kmkat and her kneedles

Cleanliness is next to something or other, I forget what.

Younger Son and Teenage Helper were both here yesterday. Whilst I slept until 11, Smokey set them to work to remove old washer and dryer and install new ones.

We inherited the old washer and dryer from Smokey's mom. They were first generation Maytag frontloaders, a generation of washers known to be crap. In my experience I found that they got things clean but did little to remove pet hair from the laundry; rather, they would roll it into many little balls stuck to the fabric. Easier for me to remove that way, I guess.

We bought the new ones -- Samsungs, selected after consulting Consumer Reports -- at a Twin Cities appliance dealer big, big annual sale* last November, but they have been living in the back of the van ever since. Getting them out of the van and up a flight of stairs, plus taking the old ones down the stairs and loading them into the van for donation at the local ReStore, was a larger task than Smokey and I could tackle alone; it required much more/younger muscle.

Ser Percival The Energetic was banished to the little deck outside the laundry room during the transfers. He was not pleased, especially because he could see our dogs running free outside.

Later, YS and I started the first load of wash.

I'm glad he was right beside me. There were still a few tweaks to be done -- tightening connections, moving the washer a few inches, figuring out why there was no water entering the tub.

Yay!

* I have since noticed that they seem to have similar sales every couple months. Oh, well.

Linksies resumes! [applause]

photo credit: banspy via photopin cc

I love these.

America's worst charities.

Don't you wish you could do this to your skin/hair/boobs/whatever?

Hooters?

The reviews are fabulous.

Hunting Edward Snowden.

Natalie Dee scores again.

The Fourth of July is almost here.

.

Hi, remember me? I used to blog here.*

* Lost post provided via Google cache, but mostly thanks to my friend Elizabeth from Friday night knitting @ Starbucks in St Paul, who is wise in the ways of the web. Thanks, Elizabeth!

Random stuff about the hip surgery and whatever else flits through my brain:

• As previously reported, the surgery went swimmingly.
• I was in the hospital for three nights. Could have gone home one night sooner, but I saw no reason to abandon the place where the bathroom was 3" from the bed.
• Recovery at home went fine, too. Smokey is a [good] nurse.
• I have been walking unassisted by cane or walker since late last week. Yay!
• Saturday morning I was completely pain-free for the first time. Yay!
• Of course, I took that as a sign I could walk around more.
• No pain-free days since.
• On the other hand, such pain as I have now is minor. 
• Yesterday Tuesday I skipped pain meds all day until bedtime. Yay!
• Now for the downside issues. Those are more interesting, anyway.
• I had an allergic reaction to Celebrex, an NSAID given to me to reduce inflammation.
• What it did do was give me the super-itchies all over. My eyes swelled, my back and legs were purple with hives, I itched EVERYWHERE.
• The visible signs of that are largely gone now, although I still itch, especially on my upper arms and torso.
• The aftermath of the reaction was been rather like getting a minor sunburn -- I peeled everywhere that had itched.
    
  Sorry for the blurry photos -- it is tough to take pictures of one's own fingertips.
   
• Something, either the reaction or the salves and lotions that were prescribed to counteract it, have given the affected skin the crepey character of an 80-yo, even though it is immeasurably enhanced by my summer nails.
  
   
• This seems to be slowly going away. Yay!
• Other main problem is lack of stamina. Getting up and dressed and making and eating breakfast is enough to send me back to bed for a nap.
• All these drugs -- oxycontin, coumadin, vistiril, lopressor -- have some minor side effects. 
• My body cannot decide if it is warm or cold and has decided instead to go back and forth between the two in an unpredictable manner.
• I thought I had finished with hot flashes years ago.
• Nope.
• Oddly enough, the surgery and/or anesthetic affected my bladder control.
• Depends are useful things.
• Happily, I no longer need them. 
• I have to be extra vigilant about every single urge.
• Also have to avoid coffee, tea, orange juice, and Coke Zero. 
• Bah, humbug.
• I have discovered that neither Fresca nor root beer seem to have whatever it is that irritates/stimulates my bladder.
• Still not as good as coffee or Coke Zero.
• No alcohol at all until I am done with the Coumadin/warfarin/blood thinner/rat poison.
• Hmmph.
• On Saturday my friend Colleen and her husband came over. She watered and fertilized and deadheaded my hanging pots and planted the herbs that I hadn't managed to get into pots before the surgery.
• She also bought me a rose bush. 
• And planted it.
• Now, that's a friend.
• Another friend is coming over on Friday afternoon to sit and knit on the deck with me.
• Friends are a good thing to have.

