I have been fighting a flu thingie that finally moved into a walking pneumonia thingie. *sigh* So have been home the last two days, sleeping and sleeping and sleeping and trying to get myself back to a functioning state. Joe has had it as well, so we take turns being totally useless!

But in other news, we are busy having the bathtubs replaced in two bathrooms. When we re-did the house, we were trying to save money, so we re-coated the tubs, rather than replace them. The old ones are badly chipped and the drain plumbing has frozen and was not removable without replacing the tub. So all in all, it was time.We also learned that recoating is a waste of money and just peeled off over and over. While the coating was under warranty, after the third ‘fix’ it was obvious it was never going to work.

So Megan’s bathroom was done first and is just about complete and looks great with new plumbing, tiles, tub and fixtures. They are now in the middle of doing Becca’s and there is dust all over her room at the moment. We are also going to replace all the windows in March, to hopefully improve the insulation of the house, which seems to leak hot and cold now.

Megan is busy taking an after school class in creative writing. They are writing a short chapter book and she is doing a story about a mystery at a haunted house – very Nancy Drew-ish. She is really enjoying it and has had a lot of fun.

Becca just finished making a DNA model for her science class out of beads, pipecleaners and colored straws that looks pretty darn good. The teacher didn’t want any ‘food’ items or ‘toys’ used to build it, just ‘household’ items, which made it challenging to figure out what to use, but we managed it in the end.

I just realized it has now been 10 years since I had a gastric bypass to loose weight. Wow! While I have gained some of the weight back, I am still 100 lbs lighter than I was before surgery. I am busy doing a diet with Joe to get down even more, but I certainly have never regretted doing the surgery and getting my weight down.

Anyhow, hope everyone is well and that each of you have a great week!

Oh, one last thing! My brother-in-law, Ian, has published his first book. I urge you to go over to Amazon and consider buying a copy. It has really good reviews (4 out of 5 stars on average) and looks good. I have my own copy on order. The link is here and it is called The Rainbow Connection.

My grandma, who I have mentioned on occasion in my blog, passed away last week at the age of 103. She died peacefully in her sleep, after having been on hospice care now for several months. I still am in awe of the things that have happened, and what she had been through in her life time. She was alive for the first flight of a plane, saw the first man walk on the moon, and then saw the space shuttle and finally tourists paying to fly into space.

She was a young married woman at the depth of the Great Depression and traveled with my grandfather from Iowa to California with all their earthly belongings in their car, with their two older children, not even sure what work my grandfather would do once they arrived. In Iowa, he had been a shoe salesman in the family store.

She was born very premature, and if the stories are to be believed, she was only 2-1/2 pounds at birth. She was kept in a box which sat on the open oven door to keep her warm. She survived diptheria as a teenager, when her parents were dirt poor and could hardly find the money to have a doctor come and see her. He declared she could only be cured by drinking pineapple juice which was terribly exotic and expensive in America at that time. Her parents bought cases of canned pineapple and she drank the juice it was canned in and somehow survived. Was it the juice? Good luck? Who knows, but she recovered.

She saved money by sewing all the clothing for the family, including my mother’s underwear. I can’t tell you the number of times I heard the story about how Grandma didn’t take shrinkage into account when doing the elastic, so mom would die once her panties had been washed a few times and cut off the circulation in her legs. But they made do.

Grandma was an amazing baker.. She would lay out clean newspaper and pour unmeasured scoops of flour, sugar, etc. until it looked right. Mix it up and make the most wonderful angle food cake. No one could every figure out the recipe, despite many attempts, since there was no way to measure the quantities she was using.

Her last few months have been a bit hard, small strokes, hallucinations at times, weakness, not good quality of life. So I am glad she passed away gently and the pain and confusion was not long and drawn out.  Good bye Grandma, rest in peace.