adding insult to injury

ok, so.....no clue on the number of days into this ridiculous injury.....four weeks on thursday....but i digress from the newest and cruelest twist....i slept awkwardly...on my left side/left arm....and now my left arm is in so much pain i am having a hard time typing....yeah, yeah, yeah.....i only type with two fingers (one on each hand) on a good day, but on this day the left one is letting me down....i am back to the pain meds for the arm rather than the foot...whicb continues to be a swollen swirl of faded purples and mustards....the tight skin is peeling.....yech!....the right knee is still sore from where my keys gouged into the cap.....neither the knee nor the foot hurt as much at this moment than my left arm....how fair is that?

where there's a will....

ok, so....day 17....oh my but the days are passing quickly since the wreck....so much so that i have to count out on my fingers just how many days have passed...and counting in days is getting as ridiculous as new parents who persist in describing the age of an infant in days rather than weeks...or months...the recap of the wreck has condensed from a 7 minute narrative to a one-liner...so back to the 17 days.....i have been wearing a limited combination of clothing based solely on the fact that the items were in the wash basket in the basement at the time of the accident....and though they have been rewashed several times....by day 16 i had grown a bit tired of the repetition...so yesterday i backed myself up the stairs on my bottom and then backed myself across the bedroom carpet to my dresser.....getting back to the steps with a handful of clothing is not as easy as it sounds.....had i thought to bring a shopping bag of some sort from the computer room closet the task would have been easier...ah well....my stack of clothing options is taller and i know that i can manage to get upstairs should there be something else i need.....which brings me to the second milestone of day 16...the bathtub....i had taken three showers in 16 days, filling in with washcloth/sink bathing in between.....sitting on a stool in a small shower stall with a hand-held shower nozzle is not much better than balancing by a sink with a washcloth....and so last evening i decided that i would figure out how to get in and out of the whirlpool tub.....and so i managed not only a lovely bubble bath with liberal use of a sugar-based body scrub.....i did so with a nice glass of white....ahhhhhhh....the spell was broken well after i had dried off and dressed....by my spouse asking me just what was all the gunk left in the tub......16 days of dead skin sticking to sugar scrub granules i suppose......i slept through the night for the first time in....let's see....17 days.......

Day 15

ok, so....day 15 of my unfortunate series of events finds me low on enthusiam and wallowing in self-pity....and not for the obvious reasons...our cat, Phillida Erskine Brown aka Kitty, our sweet 14+ year old sickly blind cat who had been living out her days mostly on our front porch due to her continence issues....failed to show up for breakfast wednesday morning....even a blind cat knows where to be when breakfast should be served....and to know when she thinks it is time to eat....we were occassionally awakened on those cool spring mornings by her caterwalling cries of hunger drifting up through our open window from the deck.....i must mention here that when i took her food out to the back deck to appease her, i would occassionally find her atop the deck railing....i would caterwall too if i suddenly found myself blind atop the deck railing....no clue how she managed to get herself up there...but i digress.....she was MIA for her breakfast and has not been seen since Tuesday at supper for certain. My spouse has gone out looking for her on several occassions as has our daughter...every able-bodied c-dub has looked....last night when the rains came i was horrified at the realization that the (probably) dead cat was out there in the storm, her body unfound and that i was unable to put her remains at rest from my chair....contact was made with the humane society in case she had been picked up...no such luck...in my heart i know that her time had come...she was often unable to keep down food, and the hair she plucked out as she groomed did not grow back...she looked quite mangey, but given that she was quick to come over for a cuddle and still purred loudly when she was held....we had decided not to put her down...not quite yet...not when she still seemed to enjoy the life she had left....

