I look forward to October every year. It's my favorite month except for December, although the leaves here don't really turn until November, but there's such a possibility in October...that it might be cooler, that it might be colorful, that we can make all the wonderful things coming up like the book sale and the Apple Festival.

It started out on a bad note Tuesday. We'd had a nice day: went to Sam's Club for gasoline for the truck, went inside and found some nice sirloin steaks for a semi-reasonable price, and some nifty dark-chocolate covered nut clusters. Nuts are good for kidney patients, and these turned out to be really tasty, with flaky dark chocolate on them. We also went by Dunkin Donuts and got two more apple cider doughnuts, and James made chopped steak and ramen noodles for dinner...

...and forgot to check behind him to make sure the chair was there and sprawled out on the kitchen floor. We had to call the firemen to get him up, and he said he was okay—he didn't even scrape an arm or a leg like he usually does and start bleeding!—but over the rest of the evening he started to hurt worse and worse around his chest, and off we went at 10:30 to Urgent Care. Even though there were few customers, it took us until 3 a.m. for him to get an x-ray and then another 90 minutes for them to look at it. I had a screaming headache most of the time there; had taken three ibuprofin before we left the house and it barely touched it, and someone's alarm was going off constantly, and there was a baby crying, and it was hot in the little cubicle we were assigned to. We were so miserable we both considered just walking out, but we had to check...

So, they said no broken anything and sent us home on a couple of hydrocodone for James and absolutely no energy for me. We got into the house and just crawled out of our clothes and fell asleep on top of the bedspread with a couple of fleece throws at about 5:30 a.m. Ever since now he has this pain around his torso when he twists (can't figure out how it happened since he appeared to have landed on his left side), coupled with the pain in his back that has been so intense he has been taking, in ones and twos, the hydrocodone Dr. Coyle gave him for post-op. I have been wakened every night by his moaning in pain.

So, whap, apparently it was now my turn; tried to get in bed early Thursday night for the book sale on Friday and instead suffered nightmares and knee pain and nausea all night. It was a whole lot of fun for both of us. I staggered up long enough to help with breakfast and feed and walk Tucker, then crashed on the futon until it was time to get up for dialysis transport. I went straight to the book sale and bought thirteen books, and didn't feel fully human again until after supper.

So James ended up going to his club meeting online again, after making it successfully last month on his own (sigh...).

Over the week I also finished putting up a couple of more fall decorations, put the new signs up on the front porch (hopefully the plague of roofers will go away), brushed Tucker, updated my blog, and finally put away the charged power supplies (and sorted out the little woven crate they're in).

I also, happily and sadly, finished the very last Maisie Dobbs book, The Comfort of Ghosts. I've been reading the series since 2007, when I read a great review of the first book. Maisie started out as a thirteen-year-old servant whose thirst for knowledge was so great that she would get up at three a.m. to study in her employer's library to further her education. Her employer educated her, and she went to college but didn't finish due to serving as a nurse in the Great War. Now World War II has ended. Maisie is at the end of a long journey. It was a satisfactory ending, but how I will miss her!

Also, back in the day when James was working, one of the things we used to watch at lunchtime was the New Zealand-produced "reboot"/follow-on of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds. They did a lot of fan service to the original series and we enjoyed it. However, Amazon Prime only showed two-thirds of the series. I just found out the remainder of the series was on Tubi.

Alas, now it seems our kitchen faucet is either broken or giving up the ghost. Like we haven't spent enough money.

Labels: accidents, autumn, books, dogs, health, illness, shopping, television, treats

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:02:00 PM

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This has been a week of shocks.

It started out harmlessly enough: James had an appointment for a Procrit shot. We talked to Dr. Kongara and Bruce, and wondered if James needed a urinalysis. Based on what we told him, he didn't think so. He did say James' BUN number was very high, so to cut back the torsemide (diuretic) to one a day.

Alas, next day James was peeing very red, so we ate a good breakfast, packed a lunch, and went to Urgent Care. Providentially, it wasn't crowded, and we were in almost immediately. He did indeed have a UTI, and they gave him an IV bag of antibiotics and then a 10-day prescription for cephalexin and asked him to come back next week for a followup. They also took a CT scan of his back, which is still killing him—to get out of bed at night to use the bathroom he has to put the head of the bed up to help him—and they did indeed confirm that nothing was broken or torn. No painkillers offered this time; they just told him Tylenol and heat/ice.

On the way home, something frightening happened. You remember that I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had expressed concern about the chair lift on the back of the truck, that it wasn't holding the chair on properly? And then we took it to Mobility Works and paid $165 for a "tune up" in which it was checked out and lubricated and they recalibrated it with the chair and they said it was fine?

When we left Kaiser we put the chair up on the lift and I gave a puzzled little look once it was up because there was still a gap a finger's width wide between the end of the bar and the chair. But we were tired after everything at Urgent Care and just drove home, through the park, downtown Marietta, and about 45 mph at least down South Cobb Drive. James turned down side streets, and we were waiting for the light at Windy Hill when I noticed the little blue flag at the back of the chair was looking awfully low. I figured it was just the angle we were at.

The light changed and when James put the truck into drive we heard a funny little jolting sound. We crossed Windy Hill, finished going down Olive Springs, made the sharp right turn onto Smyrna Powder Springs, stopped at the stop sign, then did the left turn into Trellis Oaks.

As we turned left into the driveway, something scraped the concrete.

James came to a stop, I jumped out of the truck, and nearly had hysterics. The base of the lift was almost at a 45-degree angle and his $8,000 power chair was being held on it by the barely two-inch tall outer rim of the base of the lift and the inner edge of the crossbar that usually extends across the seat!!!!! The two welds that fasten the inner edge of either side of the base to the vertical part of the lift were both cracked completely in half--looked like metal fatigue. At least one of the cracks had rust inside it--which means I was right all along about it not clamping properly when I first noticed it at Costco.

I think I need to go light a candle somewhere to thank God the freaking chair didn't fall off, get damaged, and worst of all, maybe cause an accident with the car behind us. Can you imagine if it had come bouncing off in the middle of South Cobb Drive? Or downtown?????

I left a hysterical message on Mobility Works' message machine and the next day I followed James and the truck to get it examined and drove home.

Mobility Works had that bottom platform in stock and will replace it for a nice fat $1400. Just wondering why it cracked in the first place. It was sold to us as supporting this wheelchair.

So we were in need of a distraction and never got it, as the internet crashed Saturday afternoon and never came back until Sunday night. We watched DVDs for the duration. We will never put our eggs all into that streaming basket; it's too easy to take down.

Labels: accidents, events, health, internet, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:57:00 PM

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The week did not open auspiciously, but instead with pain (James') and tears (mine).

I took Tucker out Monday morning and did our "regular" walk (across the street, down to the stop sign, reverse direction to the day care, and back across the street again). When I got home I called up to James, but he didn't answer. So I figured he was in the bathroom, which I hadn't begun to clean yet, and let the dog upstairs. Then I headed for the hall bathroom to "walk" me.

I looked down in the doorway to see James' shoes. They were attached to James, stretched out on the floor, his right arm bleeding in several places including on the hand, and some cuts on his right leg. He had somehow caught his right foot—we think, he says he doesn't know how he fell—on the doorframe and fallen face down. He did not hit his head, nor hurt his face; he was conscious, annoyed at himself, and uncomfortable.

So first I mopped up the blood and then came the problem of getting him off the floor. He can't roll over onto his knees. So I got him into a sitting position, and he basically crab walked—or actually pulled himself forward on a kitchen chair while I moved it forward incrementally and then held down—to the stairway, where he could stand up. Next I patched up all the bleeding parts and checked him for bruises.

We ended up not going to Urgent Care. He said he was bruised and did hurt, but that he didn't think he'd broken anything, like a friend did last week and who had to go to the emergency room. Instead James took Tylenol and I gave him an extra steroid. Needless to say he was very sore for most of the week, and David had to ease up on him when he finally got to go to PT this week (we hadn't gone the past two weeks due to the allergies making us feel horrible).

Lawn care, alas, is back in season. Alex is going to come on Tuesday this year, he says, so I had to stagger awake on Tuesday and go through a flurry of writing checks.

James was up to Walmart on Wednesday (sugar free candy and other stuff we can only get at WallyWorld) and then grocery shopping on Thursday. On Friday we took it as easy as possible, but did go to Canton for our monthly trip. Came out of Books-a-Million with many books, then we had pizza at Uncle Maddio's, and finally we stopped at BJs for fruit cups, maple syrup, and a few other items.

