Chemo Day

I left the house at 8:00 am and got home at 2:00 pm.   I slept part of the time in a very comfortable lazy boy style chair with a warmed blanket over me.   A cup of little round chewable pieces of ice and a bag a dark chocolate M & M’s – how good can it get?

When I came home Teddy was fine, happy to see me.  No alarms set off or piles of anything left for me.  He may have barked and whined the whole time I was gone but no neighbors are close enough to complain.

This afternoon Teddy and I took a nap for about three hours.  I may not sleep too well tonight.

I’ve been watching the Hatfields and McCoys on the history channel.  What a bunch of drunken idiots. 

Maybe it had something to do with the times or the traditions they brought from the old country.  Maybe we are still seeing some of the same things going on now. 

Do we ever learn from history?  Honor killings are the same sort of thinking but it’s done to your own family.  How crazy is that!

Later….

 

Memorial Day

There was a parade past my house today, not a very big parade and not a noisy one.  The drums beat all together, no special fancy beat.  Many groups carried flowers for graves at the cemetery.  Some poor men were wearing uniforms to represent the Revolution or the Civil War. 

It’s a small village after all.

The unpacking still isn’t done.  The laundry is almost done. 

We need rain badly.  They keep predicting the “possibility” of pop up thunder showers.  No luck so far.

I came home to find my lawn all mowed and my back deck decorated. 

Lory and John carried all my indoor plants outdoors and hung up the window that Andrea painted for me for Mother’s Day. 

If you notice the little piece of iron fence at the bottom of the picture, sprouting up in the middle of it is the onion Lory planted.  It has a white seed pod on top of the very tall stem. 

The two halves of potato that I planted are about six inches tall, in the same five gallon bucket.  The window says “Gramma’s Garden”. 

My family is so thoughtful.

Later….

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

I even braved the hot tub Tuesday morning – in my bathing suit. No pictures please. When I was all evenly pink we got out. 

The panty hose rolled up caused many tiny bubbles as the water seeped in, very funny.  We kind of took the rest of the day napping and playing games on the computer. 

Wednesday and Thursday we had very good luck finding all the items we wanted to take back to family.  A picnic at a shore side park was a treat.

All good things must come to an end.  Friday we were loaded and ready to go but we had to take a last drive around the island. 

A lot of stores and attractions were busily getting ready for the Memorial Day week-end.

Susan in the hot tub from our balcony.

 

Peace Memorial (<–- link) closed for repairs.

Honeysuckle tree.

Old lighthouse, now replaced by an automated one.

If you look really closely at the end of the dock there is a crane standing there.

A view of some of the shoreline houses.  There is also a crane on the dock but he is hard to see.

Susan took a video of the ferry ride back to the mainland.  I just spent 45 minutes getting it uploaded – then it disappeared.  Ratser fratsit.

I was very impressed with the powerful engines on the ferry and the amount of water it churned up.  Guess you’ll have to use your imagination.

Teddy was glad to see me but doesn’t seem to quite trust me.  He had become attached to Lory and John.  Lory and her neighbors were impressed with how obedient he was.

Today I went to the bank, the post office and the barn.   I got into trouble for not emailing Susan this morning that I was up.  I just plain forgot.  I am so sorry.

I still have a couple of bags to get out of the car from our trip.  I’ll get to them all….

later….

Monday on the Island

My phone does not work here but Susan’s does.  I have had daily reports on Teddy.  John’s Mother is helping them dog-sit.  She feeds him all kinds of stuff so he doesn’t even want his supper. 

I took some snapshots of our room.  We shared the king size bed.

The picture of the bed was taken this morning.

Today our goal was to drive around the island and see what was available.  We actually found a “Resale and Thrift Shop”.  I bought a hat and Susan found some treasures. 

Then we checked out some of the regular stores.  I found a pair of shorts on sale.  They even have pockets.

By then it was lunch time so we found Frosty’s which says it has the longest bar in the world.  If you put several bars end to end you can do that.

I even had a serving of the beer of the month – watermelon flavor.  Not bad, since I haven’t had beer in a long while.

The hat is the one I found at the thrift shop.

Not sure what we will do tomorrow – time will tell.

Later….

We have arrived

One of these days I’m going to write a blog and leave all the mistakes my fingers make.  It would be a test of your guessing ability.

I packed up the car and drove to Susan’s house where her boys helped load her things into the car.  We were off! 

Susan drove and soon got used to my car.  We stopped and had lunch at a Bob Evans, actually we had breakfast for lunch. 

We soon arrived at the ferry to take us to Put-in-Bay.

Here are pictures of us on the ferry.

We arrived about four p.m. or so.   It took two loads on their cart to get our stuff into our room.  Of course that included food, etc. 

We were up late eating chocolate, playing computer games, there was some giggling involved. 

We shared a king size bed which worked fine.

I got a report from Teddy – he is not terribly happy but having two people to sleep with is much more interesting than just one.

later….

Getting Ready to Go

Susan came with power tools and all kinds of parts and pieces and moved the LifeStation box from the counter top to the wall.  Don’t know why my picture is fuzzy.  No, I don’t want to read the book anymore.

This way Teddy can’t step on it again.

Susan and I are going on a vacation leaving Sunday.  We are staying in a fancy hotel on the shore of Lake Erie.  There is a pool and a hottub.

There is also a refrigerator and a microwave in our room so we are taking some food. 

