THINGS ARE LOOKIN' UP!

It has been almost three weeks since Inklings had surgery on her knee to repair a torn meniscus.  When they got inside the knee there was a lot more damage than they had anticipated.  The surgeon told me they would be out in about thirty minutes. In a little over two hours I got to talk to the surgeon for a few seconds while he was on his way to another surgery for which he was late.  He gave me eight photos of the inside of the knee and talked to me about all the work they had to do on it and showed me how they sewed the tendon back together.  He told me that Inklings was to stay off her knee for three full weeks and not try to do anything.

She is doing a lot better and is counting the minutes until she can start doing some things other than sit on the couch or lay on the bed.  She has been able to shower when she wanted to after the fifth day but was a very good patient for the first two weeks. She hurt like crazy so that is probably why she was so good.  This week she has been doing a little more, probably more than she should be doing, around the house and I think she is feeling a ton better even though she still can't move without the walker or bend her knee very much. I think the healing process is going very well and she is going to be alright again.

In the middle of this her father died.  He was 86 but it was a shock as the night before he had made arrangements with her to come over and visit the next day.  When she got the call she thought it would be her mom and dad telling her they were on their way.  Instead it was her mom trying to tell her that her dad had died but she couldn't talk.  They were on the way to see us when he had a bad chest pain.  They decided to keep coming our way and stop at the closest hospital.  As they got further down the road he had another bad pain in his chest but recovered somewhat from that.  When they arrived in the town the hospital is in her mother drove to the hospital and they took him on a gurney and gave him CPR for an extended period of time but his heart was not strong enough to maintain a rhythm and he died.  He was a good man and will be sorely missed by his family and his friends.

I took a job with TRANSCOM Environmental and am inspecting the environmental compliance for the construction of a new 345 kV power line.  This company recruited me and a good friend to help them with this project.  We agreed to split a job as neither of us wanted to work full time.  I also told them I was going to continue to do fire and if that was not OK then they needed to find someone else.  They assured me they could work around that.  I have worked two weeks and have found quite a few things in the project that needed to be changed.  My friend and I have discussed the changes and then called our boss to let him know our thoughts.  So far so good---every recommendation we have made has been implemented.

It has been kind of fun to be back in the game.  The company is treating us well and we are hoping to see the job through.  It will take two full years to complete the power line.  There is likely be another year of closing the access ways and rehabilitation of the construction disturbance so this job may turn out to be a good thing

HOPE THIS FINDS Y'ALL WELL!