Miser Family Update: the good, the bad, the ugly.

What to say about this week in the Miser Family?  It's been rich.  It's been full.  It's been things that rhyme with "rich", too, and not the happy kind of rhyme with "rich".  This is a week that really has had the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So let's start with the good:

Dog walking!  Even though I haven't had a lot of dog-training time lately, we do go regularly to the dog park, and so Prewash is getting better and better at walking slack-leash.  As an example of how good she's getting, here's a series of photos of my 4-year-old granddaughter walking the dog for a quarter of a mile, home from the dog park (when, admittedly, the dog has already gotten to run around like a maniac, so she's extra calm). 

Across an open field, . . .

 . . . down the sidewalk, . . . 

. . . and along a neighbor's fence.  

Visit from J-son!   His foster mom was in the neighborhood running errands, so J-son popped in for a little while on Tuesday evening.  He's looking good.  He's talking like . . . well, like a grown-up who knows his stuff.  He saw my husband's leg and said, "whoa!  That's some edema there!"  Because apparently if you study sports therapy you know words like "edema", and also how to properly use canes and walkers.  He's looking forward to his summer job.  

Two shows!  On Wednesday, K-daughter and two of my friends went to see Once at our local theater.  It was a great musical!   And then on Thursday, I-daughter took me to see a local musical theater group performing 70's Smash Hits.  That, too, was awesome.  (As we left the theater, one of the ushers thanked me for jumping up and dancing.  Glad to oblige!)

All of this means I got to catch up a bit with my daughters.  K-daughter got to gush about how A-child is super well-behaved at a restaurant (and made a huge contrast with a same-aged friend who was the opposite of well-behaved for an extraordinarily long time at the same event).  I-daughter got to regale me with tales of knitting and square-dancing trips she's been taking.  Her life is such a good one for her; it's good for a mother's soul to see her children grow up so well.

That's a lot of "good", isn't it?

The "bad", as you might guess from the people hardly mentioned above, includes a really slow, still painful knee surgery recovery.  My husband has been having a lot of trouble getting any sleep at all.  That's apparently a "Thing" with knee replacements, but it's still incredibly hard.  We are seeing progress, and we're glad that eventually the hard times will be behind us (we keep getting reassurances to that effect).  But right now we have a minor pharmacy that we update with new drugs every couple of days or so, because the old ones keep not being quite powerful or effective enough.

We also got to welcome N-son back into the home with open arms and a few heartfelt lectures.   He's taking a three-week break from his school.  'Nuff said about that.  We've arranged for him to stay occupied in the kitchen of our local rescue mission while he's in town, and I continue to be so grateful for the amazing community I live in who help me to parent my children into their adulthoods.

And that's it for the bad.  

Ready for the ugly, anyone?   How about a picture or two of 30 staples, just about to be removed from my husband's flesh?   Here goes:

The blue ink was to help the surgeon;
it hasn't washed off yet.

You're welcome.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures (sometimes a little more wealthy than we'd like!).  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.