#Staysafe

Things are getting to me today. My hubby listened to me rant. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts and frustrations here.

Like everyone else, I’m stuck at home. I have been here since March 16. I have asthma, and I’m 61. My doctor wrote a letter recommending I stay home because of my “co-morbidities”. My employer sent most everyone home to work remotely not long after that. Sadly, they laid off some others.

I’m glad I still have a job. I do miss my nice desk and its great setup. I am thankful that I am slammed with work, whether I’m at work in my nice office building or sitting in my pjs in my dining room. I am working daily from 8:30 to 5:00 using a tiny Chromebook with a 6” x 10” screen. I’m going to need a new glasses prescription when this is over!

I miss my coworkers. I miss the camaraderie with people of a like mind. Communication by text and email is difficult. Not being able to see someone’s face or hear the inflections in their voice leads to misassumptions and confusion. I also want to water my plants! I have several on my desk. I had our mailroom staff take care of them last week, but I hate to impose on them.

I am grateful for full tummies and enough cash to buy what we need. I miss being able to freely go to the store and buy my own stuff off of full shelves. I’m grateful for Instacart shoppers, but I miss making my own choices and deciding on my own replacements. I hate either waiting to pick things up or meeting a stranger at my front door to collect my deliveries while staying six feet apart. Everything ordered on line also costs more.

I am lucky to have the distraction of music and a flexible and helpful teacher. I do miss going to my guitar teacher’s house for my lesson where I can see and hear her while I play my bass and sing. We’ve been doing lessons on FaceTime. It’s been interesting. I’m now a vocal student, too, and I feel silly doing some of the vocal exercises where my family can overhear me. There is often a delay interacting electronically. When we play music together, the sound often cuts out, and I have to guess where we are in the song. I miss the feedback and the joy I get in playing together in person.

I wish I could keep all of us here safe and isolated. My 62 year old hubby broke his elbow at the end of February and was on worker’s compensation for a month. When the pandemic began, he was still here at home. I wasn’t as afraid with him here with me everyday. As a truck driver, he is an essential worker and much in demand. His employer couldn’t wait for him to return from disability leave. He got a verbal release from his doctor, and he jumped right back in two weeks ago, and within days he was sent right into New York City with deliveries.

My 29 year old son is also an essential worker. He works at a metal fabrication shop, and among other things, they finish parts for medical equipment. He is a type 1 diabetic, and he has gone out to work every day into this scary world we’re living in.

I’m grateful we’ve been healthy. Hubby came down with a cold his first week back at work, and he called our doctor. He wasn’t running a fever so they didn’t think he had the virus. He came home briefly today for just a few minutes. I hadn’t seen him since March 29th. He stayed out because he was needed, and because he didn’t want to give me his cold. I hate these times when all I want is for my husband to be able to be here and hold me without fear of getting me sick.

I’m a homebody, and I’m scared I’m going to be so used to being HERE that the first time out for a whole day is going to be just as traumatic as the first day of school all over again.

I stopped checking the statistics and reading the sad news stories several weeks ago. I couldn’t handle it. As an upstate New York State resident with a trucker husband who makes regular deliveries downstate in New York City, it was just too much. We’ve been lucky and fortunate, and I’m grateful.

Yes, things are getting to me as I suspect they are to everyone else, and I’m sorry for the long-winded, whiny rant. Please God, keep everyone safe and get us through this.

2017 – Not a Good Year (so far)

One of my squirrel friends this morning, sniffing a peanut I had just tossed out. He has nothing to do with this post. I just thought he was cute.

In my family, usually when we arrive at year-end, we tend to look back on the year that has passed and ask whether or not we are sad to see it go or glad that it is finally over. So far, for me personally, 2017 has been a “stinker” of a year. I will be ecstatic to see it end.

April was particularly bad. March wasn’t that great either. I visited the Dentist early in the year for a cleaning, and I was told that the one tooth I had that was mostly filling and little tooth finally had deteriorated to the point that I had to deal with it. It needed to be crowned. The first crown appointment was scheduled for March, and when I arrived and told the dentist that the tooth was hot and cold sensitive and generally a huge, aching pain in the ass, he said I needed a root canal. Getting in to see a specialist that didn’t demand thousands of dollars up front even though my insurance eventually covered the procedure in full proved to be a hassle. I did end up with a wonderful endodontist who made the root canal procedure simple and easy. The end result was a crowned tooth that no longer bothers me.