Saturday afternoon we had great fun at Ken Spivey's birthday party, which was held at Volcano Steak and Sushi, a new place out in Hiram (they also have a Korean BBQ and Hot Pot). This is one of those hibachi places where the guy cooks in front of you, and it was great fun to see little Kassidy (who's elementary-school aged) watch the chef do his tricks for the first time and be startled when he sets the fire on the grill!

James' club meeting was on a Sunday this month because it was the only day available, so he went off while I did some chores and washed some towels and did some writing and listened to the Colonial Williamsburg podcasts.

Labels: accidents, birthdays, errands, excursions, friends, health, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:15:00 PM

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The bad news: I still have a cold. Now I have lots and lots of phlegm in my throat, with lots and lots of moist coughing. Yeah, it's as annoying as it sounds, and I'm congested as hell. But no fever and no other COVID symptoms.

Thursday was the last day I could go do something with a CD I had that, years ago, was giving me two percent interest. Now it was only getting .02 percent, and renewal interest rates weren't any better. So we went to the bank, had to wait a half hour for anyone to talk to us (I had to run back out to the truck for water since I ended up having a coughing fit), and cashed out the silly thing, which I gave to James to pay down on his truck.

Plus we finally went to the HOA post office box and the checks we ordered for the account still haven't come. We will be on the last check soon; it's bad enough we got stuck with the HOA account, but to have this happen is freaking annoying.

And on Saturday night some moron in a full-size pickup truck ran into the "Trellis Oaks" trellis at the end of our street. He cracked the sign that said "Trellis Oaks," ripped up one of the spotlights, and actually tilted the stone-and-wood trellis back a degree or two. Actually, the people in the house at the end of the street must be still saying their prayers right now because if that Trellis Oaks sign hadn't been there, the pickup would have gone through their downstairs bedroom/sitting room!

All this and the nightmare news about the cretin with the 100+ page manifesto who drove for hours to a grocery store in a mostly Black neighborhood and shot up the place, the asshole who shot up a church in California, and the moron who shot up a flea market in Texas. People have no self-control any longer. Someone upsets them, they don't get what they want, the solution is grabbing a gun and killing people.

The one good thing about the week was a trip to Canton for lunch at Uncle Maddio's—the owner is still running the place by himself—and a side-journey to Books-a-Million, where I found several nifty books on the remainder shelves, including Ghost: My Thirty Years as an FBI Undercover Agent, which works out well since I've been writing about an FBI agent. On the way home we stopped at BJ's for orange and pineapple cups and various other things. They didn't have any plain Skinny Pop, so I got the buttered kind, and, boy, did I regret that. It tastes like "cheesy-flavored" popcorn and is revoltingly salty.

Labels: accidents, books, chores, food, illness, news, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:12:00 PM

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Well, James' foot is slowly healing. However...it's been a weird trip there.

First, I unwrapped it on Groundhog Day to do the twice-weekly sterilizing and rewrapping, and on either side of the stitches were big fat blisters! Really strange because otherwise the foot looks great (except for the betadyne stains); even the minor swelling, which he has had ever since he got the infection last December, has gone away. (And heck, maybe this was a sign all along that the bone infection was lurking under the surface all year even though his white count didn't increase nor did his blood test show any kind of infection, even when he was in the hospital to have the pus in the toe treated.) I can only conclude this is the result of his not wearing the compression socks.

Thankfully, the thigh portion of his left leg was still relatively blister free (one broke out right before our doctor visit, but it's not even a half inch in diameter, so it's one of his smaller blisters) and isn't the holy mess the leg was last year after his hospital stay. I treat that every other night with the leg cream recommended by the dermatologist.

So, I was worried about what the doctor was going to say on Friday the 4th at James' next followup appointment, and I didn't sleep well, and then we got to the doctor's office and the nurse took James' blood pressure and it was too low all three times. Well, I've been worried about this happening. When he was in the hospital, his blood pressure was way up in the 160s, and they not only doubled his beta-blocker (the carvedelol), but they pulled him off lisonopril and put him on both hydralazine (three times a day!) and amlodipine. Nobody seemed to be sure if the high numbers were due to the infection or from the combination of two antibiotics. I asked the doctor smack up front when he was released what to do if his blood pressure started to fall, and she gave us the numbers to watch for. Well, the moment he came home his blood pressure started to fall (surprise!) and when he came off the antibiotics it dropped like a rock. First I pulled him off the amlodipine. Then I took him off his afternoon dose of hydralazine. And it seems to have finally stabilized. We'll see this Friday. It was okay at his Urgent Care followup this morning.

(I am still flummoxed why they told us that the lisonopril was bad for his kidneys. Because the person who prescribed it was his kidney doctor! Also glad when he finished the antibiotics, because the combination of the two completely fucked up his blood sugar and gave him diarrhea as well.)

Anyway, to get back to February fourth... James does as he always does at Kaiser; the exam rooms are not large enough for his power chair, so he parks it outside the door and limps to the examination table.

Except when he stood up on Friday, his left pants leg caught in the top of one of the "outrigger" wheels on the power chair. He dropped like a felled tree on his left side and had the wind knocked out of him. Ironically, unlike the other three times he's fallen, he didn't hit his head, or even scrape his elbow. It did hurt him, but he didn't think it was that bad. However, since he really has limited mobility, he could not get to his feet on his own—it's always taken two strong firefighters unless he can buttscoot to the top of the stairs and then get up that way—so they had to use this lift gadget they have to get him off the floor. Only then did he finally get the stitches removed, and nobody suggested he go downstairs and get an x-ray. The doctor did prescribe a limited amount of hydrocodone for any pain, and we picked that up and we got home and he took one and leaded against a heating pad and figured it would help. It got later. We ate something. We watched Steve Canyon to take his mind off the pain.

The pain was getting worse.

So, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it was off to Urgent Care we go. At least they let me sit inside, on the opposite side of the doors from the Urgent Care area, even though we apparently hit Urgent Care on a dead night and no more than two people were ever in there at the same time. Still wouldn't let me go back with him. So I sat there with my laptop and worked on a story (I had made a major blunder referencing a past event, so I pretty much had to "rip up" over two pages of story; however the rewrite actually did improve the tale). At midnight they were going to throw me out to the cold (or inside Butch, which was just as cold, since his heater doesn't work), but luckily, after a CT scan and scads of bloodwork, they released him just after midnight. He had compression fractures in his T6 and T7 bones in his spine, and a stress fracture in the T8 spinal bone. All this from falling on his left side and there wasn't a bruise on him!

(As they released him from Urgent Care, the nurse asked, "Did Podiatry file an incident report?" Hell if we know! If they did, they didn't ask us to read or sign anything.)

He was in pretty bad pain for the first couple of days; anything that caused him to bed over, like putting on or taking off underwear and pants, literally leave him seeing stars. Basically he had to take two hydrocodone tablets (and he hasn't ever needed two hydrocodone in his life) and a muscle relaxant before bed, and then hydrocodone in the morning, and another muscle relaxant in the afternoon, and, of course being on "hard drugs," he can't work. So he had to call in sick abruptly (and now IBM is whining about having someone "dependable" on weekend duty—he's done this for three years now, and this is the first time he's been "undependable"; otherwise he's worked their damn Sundays and only taken a few of them off with prior approval). So he's been on total rest all week and the days have kinda blurred together. When I get frustrated I duck into a story and that really helps; it's much more pleasant living inside my head.

In other news:

Did the taxes and we owe a lot, but that's okay because I have been saving money monthly from every social security payment in my savings account, earmarked to pay taxes with, rather than having the IRS hold my money interest-free. I'll up the withholding on my pension this year, though, because I got penalized $23 for not having enough money taken out for taxes! You really can't win with the Feds.

Wellstar is still sending us "shame on you" letters because Kaiser hasn't paid them. Dude, I pay Kaiser $500 a month and then the Feds pay them at least another $1300 a month to take care of this shit for me. You can "shame me" all you like; go talk to Kaiser. I'm done.

Both Vincent D'Onofrio and Jonny Harris liked one of my tweets (two different ones). I celebrated by ordering the former's book. (Actually, now that I think about it, I celebrate nearly everything by ordering a book...)

I made a Goren and Eames Appreciation Page, mainly to "hold" all those screencaps I've posted to Facebook.

We have called him by the nickname for so long that Snowy is now saying "chickie boo."

And this is the second week in a row I've gone into Popshelf and they've been out of Tina Burritos. I think our run of luck on these has come to an end.

Labels: accidents, birds, books, errands, health, sickness, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 6:29:00 PM

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Well, it was a week. And boy what a week...

