Category Archives: Homestead

Food, Homestead, Life in general

Thanksgiving 2010 at Lazy Dog Ranch

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Thanksgiving 2010 at Lazy Dog Ranch. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Very large image, I know – I’m too lazy to do anything about it.

Dinner: two 14 pound turkeys, one on the smoker, one roasted. One 18 pound ham, glazed and delicious. Cranberry-apple compote. Stuffing. Sweet potato souffle (sweet potatoes from our garden, with marshmallows, of course). Corn, green beans, mashed potatoes. Gravy. Roasted vegetables (sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, squash, zucchini, onions, mushrooms). Apple-raisin salad. Rolls (not pictured – I made two batches of dinner rolls and a batch of buns as well for the inevitable leftover sandwiches). Deserts, including various cookies, breads, a cherry pie, and an apple pie, and there’s still some cherry-chocolate-almond ice cream I made hanging around in the freezer).

We had originally planned for a small gathering – half a dozen people, tops. We wound up with 15. I’m officially popped out here, and the incision from the lung surgery is actually burning something fierce, like all the nerves along that area have been lit by a forestry team setting a backfire.

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead, Sports

What I did on my non-vacation weekend

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I worked. I cooked. Worked. Cooked. The usual.

I wasn’t feeling quite well over the weekend, and today still do not feel as well as I did last weekend. I’m not quite sick now that whatever minor sinus infection I had cleared itself out, but also not quite feeling a hundred percent. Generally, I blame this on the fact that I’ve had far too many doctor/hospital visits, and there are simply too many sick people in those places. Fortunately, I’m done with the doctors until November unless something comes up, since the last visit to the pulmonologist this past week gave me an all clear after an xray followup to track that nasty fluid buildup to make sure it was fully drained. But like I said, hanging around in hospitals and offices brings with it the potential for random bugs to crop up, and I’m guessing that’s what this nonsense is.

On the plus side, I cooked, a lot, this weekend. Today is mom’s birthday (happy birthday, Mom!), and we just had a small dinner for immediate family Saturday night: my sister was down from Georgia, my brothers both up from Orlando, and my other sister and I. Saturday night: classic steakhouse dinner, with steak (grass-fed, organic, no less), shrimp three ways (boiled, scampi, and asian-inspired), baked potatoes, corn, bruschetta (I made two loaves of Italian bread, and by the end of the night, both were gone). Sunday morning, as is his habit, my brother made breakfast, and people went about their business for awhile before returning for a day of football. The football food: roasted red pepper soup, guacamole, more bruschetta (and two more loaves of Italian bread), roasted sweet potatoes and carrots from the Lazy Dog Ranch garden, and two chickens that had been brined in a honey-pepper mixture and then smoked for about four hours (plus a fresh batch of bbq sauce). I also made some cherry-chocolate-toasted almond ice cream for those who like that sort of thing. The youngest brother also assembled an eggplant parmigian after I fried off the eggplant slices, and one of my sisters made sauce, since my sisters were bugging him to make it.

We watched the Dolphins take a win against the Vikings, and turned off the Jaguars game in disgust after the Chargers reached the 30-point mark. The battle of the Mannings was not all together that interesting as the Colts put the beatdown on the Giants, but that is what younger brothers are for, as everyone who has a younger brother knows.

Overall, a very nice weekend indeed. The weather is not yet modulating into fall for us here, even though some mornings have dipped near the 60 degree mark. This is actually a good thing in my book, as my seedlings in the flats will go out into the garden in the coming weeks, hopefully to give us some good output now that the captain is back in the game and not having another chunk of something cut out. I could use about five degrees of cooler weather in order to get the fall snow pea round started. Out in the frames directly, I put in a round of limas, snap beans, carrots, cukes, leeks, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and cowpeas. We’ll see how they do in what can still be some brutal heat, with no rain and only the standard watering. If I can stay healthy, with no more nasty surprises coming up to kick me in the ass, and I’m able to hold the bugs at bay, I’m hoping to get some kind of decent production out of this season yet.

