Just Things

It's been an eventful month.

Gray Kitty was very sick. Two kinds of antibiotic kind of sick. He's starting to get better, but he lost some ground and a lot of weight. Poor guy. 

I screwed up my neck in such a way that I spent about five or six days mostly on my back with my neck in a neutral position. I have no idea what I did besides lean forward. (But I guess at some point in life, that's enough.) 

My therapist quit her practice, shed all her patients including me, so we had our final session last Thursday. Now comes the fun of finding a new therapist. 

What else? 

I got called up to report for jury duty this coming Monday. 7:45 a.m. I have to call today though to give them the dates of my upcoming medical appointments. Sigh.

We had my mother out for lunch--Chinese food--the day after my younger brother's birthday. (He's been gone a long time, nearly twenty years, which seems so crazy to me.) She stayed a couple of hours and at the end I got a cramp in the back of my thigh that went on and on and required warm compresses, a heating pad, and stretching over twenty four hours for it to go away completely.

What else? 

The hummingbirds came back. There are two of them chasing each other around the feeder outside my window right now.

And the frogs started their yearly looking-for-love mating call/screaming again. They crack me up. I lie in bed at night and listen to them scream and scream and scream. They start sometime between sunset and one a.m.  and quit sometime before dawn. Last year it went on for about two weeks, the year before for much longer.

What else? 

We made travel plans to go to Montana, to continue the sad task of getting Dave's father's house ready to sell. Dave's sister has been working on it, traveling back and forth from her home in Indiana, but now comes the real push to get everything cleared out and moved, donated, or sold. Because Dave's dad lived relatively remotely, it's difficult to get a decent place to stay (we've booked a cabin that is normally rented out to fly fishermen, as it's one of the closer places to Dave's dad's house). Dave is going to take his dad's car, so we'll actually be driving back from Montana.

We've also been getting out and about nearly every day for the last week or so, just to grocery stores and to the greenhouse and plant nursery, but still. I need the practice being out and around people as I've been isolated for a long time. (I was going to say since the start of the pandemic, but actually it probably goes beyond that, to after I left nursing school and began working overnight shifts at the hospital. That's nine years ago.) The downside of going out like this is that we've spent a lot of money and I've done a bit too much impulse shopping for snacks at the grocery store (chips, chicharrones, Hob Nobs, rice crackers...). We did get a lot of nice plants for the patio though, things that the butterflies and hummingbirds should enjoy. 

Today we're going to the nearby mercantile and possibly to Costco. (Don't know if I'm up for the onslaught of people at Costco today though so we'll see about that one.) 

Anyway, part of getting out and about is because of the trip to Montana, but also I'd like to start traveling again. There are still places in this world that I want to see or see again.  

Plants and Plans

 

Some photos of a trip to the greenhouse and Gray Kitty resting with his face in his paws 

I'm in the waiting room at the physical therapy facility.  I do not want to be here. At all. 

Sigh. 

A Few Things to Say

So I wrote this a week or more ago: 

Lots of storms rolling through recently which triggers my arthritis and causes headaches.  And to add to that, I strained my neck and have been in pain for three days now. Lots of laying in bed with ice packs then heading pads, getting up every hour to two hours to move around and do some very gentle stretching if I could. Can't sit for to long, can't stand for too long, but laying in bed for too long makes me feel awful. 

So that's been my week so far. 

I wrote that a few days ago. The storms are still rolling through so I still feel a bit crunchy in my bones. But luckily I am distracted from that by the perimenopausal hormone shifts currently kicking my ass. 

Right now I am sitting in the car while Dave ran into Five Guys to pick up some burgers for dinner.  Why yes, we did get a grocery order this morning.  Why do you ask? Grocery order day is the traditional day to get take out. 

I'll finish this up later. 

Now it's later. 

My mother is coming for lunch, so I've only got a bit of time. I still have to brush my teeth and I need to drink some water because my stomach...is not good today and I need to stay hydrated. 

Nothing like starting out with some TMI.

The weather has been shifting a lot recently and that wreaks havoc on my system, but that is boring to talk about so I'll talk about what else has been going on recently.

Which is not much.

I did get some sewing done. I made a small wallet with a double zipper, trying to copy a small leather wallet with a double zipper that I bought many years ago. Figuring that out took the better part of an evening. Also, it did not come out great--wonky zipper, too little seam allowance, bad lining--so I want to try again, incorporating what I've learned.

I'm also thinking--yet again!--of sewing some of my own clothes. My mother used to sew some of my clothes when I was younger and I even wore things she made until I was in high school. But nowadays I only wear things I've bought. I've tried altering some of my own clothes, but that almost never ends well. (Though I did add separating zippers to several t-shirts to use post-surgery when I couldn't lift my arms over my head.)

OH! And speaking of surgery. Awhile back I wrote about the $4,000 dollars the hospital had charged us for the imaginary two nights stay in the ICU when I had only stayed one night in what they wanted us to believe was a semi-private room. Do you remember that? Well, despite numerous calls--numerous calls, like one to three calls a week every week since that happened, the hospital was giving us the runaround when it came to returning any of that money. First we had to talk to a certain person and then that person was always out of the office. Then we had to talk to someone else and they were going to "do some research" and get back to us (which of course they never did). Then it was unanswered voicemail after voicemail. I urged Dave to call the credit card company so many times that he got angry at me (more than once) because he considered that to be the nuclear option. 

