Simple life

 I sit on the edge of my bed With the window open fully to let in fresh, cool air, and let out the nebulized fumes. I now have four different chemicals that I breathe each morning and evening. Fortunately, I can read things on the iPad while I’m doing the breathing, which of course includes coughing. That’s the whole point to clear out the mucus and get my lungs to function better. 

By the time I finish The fourth chemical, my head is spinning, and I do not dare try to move around beyond shifting slowly One direction to another – no way will I stand for a few more minutes! 

 I received a spam phone call from someplace in Texas, which I answered and don’t say anything. There is dead silence and I figure only a machine is on the other end. I hang up. Isn’t it strange to say hang up and we no longer Have a receiver to put into a cradle on a phone.

Yes dictating on iPad means strange capitalizations...you should see some of the words I deleted! nebulize does get into some interesting combination! Nebula Eyes!

Oh so slowly my purple orchid is opening...it wasn't fertilized this summer, and the blooms are tiny.

A nurse from the pulmonologist's office called last afternoon. She was answering a message I'd sent about a week or so ago, asking what the results were from the last sputum sample in July. They never got that one  examined I guess.

 But I told her about being hospitalized 2 weeks ago and being discharged 10 days ago from pneumonia. And I told her about the 2 new drugs added to the nebulizer, by one of their doctors.  They are the same ones that were in an inhaler which never seemed to work for me. None of the hospital records were available to her, but I asked about the dizziness. She was great in telling me to just use enough that I feel I can breathe better, not till I'm dizzy.

She tried to get me scheduled before my regular appointment in November, but there were no openings. So I'll work with my general practitioner, with whom I have an appointment next week. And I'll talk by phone with my care coordinator tomorrow. I just hope I feel better soon. Slowly I'm able to walk around a bit more each day! 

I cancelled the Meals on Wheels because they tried to deliver yesterday when my friends had taken me out. The MOW people contacted my emergency contact that I wasn't home. I'd never been told that I had to let them know if I was going out. 

So I'm going back to the Council on Aging lunches at the senior center,  which actually are much better (in my opinion!) I do appreciate that MOW is offering a great service to those folks who are home-bound. I'm not quite in that category (yet.)

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Every positive thought we pass between us makes room for more light.

JOHN LEWIS

Save paper and plastic, and some troubling thoughts

 Paper use:

We use 6 billion paper coffee cups (not even thinking of the styrofoam ones still being used) a year. If just 1% of us used reusable mugs, we'd save 65 thousand trees per year.

Whenever I go to lunch where single-use plastic ware is offered, as well as paper napkins, I just pull out my own set, and my own napkin for my lap. (Unfortunately I use enough Kleenex to offset this, due to my allergies! Sorry about that) As my son reminded me, our individual efforts are just to remind us that there are much larger forces that need to be addressed to limit the damages from climate change.

One day last week I met friends at a pizza place and had a ham and cheese sub sandwich with kettle chips...it was delicious. Other days I went to the Lakeview Senior Center. Here's one of their servings.

I ate the sweet potato, corn bread, apple pie (without crust part) and half the roast pork...didn't like butter beans. But I'm so glad the Council on Aging is using these cardboard plates now! They used to be Styrofoam. I declined the little carton of skim milk, as it doesn't help my mucous. They provided a tiny tub of fake-butter which I chose to put on the potato, because the cornbread was moist enough to eat straight.

Not bad for $1.50 if you're a senior (over 60? I think).

I had also taken part in chair yoga class before lunch. I just do the stretches slowly and usually hold onto the back of my chair for the balancing poses. But when I walked back down the stairs to the parking lot, I noticed my hips were moving differently as I walked. Wow. I need to do this more!

I've got Katharine Hayhoe's newsletter to publish too, as to the good and bad news on climate change. But for now, I'll just say, this is one thing I can do. I try to eat plant-based meals at home, and sometimes will just give away the meat portion of these senior meals. Meatloaf is a favorite of a lot of people, but I give mine away.

And yesterday I saw this disturbing video...a carry through from my post yesterday!

Remember I'm a pacifist when it comes to war/military actions between countries, and using guns to kill any humans (and maybe even animals unless for food). 

But I can also be an activist who tells my opinions to anyone who will listen.

So, you also have this to consider from Robert Reich on Mon. 1.8.24 regarding the Secretary of Defense missing for 3 days:

"Earlier this year, Trump said at a rally in Iowa that he’d unilaterally send the military into Democratic-run cities. “You look at any Democrat-run state, and it’s just not the same — it doesn’t work,” he said, referring to cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as crime dens. “We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”

If you think Congress or the federal courts would stop him, think again. As head of the executive branch of government, Trump could theoretically ignore whatever the other two branches told him to do or not to do, because a president is the only one with power to “execute” the laws.

And the core of that power is a president’s command over the military.

I don’t want to alarm you, but if Trump is reelected, everything could come down to whom Trump appoints as his secretary of defense, and the top generals whom that secretary appoints. (The secretary of Homeland Security could also play a key role.)

Might doesn’t make right, of course — which is exactly why it’s important to be aware of Trump’s potential for using the military to get his way.

Throughout history, the only real check on dictators has been the military. Dictators rely on their militaries. Militaries enable dictatorships. Militaries are behind most coups d’état."

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PS, as my last comment on my post yesterday said, I finally caught up with Barry and gave him a good thank you.

The sun has come out!