Six days after the root canal procedure I had my car accident. Actually, it was the little, old lady driving into me incident. I was minding my own business, mostly past her on her left, when she decided to drive into my rear passenger side door. That little fiasco ended up with me having to repair my car and replace a door, and while I wasn’t ticketed, I was listed by the police officer as a “contributing factor”. Why? Because she couldn’t stay in her own lane and decided to share mine?

June brought me a jury duty summons for three months of Federal Jury duty service from mid-July to mid-October. I got out of it until September when I was called to appear. I then got excused when I showed them my doctor’s note asking to be excused for health reasons.

Which brings me to August and September. Anyone who follows me knows what happened in August. I ended up in the Emergency Room on August 16. I had a colonoscopy on August 25. I had an upper endoscopy on August 28. I had a CT scan on August 30. I had a repeat CT scan on September 22. I was admitted to the hospital and spent five nights there from September 22 to September 27. All of this was thanks to diverticulitis. I am on disability at the moment, and I have paperwork that needs to be completed and signed by the doctor before I can return to work. I saw both my gastroenterologist and my primary doctor this week. I am on a low fiber, low residue and lactose free diet. Go ahead and Google that. There’s not much I can eat right now. I have been told that diverticulitis messes with IBS big-time, and it may be months before I am back to normal (for me).

Me, tucked comfortably into my hospital bed, with my best friend, the combination remote control-light switch-nurse call button on my shoulder

Unless I win the lottery in October and really, really great things start happening in November and December, I can safely say that 2017 sucked big-time. I will be more than excited to kick it out the door on December 31st. I am also hoping that by year end I will feel more like myself again. Fingers crossed, guys.

Lost

They say it takes three weeks to make a habit. Twenty-one days of consistently doing something, and it becomes part of your routine. They told us that at Weight Watchers years ago, and I’ve found it to be generally true. If you do something regularly on a daily basis, it becomes part of your day. You do it almost without thinking about it.

I’m on day four of life as a non-student. I am a little lost. I am used to schedules and assignments and things to follow up with online. As I go through the process of extricating myself from school and its entanglements, I feel grief. It’s a loss like any other ending. I also feel wellness returning as I find time for things I enjoy again. I have time to walk. I have time to read. I have time to just watch the squirrels and birds.

I also feel a little guilt for not seeing it out. I had messages yesterday from the counselor at school and two teachers, all wishing me well. I wondered if I should have done more, but remembering that confused and befuddled daze I found myself in last week reminds me that I did enough.

It’s okay to walk away.

Image courtesy of Pinterest

Gulls on the Bay

I’m sick again. Another cold. That’s two colds and the flu in four months. So far, 2014 has not been a banner year for health. The worst part of being sick today is that my youngest son goes in for an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, and I’m taking him. I’m sure the hospital will be thrilled to have me there, blowing my nose and sneezing. I’ll have to wear a mask. That should be a real joy.

My son is fine. He’s had this test done before. He tested positive for Celiac antibodies in a blood test a few years back, and they did an endoscopy. They did not find Celiac, but they found eosinophilic esophagitis. EE usually means you choke on food or have trouble swallowing. He has no symptoms. Since he’s at the age where the pediatric GI doctor wants to hand him off to an adult doctor, they decided to re-test and see if the medication they put him on cleared things up.

Hubby was home Saturday mid-day and left this morning (my older son drove him back to the yard). He was home two nights, and that’s always nice. I knew it was going to be a good weekend even though I started to feel sick Friday night. Saturday before I picked Hubby up, I stopped at Tim Horton’s for a cinnamon roll. I pulled up to the window to pay and the smiling drive-through clerk told me that the woman in the car ahead of me had already paid for my breakfast treat. Wasn’t that nice? I will have to do that for someone else. It was a sweet and thoughtful gesture from a stranger.

Yesterday Hubby and I drove to SeaBreeze – a small spit of land between Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay a few miles from where we live. We had burgers at Bill Gray’s and then we sat by the water for a bit, watching the sea gulls, ducks, geese and a swan. Here are some pictures of the gulls and the swan on Irondequoit Bay. My favorite pictures of gulls are when they are in flight.

Happy Monday, everyone!