Grrr, Typepad.

I put up a post a couple days ago (I thought), but apparently it was eaten by Typepad. 

Grrr. It was, of course, the best prose ever to flow from my fingertips and impossible to recreate.

In short, it said:

• Walking nearly painfree :-)
• Walking unassisted by cane or walker for 1.5 weeks.
• No pain meds except at night.
• Still itchy. Peeling, too.
• My skin now has the crepey look of an 80-yo :-(
• No stamina, although that has improved since I wrote the phantom post.

All in all, life flows on. More later.

Home again.

After surgery there are certain things that are the recuperating patient's friend.

• A kind and generous caregiver, one who can keep the meds straight and the water bottle full and the phone answered.
   
• Satin sheets and pjs. Oh, how I wish we had known of this last summer when Smokey had his back surgery. It is SO hard to move in the bed when major muscle groups are out of commission. Slippery bedding helps a lot. One of our neighbors clued me in earlier this year; her mother had a hip replacement a few years back. (Remember this for when you/your significant other/your aging parent has major surgery. You can thank me then.)
   
• An internet appliance to put off boredom.
  
  
• Audio, either books or music. I wasn't quite with-it enough to read or listen to audiobooks, but music was perfect. I listened to a lot of newer classical music since I got home, music I don't always have the patience for. Zoe Keating, John Cage, Philip Glass. That has been fun. As soon as I finish this post I'm going to be sure my Steve Reich CD gets onto my iPod.
   
• These: 
  
  I couldn't pee fast enough to dump all the fluids I was getting from the IV. Even after I came home I was swollen all over from fluids. I could make it almost all the distance from my bed to the toilet seat before my bladder would let go.  Sheesh. Fun times.

The surgery was Tuesday, June 4 and I came home Friday. Everything went well... until they gave me Cerebrex as an anti-inflamatory.

I discovered that I am allergic.

The post-op surgical and joint pain was nothing compared to the itching. Right now large areas of my body are covered in hives; the swelling in my eyes is nearly gone, and I can sit still for minutes at a time without scratching myself. Oral antihistimines were administered in the hospital to much relief, but they forgot to write an order for them when I was discharged. I suffered over the weekend with Benadryl -- better than nothing, but not much -- until Monday when I got a stronger one.

In other words, all is well again. As proof I offer this: earlier today I was halfway to the bathroom before I realized I had forgotten the walker.

 

When I come home.

Dateline: Monday, June 3. Yay for pre-scheduled posts!

You may remember I have whined about the mess that is my home office. Knowing that I would be using a walker after the surgery prompted me to take care of part of the mess. (I had pretty much cleared my desk about a month ago, so this is an ongoing project.)

Here is the office, before:

Here is the walker.

The basket is our solution to the problem inherent in using a walker: no free hand(s) to carry anything.)

 

You can see the problem -- no clear passage wide enough for the walker to pass.

 

Ta da!

In the process I have filled 1-1/2 bags of office paper to be recycled and filled (actually jammed!) the shredder bin. You can perhaps see that the desk is full of stuff again, but it is mostly stuff that I can easily put away (the plan for later today) rather than stacks of paper that have to be dealt with. Hurrah!

Tool identification.

Smokey has tools like we all have yarn; in other words, a lot. They tend to get scattered all over the house and the garage(s) and the pole barn and wherever he happens to be working. When it comes time to put them away he finds himself scratching his head, trying to remember which tools go where.

Color-coding to the rescue!

For the past several months he has been gradually color-coding all the hand tools. Red ones live in the red rolling tool chest, yellow ones go in the yellow bucket, green ones stay in the house, blue ones go in the blue tool box. (Smokey: I know that is not your actual color scheme; I just made it up for blog purposes.)  When he watches TV he has a small pile of wrenches, etc., next to him and is wrapping a short length of colored electrical tape around the handles. This is a long-term project -- he has a lot of tools.

This morning he showed me his latest masterpiece; not only are these wrenches color-coded, they also have their sizes clearly marked:

Even better, he bought me a small set of tools for my very own. Which of course we color coded in my own  particular idiom.

