James had a CAT scan scheduled at the Glenlake Kaiser office on Wednesday morning, to try and diagnose what is causing his chronic UT infections. Another dreary visit for him to the doctor. Hoping to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, I suggested I go with him. If they wouldn't let me go in (they said they wouldn't), I could wait outside on the bench outside the entrance in the shade and read; they told him the CAT scan would only take about ten minutes, and then he had to pick up a prescription which was already ordered. I had a double protein at Tin Drum, so then we could drive by, pick up lunch, maybe even stop at the Barnes & Noble not a half mile from the restaurant before driving home. James likes going to that store because they have the best magazine selection.

Alas, not to be. At ten o'clock James realized his appointment was for 10:20, not 11:20 as he thought, and he had at least a half hour drive to get there. He threw his clothes on and grabbed his wallet while I backed out the truck and loaded the power chair, and then while he drove to Kaiser—Tucker hadn't been walked yet, so I couldn't go—I tried to get ahold of someone at Kaiser to tell them he would be late. I was so nerved up I accidentally hung up on the first person I talked to, but got a much more sympathetic second person, but they couldn't say whether radiology could still fit him in.

They managed it, and he got in for the scan about a half hour later, he went to the lab, he picked up the prescription, and he went past Tin Drum and picked up our lunches, so everything got done, but I was bitterly disappointed. I had planned on us having a nice chat on the way there, enjoying each other's company, and instead I got stuck home when I really wanted to see something other than four walls or another damn supermarket.

(The scan showed some interesting items: James has a few small kidney stones [not blocking anything], a few small gallstones [ditto], and a benign lipoma in the muscles of his right hip, which explains why he can't sleep on his right side without pain. But nothing to explain the chronic UTIs.)

While he was out, I called up Kaiser again about the emergency room bill from last July that Wellstar keeps sending us. We are only supposed to pay our deductible whether we go to a provider emergency room or an out-of-plan one, but Wellstar insists we still owe them over $1200! I'd already called about this in January and again in March, and they assured me they'd take care of it, and we did not owe anyone anything. This time I spoke to a nice lady named Betty who assured me she'd get the problem sorted [later: she did] and that she would also correct the overcharge we got from the company that makes James' orthopedic shoes.

Thursday I got my chance to pay a call on Kaiser; yes, we had to pick up yet another prescription. They wouldn't let me go in, so I indeed got stuck outside, in the heat, on the bench (this one not in the shade). James' urologist consulted another specialist, who said it was okay for him to take Ciproflaxen for a short time; that using it just for a week should not damage his heart, so he got that to take home. It was also time to go to the supermarket again.

James has been wanting chicken and dumplings for a while now, but no one serves them any longer—"Folks" has closed and the only fast food chicken place that made them closed; we discovered just recently they still serve them at Vittles down the street. So while we were at Barnes & Noble after our pharmacy trip, he called them to get an order to pick up. We won't do that again. There was little chicken in the meal and what there was was dry and stringy. It was mostly dumpling. The sauce made me sick all evening.

Friday we had a much better meal—we went out to lunch at O'Charley's with Alice, Ken, Mel, Phyllis, and Juanita. We hadn't seen Juanita to actually talk to her since March! She was just getting over poison ivy she'd contracted cleaning the yard. Discussed all sorts of things including whether DragonCon will be held or not, and if they will roll over memberships [later: yes, they have decided they will, and we are going to do it, whether it's held or not—we can't risk it], television, books we are reading (Alice is getting into reading about Chinese culture after seeing the film of and then reading Crazy Rich Asians), and of course all our doctors' appointments!

Saturday was pure relaxation: while I tidied up some things and vacuumed, mostly what I did was read the copy of The Annotated Black Beauty that I got out of a box of books John and Oreta were giving away on New Year's Eve. (Boy, if I'd known then what I know now, I'd sure have more disinfecting supplies in the house!) The graphic drawings of how a "bearing rein" (a device to hold the horse's head up in place while he's in harness) harms and torments a horse really brought it home how brutally some horses were treated in the 19th century.

Labels: books, disappointments, errands, food, friends, health, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:38:00 PM

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Seriously, will you tell me how a three-day weekend zips by with all the speed of an SST when a three-day workweek lasts about a month? (I know. Madeleine L'Engle explained it. It's the difference between Chronos and Kairos. But really...)

The temps had taken a decided dip on Wednesday night and while Thursday was free of rain, it was a whole lot of cold. We bundled up in sweatshirts and jackets and hats and went off on the weekly "hunting" at Publix. Every week we say we are going to try to spend less, and every week the BOGOs are too useful to pass up. This week it was Tucker's favorite dog biscuits, and we got $18 worth of "cookies" for $9, so it is a good thing. But it adds up so fast!

