I put up a half dozen newsletters from 2009 and 2010. I have been terribly lax for some time. I still have to catch up on photos as well.
I have been busy working on the genealogy part of the site, mostly a renovation and revision of what is already out there. That is approaching the finish at last, and I should be able to get back to regular updates of the genealogy and, hopefully, the news portions of the website.
Today was Rita’s new surgery date after the spare parts they ordered did not arrive last Friday.
On Friday as she was leaving, they told her to call up in the afternoon and they would give her a time for Monday. She did, and they said to come in at noon for a 2 pm surgery. Then Friday evening about 6, she got a call from the hospital. It was a computer message, a reminder for her to be there Monday at 6:30 am. Well, that was certainly confusing, so she called the surgery clinic. It took about an hour to get through. They looked it up, and said she should come in at 10 am! Well, that was a third time — she told them they had now given her 6:30, 10, and 12 to show up, so they better be sure. They looked again and said, yes, we are quite sure, we are so sure that we are almost certain. The time is 10 am.
Rita of course did not believe them, so she got up at 5 am and got ready, then called the clinic at 5:45 to check the time again. She was expecting that they would tell her to go back to bed for a few hours, but no, they said she had to be there at 6:15 for a 7:30 surgery. If she had listened to the people who were certain of the time (and I have to say that includes me), she would have missed her surgery completely. So even though I was the one who set the alarm (and I did it right this time), I still got a little of the residual blame.
We got there at 6, and found out that the implants had finally arrived last Friday afternoon. They wheeled her out at 7:00, and I went down to the hospital cafeteria. It was surprisingly good — scrambled eggs, lots of bacon, little hash-brown triangle cake, only $2.
Surgery was supposed to be two and a half hours, but they were done in a little under two. I got in to see her about 10:30, and we were back home by 1 pm. She’s still feeling sickly and is wobbly on her feet here 6 hours later, but overall not too bad.
or lack thereof…
Slow but sure, eh? We have Henry’s room painted, and I am now working on the wood trim around the doors and windows. I had bought the premade molded pieces that you are supposed to use for the casing, although I don’t like them. They are thin and split easily without provocation. Also I don’t care much for the patterns they have, and there is little to choose from. But, I figured I was stuck with it.
Turns out that Rita did not like them either. She likes something more along the lines of what I did for the downstairs bathroom — plain 1×4’s with just a little router work on them. It is more in keeping with the original plain 1920’s house that this is. They originally had the door and window frames made from ordinary straight planks, no working at all. This is great for me, easier and cheaper. I figured I could do a little better than the original.
I made my own windowsill. That was the hardest part, because it is a double window and involved several cutouts that had to fit exactly. Also, as nothing is straight in this house, it was difficult to get the edges to line up all the way across. Then I had to add some wood pieces to fill in all around the frame and bring it out to the level of the drywall — again, all different thicknesses, and most had to be slightly wedge-shaped.
The casing I made from poplar 1×4’s, rounded the outer edges a little, and routed two grooves down the middle.
One problem we have always had, in just about every house, is where to hang the curtains from. The casings are too small, or they use the thin molded stuff, no solid wood where Rita wants to nail the hanging brackets. Half the time she tries to nail them right to the drywall, with poor results. I try to find a 2×4 behind the wall, but usually nothing there. So, I put a 1×6 across the top of the window, nice and wide to hang curtains on.
So the window is done, and I am working on the door frames — they are a lot simpler and should go quickly.
Sunday I spent putting a wheeled frame together for the table saw. We have it in the garage, and it has always been a problem for me to cut long pieces — block wall on one side, and nondescript “stuff” on the other. With all the door frames and baseboards I will have to be making, I had to have a wheeled base so I can easily turn the table 90 degrees. Putting the frame together was easy. Getting the saw up onto the frame was not. I ran two 4×4’s through the table supports, and levered up one side at a time while Rita and Henry put cement pavers under the 4×4’s. Doing the final bolt-tightening under a 200-pound wobbly table was exciting.
Rita’s next round of reconstructive surgery was supposed to be in November. She didn’t like that, as it meant that she would be laid up for much of the holiday season. But in early October the surgeon called and said they had some openings, and she could do it on 18 October. This was great, she would be recovered by Thanksgiving. Also good for me, being a Friday, I would have two weekend days to sit at home with her without using vacation.
In preparation for this surgery she had to be there at 7:00 am. The instructions said she had to take a shower the night before, and another one the morning of. So, she had to get up earlier than usual — 5:30. I set the time on the alarm, but then I screwed it up somehow so that the next morning it did no ring at all. I woke up myself, and it was 6:30! We had to leave the house by 6:45 to get there on time, and Rita still had to take a shower. Somehow she managed to do it, and still find some time to yell at me.
