Rehab and Lee ~~

Last night Lee was transferred to a rehab center for a minimum of one week.  I went to visit her for a few hours today and that place is so gorgeous I could have moved in myself.  Usually places like this have a great entrance lobby, but then you go to the rooms that are always way back in the back, and those aren’t anything like that lobby.  This was completely different.  It “looks” new but it isn’t. It’s just that the decor is so fabulous that it makes you think that it is. Wall paper, beautiful vibrant up to date paint, paintings, crown molding everywhere, beautiful floors, working gas fireplaces surrounded by shiny brass that are in the hallway walls and showing through to the other sides that are the most beautifully appointed dining rooms you ever saw.  I thought her room could never be that nice, until I walked in.  Wow.  A wonderful private room that I swear looked like a 4 star hotel room.  I wouldn’t blame her if she refused to leave.  My imagination was already knocking out walls to the next room and arranging my own furniture so that I could live there full time. I’ll try to remember to take a camera with me next time.

Tomorrow I’ll be picking her up at 1:45pm and taking her to her cancer doctor’s appointment.  I happen to know this doc on a personal and social level so this will be nice to see him.  I just wish it was on other terms and not Lee’s health.  She told me today that she thinks he is getting ready to start her back on the chemo again. But there was some good news today, and that was about the bone marrow test.  Nothing has gotten even a tiny bit worse. No leukemia showing mounting in the marrow. Whew.  I got that information straight from Lee, but I had the oddest feeling that she wasn’t saying everything. My gut feelings have never been off.  We’ll see. I hope they are this time.

I took a quick picture of Lee’s legs this past week.  One of the legs had only a small amount of marks left as you’ll see, but the other (her left) was still really beat up looking – and the picture doesn’t even do it justice for as bad as it looked in person. In this shot, the swelling had also gone done remarkably and now those legs were only twice their size instead of 3 times.  Also, the very bad place you see, in person looked as if an entire hunk of meat had been gouged out of her leg and was now trying to close up even thought it was still oozing badly.They may not look that swollen to you, but you don’t know what fabulous and curvy legs she had, plus you can see that knee caps are still not showing.  Anyway, at least things are looking up and the docs have said that no scars will be visible at all when this is done. I’d say that’s pretty darn amazing.  CLICK to enlarge:

Busy day tomorrow so I’m closing out for now.  Lee said to thank all of you for your concern and for checking up on her. She was bowled over by that.  I loved it….love you all, too.

XOXOXO

Name That Hum! ~~

As I was eating dinner tonight and watching Two and a Half Men, all of a sudden I said to myself, “What’s that humming?” I turned down the TV to mute and it stopped.  I left the TV on mute while I fixed that shouldn’t-have-a-second-helping plate of stuffed salmon and buttered steamed broccoli mixed with cauliflower.  Oh yeah, for sure dinner was great, but as I was standing at the stove, I heard it again!  It was ME! (ok, “I”, but who cares).  I just stood there for a moment and all these memories came flooding back. 

About 30 years ago, my great aunt, Ida, at 92 would walk around the house humming.  It drove my father insane. Instead of just ignoring it, he’d say, “Ida, for God’s sake, cut it out!”  To which she always answered, “What?”  Well, time went by and Ida passed away, then later Dad passed away and Mom was left in the house.  One day I was there for lunch. I was sitting and completely enjoying my sandwich when all of a sudden I heard this humming.  Oh noooooo, it was Mom.  She didn’t even know it.  We left the house and went shopping and she was still humming, and it wasn’t even a tune.  Now, I was never going to criticize her like Dad did with Ida, so I remained zipped.  Years went by, the humming kept on, and one day Mom passed away, too.

So back to dinner…..and the hum.  What does this mean???  Is it an age related thing? Is it an alone-living thing?  And holy smoke, there wasn’t even a tune!  Now I can’t help but wonder how long I have been doing this and exactly how many people have been tearing their hair out in frustration.  Oh Lord, why me?

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To update about Lee:  Tonight she was being transferred to a rehab facility for a minimum of a week.  I’ll be going over there instead and on Monday she has 2 appointments, one with the rehab doctor and another to resume chemo.  How much can a body take?  My hat is off to her.  Anyway, you’d think that a rehab center would provide the transportation to the appointments that they, themselves, have made for her, but noooooo, no such luck.  I’ll take her myself.  So the news about her today is overall good.  Her legs’ swelling is going down and the lesions are slowly closing and healing.  Now we just want the good stuff to continue.

