Fullness of Joy!

Welcome! 

It's Week #6 of Year #2014! What shall be writ on our slates this week? 

I'm very happy this Monday for the desperately needed bit of rain we got yesterday in northern California. I hope that means that parts of the UK received a much-needed respite. We have had the least rain in January since record-keeping began and parts of England have had the most rain in January since record-keeping began. It would be nice if Mama Nature evened things out a bit.

I'm also happy to be a Guest Designer at the well-known merriest Christmas challenge called Merry Monday Christmas Challenge! Our photo inspiration board this week challenges us to wear stockings on our cards!

Here is my stocking'd card:

A side:  I've been asked by the Y to apologize. I was interrupted by a phone call when I was taking the photos and one call lead to another ... by the time I got back to taking pictures, the Y had gotten tired and slipped a little in the chorus line. He's got the worst job of all the letters because he has to stand on one leg with the other one kicking up while holding both arms out and yelling, "Hallelujah!" I mean, who wouldn't get tired after a while and a half?

The joyful letters die is from Stampin' Up. The snowflake ribbon is from everyone's favorite girlfriend, JoAnn. The little wooden stocking is from GKW; I've had it in my Odds & Ends for ages.

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Since snippets of ribbon and mirror card were used for all the features of my card, I'm skipping joyfully over to the playground at Pixie's Snippets Playground. Our beautiful hostess worked very hard last week to come up with a logo button for her pixies. Way to go, Di!! We now have keys to the playground labeled "Snippet Keys" in happy rainbow colors!

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I'm also linking my card with Crafty Hazlenut's Christmas Challenge Extra (CHNC) where the challenge every month is "Anything Goes," as long as it's Christmas. You can't beat that!

Please click on the links to join in the fun and get all the details about sponsors, prizes, and rules.

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Chit Chat

I'm over my cold finally! Settle down, the bad news is I'm starting six weeks of physical therapy, twice a week, for my knee, whose pain is either reflective of an upcoming visit from Arthur I. Tis [rat fink] or somehow I have torn my mahisskiss [Latin]. I'm really intrigued at how I was able to tear anything when the extent of my daily exercise consists primarily of rolling around in my desk chair. My second hobby is being a medical mystery.

Actually, I have an amusing true story about my knees. (I want to emphasize "true" because my stories are usually lies.) When I was 12 years old, I started getting severe pain in both knees during Physical Exercise (PE) Class, especially doing an exercise that was called the Squat Thrust. Seriously. Anyone remember that exercise? You'd pay big money to a personal trainer today to learn it in order to round out your assets, so to speak. Back then it was a for-reals government-sanctioned exercise in a series of exercises we had to do. More's the pity that PE is no longer a requirement in schools.

Source

But I digest. The small town doctor diagnosed me with a form of Osteoporosis and said I had "calcium deposits" in both knees. The treatment consisted of full leg casts from the ankle to the top of the leg, on both legs, at the same time, for six months! It was quite memorable for two reasons: 

First, my school was a two-story building and you can imagine the vision I was lurching from one foot to the other up the stairs several times a day with both legs straight out in those casts. Not to mention that back in the day girls wore dresses to school so the boys mercilessly teased me while they peeked up my dress as I ascended the stairs.

Second, after six months, the casts were removed and I can still visualize myself sitting in the bathtub staring down at my little legs which had atrophied to mere skin on bones. I filled them out quickly, but it took a few days to learn how to walk again.

The doctor also told us that my condition would recur and I would very likely end up in a wheel chair by the time I was thirty. Thank goodness she was wrong about that! 

So last week when I told the orthopedic doctor my knee history, he shook his head with wonder at the things they did back then. He's never heard of calcium deposits in the knees. Wait. Whaat?! And while he was appalled that I was in casts like that for so long, he said that casts were the standard remedy used for all kinds of tendon and joint pain back then.

Just to clarify, "back then" was the year 1961, not the year 1861! How blessed we are with the advances in medicine!

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Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

BTW, thanks Linda!

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower!  Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

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Mwah!