Bird Feeders, Fire Doors, & Nemesia

Yesterday morning, something, crows, I think, brought down my bird feeder. I had been watching birds come and go, but got distracted with the computer for about 10 minutes and when I looked back at the picture window, the bird feeder was on the ground in several pieces.

My neighbor’s bird feeder appeared to be MIA as well so I’m betting it was those rather large crows I saw flying about that morning.

I added it to my Lowes shopping list since I was going that afternoon anyway.

That was a dizzyingly frustrating experience in itself. All I really wanted was to buy a plain wooden door to put between my garage and my breeze-way/dining room. Growing up in New Orleans, we had a hollow brown door there that opened into the house. I really just wanted the same thing, but white. Really, I need it to open into the house, because the garage is a few steps down and it would be awkwardly dangerous to have it open into the garage.

However, what I was told at Lowes is that in my town, the building/fire code is that you have to have a steel fire door there. Currently, there’s just a storm door that was put there by the original owner when the breeze-way was added on — several owners ago. But I have to put a steel fire door there.

And it has to open into the garage because if there’s a fire in the garage, that will make it less likely to explode into the house if the door gets opened.

Oh, and though Lowes installs doors, they don’t install fire doors, which have to be specially ordered. You have to hire a contractor to do that.

So, I came home with a new bird feeder and a pot of Nemesia from Lowes and no door and no order for a door.

I like the two tiers on the new bird feeder. Even more birds can come and visit at one time now. Hopefully this one will last longer than six months, which is how long the last one lasted.

The Nemesia are really pretty sitting on my front porch too.

Tags: bird feeder, crows, Nemesia, Lowes, fire door, fire code, photo blogging, flickr

Hello, Goodbye

The Canon PowerShot S3 IS has arrived. The Canon PowerShot SD110 is out. Yay!

I have a lot of buttons to figure out. There’s a lot of features to learn. However, I can already tell just from toying with it even in the dreary, rainy, overcast light we have today that the new camera is 100 times better. It’s going to be so much more fun to use.

Tuesday night my mother pointed out that I was really hard on the SD110. I’m going to have to be much nicer and kinder and carefuller with the S3. I guess that means it might be a few weeks before I start being really daring with it.

Here are a few of the 100 photos I took in the first day. I can already tell an amazing difference in the quality of the photographs the new camera produces. These were all taken from my living room through my picture window. I used to have to stand about a foot away from my bird feeder very still and wait without breathing for a very long time to get a close up of a bird…and still the photo wouldn’t be sharp enough to really identify the bird.

Tags: bird watching, Rusty Blackbird, Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, Chipping Sparrow, photo blogging, Canon PowerShot S3 IS, camera, Canon PowerShot SD110

Road Hazards

Yesterday, I was driving down Forest in the right lane and right as I came to The Bike Shop there were about 20 or 30 folks on bikes out front on the lawn. They chose to enter traffic right in front of me at that particular moment and they didn’t seem to be paying attention to oncoming traffic. I generally have no problem with bicyclists as long as they seem to be competent and following the law themselves.

I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting those guys you see up ahead (in this picture I took later) making the turn onto the side street from the right lane there. My camera which had been sitting on the seat next to me at the time ended up under the gas pedal. There’s now a dent that affects how fast I can change the zoom, which now requires a lot of fiddling as it seems to get stuck quite often, usually in the setting I don’t want it in.

I was planning on buying a new high end P&S camera in July, but this morning I broke down and ordered a Canon Powershot S3 IS. It’ll be here tomorrow. I’m both excited and annoyed.

Tags: bicyclists, road hazards, driving, reckless, dangerous, camera, Canon Photoshot S3 IS, photo blogging, flickr

So Now I’m The Crazy Neighbor

My mother thought a good idea for a Mother’s Day present for my grandmother would be a framed photo of myself with Pugly, but she said that the photos I’ve taken of myself with the wigs on are all so fun that I should do the portrait with a wig on. O.K. No problem. In New Orleans, I used to do the costume wigs and costume stuff all of the time.

