Saturday, November 28, 2015

November 27, 2015...the day my body finally said that it was not getting out of bed! I woke up at 7:15, the time Bill is supposed to take his medicine. I got out of bed, got the medicine, woke him up, handed them to him and went back to sleep. First time in almost 4 years that I have done that. I was tired all day and didn't even get dressed! Good thing we had leftovers to eat.

I ended up cooking for Thanksgiving after all. I woke up Monday morning thinking that it wouldn't be THAT much trouble to fix a turkey breast. We didn't have a lot of sides and not a lot of leftovers. 

The rain started late yesterday afternoon and is supposed to continue through Monday. We have a flash flood watch through tomorrow night. We got heavy rain during the night but it was slowed some this morning. At least we're just getting rain. Our kids in Oklahoma are not getting freezing rain, but it's not supposed to get this far east. Ms. A I know you are somewhere in Texas so I imagine you are getting "something". I don't know if you are in the heavy rain area or the snow/freezing rain area, but I hope you are safe and dry.

Bill is determined that he is going Christmas shopping...soon. I keep telling him he has a lot of time and I haven't given him a list yet. The list will have to be very detailed. Emily has said she will go with him if he wants and that if he has to order something just to tell her which website and credit card he wants to use. 

I don't do the Black Friday shopping although it's my daughter's favorite day of the year. I don't know who she gets that from! I don't like shopping at any time!

Except for the last couple of days, this was a pretty normal week. It wasn't as slow as last week was, but it also didn't speed by. Hopefully this week will be the same.

That's all for this time. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, however you celebrated! Just think, the next post will be in December! This year has flown by!
 

Friday, November 20, 2015

This has been the longest week! I have said/thought that every day beginning Tuesday! I don't know why it has seemed that way. We aren't anticipating anything coming up or looking forward to anything special. But, it has been very long...and it's still only Friday!

I decided to do this tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow. I've caught a lovely cold and feel horrible and I'm hoping I can sleep some tomorrow. I haven't slept well all week, which is contributing to the cold I'm sure.

Bill has had a normal week, walking every day for at least 1 hour. He did go back out for another hour a couple of days and today he walked for 1 1/2 hours. But, his fluid intake has dropped again and he was up with leg cramps again in the night.

Our weather has been strange, which has contributed to my cold. It was very warm the first part of the week, near 80 and very windy and rainy. We didn't get as much rain as predicted, but we got enough. Of course now it has gotten cold and is supposed to get colder tomorrow. We already have a wind advisory for tomorrow and a freeze warning for tomorrow night. It will be a good week-end for lighting the fireplace. 

Bill has started wearing pajamas, which is very out of character for him. But, I had told him before that he wouldn't be so cold in the night if he would at least wear some sleep pants. And, lo and behold, as we got ready for bed one night he put on a pair of pajama pants. I told him he had about 3 more pairs of pajamas that we had gotten when he was in the hospital. He could wear those at times instead of hospital gowns. So, I got them out and washed them up and he's worn a pair every night since. He's even started following me and getting out of clothes and into them earlier in the evening. 

Emily asked me if I could make mashed potatoes for her Wednesday for their youth group Thanksgiving dinner. She brought me 10 lbs. of potatoes and milk and butter and 2 crockpots. So, I peeled and chopped all the potatoes and got them cooked for her. The peeling and chopping was fine (except for trying to peel and chop my thumb), but the mashing and whipping, even with the electric mixer, was another story. By the time I got them all the in the crockpot I could hardly move my fingers! But, she said they were all eaten so they must not have been too lumpy. Then again, it was teenagers and they still will eat just about anything!

That's about it for our week. Bill has had his meds for the night so I can take more cold medicine and my normal meds and go to bed early. Maybe I'll feel better in the morning. 

We have no plans for Thanksgiving, other than not cooking. The kids are going to the in-laws so it's just the 2 of us. Our Holiday Inn has had a buffet in the past on Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm trying to find out if they are having it this year. Otherwise we'll figure something out. I hope everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving. If you are spending the day with family, have a good time of fellowship. Even though I'm not cooking, I'm still thankful for the 3 extra years we've been given so far.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Here it is, 2 pm already. Where has the day gone?

After 6 loads of laundry on Monday and grocery shopping on Tuesday, I finally was able to sit and recover from our travels. Bill also took it easy for a couple of days. But, I think we're finally almost back to normal, whatever that is.

We took the screen down from the front door and in the window since it's gotten cooler. I also was going to put the mattress warmer on the bed when I had it stripped and discovered that there were no controls in the package! Since it's been awhile since I bought it (Bill kept saying we didn't need it) I couldn't take it back. It really doesn't surprise me. Not only were there no controls, it was just a plain mattress pad. I have a feeling that someone bought, a mattress pad and a mattress warmer and then put the regular pad back into the warmer package and took it back to the store. One way to make a little money, I guess.

