April 1, 2018 -
Happy April. To start my month, this morning
I saw two squirrels attempting to reproduce
in the neighbor's tree. I've never seen
squirrels "doing it" and I thought to myself
at the time while I was watching (like the
squirrel pervert I am apparently) that
having sex in a tree is dangerous business.
It takes skill. Kudos
It is cold out. It doesn't even feel remotely like spring. The birds are acting like it's spring so there is hope. (Well, so are the squirrels for that matter...wink wink, nudge nudge...) I want warmer weather. I am sure we all do. To be honest, I don't know what I want lately. I want warmer weather and green grass and blooming trees but I don't look forward to yard work. There ain't no makin' me happy, I tells ya. I do know I will take a nice hot bath here in a little bit with a bunny bath bomb I bought myself and work out my anger and confusion in the comforting waves of my hot tub.
My Mother in Law fell the other day and was in and out of the hospital afterwards. She is 93. My husband had stopped over there to visit on his half day off on Thursday and she walked him out to his car and waved to him as he left. (After he left is when she fell.) He didn't know she fell until the calls came. He felt horrible - it was his fault. "I should have never let her walk me out!!" She is back home now. His oldest sister lives right next door and is the main on site care giver at this point. My husband went over for several hours yesterday to give his sister a small break. Tomorrow I'm sure the girls will work on plans and setting something up for assistance, etc. I find it very frustrating that when a person has a wee little bit but not much that they no agency can help them without taking that wee little bit from them. Sigh. I feel for the family at this time in their Mom's life. We all have to go through it eventually but that thought is no comfort at all.
April 4, 2018 - Update on Mom in Law - she's recovering well. I believe with the girls getting her to eat properly she has regained some strength. The physical therapist who was there last night said she could be left unsupervised now. I hope she continues to kick butt and take names.
I saw my first dead skunk of the season (in the middle of the road) ((stinkin' to high heaven))... As cold as it is, the critters 'round these parts carry on like it IS spring. My friend Judy is in Florida where she said it was 80 degrees. Good for her. I warned her there will be a seasonal culture shock when she comes home this weekend. I always take the first week of May off to do my flowers and fairy gardens but with the way this weather is going I might just be off snow plowing... Last night we had thunder and lightening and tiny hail balls. Today and tomorrow we are due for 1-3 inches of snow so...
Monday night when I was getting ready to leave work our intern asked me how my Easter was. We discussed what each of us did Sunday and he was telling me about all the good food there was at his family's Easter. Then we discussed the various ways to make scalloped potatoes. That led to a discussion about getting older. I was going on about how I have shrunk and used to be 5' 4" and now I'm 5' 3" tall, and he was amazed at that fact. I explained how everyone 'shrinks' as they get older. "But you're not that old!" he blurted. "Honey, I'll be 58 this year! I was born in 1960!" No doubt I'm just a few years shy of his Grandma's age. He looked confused at that and I could see him doing mental math and he said, 'Wait. What?" and continued to be dazed by my remark. I poked my head into Rob's office and said, "He doesn't think I'm that old, Rob! Gosh, can I keep him?!" Rob gave me permission to keep him.
Speaking of shrinking, when we had a girls night out a few weeks ago my friend Kathy was saying that we start out taller in the morning and shrink as the gravity compresses us throughout the day which is proven by the fact we have to adjust our rear view mirror every time we get in the car. THIS IS TRUE, BY THE WAY. It provided for good laughs, but it is sadly true. I, too, have to adjust my rear view as the day progresses. Deb and Amy were discussing the same thing at work about getting older and shorter. Hahahahaha. I am a firm believer if we are all thinking generally the same thing that there is something in the collective unconscious that is inspiring us to think the same thing. (At least for us old geezers.)
Work is going to be very 'worky' the next few weeks so if I drop off the face of the Earth, fear not. (Unless they find a 'jane doe' in a field somewhere that is fat ... and seems to be shrinking...)
April 6, 2018 - When I let Jake the dog out this morning and saw that blanket of white my first thought was "...If this was Christmas I would be absolutely giddy that there was snow..." and my second thought was "...but in reality, I would love to be packin' a taser about now and meet Mother Nature in a dark alley..." April snow showers bring May snow flowers? That is a interpretation of that song I do no want to sing...
