From Our House to Your House, Merry Christmas

It has been very hard for me to get excited about Christmas this year for various reasons the chief one being that we will be just the three of us, Mom, Sweetie and me.

Last year at this time I was elbow deep in baking, cleaning and shopping for presents for the offspring and his three sons. This year it's a little less hectic. The offspring and his girl are heading for Hawaii tomorrow and middle grandson B has booted it back to Calgary. The photo is from last Christmas.

The baking is now almost finished and the neighbor's will be happy. I'm putting on weight because of course everything needs to be sampled once or twice. The only thing left is the find a nice fresh Goose for Christmas dinner. Nice traditional German meal this year for the three of us.

This has been a bad year for Mom health wise. First the diagnosis of congestive heart failure in January, further testing revealed mini stroke activity and a couple of bad falls have all added to making her more frail. I think the final straw was getting shingles, which is very hard to recover from at that age.

It is heartbreaking for me to watch this sudden decline in woman who was always so incredibly strong. In her marriage of over 50 years she was the leader and the rock. I guess the decline started after my Dad passed away but I didn't really notice until she moved in with us two years ago.

My sweetie also had a health scare this year and my sincerest recommendation for anyone over age fifty is to have a colonoscopy. It is a lifesaving test to catch the most curable of cancers. I can't emphasize enough how important this test is. Go on, have one it's not so bad.

And me, well I'm stressed but reasonably healthy. The fybromyalgia doesn't bother me all the time, the migraines seem to be getting worse and the hip, oh well, I see the surgeon again in January and will tell him it's not great. I don't really know that there is a solution at this stage, I'm not prepared to have another operation. I will just soldier on.

I wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.