Weaver's Web

Popping up for air.....

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 03:21:26 GMT

Last post was in November. Its now late March. What's the old phrase, life is what happens while you were making other plans?

It's raining here at the moment. After last year's monumental rainfall and even more monumental Sierra snow pack, the severe drought that had plagued the state had largely been reversed. This year has been an average rainfall year.reservoirs all over the northern part of the not at full capacity, but well above historic levels for this time of year. Lake Sonoma the nearest reservoir is at normal levels, 30 feet below full, matching where we were this time last year and 60 feet higher than the level this time in 2022. Lake Berryessa is 6 inches below its spillway, so locally we are in good shape.

I stepped on the scale this morning; I'm down 43 lbs since the last time I posted, for which my ankles are grateful. Folks are starting to notice. I had said nothing to anyone, but in the past 3 weeks, some have started commenting that I look smaller to them. Its a relief. It was also a prod to tear apart my closet.

As I get smaller, my clothing needs to change. I've moved down two sizes in pants, and one in shirts. So the wardrobe is getting rotated. Things which had gotten to small for me to wear now fit again. It may be why it has been less noticeable to others. I haven't allowed things to get too large for me to wear, I've stepped down into smaller sizes, since I already had them on a shelf.

Going thru the closet was also a prod to get a long side lined building project done. 30 plus years ago when we bought this place, it needed construction work, and there was a caretaker living in our rental unit who had been minding the property after the last owners had died. They were both early victims of the HIV crisis and the property had a long period between their deaths and our buying it from the estate. Anyway, I had asked the guy to build me a shelving unit in my walk in closet. Trouble is he did rough construction, not finished carpentry. The result was a very durable and very ugly shelving unit that is going no where. Durable as hell and ugly as sin, built from construction plywood. What the hell - its a closet right? I had provided him ship lap aromatic cedar to line half a dozen of the cubbies, but when he was finished, nothing was fully square, and I didn't have the time to make doors for those cubbies myself. Now the volume of those 6 cedar lined cubbies is equal to 3 good sized cedar chests, and given my penchant for spinning, and knitting, I could really use them. Well in the last 2 weeks those doors have been built. The seals are not airtight, but they are critter tight, Moths and the like cannot get in, and rodents would have to gnaw thru the wood. I used inch thick picture molding to construct frames for each door, and inserted tongue and groove aromatic cedar into each frame. Viola Cedar Cabinets.

The other project was altering a piece of furniture. Our oak bedroom set came with an armoire. The upper part of the cabinet was intended to hide a TV. Not a big screen, but rather a 36" older tube model. We had no interest in having a TV in the bedroom, so the printer/scanner for our home network lives there. The bottom half is a chest of drawers, cedar drawers as a matter of fact. That was where all our linens lived. Unfortunately, the carcass of the cabinet had no bottom panel, AND was up on very small feet, thus granting access to mice, who in turn nested in all three drawers destroying all our extra linens. We have managed to keep the mice at bay for the last 10 months, The dog food is no longer left out after they have grazed. The girls get dinner every night, and whatever isn't eaten before we go to bed is put away nightly. The mice had been coming in thru the pet door to get at the food. (y'all do realize we live in the woods and not in town, right?) In any event, the drawers have sat empty for the last 9 months, ever since discovering the destroyed linens. Empty cedar drawers in the home of a spinner/knitter/fiberworker. A Shonda!

Anyway, in getting all the materials to make the cubby doors, it dawned on me that while the multiple cuts in the bottom of the cabinet would make putting a bottom into the cabinet, I actually had enough clearance to give each drawer a custom lid.particularly if I used the ship lap cedar to do it. It was challenging, especially since I have been unable to get the upper two drawers off of their slides. The bottom drawer does come out so I could get the proper measurements. Other than being deeper than the other two it has the same dimensions. Well all three drawers are lidded now, over the last two weeks. The bottom drawer's lid just lifts off after sliding it out completely. The upper two are nailed in place over the front end of the rear portion going as far back as I could slide the drawer forward. The front end of the lid is hinged with a piano hinge, flipping up to give access to the contents. Most folks have a sock drawer - I now have a sock yarn drawer. All my sock and fingering yarns are in the upper two cedar drawers giving me easy access to them. Thanks to eBay and other friends destashing excess yarns they have decided not to use
I have a large array of higher end sock/fingering yarn to work with, perfect for small projects for family and friends.

For any of you non-knitters out there, you do NOT want to make socks out of anything but very thin yarns. It hurts to wear the resulting sock otherwise. Moreover, decent sock yarn isn't cheap. 20 years ago I had a week long continuing ed continuing ed conference, up in Sacramento. I arrived without any knitting, not a wise idea for me when sitting and listening to lectures..I needed some mindless repetitive stuff to keep my fingers busy so my mind could pay attention to the lectures. I figured a pair of knee socks would keep my fingers busy. Four 50 gram skeins set me back $30 at a local yarn shop. $36 after tax. That was for good yarn, not high end yarn. These days, some of the more expensive stuff can go for $25-30 per skein, for something like Malabrigo or Madeline Tosh brands.

Well, I'm rambling. I feel a cup of soup and a salad coming on. Time to make dinner and then settle down to some TV with my husband and the pair of gloves I'm knitting. Yeah, sock yarn. It's not just for feet.

comments

It’s been forever since I posted….

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 08:57:46 GMT

October was not a great month.

12 days ago I was getting my steps in, when I found a rotten deck board the hard way. I broke as soon as my heel was bearing all my weight as I was walking briskly up the ramp to the back door to the kitchen. I went down like a sack of potatoes, twisting as I reached out with my left, so as not to do a face plant. It took the wind out of me, & I laid there for a moment taking inventory of what hurt.

My husband appeared at the door from the main house, intent on another cup of coffee, only to find me on the ground. I groaned, & slowly got back to my feet.

Shoulder bruised, left knee abraded (though gratefully my sweats untorn, so the wound was uncontaminated by grime or plant life), back tweaked, but worst of all it bloody hurt to breathe. At first I thought a rib was out of place. Then I had a sneezing fit & saw stars. Yup, probably 2 busted ribs on the lower left side of my chest.

