Tag Archives: Life in general

Cancer, Gardening, Life in general

Life is complicated

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The last post about these irritating medical issues was rather optimistic about the eating regularly again (by mouth) and using the feeding tube as a supplemental agent to that. We’ll discuss that, but first, a bit about the chicken I mentioned.

It was delicious. Seriously good, after marinating for 24 hours in a mix of greek yogurt, olive oil, crushed garlic, salt, and pepper. I seared those off on the stovetop in a hot pan, then transferred them to the oven to finish. While they were finishing, I made a tzatziki sauce to go with them, and it turned out fantastically – amazing, given that it’s been forever since I made one. I added extra garlic, and it was, quite literally, the best I’ve ever had. I’m not slapping myself on the back as the best cook ever, but I could eat a bowl of the stuff on its own and be happy, and even my mother, who is not normally one for this sort of thing, judged it to be be excellent. I managed some chicken and the rice I’d made on the side, helped along by the tzatziki to get it swallowed. One thing about dysphagia and mucositis, if you, gentle reader, have stumbled across this during a search: sauces and gravies are generally your friend. (Note: I am not a doctor or medical professional – do not take what I write here as medical advice of any sort, and check with your doctor(s) about stuff, not random things you read on the internet).

That was this past Friday. I think I’d had a couple of cans of the formula in addition to the chicken and rice, and an orange or two. Saturday, I had some of the leftovers, along with a couple more cans. Sunday, more cans. And we ran out of cans from the first delivery. This is where things start going badly.

We’d ordered more formula from the folks who handle that on Friday, and thought from the way they talked the couple of cases we’d ordered would be arriving on Monday. That turned out not to be the case. On Monday, I was feeling worse because I’d not been able to take down enough by mouth. I also had to head out to get some bloodwork done to recheck my kidney function, as of course one of the issues with not eating/malnutrition can be kidney function problems. They had been abnormal in the hospital, but had been improving once the tube was in place and I was on continuous feeding. Off we went, and they took blood and had me pee in a cup. Idiotically, I’d not even thought about the latter, but it makes perfect sense, of course: kidneys, duh! Fortunately, I managed to give them just enough to deal with. Then, back home, where I continued to feel like total crap because I couldn’t get enough into my piehole.

Tuesday, I had an appointment to finally get the stitches out of my neck, one day shy of a month after the surgery and three weeks past the original removal date. I was feeling so weak I wondered if we should call them and reschedule, but we decided they really needed to come out, so, with the help of my sister, who has been a rock through all this, mom took me up to the hospital, and my sister had commandeered a wheelchair so I didn’t have to totter around in my state to get to where we needed to be. The building where this appointment was has a cafeteria on the ground floor opposite the entrance to the part of the building where my doctors are, and the smell of whatever they were cooking was overpowering and made me ant to vomit. Through my reading, I’ve found this can be a problem for people recovering from things like this. But, we made it through that, made it through stitch removal, and the doctor said flat out he is at a loss about this lump. All the scans have shown nothing, the biopsy was negative, etc. – in effect, he’s unable to fix something that does not show a problem. If I’d had the energy, I’d have told him I knew that issue quite well, given the type of work I do. He suggested another PET scan – this uses nuclear tracers to light up possible cancerous areas, as cancer cells glom on to every bit of sugar they can get their greedy suckers on – but since I just had one a couple months ago, it wouldn’t be possible to have another for at least another three months. That’s fine, because even if it had already been six months, there’s no way I’d be able to do one right now anyway. So, the lump thing is a wait and watch thing.

Stitches out, we returned home, and thankfully, the case of formula had been delivered and was waiting for me. I immediately went back on the feeding schedule, or as close as I can get to it: five cans a day.

