The sun is brilliant on the unmarked snow and it looks like a beautiful day out there — until you notice that the wind sock is standing out and the anemometer on the weather station is twinkling. I stepped outside to comb my hair so we wouldn't have to clean long hairs out of the Roomba, and immediately decided that standing on the mat was good enough.
Dave Roomba'd the bedroom while I was out buying milk and bread, and didn't complain about long hairs. He did say the Roomba was packed with cat fur, which suggests that the brushes that he recently replaced hadn't been cleaning properly.
Dave says his allergies have been better since we got the Roomba. We spend more than ten times as much time cleaning as we did before, so that's no surprise!
When I came back from the store, he was surprised that the trunk was full of groceries; bread and milk weren't my reason for shopping, they were my reason for shopping *now*. We were also low on carrots, celery, potatoes, butter, . . .
I probably should have bought a bag of frozen hamburger patties; Kroger is packing them in much smaller bags than they used to, and I haven't adapted my buying habits. Perhaps I should switch to buying hamburger at Aldi — but I haven't checked the size of their packages lately.
I found a remarkably-cheap steak, so the spaghetti for tonight is cancelled.
Dr. Ashton looked at my nose yesterday, and told me to come back on St. Patrick's day to get the bump cut off. Dave said that Dr. Ashton doesn't believe in biopsies, send the whole thing to the lab — but the biopsy from my age spot was bigger than that bump, so I think that anybody would take the whole thing.
Past bedtime, also past midnight, played Hexavirus before toddling off, scored NINE. I'll never do that again!
Stayed home on a beautiful Thursday, but I walked a mile on Friday.
Also walked a mile on Sunday.
All the wash went into one load again. I was picking up the basket to hang it out when Dave said "It's going to rain pretty soon", so it's on the racks. Even if it doesn't rain, I don't want to be on the alert; I want to eat my lunch and take a nap.
I'll finish the red ramie bras and start the slippers today. I've already dug out fabric for two pairs of slippers and laid it on the card table. Fabric for the third pair is at the bottom of a pile on the top shelf.
The daffodils are ankle high, but I don't think I'll put my canes away for the summer just yet.
Went to Aldi by way of Goodwill today. I set out only to lunch at Panda Express and return, but I felt pretty good after lunch and came back the longer way.
Didn't feel beat up until after supper. Now it's bedtime and I feel fairly fresh.
I'm becoming disenchanted with Panda Express. Their steam tables aren't turned up very high, and the food is cold before I finish eating it. I had been thinking that my food chilled fast because I ate outdoors, but it was warm at lunch time — I came home sweaty. On the other hand, it was windy enough that I nearly lost my fortune cookie.
I bought some whole-wheat tortillas at Aldi, and we had tacos for supper. I also bought a bag of tostadas — I liked the tostadas I bought on my previous trip better than the tostadas I used to buy at Avila's.
A lovely day.
I bought ten yards of quarter-inch elastic at Lowery's, then went furniture shopping. I saw a folding dinette chair at Reinhold's that I would kind of like to have, but it's on clearance so it might not be there if I go back.
Also stopped in at the Visitor Center, but didn't learn anything. I did take a brochure for the Old Jail Museum and one for an antique store in Leesburg.
The Old Leesburg Mill went broke, so I can't have ice cream the next time I do the Leesburg tour. So maybe I won't go.
Al came in while I was rolling up the elastic to put it away and looked with interest at the elastic twitching on the floor. I stood up because I'd got enough rolled that I needed a flat surface to keep it in line, and Al jumped and ran out the door. I thought that he thought that I was going to yell at him. but when the clock struck eight, I realized that he thought it was time for his medicine instead of mine.
We have taken to putting Cosequin on his nine-o'clock treat; he doesn't appear to mind.
Enough Joe Rickets strawberries winterkilled that I can't expect a crop this year, but there are enough to save the clone, and the wildlife won't allow me to eat any of the berries anyway. I'm pleased to note that some of the survivors are in the mint bed; I've tried to make the strawberries drop off into the lawn on the other side, but they never take. Perhaps the lawn mower pulls them up before they get rooted.
It's probably time to prune the winterkilled tops of the perennial herbs in that bed. May already be too late to avoid cutting off some of the regeneration. On the other hand, it may be too early to be sure that that brown branch is dead.
