creeper, monitor, and unwelcome house guests

The rangoon creeper, always one of the last things to come back after freezing to the ground, has finally started to bloom.

I’m starting this post with a picture because FB had removed three of my posts updating on all these medical procedures for going against their community standards accusing me of trolling for likes and sympathy. What?! The one thing they had in common was no photo. 

The first tropical storm of the season, Alberto, has been causing flooding all along the Gulf Coast. We’ve had rain every day this week so far with Wednesday raining all day but fortunately is was just a gentle rain with occasional bouts of heavier rain and really really windy all week. My neighbor Gary says we’ve gotten some over 4” cumulative this week. Only a 42% chance of rain today so we probably won’t get any. Oops, I take that back. It's raining.

The heart monitor came late Wednesday afternoon so I didn’t attach it until Thursday morning before SHARE, getting up a half hour earlier than usual to make sure I had enough time to get it on and functioning. This will be the fourth time I’ve worn a heart monitor and all the previous times it was the kind with multiple leads attached to a box that had to be worn in a pouch around your neck. This time though it’s one lead with the monitor attached to it, so no wires, and a phone.

The monitor sends the data to the phone and the phone sends the data to the doctor. And it’s waterproof so nothing has to be detached to shower. The phone needs to be within 10 feet of the monitor so I can just keep it in a pocket or set it on a table nearby. This is so much better! Also, the Watchman procedure to get me off the blood thinner has been scheduled for after the angiogram since trying to get them both done the same day would have been a scheduling nightmare and involving two different buildings and I’ll have to go under general anesthesia again and spend the night in the hospital with another week of recovery. I’ll be glad when these last two procedures are done and if the angiogram does show an aneurysm, just have to face/deal with that. Though if it shows no aneurysm, taking a blood thinner shouldn’t be a problem except it’s a fucking expensive drug and even with Medicare it costs about $140 a month ($700 a month if I had to buy it over the counter). So, we’ll see.

The weirdest thing happened this morning. I have two hooks that I hang my yoga clothes and day clothes on when I go to bed. When I got up this morning and put on my capri length leggings I felt a couple of little pinches. What the hell? Stuck my hand down in there and felt something so I took them off, turned them inside out and there were ants in my pants! Checked every piece of clothing hanging on those hooks and there were ants in every single one of them. Looked all around and did not see any ants anywhere else. I have no idea how they got in my clothes or why they were in my clothes.

And last, oh joy, I discovered I have a nest of armadillos under my house. Went out with Minnie yesterday afternoon and she ran straight to one of the openings to the crawl space and started barking hysterically. 

When I could get her to stop and pulled her away I saw two little armadillo faces poking out and the ground around one of the azaleas was thoroughly rooted through this morning. 

Ordinarily I don't mind critters under the house, I usually have possums living under there but armadillos can carry leprosy, though as long as I don’t eat them or have one as a pet in the house, I should be fine. Still, I don’t really want armadillos nesting under my house and I have no idea how to get rid of them as they are nocturnal animals. If I was on a slab I could just flood their burrow and when they ran out fill it in and while half the house is on a slab, that's not where I saw them.

butterfly, flowers, and the appointment

I took the kitchen scraps out to the compost pile last Sunday and there were about a dozen fritillaries feeding on the watermelon rinds dumped the day before. They all flew up and this little one landed on my finger. I didn’t have my camera/phone on me so I walked back to the house and back outside all the while this one stayed on my finger. It seemed reluctant to leave but flew away when I blew on it after I took the picture.

And my tomatoes are blooming. What’s up with that? They’re not supposed to bloom when it gets this hot. Guess I’ll wait and see if they set fruit.

Yesterday was the appointment with the neurosurgeon and while I was trying to stay calm on the drive in and while waiting and then again in the room, my blood pressure was high when she took it, was it always this high she asked, depends on my anxiety level. Don’t be anxious she said, changed cuffs and took it again, still high but lower. Then the NP came in and took my history and family history, asked about any sudden deaths in my family. Yes, my father died of a massive stroke after surviving one and my sister just this last November, ischemic stroke with brain bleed, looking for a genetic history of aneurysm I guess. She questioned the ischemic part of my sister’s diagnosis, that ischemic stroke didn’t cause brain bleeds and also my father’s saying that stroke didn’t cause sudden death. So there’s a big question mark there as neither were autopsied. The neurologist in the ER when my sister died said it was an ischemic stroke and while it wasn’t usual, it could be accompanied by brain bleed if the artery became weak and friable from the blockage. So who knows. I did look it up when I got home and found several reliable sources that said bleeding in the brain after an ischemic stroke could happen. Then she tested me finger to nose, following her fingers with my eyes not my head, how many fingers in my peripheral vision, that sort of thing. She answered most the questions I had written down to my satisfaction, a couple she deferred to asking the doctor.

