February 5-13

Friday, February 5

I caught up with my DW journal, cleaned the litterboxes, did a load of laundry, cleaned a bunch of old food out of the refrigerator, washed the  dishes, took the litterbox scoopings out to the garbage bin, put the Schwan’s stuff into the freezer, hauled the kitchen garbage to the breezeway, wiped down several bottles of Diet Coke and put them into the pop fridge, set out the strawberry cream cheese braid out on a cookie sheet to raise over night, and moved a lighter bag of garbage into the breezeway too.

Ross arrived with my grocery order before I was able to get my garbage out to the bins.  After he carried in my groceries, he offered to take the bigger, heavier bag out to the bin, which was wonderful of him.  I have a hard time getting the heavier bags into the bin.  When he left, I wiped down my groceries and put them away, wrote out my bills, and baked the frozen pizza I had bought.  I added sliced black olives and extra cheese to my pizza. It wasn’t very good, but I ate it anyway.  I was hungry.

I called Lily to let her know I had been able to get the brussel sprouts from Schwans as she had asked me to.  She and Rhonda were at Kohls shopping.  I told her to tell Rhonda happy birthday from me.  She passed the phone to Rhonda, so I sang happy birthday to her. 

Later, Lily stopped by to get her brussel sprouts.  Before she left, she threw my smaller bag of garbage into the bin and took my bills with her to mail tomorrow.

I was tired, so I did not do much for the rest of the evening except play on the computer and watch TV.

 

Saturday, February 6

Today, I broke down all the cardboard boxes and stacked them up.  Then I baked the strawberry/cream cheese braid.  Lily stopped by with cinnamon rolls and a piece of her birthday cake from Mary Groth.  She asked me to help her post a message on Facebook thanking everyone for the birthday wishes and cards she had received, so I helped her do that.  She is so concerned about her spelling that she finds making any public posts intimidating.  She dragged my garbage bin to the curb for me.  I was thankful as it was getting close to full.

I ate one of the single serve Schwan’s lasagnas I had bought yesterday for lunch.  It was okay.  There was too much tomato sauce in it, so it gave me indigestion and acid reflux.  Never fun.

 

Sunday, February 7

I filled my pill caddy and ordered a refill of my Cartia X prescription.  I filled Peaches’ cat dishes with food and frosted the strawberry/cream cheese braid.  Lily stopped by to drop off a container of beef stew she had made.  I gave her a large chunk of the braid.  Those are always good.

My shoulder, sides, low back, and legs were really aching—especially my shoulder—so I took one of the left over pain pills from the kidney surgery.  They are very low doses of oxycodone, by they really take the pain away.  Extra strength arthritis formula Tylenol doesn’t even touch the pain.  They make me sleepy though, so I spent the next few hours dozing in my recliner.

 

Monday, February 8

Today I baked the pork chops, New York Strip steak, and two containers of sliced mushrooms and divided my pound of hamburger into 5 burgers and fried them in a frying pan. I ate one on a bun for lunch with ketchup.  I washed the dishes, cleaned up a couple piles of cat puke, and threw some recycling in the breezeway bin.

I had nice chats on the phone with Mom and Lily.  My shoulder was still killing me, so I had another pain pill and put an ice pack on the shoulder.  That seemed to help a lot.  The pain seems to be moving up into my neck.   Think I need a visit to the chiropractor to put everything back where it belongs.  Maybe I need some acupuncture in addition to an adjustment.

 

Tuesday, February 9

My former student Dean Lilya called me today.  He has decided he wants to create an RPG with a couple friends of his and would like my help with creating the story line.  I am not much into battle games, but I told him I’d be willing to use my mad English teacher skillz to proofread their stuff and make suggestions.  We talked for an hour and 40 minutes, which was pleasant.  I continued listening to the audio book The Dragon Knight by Gordon Dickson.  I read it years ago but found it on YouTube as an audio book.  It is a bit dated regarding female characters, but still good.  The female characters are either actively pursuing a “true love” or waiting for their already captured “true loves” to return from their adventures.  I’d rather see the female characters go on adventures of their own.  Arrgah, the English Wolf, is still one of the best characters ever made. 