Over the next several days must of it improved- all except for my chest. By Saturday, I was able to help a close friend move, albeit most of what I did was pack stuff into my car and drive. I left the bulk of the lifting and carrying to the others. (It is amazing what one can fit into a Prius V, & after our move to the Lake house and subsequent move back, I’m very adept at playing 3D Tetris inside my vehicle.

Trey is a good friend, part of my Covid Pod & I would have to have been in a cast and in crutches to not lend a hand. He’d gotten notice of a significant rent increase on his small 1 bedroom in the residential sprawl of west Santa Rosa the beginning of October, effective November first, and rather than simply accept that, started looking for other housing. He lucked into a house share, joining 3 women who had been sharing a place in central Petaluma when the owner decided to sell. They had just moved into this spacious ranch house in the unincorporated county north of Petaluma, in September. Literally a ranch house. It’s on a hill, surrounded by grazing land, with a 360 degree view, and the nearest neighbor a 15 minute hike away, but both Cotati & Rohnert Park are only a 10 minute drive, 15 minutes into Sebastopol or Petaluma.

Trey’s room is huge, nearly double the size he just left, with a good sized walk in closet AND thus own on suite bath. The women are all charming and friendly & instead of spending an extra $400 each month, it’s $400 less.

I was starting to feel significantly better until I started coughing yesterday morning. It started as a tickle in my throat, and by the time I awoke this morning it was clear something viral has set in.

No fever, but I am achy again to the pint it’s Tylenol a couple of times a day, in addition to my generic daily Celebrex. Throat is scratchy, voice is husky and it was entirely get me to break out a fresh Covid test, which thankfully is negative. (And before anyone asks, yes I’ve had the current booster; I got “Moderna’ed in early October. I could’ve gotten Pfizer’ed a week earlier, but I didn’t do well with the initial Pfizer vaccine.)

The cough is coming in spasms and is now productive, though not plentiful, so I’m pushing fluids and made a large pot of Avgolemono this evening. LJ made a face at first, but ultimately helped himself to seconds and then thirds. Amen for my freezer. My friend across the River had a bumper crop of Meyer lemons last summer and begged me to come take. Ultimately, when some of the of them started going moldy, I zested all that were still good, and stashed it in the deep freeze, then juiced them and froze the juice in ice cube trays, before moving the cubes into freezer bags.

The cough is not helping my chest wall. I’m not seeing stars anymore, but I’m far from a happy camper, and it may delay the fractures healing.

Ungh. Time to sleep.

comments

Cooking for the dog…

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 02:33:09 GMT

Arjuna is elderly. At 13 1/2, as a very tall wolf dog hybrid, he is quite the senior citizen.

He has always been a finicky eater for a canine, but in the last several years, if he doesn’t like it, he ain’t eating it. I noted almost 2 years ago that he was really not wanting to eat his kibble any longer, unless it was seriously doctored. It was to the point that he was dropping weight because he simply was refusing to eat it. With age there has been some dental loss , so he’s not working with a full set of choppers. Pretty much ever since we moved back to Sonoma County, I have to cook dinner for him before I make whatever we’re going to eat. Most nights it’s either some ground beef, or a sautéed chicken breast, cut up into some kibble with a moderate dusting of grated cheese. after 13 1/2 years of unconditional love, if that’s what it takes to get him to eat, then so be it. While he is elderly, and not so steady on his feet any longer to leave the confines of the house and deck, he’s not suffering and seems to be pretty content with his surroundings, so will keep keeping on this path from now.

Night before last however, he wolfed down supper & then promptly upchucked it all out on the deck. Bottom line, apparently I have not been cutting things up finely enough. LJ came home yesterday with a dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese, intending to substitute that for his dog kibble. Tonight I made him some sautéed snap peas and red bell pepper in a fine dice, along with half a pound of 85/15 ground beef. In went the cheese sauce from the mac & cheese, some cumin and some butter and finally the macaroni once it was cooked through. Then I had to call LJ down to taste it to make certain that was properly done and seasoned since I can’t touch this macaroni other than to cook it. That’s right, I just called another human being in to taste the food being prepared for the dog, to make certain it was passing muster, since my gluten intolerance prevents me from doing it.

jeez.

comments

Como agua para chocolate......

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 02:19:34 GMT

Como agua para chocolate...

There's a phrase in Spanish, used in Mexico. "Like water for chocolate" is that seething heat, that simmer just before the water comes to an angry, roiling boil. It's that anger just below the surface, while you're still in control, counting to ten so you don't explode.

What's eating at me? What isn't?

The war going on in the Ukraine is weighing heavily on me. My paternal grandmother fled genocide there a century ago, at a time when any Jew there was at risk of dying in a pogrom, before things got even worse with the Nazis of 20 years after her departure for this country. I was raised in this country where antisemitism also existed, limiting our potential and our options, though not to the level of Europe. Yet, the country where no Jew was truly safe in grandma's era, or even in my parents', elected one president 3 years ago. That's the man at the helm in Kyiv, as the Russians are attempting to take over that country. This war is horrific, slaughtering civilians, and potentially the tinderbox that sparks another world war.

Here, in this country I remain concerned about the future of our own democracy. A Harvard educated woman of color, 10 years a judge, has been nominated to the Supreme Court. 30 years ago RBG got something like 96 senate votes. It will be a miracle if KBJ gets more than 52. Ben Sasse has said she’s immanently qualified, but that he cannot vote for her. WTF?!? We are so partisan nothing the other side proposes can be supported. Democrats can be a slightly wider tent, that a blue dog can deviate from the party line, but the label of RINO is so damning that even a conservative Republican can get successfully primaried from the right is sobering. Right wing media has so much clout at this point, I’m suspicious that Tucker Carlson has more impact on our elections than anyone currently serving in office. On a good day, I’m disgusted. Most days, I waver between morose and incensed.

comments

Dealing with crap. No, literally dealing with crap.....

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 08:06:54 GMT

If you are easily offended, best to bypass this post.

