HELP ! I AM STUCK !

 I kid you not,   I am quite, literally STUCK !  The Man is at rehab and I am alone in the house and stuck in my electric recliner.  (I'll give you a moment to stop laughing)

I guess it all started last night when I could NOT fall asleep. I tossed and turned and flopped around in the bed like a beached whale.  I finally gave up at around 2 AM and came out to the living room where I made a cup of tea, got out my iPad and flopped down in my recliner. ( My recliner happens to be my favorite spot in the Florida condo. I have the lovely parlor up in Michigan where I can escape and I have my electric recliner here in Florida.)  Life is good.  

I spent the next three hours sitting the dark playing games on the iPad until I thought I might finally be able to sleep, which I did until 9 AM. Since then I have been doing laundry, changing sheets on the bed, puttering in the kitchen and just cleaning up the place.  The Man left for rehab a little after 10, (for his 11 o'clock session that is less than 5 minutes away. I don't ask.)  After he left I made some breakfast and headed to my recliner with coffee in hand and the newspaper to read.  I got sidetracked half way to the chair when I saw my computer and decided to check my mail. THAT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE. Why is it that just as I get comfortable with the structure of a website they up and change everything.  All I wanted to do was see if any of the 57 e-mails were anything important.  Low and behold Outlook had changed EVERYTHING since I last checked my mail and I now had to log in which meant I had to get up to get my password book. (The chair was functioning fine. It vibrated, produced heat on my back and went up and down just like it is supposed to.)  Naturally I had no idea where I left my password book so that took some searching but I. finally found it and went back to my chair to continue fighting the computer. That was a total bust so I closed up the computer and decided to read the paper. What could go wrong !?  I had my coffee, a piece of banana bread that I had baked last night, (that refused to cook in the middle), and the news paper. Ahhhhhhhhhh comfy at last!    WRONG !!!  I didn't have my glasses so I couldn't see. 

OK , , , one last time I'll get up, get my glasses, return to the chair and relax for an hour before The Man gets back and decides he needs me to help him do something.  I picked up the remote for the chair, pressed the button to lower my feet so I could get up and NOTHING . . . .    The chair wasn't moving so neither was I.  

Because I had tipped the chair as far back as it would go I was in a semi prone position with gravity working against me.  The chair and I were bonded together and I was going to be stuck here a while.  Fortunately I have pretty good upper body strength. Unfortunately the rest of my body sinks like a rock so that once it is in any position it takes an act of God and a 20 tone crane to get me to move. 

It only took me about 10 minutes to wiggle myself up and out of the chair. (I might as well have been climbing Mt. Everest), but I did finally make it out.  Sure enough when I looked under the chair, (that was another Herculean task) I saw that the power cord had pulled loose from the chair. 

So now I am back in the chair, vibrating and baking and I am NOT getting up for anything. 

 Please don't call because I left my. phone in the kitchen. 

MY TURN

You may have noticed that most of my blogs are written about the men in my life.  First there was Husband and all the dumb things he did.  Now there is "The Man" who provides me with an endless stream of material to write about.  But every now and then I do something so dumb that I need to be fair and let the world know what an idiot I can be.

It all started when I was still in MI wanting to send some goodies to my oldest grand daughter who is now in her second year of college.  She attends LSU and is doing an amazing job on her way to a career in engineering. (She is defiantly her parents child with none of her grandmother's stupidity in her.) ANYWAY . . .  I decided to go on Amazon to see what they had in the way of "Goodie Boxes". I found exactly what I was looking for, a whole box full of snacks.  It was the perfect gift to surprise the college student.   I quickly ordered it so it would get to her that week. 

Fast forward two and a half weeks and I still had not gotten a text from my grand daughter thanking me for her package.  This is unusual because she ALWAYS send a text when she hears from me.  I happened to be talking to her dad so I asked if his daughter had said anything about getting a package from me.  He didn't think so but then called her and asked.  She told him she had not received anything.  I couldn't understand what had happened because I had gotten a text from Amazon showing a picture of the package sitting outside her door. At least that's what I THOUGHT I saw. Upon closer scrutiny I realized the door in the picture was MY DOOR IN FLORIDA !  I had been in such a hurry to get the package sent that I didn't catch the address I was sending it to.  DUH!  DUH!  AND  DUH!    I was feeling quite stupid! 

But it gets even better !

I still wanted to get those snacks to my college girl so I went back on Amazon and re-ordered the same item but this time I was very careful of the address where it was being sent.  (Meanwhile the first box was sitting outside my FL condo for a couple of weeks getting rained on almost every day.  It was quite the mess when my daughter went over to pick it up.) Sure enough 2 days later I got a text from Louisiana thanking me for all the wonderful snacks.

But it doesn't end there.

About a week ago I put in an Amazon order for myself. I needed some pecans to snack on, a pair of Arthritis gloves, (my hands are very sore these days), and a bottle of special mouth wash. (I have a tooth that will be pulled in 3 weeks and the oxide mouth wash is keeping it from hurting.)  I sort of forgot about the things I ordered and vaguely remembered getting a note from Amazon saying the order was running late.   Fast forward to 2 days ago when I get a FACE TIME call from my college student. It is not unusual for her to call but a face time call is rare.  When I answered she was laughing, which is also not unusual. She went on to tell me that she had gotten a box that morning addressed to her. When she opened it she was confused by the contents.  There was a bag of pecans, a pair of arthritis gloves and a bottle of mouthwash.  Some how she knew right away what her goofy grandmother had done.   It seems that because she was the last person I had sent something from Amazon they had her LSU address in the "ship to" box on the order page.  Dummy me never checked on the address when I put in my order so instead of coming to me in FL it went to my grand daughter in LA.  

We both had an extremely good laugh and thoroughly enjoyed our face time chat. I promised her I would REALLY check all the information when I order anything from Amazon. I also told her to enjoy the pecans and just bring the other 2 items home with her at Christmas. She can wrap them up and give them to me as a gift.  

At this rate I probably won't remember any of this and will be totally surprised and delighted that my grand daughter knew EXACTLY what I needed.

BACK IN FLORIDA

O.M.G.    It has been a Looooooooooooong month and it's only the 21st.  Speaking of it being October 21, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAUGHTER KERI".   How is it possible that I have children that old ?   Kyle is 51, Keri turns 48 today and Kent is 46.  That must mean I am OLD !!!!  

I am feeling old these days thanks to a zillion little things that are going on.  It was a wonderful, wonderful summer in Michigan.  Beautiful weather and lots of time to rest and relax.  Good thing because the month of October has been CRAZY !!!  We usually start our drive down to Florida the first or second of October. This year The Man's son, girlfriend and her 2 boys arrived the 29th of September and visited for a week.  That meant no packing the car until they left on October 5th.  It was a chaotic week to say the least.  The good thing was that DJ drove The Man to Florida and I got to fly home. It took them 3 days and it too me 6 hours. I consider that a win especially when I had 2 days all to myself to settle back in.  DJ flew back to Alaska and the circus came to town.  The day after DJ left, Florida's East Coast was hit by a hurricane. Fortunately it made landfall about an hour north of us so we didn't have any problems at all.  Good thing because the following week our refrigerator stopped working and we had no hot water.  Thankfully the land lord got the water situation fixed right away and as of today the refrigerator has been replaced. Only problems with both of those adventures is that I had to empty out the shed where the water heater is for that to get repaired and then empty out the fridge and freezer so the old fridge could go and a new one could come in for me to fill.  Of course The Man couldn't help, which I do understand, but it is hard for me to sweating while he sits and watches me while complaining about how cold he is.  

 In between all that we have been running to doctor appointments almost daily. There was one day when The Man had 4 different appointments at the VA hospital. When he made the appointments last year he THOUGHT it was a wonderful idea to schedule everything on the same day.  NOT !!!!!!! We arrived at the VA at 9:15 AM and got home at 4 PM.  Because The Man had so many appointments at different places in the HUGE hospital he decided he would get a wheel chair and I could push him around all day.  Lucky Lucky me !!!! It took two days for us to recover from that one day.  

Things are slowly quieting down, I HOPE, but I'm ready to go back to MI. At least up there the people have some semblance of intelligence.  Last week The Man had an appointment with his allergist. We left here in plenty of time, drove to the building where her office has been for the past 2 years, parked the car, took out the oxygen tank, got it all hooked up so that The Man could walk into the building, take the elevator to the second floor and walk all the way to her office at the far end of the hallway.  (The walking required several stops for The Man to catch his breath.)  When we got to the office door the lights were out and the sign was gone from the door.  Taped to the window in the door was a note saying, "WE HAVE MOVED".  It gave the address of the building next door.  The Man was not happy.  Back down to the car we went with him muttering the entire way.  I was in total agreement with him that you would think someone from the Dr's office should have called or sent a letter to tell patients about the move before they arrived at the locked door.   Anyway, back into the car, drive over to the next building, up the elevator to the third floor and walk all the way down the walk way.  This building has offices that are accessed from the outside, like a motel. We stepped out of the elevator only to find ourselves walking into a "river". The roof over the walkway was sagging down and water was dripping down onto the walk.  We had to walk through that to get to the door of the "new" office.  (Why would you move to such a dump?  Rent must have been pretty cheap.). Actually the "new" office used to be Quest Labs where I would often go to get blood work done.  I knew Quest had moved out but didn't realize who had moved in.  I knew the suite number from when I would go to the lab so I knew where we were going. Good thing !!  When we got to the door there was no number on the door and no sign saying who was inside. That gave The Man something else to grump about. He started complaining to the poor girl at the reception desk and she looked like she was ready to cry.  (Apparently we were not the only patients to complain.) Her response to The Man was, "What am I supposed to do?"  We suggested a piece of paper, a magic marker and some tape.  That was too much for her to process. 

It is now almost a week later and The Man is still talking about that day.  I'm just glad we are done with that appointment.  I need to rest up and gather my strength for my dentist visit on Wednesday when I will have a tooth pulled.   

It just keeps on getting better and better.  Michigan here I come !!!!!

GOING BANANAS

 Grocery shopping should not be this stressful.   When it takes two Valium and a pint of Vodka to give me enough "calm" to shop for groceries then I know I have a problem !  

I used to enjoy going to the grocery store and wandering up and down the aisles checking out new products and goodies. I always have my list and I usually manage to find everything that is on the list.  But then there are the other 30 things that I decide we REALLY need to buy.  My grocery bills are never under $100 and now-a-days I am happy if the bill is less than $200.   I am pretty good with checking prices and buying that which is not necessarily cheaper but is a better deal.  I enjoy the challenge. 

The Man has not been in a grocery store since the year 1200 BC.  He still thinks that a dozen eggs cost thirty five cents and a quart of milk is still twenty five cents.  He is shocked at the price of ice cream . . . EIGHT DOLLARS for a half gallon of ice cream ??????  This is one product that he cares about the price. Not that he is paying for the groceries but he likes to think he knows a bargain and a rip off when he sees one.  

Every time I go shopping, (which is at least once a week), The Man sits at the kitchen table waiting for my return.  (I love it when I can sneak in while he is napping) But usually he is sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me to unload the bags.  With each bag I bring in I have to listen to him saying things like, "I thought you only had to get a FEW things", or, "Why did you get two of those? We'll never use two of those before we leave!"  or my all time favorite, "You do realize we are leaving here in . . . weeks".  It NEVER fails.  I have gotten really good at tuning him out and leaving things in the car until he is in bed or the bathroom before sneaking things in.  It's either that or a full blown war and I don't feel. like fighting over something as silly as groceries. 

But what really makes me crazy are the times when The Man asks me to pick up something for him.  Donuts are at the top of that list. I have no issue buying donuts because that is what he eats for breakfast every morning. morning, a Nutrition drink and 2 donuts.   Whatever !  But then there are times when he asks me to buy something and it sits here for 2 weeks before we throw it out.  BANANAS !!!!  That is at the top of that list.  Today as I was leaving You Know Who asked me to stop and pick up some bananas for him.  OK, No biggie.  I was going to the store anyway so picking up some bananas is no problem.  I bought Green bananas because I know they will sit in the kitchen on the counter top for the next two weeks until they turn brown.  We will be sitting in the kitchen and The Man will start flailing his arms around like a windmill gone wild.  "Damn Fruit Flies" he will start yelling. "Where are they coming from?  Do we have any fruit out?"  I will casually point to the now brown and rotting bananas.  

For some reason he finds it totally unrelated to the fact that these are the bananas that HE requested I buy. They have been staring at him for 2 full weeks and he has made no attempt to eat them. 

This drives me BANANAS !!!!! 

THINGS THAT GO BEEP BEEP BEEP IN THE NIGHT

 I LOVE my bed !   I LOVE to sleep !  I LOVE to snuggle down under the covers and dream my dreams !   I do NOT love being woken up in the middle of the night by "friends" texting me at 3:15 AM because they can't sleep.  And that is why we have silence mode on our cell phones !   Feel free to text me at any hour of the day or night because my phone will be turned off from the time I turn out my light until I decide to wake up and face a new day.  Occasionally I will forget to turn off the ringer but that doesn't happen often. And if it does it is my fault if I am woken up so no harm, no foul.  

What I can NOT control is the assortment of sounds that come from my partners various machines that are stuffed in the bedroom along side the bed.  The Man has no less than 5 different machines that have alarms and all of them seem to prefer to go off in the middle of the night.  Granted they are all attached to him so if the oxygen stops, or his heart stops there is an alarm to wake ME.  

Last night was one of those nights. The Man uses a Bi Pap machine at night. It is similar to a C pap machine, just more powerful. The problem is that because he needs to have a constant flow of oxygen so the machine needs to be connected to an oxygen concentrator. If the concentrator fails to work then the alarm on the concentrator goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!  If the concentrator is not delivering oxygen to the Bi Pap machine then the Bi Pap machine's alarm goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!! If the concentrator AND the Bi Pap machine are both failing then his heart monitor goes off BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!!!!!!!!!!!   

You know that these things never occur at 11 PM while we are still awake.  NO . . . .  it always waits until 2 or 3 AM when we are in a dead sleep.  It is like the fire drills they had when I was in college living in the dorm.  You had just fallen asleep when the alarm would start blaring.  With luck you were not hung over, just exhausted but you had to get out of bed and out of the dorm until the drill was over.  

Now I am flying out of the bed, grabbing my hearing aids because I know The Man will be talking to me so I need to hear him.  Besides the hearing aids I have to grab the flash light so I can find my way to the light switch in order to see what the hell is going on.  All this time The Man is still asleep.  How this is possible I have no idea but it's true.  By the time I have ears in and can see where I am going The Man is now waking up and asking, "What's going on?".   My reply in my head is, "How the "F" do I know" but my mouth says, "I have no idea what's happening",  Now comes the fun part.   Trying to figure out at two in the morning where is the problem.  My brain has woken up immediately, The Man is still trying to figure out where he is, who he is and what is this strange woman doing in his room. As he begins to focus and realize where the noise is coming from he starts pulling plugs, adjusting wires, reading display screens, and throwing orders to me to get this, that and the other thing.  Now I am REALLY awake because I am roaming through the house searching for things he wants.  I get orders like, "get me the thing from the cabinet" . . .   Seriously !   When I question, "What Thing" and "What cabinet" I get a look that says I must be an idiot for not being able to KNOW exactly what it is he is talking about.  I am used to this by now and it doesn't bother me at all because I KNOW EXACTLY WHO the idiot is.  I patiently ask questions until I figure out what I am looking for and where I will find it. It's a great game but not at 2 AM. 

Needless to say I manage to keep it all under control, fix the problem and go back to sleep.  Knowing full well that in the morning when I get up I will get to relive the entire episode with The Man.  It will be the topic for the day, phone calls will be made to different companies to complain about their machines and The Man will be thinking about the problem all day trying to come up with ideas to help avoid this happening again.   I am the listener . . .  I will say nothing, I will not offer suggestions and I will write a blog about it because it really is pretty funny.   

OH,   and I will also take a nap.  

THE BAND - AID

 If ever you were to see the true nature of a man just watch what happens when he get a small cut. I'm not talking about loosing a leg or breaking every bone in his body, I'm talking about a paper cut or a bruise caused by bumping into something that breaks the skin ever so slightly so as to cause blood to appear.  Should this happen the world will come to a complete halt while medical attention is given to the injured.

This past week The Man bumped into something and broke the skin on his arm.  There was no GUSHING blood, only a small cut that, once he held a tissue on it for 3 seconds, it stopped bleeding.    There were no stitches or cast required but you would think he was in imminent danger of bleeding out.  Quite a fuss was being made on the part of The Man so I suggested he put a band-aid on it to protect it from getting opened up again.  The huge surprise to me was that he actually DID put a band-aid on and he did it himself.  Usually I would be called to administer aid but he handled it himself. Go Figure !   Fast forward to that evening . . .  I was sitting on the bed reading when YKW (You know who) came in needing medical advice.  Should he shower with the band-aid on or take it off.  (Big decisions like this usually  require us to call all of our acquaintances and get their thoughts but I figured we could handle this one alone.). I suggested he leave the band-aid on until after his shower and then put a clean, dry bandage on.  That seemed to make him happy so off he went to shower.   When he came out of the bathroom he had a new band-aid in his hand and asked me to put it on for him.  (I didn't bother to ask why he couldn't do this himself since he had put the first bandage on his own, I just said "Sure!").  I had my glasses on and the lights were on in the bedroom but in spite of all this I could not see where I should put the band-aid.  Aside from a large bruise on his arm I could not tell where the cut was.  My indecision caused The Man to get all excited because I could NOT see where to put the band-aid so he started pointing to where it should go.  I really didn't think he had the right spot but hey, his arm not mine so I'll do what he wants.  Band-aid was on, it was time to go to sleep.

The following day we had to go to a hospital for The Man's monthly infusion of gamma globulin to boost his immune system.  We arrived at the hospital infusion center, got settled in, connected to the IV and ready to spend the next 2 hours relaxing.  As I was sitting next to YKW I see him picking at the band-aid on his arm.  He was attempting to get the band-aid unstuck from the hair on his arm without opening up the cut.  As I'm watching this I notice that there is a scab just above where the bandage is.  It is totally healed up so I'm thinking maybe he had 2 cuts on his arm?  With that one of the nurses comes over to ask if YKW would like her to get some ointment to help get the band-aid off painlessly. Of Course we do !!!  Within two minutes she has applied the magic cream and painlessly pealed of the stupid bandaid much to the joy of The Man.  I'm sitting watching this and as the band-aid finally lets go it reveals the un broken skin of The Man's arm with a scabbed over cut just above where the bandage was.  The whole time "Dr. Kildare" was worrying about his cut getting covered so it wouldn't bleed he had the band-aid on the wrong spot !!!!!

I did NOT mention this to him !   It is better to just shake my head and think about the blog I will write about this. 

MOUSE !!!!!! IN THE HOUSE

 It is no big surprise that there are mice living here.  It is a farm, we have a barn, a milk house, a garage and a house.  All of these buildings are packed with "crap" that has accumulated over the years.  The barn is empty except for the straw on the floor and a pen or two for sheep. (The sheep have been long gone from this residence but their memory remains.)  The barn is dark so a great number of creatures have taken up residence there.  The milk house has 2 large garbage cans filled with the corn we feed to the deer, a large bag of bird seed for the bird feeders and a large bag of sunflower seeds that are fed to the turkeys. The garage is jam packed with junk and furniture, all of which are perfect places for small critters to make them selves comfortable.  As for the house . . .  well you got to read about the red squirrel incident a few months ago so you know all the other critters are looking for a nice warm place to call home.  The 3 bird feeders right outside the back door are an all you can eat buffet for anything that flies or walks.  Because birds do not have very good manners they spill more seeds on the ground than they get into their bellies.  As a result this "Golden Coral" style buffet we have attracted 2 chipmunks, a ground squirrel, (which looks like a chipmunk but has different stripes), 4 rabbits and the 6 turkeys who will come right up onto the steps outside the sliding glass door.   

So is it any surprise that we have mice ?

The Man hates mice !!  Every summer he starts out with a plan to kill all the mice.  I personally have only seen about 2 mice since I have been coming up here the past 7 years.  To me that is not a panic situation but in The Man's head it is armageddon.  Man the life boats and batten down the hatches, there are mice in the neighborhood.  He has traps, poison, sticky paper and anything else he can think of.  He is armed and ready to go to war.  

We have seen NO mice all summer !  Not even one little one.  Nada,  None !!!!!

Until yesterday . . .    As is my routine after dinner, I went out into my favorite room, aka the parlor, aka the living room.  I am the only person who takes advantage of this large cozy room. I have my crafts out there, my books and my newspaper puzzles.  Each evening I leave The Man sitting at the kitchen table watching the news and I escape to my inner sanctum.  Last night I was reading in the big blue armchair when You Know Who popped in to say he was going to shower and then head for bed. We chatted for a few seconds when he said, "Do you have a rag? Or something??"  I had no idea why he needed a rag and I did not have one anyway.  He is now getting rather agitated and once again tells me he needs a rag.  I realize something is going on so I put down my book, get out of the chair and walk across the room to where he is standing.  By now he is practically dancing up and down but can't go further into the room because he is at the end of his oxygen hose.  He is now yelling about get a rag, get a rag !!  As he is pointing toward the far wall.  I look over and see the smallest mouse I have ever seen just sitting there. I swear this mouse was as small as a new born babies fist.  It was ADORABLE !!!  (At least I thought it was).  I turned back to The Man and asked him what he wanted me to do.  "Throw something over it" he says. I walked toward the mouse and it started to walk, not run, along the base of the wall toward a. large pile of crap that is piled in the corner.  All the The Man can say is, "Get it! Get it !!  Don't let it get away!"  As if this tiny little thing is going to go anywhere or do anything.  From the panic in The Man's voice you would think we were dealing with a 300 pound wombat !  (I'm not sure what a wombat is but I like the way it sounds.)

I carefully unload the corner and there is the little mouse curled up in the corner hoping no one will see him.   I reached down and picked him up by his tail and took him outside where I left him in some tall grass so he wouldn't become a snack for an eagle.  I honestly doubt an eagle would even be able to see the little guy, he was tiny.  When I returned into the house The Man wanted to know what I did with the mouse so I told him it was out in the woods.  

Fast forward to this morning when guess who was up on our patio steps looking for food.  Yup, Little mouse, even more adorable than he was last night.  We had to go out for the morning so mouse was put on hold and was soon forgotten by Mouse Killer.   After we returned home The Man went in for his afternoon nap and I went out into the garden to tie up some tomato plants and water everything.  I had left the hose lying on the ground so as I bent down to pick it up guess who was all curled up between the layers of hose?  Poor little thing !  He looked scared and hungry and I really just wanted to pick him up again and bring him in the house to I could take care of him.  But I know better.  So I did the next best thing.  I put a large open glass jar on the ground up against the house in back of a tomato plant.  I put some corn in the jar and left it right where little mouse had run to after being evicted from the hose.  

I have no idea if the little guy will make it but at least I know I tried.  Of course if he does make it and grow to be a big mouse The Man will only end up hunting and killing him.   Poor little mouse !!!