Scattered Thoughts . . .

I was sitting on the couch in the living room yesterday evening before starting on cooking dinner and picked up my notebook.  I write thoughts and ideas in this notebook everyday (I now have a whole library of notebooks tucked in all sorts of places around the house) and, quite often, add some sketches of some of my ideas or thoughts.  Yesterday, I was thinking about Christmas and the lake house. Every year of my life, in the few months preceding Christmas, my mind always drifts to spending Christmas in an Adirondack lodge-type of home or lake house setting.  I have not had the opportunity to do this just yet but I do plan to do this at least once before I have no Christmases left.   The closest I have come to living this annual dream of spending Christmas in an Adirondack-type lodge or lake house has been a few Christmases spent on various air bases.  Back in my earlier years of my Air Force career, the Airman's Club was typically the hub of social life on every base.  For variou

I've managed to get out of the house for a few short periods in the past few days... and that was really nice... today, however, I'm back indoors and I'm not so sure I'll be wandering outside today. I'm really worn out today... exhausted... and my spinal injuries are really bothering me. The pain started yesterday after overdoing my physical therapy the previous day. I knew I had overdone it while I was still doing my physical therapy! By nightfall, I was in considerable pain throughout my spine as well as having bone pain in my legs. Yesterday was a bit brutal so the only thing I accomplished was preparing and cooking baked ziti with garlic bread for the kids. Needless to say, sleeping is not going all that well. Last night, my sleeping problems due to spinal and bone pain were compounded by being cold all night long. Although the room probably was slightly chillier last night than usual (I removed the air conditioner from one of two windows in the room so we h