The doctor came in and I liked him immediately, friendly and casual. He showed me a picture of the basilar artery in my brain and the bulge that was previously diagnosed as a fusiform aneurysm, I think from the MRI, which was gray and fuzzy. He pointed out the shape which seemed to have a point and that there was a very faint line coming off of it that could be a branching off to the right from the artery like the one on the other side branching off to the left which was still blurry but more visible. Then he showed me a picture of (not my brain) the arteries as seen from a cerebral angiogram which was black, sharp, and clear. He told me there was a 25% chance it was not an aneurysm and if it is, not necessarily the difficult to repair fusiform type, could be the bubble type, hard to determine from that image. I asked him if it was fusiform (meaning an oval shaped bulge in the artery, not a bubble off to one side) could it be repaired. He said yes and gave me two methods, one of which was cutting a piece out of my skull and performing brain surgery (I’ve forgotten what the other method was, maybe a stent) but it would have to be much bigger and dangerous before he would consider that. If it turns out it is the fusiform kind then controlling my blood pressure and regular imaging would be the treatment since it is high blood pressure that causes aneurysms to enlarge and blow. I suppose if it’s the bubble type that could still be the treatment plan, that or repair. I’ll know what I’m facing after the angiogram.

So the cerebral angiogram has been scheduled for July 9th. I’ll have to go in several days before to get bloodwork done and blood pressure taken, will have to be there for the procedure at 5:30 AM. I’ll be awake he said, given some sedative that will cause me to sleep if I relax into it, it’s a quick procedure, half hour max, shouldn’t feel a thing, maybe a little prick when they go into the artery in my groin. And it’s possible the electrophysiologist will do the Watchman procedure after the angiogram in which case I’ll be staying overnight in the hospital.

My double purple althea (rose of sharon).

flowers, dreams, appointments

I spent my brief morning time outside Saturday putting two things in pots in the ground. I planted the rooted firespike from last winter in the bed against the west side of the house that is shaded completely by two big oaks except for late afternoon sun. We’ll see how it does. Might not get enough sun. My sister had some hostas planted under her back porch that are growing really well so I plan to dig them up and move them over here in that same flower bed in the fall. The other thing I planted was one of the yellow angel trumpets I also rooted last winter. I gave one away and had three left so the biggest one is in the ground now in the little backyard to the right of the one I put in the ground this spring that was in the big pot. If it’s going to freeze down to the dirt every winter it might as well be in the ground and be easier to protect.

Last week my grandson hauled the dead riding mower out of the barn and took it to his folks house to see if he could fix it. I’m glad it’s gone as it was taking up valuable real estate. I got out there this morning to try and clear all the leaves out of the barn with my little leaf blower but I think I need new batteries as they both pooped out way too quickly. I’m charging them now but I think they aren’t holding a charge.

I noticed one of my carrots was starting to bolt so I pulled them all up.

The phlox that Ms Moon sent me and the plumerias are starting to bloom. 

All the daylilies are done or are about done except this clump that I got from Pam which is in full bloom now

and these which are almost hidden in the mess that is the front flower bed. 

Dewberry vines have invaded and a very hard to get rid of ground cover which has taken over the yard after the flood in 2017 and the gone by purple coneflowers. So much needs to be cleaned out but I’m trying to not get heat stressed before the rest of these appointments and procedures so no working outside for now.

I’ve been thinking about that dream. I don’t really understand it but the night before Robin and I had been texting about a chair and bookcase that I want moved over here. The chair is an exchange. Pam had two and only room for one so I took the other one because I wanted a chair with a footstool for my bedroom. She kept the one I would have preferred so I want to trade them out now. And the bookcase is also for my bedroom so Robin cleared it off in anticipation of moving it. I mentioned that we needed to get rid of two pieces of furniture in Pam’s old office that no one wants and aren’t being used and are just taking up space. Robin said she doesn’t mind living with Pam’s stuff, that she didn’t have the heart to rearrange anything, that she felt bad moving Pam’s life around. I told her not to feel bad, that Pam was gone and not coming back, that life moves on and I didn’t think we wanted the house to become some weird mausoleum of her life, that the house needed to accommodate the lives in it now, that we weren’t erasing her, she was still in our hearts. We talked about how much we still miss her and my feeling of being abandoned and that I’m so happy Robin is living in the house. So I think that might have been the underlying cause of the dream. I don’t think it was Pam visiting me but rather my own subconscious feelings about starting to let the house evolve.

