After a longer 5 months

Saturday, January 16, 2016 @ 6:36 AM

Good morning.  I know this is the part where we say, Hi, My name is Ann (Marie) and it’s been almost exactly 5 months since we’ve written.  We did start a note to Dr. Marvin a couple of days ago, but it was only four paragraphs and we erased it.  We’re back to wanting to write again – especially in the morning, and we want to be able to write safely enough to do the journal, though we might write and then cut-out parts that are specifically for Dr. Marvin, especially in writing our thought on people relationships that we’re in.  Seems all along it’s been something that we’ve worried about, but never sure how to deal about it so we wane from writing to much to not writing at all – We’ve got to come up with a better idea than that.  So, again, more writing, but less family and friend writing.  At least the kind of thing that might upset them if they happened upon the writing, you know?

Oh yeah, your getting a lot of the old bad language habits.  We are after all still us.  Fighting the urge here to ask, “Right?”  Hmm, we’ll that was at least a conscious move hehe.  A lot has happened since writing last on August 17^th.  Well, not a real lot but some pretty significant stuff.  My Mother has died.  We hadn’t seen that coming.  She died September 3, 2015.  They are not sure of the exact time.  They found her in her home, sitting on her favorite recliner with both Bibles in hand.  She had her old familiar Bible and the one that we had given to her – so we’re thinking that it was the morning – Thursday.  There was toast on the plate on her counter and we knew she read her Bibles first thing in the morning.  She died of a stroke, which she had had in the past.  There might be more to it than that, but that’s what we’re able to recall.  There was a long sentence like explanation, but we haven’t been able to look again at the death certificate which came out quite a while afterward. 

My mother also left a small fortune for the group of us.  We had known for a long time that David her step-son would receive 26% (for John’s family), the three of us Scott, CS and us would receive 18%, Tim a family friend of John’s would receive 10% and Pastor Peg’s and my mother’s very small church would receive 10%.  We had thought that my mother’s friend Jane would receive the other friend’s portion, but it appears that paperwork was never completed.  We did offer Jane the first option on buying the house, but she was unable to do so.  The house itself was split between CS, Scott, David (step-son) and us.  It wasn’t very high priced, but should be closing about this time next month.  We hope things go well. 

We haven’t gone much of a day where we haven’t thought about my mother and responsibilities since she’s been gone.  I’m not going to talk about it a lot here, at least directly, but as all my other thoughts – it makes the circuit.  In general we feel a little lost, confused and sad.  Most of my mother’s financial concerns are being handled by financial advisors – And, we have been up to the house in MN four times since she’s passed.  The first time was for the funeral, the second time was for taking apart her household, the third time was just to pick up a few things – while we were on that side of the world, and the last time was to finalize the house for closing.  We had been also at our mother’s WITH her the end of July. 

We were fortunate that my mother left the taking care of work mostly to Pastor Peg.  We really have gotten to know and enjoy her quite a bit since the first time.  We had met her several times before going up for our annual July trip.  But, this time we were working with her in person.  We really love her to pieces. 

Hmm, we think that Rich might be getting up?  I heard him move and clear his throat, but now I don’t hear anything.   Maybe?  NOOOO He is up!  Ahhh … we just got a nice warm hug as he passed.  He’s on his way to make coffee.  Good Rich.  That is one of the things we’ve associated with writing is the morning coffee.  Lately, we’ve only taken what Rich has made – and only on some of the days.  First thing REALLY seems to be water or even pop – something to clear our throat.  I think it’s a diabetic deal that we’re drinking so much of the above.  I know PRETTY soon we’ll have to go visit the doctor – though the last time was only in October, 2015, so that wasn’t WAY far ago.  He had wanted us to come in before Christmas, or at least this month, but we haven’t arranged that yet.  Soon – couple problems we’re thinking about.  BUT, it would mean that we have to do something with the diabetic numbers.  He’s not going to be happy with that. 

Rich just came to give me the extra water in the bottle he had to use for coffee.  Some reason the blanket was over our head, but we’d reached out to hold his hand again.  He said our hand needed lotion – and that got somebody to come out because we had just been thinking of that a few seconds ago.  We told him Dr. Marvin and us just talked about it and that we’d have to have some special kind that wasn’t so oily and that we had to have something that reminded us less of sex.  Ok, obviously we’re not very good on the privacy part, but – at least we can say that kind of stuff is still happening!  Good Anns!

I think we’re going to skip the doctor conversation right now.  We are having problems with depression, but the new thing now is that it is 5 months later, and we are writing again – that’s a good thing, right?  I’m thinking … hmm, we just got the lotion for Rich anyway so he could spread it on the outsides of our fingers because they were hurting to type.  Now they are better, but we have to deal with the “aroma.”  *sigh*

I do seem to remember this part where we’re typing and typing and then we lose the thought so someone double “enters” and we are on to the next paragraph.  That seems very efficient, wouldn’t you say?

I think we were talking somewhere between my mother and Dr., but not Dr. Marvin, because those would be safer thoughts.  He’s still extra special.  THOUGH that has some problems too because we haven’t been going in as much as we should.  We still talk twice a week, but we’ve been going lightweight.  I’m thinking that part of that is the depression.  It’s about how much we can handle going outside our safety zone.  Joe talked to us about something that is working for him right now.  He’s using an online game system that’s called Habitica.  It’s a very simple framework for adding habits, dailies, to-dos and rewards in getting things done.  You may be remembering how hard this kind of thing involving self-regulation is for us. 

Right now in no particular order for our habits our:  coloring, cross stitching, money management, mail and sorting, laundry, make dessert, quilting, make a side dish, make a main meal, project time, brain buster, language, TED Talk, Personal Management, Nutrition and creative recreation (like writing).  For our Dailies we have:  Talk with Dr. Marvin, Talk to Linda on FB, Reading, Meditation, and Exercise.  Then we don’t have anything special under rewards, but the program suggests a lot of game playing gear for our “little Ann Person.”  Anything from Training Sword to Snowman Suits!  And then the last thing is our To-do list.  We did have Talk to Dr. Marvin and steps toward going in, but now we have Discussing with Rich the bathroom remodeling project – broken down in steps because Ed is coming over about noon.  He’s our general contractor. 

I suppose we should say that some of our money from our mother is going into our bathroom remodeling project – we have the Master bath costing the most, then our laundry room bathroom, and our guest bathroom.  All three are having major work done which includes things like sinks, vanities and toilets, to floors, ceilings and walls.  We want to replace a couple other lights so that they all match, but maybe we won’t install that til we do a little work on the kitchen.  We were forced to get a new dishwasher this week, but primarily in the kitchen, we’re just going to do walls, ceilings and countertops.  Extra projects will be new steps in the front of the house (matching back porch), Lights and wanting to fix the trim in the major part of the house – but, that could come a long way down the line.  Spouse that would happen during painting of walls and ceiling.  Basically we want something besides gypsum or whatever this is and have just regular drywall.  That should update the place greatly.  Just know that in the old days mobile home seams because of their movability were done with plastic trim for almost all 8’ x 4’ panels.

Pswhoo – It’s now about 7:50 AM and we’d forgotten to take our medicine so we went back and did that – and since Weekends are feed yourself breakfast days – we had to make ourselves something.  We told Rich we wanted orange slices.  And, he looked at us and asked if he NOW had to get us oranges too!??  And, we were like no – we wanted the candy orange slices.  Needless to say that was pretty much disarranged.  *sigh*  So we made ourselves some Rice Krispy cereal we had left over from making bars.  Oh yes, you’d be surprised at some of the turnarounds here!  By that we mean some cooking/baking by us has been happening.  WOW!  THAT’S some difference, isn’t it?!

For the record I still like leftover dinner for breakfast, but there was none of that to be found this morning … there’s no end to the amount of *sighing* a person could do. 

We were going to say that we also gave the boys some significant money from my mother’s will.  Not a GREAT amount, but yes a great amount, because I wouldn’t have been able to do that before. 

