Song of the day: “If I Die Young” by the Band Perry.
Hmmm. Well, it’s been a strange couple of day. On the most part tenant has been giving us fits. Yesterday was pretty darn horrible, drinking wise. No matter how you explain, and how often you remind her, she keeps refusing. Gave us a bit of a scare too, since her pee was a tad pinkish. Even called an ambulance yesterday evening to check that, but they said it was fine, probably just from where the tube is attached to her kidney. Then again today, I mean seriously, what is wrong with her? We are going to make an appointment to have her brain scanned in Malaga, because this is just too strange. There are times when it seems that she deliberately trying to get our knickers in a twist, or something, which isn’t what we’re used to with her. Luckily her doctor in the village suggested that we do this, so that’s definitely going to happen at some point in the near future. I can tell you that it is vastly disturbing and sad to see her this way.
We have an option for a temp carer, though, making everything a little less heavy all the way round, giving caregiver a little time off. We’re going to talk with two women tomorrow and see if we can get to an agreement.
There was plenty of laundry again, along with dog food for and other chores. I know, vastly interesting, right? You’re psyched, I know. Hah. Life is going steady as you please and I for one don’t mind all that much at the moment. I am slowly recovering from the flu. The cough is almost over, and I am losing the cough. Yay.
Yesterday we had a pretty darn good edit. Managed at least five pages, which is a first in a long time. Of course today we barely managed one, but what the heck. I’m getting ahead of myself. Where was I? We had to go out for a bit, grab some groceries for mom and the sibs.
Big brother and grandpa have been working on grandpa’s bathroom, installing the new toilet. It’s a pain, because the new model is of a different design than the old one. While they were doing that, I was working in the kitchen, making supper for us, as well as for tenant, who has a developed a strange yen for salt-less food. Made a vegetable barley mix with some chicken for her that worked rather well.
Got my first customer review for Saving Nina’s excerpt yesterday (Thank you Teresa), which is always exciting, naturally.
Big brother is still suffering from a bad cough, which didn’t put him in the best of moods today.
Not that I saw much of him early in the morning. Mom wasn’t feeling all that well, so I offered to take our friend to the airport in her stead. This meant that I had to get up at 6:45…which almost went wrong because my alarm gave the spirit again. Luckily I had asked grandpa to give me a shout if I didn’t come out on time. I only had to rush a little to be up by the car in time.
Middle sister came to get the lodging dogs, and friend and I set out toward the airport. Made good time, in particular since it was still early in the morning and the traffic low. Then of course it turned out that the main road to the airport was closed off, meaning we had to go the back way, but I dropped her off on time, so all was well. The way back I decided to go on country roads. It’s never smart to drive highways on your own when you slept only four hours, so that was much safe…not to mention more enjoyable. Hah.
Got home to a whole list of chores. No time for edits either since laundry was waiting, along with dog feeding time, and then down to the main house where the big freezer was going haywire. Had to take it apart and attach a new electrical wire before it was fixed.
Next the washing machine, which had somehow managed to become unbalanced again, meaning we had to fix that too. Not good for the machine, that.
Third chore of the day was go back up to grandpa’s bathroom and work on the installation of the toilet. It took some time, but we did succeed in the endeavor, even before grandpa returned from the village. By then I made some broccoli soup, so Sally would have something healthy to eat today (I didn’t feel like out and out cooking, so we opted for French fries with nuggets tonight) . But the soup worked out so well I had myself some as well.
That done big brother and I studied a bit of our Spanish, as promised to out teacher last Wednesday. My brain feels like mush so I don’t know how much gets stuck in there, but I’m trying and that’s what counts.
Took a nap right after, because my short night caught up with me. Slept wonderfully, thank you very much, and would have continued doing so if a call of nature hadn’t rudely interrupted me and reminded me that I was still supposed to edit today. Hah. My dogs also really liked that, plastering themselves to me for the duration of the nap.
So we edited, a little, put the dog food on the stove, ate our own supper, and…well, that’s about when the day came to an end with this blog. Time for some real horizontal stuff, and on to the new day.
I can hardly wait!
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Spanish
Song of the day: “Irish Son” by Brian McFadden. Who’d have thought he could sing solo, but there you have it. Good son, very intense.
Laundry wise things have been going in loads. All the bad weather kept it from drying properly again, so there was plenty to fold yesterday. Strange how just a handful of folks can produce that much laundry, eh?
