OUR PITIFULNESS

The hubs had his surgery (completely torn rotator cuff) and is on his way to a slow but full recovery. 

At the hospital, they called me back after they got him prepped and I had the pleasure of sitting with him and listening to him ramble on and on about crazy stuff due to the medication they had given him. He kept asking EVERYONE their life story and how they got to Raleigh and who they were married to in case he new them, how they met..... and on and on and on. I guess his nurses were used to crazy people, because they just played along with him. I did finally tell him to close his eyes and go to sleep because he was talking too much and then all he wanted to do was apologize to everyone. I was so glad when it was time for his surgery and they came and got him.

This is him in the recovery area, getting ready to go home.

He was wide awake and very talkative again... a/k/a very medicated!

After the really good meds wore off,  he did nothing but sit in the chair and pretend to watch TV. 

Someone please tell me how a man who is not walking around the house can gather and accumulate 

so much clutter around him. One of biggest pet peeves is to have tables loaded down with ugly stuff and there he sat with his little growing collection for days watching the Golf Channel non stop.  

The first three days after the surgery were pretty tough for him. He could not get comfortable and couldn't move unless I helped him. He was up and down all night.  He is better now and mostly pain free. He just has his entire arm in a brace that keeps it against his body like a wing. He has one more week to go in that and then he moves to a sling. After three weeks in a sling, he will begin PT. 

 He has kept me very busy since as his chauffeur. He was given strict instructions to not drive for three weeks. He works on the other side of town, technically in another small town, so with that drive, school carpool and soccer carpool I have done next to nothing else but sit in my car. But things are slowly getting close to being back to normal, he went against the doctor's orders and started driving over the weekend because.....

 I had an accident on Sunday morning around 6AM. #3 had a soccer game in Charlotte at 11:00 (3 hour drive) and I was rushing to get ready.  My round brush slipped out of my hand as I was drying my bangs and when I tried to catch it, I pushed/raked it into my left eye. I cannot tell you how painful it was. I saw stars, the moon and I do believe Jesus was there too. It hurt sooo bad. I was supposed to be driving to Charlotte, but there was no way I was able to do that since I could not open either of eyes... funny how your eyes kind of stick up for each other. So Art drove with one arm while I sat with my eyes buried in a wet washcloth. 

I did not see any of the entire trip there, the game or the ride home. Somehow, I went all day feeling like I had glass in my left eye, with both of them pouring nonstop, my nose running and for some reason my ears ringing.  I ended up going to the emergency room Sunday evening. The first thing they did was to put drops in my eye that would numb it. After the "slight stinging sensation", (I saw Jesus again) it went completely numb and I do believe that is what heaven must feel like. 

I was sent home with the diagnosis of having three "good"scratches across my cornea,  several bottles of drops and some heavy duty pain meds.

And just because I promised I wouldn't put any of his pictures on the computer..... and I broke that promise......her I am in all of my glory.....no make-up, hair pulled back and totally blindsided (pun intended)....

sunday

I am not sure who took pictures of me - I could not see them - but they are grounded!

 Five days later, I am just now beginning to get on with things and it is finally feeling better. It is no longer swollen and the lovely shade of crimson red is fading!!

 Seems we just cannot get going this September at our house and are looking forward to October. We definitely  have had our share of set back, accidents and the craziest drama this month. Our weekend is going to be full of tailgating, football, soccer and finally so Fall like weather!

ANOTHER DAY DURING THE SUMMER...

Well, this is a big week for us here at the Odom house.

 #1 has her first official day at the hospital as a nursing student. She is staying here at home on her clinical nights. She will have her own patient to attend to. She went in today to get the paper work for her patient and got a bit overwhelmed and nervous. She will be working with post surgical patients. The worst part is that she has to be there at 6:45 AM..... everyday. It makes me laugh and cry all at the same time. All through school, she was the WORST about getting up and being ready on time. It has been really nice not having to fight with her about getting out of the bed the past few years and now here I am back at square one.

While #1 is headed towards one hospital in the morning, Art and I will be headed towards another one. He is having rotator cuff surgery tomorrow. We will be there most of the day and he should be released late tomorrow afternoon. So I am just guessing we are going to have a long night tomorrow night.

I am still catching up with end of summer pictures. We had so many "last night of summer" dinners and outings because all three girls started school on different days. We are into our nights out around here and look for any excuse to not cook!

This is my traditional picture of the sun going down on our summer.

Instead of our tradition of having

 Nutty Buddies on the front porch while the sun sets, #3 chose to go to a new frozen yogurt place. 

It is one of those places that has 100 different flavors of self serve frozen yogurt and then

at least 1,000 different toppings to choose from. 

(That is only a slight exaggeration.)

After you finish creating your masterpiece, you take it to the counter, 

it is weighed and then you are charged based on what the scale says. 

I love this picture below and how Barrett is sitting out in front of everyone. 

BF1 has tagged along with us for almost five years now.

#3 gave up.

She needed a doggie bag.

 

One Day During The Summer...

Since I haven't been such a good blogger over the past few months,

I want to go backwards and take a look at some of the things we did 

over the summer. 

