 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Saturday, July 31, 2021
Getting It All Backed Up
 Tucker's paw was well in two days. Which was okay with me because I tossed him in the bathtub on Monday and scrubbed him top to tail. He always has to be dragged to the tub, but then he comes out of the bathroom active and with a big doggy smile. This week we did "the thing" and replaced the UPS on the router (and, boy, is there always that heart-in-mouth moment when you wait for it to start blinking again, and then for the blink to turn solid!). I also put a UPS on the television, because this TV is seven years old and has been flaky for years anyway. We don't need more power blips aggravating it. And we killed the HOA frog by going to the post office and renewing the post office box, and since it was the end of the month, I backed up my hard drive. And really, this was it. We did the grocery shopping and went to Barnes & Noble. These days about all the excitement I can handle. Labels: books, dogs, electronics, pets, shopping  » Sunday, July 18, 2021
"I Do Not Like the Cone of Shame"
Tucker and I have had an "adventure" this morning. Neither of us liked it very much. Anyway, I was finally feeling well enough to take Tucker on the longer walk we were used to. In the last couple of weeks, with the headcold and other things I had only been taking him out front of the development, and walking back and forth under the trees (really, what I don't want to do is be out in the sun; I hate the sun—it hurts my skin). This morning it was cloudy and relatively cool, so we went across the street, walked all the way to Sandtown Road, then turned around and walked all the way down to the day care. Tucker had a happy time sniffing and marking things he hadn't marked in weeks. When we came back across the street, I decided to do one "extra lap" by walking the sidewalk in front of the neighborhood one more time. Well, immediately after we finished the "right" side (going toward Sandtown Road), Tucker plopped down on his hind end and started chewing frantically at his right hind paw. I checked it out and didn't find anything sharp between the toes. Nothing was bleeding. It did, however, almost look like the pad of one of his toes had been pulled off. That toe was very pink. So I sort of half carried him/he half limped home and I got things out to treat the leg and wrap it, and then, since I knew he'd chew at it, I would get the Elizabethan collar we had for Willow that's still in the hall closet and put it on him. James had to hold him still so I could treat him. Checked the foot again, probing with my fingers, no sharp anything in there, no bleeding, just the one toe looking really pink. Put some alcohol on it, nonstick gauze, and tape. James let him go so I could get up to get the collar. He had the bandage off before I could even get off the floor. Tried it again, and was stupid enough to think that a better antiseptic would be Betadyne. Again the nonstick gauze, this time with Coban tape. Once again, he had it off before I could even get off the floor. Not to mention he knocked the Betadyne bottle over and left a third of it on the rug.
Third time's the charm. I went back to the alcohol, yet another nonstick gauze pad, and I wrapped the Coban up around the hock, too, and this time sent James for the collar so I could admonish Tucker to "leave it!"
Doing God's work for a little dog on a Sunday. Thanks again, Alice. I still want to know where the dickens Willow's old Elizabethan collar got to. And now we have a dessert-plate size iodine stain on the rug. Not to mention that the dog has issues with the collar:  » Saturday, July 17, 2021
Not a Healthy Week
It's...been a week. I was still struggling with post-nasal drip at the beginning of the week, and feeling almighty tired after those short-sleep nights because of it. I was really tired. Monday I did trim the bushes out front, but spent the rest of the day and almost all of Tuesday with more sessions with "Detective Twitchy." (See previous entry. 😀 ) The only useful thing I did was write checks for the lawn guy, and I felt like a lump of clay. Wednesday I went out despite the heat already shimmering the sidewalks at eleven in the morning and hit Kroger and found some more discount meat: two packages of "diced pork." Also bought milk, desserts, and mushrooms. And I found a dozen of my flavor/kind of yogurt, although to get them out of the dairy case I had to find someone to help me (it turned out to be one of the guys working in the pharmacy). The shelf they are on must be six and a half feet off the floor. I can just get one yogurt if it's right at the edge of the shelf and I stand on tiptoe! When I got home I prepped some ingredients, and James used one of the pork packages to make a luscious stir-fry of pork, celery, mushrooms, and onions in a delicious sauce. Thursday...Thursday I started having lower GI problems. I will not elaborate, and this is an occasional occurrence, as I have problems in that area, but the medication I take usually works. However, usually when I do get the problem, it lasts for a while, I have a few uncomfortable hours, and then everything clears up. This showed up unexpectedly, and then got me again when we finally made it out of the house to take advantage of some Costco discounts. We