Cancer, Gardening, Homestead

Bugs, redux

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The problem with spending quite a bit of time in doctors’ offices and hospitals is that these places are more often than not filled with sick people. While this is not entirely surprising – after all, how often do well people go to the doctor or visit a hospital unless they’re visiting someone or working there? – it is rather annoying for those of us who are otherwise healthy but are susceptible, thanks to being blasted with radiation and chemicals, to picking up bugs from various places in their travels.

Such is the case on the ranch, where yours truly has a typical case of the flu or a cold or something, resulting in an amazing amount of snot being blown out of my head.

Speaking of amazing amounts of stuff: this week, a return visit to the pulmonologist, for a followup xray to make sure that massive amount of fluid they drained out of the left lung last week remains at bay. It does, although there is still a bit of hazy “pneumonia-like stuff” hanging out at the bottom of the left lung. Do we know what it is and why it’s there? No. Do we want to preemptively treat it with antibiotics or anything? I voted no, and the doctor concurred. In two weeks we’ll have a followup xray to see what progress the body can make on its own.

On another note, I got to see the xrays and scans from before and after he drained the fluid. I have to say, it was one of the most incredible things I’ve seen on a scan, and more than a little scary: my left lung was pushed almost to the point of collapse by the sheer amount of fluid, and the CT scan results, when rolled back and forth like a film, are rather awesome in demonstrating just what medical technology has the ability to do (of course, I am a great fan of technology in general and medical technology in particular, because hey, it has saved my life rather spectacularly, twice, in the span of five years). When viewed as a film, the CT scan results, working from the top of the lung downward, show a massive black space where the fluid has displaced the lung – a bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey, minus the stars bit, because there was absolutely nothing there but a huge amount of (thankfully benign) fluid.

Right now, although my head is stuffed to the point where I want to chop it off, breathing deeply no longer is the agony it has been, and is getting better daily. A slight twinge here and there, but overall, recovery is back on track. The other day I went out for about 20 minutes or so and actually worked in the garden by chopping off some of the giant okra fingers that were threatening to topple some of the plants. All of those went into compost, as they were inedible – some had dried on the stem, the seeds rattling around in the now zebra-striped pods as I cut and tossed them.

I’ve decided to try another round of tomatoes, as a last hurrah to the season. I’ve also decided that instead of starting other things in flats, they’re just going to head straight for sowing in the frames. Since Earl is not going to pass closely enough to our coast to bring us any weather, and the daily rains appear to have moved along, there is no real danger at this point of the seeds being washed out or the soil staying wet so long so as to cause the seeds to rot in place. That means the broccoli, cauliflower, and other assorted goodies will be directly sowed at some hopefully short time in the future – but after we go through another week of 95-degree weather here, according to our forecast. Summer does not want to let go its grip, and who can blame it, really? Summer, to me, is the very best of seasons.

Gardening, Homestead

Bugs, bugs, bugs. And I’m not talking coding here.

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After awhile, bugs landing on you while you’re in the garden are as ho-hum as finding pocket lint: you’re so used to it by long exposure that it is a mere annoyance to flick one off your arm (or face) and stomp it dead.

This is what happened to me this evening as I wandered out into the back garden for the first time in quite some time after taking out a couple of very light garbage bags. Despite serious neglect, blight, and a complete invasion of leaffooted bugs, stinkbugs, and who knows what else, partying along like it’s their personal buffet, there are some things that are still growing – some completely out of control. The okra, for instance, is actually starting to lean from the weight of the uncut fruit on the stems, the largest of which are starting to curl into themselves much like those crazy fingernails people grow in a strange attempt to get into Guinness.The eggplant continues to thrive even though it was transplanted hastily before my surgery and virtually ignored since that time. The new round of peanuts, planted post-surgery, is coming up well, although we won’t be able to pluck those out until around December, assuming the weather holds. The cukes are spent, and need to be pulled, but all three varieties were excellent producers while they were producing, but next year I think we will stick with two varieties that everyone judged tastier than the third.

There are also small watermelons scattered here and there, ready to be picked, as they are hybrids specifically bred to be what amounts to a single-serving melon. I pulled one while out looking around, since the bottom was starting to yellow and get soft. After breaking it open, it showed itself to be slightly mealy from having been out too long, but otherwise a perfect specimen of a tiny version of the behemoth watermelons that are so often seen: deep, ruby red flesh studded with black seeds, the clear, strong scent of fresh fruit wafting up from the split pieces.