We made a brief detour by Kroger on the way home because we were completely out of mushrooms. James just sent me in with ten dollars and I got a dozen small cans of "no salt added" and some ramen noodles to make up the difference. Then we had to hustle home to put up the perishable groceries, because it was 12:30 by then and James had to be at the doctor by 1:30.

We hope this will be the last appointment until January, although we will need to go back to Kaiser itself for prescription refills. Today we saw the nephrologist and he was very pleased that all of James' kidney functions were holding steady, with his creatitine at 2.4. However, he seemed a little bit more worried that James' BP had been high the last couple of months (we think it's stress from his work schedule and, frankly, money shortages). So the doctor put him on a low dose of BP meds, and said it should also clear up the protein he is seeing in the urine. James will need to come back at the beginning of December for followup bloodwork to check up on that. [November 17: looks like the BP med is already working.]

By the time he did prescriptions it was time to head home. For evening enjoyment we had Young Sheldon and some Perry Mason.

The rain came whirling in on Friday. I like chilly days, I like cloudy days, but chilly and cloudy with cold rain is just misery. James decided not to come with me to go to the small Smyrna Library Sale. This is usually held at the Fall Jonquil Festival at the end of October, but they decided not to risk it in the rain that weekend. I went there just for the heck of it, found one nice book that I thought I might have, but it was only a dollar, and then two other books for fifty cents: Simon Garfield's On the Map (go ahead! twist my arm! make me read about cartography! 😀 ) and a nice basic book of cross-stitch stitches in color with instructions. Turns out I did have the bigger book, and that went into the McKay's box.

We left the house early for our lunch date and so we stopped briefly at Lidl for a bread/milk/ground turkey run. It was so cold outside (low 40s) and clammy that neither of us worried about leaving the turkey in the insulated bag when we went to O'Charley's for lunch. Most of the rest of the crowd was at Conjuration (Harry Potter/magic convention), so it was just Mel and Phyllis at the table with us. The conversation and lunch were nice—I had the same six-ounce steak, baked potato with butter, and salad with balsamic dressing as last time—but after we headed home I started feeling decidedly sick. Not sure if it was the salad dressing or the seasoning on the steak, but I was queasy and miserable all afternoon and finally fell asleep under a blanket on the sofa for a couple of hours. By Hawaii Five-0 time I was a bit better, but it wasn't the greatest of evenings. Later we watched an episode of Perry Mason with Bill Mumy as a young orphan who found a murder weapon. They edit these things so much: we found out the murderer but never told us what happened to him!

Saturday dawned sunny and nice—we left the house in jackets and ditched them midafternoon, so we decided to drive up to Acworth for a hot chocolate at Books-a-Million. We wound through our favorite back route, which is mostly residential, checking out the mellowing trees with their darkening leaves, and saw our first Christmas decoration, a Santa Claus on a front door, and a Christmas tree heading home, and finally pulled into the handicapped parking space in front of the store. As I was prepping the power chair to come down, I looked up. The bookstore was empty. The sign was gone. Wow. In fact the store wasn't just empty, it had been completely cleared out inside down to the concrete flooring and walls.

Well, dang, when did that happen? That Books-a-Million has been here over ten years, and I've been going there every couple of months for that long. We were just here in the summer for frozen hot chocolates, and it didn't look like it was going to close. 😞 Anyway, since both other BAM stores were an hour's drive away on this traffic-clogged Saturday afternoon, we just went to Petco to use the restrooms and buy Tucker some cookies and then came away. Instead we turned back toward home and stopped at Dallas Highway and checked out the Barnes & Noble, and then drove out to Austell to get something at Ollie's Discount Outlet—except, of course, that they didn't have it. I did find a couple of nice books for gifts, and James discovered some brown-sugar cinnamon PopTarts (without the dreadful frosting!) for me.

That was quite a bit of driving for James, so we headed home. He made beef stir fry for supper, which was delicious, and we watched a couple of Father Brown episodes we hadn't seen as well as the Britcoms.

Then, poof! Weekend over for us.

Really bummed about Books-a-Million. The closest one is now at Arbor Place Mall, which is nowhere I want to be at this time of year. Maybe after Christmas.

Labels: Christmas, disappointments, food, friends, health, shopping, television, weather, weekend

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:07:00 PM

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I had a very profitable day yesterday. I'm determined to get all the junk cleared from the house, and I wanted to fill up a trash bag up (and I did). There were other things hanging about, and the wrapping paper from Christmas, so I had that to begin with, and I cleaned out James' two drawers in the bathroom. There were old Kaiser bags in there from three years ago.

