How time flies

Today is my sister's birthday, she would have been 72, but she has been gone 15 years.  I can't honestly say that I miss her, she gave our parents so much grief and worry, and once told me, "they promised me" whatever that meant.  The folks were on the brink of losing their home, I had no idea until I took over paying their bills after Mom couldn't cope any longer.  No,  I don't miss my sister, and when I think of all the money our parents threw down the rabbit hole, with not even a thank you,  I get furious all over again.  Their retirement wasn't what they deserved.

I went to the hospital yesterday for a repeat mammogram and an ultrasound.  It was damned painful, they compress so much, I am still sore today.  I don't, of course, know any results.

We are finished with winter days, now if only we could get some sunshine and blue skies.  I read somewhere that this area only gets 30 days of sun in a year!  I believe it.  Grey is the color of our year.  I am still using the electric fireplace, the room has only one tiny vent from the furnace for this entire 20 X 40 room.  I watch the various home improvement shows online, like Property Brothers, and Chip and Joanna, and a majority of the remodelers want "real" fireplaces.  The only ones that want a fireplace are the ones who have never lived with one.  For instance: hauling wood into the house, dribbling bark and dirt across your floor (having spent money, or your labor, to get the wood and stack it in the first place); scraping ashes out, trying not to spill any; trying to get the fire to "catch"; and worst of all, making a commitment to stay in the house/room while the fire is still burning, so a log doesn't spray burning sap across your floor and set your house on fire when no one is around.  Oh yeah, and then there is the necessity to get the flue cleaned out every year or so or else risk a chimney fire.  All in all, a gas fireplace is the best, on at the flip of a switch, off the same, and they deliver real warmth to the room.  There, that's my vote.

I've fielded 3 robo phone calls so far this morning, I have no idea how they came up with name and number.  I always give my cell phone number if it is a trivial contact because I never can hear it buzz, and if they leave a message, I never call back if I don't recognize the number.  Sometimes the number they leave is my own number!  I may occasionally talk to myself, but never on the phone...

Nearly lunch time, I don't want to miss that.  Bye for now!

Trivial pursuits

Yes, I know I am a *little* late for St. Patrick's day, but this is what happens when all the calendars in the house are from last year.

So life has been ticking away these last few months.  The therapy place has suggested that I take a month off and just do the at-home exercises, then see where we are.  The evaluation on Monday didn't indicate improvement over the last two months.  I feel like school has recessed and I look at my no-biweekly sessions as holidays.  I will do the exercises faithfully and see if my regime is an improvement over theirs.

I think we have finally turned the corner on winter.  Just 10 days ago we had snow squalls all day, but nothing stuck, it was so warm the previous days.  The forsythia is in bloom (if you are not familiar, it is a vivid yellow shrub  that is the first color of spring).  Soon the tulips and daffodils will be up.  We haven't planted anything new for a couple of years, but maybe this fall I can get around well enough to get some bulbs planted for a little spring decor.

I have been doing some laundry the last few days, mainly of my new things until I can feel safe in washing them together.  Almost all of the new things are "jewel" colors, rich and vibrant, the colors most prone to bleeding.  I feel good doing something other than reading and sewing; not that laundry is intrinsically interesting, but I take what I have.

I got a summons for jury duty beginning in May, and I just can't manage doing it.  I am still using my walker (and practicing with the quad cane) and I have 13 different doctors/clinics that I see at odd intervals.  I hope that my letter and a note from the ortho doctor is enough to excuse me.  I have served on juries in the past and I mostly enjoyed them.  But now I dread trying to get along so slowly I would hold everybody else up.  And of course I cannot drive now, I can't lift my right leg up to manage the pedals, and can't feel them (neuropathy) if I could.  The vehicles we have are, one for C, one for R, and the third is "mine", a P/U truck that I can't even get into, much less drive.  C drives it when he is getting supplies for the horse/barn, but that is the reason it is a 2009 GM with 12,000 miles on it.  Maybe less.  My shoer can't believe we would keep it, when we apparently don't need it, but it is paid for, and when you have to buy bales of hay or wood shavings for bedding you can't cram much in a Subaru.  Reliable, yes; spacious, no.  Anyway, to be on the jury, you call every night and if they say your name, you have to show up at the courthouse the next morning.  So it is hard to schedule around, and it goes on for 6 weeks.