Two loads this washday. I'm trying to hold out for a drying day to wash the hot whites, but we are running out of dish towels.
The squirrels have cleaned up the cracker soup on the picnic table, but it needs a good scrub where the soggy crackers were.
I put out more crackers this morning, and they hadn't, the last I looked, succumbed to the misting rain. I saw a squirrel running away with a cracker; near the fence, another squirrel jumped him and he dropped the cracker and both ran behind the shop. I didn't notice the cracker still there when I took the garbage out just now, but I didn't think to look.
Al has gotten bored with squirrels eating crackers and quit watching. We need a new plot for the squirrelvision show. Perhaps I should put the crackers on the patio right up against the window.
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Nobody makes scarf hangers, which isn't surprising because "trouser hangers" are perfect for the job. I wouldn't want to hang trousers on them because they'd get a crease where they are folded in half, but a scarf has to be folded no matter what.
(Don't send me jaypegs of boards with holes in them; those aren't scarf hangers, they are scarf wrinklers.)
We found a trouser hanger in the house when we moved in, and I spent months or years wondering what it was before I realized that I could hang scarves on it. I found out what it was called when I saw a duplicate of it at Our Father's House. Pity I didn't have the wit to buy it.
My scarf collection grew, and I started hunting for trouser hangers; I finally bought one at Walmart (or was it Meijer?) that was greatly inferior to the original one; it had only four bars instead of five, the bars were a lot closer together, and the non-slip coating made it hard to hang up a scarf — and almost impossible to pull out one that had been hung up with another on top of it. And all the bars were secured at both ends, so that scarves had to be fed through slots.
These two got crowded, so when I saw a hanger at K-Mart, I bought it. It was a pain bringing it home; I was on the bike and it won't go into a pannier. I bungeed it on top of a pile of groceries.
This one has five bars, they are farther apart than the original hanger, and all but one of them is a "swing arm". This isn't as good as being able to hold the hanger horizontally with all the scarves dangling down while I slide a new one onto the end of an open arm, but it's a vast improvement over the Walmart hanger even though the arms have the same sticky non-slip dip.
So the next time I was in Sprawlmart, I bought another one, planning to give the Walmart hanger to Goodwill. This time I put a corner of it into the pannier, making a wall next to the rack against which I piled the groceries before bungeeing it into place.
This afternoon I unloaded the Walmart hanger, put it on the pile of Goodwill stuff, and re-arranged my scarves, hanging the silk and wool on the original hanger, the sarong and cotton squares on one of the K-mart hangers, and my triangle scarves on the other.
I had a bar left over. So the scarves are comfortable on the same number of bars that they were crowded onto before.
And the next time I want to wear my sheer linen scarf, I'll know where to find it.
I got a notice of a "private message" in today's e-mail. One of the first things one learns is that one *never* clicks on a link in an unsolicited e-mail, so, after figuring out that it purported to be from a Web forum that I belong to, I went to the home page planning to check my "private messages". I'd forgotten my password and it wasn't in the welcome message, so I reset it, activated it, and (by this time having verified that the URL in the e-mail was legitimate — though, gasp, I now realize that I didn't view source to verify that it was the URL that it purported to be — I clicked on it.
Got a log-in page, logged in with my new password.
"Unable to find private message".
Now what was *that* all about?
It's probably a couple of years past time to send my dues to the Hoosier Lakes Hams. Perhaps I should try again to attend one of the meetings. I'm pretty sure that we have a handy-talky around here someplace. (One needs a hand-held to call someone to let you into the jail.)
On the other hand, I'm barely keeping up with my activities the way it is.
The surgery was nothing, but the swelling afterward makes me feel as though there were something in my nose that needs to be blown out.
Kept my eyes closed most of the time, especially the one on the side where sutures and tools were flitting about. On the way home, Dave remarked that it took fifty minutes start to finish.
I get the stitches out next Thursday.
We had a turn when we arrived and the door was locked, with a sign saying that they would open at 1:00 pm. But before we'd left — after Dave had started the car — Bree opened the door and called us in. Then she locked it behind us because she and the doctor were all the staff today.
