Knee Replacement and return to physical therapy

After suffering in with some back pain and going to a chiropractor and massage therapist, my regular doctor finally returned from vacation and suggested physical therapy. I knew my range of motion was not good. I have been lax in doing my exercises for about a year and a half. I have done some walking but not the kind of exercises that will help the range of motion. Some people probably think whatever they have is good enough after that long. Mine ROM was 82 degrees, considering that we live in a split entry home, that is not good enough and was causing me to improvise too much.

Can I say there has been lots of pain and torture? I believe so.Each one of the last seven appointments my ROM has increased and on Friday we ended at 103. Whoo hoo!  This is going to be a life long situation I am afraid. Even as I sat in church this am I was exercising my knee. Saturday I worked out at the rehab for  about 45 minutes. I found I could ride the bike much better following the workout with the leg press machine. Where I was only able to sit at a four and bike, I could go to a three.

Today is my daughter, Michelle and her husband Dave's wedding anniversary. Congratulations you two!

On Friday Michelle had Breanne and the kids over to do an an Easter egg hunt. It is things like this that cause me to be closer to her and her children. I haven't talked to Bryce in quite  while either. It is difficult when he is in the Coast Guard and on the east coast. I am sure he gets lonesome for home. He spent about two weeks in California in February. I believe he missed his family more than he thought he had. I get to talk to Breanne and Leah often but not him. Michelle can be hard to call unless she is in the car on her way to one of her 27 music students! Good thing we have mobile phones or we hardly ever talk. Between her attending the university full-time and the music students, she is one busy woman.

Yesterday afternoon the Roseau library had a professional genealogist give a workshop through the Minnesota Arts and Culture Legacy Library funding. It was given by Rick Crume.It was very informative. He examined several websites we could find information. One of the sites that looked promising was Roots Web World Connect Project. The have approximately 644 million names and it is a free website own by Ancestry. We each received a six page paper of websites. It makes one itchy to do their genealogy when they receive information that gives good sources.

FIVE THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN THE PAST WEEK

1. The Roseau library and the Roseau County Historical Society A-B-C book, P is for Pioneer went to the printers last week.
2. I finished the historical society annual report for the meeting on Saturday.
3. I worked out or went to PT six days last week.
4. The Roseau River opened in three days, the ditches opened past our house two days later.
5. We are getting things ready for the Minnesota History Contest in May.

Time to head to bed, pain and torture again at 10:30 tomorrow so need a good night's sleep.

Waiting for Spring

Today is the annual spring general conference for our church in Salt Lake City. Our family has so many good memories of us going to general conference in April.It was always inspiring to be among so many Latter-day Saints. I just turned on conference to listen and watch while I blog and President Monson announced that there is going to be a temple in Winnipeg! I am so excited! I have prayed for years to have a temple in Winnipeg. Now we will only have to drive 100 miles instead of 400 to attend the temple. Wonderful! We had a temple trip scheduled about three weeks ago. Our friends, who went were caught in a terrible blizzard on their way to the Bismarck Temple on I94. 800 motorists were rescued during that storm, including them.

This was the last week of Women's History Month so it must be time to put some photos on my blog.
This year nineteen women were selected from Roseau County cities and townships for the honor of being a One Woman.

One Women selected were Gladys Paulson – City of Badger, Alice Miller – Barnett, Alpha Darst – Barto, Marianne Kristofferson - Enstrom,  Alice Erickson – Falun, Adele Folland – City of Greenbush,  Pearl Loe – Grimstad, Avis Wiskow-Huss, Helen Bergland - Jadis, Lillian Nelson – Malung, Sadie Rygh – Mickinock (2009 selection), Dorothy Brinkman – Mickinock, Clarice Billberg – Palmville, Alma Mellquist Skime - Reine, Annette Hermansen – City of Roseau, Mary Dostal – Skagen, Frances Karlsson-Stafford, Loretta Voll-Unorganized/ Norland, and Anni Daedlow – City of Warroad. These women are well deserving of this title for their communities;  their volunteer work and serve has made their communities better places to live.

This year we were concerned about the program due the townships not sending in the name of their selections but about two months prior to March first they began arriving. This kept Britt very busy working on posters. Her creative touch can be seen throughout the museum not only in the One Woman posters she designs but in the exhibit she put together for the Women in Government area.

The programs were wonderful and well attended. Time for photos! For a closer view of the  photos click on the photo, then hold the ctrl key and increase the size by rolling your mouse wheel forward.

 

Thank you to all the wonderful volunteers who helped make the 2011 One Woman such a success and a special thank you to Britt Dahl our staff guru who designed all the Women in Government exhibits for the second program of Woman's History Month. Those photos will be put on in the future too.

Exhibits, exhibits, exhibits!

We are half way through the North Dakota Museum of Art exhibit "Marking the Land" now. This photo exhibit has so many novel ideas on the ingenuity of people! I especially find the photos showing the handmade Stations of the Cross in the Catholic Church photo interested as well as the many items that dot the landscape of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The exhibit will be displayed in the Roseau City Center through February 28.

We have been unable to show certain videos on the SMART board. The SMART board uses a video application that works with only a few formats and it has been discouraging again and again to try and play videos with Real or Windows Media Player as neither show up on the board. Last Thursday, I contacted SMART concerning this problem and worked for about 2 hours will a tech person only to have her decided we needed to work with someone who was more knowledgeable. I have to say, they are awesome to work with, I have worked with several individuals over time and  they have all been very helpful and solved our problem. Yesterday the tech person she turned me over to called and we resolved the problem! Hurray! We can now show any video on the board.