Other things have not fared as well, and it is a significant disappointment that another season has been lost without what should have been a bounty of zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers, both sweet and hot. Late transplants, poor weather, and medical issues both in the family and for me personally have led to pitiful looking plants, both earlier in the season and since I went in for surgery. But, like a good Cubs fan would, all I can say is: wait until next season. The good part for me is that my next season is right around the corner, even if the continued 100-degree weather makes it seem as if summer will last quite a way into the fall.

Next up: I should be receiving the shipment of garlic for fall planting. That will go into the cold room until the weather moderates a little, since these particular garlics do not like overly hot weather (not to mention that the frames where these will be planted are not ready to receive them yet). In the flats, I plan to start brussels, broccoli, cauliflower and in the frames directly, carrots and onions. If the weather cools off into the low 80s consistently, we’ll also put in a late round of snow peas.

Overall, today, looking at the state of affairs, considering all the work that has been plowed (so to speak) into the effort: disappointing and depressing.

Cancer, Gardening, Homestead

Moving forward

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Everyone is always after results: test results, harvest results, weather results, sports results. The results we received from the oncologist were, I must admit, those I had suspected would be the case. The sample was negative for the markers for which it was tested, as I knew it would be – after all, if the primary sample had tested positive for those same markers at the time, it would have been quite simple to point to an actual cause of the original occurrence rather than it being a grand mystery. But it didn’t, and neither did this one, which leaves us in the same position with this one as with the first. No one knows why someone with no risk factors at all amongst the various possibilities wound up with not one but two rare (for my category of risk) cancers.

Our next step, after meeting up with the radiation oncologist who developed the treatment plan for the first episode, is another PET scan. A baseline, if you will, of the state of my system,  post-surgery, to make sure that everything that needed to be cut out was cut out, and that no other hot spots appear. That will be next week, and I have to say that I’m not looking forward to it. Not because the procedure itself is scary or painful, but because you can’t eat anything for a period before the test. During my week in the hospital, I lost about eight pounds, leaving me tipping the scale dial right at about a hundred pounds. Trying to maintain that, much less put anything back on, is a daily struggle, and the way a healing body burns through calories, not eating for at least eight hours is going to be a tough road to take, and the end result will be a queasy and cranky Captain. I plan to stuff a cooler in the car with something to immediately boost my blood sugar as soon as the test is finished and they turn me loose.

The week after that, back to the oncologist, as the results of the PET will be back by then, and at least we’ll have something concrete there to look at and see where we stand.

Recovery continues, slowly. Weight maintenance/gain is the single largest issue right now, followed closely by range of motion/strength rebuilding in the affected area. I have this nasty dry cough thing going on, which aggravates every muscle they cut through during surgery, along with the ribs they spread apart to get a good view of the lung. Try coughing without involving any abdominal or back muscle. Doesn’t work very well. On the plus side, I’m not coughing up any blood, and it’s probably related to the fact that I spend the vast majority of my time inside in the air conditioning rather than splitting my time between being inside and being in the great outdoors. It’s simply too hot and humid right now to be outside doing anything much of consequence other than stepping out from time to time, as it’s difficult to breathe the heavy, humid, still air without starting to gasp like a fish unceremoniously dumped out of the bowl. Since our fall won’t arrive for a couple of months yet, the most I can hope for is periodic trips outside without doing anything strenuous (like pull weeds) and that the weather modulates just a tad to something more bearable so I can start getting back outside here and there, even for a short walk around the gardens that are going to hell.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Food, Homestead

Going around the bend

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Tomorrow, another visit with the oncologist to see what the results of the testing say – hopefully, there will be results and this won’t be another trip into town for nothing.