Oo, er. The anesthetic has worn off, and now I want to *scratch*! I don't think I'll be able to keep my mind on my sewing.
So I edited a page of Rough Sewing instead.
When I looked at the hand mirror, I saw that my nose didn't just *feel* stuffed up: the dressing was a pressure bandage that collapsed the nostril. It still hasn't sprung all the way back. I don't notice the incision unless I absent-mindedly touch my nose and feel the blob of Bacitraycin. The wound is in my field of view, but it's out of focus.
I had a hearty breakfast, and now I want to go back to bed. I think that that is because I absent-mindedly ordered a glass of iced tea with my smoked brisket and was awake half the night.
The brisket was delicious, but even half a serving was too much to eat at one sitting. When we had finished — and Dave, smarter than me, had put some of his into a box — I saw a plate piled up with the whole mess delivered to one guy.
The irish stew in a bread bowl sounded good too, but we both homed in on the brisket. There was a wider assortment of special dishes, or so it seemed to me, than they had had for Mardi Gras.
I read in alt.usage.english that "Mardi Gras" is going the way of "Carnival": there are events advertised as "Mardi Gra" at all times of the year. I suppose that another generation or two will see us referring to the real thing as "Fat Tuesday".
I think I'll edit ROUGH011.HTM some more. It badly needs a table of contents. First I have to look at a page that has one so I can remember how to do it. Or did I stash some crib notes on ED.DIR?
⁂
Page edited and uploaded. Could use some additional text, but it's presentable.
Dave saw a squirrel open one of the packets of crackers, reach in, pull out a cracker, eat it, then reach in and pull out the other cracker.
Later on I fetched the wrapper and threw it into the wastebasket. It would probably be more efficient to open the wrappers myself.
Sometimes I forget that I'm forgetful, but Al never does.
New routine for when the bird-twitter alarm goes off: After I fed Al, I washed my nose with peroxide and put Bacitraycin on it. This has to go on for two weeks. Should be easier after I get the stitches out next Thursday.
The peroxide fizzes when it hits the sink. It may be doing some clean-up there, too.
The incision doesn't exactly itch, but I still want to scratch it. I'll be allowed to rub after next Thursday.
I'm running around with the constant awareness that I have something on my nose.
Went to the church work day after breakfast; found most of the work already done, but I got to visit with Martha. I did find a plate to put under a leaking flower pot.
After my nap, I suited up and rode to Owen's for bread and milk. I should have worn two pairs of pants; I did turn back and put on another shirt. Oddly, I didn't feel chilly on the return trip.
Now I'm planning to drive the car to Little Caesar and buy a pizza for supper; I'm downright peripatetic, going out three times in one day.
By three different modes of transportation. Perhaps I should ride around the block on the Flatfoot to make a complete set. [I didn't.]
Just got an e-mail saying the Hoosier Lakes Hams website was hacked and the "private message" e-mail was spam. I'd better change my password. Right Now. [I did.]
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I'm getting too accustomed to my incision. After the choir supper, I washed my hands in the ladies' room, took a swipe at my face with the wet towel — and remembered just barely before I would have rubbed my sutures.
I had a short morning because I wanted to take my nap early, but there was enough time to rake twigs and leaves out of the garden and push the cultivator around. There's stuff I could be harvesting — I should pull the leeks the next time I serve something compatible with scallions, the winter onions are big enough to be worth pulling, though not scallions yet, and the garlic chives have been up for some time.
There's been a purple crocus beside the lamp post for days. I'm pretty sure mammals shouldn't eat crocus, but the web sites I found were all distracted by the very toxic autumn crocus, which is a different genus. An extract of autumn crocus is good for gout in careful doses.
Got to the church at two, worked until nearly seven, with a five-minute lie-down on the pew in the hallway. I had to sit down to sort and trim the broccoli because my back started to hurt about halfway through.
I thought about staying for the concert; the kids are good. (They sing a prayer after eating.)
We fed them very well, I thought. And the little plastic tubs of canned fruit are a marvelous idea: no washing, stemming, sorting, cutting out bad spots, peeling, or dicing required, and any left-overs can be put back into the box for the next dinner. And people seemed to like them; only one fruit cup was left while they mostly ignored the two plates of delicious cookies. Well, the molasses cookies were delicious; I didn't eat any of the peanut-butter cookies. That could have been because they knew the same cookies would be served at a party after the concert, together with a large pile of assorted cookies on the counter. Thankfully, somebody else was responsible for that.