But anyway, I don’t mind. Hanging and folding laundry soothes me, and allows me to let my minimal amount of OCD play. Hah. Seriously, if you’ve never hung laundry (can’t imagine it, but what the hey) you should do it some day. Cheaper than a dryer and, not to mention, better for the environment. Hah.
Tenant is back home, yay. They sent her home, saying that we’re not supposed to bring her there again unless the local infirmary says she has to, or if it is an extreme emergency. *sigh* It’s not as if we go there for the fun of it, idiots. She seemed to be in good spirits, except that she was trying to think of ways that she would be able to have her intravenous drip in her room, rather than needing to drink constantly…which isn’t possible of course. There’s no way they’ll put you on a drip when you’re at home without a professional nurse. Seriously, it’s a trial…we’ll have to get through it, though. We have been looking into getting help if she doesn’t improve soon (so far it is going…albeit difficultly. She has, just barely, reached the absolute minimum quota of what she’s supposed to drink today, yay) so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
Talked with her daughter on the phone a bit, which was a relief, since there are, and will be, decisions that have to be made in the future, and it is not our place to make them. *sigh*
Did finally manage to scrounge up the nerve to talk with Sally about, if the worst were to happen, and she dies, what she wants to be done. She was very firm about it, and determined, claiming she wants to be cremated and for us to let her oldest brother know. That’s a relief too.
Okay, enough depressing news. Good thing is we sent another manuscript to a publisher. A novella, this time. The one we read through in 4 hours without finding any major errors. Yay!
Sent it, got a confirmation that it arrived, and so the waiting game starts. Did see that A.I.L. which we sent to the same publisher has an “In progress” status, rather than just “received”. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Managed to choke down meat (both today and yesterday) just barely. Didn’t get the whole slab, but at least eighty percent, so I’m content with that at least. Part of my problem was that I was out of peanut butter, meaning that I was unable to make a proper Satay for it. Without the sauce I really am not able to make my way through the stuff…and due to the fact that I only ate it once or twice this past month, it was harder again to eat it.
Did some edits for T.M.S.T.S. Not as much as I would have liked, but some at least. Am afraid we’re not going to make our deadline of before the end of spring, but we’re going to continue trying at the very least.
Cooking involved a large amount of potatoes, tossed together with fresh Broccoli and Cauliflower from the yard. The cream and butter that I added with fresh garden herbs, made it darn near perfect, thank you very much. Blendering the mix with some liver for tenant, took care of her needs as well. And she liked it, so, yippee.
The dogs had to be fed as well, of course. One of the morning chores, ya know. Every day the same, naturally, but they are much appreciative nigh on every morning. Were in a bit of a rush with it this morning, because at noon we had to be in the village to meet with our Spanish teacher. Yep, the day has arrived for us to start on our Spanish lessons. We actually managed to arrive on time, and spent some odd two hours poring over our notebooks as she instructed us in the finer parts of the language. I wasn’t as bad at it as I expected. She could explain most of anything in Spanish (only needed to resort to English a handful of times) and we repeated, and repeated, and repeated when we were told to. Hah.
Afterward we headed to town to go past the garage and ask for an appointment for the Land Rover. The light of the differential lock has been flickering, meaning that something is wrong. The way we figure, we better have the mechanic look at it before something breaks. Got an appointment for Monday. Had a nice chat with the receptionist, who had some awful experiences at the hospital these past few months. She almost died, in fact, if she had not gone to a private hospital where they sorted it out real fast. Bone marrow was no longer making red blood cells. Yikes! Scary, huh, all the stuff that can go wrong?
Knight is doing okay, the bandage held this time. Am going to have to check it today, though. My foot. Well, I have been doing a lot of stretches, seeing as the discomfort was somewhat fierce these past few weeks, and this morning was the first time in ages that I could actually get out of bed without risking going flat on my face from it. A definite yay, that…of course, it doesn’t help that Tadaika decided to use me as a horizontal rubbing pole, and thereby caused me to sprain something in my neck while I tried to dodge her affection. Grrr. Have been turning my upper body instead of my neck all day, darn it.
Went into the yard for a bit, which was nice. Got to yank weeds and harvested broccoli, chickweed and iceberg slaw. The weather was actually splendid. Bright sunshine. The wind wasn't too bad, and the temps doable with a sweater on.
Well, that’s it for me. Time to go to bed. This day has definitely reached its end for me.
Laundry wise things have been going in loads. All the bad weather kept it from drying properly again, so there was plenty to fold yesterday. Strange how just a handful of folks can produce that much laundry, eh?
