I'm ALIVE!

Oh my goodness... don't ever let anyone tell you that a colonoscopy is 'no big deal'. Unless you actually like sprinting to the bathroom dozens of times in one day (and night!)! And drinking all that stuff is like trying to drown yourself from the inside out. Things I will never eat again : green jello, broth of any kind, Vitamin Water (which I mixed with Miralax) I don't do well with no food and I found myself passing through the kitchen looking at all that food in there. I asked myself "How could I have ever taken you for granted , CornChips??? (sigh)" So anyway, now that my sphincter muscle has had a workout Jillian Michaels would be proud of, I did get my test and everything looks "excellent". I am very happy about this and hoping this means I won't have to go through this until I reach retirement age, or later would be good. The test itself was cake. Of course, I was asleep and a chimpanzee could have taken over the examination for all I know. I am still feeling the effects of the Miralax and Dulcolax today, but as the saying goes, this too shall pass............

Long time no blog!

Hey, hey! It's been a few days since my last blog! A few notable things have taken place, I guess. My Jeepie is in the hospital and might be facing a heart transplant (i.e. engine may be blown to smithereens and need a new one - way boo hiss!) We are doing some praying to the Jeep Gods that it will be something less catastrophic but Dennis isn't holding out much hope.
I have also been working on my vacation scrapbook. We only took 1200+ photos. I don't know why it's taking me so long to pick out the best photos! duh........;-) In fact, it looks like, for the first time, this might be a two booker! Yikes!!!
Yesterday, I spent the day with my sister, nieces, and twin,great nieces down at Mom and Dad's. They are about 7 months now and soooo cute. They just look at you and grin with those big, chubby cheeks. Maddie crawled for the first time! I tempted her with several shiny, silver bangles I had on. No female can resist flashy jewelry, no matter the age!
And tomorrow is the all liquid diet day before my colonoscopy. Yay, what fun that will be....I had been reading on the internet and advice that might prove helpful and came across this snipit. One lady recommended ,"Pretend that you hold in your hand the only antidote to the lethal virus that has been introduced by some foreign monkey into our country. You will die if you do not drink this glass within 10 seconds every 10 minutes. You may not stop, and you may not lose it into the kitchen sink. It is your only hope." Sounds like good times....... Dennis says he knows I am gonna' be grouchy with no food because previous experiences have shown this to be the case. It certainly won't be pretty....Advice for post procedure was the following: "The recovery: Stock your pantry in readiness: You'll pack in food like a starving bear once this is done -- after your six-hour nap, that is. Have the bed all ready, shutters drawn. Once I slept from noon until the next morning." Well now, that part doesn't sound so bad. I think , however, I will be eating much sooner!

Back to the grind...........

We've been home two days and are still feelin' pretty tired! Seems like the jet lag is worse once you're home than when you arrive at your vacation spot! Dennis said it's because you have all those exciting things to do on vacation, you don't think about it. (You mean doing laundry, mowing grass, and cleaning house aren't exciting??! And all this time.......;-) Anyway, my next thing to do is get my "vacation scrapbook" together. It usually takes about 1 day a page. I love being able to go back and look at my past trips because you forget so much over the years. When I am old and gray (with blonde highlights) and sitting in the nursing home, I will be reliving my glory days, I guess, via my scrapbooks! Or who knows, Dennis and I might still be seein' the world in our scooter chairs. Rolling past the pyramids of Egypt and honking at the camels to get out of our way. haha
I just got in from picking some blackberries from my neighbors Sue and Ed. "Thanks, Sue and Ed!" Must have been a super year for those things 'cause I have never seen sooo many. Lots of thorns too! And no, we will not be eating them over rice. I cooked tilapia this evening and thought it would be really great, but Dennis and I need to omit fish from our diet for awhile. Like 8 years should do it.........no more fish or rice for awhile. I wouldn't make a very good Japanese person. I would be mail ordering the whole line of Little Debbie Snacks and investing heavily in Frito Lay as well. hahahaha Fellow Japanese people would be sniffing my breath and drooling.......
Oh well. Looks like Lee Ann's next big adventure will be her colonoscopy. Dr. Turner has been after me to get one forever. I guess with a history of Crohn's Disease it's a good idea and I want to get that monkey off my back and shut him up! It is scheduled for the 21st and with all the questions I have had to answer (the nurse called me today from St.Mary's), it looks like like they may be either performing open heart surgery or removing a lung!!! Do I have a living will, does my religion prohibit blood transfusions, did I have chicken pox, do I cry at sad movies...OK, not the last one but just about as crazy. So I will be in for good times this coming weekend and Monday. More on that later! Woo hoo......
Oh, and my Jeep is having serious issues. Seems the radiator became possessed while we were gone and spewed its contents, causing it to overheat, AGAIN! We bought another radiator last night and Dennis is going to tear into it this evening. Perhaps sprinkling a little holy water would also be a good course of action. Hopefully, the rest of the motor survived without any major damage. Time will tell.........'til next time!

Oh the joy of flying in the USA!!!

