Archive for September, 2008

The Good News

Published on September 29, 2008 in My Peeps. 3 Comments

I didn’t get off to a very good start today, but by early afternoon I wasn’t hurting so much.

Saturday night, my pal Angie brought us dinner. Roast chicken, roasted potatoes with green beans, rolls, salad and brownies for dessert. Yum!

Sunday night, my pal Amy brought us dinner. Homemade beef stew, with carrots and potatoes and mushrooms and celery and parsnips. WTH is a parsnip? Homemade whole wheat bread and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for dessert. We ate leftover salad with it. There were leftovers for lunch and enough in the freezer for another whole meal. Yum!

I have good friends.

What is UP with my FEET, Part 3

Published on September 27, 2008 in Miscellany. 4 Comments

Just 30 minutes after my post on Tuesday, I started feeling kind of lousy. Then, I started having abdominal pain - BAD abdominal pain. I took a Vicodin (that I thought was just codeine, oh well) and slept for a few hours but woke again after midnight in worse pain than when I started. DH and I hemmed and hawed (I also groaned and cried) and we decided that the symptoms warranted a trip to the ER.

Four days later, I’m home. The abdominal pain was in my lymph nodes, stressed and upset from working overtime to generate the adequate white cells needed to fight…

wait for it…
Continue reading ‘What is UP with my FEET, Part 3′

Quick Update

Published on September 23, 2008 in Miscellany. 3 Comments
  • I joined Facebook. Find me there!
  • I have been working really, really hard this week, and it’s only Tuesday (caution - language).
  • My foot is still messed up. It’s somewhat better, but I think it’s just a lull. I probably need to go to the MD. I haven’t been able to bring myself to try the onion and garlic treatment.
  • My new grandchild is going to be another little girl. She has two functioning kidneys, and her renal arteries are working just fine. She has eyelids, and they are closed. She does a “Thinker” pose. I think “Ann” is a lovely name, don’t you? One of the other grandmas suggested Mercedes. DD was unimpressed.

What is up with my feet?

Published on September 13, 2008 in Miscellany. 9 Comments

I had an insect bite a couple of months ago that messed up my left foot. Now I seem to have a similar mess-up on my right foot. My toe is badly swollen and the foot is slightly swollen and with a rash. I had thought it was just athlete’s foot (hah!) but it’s been way, way worse today.

I put some hydrocortisone on my toe and I was able to feel my pulse in my toe, and watch my toe change color (whitish to reddish to whitish) in time with my pulse. Simultaneously very odd and very cool.

Wahh.

Reality is for people…

Published on September 10, 2008 in Miscellany. 3 Comments

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a sharp pain in the back of my shoulder. This has happened before. It hurts a lot. I took a couple of Advil and was able to get back to sleep. My shoulder still really hurts though, so I’ve taken some codeine. Knocks the pain RIGHT OUT.

This morning I was listening to a Howard Jones concert that was broadcast on a German radio station in 1985 (thanks, Matt.) I was way more amused than reasonable by the occasional DJ interruptions. The DJ has a very typical DJ voice, but in German. I don’t speak German. For some reason I found this quite funny. Do you think it was the codeine.

The German DJ also reminded me of my friend Bettina, who took German in 8th and 9th grade (and maybe longer…)

Finish the sentence started in the title of this post.

Lots of Stuff

Published on September 6, 2008 in Miscellany, Life in Louisiana and The Fam. 8 Comments

My mother is better. Her lung infection seems to be under control, so she’s more busy and energetic. She will be seeing the surgeon about the hernia late this month.

I saw my daughter a few weeks ago. It was really, really good to see her again, although it was a very short visit. She was in Tampa on vacation (her in-laws bought the tickets, because they love her more than I do), so we drove over to Gainesville and then drove down to Tampa on Saturday to see them. We went to Siesta Key, rated #3 on Dr. Beach’s Top 10 US beaches list. I so love the ocean, and this is a beautiful place on the Gulf. The visit would have been nicer and more fun if I hadn’t spent an hour helping DH (fruitlessly) search for his glasses in said Gulf. The lifeguard said they would probably wash up on the beach in 20 years, encrusted with barnacles. DH was fretting because he’s almost blind without his glasses. I was fretting because new glasses are going to set us back at least $300.

Matt over at Addicted to Vinyl wrote a couple of posts that covered a lot of material, which is what triggered this post covering a lot of material. One of his ‘graphs pointed out the painful reality that the Springsteen tour is o-ver. I found out from my sister-in-law after I arrived in Gainesville that Bruce was in Jacksonville (just 90 minutes away!) the Saturday night we were there. If I had known sooner, I probably would have arranged the weekend differently! In any case, we returned to Gainesville from Tampa late in the evening Saturday, so I wasn’t able to just show up at the last minute and buy a ticket. Matt’s reminder that Bruce is all done made me pout all over again that I missed it.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t have wanted to see my daughter and her family for any less time than I got - it was little enough any way. I really miss her. My grandchildren are beautiful and growing like…well, like children I haven’t seen in over a year. My daughter looked wonderful for someone who has had a headache for three weeks. She’s looking mighty slim as a result of three months of NVP (Nausea and Vomiting from Pregnancy, fka morning sickness). Oh, how I don’t miss that time of my life. It’s hard to remember when you’re going through it that you get a baby when you’re all done.

My evacuation from Gustav is almost at an end, possibly to be followed in short order by an evacuation for Hurricane Ike. On the one hand, I sort of think I should just stay here, but on the other hand, if I do, I would probably be here for another two full weeks, which is three weeks gone, which is way longer than I want to go without [fill in activity you think I will miss the most here]. I fly home through DC tomorrow a.m. My flight leaves at 7:30 and I’ll be arriving in NOLA around 2:00. Hopefully Ike will go to the Yucatan or fizzle out completely. In any case, we’re prepared.

I have an opinion post about feminism at my other blog. Probably some of my readers won’t like it much.

Good News at Home

Published on September 3, 2008 in Life in Louisiana. 2 Comments

DH and The Kid are home. They have power and there’s no apparent damage to the house. No cell phone coverage at the moment, either, though.

Denouement

Published on September 2, 2008 in Life in Louisiana and The Fam. 5 Comments

DH and The Kid are still in Gainesville, and planning to head back home tomorrow. I flew to Columbus from Jacksonville yesterday. I will be here all week, at least. I have a ticket home for Sunday. Our neighbor says the house seems to be fine, though we had no power this afternoon. DH will know more when he arrives.

My mother is ill. Her large intestine is herniated and she has a lung infection. The only treatment for the herniated intestine is surgery, and because of her severe atherosclerosis and history of stroke, she is a very poor candidate for surgery.

So, I’d like to be able to say that everything is just fine, but that would be a lie.