came home, things eased off, we successfully went to Lidl and Publix, and I was fine all evening. However, I think having a Costco hot dog for lunch, and then lamb for supper (even though James trims the lamb so it doesn't have fat on it) was not the thing to do when my system was already in distress. Everything started up again about ten p.m. and went all through the night. It calmed down a little only when I guess I was "running on empty" about seven in the morning. My Fitbit registered me as having not even three hours of sleep. It seemed to start up again Friday morning, and this time I took an Imodium. I tried to avoid this on Thursday and only took Pepto-Bismol, but it obviously didn't work. I'm always afraid of the Imodium, because I used it once and it stopped the problem. In fact, it stopped everything for three days, and then it got very painful. This time I took only one, and was okay by noon and I was able to take a nap until it was time to get dressed to go with James to the wound clinic. Today the weather was sunny (but, sadly, brutally hot—the sun was burning my legs through my jeans) and we had no trouble finding parking and didn't get stuck in an elevator. And, hurray, Greta was able to remove the unna boot and pronounced the leg healed. She thinks James needs stronger compression socks, though. I don't know how she expects him to pull them up; he can barely get the 15-20mmhg socks on. I can put them on his feet, but can't pull them up over his legs; it gets me all out of breath. I had a couple more problem trips to the toilet around suppertime, then it all stopped. I was able to sleep during the night and had a normal breakfast this morning (milk, yogurt, oatmeal with almonds on it) instead of the plain one (with dry toast instead of yogurt and no nuts) I'd done on Friday. I was even able to go to Hair Day this morning although I was terribly sleepy for most of the visit. We found out one of our friends is going to have to start chemo on Tuesday. Very unsettling. We knew there had been health problems for several months now, but did not think it might be cancer. In better news, two friends who have not been to Hair Day since the pandemic started were finally able to come today. This afternoon I vacuumed and prepped some veg for James, and James cooked up his meat and his breakfasts for the work week, we had pot lucks for supper (I worked on a container of pork fried rice; to make sure I ate it slowly and thoroughly I used chopsticks), and we spent the evening watching season nine of The Big Bang Theory.
» Saturday, July 10, 2021
Stuffed, Sneezing, and So, So Exhausted
Had a wonderful week, and yes, I mean that sarcastically. While James' allergy-attack-turned-head cold gradually improved over the week, with the exception of him having a little cough to get rid of post-nasal drip, mine just got worse until by Wednesday I was snurgly and sleepless, and finally pulled out the vaporizer for a couple of nights, although I think by the time I did pull it out, I was already over the hump, and it didn't make much of a difference. The thrice-daily salt gargles, the saline irrigation, and the spoonful of honey before bed (I keep reading this is better for a tickle in your throat than cough medicine). We definitely both had headcolds: mucus was clear and any cough always in the throat, not the lungs (we had it checked). We celebrated the Fourth again Monday night watching A Capitol Fourth and the Macy's New York show. Capitol Fourth was disappointing; I didn't like the skipping all over the country for performances, which were just okay. So were the fireworks. We pretty much skipped all the performances in the New York show, except for Reba McIntire, but the fireworks were outstanding. Pretty much miserable for the rest of the week, and spent one day watching Law & Order reruns on WE, and the next day watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I love Vincent D'Onofrio in the latter. James always called him "Detective Twitchy." He's fascinating just to watch: the way he moves and positions himself. They showed the episode where Mark Linn Baker played a rigid little insurance agent who is deluding himself about his marital problems. Det. Goren is able to see the patterns in things others can't, and he pegs this guy's pattern eventually. It's kind of a sad scene, even though the character has caused deaths. When the visiting nurse came—her last visit!—I asked her to check James' lungs and she checked mine, too. No problems there, and both she and James' nephrologist agreed that the symptoms all pointed to a simple head cold, especially since no fever was involved. Still masked up for James' visit to the wound clinic. Alas, the large blister is not yet healed, so on went another unna boot for the week. Just this and a short, masked visit to Publix wiped me out. I decided I would not go to the bridal shower I'd been looking forward to on Saturday, just in case. Instead I spent the early afternoon battling gastric distress, and then over two hours asleep. James had a much better time at his club meeting, but he got rained on on the trip home. Oh, we did take a half hour to go to the Hallmark Ornament Premiere. There weren't even a dozen people in the store, including the two cashiers. James got this year's airplane, I got one of the miniatures (a little bird in a scarf), and the 11th of the 12 Days of Christmas ornaments (a cute girl piper), and also the St. Nicholas ornament. (I'm not saving the last for Christmas; I put it up in front of my "St. Nicholas" magazines.) I can hardly believe the "12 Days" collection is almost over! When I bought that first partridge in a pear tree it seemed like it would take forever to complete the collection, and now here it is almost complete. "Tempus fugit" and all that. Labels: Christmas, health, holidays, Independence Day, sickness, television » Sunday, July 04, 2021