It did indeed rain on Sunday, but with the lights already outside the rest of the First Sunday of Advent decorating was a doddle. I put additional things out on the porch, and hung the garlands on the inside doors and set the candoliers in the windows. Our neighbors were already brightening their homes as well. Pam next door has a plain white lit tree downstairs, and a red-and-white peppermint tree upstairs. Miranda and Eddie strung multicolor outlines on the front of their house later in the week. Even the lady across the street put a color-changing tree in one of her bedroom windows.

About 2 a.m. Monday morning everything went pear-shaped. James got up to use the bathroom, fell asleep as he leaned forward to pull up his pajama bottoms, and took a header into the wall. I was woken from sleep by an enormous thump and raced into the bath to find him on the floor with a big black-and-blue goose-egg already forming on his right temple, coherent but in pain, and no way to get off the floor, since his knees are so bad he can't roll on them to get up. So I had to call the rescue squad. Four nice firemen/EMTs rescued him, checked him out including his blood sugar, thought he was okay, but since he banged his head, also thought he should go to the hospital to get checked out. The EMTs were geeks and before they left we were talking Star Trek. Then James went off to St. Joseph's via ambulance and I tried to get back to sleep and miserably failed since most of what I was doing was crying.

Labels: accidents, Christmas decorations, food, friends, health, sickness, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:23:00 PM

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So we've been following this weather pattern. It gets cold for a few days. The air is bracing, and you can sleep deeply at night. Then the rain comes in and it gets warm. It's wet, clammy, but still not cold enough to sleep properly. Urgh.

So far February has been mostly boring. And I was wishing for boring, so that's fine.

Trouble is, it keeps being peppered with these little things like the neverending rain. Normally we like rain. Rain mean James gets to telework if it falls on one of his weekdays. Rain on the weekend is a pain because we can't take the power chair out, which means James doesn't go anywhere but supermarkets. And that certainly fits the description of "boring." Saturday we had a little dusting of snow that promptly turned into slipper slush. James decided discretion was the better part of valor and didn't get to go to his club meeting.

But we got a double whammy last week.

On Wednesday I sat down with my copy of TurboTax and played with numbers. And boy did we get a shock. I figured we might owe money. Last year we had a month of my old salary and the unused annual leave I got in a lump sum which was taxed to the max, and those would override the fact I wasn't taking any deductions. This year I knew would be a different animal. It turned out to be a mountain lion. We're getting a small amount back from the state, but we owe an enormous amount to the Feds because I had my withholding at about $13 a month. (Yeah, I went in there and changed it. There goes $100 a month out of my pension check.) This combined with knowing we were going to owe Emory St. Joseph the co-pays for James' hospital stay last month was one whammy.

Alas, that paled to what happened last Friday. Thursday we started a series of James' doctors' appointments that were partially already arranged and partially a result of his hospital stay, and he went that day to the podiatrist so he can get new orthopedic shoes (the old ones are three years old and very scuffed). Today we had the cardiologist and tomorrow we have the nephrologist.

Friday we went to Kaiser Glenlake for James' MRI to determine if he had spinal stenosis. It took about 20 minutes, and then we thought we might stop at MicroCenter on the way home. We got back out to the truck, let the ramp down, got the chair on it, and I started the lift. About halfway during the process there's this terrible racket like the lift is struggling, although it gets all the way up. We stared at each other in bewilderment. Then I looked down. The "shoe" (that's what they call it), the little curved piece that comes around the triangular cog when the ramp goes up, and which folds the ramp up when there's nothing on it, was bent to the left and twisted. The terrible noise was the metal frame of the shoe grinding against the part that the rubber roller at the tip of the shoe usually rolls up against when it is straight.

James grumbled about having to call Mobility Works and my having to take the truck up there on Monday and more money going out, so I asked why we couldn't take it up there right then? We couldn't go to MicroCenter—if we let the chair down again the ramp might not come back up at all—so we'll see if they can look at it. Maybe they kept that part in stock, and if not, we'd order a new part. And maybe they could tell us the best way to get the chair down.

So there we stood eventually all looking at this bent piece, and the service guy said "let me take this around back and check it closer," and drove off to the back with the truck. About ten minutes later, he and Scott (who's our contact at Mobility Works) came back out. There is no way, they said, that it bent like that by itself. Not only that, but the spring that holds the ramp up was also broken, and part of the shaft was bent. Basically the whole lift would be eventually unusable; it would fail because sometime while we were in the Glenlake office, someone hit the lift and then just drove off. Mobility Works told us to call the insurance company and if the adjuster didn't understand the structural problem, they could call them and they would show him or her just what's wrong.

So there I was on the phone with Nationwide as they talked to James about all the broken parts, standing at the back of the truck, juggling the phone, my insurance card, and my tablet case (I was reading at Kaiser and while we were waiting at Mobility Works). I kept talking on the phone as we got back into the truck preparing to go home, and when we crossed Hwy 41, and when we used the small road that cuts through Cobb EMC's property. It is only when I try to find the Mobility Works card in my tablet case for the Nationwide representative that I realize it is not in the cab with me.

Like an idiot I left it on top of the power chair!

So we turned around and went back to Mobility Works, with me having a cow all the way there because of the tablet and also because I had a cross-stitch kit in there with my good Gingher scissors. We got back to the parking lot, where I figured the Case Logic pouch I had everything in had fallen off, hoping no one had run it over. But it wasn't there. Went back inside just in case. Not there. They start helping us look for it. In desperation I started walking back up the road to 41 in hopes that it was at the side of the road.

Just then Scott who had just left for the day, came back down the road with the case in his hands. He found it on the other side of 41, at the side of the road leading through the Cobb EMC facility; I guess it had stayed on the chair until we went over a bump and then it bounced off.

It didn't get run over and everything appears to be safe except one corner of the tablet cover is cracked. I was furious at myself for doing something so stupid. And also royally pissed at whomever hit the damned lift and didn't even say anything.

Case Logic, on the other hand, makes good tablet cases. Thank you, Case Logic!!!

To make sure we could get the chair down off the lift and then raise the lift back up (otherwise the truck cannot be driven), they took off the bent "shoe" and another part. So the ramp will not stay up anymore; it has nothing to hold it. When we got home we had to tie it up with some rope and three bungee cords.

And this of course means James will have to use the rollator at Anachrocon. Oh, aren't his back and ankles and knees going to love that.

At least the insurance is going to cover the claim. The adjuster came on Monday, could see all the other damage we couldn't, and said we'd be seeing the check next week.

Labels: accidents, health, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:41:00 PM

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Yes, I'm still alive.

However, I'm still recovering from an emotional tailspin that's been a nightmare.

The foley catheter that James had inserted after the urodynamics test on June 26 was defective in some manner and kept disconnecting from the leg bag. He had to come home from work one day, and, because he sits off in an area with no one else around, went through another day with the damn thing popping off about a dozen times. That Thursday he called Kaiser urology, but they couldn't get him in. They told him if he felt it needed to be changed, he needed to go to...guess where: Urgent Care. So we did that on Friday afternoon after taping the catheter output to the leg bag with electrical tape.

The tech they had put the catheter in was not experienced at it. By Saturday afternoon, July 14, it went sour. James called me about 3 p.m., after walking out of his club meeting in terrible pain. I asked if he felt capable of driving to Urgent Care at Towne Park (he was about three or four miles away) and he said yes. So he went there and I went to drive to meet him. I was nearly there when I had to slow down for traffic. It proceeded forward and then had to stop again, but I reacted three seconds too slowly and rear-ended someone. Alice and Ken came to rescue me, but amazingly the car was driveable even though the hood was bent up and the grill broken and the A/C quit working. In fact, according to the HUM device plugged into the car, all the systems (battery, coolant, engine, transmission, etc.) were working perfectly. I drove it home (with Alice as co-pilot) and ironically they were going to take me back up to Urgent Care, but James was on his way home. They had to put in a new catheter (and this time they did it correctly). We need to have a big, big talk with Urololgy or someone at Kaiser. This is the second time we've had a foley put in at Urgent Care and it's gone bad.

I had a big bruise on my left shoulder where the seat belt caught me and I ached all over for a while, but the biggest ache was in my heart because I hit someone. (The lady wasn't hurt.) I've never hit another car in my life. And I knew Nationwide would want to total the car. Even though I've taken such good care at it, and even coddled it after the bridge collapse on I-85 last year, and the seats and the interior still look brand new, the body work would be a bear. I did take it to my mechanic and he said he knew a fairly honest body shop; I went there next and they said it would be $5K to fix and even then, because the hood was jammed shut, they might have to make more repairs after reaching the $5K limit. After the impact of the accident, vapor came out of the vents and the A/C quit working. There was another $1K right there. In misery I just gave up.

