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.