But anyway, I don’t mind. Hanging and folding laundry soothes me, and allows me to let my minimal amount of OCD play. Hah. Seriously, if you’ve never hung laundry (can’t imagine it, but what the hey) you should do it some day. Cheaper than a dryer and, not to mention, better for the environment. Hah.
Tenant is back home, yay. They sent her home, saying that we’re not supposed to bring her there again unless the local infirmary says she has to, or if it is an extreme emergency. *sigh* It’s not as if we go there for the fun of it, idiots. She seemed to be in good spirits, except that she was trying to think of ways that she would be able to have her intravenous drip in her room, rather than needing to drink constantly…which isn’t possible of course. There’s no way they’ll put you on a drip when you’re at home without a professional nurse. Seriously, it’s a trial…we’ll have to get through it, though. We have been looking into getting help if she doesn’t improve soon (so far it is going…albeit difficultly. She has, just barely, reached the absolute minimum quota of what she’s supposed to drink today, yay) so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
Talked with her daughter on the phone a bit, which was a relief, since there are, and will be, decisions that have to be made in the future, and it is not our place to make them. *sigh*
Did finally manage to scrounge up the nerve to talk with Sally about, if the worst were to happen, and she dies, what she wants to be done. She was very firm about it, and determined, claiming she wants to be cremated and for us to let her oldest brother know. That’s a relief too.
Okay, enough depressing news. Good thing is we sent another manuscript to a publisher. A novella, this time. The one we read through in 4 hours without finding any major errors. Yay!
Sent it, got a confirmation that it arrived, and so the waiting game starts. Did see that A.I.L. which we sent to the same publisher has an “In progress” status, rather than just “received”. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Managed to choke down meat (both today and yesterday) just barely. Didn’t get the whole slab, but at least eighty percent, so I’m content with that at least. Part of my problem was that I was out of peanut butter, meaning that I was unable to make a proper Satay for it. Without the sauce I really am not able to make my way through the stuff…and due to the fact that I only ate it once or twice this past month, it was harder again to eat it.
Did some edits for T.M.S.T.S. Not as much as I would have liked, but some at least. Am afraid we’re not going to make our deadline of before the end of spring, but we’re going to continue trying at the very least.
Cooking involved a large amount of potatoes, tossed together with fresh Broccoli and Cauliflower from the yard. The cream and butter that I added with fresh garden herbs, made it darn near perfect, thank you very much. Blendering the mix with some liver for tenant, took care of her needs as well. And she liked it, so, yippee.
The dogs had to be fed as well, of course. One of the morning chores, ya know. Every day the same, naturally, but they are much appreciative nigh on every morning. Were in a bit of a rush with it this morning, because at noon we had to be in the village to meet with our Spanish teacher. Yep, the day has arrived for us to start on our Spanish lessons. We actually managed to arrive on time, and spent some odd two hours poring over our notebooks as she instructed us in the finer parts of the language. I wasn’t as bad at it as I expected. She could explain most of anything in Spanish (only needed to resort to English a handful of times) and we repeated, and repeated, and repeated when we were told to. Hah.
Afterward we headed to town to go past the garage and ask for an appointment for the Land Rover. The light of the differential lock has been flickering, meaning that something is wrong. The way we figure, we better have the mechanic look at it before something breaks. Got an appointment for Monday. Had a nice chat with the receptionist, who had some awful experiences at the hospital these past few months. She almost died, in fact, if she had not gone to a private hospital where they sorted it out real fast. Bone marrow was no longer making red blood cells. Yikes! Scary, huh, all the stuff that can go wrong?
Knight is doing okay, the bandage held this time. Am going to have to check it today, though. My foot. Well, I have been doing a lot of stretches, seeing as the discomfort was somewhat fierce these past few weeks, and this morning was the first time in ages that I could actually get out of bed without risking going flat on my face from it. A definite yay, that…of course, it doesn’t help that Tadaika decided to use me as a horizontal rubbing pole, and thereby caused me to sprain something in my neck while I tried to dodge her affection. Grrr. Have been turning my upper body instead of my neck all day, darn it.
Went into the yard for a bit, which was nice. Got to yank weeds and harvested broccoli, chickweed and iceberg slaw. The weather was actually splendid. Bright sunshine. The wind wasn't too bad, and the temps doable with a sweater on.