Ten on Tuesday, the ice cream edition.

Ice cream is (one of) my downfall(s). I have bought an ice cream cone for myself when the temp was -25˚F. In the past year I have attempted to pursuade myself -- with some success -- that a small dish of ice cream is just as good as a BIG one. A few years back Smokey bought me a set of tulip glasses and spoons for ice cream sundaes; the good thing is that they hold far less than a cereal bowl. The bad news is also that they hold less than a cereal bowl.

Ten Favorite Toppings for Ice Cream

1. Chocolate syrup.
   
   photo credit: be OH be via photopin cc
   
   
2. Hot fudge.
   
   photo credit: su-lin via photopin cc
    
3. Amaretto.
   
   photo credit: karsten.planz via photopin cc
   
   
4. Fra Angelico.
   
   (Oops...)
   
   
    
5. Creme de menthe.
   
   photo credit: mhaithaca via photopin cc
    
6. Pecans, generally in combination with one of the above.
   
   photo credit: santheo via photopin cc
    
7. My homemade blueberry sauce.
   
    
8. Whipped cream.
   
   photo credit: stevendepolo via photopin cc
    
9. More ice cream.
   
   photo credit: sea turtle via photopin cc
   
   
10. Even more ice cream.
    
    photo credit: yewenyi via photopin cc

* * * * *

Look what I found when I searched the PhotoPin website for amaretto photos (at least I think it was amaretto, might have been chocolate):

photo credit: hello lovely via photopin cc

Just so we know that was not a fluke, look what I found under pecans:

photo credit: madelinetosh via photopin cc

 

It's Sunday. Where is summer?

1. Progress :: Energy.*
2. Wife :: partner.
3. Denim :: jeans.
4. Wow :: -zers.
5. Jacket :: potato.**
6. Studio :: draft.
7. Boyfriend :: teenager.
8. Tablet :: broken.***
9. Hidden :: secret.
10. Closer :: baseball.

   * A stock my inlaws used to own. I still get statements from the company for some reason.
 ** Apparently I am British.
*** Just got off the phone with Younger Son, who dropped his tablet and cracked the screen. 

* * * * *

I am counting down the days/hours until surgery on Tuesday. Had a update on pre-op physical, all systems are go.

photo credit: Kriatyrr via photopin cc (NOT my hand)

Then I found what appears to be a tick bite on my stomach. We are at ground zero for Lyme disease so I am holding my breath. The blood test for Lyme is not given until 6-8 weeks after the bite; the bull's-eye rash typically does not appear for 7-10 days according to the CDC website. 

Let's all keep our fingers crossed, m'kay?

Do y'all believe me when I tell you about my many surgery delays? I am starting to feel like a girl I knew in college who had an imaginary boyfriend who attended college in a different city. *Jim* always called when she was alone in her room, never when there was anyone else around. She would come running downstairs to where others were gathered and report happily on everything that *Jim* was doing. She talked about him a lot. 

Eventually someone figured out that *Jim* did not exist. I no longer lived in that house so I don't know the details; I do seem to remember she had some kind of mental breakdown and dropped out of school.

Anyway, let me just say that my ailments are real -- unlike *Jim*.

* * * * *

I see that the weather on the Right Coast is extremely hot. Here it is the opposite, either cool and rainy or cooler and sunny. I have not knit on the deck for days weeks.

Summer, the imaginary season.

 

 

Links, many.

I found this on photpin.com but now I cannot find the attribution. Sorry...

Minnesota The Twin Cities is are Teh Awesome.

The Illuminati -- you will never guess who they really are!

Here's that bad advice you were hoping for.

This is why we can's have nice things.

Not everyone loves sheep, even in Britain.

You may have seen this (I may have shown it to you), but it bears repeating.

R.I.P.

15 most elegantly written warning signs of all time.

Please do not eat [the crocheted food].

Speaking of food, Natalie Dee is my kind of cook.

Kitteh Olympics. Kitteh goes surfin'.

The Congressional gender gap.

Bone flowers.

I just discovered a whole new(-to-me) musical genre! (via this)

Next time someone whines for something, here's the response they should get.

Grumpy Cat tells all.

Maps that explain the world.

Shopping mall vs. trees. You decide.

She's my wingman.

Remember to check out Chris's links, too.