Hmm, where are we?  Forgot what we were saying – we had a second helping of cereal – it was just 172 calories WITH skim milk.  So that wasn’t too bad and we did share with Dakota.  He seemed to like it.  Good boy.  By the way, he had a nice day yesterday.  He went in for grooming.  He smells pretty and is soft to the touch.  He had some relaxing to do when he got home, but in general didn’t seem too traumatized or anything.  He did want to come home.  We were sitting on the park like bench outside the groomer’s door and when he came home he jumped up on the bench to see us, but then we had to get him down – he’s a big dog to be doing that kind of hopping around.  Hehe – he WAS happy to see us and be out the door.  I think it’s a lot to go through for a dog with all the activity of grooming AND being around so many animals.  He did pretty good – we did play some games with his stuffed animal pets.  Rich had gone to a customers with us on Thursday and he packaged dog things, so when he saw Dakota – he brought him three new stuffies.  Dakota couldn’t be more pleased to get home and try them out.  One is like a tug of war toy, so we’ll wait until Maury’s dogs come over to give that a try. 

Maury’s dogs will be here from Feb 19-23.  Not sure where he is going this time, but he seems to get around.  We had traded him getting our new TV computer stuff ready for me to be taking the dogs.  We’re a little worried about the contractor being here then, but Maury is brining over a gate to go between the fireplace wall and the sitting room wall so that we can hopefully keep the dogs in check on the other side of the house keeping space open for Ed to be getting in and out.  Ed is the contractor.  We hope we like him and his work AND prices, because we have other work, we’d like to do too.  I think we mentioned this briefly before.  We’ll have to see how it holds out – they money.  Not sure in February when he’s coming, but we hope sooner than later.  Our master toilet is sinking enough so we can’t sit down on it anymore.  AND, I think we worked it out the toilet in the pantry is coming out and we’ll leave it pretty blank until Missy goes and we won’t need to use the space for kitty box.  The next move though is the toilet and sink will come out and be capped, and then we’ll just use a chair in there until it’s time to go to a full pantry.  Hopefully Missy stays around for quite a while longer.  She is 17 though so we know the time is closer than not.  God Bless her!

I’m thinking how do we pull the time closer together.  Maybe talking about a little of Mom.  We found out that she was gone after most of Thursday had gone by.  My brother had called, but I didn’t recognize the number – he called during Dr. Marvin’s appointment.  Later we tried to get a hold of him, and then my sister and my mother, but the latter two didn’t answer.  After a short while CS called back and said I don’t know if I should be the one telling you, but Mom died.  I think Rich was home earlier that day – remember him coming in and using the washroom, but by the time he got out we were pretty hysterical and cried for a couple of hours.  I think that first shock was the worst of things, though we’d had problems after it.  We just couldn’t make light of it.  We had just seen her and she seemed fine.  We did finally after some calling around get a hold of Pastor Peg and once we got up to MN we found that Scott had accidentally given us his home phone instead of his mobile and he’d been on the road to Mom’s.  At the time we were pretty frustrated – but, during the time we were up there and talked to he and Deb for 2-3 hours, we’d gotten past a lot of our communication problems we’d had over all those years.  I think both of us were thinking our own ways, and without checking things out they stayed like bad images in our brains for a long time.  I still think he gets very grouchy, but we can appreciate he’s in his own stages of grieving and he is a different person than us.  I think the best thing is in getting to meet better his wife Deb.  Things have been happening bad or good, but for the most part they are good.  We’re just learning about one another. 

CS was another story through all of this.  She was up for the funeral, but she wasn’t able to travel back to the house to help with the major packing up of the house.  Between the group and us, we’d saved her about 20-25 boxes of things she’d said she wanted in the china and jewelry.  CS was in and out of the hospital because of infections and such.  We wondered for a while if she wasn’t going to die.  It seems to be much better now, but at the time it seemed touch and go.  We will admit to calling her more when she was in the hospital, then the time she’s been out, but we know she’s making her way in life then since.  We’ve pulled back from Deb too.  Just feel she’s busy and we’ve been pretty much withdrawn into our own small life within the house and too Dr. Marvin’s. 

I think there were times that changed too due to some of the things we collected at Mom’s.  Like we seemed to get our fair share of her old sewing things and that of my Grandmother’s and Aunt Alice – which means things like we collected 20 thimbles.  I know it’s silly, but it happened.  We sorted out the yarn collected in it’s own boxes and when we meet the girls in February the yarn will get switched over to Linda’s care.  We’ve since sent her pictures of the boxes, but in general I hope she’s going to be very happy with the collection.  CS and I don’t knit or crochet and we both have enough with our other stuff, so that we see it going to a good cause.  Linda might work on donating baby blankets with some of it, but has promised to make CS and us something first.  I’m thinking we would like just a lap afghan.  There is like two gigantic boxes, and a couple of smaller ones.  I can’t wait to see Linda’s face J

One of the other things that my mother had a lot of was DMC cross stitch thread.  Along with that came the Aida thread and patterns.  That’s the part that I got really excited about.  It is why we added Cross stitch to our new habits.  We’ve got a design picked out and started with like 9 country style bears – working around a quilting circle.  I’m just on the second bear now.  We’re not real regular, but am keeping it next to the couch for times, we can focus on it.  I think all told during our inventory process – there are about 1950-2000 flosses of ALL kinds of threads.  We had everything we needed when we pulled out the group needed for our quilting bears project.  And we’ve got hundreds worth of background cloth. 

Because we had that and so many new things, we redid the quilting room to be more productive.  We went crazy with sorting drawers and then made a video of all that.  Maybe later we’ll post it on our blog.  Lots of the drawers about 150 of them or so – are little drawers for just the putsy of stuff, but we had a lot of pleasure finding space for everything.  In the process we emptied all the bookshelves and all the scrap stuff, and we sorted through and refolded stuff so that we now have shelves for regular fabric a couple yards and bigger, a shelf for the DMC threads, a shelf all the bundled scraps, we’d worked through before, and a shelf of stuff we’re working on and other newer quilt kits from CS.  We also filled our wicker shelves with a couple shelves for coloring and the others for books and magazines for quilting.  All the little drawers are on the tables which are mostly cleared off.  Our sewing machine sits also on that and there are five new bigger drawers under the tables, and then we’d brought the old sewing machine table back to between the regular shelves for my mother’s sewing machine.  Since that time for Christmas, we’ve given Andy my mom’s sewing machine, because she’s doing so much hand sewing AND machine sewing over at his mother’s.  This is the old Amy.  He’s in role playing activities where he is making his own clothes.

Hmm, been gone for a while.  It is now 9:45 AM.  We first talked to Linda in IM, and then we had to clean the kitchen and take care of papers on table while Rich vacuumed, and now as soon as he leaves the bedroom/master bath – we’ll take our shower – oh and we’ve got a load of towels in the washer – AND the dog has been outside.  Between the dishwasher and washing machine, we hope we have enough water for a shower.  We’ll be checking that out.  Rich couldn’t remember if he said 10-12 pm, where we thought he said 12-1 pm.  So we both had to be ready just in case.  Ok, time for another break – Rich is in the sitting room – hate to be electrocuted if he was vacuuming the bathroom while we were in the shower, you know?  Ok, chances not, but why not eliminate the chance all together.  Ok, here we go!

Good good – we’re back, our things are charging, we’re showered and dressed and Rich is just emptying the garbage from the vacuum cleaner … think we’re finishing almost on time.  I think he went through the entire house.  Think we have to do the litter and the garbage.  

Mid May to Mid August - We're saying that's about three months behind/caught-up!

