The Title of this Post

Have you ever had a great idea for a post, then forgotten it when you sit down to write? I hate when that happens.

My children are getting older. I don't mean my children, specifically, not the four who share my last name. I refer to folks who are young enough to be my children. Diva's birth mother was 16 when she had Diva. She's now 32. I'm 52, a whole twenty years older than her. Today Superman and I met a young-ish Physicians Assistant (PA) who is 33, father of two-year-old twins. At 19 years older than him, I'm old enough to be his mother. And he's not all that young.

And how did we meet this PA? We were in the emergency room. Superman experienced some atrial fibrillation again this morning and got extremely dizzy. Shortly after 8:00 I said call the doctor, he called the office and made an appointment for 10:30. No, dear, TALK to the Doc! I mean, he could barely stand. He needed to go to the ER. So I called back and cancelled that appointment then took him to the ER. By the time we got there his heart was back in normal rhythm, but his blood pressure was low - 91/60. No wonder he was dizzy. They put him in a treatment room and eventually infused him with a unit of fluids (saline solution). That helped. They did blood work, took a chest X-ray, and of course did an electrocardiogram. Everything except the blood pressure was normal, and after the bag of saline solution the BP improved. So we came home. And had lunch. He stayed home the rest of the day and has felt fine. I convinced him not to go to work this afternoon. We had a pleasant day together, except for that ER part.

There might have been more I was going to say, but I don't know what it might have been.

More kitchen drama, update style

It's been a while since I gave you an update on the kitchen. The demolition is complete now, and Superman has begun to do what's necessary to put it back together. Things are progressing slowly once again after a hiatus. 

The hiatus was necessary because Superman is... well, not the most graceful of all creatures. The floor was gone, all the way to the joists in the primary kitchen-y area of the room. 

The room is shaped like a fat L, the upright portion being fattest, and the horizontal bit more like a wide hallway that leads to the laundry room. The fat corner connecting the two lengths is where we have no floor. Therefore, in order to get from one side to the other one must levitate above the hole, or something. Walk on the joists. Jump really far. We have to cross it in order to do laundry (unless we want to use the laundromat, which we don't, since we don't need to, since we now have a working washer, thankyouverymuch). 

 Superman had a couple of space heaters blowing toward the joists to dry them out completely. On the Thursday between Christmas and New Years he went in there to check on things before going to bed. Only he forgot to activate his levitate function, and ended up here:

... after a brief visit to the ground under the joists. He cut a big gash on the top of his head which the ER doc stapled together. It's the first time I've seen staples applied. It was fascinating. Since Superman's scalp was numb, it more or less fascinated him as well. He was not amused before the Lidocaine took effect, though. In addition to the gash in his scalp he got lots of bumps, bruises and scrapes from the adventure. Oh, and also a concussion. And of course it hurt his delicate back. He was on prescription pain meds for a couple of days, but healed fairly quickly, all things considered.

Here is his stapled head before he'd had a chance to wash it. You can still see the Betadine in his hair.

The staples are out now, and the wound looks amazingly good. I can barely see the scar. It was a very clean cut and the doctor did a good job with the staples. Also he's no longer in pain from the fall (though he's currently suffering some shingles pain) and has gotten back to work on the kitchen.

Last week he sanded the damaged wood, scrubbed it with bleach water, then painted an anti-mold concoction on it. This weekend he sistered all the joists. When he fell into the hole he squished part of the air conditioner duct and has to repair that. He will also reroute the drain pipe, hopefully this week. After that he can begin to reconstruct the floor.

One might wonder why the joists were left exposed like that. 'Cause come on, Java, some planks or a piece of plywood would cover that gap and make it safer. Yeah. Wouldn't it. He laid some plywood down after he fell though the floor. When he was working in there this weekend he removed the plywood and put down a couple of planks, but that isn't very safe either. I carried a load of laundry across it this afternoon - kinda dicey. I am not strong enough to put the plywood back down, though he says he'll do it this evening.

In other home improvement news, Superman finished the bathtub area in the hall bathroom. That bathroom has been an ongoing project for a couple of years. He retiled the walls around the tub and replaced the fixtures. It took him a long time to get the tiling done (a year or more) and over the holidays he finished the grout and calk and applied sealer. When Twitch was home for the holidays they put up the shower curtain rod.