Ob A.E.U.: should I have said "Thankfully: somebody else was responsible for that."?
Suzanne took some of the decorations we've laid in for Easter Breakfast and made the tables look very nice. But we made them eat off plastic plates with plastic silver; we were pretty much done with the clean-up by the time they got their costumes on: black floor-length dresses like professionals.
Ugh! I checked the bike-trail conditions before shutting down, and learned that during the weekend some jerk tipped over the portapotty, tore the fountain apart, moved and stole cones, broke into a storage shed, and tore up delineators along the entrance road.
I remembered that I need to climb stairs before I left the church, but didn't. Partly because I was already wrapped up to leave.
The ten-day forecast predicts a thunderstorm for Thursday. Pout. I was looking forward to riding to my appointment. Tomorrow should be dry and sunny, but it might be too windy to hang clothes out, so I haven't put hot whites in to soak.
I'm glad, glad, glad, that they have enough workers for the homeless dinner tomorrow.
Still tired, and my back is sore.
It's definitely not all going to go into one load today — the laundry was piled high before I took a sheet and some pillowcases off the bed.
The bedding is most of the first load.
Duh. The stitches come out tomorrow, and the dime just now dropped. I washed my nose, threw water on my face, then picked up the peroxide bottle and grumped about having to squirt blind because the mirror is offset from the sink. WE HAVE ANOTHER BATHROOM!
And *that* mirror is over the sink.
Just to rub in my stupidity, I've always gone to the other room to put on the Bacitraycin because that's where we keep it.
I finally got the spelling right: Bactricin is a trade name, Bacitraycin is another trade name, bacitracin is the name of the active ingredient in both, all three are pronounced "bactricin".
Nothing is scheduled on today's calendar, which I'm enjoying very much. Well, today is Roomba in the sewing room day, so I've hauled a bunch of stuff into the bedroom.
I hope I sew my fleece slippers together today. I'm eager to get on with the next project.
Having succeeded in getting into my typing chair, I was tempted to just stay in it all day, pushing myself around with my feet. Then I remembered that it won't roll over the threshold to the sewing room.
I sat down to put my shoes on this morning, then discovered that I couldn't stand up again. Not without extreme pain and much spasming. I was *very* glad that I'd already put my pants on. It wasn't very difficult to take them off at nap time, but I had to have Dave hang them up for me.
Oh, man, *everything* makes vigorous use of the back. I made it to the doctor and back again, but scratched my plan to stop at Owen's on the way home and buy cabbage.
The good news: the bump was basal-cell carcinoma, which we had expected. (Basal-cell carcinoma is the least aggressive form of cancer.) The bad news: It's multi-focal, which means that he almost certainly didn't get all of it. So I've got an appointment to talk to a radiologist next Wednesday. (I sure hope I can walk by then!)
Dave had been dithering between radiation and another round of Mohs surgery. My news crystallized his decision, and now he has an appointment fifteen minutes after mine.
Used to be that the things we shared were a lot more fun.
Dip your children in sunblock before you let them play outside in Texas or Florida. I recall once that I got my back burned right through a shirt. But if I recall correctly, it was a thin shirt. But only my face got really brown.
I wonder how my classmates, who got sunburned on purpose, are doing now?
Typing hurts. Doesn't set off the panting spasms, but it takes the fun out of it. I think I'll take a book to bed — one can read flat on one's back if one puts a thick pillow under each elbow.
Now the fun begins: getting from the chair to the walker, and getting from the walker to the bed. And I didn't have lunch before napping, and I'm starting to miss it.
When undressing after my visit to Dr. Darr, I hung my pants up myself. And if the prednisone has kicked in, I'll dress for dinner. Yesterday, I spent the rest of the day in my underwear, which was rather chilly when I wasn't in bed, but that wasn't much of the time.
Don't know what I'd do without Dave. He made the appointment, drove me to the office, signed the check-out sheet so I wouldn't have to put the walker in reverse after forgetting to check out, went in at Owen's to pick up my pills, and brought me a glass of milk, a slice of bread, and a slice of cheese to take them with after we got home. And he's planning to bring home wings for supper.