Two older gay men live in this home, and when shit happens, we get to deal with it. Some stuff we hire out. (Like taking down the dead 120' tall Doug fir tree that was 10 feet from the house.) Other things, we roll up our sleeves. Today was a day for rolling up my sleeves and pulling on rubber gloves.

I wasn't always willing to take home projects on like this. It wasn't something I learned about as a kid. Neither one of them ever took on a serious home repair project. However, when we moved to the lake almost 5 years ago, we remodeled a kitchen and I got a stiff dose of sweat equity working alongside our contractor. If I could learn to do demolition and re-frame walls, I can figure out how to clear a clogged pipe.

We have two full baths in this house. One in the main house, the other in the building were the kitchen is. Yes, the kitchen is in the a separate building. Midnight snacks always involve slippers and at times, a winter coat. The bath in the kitchen building is cramped and dark, and frankly, needs to be redone. The tub is never used and the throne is ancient and persnickety. Despite replacing the whole flapper mechanism twice, there are still times the flapper doesn't seat and the water continues to run. My husband and I know to stand there and wait to hear that the water stops running. Guests are another story. 6 months ago after a horrid water bill, LJ turned the water off to that toilet and we've had every one use the master bathroom in the house.

Well, night before last the throne in the master was hopelessly clogged and after a flush filled with water not quite to the rim. Plunging was not effective, I decided to close the lid and give it a couple of hours for the water level to drop. It was late, so I left it for the morning. Come 7 am, the later level was unchanged and after the plunging from the evening before, as opaque as mud. I padded off to the tool shed for the drain snake, but after an hour of trying, could not negotiate the ess shaped bend in the snake. It was too thin and too flexible. Time to hit the YouTube videos for suggestions.

First however was turning on the water to the other toilet.

The long and short of it, I ~~realized~~ learned I needed some other type of pipe auger, or I was going to wind up having to unbolt and pull the toilet off of the floor, which was more than I wanted to deal with. Fortunately, my friend, the retired winery engineer was still in town, having delayed his cross country trip for the holidays. He's gotten to the point where his tool collection, is better labeled a tool library. He was out yesterday, but I was welcome to run by this morning to get the tools I needed. Unfortunately, the closet auger, which was what I thought I was on my way to borrow, was not what he had, but there were two other pipe snakes, both more rigid than mine, that might get the job done. Took me two hours and multiple attempts, but indeed it got the job done, without an expensive house call from a plumber. It may have taken up most of my day today, getting the drain cleared and then cleaning up both myself and the bathroom floor, washing towels and the bath mat and all the other things that were dirtied in the process, but all and all, I'm a happy camper this evening,

comments

I am done with AT&T…

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 17:31:08 GMT

I’ve been with AT&T for phone service for years, never really happy with their service, but, well, inertia. I didn’t start with AT&T. Once upon a time, I was with Cellular One, which was bought out by Singular, which in turn was swallowed by AT&T.

I was about to jettison them when we moved to the lake, but Verizon was inordinately more expensive for what we were get and the other carrier I the area with better service could not port over our long ago assigned phone numbers. So we stayed.

Then my sister gave mom her iPhone 6 when her work updated her to an XR. That 6 wasn’t compatible with her Verizon CDMA network, so I added mom to my family plan, cementing us to AT&T for a while longer. My other sister upgraded mom’s couple of months ago & added her to my sister's Verizon account, so no longer was I stuck with what we had. Finding out recently about AT&T’s behind the scenes sponsorship of OAN was the last straw. I’m done with them.

Research began.

Then our internet went down for six hours recently and along with it our phones. Did I mention because our AT&T signal here, without wifi at the house we’re dead in the water? Well when Xfinity went down, and our power didn’t, we lost phone. Enough is enough.

I looked over the MVNOs that run off of Verizon towers, since anyone visiting who has Verizon has service here, to see what was available. The best deal was to bundle with our already present Xfinity service. I looked at 1/2 a dozen different companies and given our data usage is minimal (less than a gig a month between the two of us), our new plan includes 2 lines with 2 gigs of data that’s shared, plus a new iPhone 13 for me, for $56/month. We’ll bring over my iPhone XR, which gets as a $200 gift card, ditch my husband’s 6Splus which needed upgrading, all for less than 1/2 of what AT&T was costing. When the iPhone13 is paid off in 24 months, assuming the data plan is sufficient for us, it will drop to $30 a month.

Now I have no illusions that Xfinity is a politically blameless company, certainly not as long as Fox is bundled to our service, but at least the will be getting less of my cash proportionally, leaving me with an extra $66 each month, money I can use for supporting things I believe in and that’s a damned good thing.

comments

I hate psoriatic arthritis….

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 15:17:19 GMT

After almost a decade in remission, I flared after taking the Covid Vaccine immediately after each dose. Unfortunately, while its gotten better, I haven’t gone back into remission even 8 months post my first dose & it’s getting old.

In comparison to others I know with this disease, I’m not that impaired. I’m generally well managed with Celebrex once daily and topical diclofenac for breakthrough flares. I’ve screwed up a handful of times and missed my daily Celecoxib and by 12 hours after I’ve missed the capsule, I am NOT a happy camper. Oddly this time around I’m having more trouble with tendonitises than discreet joint inflammation, particularly in my wrists and shoulders. Given the pandemic, I’m extremely grateful I’m not taking any of the biologics. Downing out my immune system is the last thing I need in the time of Covid.

I was fine when I went to bed last night. Well, almost fine. My right shoulder was a tad irritable, but nothing to write home about. I woke up at 5 AM with that shoulder on fire and no position I could find alleviated my discomfort. When either shoulder flares badly, lying down makes me more uncomfortable. After 15 minutes of shear misery I gave up, got up, went to medicate, & plopped my butt down into the easy chair in the sitting room. Two hours, a celecoxib, some topical diclofenac, & a couple of Tylenol later, and I think I can go back to sleep.

comments

Covid follow up

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 06:31:40 GMT

I was just about certain I had posted about this but I must have dreamt it.

So, yes, I did catch Covid while we were in Vegas.