Well, that’s it for me. Time to go to bed. This day has definitely reached its end for me.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
There we go again
Song of the day: “A little time” by the Beautiful South.
And once again I am writing this blog from the hospital, darn it. Today was tenant’s appointment, and since feeding/drinking time is nothing if not a trial these days, it is starting to look like she is going to have stay here again. Added to that, the latest on the kidney stones is that they are either going to have to laser them, or operate, both for which she is not strong enough yet. Seriously, I have never met anyone who is so reluctant to get well again. Not saying that she’s doing it deliberately, but when the doctors say you should drink at least a 2 to 3 liters water for those pesky little buggers to pass I’d darn well be drinking them. Apparently, for tenant this is not the case. With every day that passes she drinks less, and less, and…well, feels worse for it. *Sigh* It is rather sad, in particular since in both instances when she happily went out of hospital the past two times she claimed to have learned her lesson, only to forget said lesson in less than two days after her home coming. The doctors are dismissing her behavior to age, but I have to say that I have my doubts. Something else seems to be amiss, but what remains to be seen.
So Cousin Ed and I spent a wonderful day at the hospital…well, she spent three hours more there than I did, seeing as I had to go to the hardware store in Marbella, and then decided to spent a couple of hours at Funny Beach to do some work on my computer. Managed to finish the book I’m reviewing. I’ll be posting that one of these days (“I’ve Been Deader” by Adam Siffre) since I actually got around to starting on it. Had some coffee, some water and some chips…the latter really necessary due to the fact that I only had a small portion of cereal for breakfast.
And then the waiting started. Waiting, waiting and waiting some more while they ran a whole battery of tests. At a certain point we left to go to a supermarket to get ourselves some food, then stood on the beach eating it, before we had to head back to hospital for the next step of the day. The fun thing is, you can speak to the doctor at one and at eight, but visiting hours are at eight, eleven, and five, so guess what you’re doing between those hours? Yep! Wait! Aaaargh!
At the moment they can’t really find anything wrong, but better safe than sorry, of course. We should find out more tomorrow.
Darn it, now I’m going to have to write her daughter with the bad news again.
But enough about that, there’s nothing I can do anyway, so there’s no sense in getting worked up about the whole thing. On to nicer subjects. Like yesterday.
After the morning chores, big brother and I hopped into the car and drove to the Coin market. We are looking for a deep fryer, seeing as the old one is dying a slow death. So I got to haggle, which is always fun. Though I didn’t find a deep fryer, I did manage to get a nice set of ceramic plates for my future kitchen. There were 26 plates and bowls and the vendor wanted fifteen bucks for them. Considering the set was old, and there was some damage, the haggling commenced. Sure, I want dishes, but for the amount of damage, fifteen really was way too much. So I started to doubt, but the guy was desperate and asked me what I was willing to give. Considering my doubts, I didn’t really answer and he said ten, at which point I sighed and said, six. He looked outraged, I shrugged, pointed out the damage, and the fact that there were way more small plates than big ones. He went to nine, I to seven, and in the end we settled on six…minus the box in which they were piled. Instead I got a bag.
Also got a couple of books for tenant, bras too, and three stainless steel bowls (you know the kind from hotels, right?) that I haggled down from twelve to six bucks.
All in all a successful morning, in particular since I also found a couple of Salvia (sage) plants, which I’d been looking for for quite some time.
For the past couple of days big brother and I have been working on the novella Chicago Hope, because we’ve decided to send it to a publisher that is looking for stories of that word count. Managed to edit the entire story (some odd fifty pages) in a four hour session, so that’s definitely not bad. The remainder of our computer time has been spent working on a proper pitch letter.
There was some time to work on the window for the kitchen. Got it together this time, so only one more that we need to make now, and then we can start to mason them into the walls. That sure would be nice, in particular since we haven’t been able to do much of anything on the kitchen this past month. Gawd, friggin’ flu…almost done with it now, though. Got some residual coughing going every now and then, but that’s it.
Other than that…well, life is otherwise pretty uneventful at the moment. Had some trips for donations, did the cooking, fed the dogs, bandaged Knight II up, because the idiot decided to lick his paw open again. Gawd, sometimes I think the idiot will eat up his foot some day.
Had to take Sally to town to have her glasses checked. She says she still can’t see everything right, but the glasses they made for her are the strongest available. She’s okay with it, but wanted to know for sure that there wasn’t anything to be done. At least she was in good spirits.
Well, time to go to bed. I’ve had it. We didn’t get home until 8 PM, and …well, it was a long one.