If the prednisone has kicked in, I'll make some celery sticks.
I've got an inflamed sacroiliac joint, and I'm tapering off of prednisone for it: six pills today, five tomorrow, four . . . and one on the last day. He said that would also help the rotator cuff in my left shoulder, which is sore because I have to push off the bed with my left arm. I expect the *main* way it will help my arm is by allowing me to sit up in a less-convoluted fashion.
He also gave me a paper to take to the Beyer building for X-rays if the prednisone doesn't do the job.
Sigh. I'd been looking forward to the Easter breakfast.
And it's a glorious day for playing outside. But we'll be getting those more and more often as spring wears on.
I'm glad I got the garden cultivated before the back-ache started. But I don't even feel like buying potato and onion sets, let alone planting them.
Just waved my arm around. I think the rotator cuff is starting to feel the prednisone. I'll take three more pills with my wings.
But maybe take a nap right now.
⁂
I not only dressed for dinner, I walked from the table to the refrigerator using only a cane. Twice.
All six pills are in, so this should be as much as I get from the pain-killing properties. The rest will be healing.
I think.
⁂
Noticed then that my feet were cold. (The easiest socks to get at when I dressed this morning were cotton.)
So I got up and put on a pair of slippers. (But I didn't hunt for my slopping-around slippers.)
Last few times I transferred from chair to walker, I *didn't* get spasms.
⁂
I cripped over to the window to open the curtains that I closed yesterday, and noticed that there's a hyacinth fixing to join the display of daffodils. I expect it to take a while to develop.
If I can get along with just the cane tomorrow, I'll go around and see what else is coming up.
Hmmm . . . I could use the flatfoot for a walker. It has fat tires. But it forces you to sit bolt upright, and I need to lean forward at least a little.
I'd like to lie down while waiting for the eggs to cook, but anything less than an hour isn't worth struggling to sit up again. Not to mention that the time it takes to get out of bed is less than the time on the timer.
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Dave gets at least half credit for the devilled eggs. First he boiled the eggs, then I sat at the table and he brought me things.
The after-dinner prednisone took effect; about halfway through devilling eggs, I discovered that I could get around the kitchen by leaning on strategically-placed furniture, and that meant that I could carry things that don't fit into my pockets. I put the filled egg tray into the fridge all by myself, and cleaned up some of the mess.
Kitchen still needs a lot of cleaning and arranging.
Dave carried out the kettle of water I shelled the eggs in. Must have been the first time he's been to the compost heap in a while; he came back impressed by the number of eggshells. We do eat a lot of eggs, but also, they float to the top, they are bright white and show a lot, and the wildlife doesn't eat them.
Not to mention that most of our food is canned or frozen, so there isn't much in the way of corn shucks and melon rinds. For some reason (wink) *all* of our food has been zap-and-eat meals the last few days. For supper tonight, Dave stir-fried a package of chicken and vegetables.
I woke up this morning worse than when I'd gone to bed, but I'm significantly better now than I was this time yesterday. I have hopes of washing clothes on Monday. I didn't wash until Tuesday this week, so I've got until Wednesday before it's a problem. But we are going to the radiologist on Wednesday.
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Al hates the walker; I've seen him peer in at the doorway, give it a disgusted look, and go away. I told Dave that I thought the noise it makes hurt Al's ears. Dave said, "It hurts *my* ears."
I'm not at all fond of the noise either. Pity I can't keep the walker on carpet.
I thought going to the party might be too much for me, and thought my first words would be "Everybody off the sofa — I've got to lie down.", but I left Alice's in better shape than I'd been in when I left in the morning.
I needed a nap by the time I got home, of course, and by the end of the nap my lunchtime prednisone had worn off. But I'm still able to stand up out of a chair without the walker. I can still walk without it too, but now it hurts.
I hit a few milestones during the party; partly that's because I took a prednisone as soon as I got there, and partly because it was time to get to that stage, but I'm sure that it helped that I didn't get into a position and stay there for an hour, but frequently got up and hobbled around.
And we got the whole gang together, and there was too much delicious food.