(Incidentally, the HUM from Verizon worked fine, just like the similar gadget in those OnStar commercials. I had barely reached for my phone to call 911 when the dispatcher came on the line and asked if I'd been in an accident. They called the police for me and the dispatcher stayed on with me until the police showed up, while I sobbed to poor James stuck at Urgent Care.)

On July 25, exactly fourteen years from the day I bought my PT Cruiser,  I had to tell the insurance company to come take the car away. They were fourteen good years and so many adventures: my mom's house for Thanksgiving after the car being broadsided by an SUV costing $13K to repair, LaSalette Shrine, Udvar-Hazy (twice), Newport, Orchard House, Quonset Point, Yorktown, Jamestown, Williamsburg, Valley Forge, Roadside America and The National Christmas Museum (now both closed), Hershey, the PA Railroad Museum, Strasburg Rail Road, Newport News, Norfolk, Dayton, Wapakoneta, Bronners CHRISTmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, the Henry Ford, Greenfield Village (where I still want to live), Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Helen, Toccoa, Chattanooga, DragonCon, Owensboro, bringing Schuyler home from Petco...and surviving I-75/85 and I-285 weekdays. It was the last car I had that my mother rode in, and, with our finances, the last new car I will ever own. Lots of memories. Much heartache.

On Saturday July 21 at Aaron Lawson's going-away party, Jerry, bless him, was trying to cheer me up and asked if I'd like to look at his car to maybe think about getting a used Kia Soul. (Both he and Clair seem happy with their Souls.) As we were leaving, Jerry invited James to sit in the car to see if he had good head clearance. Just as we approached it, a big red-tailed hawk swooped down over our heads and landed in a tree almost right over the car, and looked back at us. It was so close we could see the beautiful patterning of the spots on the chest feathers. So James "tried on" the car, and then we got in the truck to drive home. We were approaching the end of Sewell Mill Road, almost at Roswell Road, a few miles from the Lawson house, and I saw a flash of white next to the window. Flying right next to the passenger side of the truck, so close that James couldn't see it, was another red-tailed hawk.

Just for the heck of it I Googled and got "The hawk is a messenger bird. Usually when we see a hawk it means to pay attention because a message is coming to you. Hawks represent clear sightedness, being observant, our far memory and guardianship. They also bring courage, wisdom, illumination, creativity and truth. Hawks give us the ability to see the larger picture in life. They can help you to overcome problems and make wise use of opportunities."

James whiled away some hours for me by looking for used Kia Souls. We found one with a great Carfax report (one owner, no accidents) except for a lot of miles (150K for a three-year-old car!) up in Roswell. So we went up there Sunday the 29th and got caught up in a whirlwind of perky car salesman (so help me, I asked him "Are you always this relentlessly cheerful?"). Anyway, we drove it and it seemed okay. It's got a smaller engine than the PT so it's noisy, but it runs okay. Beggars can't be choosers, and because James needs the power chair to get around, we won't be using it on vacations anymore, except maybe for weekend things where we are not moving around much (like when we went up to his sister's for Thanksgiving in 2016). It will strictly be an errands and emergency car.

So I had it checked out by my mechanic on Monday the 30th and had it bought by that afternoon. The tow truck came by for poor Twilight last Friday (I promised not to cry anymore but I did after the taillights disappeared from our street). I've put all the shopping bags and etc. in the new car—it's a 2015 white Kia Soul, and it is definitely not "bigger on the inside" like the PT—and did a bunch of errands in it today.

Ambivalent about names. Since Twilight and Cloudy (the truck) had weather names, I thought "Hoarfrost" or "Frosty" for short, and James started singing "Frosty the white car, is a jolly, happy Soul..." I laughed and considered decking him at the same time. But a couple of times I've called it "Butch." It does have a flat top, after all.

Still, miss my "boy." And still miserable about hitting someone. I've been driving since 1971 and never hit another car in my life.

Labels: accidents, cars, friends, illness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 3:10:00 PM

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And, astonishingly, it's over.

I made it to work and back yesterday without the traffic accident I've been fearing for years. Traffic has changed so much since I began at CDC. In 1988, after I left work for the day, I used to go exploring. I would drive up to places as far as Haynes Bridge Road (I was living in Brookhaven, just north of downtown, at the time) to check out an interesting store—this is back in the days when Atlanta was dotted with needlework and non-chain craft shops (alas all gone) and new small restaurants—unmindful of the other traffic. Now you need a whip and a chair to get me out there some days. People drive quickly and they drive crazy, using the HOV lanes and turn lanes to pass, skittering across five lanes of traffic to get to the exit they forgot, caught at intersections with a cell phone attached to their ear. (I love my smartphone, but can't understand for the life of me why some folks must have the damn things seemingly surgically attached to them.) The accidents shown on the news are enough to make your hair turn white overnight: crushed engines, crumpled-in trunks, rolled-over SUVs, vehicles with their tops or sides peeled away with a nightmare can opener. And I discover that in the last few years that it is harder and harder for me to drive in the dark due to the glare of the headlights. Since most of my morning commute, except for about six weeks around the summer solstice, is taken in the dark, this is a problem more serious by the day.

On Wednesday morning I printed out and assembled in its little brown folder the Very Last Purchase Order I finished yesterday and left it on Puli's desk for signature. I distributed the thank you cards I wrote out Tuesday afternoon for the gift cards I received at my little party, and wrote a thank you note to Will who helped Puli set up the party. I copied off the party photos from Puli's e-mails and some other photos I'd forgotten, then I deleted all my e-mail folders, and, before I left, emptied out the deleted box. I used the bathroom several times, and had my breakfast and then washed the bowl and spoon for the last time and tucked it into the cart I'd brought with me, and drank my water. I had to go downstairs to ask Portia—I have to leave my laptop and cord with her—just what the heck I was supposed to do. Talked to Gary and Kris and several other people congratulating me.

Then I was down to nothing. I unplugged my fan, packed it into the cart with the spoon and the bowl and the box of Kleenex, all that remained in my cubicle of the seasonal photos and decorations, the Cup-a-Soups and the crackers, the magnets and the old calendars, that kept me company over the years. I tucked the laptop and the cord under my arm and took it to Portia (good thing I did it then, too, because she was going off to a class in a few minutes) and she signed off on my checklist, and then I went back upstairs and rolled the cart downstairs and put it in the car.

Without the laptop, nothing left. I asked Vivian to sign my request for a retiree badge (I needed a branch chief) and I took my bag, and as Juanita suggested, took a photo of the empty cubicle and then walked out without looking back, still smiling at Vivian saying that she always liked to get my purchase order folders; they were so nice and neat! (Thank you, I tried. I abhorred messy folders when I inherited them!) On the way to the car, I took a photo of myself reflected in the front of the building. I looked so small and it was all so big.

Then I went to the Williams Building and swapped out an active badge for a rather homely retiree badge, and Twi and I came home. Poor car needs retirement himself. And all the way I home I sang my mantra:

"I know where I need to be ‘cause I know where I've been--
Found a better road to walk and I'm ready to begin.
Time, it takes you into change, and time, it teaches you;
Gotta another chance this time and I know just what I'll do:
Gonna take my life, give it to me, gonna become what I came here to be,
Gonna change my life, gonna be strong, now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong.
See the sun climb up the sky to light another day--
Gonna let it shine on me, let it take me on my way.
I know where I need to be ‘cause I know where I've been;
Found another road to walk and I'm ready to begin.
Gonna take my life, give it to me, gonna become what I came here to be.
Gonna change my life, gonna be strong, now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong.
Now I know where I belong."

You know, I don't think I imagined how I would feel on my last day. The guy in the badge office said that a lot of people just tossed their badge at him and stalked out. I almost sort of imagined I'd go out grinning like mad or skipping. I almost didn't feel anything, even though I was singing going home. It was almost like it wasn't real yet.

Today it was real. But then today ended up being a little odd, too.

I've been planning a lot of things for retirement. People have sort of jokingly ribbed me about doing nothing about living it up, but one of the things I know about myself is that I can be abominably lazy when I let myself. So while I'm not completely discarding being spontaneous or taking it easy once in a while, I know I have to be on some type of schedule. Just because I'm free of "work" doesn't mean I'm free of work. Clothes still have to be washed weekly, the trash done, the kitchen tidied, the carpet vacuumed, the floors swept, the bathrooms cleaned. And there are things I have been dying to do—and, conversely, things I don't have to do anymore. I have tantalized myself for months with my list of "the things I don't have to buy after I retire": Those Damn Bananas, Kroger buns, lunchmeat, chicken spread, Reeboks, granola bars (oh, how sick I am of those granola bars!), Chex Mix, Reeboks, cookie trays, tuna, an extra calendar, a desk pad. Or things I don't have to do anymore: get up before six a.m., drive on the freeway with crazy people during rush hour, sit in that awful uncomfortable ergonomic chair all day.

