I don't know, but oh my!

And here we are again

I have my computer back now. It had a nasty Trojan (is that supposed to be capitalized in this context?) that was erasing my registry or something. The nice fella at the repair shop fixed it, maybe. He said it was a particularly nasty one. The first time I started up the computer it did well, but since has been very slow to start. I may need to call the guy on Monday. Nevertheless it is good to have my own computer back.

I had the esophagogastroduodenoscopy on Wednesday. Did I tell you about that? I know I mentioned that I was scheduled for the procedure. It's an upper G.I. endoscopy. The doc snaked a tube with a camera on the end down my throat, into my stomach, and on to the first section of my intestine (the duodenum). It all looks good, he said. He took a few "clippings" from my stomach for biopsy or something because he said it was ever so slightly darker pink than perhaps it should be. I suppose I'll hear something from my family doctor once the results come back. I'm not worried.

My body heard that we are anemic. So what does the uterus do? She decides to bleed profusely for a couple of days. Not cool, uterus. It's not even time for that yet. You're supposed to wait another week or two, according to our most recent schedule.

Have been pretty depressed this week. Why? I dunno. Why does depression happen? I think that's the wrong question to ask, though I can say that hormones probably contribute to this episode. I don't want to go out anywhere or do anything. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist for this coming Monday but I called to cancel it Friday. I intend to reschedule, but the office was closed when I called so I have to call back to reschedule. There was a menu option to cancel appointments, though, on the answering program. I appreciate that.

I'm supposed to go to Florida for Thanksgiving. Have we discussed this? We're to bury my dad's ashes on the day after Thanksgiving. Light is coming home to South Carolina for this holiday, and Twitch got Tuesday through Friday off work so he'll be here from Charleston. All of this means that if I go to Florida, I'll go alone. Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I'm all about solo road trips! This time, though, I'm just not feeling it. A practical reason: my truck needs a work-over from the mechanic. That "check engine" light that started blaring on my way up through Vermont is still shining as soon as the truck warms up. We haven't had room in the budget to get it checked out. And otherwise, I kinda don't really want to see my Florida family. Especially not all together at one time. I usually do OK one on one with each of them, mostly, for brief periods. I'm supposed to spend a couple of days with my Mama in the Orlando area before T'giving, then go up to Gainesville for the holiday. Friday we'll go from Gainesville to the little town where my dad's family has cemetary plots. His parents, grandparents, and uncles are all buried there and it's where he wanted to be placed. Then either Friday or Saturday (depending on how long this thing lasts Friday) I'll drive back home. If I go.

I will get to see Light if I go to Florida because she doesn't fly back to Pennsylvania until the Monday after Thanksgiving. I'll miss Twitch, but I've seen him fairly recently anyway. He's only about four hours away, which makes for a nice drive especially if Superman and I go together without other passengers.

And now that I've discussed the Florida trip, I'm more willing to go. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not making any decisions about it now because the hormones and depression influence me too much. I'll think about it in another week or two. Of course that gets really close to travel time, but I've told the family that I'm going, and if I end up going, they'll not know I almost didn't. You know what I mean?

My last post was way too long, so before this one gets any longer I'm going to end it.

A little bit more then lots of rambling

I took my computer to the repair place today. Probably won't hear anything until late tomorrow at the earliest. So here I am struggling along on Superman's laptop. I miss mine.

Diva saw the doctor. She's sick, but not with the flu. They did a nasal swab. Diva was all like "WTF?" when the nurse came at her with the long one-sided Qtip lookin' thing. I was good and didn't even laugh at her or nuthin'. She had a fever of 101 at the office. We didn't have a working thermometer so I wasn't sure what kind of fever she had. The doc prescribed a course of antibiotics for her. I feel sorry for the poor Diva. She obviously feels like shit. I picked up a new thermometer at the drug store when I got her medicine, and this evening her temp was 102. I gave her some Tylenol PM (the generic version) and she's sound asleep again. I got her some fruit juice and Gatorade and encourage her to drink a lot. Which means she'll wet the bed profusely, which sucks, but she needs to wash this ickiness out of her system.

Light has been in communication this weekend. She and her boyfriend have terminated their romantic relationship. Thing is, he moved into her apartment a few months ago and doesn't have anywhere else to go or enough money to get his own place. So now Light no longer lives with her boyfriend. Now she lives with a roommate who just happens to be her former boyfriend. She said they are on friendly terms, thankfully, which is the only way this roommate situation will work. I met the guy. I like him. But evidently they aren't good as sweethearts.

Light also told me that she'll be graduating either in May or August. I didn't realize she was graduating so soon. I'm so used to her being in Pennsylvania in school, it seems like that's where she belongs. I'm sure she is ever so ready to be done with school now, though.

While at the doctor's office with Diva this morning I got the results of my blood work. I had my annual physical last week with accompanying blood work. My cholesterol numbers are better, not that they were bad before. My glucose was a little bit high, but the nurse did an A1C check while I was there today (it was supposed to be part of the blood work, but didn't get ordered or something) and my A1C was only 5.5!! It's supposed to be less than 6.0, and a few years ago it was hovering at 6 or slightly above. My doctor had me coming in for blood pressure and A1C checkups every 4 months. When I changed my eating habits a couple of summers ago and started losing weight, my bp and A1C numbers went down. Duh. It's what the doc had been telling me to do for years! Last A1C about 4 or 5 months ago was 5.8 if I remember. Today was 5.5! Yay me! No, I am not diabetic. Doc says perhaps I'm pre-diabetic, whatever that means, but it is NOT "diabetus." With my numbers improving, it looks less and less like diabetes. So it's all good.