I was surprised when we set out this morning that sitting in the car started to hurt at once. I'd been sitting on hard chairs with straight backs; a car seat is a soft, low chair with a back that can't be adjusted quite all the way up. In addition, the upholstery grabbed my bottom and refused to allow me to fidget.
The trip back was much easier, but both ways, every time I noticed my left arm, it was tensed up or pushing against something. If I tried to leave it relaxed on my lap, the next thing I knew I was pushing hard on my knee as if to hold my back against the backrest. Dr. Darr said the anti-inflammatory prescribed for my back would also fix up the rotator cuff I over-stressed while repeatedly struggling out of bed, but if I keep aggravating it, that won't work.
At the rate I'm healing, I'll be able to do laundry tomorrow, but I think it wiser to stick to activities that can be put down at a moment's notice. It's a pity that my current sewing project needs to be sewn on the electric machine — I think that sitting at the treadle would be good for my back. Cutting out a new project would most definitely *not* be good for my back.
After feeling so good yesterday, it's disappointing to wake up keenly aware that I *need* the prednisone that wore off during the night; I'm beginning to fear that I'll have to use that prescription for X-rays.
By the way, whenever I say "prednisone", I mean a related drug that's harder to spell. Something like methylprednisolone.
At least the pain is now confined to the actual injury, which makes it much easier to get around. I picked a dish of stale cat food up off the floor and emptied it onto the patio this morning. I'll wash it after my before-breakfast pill takes effect.
I read most of the package insert — the one meant for the prescriber — while resting up after dumping the cat food. It said that this class of medicines has more effect on hypothyroid people, so the dose of levothyroxine I take in the middle of the night could be helping the prednisone wear off.
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After lunch, I rode the flatfoot to the end of the driveway and draisined back. After I parked it, I came into the kitchen, then realized that I'd left my cane in the bicycle basket.
Another milestone!
One thing I learned from this episode is that pain is an excellent substitute for exhaustion. With all the bed rest I've put in this week, I've read only one book, and that was one I'd half read in waiting rooms. And I read all of it on the first day. Whenever I stayed in bed only an hour, I was quite content to just lie there.
Well, today I'm washing clothes, and after getting the laundry sorted onto the floor, I reflected that it wouldn't be smart to do this all in one go, set the timer for five minutes, and lay down.
It was BORING.
So for my second break, I downloaded my e-mail and wrote an entry for the Banner.
And now my back says it's time to stand up.
⁂
I not only took care of the laundry, I cooked supper. Dump soup: dump a can of broth into a saucepan, cook potatoes and vegetables in it, dump in a can of meat.
And I served it. But Dave had to clear the table.
It was a lovely drying day, and I didn't dare hang anything out. Aside from not being sure I could stand up that long, hanging it out commits one to taking it down.
My morning pill had worn off when it would have been time to bring it in.
Didn't touch my sewing today. Yesterday I ran zig-zag stitch along a seam that I'd pinned before all this started, and thereby completed my right fleece slipper, but the left slipper is still in five pieces.
Dave set the alarm to get us up early tomorrow: We each have an appointment with our radiologist, then afterward Dave is going to drop me off at Beyer Building for X-rays of my sacrum and lumbar region.
If there's any daylight left after I've rested up from that, I want to go out on the flatfoot to look at the redbuds. So far, I haven't even seen ours. The hyacinth under the sewing- room window is in bloom, and the daffodils are spectacular. I thought at first that the daffodils had come out too early and been frostbitten.
The radiologist explained everything to us, and for both of us he suggested wait and see, since there's a good chance the cancers won't come back, if they do come back we'll notice right away, and the delay means only a couple of extra days of radiation.
We learned that for skin cancer, they use electrons instead of photons — beta radiation instead of X-rays. Since electrons don't go very deep, that protects the healthy tissue. Procedure takes about five minutes, the set-up . . . a bit more. And it has to be done Monday through Friday for four weeks. (Four and a half, if we wait until it grows back.) It's done in bits because the cancer cells don't heal quite as fast as the healthy cells, so a little healing time between shots helps the normal tissue more than the cancer.
Next I went to the Byer building for X-rays. We forgot to take the prescription with us, so after we went home for it, I drove back by myself. That was a better idea than our original plan.
