Time Sure Flies When You're Not Having Fun

This past month of October was one nasty month.  It all started on the first when my husband had to have a procedure done.   The same procedure he had done over five years ago and came out of that with no problems.  This time was a lot different.  First of all the doctor was supposed to see him as a follow-up two weeks later but that was cancelled and then the second date was cancelled as well.  We were told the doctor had a family medical emergency and would be gone for most of the month.  Finally we were able to see him on the 28th.  By then so much had happened and was going on with R that four days prior we had to turn to our family doctor for some help.  Without going into a lot of detail things are finally looking up for R.  It was rough, believe me.  I suffered right along with him.

Last week R had three doctor appointments...all follow ups to tests he had done prior to October.  I had to have one rescheduled because he was just not up to driving or  traveling that distance and I was not wanting to drive on the thruway.  If I can find a different way to get to where I need to go without  having to drive on a thruway I will grab it.  Even if it takes longer.

And now we are in a new month.  Hopefully this month will be a lot kinder to us.  We have no appointments for this month or the next.  But then in January they start up again.   It is never ending when we get to be our age I suppose.  I only have two family doctor appointments over the course of a year with the occasional blood work being done.  And I have to go back in a year to get my eyes examined after having gotten cataract surgery for both eyes back in September.  I came out of that with no problems whatsoever.   It was such an easy procedure that if I had three eyes I was ready to get that one done right away, too.  The only glasses I need to wear now are off-the-rack reading glasses and I don't always need them if the print is large enough to see without them.

My eyesight had gotten so bad that I stopped driving for a few years.  But now I am back in the drivers seat of my trusty Mustang and all is well in my world again.  I really missed driving that car.

Two months ago my one blood test came back showing my thyroid was not doing what it is supposed to be doing like making enough of what it is supposed to be making.  It is under-active, so now I am on a thyroid medication for that.   The only problem I have with that is it has to be taken an hour or more before I eat in the morning and I am a late sleeper.  I usually wake up anywhere between 5 and 6 am so I keep the medication by my bedside with a bottle of water and I take it then.  It works for me.

Other than what has been going on this past month all is well in the household...for now at least.  Fingers crossed.

 

Today Is My Birthday...but Who's Counting

Sorry I have been lax in posting but we have had numerous doctor appointments and procedures done and blood drawn etc. that my head is still spinning.  And we won't see daylight until mid-November.  90% of those things belong to my husband.

I recently had cataract surgery and I go back to have my eyes tested in a few weeks to determine whether I need to wear prescription glasses.  For now I do not need them and besides the time I wore contact lenses, this is the first I have been able to be without glasses other than reading glasses.  Hallelujah! 

They claim today is the first day of Fall/Autumn but we are experiencing 90 degree weather and it is hard to think about leaves changing color with all this warmth.  I prefer this kind of weather and dread winter.  I stopped liking winter when I learned how to drive and have hated it ever since.  Although I don't do that much driving these days I still do not like the bone-chilling weather of winter.

They always say no news is good news and since I don't have any more news that's it for now.

 

Summer Is Fading...

...and I hate to see it go.   I prefer the heat over the nasty raw coldness along with snow and ice of winter.  Our winters here in SE PA are raw...and the air is moist making it a lot worse.

Another reason for my disliking summer leaving so soon is that the two of us have a lot of medical appointments coming up through the end of the year and into the next year. 

I am having laser surgery done on both my eyes over the span of two weeks starting at the end of this month.  I wish that was already done.  There will be follow-up visits, too.  I also have my semi-annual family doctor visit this month.  So far that is it for my appointments. 

R is having routine work done as well but not on his eyes.  Other parts of his body.  We clear one hurdle and up pops another with him.  That's just the way it is when one grows older.     Something's always going on.

Tomorrow we both need to have blood drawn and we found a new place to go to that is much closer than the other lab.  The new one popped up back in May and it is in the same system as both of our doctors are that need the tests to be done.  R also needs an EKG and it could be done where we are going tomorrow; however, he would have to be there at 8:00am.  The other alternative is to go another day to a local hospital where he always goes for those types of tests.

Needless to say these never-ending tests are mind boggling and quite bothersome.  R does not complain, he just has them done and gets over it.  I, on the other hand, feel like they are quite intrusive to my life. 

I like to sleep as late as I want to, get up and have breakfast eventually, read the newspaper, do odd chores that need to be done, eat lunch, do more odd jobs or putter around on the computer, make dinner for the two of us, more computer puttering, feed the cats (inside and outside) when they need to be fed, do whatever else needs to be done and by 8:00 I am ready to watch some TV programming.  When something like tests and surgery are on the horizon it kind of upsets me because it is getting in the way of my life the way I want to live it these days. 