Mom felt ill on the 1st, tested positive on September 2 and was immediately given the monoclonal antibodies. I tested on the 2nd at a walk-in testing site, started coughing 8 hours later & had the chest cold from hell with a mild fever 24 hours after that. My test results were still pending Saturday morning the 4th, but my provider sent me to the ER to be seen. He sent me to the ‘other’ hospital in-town, the one that wasn’t the regional trauma center, figuring I’d get seen faster. I’d worked in that ER while I was still in practice, & can tell you that Saturday morning at 8 AM should have been near empty. Not any longer. I waited 6 hours for a room.

They had converted the waiting room into a triage area, while everyone waits socially distanced out on the patio. They’d call you in fill out paperwork & send you back out, call you in, get vitals, & send you back out. By the time I actually got into a room, I’d had a chest film, blood work, and a rapid Covid test, since they couldn’t get the results from 2 days earlier. The nurse told me the rapid test was positive as they put me on the stretcher. it was still another hour before I saw the doc for all 8 minutes and another hour before getting the monoclonal antibodies. I headed for home at almost 6pm.

Four hours later I had shaking chills and a fever of 101.5, which broke an hour later. By the following Wednesday I began feeling significantly better. By the Monday thereafter it was as though I had never been ill.

I still had to deal with my abject rage.

While I waited outside the ER, I watched folks sitting outside with things I’m pretty certain were not Covid. There was one young woman I suspect was passing a kidney stone, intermittently writhing in pain, intermittently vomiting. She was there when I got there, and still sitting outside when they brought me in 6 hours later. This in a county with good vaccine acceptance & still the ER was awash in mostly unvaccinated Covid cases. That poor woman was miserable. She shouldn’t have had to wait that long to be evaluated. However, my greatest rage isn’t about her as awful as that is.

I found out 2 days after I was seen that the only reason I had gotten the monoclonals, were 2 colleagues who had gone to bat for me. My pcp and a second doc on staff had argued with the ER doc. The ER guy was disinclined to medicate me; I’d had the vaccines. I wasn’t that sick. He’d wanted to save that dose of monoclonals for someone who might present sicker than I. What galls me, is that most people who would have been sicker would likely be someone who’d chosen not to vaccinate.

Before I go any further, let me stress while I was not on death’s door, I met all the criteria for the monoclonals. I’m older, underlying medical issues that put me at significantly greater risk to do poorly. I was only 36 hours into symptoms and the monoclonals work best when given early. And yes, statistics were in my favor to do well, but there are no guarantees. In 36 hours I had the chest cold from hell; what would have happened in another week? The ER doc was willing to throw those dice. My PCP was not.

I had someone willing to go to bat for me, willing to look out for my best interests. How many folks don’t? I could easily have fallen through that crack, without the protection I met the criteria for. Angry doesn’t even begin to explain how I feel, when I contemplate the factors in play. The idiots that made this pandemic a political issue, & have without shame fueled the carnage this virus has wrought on our community, our health care system and our national psyche, are both unconscionable and unforgivable.

comments

Coughing...

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 22:37:46 GMT

I'm home now.

I was grateful to have the time with Mom and my sister. I'd not seen either of them in the flesh since Thanksgiving of 2019. That's been difficult. In the time since, my mother has had three hip replacements (yes, I said three. The afternoon of her first replacement she fractured around the new prosthetic joint, requiring a second replacement surgery 2 days later. The other hip was done this past April.) Both of my siblings had Covid, as did both their husbands, and at least two of my nephews along with their families. Mom is at an age where she looks forward to the next occasion and makes known her to desire to be there for it, "if I am still here." She'll be 91 in two months and while her mother made it to 108, my grandmother was not a 4 time cancer survivor.

With Mom and my sister driving cross country, to not rendezvous with them somewhere was not an option for me. My sister wanted to keep their LA destination limited to her nuclear family, and that made their stop in Las Vegas the easiest spot for me to get to. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen somewhere else, but that would have meant both a flight as well as a car rental and a significant drive of 3 to 8 hours after my flight.

We did our best in LV to social distance from all strangers, and to stay out of anywhere with a low ceiling or where there were crowds. There are signs EVERYWHERE indicating a mandatory mask mandate, which 80% of folks complying with it, at least nominally. I still saw plenty of masks being worn as chin warmers, or dangling from one ear, twisting in the breeze as a paper earring. My guess, somewhere between 5 & 10% were wearing their mask improperly and another 20% not at all. There were at least four occasions, when folks became aggressively too close to us. There was the drunken man at noon on Monday, who ran from table to table in our very open and widely spaced restaurant shouting, "It's someone's Birthday!" There were the two drunk young women who pushed their way unmasked into an elevator with us, as their masks dangled from one ear. I loudly asked them to mask up and they did, but were way too drunk to do so quickly, and one of them leaned up against the elevator buttons, pushing about 1/2 of them. Our elevator stopped at every floor between 32 and 45. They got out on 43.

I thought we had made it through without damage. Then Mom started feeling ill Wednesday afternoon, after they arrived in Los Angeles. My sister called me yesterday morning to tell me Mom was coughing and had a mild fever, & they were on their way to an urgent care. I decided to go find myself a Covid test. The last thing I did Monday night when we separated was to hug and kiss them both.

The nurse was just capping the nasal swab for my PCR test sample yesterday afternoon, at the walk in testing center, when the text came. Mom has Covid. Her rapid test was positive, twice. She was given the monoclonal antibodies infusion, as well as a course of azithromycin and she and my sister have gone to a hotel. My sister's rapid test was negative, and her PCR is pending. The remainder of my sister's family have arrived and they are quarantining from them. Best laid plans and all that.

I started coughing last night. No fever. No headache, Just a mildly productive, barking cough. I still have my sense of smell and taste. I will be very surprised if my PCR comes back negative. Now having had the two doses of Pfizer mRNA vaccine, I am unlikely to get seriously ill. I also know exactly where to go to get the Monoclonals should the need arise, so honestly, I'm not especially worried. I AM staying home and avoiding everyone, other than my husband, who was already exposed to me intimately for 48 hours before I had any symptoms whatsoever, and he too is post both doses of the vaccine.