Now, the thing about feeling so badly those couple of days is this: it’s incredibly scary. When I weighed myself after getting home from hospital, I was 92 pounds. When I weighed myself this past Saturday, I was 90 pounds. That is the completely wrong direction, and I was shocked at that, because I thought things were going better. Clearly, they were not, and as things progressed, obviously not good. Now that I’m back on the feeding train, when I weighed myself today, it said 94.5 pounds. I have more energy, I don’t feel like I’m so weak I can’t walk, and while this does not mean I’m going to be able to get out to the gardens and start the huge catchup work that needs to be done, it does mean I can take some laps around the inside of the house. Moving is one of the keys to recovery: if you decide to put it off until you “feel better” you’re not going to feel better. Get up. Move around. Don’t try to do 50 laps on the first go. The first couple of days, I could only do two laps through before I had to sit back down. Now I can do more, and also do things like get the dogs’ water bowl up, clean it, refill it, and get it back in place. It doesn’t sound like much to most people, and the previously active me would not think such a thing would be a big chore, but it is a victory for me in my current state.

The mental side: I had a bit of an existential crisis during the days I felt so incredibly weak and shaky, and wondered – for the very first time – if I was going to be able to make it back from this. Even with the first cancer diagnosis, I never thought for a minute that I would die. But at the beginning of this week, it was something weighing heavily on my mind: was it possible that things were too far gone for me to recover? I’d no thoughts of giving up and ending it all, so don’t worry about that, friends and readers (in fact, it never actually occurred to me for an instant). My mental state is not generally fragile, as people who know me would be able to confirm, but because of all the things going on and the very physical signs that are so very easy to see of the condition I’m in, for those couple of days I went to the edge of the abyss of wondering about the possibility of failure and very nearly fell in. To be honest, it scared the shit out of me. And during that little crisis, what I thought was the stupidest thing ever (at the time) bubbled to the top of my mind: I had grand plans for the gardens and bees this year, which are now out the window. I’ve no idea why that came to the forefront of my mind at that very moment. Perhaps it was because these things are important to me, and it was an attempt by my brain to help me recognize these are things I would want to fight for, and not to completely give in to the hopeless feeling that had flowed up to envelop me in its grasp. It still felt silly and stupid at the time, and I do recognize that this is going to be another lost season for the most part, but this acknowledgement is not a sledgehammer driving me into a depression, just a recognition that this is the way life happens sometimes.

So, where do we stand now? I’ve just finished another tube feed, and in a few hours, I’ll do another. It’s very much like being on a newborn baby’s schedule: wake up, eat, wait a bit, eat, wait a bit, eat, maybe nap here and there, and so on. If that’s what it takes to get the weight back on my frame and head back to the healthier me, then that oddball schedule is what I’ll do.

Remember, if you are someone going through cancer treatment, or dealing with the aftermath of it, or having issues thanks to radiation, the gift that keeps on giving pretty much forever, or just in general feeling that you’ve lost the point of it all somewhere: life is worth fighting for. There is, and only ever will be, one you, in the history of the universe. Find something that is special to you, the unique you, and hold to that as your anchor. The seas of adversity may be rough sometimes, but hold fast to your anchor and do not let the waves overtake you. You, and the people who love and care for you, will be better off for it.

A note for those thinking that nothing is worth it, and waving a flag of surrender is the only option to whatever problems have invaded your life, be they medical or other: please talk to someone before considering doing yourself any harm. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7, at 1-800-273-8255 if your friends, family, or medical contacts are unavailable or if you want to talk to someone anonymously.

Until next time, peeps: be well.

Cancer, Food, Homestead, Life in general

Tubing

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Alas, this is not about floating leisurely on a tube at a place like Wakulla Springs (something you should do if you have the chance).

After that last post, and after the surgery to take care of my neck – they took some lymph and tissue samples to biopsy as they drained it, and those tests were negative, yay! – I wasn’t feeling too well. In fact, I’d not been feeling 100% prior to the surgery, but went ahead with it anyway as it had been so long getting it address, and I didn’t want to change any infection running up anywhere else. What I’ve noticed, though, is that I still have a lump there just below my jaw. Something to discuss with them when I finally get my stitches out next week.