We have been going into our cache of photos and showing them on the board also. Yesterday we started with Roosevelt logging photos and in the afternoon we switched to photos of the dredging of the Roseau River, taken in about 1915. These were very interesting. I thought it would be nice to have some background music and turned on a classical radio station on iTunes for this and found it to be very effective. We have a person who is always telling us we should have music in the museum, well this way we do! I think we will put together information and photos of the former One Women and put them on the SMART board during Woman's History Month.

The focus of Woman's History Month is One Woman, of course, and Women in Government. Our committee has been very helpful and we are getting down to the wire now and need to get our exhibits together. It takes so much time to do these things and volunteers are such an important part of doing the job.

I noticed a red squirrel in the yard last week one day. We have never had red squirrels here. When I told Ardmore he decided to put some sunflower seeds on the snow and see if it would come back. Now we have two squirrels visiting our bird feeders. The second time the one came he noticed seeds on top of the table on the deck where we keep our feeder.He tried to climb up the legs but they were too smooth and he fell back onto the snow below the table. After examining the area, he headed for the deck railing and climbed to the top of the railing, eyeballed the distance between the railing and the table and took the leap. Now he discovered he had much more to eat! The chickadees and red polls will have to share their food.

James seems to be enjoying his ground school with Cathay Pacific in Australia. It has been very hot at times though. About two weeks ago he said it was 105. We were sitting at about -28 that morning so it was quite a contrast. He will start fight school in about three weeks which he is very excited to start. Ashley seems to be enjoying her time with her family. They celebrated their Chinese New Year about two weeks ago. All of her family came to Dunon to be together.

Frost and Rain

On Thursday we woke up to a very foggy and frosty morning. One of our visitors told me that an old wife's tale says that heavy frost means that we will have heavy rain in six months. That would put the rain at the beginning of what could be harvest time. We will see. I am even going to put it in my phone's calendar as a reminder.


This is what it looked like outside that morning:

Frosty days

It may be cold in Minnesota but we have some absolutely beautiful winter days. An example of this was Thursday morning. On my way to work, I just had to stop and take this photo of Concordia Lutheran Church with the frost on the trees. It was such a white on white day with the clouds, the church and the white trees the red stop sign was outstanding.

Often the river is a site to behold when the frost clings to the trees along the bank and the wind blows enough to make it float off gently from the branches.

I took my camera when I walked last week and this was what our yard looked like looking back on it. Another frosty morning!

The same day I was looking out my window and marveling at the fabulous view I had of our three evergreens  with the snow on every branch. How perfect is the world!

I am headed to a Rams Girl's Varsity game in about 10 minutes. They will play Duluth, I am assuming Duluth East but I'm not positive. Last night they beat Hibbing-Chisholm  9 zip. Roseau has such great hockey teams. Hibbing and Chisholm must have a population of abut 18,000 with both towns. it is amazing that a little town of 2,800 can have such an excellent hockey program.

Five things that I did today:

1. vacuum the upstairs and downstairs
2. dust everything
3. Talk to James in Australia and Ashley in Donun Taiwan
4. Clean out a cupboard
5. the next thing - go to the hockey game - Go Rams Go!

Listen With Your Heart

This morning I have come across two items that connect the saying "Listen with your heart." The first was while reading the History of Relief Society. At the end of the short article was the question "What Can I do?" followed by  two more questions:

1. What can I do to help the sisters I visit receive the gift of charity?

2. What can I begin to do this month to help share a righteous future for myself? For my family?  For others?

What great questions! It means in order to put this into action I will have to think about what I can do and then put it into action.


Then a little later I picked up my latest issue of the Toastmaster magazine and saw the Viewpoint article from the International President Pat Johnson called "Listen With Your Heart." There at the very beginning was a quote from LDS author and motivational speaker Stephen R. Covey from his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People book.
The quote follows the Relief Society questions well:
Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communication experts estimate that 10 percent of our communication is represented by the words we say, 30 percent is represented by our sounds and 60 percent by our body language. In empathic listening, you listen with your ears . . . with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.

So what does that have to do with the two questions I came across when I was reading the RS history this morning? Everything. If I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father and really want to accomplish the two questions, I will need to listen more carefully to what is being spoken to me by my family, by others, and especially by the Holy Spirit. As Jesus Christ is out mediator with our Heavenly Father so is the Holy Spirit our mediator when we need to be impressed of others needs. I hope I can listen with my heart empathy.

James and Ashley left for Hong Kong and then on to her parents about two weeks ago. It was very hard to think of them being so far away. I am so pleased that we all could spend Thanksgiving together at Brian's.

James and Ashley's new adventure will separate them for the next six months. James will be in Australia for pilot training with Cathay Pacific and Ashley will spend the time with her parents in Taiwan. I am hoping that during that time, James will be able to visit her and I understand she will be able to visit him one time. These are a lot of changes for a newly wed couple. They will spend their first anniversary apart. I hope they can think of special things to do for each other even when they are apart.

I have a dilemma every second Tuesday of the month now. I have both Toastmasters and Quilt Guild. Which one will benefit me long term? I wish I were two people, I could attend both and gain knowledge from each, as it is, that is not the case. If Toastmaster met in Roseau I would be able to attend both as our meetings are usually over by eight, but we go to Warroad so I don't get back to Roseau until nearly nine. I guess I will have to alternate! That means that this time, I will be going to Quilt Guild!

I completed my first wall hanging and did a stitch in the ditch on it. I had planned to give it to my sister-in-law, but it has hockey on it so it will not have much meaning to her. I will just have to make another one with a snowflake on it for her. Yup, it was suppose to be a Christmas gift, she will just have to get it when it is completed.