I am however incredibly ticked at the idiots who put us at unnecessary risk (although I am squelching the urge to reach for voodoo dolls in their image. I don't need their Karma.) I am royally pissed off at so many forces right now. Places that are making little to no effort to enforce mask mandates. Republican legislators that are pushing for full re-opening of everything and who are simultaneously blocking mandates for both masks & for vaccines. After 19 months in isolation, I am almost certainly now infected, and a potential vector for this illness, despite all my social distancing, and masking all that time.

Please forgive the graphic image, but I just succeeded in coughing up one small globule of mucous that was deep in my chest, and looking down at that speck the size of my pinky nail, certain it contains a virus that could cost someone their life is still very sobering, were I as unscrupulous as Greg Abbot, Kristi Noem or Ron DeSantis. I am not scared for my own well-being right this moment, at least not consciously so, but I'm angry that I'm here, and I'm angry that a part of me would welcome any of those three politicians to share a cup of coffee with me right this moment, here in my kitchen, unmasked. Dorothy Parker is alleged to have said, "If you have nothing nice to say, sit next to me!" Well Gov. Noem, come, pull up a chair. Let me cut you a slice of coffee cake.

comments

Viva Las Vegas?

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 16:06:29 GMT

I am in Las Vegas. This would not have been my choice of destinations, but my mother and sister are driving cross country and this was the easiest place to rendezvous with them.

As I sit here writing this I realize that all three of my Las Vegas trips have been to rendezvous with my mother. iMessage does my parents hear of the early 90s & my husband and I joined all of my siblings here a decade ago to celebrate mom’s 80th.

So I am struck by the sheer chutzpah our species is capable of, every time I am here. This is a town is excess. Ginormous water fountains in the heart of the desert. Throngs of humanity. Never mind that there is a pandemic going on, the hordes need entertainment. There are signs everywhere indicating that there is a mandatory mask mandate in every last hotel here on the strip. Tons of people are wearing masks, but plenty are flouting the requirement. In almost every casino and every hotel lobby an employee is handing out masks what is tongs. Last night I saw plenty of scantily clad revelers stumbling past those employees many too drunk or too stoned to notice, or too indifferent to care.

Mom and my sister are staying at the cosmopolitan, one of the more expensive destinations on the strip. somehow, I heads up with a price tag the clientele would be also more upscale. Since when is a bikini appropriate evening attire in a casino? That was at 10 o’clock last night long after the pool and spa were closed. Not that I am someone who indulges in fat shaming, but at least that young woman has a bikini body. I have seen in the past 15 hours more pairs of leopard print stretch pants than I ever knew existed. Personal opinion? I don’t think those things look good on someone who’s a size 2. Now imagine them on someone who is a size 24. Call me a curmudgeon, but I have seen more square inches of exposed flesh wandering thru the lobbies, restaurants and casinos than at the pool. I’ve never seen so many short skirts and dresses in my life.
Mind you, I’m not going out of my way to wander through the casinos. You cannot get anywhere from hotel to hotel resort without wandering through their gaming areas. On the lower legends of the hotels they are everywhere. Given my own concerns about the pandemic, I am doing my best to steer clear of things.

At least my mother, my sister and I are all up on our vaccines, and likely soon to be bolstered.
More later.

comments

Freshly picked fruit…

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 06:34:19 GMT

Life has been quite busy, and my mind has been elsewhere, but I just had a ‘stop & smell the roses moment’.

I called a friend last Saturday to invite her over for dinner. She had family from out of town visiting, so she declined, but pushed me to come by to raid the trees in her yard. There are 3 Italian prunes, a Bartlett pear and a couple of apple trees, and she’s just too tired overwhelmed to do anything with them. I stopped by the next day with a market basket and spent 20 minutes picking

Oh. My. God.

We’ve been eating the plums a few at a time all week. They’re insanely flavorful, juicy & sweet, but so much more than just sweet. These are all organic and SO much more delectable than what’s in the market. Now I live in farm country, & obviously this stuff grows here commercially, but I can’t remember enjoying plums so much. There are subtle flavor notes beyond the sweetness & maybe it’s my imagination, but I don’t remember this degree of flavortown, to quote Guy Fieri, who’s both local & a native son, in anything I buy at the market.

Well the pears were rock hard when I picked them. I just had my first one. Sweet! Floral! Subtle, yet complex. I’m talking about a piece of fruit, not a glass of wine. Just like the plums, there were delicately delicious undertones of flavor, I just don’t find in commercially farmed fruit. I had initially planned to make pear butter, but now I need to rethink that. I don’t want to hide that fresh complexity. Won’t do the pears justice.

comments

It’s been a while…

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 02:23:43 GMT

It’s been two solid months.

Life has been busy. My goddaughter graduated from high school and two weeks ago entered the Army. For her, it’s an end to a means. She’s doing this with the intent it will eventually pay for school. Not thrilled with her decision, but I understand it.

I lit Yahrtzeit & said Kaddish twice this past week. Tuesday, someone I’ve known for 35 years died after just 3 weeks on hospice. I’m grateful her suffering is at an end, but this was just too early. I’m a couple of years her senior. The second was Rep. John Lewis. Saturday marked one year since his passing.

Fire season has begun. So far it’s nowhere near here, but there are at least another 4 months before the rains will come again. To date, my neck of the woods has been spared the heat that went to our north. We’re actually still needing heat some nights, which is good news. We‘re not as dry as we would be if the heat was higher, and that cuts back on fire risk. Meanwhile, we’re busy cutting back brush and felling, dead trees and getting everything mulched. We just dropped $1800 on a higher end wood chipper the replace the one we had that rattled it self to death 2 weeks ago. The more we tend this forest around us, the more fire fuel we get rid of, the safer we’ll be. At least, we hope.

Arjuna is hanging in there. He’ll be 13 in 6-7 weeks, & very much showing his age. He’s made it clear he ain’t eating dog food anymore. He’d rather starve. He had two bouts of vertigo a week apart in early June & since then won’t touch kibble or even the fresh stuff we got to supplement. The girls will eat anything, though they too make it clear they’d rather have what we’re having. After Arjuna’s last attack, he pushed away food for three days. One the third day, his bowl full and rejected, he started begging for LJ’s pizza crusts. After downing them, it was clear he WAS willing to eat, just not what we’d been giving him. I made another take and bake pizza, just for him. He destroyed it. The following morning I hit the market got 10# of ground beef and started cooking for Arjuna twice daily. He’s eating, usually everything I make for him, if there’s stuff left over, we stick it in the fridge and offer it again a few hours later. That strategy is working. It looks like he’s regaining the weight he’s lost and has become somewhat more stable on his feet. Aging is a nasty bitch.

