Soggy Spring

Somewhere between winter and spring lies that little-known season that is the bane of the existences of pet owners and anyone who lives on any parcel of land where green space > asphalt: Mud Season.

That's where we are right now.  The calendar says it's spring, the sky says it's winter, and the ground is just mud.  Except where it's still snow.  But it's not really snow anymore, it's snow and mud mixed together.  People are already complaining of allergies, thinking that the trees are already releasing pollen or something.  Nope.  That's the mold mixed in with the mud that's in the snow banks that are melting.  

Spring is here, but still feels so far away.  We have patches in our yard with no snow, but the grass beneath is brown and yellow and dirty, and you don't have to walk through it to know it's just all muddy.  And if you do have to walk through it, you better wear your boots (or shoes that you don't mind getting muddy) and have good balance.  Seriously.  That stuff's worse'n ice.  I'd rather fall on ice than in mud.

The water hydrant at the boy's house is still frozen, so I had to wade through ankle-deep puddles of water and mud to water the horses last weekend, while my favorite chestnut mare stood at the gate and watched with bored amusement.  She's lucky I love her so much.  She's also lucky that my awesome hubby bought me these amazing boots last winter that are warm and waterproof, and I can literally walk through anything in them and my feet stay warm and dry!  So the fifty begillion trips I had to make back and forth from the end of the hose to the horses' water tank to top it off, one 5-gallon bucket at a time, wasn't horrible because my feet weren't wet and cold.  Anyhoo, I figure the hydrant will thaw in about June, as it usually does.  Hopefully the mud will be gone by then.

I was at my parents' house yesterday, and their yard has, like, no snow in it.  I almost want to complain about how not fair that is, but I don't want to imply that I'd rather have a small yard in the city with no snow instead of acreage in the country with snow.  :D  

Speaking of my parents, my Dad had his last PT session yesterday.  He says he's going to keep doing exercises now so he doesn't regress again, and my Mom says she's going to make sure he makes good on that promise.  She's been good about doing exercises, too.  She only had one official PT session after her hip replacement last November, and they said she was doing so well she didn't need to come back.  They gave her more exercises to do and basically said to call them if she thought she needed more work.  So she's been doing those, and the ones they've given my Dad to do, as well.  Anyway, I hope my Dad really does keep up with those exercises.  Now that I'm going over there more often, I'll have to nag him about remind him why it's important to keep doing them as well.

In other news...I don't know, I just realized I hadn't written in here for a while and since I had a little lunch break time to kill, I thought I'd sit down and write and see what I came up with.  Didn't have anything in particular in mind to write about today.  Suppose I should get back to work now.  The sooner I get back to work, the sooner I can finish for today! Because it's one of those rare days where it actually works that way!  Ha, ha, ha. TTYL

 

It's like raaaaaaain on your wedding day...

You know what's cruel?

Well, lots of things are cruel, but I'm referring to two specific things that are probably more along the lines of ironic than cruel.  "Cruel" sounds kind of harsh.  

I love trees.  For as long as I can remember, I've dreamed of living in the country, surrounded by trees.  They're just so beautiful and perfect!  I love them in the springtime when the new leaves start to bud, and I love them in the summer when they're full and gorgeous and provide all kinds of shade and green-ness everywhere, and I love them in the autumn when everyone else loves them, too, and I even love them in the winter because no matter how cold and snowy and icy it gets out there, they stand tall and ride out the storm until spring when they show signs of life again.  (Well, a lot of them do, anyway.)  There's a message in there for all of us, isn't there?  But, I digress; I love just being amongst the trees.  It's my favorite part of camping, and going Up North.  

The irony is that my hubby is allergic to trees.  So many trees.  He had allergy testing done last year, and there were so many different kinds of trees listed on his "reactive" report (or whatever it was called, I don't remember, that sounds pretty official tho).  The trees that I love so much are trying to suffocate my beloved soulmate.  It's not okay!

You know what else I love? Animals.  Mostly dogs and horses and okay I'll admit that I like cats, too.  I didn't grow up with cats.  Not that I didn't like them, but we were a Dog Household and never had cats.  I got my first cat, 7 (yes, his name was 7 -- no, I didn't name him), after I moved into my first apartment, because I couldn't have a dog.  I've had dogs all of my life, and probably hopefully always will.  I didn't grow up with horses, either.  I adopted Nic about, oh my gosh, 19 years ago?!? So maybe I did grow up with her, ha! ha!  Anyway...you get the point.  

The irony here is that my son is allergic to animals.  All of the animals.  He's never had allergy testing done, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the reason he starts wheezing and itching after he touches one of the pets is because he's allergic to them.  I used to blame the fact that we didn't have inside cats anymore on Luger, but it was really the boy's fault (kidding! Mostly.) Ok, I'm not kidding.  I can't have my baby boy mainlining diphenhydramine constantly.  The irony for him is that he likes cats.  But he can only pet them in the winter, when he's wearing gloves and a coat and a scarf...;)

Alright, that's all for now.  TTYL!

Back by popular demand!

Two different people yesterday, in two different locations and two completely different situations, commented to me (in person) that they enjoy reading my blog and I need to update more often. 

You love me! You really love me!  😁😁😁

Before I go getting a complex or something, I do want to thank you for reading this.  It blows my puny human mind that anyone would enjoy reading my rambling thoughts as much as I enjoy putting them into words.  Even if you are just reading to see if I'll slip up, forget that this is a public forum, and talk trash about you or someone you know.  (KIDDING!! Mostly.)