day 10

ok, so...ten days into my unfortunate series of events......i go back for my thrid orthopedic appointment tomorrow morning....will hopefully trade plaster cast for a removable boot that will allow for a shower....have been washing hair in the sink but this method is far from thorough and i spend my days feeling this side of greasy-granny funk......have had several folks bring food and/or nibbles but only one person has been thoughful enough to stay a bit with me and chat....so nice to enjoy pleasant conversation about more than what one has done with one's day.....as for what i do with my days, it is to sit in this very computer chair, hour after hour, scanning print photos from albums...i have finished three, including our wedding album and two that included babyhoods......ah......trying to crop out the unnecessary and select only the best ones is a trial....as i think every photo of my children is precious.....i am listening to Fallen Angel...the newest by Daniel Silva.....i am on my second listen as i wanted to make sure i caught all of the finer points before i move on to another book.....i have managed to get the wheelchair out to the porch twice....both times in the mornings to enjoy the weather, the hummingbirds, my coffee and the newspapers...getting the chair out is not the hard part.....it is getting back inside without having to lift up onto my good foot and thrust the chair forward over the sill.....that is the problem......but i learn a little more about solving this problem each time....at some point i will venture up the drive to get the mail....at some point i will get out the crutches as well and make my way to my terrace, but not before i figure out how to take coffee with me....backpack and a thermos perhaps....the chair is too wide for my walkway and possibly the walkway leans a bit down hill....the drought and heat pretty much killed off most of what there was to see in the garden anyway......so that brings me to my reward fior a morning spent scanning.....netflix.....movies, documentaries, reruns of cozy british television shops....and eventually somebody comes home and asks me what i have done with my day....

a tale of woe

ok, so....I am in to day 3 of my broken ankle......i have managed to use the walker to get to the kitchen and make coffee, and figured out that the computor desk chair makes for an adequate wheelchair substitute......cannot use walker while carrying a cup of coffee.....i am sitting at the pc for the first time since thursday morning....mostly out of necessity....it is the only one of the available electronic toys that has it all.....neither the iphone nor the ipad have access to this blog.....i paid for access to the new york times for only my phone and the pc and not the ipad....you get the picture.....thankfully the pc has a wireless keyboard.....i am currently sleeping in our downstairs guest room AKA our retirement room.....and after two nights there i have identified numerous issues that will come into play should we ever have to reside in that room fulltime....like the fact that one cannot actually see much through the bay window when laying (lying?) in bed....the drapes cover much of the view.....and the bed cannot be shoved up against the wall...or one of us will have to crawl over the other to get out....on the upside...there may be room for a queen-sized bed...an upgrade for us.....we use an antique bed that fits in the best spot fore a bed in our upstairs room and it is a double....clothing is problematic......i prefer pajama bottoms and a v-neck white tshirt....but as i cannot get them over the cast i am forced into nightgowns that i never wear because they are mighty uncomfortable to sleep in despite their stylish looks.....thankfully, the two nightgown/robe sets that i own hang in back of the bedroom door and have escaped numerous clothing purges over the years....i am already trying to figure out what i can possibly wear to my MRI appointment on Monday...the capris that i wore to the orthopedic appt had to be carefully split open at the inseam for me to get them over the case......who knew that a cast would be so big?......the good news is that on my last goodwill donation frenzy i discarded clothing that i could not fit into.....which will hopefully spare me the indignity of having my spouse present me with an outfit he has chosen, only for me to admit that i was saving it until i lost a few pounds....losing a few pounds i quite likely...another upside to this incident....my appetite is diminished....and the next point i want to make must be done so delicately.....suffice it to say that i have spoiled my family with interesting food for so long that they have no idea how to come up with much beyond pasta and sauce....they make pasta and sauce every thursday while i teach at eku-danville.....every thursday....and i do not mind because i generally grab a junior rb from arby's to tide me over....and i rarely partake of their pasta and sauce....we have had one pasta and sauce meal (on day 1) and i started in early coaching my daughter on the supper menu i had in mind before so that pasta and sauce could be avoided....and so we had grilled marinated chicken, and box mac and cheese, and cucumber salad, which i actually finished from my coach command post because the person who sliced up the cucumbers and onions declined to be responsilbe for the vinegar and salt phase....we also had pickled beets because that jar is so easy to open....at some point i will not be able to recall what is still in the fridge and i may have to make meal charts and grocery lists to go along....that is if i want to eat well during this ordeal...if we do pasta and sauce for six weeks i may be able to fit into all of those clothes i just gave to the goodwill....now is a good time to bring up pain...i have been sitting at the pc for awhile now, and though my leg is propped up on the walker, it is not elevated and it is starting to throb...like it has its own pulse....i have taken my pain pill for this time slot, and it has kicked in, so far as kicking in goes.....there was a point yesterday afternoon...after the cast had been put on and it was starting to 'cure' as the tech told me it would.....my foot felt like red hot pokers were stabbing into it and the pain pill had not helped after an hour, and so i took another one despite the lable directions.....and still the pain did not ease up...and i started in crying....and my daughter who was sitting in the room (we are doing a long-version LOTR marathon) got so upset she called my spouse at work to tell him that i was crying....but he was busy and when he called back i was a bit abrupt with him who decided against filling the entire pain med prescription because surely i was tough enough not to need all of those pills.....yes- i delivered my first baby completely unmedicated...but i was motivated to spare my baby of those drugs.....and i knew that eventually the baby would be born and the pain would stop.....i have no experience with brolen bones and i have no idea when this agonizing pain will settle into nothing more than background twinges.....the wreck itself has already become a blur...i can recall checking out the green light at the intersection and then looking ahead to see if traffic was backed up by a train....one is always cautious at this interection because of the frequent trains that come through town.....traffic is often backed up as far as my office from especially long trains....and the next thing i knew i was braking to avoid a huge cream colored suv and then there was impact....like hitting a brick wall....and i can recall leaning to the right with my face down in case the windshield shattered......and in one fluid motion i turned off my car, took out my keys, grabbed my purse and got out....becuase there was smoke and flames coming out of my ignition and i was certain that my car was going to blow up ( i watch far too much tv)....it was then that i discovered that i my left ankle was bunged up....and i had to ask people who had stopped to help to get me away from the car...the three Samaritans who let me sit in their car had witnessed the suv pull out in front of me to make a left turn....and i was grateful for their help as much as for their confirmation that the wreck was not my fault.....i have never had a wreck....not in 40 years of driving and i did not want my first one to be my fault.....speaking of 40 years.....i was in europe 40 years ago this summer.....on a three week driving trip with my parents and brother.....my dad broke his leg while photographing a falls in switzerlad.....when i graduate from the walker i will be using his crutches....i can still see myself in the pharmacy in Thun where i was trying to help my mother understand that they only had one crutch and that we would have to go elsewhere for another one.....when we got to Paris, my cousin Nancy (who was a translator at the Australian Embassy) offered to let me stay with her for the rest of the summer....I declined because i was signed up to take driver's ed when i got home.....i chose driving over Paris because i was 16 and had not yet fallen in love with Paris.....ah well.....i really need to wrap up this post, and prop up my leg....it has been nice to record this episode for posterity while it is still relatively fresh...and hopefully i can figure out how to blog from the ipad....heaven knows i will have plenty of time on my hands for such things...the doctor said something about 6 to 8 weeks....yikes!