The girls are the lights of our lives during this pandemic. They’re almost 27 months old. Littermates, but so different personality wise. Wolves & wolf hybrids are affectionate, but on their terms. They don’t spend as much time on top of you as dogs do. That said, the girls clearly see us as their pack and spend a lot of time making sure we know it. Eve often sleeps with us. Generally, she doesn’t want to be cuddled; she just wants to be next to you. Get too assertive petting her and she growls. She does not however get up. “I just want to be next to you. You don’t mind if my leg is across your foot, right?”

Lilith on the other hand, is a cuddle slut, with me in particular. if she wants my attention, she gets her nose under my arm, usually the one I’m actively using & flips it up. Pet me!! Pet me now!!!. She often crawls on top of me- a 75 pound lap dog. She has no compunction about waking me. Eve gently lays he head on my shoulder or licks my hand. Lilith stands on my chest to lick my face. She’s nudged my CPAP mask off my nose to get at my face. Unlike Eve, she wants tons of aggressive petting and cuddle. If I’m lying down when it starts, it’s like getting tackled, & she expects you to be just as tactile. Hug Eve & she may well growl; Lilith however, is in hog heaven. But, unlike dogs, after 20 minutes of active petting, Lilith had had her fill and is done for the moment & off to explore her terrain. It may be an hour before she’s back in my face.

I gotta go. Lilith just flicked my arm up.

comments

Conflicted....

Thu, 13 May 2021 03:30:23 GMT

I am not a fan of Liz Cheney. I certainly was not a fan of her father. During the <s>Cheney</s> Bush administration, Liz’s daddy often made me think about the antichrist. One of his few saving graces, was he wasn’t rabidly anti-LGBT, likely having more to do with Liz’s sister, Mary, living her authentic life. As I recall however, unlike her parents, Liz was vehemently opposed to marriage equality.

Unlike most of the Republican party currently in office, Liz Chaney has some anatomy most of her party lacks, namely a spine. I am gob smacked that for once I’m in agreement with her. Donald Trump is a threat to the United States, he fomented an insurrection and is continuing to press publicly outright lies about the validity 2020 election. What kind of topsy turvy world is this, that I’m suddenly in Liz Cheney’s corner?

My thoughts about the Republican party have not been charitable for over a generation. The purge of anyone who could be labeled a moderate, let alone liberal from the Republican ranks galls me. I see pandering, gerrymandering and a threat to any institution that serves a public good. 35 years of practicing medicine and watching too many people fall thru the cracks of our so-called safety net, people who were working two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet, and still unable to access healthcare in a timely and compassionate way. I have no respect for a society that treats healthcare as a privilege and not a right, and shortsightedly and purposefully shorts education resources so that there remains a permanent underclass, with few hopes of improving their social standing.

(Gee Weaver, tell us how you really feel.)

So. the House Republicans purged Liz Cheney from power today. She was the #3 person in the Republican leadership. That is no longer. She had the audacity to speak the truth, to say the Emperor had no clothes. She told the truth. Unthinkable.

For that the talking heads on Fox, and Newsmax, and OAN, opinion writers masquerading as news reporters, have trumpeted from their bully pulpits that Liz Cheney is dangerously deranged and must go. Despite all this, she has remained steadfast. She will not lie about Trump. She will not bow to kiss his ring, and make nice, and pretend he did not try to overthrow an election. For that she has my grudging respect, as uncomfortable as I am about it.

comments

“America is not a racist country” -Sen. Tim Scott

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 16:52:44 GMT

Really, Tim?

Talk to Brionna Taylor. Talk to Eric Garner. Talk to Philando Castile.

Talk to George Floyd.

Oh. Right. You can’t. They’re all dead.

Tim, how many traffic stops have you endured? How many times have you had to breathe slowly, zen-like, hands on the wheel at 10 & 2, no sudden moves. Really, Tim, how many times? Did your mother have the ‘talk’ with you, a talk no white mother has to (unless her kid was of color)?

Tim, was Jim Crow not racist? During WWII, when we interned Japanese Americans, but not Italian or German Americans, was that not racist? When Latino families seeking asylum here had their children taken from them, was that not racist? When Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, & Black Baptists are shot inside their houses of worship in this country, I suppose that’s not racist either.

What planet are you on? If you can say this is not a racist country, it sure isn’t this one.

comments

This and that... joy post vaccine

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 09:46:04 GMT

It’s been a rough couple of months. I got the Covid vaccine as quickly as I could without cutting into any lines. I’m still licensed, but not practicing so I didn’t think it ethical, to try and get vaccinated along with the remainder of the local medical community.

February 17th, it was my turn. Got an email from my provider’s medical group with a website to go get registered & 2 days later I showed up at the county fairgrounds. In and out in under an hour and that included 30 minutes of observation post shot and to and from the parking area.

I woke up the morning of the 18th in a full arthritic flare; not the aches and pains many people get, but I had come out of remission during the night. About 10 days later, psoriatic plaques on my scalp behind my ears were back. This was not the handful of joints that was typical when it was active. It was wide spread- ankles, wrists, shoulders, a thumb, an elbow and all at once. I wasn’t shocked. I certainly wasn’t pleased, but so be it. I have anti-inflammatories & I can wait this out. It’s not Covid. I can survive this. Diabetic, albeit well controlled, and sleep apnea? Mixed with Covid and MediCare? Thank you, no! I’d take a vaccine (any of them) any day of the week.

After 2 weeks, it was slowly improving and by March 15, I was almost back to normal. Just in time for my second dose of Pfizer. Well the ides of March, were auspicious all right. March 16 was as bad as February 18, only this time in addition to the arthritis returning with a vengeance, I now had all the muscle aches most people seem to have, with fatigue and nausea. The nausea at least was short lived. Tomorrow I’ll be five weeks out, while I’m now getting better, it’s still going on. My suspicion is I’m not going to be back to normal until the beginning of May. It’s getting old.