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Between the hospital and my own errands, I was also talked into doing a 2nd blog – do you hear me, Carole? You all know by now if you followed me on WLS,  that I adore my pets, 2 cats by the name of Sam & Lucy. Yeah, I’m one of those old cat ladies you read about that have no kids and transfer all their affection to their pets.  So be it; they’re terrific and they’re fun and they’re smart and adorable.  Need I go on.  The thing is, when Carole (see, you aren’t getting out of this) talked me into this, I thought, “Wooohoooo, I can DO this”, and never, EVER thought about all the rest of the stuff going on.  Oh wow.  I opened the new blog (http://lucythebeautiful.blogspot.com) and now I’m am trying to answer bloggers from BOTH places.  I might die. By sheer luck, I twisted my ankle on the stairs and have been home for 2 days, mind you, 2 days in my pjs because there’s no time to even dress for typing!  Thank you, Carole.  I love you.  ;)

Time to call it a night and tend to the finger nubs.  I’ll be around as soon as I can and will try not to get too far behind. Love and hugs and real admiration to all my blog buddies and especially those that have 2 or more blogs. Miracles, that’s what they are.

I am now hummingly out of here for the night.

XOXOXO

B-R-R

That’s what Mom used to say; she’d spell it – B,R,R….brrrrr. It’s very cold here today. It was 14 F this morning and only reached 20 today, but that was actually ok with me because it was my day to be home, vegetate, do some laundry of my own, and definitely take a long overdue blog walk as I’m sure you’ve seen by now.

This past week, (16 days really) has been busy with sitting with my friend, Lee, still in the hospital and also running errands for her and for myself.  After that long in the hospital, she had bills that were coming due, plants to be watered, clothes to be laundered, hair to be done (or as well as it could be), and calls to be made.  Very busy time.  This coming week she is scheduled for another bone marrow test so I doubt she’ll be home anytime soon.  Besides, if you saw her, you’d know that she’s not able to take care of herself yet anyway.  Her legs were 3 times their regular size and there were beginning lesions opening up.  Then on top of that, biopsies were done and she had severe reactions to that, too.  I’ve never felt so badly for someone.  It’s been a lot of pain for her and she’s still on morphine.  To give you an idea of the swelling, when she entered the hospital, she weighed 130 lbs.  Since there, she only eats like a bird, and then yesterday weighed 163 lbs.  They have now started her on a diuretic, thank goodness, and it’s starting to work.  Seeing 33 lbs extra on 2 legs is some sight. Scary.

A week ago, I was getting up at the crack of dawn, looked out of the window and saw this HUGE sink hole in the middle of the road.  Now this happened a few days after the first incidence of losing water to my house. Sheesh, I still have to back up to explain this.  Last year, there was a geyser of a water spout rising from the road just across the street. Everyone lost their water service.  The road was dug up and the pipes replaced due to age.  So now it’s another year gone by.  Same spot, new geyser.  The county trucks were back out but this time I was the only one without water.  The digging began.  First they found that the other repair was done with plastic pipes instead of copper.  A redo was in order. Because of this 2nd break, the line running to my house broke at the water meter.  The next sight I saw was my yard being dug up to replace everything with copper there as well.  Listen, I know this had to be done, but lordy, I’d just resodded my yard all by myself last Spring, and now it’s dug up clay.   Here’s where they were digging:

Notice how close they are to that pine tree.  They cut right into the roots of it and I’ll bet in another year that tree will die. Glad I took pictures.  See the roots below? (You can always click to enlarge) :

So, repairs were done and I had my water back about 12 hours later.  I also had a dug up yard. All they did was semi-smooth the clay over that side of my yard.  Gee, thanks.

A few days ago, I was getting up early again and glanced out the window (now we’re back to the present).  There in the middle of the street was this HUGE sink hole in the middle of the road. Even a new little geyser had begun across the street.  Now this sink hole was about 3 ft deep and 5 ft across.  The county trucks show up again and the digging begins.  In fact, the digging started at that hole, ran the length of my house, the next house and all the way to the highway.  They don’t even know what caused it.  They dug and dug and filled and filled:

I didn’t even bother going out to take pictures of them digging all the way down the street, and it didn’t matter.  You know why? After ALL that work and ripping up the street and refilling everything, they left, and 2 hours later they were back --- because the entire thing caved in again.  It was like the twilight zone.  Again, they didn’t know why, and again all the repairs started over. As of today, the road hasn’t sunk for the 3rd time but we are holding our breaths.  You should see all of the neighbors and myself skirting around the middle of the road.  I heard my 80+ neighbor say they were afraid the darn road was going to swallow them up.  I look at the whole thing from a different angle – and here’s my mean side.  Our street has been used as a cut through for the last year and cars will come flying down the road.  Good golly, we have kids and pets here! The county even put speed bumps in but that didn’t stop the huge amount of traffic and some still speeding their heads off.  So here’s what I hope, and I don’t care how mean it sounds. I hope that one of those speeding cut-throughers has the fortune to ride right over that spot just as the road collapses.  It would serve them right. Up until now, I’ve waited for those folks with my camera and a pad of paper.  Just when they get close, I’ve been running out to the side of the road, lifting my camera like I’m taking a picture of them, pointing with my finger to their face and then looking like I’m writing it all down.  Well, I can say it’s kept a few off the road but not enough.  Wow, this turned into a rant and it’s not even Wednesday.  I need to calm down.  Hey, Arlene, bring over that glass of Bailey’s.  I’ll make the next blog walk in spurts as I can.  I never like getting behind and missing out on what’s going on in your neck of the woods.  Be good, be careful, be loving.  