I feel like I haven't been home all week.  I had to work from the office four out of five days last week (GASP, I know, hashtag first world problems) and also had things to do after work four out of four of those days last week.  I don't usually do things after work, partially because I'm an introverted homebody who enjoys living in the middle of freaking nowhere.  Also, because I like sleep, and to get to work by 0730 I need to leave the house by 0630 at the very latest, so I need to get out of bed by 0545 at the very latest (if I'm going to take a shower) although I actually wake up much earlier than that because the hubby's alarm goes off stupid early, I think 0330 or so? And even though I do usually go back to sleep after his alarm goes off, it's rarely ever GOOD sleep.  Long story short, we go to bed early around here, as you might imagine one does when one has to wake up at stupid early every morning.  

I'm not whining. Just documenting. 

It's been a good kind of busy this week, though.  Tuesday I stopped at the boy's house after work to water the horses, but after I got all the hoses hooked up and everything, I discovered one of the hoses was still frozen. So I unhooked all the hoses (to paint this picture for you, the water hydrant is in the rubble of the old barn, and I need to use two hoses put together to reach the pasture where the horse water tanks are...I'm really bad with guestimating distances and I know hoses aren't standard units of measurement, but I think it's maybe like 500 feet or so? Plus or minus 400 feet?) and plugged the one in because luckily for me the one that was frozen is the one that has a built-in heater to keep it from freezing.  But I didn't get to the boy's house until after 6:30pm (because the downfall of working from work is that I never seem to be able to leave before 5pm anymore!) so I didn't get home until, well, the hubby was already in bed when I got home.   Then Wednesday, I went back to the boy's house again to water the horses for real (don't call the ASPCA, they had water already, I just wanted to top off the tank) but then I discovered the water hydrant was frozen. So I had to break out another hose, and with the boy's help, ran the THREE hoses from the spigot on the outside of the house as far as I could, which was about 50 feet away from where it needed to be.  Maybe more, IDK.  In case you don't have horses or outside animals that need to be watered in massive amounts of gallons at a time, the next solution is to haul buckets of water to the tank.  Which isn't so bad when the hose is almost to the tank.  It beats the hell out of hauling buckets from the house to the pasture, which is what I used to have to do when the hydrant froze in the winter! 

So, that took a while, and was messy because it was dark and I spilled some water on myself and it was cold, but I got to spend some time talking with the boy and petting Princess Daisy. For a few seconds, I even thought Bo had returned...I was by the horse barn petting Daisy (the cat) and I heard a loud "meow" coming from the garage, that sounded an awful lot like Bo.  I reflexively called his name, and the cat responded like Bo would have.  In the shadows, I could see a large possibly-Bo-sized cat walking out of the garage, ambling about as cats do. I kept calling his name and he kept ambling closer, and I was just taking my phone out of my pocket to call the boy and tell him to come outside and see who decided to grace us with his presence after being AWOL for about 3 months now, when the chonky boy stepped into the light and I could clearly see that it was NOT my Bocephus kitteh.  It was a very friendly orange tabby cat, who is obviously used to being outside and also seemed pretty familiar with our the boy's place, but it was definitely not Bo.  Sigh.  

Anyway, so by the time I was done with all that and putting everything away, the boy wanted to go to Culver's, and how can I say no to my precious darling son!?!  By the time I got home, the hubby was in bed. ;)

Thursday night, I went over to my parents' house after work, which I do about every other week or so, to take my mom shopping and have dinner with them.  They're doing pretty well.  Physically they're doing good, my Dad still gets in-home PT once a week for a few more weeks, but his strength and balance and mobility have improved greatly from before he was hospitalized last fall.  His dementia is, well, you know.  From what I can tell, his good days still far outweigh his bad days, and his bad days aren't drastic and extreme yet.  There was one day I was over there and he just kind of sat there looking empty the whole time, barely talking or interacting.  The next time I was there, he had the light in his eyes again and he was joking and talking and even said some things that surprised me (memory-wise -- remembering things I didn't think he'd remembered from the previous visit).  

So, yes, I've been busy, but it's a good busy.  But it's still busy and I'm still kind of wanting to be done with people for a while.  :D

Another reason I haven't written much lately is because a lot of what's on my mind isn't my story to share.  But since it's now up on CaringBridge, I will share some of it here.  On 2/22/22, one of my friends (technically he's married to one of my best friends, but I also consider him my friend and they're our friends as a couple, and as a family because our son and their oldest son are friends as well) had a stroke and ended up having emergency brain surgery that night.  I've been trying to make sense of it all, you know? Five years ago this same friend was in a bad car vs truck accident at work (he was driving the truck) and sustained a pretty bad leg injury, was unable to walk for a while, had hardware sticking out of his leg and everything.  A few years later, my friend (his wife) was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and has since been through chemo, radiation, and surgery.  And now, this happened.  WTAF?!?!  Of course, I'm also trying to wrap my pretty little head around it, because obviously I know crap like this happens all the time.  I have some patients with stories that you wouldn't believe! But this doesn't happen to people I know.  Definitely not to people I'm friends with.  I want to fix everything, and I can't.  I want to explain everything, and I can't.  I want to assure them that everything will be alright and...I can't.

On that note, I'm signing off for now.  Thanks again for reading.  Be kind to those around you, because you have no idea what they might be going through.