On the other hand...

Some people write when their lives are turned upside down and they’re feeling muddled or depressed or stunned. I’m not one of them. I know you can believe that since it has been such a long time since I posted here. Are you even out there reading this? Somehow I imagine that everyone has moved on and forgotten this little isle… If not, thank you for your stalwartness and loyalty. Please pass it on…she lives!

I am not going to go into minute details about the past few weeks. They’re over. Their ghosts float around the edges of today but life goes on and so do I. So…a great big hello to you, dear reader. Thanks for stopping by. I guess we’re all drawn to train wrecks, even if we state otherwise.

The Old Guy made a total and somewhat miraculous recovery from his Canine Peripheral Vestibular episode and seems much more animated than he has for quite awhile. Good. He’s a fine pal and we like having him around. He’s one of life’s “positives…”

The Rock had hand surgery (again), for a trigger finger this time and as usual, he is healing splendidly and took out his own stitches a couple of nights ago. He will go up to the hospital for the surgeon to say “good show” next week and we will have delicious Italian food at a favorite restaurant to celebrate. The hospital is North of here, about an hour and 40 minutes away and is a truly fine hospital with top notch doctors and staff. (And, ahem, located conveniently near one of our favorite restaurants…oh, I already said that? Well...)

The Rock has had about 6 hand and wrist surgeries, in as many years, and I tease him that he has a crush on his surgeon. Actually, I like her too. She’s terrific. I’ve been with him each and every time through the short surgeries and am getting quite adept at putting on my mask unaided. My glasses still fog up though, so I guess I’m not pinching the mask around the bridge of my nose properly. Maybe I’ll get to perfect my technique since The Rock still has a couple of fingers left. Hopefully he won’t require any more intervention…but who knows?!

Our old car that we bought from my mother a couple of years ago for The Rock to drive back and forth from work died…after we’d recently invested almost $800 and expected another year from it. The Rock hated that car. We gave it to my sister on her birthday because she was truly needy and my dad threw a little more money at it and hopefully she’ll be able to get the year out of it. The Rock now has a new little Nissan Sentra. They made him a deal he absolutely couldn’t refuse and gave him a 2 % loan as well. He’s happy, she’s happy, I’m happy. We’re happy. Well, mostly…

I developed some horrible edema in my ankle and leg and foot and couldn’t get the swelling to go down no matter what I did or didn’t do, so I broke down and visited the doc. “Hi doc... Look at this. My foot and leg are swollen and it’s hard to walk and I’m having trouble getting my shoe on.” Darnitall, I knew what he was going to say. He gave me 2 prescriptions, one of which I will not get filled and one for an unending supply of anti-embolism knee high stockings. Old lady stockings. The kind that take at least 10 minutes of every morning and the gyrations of a contortionist to put on. They work. The swelling has gone down pretty nicely but now I have old lady legs. Oh well. I usually wear slacks anyway.

The second prescription was for Lasix, which I don’t think I need since I’m allergic to sulfa and it states in the literature…don’t take if you’re allergic to sulfa and especially if you’re taking yadda, yadda, yadda… I take yadda, yadda, yadda… You get the picture. Have to watch these docs like a hawk. I don’t think he wants to kill me…just maybe make me suffer a little bit. So I’m suffering already… Me and my old lady legs. While I was there I confessed to the MRI fandango. I told him I was prepared to take on a little extra pain but not to be subjected to THAT again. He said “we’ll see.” He said “we can give you a pill to deliver a k.o. to you so you won’t care what happens for a little while…if needed.” I said “we’ll see.”

I had my yearly patdown, uh mammy, last week. Either my pain center is a bit addled or they’ve made some minor improvements to the mammogram machine. Minor I said. It wasn’t quite the fiasco as it used to be. If nothing else, at least the artwork at our local hospital is worth the trip over. While I was there I stopped in to have the optician make a small adjustment to my eyeglass frames. When I first walked in she looked downright nervous but was quickly reassured that I’ve mended my ways and haven’t sat on my specs since last year. That calmed her right down and after a slight fiddle here and a fiddle there everything was “squared up” again and sitting atop my nose like they should be. I wish you could have seen her when I first walked in and asked to have my frames adjusted. I guess opticians have long memories.

We woke up one morning recently and the water wasn’t running down the drain like it should. Uh oh, call the plumber (after trying all the old true-blue remedies…we’ve been through this before) and prepare to hand over the rest of the paycheck. Life is just so doggoned unreasonable sometimes. My CD player has started slipping again. The Rock had at it but it’s just too old now to resurrect properly and even his ministrations can’t keep it from gasping and groaning. Darn! I like the sound of those speakers too. I wish there was some way of hooking them up to my computer. My computer’s speakers sound crappy. Oh well, we’ll figure something out eventually. Meantime I’ve been glued to the live web coverage of the New Orleans calamity and then this week’s live web coverage of Judge Roberts’ grilling. I set it to full screen and sit back with my legs propped up and think of how nice it is to be me and here. Like the man once said…it’s all relative.