I am purposely avoiding the topic of a positive mammogram.

Our neighbors are selling their house, but they don't plan to take their cat, he(?) has been there since a kitten, and he is around 10 or so.  I would guess he will become a new cat for our garage, hopefully without any fighting.  They couldn't take him unless they made him an indoor cat which apparently is not in the cards.  I hate when people abandon their pets when it is inconvenient for them, but at least they told us ahead of time.  And we have seen the last of the sub-zero weather, so he will have months to get used to coming here to be fed, and for shelter later.  They had two beagle dogs that were supposed to be in training for hunting, but the neighbor never even attempted doing that.  Those at least he gave to a a rescue org. to be re-homed.  They were nice dogs too.  Hopefully they won't spend the rest of their lives in a 12 x 12 pen.

We had another major plumbing fiasco last week, to the tune of $250+ .  I am still not sure they cured the problem, but only time will tell.  While they were working I had a call (demand) of nature, not surprising since I am taking a diuretic.  But the other two bathrooms are upstairs, and so I quickly had C help me up the stairs in jiffy-quick time.  Going up is, fortunately, a pretty safe exercise, I need to work more on going down.

The laundry is done and I have run out of trivia to write, so I'm off for today.  Bye!

Daylight savings time

Yesterday morning was "spring forward" day, and once again my sense of when throughout the day is messed up.  I see where there is a movement nationwide to keep us on daylight savings time all the time, and I am in favor.  There was one time when the government decreed we do just that.  It was to conserve fuel during that time, and damn I never figured that out but enjoyed it anyway.  Having some daylight when I get off work (before I retired) was great, time to mow, exercise the horses, work in the garden, that is just my opinion, but it would do something good instead of the bull*hit about something the POTUS doles out.

I have been working on the cross stitch chickadees pattern, I need it before July 4th and that is not much time, when I include framing, shipping and so forth.  It is going but I feel like it is taking far too much effort,  I hope I will pick up speed when the birds themselves are done.  If I don't make my deadline, there is always Christmas.  Which is what I said last year!  My new light/magnifier are a big help, the old one was 4X and this one is 30X.

 C is all mended from his fall in the road, just a tender spot on his head.  Selfishly I think what I would do if he couldn't help care for me.  I need to practice getting up from the floor by myself, but the main kicker is meals, not being able to get to the kitchen by myself yet.  I have this uncanny reverie when I go down for the night, I call them my MIs, short for morbid ideation.  Can't seem to shut down and let me get to sleep quickly,  instead of laying there and feeling what ifs swamp me.

It is 3 in the morning and my eyelids are waging demands about staying open, so I will leave this for the morning to finish.  Ta!

Continuing

I fell last night I guess.  I remember sitting in my chair when whoosh! the chair went down to the lowest setting.  I got up, lifted the lever to bring the seat back up, and then...
I have no memory of what happened next, but I don't remember a fall, just being on the floor.  I thought No Problem! I've practiced this --
So I crawled over to the bed, grabbed hold of the frame, and for the life of me I couldn't get my "good" foot on the floor to push me up.   Finally I call C and he boosted me up.  The next morning I didn't remember anything until C asked me how I felt.  Weird.  Guess I need more practice.

Bye for now...

March Madness

I received yesterday a new pair of glasses from GlassesUSA.  They are dynamite, I can see clearer than my usual glasses, they look nice (photo in a few weeks, I guess) and fit my face.  There's just one teeny problem - they aren't sunglasses.  So after being on hold for 30 minutes, I got the Return Authorization form and put them in the mailbox to go back.  I hope they just spritz the sunglass coating on them, dry, and send them back, instead of re-making the entire pair.  That's why I said I would show them off in a couple of weeks.  Fingers crossed.

C slipped and fell Monday going to the mailbox, hit his head and sent his glasses flying.  He went to Med Express after the dentist urged him to go, and he has quite a goose egg on his head.  They checked him all out and said no ER necessary, but watch for symptoms of concussion.  I was way worried, he was very sleepy that afternoon, but OK after a nap.  That was the day we cancelled my PT session, the driveway was all ice and I don't need to fall either.  THIS is why I scheduled my knee replacement to be done in June (of 17), so all the therapy would be done in the summer, ho ho.  Instead this second knee went in Feb. 19th  (of 18), and this winter has been bitterly cold, like a lot of the US.  It has been a year since the surgery, and I still need the walker, and I still fall.  Now I have a brace to wear any time I am up, and it feels like a tourniquet on my leg, it goes from my upper thigh (groin, really) down to my foot and under it, to keep it from sliding down.  It was custom made and I am sure it cost the earth, but I hate to have it on in the house.  Although in the house is where I have fallen and actually need the brace.  I'm divided on wearing it.  For one thing, it has to come off when I need to pull my jeans down, like, er, peeing?  And my diuretic has a lot to say about that.   It isn't made to be placed directly on my skin...

