Happy Birthday Jo!

Jo at Serendipitous Stitching is hosting the blog hop of all blog hops to celebrate this very special day in her life. She has assigned each of the participants a year in her life and asked us to write something about our life in that year and post a picture of a piece of our stitching we think she would like.

I've been given this year and this is what Jo has to say about herself.

2016 - Jo is 50!  Welcome to the present day.  This year Jo has decided to attempt her largest Blog Hop yet with a blogger for almost every year of her life (we skipped the boring years!).  Jo's stitching targets have focused on her GG projects with great success this year.  She also set herself a new challenge - The Longest Day WIPathon, the chance to work on as many projects as possible in one day.  Her final achievement for this year will be to tick off a goal which has featured in her sidebar since she started this blog - to stitch a Chatelaine!  

I turned 66 this year, so Jo is still a young'un as far as I'm concerned! This year I joined the local Seniors' Centre and have greatly enlarged my circle of friends as well as being introduced - or reintroduced - to the world of cards (crib, whist, canasta, bridge and a few more), crafts, darts, floor curling, carpet bowling, jigsaw puzzles and, of course, bingo! Plus amazing opportunities to volunteer for some excellent causes.

So, keep coming Jo - life is not going to get boring and you may (still?) be asking yourself how you're going to fit everything into a day.

Choosing a picture has been difficult - Jo's stitching likes cover a WIDE variety of themes and styles - but I finally settled on two, for personal reasons.

This one because it was my first on anything except white Aida (and it's cute)

and this one because it's been my biggest project to date and I love the colours and the designs in each square.

Be sure to check out Jo's blog and see what happened in all the other years that make up her 50.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO!

It's Happened!

Warning, I'm being rather philosophical today!

It seems way too soon, but today I am officially a senior citizen! Understand, I am not one to get fussed over birthdays - they show up every year and you can't stop them, so you might as well enjoy them (or ignore them). But I've been thinking a lot about this one - maybe because it's a watershed one or maybe because there have been a couple of major changes in the last few years.

First one - in March of 2010 I was told I had breast cancer. I was one of the lucky ones - my yearly mammogram caught it very early while it was still tiny and hadn't spread anywhere. So, a modified mastectomy. a couple of months of daily radiation and in September of that year I was told "All clear. Go home and live your life". There have been 2 scares since then that turned out to be nothing serious and I'm 4 months away from 5 years cancer free and being an official survivor.

Second one - for more decades of my life than I care to admit, I've been morbidly obese. Not just fat, morbidly obese. An ugly phrase. I had all the problems associated with carrying that much weight - high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type II diabetes, hips, knees and ankles that had me in constant pain and I was a walking pharmacy - 15 pills a day spread over 9 different medications and that doesn't include pain pills. (Not good for the budget either!)  In February of last year my doctor sent me to a bariatric specialist who said he wouldn't do the surgery on me because he didn't believe I was capable of changing my eating habits. I was devastated. When I got home, I decided to prove him wrong and in March I joined Weight Watchers online - had no choice, there are no meetings here where I live. Something clicked. So, today as I turn 65 I am 87 pounds lighter, I take 7 pills a day over 4 medications. One of those will stop in September when I hit my 5 year cancer free mark. I am still classified as morbidly obese, but I now believe I can get myself out of that.  And I can walk again! I'm looking forward to what I believe will be some of the best decades ever.

Life, whatever you have planned for me, bring it on! I'm ready.