Oh Melissa, I'm sorry you are having such a string of "rogne". Your troubles found an echo in me! Recently I lost a big old spike ... no commercial value but it was my best weeding tool for dandelions and such. I wasted so much time looking and finally my DH found it stuck in the ground where I had looked before! Our MIP (and nearby Zeffy) also have rust for the first time, the weather I suppose.

As for the knees, I hope your doctor can help, but what works for me is stretching. I have back problems (an old injury) and my lower back is very tight. Some days I can barely walk. I hate doing it and find every reason not to, but really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g is my life-saver. Just 10 minutes a day. Garden work of the sort you are doing is very tough on the body.

Wish you all the best (and trust your Felco and glasses will turn up!!!).

MayBee

Melissa, what you describe sounds like a Baker's cyst.

Bakers's cyst info on Mayoclinic.com

I'm so sorry Melissa. That is frustrating. Yesterday I wandered for at least 30 minutes from the top of the garden to the bottom and back again trying to find a sprinkler. I think we'll just have to learn more patience as we get older.

Losing & forgetting things is a way of life for me! Though my knees are OK now with medication, I have rheumatoid arthritis and little old ladies used to beat me into the grocery store, so I know what you mean. My only thought about that (if you do have what I have) is to be VERY aggressive with medication against it. The problem isn't so much the pain as the degeneration of the joint. They can stop the disease now (with Enbrel, etc) but damage can not be reversed. So you want to jump on that right away. Mine went on for 3 or 4 years untended, and I regret that VERY much because of the damage to my hands. The good news is that now I don't even know I have it, because of the great drugs I take!

I do hope you find your glasses. It's tough when you need your glasses to find your glasses - I know. :)) Hope you have a new pair REAL soon.

And, of course, you know all these missing items will show up - after you've replaced them! Keep your chin up, girl!

Sherry

Melissa, I'd thought once about starting a thread on other things besides roses we all have in common. Bad knees, bad eyesight, and losing things would probably be first on the list!

Let us know what the doc says ... Gean

You are not alone. My back is so tweeked out I couldn't work today. I cleaned the fish pond at a 45 degree angle. My knees are going, my shoulders are going and yesterday my irrigation pliers left. I keep two pruners because one always goes missing. It was 90 degree today so I just sat inside, felt sorry for myself, answered email and felt guilty about things I should be doing. I thought civilization was supposed to make life easier. All its done is increased the number of tasks. If the internet, fed ex, credit cards and plastic irrigation parts didn't exist, I probably wouldn't have 200+ roses to worry about.

I'm sorry you are having this kind of time right now. Each winter I find the tools I lost in the garden during the Summer and then berate myself for being so disorganized. I had folks weeding for me all last year because of back problems. I also left my favorite camera sitting on a bench in our garden because I needed to remember to lock the shed which I constantly leave open. I so was proud of myself for remembering to lock it but the price was steep. I also have a habit of losing my asthma inhaler in the garden when it falls out of my shirt pocket I'd like to blame it on age but I've always been this way. We have a joke when my glases are gone "have you looked in the refrigerator"? I seem to put them there often and this go back to my 20's

Well, I see I'm in good company. Thanks for the support!
MayBee, Rogne infatti. You're right about the stretching, it does help a lot, and I need to make it a habit. When I'm in Florida and going swimming, I always stretch, but I've never learned to do so when I wasn't on vacation.
Mexican Hat, you may be right, my doctor suggested that also, as she checked my knees and wrote a referral for an X-ray. Thanks for the link. The Mayo website is great, isn't it? I've used it before.

After writing my lament here yesterday it occurred to me that my long-term happiness would be best provided for by a thorough, determined search for my pruners. I found them in three minutes. I HAD brought them back to the mudroom, but instead of putting them on the shelf where they belong I left them on the bench. There my husband afterward threw his hat down, rather than take the necessary extra half-second it would require to hang it up on the hook, and covered the pruners completely. When I hanged the hat up, tidying, there it was. Umph. No one listens when I preach the virtues of neatness. Anyway, I was SO glad to have my pruners back!! I went out and deadheaded and cleaned out old growth here and there, finishing up by cutting out a lot of Zeffy's diseased older canes. She still looks pretty awful, but at least there's some air and light coming in now, and she was probably due a pruning anyway: I'd never touched her before. I'll see what happens: my guess is that the rust will go away when the rain does. It poured again last night.