Last week when I pulled in the drive way (or was it the week before?) I noticed a dead bunny in my yard. The head was missing. I laughed at myself when I thought that maybe it was the right of passage for a young male hawk to behead a rabbit and fly around with the head on it's belt or something, but then I thought, "OH NO, ROCKO?!?!" Rocko the cat has killed several birds and one mouse since he's been 'our' cat but never anything as large as this rabbit. Nonetheless, I ran into the house and found him and checked him all over. Sure enough, he had a wound on his chest. It didn't look too bad, really, but I cleaned it out and put Bactine on it. Other than that wound, he seemed fine. When I got home from work, I used antibiotic cream on it. He still seemed fine and ate and pooped and was normal Rocko. I continued to treat the wound and at one point it got quite nasty looking, but boo boos do not deter me and I continued to keep it clean and treated.
A quick Reader's Digest history - Rocko was bequeathed to us by my daughter who couldn't really keep him anymore due to their dogs. Their Husky Zora just wanted to play and eat Rocko. Rocko was not happy in the city anymore and had to be barricaded in the bedroom for his own safety. He was left here after a visit 'by accident' and now Rocko is our cat. Rocko never took to anyone here except Jake and my husband. Rocko doesn't snuggle or want loving. (He does, on occasion, sit on my husband for attention but this is rare.) Rocko used to pee all over EVERYTHING until he started going outside. Once he was able to roam a bit, the indoor pissing stopped. Sigh. Rocko will get on the kitchen table and wait for someone to come around the corner so he can rip their arms off. I love him for being one of God's creatures, but I am not FOND of him. He won't play or cuddle. He just spends the majority of his time humping his fuzzy blanket 'girlfriend' and scratching up the furniture or waking us up at night because he's hungry. Ugh.
Last weekend when he started sneezing and coughing I thought that maybe he was dying from a disease he got from the rabbit incident. (We are pretty sure that Rocko did not kill that rabbit but wanted in on the action - possibly the local feral cat outside did the dirty work and Rocko was at the wrong place and the wrong time...) I did not rush him to cat emergency because he is, well - Rocko. All weekend long we listened to him suffer and sneeze and come up missing in the house only to find him hiding upstairs in a confused daze. I was going to let nature take its course with Rocko but yesterday I finally couldn't take it anymore. I called the vet the minute they opened and got an appointment for Rocko after work last night.
Rocko used to go to the veterinarian a lot because he had an issue pooping when he was with my daughter. He would get bound up. I am sure my daughter spent lots of money on that cat before we inherited him. Needless to say when we went into the vet office, Rocko was mad at me. He hissed. He had that guttural growl of disgust when they took his temperature (at the place where he HATES to be touched, his butt.) He is two pound lighter than last year, and they said that was the equivalent of a human losing 20 pounds. They took a blood draw to run a panel to see if anything inside was off kilter. The vet checked his wound and complimented me, saying the wound was healing quite well. He listened to his chest and breathing and Rocko had a huge snot fit for him (which is good because normally when you take animals or kids to the doctor they suddenly seem healthy as horses when just a few minutes before they were dying in the car...)
Rocko got an antibiotic shot and tested well on all his blood panel. No feline leukemia, kidneys tested good, liver, etc. My husband texted me while I was waiting for the lab work.
"Are you coming home alone :( "
"Hell no - he's fine. He just has a cold..."
"Get a second opinion, I'm pretty sure he's brain dead"
When we got home Rocko ran into the bedroom and sat there in the doorway staring at me. He sat there for the longest time. Then he ate a can of cat food, peed in the bathtub, and went upstairs to sleep all the excitement off. Sigh.
April 11, 2018 - Rocko seems to have made a full recovery. The gaping wound is almost invisible now and he has been eating us out of house and home. He is even a bit more 'loving' as far as nuzzling up to us and not being his total normal 'Rocko jerk' self. His poor fuzzy 'girlfriend' blanket has been taking the brunt of his new found energy, I fear. Cats...go figure.