Sister-in-Law of my Sister-in-Law

ok, so....the call came at 8:50 am...as I was getting settled in for the monthly meeting of those who manage public health departments...in Frankfort.....the caller ID announced that Fred was on the line...and when Fred calls my cell phone it is serious stuff.....he called when sister Sylvia died...from a long battle with a series of brain tumors.....this call was taken on a country road in Virginia the first time Ernst and the boys attempted to finish Ernst's cross-country bike ride....we dropped everything and drove to upstate NY for the funeral knowing there was time to finish that ride at some point yet unknown. The next call was when Ernst's sister Marilynn died...after a long bout with recurrent breast and ovarian cancers....I found out later that mine was not the first cell phone number he used to get in touch....my youngest uses my original cell phone number....the one that frequently gets confused with the xray reading room at the local hospital...ah...the price the young pay for a free cell phone....and i use a new number....for Fred's name to pop up means that I had him listed as a contact.....but I digress.....Fred's sister Sally died suddenly and he wanted me to hear the news before I read it on-line....as I would....as Sally is (was) a FB friend....though I met her the first and only time at Marilynn's funeral....I have since had almost daily contact with her through Scrabble, Wordtwist, messages, and likes/comments on photos. Our last exchange was just this week...on a darling photo of her grandchild using the family cat as a pillow....I have an unfinished game of Scrabble going with her, a cousin Anne from Oklahoma and her sister Lucy who lives in New Zealand....I met Lucy on our last visit to Marilynn before she died, and I have never met Anne, though we often babble back and forth in the comment section of the Scrabble board as well as on messaging and on status updates. I am saddened that my world is smaller by one, and anxious to communicate condolences to her family...those I have met and those I have not....I actually met her parents way back when at the first Thanksgiving I spent with the Webers, and I met her husband and sons at Mariylynn's funeral....but through technology I enjoyed years of delightful interchange with her, and I feel her loss more than typed words can convey.....