 

The comic is the story of my "infected" knee, although I will never know if the surgeon was booted out because of problems like mine, or if he was booted for other reasons. Update:  Guess the rumors about that surgeon were correct.  He was on the front page of the local paper, as part of a sting operation on pain med oversubscribing and/or using  I hope he wasn't the cause of my botched knee surgery. The surgeon I have now is great.  He is injecting my good left knee with cortisone every three months, and it helps enormously. He does explain another surgery that would involve a cadaver kneecap and "major" attachment of tendons and ligaments, and if it is not done perfectly (or even if it is), I could end up with a locked straight leg.  I explained my stand on surgery is "do or die"  and I am sticking to it.  Two close calls in the OR is plenty warning for me.

Lunch time, Bye for today!

This and That, Here and There

I have been reading a couple of books on de-cluttering the family home.  It makes me tired just to read them.  One of them, by a Japanese professional organizer, says to start with the closet, which is enough right there to grind my efforts to a halt.  When we cleaned out the closet after N died, there were a few brief days when that side of the closet was empty; but soon after my clothes migrated to that side as well, and now the closet is crammed again.  It doesn't help that I have been buying clothes (and other things) online, it is my main form of entertainment these days.  I don't see anyone other than the therapists and the lady who does my nails here.  Even R seldom comes downstairs, I don't know what her problem is.  If not for C I would end up in a nursing home with no privacy but lots and lots of therapy.  No, thanks.

I opened a dry cleaners bag that has been hanging there for months, and I find a card from the cleaners saying that they "tried and tried" to remove a stain on my gold silk shirt and were unable to do so.  The thing is, I don't remember having any stain on that shirt at all when I took it to them.  The stain, about as big as the palm of my hand and right in the center of the right side of the shirt, is stiff like a sweet spill, and I believe the cleaners put it there.  But after all this time, I can't very well complain.  I think I will try the stain remover in the Dryel package, I have nothing to lose at this point.  I can always wear a sweater, shawl, whatever, if I make the stain worse.  No more business for them, convenient though they are.

I found a book by Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber, that I thought had been purged from my books years ago.  Looking online at ABE, I found it was the first of 10 books, all about Amber, a sci-fi compendium.  Now I am divided about getting some of the other books, I am pretty sure I read the second and third ones, but I would need to re-read this one to see if it has stood the test of time.  Some of the sci-fi books read as really dated, and I don't want to waste my reading time.  I have no idea how this book ended up on my shelf.

 I have been looking for iPhone covers for my 5c, the current one is a flip type and the binding is starting to crack.  I need to get one now, since this is a really old iPhone and I am surprised there are any still available (on Amazon, of course).  I found one I really like, with a chain wrist loop, I liked it until I saw the price, $88 dollars!!!  I have no idea why, all of the other ones (pages and pages) are $10 or less.  I finally settled on one, I hope it actually fits, there are so many versions available.  I don't use my phone much, only 4 or so people have my number, and all the other calls are spam.  Don't know who is releasing my number to the spammers.  The ones I hate are those that sound real, one is "from R" , my daughter's name, and it catches my attention.  I got one that said "Grandma?" which was way off, since I don't have anyone to call me that.

I collect fountain pens, mainly Parker Vacumatic ones from the 40s and 50s, but they have caught on with collectors with deeper pockets than I have, so I now have some modern Parkers, Crosses, and Shaffer pens.  I need to disassemble them and clean them inside, then store them empty.  They are leaking ink all inside their pouch/cap and I should just use one at a time, then clean it and move on to another.  I have dispo gloves to wear, the ink stains my nails blue, really blue!  Maybe I will tackle a couple today.

This post has wandered around a bit, but if I don't make a list of what I want to write, I can never remember when I am sitting at the keyboard.  Meanwhile, Aloha!