Sunday

 We've just gotten back from a walk with the dogs, all 3. It is 82 degrees outside, and humid. Sophie especially has a rough time, whether it's because of her murmur or her blind/deafness I don't know. She trots along willingly enough. And then it takes her an hour to stop panting when we get home to the cool interior.

But it was such a beautiful morning! That blue sky, the sunshine, the green trees and palms. Everything is flowering. 

Work week was calm, especially after learning that LadyDoc is off from Friday (two days ago) to next Thursday. Yay!  So it's much more relaxed now that she is away.  

My doc's birthday was Wednesday, so there was a potluck of course.  Always good food. This time I brought the veggie tray, but never again--they charged $25 for a dinner plate-sized collection of cut up veggies, and a little bowl of dip in the middle. Outrageous.

Sis and BIL came Friday night, along with MissS, for a pizza dinner which they supplied and had delivered. Everything was excellent, including the Greek salad I had instead of pizza. We all got a chance to get caught up again.

Lots of travel plans for each of us coming up, so there was some discussion of all that.

Nothing much to report this week.  Well, we do have a family of Muscovy ducks. Mama appeared last Sunday with 11 utterly adorable babies.  They were rooting around our front porch, searching  for food. J promptly brought out a giant metal dish of water for them, and scattered some bird seed. 

They have been with us all week. The babies have doubled in size, and love not only drinking the water but actually sitting in it, paddling around.  They follow Mama when she takes off to explore, and then we don't see them for a while.

 Later one of us will say, "They're back!" and we both carefully move to the living room so we can watch through the big window. It's so fun to watch them. There are 9 now, so something  clearly happened to two.

I think they were born in, and sleeping nights in Louise's back yard. These guys are too little to have walked very far. But they are growing fast, and hearing the peeps and chirping is so sweet.

J also stood in line at the DMV this week. That's a terrible chore!  But we had to change the license plate and update the registration for the SUV. I'll have my new plate in 2 weeks.

On the therapy front, the counselor my PCP recommended me to is not taking new patients, so I asked her to refer me to a different place which a friend recommended.  The lady there said I needed a  referral and then I could be put on a waiting list. Sigh. Good thing this isn't urgent!

I don't have a lot more. Been a quiet week, except for the usual work drama, which I'm not going to bother writing about.

But I still feel lucky, and TYG, for family and for Al Anon.

Sunday

 I have turned down the brightness on the laptop display, and it's still very noticeable. That is actually one of the side effects of my new medication. It's an anti-fungal with a long name. Side effects include sensitivity to light, whether it's day or night; and sensitivity to sun. So if outside without sunscreen I will burn faster.  If driving at night there will be a halo around the oncoming lights. We don't drive at night anyway, but this was good to know. For me, the sensitivity feels like I've just had my eyes dilated, and everything is too bright.

Sunday, Father's Day. I sent a message to my sonN, who is a father to 3 kids.   I wrote something like, I hope you are proud of your life as a father with your girls, but when I look at it now, it seems snarky and I didn't mean it that way. I meant, I hope you are being the kind of father you are proud of. Sigh.

We took a walk this morning with the dogs, all three, and then washed two of them when we  got home. 

Yesterday was a wonderful day. Part of it of course was because I was at my Al Anon meeting where "coincidences" occur regularly. 

My daughter has confided in me a terrible traumatic event from her childhood. This was last Sunday. We talked quite a bit about that. She shared that she was ready to get some counseling for this. This is a huge decision for her; she's had a very rough ride. 

It was so hard to hear this from her, because there are so many layers. In my utterly chaotic state of mind I called a friend Monday, who just happens to be a now-retired therapist. After some discussion I have decided to get some counseling for myself.  Oddly she recommended the same place that MissS is going to. 

I remembered that an AlAnon friend, M, was also a therapist; I emailed her Thursday because she works at my company too. I was hoping she could recommend someone, or maybe even tell me who not to see. I didn't get a response Friday, but figured she had a pretty heavy caseload. I haven't seen her in over a year at any of the meetings but I knew she was still active in the program.

 In the meantime I also checked in with my own PCP, who gave me referrals to two other people. I'm waiting now to hear from  them.

So I was quite surprised to see M walk into the room Saturday morning. And! it turned out she  never got my email, because she just had a baby  2 weeks ago and has been home on maternity leave since. How bizarre to see her in person after this, when I needed her. Who says there is no Higher Power? Angels...   