So tomorrow is my appointment with the neurosurgeon and the anxiety I’ve managed to push to the back of my mind about the aneurysm while waiting for my appointment is back in the forefront. I won’t find out everything about the aneurysm until the diagnostic cerebral angiogram is done but at least I’ll get answers to my list of questions, foremost of which is can a fusiform aneurysm be repaired?

disturbing dream and anxious anticipation

Wednesday night as I was laying in bed I was thinking about my sister, about her ability to see ghosts, mostly strangers that gathered around. She would never engage them and could block off that part of her consciousness or psyche or whatever part of her that allowed her to see when it became too disturbing. Her husband appeared to her three times after he died that I know of, there was a ghost cat that she could feel jumping onto her bed at one of the houses she had lived in, a poltergeist that threw things off her wall once, and she told me one time she saw our father walking down the beach where our family beach house was after he had died suddenly from a stroke, the same way that she had died. I was thinking about all this and wondering why her and not me and why had she not come to visit me, you know, just to say goodbye at least. Anyway these were my thought when I went to sleep. This is the dream I was having when I woke up Thursday morning crying:

My sister and I were at a restaurant for breakfast to discuss something. The first table was too noisy so we moved to another table in the back where a man was already sitting. We were talking and the man made a comment about our conversation sort of supporting what we were talking about. It was still noisy so we moved to another table in front. The server came to take our order. My sister ordered french toast. Looking over the menu I couldn’t decide so I just said to bring me french toast too but before our food came we decided to leave and go to her apartment (this was a place where she had never lived in life). Later in her apartment we were sitting on the floor and talking and she was being very unkind towards me. I got up and walked over to the table. I said to her, you don’t like me very much do you and she said no, which really hurt. She told me to call our aunt (someone I do not know in life, all three of our aunts have been dead for sometime) who was at my house and see if she wanted to come there and give some input to the funeral we were planning so I went in the next room and called her and when I was trying to give her directions on how to find the building my sister’s apartment was in my sister grabbed the phone away from me and gave our aunt the directions as if I was incapable of being clear. Then a woman and her two kids, a young boy and a younger girl, a neighbor in the apartment next door, came in and the boy was just a wild child running around and yelling. I told him to stop bothering me and he punched me in the stomach with a stick like a broom or mop pole. Leave me alone I shouted and left the apartment to wait for my aunt outside. The little girl followed me out the door and into the vestibule and gave me a hug, never saying anything and then went back in the apartment. I continued outside and when my aunt arrived she had brought my dog Minnie who was being a happy dog greeting the other people out there like she does. We headed back in to my sister’s apartment walking through two vestibules, one after the other, and when we went in my sister’s apartment she was having a big party like maybe a Christmas party. There was candy and other refreshments on the table. Everybody was having a good time except for me. I was very sad. My sister asked me if I wanted her to get Minnie but not in a way that conveyed caring, more like indifference, and I told her no, she would just bother everyone and be underfoot and I started crying. 

That’s when I woke up and I was crying and so sad. I couldn’t believe my sister had been so mean to me and it took some effort to stop crying after I woke up. Had to tell myself that was not my sister in the dream although to be honest, she could be pretty condescending when people didn’t behave the way she thought they should and she had lashed out at me than once when she thought I was butting into something she thought was her prerogative. To her credit, she would usually apologize to me later. Maybe she’s mad that I kept her on the breathing machine for 7 hours after it was apparent she was mostly dead already while I waited for all the family that could to get there and say their goodbyes.

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I went to SHARE on Thursday but I think I overdid it a little. Not at SHARE because although the first hour was pretty much non-stop after that it slowed down and I had plenty of time between food orders to sit. It was really after when I was running my errands…taking the cardboard to the recycling location, giving a book to the little library across the street from the Post Office, returning a book to the big library, carrying a watermelon up the stairs to Pam’s/Robin’s house, taking leftover milk and another watermelon to my neighbor down the street all in the heat of mid-day so I was in afib pretty much from about 1 PM to about 4 when it had calmed down. Wasn’t sure if I was going to go to yoga last night but by the time I had to leave I felt fine and so I did and have been fine since.