Monday, August 17, 2015 @ 10:30 am

Hi … I’m not sure if you remember me, but this is where we USED to post – haven’t posted anywhere else just haven’t posted here for a very long time – we’re thinking just over 3 months – so basically, we’ve missed summer.  I almost forgot to write this weekend too, but I thought of Dr. Marvin for some reason, and he told us, we should try writing again.  I think one of the reasons we’d stopped writing was because of pain in our arms – particularly our elbows.  Since then we’ve had nearly 3 months of OT therapy for the tennis elbow.  Valerie our therapist is coming today and then Monday will be our last day, but we did have therapy twice a week and along with OT, we’ve had PT which has been harder, and we’ve also been under the care of a nurse.  This all started with seeing another doctor other than Dr. Albright at UIC.  Can’t remember at the moment our new doctor’s name, but we have seen him twice, and we like him.  He is Rich’s doctor as well and I think we’re seeing him again around mid-September.  We’ll call and confirm before that.

I am thinking that my three support people are getting together this week and making a decision whether I continue therapy or not.  I’m thinking they are going to say not … they extended the first 8 weeks to another 8 weeks, but I think I’m about as far as I go without doing things more on my own.  I seem able to work while they are there, but I don’t take the time when they are not here.  The PT also has been coming in twice a week and the nurse comes once – and this all happens Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and then on Tuesday and Thursdays we have been seeing Dr. Marvin – for the most part – we are just getting out of his and our vacation scheduling. 

The problem is is that we are tired of being “in the ready circle” where we have to be committed to something every weekday.  I know that sounds terrible, because we’ve accomplished some things we don’t want to lose.  We’re better able to stand – where we’ve probably gained 2-3 minutes if not more.  I know we can do unloading, loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the rest of the counter in one shot.  It’s not as painful at the end – we do tend to sweat it out though and we’re keeping a drying rag with us that gets washed frequently.  I think that part – the sweating comes with being overweight with the effort needed to move us around.  Our face is pretty broken out and that part is a problem.

Rich wants to do the treadmill and he wants me to do it with him, but he keeps making excuses and I don’t make it any easier.  When I do remind him, it’s the wrong time, and if I don’t remind him then he says I’m making it difficult for him.  Yeah a LOT of denial going on around this household. 

Dr. Marvin and I have talked about weight for the last 2-3 visits, but its at a pretty lame level.  I’m not jumping into it as I should.  I’m more like do you know it’s 80 right now – HOT in the sunroom and it’s going to get up to 86 or more today.  Yup there goes our enthusiasm.  We are ahead in that we showered last night so could just get dressed and do it, but yeeks!  That would mean doing it instead of saying it and HEY – weren’t we here to be writing?  Hmm, and doing household.  I know usually we write and do household at the same time.  Let’s add a BLAH to that right now too, Hmm?

The same old problems with household has got us stuck as before.  Usually the floors and the steaming are the last projects to be pushed through.  We got the e-broom and finding it more difficult because after we sweep, we have to go and clean out all the hair the thing has collected between me and the dog.  Rich has pretty short hair so is not being included here.  That’s about as gross – cutting the hair from the brushes, especially knowing what we just cleaned up.  Ok, back to having to get over that too.  AND the floor needs a good scrubbing.  It’s been missed most of the summer.  Rich just did one of the bathrooms over the weekend and he’s been helping a little – like maybe 2-3 times over the summer in getting the carpet areas vacuumed while I was healing my elbow.  I’m having trouble with the vacuum too in that it is broke so that it doesn’t stand up and we’re doing more literal picking up of the handle and all that goes with that like the bag.

BUT, if we were going to do something that would be put back on the list too.

Hmm, what else has been going on?

Dakota is just normal.  He was a sandwich thief the other day – I just left my sandwich on the desk and the keyboard was out past that because I’d forgotten to take my medicine while we were up.  I got back and he was chomping down the sandwich backed away from where it had been.  Yeah, I’m thinking I DO know who my sandwich thief is!  He had no remorse and then went back under my desk for the piece of sandwich he missed.  By that time, we were like sure take it all, I don’t want to clean up after you!

So that was a case of Dakota being bad – AND he’s been just as sneaky going into the laundry room to eat the cat’s dry food.  We’ve gone back to leaving up the gate – whereas, it has a smaller CAT-size door on the bottom but otherwise – it’s waist high and fits the door frame so Dakota is on the OUTSIDE.  Cat Loves it.  Hehe

Nothing much has happened to the house.  Rich is doing pretty good between fishing, work and the rest of his life in taking care of the yard.  We’re having Don mow it every Friday, but the rest of the yardwork has been done by Rich.  He does say that the flowers he planted are all for me to make me happy.  I especially see the little rose garden when I let out the dog.  I’ve had trouble though with going outside because Don then always comes over for long talks.  Dr. Marvin had given us a sheet of paper to back him away, but I only did it once, and then decided ummm, too hot outside.  Rich has taken us out there a couple of evenings when Don DIDN’T come over.  We’ve been appreciative of that and usually have a nice drink while were out there, but again I feel safer inside.

Pretty much since the start of the summer, at least about the time that I was backing off from writing and going through the therapy schedule, I’ve picked up a new hobby and Rich doesn’t know the total, but we’ve spent $776.98.  We’ve offered to show him, and now that we’re admitting to it out loud in our journal, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told him.  He knows it’s over $500 though the first $250 was free as part of our birthday gifts or reward money from credit cards.  Maybe I’ll include a list of what was purchased on our ongoing coloring list.  We have to add a few things, but the total of $776.98 is still good. 

I know, I know.  What in the world does people spend that much money for?  Maybe we’ll clean that up right now ... hold on … ok, got THIS list updated, now we’re going to skim down and see what we think – you might want to do the same.  I know people don’t spend the same, but you can see a range of objects, PLUS a LOT of coloring books L

Ok, skipping to the next paragraph, we decided to put the items not only alphabetical, but also to put the items by category