Why the vast delay in getting the stitches removed? On the 13th of February, I was having issues catching my breath, and I was having sharp pains in my chest when taking deep breaths. To me, based on experience, that meant one thing: pneumonia. Since I was having some breathing issues, it was off to the ER – a shiny new facility one of the hospitals had built down in our area.

I figured they would take a chest xray (they did) see some opaqueness (yes), give me a breathing treatment (yes), then throw some antibiotics at me and tell me goodbye (no).

Because I’d had the surgery on my neck at another hospital, they decided the way to go would be to transfer me over to the ER of that hospital. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the proposition, as the other hospital is in the inner city and is a teaching hospital. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things, but that generally means very busy and understaffed. But away I went, transported over to the other hospital.

I arrived at 9:44 PM in the ER at that hospital on the 13th. At about 3 AM on the 14th, they put me in another ER area, a holding pen of sorts for people who are to be admitted to the hospital, and where people wait for a room. My sister waited with me. And waited. And waited. Finally, she had to leave to take my nephew to school and take care of the soul eating baby, since her hubby had to go to work. So I waited alone, and my mom came up after sunrise to wait. And wait. Somewhere between noon and 1PM, they finally moved me into a room, where I would stay for over a week.

In the meantime, because I had mentioned I had dysphagia (that’s difficulty in swallowing) and because they decided, after taking their own xrays, that yes, I had pneumonia, they put me on a clear liquids diet. And that’s when things went downhill.

I’d not really been eating well before the neck surgery, because I’d not been feeling well. I’m sure everyone knows how that is: you don’t feel entirely well, so you don’t really feel like eating or you have no appetite, or both. I’d already lost a couple more pounds that I couldn’t afford to lose from before the neck surgery to that point.

We pointed out, multiple times, that I’d not eaten anything substantial for almost a week, and that the “clear liquids” diet was not necessary, since I could actually eat. The menu I really needed would have been what they term “soft mechanical” – that is, softer foods designed for people with dentures, but actual food. Didn’t happen. They insisted on tray after tray of crap I could not eat and i one case, could not even identify. Typical tray: apple juice, pudding (too thick for me to eat), jello (difficult to eat when you can’t really move your tongue because you’re missing half of it and missing a lot of the base muscle on that side), and broth. Plus, a Boost in a range of horrific flavors: peach, strawberry, mixed berries. The peach was the grossest of them, and all had “natural and artificial flavors”, which is simply bizarre: those items are all available, even when you’re manufacturing on a huge scale. The broth was generally just a chicken bouillon cube in hot water, which is also disgusting to me. On one of the days, the broth/soup was a gray, almost slimy batch of something that was impossible to identify. I even had my mom take a smell of it, and she bravely took a tiny taste of it, and she could not identify it either. Then, some sorbet showed up on the tray, a departure from the other items, and something I could eat a bit of. However, when the ingredient list starts off with water, sugar, corn syrup, and you have mucositis, as I do, this leads to the high sugar content coating your mouth with a film that takes multiple rinses to get out.

Short version: I ate virtually nothing off the trays. That means day after day of not eating anything. They had me on the usual saline/glucose drip, but I was worried that I was basically starving to death in a hospital.

On the third day, the gastro folks came up to talk to me about inserting a feeding tube. As I thought I would be getting out of there fairly soon, and returning to be able to eat now that they’d been pumping me full of antibiotics to fight the pneumonia (and I felt much better in that regard), I declined. But I continued to feel very weak because of the not eating situation. So, after getting a a good look at myself in the mirror one morning and realizing I was looking like those poor folks who were rounded up and starved in concentration camps (not a specious comparison: I had my mom take a picture of my back, and I had bones prominently displaying instead of being covered by even a small amount of flesh) I changed my mind, as it seemed the only way to be able to get a decent amount of calories into me since I wasn’t eating off the trays.