I went back to the doctors on Monday. I've had huge swollen lymph nodes in my neck (under the chin) for months now. Sometimes they are huge and remind me of tennis balls on steroids. Other times they are just small, hard boiled eggs. I have been through two rounds of antibiotics and they are still "swollen" and sometimes painful. I had been seeing the physician's assistant for this issue the first two times since other things were wrong and I had upper respiratory infections , but this time I went to see my family doctor.
He checked all the other areas lymph nodes tend to bunch up and hang out like gangs on the back of the neck and armpits and groin area. Just my front neck nodes are being turd heads. We discussed what to do. He kind of didn't want to try one more round of antibiotics (a different type this time) because of my first two rounds. He didn't want me to end up with the explosive diarrhea that can happen with excessive use of antibiotics and can occur up to two weeks after the last round. I don't blame him. Who has time for uncontrollable diarrhea?? However, he was also not happy about the nodes. "I am concerned but not ready to panic yet..." he said. That means bad things. I told him no doubt I have some form of lymphoma and he told me not to think that way yet. So we went with the route of doing a ZPak of Azithromycin this time. I have a follow up appointment in a week. I tend to name my body parts (such as my night time brain function who I know as Brian) but I've never named those nodes. Suggestions welcome. I can come up with nothing suitable at this time, although Bosco and Barney come to mind...Note - I feel fine. I feel pretty good for having large foreign feeling objects in my neck, to be honest. :)
My oldest will be over tonight for a home cooked pot of soup and he will bring my Granddog Watson. It will be nice. He's been trying to eat healthier (which is hard for a truck driver on the road for a week at a time) so I am doing a nice, healthy soup. No dessert, no fancy stuff. Just filling, hot soup. He is home this week babysitting Watson so my youngest son could work a job up north. That was very kind of his big brother.
I will be working all weekend for the migration of my server to the new IBM Power9. (I know this means nothing to you all. It means a lot to me only.) I will test her for a week and then next weekend will go live on the new box. I have been planning this and reading stuff and prepping for this for a while now. I will be glad when this is over. Then we start on the long path of finding a new ERP solutions for the Company. Sigh. It's always something if I may quote Roseanne Roseanadanna. Viva Learning!!
It is cold out. It doesn't even feel remotely like spring. The birds are acting like it's spring so there is hope. (Well, so are the squirrels for that matter...wink wink, nudge nudge...) I want warmer weather. I am sure we all do. To be honest, I don't know what I want lately. I want warmer weather and green grass and blooming trees but I don't look forward to yard work. There ain't no makin' me happy, I tells ya. I do know I will take a nice hot bath here in a little bit with a bunny bath bomb I bought myself and work out my anger and confusion in the comforting waves of my hot tub.
My Mother in Law fell the other day and was in and out of the hospital afterwards. She is 93. My husband had stopped over there to visit on his half day off on Thursday and she walked him out to his car and waved to him as he left. (After he left is when she fell.) He didn't know she fell until the calls came. He felt horrible - it was his fault. "I should have never let her walk me out!!" She is back home now. His oldest sister lives right next door and is the main on site care giver at this point. My husband went over for several hours yesterday to give his sister a small break. Tomorrow I'm sure the girls will work on plans and setting something up for assistance, etc. I find it very frustrating that when a person has a wee little bit but not much that they no agency can help them without taking that wee little bit from them. Sigh. I feel for the family at this time in their Mom's life. We all have to go through it eventually but that thought is no comfort at all.
April 4, 2018 - Update on Mom in Law - she's recovering well. I believe with the girls getting her to eat properly she has regained some strength. The physical therapist who was there last night said she could be left unsupervised now. I hope she continues to kick butt and take names.
I saw my first dead skunk of the season (in the middle of the road) ((stinkin' to high heaven))... As cold as it is, the critters 'round these parts carry on like it IS spring. My friend Judy is in Florida where she said it was 80 degrees. Good for her. I warned her there will be a seasonal culture shock when she comes home this weekend. I always take the first week of May off to do my flowers and fairy gardens but with the way this weather is going I might just be off snow plowing... Last night we had thunder and lightening and tiny hail balls. Today and tomorrow we are due for 1-3 inches of snow so...