Coloring Utensils - $309.40

24.99 Best Gel Pens – 60 Pcs

31.00 Faber-castell Watercolor Pencils - 48 Pcs

10.49 Faber-castell Oil Pastel Pencils - 50 Pcs

19.20 Fiskars Gel Pen 48 Pcs

97.50 Prismacolor Colored Pencils - 132 Pcs

12.99 Prismacolor Verithin Colored Pencils - 24 Pcs

7.01 Pro-Art Sketch/Draw Pencil Set – 18 Pcs

9.59 Pro-Art Soft chalk Pastels – 48 Pcs

12.96 Sharpie Brush-Tip Markers - 12 Pcs *

5.37 Sharpie Chisel Point Assorted - 8 Pcs*

35.97 Sharpie fine-point Limited Edition Markers – 28 Pcs

36.90 Sharpie fine Point with Neon - 36 Pcs

5.43 Sharpie Metallic Fine Point Markers Assorted colors – 6 Pcs *

Containers - $148.76

18.09 Global Canvas Pencil Case - Blue (for 48 pencils)

18.09 Global Canvas Pencil Case - Red (for 48 pencils)

18.09 Global Canvas Pencil Case - Beige (for 48 pencils)

30.75 Global Art Canvas Pencil Case - Black (for 120 pencils)

63.74 InterDesign Storage Organizer – 12 drawers for pens and markers

Coloring Books - $112.19

9.19 Balance Coloring Book

10.76 Centered Coloring Book

8.96 Dragons, Knots, Bots Coloring Book

9.63 Enchanted Forest Coloring Book

13.46 Enchanting English Garden Coloring Book

8.01 Fantastic Cities Coloring Book

11.59 Lost Ocean Coloring Book

9.74 Secret Garden Coloring Book

8.98 Splendid Cities Coloring Book

12.88 The Art of Nature Coloring Book

Free - The Coloring Cafe Coloring Book

8.99 Wings and Things Coloring Book

Books and Magazines – Color Theory - $59.32

19.13 Colour 2^nd edition (Book)*

15.19 Color Choices:  Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory (Book)*

25.00 Color-On Magazine – 12 Months

Assorted tools that support the coloring - $88.17

4.87 Art Alternative Stumps and Tortillions - 10 Pcs

5.79 Avery Top Load Sheet Protector – 50 Pcs

10.56 Gamsol Mineral Spirits Painting Kit

5.74 Gesso Soft Wash Paint Brushes – 3 Pcs

5.90 Krylon Workable Fixatif

15.99 Neenah 110 lb. Index Card Stock - 250 pcs

5.91 Prismacolor Blender - 2 Pcs

2.80 Prismacolor Kneaded Rubber Eraser

2.00 Prismacolor Magic Rub Eraser – 3 Pcs

5.49 Prismacolor Premier Pencil Sharpener

6.62 Prismacolor Scholar Pencil Eraser - 3 Pcs

12.51 Royal Brush Set 12 Pcs

3.99 Sanford Art Gum Eraser

Gifts - $59.14

8.99 Jillian's Sharpie Neon Fine Point Markers – 12 Pcs

20.99 Jillian's Sharpie Ultra Fine Electro Pop Markers – 24 Pcs

10.49 Mom's Accu-gel Highlighters for Bible– 6 Pcs

18.67 Mom's Sakura Pigma Micron Colors for Bible – 8 Pcs

$776.98 Bottom Line *

WOW!  Ok, we’re back sort of … we’ve been going over the list.  We cleaned it up a bit and made sure everything was on it.  It was a pretty good list to begin with just added some new things * not included.  We left the asterisk, because we have to update the inventory pages.  Later … just want to get back to writing.  We also stopped to have medicine and eat lunch.  It’s now about 12:11 pm and no housework has been done, but we’re happy that we’re writing again.  It still takes a while to do.  We sometimes speak what we’re writing and we know that it takes longer than normal conversation.  Fortunately, we’re a PRETTY fast typist.

 We’re back again.  We were doing a few things that had to get done SERIOUSLY today.  Basically, we had to straighten up the house (a bit), get dressed, then we got our newest book on coloring in the mail, and then we read or skimmed the pictures for about 45 minutes and then Doda, the PT person came.  We did our exercises – abbreviated, and then we walked 6 lengths of the house.  Soooo, we are doing better there – six is the highest number of times we’ve tried.  SO that was good, although our whole lower back was numb from pain.  Oh well, that’s why we’re doing this, right – to get better control of our body.  No complaining there.

We talked to Dakota and took care of his needs before sitting down and now Missy is up to get at the fresh water.  It’s a hot one out there.  The accu-weather station says that it feels like 87 degrees.  I guess that’s how that goes.  I don’t know where Rich is at with his day.  He had a full agenda.  I know that at 2 (the time it is right now) he was supposed to be at his mother’s to talk to the new support people.

That was something going on around the last time we wrote too.  She had a couple episodes where she had to be hospitalized because her breathing was so low.  After the first time she’d been given oxygen, but chose smoking over the other and she can’t do both at the same time obviously for safety reasons.  After the second hospitalization the doctor told Rich if she hadn’t come in, she would have been dead by that night.  SOOO, after that stay she went to the nursing and stayed there just short of 3 months.  She came home on Saturday, but the new rule is no smoking in the house, or anywhere for that matter, but that is where she is at most often. 

She’s already set out to cause problems with that after not smoking for 3 months.  She is going to be in the same setting as before, so she’s got to do it in her mind with now not smoking, but she is the type that is going to bother and nag EVERYone she meets for as long as she can.  It is going to be a struggle and the care both her and Bud need are going to press all edges.  She is supposed to get more help at home – 7 days a week, so that should help, but there will be times in-between where Rich is going to be called at 2 am, because she wants a smoke.  That we just have to adjust to.

So that is that.

I’m thinking we’re going to catch a few facebook things to see what we’ve done over the last three months.  Maybe we can do some pictures, too, hmm?

May 4 – Lady and Max were here for the week

5-9-15 Dakota was very sad when his cousins left

5-10-15 was Mother’s Day – don’t remember anything about the day and thinking it was a quiet one. Though we did put together a collage that reminded us of having kids hehe

5-21-15 Celebrated Rich and Dakota and our own home life by making out of the garden rhubarb pie and we were spending time outside on the patio.  We had problems though in that Don was pushing me by being here every time we went out.

5-26-15 – I think Rich was still celebrating mother’s day, because he gave me permission to spend some clothes money at Catherine’s which was especially nice because we got a coupon for $100 for $200 spending – so in a sense $200 clothes for $100 J

5-31-15 The next nice thing is that Jillian – Rich’s daughter, her husband and stepson came for a visit and in doing so Rich got to go to Cubs Park with them and they were reported to have had a good day.  They stayed over here one or two nights, I don’t recall.

We couldn’t manage the park with our lack of walking/standing ability, but we were in a good position to watch their two dogs – this one is Starlet the older dog making herself comfortable in the sunroom – she really liked the windows J

This one is of Wrigley – in honesty she never had a problem with the sunroom either … the dogs loved the fluffy cushions AND windows!  Ok, maybe they were also waiting for their family to come home.

 6-10-15 Ame Graduated 8^th grade YAY!!!!  And btw yesterday the 16^th of August she started her first day of high school double YAY!  Not sure what color her hair is now, but on that day it was blue!

6-11-15 Maury and the girls AND the dogs came out again about this time so that we could celebrate Ame’s graduation and because we would be dog sitting again.  The dogs get along very well, but have to share the same bone.

6-11-15 2 Got a glimpse of Alex and started working toward them coming out to visit.  I think we were working toward July 5^th.  Alex gets cuter by the day!

 6-13-15 We caught a picture of Austin and his step-father Mike out mowing the lawn … definitely summer over there, but we were never able to reach an agreement on dates to be over.  Austin said maybe after he gets settled in school.

6-14-15 I believe the week before we’d been to quilting with the girls and we started working on the pomegranate squares, but we didn’t get very far … maybe only 4 were done, before company came and we put our sewing away.

 6-21-15 Happy Father’s Day came without too much ado – everyone was doing their own thing

6-27-15 Somewhere around here … things took a real turn.  This is where and when the coloring started to happen.  I know I had gotten for my mother’s mother’s day a special Bible to write in – so she could communicate to me some of her thoughts.  In the process we got some special Bible gel pens and highlighters.  That was really the start of it.  Oh I’m remembering now too.  Mellissa Killen one of our FB friends had shown a picture of a REALLY neat coloring book from Johanna Basford called, “Secret Garden.”  She had stated about wanting it and then being us, we wanted it too, but it took a LONG time to be off back-order.  In the meantime we got this other Garden book and some markers, and we went to town.  We even went back outside.

Yup us and our buddy!

6-27-15 We were figuring that Dakota wasn’t getting enough stimulation so we bought a brain toy for him.  He had to remove the cups to get to the treats.  Unfortunately, he conquered this within 2-3 days and we haven’t done much with it since.  BUT, it was fun!

Hmm, 2:52 pm and we’re getting a LOT of thunder from what seems like the SE – it’s dark over there too, but so far no rain – you remain on hold there!

7-1-15 ok … here we are just acknowledging that the Garvey grandkids are SWEET!  This is my son Joe with his son Alex J

7-4-15  We had Maury’s dogs through the 4^th of July – these dogs have seriously bonded!

 7-5-15 – Maury AND Cari AND Joe AND Alex AND the dogs – were all here for … well just to be here – we were seeing Alex in REAL 3D AND Maury was picking up his dogs.  Alex ate dinner at the table and it was pretty snazzy!

What was really amazing is how well the dogs did with the baby – I think he was about 8 months then.  The KING of dogs?  Turns out to be Max.  He cuddled that lucky kid as much as possible and made sure he didn’t get into trouble!

7-8-15 – ok, don’t really know how this next part happened, but it was pretty darn quick!  Thinking it’s coming up to Ann’s Birthday – and 3 out of 4 weekends Rich was fishing … EXCEPT the weekend we went to see my mother in MN, well I went to my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday and that night about 10 pm I came home with a new car.  No not much else thought of in-between.  Rich was naturally upset and had called local and state police because we’re regularly not out that late, and we weren’t going to call him because we didn’t want him to stop the processes that were unfolding.