I've also been making lists of things I wanted to do around the house. My motto is "Declutter! Declutter! Declutter!" I am tired to death of dodging, stepping around, and pickup up. One of the projects has been to repurpose locations which had been formerly "work only." For instance, since we've been in this house, I've hung up my work clothes on hooks behind the bathroom door, and gotten dressed in the bathroom because I have always gotten up either at the same time as or before James. Once I got home Wednesday I cleared off those hooks and they will now be used for "knocking around" clothes.

Someone asked me what I was going to do on my first day of retirement, and I flippantly said "Sleep late and eat at Tin Drum." Frankly, what I was aiming for was simply eight hours of sleep, and I was happy when I went right back to sleep when James got up. Alas, Nature screamed about 7:10. Since this is about the time my phone tweedles to tell me James has left for work, I was wondering if I missed it when I looked toward the bedroom door and saw a bright light. Yes, the living room light was on, and James' laptop was set up in the living room. Wait...what?

Quick rewind: you remember the car accident, the truck being totalled, and the chair lift being damaged beyond repair. The chair, which was tossed into a ditch at the side of the street, seemed to have faired best. Covered in scratches and with a bent shock absorber and a cracked plastic cowling, it still worked, although we found out it still needed some adjusting. We used it minimally over the weekend because it rained, but James took it back and forth to work Monday and Tuesday with no problem.

Wednesday he got it off the ramp and it locked up flat. He finally had to put it into neutral and struggle to roll it on the lift and limp into work. He got an appointment at the chair place a few hours later, but the chair started normally at the mobility place and the technician could find nothing wrong. He tightened a bunch of things and ordered the new shock. James came home and finished up the day teleworking.

This morning he got it as far as the driveway and it stopped dead, and the little LED screen is showing a blinking maintenance symbol. He had to put it back into neutral to get it back into the garage and it was a bear to heave it over the lip. Then he had to call up his boss and tell him he was once again transportationless. The chair place only called back at lunchtime. Since the chair won't turn on at all now, James told them there was no way he could get it uphill on the driveway and on the lift. They can't come our way to fetch it until Wednesday. So either we struggle to try to get it there tomorrow and James loses another afternoon of work, or he can telework and wait for the chair place to mosey over our way. His boss told him to telework.

Anyway, I got several things checked off my list, although I neither slept late or ate well. I've been keeping my work bag in our bedroom on a little teak table James inherited. In the interim all the books I've been hoarding from coupons, library book sales, bookstore closings (::sob!:: Borders!) and the like have been piling up around this table. Since the bag doesn't need to be there anymore, I unstacked the books and dusted them off, removed the table (it's now under a window in the living room with the CD player on it), and then restacked them in a more orderly fashion. I also had to do an intervention on a double stack of fiction books near the bed, which were threatening to tip over, and almost did when I started fiddling with them. It worked out, I vacuumed, and that was that. I also re-positioned another table, James now has the lunchbox shelf in the kitchen to himself, and my work shoes are now my everyday shoes, and not a minute too soon: my weekend shoes have little tread left and list alarmingly to the outside edge of each of my feet. I will box them up for dirty work in the yard. I also uninstalled Citrix from my computer and erased any work files off my computer.

It was a busy morning's work, but I was satisfied and rewarded myself this afternoon by listening to my John Denver "Complete RCA Albums" set. I'd been thinking of running to Stein Mart this morning to look at bed quilts, but since I had to wait for TruGreen (I couldn't risk that James would be on the phone when they showed up), I did this work instead and am glad I did. Also collected the trash early.

We had to go to Kaiser to pick up James' prescriptions, so we stopped at Zaxby's for supper. Again, probably bad idea. Too many calories and it made me queasy. Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon on the box, and then a goofy Puppy Bowl special that quickly became tiresome. Yeah, we get it, they're building a new "stadium" in the shape of a bone. As Addie Mills would say, "That's corny."

Just a funny feeling today; I had to keep catching myself thinking "Well, I'll have to get back to work tomorrow," just as if I were on vacation that's just ending. It was very strange to think I could actually continue a project tomorrow without having to worry about going back to purchase orders.

Oh, and another thing I'll never have to do again: an 8(a) contract. Thanks so very much!

Labels: accidents, chores, music, retirement, television, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:55:00 PM

(3) COMMENTS

It's been a frustrating ten days.

New Year's was pleasant. We watched the Rose Parade (grand marshal Gary Sinese) and its colorful floats and equally colorful bands (a Japanese band had bright purple uniforms) and horses. Later we went to Alice and Ken's house to watch the Rose Bowl because the University of Georgia "Bulldogs" were one of the teams. I don't like football, but I have to admit it was a really good game; lots of suspense into two overtimes. The "Dawgs" won, which meant they went to the SEC championships. Alas, they lost that game in overtime to the University of Alabama this past Monday. Apparently the "Tide" was too high to resist.

The cold continued apace. It was cold even for me. LOL.

No one came to pick up the poor truck until Friday. We had left it out all afternoon on Thursday as they said they were coming by. Apparently there were so many wrecks over New Years' weekend they couldn't keep up. We have not heard what they are offering us yet, but today we found out the repair would be over $9,000. The truck was only worth a third that much. No word how much they will offer for the lift.

When I arrived back at work on the 2nd, I still had thirteen hours of use-or-lose remaining, so I took Thursday afternoon off and Friday. Thursday I took James to his nurse visit (thankfully his blood pressure was down) and then we looked at two local used car lots for cars. We also broached the idea of getting a small SUV. However, another Tacoma would be the best value, and we did find a promising one just down the street, near the house.

We also went vehicle hunting on Sunday, including cross town to a Toyota dealership. That was a bust, because all they had was a double cab, which won't fit in the garage with the lift. We came back, went by the Toyota used lot on Cobb Parkway where we saw an access cab that looked promising, but which was as old as the old truck. It was freezing—we were in our "Rhode Island winter coats" and bundled up like Randy in A Christmas Story—but the salesman was very helpful. Finally we headed up to the Toyota lot at Town Center. They had a very nice 2011 in "pyrite," so we decided to keep an eye on that one.

However, James finally decided on a 2014 white Tacoma from the lot near our house. We took it on a test drive, kept it overnight, and then brought it to our mechanic, who found it needed brakes and the tires were suffering from dry rot and it had a broken door hinge, but otherwise was good mechanically. The dealership agreed to fix those three things and we should have it by the end of the week. We have an appointment to put a new trailer hitch on it next week and Mobility Works is ordering a new lift. (The old lift cannot be fixed. Once it is even slightly damaged they cannot guarantee its structural integrity anymore.)

We also tried out Wade's Diner and didn't think much of it.

We had our Twelfth Night party as usual, this year on Epiphany itself. We had a small but fun crowd, and missed Mel and Phyllis, who were home with a cold. Aubrey found the pickle on the tree as always. Gifts were exchanged and enjoyed.

A few weeks ago we got an offer from Earthlink for their "Hyperlink" service (broadband through the phone line). We were doing okay on DSL but we are still considering "cutting the cord." I made an appointment to get it yesterday because the salesman said it only took about an hour, an hour and a half to install. They assign you a time, and since James had to take the white pickup over to the mechanic to get it checked out anyway, I figured that would work.

Well, this turned out to be a fripping nightmare. The Hyperlink is installed via AT&T. Yesterday's technician showed up, turned off the phone without telling me (I was in the middle of an order), then went through the house testing all the phone jacks to find the one that was loose so he could connect the modem to hardwire to the computers. Once he found that, he installed the modem, but it wouldn't update. He kept going back and forth outside and then finally decided there was something wrong with the outside line and called an AT&T tech to come fix it. This dude was outside for about four hours, and when I noticed he was in the truck (this was after dark by now) I went to ask him what was going on, since when the first tech left we had a dial tone and now we didn't. He thought it was fixed and expressed surprise about the missing dial tone, and had to go to the box on the main street to turn it back on. It was horribly scratchy, and even though the Hyperlink hadn't been installed, we had no DSL at all and couldn't even fall back on it. For some reason my dial-up modem would not work, either.

Plus James had missed a day of work, I'd missed most of a day of work, and I was madder than a wet hen. I called up Earthlink and gave them a piece of my mind, but since the call center isn't even in the U.S. it's not like they really care.

By this time the first tech had gone off duty. They promised me someone would be here at 9 a.m. today to finish the install. I didn't let it wait. Since I couldn't sleep anyway—I had hurt my left leg on the stairs during the day—I was on the phone with Earthlink customer service at eight and finally found the Atlanta number and called them at eight thirty. During the latter call I got someone named Debbie and she called up AT&T and made sure someone was on their way.

