Category Archives: Site Management

Brief Status Update

Brief Status Update

Hey everybody! My posting schedule has been seriously haywire for most of December and January and I wanted to let those of you who check in every so often a reason why.

Mama was in the hospital for most of October. This was the first time she’s had to be hospitalized with her C.O.P.D. but it may well not be the last. Doctors’ visits and medicines and followups have taken a huge chunk of time.

Since coming home, Mama hasn’t been able to take proper care of Granny. Physically, it’s just become too difficult for her so we’ve been exploring alternatives.

Over Christmas holidays, Budge’s dad had a chest pain scare that ended up with three loooonnnggg days in the cardiac care unit at St. Francis waiting on his surgery results.

Because of Dad’s surgery, Budge’s issues with her brother came to a head and she hunted him down and had a nice loud conversation with him outside his second home bar. The conversation ended with Budge cussing out Rich AND the entire bar as well.

Realizing she could no longer adequately provide for Granny’s level of needed care, Mama relented and allowed Granny to become a resident at a local, extreme care nursing facility. Being separated from Granny has really taken a toll on Mama in several ways.

Granny fell in the nursing home and fractured her hip so she spent four days in the hospital getting a screw and pin placed into her hip to minimize her pain. Going back and forth to the hospital again has taken a lot out of Mama physically and emotionally.

Granny going into the nursing home has taken a huge chunk of income out of Mama’s household so I am in the process of making out some rudimentary plan to help Mama replace that income and keep her bills paid. This is proving to be a little like hauling eleven gallons of water in a ten gallon bucket.

Chloe, my niece, is scheduled to have the feeding tube removed from her stomach in the near future, but that is being delayed because my baby brother, Travis, and his girlfriend, Danielle, just welcomed baby number 2 while Granny was in the hospital. Little Baby Stoney was a completely healthy and quite stout ten pounds and two ounces.

My little brother, Nick, and my sister-in-law, Keri, are expecting a new little Wham and Keri is finally midway through her second trimester and can eat something besides saltine crackers and 7-Up without risking it reappearing. They aren’t going to find out what this little booger is going to be, so we’re all in for a surprise near June.

Both Budge and I have been fighting sinus infections for several weeks. Mine has more or less finally succumbed to a Z-Pac and Sudafed, but Budge has had to resort to steroid ear drops to help clear her ears up.

Those are the high and low points and with all that going on, it’s been quite an exhausting run since right before the holidays up until now. It APPEARS things are settling down somewhat. Granny is out of the hospital and all my nieces and nephews are currently doing well. Mama is stable, if far from what anyone would call “well,” and Budge is finally on the mend. I have several ideas for posts as well as topics I want to discuss with my fellow Feetsters, so stay tuned and thank you all for your patience with me in this insanity!

Love y’all, and if anyone happens to find a satchel with several thousand dollars in it, please let me know because it’s probably mine (at least that’s the story I’ll use!). Take care everyone and keep those feet clean til next time!

2011 in review

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

New Look for Grocery Store Feet!

New Look for Grocery Store Feet!

Now THIS is a grocery store you can get grocery store feet walking around in!

So, WordPress.com added a cool new theme called Matala and since I’d been using the Enterprise theme for the last year, I thought I’d try updating to something a little fresher and newer that looks older. It doesn’t put everything exactly where I’d put it, but the WordPress designers are way better with CSS and HTML and a dozen other code languages than I’ll probably ever be, so I’ll be happy with “good enough.” Y’all should cheer about that. I’m still OCD, but I’m letting go of a little control! In any event, this little update brings the total number of posts to 200. Two centuries worth of my thoughts down on paper — or electrons or whatever — you get the point.

I hope the new look attracts some more readers, unless of course, my writing actually is horrible in which case I guess they are staying away in droves. As Yogi Berra once said, “Nobody goes there anymore; the place is too crowded!” That’s a problem I’d love to have, if for no other reason, my shameless ego.

So, take a tour. See if you like it and if you do, let me and several friends know. If not, you can tell me and I’ll weep in the darkness alone about it and have a major setback, but I’ll recover. I do hope folks like it though. Otherwise, I spent five hours today wasting time!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

Site Face Lift

Site Face Lift

I am not a plain vanilla person, just ask anyone who knows me. I mean, I wear bright purple Crocs just about everywhere except my grandparents’ church. So I was getting bored with the previous theme, logo, and layout. WordPress has been kind enough to provide some slick new themes and I’ve chosen one called “Enterprise” because I like the navigation bars and the footers. It will take some tweaking to get everything like I want it, but that just comes from being OCD.

Now, as my faithful readers or as someone just stopping by randomly, I need your honest opinions. If you don’t like the changes, please leave me a comment and let me know what you don’t like and why. Likewise, if you like what you see now, let me know that as well. Thanks everyone and remember to wash your feet!

Question for My Readers

Question for My Readers

I am seriously curious about the post that stays consistently tops my Popular Post list. My number one post is “Mighty Bumps from Tiny Acorns Grow”.

What I want to know is WHY?

Of all my posts, this is one of the least promising to my mind. It just doesn’t click to me why this particular article is the one everyone keeps reading. Is it just the one that shows up in search engines? Do a lot of people just like acorns? Is it being mistaken for the ACORN political group?

If anyone has any ideas, PLEASE, let me know. I’m seriously curious. Thanks a bunch and remember I love y’all!