The bottom line was that Rich was very much ok, by the next day, we got to keep the car and it’s a beauty.  It’s another Honda Civic, but it is the 2015 model with all the bells and whistles, including leather seats, computer, special side mirrors AND heated seating YAY!  This is Ann’s new ride!

Looking forward to the August 29^th trip to WI with the girls.  We figure its dark grey and mature, but here we are only acting the part. Maybe not so reserved.

Ah and THAT reminded us to reserve our room!  We called New Berlin in WI, but Carol was on vacation.  We had to make reservations with the desk and they have to confirm with Carol on the price.  Just have to wait all that out and hope for the best.  Moving on …

7-9-15 we had mentioned this coloring thing?  Well from then on we stay very close to it.  First all our drawings were markers and Rich kept fishing and fishing and we kept on ordering – well you’ve seen our total, but first were different coloring tools, then coloring books, then stuff to put it in, and then stuff to help us work on it.  We have seen a LOT of videos and now have a few color theory books.

7-12-15 By this time we are listening to a LOT of different women and even a few men in Facebook Groups for coloring … I think I’m in about 15 groups right now although there are a few really popular ones that hold about 7,000-10,000 people.  There is a lot of activity and posting and good advice, well actually most don’t post, but most likely for various reasons like they aren’t sure of the quality of their work.  I’m obviously not one of those.  Along with listening – well, that’s when you start getting more stuff especially in the medium and coloring books.  Lot of subjective opinion, and you always want the most, best and top-rated stuff.  I might have over-concerned ourselves here.  We did bring Dakota to the dog park a couple of times, but once there was one dog and the other time no dogs.  I’m figuring we just got a bad set of times, but Dakota did like it – just that he wasn’t coming immediately so that unnerved us a bit and we have to get our confidence back up.  On the side he’s gotten a couple of summer haircuts at the groomer’s and has been keeping up with all his vet needs including for a while he had an ear infection.  That all seems good and he’s up-to-date on all his shots, vaccinations – including the one for flue going around Chicago Parks, and he’s up to date with his flea and tick.

7-16-15 about this time Rich and the boys and their families played a little trick on me.  Rich was going to take me out a few days early for our birthday because he was going to be fishing on the day, but he didn’t tell me my whole family was involved – all except Austin and Thom, but the group was together and included the boys’ friend Alex.  I mostly had a good time, but was a little crabby the boys kept up a separate conversation throughout dinner and they had chosen a place, I don’t do so well with and this time they put fish in my sweet and sour pork … we didn’t want to cause problems, but having Joe, Alex and Maury – in a separate world was hard to handle.  Ame stuck with that conversation.  The good part was talking to Cari and watching her with Alex and Isa.  Rich never talks a lot at these kinds of events, but we were proud of him being there and he covered the expense.  He didn’t have to do that, but we were proud of him anyway.  It was nice for everyone to be there – that part was still good.  And, Ame was interested in sharing our birthday dessert with Isa and me – so felt a little camaraderie there YAY!

Birthday continue on though even after our official dinner.  One of the nice things was that over a 100 people stopped by our facebook to acknowledge our special day – which for the most part turned into a birthday month.  YAY JULY!!!  It was this kind of sparkle!  And we got to talk to some special people on the phone.

The birthday dinner was on a Thursday and Rich left Friday for fishing – not to return until Sunday.  One of the birthday surprises was that Joe and Cari got us a gift certificate to Amazon – I’d like to blame them for this spending spree, but they are the last to do something like that.  They just cleared in savings 3-6 months in case something happened, and they are now starting to save for their first house.  YAY – they are very reasonable with their money … Us?  Maybe not so much.  The next surprise was that my mother sent us a gift check which was by this time we figured ALSO going to be spent at Amazon – everything was going toward coloring.  AND THEN, one MORE surprise.  When we went to check out with the first gifts, we found that we had a credit on one of our credit cards that gave us $132 free spending OMG – AND the MAN was OUT of TOWN!  Lordy did we have a shopping spree.  We only spent about $13 of our own money, but the gifts were soooo much fun and appreciated.  This is the majority of gifts that came in by Monday two days after our birthday – we were in 7^th heaven!

This is the majority of what we got – the big items were gel pens, my special 132 count Prismacolor Pencils and the boxes for storing the pens and markers – Isn’t this just a blessing!

The next thing that happened though it was too overwhelming with all the other things going on, but T one of our artist friends we’ve been connected to through blogging and Facebook offered to help me with some drawing lessons.  She established that we should draw three of the cherries that were in our fridge and that she would give us some lessons on drawing.  She’s an artist that has specialized down in Florida painting huge murals on the side of big buildings.  I was sooo proud and happy she’d do that for us, but then we went next to my mother’s and by then everything was happening too fast.  I hope she’s going to give us a raincheck.  Learning drawing AND coloring is a lot, but we want to do it all!

T was especially careful to tell us not to get frustrated, and we did realize that it wasn’t like we’d turned automatically talented, but it was overwhelming.  We had gotten a few new coloring books and a means to come up with color using our Jinny Beyer colored fabric fan – oh man those pencils were so inviting.

There was a little success and failure here, but nothing really outside the scope of just starting a long journey in learning about coloring.  I did like the Jinny Beyer technique (usually used with quilting), but we were using way too many colors and we had to look for things that joined in the Angie Grace coloring books – both “Balance” and “Centered.”  She has a certain style and you have to look at a lot of pictures until you start seeing things that will work or not work.  We’re a little disjointed with her now, because she said something about cleaning up her site where people like me were posting and she erased all the people’s pictures and just left her pictures of her colored designs.  That was off-putting, but we’ll get back to her.  We’ve saved a lot of pictures of the last one done by different colorists.  I’ll go over it more carefully before we return to her book. 

7-22-15 This is Dakota by the way looking GORGOUS after his last grooming.  We got his hair cut on Wednesday and we left Friday morning for my mother’s up in Northern Minnesota.  It was just under a 10 hour trip.  

Before that though?  We got a call from son #2 after a LONG while of not hearing from him.  He was really excited about his new position.  He had gotten the job that was left by the guy ahead of him.  Thom is REALLY young to be getting the position and I think GS13 category is like a Lieutenant Kernel.  One way or another he has his work ahead of him.  He deals a lot with security – ok, I’ll be the mother – he’s practically running the airbase!  Ok, maybe not, but he’s doing a hell of a job and it seems that he and Cathy are doing very well – though he’s less likely to talk about that. Newlyweds!  *sigh*

7-28-15 The next part we foreshadowed was going up to MN.  The first and most important thing was that my mother seemed to have a very good time with us up there and she had a strong bond develop between her and Dakota.  That was a great thing.  Dakota had a pretty good time, but again as shown in the first picture when we got packed he packed himself so as not to be forgotten!  We had a pretty busy time, but not too much.  We got up Friday around dinner time and she’d arranged to have brought over the hamburger and fixings dinner they were making at a charity event.  That turned out to be fine.  She’d asked us about an hour out of town if we wanted to go to it and it was like NOOO – didn’t want to do that.  She seemed to handle it and made the secondary arrangements.  I brought my box of markers and pens, plus the extra box of pencils and in-between everything we spent time making the circles we colored for each of the colors so we could tell what we were getting when we looked in the container.  The pencils didn’t work too well, but the others are doing fine.  Saturday after breakfast – toast and curd cheese we’d had from going through WI.  It was decided that we should take Rich to Itasca state park 1 ½ hours away so he could walk across the headwaters of the Mississippi.  That was only a so-so deal.  The ride was fine, but we ran into a lot of people and dogs and Dakota didn’t do so well behaving.  That upset us and we were crabby – mostly thought because we remembered too late we’d skipped two medication periods.  When everything is askew.  We rebalanced and then apologized.  Rich was pushing ice cream, because they didn’t sell much more and we were skipping lunch, but we were argumentative because we were grouchy and ice cream had been taking a toll on our stomach.  We got through everything, but it was better after eating real food.  We watched Canadian TV – Northern American Panama Games – so that was relaxing.  The next day we went to church and then out for breakfast.  Rich made ham while we were up there and then the next day he made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.  I forgot what else the last night, but on Monday we stopped at a craft store, but mostly it was things other people had made – so we only spent $15 on a cute sign.  It’s wood and painted and says, “This is the life.”  We put it over the wooden bear coming into our house.  Hehe

Most the time we were there my Mother talked – she talks a lot.  A really lot.  BUT, we were doing something easy with our hands and stayed pretty calm about things.  On Sunday night when we were eating Lord knows what?  Hehehe well after dinner, Rich and us had gotten for her a towel set for both bathrooms.  She had very old towels that were more like hand towels to Rich and us.  I think she liked her gift very nicely – we had also given her some Bible gel pens and highlighters as they had come up in conversation and I’d already had them.  AND THEN!  We guessed right in that carrot cake was her favorite so all in all it was very nice.  AND again Dakota did everything else fine and he was using her yard without a leash nicely (without fence).  Mostly he was real easy to pet going from Rich, to our mother and back so he was a good icebreaker.