On Friday the 17th, I had the tube placed. PAIN! I was also dealing with constant nausea and periodic heaving – dry heaving, as obviously there was nothing in my gut to bring up. Routine doses of anti-emetics helped, but didn’t always damp down the random heaving, and the undercurrent of nausea was always with me. On Saturday, they hooked up a bag of formula to the IV stand, and hooked me up for continuous feeding from it. As I’d not eaten anything in forever, the feeding began at 10ml per hour and works up to 50ml per hour. I still felt weak, but I could walk around, even though it left me drained.

Finally, on the 22nd, I was cleared to be discharged. The first order of business was a shower, and when I weighed myself before that shower, the scale read 92 pounds. I am eating by mouth once more (hooray!) but also using the tube to dump cans of formula in so I can get more calories in to help add some weight and more importantly help with the energy issue. Spring is already here, and there are tons of things that need to be done here at the ranch. As I continue to recover and am able to eat a normal amount of calories in a day, I’ll be able to have the feeding tube removed to get that annoyance out of the way. I am terribly behind on the schedule I had mapped out for the season, but being here, and even being behind, is far better than the alternative, if you know what I mean.

One really, very good thing that happened somewhere in the midst if the terrible month that was February, however, is something clicking over in my brain that woke up my love of food and cooking. For many years now, I’ve cooked for a ton of people, but not been able to eat my own cooking. Between the mucositis, trismus (inability to open my mouth very wide), xerostomia (dry mouth; extreme in my case due to getting blasted in the face by radiation, and also the reason I eventually lost all my teeth), and the fact that the bottom denture  loses its grip fast when I eat because of the missing pieces there in m mouth, it’s been terribly difficult to eat real food.

But my brain started nattering at me that there should be ways around that, and I believe this to be the case: I am now putting together selections of things to cook that will serve other people but also myself. At this moment, there are chicken thighs in a greek marinade I whipped up at 4 AM this morning in my fridge. Tomorrow, those will be lunch, and even if I am not able to each a lot of a piece, I will eat what I can of it. It my be messy. It may be painful due to the trismus. It may be tiring, as I’m not used to chewing. In the end, it will be worth it, though, so I will persevere and continue to chip away at the wall that has separated me from the foods I love for over a decade now. I may not be able to “eat” a specific piece of food – a halo orange, for instance, I cannot chew and swallow the segments of. What I can do is work to get them into my mouth and chew on them to extract the juice and some pulp, leaving behind the dry segment that (right now) goes into the trash – when I recover, those will go to the compost heap. If that’s what it takes to get through this, then that’s what I will be doing.

So there you have it peeps: February, in a nutshell, was a month where time basically stood still and is best forgotten. When I finally get the feeding tube removed, forgetting it will be much easier and I will be able to move along with Mother Nature as she defines our lives.

Gardening, Life in general, Music

Feeling the blahs

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Yes, not everything is sunshine and rainbow farting unicorns. Today, for some weird reason, I just feel out of it and fairly unmotivated to do much of anything at all. This may be a combination of things, the biggest one of which is the ongoing issue with a lump in my neck combined with the severe weight loss due to the pancreatitis flareups, plus, as a sort of cherry on top, the chronic cough I’ve had for a couple of years now has really been an incredible pain in the ass the past couple of days. It’s annoying and very tiring to go through those episodes, which about half the time lead further into a sneezing fit.

To give you an idea of just how it is: I still have not placed my seed order for this year. However, I wrote in my (handwritten) journal that I would do that tonight, so I am going to sort out what I want in all the things I put into the spreadsheet, and get the rounds ordered from the various suppliers. By this time last year, I already had flats going under the lights in the barn. I think, though, this won’t be too bad a thing to start them late this month or the beginning of February. They grow so quickly that even transplanting them out in March from a January sowing means dealing with large, often tangled seedlings. So, this year, the goal is to get them out of the flats in a more reasonable timeframe, and if they are a couple of weeks younger than I’ve been doing, it probably won’t matter a bit.