When I telework James pretty much has to dress up in the dark, and I've been thinking of making a little dressing room in there for him. There's already one of my grandmother's old chairs in there, and I added a second one that is in the library downstairs. With all the junk cleaned out (tossed in the trash or put in a box for donation) I made a little space where he can get dressed; he can even use the stepstool to help put his boots on. A couple of hooks behind the door and a small light would make it complete.

There was only one tiny problem: I used the dishwasher this morning and it would not drain. After watching a video on YouTube and calling Bosch, I bailed it out and washed the filter (but I had done that several months ago; it was not the filter that was clogged), and then tested the dishwasher on a rinse and hold. It sounded like it started to drain, but there was still water at the bottom of the cup the filter goes into. But I found the order we put in at Lowes and discovered we did get the extended warranty. So someone will be here on Tuesday to look at it.

After such a productive day we had a terrible time with dinner. We were going to Longhorn but it was completely packed, no handicapped spaces or close spaces available (James had put the power chair up). Everywhere else was crowded as well. So we went past Bed, Bath and Beyond where I was unsuccessful in finding the small light I wanted. We ate at Ken's Grill and did the last of our grocery shopping at Kroger.

We were up early this morning, finally headed on our trip to Chattanooga. We had breakfast first and stowed some oranges in the truck so we wouldn't be tempted to snack. It was going to be chilly later on, so we put on our warmest things and I put our scarves in the cab, although we planned to be back before dark. We were headed out toward Windy Hill to get gas when James realized he forgot his phone. This has been typical of this whole plan to day trip up there. We planned to go weeks ago, but first it snowed, then was James' party, then last weekend it rained. Today it was fine, just cold.

I retrieved the phone, and, since gas was cheaper up north of our location, I asked James if he would rather go through Delk Road to get to the freeway. This meant going through Sandtown Road. We were just driving, talking of nothing in particular--Tylenol, actually, for James' knees, when we crossed through the intersection at Pat Mell Road. The cab of the truck had just cleared the intersection when it happened: someone smashed right into the right rear of the truck. James knows he had the green light, but the other driver said that as well. The police said since there were no witnesses no blame could be assigned, and no one got a ticket.

I don't want to talk about the whole story, but the truck is toast. If it was just the back panel and the rear lights, it might be okay, but either the right rear wheel or the axle is bent. The chair lift is also twisted and bent. The other car hit us so hard the power chair was flung across the street and landed in the ditch on the other side. It had a twist in it when they got it back on the lift, but it straightened itself out when James rode it back into the garage.

Plus this is his second accident in two years. They will total the truck and then cancel his insurance and he'll have to go with a high priced company. We've no money for a new truck, but Twilight can't pull the chair. It's all a big horrible stinking mess.

We limped the truck home (it bounces like a bronco if you drive it over ten miles per hour) and just sat for the rest of the day; only watching the M*A*S*H marathon was some tiny consolation. The joy has gone out of the season. I want to bury my head in my mother's lap and cry and cry. No way to turn the clocks back and take a different direction. I don't even know why  I try to make things better. Once I do something else f**ks up.

Labels: decluttering, disappointments

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

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Well, today was a bit of a topsy-turvy semi-disaster.

Plan for today: bake cookies. I really didn't want to bake, but it was the only way I'd get the cookies. So, sleep until eight, then bake, and also wash the towels.

James texted me at 7:30 that he couldn't get the power chair off the lift at work. It worked fine when he left, but the rubber flap that covers the controls has come loose, and there was a dense, dense fog outside. He figured the contacts that run the chair had gotten wet. So he limped in and soldiered on. In the meantime, I'm thinking, oh, no, not again. First the truck, then the computer... (For the record, the fog dissipated, James checked the chair at lunch, and it worked fine. He'll have it looked at next week.)

So I was up at 7:30. Once I'm up, first comes nature's call, and then comes my stomach chiming in claiming it's starving to death. Straightened a few things out, then began to prepare to bake. At one point I went downstairs to see if we had any canola oil. We didn't, but I found a bottle of hearty burgundy in the pantry closet, after having a reminder on my Google calendar all year that I had to buy a fresh bottle of wine this year (which we did last weekend). I felt just like Ruth in "Lassie's Gift of Love" when she finds four potatoes in the oven instead of three. Finally I had all my ducks in a row—and just enough canola oil—when I realized I had one tiny problem: where was the corkscrew for the wine bottle? We use the damn thing once a year, for my cookies, and the rest of the time it's hung up on a hook with the meat thermometer, where it's been since we moved into the house.

Guess where it wasn't today.

I searched all the drawers (there are only three) and even on the baker's rack, then put on a pashmina and went off in a huff to Kroger where I found corkscrews...with the beer. Well...okay. I got one with a red handle so it would be easier to see.