She gave me a name of someone she highly recommends, and her own phone number, and we exchanged impressions of various people in our company. Talk about work overload: her department is short-staffed too. She has 70 patients, who are all being  somewhat covered by co-workers in her absence.  Seventy. I was staggered.

Well, after the Meeting, I went to Target to find a Father's Day card for J. I also got him a bag of candy, Hershey Deluxe minis. He was thrilled to see that this morning.

Then he and I went to do a few errands, and came  home, where we decided to work on a project outside. It was 87 degrees yesterday, and humid. So humid we were dripping within 5 minutes. But we worked on, slowly and steadily, finishing edging two more garden areas and raking up the leftovers.  He will bag it up tomorrow. 

Then we got in the pool!  It was heaven.   We had bought a frozen pizza for dinner, trying the California Kitchen brand, thin crust. It was fine. And easy, because we were drained.

The work week was fine, mostly. No problems so far with LadyDoc. I still don't trust this mood change, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. We had the usual crazy patients, but nothing out of the ordinary. My one co-worker who complains all the time, the racist, is the only difficulty. I try to ignore her when she starts to go on a rant, but sometimes she won't let go of a subject, or take a hint. 

MissS will be over later and that's always so much fun.  I'm so grateful for my life.

TYG

Sunday

 J has taken the dogs (except Murphy) for their morning walk. He doesn't join them most mornings anymore. He just turned 13 this week. And he is happier to stay home with me on these weekend mornings.

 It's about 10am, and I just came back in after about 90 minutes of work outside.   I decided to switch the two birdbaths to different locations,  and then pulled all the whatever-it-is from one small garden, re-worked the bricks outlining it, re-worked the bricks on two other areas, and by that time I was bushed. It wasn't so much humidity, thank God, but just the constant crouching and bending that got me. Still, I always feel better after doing yard work.

Which is probably where I picked up my lung disease, according to the Infectious Disease doc. That visit was interesting, although the appt was about 2 hours altogether. I left work at noon, went home and changed and ate a quick lunch, and then we drove down to NSB.  

Basically there are two molds growing in my lungs.  Gross! ...one is still unidentified and still being cultured. The other is called mycobacterium abscesssus.  A "cousin" to TB, but not contagious, and my case isn't life-threatening. She seemed quite confident that a first treatment of  an anti-fungal for 4-6 weeks, and then a round of antibiotics should take care of it. Said it wasn't uncommon here, because we are living here in FL, in a wet environment, and it's in the soil and air.  Sigh.

But it's not contagious. And if I want to continue working outside, as I do, I will be wearing a mask. (Thought I was done with those, but apparently not.)   She, the doc, seemed very caring, very concerned.  She reassured J that it wasn't necessary to have specialists come in to the house and check for mold, because ...it's all over the place inside or outside, and there's no telling exactly where I picked it up.

I didn't have any more testing done, but I will have labs done in a couple of weeks to see if the anti-fungal is killing my liver. Just kidding.  I haven't even started it yet. But it does get processed through the liver so as long as I am on it my labs will be monitored.  

I go back to see her at the end of the month, and then also see the pulmonologist too the same day. Each of these visits is $40. Ouch. 

Monday morning when I walked in, I realized the maintenance men had replaced all the fluorescent lights in our suite, including above my desk. These lights were at least double the brightness, and shone such a glare I couldn't see my phone, or my computer screen. Not to mention the blinding headache. It was absolutely awful. 

I panicked. I cannot work like that. Before I even clocked in I shot off a request to the Service Dept to come ASAP and remove the lights. I've been perfectly happy with actually no lights above my desk, and a few of the other overhead lights in my desk area have one or two of the three tubes deliberately not in the fixture. 

So I complained all morning, because honestly I was having a tough time working on the computer; and actually had to hold my hand above my forehead to read the screens. Finally over my lunch hour they did show up. They restored the way it had been in all the fixtures, and removed the bulbs above my desk. Sheer relief.

Meanwhile, J was at home installing the new gutter, or eavestrough as he calls it. He did a great job, but wasn't satisfied with it entirely, and in tinkering with it, something went wrong and here it is Sunday, and it's still not right.