We got there at 7:00 am, with surgery scheduled for 9. About 8:00 the surgeon came in and said that the implants had not arrived. There was some mixup in the ordering, new fiscal year just started on Oct 1st, funding not finalized yet, so someone failed to finalize the order, etc etc. There was still a chance they would come in on the 8:30 shipment from the supplier, so we waited around for that. But no such luck. They sent her home and said they would probably reschedule for Monday.
Arrh, that be right, matey, ’tis a veritable treasure trove which I have dug up this evening.
Now that we are nearing completion on Henry’s room, Rita started talking about the floor, and she said the word I dread to hear — Pergo. This is not what I wanted. Maybe some thin carpet. Maybe linoleum. Please, not Pergo. But she was stuck on that. But, I had a secret plan, because I knew something that she didn’t know.
When we moved in here, they had some ultra-cheap stick-on carpeting in the bedrooms. Well, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be stick-on, now that I think back upon it. It was just ultra-cheap carpeting with a permanent rubber backing right on the carpet, and over the many years it melted itself right onto the floor. We had a terrible time ripping the carpet off — we had to pull it away up off the backing, because the backing was stuck on the floor. Then we had floors covered with a thin layer of lumpy, crumbly black rubber. We spent weeks scraping it up off the floor. Well, underneath the carpet and the rubber we found some nasty old tiles, all old and cracked, many of them loose. Could not use that as a floor. So we had carpet installed, and that’s the way it has been for 15 years.
Last night I ripped out the carpeting, and got back to the old tiles, enduring all the while a monologue on the many virtues of Pergo. But tonight I went digging for treasure. Under the cracked tiles is a layer of masonite particle board. And under the particle board, I found a beautiful hardwood floor! Well, it wasn’t a surprise to me — I had expected to find it there, based on things I had seen in some of the closets and in our old room where they took out the chimney — but I had kept it a secret from Rita until I knew for sure. I don’t know why they would tile over it, it looks like new (except for all the nail holes those idiots used on the masonite). I got about 20% of it uncovered tonight, and showed Rita. She likes it a lot better than anything else we could afford. Barring any hidden problems in the rest of the floor, I now have a new hardwood floor in the bedroom. Saves several thousand dollars, and several weeks work.
Our little guys are all endangered by this new arrival, a large hawk. He’s probably about 18 inches tall standing on the ground. We have seen occasional appearances for the past few weeks, and some circumstantial evidence — a huge pile of dove feathers, a piece of a squirrel tail. But for the past few days he seems to have taken up permanent residence. I don’t know what kind it is — medium brown with a tan belly — probably the dreaded mousehawk.
He knows where the cardinal family lives, and we catch him a lot of the time sitting on the ground under their cedar bush, trying to look up into the branches. We go out and shush him away, but he always comes back. Last night he was sitting on the neighbor’s fence one yard over for several hours, looking over here. The little guys seem to know somehow that he is around though, and there was no sign of life anywhere in our yard. He finally gave up around sunset and flew off home (so, that means he’s not a nighthawk). Within five minutes, the birds and chipmunks started to appear — I put out some extra seeds and called everyone in for a census. Mr and Mrs cardinal plus baby; and five (5!) chipmunks — all present and accounted for.
Didn’t make a lot of progress on Henry’s room this past week — almost none, to be more exact. I tried out a few types of texturing, which I hope to use on the ceiling to make it look a little better. I had some stalactitic bumps, and some swirls, and some corrugated checkerboards, and some corrugated arches. Everyone liked a different pattern, but Rita of course gets the final vote and went with the simple bumps. I like some of the other patterns better, but this one is the easiest so I am not complaining.
Thursday night I was taking my mudding tools down to the basement to wash, and I noticed a pool of water on the floor where the drain is supposed to be. Oh no, the dreaded backed-up floor drain! We used to have that a lot, when we first moved in here. We had rotor rooter out once a year, occasionally twice in the year, to clear out our sewage drain. Always lots of fun. But that was all due to a big old tree out on the curb, and we had not had any trouble in the past 5 years or so since having it cut down. Maybe our little maple tree is finally growing up! But no, I ran all the other sinks and toilets, and the main line is clear. The problem is just in the floor drain itself. The drain was not backing up, it was just filling up from our air conditioner condensation. I sucked up the water with a shop vac, and went out for a pipe reamer. Good in theory, but I could not get the reamer through the pipe. Or rather, I couldn’t find the pipe opening at the bottom of the drain. That old iron drain is just a big blob of rust. It looks like some old Spanish cannon pulled out of the ocean. I guess it will have to be replaced. But, I was able to knock enough crud loose and vacuum it out so that at least a tiny trickle can seep out. It still fills up when the air conditioner is running, but empties itself during rest periods.