Gee, it really sounds like I am complaining.  Well guess what...I am.  Life was so much more simpler when we were still in school with no worries whatsoever.  But good Lord I would not want to go back there and have to go through the years again to get to where I am now.  For the record though I think there are some things I would do differently and make other choices. 

And it would be nice to shave maybe ten or fifteen years off of what I am now.  But I guess we can't have it both ways.  

Two-And-One-Half Years

That's exactly how many years are between my brother and myself.    He is older.  

I grew up with my brother so that meant I knew only "boy" things.  So instead of playing with dolls I played with trucks and played baseball and got muddy and did whatever it was little boys did.  And to this day I prefer driving a pickup truck to some fancy car.  Except for my Mustang -- but that's because of the "I want to go fast" in me.

My brother and I were quite the pair.  He had a 2-1/2 year head start on me so it was natural that he was the first in anything.  To say that I was a tomboy is putting it mildly.  Where he was, I was.  I was never considered a tag-along little sister who got in the way.  And we always got into trouble together.  And boy did we get in trouble.

I remember one time in particular when we set a field on fire (we lived in the "country") and then ran home.  We caught a lot of heck for that little escapade.  Luckily the fire was found before it got out of hand.  I think it may even have burned itself out.

Then there was the time we played Superman and attempted to jump off a small out-building, cape included.   We were stopped before anyone got really hurt.  Parents...they really take all the fun out of everything.

My most favorite memory was the day we were shooting arrows into the sky using the small sets my aunt had bought us.  Toy sets, that is.  We situated ourselves behind another small building that sat alongside the road.  Unbeknownst to us one of the arrows came straight down
on the roof of a car passing by.  The road was not heavily traveled as it was a small road off the beaten path.  Luck would have it we captured a car.  The driver stopped and knocked on the door bringing my mother outside.  Boy, did we ever catch heck when our father came home...after a hard day of work when he was super tired.

All these incidences occurred between the age of 6 and 8, but I can still recall them as if they happened just yesterday. 

I wanted to insert this photo somewhere above but it would not work and I am still learning how to do things with this new computer.  I think if you click on the photo it will get bigger.  In the photo is myself and my brother along with our mother and paternal grandfather.  We were all staring into a very bright sun and everyone is squinting.

Stop The Insanity

When earth was created, whether it was by God or some other phenomenon, a whole array of fauna was born with  every living thing having its purpose during its life.  However, what was created man is ever so slowly taking away.

For instance...much of the wildlife in southeastern Pennsylvania is losing their habitat.  Why? 
The nasty answer is developments -- both residential and commercial.  Every time I see empty space with a For Sale sign on it I cringe.  It doesn't take long before mother earth is gouged and the ugly buildings etc. appear.  Prior to that happening, the land was/is a peaceful place for many animals.  Some call it their home, some are just passing through.  Take the whitetail deer for example.  For centuries they have had their own travel paths, never straying from those paths.  Those paths disappear with man moving in and taking over most of that area the animals have called home for so long.  So where do they go since they have been pushed out of their homes?  They are creatures of habit and when you take that away they have no place to go so they reluctantly venture elsewhere.  And soon that is taken away from them as well.  Just keep pushing them out until they no longer exist.

Man keeps insisting on taking their homes away, all in the name of GREED of the mighty dollar.  And what really upsets me is when people move into their precious new home and are "pestered" by wild animals they are the first to get upset and complain.  All I want to say to them is:  Folks, they were here first so where the hell do you expect them to go?  Do you want to kill all of them so you can live happily ever after?  Think again! 

One of these days, and I probably won't live long enough to see it,  there will be more houses than people to fill them and because of that many animals will have become extinct.

How sad. 

(When I was writing this I was thinking about how this parallels with what happened when the white man (yes, I am white) came to this country and pushed the natives to oblivion and almost-extinction.  Apparently they still haven't learned a darn thing.)

Jewelry Box Mystery (And Surprise)

This past weekend with nothing to do but wait for the night race in Kentucky, I decided to go through the big jewelry box that belonged to my mother.  It has been 14-1/2 years since I took possession when it was handed to me by my sister.  At the time I felt there was nothing of real value in it because my sister was like a vulture before both parents passed within 2-1/2 months of each other.  At the time, I opened it, looked things over quickly, closed it and there it stayed all these years in our spare room.