Pswhoo!  That was a lot.  It really is a big deal – it’s our one for sure vacation a year.  Though I think we’re going to visit Jillian’s again in NM this fall and I think Rich wants to see his aunt and uncle again next spring.  It be nice to go somewhere on our own too, but have to admit, we like seeing these people and if given a choice I’d still see family.  Mostly they are long weekend trips.

7-31-15 By the last of July we were fully invested in Amazon and were checking out things through video and groups to be doing things like trying to curve the edges in our pictures.  We’re drawing a blank as to what that’s called again … two terms – just way out on other trains of thought.  Rich has been on the phone discussing things with his younger son and now that he’s off the phone, he’s got the TV on so it’s a lot of noise in the background and we’re not relaxed.  It’s about 5 pm now when the OT should be here, but she usually calls first so she’s obviously going to be late which means dinner is late too … just growled at Rich because he’s eating popcorn which feels like to me then dinner is going to be very late if he’s not hungry.  I know we’re really waiting on OT, but the phone call was the Holiday Inn in New Berlin saying we’ve got our price for the room – not this next weekend, but the next for our quilting event.  We’ll have to figure, if we’re going to be able to get back to quilting, or if we’re going to just bring the coloring.  It’s a long day, but we’re looking forward.  These are a few pictures that were happening then.

8-2-15 The next exciting thing was that we celebrated National Coloring Book Day.  We got really gutsy and signed on to go to a library about 1 ½ hours from here – a BIG one – to sit down and color with other people all around the Chicagoland area.  There were 26 meetings like this throughout the United States.  The Chicago meeting was third biggest behind San Francisco and New York.  I was really proud of us and got some nice coloring done, but most people knew us because of Dakota – a couple people stopped and asked to take his picture *sigh* he is a very beautiful dog *whimpering*

8-16-15 This hummingbird was the next picture done.  Again we’re working on the 3D part.  It takes some getting used to and knowing which colors to use and how to place it … Just because we can see the really beautiful ones, doesn’t mean we can do it yet.  Some people can do it naturally, or had better time coloring growing up, and then there are us others who just have to work on it.  Hmm, there was a series of pictures that were done – maybe we’ll collage some of them too.  Hold on

Ok, maybe TWO Pages of collages.  We just got a call from the OT saying she would be here in about 15-20 minutes.  Then that will be pretty much it.   Just a few moments left … think she’ll be coming here directly and it should be pretty soon.  Rich was in the kitchen and cooked dinner so that we could eat after Valerie the OT person leaves.  I’m a bit sad though in that I think this is her second to last time here.  PT said today that there would be next week and then we would do once a week for the next 8 weeks and I’m not sure about the nurse.  Maybe we said this before.  I have to admit house is smelling pretty good – leftover meat – pork from last night that was real good – mixed with rice, BBQ sauce and other.  We also went to the bathroom, took Dakota out, fed him, and got our personal self-ready. 

I have to admit by adding all the pictures this blog entry came out pretty long.  I think I can just Control A and collect all the pictures we put in a separate file – and we ordered them by date and number so that they fall onto the page all at once, and then we’re going to have to go back and in-between all the pictures the comments we’ve been writing.  Now as we look at the page count – have to apologize because we’re up to page 50.  YIKES – Mostly though it’s pictures.  It has been good for me/us to get the time done – we’ll skim over it ourselves and try to figure out in a quicker analysis of what’s happened.  Mostly though I think we’re between having the trained support staff here and doing all the work involved in that – and being conscious of our house, along with getting the $776 or whatever in art supplies and all the coloring that’s happened. 

I’d like to think there were an abundance of other activities – mostly family, but they are never enough.  I did decide that because we’ve not been contacted by anyone in our family for about a month that I didn’t want the task of babysitting one of their sets of dogs next month while he saw his father’s family again.  We’re still complaining about that, having the conversation stolen from our birthday dinner and only being contacted if needs a favor.  AND, when they are here, they are all on the phones connected even when sitting lounging – just holding and then interrupting contact to talk to their friends – the people they like spending time at.  And, then when one did talk to me he “scoffed” at the idea of me spending time coloring … like where else should my time be spent, family?

I can’t say I’m happy about complaining out loud.  I think it’s because my dinner will be an hour and a half late – though those other things are true.  I guess when we came to a summary though of this three months – that part happened too and it has something to do with the amount of time we’re doing trying to isolate ourselves.  I don’t know how to feel about the therapies closing down.  They made decisions without including our opinion of whether we would like them to stay or go.  I think the doctor will be satisfied for the mid-September appointment – though we’re between appreciating their care and wishing we could have our time back – to be doing the opposite of what is good for us – like time dressing and cleaning house for company.  *sigh* Anyway I believe she’s here because we heard a car door as did Dakota and he is up at the door.  I think this is one that comes in on her own and then is waved in.   Lot’s going on, and then not much.

Hmm, I think this one took about a week to get out *sigh*

Wednesday, May 6, 2015 @ 1:56 PM

Good afternoon – this is us and we just got writing to Dr. Marvin so we figured we’d cheat a little and use that email here.  This explains how things went with the new Dr. Dorman.

Hi Dr. Marvin,

This is us.  We are outside now with the dogs off the front patio.  We'll have to untangle them in a little, but they are getting drowsier with the sun.  They seem to appreciate the shade as much as the next guy.  I just got two of them unstuck and Max grabbed the tug of war toy to bury it in the leaves.  I don't like when they chew on the grass, but it’s hard to keep them away from it ... is this just a dog thing.  It takes forever that they all lay down at the same time.  Max laid down in the sun so don't think that is going to last long.  Dakota and Lady are on the cement with me in the shade good dogs.

Well, as far as Dr. Dorman, it was a good appointment.  I did misunderstand the time in that it was supposed to be at 2:15 instead of 3:15 pm, but he still saw me and spent time getting to know us.  I had a couple of sheets with me from Dr. Albright from this last visit and from the visit one year ago.  He looked them over and it appeared that somehow my medicines were in his computer already - not sure how that happens.  He verified the medicines that each you and Dr. Albright have been in charge of.  He was a nice person - though you could tell he could be very stern when he wanted to be.  He definitely had his ideas and they weren't all in agreement with Dr. Albright.  

The most notable were that he didn't want to give injections as a first route.  He gave me a couple of exercises to do for my elbows.  He said they were actually a problem because of the overuse of my wrists.  So the exercises were in stretching them out.  He had all the professional names for things just we weren't picking them up.  We made sure and it looked like his practice to type out on a sheet going home with us the specific directions we needed.  We told him about the moderate impairment in our ability to recall.  He said that he gives the injections that the other doctor talked about, but he asked us if we wouldn't do some PT first and then we would see - his logic was to address the problem directly.  We told him we had a very hard time leaving the house with the exception to your appointments, and that sometimes that was hard too.  He dropped it for a moment, but then came back and said that because we were homebound for the most part, he could have therapy come to the house.  We figured that was an acceptable decision although we'd have to work then on the getting showered and dressed part every day.  

