TheCapeBlog

Lizzie woke us up around 3:15 am. She had terrible gas but didn’t seem to need to go outside.

Me, then Ron, then me. Turns out she was hungry. Around 4:15 I got up for the last time and fed her after pushing the button on the coffee maker.

I’d left a couple of big cookware items last night for poor Ron, who was pretty worn out from yesterday’s van turmoil. Cleaned them up this morning while Lizzie slept in the middle of the kitchen floor, making transport of heavy items like the Le Creuset an awkward undertaking.

While Ron was getting caught up on sleep, I cooked rice and vegetables. Later, I prepped a couple of days worth of food for Lizzie and cleaned up the kitchen. Cleaned myself up while Ron kept a routine appointment with his primary. Great to have the new binder.

It’s been snowing. Lizzie was brave, has gone out in it without complaint.

I’ve been working on MRS off and on this week.

Got a call to pick up Ron’s van, only to find when we got there that it wasn’t ready.

It would require another hour and a half. However, the van was not being worked on, just sitting in their lot. Shocked, shocked.

We went to Graziella’s to wait, had lunch, a calzone (my treat) with enough for another meal.

On the way back to the shop, I stopped to fill up the truck at the Cumby in Monument Beach.

The truck was not ready (another 10-15 minutes), still in the yard (again, shocked). I drove back home, stopped for flowers (gorgeous) on the way.

I cooked the big package of chicken thighs Ron got on sale last week.

We had eggs and toast for supper.

Had a checkup yesterday with the surgeon and got rid of one of the drains.

I made a run to Falmouth Hospital to pick up a second binder which they’d inadvertently forgotten to include in my discharge kit.

I’ve put on two pounds a day in fluid this week. Had to wash blood-stained bed linens again.

We made supper last night for the first time since the surgery: ravioli and meatballs, salad. I had stomach pains for hours from the tomato sauce.

Lizzie had a tough night, barked and trumped a couple of times.

Made reservations and paid for a veg supper on the Sunday of my birthday weekend.

Ron’s friend Annette passed away over the weekend.

When Tony’s son didn’t show up yesterday, Ron drove Tony to and from an outpatient medical procedure in North Falmouth.

Mighty Rondromat did a great job with the blood-stained linens. Everything came out very well and we put the bed back together yesterday.

We saw my bruised self for the first time today. It’s impressive. I’m glad to have the surgery done and glad to have had it done.

Lizzy has been a brat but quieted down after I gave her a spoonful of cherry pie.

I’ve been listening to Heather Cox Richardson’s interview with Joe Biden. It’s mediocre, not memorable and certainly not inspiring. As we’ve come to expect, Uncle Joe is not a soaring rhetoric kind of guy.

Took a shower this morning and put myself back together again a bit better than before. Hope to get rid of the drains on Monday.

Have been watching “The Drop Out” on HULU and “Seaside Hotel” on PBS. Felt luxurious in a way to have a minimal schedule this week. No errands, cooking or cleaning and I only looked at NEPS yesterday.

It’s two days after surgery and I’m starting to feel better.

The pain is manageable, more so than I expected. What I didn’t plan on was light headedness and nausea. I refused to pay for any meds but antibiotics. Besides, opiods and anti-nausea meds cause constipation.

Falmouth Hospital treated me very well, but I couldn’t sleep there. Catching up at home.

Last night (day of discharge) one of the drain incisions started bleeding, over my clothes, the binder and a little on bedsheets. It was a bloody mess and I was dizzy to boot, almost passed out. Ron was helpful.

Ron and I shoveled yesterday. I started with the deck, stairs, the truck and the driveway around the truck. Ron tackled the plow leavings at the end of the driveway. We finished the drive under Lizzie’s watchful supervision.

The snow was so waterlogged that I could easily walk on it.

Ron had a temporary freak-out over finances, including mislabeling a couple of payments he’d made to credit card companies.

I contacted two other vendors and arranged for refunds totaling over $140.

He was morose afterwards.

Another email about the Foley family tree, this time reporting shared DNA with a half-brother. Still no answer from the originator.

Lizzie and I ventured out before 7. Small amount of snow on the ground and freezing rain now, which for our lifestyle is not as troublesome as the 1-3 inches of snow that had been predicted.

I do feel for those who have to drive this morning. Cathy and Cindy texted that they’re staying put, thank goodness.

I’d asked the surgeon’s office to send me a copy of the preop list. They didn’t but fortunately I found it in a semi-obscure location in MyChart.

I’ve been preoccupied with the upcoming surgery but managed to shake it off long enough to copy, confirm, format and return the thumb drive that had the old computer files to BackBlaze yesterday afternoon.

I mailed a couple of cards as well and booked an appointment for COVID testing on Monday.

Yesterday was Lizzie’s 15th birthday. She was fussy about food all day so I cooked a hamburger for her supper.

We’ve been following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the right wing Republican reaction with equal revulsion.

Glad the tree work got taken care of on Monday. Also on the home improvement front, fireplace guy says $8-10,000 to install one but our room is too small anyway.

I was on the line with Tech Support yesterday, and when it got to be after 5 pm, took a break to throw a collection of leftovers into a pot with some vegetable broth.

Ron is a master at seasoning, much better than I am. So, I recruited him to finish off the soup after I ran back downstairs to finish my “conversation”.

Good idea: it was fantastic, better than anything I’ve had in a restaurant.

The soup has black beans, tomatoes, rice, rice noodles, kale and vegetarian “meat” balls.

We finished watching “Friendly Persuasion” last evening, and although I enjoyed the film (more so now than when I first saw it) I was put off by the incorrect use of “Thee” as a subject rather than an object.

Turns out, this is historically correct:

“On a side note, I was initially puzzled by the depiction of the Quaker dialect using “thee” but not “thou” in both the objective and nominative cases. Thus, for example, where in the King James Bible we might read “Thou art the man,” the Quakers in Friendly Persuasion would say “Thee is the man.” (Example: “When thee asks or suggests, I am putty in thy hands, but when thee forbids, thee is barking up the wrong tree.”) I was even more puzzled to learn that this seemingly ungrammatical usage goes back to the source novel.

“However, I have since learned from an online article by Cheratra Yaswen that this usage is apparently historically correct: In at least some times and places, Quakers did adopt the practice of using “thee” rather than “thou” regardless of case.”

http://decentfilms.com/reviews/friendlypersuasion

It’s almost 4 pm on Sunday. We got back a little while ago from the transfer station, having dumped a batch of pre-Spring cleanup, including grasses, leaves and a good portion of Autumn Clematis.

We read the Times and Rondromat (aka “Mr. MacSuds”) did a load of laundry and made an omelet for us – good, too.

We re-loaded the truck with some blow-down branches. Our hands were cold and my back was complaining, so I’ll need to finish if anything’s left tomorrow.

I did get to watch “Spencer” today on Hulu, which made me very happy. I’ve been trying to rent it at RedBox without success and delighted that I could see it online and without paying extra. It’s a fantasy with a happy ending for her and her children, and so poignant that her life ended as it did. Poor woman.

Ron noticed that the gas tank on the truck was almost empty and put in $10 for me. Good man!