Today, though: planning. Planning for next season and next year. This afternoon, I managed a tour around the rear garden to see the pitiful state of affairs. Blight has taken hold of several frames of tomatoes, and the bugs are munching on the cukes and zucchini like it’s their personal buffet (although I did manage to squash a few during my brief stay outdoors). The corn is dead, for yet another season, and I’m of half a mind to just give up on that altogether. The new round of lima and green beans are not thriving, as they say, and are either dead or dying. Some of the transplants I managed to get into the frames before going into the hospital are still alive, and even thriving, including a new round of Cherokee Purple tomatoes and some bell peppers. The watermelon and butternut squash transplants don’t look horrible, but they’re skinny things and I’m hoping they make it through.

The other part of planning involves chickens. We decided before I went in for surgery that next year we’re going to raise our own chickens for meat in addition to those we keep as layers. This is not without logistical issues, of course, and it’s likely that only my brother and myself will be able to actually butcher the birds, but that’s fine. Other family members can handle the less gruesome parts, like packaging the birds, whole or pieced out, once they’ve been dressed. That seems like a fair enough division of labor to me.

Since the birds are generally processed at about 12 weeks, and the chicks are available year round, we could do multiple groups per year if it turns out to be worthwhile. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be, as how often do most people really get the chance to raise their food almost from start to a very definite finish? We’re not quite on the path to hatching our own chicks here, and probably never will be since that would require a rooster, and that simply isn’t happening around here. I’m content enough with ordering chicks even though it isn’t as completely self sufficient as would be the case in a utopian universe. Now, if it really comes does to the end of the world as we know it, complete with zombies, we’ll rethink that part of the equation. Until then, we plan for stocking the freezer with freshly butchered, pasture raised chicken, right off the property. There are, no doubt, worse things in life.

Cancer, Gardening, Homestead

Planning around

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The great rice experiment of 2010 is a bust. We had thought it would be fun to try to grow our own rice, and set up a couple of bins with some dirt, flooded them, then tossed wild rice in one and brown rice in the other. A few days ago, during a lull in the nonstop rains when we had several clear, very hot days of no rain in a row, I noticed the wild rice bin was dry. I filled it again, and it looked fine, but two days ago, we noticed it was once again dry. The culprit? A leak, not previously noticed, allowing the water to slowly and sneakily drain out. The other bin has no hole, but is looking a little fetid – the problem with not having a large, open-air area with natural breezes and circulation, I suppose. There is, however, a solution to both problems: a new bin sans leaks for one, and a small recirculation system for both, akin to a fishtank aerator setup. Just enough to keep things bubbling along and keep the water from getting scummy. That will have to wait until after the hospital.

Speaking of, I went today for the pre-op ordeal, which is less than an ordeal than it is an exercise in patience. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork: a consent form for the hospital. A consent form for the doctor. A privacy advisement. Yet another questionnaire about general health, diseases, and meds I’m taking. I notice that the doctors carry their own liability insurance (I suppose so the hospital doesn’t bear the entire responsibility for whatever lawsuits might arise from something or another). A sheet of instructions about the day of the surgery. All of these things are things I’ve seen multiple times before at this point, so I’m talking along with the nurse who is rattling off the same things I’ve heard before.

Then they took four tubes of blood from me and made me pee in a cup. The latter is, I think, another way of covering their butts to make sure I am not pregnant although I have already told them I’m not.

Barring anything strange, we’re on for the 6th, where yours truly is to arrive four hours prior to the scheduled operation time, in order to sign more consent forms and to get prepped for a procedure the surgeon estimates will take about 45 minutes or so. Then they will hold me hostage for several days unless someone manages to smuggle a file in my jello so I can escape. I am not counting on this, as everyone seems to think it would be grand for me to be in forced inactivity for at least a few days.

The upshot of all of this, as we rocket toward surgery, is that I have a massive number of things to do, and little time to do them. Although the rice experiment do-over can wait, there is something else that cannot: the flats of seedlings that are rapidly becoming too large or their starter flats, and which need to be planted out in the frames. Since the seedlings have been outside since they were started, I’m thinking they should be fine in the great outdoors, but I am still leery of putting them out without being able to be here to keep an eye on them and take preventative action (like partially shading them if necessary, assuming the sun ever comes back, from the worst of direct sunlight until they’ve settled themselves). On the other hand, I know that another week plus in the flats is probably not the best thing for them. It’s something I think on while getting some new servers set up and installed so they will be ready before I head in for my version of a vacation.

