July 10 through 17

[chochiyo_sama]

Sunday, July 10
I got up at 9 am to get ready for my weekly Zoom with DeAnn.  I fired up my computer and waited for her to send me a link, but she never did.  I figured she had overslept and would be on any minute.  At 11, I got a text telling me that she had overslept and we decided we ’d just skip this week.  It was just as well as I was really tired and didn’t really feel in the mood to Zoom anyhow. 

I dozed in my recliner for a while then caught up with posting my DW entries. It was a very quiet day.  I dozed sporadically throughout the day and watched three movies:  Avengers:  Infinity Wars, Thor, and Thor:  Ragnarak.  I enjoyed them all.  I had not seen Infinity Wars before.  It was worth watching.  I love the humor in the original Thor.  My favorite parts are where Thor starts to storm at Jane’s sister, “You DARE threaten the mighty Thor with that puny weapon?”  Then she shoots him with the taser.  His eyes roll up, he starts to twitch, and falls over.  LOL.  The other part that just cracks me up is when he wakes up in the hospital strapped to the table.  He snaps the restraints off, gets up and starts tearing the place up, flinging doctors, male nurses, and orderlies in every direction, howling something about “How dare they…”  They yank down the waist band of his pants and stick a needle in his butt cheek.  Ha!  He falls face first against the window of the room and slides slowly down the glass, his face all smushed and distorted as he slides down and thumps against the floor.  Poor Thor.  Such indignities inflicted upon the god of thunder.

Lily called, worried sick about Finn and Missy hissing at each other.  I told her it would take time for them to adapt to each other.  There will be hissing and possibly paw slapping as they begin to interact.  They’ve only been together a few hours.  It will take time for them to accept each other and learn that no one will kill them.

 

Monday, July 11

I took a shower first thing this morning then bagged up a bunch of garbage and washed the dishes.  I had quite a sinkful.  I didn’t do much else.  I watched some of the shows I had recorded on the DVR, messed around on line, and cuddled my cats.  Lily called me again, still in crisis about the cats hissing at each other.  She has a friend coming to stay with her until Friday, her dinner party on Wednesday, and her friends Kathy and George coming up for a meal with her other friend on Thursday or Friday, and Ed and Amy coming over to play games one day.  She also does water aerobics and goes “water walking” at the water park every day.  She also was fretting about needed to mow her huge yard, dust and vacuum her house, and make a bunch of food and sweets for all the days this week that friends are coming over.  She makes all these elaborate plans—all within a day of each other—and then freaks out because she doesn’t think she can do it.  And she is also absolutely certain that nothing she cooks tastes good.  That she just cannot cook or bake right any more. 

Well, I always get some of her leftover foods from her entertaining, and the food always tastes excellent to me.  She frets herself to death.  And as a result, she gets herself so worked up that she isn’t able to sleep at night.  And she doesn’t eat enough nourishing food, so she is always having blood sugar issues where she feels light headed and confused.  I have told her a million times that she needs to keep protein bars or nuts handy or even some of those nutrition drinks like Ensure around so that she can boost her blood sugar back to where it belongs. She thinks an orange and a carton of yogurt are all she needs from the time she gets up till midafternoon.  I keep reminding her that she is 82, not 28. 

She would have kept going for another hour, but I had a Zoom meeting with my West Concord friend—Sue, Tammy, Julie, and Nancy.  DeAnn was supposed to be there too, but she did not show up.  Probably had something else going on.  We have been talking about having a girls’ weekend in Iowa at a cabin, but I told them there was no way I could go.  While my frequent, urgent, explosive diarrhea is not as terrible as it has been, it still exists.  I’ve thrown away three pairs of underwear in the last few days because it comes on so fast and hard, and my knees are so bad that I am unable to make it to the bathroom fast enough to avoid disaster.  I cannot be going off to a place a few hours away without guaranteed bathroom access.  I just do not dare. 

I had so much diarrhea today that my butthole was raw from so much wiping.  It hurt so much I wanted to cry.

That’s about it for today.  Not much productivity today.

 

Tuesday, July 12

Today I did a lot of tidying up in the living room and hallway, bagged up a lot of garbage from the living room and kitchen into the breezeway, cleaned a bunch of old stuff out of the fridge, washed the dishes, “butchered” my watermelon (which was extremely delicious, I must say!), made a pot of spaghetti, cut up and washed the bunch of broccoli in preparation for making cream of broccoli soup, and put everything back in the fridge. 