The nurse never did call me back on Monday but I wasn’t concerned because whatever had been going on those first four days after the procedure had settled down but she did finally call while I was at SHARE. My doctor wants me to wear a monitor for a week just to check and see what is going on with my heart. I told her it had all settled down and I was feeling pretty good but, you know, if that’s what he wants, OK. I asked if he still wants to do the Watchman procedure (closing off that little pouch where blood pools during afib), she said yes, and if he still wanted to do it the same day as the cerebral angiogram which has not been scheduled yet. My appointment with the neurosurgeon is Monday and I’m to call my electrophysiologist’s office and let them know when the angiogram is scheduled. Fortunately both doctors have offices on the Memorial Hermann SW hospital campus. If both procedures can be done on the same day it would be one less trip in and I'd have both those behind me at one time. The angiogram goes through an artery but the Watchman goes through a vein which I guess is why both procedures can be scheduled the same day. Then all the heart stuff will be behind me (for now anyway, the afib could come back or not be completely repressed). The angiogram will determine if the neurosurgeon just wants to keep an eye on the aneurysm, which I gather is having MRIs on a regular basis, or if it needs immediate attention. I’m not sure how he would repair a fusiform aneurysm and I’m resisting the urge to google it again. I’ll find out soon enough on Monday.

I will be so glad when I finally have some resolution and have something to talk about than my heart and my brain. Like the unbelievable whackadoodle clown show cult that the GOP has become. Boats, and batteries, and sharks; bitcoin mining? The outright adoration shown by the republican House and Senate when he visited yesterday? What the actual fuck!

 

over the hump

I think I turned a corner Sunday. I did not start the tomato sauce but I did get the biggest room in the house vacuumed…all good. Cleaned up after breakfast…all good. Drank lots of water, got up and moved around between episodes of GoT, picked up four more handfuls of sticks, did some yoga before bedtime…all good. I did still have some episodes but they were low key, infrequent, and ended fairly quickly.  

Monday was even better. I had one episode in the morning when I received a message from the neurosurgeon’s patient portal addressing a message I had sent two weeks ago when I was worried about whether or not my insurance would cover my appointment or any procedures by him, an issue I resolved that same week so I called their office and was reassured that all was well, they already had approval for my appointment next Monday. And then the afib stopped and I don’t think I had any other episodes besides maybe a blip or two all day.

And so I put myself to the test and cleaned the bathtub and the three walls that surround it. It was really horrible and really needed to be done and even after that vigorous activity, all was well. And I drove to El Campo for yoga class Monday night. The restriction on not lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds has passed and so I am back to my regular activity, which now that it’s summer does not include doing anything out in the yard for most of the day, basically an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

So, a month or so ago, little moths started showing up in the house, more and more as the days went on. Could not figure out where the fuck they were coming from. Checked the pantry, nope. Could not think of any other possible source. Well, when I vacuumed the big room, my office/workplace in the house, I found the source. Right before the place that buys/sells/cracks pecans closed towards the end of February I took one last bucket of pecans from the box I withheld when I sold mine and had them cracked but I never shelled them. I was so over shelling pecans by that time so they have just been sitting under the small work table. When I bumped the bucket with the vacuum cleaner a flurry of little moths rose up. Damn. Carried it outside and dumped it under the bird feeder for the birds and squirrels. Later I saw a young squirrel very timidly approach the pile and finally pick one up and started eating. I still have a bunch of moths in the house but at least they’re a declining population now.

My grandson was here when I got back from yoga last night. He’s coming back this evening after he gets off work to fix our truck which has been dead since a pulley that has something to do with the power steering, I think, fell off. I’ll be glad to have my truck back so I can move all those piles of sticks over to the burn pile at one time instead of multiple trips with the garden cart. I gave him my canoe a couple of weeks ago finally putting the last nail in the coffin of my guide and river running days even though it’s been maybe two decades since I’ve been on the water. It’s been leaning against the side of the barn for most of that time and the thwarts rotted and one of the supports for the seats as well. He’s going to make a trade with a woodworker to replace all that in exchange for mechanic work. Once he gets the canoe back in shape I’m going to get him to take me out in it this fall on a nearby lake. 

Since Mikey has it now, this is a picture off the Old Town website of what my boat looked like new only mine had cane seats, not webbing.

I don’t know where all my river days pictures are. I found one folder with a few. This is on the Pecos River and that's me running a rapid. 

This one is hiking in Boquillas Canyon on the Rio Grande in Big Bend.