Fizz Goes the Fourth
Hi-ho, hi-ho, this week it was off the doctor we go. Good news: cardiologist gave James a good report on Tuesday. Bad news: wound clinic wrapped James' leg in viscopaste (the zinc-based wrap that I hated) again on Wednesday. She'd already given him antibiotics "just in case." We have to go back and see her next Friday. He also picked up meds at the pharmacy and went to visit the vampires. He was supposed to give another sample, but he'd just "drained the tank," so we had to drop that off at Cumberland another day. The really bad part of both appointments is that we had to get up early on two of James' work days to get to them on time. I am not used to getting up at 7 a.m. any longer. Ended up taking a nap Tuesday, but laundry had to be done on Wednesday, and since I was awake for laundry I just stayed dressed and went to Kroger (found yogurt, so yay) and to Nam Dae Mun for sesame oil and cheap meats (although the thin steaks aren't so cheap any longer). Our usual three-day weekend was kind of a bust. James has had allergy problems off and on all spring, and had another whopper of an allergy attack very early in the week. All the post-nasal runoff had given him a sore throat. Luckily it didn't get bad until after we had done the shopping at Lidl and Publix. We figured it would be better for all if we didn't go to lunch, just in case, even though he had and still has no fever. I did run James' specimen to Kaiser and picked up some different nasal spray for him. As I was waiting to get out of the parking lot a big red-tailed hawk swooped right in front of the car and landed in a tree nearby. This makes it sound like the Cumberland office is in the woods, but it's really not. Sure was pretty, though! Saturday James had to cook his breakfast meat for the week, so I helped him do some prep of the vegetables that go in it, vacuumed where he'd have to put his desk up, put some Independence Day decorations outside, and finally unloaded/loaded/and ran the dishwasher for the fourth time this week. That dishwasher is insatiable. James also made turkey wings in the air fryer for Saturday night. I was planning Chinese barbecue ribs for the Fourth, but, alas, Dragon took the weekend off. Got wings at Zaxby's instead. Managed to do my essential Sunday chores (charging the bath electrics, sorting meds for the week, and washing towels) along with cleaning the master bathroom, and still got to watch 1776 and the two episodes of Alistair Cooke's America having to do with the Revolutionary Way and the Constitution. [A funny while I was sorting meds: I asked the Echo Dot to play "instrumental patriotic music." What I got was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "The Hallelujah Chorus." Say...what?] Bloomberg TV was still broadcasting the Boston Pops July 4th concert this year. Unfortunately we don't have the higher tier on Dish Network any longer that gets Bloomberg TV. I didn't worry because it was supposed to be live on Bloomberg.com and I could pull that up in the Chrome browser and then use the Chromecast gadget plugged into the television to "cast" the computer screen to the TV. Well, it seems Bloomberg has some kind of barrier; when I cast to the TV all you get is a pink screen that says "Bloomberg" on it. We do have a Bloomberg feed on the Roku, but you could only see the Pops concert in a smaller screen tucked into the upper left hand corner of the screen while financial figures wildly danced on the other two-thirds of TV real estate. So here we had the concert full screen in a browser on the computer, but no way to see it. No, wait. One more try: my venerable Samsung tablet. Which does screen mirroring to our equally venerable Samsung television. And that pretty much worked perfectly. Even thought the Boston Pops concert was interrupted frequently for ads, Bloomberg left the entire end portion of the show uncut: the performance of "The 1812 Overture," the concluding "Stars and Stripes Forever" piece, and then finally the fireworks. We would have preferred the latter in HD, but beggars can't be choosers. The concert was wonderful; they didn't rely on a bunch of prima-donna celebrities, but had some great R&B singers on instead, including Mavis Staples, and also Jon Batiste, plus the Air Force Band Singing Sergeants and the Six-String Soldiers. I do not know the woman's name who sang the National Anthem, but wow: overpriced celebrities who sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at other events, please take a note from this marvelous lady! You do not need to warble, trill, or shriek to do a beautiful job. Labels: chores, health, holidays, illness, Independence Day, shopping, technology, television |
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