thank you all for your best wishes sure helps allot . saw my doctor today blood count is a ok only have to go once a month for the next 6 months . I think he just wants to see my smile every ,month :)) plus my money :)) I have to go in one day this week to have an xray taken of the bone in my leg for now he thinks there maybe a chance of an infection in the bone . no artery problems no clots in the viens , & no nerve damage so only other choice to look at is the bone ))) other then that he just says no heavy lifting so guess I will have to watch what I put into my friends boxes :)) for a week or so :))) I sure enjoy all your cards & letter bettyboops summer lapp nancy sneed p. johnson s speed d schoedel m seehusen b. henricks a traversilovefarac pchang lisam djm906 & so so many many more thank you all. good night my friends susie

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, not having any idea there is actually a book that addresses it. We sold our home at the top of the market in late '05 after having updated it to reflect some of the HGTV trends of the day. We purchased a home built in 1977 with outdated bathrooms and gold and blue shag wall-to-wall in the upstairs bedrooms. Obviously that wall-to-wall needed to be replaced since it was 30 years old, but what I've realized is how silly it is to turn my home into a showplace based on how it might benefit potential resale value one day. I've read many times on this and other forums (but this one is particularly bad for it) some condescending and even downright snotty advice from people who perhaps unwittingly give off the impression that not only would butter not melt in their mouths, but that they would sooner run naked over hot coals than cook an omelet on anything less than a Wolf or Viking range. Don't get me wrong--I do enjoy living in a nice home, and my home is indeed a nice one. It's just not one that is currently or will anytime in the near future be tricked out with granite, stainless, 'hardwoods' (because 'hardwood' is no longer in fashion; it's 'hardwoods' in the plural or we all might just as well go with the horror commonly known as laminate), or a marble counter in the bathroom topping a trendy but completely impractical vanity. I still enjoy home improvement projects--at least, I enjoy the result--but these days I seem to be looking at the most cost-effective way to update rather than the one they would do on any number of HGTV shows. I think it might actually be a bit more fun than throwing money at the biggest, shiniest/most matte model of modern design I might come across. Granite, soapstone, marble, inexplicably vast expanses of reflective stainless? They are great. I enjoy coming across them here and there. However, one place I am unlikely to come across them is here in my very nice, certainly above average, structure that has truly become home to my family. I will continue to enjoy tweaking things and decorating my 31-year-old home, and I will enjoy the process as well as the result.

Georgia - happy to see someone else reading "The Moonflower Vine"... It was a title I found somewhere and dug up and enjoyed. I've been reading (and reminding myself) how to write by reading "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. A book straight out of the late 1970's, Zinsser was/is? a prof at Yale and has a journalist's background. It's more of a primer than anything, but he has a good sense of humor and I've finally learned the plural of "genius" is "genii". And then speaking of well written, I am also reading and enjoying "Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain" by Judith Flanders which is *packed* with detail about this time. Obsessed with Victorians as I seem to be, this is a great read and I'm having fun. However, it suffers from a steady stream of typos which is a bit distracting. Speaking of distracting, I am also reading "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray about a death in an Irish boarding school. Light hearted and the writing is fine, but whoever decided to "translate" all the English/Irish bits into "American" needs to smothered. "Mum" or "Mam" is now "Mom". "Shopping Center" is now "mall" and numerous other examples. Unless things have been decidedly American in my long absence from living in UK?... All good reads if you're not too pedantic about stuff other than the story. (The pains of being an editor.) :-)

My Dr. told me the reason that I needed reading glasses was that as we age, our corneas droop downward and become pear shaped. Thinner on top and thicker at the bottom. It's just gravity. I am sure some folks will disagree. But that is what I was told.