Marc and I on a different trip on the Pecos River.

Oh, those were the days.

not much to say

The red crinum lilies are in full bloom. They are some of my favorites and I dug them up from the Houston house when we moved out here. 

I haven’t felt like writing, sick of this whole thing and the weird afib episodes I’ve been having, one episode Friday morning about every 5 beats or so there would be a long pause, not like skipping a beat but as if my heart had stopped beating. And then it would again and then it wouldn’t. This went on for, I don’t know, 45 minutes. Scared the crap out of me. Talked to the nurse and she said it sounded like my heart was converting, trying to reset itself, not to worry but she decreased the dose of one of the statins they have me on.

Plus I haven’t done a goddamn thing since I got home on Wednesday but lay around in bed or in the recliner. We’ve been bingeing on Game Of Thrones, sort of our go to when we don’t feel like searching for something to watch. We’ve both read the books and have seen it all before so it’s something we don’t have to pay a lot of attention to except for the story lines we really like, like Arya’s. We’re trying to get through it before the new seasons of Outer Range, The Bear, and The Boys start.

So last evening, my heart rate was so low, low 40s, I figured all this laying around was not doing me any good and when we switched off the TV and went to bed I rolled out my yoga mat and did about 40 minutes and I felt so much better afterwards. So I determined that I was going to start doing stuff regardless of what was going on with my heart and went out this morning to pick up another pile of sticks, or really just added to an already big one, this morning. 

Just one of the 4 piles of sticks I’ve picked up and I still haven’t picked up all the sticks and small branches that came down in the storm the week before my procedure. 

We’ll still watch more GoT today. Arya and Bran are back at Winterfell, the Lannister army had their first encounter with a dragon, and Jon and company have gone beyond the wall to capture a wight.

I have tomatoes in the refrigerator that need making into tomato sauce so I might start that today. And more yoga. I did finally dig up my potatoes the day before my procedure, a disappointing harvest. They only made potatoes in the first bottom layer. And while I thought I had one tub of white and one tub of red it turned out they were both white.

There were two whistling ducks in the native pecan at the back of the property Friday morning.

So now at 10:30 AM it’s already too hot to be outside for more than just a few minutes. 85˚ and sunny, no breeze to speak of, 71% humidity, high of 93˚ predicted.

all is well

We got to the Heart Rhythm Center on time, checked in, and waited for them to call me back which they did about a half hour or so after I got to the waiting area of the pre/post op floor where they hooked me up to every medical device known to man, did the transesophageal echocardiography under twilight sleep and then rolled me into operating theater. We passed my doctor in the hall, I’ll be right there he said, do your best I told him and that was the last time I saw him. Once in the room filled with all sorts of imaging devices they plastered my back and sides with sensors, anesthesiologist asked it they were ready and that’s the last thing I remember.

Woke up in the pre/post op center from whence i had come. The procedure took four hours which is what the nurses said it would take before they whisked me off. My doctor had gone out to tell Marc that all went well, that there was no sign of afib now and they would be keeping me overnight because recovery would be long. After coming out of the anesthesia I had to lay flat on my back, no moving my head or legs but could move my arms, for 6 hours which would not be up until 10 PM. Sore throat and because I was laying flat my sinuses kept draining into my throat so was constantly trying to clear my throat. And they had an external catheterization device on me which as far as I could tell was a cup attached to a long tube that would suck the pee up and I really had to pee. Just relax the nurse said and let it happen. Yeah, just relax and counter decades of training not to wet the bed. Which btw I had done under the anesthesia I guess because when I woke up the bedding was wet under me. Anyway I finally coughed hard enough which put pressure on my bladder and released all the pee.

I guess everyone else in the pre/post op center went home until I was the only one left waiting for a bed upstairs. They finally got me upstairs about 8 and I still had two hours to go laying flat on my back. At 10 PM I was finally allowed to sit up and then I dozed off and on sitting up til about 3 when I lowered the bed and laid down again sleeping in spurts because...hospitals that want you to sleep and rest but wake you up regularly for vitals or blood or this or that. Wednesday morning was a constant stream of techs and nurses and advocates and NPs and assistants and they discharged me about 9:30 and Marc came and picked me up about 10:30 and we drove home in a hard blinding rain.