 (Twitch needs a haircut.)

 That was exciting!! And he accomplished that with a concussion and staples in his head! Superman, indeed!

He also gave us a bathroom door. There's been an old sheet hanging over the gap for a long time. There's still no cabinet or sink, but the toilet, bathtub, and door all work. It's all very exciting, let me tell you.

And that's all for now. This is only a home improvement update, and there is other stuff (not much, actually, and that's the point) that I'd like to ramble about. The kids are doing fairly well, all things considered. Sproing is actually doing very well, and Diva is not being outrageously bad. I'll post again, hopefully later this week, with more adventures from Java land.

Not how I wanted to spend my evening

In the emergency room!

On a bright note, (ha ha) Light got home yesterday evening. She's done with finals, finished with her first semester of college. She's such a sweet and wonderful young woman. I'm extremely proud of her. I used to think that I was a great mommy for producing a daughter like her. Although I did do lots of good mommy things with her, she's turned out the way she is because of who she is. The actions, behaviors, and temperaments of the other children is humbling enough to let me know that Light is the way she is because of who she is more so than anything I did.

Back to the emergency room. Last night Superman was complaining about his heart. It was all fluttery, and his chest had a full feeling, he said. He asked me to check his pulse, and sure enough his beat was very irregular. I called our family doctor (who thankfully was on call. Any of the docs in the office would have been fine to talk to, but I much prefer our fella', you know?) and he strongly recommended that Superman go to the ER. Duh. I was afraid that would be the advice.

So we went to the ER. I dropped him off at the door and went to park the truck. By the time I got back into the waiting area, he was nowhere to be seen. As soon as he got up to the intake window and said he was having heart issues, the guy at the desk called back and had a nurse come whisk him away to the bowels of the treatment area. I asked where he was, and no one in the waiting area could or would tell me anything. I was very frustrated. Again, Duh! No one would let me into the back until his name appeared on their "board," their roster. I wondered for a few minutes, looking firm and concerned but not freaking out. Yay me. I made sure to give the guard at the door the proper spelling of our name, and he promised to let me know as soon as I could go back. Very soon he called me over and gave me a visitor's badge and told me where Superman was. Good!

When I got to the treatment room where they'd taken him, he was hooked up to all sorts of machinery. I think they'd done an ECG by that time. It was less than 10 minutes. I was impressed. And the doctor on his case was a friend of ours from the church we until recently attended. The diagnosis: he has atrial fibrillation, I think he called it. The beats of the upper chambers of Superman's heart are fast and irregular. They took X-rays, scans, blood tests, and everything looked normal except of course for the irregularity of things. They gave him some medicine to slow the heartbeats. That was supposed to also get the rhythm regular. The beats slowed, but stayed irregular.

The doc went ahead and sent him home, but he's got to get an echocardiogram today. Doc called our family doc to tell him what's going on, and to expect a call from us today. I just got up about an hour ago (and I need to leave for work in 2 minutes. I'll be a little bit late.) and I checked his pulse when I woke up. It is still irregular. Shit. I was hoping it would have regulated by now. Shit. The fibrillation increases the chance of clots forming and going to his brain, causing a stroke. Shit. I don't want the man having a stroke. That would really put a damper on my holiday. Shit.

Anyway, I'm going to work. I have a field trip to drive this morning. I'll have about an hour between the end of my regular morning route and the start of the field trip. I'll probably come home and check on the guy, but unless he's really sick I will go on to do the field trip. Light, bless her heart, can take him where he needs to go today. My field trip will take all day, until it is time to start taking all my students back home. I should be finished and back at the bus lot by 4:30, if all goes well. Fridays can be hell. The kids are hyped up for the weekend and tend to be ill-behaved on Fridays. All the kids who've been suspended from the bus for bad behavior are now back on, so it could be rough. I assigned seats yesterday to keep the biggest trouble-makers away from trouble, and yesterday went much better than Wednesday, which was a bitch.

I'm taking my laptop with me today. While the class is busy doing field trippy things, I'll try to catch up on some of the posts I want to submit. I doubt I'll have internet connection, so it'll have to wait until I get home to post, but I can write stuff up anyway.

Ta ta for now.