Like I said, I was not surprised. I hadn’t expected it to be as long or as severe as it has been, but rev up the immune system with a novel vaccine against a novel virus, in someone with an underlying autoimmune disorder, even one in remission, you’re not shocked if it reactivated. At least now, I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hmm, a post I never finished, a week and a half ago.

Well, I was right. I thought it would be the beginning of May before this flare was over. It’s 4-29, and I’m almost back to normal. Still need the anti inflammatory med, but not nearly as dependent on them as I was. My skin is calming down. Its bloody well about time.

comments

Awake at 4 am

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 14:08:49 GMT

This is not going to be a good day.

My husband's CPAP woke me almost an hour ago. His mask was ajar and between the hiss of a now leaky seal of mask with face and the beeping alarm of his machine, which was supposed to alert him, but never does, I AWOKE. After adjusting his mask, I spent 1/2 an hour tossing, trying to find a comfortable position to go back to sleep, without success. I got up to take a leak, came back to bed and picked up my phone to check the time, only to find I could not focus on the screen. WTF?

I don't mean I couldn't concentrate on the screen. I couldn't see it clearly. Rubbing my eyes didn't help. I had to look at the screen not directly, but from the side, first with one eye, then the other, just to read the time.

Crap.

There are times when being an MD is a curse. The mental wheels started turning. Mom has macular degeneration, as did her mother and her brother, as did her father-in-law, so I have it on both sides of my family. Never mind that my last eye exam was absolutely normal, other than I'm nearsighted as all hell. Macular degeneration was right where my mind went. Thanks to the pandemic, and social distancing, I've put off preventative care. I'm six months overdue for a recheck on my eyes and I've been waiting for my second vaccine to reschedule my next eye exam.

I spent 15 minutes in the dark, wasting precious time while debating what to do about my sudden onset of bilateral macular degeneration, time I could have spent medicating myself. Sixty-five years old, almost half a century after my first, I failed to recognize my sudden visual issue was my old friend, migraine.

My aura is almost always long enough to medicate and prevent the headache. Once upon a time I used ergot, which gave way to triptans, but I learned 20 years ago, I usually respond to a large dose of caffeine. My migraines are infrequent, triptans are prescription only, usually expensive & often leave me nauseated (as can the migraine itself), and I didn't always have them on hand when the rare migraine hit. In my 20s, they were frequent, sometimes weekly, but by the time I hit my 50s, they spaced out to only a few times a year. Coffee and tea in my home are omnipresent, and if I'm out, Starbucks are everywhere, so I always have that option.

This was a first for me. I can't remember having a migraine in the middle of the night before. The aura didn't waken me; actually, I don't think it started until 15 minutes or so after I awoke. In the darkened room, & without my glasses, I didn't recognize the visual aura nearly as quickly as I should have. Lack of sleep can be a trigger, and thanks to LJ's CPAP, I'm definitely short on sleep right now. I'm finishing my first cuppa joe, a fresh pot is brewing, so soon I'll be having my second, and if needed, a third thereafter. My head is throbbing, albeit it not horrifically. I'm mildly homophobic, but my vision is starting to return to normal, though I'm not sure if that's the coffee, or that the aura is ending and the headache phase beginning.

My day however, is screwed. Once my headache is down to a point where I might be able to go back to sleep, the caffeine I'm slamming is going to prevent any shut eye. I have Zoom meetings scheduled from 10 till 4 today, with a virtual lunch with a friend at noon. This is going to be one long ass day.

comments

When it rains, it pours...

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:20:25 GMT

My husband and I are now vaccinated, well at least the first one.

I’ve been watching all the listings for vaccine clinics in our county & in counties nearby, without success until this week. Though the state had said age 65 on up are vaccine eligible, our county was still working on 70 on up. Two weeks ago, I registered my husband and I with the local pharmacy I use, on their list to call if someone no showed for a vaccine appointment. Once a dose is defrosted, it either goes into an arm or the trash. They have only a few hours leeway if they have a no show, to get that dose into someone else.

Monday, I got an email from my PCP’s medical group with a link to register for the vaccine this week. I did not let this lead go cold. A friend of mine got an emailed link from his job last week which he shared with me & when I logged onto it a couple of hours later, all appointments were gone. I have Gmail set up to alert me to incoming mail, so I was on the website minutes later & snagged an appointment for this afternoon. Yes!!

There’s a well organized vaccine clinic at the county fairgrounds, that my medical group directed me to. I was in and out in 45 minutes. To my surprise, I was Pfizer'ed. Apparently the site has access to the uber cold freezers required to hold the vaccine.

On the way home, I decided to be a good egg & stop at my pharmacy, tell them to take me off the no show list. When I walked thru the door, the pharmacy tech looked surprised. "You're here already? Damn, that was fast!" Turns out she'd called me 5 minutes earlier. They had a shot for me. I laughed. I said I'd just come from being vaccinated to tell them to take me off their call list, and I'd call the next guy for them. She looked confused. I told her I had given them two names for their list and I was calling the other older person from my house to get his butt down there right now. With that I dialed LJ. He was there in 10 minutes. I had barely finished his paperwork when he got there.

So, the upshot is we are not both covered AND we both have appointments for the next vaccine. Mine is March 15th back at the Fairgrounds. His is at the pharmacy on 3-17.

I'm more relieved than I can say right now. It's almost 24 hours since I had my jab, and I'm feeling it. Nothing a couple of tylenol won't handle mind you, but I am achy, not just where I had the jab but all over. Not the end of the world. It's surely better than getting the infection. We oddly each had a different vaccine, I, Pfizer and he, Moderna. He's feeling perfectly fine. We both are feeling the same sense of relief, that there's a light at the end of this tunnel we're in, and it's not an oncoming train. We're among the 14 million people who've been fortunate enough to get a vaccine. Now just 317 million to go..... At least the authorities say we're up to 1.7 million doses being given a day. I'm so looking forward to seeing people again and to going to the gym.

comments

Of vaccine searches and impeachments....