Thought of the day:

“Well you are here and born with fire and desire
You’re the only one can stand in your own way”

From this video by the Wailin’ Jennys. Take care, people.

Bees and beekeeping, Cancer, Gardening, Homestead, Honey, Odds and ends

Where have you been??!!??

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It was a long July and the first part of August has been as well. We’ve been rearranging servers t the NOC, trying to stay ahead of the weeds (and failing badly), and yesterday I had 15ml of fluid sucked out of my face under my right lower jaw because I have a huge lump there. It doesn’t sound like much, but that isn’t a very large area, and even 5ml would be a huge amount. Not nearly the same as the almost 2L I had aspirated from my right lung a few years ago, but just as painful even with some lidocaine. On the plus side, it was an ultrasound-guided aspiration, and I got to watch it on the screen, so that was pretty cool.  I can tell the fluid was adding some padding to the bulge, because now I’m left with hard lumps instead of kind of squishy ones. It will be back to the doc to see where to go from here. I’m really hoping to not have to have myself sliced up again, but if that’s how it goes, that’s how it goes.

In the meantime, I’m trying to tend my bees – a very small hive I was babying along vamoosed at some point in the past week – and with my sister’s help, trying to get the weeding done everywhere and plastic down to solarize the rows and not have to spend half my time yanking up weeds. For years now I’ve tried to come up with some kind of mulching system that is not hideously expensive, is easy both to maintain and plant through, and that would not cook the roots of the plants when we have three straight months of 100F weather. My thought is to pull back the top layer of soil in each row, maybe six inches or so, throw a layer of hay down, cover that back with the soil, put black plastic on top of that, and then a heavy layer of hay on top of that. The plastic should keep out the humongous numbers of weeds that don’t care what the weather is like, I can punch through plastic easily enough to plant/transplant, the under layer of hay will act as a water wick and retain moisture for the plants,  and the top layer of hay will keep the plastic from becoming an in-frame broiler and help retain the underlayer’s cool/moist combo. This is the theory, anyhow. I hope it works, as it would make life much easier around here.

I have five flats in the barn under the lights: primarily tomatoes and peppers – the peppers took a direct hit from pests while I was down with pneumonia over Memorial Day and they never recovered – some onions, leeks, and brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower). The latter will go under some shade cloth after I get that rigged. I’m also working on rigging shade barriers for the height of the season to go along the frames to help with the insane heat we’ve been having down here. A check of my weather station records, and the notes I’ve kept from before I had a weather station tells me each summer is getting hotter, longer, than the previous one. This year, we hit 100F before the end of May, and that has lasted right to this week, where we are averaging about 93F. The issue with such high heat for things like tomatoes is that we also have high humidity. This causes the pollen to clump, so the plants may grow, and often will also flower, but fruit set is poor, as pollination is more difficult in these conditions. Rigging some shade to take the brunt of the west/south sun may help that (at least I’m hoping it will – only testing will show if it does, so that’s what we’ll do).

My hiatus from social media is still on, and life is much better for it, I must say. I’ve also stopped going to various news-related web sites to avoid getting into time-sucking, useless commentaries with people I don’t know (and in many cases, wouldn’t care to). This has also been a good thing, and I’ve stuck to reviewing headlines at Google news and just zipping in to quickly read an article without getting drawn into commenting on anything.

Life at the ranch continues: the world spins, and we with it, doing the best we can with what we have.

Geek stuff, Life in general

Things that bug me, part whatever

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“Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man.” – Ausonius

Being ungrateful and disloyal – not blindly loyal, mind you, but disloyal to people who have treated you beyond well – are two things that annoy me considerably. Some days (or weeks), I really do question why in the world we go out of our way to do all the extras we do for people when we get those things chewed up and spat back out at us as people give lip service to thanking us for everything we’ve done while they sail out the door without ever bothering to discuss options with us before doing so, even when they have been perfectly happy for a decade or more. It is disheartening and depressing to go through, and very stressful in some ways.