I sorted and started my laundry, talked to my mother on the phone, and enjoyed the sunshine, despite the fact that it was literally cold enough to freeze your toes off.  I warmed up half of the New York Strip steak and part of a pork chop I made the other day along with a cooked potato for lunch and had a bowl of Rice Chex for supper.

 

Wednesday, February 10

It was another quiet, sunny, frigid day.  I warmed up two of the smaller hamburgers I had cooked the other day and ate them on buns with ketchup.  I washed the dishes and tidied the counters.  I had nice chats with Mom, Lily, Joni, and another long chat with Dean.  He really wants me to be a part of the RPG project.  I am not enthusiastic about the project, but I do love Dean.  I continued listening to The Dragon Knight. 

I think this cold weather is part of the problem with the pain in my shoulders, knees, low back, and sides.  I just took plain extra strength Tylenol the last few days.  It isn’t as effective as the prescription pain killer, but I will not allow myself to develop a dependence on that crap. 

 

Thursday, February 11

It’s been so cold that I have not been enthusiastic about taking any showers.  The cold from outside radiates right through the outer wall of my shower, and I don’t like it.  However, today, I had to surrender and climb in.  My whole body felt gross and greasy.  The shower itself wasn’t much fun, but afterwards, I felt MUCH better.  In fact, I even worked up enough ambition to strip my bed, put fresh sheets on it, and wash the bedspread and dirty sheets.  I discovered that Peaches had puked on the edge of the bedspread at some point.  There were a lot of cat food crumbs and cat hair on the bedroom floor and still evidence of the uncontrollable leaking of urine from when I had the kidney stone issue.  I used my electric sweeper to clean up the floor of the bedroom and put away a bunch of random stuff in the bedroom. 

I folded the white clothes in the dryer and hauled them into the bedroom and washed the afghan the Methodist prayer group had given me while I was in the hospital with the first batch of kidney stones and Peaches’ pink, fuzzy blanket (which she had also puked on). 

Peaches was very helpful—or so she thought—while I remade the bed.  She attacked all the invisible monsters that were hiding in the clean sheets and pillowcases.  Somehow, I was able to get the bed totally remade despite her “help.”  It was wonderful to put my squeaky clean body into my squeaky clean bed.  Making the bed is still the hardest task for me post my medical adventures although this time was so much easier than the last time I had to do it.  It only took about 20 minutes as opposed to the 30-40 minutes it took last time.

I ate the stew Lily had given me for lunch.  Today she brought me another container of stew today—leftovers from what she made for her dinner party group last night—and my mail.  She dragged my garbage can back to the house on her way out.  She did not stay long.  She was tired and ready to get home.  She took Mom to the Clinic to get her first Covid vaccination.  Lily had hers two days ago.  I am unable to have mine yet as they are only doing the high risk groups (like medical people, teachers, first responders, nursing home patients, people 80 years old and older, and so on. I will be in the next group of older, high risk people.  But I feel pretty safe from it as I never go anywhere, and I have very little contact with other people.  Lily is the one who puts me at risk the most, and she is very diligent about wearing her mask and social distancing despite the fact that she is on the go constantly.  She shops at least twice a week, goes to the Clinic for blood tests and physical therapy at least twice a week, sometimes more, goes to church, and goes every Wednesday night to her friends’ house for dinner and card playing.  Half of them are not leaving the house and the other half have had the vaccine already.  Hopefully that is enough.

Good news.  Lily has decided that she will NOT be going to Texas at all.  Her second dose of the vaccine will not be given to her till mid March.  Most of her Texas friends are returning home at the end of March, so she doesn’t see any point in going south for two weeks of socializing and then being stuck there alone until someone is able to go down and drive her home again.

I found a couple more piles of dried cat vomit and cleaned them up.  Who knows how long they have been laying there.