O.K. This is Maine. Definitely not the same as New Orleans.

And rural Maine? You cannot go out of your front door wearing a blue page wig, a Indian-made blouse, and blue jeans and carrying a tripod, a camera and a Pug and not have every single one of your neighbors come to the edge of your yard and stare like you’re about to climb up a water tower with a rifle or something.
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Tags: Pug, dog, the puppy, neighbors, dress up, New Orleans, rural, Maine, Mother\\\'s Day, family

Splurging On A Camera

I’ve decided to splurge. Like a really big splurge. Not like “Hmmm, it’s Friday; I think I’ll have some sushi” but like “I really am frustrated with this rinky-dink camera and I want to take better photos” splurge.

At first I thought I was desperate for a DSLR camera. You know, with all of the different, really expensive lenses and equipment? For months, I’ve been drooling over those professional-type cameras and their complexities and the brilliant photography I could do with them.

After the suffering I’ve done with my Canon Powershot SD110 and it’s measly 3MP and 2X optical zoom, just imagine how brilliant I could be!

Now, let’s assume that I have $800 to $1,000 to just through at the initial investment of a Canon Rebel XTi and one lens (probably a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6), the zoom isn’t any better than what I have now, though I’d get 8 or 10MP. I’d still have to acquire another lens for better zoom and extra lenses cost about the same as the camera if not way more.

Talk about an expensive investment!
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Tags: Canon, Canon Powershot, camera

Maine Red Meat Recall

Some days I’m really glad the doctors told me not to eat red meat.

The Maine Department of Agriculture says a Greene company is voluntarily recalling nearly a ton of beef. Bubier Farms says nearly 2,000 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal matter, a common source of E-Coli bacteria.

State officials say 1,936 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal material, as well as other contaminants. The problem was discovered by a federal inspector earlier this week. Officials say the inspector found fecal matter and hair on slabs of beef inside a cooler at Bubier Meats.

Bubier meats is a small family run business that only sells product here in Maine. State officials say at this point they do not know if any of the meat in the recall is actually contaminated. But it is being recalled because it was in the cooler on the same day the inspection was done.

“The big concern with fecal contamination would be e-coli. We haven’t confirmed, we haven’t tested any yet, we’re just recalling because with fecal contamination we can’t take any chances whatsoever,” said Hal Prince from the Maine Department of Agriculture.

Most of the meat went to small grocery stores and restaurants around southern Maine. State officials say about 75% of the recalled meat has already been returned.

Here is a list of what has been recalled:

–Two whole sides of beef stamped Est. 4.

–10-lb. bags of beef labeled Bubier Meats Hamburg.

–10-lb. bags of ground beef labeled Caldwell Farms Beef All Natural Beef. The product code on the ground beef is 647.

–Primal cuts of beef also labeled Caldwell Farms Beef All Natural Beef.

Consumers with questions about the recall can call Bubier Farms Manager Tobie Bubier at 207-946-7761. Tobie Bubier says he’s confident that no meat that left his plant was contaminated and says he plans to have an independent laboratory test it to prove his case.

Source: Maine Farm Recalls Beef That May Be Tainted

Keep in mind that a small percentage of red meat is actually inspected. How scary is that? How much scary does that make the fact that they just happened to inspect on the same day this happened?

Tags: beef, red meat, food contamination e. coli, Bubier Farms, Maine Department of Agriculture, Maine

Lawnmower Man

O.K. So apparently I was kind of wrong. That kid with the corner market on mowing the neighborhood lawns still lives in my new neighborhood. He’s about my age now and has a cute little girl and a Pug named Bruno.

He also has a riding lawnmower and for $25 a mow, he’ll mow your lawn and every other mow, he’ll weedwhack — by the way, spellcheck doesn’t like the word “weedwhack. His little girl rides up on top of the lawnmower with him, which is probably one of the cutest selling points. I think if he could have fit Bruno up there too, he could have charged me more.