A few moments the first person called from that service.  She said that he'd ordered PT and OT.  That was a surprise to us.  She said that the PT would be for the core exercises and that the OT would be for helping us do things that were difficult and for upper body - so we told her about the problem with our wrists and elbow and she said yes the OT would cover that but they would come in with a full evaluation.  He also wanted to see me cut down on about 20% of our computer and quilting work.  I had no response to that, except to think not likely.  How are you going to judge that kind of thing anyway?  This lady on the phone said someone - maybe two people would contact us before the end of the day to set up appointments.  I told them they couldn't be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because those were the days we were seeing you.  Our head is already in a jumble over it ... thinking we have to worry about having clothes and being able to clean up.  Maybe that's something the OT person could help with though is getting us in better ability to do things here.  I don't know.  She asked if we could take showers or baths and I said yes, though we needed a new chair, and she said that was something they could most likely help us with ... didn't see that one coming.  Our legs on the chair have been folding in for quite a bit.  Just figured that wasn't going to go over with a therapist.  

Kind of scared with what they are going to say or do.  We talked to Rich about it a little, but didn't know it would involve OT too.  I’m sure he'd be happy to know that in all reality.  Just not sure if we're already in over our head.

I had a hearing problem yesterday because of having cleaned my ears probably incorrectly so he gave me something to soften that.  And, I don't know if you knew, but I had a dentist like problem on Monday and had to make an appointment for 9 am on Friday. The space where we lost the tooth a month or two ago started hurting as did the space above it - and all of a sudden we were having trouble with icy water or pop.  This week has been scarier than hell.  I called into the dental insurance place.  I don't think they cover much, but they are located in Aurora ...Rich took me to the doctor yesterday a couple towns away in Yorkville because we were falling apart and the dogs did ok with us out about 2 1/2-3 hours, so we're going to have to trust it for the dentist too, because Rich goes fishing Friday morning through Sunday evening.  Maury and the girls are supposed to be here Friday night and leave after dinner on Saturday.  Just way too much going on for me.  

Dr. Dorman set the structure of the appointment and he seemed to do good listening things.  I did ask him if he was on the side of believing or not believing in Multiplicity.  He said he really only knew about it from TV and he thought that probably wasn't very factual.  We appreciated his candor.  We just said that we had 19 parts, it was diagnosed in 1990 and that we've been working with you for 16 years.  He seemed fairly settled with that and that you would deal with those kinds of problems.  We did sign something to get the last lab reports and MRI results from UIC. 

I was glad for the result in having seen him.  By chance too ... yesterday the UIC pain clinic called after 3 weeks to schedule me - they said I'd be seeing someone the 15th of June ... they didn't ask me or say how are you or anything just told me when I’d be coming in and it was over a month away.  I will cancel that appointment.  I will probably be seeing Dr. Dorman again about the 15th - 6 weeks.  He like Dr. Albright would have - my new Synthroid level has to be checked.  Otherwise nothing much interesting he asked family health questions and checked operations.  We didn't talk about the diabetes much - he did when we said something confirm everything would be better with less weight ... No surprise there.  We'll have to see what happens next.  We were down from the 309 we'd gotten up to - to being 303.  Not much, but a nice surprise.  I think we lost some during the flu.  

We'll talk to you tomorrow when you call at 11 am, but pretty much thinking this is it.

Ok, we’re back – the above part went to Dr. Marvin, but we don’t really expect a note back.  There was nothing he had to comment on it was just a report. 

All three dogs are doing well – seems that Max prefers sitting in the warm sun – maybe it has to do with arthritic legs or something.  Not sure … Oh spoke too soon and now Lady is at the door as if she wants to go in. We didn’t see Rich go past – not sure where that is coming from.  Ahh that’s been confirmed … Rich just called and he’s leaving from Crete – it’s where his main job is at.  He still has to stop by the bank, the fishy store, Walmart and his mothers.  He said he’ll be home just in time to make dinner.  Yah that’s a sure bet – probably later than 5 pm.  It’s only about 2:15 pm now … We’ve got a good stint ahead of us.

As to anything more being said on medical, I think we covered it pretty good with Dr. M.  We are worrying about a few things not mentioned like how are we going to do clothes and if she’s going to make us do meals and stuff.  What about the regular stuff we’ve been having so much problems doing.  We’re thinking that when we make ourselves do it then it is something we’ll do good enough, so probably won’t need their assistance.  It’s just that if we tell them we need some help with something then they are going to make us do it, and then it will be like they do it with us once and then that is all.  Not anything that might be real helpful. 

It seems like the biggest walls we’ve worked on already especially with Dr. Marvin.  Like now we can be outside.  It’s like 3-4 times where we’ve come out.  Of course we’ve got the dogs – that’s been the biggest incentive so far.  They are doing pretty good in consideration of Don across the street putting something on his lawn.  And, they did well with the guy from the management company spraying around stuff with the front of the park lawn.  Lady barked a few moments.  We turned on Adele and we’re watching a particular robin – that’s all good stuff, right?

Ok, definitely avoiding the chat on having people come out to the house to do therapy.  One thing for physical therapy, but Dorman was tricky and threw in the OT too.  Just didn’t see that coming.  On the one hand, it would be nice if someone could help me do stuff like shopping for clothes.  BUT, we have been able to do this … Just that it’s hard.  Maybe it’s just a matter of getting the right parts out.  Who does our shopping anyway?  Hmm, looks like Lady wants to play…  Two of them walked over the fence and Dakota grabbed the other end of Lady’s rope, but they’re getting even more mixed up as to chains … guess we play it out until they HAVE to be untangled

Ahh, it’s about 8+ minutes after and all three dogs are down again.  It was pretty much tug of war between Dakota and Lady, but then Max got in there and it turned into more of a physical battle, but they must have decided they were too tired, because they didn’t rough house very long.  Whoops, Max sees something he wants – probably Don’s dogs …. Hoping he lays down.  He wants to go inside.  Let’s see if he gives that up in a few moments or if they are all going in that direction.  There, he just laid down on the top of the steps … that works for us.  Not sure, but thinking we’ve only been here for about 45 minutes.  It seems a lot longer, but I think I caught the start time about right.  I’d like to carry it to at least the 3 pm time.  Usually Max is the first one that wants to go outside, but he and Dakota just had a umm pee-off … I’m pretty sure he’s good.  Today is warmer, but there is a nice breeze.  Wow!  Just checked out the weather.  It’s 80 degrees, 50% humidity, 0 precipitation and about 8 miles wind coming at us today from the SE.  That’s nice since we’re on the SE corner of the house.  Direct hit! 

I am going to run out of water soon.  Might have to do something there, and we’re kinda hungry.  Hmm, now there is a LOT more to consider.  If I ate something.  What would it be?  I had a sandwich for lunch.  Maybe a little soup OR vegetables?  I wonder if we have some of those. 

Maybe just 8-10 minutes – then we can at least say that we made it an hour.  That be good, right?  Oh shoot our first little bee.  He seemed to pass us up but he seemed a little bigger to us than we remembered.  Is it going to be another one of those summers where we don’t get to come out here because we’re terrified? Oh Lordy, we hope not.  We’re starting to collapse just huddled in shoulders face close to the keyboard and staring.  Hmm, lots of cars and SUVs coming in people are coming home to catch the school children I think.  They’ll be here in about 10 minutes.  I do want the dogs used to the kids coming in where they lay down and don’t be barking on them. 

Hmm, I’m going to have to get a grip on shaving legs this summer.  Just looking at how furry they look.  Maybe that’s something an OT person can help with?  Why can’t we figure it out ourselves?  Just have to get something to do it with right?  Can Rich pick something up?  Is there a kind of cream so it doesn’t hurt so much, cream and shave?  Why don’t I know these things?  I sure hope we have a nice person who maybe knows these things.  If someone else knew these things it be a good time for them to come out, you know?  Before we embarrass ourselves? 