We had some excitement in town this week. Al Roker was at our historic bus stop on his Rokerthon 2 tour. We didn't go see him. The ones who went said he was only here for about 15 minutes before leaving for his next stop. But, there was a good crowd for him.

Bill has done better with his fluids this week. I always judge it by the amount of water bottles left in the package. I bought a package Monday and it was half gone by Wednesday, which is better than he's done for some time. But, it only has 1 more bottle missing, so he's slowing down so I'll have to remind him to start drinking again. I've noticed that he will get a bottle and drink all of it when I tell him that he needs to drink more, but he doesn't want to initiate getting the bottle.

We had a little funny this week. Our alarm system has a function with it that sounds like a doorbell when the monitored doors are opened when the alarm is off. Just a little precaution that lets us know if a door is opened when it shouldn't be without the alarm being on. Bill had gone out to use his treadmill which is located in the studio apartment attached to our garage. The door usually pings a couple of times while he's out there. He keeps the door open so that he can see out while he's walking but will shut it if he's in the bathroom. I heard the door ding a couple of times, pretty close together, and then it kept dinging. I wondered what he was doing, but didn't want to go check on him. When he came in I asked what he had been doing and he said there was a wasp in the room and he was trying to shoo it out. It kept landing near the door so he would open it and swat at it to get it out. He finally just killed it! That explained the door dinging, but it was sure driving me bonkers!

That's it for this week, nothing exceptional going on. I still haven't uploaded the pictures of the sunrise/sunset yet. Just call me lazy! Have a good week ahead!

Sunday, November 8, 2015

This will be pretty short, just to let folks know that we made it home from our adventures! The weather while we were in Florida was fantastic, upper 80s to 90 and no rain. But, every day that we had to drive there was rain!

We had a good visit with Bill's sister and her husband. We did hit the beach for the sunset on Thursday and it was a doozy. I'm too tired to upload all of the pictures tonight, so maybe they'll get put on here by next Saturday.

We've got the car unloaded but everything is sitting in the middle of the living room (not exactly in the middle but you get the idea). I've got to see what there is to eat tonight but I have a feeling we're going to order pizza!

Bill has done better with his fluid intake this week so maybe it finally hit home with him. But, we'll see now that we are home and will get back to our normal routines.

All for this post...I'm wearing out fast!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Blogger is acting really strange tonight mixing fonts together, so if this looks weird, that's the reason.

Bill got a good report from Dr. Hosenpud, except for his kidney function. It has not been good since the transplant but it has been holding stable. But, his numbers were higher than before, bordering on too high. His prograf (one of the anti-rejection meds) is filtered through the kidneys which adds to the problem. As of now, all they are wanting him to do is drink more, which of course, I have been telling him. But, it comes better from someone other than "the wife". So, he's going to try to do better.

When we come in May, Dr. Hosenpud also wants to do a heart cath. They have not done one for 2 years because of his allergy to the dye. But, he said to make sure he is given the meds to counteract that and if the dr. who is doing the cath, or sees us in clinic doesn't think it's necessary, to tell them to cancel the cath. Don't know exactly how that will work, but we will see. I guess it will be a time to assert some authority again.

The weather on the drive down wasn't bad when we left early Sunday morning, but right before getting on the interstate in Alabama it started raining and rained the entire way to our overnight stop. We got totally soaked getting dinner. I had planned on just going through the drive-thru at Zaxby's but it was raining too hard and I could park right at the door. We parked farther from our room than I wanted, but we didn't have to use the key to get in the front so parked there. Yesterday we had to wait longer to leave because of torrential rains and it rained hard enough that it was hard to see until right before we got to Florida. After that it didn't rain at all. It took 45 minutes to get through town because of a horrible accident. It looked like they had to cut the people out of one of the cars.

I have truly enjoyed our balcony. I sat with my coffee and devotions this morning and watched the sun rise. Ironically we will be able to watch the sun set when we get to Clearwater tomorrow.

I've had a terrible time with electronics this trip. My car charger died and then I left the USB cable in the car last night, so my phone was almost completely dead this morning. I couldn't get my new cable for my tablet to charge it until this afternoon, and the internet at this hotel leaves a lot to be desired. I guess they don't expect guests to use the internet since they should all be on the beach! Anyway, it has been a challenge. Made a quick trip to the ATT store and got a new interchangeable charger for the phone, batteries for the cameras that died while I was taking pictures of the sunrise. Could only replace them in the cheap camera and not my Kodak because Walmart didn't carry/doesn't carry the battery packs anymore! Oh well, we managed. I'll try to get some pictures uploaded after we get home.

I do know that the internet is not good where we are staying in Clearwater so don't know if there will be any posts until we get home on Sunday.

OK, that's it for this leg of the trip. I need to make one final trip to the balcony before calling it a night...the wind and waves are calling my name!