Paula, Sherry, Gean, catsrose, Labrea, thanks for letting me know I'm not alone! Aches and pains and losing tools afflict us all.
Catsrose, I've thought about that same idea: we're a lot richer, but our lives aren't any more leisurely than before. Do we have better lives? For practically the first time in history we live in a society of abundance, and have to learn how to manage that abundance. People didn't use to have so many choices. I've never been one who thought that "new" automatically meant "better"; and I try to sort through my possibilities to determine what will benefit me and not be a burden. I don't consider I'm very good at it, but at least I have the idea that some screening and selection are necessary.

Melissa

I'm fighting all those things, too, odd to see a thread here about that. Some days back isn't too bad; other days I force myself to keep going. I find myself leaning on my knees when I bend for support. My knees are starting to hurt really bad most of the time now to the point I want to grab something to climb stairs; otherwise I don't need to yet, so I will ask my dr about that Enbrel. I REFUSE to give in to it and keep doing hard chores like digging sometimes big holes and such. Hoeing is the hardest for some reason, can only do so much and have to quit.

And the glasses! Oh my. A couple years ago I was out with the snowblower or shovel, came in the house and realized that things looked "funny". My right lens was missing. So I procrastinated about going to the optometrist because the old place closed and lost my prescription. So I drive with my reading glasses all winter. Bad enough that the little screw came out and I'm holding the lens in with strips of duct tape wound tightly (which is why it fell out).

I looked and looked back and forth both sides many, many times when the snow melted trying to find that lens. Nothing. Then about 3 months later, I go out and there it was lying right on the sidewalk by the alley but on the side. Did a kid or squirrel find it and stick it there? Anyway I had it back, a little white scratched place now, no biggie.

So finally I decide it's time for new glasses, won't go into all of it, but it was hard going to the mall and doing all those tests. I had trouble figuring out what looked best. The assistant picked out frames while I was in the exam room. I finally made it out there (let my driver's license expire and would rather than do anything than read that 70-page book and was afraid of the vision test) to pick up my $500 glasses I paid for myself all but $75 covered by my medicare supplement. They are no good, can't use them at all. So now I have to go through some hassle to try to get it right, and I'm afraid that it can't be made right. I want my bigger lenses back even if they aren't in style, want the bifocal blended like the ones I have now, and if they can just figure out from what I have now, grind those lenses. I can't see that bad without them actually but do need them, worn them since I was 2.

And I bought a hoe but need that pointy thing on a stick to get into narrower places and where the dirt is packed hard. I think I loaned it to my daughter and it got thrown out when she moved, so I had her pick me up a new one, looked everywhere for that.

And my pruners have gone dull, would like a better pair, but hate to spend the money. At LEAST I KNOW where they ARE lol.

I feel whiny moaning about these nuisances, but it was nice to open the thread, be able to relate and have a chance to vent when I couldn't sleep all night, think I'm all wound up from worrying about how I'm going to get so many problems solved, not just these. People around here are having to evacuate their homes, the roads are closed with horrid detours for people who have to travel, some to the State U hospital. They are asking people to stay away, but if they have to drive there for medical reasons, which roundabout detours and approach into the city to use. They are not moving any criticals by ambulance but using the helicopter. Plus we got some in from other cities because a couple hospitals are filled with water, the generators are on the lower levels, and they had to evacuate all the patients.

Now I just read the baseball stadium is completely surrounded by floodwaters, they built a special ramp, parking lot flooded, the place was filled with over 4,000 people for a game! And others are scrambling to fill sandbags and can't get big enough pumps so are moving their belongings and getting out. One guy even took out his new furnace he had just installed so it wouldn't get ruined by water filling his basement.

So that kind of puts things in perspective in the bigger scheme of things.

Melissa-----I can sympathize with you trying to garden while in pain---I've been the last 8 months trying to recover from complications with my second hip replacement.

I also had back surgery in 2005 which was succesful but I now have resigned myself to the fact that I can no longer dig and garden the way I used to---Of course at 78 years old I'm just happy to be able to walk---

We all misplace things but it can be very frustrating----

I think Aliska said it all ---if we put our problems in perspective we are still lucky people.

I hope you feel better soon.

Florence-