So Wednesday I did nothing but lay in the recliner snoozing off and on still recovering from the general anesthesia, nice sinus rhythm in the hospital and at home if a little rapid, about 70 bpm, until about 5 PM when I went into afib and it continued off and on, mostly on, til about 9:30 this morning (and still going in and out) and my emotions just sank. What the fuck, doctor said it was successful, why am I in afib, did it not work, am I going to have to do this again, I don’t want to go through this again. Went to bed last night thoroughly disappointed. Called the doctor’s office first thing, like 5 minutes after they opened and left a message for the nurse to call me back. 

So the nurse called back about an hour later. They should have explained this to me before they discharged me, she said, but it is common to continue to have afib episodes after the ablation because my heart is still inflamed from the procedure and is still healing. The areas they burned or froze, whichever, that stimulate the afib are still raw and it will take about two month for the heart to heal completely and for the scars to harden. Once the scars harden I should be free of the afib so in the meantime I stay on the drugs to help control the rhythm and they upped the dose of one and added another temporarily.

I feel good now, reassured that these episodes are normal, that they will lessen in frequency and eventually stop when all the healing is done.

Thank you all for all the white light, love, and good wishes sent my way. I’m sure it helped guide my doctor’s hand.

see you on the flip side

I guess I’m as prepared as I’m going to get. A little anxious but mostly just want to get it done and over with. A nurse at the Heart Rhythm Center called this morning to get all the medical history and other personal stuff out of the way, making sure I knew what, when, and where, did I have any questions, she would be at this number til 5:30 if I needed to talk to her again, and all that stuff. I went and got the medical antibacterial soap for my shower in the morning, I’ve arranged with Robin to come and feed Minnie and the wildlings (though they aren’t so wild anymore, even Twin lets me pet him briefly now and then) and I’ll fill Cat’s bowl before I leave, filled the bird feeder and watered all the plants in pots. I’ve packed an overnight bag in case they decide to keep me which I think might be a possibility even though it’s an out-patient procedure, I’ve got my clothes picked out for tomorrow (comfortable clothes they said). Nothing to eat or drink after midnight.

I have to be there at 7:30 so we’ll leave at 6:30. They’ll do a transesophageal echocardiography first which means they will thread an ultrasound device down my throat and look at my heart to make sure there are no blood clots before the procedure. They get a clearer picture from the inside. I’ll be in twilight sleep for that. And then the ablation which is supposed to take about two hours if all goes well and in recovery for four hours. The twins FaceTimed me last night. They’ll be on a plane to Mexico for their birthday trip with three friends during my procedure.

So, yeah, I guess I’m good to go.

MAGAts and treading water

If ever there was an illustration of the core integrity and quality of character of MAGAts, it was on display after Trump’s guilty verdict was read. The MAGAts waiting outside the courthouse exploded with anger, screaming profanities and threats.

Trump was on Fox and Friends. Here’s some of the things he said:

He says he never said ‘lock her up’.

He supports climate change because it means a little more beachfront property.

He will appoint an Attorney General who will go after Americans who don’t support him.

He will fire America’s military generals and replace them with MAGA loyalists.

He said Americans who don’t support him are the enemy and more dangerous than Putin.

He said Americans who don’t support him are evil and he wants to seek revenge on them by sending the DOJ after them.

He said China and Russia aren’t the problem, people in America who don’t support him are the problem.

He said there will be a depression like in 1929 if he loses.

He said he will immediately end the Department of Education if he wins.

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So, me? Yesterday was my last day to take the blood thinner before my afib ablation on Tuesday. Also the last cocktail I will have before the procedure. Drinking plenty of water to be well hydrated. Not going out in the heat and humidity and getting overheated and overtired before the procedure even though the wild muscadine grape is taking over the other section of fence on the other side of the driveway in front of the shop yard. My potatoes are probably rotting in the big tubs for the same reason. The dog is not getting any walks for the same reason. Doing my yoga in the mornings. 

Went to SHARE last Thursday and we were 5 volunteers short in the food section and had to draw two people from the front who interview clients and they were already short one volunteer. So, was it a slow day because we were so shorthanded? Fuck, no. One of the busiest days. Don’t know the final tally but I’m pretty sure we filled close to 40 food requests. My morning at SHARE doesn’t usually tire me out but last Thursday did. I even took a rare short nap in the afternoon.

I did something I very rarely do yesterday. I had started a new book and was about 50 or so pages in and I took it back to the library. I didn’t like the writing style and I really didn’t like the main character. I decided I wasn’t gong to torture myself on the off chance it would get better and checked out two other books.

Since I’m a little preoccupied and not really engaging with the world right now, here’s some random photos.