Letter my Dad sent to the manufacturer of his new chain saw:

Received your letter of Nov 6th, waited about a month for someone to contact me, (No contact) then decided to use the saw with no brakes.  If you remember, this saw was out of my possession from May to Oct. I am working on a wood job where the trees have been pushed over.  I trim them, then drag them to a better location.  I trimmed for less than an hour, turned the saw off and moved to another location.  The saw would not restart.  Back to the shop.  Today, I checked with him and he says the saw has to be sent away and with what he knows about it, there will be a bill of about $200 for parts.  I am rapidly approaching the figure of $1500.00, the cost so far to use this saw.  I think that it is about time to send this to the local paper to warn people about this saw.

As I was sharing with the Northern Composure group this morning ...

Recently I had knee surgery.  I'm afraid that my expectations for a quick recovery were dashed when the surgery involved more than a tear in my meniscus cartilage.  After a month, I am still using crutches (mostly) and hobbling around when I'm not.  I can't get anything done.  Have you ever tried to carry a plate of food or a glass of milk to the table while using crutches (even one crutch)?

So I'm feeling a little down at times --down at myself and down at my knee.

I've noticed that depression gets worse when I stay inactive.  So the physical therapy I've been having for my knee brightens my mood a lot.

The darkness doesn't seem to affect me one way or the other.  I love the snow.  Actually I think walking on crutches in snow is cool.  I have prongs on the bottom and it bites into the ice and snow.

The doctor told me to "take it easy" but I don't want to.  He told me that I could permanently injure my knee if I didn't let it take time to heal. That's encouraging news, eh? So here I sit letting my knee rest while I write a few e-mails and posts.

The doctor said, "Lower your expecations."

And I think "Lower them to what?"  I am hardly getting anything done now.

The doctor said, "You should take care of yourself."

I should do a lot of things.  I feel so selfish already.

I know that having a "should" attitude contributes, and also striving for perfection.  So I should get up and go to bed.  I need some sleep.

I have so many things bugging me right now that I don't know where to start.  First I'm trying to pack for our trip to Indiana, Nevada, and Seattle.  I have so many other things vying for my time that I am not keeping on track.

For instance, our water keeps freezing because it is 25 below zero.  Keith has a system for keeping it thawed, but it requires me running up and down the stairs.  That may sound easy, but I just had knee surgery a few weeks ago, and I have to ration my energy, especially going up and down stairs. Every trip to the garage requires a half hour of rest until my knee stops throbbing.

Another irritation is that the automatic-garage door opener decided not to be automatic.  The one on Keith's side of the garage works find, but mine doesn't.

I go to physical therapy three times a week, and it takes me 10 minutes to get out of the garage.  First I have to turn on the master heater (to keep the garage from cooling down too much while the door is open), open the garage door, get in the car, back out of the garage, get out of the car, close the garage door, turn off the master heater, and get back into the car.  Then I can drive off to wherever I'm going.  It wears me out just typing it.

Then while writing this rant, the Blogger interface appears to be offline.  Now I can't keep up my momentum of updating my blogs.  I really want to finish this before we take our vacation.  I want it to be a vacation away from the computer!  With as many problems as I have with computers, I need it!