Status Update

Doug had his rotator cuff surgery Monday a week ago. We got to the hospital at 6 am and were able to leave at 1 pm. He was in pretty good spirits while the nerve block was working. Unfortunately it stopped working about 5:30 pm and he had a really rough night Monday night. Since then the pain has slowly but surely lessened and we are going back to the doctor tomorrow to have this huge "bandage" (his whole shoulder is taped up right now) taken off. The next step should be physical therapy twice a week and hopefully he will feel a lot better by the time we need to leave beginning of April. At this point I am taking it one day at a time.

The weather in the meantime has been rainy and cold, but we had a lucky break last Saturday and Sunday. Mike Rhodes, the builder and owner of Retama Village, gave a "welcome back" party on Saturday night. It was catered by Rudy's Barbecue and we picked out on pulled pork, sausage and pork loin with all their traditional trimmings. Doug felt well enough to attend for about an hour, but then the chair got to uncomfortable and we made our way back home. A band played until 9:30 pm and we were told that everybody had a very good time.

Due to the bad weather this season, we really have not had many "Happy Hours" with our group. Who wants to go to the clubhouse when it is cold and rainy? Well, Sunday was a gorgeous day and Linda came up with the idea of having Happy Hour and Church's chicken that afternoon. What a great idea and we had the whole group (except the ones that have left Retama Village already) for dinner. It was nice to sit outside and catch up with what everybody has been doing since our last Happy Hour.

Well, this is pretty much all that has happened since the last blog. Hopefully we will get warmer weather soon, but it will not be this week. Tomorrow's low is 37 degrees with a high of low 60s. This is way to cold for us!! I want my 75 degrees back!!

What a beautiful sight!!

Have you ever had a day where you wake up, have your day planned, and then your better half has totally different plans? Luckily by now I have learned to go with the flow and what he wanted to do made sense.

Since he is going to have rotator cuff surgery tomorrow he wanted to hook up the truck to the rig for the first time and move the rig backwards a couple of feet, since it is sitting a little bit to the front right now and the big truck does not fit in front of it.

I am so proud of us. I have to learn a couple of things, since you really need to be lined up exactly with the kingpin to the hitch and adjustment in high can also now be done through airbags on the hitch, which we did not have in the F550. It really did not take us long at all to get hitched up and get the rig moved a few feet back. Jack actually did not come over until we were all done, since he did not hear any expensive noises as we hooked up (LOL). The red truck can now stay exactly where you see it in the picture.

...and I got my little entertainment area back. When somebody now comes to visit, if the weather ever gets nice enough, we can entertain outside again.

Life is good today and hopefully everything will go well tomorrow morning and I will have him back home by lunch time.

What a week!!

Actually it really did not start so bad. We were walking around on Monday at 4 pm to see where "Happy Hour" would be for the day to find out that it was Larry's birthday that day and Mark's the next. So of course since Kathy is still here, there was plenty of cake and ice cream. These are the days where we skip the diet and just enjoy being with our friends. It was nice to sit out on the patio at the clubhouse on a warm and sunny afternoon. There have not been that many this season.

Tuesday was more exciting for us. People that follow our blog frequently know that we were looking for a place to settle down again last summer on the west coast and due to the current state of our economy, that is not going to happen right now. So we decided to give "workcamping" a shot. We have been subscribing to an online workamper magazine that provides us with daily listings of campgrounds looking for people. Doug had also heard about a place called Adventureland through one of the many forums he follows. Adventureland is an amusement park in Altoona, IA (near Des Moines) and is one of the biggest employer of workcampers in the country. We knew that their human resource manager was coming to the valley to hold interviews, so Doug gave him a call one day and we had an appointment on Tuesday at 10:15 am. The gentlemen we met with was very nice and was able to answer all the questions we had as well as explain to us what would be expected of us. I never thought that we would actually get an answer if we would be hired or not that day, but by the end of the interview we both had a job for the summer. I will be working in retail and can start on April 24th and Doug will be working in rides with a starting date of May 21st. So you will be probably be hearing a lot about Adventureland and our adventures there this summer.

As our friends know, Doug has been in pain with his left shoulder for some time and finally agreed to go to an orthopedic specialist to find out what is going on. Well, he has a rotator cuff injury and we tried to relief some of the pain by him getting a steroid shot last week. For a lot of people, like our neighbor Donna, who got a shot in her knee, this works and the pain goes away. Unfortunately for Doug the pain stayed. So we have made the decision for him to have surgery this coming Monday, so that he will have enough time for rehab before we have to leave here for our jobs in the beginning of April. Wish us luck and say a little prayer for him please.