One day during the summer,

while the Man of the House was busy in Charleston tearing his rotator cuff, 

the girls and I went French.

We went to a new small restaurant called Simply Crepes. 

They of course have a menu full of delicious crepes plus soups and salads. 

We really liked it and couldn't stop passing our plates around for everyone to taste. 

This is the turkey reuben crepe. 

I love anything with sauerkraut on it!

#1 had the seafood crepe.

For dessert we shared the berries and creme brulee crepe.

"O-M-G!"

We ate it so fast I wasn't able to get a picture of it!! 

From there we went to see the movie 

Midnight In Paris.

I new nothing about it, except that it was about Paris, Owen Wilson was in it

 and it was a Woody Allen film.

What a pleasant surprise.

This was one of our best girl's nights during the summer.  

THIS AND THAT

Well, we made it through Irene just fine. Our yard here at home is a big mess and you cannot see the driveway in some places. We had a good amount of rain and wind, just enough for the power to go off for about an hour and to undo everything that was done in the yard just a few days before.

 Everything is fine with the beach house also. We went to the house there last Wednesday to get the boat out of the water and to put all of the outdoor furniture inside. There was a loooooong line at the boat ramp, everybody else picked Wednesday too. It was a long day of driving.

The hubs is going back tomorrow and he will set all of the furniture back to where it is supposed to be.

constant action at the boat ramp

would hate to have to pull that boat anywhere!!

The water was already high on Wednesday.

The grasses were almost covered. 

It was soooo humid too.

The clouds were so big and fluffy they did not look real. 

The water was very high on the docks in our canal. 

This was taken from our little dock looking across. 

The docks were covered with water by Thursday.

So I can only imagine what it was like on Saturday. 

The Man of the House found out on Friday that he will be having shoulder surgery in two weeks. He has a completely torn rotator cuff thanks to a golf ball and a sand trap. He will be in a sling and completely immobile for almost four weeks and then rehabbing until November with strict instructions to not lift anything or use his arm until late November. HMMMMMM..... we have put off cleaning out our attic in our house because he could never find the time to commit to it so I made him put down in blood during the summer that THIS fall, as soon as it cooled off up there, we were going to spend as long as it took to go through every box, every paper, holiday decoration and just get it done. I knew he REALLY didn't want to do it, but going to this extreme to get out of it is just ridiculous. (say prayers for me)  :)

We had a great weekend!!  Friday we went to The Jimmy V Foundation "soiree". Jim Valvano was the basketball coach at NC State, when they last won the national championship. He found out he had cancer while he was the coach and spoke out publicly about his journey. (There are some really great and moving videos of him speaking about his prognosis on the website - check it out. )  It was a reverse raffle  for   your choice of any loaded BMW all to benefit cancer research.  We ended up buying three tickets and so we took #3 with us. She loved it!! There was wonderful food and we had a front row table. She hobnobbed with some celebrities  - are they still "celebrities" if she didn't know who they were?  Ha!  Sadly, she did not win the car. With her luck, she will probably do it next year! 

Barrett with Charles Barkley

Barrett with Joey Fatone from N Sync

The bottom of her chair had a $250 gift certificate to a jewelry store on it!

She had a LARGE time! 

Saturday (while the weather was bad)  we went to our annual Pre Tailgating Party. It just happened to be our good friends birthday too so he went all out and had it catered and had a band. We had a great time. NC State has their first game this Saturday and so the timing of the party was perfect. Sadly I did not take any pictures!! 

Sunday, we went to Winston Salem, NC. #3 had her first soccer game of the season. We carpooled with another family and it was just so much fun to chit chat and laugh all the way there and back. They started the season with a tie, 1-1. That was a really good outcome because we were playing one of the top elite teams in the state. Their girls were not too pleased with how the game was going and as they became more desperate towards the end of the game, it turned very dirty. Let me just say...."Nobody puts #3 in the corner!" She held her own and took a few names! 

The past few days I have just been trying to play catch up. Busy weekends are a lot of fun, but really hard to recover from!  

IT IS OFFICIAL

Tomorrow morning, it will be official. 

"S-E-N-I-O-R!!"

#1 starts classes in Chapel Hill and she will walk into the classroom as a SENIOR!!

That means I will have a senior and junior in college and

a freshmen in high school.

In mom year's does that mean I am getting old?

It sounds so o-l-d.

I do not feel old and defiantly do not look old. :)

I refuse to dress old.....

except my girls have told me that they think some of my capris look like 

"grand-ma pants". 

 I will admit they are a little loose and roomy, but I promise it is because of the heat and humidity around here in the summer. 

I cannot stand to wear anything that touches me when it is:

or especially when it is: 

(pictures from my dash this summer)

So I took my SENIOR to UNC's bookstore to get her her first nursing uniforms.

She will have to wear them to class and to the hospital when she is doing her clinical work.

Here she is trying on lab coats...

here are her polo, jacket and pants...

and her first set of scrubs!!!

I should have made a video of her dancing a little jig in the dressing room.

She was so excited!

I was proud.

I also saw this in the bookstore. 

Love it!!!

Can't decide if I need it though.