Who is that masked woman??!! in A New Beginning

I am going to try to get back to writing here again. I should at least do well over the next couple months, when I’m on summer vacation! I am bored with FB and wanting to write things longer and with more substance. And I thought about returning to Open Diary, but I don’t even know who, of my friends here, is back there. And I don’t really care about finding new friends, though it is nice when that happens. Mostly I hope to catch up with my old friends.
It has been QUITE a year, starting with the unexpected passing of Joe’s brother Les last November. We are going to miss Les, a lot. He left us, his other brother and his sister quite a bit of money, so we have been using it wisely and doing things that will make our upcoming retirement years easier. Les, though just 59 when he passed, was retired already because he was extremely thrifty and had been very good at investing and saving while he was working. (Having no wife or kids helped too!) For example, we got a new roof put on the house and we paid off my car and the lawn tractor. We also put a 6’ high chain link fence around a big portion of yard for Guinness so he can have more freedom outdoors. For awhile it seemed like we ALWAYS had workers here doing something!
In March, Joe went to see a urologist about a lump in his scrotum. The doctor said the lump was harmless, a hydroceil. He said that though harmless, hydroceils can grow or shrink, and if it became annoying it could certainly be removed.
It did become annoying, so in early May Joe went in to have it removed. The doctor found out that the hydroceil was actually very small, but Joe had developed a hernia there that was very large. So, 2-3 weeks later Joe went in for hernia repair surgery!
There was a bad complication from the hernia surgery, and two days after that I had to take Joe to the ER with bad pain and a very high fever. The bloodflow to his left testicle had been cut off and the testicle had to be removed immediately. They said it was a very good thing I got him there when I did. To me that meant, “or he could have died.” Oh, that put so much scare in me, just thinking how close we came to something that terrible happening!
Aaaaaaaaanyhow.....that recovery took longer. It took a few weeks for him to get his strength back, and even longer for the swelling to go down, but the doctor said that was normal, considering! Joe and I both worried. But I had to keep him reassured and encouraged! It was GREAT, as we noted small signs of improvement each day though.
And finally, this Monday, he is going back to work! I just hope to heck he will be VERY careful in what he does, because after all that, I sure don’t want him getting any more hernias!!
I’m going to stop right there for now. Now I’m at least caught up on our biggest stuff!
I hope some of my friends here see that I’m back. And I hope I manage to stay back!!