I talked to him about frequency since he’s familiar with my lawn and the neighborhood and the weather and climate. He said that my across the street neighbor gets more sun and she needs to have it mowed more often than I do — she also has a prettier lawn than I do. Still, for me that’s less mowing and less paying.

I did tell him that I need to do some work in the back yard this weekend; I still have some fallen branches from the last Nor’Easter that need to be hauled off. I also want to square off the garden in the front. I don’t know which previous home owner thought it would be neat to do the swirly non-edge edge garden in the front, but I imagine that it can’t be easy to keep weeds out of or mow next to. So, I want to straighten that out and put some edging down and mulch.

Of course, I still don’t know what’s in the current garden. I’m considering taking photos of each section and posting them here and asking people to tell me what’s what.

Unfortunately, were I’d like to plant sunflowers, there are some mysterious flowers and I don’t want to uproot them until I know what they are.

And I’m wondering if it’s too late to try to start a vegetable garden in the backyard and if not, what I should try to grow. I’d like some tomatoes and zucchini and cucumber, but what else?

Tags: grass, garden, lawnmower, yard work

The $1500.00 Dog Biscuit

This is the type of dog treat that made Wookie so sick. IAMS tartar treats are allegedly 100% edible and digestible. And… supposedly, they are also hard enough that they won’t break into chunks large enough to disrupt digestion.

The treats puff up when they get wet, so Wookie had two 1″ x 1.5″ pieces, floating around (chewed - but undigested) in his stomach for nine days. The pieces resembled wet particle board. The “treat” caused him diarrhea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain. He lost over 10% of his body weight in a week and is still an inpatient at Virginia Tech’s teaching hospital.

So far, we’ve spent $1500.00 and made seven vet visits. (and even now… we’re not 100% sure he’s OK)

If you have dogs… please think twice about giving them these treats. It just isn’t worth the risk.

Uploaded by letskyce on 2 May ‘07, 8.01am EDT.

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Tags: IAMS Tartar treat, Pug, puppy, dog, diarrhea, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, Virginia Tech, Wookie

Photo of the Day: 100th Most Interesting On 04/25/2007

According to Flickr’s mysterious “interestingness” formula, this is my 100th most interesting photo today:

(click to for larger view)

As you can see, Pugly is trying to eat that tree. He’s such a nature-loving, quirky, silly little dog.

Tags: photo blogging, Pug, the puppy, flickr, interestingness, 100th interesting photo

What’s In The Garden Now?

When I moved into my new house, Fall had pretty much set in real good. The leaves were long gone from my crabapple trees in the front yard and my lilac trees along one side of the house. There were two bushes at each end of the front of the house, which I’m told are rhododendrons, and a bunch of really dead looking plants in the front garden.

I’ve been looking forward to Spring and the possibilities of a garden since January and then the snow finally hit Maine and just. would. not. go. away. It lingered like a relative who doesn’t know he’s outstayed his welcome, borrowed too much money, and eaten all of your stockpile of junk food. And then he had two really wild parties two weekends in a row before taking off until next year — you know, he’ll stay away just long enough that we’ll forget how frustrated we were by this year’s visit.

By the time the snow had gone, I’d given up on gardening. My dreams of a vegetable garden and sunny afternoons planting flowers in the yard had somehow drifted away through the long days of staring at a plain white yard. I’d come to believe that there was nothing but snow underneath all that snow…and even when the snow had begun to melt away and grass began to peak through, it was only a taunt because another Nor’Easter would just cover it up with another 10 or 12 inches of more snow.