It was much less strenuous than I expected, and everyone was very helpful. When I slipped on the leaves on the boardwalk, getting my neck X-rayed called for all sorts of painful posing. For the sacrum and lumbar region, one lies flat and it was quite restful.
The Beyer Building has handicap chairs. Scattered through the waiting room are high chairs with footrests; much easier to get in and out of without straining one's back. I think all the chairs have arms to lever yourself up with, but didn't think about that at the time.
And my last corticosteroid pill held through both appointments, but as I was driving home from the second one, my sore spot started to sting, so I thought it wise to skip stopping at Owen's.
We're getting pretty low on food. We have an appointment with our accountant tomorrow; perhaps I'll ask Dave to stop on the way home.
Doctors kept asking "is there numbness in your leg" and I kept saying "Yes, but it's forty years old." A while back, it came to me that that forty-year-old injury might have set up the current episode; I've been getting backaches in that area for *years*. I can easily see that a smart blow to the hip might damage the joint between hip and spine.
Checking Wikipedia shows that the slip-in-a-puddle-of-oil must have happened no earlier than 1984 and not much later than 1988. Dave's Fiero was fairly new when the cross-country trip showed me that I hadn't yet recovered from the fall.
The Beyer technician told me that my pictures will have been interpreted and sent to Darr by morning. I'm hoping for a call in the afternoon.
Got the call in the morning. I've got arthritis. Pondering in the dark of night has led me to believe that this is due to slipping in a puddle of oil between 1984 and 1993, so I can hope that it's not the harbinger of a more-general trend.
Milestone: I had to go hunting for my cane on three separate occasions yesterday.
The plate of garbage is piled high. I've got enough endurance to carry it out to the compost heap now, but it's soggy and wet out there.
A thunderstorm passed through yesterday, but it fizzled.
We've got one more appointment this month: with our financial advisor! I think I'm all done with the medical reports.
Oh, the dates: The bucket seats in Dave's sports car aggravated the injury, we kept the car about three years, and Wikipedia says that the Fiero was available from 1984 to 1989. Odds are that Dave bought last year's model, and I *think* that that was our first long trip in it, so you can clip a little off both ends of that estimate.
I hope the April issue is about training to ride my bike. Probably won't make it to Spring Creek before August; I think it will take a couple of weeks to get me off the flatfoot. I've made a sign for it saying "this vehicle is a wheelchair".
It's more of a walker — an adult-size baby walker — but that's too complicated to put on a sign.
⁂
Let us see whether I can write about it before time to put it into the oven.
We stopped at Owen's for bread and milk on the way home, and I looked around for something for supper. The Manager's Specials included a half-pound mixed-hamburger . . .
Nope, but I came right back.
It looked good to both of us, so I bought a $1.99 patty with shreds of cheese on top. I didn't want to fry something that thick — it was probably meant for grilling. So I'm calling it a meatloaf and baking it in a skillet with a lot of vegetables. I love baked vegetables. Dave doesn't, but there's a potato in among them. I zapped it a minute and a half before putting it into the skillet.
I found that I can walk easily with a half-gallon of milk in each hand. A burden easing a back-ache is something I've noticed several times before. In this case, I think it was because it forced me to stand straight and balanced.
I figure that using a cart as a walker counts for exercise, so I'm not planning to go out into the wet and soggy with a background of thunder.
A pleasant meeting with our financial advisor; we can live to be a hundred and still leave an inheritance. We have to start investing in things that transfer gracefully when one or both of us croaks.
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Had a little lie-down after supper. Got to thinking that a short pedal-powered wheelchair ride would hit the spot, got up, found it raining hard.
So I'm going to pin the left slipper together; that can be done sitting down.
The radiologist was impressed that my incision had healed so fast. He also asked where I'd got the bruises on my chest. I went to his mirror in consternation: yup, green marks all over. We finally figured out that I'd done it on the walker getting out of chairs.
All I have to do now is make sure my feet are under me, yay!
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I did ride around the block later on, and it did hit the spot. All the time I was out, "I'm out of the house! Under my own power! AND NOTHING HURTS!"
I never shifted out of bottom gear, didn't notice until I got back.
Getting a little exercise without putting any stress on the healing joint did me a world of good; I must repeat this frequently.