Terrific Two!

Today is Eliza's big #2 birthday! Happy Birthday Eliza! I remember the day she was born. She was so cute, and for a while she had her funny little perma-frown. She was very suspicious about this new world. And now she is all smiles! One of my favorite memories of Eliza is from Thanksgiving 2007. I flew from Chicago to South Carolina in the evening, so she was already in bed by the time I arrived at Sarah and Joel's house. I slept on the couch, and Eliza started to cry kind of early the next morning. Joel went to get her up, and when she saw me out on the couch in the living room she got the biggest smile on her face. It was so cute! I am lucky to have four of the most adorable and sweet nieces in the whole world.

The Red Brick Path

This morning I went to the doctor for my post-operation check-up, and Orlando Icaza says I look good. I can't lift anything heavy for six more weeks, but I don't typically go around carrying really heavy things anyway. He pulled off all of my steri-strips except for the one in my belly button. He said I should pull that one out in the shower (which I did this afternoon). My belly button incision and the two incisions on the lower right side of my abdomen are really small, but the top incision--the one right under my sternum--is big and gross. I'm thinking that is where the gallbladder came out. Dr. Icaza said that this incision will probably ooze for a while but that I shouldn't be alarmed unless it starts to look infected. (I am actually alarmed every time I look at it.) He showed me a description of my gallbladder--the "specimen labeled Tiffany Bowles" (that's really what it said)--and it turns out that it was "chronically inflamed." So it's good that we got rid of it!

This afternoon I was poking around in the yard and discovered a secret hidden brick path through the garden area. Some of the bricks along the edge were sticking up--that's how I knew the path was there--but the entire inside of the path was covered with a layer of grass and weeds. Greg and I worked in the yard for a while this evening, and we decided that we're going to uncover the whole path and plant our garden on either side of it. We got about half of it uncovered this evening. It's pretty awesome! In the early days of Athens there was a mill located where our house is today. These bricks that we've found throughout the yard definitely look old enough to have come from the mill. We are quite excited about our planned garden area. We also tried out the fire pit this evening, and it works splendidly. I am currently enjoying a delicious cup of Greg's hot cocoa which my pre-surgery diet forbade me from having. Life without a gallbladder is wonderful!

The Easter Bunny

Yesterday I saw a couple of interesting things. The first was this--the Oscar Meyer Mini Cooper. It looked pretty funny to see it driving down the street--especially since the hot dog part is twice as big as the car part.

The next funny thing I saw was at the mall. I was trying to kill some time between lunch and my post-op doctor's appointment, so I went over to the mall in Springfield and was just walking around. I was looking down, lost in my thoughts, and then I glanced up and saw someone waving at me out of the corner of my eye. It was the Easter Bunny--bow tie, purple vest and all. Hello, Easter Bunny. He was sitting in this big throne chair waiting for children to come have their picture taken with him. If I was a child I would have been thoroughly frightened. He was gigantic, and had these huge fake eyes and big teeth. He was definitely not the real Easter Bunny.

I had a very enjoyable lunch with my friend Linda and her mom yesterday. Linda's mom volunteered to take care of me after my gallbladder surgery if Greg got called away to work--and she didn't even know me! I was very happy to meet her. Just like Linda, she is an incredibly sweet lady. I planned to then go to my post-op appointment at the surgical center, but the doctor's office called right before I left the mall and told me that Orlando Icaza was still in surgery; so they would need to reschedule. Like Mom said, at least he wasn't still in my surgery! So I will go see him tomorrow instead. I am hoping that maybe he will remove my steri-strips. They are getting quite itchy. Supposedly they fall off on their own, and they have started coming up around the edges, but they are still quite firmly attached to the incisions. Speaking of the incisions, Greg and I discovered just the other day that one of the incisions is in my belly button! That's kind of weird. I thought it was below my belly button, but the steri-strip came off a little, and there was no incision below the button, so I guess it's inside. That kind of grosses me out. I'm still trying to figure out how they actually removed the gallbladder if it was full of gallstones and I only have four little incisions. Maybe they pulled it out through my belly button?

Today was Greg's day off so we went and played catch at the park which was very fun. We are excited for the upcoming baseball season and are hoping to go to a St. Louis Cardinals game in April. It's fun to live so close to the home of a professional baseball team! I then went to the library with Alice to work on archiving some of the Athens Rotary Club materials, and someone came and took our picture for the famous local newspaper: the Menard County Review. Greg has his picture in the Menard County Review every day with the funeral home advertisement, and all of the Athens ladies are always telling me how handsome he is. I agree!