But finally after that horrible Nor’Easter April 15th - 17th when first the snow pounded the North East and then the rain and wind came with such intensity and timing that water was pouring down the outside of my chimney and seeping up through the foundation of my basement floor, suddenly Spring arrived, not with a whimper, but with a bang — the beginning of mud season.
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Tags: garden, flower, bloom, Winter, Spring, Nor\'Easter, crocus, daylily, daffodil, photo blogging

First Sunny Saturday of Spring

Yesterday was the first sunny Saturday of Spring after a month of false starts and Spring snow snowstorms and Nor’Easters. And while I admit that I understand that Winter came late and wanted to stick around awhile, my Seasonal Affective Disorder was really tired of it all, despite the lovely photographs I managed to take.

So, with Spring literally in the air, while my new neighbors were blowing the remnants of last Fall’s leaves into my yard, Pugly and I hopped in the Jeep and headed down to Portland to the Eastern Prom where everyone and their dog was out and about enjoying the day. Pugly and I took end the sights of the Eastern Prom Trail near East End Bench including The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad. Pugly saw the beach for the first time and got slapped in the face by a wave for the first time, much to his surprise.

All in all, a great day.
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Tags: The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad, Eastern Prom, East End Beach, Portland, Maine, Spring, photo blogging, Pug

Don’t Feed The Crazy People

I’ve been meaning to stop by for weeks now and let everyone know that I’m alive and well.

(Ironically when I tried to stop by to leave a note, the server was down… grrrr)

Lots of changes going on around here, lots of stuff to deal with.

I’ve had my surgery now. It went very well. The surgeon said that my gallbladder was very inflamed and, of course, full of stones when they removed it (through my belly button — how?) and that I was lucky they removed it when they did. Well, duh! No one listens to me.

My recovery also went very well, except for my mother’s apparent obsession with my personal plumbing. It did take me about 3 or 4 days to get everything going again and I admit that was quite painful and uncomfortable in the meantime.

My mother, being the taskmaster that she is, the nurse who never let me stay home sick as a child, had me hanging curtains in the guest room 3 days after surgery. So, I didn’t really start resting until after she went home a week after surgery.

I have to say that the two weeks of recovery that I spent at home away from the stress of dealing with all the crazy people at work was the best medicine ever. I really needed that break. I came back so incredibly relaxed and with an entirely different outlook.

The environment at work is incredibly different now. During the month(s) leading up to my surgery, things had gotten completely out of control, Lord of the Flies out-of-control.

I have mentioned on this blog how frustrated I was about my problems with FW and in particular MJ and how unprofessional their behavior was to me. The closer it got to the deadline of our project — Daylight Saving Time (March 11th), the more certain I was that MJ was actually working against me, keeping me from getting my work done. Looking back now, a month later, I don’t know that she consciously did it, but I do know that I still feel that she didn’t support me and didn’t help me and certainly didn’t give me the respect of a peer. I know that she didn’t treat me the way I would have treated her if things had been reversed and I have come to realize that more than anything this so-called team, works more against itself than together.

In fact, I specifically asked GE on one occasion to help me with testing after he told me he literally had nothing to do because his projects were on hold and he was just sitting at his desk reading articles. He actually told me “Hell, no.”

My project didn’t make the deadline because of lack of support within my own department. It still is sitting waiting to go live, waiting approval from another division within the department. Every other person who needed to sign off on it has — all outside of this department — but our own department couldn’t make it a priority to meet our own deadline and my director who I report to won’t push the subject with the manager of the person — the manager reports to him. Yet, this project was my director’s priority. Suposedly.

I was so completely stressed out that I literally wanted to quit on March 10th. I just felt like a failure because I hadn’t made my deadline and no matter what I did I couldn’t get my project to budge forward for weeks. Then it suddenly occurred to me — I had done the best job I could do; I can’t control anyone but myself. All of those other people are outside of my authority, out of my control. All I can do is know that they are crazy.

That made me feel a little better, but still I needed a break and the two weeks I was recovering from surgery and didn’t have any contact with anyone helped.