Lily stopped to pick up the orange roughy I had bought for her from the Schwan’s man and to drop off the things she had picked up for me at the grocery store in Owatonna—a loaf of Italian bread, a carton of mixed spring greens (one of my favorite things), a bottle of blue cheese dressing, and a six pack of Diet Coke.  She needed a birthday card for her friend Doug, so I let her look through a stack that I had on hand.  Back when I shopped in actual stores, I always used to look through the cards and pick up a few to have on hand for birthdays.  She found one she liked for Doug and one that she thought would be perfect for her son in law Loren.  I had actually bought it for Loren myself, but then he decided I was evil and no longer deserved to be spoken to since I said people who worshipped tRUMP were either stupid or crazy.  No loss for me.  I think he is a complete asshole because he shot their cat in the head instead of taking it to the vet where it could be humanely put down and die in the arms of someone who loved him instead of out in a ditch terrified.  Fuck him. 

I feel like I had a pretty productive day today.  Hope is coming to clean tomorrow, so that will be a good, productive day as well.

 

Wednesday, July 13

I got up early enough to strip my bed and throw the bedding into the washer, clean the bathroom, throw the bedding in the dryer, and throw the bathroom rugs into the washer.  Then I dragged more garbage and recycling to the breezeway, cleaned the litterboxes, and swept the breezeway.  What was left of my milk was over three weeks old, so I dumped it out, rinsed out the jugs, and put them in the recycling bag.  There were two pretty heavy bags of garbage in the breezeway and three bags of recycling.  I had asked Jack yesterday if he could come and carry out the heavy bags as I could barely slide them into the breezeway, so I knew I could never lift them into the bins.  He said he’d be here by noon, so I had been watching for him all morning. 

I went in to check the laundry and discovered the bedding needed a second dry cycle.  They must not have spun out completely.  I was just starting to sort my “regular” laundry when I heard someone come in and holler hello.  I thought it was Jack, so I hollered that I was in the laundry room and to come on back.  Well, it was Hope!  So we chatted a bit and I told her I thought it was Jack as that garbage was so heavy I didn’t want to ask her to lift it.  She said she’d try, and if she couldn’t, Jack could do it. 

Danged if that tough little shit didn’t get all of it up and in the bins and squished down so all of it fit!  I thought that some of the recycling would have to go next time, but she got it all in.  She worked hard today—she dusted all the light fixtures and corners free of webs, polished the wood furniture with Orange Glow, vacuumed the upholstered furniture, swept, vacuumed, and scrubbed all the floors, hauled a bunch of stuff to the basement, made the bed, scrubbed the shower, and started working on the laundry/craft/sewing room. 

While she was doing that, I made my grocery order and called it in.  Katie took my order and told me that Lerberg’s was closing tomorrow at 1 pm.  I asked what was going on, and she told me that Ross’s mother had died and tomorrow was her funeral.  I said, “OMG, I didn’t even know she was sick.”  Katie responded, “She wasn’t.  She just didn’t wake up.”  So I told her to add a sympathy card to my order.  Poor Ross.  What a shock.

I joined Hope in the laundry/craft/sewing room and started sorting through some of the totes full of random stuff—most of it was stuff that had no “home,” so I just tossed it into totes to deal with later.  I created homes out of shoeboxes for the used up check registers and the pill bottles that have unique shapes that I intend to turn into doll Easter baskets and/or planters.  I found a lot of doll sized Easter stuff I had bought a while back and put that in an empty drawer—temporarily.   Once I find everything, I will probably pack those items in a small tote.

Hope was here for six hours and worked like a trooper the whole time.  The house is looking so much nicer than it has for ages.  If we can actually get that laundry room spiffed up, I may just die of joy.  When we get that room done, we will most likely go to the basement.  That will be a momentous occasion as I have lived in this house going on five years, and I have never been down in my own basement.  After I get things right up here, I intend to investigate the stair chair—probably not until next summer.  I also need to talk to someone about getting the air quality in the basement upgraded.  Jason has already told me that he can frame out rooms down there.  I would like to have the bathroom down there framed into a room with a door.  Right now, it is just a toilet and a sink sitting in the huge open room that is the basement.  I might have a shower installed down there too.  Why not?

 

Thursday, July 14

After two days of serious work, I feel like death warmed over today.  My shoulders especially are hurting bad.  My knees are also feeling weak and painful.  My low back is also hurting.  I literally feel like someone beat the hell out of me with a baseball bat.