And now in interesting stuff from my inbox, I present a very expensive house. With what they're calling a "wrap around pool." Call me old fashioned, but to me, a wrap around pool is really a moat. I mean, what else could it be? Perhaps the moat doesn't encircle the palace house entirely, but in the olden castle days of yore not every moat completely circled the structure, right? Especially if there were geological structures that prevented bad guy access to the place, then the moat didn't need to go all the way around. Like for instance a cliff or very large rock beside the castle probably would work as well as a moat right there. So imagine this: a castle surrounded 25% by a steep cliff and 75% by a moat. Trust me, it'll work.

OK, this moat circles the castle. But not all moats did, right? 

Back to the more mundane. I have pictures to share. Not the ones of palaces and moats, but ones I took myself with my camera that I can't find the battery charger for. I can take the SD card out and load the pics to my computer.... wait, I don't have my computer. Shit. I also can't take any more pictures until I figure out how to charge the damn battery. If only I could find the box the camera came in. I bought it in April of this year after the disastrous canoe trip down the Juniper Run when I took my old camera swimming with me. Twitch was living here in my office, using my desk (OK, it's actually his old desk that I took over from him when he moved, but that's beside the point). So I doubt the camera stuff is in the bottom drawer of that desk, which is where I think it ought to be. Maybe it's on the little desk we moved into our bedroom when Twitch moved back home last December. That desk has accumulated a LOT of stuff on its surface. I'd show you a picture, but my camera isn't charged. Actually, I probably wouldn't because it's embarrassingly messy. Anyway, I might try excavating this little desk tomorrow and see if I can find the camera peripherals. Since I'm looking for the camera peripherals I probably won't find them. I'll find many other interesting and useful things, but not what I'm looking for. That's the way of the Java. 

But what I came to tell you is that I have pictures of the room we've been painting. This is the room that Twitch most recently occupied. It was my office before he moved home in December. It's meant to be a formal dining room in the overall design of the house.  We are tentatively planning to move our bed in there when we finish painting it so we can clean out our bedroom and do these major upgrades to the master suite. So right now I don't know what to call that room. Office/dining/bed/guest room? We painted it yellow above the chair rail and gray below. And I intend to put yellow vertical stripes on the yellow field. The yellow was supposed to be cream, but it's a bit yellower than the paint chip implied. Paint does that, I forgot. It's a pleasant yellow. Sproing says it looks like the color of Blue Bonnet Margarine. (I think that's the brand he indicated. We use dairy butter, so I'm not too familiar with margarine brands.) We have many partially empty cans of yellow paint from other projects, and I know there's a very light yellow that I hope works well against the not-cream margarine color. I've painted a test patch of the Blue Bonnet Yellow and need to get out my contrasting yellows to give it a try. My goal is a very faint contrast yellow on yellow, vertical stripes of approximately 12 inches. Coincidentally and conveniently, the paint stir sticks available for free at Lowe's are 12 inches long. Ain't that a treat? 

Superman and I were very efficient this weekend and got that room all painted. We'd done the priming a few weeks ago, just over the very dark blue/gray that was there before. When it was Light's room she painted half of it as a dark storm, the other half as a light blue sky with lighter blue or white sponged over the sky. We didn't need to prime the light parts. The dark bit needed three coats (maybe it was only two) of primer. The whole thing is yellow now and looks all kinds of solid. Nice. No light blue/dark blue bleeding through the yellow. 

It's late, I'm tired, and I don't know if this still makes any sense. Or if it made sense to begin with. 

OH, wait! I have more blood work news to relate. I'm anemic. My new doctor (actually a Physician's Assistant - PA) (because my old doctor, who wasn't old, retired this summer and I'm still in mourning over that) wants me to have a test... EGD? Yes! Thank you Google. It's an esophagogastroduodenoscopy. How cool is that!? I don't know how to pronounce it. Aka an upper G.I. endoscopy. I know how to pronounce that. Anyway, the PA, Jillian, wants to make sure I don't have any internal bleeding. I just had a "scopy" of the other end this summer, so that's been checked out. The procedure is scheduled for Wednesday the 6th. I'll need a driver, and can't eat anything for 5 hours preceding the procedure. (Alliteration, for those English majors out there.) But about the anemia thing, I've been cutting back on my meat consumption and I suspect I just haven't been getting enough iron in my diet. I'd much rather have to eat more leafy greens or take iron supplements than have internal bleeding or esophageal cancer, you know? I'll be sure to update you on this esophagogastroduodenoscopy, though. (Damn, that's fun to type!) 

The anemia would explain why I've been so tired lately. Anemia and staying up too late. Yeah, I'm going to bed now. Goodnight. 

Oh heavens to Betsy!

What a technological mess! The SIM card in my phone went wonky and I was unable to send or receive calls for most of last week. On Saturday my computer refused to allow me to log into Windows, so all I could do was look at the log in view or the error message saying I couldn't log in. Boring, and frustrating. So I used Superman's computer which didn't work so well either. He has some kind of malware advert infection preventing me from doing anything about posting here except to title the post. He has since fixed part of that, so I am writing this post now. Obviously. OH! and another thing, the Anonymous comments on this here bloggie thing have gone wild, so I just put a word verification step on the comments. Sheesh, what a mess.

I need to take my computer to the repair shop then take Diva to the repair shop doctor's office as she has been feeling poorly most of the weekend. I will post this short message now, and hopefully get back soon for something a bit more significant.