GE has become come some sort of self-appointed hall monitor of the interface engines, making up rules for how he wants things configured and set up and childishly harassing the rest of us through nasty emails until we do things his way. He has also said some pretty nasty things in email about people on our team, not on our team, and even our boss and cc’d pretty much everyone and then he was sent to training and told no one about it until he got there. There was quite a bit of resentment on the part of the rest of the Interface Team because everyone has been asking to go to training for over a year and no one could get a straight answer out of our boss, who is the department director. (Note, our “team” does not have a manager to report to.)

Somewhere in there, there was a procedural disagreement between GE and FW that turned into a very childish argument that turned into a tattletale email where GE recounted the whole conversation with a so-there attitude and demanded that the director make this tiny procedural decision. Mind you, that one of FW’s biggest complaints is that the director hasn’t made an actual decision concerning us in a year and FW commented that the director would never make a decision about coding procedure. Well, he did and he made it in GE’s favor. Fifteen minutes after that email went out, FW quit.

His last day is May 18th. Now we’re trying to sort out FW’s projects, which GE sent an email saying he absolutely would not take on (right before he went to training without telling any of the rest of the “team”, which is why everyone is pissed off that he’s being rewarded for bad behavior — he gets to go to training so he can not work some more?), and how we’re going to divide up his duty officer call. There’s talk about how we might try to hire someone from with-in and train him.

There has even been a demand by MJ to our director that we be given a manager. She can get away with saying a lot to him because he’s married to her sister. Apparently he told her that he got tired of dealing with the Interface Team’s “personalities” so he’s been avoiding them and she told him that when you ignore dysfunctional personalities, they get worse in a cry for help. MJ and FW both tried talking to the director and tried to say that they were willing to make an effort to discuss the dysfunction in the group and talk about getting the group a manager and FW is willing to stay if an effort toward change is going to be made, but the director appears to be doing what he does best, which is ignoring the real issue.

Mind you, they aren’t the only ones who’ve been to talk to him. In the weeks before my surgery, I went to the director and I told him that the working situation was making me ill. I talked to him about the need for some sort of management involvement with the Interface Team, but he was at that time, unwilling to get involved himself.

So, FW is leaving. GE is getting my new project load. MJ is getting one of FW’s projects and I am getting FW’s biggest projects. My Daylight Savings Project remains unfinished — I sent another email yesterday reminding everyone involved that I’d like to complete it this week and it’s waiting on them. My current attitude is watch the crazy people but don’t get involved.

Tags: gallbladder surgery, work

Gallstones & Puppy Kissing Diseases

I thought maybe a health update was in order too.

My MRI came back all normal.  Well, except that I have gallstones.  Huh.  The GI guy said I need to have my gallbladder removed.  Gosh, I wish someone had told me that before. ;)  Anyway, no renegade gallstones; they’re all in my gallbladder, huddled together awaiting the big surgery day.

The surgery is now scheduled for March 23rd.  The surgeon had to be out of town on the 16th.  Oy.  But at least my mother is coming to visit and now at least I won’t be spending my birthday recovering from surgery and she won’t spend her birthday flying 12 hours to be hear for my surgery.  She’s already talking about all of the lobster she’s going to eat.  Ick.

However, this did get me worried about what I can eat after surgery.  So far no one has mentioned an after gallbladder surgery diet.  Everything I’ve seen on the web about it has basically said low-fat healthy diet.  Well, I already eat that way, but I’m talking about the day and week after the surgery.  I want to make sure my fridge is stocked correctly so I’m not having to go to the grocery store with discharge instructions in hand after the surgery and worse, try to tell my mother where the grocery store is here because she gets lost way easier than I do and she will surely buy the wrong brands.

Yes, I’m a worrier.