Life in general, Planet NoSocialMedia, Writing

Exploring Planet NoSocialMedia, Day 6

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I’m closing in on a week without the usual social media haunts of mine, and I have to say: it feels pretty damned good. I hit up the headlines on a handful of sites just a couple of times a day, and STAY AWAY from the comments.  Today I didn’t actually check the news until mid-afternoon, and that felt pretty fine, too. I’m quite happy to have avoided all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the last few days especially.

What have I been doing instead? Writing! Mostly. I’ve also pulled a bunch of weeds, sorted out some things on my desk, cleaned out my inbox piece by piece, done some reading, worked (of course – something has to pay the bills until the writing does), and in general have been quite productive without the whirlpool of suck that is social media.

If you have it in you, and you want to get more done without the stress various social media outlets create (yes, they do) or just want to relax and do nothing, you could do worse than significantly scaling back the time spent on those. That isn’t to say there should be none in your life – after all, most people are not like me, content to live in their own heads most of the time – but I bet if you timed how long you’re on, you’d be astonished at the reality of the amount of time spent there versus what you think you spend there. I was. Real life is much more delicious with less of that particular seasoning.

 

Gardening, Life in general, Planet NoSocialMedia, Writing

Exploring Planet NoSocialMedia, Day 1

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Some months ago, I told myself to pare back on the timesink known as facebook. I’d been doing really well, too, although I’d not gotten around to doing some of the things I planned to do, which was the reason I dropped facebook in the first place.  I don’t count this as a total fail, because I did get some rather deep introspectional type stuff done to clear up some things in my head that will help me forge ahead with these other things I want to do.

However, I wound up back on facebook as a place to vent after a few events (one of which was the horrifying massacre of 49 people and the wounding of scores of others at a gay nightclub in Orlando) and got sucked in again, resulting in more and more time there, wasted.

But! During the last few days of June, I made it known that I was going to live on Planet NoSocialMedia for the month of July, and perhaps even longer.  It’s slightly easier for me, as the only ones I actually participate on are twitter (not much), instagram (not much except pics from the ranch), and facebook, the ultimate alien-like, face-humping, time-wasting monster.

Today is (still, as I type this) July 1. I have not ventured off Planet NoSocialMedia today. I also have not written anything today. I think this will be all right, though, as I had to get some other things cleared out of the way after having a couple of days of forced rest thanks to some physical issues that cropped up.

Now, we head into Day 2. The goal: continue to work at things that need to be done at the ranch, but also meet a very basic step in the workout to rebuild those writing muscles. A mere 250 words, or about one page of a typeset book, is the target. We all learn to crawl before we can walk, and walk before we run, after all. I firmly believe that trying to start off with some huge goal, right off the bat, after years (ok, decades) of not pursing my art would be like the people who make resolutions to go to the gym, show up on January 2, vastly overwork themselves even though they are not used to working out, then find the next day they can barely move, so they wind up not going to the gym as they resolved to do, slipping back into old habits, only to do the same thing again the next year. I don’t want that, so that is not the way I’ll pursue it.

More to come, my dear readers who swing by every so often. Take care of yourselves.

Geek stuff, Life in general

Connected

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As many of you know, I moved out to the very edge of the biggest city in the area – technically, just across the county line into a town that is both unincorporated and unknown to most people even if they live around here. Now, while I love life at the ranch, with all the ups and downs that go with it, there is one thing, above all else at this moment, that I miss dearly about living closer to civilization.

High speed internet access.

Now again, as most of you know, I run a business that is internet-based (well, one of the businesses is). While satellite is ok, it is definitely not high speed. It is also terribly unreliable, and in a place where we receive reasonable amounts of rain, generally speaking, it leads to signal loss. There is also the problem of the satellite just deciding to cut out for no apparent reason at all. We have endured outages when there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and when there is a stronger than usual breeze, as if the signals are blown out of alignment by the wind.