Today I picked a beefsteak type tomato called Steak Sandwich (Burpee, hybrid), and sliced it open. It smelled, as most tomatoes fresh off the vine smell, like a tomato, with undertones of green vine. It was juicy, with nice, small define pockets of gel and seed, and not grainy at all, as some can be. According to my taste tester, this one could benefit from a touch of salt, unlike the Cherokee Purples we got before they gave up and died on us. Still, it was great to pick a beefsteak, long season tomato before July 4, given all the issues we’ve had around here.

And now, back to work, to continue the server setups and get as much in order as possible before I’m forcibly separated from my laptop and cell phone.

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead, Life in general

Breathe deeply

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I am certain that my half dozen faithful readers are wondering what cliff I fell off, given my complete lack of maintenance here on ye olde blog front. What, they ask, is she doing? Lolling around, eating bonbons, instead of planting things, cooking goodies, and the like?

I’m not much on bonbons. At least for myself, not these days.

No, dear readers, yours truly has actually been doing things like whipping up batches of pizza dough for the freezer, babying plants along and harvesting goodies (six pounds of cukes the other day!), making bread and butter pickles and foisting them off on anyone within arm’s reach, cooking up some homemade french onion soup (delicious!), and pulling weeds (a losing battle).

But I’ve also been undergoing yet another round of tests, from an x-ray to a CAT scan to a PET scan to a biopsy, and on the 6th your intermittent blogger will be back in the hospital, this time to remove a wedge of lung that has a suspicious lesion on it, along with a lymph node hanging out near the trachea that also looks suspicious. None of this is good news other than the fact that a) it’s very small, and b) it’s very early, so given my overall good health, my total lack of smoking, ever (which makes it all the more ironic this second time around, having some crap I absolutely should not have),  and my relatively young age, should be not as big a deal as it would be were I a two pack a day puffer with cardiac issues and high blood pressure.

Still, it’s no fun, and I’ve had enough of medical stuff these past five years to last me a lifetime – in fact, it seems like I’m making up for a lifetime of not a whole lot of medical anything, doesn’t it? And still, the same people ask the same question over and over again: smoker? The only thing I smoke is bbq on my Bradley, thanks. They’re always surprised, and I suppose given their professions, they should be, since it still surprises the hell out of us here that me, of all the people in this family, should be receiving these diagnoses. On the plus side, I’m probably the healthiest person in the family, so my odds are a lot better for recovery than most everyone else’s.

The doctor says a 4-7 day stay in the hospital (let’s aim for four here), and then six weeks for recovery (too long for me), which will put us at the beginning of planning stages for the fall garden. Once again, it seems another prime season has been lost in some fashion, this year from a late start due to an extended illness and death in the family a few months ago, and now an interruption in the height of the season due to surgery and recovery. One of these days, we will have all the pieces together for an actual, planned, well-begun, well-managed season.

The tomatoes are soldiering along as well as they can, although the heirloom Cherokee Purples went down to blight due to an extraordinary run of rain we had. The paprikas, the stars of last year’s garden, and the bell peppers are both a major source of disappointment this year, as neither are producing. The latter is especially discouraging, as I wanted to stash plenty of roasted red peppers in the freezer for those times when I want to make soup. On the plus side, as we’ve been going through all this testing/scanning nonsense, I did get some more flats started, and put in (I think) about 36 starts of a bell pepper called Fat N Sassy. If there is a more appropriate name for a pepper that should be perfect for roasting, I don’t know what it is. On the downside, these will be ready to go out into the garden proper in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be directing traffic instead of participating fully, what with all the mother hens hovering.

The peanuts are going gangbusters, and we’ve already enjoyed zucchini, green beans, filet beans, and okra from the garden, along with the aforementioned cukes. I have kidney beans, another round of green beans, and limas popping up out of the soil – once again, score one for getting these things in before surgery time!

This coming week I”ll be working like an over-caffeinated squirrel trying to get things in order before I go down for the count. The upside is that I’ll have time, sitting around on my ass, to post some of the pictures that I’ve been taking here and there. One thing I will say is that french onion soup, delicious though it is when homemade, is not very photogenic. It surely was tasty, though.

