In Thanksgiving

Since we have been home, Roger and I have been trying to get back into the groove of daily life. Of course, we were "living" every day while we were touring, but that experience was so far removed from the stuff of normal day-to-day activities and operations that it remained an adventure, rather than just - life. You know - what you do every day when you don't have something special to do.

So here we are, doing what we did before we left, with the added bonus of recuperating from the accident. I am astounded that the scabs on my knee and ankle are still not healed. While the scrapes on my face were fairly superficial, and I scabbed up and then lost those by the end of a week's time, my leg and ankle sores must be quite a bit more severe. It has been nearly six weeks since the accident, and they are still tender. The skin has appeared to heal several times, then it gets sort of oozy like a blister, and then it scabs up again.  I guess that there must be some underlying trauma to the tissue below the skin that is trying to get itself sorted out. Maybe I bruised the bones, also, because sometimes they just hurt, and there's nothing there that I can see that would cause that.

Roger had an MRI yesterday to take a look at his knee. He is still in quite a lot of pain, particularly when he gets up after being seated a while. Then it takes a bit to get it limbered up. We'll see the orthopedist next week to learn what's up. We expect that his medial collateral ligament was torn. Don't know yet whether that's something that heals on its own, or whether he might require surgery, and if so, what that would entail.

Making pie with Grandpa

Thus, we creak along! We are enjoying our rides on the borrowed tandem, and we particularly enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with our daughter and granddaughters. For many years, Roger and I have enjoyed our own tradition of spending Thanksgiving in one of our National Parks. This was the first Thanksgiving since we've been together that we did not do so. In part, we were pretty worn out with traveling, and I just couldn't quite wrap my head around planning a trip somewhere when we'd only gotten home a few weeks earlier. Plus, we'd been able to visit a good number of National Parks during our tour, and were kind of preparing ourselves to miss our own holiday trip this year. And most importantly, we just really felt like we wanted to spend some time with Dana and the girls when we finished our tour.

Phebee really liked the dressing

So they joined us down here, and we had a grand old time. I was a little bit anxious about the food - I haven't cooked a turkey in years! (It's one of the upsides of being away from home for the holiday.) But everything turned out great. We had all our favorites, plus two pies. Yum! Honestly, I was basking in the glow of satisfaction from that turkey dinner for several days. It's probably a sin for anyone to be so caught up in the outcome of a meal, but I was.

And so, we offer our thanks for our good health, our family, our friends and good fortune. We are so very, very lucky. So often these days, whether I'm getting a coffee at Stell's or running into a friend at a holiday party, I get this greeting: "I'm so glad you're back. I mean, really - it's so good to see you."  And I know what they mean. We had so many people watching our backs. So many people following along, enjoying our trip.  So many people who opened the paper that Wednesday morning and caught their breath when they read about the accident. So we see them now, and they give us a hug, and they say, "I'm so glad you're home." Because really, this could have ended quite differently. I said something like that to Roger the other day. We were moping a bit, feeling a bit blue, and I had to pull myself out of a hole and remind myself that we both made it home. We're sad about what happened, and we're still hurting a bit, and we don't know what's next, but we're here. We're together, and we're okay. That counts for quite a lot, and for that we give thanks.

Let the feast begin!