And since we’re on the subject of worrying.  Well, I got to worrying about this wart and cough my Pugly developed.  It didn’t seem like kennel cough but the wart is inside his mouth and it’s ugly and big and white and came on quite sudden.  So, I took him to the vet Saturday.  Turns out he’s got this contagious puppy kissing wart disease.  Apparently there’s no treatment except time.  It’s contagious to puppies under two years but after they’ve let it run its course, they’re immune.  The cough is because the warts are in his throat and some puppies get it so bad that it interferes with their eating and the warts have to be removed, but then they aren’t immune.

So, he got this disease from some hussy puppies at the daycare…I’m telling you, they love him.  And now he has to stay home until they go away.  It could take weeks or months.

The first few days he was well-behaved but yesterday he was very destructive.  I don’t know how the cats or the house or even he is going to survive.

On top of that, it turns out he’s gained 4 pounds at daycare.  My mom thinks, and probably rightly so, that they are giving him treats.  I’ve been so careful about his food intake, but he’s gained about a pound a month!  That’s a lot for a small dog!  The vet says he has to go on a diet.  The poor thing is obsessed with food.  I don’t know how he’ll survive.

Tags: gallbladder, gallstones, surgery, Pug, dog

Stress, Procrastination, Paralysis

I’ve been completely stressed out lately.  Stressed to the point of being overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed to the point of near-paralysis.

I spent a rather eye-opening hour with the shrink last night who pointed out how connected my home-related stress is to my work-related stress is and how it all is just merging with my Winter-related depression and weighing me down to the point where I’m allowing myself to live up or down to whatever expectations certain people have of me.

I don’t know if I can explain this.  It all seems so circular.

So, at work, my top thought is always that I’m going to lose my job, though that’s not necessarily the case.  That, of course, is the result of my last job and looking back now, the jobs before that where the threat was always made present by the higher-ups as a form of possible punishment.  So, the more negativity that MJ and FW present toward me, the more MJ hovers and tells me that I’m not doing my job correctly, the more FW unprofessionally berates me in public and tells me that he and MJ are worried they are going to have to finish my work, the more anxious it makes me — especially since I am currently already highly anxious due to a very high-anxiety-producing deadline looming.  I just want some sort of validation that my job is not at risk.

On top of that I just bought a house, right?

A house that appears to have some “issues”.  The beadboard in the kitchen appears to be drying out from what little heat I’m using.  The paint is bubbling and splitting.  It looks horrible.  Cracks are forming between the ceiling and the slanted part of the wall in the rooms upstairs and the hall.  The paint between the wall and the linen closet in the bathroom has split.  The wall where the wood and the drywall meet beneath the stairs has distinctly separated.  I’m starting to see where seams and boards are in the walls and ceiling.  Oh, and there’s two small cracks in the paint in the bathroom over the shower/tub, which I suspect is hiding an army of mold spores beneath it’s plastic sheath.

My father wants me to talk to the people I bought the house from and make them come fix it, though I doubt I they are liable.  And someone told me some houses resettle every Winter.

However, I’m so miserable because I worry that there’s something wrong with the walls that I don’t want to do anything like finish unpacking or hang pictures or window treatments because that would be a waste of time because I’d just have to undo that stuff.  If I hang stuff, it’ll have to be unhung when the walls have to be fixed after all.

But my mother has decided to come for my surgery next month, which means I need to get the house in some sort of order or she’ll be disappointed, but there’s just so much to do and I just don’t know where to start.  I need to hang the shelves I bought for the office to finish unpacking, but the curio cabinet I bought and haven’t put together is in the way.  The curio cabinet is in like 1000 pieces and it just looks too hard.  I don’t want to do it alone but I don’t have anyone to help but I don’t want it still sitting there when my mom comes.

And on and on it goes…

And part of the house comes back to work…why unpack and finish the house if I’m going to lose my job and have to move.  Traditionally I take years to finish unpacking and hang every thing up and then it’s time to move.  Everyone who knows me knows this.  Which is why my mother keeps asking if I’ve hung stuff on the walls, I’m sure.