Monday night when I was getting ready to leave work our intern asked me how my Easter was. We discussed what each of us did Sunday and he was telling me about all the good food there was at his family's Easter. Then we discussed the various ways to make scalloped potatoes. That led to a discussion about getting older. I was going on about how I have shrunk and used to be 5' 4" and now I'm 5' 3" tall, and he was amazed at that fact. I explained how everyone 'shrinks' as they get older. "But you're not that old!" he blurted. "Honey, I'll be 58 this year! I was born in 1960!" No doubt I'm just a few years shy of his Grandma's age. He looked confused at that and I could see him doing mental math and he said, 'Wait. What?" and continued to be dazed by my remark. I poked my head into Rob's office and said, "He doesn't think I'm that old, Rob! Gosh, can I keep him?!" Rob gave me permission to keep him.
Speaking of shrinking, when we had a girls night out a few weeks ago my friend Kathy was saying that we start out taller in the morning and shrink as the gravity compresses us throughout the day which is proven by the fact we have to adjust our rear view mirror every time we get in the car. THIS IS TRUE, BY THE WAY. It provided for good laughs, but it is sadly true. I, too, have to adjust my rear view as the day progresses. Deb and Amy were discussing the same thing at work about getting older and shorter. Hahahahaha. I am a firm believer if we are all thinking generally the same thing that there is something in the collective unconscious that is inspiring us to think the same thing. (At least for us old geezers.)
Work is going to be very 'worky' the next few weeks so if I drop off the face of the Earth, fear not. (Unless they find a 'jane doe' in a field somewhere that is fat ... and seems to be shrinking...)
April 6, 2018 - When I let Jake the dog out this morning and saw that blanket of white my first thought was "...If this was Christmas I would be absolutely giddy that there was snow..." and my second thought was "...but in reality, I would love to be packin' a taser about now and meet Mother Nature in a dark alley..." April snow showers bring May snow flowers? That is a interpretation of that song I do no want to sing...
Last week when I pulled in the drive way (or was it the week before?) I noticed a dead bunny in my yard. The head was missing. I laughed at myself when I thought that maybe it was the right of passage for a young male hawk to behead a rabbit and fly around with the head on it's belt or something, but then I thought, "OH NO, ROCKO?!?!" Rocko the cat has killed several birds and one mouse since he's been 'our' cat but never anything as large as this rabbit. Nonetheless, I ran into the house and found him and checked him all over. Sure enough, he had a wound on his chest. It didn't look too bad, really, but I cleaned it out and put Bactine on it. Other than that wound, he seemed fine. When I got home from work, I used antibiotic cream on it. He still seemed fine and ate and pooped and was normal Rocko. I continued to treat the wound and at one point it got quite nasty looking, but boo boos do not deter me and I continued to keep it clean and treated.
A quick Reader's Digest history - Rocko was bequeathed to us by my daughter who couldn't really keep him anymore due to their dogs. Their Husky Zora just wanted to play and eat Rocko. Rocko was not happy in the city anymore and had to be barricaded in the bedroom for his own safety. He was left here after a visit 'by accident' and now Rocko is our cat. Rocko never took to anyone here except Jake and my husband. Rocko doesn't snuggle or want loving. (He does, on occasion, sit on my husband for attention but this is rare.) Rocko used to pee all over EVERYTHING until he started going outside. Once he was able to roam a bit, the indoor pissing stopped. Sigh. Rocko will get on the kitchen table and wait for someone to come around the corner so he can rip their arms off. I love him for being one of God's creatures, but I am not FOND of him. He won't play or cuddle. He just spends the majority of his time humping his fuzzy blanket 'girlfriend' and scratching up the furniture or waking us up at night because he's hungry. Ugh.
Last weekend when he started sneezing and coughing I thought that maybe he was dying from a disease he got from the rabbit incident. (We are pretty sure that Rocko did not kill that rabbit but wanted in on the action - possibly the local feral cat outside did the dirty work and Rocko was at the wrong place and the wrong time...) I did not rush him to cat emergency because he is, well - Rocko. All weekend long we listened to him suffer and sneeze and come up missing in the house only to find him hiding upstairs in a confused daze. I was going to let nature take its course with Rocko but yesterday I finally couldn't take it anymore. I called the vet the minute they opened and got an appointment for Rocko after work last night.