Wednesday morning we had just sat down to open the computers and wake up, and the power went off with a big boom from down the street.  J cooked us breakfast on the gas camp stove, and we did without toast. We sat with the hurricane lights and talked, as neither of the laptops worked. Finally we thought to check the phones and they did work, although his couldn't get the Internet.  Fortunately, shortly after I left for work the power came back on.

That same day J had to go to the cardiologist office because his monitor was loosening. Naturally it was loosening! He couldn't not work, and therefore he couldn't not sweat,  and it was just too long a period to try to go without sweating this time of year. They ended up just removing it entirely, and ending the monitoring period; they made it a one-week trial instead of a two-week trial. He was thrilled--he went home and cleaned up all the debris, mowed the yard, and did some shopping before getting in the pool for the first time in a week. 

 Shortly after getting home from the doctor in NSB that afternoon, we noticed the house seemed warm...eventually we realized the AC wasn't working. The fan part was, but it wasn't cooling. He called the repair people who'd installed it 4 years ago, and the earliest they could come was the next day. 

They didn't show up til almost 7pm, but fortunately got it going within 3o minutes...for $300. Ouch. We didn't have the premium  extended warranty, just the regular extended warranty which covered the part, but not the labor or installation. Sigh.

That was the same day MissS and Sis came for dinner and pool time. We enjoyed this a lot--it was nice to catch up, and sit in the warm pool. The pool this week has been between 90 and 92 every day.  Dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches and broccoli for us, and an Amy's frozen dinner for Sis with more broccoli. 

The headache has been more difficult to battle this week, starting with the blinding fluorescent lights on Monday. But I just keep trying various treatments.  

Sometimes I wonder if intense emotion has a part to play in these cycles. The night of the  appt with the ID doc, I had a very emotionally intense dream about my Gramma. I haven't dreamed about her in a long time. But in this one I was sitting on her lap, and telling her how very much I missed her. She responded with a loving smile and a twinkle, saying "I miss you too, darling", the way she always said it. She was hugging me, but not tightly, really just holding me. I could tell she was with me, she didn't have the Alzheimer's.  It felt wonderful to talk to her. 

I think because Monday was the 7th: the death day anniversary of both she and my mom. Nine years for mom, 20 years for Gramma.  That's a big number. Significant.  I was so lucky to have her for so many years. I am so grateful.

TYG

Sunday

 Sunday again. These weeks fly by, but sometimes the days seem long. Yesterday was busy: first was an early morning walk with the dogs. We saw an armadillo in a neighbor's yard, and watched him scuttling about for awhile.  Next, the AlAnon meeting, without which I could not manage my life. Then to Home Depot for the gutter installation project.

Frankly, J is seeming overwhelmed too.  The planting of the almond bush requires clean-up of an area by the shed (getting rid of some miscellaneous unwanted unused  things he was collecting for possible use in the future).  I'm thrilled he is finally deciding he won't be needing those, and we can get rid of them.  

OTOH, he seems sad about this decision; I think it's because he is acknowledging he won't have time, energy, ability, whatever--to actually implement these ideas.  It's all he can do to keep up with the repairs and projects connected with the house.

The gutter project: collecting all those things at the HD was a process. Three 10-foot gutter sections did just fit in the Rogue. 

Tuesday after he'd planted the myrtle, I came home after work, exhausted as usual. I went straight outside to admire this great location and all his work. Then I turned around to go back inside, and walked straight into some Spanish moss. This floored me--it's never hung this low before, and in fact I had cleared some of it just the day before. It was in my face, almost literally.  

I stepped back and looked more closely, realizing that the beautiful old native orange tree had finally-- seconds before--- broken at the base, and tipped over onto the wires and cables running from the corner of the house to the transformer pole at the other end of the yard.  The whole tree was resting on the cables. I was under the cables. This had just missed me when it fell!

So, this was an emergency. We leaped into action. J grabbed his chain saws, and ladders, and carefully cut where the branches and tree would not fall onto us, or tear the cables down.  Then we pulled what we could away from the house, and by that time it was almost 6. I'd gotten home at 4:45. 

Complicating matters was that J had just gotten a two-week Loop monitor placed.  He is not supposed to sweat, or wet the monitor (which runs vertically down the center of his chest). Bathing is  a challenge, washing hair is a challenge, and he can only get in the pool up to his waist. 

But the next day he slowly and carefully removed 100% of the  stuff that had fallen, and  had cut up all the wood, so we can use it for firewood. (More!  Oh, boy. Yeah, we are fully supplied....) And the next day he carefully and slowly (so he wouldn't sweat) moved all the wood to the other side of the house where our wood is stacked. 