One of my favorite stained glass windows.  But I forgot where it is, and who made it.  If you know, please comment!

Cool nights mean I open my windows, but hot days (with high humidity) mean I close them and turn on that AC.  This shot doesn't show the sun much, and the ridge tops are still in clouds.

I've had a busy week and it's only hump day.  Going to get more active in the arts...signing up to be on a waiting list for a show out of town.  If there's a cancellation, I might be in.  Big IF.  And I'm going to get active in the Swannanoa Fine Arts League again.  See, today things look much more promising.  Why? I think I am able to keep up with the plans each day again.   Recovering from Pneumonia usually takes about a month...and I'm in my 4th week now.

Yesterday I threw on the wheel for the first time in a week.  What with the studio closed for flooding (just a bit causing a wet floor for a couple of days)... and some days my coughing really puts me into low energy...well, I've been lucky to get to lunch at the Council on Aging site here...and maybe do a bit of volunteer work.  I was at the Swannanoa History Museum 2 afternoons this month...and it's an easy sitting welcoming kind of job.

Today's big adventure was having my management do an inspection of my apartment...to make sure there are no leaks, or other damages.  I did mention to the manager that the outside wall in my kitchen is so damp that a wood cutting board leaning up against the refrigerator grew some mold.  I cleaned it with vinegar (the cutting board) but I think I'll swab it with bleach before cutting any food on it.  I also got my batteries in the smoke detectors changed while the maintenance man was checking that they were working. He was happy to use my step stool, and that meant I didn't have to.

I'm about to go to lunch, which is only $1.50 donation for the meal.  Today's one of my favorites, buttermilk fried chicken strips.  I have to watch that I don't eat too much of the mashed potatoes, and I usually skip eating the buns.  But the green veggies are usually good, as well as some kind of sweet desert.

I hope a friend of mine who just turned 60 will start coming to the lunch program.  There are lots of different kinds of people.  On Tuesdays we have a Spanish Conversation table...where we each take 2 vocabulary words and bring them back in sentences the next week.  It's great when a hispanic person also joins us, and can correct our pronunciation...if she can bare it!

volunteering

That's me in the church office, while waiting for the computer to warm up.  Yep, it still has to do that.

I volunteered to do just the weekly news while the administrator took vacation.  I said no to several other duties that might have needed to be done.  I just thought I could add one new thing a week.

It's gotten to be that way.  I can add one new thing a day as well.  The fact that I used to have the administrator's job but left when I felt it too stressful, was completely reaffirmed.  There's not any major thing that makes it stressful. Just that at a moment's notice something new and major might come up.

That's true of life, but sit in an office at a church, and it's multiplied times however many people come to the church.

No, I don't have any tales of woe to share.  I did the 2 newsletters for the 2 Fridays she was gone.  I didn't have major interruptions.  Sigh.  Things were sometimes a bit more pushed for last week.  So this week feels like a breeze, right?

Well, I've decided to accept the offer of Council on Aging of a low cost lunch served at the Senior Center Mon-Fri.  So I finally signed up on Wed.  I had to pick a day when I could go over when they were getting ready to serve, and when I didn't already have other time constraints.

The woman in charge wasn't there.  She's off helping her daughter have a baby, and the volunteer that was there thought she could do it, and I could come back and start on Fri.

So I did.  It meant leaving the studio where I work an hour and 15 minutes early, so as to arrive by 12:00 noon.  And when I got there, I had to laugh.  No they hadn't ordered me a lunch.  They didn't know why, and the woman who said she would wasn't even there today.  But several people were absent, so they had an extra lunch.

On Monday it may well be the same story.  I have really missed bureaucracy!

So today I did something new.  I don't know what tomorrow's new thing may be.  Going to that Senior Center 5 times a week is sure to be disruptive of my schedule.  I set my alarm so I could do all my morning routine in time to go to the early studio hours that are only on Fri.  Of course that gave me enough subtle anxiety I woke up hourly throughout the night to see if it was time for the alarm yet.  No kidding.  This old body would much prefer to just gently fight off the cats till I can't stand it any longer and get up and feed them.

Speaking of an old body, the right ankle is again giving me awful pains, and then little gripes...so I've been very nice to it today.  It's raining today.  So I took Tylenol thinking at least I know my joints aren't happy with rainy weather.  Ankle has behaved, but I haven't exactly been hiking.

I had cleaned up my kitchen a couple of days ago, and every day since.  That's rare for me.  I'm a once a week clean the kitchen kind of person.  So today I took advantage of all that counter space and made me a good dinner.  Silly after strangely (rarely?) having a balanced meal for lunch.  But that's what I did...cooked a pot of rice, mixed up cornbread, thawed salmon...which in itself has been difficult for me to think enough in advance to plan that tonight I will actually cook.

That's why the lunch is a good idea.  I just avoid cooking these days.  Not that I don't like to.  But I mostly don't trust myself that much.  I make mistakes, forget things, like ovens or burners being on.  That's such a big no-no, I'm really super aware, and (you may have noticed) the anxiety is too high to really enjoy working in the kitchen.

So today feels very successful.  I've even done a couple of loads of laundry.  Not all of it.  Heavens, I wouldn't be me if I completely finished something.  And there are also some dirty dishes in the kitchen.  But now I'm going to watch my Netflix streaming here on the computer (in case you didn't know, I don't have TV any more)...and fold clothes!