infinite sadness

ok, so.....i either quarrelled or came close to arguing with most of my blood kin yesterday.....the main theme being a disjoint between my desire to inspire generosity in my offspring by example....by being generous to them in hopes that they would, in turn, be generous to others.......yesterday, i came close to changing my approach to one of itemization and score-keeping.....close.....but i will continue to with the pay-it-forward lifestyle and hope for the best.....

All My Children

........................................ok, so i successfully photographed my children just before we sat down to enjoy a meal of sushi and sashimi to celebrate Stephan's bold move to Bloomington. What lovely children I have!

Mother's Day

Wishing my mother a happy mother's day as well as happy 83rd birthday! Here she is just a week ago at Kim's wedding in Cleveland.

google map fail

ok, so.....i googled my own address on google maps yesterday as i ate my lunch at my desk....and the photo of my address is not where i live.....seems that the google vehicle drove our circle backwards....and thus my house shows up as 272 rather than 155....ohter than the mixup in addresses they did get a decent picture of my house...sadly, the trellis roses were not blooming at the time....

10 dwindling years....

ok, so....the 10th anniversary of this blog came and went on April 9.....the 1st day was a Sunday....and involved flowing dance movement of our middle child down the hall to the chant....mean mamma mean daddy......mean daddy did not get around to blogging.......i am even meaner in my dotage than i was ten years ago.....

yeah, yeah, yeah.....

ok, so.....it has been a long time since i updated this blog....so long i cannot quite remember when i last took the time......surely the fallout of time constraints versus FB games....as well as my preference for surfing web on my iphone rather than our pc or two ipads.....yes, two (hand-me-down) ipads.....my audiobooks are downloaded onto my phone and it seems cumbersome to hold tweo handheld devices when one can suffice.....which brings me to where i have been listening to audiobooks.....in my greenhouse as well as in my flower and vegetable beds whilst weeding......if the phone is turned up load enough i can actually carry it in my front pants pocket and hear well enough to multitask....but i digress from the greenhouse, which turns out to be more work than i ever imagined....i am still on the uphill side of the learning curve about watering inside the greenhouse....and have not yet figured out how to manage the hose....i really need a hose dedicated for this single purpose that is only long enough to efficiently spray the beds and one that does not require recoiling after each use......the heat problem has been sorted out, thankfully....i found the temperature to be over 100 degrees in side on several moderately warm days, and i do not consider coming home at lunch to check on my greenhouse temperature to be 'green' gardening.....our contractor has fully screened both doors, and has customized plexiglass panels that can be fastened on to each door when the temperature is expected to drop......so most days the screen allow for maximum air cirulation, and last night when the frosty temperatures were predicted, i clipped on the plexiglass.....i am stumped by the cultivation of carrots......they just seem to sit there.....carrots that i brought in from the deck last fall are still in the same stage of non-growth that they were months ago.....which is where the watering issue crops back up...couldn't be the soil, as it is premium potting soil....so is it the water?....not enough or too much?......maddening.....we are still eating lettuces brought inside from the deck....lettuces i planted are still growing on time-lapse basis that is barely visible to the naked eye while the pea pod plants are 3 feet tall and are bearing reliably.....hopefully i will have it all figured out by the second season.....speaking of seasons...the rose season will be impossibly early this year.....my trellis rose City of York has an open bloom as does Old Blush......Stanwell Perpetual will certainly bloom today.....the knockout roses are blooming but these scent-less soul-less creations hardly count.....which brings me to new roses.....I have received a replacement New Dawn in the mail....it is beside the cabin.....i am relieved that i never got around to planting Therese Bugnet or Paul Neyron because the workman have trampled the Dr Huey on the other side of the cabin door.....we have decided to spend some money on the cabin....it was either spend some money on necessary repairs or watch it rot/sag/implode.....and so we have replaced the roof, removed rotten logs, rechinked the walls, added braces to the ceiling to hold up the upstairs floor, installed new windows, poured real steps to replace the stone steps....we do not have a real plan on how we will use the space, which has been cleared of most of the junk that has been around since grandpa's time...the youngest of the workman was delighted to back up his truck and haul off numerous rusted metal parts and pieces.....could have been a few treaures, but after living here nearly thirty years, i sincerely doubt that i have overlooked an antiques roadshow valuable....i suspect that my brother-in-law can run electric out there, possibly by running it through conduit buried under the brick walk.....that only leaves sanitary issues.....will start to google composting toilets just to see how big they are and how much they cost.....we have enough stored furniture in the attic of the garage to furnish this new 'playhouse'.....and if we lack anything there is always my mother's attic....could be fun to decorate my own private getaway without having to travel too far....the wi-fi works out there, this i already know.....