Satuday is lawn-mowing — first time in about 3 weeks, as we are now into the summer drought. Then that night was a bunko game, night out for us. Rita made chocolate chip cookies as our contribution to the pot-luck. Sunday night we had some friends over here for supper (brats, hot dogs and pulled pork sandwiches — I managed to talk Rita out of the healthy wheat buns for a change) and dominoes. We had to spend the whole day cleaning house and getting the food ready for that. So, Henry has to wait one more week for his new room.
Alan is trying to get into a new apartment. His current one has water leaking down through the walls, and consequently mold growing up the walls and under the carpets. He has gone to the hospital once for it. Also, the air conditioner is broken and the managers make no effort to fix it. They have found a new place, who says they can move in as soon as they clear the lease on their old place. So now he has to find a way out of that. They have tried to get the city health inspectors to come out and condemn the place, but this is City of Dayton. Those people just say “huh? you want me to get up off my chair? Sorry, I’m a City of Dayton employee.” They did suggest that he contact a lawyer, which he did. Supposedly they can qualify for some kind of free or almost-free legal aid, since their income is a little less than welfare. Hopefully something might come of this — and soon, before they all get pneumonia. Now I see a little bit how people feel living in the ghetto projects.
Another humid day. We had a couple thunderstorms near the end of the week, and everything is still wet. I played on the computer first thing, for as long as I thought I could get away with it before Rita came down. Well, actually not playing at this time. I had started up Lord of the Rings once more, after a break of over a year, and got my little guy from 46 to 51 in a couple months. But lately I have been working on the genealogy again, and am becoming increasingly obsessed with tweaking the website to make it HTML 4.01 compliant, and move all the styles to CSS. I am redoing all of the family sheets, trying a new look, hopefully a little more interesting. Also revamped the indexes and the gateway to the genealogy, trying to make it a little easier and more obvious to get started into my vast database. Anyway, if you’re still awake after all that, that is what I was doing this morning.
When I thought Rita might be waking up, I snuck quietly outside, so as to appear like I had been working hard all morning. I did do some work, too, weeding and cleaning up around the yard. My compost pile is still chugging along, but I’ve always had a problem of ever-increasing mass. I started out years ago — maybe ten years now? with wire bins for about two cubic yards. Since then I have improved that to a very nice concrete and brick set of bins that hold three cubic yards. But that was quickly swamped, and we ended up with another “temporary” (five or six years now) bin on the side, which holds maybe another three yards. Well, that’s not enough either. We have had huge piles sitting back there which won’t fit into any bins. Of course they eventually turn into dirt on their own, but still, this is too much. I won’t even mention the tree branches and logs. I have been making an effort over the past year or two to reduce all this to a manageable size. We have given away about half of our fireplace logs, and a couple truckloads of dirt. I have been taking the finished dirt each fall and spreading it around the yard (which I guess was the original objective of the compost pile). Now, we have additional help from our local waste management. We had been using their little paper bags to put approved yard waste out in the trash — grass and twigs, which are hard for the compost to digest, pine cones and needles, which are too acidic, and noxious weeds. Expensive, and not able to handle too much. But now they have a huge bin which we rent for 9 months of the year, and I am finally making some progress with all the excess piles of hard-to-break-down materials. So, uh, what was I talking about?… oh yes, I went out and spent some time filling up the bin.
Then is a well-deserved break. Rita came down in time to see that I was covered with sweat from all my hard work, so I was able to get a little more computer time, then lunch. After noon it was way too hot to go back out, but by that time Henry was up, so I started working on his room again. We are almost done mudding the wallboard joints, so it is time to attack the ceiling. We had earlier pulled off many layers of old wallpaper and paint, almost down to the original wallboard. Almost, but not quite. Still have problems with random bits bubbling up and peeling off when they get wet, so the joint compound may have trouble sticking. The old ceiling is rough and wavy. I’m not about to replace drywall on a ceiling, and trying to get it smooth is hopeless, so I am going to try to texture it — if I can figure out how to do it. But first the old board has to be sealed, so this afternoon’s project was painting the ceiling with a primer/sealer.
That was enough work for one day, so I spent the rest of the day working on the computer. I did say working on the website has become an obsession?