Cancer, Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Gardening, Geek stuff, Homestead, Life in general

A day like today

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I do not, as a general rule, sleep well or much. My family knows this because they have to put up with my oddball hours. Friends and clients know this because it is not rare for them to receive an email from me at some horrible, zombie-like hour where I, fresh from about three hours of sleep, have logged on to see what is happening in my little corner of the world.

Most of the time, this does not bother me overly much. After all, I have a great deal many more hours at my disposal than most people, meaning I can come up with grandiose plans about various things, and also cement the reputation I have garnered of being a robot rather than a human being. Since the radiation from the cancer treatments still has not brought me any real superpowers, I suppose it’s as close as I will ever get, although I won’t be doing this anytime soon.

Some days, though, the lack of sleep brings out the cranky, especially if I am also not feeling well. Like today. This makes me want to kick someone’s ass right off the planet for tossing a nonsensical legal threat our way about information in a domain registration that she provided, even though we have pointed out what she is saying means nothing and she readily admits she doesn’t understand the “jargon” – and by “jargon”, I mean English. Apparently, she is simply terrified that one of her “fans” (she is an actress, apparently) will find out her address from a years-old cached pieced of information on google, something that we do not control, last time I checked, and do some stalker-like thing, or kill her, or both. Or something. This is the time when I want to state it flat out for people: you are just not that important. You are not fodder for the next American Justice where some crazed, obsessed person hunts you down and kills you. You may tell yourself, actress aspiring to be famous, that someone would care that much, but let’s face it here: you provided your own biographical information to IMDB which is quite handily on your own web site, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist or some weirdo even slightly off their meds to find you. I know: I tracked down someone, including their name, date of birth, current residence, current hobbies, other web sites they visit, and the fact that they coached little league from a single piece of information (an IP address attached to a comment they left on a blog we host). With all the information you have provided on your own, deranged psychos could track you down if they wanted. They haven’t. This should tell you something about your place in the greater universe.

A day where you think it would be nice to be able to eat and drink the way you used to. That an icy cold beer and a pile of wings would be great after sweating off a couple of pounds working on the ranch, except that you can no longer drink alcohol due to the radiation burning off the lining of your mouth and you really can’t eat wings any more because the chewing issues make it virtually impossible. That it would be great to settle in with a margarita and a blackened chicken burrito with extra sweet and hot chile sauce, but the spicy foods are offlimit now for the same reason alcohol is, and you know even as you sow the seeds in the garden that you’re unlikely to ever be able to eat habaneros or even jalapenos again any time soon, if ever.

On the other hand, on a day like today, where I’m having some trouble catching my breath and generally feeling like crap – oh, not to mention having a slight bout of anxiety over the fact that the doctor wants me to have a chest CT because of something they saw on the chest x-ray they wanted before I started hyperbaric dives after having yet another tooth pulled – it’s nice to Get Shit Done. Like sow the cukes from seed that I’ve wanted to do for several days now, for a total of about 140 seeds planted, with a little overflow from my nephew helper, who put half a dozen seeds in several holes while I tried to convince him that really, one was all that was required. I also directly sowed some more tomatoes and peppers, because let’s face it: there are rarely enough, and we intend to do a lot of preserving this year. If we have the space, I want to fill it with something. That includes the newest 8 x 4 frame I polished off today in the herb garden, with a little assist by my sister, who hauled a load of dirt and poop for me amongst the five others that I brought over and mixed in. Tomorrow, while we wrangle a scheduled CT from the hospital people and I stay out of the hyperbaric chamber until we determine what the hell is going on – and if I have walking pneumonia, I will, as I have told several people, be pissed – I will begin work on the final 8 x 4 frame for the herb garden. Tonight, I may just go ahead and sow some things in flats that really want the much hotter weather we will no doubt be heading into very soon, and set them up on the heat mats in the garage, turning on the lights for them in the morning.