Didn’t we have a plan to mark cars coming in and out?  Is it too late?  Maybe we should be trying this again.  Oh oh Dakota is up –AND I don’t think he saw Joe’s dog – maybe Don’s.  Chain caught again.  Good he’s lying down.  This table is going to be the death of me yet.  I just uncaught Dakota from the scroll at the bottom of the legs, and now Max got himself caught because he thought I might get out a spare pet or something.  Silly dogs.  It be nice to have a fenced yard, but we’re not the kind of park that allows them.  Garden fencing is one thing, but NO ONE of the 35 has a regular fence so we’re thinking it’s against the rules.

Hmm, I think the woman just said her name was Doda, but we’ll ask her to spell it tomorrow when she comes.  She’s the PT and she’ll be here somewhere between 12 and 3 pm.  I told her not regularly on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but tomorrow would be ok for the evaluation.  She said that she’d be in the area and she would call when she knows the time for certain.  Three hour blocks of time?  That’s going to be way too wide!  I can’t let people push me around … HMPF!  This is sounding scarier than I want to deal with. 

Moms arehere up front for the picking up of kids – ahh another one.  It’s 3:04 pm.  Must be the time.  Dogs leashes are caught-up enough so that they aren’t going to go out that far.  I don’t want to be the neighborhood threat because we have the three dogs.  It’s not like they are vicious.  Just hoping they keep their good manners and don’t bark at kids.  We really want them to be able to do that.  This is new where we are here at the same time as the kids.  Here comes the bus.  At least one of them.  I know they have at least two busses.  One on the outside and one that comes in – 3:08 pm and everyone is gone.  Dogs did great and the lady in front of the house said something nice about them being attentive.  Good boys and girl!

I am going to have to use the washroom in a few moments.  So, I should probably try wrapping things up.  We are going to need coming back to unravel the leashes.  But, maybe in a bit, right?

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 @ 4:27 pm

Hi hi it’s me again.  Were offline out here and I don’t want to go in to fix the problem, so we’re going to continue this blog entry.  At least it seems like it … when I get inside online, I will figure out if we’ve already pasted.  Should probably though skim the last 6 pages to see where we’re at AND hey by the way – did you know we have a robin’s nest over the light outside?  Kind funny – I heard about it, but we didn’t realize how big it was … and when we came out the mom flew off the nest … Hey, we were here first!

We’re back again.  We just finished reading the old entry, AND we went in to fix Rich’s PDF.  Good Ann.  Rich let Dakota in when I went in, but then he wanted to come outside with me again.  This time we brought a blanket – It’s really nice out here and the sun is out though we’re in the shade, but the temp says only 57.  That should feel colder, but especially not with a blanket.

We spent some time earlier talking to Rich before going out, and then he multi-tasked to finishing filling out his passport.  I think he want to go to Canada at the end of the month.  Some things he just can’t procrastinate on much longer.  Happy that he got it done and now he’s moving around in the kitchen – win/win for us! Dakota is laying down in front of the table and we’re here.  Before talking to Rich, we were at Dr. Marvin’s office.  Dakota and us drove in today.  HEY and we DID want to say that it looks like the people who own the park put up new signs for Chrissy Drive and Peggy Drive.  We’re on Chrissy.  Looks sharp – the other ones were soooo faded.

Anyway – not too much happened during the drive to Dr. Marvin’s or back. We did stop for gas, and we were right by MickyD’s so we stopped for one fish sandwich and fries – and it came with a small orange hi-c.  That was my favorite part of McDonald’s the orange drinks.  PLUS beside not being over too much on calories, the fish sandwich is small enough to eat when driving VERY important when you’re on a schedule.  Still can’t beat BK’s fries, but they got ate anyway.

We took Dakota for a break after we got in to use the tree, and that was fine.  He’s really good at urinating *big smile* give them credit where it counts!  We got there in time to read a couple articles in the doctor journals and then Dr. Marvin opened his door for us.  Yup we were there in plenty of time … Oh do have to say this one part – toward the last few moments we were still talking about not looking forward to anything, and then someone inside suggested a candy bar since we didn’t have any before the appointment.  We only had $1.25 which is what you need for a candy bar.  We looked over appreciatively and saw there was Milky Ways which we’ve been eating of late, but mistakenly pressed the buttons for the snickers bar which made me a little GROUCHIER.  But then, the corkscrew turney thing stopped before my candy bar came out – ok, lets say that it was a little bit of a freak-out if people can still say those kinds of things now days.  Being a volleyball player, the instinct then was to hit it with the right heal of our hand as if we were going to spike the ball.  Then the little whirly thing started again and kerplunck down came the snicker’s – no problem any candy bar is better than none, but then?  Whirrrrr, and KERPLUNCK TWO candy bars.  Ok, by this time we’re grabbing and stuffing them in Dakota’s bag and hustling out of the area not believing our sudden turn of good luck.  WooHOO!!!

So that was all the good stuff of the day – and they all had to do with eating.  Funny that! Dr. Marvin’s was no fun and yes somebody tells him that when we get all done and feel worse than when we started.  It was that kind of day.  Most of it seemed to be going through all the blechy things that happened since we’d seen him. We missed one of our Dr. Marvin appointments, had to go see the new doctor, and then we had two PT appointments we didn’t consider fun AND to throw in with that mess – there was a Dentist appointment, many more to come and we only talked to Dr. Marvin 15 minutes on the phone.  There was NOTHING promising there.  We did watch Maury’s dogs for the week – and on the good side there … Dakota really had a good time.  AND, we did see Maury and the two girls Saturday for an early dinner.  Maury washed a couple loads of clothes and then we thanked him for making us feel like a mother because we ended up folding his clothes.  He said no problem!  He did help us with the dog stuff outside, and he did bring in my sewing stuff – so there were a few plus’ there.

It was a busy week AND Rich was out of town for most of three days – hmm, at this point we could consider it pretty much a challenge and we actually did very good getting through things.  Sunday we set up the sewing machine, and then Monday we did a little sewing.  For one of the blanket backs, we sewed on two sides and the top which was two pieces.  Linda agreed we got extra credit for cutting too!  Just have to put on the bottom and make sure things fit between top and bottom and we’re all set with one.  The tops are done for both quilts, so we can finally finish them up and bring them to Linda on our next trip June 7^th’ to WI.   I hear that Rich is already got a fishing date for then.  So that’s a pretty good deal. 

You heard most of Dr. Marvin stuff it was really complainy and he said it was really good that we were able to let go of it all here – meaning his office.  We didn’t good about that at all and we were frustrated we were still feeling bad.  There was one funny story.  Yesterday was the first time doing the exercises for PT.  We had a problem settling down Dakota – because he thought there was a new friend to great AT his house!  Needless to say the imp followed us into the guest bedroom.  I laid down on the bed, and then my big floppy dog jumped up on the bed between me and the PT person.  It was like OHNO you can’t be here, so we got off to the side of the bed and tried to pull him off, but he wasn’t budging.  So we got up and said sorry to him because we were going to have to shut him out of the room.  So we got him on the other side and shut the door.  Then we laid down on the bed again.  Before I could rest my head on the pillow – FLUFFY FACE came charging in – and in two leaps was again laying on the bed again between me and the PT person.  OH LORDY dog – we’re not PLAYING HERE!  So unfortunately, we had to put him in the sunroom with the sliding door.  That made him look forlorn, but he needs to know some kind of manners!

So that was our funny story of the week.  He did have such a nice happy face when he jumped on the bed a second time – Just like Lassy coming through the window – SUPER DOG!!!  LOL

Well, I suppose that’s enough … it’s time for super dog’s dinner and my fingers are now a little chilly AND I’m thinking that’s the Robin Mom scolding me for being in her space.  She should be warming up the eggs.  Ok, then maybe our dinner’s ready pretty soon too?  Better get to checking that out!

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