XOXOXO

The Januarys Of Our Lives ~~

I keep this little desktop calendar going as my default.  It’s old as the hills, a la 1997, but I’m so used to it that I never changed to anything better. I do wish it would take birthdays and roll them over to the next year, though I’m not complaining.

We are all off and running into January now. I went back about 6 years to all the Januarys and never realized before that I always got hit with the flu and/or pneumonia every single January even though I’d gotten a flu shot each year and I’d gotten a pneumonia shot to last for years, too.  Ok, I guess the month is here again for 2011.  I’ll keep an eye out.

Last January of 2010, I was moving all the big stuff out of my prior abode, storing part of it in a giant storage unit, and then unloading Mom’s things and storing most of that, too.  When I think back to all that physical labor plus being so darn sick, I don’t even know how I lived through it.  Well, you do what you have to do, right?  You can collapse after.  Last January, our friend, Curtis was also getting new tests done and trying to recoup from his bout with vasculitis.  It was a tough month for him, too.

The very beginning of that month saw tons of snow and ice and I’d noted on the calendar about the hair-raising trips back and forth to the storage unit. Other than being so sick, I think it was lucky the cars and truck weren’t hit and totaled on the roads.  We ended up with a grand total of 36-38 inches of snow for December and January and everyone got their wish for a white Christmas.  After that, not so many got on the Band Wagon of Wishes for this Christmas.

Last January was also the month of Eric, the accountant. Remember him?  He’s the one I wrote about that made the major move on me when I went to see about the taxes being done.  I can still see him with those puppy dog eyes and hear him making that ungodly groaning noise when he trapped me in “the hug”.  Good lord, what a day that was.  Obviously I did not hire him.

Then, same month, my oldest friend, Lee, was put into the hospital and diagnosed with the same cancerous disease that Curtis had.  Well, Lee has been going through chemo since then and actually doing pretty well. Until now. She’s back in the hospital and has been for a whole week.  Yesterday, the Eve, was her birthday, and I took her her favorite Wonton Soup and bunches of birthday cards.  She is in an isolation room and you have to put on all this plastic garb and gloves before you can visit.  Everything is seeming a bit like a rewinding repeat of last year.  She is worried that she will never get out of the hospital, and to be frank, so am I.  (Update: She called me and now cannot even walk with help, and lesions are opening on her legs. I am having a very hard time not showing extreme worry when I am with her. I am very, very afraid now and even sorry to pass this along in my post.)  Here is my friend, Lee, on her balcony:

There is nothing I can do to change Lee’s situation no matter how I try, and if I don’t write about something else, I will crumble into tears, so, enough of the nightmare January stuff for now;  here’s a funny to at least raise the spirits for a moment.  Last January, at the end of the month, a friend of mine decided to throw a party.  He LOVED my dip and knew it was my own recipe of over 30 years.  Everyone said that dip is like a drug and you can’t stop eating it once you start.  He begged and he pleaded for that recipe and I finally caved and gave it to him, but with the stipulation that he never give it out to anyone else.  He agreed. Ha. People will do anything to get what they want. Here’s what happened at that party.  Lots of people, lots of food and everyone was having a wonderful time.  My friend was being the perfect host and visiting with every person there.  As I was mingling, I kept hearing comment after comment about how fabulous that dip was and I really did feel very proud.  Then I saw my friend with a larger group and I started walking over to them.  As I made it just to my friend’s back, I heard one of the guests in that group say, “Oh wow, this is the best damn dip I’ve ever had in my life!”  Without a pause, my friend pipes up with, “Soooo glad you like it, it’s my own recipe.”  Say what??  I was almost fuming and I tapped him on the back.  He turned, saw me, turned beet red and said, “Ohhhh s**t”.  I think he saw the fire spurting out of my eyes.  He had no choice, so he turned back around to his guests – thinking he could still save face and I wouldn’t hear everything he said, and in a half way whisper to them said, “Well, she helped me with it.”  I can only say that this was the first and last time I ever grabbed a guy by the rear end and pinched that cheek so hard he screamed like a girl. But it worked. He said to the group, “Ok, ok, it’s HER recipe.”  I thought he was actually going to cry. Tough.  He’s just lucky I didn’t grab somewhere else!

See? January can be fun!

Oh, and as a quick post script, I forgot to mention that both laptops that I won arrived and they are Perfecto!

XOXOXO