It’s been over a year since I last posted anything to my website. It’s been quite a year. For those of you that don’t know, I’ve been dealing with health issues, specifically frozen shoulder in both of my shoulders. The pain I felt at its peak was horr-en-dous! The whole ordeal was both physically and mentally exhausting. I’m still experiencing some discomfort, but for the most part, I have my mobility back in both arms and the discomfort is for the most part manageable.
Due to the fact that I was unable to use my arms in the normal way that I was used to, I spent far less time worrying about styling my home or making my garden look its best. I dabbled here and there, but my focus was more on recovery than anything else. As a matter of fact, I was hardly cooking for pleasure, more so for survival.
In October 2024, I started B12 injections because my levels were far beyond the low levels for B12. I continued to get the injections until February 2025. By then, the brain fog had started to lift and I was able to focus a little more clearly.
In December 2024, we got thru the holidays barely, but my sister came home and literally cooked the entire Christmas dinner while I camped out on the sofa. Tanya has come to the rescue many times for me and I’m grateful to have her in my corner.
In May, I finally got a diagnosis. I had been seeing my GP regularly for B12 injections, but we could not figure out what was wrong with my left arm (which is where this all started). Earlier, I met with a doctor at the fracture clinic, but since I did not have a break, they could not help me, so that’s when I was given a referral to see an orthopaedic surgeon. He ran a few tests and told me I had textbook frozen shoulder symptoms. From there, I learned that I had to wait out the pain until my mobility came back. Once it was back, I began physiotherapy twice a week for a few months. I also tried massage therapy for a while. I did 9 sessions which seemed to help.
It’s been a long road. I’m still not healed, but I can function.
In October 2025, we started switching everyone’s bedrooms. I’m now in the largest bedroom in the house which is where we started when we first moved into our home in 2000. My oldest son came home from university and has decided to continue his education at our local college. I moved him up to the third floor so he could have his own space and not be bothered by us while he is studying.
Mid-November 2025, I started renovating our guest bedroom which would eventually become my mother’s bedroom when she moves in. Her move in date was loosely scheduled for June 2026. The guest bedroom was completed just before Christmas 2025. I’ll share a post about that soon.
Just a few days after Christmas, I decided to paint my bedroom. The walls were grey and the ceiling was white. The walls were so marked up. They’d seen better days. It took longer than I hoped it would, but I finished painting the room on January 4th, 2026. It was a long process, but one more room painted on the second floor was one step closer to having the same colour throughout on that level.
As Spring began to unfold, I started the daunting task of cleaning up the garden beds to ready them for the upcoming gardening season. Again my sister came home for the long weekend and helped tidy up my gardens. She’s a wonderful gardener herself and she loves to putter around weeding the beds and really just tidying things up. She got me all set for the start of the gardening season. All I had to do was maintain what she did. How hard could that be, right??
This year I wanted to make sure I had the stairs to the treehouse re-built. They are dangerous by now and really not safe to climb anymore. Once that project was finished, I was excited to plant up the treehouse flower boxes. All in due time though.
At the end of May, it was time to start our bathroom renovations. This needed to happen before my mom could move in. Our claw foot tub wasn’t safe for my mom to climb into, so I had to get rid of it and replace it with a walk-in shower. While I was doing that, I decided to move the fixtures around to allow for better flow. Before the main bathroom could be renovated, we had to add another bathroom so we had a place to shower while the main bathroom was under construction. That’s right, our home only ever had one bath/shower combo and it was original to our 100+ year old home.
Two months later, we have two working showers. A month after that, the main bathroom was finished. What held us up was finding a countertop for the custom build vanity. For such a small project as ours, all we needed was an off cut which proved to be nearly impossible to find.
Here we are now, and I am so happy with how things have turned out. My 85 year old mom is now fully moved in and my stress level has finally gone down a little bit. We are learning our new normal and happy that mom is fairly healthy and under our roof.
If you made it to the end of this post, thank you! I hope you’ll stick around for what’s coming.
By the way, my previous computer had Windows 10 on it and I could not use it any longer. I recently had my son build me a new computer (he’s so good at that!) and now I’m all set to get back to posting on my website.
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Shari you had a tough year, I am glad the worst is over and you are moving forward.