And some of the stuff I keep putting off saying I’ll do it when it gets warmer.  I have a ton of boxes from the move.  They’re all broken down and against the wall in my garage.  I want to put them in the rafters of my garage, but it’s friggin’ cold outside.  Who wants to spend that long outside?  I’m waiting for a warmer day.

Anyway, my job isn’t at risk.  I still have an immobile deadline.  MJ and FW are just unprofessional, nasty people; I think no matter where you go, there’s always one or two of those.  My boss is entirely understanding, if conflict avoiding.  I hung some curtains up last night and even unpacked a box.  I’ll have to see how I feel about my Susy Homemaker list when I get home tonight, but I’m o.k. with the stress I feel for work.  It’s just regular deadline anxiety and not “I’m going to lose my job if I don’t meet this deadline” anxiety and that’s o.k.

Maybe I’ll be able to crawl out of the overwhelmedness and depression and stressful paralysis and start posting again.

Tags: work, anxiety, job loss, depression, overwhelmed, stress, paralysis

Fortuitous Turn…Kind Of

Well, it turns out that postponing my surgery might have been an extremely fortuitous turn of events though I was bullied into it by my co-workers who wanted to make sure I did my share of the work while they went on vacation.  Heh.

I’ve been seeing a GI Specialist, you know, and he happened to notice that no one followed up on one particular piece of blood work after my visit to the ER in December when I had my Gallstone attack.  Something about some liver enzyme level or something being high.  Anyway, this could apparently be a sign that I didn’t actually pass all the Gallstones that have come out of my Gallbladder.  One of them could just be loose in the duct, which could explain why I’ve been having painful mini-episodes and twitches that the other doctors and my parents have basically written off as some sort of ghost pangs or spasms.

What’s worse is that if the surgeon goes and takes my Gallbladder out before they do something about the renegade gallstone then it could get lodged in one of the passageways to one of my other organs like my pancreas and cause a major infection.  Apparently right now, the Gallbladder is providing bile or something to help keep it from being really problematic.

That is, if there’s a renegade gallstone.  The truth is that no one knows for sure.

Last week I had my liver enzyme level or whatever checked again and it’s still elevated so I’m off next week to have an MRI of my duct to see if there’s a gallstone hanging out in there playing hookie or something.  If there is, then I have to have yet another procedure where they’ll go in and take it out before they operate on me to remove my gallbladder.

My mother always told me growing up that I always had to do everything the hard way.

Anyway, if I hadn’t postponed my surgery, which had been scheduled for last Friday, I could be finding out the really hard way that I have a loose gallstone, so it could be worse I guess.

Tags: gallbladder, gallstone, MRI, surgery, wellness, health

Discombobulated Thoughts — January 16, 2007

• Wow, halfway through January already?
• I’m feeling slightly better, just some residual pain in my back and right side but not feeling like I’m splitting in half anymore.
• Pugly is acting very odd lately. I’ve been having to carry him to the car every morning to go to doggy daycare and sometimes I have to catch him to put the leash on him to go outside. Then there’s the weird matter of him not wanting to jump down from the car when we get home. Very strange little dog.
• I’ve been watching HBO’s Rome and I just love love love it. I love the two guys who always seem to be in the right or wrong place and inadvertently cause history to happen.
• I’m reluctantly switching from bottled water to Brita filtered water to save money at home. As long as it’s not tap water, right?
  