He indeed got here at nine, but it took him over three hours to get it going. He had to work on the box on our street, and then the main junction box on the cross street, back and forth, and finally, to get our dial tone back, had to lay a new line just for the phone (someone will be out to bury it next week). He didn't say it aloud, but apparently the dude who worked on the box yesterday didn't know what he was doing. Anyway, finally we had a solid green light, and one by one we could attach the computers. The cell phones and the tablets were the least trouble because all you have to do is show Android a picture of wi-fi and it connects. 😊 Even the ancient Blu-ray player attached to the modem and it hasn't spoken to the wi-fi signal in five years! It took us, however, at least another hour to get the most critical unit attached: James' work laptop. The other two computers were a cinch: find the modem, tell it to connect, type in the cybernetic salad that's the password, and you're in. The work laptop wasn't that simple because we also had to set the connection parameters (what level of security and in which format, which we didn't know until James found the specs on the modem). That didn't get done until 2 p.m. James' supervisor sounded really testy this morning when he called in saying the internet was still down, so he worked an additional hour to make up for not being available in the morning.

There has been entirely too much drama already this month.

And I've only just begun putting Christmas back up! Only the kitchen and the foyer are cleared so far.

Labels: accidents, cars, Christmas, electronics, food, friends, holidays, parties

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:38:00 PM

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We would have liked to have gone to the Farmer's Market this morning, but they are closed through the 10th. Instead we had breakfast and listened to Snowy sing along to This Old House. My back was giving me fits. It wasn't just hurting, it was cramping up, which made it exceedingly hard to get dressed, and James ended up taking Tucker out this morning. I sat myself on the sofa with the courderoy "husband" for suppert, and it was reasonably unkinked by the time we picked up Alice's birthday gift from under the tree, got in the truck, and headed for Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint at Aker's Mill shopping center.

There is a double left turn at Aker's Mill and we were just starting through the turn when we heard a horn, a screech, and a bang, and the truck was shoved sideways and our necks snapped back. James and I looked back and there was something round and black was in the middle of the road, and there was a red coupe sitting in the lefthand turn lane with its front bumper pulled off. We pulled up to the curb on Aker's Mill in fear that someone had been hurt or the lift had been damaged, but there was just an inconsequential dent in the rear panel between the rear left wheel and the bumper. The bumper was fine and the lift wasn't touched. Mel Boros had pulled up ahead of us, having been several cars behind us and seen the truck parked at the side of the road. I called 911 and they told us to pull over somewhere, so we pulled over into the Bank of America parking lot and soon the lady with the red car followed along with the police. The policeman looked at the accident site and said the skid marks showed that James had probably been a little over the line when he turned. It didn't seem that he made that sharp a turn, but that is a bad corner. I'm not at all sure how she hit us, though. James said he did not see anyone on his left when he started through the intersection.

So we got to Alice's party a bit late and I was shaking all over and sick to my stomach by the time we got there. Both Aubrey and Jessie came over to give me a hug and I frankly started to cry; they are such sweet young ladies! Needless to say, although I ate the pizza because I was hungry, I didn't really taste it all that well and it made me sick later on.

Everything broke up about 3:30 and we drove up to Town Center to the "Chicken Salad Chick" store, which is next to Ippolito's Restaurant (next to where Michael's used to be). Stu at Cuisine on the Run, James' go-to chicken salad place, had recommended them. He got their standard chicken salad and one with apples and grapes in it, and I got one that sounded close to Trader Joe's old "gourmet chicken salad" that I used to love. We also bought a cheese ball for Bill and Caran's party.

We stopped at Barnes & Noble for a few minutes and I was able to make a start on next year's shopping. I also got a calendar for the spare room at half price.

On the way home we realized we couldn't go shopping as usual on Sunday because we were going down to James' mom's tomorrow, so, however reluctantly, we stopped at Kroger. But this meant we could get the bread and garlic spread we needed for tomorrow, as well as a dessert. We got a chocolate pudding cake.

Later chatted a bit with Mike, Jen and Emma online, but I was still feeling shaken up.

Labels: accidents, food, friends, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:14:00 PM

(0) COMMENTS

Well, we have had a sad end to our trip. Thank God it had nothing to do with Willow or Schuyler, or the house.

Nothing much to say about today otherwise. We'd packed a bit last night, and finished this morning, stuffing dirty clothes just about everywhere they would fit and rearranging some things. Went downstairs for breakfast and found every space taken—this hotel has been tremendously crowded; not like the Staybridge last year in Royersford, but then this is a much busier location—so we gathered up what we wanted to eat and brought it back to the room. This way I could eat the yogurt I bought and finish the milk. Had to leave the bottle of coffee syrup behind; should have used it more and earlier in the week.

Drove back to Providence, turned in the car. We are both sorry we took the upgrade. The intermediate car was certainly cushier and comfier, without sacrificing much mileage, but it was so low to the ground we practically had to crawl in and out of it. Compact cars are so much higher off the ground!

I have decided after going through security at Providence that I really despise flying anymore. It's not TSA; they were all friendly and just doing their jobs, but they almost strip you down to your underwear these days and piling that all in trays is a flat PITA. Then we just sat and waited, munched on apples and the rest of the marble cake from DeFusco's.

The ride (a much more comfortable one than coming up!) was unremarkable. We dragged across half the airport to get to baggage claim, then out to the van transport pad. Yadda yadda.

Our troubles started as we approached my car. I thought it looked like the drivers' window was open, but I figured that was my imagination. We opened the trunk to put the suitcases in, and I unlocked the passenger door to put my purse in.

First thing I noticed was all the glass everywhere and that my glove box was open. Then I noticed my satellite radio was gone. That's when I noticed the driver's window was broken in.

To make a long story short, the manager came over. They had five cars broken into last week and mine was one of them. He paid my parking fee and gave me a number to call. I don't care so much about the radio—Sirius is just such a letdown anymore—but having the window broken really hurts. I've always tried to keep that car safe and I fell down on the job. I should have put it in the glove box so no one could see it, but we've used that lot for years (but, admittedly, not in the last few years, since we haven't flown since...2002?) and never had a problem. Probably if we hadn't been in covered parking, we wouldn't have.

Anyway, we got to the vet, picked up Willow and Schuyler, and then came home, which, thankfully, was okay. Had to go out again to Publix to get milk and something for supper, but that was it.

Feeling rather numb at the moment.

[Next morning, 10/18: We had all the windows open last night. Hard to believe it was in the 40s last night and going up to 80 today. Slept badly (unfortunately not as badly as James) and woke up with a screaming headache and a sore throat, the latter probably from the lady next to me on the plane, who coughed and sneezed through half the trip. Then the dam broke: I had a good cry on James' shirt before he left for work. Now I've made the phone calls to the insurance company and am waiting for the adjuster to call me back, started a second load of clothes, filled the bird feeders, and had breakfast. You should have seen Schuyler when she saw my oatmeal; climbed right up on her branch at the front of the cage waiting for me to share! Willow is just depressed; finally has her daddy back and he had to leave...]

Labels: accidents, birds, cars, dogs, pets, travel, vacation

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:03:00 PM

(1) COMMENTS

Gah. What a couple of days.

Sunday night I went to bed feeling unwell. Monday morning was no better. I was late leaving the house due to having to use the bathroom, and had a miserable ride in, only to have to duck into the ladies' room the moment I got there. I was also feeling queasy most of the morning. You know things are not right when oatmeal and yogurt upset your stomach.

By lunch time I was spoiling for a migraine. Unfortunately there's no way to treat it at work...it takes total quiet and a fairly dark room. But I had so many things I wanted to get done...I ended up skipping lunch hour and ate at my desk, just to keep going. Finally, when all that I needed was done—it was about two by then—I gathered everything up, placed some things in signature bins, and asked permission to go home.

The drive home was a trip in itself. I kept my eyes on the road in front of me trying not to be distracted by my headache, so I wasn't sure quite what was going on when smoke started billowing from the left lane as I approached Riverside Drive. Then I heard that distinctive "whoomph" that happens when two half-plastic modern cars slam into each other. A bright blue pickup truck spun into my line of view, skidding backward toward the right lanes, its side bashed in and its windshield crazed. I immediately slowed down and nudged the car safely toward the breakdown lane, but the truck stopped well away from the far right lane I had been in. For a moment, I looked at the truck, then, as people started passing me, I inched back into the lane to get past the accident scene, then pulled over again to call 911.

Man, I hope no one was too badly hurt. I didn't see the other car, but the blue truck was a mess.