After more than ten weeks of this, Dave finally listened to me and called the credit card company. They listened to our side and said they were going to contact the hospital and open an investigation. And what a surprise! Within thirty six hours of that call, a FedEx driver knocked on our door with a check from the hospital, sent overnight by the same woman in the accounting department that had been dodging our calls for ten weeks. 

Fucking assholes. 

But now I can go on all the review sites and leave our story as well as filling out the satisfaction survey they sent to me a month ago (I have until November to return it if I want to).  I have a few things to say now that the check has cleared.  

Okay.

The weather today is kind of nice. Cool but clear. Alexa says it's 64 degrees--only supposed to get up to 70 degrees today with a low in the 30s--close to freezing--tonight. It's been windy, which is not pleasant, and the pollen is out of control so my allergies are going nuts. Doesn't help that our little bumble-cat runs around outside and then brings in all the dust and pollen straight in to rub in our faces. It's part of his charm.

He is a charming little cat though. Later this summer, he'll get to stay with his favorite person again, our cat and house sitter Carrie. I don't think I ever did write about her, but she is one of those amazing people who just gets animals and Gray Kitty adores her.  He's going to be so happy when he finds out he gets to spend time with her.

Onward, Soldier

First, happy Easter! 

Easter makes me think a lot of my brothers. We used to have a lot of fun on Easter. We weren't a church-going family at all, so Easter was cute outfits (when we were younger, mostly), baskets,  egg dye sessions, making cascarones (confetti filled eggshells), egg hunts and candy. We used to make so many cascarones that we would smash on each other's heads. (Now you can buy them commercially made, which cracks me up.) We would also typically go to my grandmother's house for lunch and she would have made a ham and a million things to go with it, mashed potatoes and gravy and chile and salad and rolls and some dessert like apple cake or cookies. Sometimes we would re-hide our eggs in her yard and hunt for them there, too. 

I miss being a kid sometimes, you know. But I miss my brothers more.

As far as not updating my blog for awhile, I keep starting updates and then abandoning them a few sentences in. There hasn't been much going on, but there is some. So here's a quick rundown:

My incision is completely closed up. That is a wonderful thing to be able to say. I still keep a bandage on it because it cushions the area and I can keep it covered with Vaseline as the new skin forms over the area. But it is completely closed up! 

I started with a new physical therapist. I'm not sure how I'm going to like her, but I'll try out the first few sessions I have scheduled and see. The nice thing is that it's a bit more affordable than the other PTs I've seen in the recent past.

I got a new mattress. Of course it's standing on it's side nowhere near the bed, but that is to be expected. At some point, I'll get to sleep on it!

Dave had his first colonoscopy last Wednesday. For mine, I did the traditional prep and it was fine (the anticipation of its being awful was far worse than the actual experience) but Dave did the Miralax prep. After watching what he went through (headache, nausea, cramping, chills, vomiting), I'll stick with the traditional prep, thank you. I had none of those side effects.  But things look generally good and I'm glad for that. 

In less TMI news, the hummingbirds are back. Our feeders have been out for a couple of weeks, but a couple of days ago, the hummers started to visit them. Now we have to be a bit more assiduous about keeping them clean and topped off. 

The weather was far too hot (in the 90s) but then around April 1st, we had the usual storm come through with cold, rain, and even snow in the mountains, and since then it's been cooler. Next week though, we start climbing back into the 80s and I'm sure the sky's the limit after that.

Am I spending more time outdoors, enjoying the weather? Lol, no. I've been inside on a BBC/PBS video viewing binge. I've watched the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice more times than I care to admit, not because I love Colin Firth--he's okay--but because I own it from when I used to work nights and would play bland videos to occupy my mind while I tried to sleep duing the day. In addition to watching it again, I have read the book in between viewings). I also watched the 2006 BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, the Ruth Wilson version of Jane Eyre (more BBC), and last night, the 2007 version of Persuasion with Sally Hawkins. (I think I had seen it before though and just forgotten about it. It was...meh.) 

So there was a lot of Jane Austen in there which made Amazon suggest a mini-series called Lost in Austen, with a ridiculous plot where a modern Austen loving woman trades places with Elizabeth Bennett before the action described in Pride and Prejudice. It was just dumb enough to hate watch. The actress who played the main character had a weird rubbery face and the actor who played Darcy mistook a drill sargeant's unblinking, dead-eyed sternness for Darcy's brooding charm. But it was only, like, four episodes, so I soldiered on.

Anything to distract myself from all the horrible news. 

Yay

Healing update:

The incision has been healed for about ten days (?). I am still wearing a bandage over the newly formed skin to protect and cushion the last little bit, but it isn't bleeding or oozing anymore. This is a complete relief for both me and Dave. And it makes Dave's job as a wound care nurse much, much easier. 

My energy levels are still fluctuating with some days of really low energy and some days of completely normal energy. Allergies don't help as the pollen levels have been very high which makes me feel fatigued. 

Ah, yes, allergies.  Once again my sinuses feel like someone filled them with concrete. My eyes are blurry and itchy. My skin is dry and itchy. 

Yay.