I really miss that beautiful old orange tree. It was the perfect spot , providing shelter and perches for all the birds at the bird-feeders. And the squirrels loved it.  I knew it was dead, but I couldn't bear to cut it down. So Mother Nature did that for us.  It's been windy for a few days, and that just was enough to tip that mass over. Here are some photos: the first one below was just before we stopped for the night. These are arranged in backwards order.

It was a shorter work week, having Monday off. Still it wasn't too bad. People were in good moods. LadyDoc decided to be nice, all week. Even thanked us on Friday before she left, for all our work that day. Mouths fell open, I can tell you.

I left work early one day for a Neuro appt. Literally she wasn't even in the room for five minutes. I'm doing well on the combination  of meds used at different times. She is pleased with my "progress" , and I don't have to go back for 6 months. Basically I use a combination of neck vibrators, cervical traction, heat,  muscle relaxers, daily preventive meds, rescue meds, and occasional OTC meds.  I balance and alternate all these tools. 

My pain level is about 3, generally: it doesn't prevent me from doing daily activities, but it's there all the time, in varying intensities depending on...what? Who knows. Sometimes stress affects the headache, sometimes I'm simply dehydrated; sometimes it's related to my neck issue. At its worst it's maybe a 7, but fortunately I haven't experienced a bad migraine in over a year now. I have bad headaches, which is the 7; a migraine is an actual 9. 

Friday J got to go with Sis to a special store she likes out in Deland. Then she was good enough to drive further , all the way to the Papa Murphy pizza place in Mt Dora. J picked up two pizzas, and bought one for them too. It was a rainy stormy afternoon later, although I missed it entirely being inside all afternoon at work.

This week I have the appt with the Infectious Disease doc. I'm reassured by co-workers that she is great, very caring and thorough. I'm guessing more testing will be involved, and then I go back to the Pulmonologist Dr Z at the end of the month.  

My sons turned 35 yesterday. I sent them both cards, and did not send money. I'm told via MissS that SonN's gf (and mother of his child) has given him notice of her intent to move in July, and that he is not welcome unless he can kick in $300 every month for the rent. Apparently he has not been doing so. I don't know any more than that. MissS and Amber text more frequently than I do, although there's nothing preventing me from doing this too. I'm just anxious about seeming nosy. I do wish so fervently that my sons would be more communicative, but they just are not. 

Thank God for the Meeting yesterday; I was so sad, so depressed, and worried. I talked with one dear friend as we were heading into the meeting, and he had some very comforting words. After we talked about me, he confided his wife had started drinking again, after years of sobriety.  Well, that put my worries into perspective... then two more friends shared important concerns after the meeting, which also helped so much. So grateful.

MissS helped at last week's visit with two major issues I had with the computer. Thank God for her!  We She re-set my old blue laptop to factory settings, after removing what I needed from it. And she helped with my Dropbox account which had me tangled in not allowing access due to incorrect passwords. What a mess!  

Sometimes I am embarrassed about my  ignorance re computers, but other times I am just so grateful that she is there to help, manage, fix, repair, offer better suggestions. For instance, I can help J with some of his computer  issues because he is even more ignorant than I, but not all of them, which is where MissS comes in. 

I was even more anxious about putting an ad on Facebook yesterday to sell the laptop. Had no idea what price to set it at; after browsing what was being charged for similar laptops, I chose $100 OBO.  I put up two photos, and the info that it was too slow for me but ran fine if plugged in.  Much to my surprise, by 5 pm I had 6 people /conversations going, people asking for info, asking specific questions. Long story short, one person asked to come and see it, and ended up giving us $80 for it an hour later. He gave us his new business cards, and was completely non-threatening. Very nice young man.

So we'll be putting that in the bank. Thanks to MissS for the invaluable help with readying it for sale. 

Today she will be coming over, of course. It's always a wonderful time, and we laugh a lot. I don't laugh like that with anyone else, except my sister.  

We are now in Hurricane Season, with more chances of daily rain in the afternoons. We desperately need the rain, but it's sure been nice with such a long Spring season--cool-ish, windy, dry, sunny weather, cool nights. Perfect for being outside during the day. Our pool is warm enough to be refreshing and completely enjoyable. I feel so lucky.

TYG