Here we sit in Seattle Airport, waiting for our flight to Cincinnati! We arrived here at 4:30 AM, yes, AM, and our flight doesn't leave until 11:30ish. They did have it listed as delayed until 7:30 pm which would have been totally insane!! (I guess they were going delay so someone could make a peanut run) I hope things go as planned from here on out. Going through security was a real treat in Maui as well. I set off the alarm AGAIN and explained it was the metal in my hip and ankle. So they direct me to this little room and some security chick goes over my whole body with the wand. Of course it beaps and other people are looking at me like : "she certainly doesn't fit the terrorist profile...hmmmmm...) I had to stand with my arms up for about 5 minutes and I showed her my ankle scar as proof. Then she had to do the "pat down" procedure. Sheeesh! (Meanwhile, there's probably a dozen people going by with wires and plastic explosives hanging out of their backpacks.) Then, Delta charges us 30$ for checking 2 bags - one for each of us!! Dennis is really down on Delta right now, for sure!! They gave us one drink and a 1.5" square bag of peanuts on the flight over from Maui. I stole their blanket and now feel a miniscule bit of satisfaction from that! haha Anyway...gotta' love the airlines...We ate breakfast here in the Seattle airport from Wendy's and are now thinking of ways to entertain ourselves for the next 3.5 hours. Wheeeeee!!!

Last full day at Maui - sniff, sniff......

We declared today another beach day and just hung out at the beach across from our condo. After all this running around, we needed to just sit and stare at the ocean. haha Dennis did take his snorkeling gear and checked out the fish for about 15 minutes and then he sat in his chair with a towel over himself, like a little tent. After he got sunburned yesterday, he was afraid of any additional exposure! I alternated between sitting in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and reading my paperback. Only my back was a little sunburned so I guess I am immune! There was what looked to be a local cub scout troop that showed up and set up right beside us so we had plenty of entertainment. The guys in charge thought it would be a good idea to let some of them paddle these big, plastic ,sit on top kayaks only these kids had no experience! They were just going around in circles with waves knocking them over, hitting the rocks, and floating out to sea! Finally, a life guard showed up and said they should have an experienced adult in the boat with them. They were having a lot of trouble with people getting blown out to sea! So then they just gave them a bunch of those stryofoam noodles and they started hitting each other with them and then they went and dug in the sand the rest of the time! Most entertaining! haha After that, we went to the Mexican Cafe down the street for lunch. I had a chicken burrito the size of a football. Then we on the search for a T-shirt for Dennis. We came back to the condo and Dennis played on the laptop while I read some more. Dennis then looked up some geocaches nearby and I agreed to go as long as I didn't have to hike 20 miles up some hill. My knee has yet to let me forget what I did to it on Fuji! I have had to go easy on it this whole time but if that's the worst I got from it, I'm lucky! We found two caches and the wind was crazy today! I was having nightmare flashbacks of Fuji! We decided to head to Denny's this evening for dinner and it was yummy! We had to walk about 5 blocks and on the way back, there was an ambulance, cops, and a fire truck at a park near us. We stopped and rubber-necked like good West Virginian's but never did figure out what was up. They were all shining flashlights in the trees looking at something for about 15 minutes then they just up and left. I guess the person was dead and there was nothing they could do for him so they took off! Too much excitement for us! So tomorrow, we are here until 7:00 at the latest and it's a night flight back home. Yawn! Sure would be nice if they could upgrade us again but that's soooo not likely! Darn!

After snorkeling, we rushed back to the condo and got ready to head to Lahaina for the luau. We'd never done a luau and since the "The Old Lahaina Luau" is supposed to be the best in Hawaii, we had to see it! We sat right in front of the stage on the traditional mat seating with the short tables and pillows to sit on. They had regualar tables and seating behind us and there were a TON of people there too. It was buffet style and they dismissed us by sections so there wouldn't be a giant stampede to the buffet table! Dennis I tried a little bit of everything there and it was delicious! They even showed us how they dug up the steamed pig in the pit wrapped in leaves. I thought it would be really disgusting but when they unwrapped it, it was just cooked meat falling off of bones. You could see the skull though which was rather gnarly. I tried to ignore that. Don't like my dinner grinning at me.......... We had chicken, pork, steak, salad, mahimahi, tuna, Hawaiian sweet potato, banana bread, rice, a ton of food. And, oh yeah, octopus. Our server was listing everything on the buffet and I said ," Oh great! I was so hoping there would be octopus!!" (Snarky of me) So I have to include a picture of me eating that tasty tidbit! They had all the traditional hula dances which were awsome and made me feel like I should be able to do it when we left. But no, I can't shake it like that! The metal plate in my hip would get bent beyond repair! haha So check out my previous blog on our snorkeling adventure this morning! This is what I would call a "do-over day". One you'd like to relive many times....

Woweee Maui!

What a great island Maui is!! We decided to go do some snorkeling this afternoon at Papa' Anui and saw sooo many beautiful fish plus several green sea turtles! They were huge turtles that just swam right beside us like no big deal. I think they were as curious about us as we were of them. I could have watched them all day if not for the cold water currents that would go by every now and then. Dennis got a really nice sunburn on his back, of course, even after I warned him he needed sunscreen! I didn't get it too bad. Dennis says I am immune after all these years.....haha I am including some pics of the neat fish and turtles we saw.