And once again I am writing this blog from the hospital, darn it. Today was tenant’s appointment, and since feeding/drinking time is nothing if not a trial these days, it is starting to look like she is going to have stay here again. Added to that, the latest on the kidney stones is that they are either going to have to laser them, or operate, both for which she is not strong enough yet. Seriously, I have never met anyone who is so reluctant to get well again. Not saying that she’s doing it deliberately, but when the doctors say you should drink at least a 2 to 3 liters water for those pesky little buggers to pass I’d darn well be drinking them. Apparently, for tenant this is not the case. With every day that passes she drinks less, and less, and…well, feels worse for it. *Sigh* It is rather sad, in particular since in both instances when she happily went out of hospital the past two times she claimed to have learned her lesson, only to forget said lesson in less than two days after her home coming. The doctors are dismissing her behavior to age, but I have to say that I have my doubts. Something else seems to be amiss, but what remains to be seen.
So Cousin Ed and I spent a wonderful day at the hospital…well, she spent three hours more there than I did, seeing as I had to go to the hardware store in Marbella, and then decided to spent a couple of hours at Funny Beach to do some work on my computer. Managed to finish the book I’m reviewing. I’ll be posting that one of these days (“I’ve Been Deader” by Adam Siffre) since I actually got around to starting on it. Had some coffee, some water and some chips…the latter really necessary due to the fact that I only had a small portion of cereal for breakfast.
And then the waiting started. Waiting, waiting and waiting some more while they ran a whole battery of tests. At a certain point we left to go to a supermarket to get ourselves some food, then stood on the beach eating it, before we had to head back to hospital for the next step of the day. The fun thing is, you can speak to the doctor at one and at eight, but visiting hours are at eight, eleven, and five, so guess what you’re doing between those hours? Yep! Wait! Aaaargh!
At the moment they can’t really find anything wrong, but better safe than sorry, of course. We should find out more tomorrow.
Darn it, now I’m going to have to write her daughter with the bad news again.
But enough about that, there’s nothing I can do anyway, so there’s no sense in getting worked up about the whole thing. On to nicer subjects. Like yesterday.
After the morning chores, big brother and I hopped into the car and drove to the Coin market. We are looking for a deep fryer, seeing as the old one is dying a slow death. So I got to haggle, which is always fun. Though I didn’t find a deep fryer, I did manage to get a nice set of ceramic plates for my future kitchen. There were 26 plates and bowls and the vendor wanted fifteen bucks for them. Considering the set was old, and there was some damage, the haggling commenced. Sure, I want dishes, but for the amount of damage, fifteen really was way too much. So I started to doubt, but the guy was desperate and asked me what I was willing to give. Considering my doubts, I didn’t really answer and he said ten, at which point I sighed and said, six. He looked outraged, I shrugged, pointed out the damage, and the fact that there were way more small plates than big ones. He went to nine, I to seven, and in the end we settled on six…minus the box in which they were piled. Instead I got a bag.
Also got a couple of books for tenant, bras too, and three stainless steel bowls (you know the kind from hotels, right?) that I haggled down from twelve to six bucks.
All in all a successful morning, in particular since I also found a couple of Salvia (sage) plants, which I’d been looking for for quite some time.
For the past couple of days big brother and I have been working on the novella Chicago Hope, because we’ve decided to send it to a publisher that is looking for stories of that word count. Managed to edit the entire story (some odd fifty pages) in a four hour session, so that’s definitely not bad. The remainder of our computer time has been spent working on a proper pitch letter.
There was some time to work on the window for the kitchen. Got it together this time, so only one more that we need to make now, and then we can start to mason them into the walls. That sure would be nice, in particular since we haven’t been able to do much of anything on the kitchen this past month. Gawd, friggin’ flu…almost done with it now, though. Got some residual coughing going every now and then, but that’s it.
Other than that…well, life is otherwise pretty uneventful at the moment. Had some trips for donations, did the cooking, fed the dogs, bandaged Knight II up, because the idiot decided to lick his paw open again. Gawd, sometimes I think the idiot will eat up his foot some day.
Had to take Sally to town to have her glasses checked. She says she still can’t see everything right, but the glasses they made for her are the strongest available. She’s okay with it, but wanted to know for sure that there wasn’t anything to be done. At least she was in good spirits.
Well, time to go to bed. I’ve had it. We didn’t get home until 8 PM, and …well, it was a long one.
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