Has It Been Almost A Week Already?

Seems just like yesterday I posted last…

The rampant electronic consumerism continues here, I’m blogging on a new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite T135-S1307. The screen is a couple inches smaller than the old Dell, but after a few hours of use it is not really an issue any more. One big advantage is this thing weighs like half as much. Another is the loooong battery life, I’m fairly sure I’ll never get that promised 9+ hours out of it, but right now I’m at 82% left and according to the task tray icon that equates to 6 hours and 3 minutes. Getting it set up on the home network, while not painless, certainly went pretty easy. And all and all Windows 7 hasn’t been too hard to deal with. My only complaint so far is the letter markings on the keys are faint and hard to see in dim light – I know, learn to touch type already.

It is time to replace our current living room stuff, the couch has started to creak when we sit down or get up from it and a seam has split showing stuffing (fortunately it is out of sight mostly.) It is kind of a shame too as the love seat and chair are practically new, because they rarely get used, but anyway, today we started furniture shopping. This could possibly be a six month adventure because we have such different tastes sometimes it is hard to agree on a compromise, on the other hand we always do seem to find something we both like, so it might happen quickly. It didn’t happen this afternoon in the local Rooms To Go.

The weather has still been unseasonably cold around here, looks like it will straighten out this next week, but I did manage to get the top down a couple of days this last week and it did go down again today, so the total below should be up to date.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 546

No TV Monday

House was a repeat and Castle was preempted by some nonsense reality show. Thought for sure now that the Olympics were done we would get new shows. At least TDTVS won’t let me down tomorrow.

This Ip Odd thing is turning into a money pit. We needed a set of headphones so Donna could listen, she hates ear buds – $50. We then wanted a dock with speakers for the bedroom – $80. If I want to use in the Miata, I could remove the 6 disc changer in the trunk thereby reclaiming precious space, an adapter is needed – $150.

Started down, went up, went down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 541

Ip Odd

In a 2006 episode of House MD, John Larroquette is woken from a 10 year coma in hopes to provide a clue as how to cure his son from the same fate. Somewhere along the line he notices a small electronic device and holds it up asking, “What’s this? It says ‘ip odd’?”

Ip Odd is definitely what I’m calling our new 8 Gig Nano. Having decided that these little gizmos are here to stay we opted to plunk down the serious change required to buy an Apple product.

After unpacking our shiny new toy, the second order of business (right after charging the battery) was to find something to load music to it without having to use iTunes since all my music will be from my private collection, CopyTrans Manager to the rescue.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 538

104,000 Band Aids

Donna is making slow, but steady progress towards normalcy, but she still is using the restroom a lot more than usual. Consequently she is washing her hands a lot. This means that they are exceedingly dry and chapped with numerous cracks and splits in the skin. Towards the end of the day these really start to hurt. Tonight I put 104,000 band aids slathered with neosporin on her hands. Actually 104,000 is the number of miles the Emperor passed through on our way out to do some shopping today, the number of band aids was closer to 10.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 538

Doctor Ordered Seperation

It has now been a week since Donna has returned home from the hospital and she is making slow and steady progress towards normal. In that week her sister has come and gone, leaving behind a refrigerator and freezer full of cooked food that fits into Donna’s colon friendly menu (and is tasty to boot) and I have gotten about 30 hours of sleep total, none of which has been more than an hour and a half consecutively.

Whenever she gets up to go to the bathroom, I wake up too. I have to turn on the bedside lamp so she can find her way to and from because the Xanax makes her very drowsy. Most nights around 2:00 AM (the doctor thinks because of the steroids) she feels so cold that she has to put on a second long sleeve shirt and a thicker pair of socks. Then for whatever reason, she cannot stay in bed past 4:00 AM and her rattling around in the kitchen making grits keeps me from returning to a full sleep.

Needless to say this is taking its toll on me, even the people at work notice that I look like crap. Yesterday at lunch I went out to the car covered myself with a blanket and tried to get some shut eye. I set the cell phone alarm for 12:55 so I would wake up and get back to the drawing board. Fortunately I woke on m own at 12:53 because I had set the alarm for 12:55 AM!

Today we both had doctor’s appointments, her with the gastro guy to see how things worked out with Monday’s medicine change (very good) and me with the GP to check on my blood pressure (better than I thought.) My GP is her GP and even though it was my appointment he did ask about her some too. When I told him that I was having sleep issues his “cure” was a script for lorazepam and the recommendation that we try sleeping in separate bedrooms. So tonight, because tomorrow is a work day, we are going to give it a try. She will spend the night on the living room couch with the TV and I will stay in the recently vacated back bedroom with the PC and internet radio.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 537

Time Flies

Donna came home from the hospital on Thursday afternoon and her sister showed up later that night for a weeks visit. Because Sandy was here to look after her I actually got to go to work on Friday for the whole day, even did some productive work. After work the temperature was close enough to 60 that I rode home with the top down.

Squeezing in productive sleep has been tricky though, so late night I went to bed at 9:30 and left Donna on the couch “watching” the Olympics. I slept until 2:30 when I woke up and could hear her futzing around. I talked her into coming to bed but lasted barely an hour or two before she had to get up. We tried laying on the couch, but couldn’t go back to sleep, so I made her a bowl of grits. Ten minutes after finishing it she fell asleep on the couch.

Some of the MMC might come over and visit this morning in place of the club’s usual monthly breakfast and after that she and her sister will go out shopping some and my plan is to put the tarp back up over the “carport” that the snow knocked down.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 534

A Case of Attention Deficit Disorder

I haven’t blogged much about the actual reason we are in the hospital for several reasons, Donna isn’t as excited to share the intimate details as I would be, the spotty internet connection and the lack of free time allotted the assistant lay nurse of a sick person. But I will shared my favorite story of the past week. Treatment for her type of colitis is the steroid solu-cortef. The steroid amps you up and in Donna’s case on the second day kind of turned her into a 5-year old kid with a case ADD. To counter act this the doctor proscribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine, and it has calmed her some, but not entirely.

While on the clear liquid diet she was drinking all sorts of fluids, but she always kept her favorite three at hand on the bed table, water, cranberry juice and diet ginger ale. Each fluid had its own little styrofoam cup which she would have me write the fluids name in three or four places along the top edge of the cup. She would line them up in a straight line formation. Directly behind the cup marked water was the large hospital supplied plastic mug which the staff kept full of ice and water, directly behind the ginger ale was the small 8oz can of soda and lastly right behind the cranberry juice glass were stacked the 4oz plastic containers of juice. Each cup had its own separate straw. After each drink from the cups, sometimes one right after the other, she carefully arrange them back in straight lines.

This morning after we got all the cups arranged and filled with the appropriate combination of fluid and ice she looked down at the row of drinks and frowned. When she looked up at me I asked, “What’s wrong?” She looked at me and said, “My straws don’t match.” Sure enough, there were two yellow straws and one white one. I went over to her neatly arranged bed stand picked out a matching yellow straw.

You already seen my two favorite snow day pictures, but because I can I posted most of the rest of them in a new gallery online, Aiken’s 2010 Snow Day

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 533