well, there is is....what i have been up-to since i last blogged......well...not quite all...i did go to paris for a long weekend and failed to blog as has always been my custom.....FB makes it all too easy to post photos at wi-fi ready cafes...and mobile blogger is not user-friendly.....

sick

ok, so after weeks of regular exercise, including swims before work four days this week, i have come down with a deep, throaty cough that tastes of infection....yuch! and the cough interrupts at such random intervals that i cannot seem to find peace day or night....not the bill of health one wants within 3 weeks of a trip to paris.....i actually had a pneumonia vaccine within the past month.....only at weak moments do i suspect that the two scenarios are related...i iknow better than that about vaccines, but i digress from moaning loudly about just how awful i feel at this very moment.,...

awakenings

ok, so...dr. rick took my mother off most of her medicines on thursday....and today she has been up since 3:30 am...fully dressed and roaming her house for materials to complete long discarded projects.....she spoke this evening at supper of long-forgotten neighbors in cleveland....of her serger machine that does not seem to work...of the boxes upstairs that require sorting ....these being the very same boxes that i had intended to disperse amongst the many charities that use fabric, yarn and notions......that will teach me to procrastinate.....seems she has phoned several old friends, and dispaired at the numbers that have been disconnected since she last felt up to phoning old friends.....we shall enjoy this bolt of enthusiasm for as long as it lasts.....

unprecedented

ok, so....i got up early three days this week to swim before work......this change in schedule was forced by the inconvenience of swimming after work, given that swim lesson season has begun, my time frame coincides with aqua zumba, and the general chaos/noise level in the pool got in the way of my good time.....and so i gave before work a try....i have had to share lanes on occassion, but the peace and quiet that reigns in the early pool hours is just what i was looking for in an exercise routine. today i will try out my new heart rate monitor....to qualify as a workout for my insurance incentive scheme there must be verification....my monitor will upload into the program's website.....just like my pedometer uploads and records steps as wrkouts......you might ask if any or all of this effort has paid off in pounds lost....the answer would be no.....but i am sleeping better and i feel as though the slightly firmer muscles will be able to handle Paris with less fatigue.....in fact, plotting paris is the general theme of each lap swimm session.....the exact routes for each day's circuit amongst the sites.....but swimming is not the only unprecedented event of the week.....i signed up to be a paid subscriber to the NYT......after it became clear that they really were not going to let me read entire articles after the first 20 of each month without chipping in.....at $3.50 a week i shou;d have subscribed ages ago......so...this morning i am going to read my way through the newer articles on the NYT website, then change and go the wellness center to swim laps.....if i can get in the water before 9:30 i can avoid the zumba crowd at 10:15.....

lap swimming....

ok, so i am up 30 minutes early so i can manage all of my morning chores before going to swim laps on the way to work....a sign of the end-times?

the sunday i stayed home from church.....

ok, so....the clock in the corner of this screen says 9:48 am......a time that i am rarely at home on a sunday.....when the weather is especially bad the church will call of services altogether as a way of keeping us all safe from the perils of ice and snow.....on this morning i am isolating my cold from my church family, mostly because i likely caught the cold from someone who went on out into the world feeling wretched rather than keeping their contagion away from society.....frankly, i should have stayed home yesterday, but i thought that a warm swim followed by refreshing errands would make me feel better......yea, right.......i feel worse today, what with the sneezing, the watery eyes, the stuffed up pressure in my sinus cavities that makes my jaws ache....and so i have treated myself to a rather hot whirlpool bath with hot compresses on my face, and several cups of Earl Grey, and I am thinking of going back to bed.....