So, I am taking it moderately easy today.  I did hang the two ROC sweat shirts and the long-sleeved tee shirt all the kids had signed for me when I left ROC on hangers.  I decided to keep them just in case I ever got together with some of my ROC kids.  I also continued with the laundry I started yesterday.  I di all three loads and folded all but the last one.  I’ll do that in the morning.

I talked to my sister Joni on the phone—she had been to Mayo in Rochester yesterday to have 10 pounds of fluid sucked out of her body.  She said her legs and feet where still so swelled that she cannot bend them.  But she feels better and sound so much stronger.

In other news, all three of my cats were sleeping together on my bed this afternoon.  They were not snuggling, but they were reasonably close and there was no hissing or striking out at each other.  That’s major progress!

I spent most of the day sitting in my recliner, admiring my much cleaner home, napping a bit, and watching TV.  I watched The Breakfast Club and Furry Vengeance which starred Brendan Fraiser who used to be so cute.  He isn’t ugly now, but he is past his prime.  It was kind of a dumb movie, but there was nothing else worth watching on.

 

Friday, July 15

There were sporadic rain and thunderstorms last night.  The thunder woke me up a couple of times in the night.  I folded the last load of laundry this morning, put the clean towels in the bathroom, and slid the basket of folded clothes into my bedroom.  I cleaned the litterboxes in the breezeway again today, swept up the litter the monsters had flung all over the breezeway, and opened the breezeway door so Ross could just walk in when he delivered the groceries.

Ross delivered my groceries after 2:30 pm.  We had a nice chat about his mother’s passing after I told him how sorry I was to her about her passing.  I grabbed the sympathy card, filled it out, stuck a $20 in it and gave it to him.  He said he had talked to his mother as he drove into Owatonna the day before she died.  She was totally fine—nothing at all wrong with her.  They just talked about random, unimportant stuff.  The next day he was on the road again, so he called her again.  No answer on the house phone, so he called her cell.  No answer.  He wondered where she was, but he wasn’t too concerned. 

Later, his sister called and said, “Ross, you have to come right away.  Mom’s gone.”

He said, “Yeah—I tried to call her.  Where do you suppose she went?”

Her voice changed and she said, “No, Ross.  Mom’s GONE.”

He said that she was alerted to something being wrong because their mother always closed the drapes before she went to bed and opened them first thing in the morning as soon as she was up and dressed.  Late in the day, the drapes were still closed.  So she sent her son over to check on her. He found her partially dressed, lying on her bed.  They figured she got up, started getting dressed, felt woozy, and lay back down.  He said she did that sometimes.  Then she just passed away.

No sign of distress or suffering.  Just peacefully lying on her bed as if she was asleep.

The shock of it was hard on the family—but he was thankful he had been able to have that last conversation with her on the phone.  He said they always said good bye with an “I love you.”  I said that was a real gift from God to have that little bit of closure. 

He agreed and said that they took comfort in the knowledge that she hadn’t had to suffer a long, lingering, painful death.  He said, “She’s with Dad now, and we know we will see her again.”

We both got a little teary.  His mom was 86; mine is 88.  You know it is coming, but you always hope it will be a little later yet.  My mom can be a real pain in the ass and mean as a snake from time to time, but she is still my mother and I love her.  Even when she really doesn’t deserve it. 

When he left, I put my groceries away.  It didn’t take very long.  I bought some nectarines and ate one, but it wasn’t really ripe yet.  It tasted good but was not as soft and juicy as I like them. 

Later I watched a movie called Blue Bayou about a 30-something man who was adopted from Korea when he was three by a white couple who only kept him six months before surrendering him to social services.  He spent the rest of his youth being shipped from one abusive foster home to another, got involved with gangs, committed some felony thefts, and was trying to live a straight life but couldn’t get hired due to the felonies on his record.  Anyhow—the story was about how his adoptive parents never filled out the paperwork necessary to make him legally a citizen of the U.S., so he got tagged to be deported.  It was a really heartbreaking movie—and while this movie was fictional, at the end, it showed pictures and brief stories of many REAL people who were adopted as children from foreign lands and never made legal citizens who were all deported.  Very disgusting that this really happened and as far as I know may STILL be happening.  So fucking unfair.  These were children.  They had no memory of their birth nation and did not even speak the language.  How are they supposed to survive being dumped in a land where they culture and language are alien to them? 