So I didn't start baking the wine biscuits until 11:30. I rotated the trays, and the stove performed flawlessly. This year I didn't burn the bottoms of some of them; it's silly anyway. I took the first batch out after 46 minutes and let the second batch cook about ten minutes longer. The convection cooked them nice and easy; the second batch was more dense, the second still a little soft inside, but they both taste good.

I shoved all the baking things in the dishwasher, cleaned up the kitchen and cleaned off the side of the dining room table where I mixed the dough, and then settled down on the sofa to have some milk. I found an interesting British documentary called Legends of Santa on Amazon Prime, narrated by Richard Attenborough. I really enjoyed it, but lack of sleep caught up with me when it ended, about 4 p.m. and I fell asleep on the sofa, only to be woken by James (again...LOL) telling me he was stopping for gas on the way home.

Thus awakened, I decided to take the newly-washed baking board back into the bedroom (it lives in the master bedroom closet, since there's no room in the kitchen). Now, I run the fans in the bedroom every day to air out the room, and they were going strong when I entered. So was a horrible smell in the room: it reeked of natural gas!

I rushed back into the main part of the house; no smell. Ran down the stairs and opened the front door: it was indeed from outside. Was Miranda and Eddie's gas meter leaking? Or was it ours? I ran back into the bedroom to confirm it was indeed gas I smelled, then called 911. The operator told me that apparently they did some type of "controlled release" of the odor they put in natural gas while doing maintenance on the gas pipeline in Paulding County. The wind blew the scent to Cobb and South Fulton Counties. So everything was okay, and I turned the fans to vent out and closed the door and kept an eye on Snowy. But that was...scary.

The rest of the evening was a bit more normal. James made the little thin steaks I got at Publix with teriyaki rice as a side into a nice dinner. We watched Wheel and Jeopardy, and then I put on Friday's two episodes of Hawaii Five-0. Well, I think Steve has paid Danny back for the loan of half a liver. 😀

One more thing had to happen, though: I'd recorded a Moody Blues concert off PBS a few weeks ago for James. I put it on after we got done with Christmas on Oahu (and Junior officially being part of the team), and it turned out to be the end of a Pavarotti special followed by a Graham Nash special. Well, gee, thanks, GPB. And a Merry Christmas to you, too.

Labels: baking, Christmas, disappointments, emergencies, events, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:19:00 PM

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We were up wayyyy late last night, so we slept in this morning. James took Tucker out and we had breakfast. We had no plans for today, but after checking the weather report, James thought he might want to go get his laptop since it looks like it may rain all day tomorrow. So once the rain that was falling this morning slacked off, we went over to his work to fetch it; it drizzled on and off, but never did pour. It was nice and cool for driving, but sticky as glue once you stopped.

We got all the broken things taken in the garage recycling box and then sat to give the sound bar a real test: Twister. For the first time in a long time I could hear all the dialog and the thunder rumbled and the tornado roared quite nicely in the background.

We had bought a nice roast at Sam's, and James decided to test out the pressure cooker. It has a voice that instructs you what to do. He didn't put it in until three, right before we started the movie, and by six it was still "setting pressure." So I guess whomever sold it to "Grandma's Attic," the thrift shop we bought it from, sold off something that didn't work. How rude. We will put it in the box with the electronics recycling. 😒

All the broadcast stations were coming in so well this morning that I ran the scan of the channels again. I had already done this last week, hoping we could get Ion Life in better (and we did; it is no longer dropping out during Colour Confidential) and lo and behold, in came RetroTV! We haven't gotten Retro since they moved from channel 32.7. Still no GPB, which irritates me no end; why does WPBA (Atlanta PBS) have a strong enough signal and not Georgia PBS? Found a couple of new channels, but still mostly Christian, Spanish, and shopping, so while I found 84 over-the-air channels, I only kept 35, and one was QVC, because they'll be doing Christmas in July. Still no METV, still no Hero & Icons. We are supposed to get them over the air, but apparently not on this side of town. If you live in another area of Atlanta, you get it. Bizarre.

Of course, I expect when Doctor Simon Locke rolls back around on Tuesday, Retro will suddenly vanish...

Tested out using the Aux feed on the speaker to play a little of a "Travel with Rick Steves" and also tried it on Tune-In Radio to play music. Splendid. Wondering if I need to invest in a portable CD/cassette player so I can play my cassettes at Christmastime. I have a portable CD player that I bought about ten years ago to play MP3 radio shows, but I notice it's been skipping when playing CDs and it doesn't play cassettes.

Labels: disappointments, electronics, movies, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:26:00 PM

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