We will be back Friday.  If there is WIFI I may post and then again I may not. 

Lory and John are back from their vacation to FL. They will be dogsitting Teddy.  That involves taking his cage and his bed and his food and his treats and his leash and comb and brush and some of his toys.

Me, I’m just taking a minimum of stuff like pills and a couple changes of clothes and hats and scarves to cover my quarter inch of fuzz. 

I’ve been busy all week making lists and losing them and trying to remember what I will need.  My brain is already on vacation.  Lucky me, I can blame chemo instead of old age. 

We plan to have a good time.  There is something about large bodies of water that is soothing and life affirming.

Later….

Cancelled Chemo

Well, not completely cancelled, just put off for a couple of weeks.  My blood  count was low so I just got Zometa (bone strengthener) and a Neupogen shot (peps up my blood).  Of course, I had arranged for rides to and from chemo.   I had to call my ride home and move it up.

It turned out to be no big problem.  I really don’t mind putting off the chemo for a while.  I should have guessed my blood was low, I have been feeling like I need two naps a day lately.

Teddy was glad for me to come home and let him out of his cage.

My new Nook arrived today.  I was waiting to see if it works before I send the old one back.  So far it is charged 100% and I have moved a book to it from my laptop.  The book is on the Nook! 

Guess I’ll have to get busy and send the old one back.

later….

 

Sorry about time lapse

Sorry I’ve been so long getting another post put on here.  Nothing special happening.

Teddy did go meet a new friend.  They did the doggy thing, sniffing etc.  Then Teddy realized there was cat food on the back steps. 

If I tried to feed him cat food he would probably refuse.  Snitching it is altogether different. 

So he didn’t play with the beagle, he just kept sniffing all over the yard for more food.

 

Lory is doing this introduction because she and John are going to dog sit for me while I take a vacation with Susan the 20th of May.  I’ll be gone from Sunday till Friday.  Teddy will drive them crazy. 

I went shopping at a Thrift store this week looking for something I might want for this vacation.  All I found was a small suitcase looking thing with wheels and a long handle on it.  When I opened it to check I found a very pretty bowling ball inside.  What a find!  I think I have five bowling ball/gazing balls in my yard now.

Friday is another round of chemo so I went grocery shopping today.  I didn’t take a list so I probably forgot lots of stuff. 

My hair grows into a little fuzz which then falls out the second week after chemo. 

I have had a bathing suit for quite a while and may get a chance to use it on this trip.  I wondered what to put in the left boob side to make it look symmetrical.  I finally settled on a pair of black panty hose rolled up and pinned inside.   I just don’t want to scare anyone. LOL

We have had rain but no more alerts or warnings. 

My Nook died a couple of days ago.  I took it to Barnes and Noble and they confirmed that it was dead.  It is interesting that they put all the instructions on it for you to read – except when it dies you can’t get to them.

I had saved the sales receipt so it will be replaced.  I am to send the old one back to them and they are sending me a new one.

In the meantime I can read books on my laptop computer.  The one I just finished is “The Help”.  It was made into a movie but I don’t see how the movie could be as good as the book.  I found myself sitting up till after midnight to read it.

In 1960 I was living in Gainesville, FL.  I had a job at the University of Florida and rode a bus from the trailer park where I was living. 

One evening I was on the bus when a woman with two small children and a bag of groceries got on.  There were no more seats in the front half of the bus so I got up (to shame the men as much as anything else) and gave her my seat.

When I looked toward the back of the bus there were plenty of seats in the back.  This stupid Yankee went way to the back and sat down. 

The bus came to a screeching stop and the bus driver got up and walked back the aisle.  He looked me over and looked at all the people in the bus.  He finally just shook his head and drove on.

None of the black people in the bus appreciated what I had done and I’m sure the whites didn’t either.  This was all before I noticed the law posted at the front of the bus listing off the law about where people could sit. 

I pulled a lot of other dumb Yankee stuff in the three years we lived there.  I guess I’m still a dumb Yankee.

later….

Weather

Tornado warnings, sirens, thunder and lightening.  I live in a corner of a county so it is tricky to know whether the warnings apply to me or not.  Turns out it was at least 10 miles south of me. 

There have been two or three inches of rain so for today and they expect two or three more inches tonight.

The sump pump in the cellar is working.  It isn’t at the lowest spot in the floor so I know there is a big puddle.  I used to go take a dust pan and scoop the water into the sump pump. 

Don’t think I’ll do that.  I think I will open the little vents in the glass block windows and turn on the dehumidifier.

There is also a flash flood watch but that doesn’t bother me.  I’m on high ground.

This morning I went to get blood drawn and then went for a few groceries.  I also mailed a couple of bills.

In the mail I got an envelope of old pictures and papers that my sister found while cleaning out their house.  Going through them was a trip into the  past.

Don’t know why I thought about this today, maybe looking at the old pictures reminded me of other things from the past.

When you have your 80th birthday the White House will send you a birthday card if you ask them to.  So when my Mother’s birthday was coming I wrote a letter asking for a card for her.

This was in 1992.  The first President Bush was in office.  When I went to visit her on the big day she was very excited.  She told me she had received a birthday card from “Barbara and what’s his name”. 

She really liked Barbara because she was a common woman, someone you would like for a neighbor, and she didn’t dye her hair. 

What a fun memory.  Happy birthday Mom.

later….