 

Saturday, July 16

Woke up feeling greasy this morning, so I took a shower before filling my pill caddy and calling in a refill of a prescription.  Lily came over to bring me two pieces of egg bake, a container of orange jello salad, and a nice big piece of carrot cake.  I gave her my spare card board scratching thing, a couple of cat toys, and bottle of catnip spray.  She was worried that Finn was bored and unhappy.  She is worried he might have ear mites, so we called Joni to see what vet she took him to.  She said he has had ear mites before and that they have given drops for his ears. 

Joni sounded even better today and reported that the swelling is slowly going down in her legs.

Thank God.

Not much else happened today.  I am still recovering from my productive days.  I have no ambition at all today.

 

Sunday, July 17

DeAnn and I had a good Zoom today.  We wrapped it up at 1:30 today as she had plans with one of her friends.  I watched some random shows on TV and warmed up the last piece of egg bake from Lily and some left over Pasta Roni from the other day.  I finally ate that piece of carrot cake for my dessert.  It was really good.  It’s been a long time since I had carrot cake. 

Jack came over to roll my garbage and recycling bins to the curb as garbage goes tomorrow, and recycling goes on Tuesday.  He came in and we had a nice chat about random things.  He gave me a thank you card from Caleb.  It was really cute—the front was covered with drawings of dogs and cats with big smiles on their faces and inside was a very nice note thanking me for the kind words I wrote on his card and the money. 

While we were talking it got darker and darker.  Next thing we know, it’s pouring rain!  I always check the weather app on my phone and there was absolutely no chance of rain.  Yet, it rained for about 20 minutes.  We needed it desperately, so I was glad it happened. 

Not much else happened today.  It took a while to catch up on all my DW entries, but I will start fresh tomorrow.  I am definitely ready for bed right now!

Comments

[the_godiva]

Go on amazon and get some Stallmates.

I never read these original comics but were the original ones funny slapstick like this? Or they basically bastardizing the original material? Superman and Batman weren't funny. So why are the Norse Gods being made into slapstick buffoons?

Lily should give them two weeks to acclimate. If all they're doing is hissing that's nothing. they haven't beaten each other or drawn blood so there's nothing to worry about. You should tell her how long it's taken for the boys and Peaches to all just chill on the bed together.

Lily should just double recipes and then only put out a quarter or a third and hold back the rest for the next day/event. Then she isn't baking/cooking every day.

Loren is a fucking sadistic asshole. ShitForBrains hasn't gotten that bad. Yet. My sister wants my Dad to leave him his 22 rifle instead of my brother, who has all the guns and does regular shooting and knows how to handle and clean them. Why? I'm sure she heard that it was rare and valuable. Because that is how her mind works. My Mother has always talked about them leaving the grandfather clock to my brother's son because it is engraved and he has the same name as my Dad. When I mentioned it my sister was all "Why do you get to decide, blah blah blah." Fuck her.

Joni's edema sounds like a heart problem. How bad is her blood pressure and are they doing anything about it? I assume she is on a low salt diet. Glad to hear she's getting better. As she stands and walks around that swelling will also go away. She just has to make sure she doesn't overdo it or make herself sick again by either drinking or going strict Vegan again. Her body isn't ready for the latter and it cannot tolerate the former.

I am praying I pass my test on Tuesday so am free to drive to my parent's house whenever I want and it only takes 20 min, not 90. And I can take the dogs with me too. That is what the doctor said will happen to my Mom (and likely my Dad too), go to sleep and just not wake up.

Another weekend and I didn't do squat except to lock the front gate. I'm just not motivated to do anything I am so obsessed with driving. While I did do stuff this week, I didn't do any of the things I planned for the weekend. Well, I did water and replace the dog bed covers yesterday, but I didn't carry stuff back and forth from the front and back. Just thinking about it made me tired. I also have some new locks for the front door I haven't installed. I got a decorative deadbolt to match the new door knocker that no one is using. I do have laundry in the basket but haven't taken it to the garage. Maybe tomorrow. I've also filled some paper bags with paper for recycling but they are still in the house. The dog food is now sitting by the gate to the back yard but will have to wait for tomorrow when I can lock the gate again. Maybe I will get the trash to the front and the pots to the back then too. My main focus is the printer for the appt letter. I have other stuff to print but all I want is that letter. Everything else can wait until after Tuesday. Aside from the printing and my driving lesson tomorrow I'm not likely to do anything else. If I get the letter printed out and I have any time or energy left, I may try to wash my car. With buckets. By hand. Or I might just go out and pour a few small buckets on the windows and call it a day.