come thou long-awaited green house

ok, so...the long-awaited greenhouse is nearly done.....i say nearly, because now that i am working in it, i see the need to make improvements originally down-played by the builders....like an exhaust window with a temperature-gauged hinge.....yes, one can open up the doors when the temperature gets too high inside.....but i cannot do this from work.....i can see myself driving home at lunch on unseasonably warm days to open those doors....driving to and from work to check on a greenhouse is hardly sustainable food production....aside from the temperature issue...there is the lack of any opening big enough for an extension cord.....in the event we are sub-zero for a few days i might want to warm things up a tad.......heavy sigh....i am perusing the seed catalogs for varieties that winter-over well in hopes they will do as well in the greenhouse.....i have found an unused packet of rouge d'hiver lettuce that looks to be winterhardy...will plant these the next time i am home during daylight.....

cultural differences

ok, so it has been months since my last blog....but as this space is resrved for the preservation of my (more important) thoughts and circumstances as i age, i feel the need to put down the events of the past few days. For starters, my eldest's girlfriend has flown back to Florida to spend the holidays with her family. He plans to drive there sometime next week to meet her family and to vacation in a warm climate. The drive will take him within the geographical vicinity of the birth mother to the youngest of our children. Naturally, the opportunity to accompany the eldest was put to the youngest, and that is where the chaos began. The birth mother has hounded the youngest for 'details' of the visit. Seems there are numerous complications to a potential visit: the birth mother's spouse works three jobs, they have taken in a border with a baby who must keep her job as a condition of probation, the restraining orders against close neighbors.....you get the picture. The travel dates have been shared, but even the dates has not been enough to quell the constant stream of texts asking for more information. Should Junior take off on the expected date of arrival? Should they find a sitter for the baby? It occured to me last night, when I lay sleepless after another unfortunate interchange with the child in question about the known trip details as i knew them: there is a cultural disconnect at play here. in our family context, we get up 'early' on a travel day and drive....with stops for food and comfort when needed, armed with printed travel directions that include expected mileage and timing. when this couple have (has?) visited us, they left whenever the spouse got off work, even if it was late at night, and drove through the night....even if it meant arriving while we were still asleep.......they have been known to sleep in their car in front of our house and wait until they saw lights come on. when they were told the arrival date, they appear to have figured that this child could arrive any time after midnight on that date, rather than 14 hours after a reasonable morning starting time.....the child in question, despite her increasing agitation over the 'lack of details' has yet to google the particulars on her own...she has both addresses, and could find out for herself just how long of a trip she has in front of her.....and could possibly come to the realization that there are many factors that will confound an estimated time of arrival- sheer distance, wrecks,construction, disorientation......as for me, i will continue to pray that the eldest and the youngest can complete a journey of that length without un-mediated theatrics.....and that the visit itself will be void of drama and danger....amen, amen and amen

the way

ok, so....we went back to lexington this evening to see the way.....i called ahead to make certain that the projector was working and that we would not have to see the other film playing at the kentucky by default....like last sunday when we saw the ides of march because the projector for the way was broken.....ah well.....all this after an afternoon at the wildlife refuge and a substantial hike.....for the record..the way is about the pilgrimage to santiago de compestello....800 km of walking across southern france and northern spain to see the site fo the burial of st. james.....i envision myself on such an extended hike....and said as much to my treasured spouse on the way home.....whereupon he expressed concern that AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT i could not possibly entertain such a journey....he went so far as to express surprise that i managed to hike the refuge trails AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT......he went on to express concern that i lack the fitness required for my upcoming trip to paris......for the record, i weigh almost to the pound what i weighed on my last 2 trips to paris and my last trip to london...and somehow managed to drag myself to the sights AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT.....for the record i walk 4 lunches a week on a church-sponsored indoor walking track....as well as several extra 30 minutes in the evening on the treadmill...seems i need to be doing more..step it up a bit.......like the time slots when i am playing scrabble.....seems seeing me at the computer rather than on the treadmill this morning is what set off this day's diatribe.....heavy sigh.....no clue how i will manage to drag myself up to bed AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT