bookmark_borderHump Dump Umpdate

An update to this update is found at the end.

Knee: The overall pain has dropped dramatically, unless it rains then it’s a heap o’ goodness. The swelling has finally gotten to where it looks more round like a basketball and less lumpy like a football. I still can’t straighten the knee out, though. And I can balance with the toes but cannot take a step.

Hip: My hip is giving me a lot of grief. We’re trying to figure out what the problems are so we can eliminate them as much as we can. I think most of it is the entire weight of the leg is on a so-so hip socket. The tendon on the front (groin?) is very tender, hates to be moved, and isn’t happy no matter what position I try to sleep in. I can now only sleep on my back with a pillow under and to the side of that leg to position the hip and to support the un-bending knee.

Other Knee: the brace I got is great! I can wear it all day and not get the usual grossness underneath. This proves it is the latex/neoprene and it is an allergy, not heat related. The knee is very tender to the touch but it is easier to stand and hop on it now. I have a groove on the side that includes the knee cap. I’m going to have the bone doc check it out when I see him one the 23rd.

Writing: Eh, not much. Lots of ideas, though. I got Moon’s Deeds of Paksenarrion and am re-reading it. I love that book and it inspires me to write. The style is so simple, so real. There’s big info dumps because of the war strategy and stuff but overall, it is fantastic. I am re-gaining a visual image of where Sarah and crew are and that allows me to “be there” further and therefore write much more better-er.

Cats: The Tues. before I fell and broke my leg (that still sounds so weird), Lorna called me to say there were three kittens at the post office. I joined her there and we caught them. We brought them home and set them up in Mike’s Big Boy crate. They drove the dogs nuts. We had to cover the crate with a sheet at night. We knew there were going to be problems. Mike has a huge prey drive and chasing cats is fun. I could keep that under control if Sass didn’t egg him on. So when I fell and we realized how much it was screwed up, we also realized there was no way Lorna could take care of three kittens AND me AND the house AND the dogs AND our own 2 cats. So we called Mary at Asheville Pet Supply. She often finds kittens in boxes left on the store’s doorstep and has a huge cat crate set up. We called her and asked if she could take them for us and help us find homes. She did! AND then called the next day to say they’d all found homes already! All 3 went to the same home which was great. This lady decided a while back she wanted kittens but would only take any that Mary got, knowing they’d need homes. She happened to come in that morning and there they were. We’ve heard since then that they are doing great.

Dogs: Joella is now on full-time pain meds for her arthritis. She still has trouble getting up off the floor but is happier and more active. We played with the dosage for a few weeks and think we found the right amount. Mike is a handful and a half. What a teenager he is! No more snakes although there was the dead possum and the mouse. And bamboo. Lots of bamboo. And sticks. And lost toys. Lorna had to wander through the dog lot to find all the cat bowls he took outside. She has to pick them up each morning or they wander back out. Now that I’m not so stoned, I hope to re-re-restart his training again.

Friends: About a week before I fell, a close friend of ours was thrown from her horse. She broke her spine but had no spinal cord damage. She was in neuro-ICU for several days then in a room for quite some time. She’s home now and slowly recovering. It will be a long haul for her. Patti is the woman who takes care of the dogs when we both leave, like for trips up Nawth. Another friend, Elena, is doing “as good as can be expected”. Her husband is dying of cancer. Hospice has been working with them for a month or so now. The hard part for her is his mental capacity. Between the cancer and the drugs, he’s far from himself.

**I have found out that Lew died Sunday, at home where he wanted to be.

So there you have it. A big honkin’ set of updates. Did I miss anything?

bookmark_borderCrick

I have a crick in my neck. And, quite surprisingly, I don’t have a matching headache.

Usually I get a massive headache anytime I “overuse” my neck from doing silly things like turning my head while I go down the aisle in the grocery store. Or keeping my head bent for more than two pages while reading a book. Or turning my head more than a few times while driving. Silly me for abusing myself that way.

I can turn my chin to the right all the way and can turn it to the left about 1/3 of the way. I can bend my neck until my right ear almost touches my shoulder but can barely go left of center in the other direction. I can bend my chin down most of the way but only a little way backwards. When I try to walk, my head is tilted to the right and looking down. To hold my head upright while walking is horribly painful, even by my tainted standards. So the few times yesterday and today that I have to walk through the house, I put on my neck brace (I have a new one that is awesome!). It helps some but mostly helps me keep my head level. I can sit with my head and neck supported and manage to keep it fairly level without the brace.

Because when I keep my head in that position, you guessed it, I got a headache! Luckily it was a very minor one that I caught way early. I’m also taking high doses of muscle relaxers so that helps, too.

Today I read the Oath of Gold, book 3 in the Deeds of Paksinarrion series by Elizabeth Moon. Good read. The books are a big influence on my writing of Simple Sarah although in re-reading it (for the fourth or fifth time) I can see how much the two differ as well as how they are so similar. I re-read it to try and find where and how Moon “shows” instead of “telling”. Her infodumps are subtle but there. I like how she describes things using all the senses and not just visual. She likes smell the most.

Lorna will be home tomorrow and can keep me entertained. I may send her to the library after some more books. Any suggestions?

bookmark_borderOh, the Irony!

Okay, a little back story. Lorna and I moved here in ’92. The idea behind it was for me to follow a dream of being a potter. Lorna had been laid off from her job of 14 yrs or so and I disliked my job (read: burnout). We looked into various colleges and programs (which is another story, too long for right now) and eventually settled on the Haywood Community College and their Production Craft Program. And I loved it. I excelled in it. As good a writer as I am, I was an even better potter. While I was studying pottery, learning not just the craft but the business behind it, we learned of other programs and schools. One was the John C. Campbell Folk School. They had a yearly wood fired pottery class that I wanted to take. Unlike HCC that offered year round classes and a degree, John C. Campbell offered classes that ranged from either a weekend to all the way up to a three week course. I never got the chance to go take it, though. Real life stepped in and after a series of events, I found myself on disability, unable to be much of anything and certainly not the physically demanding art of pottery.

Fast forward to tonight. I had heard of a newish WNC writers literary online thingybob so I looked it up. I’m not sure how far off the ground it is though. Anyway, as I wandered the rather unorganized website, I came across a link to a place offering writing classes. Guess where? John C. Campbell Folks School. One or two of them I am kinda interested in. But could I actually go there? Could I actually take a class there? I’ve never looked to see if HCC offered anything. Don’t think I could go there either. Losing pottery was like losing a large chunk of me. I’ve never forgiven my body for letting me down, for falling apart and making me limp away from that.

The answer is no. I can’t. The classes may be the best thing since literary sliced bread but I can’t do it. I won’t even put myself in that position. The good news is that the classes don’t appear to be the best thing since literary sliced bread. Another community college (A-B Tech), one much closer than HCC and certainly closer than John C. Campbell, offers some good classes. Maybe I’ll go there.

bookmark_borderBoo-Boo

I got a boo-boo, an owie, a #$%&@.

We live in an old house and have not been able to do much with it since we bought it back in ’92. In the long list of things to fix, the third thing on the list is the front door. The door frame is so freakin’ warped. Nothing is straight in this house except the critters. Prior to us buying this money pit, someone tried to “fix” the door frame by putting up metal-backed strips of fuzzy insulation to try and stop the draft around the edges. Most of that we’ve removed or hammered down. But it seems there’s a piece that’s worked it’s way back up. I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow while letting Mike out on the long lead (16′ leash) to greet Lorna, I got tangled up in the leash and two other dogs. My arm was pressed against and scraped along the door frame.

We have a code phrase for when a boo-boo is bad enough that an extra hand is needed or whatever. We say “meet me in the bathroom”. This usually means blood is flowing. It gets the other person to slip into the right frame of mind. The bathroom is near the cabinet where we keep our bandages and other wound supplies.

As you can guess from the photo above, it wasn’t pretty. I looked down and at first just saw white skin from the scrape and figured all was sore but fine. Then I saw blood starting to pour. I said “meet me in the bathroom”. I went there and started running cold water over it to rinse it while Lorna got the dogs in. She joined me quickly and cleaned it up. We saw it wasn’t a deep cut, just an angry one. We also discussed when did I last have a tetanus shot. It’s an awkward place to bandage so we’re just letting it air out.

By the time we fed the dogs and went out to take care of some things, the arm was on fire. It’s how my body deals with injuries. It was during dinner that the initial irritation calmed down and we could see the other scratches. I’ll survive, but boy howdee, did I do a good job or what?! The flash from the camera removed the smaller scratches and the redness doesn’t show up at all. So much for the gore, dangit.

This scar will join so many others on that arm. The two tornado shaped ones from Kev’s chickens when we were kids. The long one on the top of the wrist from a burn/cut gotten from a Flexi-lead cord (that one hurt like the beejeebers!). Then there’s the one from the Jeep door cut while on vacation. The bite scars from Jake chewing my hand (I still have problems with the ring finger). It’s also the arm with the Bible Bump (ganglion cyst), the chronically out-of-joint thumb, the ulna nerve damage, and various other weirdness. All of this is from the elbow down! I’m such a freakin’ mess, ain’t I?

bookmark_borderShoe Shopping

I hate shopping for shoes. I really do. And this is why:

If I go to get a pair of jeans and I know I wear 28″ waist with 29″ inseam, then I know that any pair of jeans I pick up that says 28×29 are, well, going to be 28×29. That’s not the way with shoes. This shoe is too small and it’s an 8. This shoe fits and it’s an 8. That shoe is like, way big and it’s an 8. SAME SIZE!!

And now they went and changed the width stuff.

In women’s shoes (which I don’t/can’t wear), size 8D means it is 8 Wide. 8 2E is size 8 double wide. In men’s shoes, 8D means 8 Medium. 8 2E is 8 Wide.

Arrgghh!

At least now that I’m mostly using a wheelchair, I only need to get shoes once every two years or so. Except when a certain Shepweiler (rottweiler/german shepherd pup named Mike) decides shoes are tasty and make good teething objects and really fly when tossed by the string.

For years, I have worn Thom McCans. I love those shoes and they were in Kmart (vs the evil Walmart). But a few years ago, they changed the style and they aren’t as comfortable. When I walked more, these were the only shoes to survive past 3 months. My pronation or whatever it is can wear down shoes in now time flat. Thom McCans make excellent dress shoes and I wore Saucony sneakers. But the place we went to today seemed to be lacking in Saucony shoes in my size (whatever size of the moment they happened to be) so I went wandering about in the men’s shoes while Lorna wandered in the women’s section.

I found some hiking shoes that I fell in lust with. They’re by Merrell. Lorna called (to make sure I hadn’t killed anyone) while I was looking at them and I told her to look to see if there were any in women’s. She found me a few minutes later and had fallen madly in lust with a pair of her own. She got the women’s Phaser Rush and I got the men’s Pantheon. She also got a pair of Saucony’s.

I don’t know how long we were there. We’d shopped together for a while but drifted apart in the madness that is shoe shopping. We like the store (Discount Shoes out on Brevard Road) because they are so freakin’ big that we have a good chance of finding something we like. They ought to have a hot dog stand in there, though.

bookmark_borderStill Buggy Login Errors!

Ooookay, first time I’ve been able to log in for, like, ever!

I hope the login fairy looks kindly upon me for a while.

This time, I renamed the plugin folder to “plugin2”. I deleted the cookies for this site (again). I then was able to log in. I’ve named the plugin folder back to “plugin” and so far, it’s not tossed me out to the login page again.

I cruised the WordPress support forums (again) and found more and more login error threads. This one (“Can’t Login“) led me to a “Trac Ticket“. In it, someone mentions it could be a problem with blogs being installed in sub-directories (such as this site) and linked to another support forum thread. This one is huge (192 posts) and somewhere in it I found the “rename the plugin folder” idea.

I’ve tried various other methods prior to this latest one. Each time, it works for a while then ceases to work and I am back to the ever reloading login page. Annoying as hell.

The Trac Ticket (used for legitimate bugs, not WTF issues) mentions another fix so if this doesn’t work, I’ll try that. And when that stops working…..

bookmark_borderFuh-reezing!

Okay, so, like, I live in The South. You know, the warm South? Someone left the gate open up at the Mason-Dixon Line and allowed the cold air to come down here. If you look at a weather map that is showing temps with the cool color blobs, you’ll see that the cold air from up Nawth leaks down along the mountains and ends just this side of Georgia. So while others around us may not be so cold, we are.

Here’s proof:

11:41pm on Jan. 16th

2:03am on Jan. 17th

and at 8:36am

It is hard to read (I think the camera was refusing to work properly), but that last one says it is FOUR BELOW ZERO!

Our water froze. It’s been years since it was cold enough to do that. It was the second night with temps below 10F and with highs in the daytime not making it above 30F. We had a lot of errands to run this morning so we took the heater from the kitchen and put it in the cellar (a small, scary room under the kitchen) to attempt to thaw out at least the kitchen’s water. When we got home, the bathroom’s water had thawed, too. We left the heater down there tonight to keep the pipes clear. If the low temperatures stay in the 20s, we don’t have any problems. But when it stays that low and/or gets lower, then the core temperature of the house drops. Our house is “air-ish” and “well ventilated”. Add in the winds we are getting, and it is almost impossible to keep warm.

bookmark_borderPuppy Class

Mike and I went to our first Puppy Class. We had a blast! Then we had a bang.

Lorna and I had decided it was Feed Your Own Damn Self night. While I was gone, Lorna would make something disgusting (usually egg and/or mushroom related) and I would pick something up while out. On my way home, I debated the various places and decided Wendy’s was the least dangerous to my exhausted system. Ha. First, I did the drive-thru. I got a #8 (bacon/chicken/cheese sammich with fries and a coke) and pulled into a parking spot to eat. Problem was, the chicken was their spicy (which Lorna says isn’t spicy at all but my delicate mouth disagrees!). I figured I could eat it anyway but didn’t get very far. I went inside and got another, making sure it was not spicy. Went back out and finished eating. Mike discovered french fries and decided he liked them. After finishing the sammich, I drove around the place to get in the exit lane. In front of me was a big-ass Ford truck. We waited a short while and then….the truck started backing up.

I laid on the horn but it was too late. We were only a few feet apart anyway. The truck was so high and the Subaru so low that all it did was hit the hood. We pulled to the side and checked everything over. Since the hood opened and closed just fine, we all decided to just go home. Meanwhile, the woman was smacking the snot out of her husband. “You will NEVER talk about how bad my driving is EVER again.” (smack) “EVER again!” (smack) She had me laughing and him wincing. Their kid was playing with Mike through the window. The man had his wife drive instead. As they pulled away, she was hitting him again. Mike, meanwhile, had eaten all the fries.

bookmark_borderLife

My back is out (for lunch, I think) and sitting-up time is limited. The shoulder is doing better, the knees are improving, and the headaches are roaring along just like always.

Mike is doing well, still not house trained, though. (check out his website)

Lorna went up Nawth and safely returned. Her sister got married! (congrats Karin and Chris!)

The truck needs a transmission. Anyone with $2000 dollars they can spare?

PopCorn had the growths on her foot removed in a tough 2hr surgery on Friday. She was rather stoned so we didn’t get to bring her home until Saturday. She’s doing good and is putting weight on the leg. It looks nasty, though.

bookmark_borderHousetraining a Puppy

…is a pisser of a job. Pun intended.

I got this 3mos old pup and 4 older dogs. The back door opens onto the back porch which is connected to the dog lot. All I have to do is open the door and out the monsters go. Easy.

Until the pup. It’s really not good for him to just be let outdoors. He needs to understand that outdoors is not just play time but poop and pee time. So after several days of cleaning piddle puddles, we’ve backed up to evaluate just what the heck we are doing.

I’ve hit the ‘net and read a lot of advice. Some of it is weird, some of it just plain wrong, some of it actually makes sense. House training a puppy is a science full of opinion and myth. You want the pup to understand where to go and where not to go. And the human has to learn how the pup tells them it has to go (which usually means “I gotta go NOW”). Mike and I need to learn to understand each other.

Luckily, Mike is old enough to grasp the situation soon. I am soooooo glad I didn’t get a younger dog.

Other than the piddles and piles, Mike is doing great. He and Sam play several times a day. He loves to nap laying next to or within sight of Joella. He knows to avoid Casey. He’s friends with Sassafras but he and Callie have a spitting relationship. As in he likes to irritate her so she will spit on him. She’s tried to rip him a new nose hole several times but the little snot is too fast.

I’ve got some more pictures and some video of him and Sam playing. I’ll upload them. Someday. Maybe.