Rocko used to go to the veterinarian a lot because he had an issue pooping when he was with my daughter. He would get bound up. I am sure my daughter spent lots of money on that cat before we inherited him. Needless to say when we went into the vet office, Rocko was mad at me. He hissed. He had that guttural growl of disgust when they took his temperature (at the place where he HATES to be touched, his butt.) He is two pound lighter than last year, and they said that was the equivalent of a human losing 20 pounds. They took a blood draw to run a panel to see if anything inside was off kilter. The vet checked his wound and complimented me, saying the wound was healing quite well. He listened to his chest and breathing and Rocko had a huge snot fit for him (which is good because normally when you take animals or kids to the doctor they suddenly seem healthy as horses when just a few minutes before they were dying in the car...)
Rocko got an antibiotic shot and tested well on all his blood panel. No feline leukemia, kidneys tested good, liver, etc. My husband texted me while I was waiting for the lab work.
"Are you coming home alone :( "
"Hell no - he's fine. He just has a cold..."
"Get a second opinion, I'm pretty sure he's brain dead"
When we got home Rocko ran into the bedroom and sat there in the doorway staring at me. He sat there for the longest time. Then he ate a can of cat food, peed in the bathtub, and went upstairs to sleep all the excitement off. Sigh.
April 11, 2018 - Rocko seems to have made a full recovery. The gaping wound is almost invisible now and he has been eating us out of house and home. He is even a bit more 'loving' as far as nuzzling up to us and not being his total normal 'Rocko jerk' self. His poor fuzzy 'girlfriend' blanket has been taking the brunt of his new found energy, I fear. Cats...go figure.
I went back to the doctors on Monday. I've had huge swollen lymph nodes in my neck (under the chin) for months now. Sometimes they are huge and remind me of tennis balls on steroids. Other times they are just small, hard boiled eggs. I have been through two rounds of antibiotics and they are still "swollen" and sometimes painful. I had been seeing the physician's assistant for this issue the first two times since other things were wrong and I had upper respiratory infections , but this time I went to see my family doctor.
He checked all the other areas lymph nodes tend to bunch up and hang out like gangs on the back of the neck and armpits and groin area. Just my front neck nodes are being turd heads. We discussed what to do. He kind of didn't want to try one more round of antibiotics (a different type this time) because of my first two rounds. He didn't want me to end up with the explosive diarrhea that can happen with excessive use of antibiotics and can occur up to two weeks after the last round. I don't blame him. Who has time for uncontrollable diarrhea?? However, he was also not happy about the nodes. "I am concerned but not ready to panic yet..." he said. That means bad things. I told him no doubt I have some form of lymphoma and he told me not to think that way yet. So we went with the route of doing a ZPak of Azithromycin this time. I have a follow up appointment in a week. I tend to name my body parts (such as my night time brain function who I know as Brian) but I've never named those nodes. Suggestions welcome. I can come up with nothing suitable at this time, although Bosco and Barney come to mind...Note - I feel fine. I feel pretty good for having large foreign feeling objects in my neck, to be honest. :)
My oldest will be over tonight for a home cooked pot of soup and he will bring my Granddog Watson. It will be nice. He's been trying to eat healthier (which is hard for a truck driver on the road for a week at a time) so I am doing a nice, healthy soup. No dessert, no fancy stuff. Just filling, hot soup. He is home this week babysitting Watson so my youngest son could work a job up north. That was very kind of his big brother.
I will be working all weekend for the migration of my server to the new IBM Power9. (I know this means nothing to you all. It means a lot to me only.) I will test her for a week and then next weekend will go live on the new box. I have been planning this and reading stuff and prepping for this for a while now. I will be glad when this is over. Then we start on the long path of finding a new ERP solutions for the Company. Sigh. It's always something if I may quote Roseanne Roseanadanna. Viva Learning!!