I don't even know where to begin . . . Usually when I take a hiatus from blogging it is because life is good, I have no complaints, all is well with the world. (That doesn't happen often but it does happen.) This time you have not heard from me for a while because, quite honestly, I just don't know where to begin.
With the arrival of each new month we flip the pages of our wall calendar and look ahead to see what is in store for us for the next 30 days. Usually, because we are retired, the calendar is a fairly clean slate for the new month. There are a few doctor appointments scattered here and there but for the most part the days are blank. This time when we turned from May to June there were 2 doctor appointments for The Man and one Chiropractor appointment for me. THAT WAS IT !! We drew a sigh of relief and looked forward to a nice month of being out doors and "getting stuff done".
Because we are so far north the summer is very short so those lovely out door days are cherished and filled to the max with things that The Man can manage to do outside on his own. He loves riding around on his mower checking out the property and cutting paths in the tall grass from the pond to the house so the deer have a nice trail to walk on when they come each afternoon for their corn. Occasionally WE will take a trip, (him on his mower and me walking alongside), around the property to play one of his favorite games, "Pick Up Sticks". The Man is obsessed with sticks in the grass because, "They mess up the mower blades and those blades are EXPENSIVE". And so I go along with him as he points to sticks and I pick them up and put them in the little trailer that he pulls behind the mower. Once the trailer is full we drive up to the fire pit where we dump the sticks to be burned on the next calm day. (The wind up here is ALWAYS blowing so some times the stick pile is huge.). Last week when The Man suggested we go for a ride to pick up sticks I got out the 12 gallon spray can of bug spray, doused myself from head to toe and headed down the driveway to help him in his adventure. He turned off the driveway and headed onto a path that cuts across the woods from one side of the property to the other. He likes to mow a path through there, I have no reason why. Maybe so he doesn't have to go out on the road to cross the property out front? I don't know. Anyway, we turned into the woods and about twenty yards in he stopped and said, "Can you get those?" (As usual he didn't point anywhere to give me an idea of where to look.) I looked on the ground next to him searching for sticks . . . Nothing . . . He sees me looking on the left side of the mower and starts yelling, "No No, Not THERE ! Over HERE!" and this time he gives me some waving arms so I have a clue that I need to look on the other side of the mower. I walk around the mower and look and still I don't see any sticks. The Man by now has lost all patience with me and is waving his arms and yelling, "THERE !! OVER THERE!!!". It is at this point that I realize he is pointing to a pile of LOGS !!!!! Not STICKS", LOGS !!! These freaking pieces of wood were trunks of small trees that had been cut down a couple of years ago. They were at least 3 feet long and 8 inches thick. There was no way on God's green earth that I was going to be able to pick them up and carry them to the trailer. As I looked at him the words of my Michigan sister-in-law Rhonda came to mind. She had once told me that these brothers were all nuts and there are times when you just have to tell them, "F - - K NO !!!! I'm not doing that!" I did not actually say that to The Man but I muttered it under my breath for the rest of the day. I later told him I was flattered that he thinks I can do these "small" jobs but I just physically can not manage them. I'm freaking 77 years old and he wants me picking up logs and putting them in his trailer ? He is crazy.
At the beginning of the month The Man was feeling fairly well. His breathing wasn't awful and he had some energy. Then something happened and it was like he was a balloon with a small pin hole that was causing him to deflate a little more each day, He was getting tired much faster, his breathing was getting worse each day and he felt like crap. Part of this was because the heart doctor in Milwaukee that we had visited last month changed his medication. That was not a good idea. After several calls we got The Man back on his original medication but even that didn't really help. The Cardiologist said the problem is his lungs and the pulmonologist said the problem is his heart. Of course neither specialist speaks to the other so we are caught in the middle. We made several trips to the "local" Va, (an hour away) but nothing really seems to be helping.
In the midst of all this The Man celebrated his 75th birthday on June 17. We had a surprise party for him here at the farm on that weekend and 30 family members and friends stopped by to wish him a happy birthday. He loved every minute of it. The weather was perfect and everyone had a great time. The down side was it tired him out for days after.
Once he recovered from the party it was back to business as usual. His breathing is still getting worse AND his memory is also fading fast. I have reached the point where I want to record every conversation we have because The Man will not remember it 24 hours later. We are now moving things that we took from the house last year to store in the garage back into the house because he has no memory of cleaning out the parlor before he had it painted and putting lots of "stuff" in the garage. This is all coming to a head because he has a woman who owns an antique shop coming here tomorrow to "look through the garage" to see if she will buy any of this crap. WE purposely put all sorts of things in a specific place last year with this thought in mind. Yet when we went out to the garage yesterday to see what he had for her to look at he was all pissed off that some things were out there. I believe his words were, "That is good stuff that I need to look at before YOU, (meaning me) get rid of it!" As if I was the one who had decided to put these things out there. He honestly has NO memory of going through all this last year.
That nice clean calendar page was a total joke. It has been one crazy month in which I have had many discussions with The Lord ranging from "Really God?", to "What do you want from me?" God just smiles at me, gives me beautiful weather, good health and a good book to read when things get crazy. As we always say, "This too shall pass" and "Don't ever say it can't get any worse" because you know it can and probably will.
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