My husband helped me untangle everything since it seemed as if someone had grabbed a fistful of things and tossed it all into the drawers.  There were pins, brooches, necklaces, clip-on earrings and some other small pins that belonged to my father, a package of unopened hearing aid batteries good through 2004, and a dime.   I don't remember a lot of the things in there but I do know my mother wore mostly gold jewelry (or goldtone) and rarely wore silver things.  So finding silver jewelry (mostly the necklaces) was a surprise to me.  But a much larger surprise lay in waiting...

There was a 2 inch pewter Maltese cross on a very chunky chain -- something you would see a biker wearing.  I was elated to find it and I will wear it whenever we ride our bike.  I will also wear my Harley clothing along with my black boots with the silver chains on them.

The fact that the Maltese cross was in my mother's jewelry box will always be a mystery to me  because it sure threw me for a loop as they say.  My mother (as far as I know) had never been on a motorcycle and my father never owned one, so I have no idea who it belongs to.  One thing I do know for certain is that it's now mine. 

(Footnotes:  1) motorcycle riders wear both the Maltese cross and the German Iron Cross.   
2) I am not able to ask my sister where it came from for reasons of my own.)

This Should Be Required Reading

It has taken me this long to finally read this book.  I am getting through it slowly.  It is a difficult read in that it breaks my heart with just about every page.

What the government did to those people is outrageous.  I truly cannot believe what they went through as they kept being pushed all over the country with most of them herded onto reservations like cattle.  

The lust for gold and good land etc. by the people that came to this country was (and still is) nothing short of greediness.   

Long before the Pilgrims came in 1620 the Spaniards arrived in the 1500's bringing with them horses, slaves, and pigs to take care of those that died along the way.  (That part is not in the book.)

In my honest opinion, this book should be required reading in every school and every grade starting with middle schools on up.  

Anyone who reads this and can still say they don't care what happened back then and still call themselves Americans is not telling the truth.  The native people never stood a chance...

Mondays

When I worked I hated Mondays with a passion.   Sundays used to be a bad time for me especially as the day wore on and into the night.  A lot of times I would get sick to my stomach. Toward the end of my job those days just got worse.

And then the day came that my job and I parted company.  I was freed and relieved.  When that happened I had any day I wanted to do absolutely nothing.  But those days were few because there was plenty to do around the house.   When I worked it seemed I never had time to take care of business at home and a lot of things got left undone.  Not so anymore.

Since then things are so much better and now Mondays are just another day for me.

R and I usually save Mondays and Tuesdays as days of rest and relaxation.  A lot of times we use both those days when we need to set up appointments.   

On another subject, I figured out a way to get at least some of my cherished photos back that I lost when  my other computer died.  I paged through all my posts here and transferred what I really wanted to My Pictures.  I am still so new with this new Windows system and it has become a learning process for me.  I also have quite a few photos stored at another place that I haven't visited for years.  I recently was able to get back into that but now I have to figure out how to transfer some of those photos as well.  They're a little picky it seems.

Upcoming posts will be about bringing this blog up to speed with happenings over the past year, about my fur babies, about our obnoxious next-door neighbors, about happenings with our township and what just recently happened with the manager of said township, etc.  Lots in store, lots to tell, but it does take time for me to formulate just how I want to write about a certain subject.  So be patient because Lord knows I am not. 

I hope to be adding more photos as well to this blog.  I stopped taking photos on both my cameras when I could no longer use the memory card in the old computer.  For now I have to figure out how to use this new memory card slot because I have a few saved photos on both cameras.   When new items are purchased user guides or manuals are far and few between and all I got with this all-in-one computer is a large insert showing what is where but not how to use them.  I have so much to learn.

Hey People...I'm Back...

Yes, I am back but for how long I don't know.  

A lot has happened since I left toward the end of last year.  I lost a total of 45 lbs. (so far) on my new food regimen  and my husband whom I shall refer to as R from now on has had another knee replacement earlier this year.   

I recently had to replace my computer (at the beginning of this month) but I am thankful that it lasted nine years like the first computer I had.  This is my third computer.  This time I went for the All-in-One model.  So far I am loving it despite going from Windows 7 to Windows 10. 

I did lose all my photos and I am sure someone somewhere can figure out how to get them off that hard drive.  I was fully prepared for that PC to eventually die and was backing things up, writing things down, printing documents etc.  

I really enjoyed writing on this blog but I hit a wall back in 2018 and was frustrated so i just gave up.  But for now I think I have so much more to say and write about...I hope anyway.

Here is my quote for the day:

If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
---Ronald Reagan