The wedding Mass and reception for JFM's nephew last night went wonderfully. Joe and John both sounded great at Mass, the bride and groom looked superb, and it was a beautiful ceremony. The reception was very nice, too. I'm glad that Joe's brother R, who's had major health issues recently, was able to attend the reception.

I used Mark's car yesterday to get to physical therapy and the wedding, and I noticed that the "check coolant" light kept coming on. That's reminiscent of the issues we had with the car back in July. Mark's out getting the car fixed, even as I type; the radiator fan has stopped working. Thank goodness the car didn't overheat and conk out yesterday.

We have got to have the car repaired because we plan to go to my in-laws' today and celebrate their 61st(!!!) wedding anniversary. Normally, I toast a wedding anniversary or a birthday with "Cent'anni!", which means "One hundred years!" However, one must admit that in a case like this, wishing someone a century seems kind of limiting. ;) God bless them, thought, because landmarks like these couldn't happen to two nicer people.

Yesterday's physical therapy session was productive. Besides adding an ankle weight to my leg lift exercises, I have gotten clearance to make a subtle change to how I navigate on stairs.

Since the surgery, I have been climbing stairs by placing the good leg on the next step up, then bringing the injured leg up to join it. I started this process with two crutches, and moved down to one crutch last week.

But now, I can officially alternate feet normally to climb stairs, while using the crutch to assist with the climbing and with balance. Hooray for progress!

It's going to take some additional time before I can walk normally going DOWN the stairs, however. For now, it's "step down with injured leg first, then bring down good leg to join it", with the crutch employed to help control the rate of descent. The injured leg isn't quite ready to be used to lower me from one step to the next, crutch or no crutch. That's not surprising; that particular milestone takes a bit longer to reach than the "climbing stairs normally" landmark.

I had better hit "send" on this post -- I have some things I need to accomplish before we head out to the in-laws' house. Later, all!

My next therapy session is on Monday afternoon.