What's new?

You may remember that I splurged on a bottle of nail polish when I lost ten pounds.

Clearly 22 pounds lost required something larger.

How’s this? Does it make my butt look big?
Seriously, though, we’ve been debating about a family vehicle for awhile now. We purchased our Passat Wagon shortly after our daughter was born; it already had 70K on it, and it recently broke 110K. It also needed some things repaired - nothing major, but it was still going to be around 2 grand. At what point do you stop sinking $ into an old vehicle and decide to put that toward something newer? We also had an F-250 that we no longer needed, but it had some major quirks, so we weren’t necessarily excited about selling it ourselves (we had visions of someone throwing a brick through the window 2 weeks later).

Anyway, we set off on Saturday morning to test drive some vehicles and just get a better feel for what was available in our area. The used market is really crazy down here - they don’t depreciate much since there is such a high demand for vehicles over the border - and many people told us they’d actually done better buying new due to dealer incentives, etc. We really wanted something that seated at least 6, too, so that when we have a couple visiting we can all fit in one vehicle. We’d done quite a bit of research online, so had essentially narrowed it down to a few models. Mitsubishi wasn’t even on our radar initially, but turns out they’re better priced than a lot of other comparable models, plus high safety ratings and a great warranty package.

Long story short, we ended up buying an Outlander with lots of shiny bells & whistles, with 2 vehicles as a trade-in. I know it’s going to serve our family well and we’ll be driving it for many years. It’s strange to think that we no longer have a VW, though. You see, we’ve always had at least 1. Our first real date was in a Jetta, driving to a church event then Olive Garden for coffee. Bought a newer Jetta after graduation, and drove it off on our honeymoon (a cross-country trip from Montana to Pennsylvania. Wahoo!) We commuted in to work together for about five years. We brought our babies home from the hospital. We packed up our basic belongings (after filling a moving truck, of course :) and drove from Pennsylvania down to South Texas to start a new chapter. ALL in a Volkswagen. It truly feels like the end of an era.

In other news, we sent the kiddos out to scavenge for sweets last weekend, dressed in appropriate attire of course ;) I got in on the fun, too, and raided my closet for every clashing print I could find (I also had black & white toile pants on) At least the mob scene in our neighborhood was not unexpected this year; I gave out my 600 Dum Dums in about 30 minutes, and probably could have gone through another 1000. I'm tellin' you, it's crazy!!

I saw the orthopedic doctor on Thursday. I’d had the MRI of my left knee done a few weeks ago, and my primary doctor had filled me in on the basics and I was expecting to schedule surgery to clean out the damaged cartilage. Things didn’t go exactly as expected, though; when the doctor initially came in, his first comment was, “I thought you’d be older” - and then wondered how many in my family had RA. Huh?!?! Yes, it turns out that I have some fairly severe arthritis in there (to quote the dr: I have the knees of a 60 YO), and based on the description of pain, that seems to be the major issue rather than the torn meniscus. Since I’m not even 40, he’s not in a hurry to do a joint replacement… but it’s only a matter of time. I got a cortisone shot as a first step, and we’ll see how long that lasts. They’re generally good for 3-6 months, then there’s also a second injection that they can try that’s an artificial lubricant. Next step would be the laparoscopic procedure to clean out the joint before finally replacing it entirely. Whew. Part of me is happy to know exactly what’s been going on (and obviously I’m not imagining the pain!) but I’m not thrilled to discover that essentially we’re talking a degenerative condition… I’m supposed to avoid stairs, running, lunges, kneeling, etc whenever possible. Walking is OK, and the injection did allow me to stroll around car lots this weekend without excruciating pain.

Well, I think that pretty much sums up the past couple weeks. Yesterday was also my hubby’s birthday, so we took our new vehicle over to South Padre and had a nice little family celebration. He is still working in Mexico several days each week, and in case you haven’t heard, the violence has been escalating in this area. There was a major shootout on Friday night (the military took out one of the drug cartel kingpins) with nearly 50 dead, and frankly it doesn’t seem as though the issues will be resolved anytime soon. We’d really appreciate your prayers for his continued safety.