The last couple of days have been very windy. I’d hoped to start cleaning up the fallen twigs and branches around the yard by now, but we’re not quite there, yet.
While putting out feed for the birds and deer, I thought I would do one thing, though. There is a bird house on a post outside our dining room window that has a tree growing next to it. The tree has a couple of trunks growing out of its base, one of which is growing against the post, pushing it aside. I figured this would be a good time to try and shift the one trunk to the other side of the post. This way, it might start pushing the post straight again.
That didn’t quite work.
It broke off completely.
As you can see from the stump, this is not the first time it has broken! Though the tree only put out 2 or 3 cherries – the only reason we figured out what the tree was – it was in full leaf and seemed to be strong and healthy, so it was a bit of a surprise to see how dry and half-rotted the base turned out to be. It makes me wonder about the one part that’s still there.
We shall see how it does, this year.
Before heading out to see my husband in the hospital, we had a new visitor.
One of the first things I do every morning is check the weather.
This is what I saw, yesterday morning.
Just so you know, 46C is 114F.
The error even stayed there for most of the day. LOL
It’s possible it was accidentally in Fahrenheit, which would make it about 8C, but we didn’t have a high of 8C the day before – we barely got above 0C – so that doesn’t make sense, either.
After I wrote about our foggy morning, yesterday, my daughter and I headed to town for her shift.
Locally, we had a light, moody fog. By the time we left, it was pretty much gone.
On the way to town, we drove into a wall of fog, that just kept getting denser as we got closer to the lake!
I took this picture in the grocery store parking lot.
Keep in mind that my phone’s camera cleans visibility up quite a bit with smoke or fog, so in real life, the visibility was actually much less. Even so, I would normally be able to see several buildings, including the hospital my husband is in, from here!
Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary.
Well. As much as we could!
I drove my daughter to work in the morning, which meant I was in town late enough for the grocery store to be open, so I picked up a few things before going to see my husband.
I found the tiniest little sheet cake for us to share – making sure to check if he was allowed to eat cake before I brought it in!
It was just big enough for 4 pieces, so he and I shared half, and I brought the other half home for the girls. :-)
On the plus side, we missed driving from the city in the middle of a storm! The roads were clear while driving from the city, but in the time it took me to set my husband back up in his hospital room and start driving home, it hit. The storm came in from the south, so it basically followed us as we were driving. On my way home, visibility was down to 100-200 yards.
That kiboshed my plans to come back in the afternoon.
For the past while, we haven’t been seeing deer come to the feeding station. The changing season and daylight hours seems to be the trigger for them coming by less often.
They are coming, though. Yesterday, I could see some hoof prints in the little bit of snow that had fallen during the night. By then, most of the feed was eaten, and I could see they’d walked around, but little sign in the snow that they ate anything.
This morning, there was no snow to leave tracks in, but I did find other signs of nightly visitors.
There were little tufts of deer fur, all over the feeding station! Their winter fur much be coming out in patches right now. :-)
With heading to the hospital both morning and afternoon, I’ve been pulling into the yard after the morning visit. By the afternoon, things have warmed up, and I can really tell as I pull out of the yard.
There was a time when this area was gravel. It’s been so long, there’s no sign of it anymore!
Getting a whole lot of gravel is just another thing on the to-do list for this place!
I was at the hospital in plenty of time for the morning visit with the doctor. My husband is doing so much better. Feet and lower legs still a bit puffy, but the shortness of breath is mostly gone. The reduction in fluids in his body has meant he’s able to do stuff for himself again, that he hadn’t been able to for a while. He was even able to sit in the comfy chair in his room! It’s a low chair, making it painful for him to get in and out of, but the back support and comfort made it worth the effort.
He’s still waiting on the tests for his heart in the city. Based on his bloodwork, the doctor has written him up for an ultrasound on his liver, but that may be (and likely is) completely unrelated to the edema. That will be in another, smaller city, not where he will be going for the heart tests, so that can be done on an outpatient basis; they’re not going to keep him in the hospital for it.
At one point, a woman had come in to let him know they’ve sent his file to a particular department, and someone was going to come talk to him about resources of this, that and the other thing. As she was talking, though, I brought up what I felt was being lost in the shuffle; the root cause of all of his problems. His back injury, and pain management problems. I’m glad I did bring it up, because she hadn’t know anything about it. She was just dealing with what they were dealing with while at the hospital; they’re focusing on congestive heart failure (I wonder what will happen when he goes into the city and the tests end up showing his heart is just fine, now that the edema is almost completely gone?) and the scare with his blood sugars. They’re talking about getting his sugars under control, increasing his mobility, and talking about weight loss. I brought up that, when he was first being diagnosed with his back injury, a spine specialist had said flat out, yeah, losing weight would probably help, but it’s not going to happen. The nature of his injury makes that almost impossible. Add in that one of the medications he’s on prevents weight loss, none of that is going to happen until that pain is under control. She clearly hadn’t known about the back injury, so we talked about his being on the waiting list for the pain clinic for more than a year already, and pain related issues, and she did even say, until the pain is managed, nothing else is going to get managed.
The down side of my husband working so hard to be a “good patient” is, things tend to get distracted away from the main problem, and all these peripheral issues are being focused on. Yes, they need to be treated, but as the symptoms they are, not separate, unrelated issues on their own.
On a related note, the doctor did the paperwork for the disability and caregiver tax credits, and I’m concerned we’ll have a bit of the same problem. The doctor can only answer for what he’s been working with, first hand, which even the form says is not necessarily the date of diagnosis. That’s fine. But where it talked about my husband’s condition, it only was about the most recent stuff from the past few days. There is nothing on the form that talks about the reason he’s on disability to begin with. I took the paperwork to the tax preparer, forgetting just how early in the day it still was. She wasn’t there yet, but I was able to leave the forms with the franchise owner. I asked for her to phone me, but I think I’ll just call her myself, before we head back to town this afternoon. I can find out how much we owe her, in the process.
Our budget is totally hooped for this month! We got our monthly shop in, and the bills are paid, so that’s the main thing. We’ll manage just fine. :-)
With all the driving around we’ve been doing lately, one of the things I’ve noticed is how much standing water there is this spring, compared to our first spring here, last year.
In fact, we even have a pond in the old hay yard again.
My daughter had her first Sunday shift today; at only 4 hours long, we left later and I simply stayed in town until she was done.
As we were getting ready to head out, I popped out to see if there were any cats to say hello to.
I saw none, but heard a noise above my head. It took a bit, but I found her – Rolando Moon had been on the roof, and was making her way down the tree towards me.
She paused at their favourite sitting spot, where I could reach to pet her – and get a few pictures that I just love and have to share! These are in chronological order. :-D
That’s just how she rolls! :-D
It was quite a lovely day today, and the cats were enjoying it as much as they could! By the time I got those pictures, I had three other cats come out to see what was going on!
After I dropped my daughter off at work, I went to the hospital to see my husband. He was just finishing up lunch, and told me they were soon going to move him to a private room!
I was able to register my mother’s car in my name, but it’s still her car. This means that, if she needs help to get to an appointment or go grocery shopping, I can use her car, instead of her struggling to climb up into our van. I will make sure to use it once in a while, just because it’s not good for vehicles to sit around. Today, I plan to take it in for a car wash! :-D
The Re-Farmer 