  It’s a jungle out there
  Poison in the very air we breathe
  Do you know what’s in the water that you drink?
  Well I do, and it’s amazing
  – “It’s a Jungle Out There”, Monk Theme Song lyrics

• I bought Seventh Generation dish soap, which I think is supposed to be biodegradable. At the very least it’s better for the environment that Joy, which is what I was using. I also bought an organic green tea hair conditioner. I couldn’t find the reusable grocery bags, but I’m thinking about making my own.
• I’ve been trying to find a sample Square Foot Veggie garden online for one adult that I could modify to my own liking. I just like seeing examples of what other people have done.
• I guess I’m going to have to create a gardening category.
• I knitted all day on Saturday on a dishcloth but I have nothing to show for it because I pulled it all out. No matter how careful I counted or what I did, by the time I got to the 12th row, I had an extra stitch and couldn’t figure out where it happened. So I pulled it all out. It’s one of those complicated patterns that is different on every row — you know, K5 P2 (K6 P2) repeat 4 times K5 P1 K2 and then the next row is something else and then like on row 12 you repeat rows 6 through 10. Oy. The scarf was all knit stitches and it took me how many months to do?
• I’m feeling uninspired to take a photo today.

Tags: discombobulated, Seventh Generation, Joy, project365, knitting, gardening, wellness, the puppy, bottled water, Brita, HBO\\\\\\\'s Rome

Project 365 (Day 15): Convenience Food

I don’t feel well, but I was running low on a few staples like caffeine, bottled water, milk, breakfast, lunch, dinner…Because I wasn’t feeling well, of course, I headed right for the convenience foods. You can’t see that I have oranges and cut up fruit in there but I do. Honest. It’s just hidden behind the T.V. dinners.

Tags: project365, photoday, oneaday, groceries, sushi, comfort food, health food, photo blogging

Waiting While I’d Rather Be Doing Other Stuff

I put in a call to my GP this morning about the pain in my stomach, right side and back, as well as my migraine, bloatiness and lack of appetite.  I said straight out that I’m not going back to the E.R. (or E.D. — interesting that since that series started most actual E.R.’s now want to be called Emergency Departments) and I don’t want to pop oxycodone all the time — makes me too sleepy and discombobulated, and that’s saying something.

As it is all morning I’ve been trying to pry my eyes open.  I can’t decide if it’s not feeling well, leftovers from last night’s oxycodone, or just my regular morning meds…or a combination of them all.  It’s very hard to program with your eyes closed.  OK It’s not hard to program that way.  It’s hard to do the analysis part of my job that way and I’ve been trying to go through papers and notes and code from 9 months ago and figure out what was done and why and what wasn’t done and why not and who decided what because last Friday someone got ants in their pants to actually finally go-live with their project after letting it sit for 9 months and it still doesn’t have anyone in charge.  Oy!

So, while my brain is trying to sleep and wake up and sort out my lack of filing system, I’m now apparently waiting for the surgeon to get out of surgery around 3pm to talk to my GP to discuss what to do about me and my pain and my possible 2nd gallstone attack.

And what I’d really rather be doing is going to the grocery store or paying someone to go to the grocery store and having someone do my dishes while I take a nap or watch my finches.  In fact, I still need to get a photo for today and I’m trying to figure out how to capture a picture that represents the pain I’m feeling.  Any ideas?

Tags: pain, migraine, gallbladder, gallstone, surgeon, GP, grocery store, project365, sleepy

I Hate When She’s Right

I’m annoyed at my mother.

Last night I was excitedly starting to tell her about this book I’m reading about gardening and what I was planning to do when Spring comes and she, being who she is, pooped on my party. She told me not to get too excited about it and not to go all out and invest too much in it and start too big. She told me I should start with a small garden and go from there because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself and take on more than I could physically handle.

*hrmph*

The sad part is that for once she’s actually not being critical or saying I’m an underachiever or something. I really think she was talking about my illness like she finally gets it. She didn’t want me to set myself up with grand ideas that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with on my own and then I’d beat myself up about.

I hate it when she’s right.

So I need to think this out at a small scale level.

Tags: gardening, mother

The Migraine Continues

And I’ve got a continuing sharpish pain where my gall bladder is.  None of the usual meds seem to be doing anything to help the migraine.  I’m getting ready to go bury my head in a snowdrift, if I can find one big enough.

I haven’t had one this bad since I moved.

Tags: migraine, gall bladder