Monday week 6

I'm in to my 6th week now since the knee op, so, officially, the (compression) tights come off on Friday. My follow-up appointment with the surgeon is next week - the day before the invasion from America and Australia.

Regrettably, last night was another sleepless one for me - how many of these can I have before I collapse completely? I'm beginning to hate my bed - it's full of bad memories just now. I doze for an absolute maximum of one hour at a time, but then I'm awake for at least the amount of time that I've been asleep, before dozing off again. Last night, it was sharp pains in my leg that kept me awake, but I was damned if I was going to revert to Tramadol again.

I long for the alarm clock to display 6:30 am - I feel that's not an unreasonable time for me to sit up. Any earlier and it's not fair to Jo. Today we had to be up anyway as the new doors and windows were being fitted. Surprisingly, it was a one man show, but soon he was laying out all his materials in the driveway for his first day's work here:

He's finished for today now - he's done the 3 doors:

Front door (from inside) - brown externally. Same 3 pane layout as before.

Door to garage from utility room.

Back door from utility room

Tomorrow, it's the windows in the kitchen and the downstairs study, where the exercise bike is now located. Talking of which, how would you like to see another video showing how my knee is improving? It's a bit of a rusty start, but once I get going, the movement is relatively seamless, I think. My main problem is that after almost 6 weeks of doing very little other than lying on my back, I am as weak as a kitten and 30 seconds on the bike and I'm knackered! Hopefully, I can improve on this as time goes on. Here's the video:

We managed to connect with Kelly (and Miller) this morning on FaceTime. Miller's favourite cuddly toy is one Aunt Mary sent him:

Sorry - it's upside down again! Kelly sent it to me via i-Message and no matter what I do, I can't get it to appear the right way up in Blogger.

Today, Kieran and Julie posted the family photo that was taken at the wedding on FaceBook. It took absolutely ages to get everyone to turn up and pose and yet the finished article shows Luca sticking his tongue out!:

To close, yesterday we finally got round to booking some of our flights for our USA holiday next year. We plan to descend on the Lesinas at the end of July - the very day that Lucy's friend Lorna and her family leave Oregon after 2 weeks. Jo and I are flying in to New York and planning to spend 5 days just south of there in Galloway, New Jersey - near where Uncle Alex lived - before flying over to the West Coast. We'll hire a car and visit nearby Philadelphia, and, of course, we'll visit the famous Boardwalk in Atlantic City - we've been watching a lot of Boardwalk Empire on Sky - tales of evil deeds in Prohibition America! Here's an image of the resort:

That was very easy for us to book as it's a Marriott resort and we acquired additional points with them this year. We were also able to book just 5 nights here at the lowest rates, avoiding Friday/Saturday night premiums. We don't have the same flexibility, nor the ease of booking at other non-Marriott resorts, and we've left it a bit late this year to book another holiday with the Lesinas, but Scott and Lucy will have to use up a good bit of their holiday entitlement when Lorna and her family are over there with them anyway. In light of this, I have just put in a request for a week locally at any resort in Oregon when we're there and we'll see what happens. If we get something relatively close, hopefully Scott and Lucy will manage to duck and dive a bit between the resort and work.