Over the years, we occasionally check to see if any of the usual providers have made it out here. We know that Comcast has a loop on a pole about 700′ from the house. So we went on their site to determine if service was available, and while the first guy said there was “nothing remotely” in our area, the second guy who called a day later said what we knew: there’s a loop 700′ away from us. Happy day!

He was quite interested when we said we wanted the largest business package (that runs about $300/month, give or take), and that other people in the small development here had also expressed interest in high speed access. We went back and forth for a week, only to be told, in the end that no, they would not be able to do it, because the loop at the road “already had too many people on it” and it would cost Comcast $200K to roll it out to us. Mind you, this is already after we had polled the people here – some of whom, like me, run their businesses from their properties – and almost to a person they wanted some form of service, whether it was internet only (us) or internet plus tv (several), and all were agreeable to having a multiyear contract. It seemed, when we reported those results, like a win-win, but someone on the chain knocked it down.

It’s rather unfortunate because it is so close to us since we run up against the main access road. The upper level business account dude suggested we contact one of the local offices and have them call their corporate overlords to talk about it. I’m not entirely sure what difference that will make, but it is on the list of things to do. The tiny candle of hope still flickers in the darkness of slow internet service here.

Bees and beekeeping, Cancer, Geek stuff, Homestead, Life in general

Tuesday’s child is NOT full of grace

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In the tech world, for some reason Tuesdays are generally the shittiest days. Problems are extra large, people are extra dense, ticket volume is extra high, and everything just seems to be a bigger pain in the ass than it usually is. Generally speaking, all my days are pretty much the same – to the point that sometimes I don’t even know what day it is – because I work every day, anywhere from 12 to 18 hours, doing something. So I take Tuesdays in stride, because often some other whack-a-mole will pop its head out on a day other than Tuesday, and to me,it seems like Tuesday even if Tuesday is just lending an outfit to another day.

However.

Today was my personal Tuesday. It started off very calmly. As Stacy astutely points out, that’s sometimes a warning indicator, i things are far too calm. Turns out, this was one of those times. Got my breakfast, got a shower, headed off to pick up a paper scrip from one of my docs because the med contains a scheduled drugs so cannot be called in – thanks a bunch, Feds, for making it annoying for those of us who actually need the stuff. It’s a 35 to 40 minute drive to that particular office, as it’s on the other side of the world from the ranch. Picked it up, got back in the car, and started my way toward Publix, to get the thing filled, plus pick up another that was ready, along with a few assorted other items.

On my way there, I get a call from the ranch: the electric company dude who reads the meter (they just drive up the driveway to the house and use their reader without getting out of the pickup, yay technology!) managed to back into and snap a stub that is a water line. To the house. Since Gabby was there with some worker bees, they shut off the main valve that leads to the house. Therefore, no water in the house or to any of the irrigation piping until it’s repaired.

Change of plans: we have no spare 1″ PVC lying around. Everything is the wrong size. We do have couplings, and they assure me we have pipe dope. Off to the big orange store. I pop in, pop out, hustle back to the car. In the parking lot, some guy gives me a shout, starts walking toward me with his hand out, like he wants to shake my hand and says, “Hey, how you doing?” and who obviously either wants to sell something, or get something. I say, “Sorry dude, in a hurry.” and I head back to the ranch, where…

…we do some test fitting, cutting down – with a mini coping saw, because the PVC cutter I had once upon a time I cannot find – test fit things, judge it good, and get ready to finalize it. No cement. Primer, yes. Cement, no. I dig around in various places, and in a drawer I come up with cement that a) I do not prefer and b) is old, so questionable. We try it anyway, allowing it to set, then turn on the water. Sealant: fail. Off I go once again to the big orange store, and since I’m already out again, to Publix to get the other stuff for the ranch.