 

Friday, February 12

Mom called me this morning, ranting again about black people.  I don’t know what set her off, but she bitched about the number of white game show hosts who have been replaced by black game show hosts and how “they are taking over.”  I reminded her that, for decades, ALL the game show hosts had been white and that there are much more pressing issues in the world to be concerned about besides the darkening of game show hosts.  Personally, I despise most game shows and never watch them. 

She is also incensed that the impeachment trials have taken her soap opera off for most of the week.  Horrors! 

I mixed up a Duncan Hines brownie box mix, adding walnuts and white chocolate chips to make it better, and baked it.  I think I over baked it by about five minutes, but it still turned out chewy and good.  When it came out of the oven, I cut a bite-sized piece out of the corner to taste it.  Good stuff.

I heated up the other half of the New York Strip steak, put it on a bun, and had it for lunch.  Later in the afternoon, I ate one of the brownies as a snack.  It was good. 

Today, I finished listening to The Dragon Knight.  They included a teaser for the next book in the series, Dragon on the Border, but I did not find that audio book on YouTube.  I was disappointed as I was enjoying the series. 

 

Saturday, February 13

I slept in as late as I could, but when I got up, I went to work.  I thoroughly cleaned my bathroom, scrubbing the entire toilet with bleach cleaner including the back and sides all the way to the floor and scrubbing the sink the same way.  I swept and scrubbed the bathroom floor and washed the rugs.  It glowed with beautiful cleanliness when I was done.  Then I used the electric sweeper and the vacuum cleaner to clean the floors in the bedroom, living room, kitchen, and breezeway.  I had to rest a few minutes after that.  But once my energy started to come back, I scrubbed the bedroom, living room, kitchen, and breezeway.  I hauled a big bag of recycling to the bin outside and dumped it in.  My socks were a little damp from scrubbing the floors, and I just stepped out onto the step to put the recycling in the bin.  I grabbed the huge pile of broken down cardboard to take out to the recycling bin too.  Of course, it resisted me and I had to fight with it to get it into the bin.  I finally got it all in there, but in the time it took, my stockinged feet had FROZEN TO THE STEP.  Fortunately, I was able to pull them loose and come back in the house, but it was scary how fast they were able to freeze like that!  My cell phone was in the house.  What if I had not been able to get my feet pulled loose?  I might have been frozen solid on my own steps!

When I came back in, I pulled off my wet, frozen socks so I would not track all over my freshly washed floors.  Then I cleaned the litter boxes.  I took my socks to the laundry hamper then put on fresh, dry socks and those socks they give you in the hospital with the gripper things.  They are warm.  In that brief time outside, the whole bottoms of my feet had turned white.  It was THAT cold!

They were fine in a very short time and there was no lasting damage. 

I had not called in a grocery order to be delivered on Friday, but there were some good deals on their sales bill.  I told Lily about it, and she offered to go pick up the stuff for me if I called Lerbergs and had them bag it up for me.  So, I called in a grocery order for 2 lbs of asparagus, a pineapple, a bunch of bananas, 2 bags of Fritos, 6 hot house tomatoes, 2 ribeye steaks, 2 pints of fresh raspberries, and a can of readymade frosting as I may make a cake next week and do not feel like making frosting from scratch. 

She stopped at my house on her way to the store to pick up the check to pay for my groceries and brought me 2 cinnamon rolls from Mary Groth and my mail.  While she was getting them, I cleaned a dried pile off puke off the coffee table.  Gross. 

When she brought the groceries, she also brought in a package from the breezeway.  It must have been delivered at some point after I took out the recycling.  She also brought a card that her 3 year old great granddaughter had sent her for Valentine’s Day.  It was very cute.  Her momma had written down exactly what little Sophie had said, and it was the sweetest thing!  I would treasure that forever.

After she left, I put away the groceries.  I ate the Wednesday left over stew, one whole pint of raspberries, and a brownie for supper. My whole body ached after working so hard, so I took another one of the prescription pain pills which took away the pain and all my remaining energy.  I dozed for about three hours, then perked up enough to watch some TV and poke around on the internet.  I went to bed fairly early and listened to some stuff on YouTube before going to sleep.