By the time I got home, it felt like Ricky Ricardo was beating out "Babbaloo" on the left side of my head. I took two extra-strength Tylenol and retreated to the spare room with a fleece blanket over my head.

We had a quickie supper and later watched Antiques Roadshow and then House off the DVR, and finally Castle. Was everyone else's opening scenes on Castle messed up, or was it just the Dish Network feed? It was all background music and no dialog. I thought they were just doing the opening differently until no one was talking in the opening scene where the couple with the little girl comes home to find a dead man in the daughter's bed.

After yesterday I was anxious to get off to work this morning and finish up what I started. Not to be.

For most of her life, we have confined Willow to the kitchen/dining room area at night. She has her food and water there, and she sleeps in her crate, which is left open. But since October she's been waking us up in the middle of the night with these short, sharp "lonesome" barks. She's not barking at anything, just because she's alone. Anyway, we discovered quite accidentally when we didn't put up the gate one night that she does not bark if she's allowed free run of the entire floor. So what we've been doing is tossing books and things onto the sofa (so she doesn't try to sleep on the "warm soft puppy bed" where Mama sits; it's okay for her to sleep on "Daddy's chair," and we've found her there many a morning), putting up the larger gate at the top of the stairs so she doesn't wander downstairs, and putting the old baby gate that we used when she was a puppy across the arch to the hall that leads to the bedrooms.

On the days when we both get up together, James leaves the bedroom first. He usually puts the gate aside, but this morning, absently, he put it back in place. A few minutes later, when I came out of the bedroom, I had my hands full with my big purse, my accordion folder which is full of the hard copies of my purchase orders and all their printed backup, and my shoes (I put them on while booting up the computer to check the weather and traffic). With all that in front of me, I couldn't see that the gate was still in place. So I walked right into it, got my feet tangled in it, and fell flat out onto the floor in front of Schuyler's cage, arms still clutching bag, portfolio and shoes.

Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Unlike James' fall a few months ago, I didn't scrape or break anything. But boy, did I raise an immediate and huge "goose egg" just under my right knee (of course it's my right leg; it's always my right leg). It had struck the metal piece that adjusts the width of the baby gate. James got me a bag of ice before he left for work and I plumped it on the spot immediately; still, it spread until it was between the size of a dessert plate and a dinner plate. I kept ice on it, 15 minutes on and 15 off, for about two hours, and swallowed some ibuprofin, but the pain was pretty intense and it hurt to walk for a while, although I kept moving just so not to get stiff. Finally I just gave in and stretched out on the futon for a couple of hours, and fell asleep.

To my surprise, when I got up I could walk normally, although the bruise was rapidly purpling and it hurt when the fabric of my pants touched it. I was very encouraged. It looked like I had dodged the bullet.

Alas, the approaching evening has not been kind to my body. Now my left leg, especially the knee and below, hurts, in tandem with my right, as well as my left shoulder and elbow (the arm I was clutching my purse and portfolio in), and just under my right wrist where it appears I barked myself. Both ankles are stiff and I have a sore spot just under my left ribcage.

Basically I feel like the time I fell face-first on the concrete floor in the shipping room at Trifari. At least this time I didn't break my nose!

In the midst of an analgesic afternoon I decided to watch a couple of things I'd recorded months ago and never seen. The first was a History Channel special based upon a book I've thought about buying, Ship Ablaze!. This was the story of the side-wheeled excursion boat General Slocum, which caught fire in the East River on June 15, 1904, with a Sunday School picnic group of German-Americans aboard. All but about 300 people of the 1,300 folks aboard died because the crew was untrained in firefighting and the hoses did not work, plus the canvas life belts had rotted and broken apart, and the lifeboats were tied down. In the end, the only person who paid a price was the captain, who did the best he could to save the passengers!

What was really interesting was that there were two elderly women in the special who were children who survived the disaster. One woman died soon after she was interviewed for the documentary, in 2002, and the other, who was just a baby at the time, but remembered her mother's burn scars growing up, passed away in 2004.

Also watched Remember 1929: Year of the Great Crash, which was a British-made documentary about the "Roaring '20s" and the inevitable result. Some really nice film footage that I'd never seen before, starting with World War I battlefield scenes, including Calvin Coolidge speaking (and he really had an old time Vermont twang!) and street scenes in Harlem at the time of the Renaissance, with a super 1920s music score, from jazz to Crosby singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Labels: accidents, health, history, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 6:59:00 PM

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We had two warmish days at the beginning of the week; not hot, but enough to make it comfortable to nap in the car without being hot or cold. I really needed to nap on Monday, as I had experienced one of my screaming nightmares in the wee hours of the morning. I was being smothered by large quantities of cloth—not only cloth, but of that horrible chartreuse green color that appears to be popular for Christmas this year. Thankfully, my Monday night's sleep was much less disturbed.

The weather forecast, however, was a delight. Yesterday was at least 10 degrees cooler. I can't say it was a flawless day, though: I got assigned two rather hairy orders (one of which I was able to do today). Then I sat down at lunch to start a cross-stitch project.

I dropped the needle on what I thought was the sofa as I changed threads and knew I had to find it or I would be sure to sit on it. So I got up...

...and you guessed it, I stepped on it. It went right into the flesh of the arch of my foot, not really deep, but enough when I pulled it out I could feel resistance and the blood came flowing out. What fun. ::snark:: A few minutes of pressure did stop the bleeding and I limped to the bathroom to apply alcohol and an antiseptic Band-Aid. Who would have thought such a little needle would hurt so much?

I was waiting for James to come home last night because I recorded a surprise for him while I was watching Iditarod on Discovery Tuesday night: HDNET showed Thunder Over Louisville, an air show that is held before the Kentucky Derby. Fantastic hi-def photos of jets doing maneuvers over the Ohio River! It looked like a lovely day for an air show, too—it was cloudy; in fact, it looked downright cold, as people were bundled in heavy jackets and coats with hoods up.

Today's weather was better yet: partly cloudy with the sun peeking out only occasionally. By noon I had all the windows open but I closed them again by dinnertime as it was in the fifties outside already and, although I'd turned the heat on, I have the thermostat set to 64°F and actually don't want it to come on unless it gets really cold. It may come on tomorrow, as we're supposed to have one of those damp, rainy days, with the temps not getting out of the fifties. The wind was certainly up today, though; when I took Willow out at six I had to wear a jacket and it was so pleasant outside putting up the Hallowe'en decorations on the porch.

I spent the late- and post-work hours listening to the O'Neill Brothers Christmas CD set I bought last month. I'd previously listened to it only at work and of course had to play it very low. The beautiful arrangements were more enjoyable at a little louder volume, especially a piece that blended Pachebel's "Canon" with a leisurely version of "Jolly Old St. Nicholas."

Labels: accidents, television, weather, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:36:00 PM

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• Poor James! For the first time he had the opportunity to renew his driver's license online and they sent him a note back that he had to come in anyway: his driver's license number was too close to a social security number. Apparently in Georgia in the 1970s your SS was your DLN, too, but now that's illegal. James' was off by one digit.

• Turned on to Atlanta Road from the rotary near the Smyrna Library this morning and was faced with what looked like a carnival at the corner of Atlanta and Concord Road. It was the aftermath of a huge accident, including the presence of an ambulance. ::brrrr:: I hope the injured people are okay. What a reminder that things can take a bad turn any second.

• Looks like my cell phone's dead. Since the spill it's needed charging every night. I heard it chirp last night but forgot to get up to plug it into the charger. This morning I plugged it into the car charger; it started up for a few minutes, then the charger came loose. When I fixed it a few minutes later the phone would not come up again. Bother.

Labels: accidents, annoyances

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:55:00 AM

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...you can say that again.
Yesterday was plain awful—
But that's...not now...that's then..."

Worrying about Schuyler only was the start of the day. My mind was constantly on her, so when we went out to JoAnn and Linens'n'Things I found it hard to collect my thoughts about what I wanted.

Anyway, I decided finally to buy the Crosley 4-in-one player. I have a stereo system and James has a turntable, but neither play 78s and I wanted to play my mom's records. We hadn't thought of a cart, so we got into line behind a man with James holding the player and me holding James' new fry pan and a couple other things he'd picked up, since we had a 20 percent off entire purchase card. The player was bulky, so for a moment, since the line was so long, he rested it on a display of boxes.

Then the man in front of him moved, so he shifted around to move forward in line, only to find that a woman had cut in front of him. She was tall, blonde, and in a white suit, with sunglasses on.

James said politely to her, "Excuse me, I was next in line."

She stared at him with this lofty, haughty expression and said nothing.