The big orange store has all the things I need – including a ratcheted PV cutter – and I also spy some couplings that have rubber seals and teeth to grip the pipes when they’re inserted. No cleaning, priming, or cement required. I also find a combo cleaner, primer, cement in a handy spray bottle just like spray paint. Why did it take this long to come up with this? I pick up both, along with traditional blue dope, and head to Publix, where…

…as I’m giving the scrip to the tech along with my ID, and she’s reviewing it, she says, “Oh, no. They didn’t date the scrip. We can’t fill it.” Argh. I take the scrip back, pick up the other stuff, race back to the ranch, where….

…I redo the bottom fitting in the traditional way, but cannot get the top fitting off to redo the cement on that. Fine. I do the bottom, allow it to set, wipe off the excess, and then the valve to get the water flowing again to test it, only to find….

….the top seal is definitely not going to work. Fuck. I turn off the water, cut the pipe off at the ends of the couplings, which requires digging out the bottom part of the stub a bit, get the other part of the replacement PVC I didn’t use, and cut it down. Instead of dealing with the traditional prim/dope method, I slip the newer coupling on to one end and use my body weight to push the piece snug and it clicks into place. The other coupling goes on the top connecting pipe, and I cut down the replacement pipe a couple of times until I can get it to slide under the top coupling (after pushing that part slightly to an angle in order to do so. I push down with all my weight, but can’t get it to snap into place. I grab a rubber mallet and pound the damn thing until it gives a satisfying snap. Finally.

Time for a test! I open the valve, and the pump kicks on. The couplings hold and are not blown off by the pressure. There are also no leaks at the joints. Yay. I head inside, turn on some taps and the tub in the master bath to force the pump to cycle on and off to make sure any pressure changes don’t damage the joints. it doesn’t. Problem solved!

By now, I’m drenched in sweat and my pants are sliding further and further down my hips. I have a massive spasm going on my left side, from my hip all to the way to my face. I decide – it’s now 4PM, and I left the house about 11AM originally – it’s time for lunch. Except…

…it pops into my mind that the bees need to be fed. Luckily, I had already made their syrup this morning, so I poured the jars, climbed into my suit, went out, and changed their bottles. It’s very still, with no wind, and very humid, and I’m sweating even more in the suit than normal. I head back inside, peel out of the suit, and get lunch started, only to be hit….

….with a massive new spasm that takes my breath away. I lean against the counter to let the worst of it pass, then grind up my antispasm and other meds and finally get lunch made.

Then I find out Comcast is not willing to run access to our one road development: there are too many people on the loop they have at the road now, and they estimate it would cost them $250K to do our road. Fuck. The corporate guy suggests we call our local Comcast office and have them call in to corporate. Yeah.

So, thanks, Tuesday, for fulfilling every expectation I generally have of you. But you can go now, really. Seriously.

Life in general

No matter what

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I generally do not get into politics, most news, or religion here, but I will say this: no matter what someone may think of Joe Biden, there is no denying he is a decent, compassionate man, and a terrific communicator. And, no matter what, the inequity that pervades our legal system is, at times, sickening: if this “champion swimmer” Brock Turner was not white, not a “champion swimmer”, and not at Stanford, he would have received a far harsher sentence and the presiding judge would not have overly concerned himself with how the man would have fared in, been treated in, or been affected by a longer sentence than the paltry six months given to him as a gift. It is appalling.

The only possible good to come out of this – if anything can be termed good in relation to it – is the message from the actual victim in this case. No, Turner the Elder, the victim is not your son. It is the woman he attacked while she was in no condition either to consent or resist. She is also the hero of this pathetic example of justice, as are the two Swedish grad students who didn’t simply look away and ride by. While we may never know her name, one thing we do know, and will know, now and for years to come, is that she has potentially made a difference in the lives of those who might not otherwise speak when visited by the horror of a sexual assault. Through her, perhaps others will find their voices too, and as all decent people do, say enough is enough: no matter what, this is not okay.

Her full statement – and I suggest reading the entire thing – is here.