It’s a day where you also get nice, chatty mails from certain clients, about their newest projects, and about being a test case who found a bad link on our site. Or from someone who understands the information (some of it erroneous) at some random, invisible data mining company is not the end of the world as we know it, which then leads in a roundabout sort of way to a discussion about critters and gardening/sustainability. Or from someone who congratulates us on ten years of putting up with all of this. Or where a pooped out puppy sleeps on the back of the couch while you work from home on a laptop, ass planted on the couch yourself, his tail slapping against the cushion now and then, his nose crinkling as he sniffs out a rabbit or turtle or whatever populates puppy dreams, every now and again his paws wiggling manically, chasing down a bird he will never catch, growling and then squeaking out what would be a bark were he awake. Or where you watch as your nephew, having discarded his swimming diaper at some point, stands on the patio in the shade, fresh from the pool, with only his water wings on, downing saltines with a slab of cheese between them, crumbs falling from his mouth and sticking to his wet chest. Or where you decide, apropos of nothing, that Saturday would be a great  time for a spaghetti dinner night, and that homemade pork/beef/veal meatballs in homemade sauce, with homemade Italian bread as a vehicle for carrying butter and garlic, would be a rather fine thing indeed, even as you muse about the possibility of making homemade pasta, just to top it all off.

Or where, in general, despite never having as much time as you think even though you don’t sleep, berating yourself for not writing nearly as much as you would want to (or anything at all, for that matter), and having a list of todo items that is constantly expanding, you think this is a pretty damned good life, overall, and that you wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything.

Cancer, Gardening, Homestead

Forced downtime

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Three consecutive days of dentist/oral surgeon visits have resulted in forced downtime for me on the ranch. On Wednesday, a visit to the dentist to address the broken tooth slated for a crown. While much of the shearing off was the buildup, some of it was the actual tooth, and what was left after that was one little stub, resulting in yet another unrestorable tooth. Luckily, we had already made an appointment with the oral surgeon for Thursday, because I could tell what was coming: an extraction of what was left.

And that’s what we did on Thursday: appointment at 10, and by 11:20 I was walking out the door, my mouth yet one more tooth lighter. This was a bit more difficult an extraction, as the top stub broke of and he wound up using forceps to dig in and grab the root, but he managed to pull the root out in one piece. No cutting! Gauze, the usual prescriptions, and off I went back to the house. Because of the additional rooting around (no pun intended) this one hurt quite a bit more than the last one, and my lower jaw started to swell fairly immediately. I also felt quite a bit more nauseated this time than last, but sleep plus the various drugs made it all slide down the list of my concerns, even if it did put me behind on various things and make me a bit foggy throughout the evening. My oral surgeon – Dr. Tayapongsak, by the way, if you’re ever in this area and need a very good one – also mentioned to me something I resigned myself to three years ago as I began the never-ending dental work: eventually, all my teeth will probably have to come out. For now, though, I’d like to retain what I can.

Friday, back to the dentist for what was actually my scheduled appointment for crown preps, now on a single tooth instead of two. That didn’t make it hurt any less, as my jaw had swollen further through the evening, but I went ahead with this appointment to avoid having the other tooth meet the same fate as the one requiring extraction. As he shaved away the buildup and shaped the remainder of the tooth, of course some of that work wound up going right along the gumline. Ouch. Then the impressions, and me trying to open my mouth widely enough to get the trays in, which were then jammed up against the teeth and held there for several minutes. Then the even greater challenge of getting the trays out through my limited opening, without destroying what we’d just managed to create. Then the temporary crown, on the tooth, off the tooth for shaping, over and over again, every time jammed up against and into the gumline until it was shaped properly.

After that adventure, off to the hospital and an EKG and a chest xray, so I can begin hyperbaric dives on Monday to promote the healing of the socket where the root had been. While I was in xray, getting lined up for the second shot, a code blue in MRI comes over the intercom. Such is the ebb and flow of the medical world.

All of this adds up to no work outside since Wednesday. My face is still swollen today, although less so than yesterday, and there is no heavy lifting permitted anyway for a day or so after the extraction, to avoid the potential of dislodging the (very nice) blood clot that formed in the empty tooth socket. Since I feel like someone has been beating me with a lead pipe – and look a bit that way, too – this is disappointing, but sort of welcome at the same time.

Tomorrow, though: full steam ahead. Lots to do. Not many people to do it. It’s time to really start ramping things up here on the ranch.