Still polite, he raised his voice a little. "Ma'am, I'm in line after this gentleman. The line-" he pointed to the person behind us "-is back there."

She continued to give him this stare as if he were some bird that had pooped on her shoulder.

He repeated, quietly but firmly, "I am next in line after this man."

She bridled and said, "There's no need to be so ugly!" and moved into the other line!

So it's "ugly" now to politely inform people that you were already in line and that she should not be cutting in? Geez louise... I guess she figured that if she looked down her nose long enough at us, we would quail under her superiority. Yeesh.

In the meantime, I had, minutes earlier while pulling up my pants, managed to drop my cell phone in the toilet. It barely got wet (the inside between the phone and the battery wasn't even damp), and I wiped it off and washed the case, but it went berserk for at least an hour, saying it was charging when there was no charge plug in, and other nonsense. I held it up in front of the car vent on the way home and then left it open in our bedroom near the fan to dry out. Everything was working by the time we got home except that the ring still sounded muffled, but that seemed to have worked out by bedtime.

So we get home, we have Dragon168 for supper, play with the Webkinz awhile (miniature golf had a bonus for an hour, so I played three games), talk to Schuyler about everything, pet Willow. About ten p.m. I put Star Wars on, since this is the anniversary and there have been news reports everywhere.

Now on Sunday night I have disk manager set to defrag my hard drive at 10 p.m. Presumably it started to do this. About the time R2D2 was meeting Ben Kenobi, I thought of something I wanted to look up and had forgotten previously, so I got up and went to the computer.

There was a popup window on screen with some type of mysterious message about a runtime error 202. I clicked okay and noticed that my AVG icon in the taskbar was greyed out and all my icons in the quick launch toolbar were blank. What the...?

Of course I did what you do first: I rebooted.

"Invalid system disk."

To paraphrase Gwen DeMarco: "I know those words. Those are not good words."

OhmyGod. I hadn't done a backup in at least a year.

To make a painfully long story short (since we were up till 2:30 a.m.), James used the Win98 boot disk to get it to do scandisk. He told it to fix all the files.

When it got done fixing the files, all of Windows98 was arranged in directories called DIR00012, etc., and nothing worked. So he reinstalled Windows98, the video driver (because he had to), and Nero, and we spent the next hour or so after that copying off files.

I guessed we'd have to buy a new hard disk, supposing sectors had gone bad, but scandisk had showed absolutely no bad sectors. I ran defrag and we looked through all the little files. We could find not one bad sector on the C: virtual drive (where I have Windows installed). All the other files were intact.

So what? Windows98 imploded?

Anyway, neither of us could sleep this morning. After 5 1/2 hours sleep, we dragged out of bed, James reformatted the C: drive (my hard drive is divided into ten virtual drives, with different things in each one), and he installed Windows2000. (So there, Rodney. I'm not using a ten-year-old operating system anymore. This one is only seven years old. It's...seasoned, as Hilary Booth would say. <g>) It networked almost immediately, Firefox and Word still work (although I get an error message first on Word), but I have to get to e-mail through the web and my darling WordPerfect is at present inoperative.

As long as I can work on Wednesday without driving 56 miles, I'm happy.

Oh, and Schuyler was chowing down again while we were computing this morning. She's preened several times since yesterday, and this morning regaled us with a few chirps!

Still worried about the droppings, though...it's a Mommy thing.

Labels: accidents, birds, computers, pets, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:27:00 AM

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Despite having taken two Prilosec yesterday, I had a severe case of acid reflux at bedtime. Had I eaten something spicy, it would have been my own fault, but it was simply was from the wonton broth I'd had at supper, which I'd eaten with oyster crackers and a couple of spoonfuls of leftover white rice. I finally got to sleep after four a.m.

James in the meantime had a sore throat all the previous evening. When he started getting cold, we knew he was coming down with something, since he's never cold. Luckily, James' usual cold remedy is "stay home-drink hot liquids-wrap up for a day" and he's fine the following day, which is why we were so concerned when he had fevers for three weeks last year, despite two doses of antibiotic.

I got up at nine intending to go into work and instead found myself coughing and not breathing well. When I cough like that, I am coming down with bronchitis and have to work fast to nip it in the bud, since I developed a penicillin allergy in 2004 and Kaiser finds it hard to find something to prescribe that doesn't cause a reaction. Instead of going to work I went to CVS and got myself some guaifenesen, which is what Kaiser always tells me to get when I call the advice nurse, and also some zinc lozenges. So we sat hibernating all morning and afternoon and I swilled ibuprofin and had an orange. I was feeling a little better by late afternoon, so I put on a jacket and hat just to be safe (even though it was still in the 50s) and went out to get the mail, and on the way back in grabbed the Christmas stuff off the porch, which I'd intended to do when I got home anyway. This took about ten minutes, and I took another ten minutes putting out the winter flag and the little snowman decorations, then swapped a blue bow for the red bow on the silver wreath and was done. I closed the garage doors (I had put the extension cords in the garage), came in, took off my jacket and hat and came upstairs to put the tools away, then asked James if he'd like to see what I did before it got too dark.

He had just put a pot of rice on the stove. It was about 5:30.

He looked around when we got outside and said, "Well, since I'm out here, I'll just get the stepladder and take the lights down. They're all on hooks, it will take five minutes." So he got the stepladder while I unwound the blue lights from the columns, and he took the star lights down.

I picked up the star lights. "I'll put these in the garage."

Except he'd turned the lock.

And there we were, out on the porch, locked out, no phones, and no coats. The garage doors were locked.

However, the bedroom windows were still open; I was airing out the room in an effort to eradicate whatever germs had caused this morning's mischief. If we could find an extension ladder (ours, of course, was in the garage), James could get in the bedroom window.

Unfortunately the Robinsons next door weren't home, Kristi's husband (who was home with the creeping crud, too) said they didn't have one, and the folks next door to them didn't have one, either. Kristi's husband invited us in to keep warm and we called the Spiveys, who gave us the Boulers' number (we know John has an extension ladder), but they weren't home. It's now about 6:15. The rice is on low on the stove.

We bit the bullet and called a locksmith, who told us it would be 20 minutes. They called back five minutes later saying it would be 45 minutes and that since we had something on the stove we might want to call someone else. We did, who said they'd be out in 20-25 minutes. It's now 6:30 p.m.

We know the street is not on a lot of maps, so when someone had not showed up in 25 minutes, we called the locksmith back to make sure they didn't need further directions. Sure enough, the guy couldn't find our street on his GPS receiver and had gone back. James told him to look up the address of the house on the corner, which is on all the maps (this is how we generate a map to give to friends trying to find the house) and clearly enunciated the name of the street several times and spelled it. James said the person was talking on a cell phone and the signal was terrible.

By now I'm getting paranoid about the stuff on the stove. A half hour more goes by. By now Kristi comes home. James is sitting outside waiting for the guy with my scarf on. She makes hot chocolate for him. The guy calls. After an hour, he is still ten minutes away!

Ten minutes later he calls back and it turns out he is on a completely different road. Although James told him the name of the street several times and spelled it for him, he was near a street with a similar name instead. I asked him where he was, asking for specific landmarks so I could give him directions our way, and couldn't understand him very well since he had a thick accent.

It is now close to 8 p.m. The rice has been on the stove for almost two hours. Despite the fact that James assures me it is on "low," I'm having visions of the kitchen catching fire.

In the meantime Kristi said "Wait a minute, maybe Dave has an extension ladder." Dave and his wife Linda live a couple of houses down from them. Kristi calls Dave, who does indeed have an extension ladder. I am at that point on the phone with the locksmith, who is still something like a fifteen minute drive from our house. He says, "Do you still want me to come?"

By the time he has asked that, James is at the top of the ladder, cut a small hole in one of the screens, enough to release the latch and get the screen off, and is going through the window. I said, "No, there's no need to," and he hung up. About five minutes later, as Dave is putting the ladder away and I'm giving Kristi a thank-you hug, the dispatcher at the locksmith calls Kristi back on her cell phone, angry because we told the guy not to come. Kristi calmly told her that the guy had gotten lost again, had not listened to our directions in the first place even though we had spelled out the name of the street and the cross street, and that in the meantime we had to get into the house because there was food on the stove and a neighbor had helped out.

Ironically, the rice was fine; it had turned into porridge, but it didn't even scorch. I patched the screen with the cool screen patch kit from Benny's in Rhode Island (they apparently don't sell them here; I've looked at both Lowe's and Home Depot, and even at the Ace and True Value Hardware stores), so we at least don't have to worry about that.

Sounds like it's time to get a spare key made... <wry g>

Labels: accidents, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:32:00 PM

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