After supper I was forced to dry dishes for Rita.Then we thought we would go for a walk in the park. We did that quite often, almost every night, last summer, up until daylight savings ended and it got dark too early. We assumed we would pick up this routine again as soon as we could in the spring, but we really haven’t. We’ve only been out in the park a half dozen times this summer, and maybe another half dozen walks around our block (exactly 1 mile around) or downtown. So we thought we best get to the park. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we got a phone call from Henry, who relays a message that he got from Alan, saying Alan is on his way to the hospital. That put Rita into full panic mode. Of course we were unable to get Alan on the phone, and didn’t know to which of many area hospitals he had gone. Alan has had problems in his new apartment, what with people pushing their girlfriends completely through the glass entryway doors, and people being shot in the parking lot. But the main problem has been that the building leaks when it rains. They have water running behind the walls and soaking into the carpets. They have black mold growing up the walls. The apartment managers do nothing about any of it. The dogs (yes, he has dogs) are getting sick, Alan is getting sick. He is looking at a getting a new place, and we are hoping they will be able to move out within a short time. But, Rita is now convinced that he is in a coma with pneumonia. I told her not to worry, maybe he was just shot in a store robbery or something. She finally located him in a Kettering hospital, and was able to talk with one of his roommates (one of? we only knew of one — apparently he is living with two girls — at that point I drift off into a daydream and miss most of what Rita is saying). So, there was no coma, no ambulance, just sick at work and talked into going to the hospital. Where they did many tests – EKG, CTscan, etc.
With apparently no dire emergency and no results till later, we went on our walk. Once the sun started to go down it was pretty nice out, even a bit cool. But Rita read something about a walk doing no good unless you go at 3 miles an hour, so we were hoofing it. The park has made a nice path along the outer edge, a mile and a half ring. We normally walk around twice, for three miles, so now we have to make sure to do it in an hour, or we get no benefit. And we did it, maybe 45 or 50 minutes, so I guess we got the benefit. Sweat was certainly one of the benefits.
Back home, we found out that all of Alan’s tests came out normal, so they figured just sick from some medications he is taking, or maybe vertigo. We are wondering who the tests will be paid by, and how much……
I had quite a long break this year with no major vertigo episodes. Last bad one I think was in January. But, a small one near the end of July, and another one yesterday. Both times had to come home from work a few hours early. I can now recognize when one is coming early enough, so I have a couple hours to get home before it gets bad. If I can get home and in bed before the world starts spinning, I can usually avoid getting sick from it. For the most part, individual episodes don’t seem as bad as they once did. Or I should say, the bad ones are less frequent. Most of the time they are rather mild, just laid up spinning around. But at the same time, my “normal” everyday state is becoming more off-balance and dizzy all the time. Makes it a little harder to tell when it’s going over the edge into an actual episode.
I always wondered why, if I have vertigo, why isn’t it all the time? If it’s a problem in my inner ear and I lose orientation, why isn’t it going on all the time? I am thinking it probably is going on all the time, and the brain is working to correct it. Maybe every once in a while the brain has to take a break and let it go. So the vertigo episodes are like a reset.
It also seems to me that over the past couple of years, it is merging with other illnesses. Any time I get sick now, there is a vertigo component to it. Makes it harder to tell whether I am actually sick, or just having vertigo. I am thinking this is caused by the ears getting stuffed up when I am sick or have a cold.
Stuffed up ears seems to be a trigger, which I can sometimes head off, delay or lessen with a benadryl. Other triggers I have noticed include weather, especially changes from bad weather/low pressure to nice weather/high pressure. First nice day after a rainy period is always dangerous for me. The other thing which seems to make an attack more likely is a lot of stress; I have noticed that episodes sometimes happen after times when several major problems hit us all at once.
We had part of our fence ripped out by a storm in June. We had to dispose of a half dozen sections, too big for the trash, and I didn’t want to take all those little slats apart. So I rented one of those big dumpsters, had it parked in our driveway for a week. As long as we had it here, I figured to get a start on the living room and dining room remodeling as well. Ripped out all the drywall and insulation in both rooms. It took all week, and we filled the dumpster completely, but got the rooms 90% cleared.
I am still working toward finishing by this Christmas. Right now it looks like an impossible deadline, but I should make a sizeable dent in it. After we cleared those rooms, we went back upstairs to continue work on Henry’s room. We had put up the drywall in his room and Alan’s old room, and finished Henry’s closet (not quite finished — drywall and joints done, primer done, but still lacking wood trim and floor). I then moved on to finish the drywall joints in the guest room, that being easier to work on since it was empty. The plan was to finish that room, then Henry move temporarily to the guest room while we finished his. It was a great plan. I got about a third of the way through it, when we got an unexpected tenant in the form of Alan’s cat. Alan has moved to a new place and had to abandon Charlie, so we agreed to take him in, at least temporarily. The cat has to live permanently in Alan’s room, not allowed anywhere else in the house, due to his… uh… incontinence. So, that ended my work in the guest room.
We took what we could out of Henry’s room, and are shuffling the few essential things around while we work on the walls. I really hate mudding the joints. It seems like professionals do a first coat, and then a second coat. I have to go over the same areas three or four times before they look good. The ceiling is not in very good shape — kinda wavy, and uneven spots from ripping off the old wallpaper. I plan to do some kind of texturing with the joint compound to make it look a little better, but I have no idea at this time how to do texturing. It will probably be a horrible mistake.