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 23:51:14 GMT

I'm getting old and not so tolerant.

The TV is sounding like a modern day Paul Revere. "The vaccine is coming" The Vaccine is coming!" Well, not fast enough for me I'm afraid. According to the state of California, at 65 I am now eligible to be vaccinated. Good luck finding it however.

Locally, we're way behind vaccinating. there was one batch of the Moderna vaccine that had a higher than expected allergic reaction rate at a site in Southern California and for the time being the rest of that batch was place on hold. That includes 7500 doses that were shipped to this county. Bloody wonderful. Supposedly, they are asking recently retired MDs and RNs to volunteer to give out vaccines. I would be more than happy to. Just not before I have had the jab myself, given my personal risks. I'm not having any luck finding out where I can go and get the shot so I can go volunteer, nor am I seeing where I could sign up to volunteer.

It angers me. My friend's parents in rural North Carolina, in the heart of Trump's Republican country, had absolutely no trouble finding the vaccine and getting it. I know because I had a personal chat with them, telling them why it was crucial they get it. Less than 4 days post chat, they were vaccinated. In Democratic Northern California, I am still waiting. Even though the Governor's office says officially, I am eligible, none of the local vaccinations sites will make me an appointment. Either they have no vaccines or they are still working their way through those age 70 and up. My age 65 with significant health related risks isn't putting me any higher on anyone's list for now. Other than the Governor's that is.

I have been stewing over the impeachment hearings this week. I have deeply appreciated the house managers and their presentation. It's damning of Trump. The videos played in the Senate chambers have made is dramatically clear just how close we came to bloodshed of our elected representatives, whipped up by Trump on the ellipse and then aimed directly at the Capitol. The videos have been graphic. I cannot understand how anyone in the room watching them cannot be moved, especially anyone that was there that day and who could easily have been victim to that mob.

The reports that folks like Senators Hawley, Cruz, Scott (Florida) and Paul sitting there with their eyes averted, reading magazines or doodling absolutely incenses me. Five people died in the attack on our capitol. Two more Capitol police took their own lives thereafter. 140 officers were injured. The Capitol was left in shambles, by our own fellow citizens. If spurring this mob on to attack a co-equal branch of government isn't an impeachable offense, then what is? I just don't get it.

comments

So Weaver, where the hell have you been?

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 22:58:11 GMT

The last 12 days have been especially aggravating. The end of each month is pill time for our furry brood. The girls are easy to medicate. The heart worm preventative is a chewable that they like and they have never been difficult to pill. They can be challenges in other ways, but that has not been one of them. Arjuna, not so much.

He is old and crotchety. He's a big boy and at 12 1/2 showing his age. He's arthritic. His sight is going, and I suspect his hearing as well. He's had chronic nasal congestion for ever, so his sense of smell is shot and has been for a very long time, a real loss for a nose brain as his species is. The large number of people afflicted by Covid related anosmia is raising awareness how central the sense of smell is for humans. I cannot fathom what a loss it is for a canine. His congestion means he also snores and we're often treated to the canine version of an old man clearing his throat. But he's family and my husband and I adore him and so we but up with the noise and all his idiosyncrasies.

Anyway, pilling Arjuna is generally something that I do, but as I was busy with something, LJ decided to go ahead and do it himself, or at least try to. The girls went without a hitch. Arjuna took his heartworm tab and then dropped it on the floor. LJ tried again with the same result. "Hon, would you please...", was enough to make me stop what I was doing and take over.

Had I been smart, I would have gone for the cream cheese, which has always gotten him to take his meds without too much trouble, but the tab was already wet and somewhat slimy. Given that Arjuna has always been better with me and meds anyway, I simply offered it and again he took it and dropped it at my feet. Again I picked it up, and offered, Again he took it and dropped it. I decided to retrieve it and would go for the cream cheese with it, but did not get the chance. When I reached for the tab on the floor, Arjuna grabbed my hand and bit down. I saw stars.

I looked down at the back of my right hand to see a deep gash across the 4th and 5th rays, an inch shy of my knuckles and just before the blood welled up hiding everything from sight, I saw at least two of my extensor tendons. Not good. Not good at all. The gash was about an inch and a half long and away from my joints, but it was clearly something that needed much more attention than I could provide myself at home. After avoiding any healthcare settings since the onset of the pandemic, other than the pharmacy, I cleaned the wound with peroxide, wound on a pressure bandage, and drove myself to the ER on the other side of the county, as required by my insurer.

No, I did not get my husband to drive. First of all, the sight of blood gets him light headed and given that, I certainly did not want him behind the wheel. Moreover, he is very much NOT a healthcare person, and every thing one needs to do to enter a place of potential covid transmission does not come to him easily. I have settled for keeping him at home and away from anyone else as much as possible. We have been successful doing that in this rural part of our county. I've been doing the marketing for just about everything, hand sanitizer, gloves when needed, heavy duty face masks, and even protective eye wear when venturing out of the house and off of the property. The thought of him sitting in the ER waiting room was not tenable risk for me. Besides, I'm left handed. My dominant hand was not decommissioned.

Just over an hour after my injury I was at the ER. Three hours later I was taken in to be seen. Once I was in the business part of the ER, things went much more quickly. The ER doc was wonderful and adept. I was numbed up effectively and cleaned out. Tendons had been exposed, but not torn. My strength was good in all my fingers. Xrays were negative for any fracture, as well as other ominous signs like air in any joints. A few sutures were expertly done closing the wound, I got a tetanus booster and then we discussed preventative antibiotics. The literature on antibiotics post dog bite is not without controversy. Some authorities recommend it, others don't. Given my medical history, I was unwilling to leave without it, and to my relief the doc was very amenable, even agreeing with my thoughts on which antibiotic to use. I asked for my first two doses, one to take there and the other in the morning at home, so I could wait until late in the day to hit the pharmacy for the remainder. I also asked for a single dose of something strong for pain, knowing the Epivicaine would wear off in a few hours. Unfortunately, while the care of the ER staff was fast, it took another hour waiting for the hospital pharmacy to cough up 3 tablets for me to depart with.

I had figured half of the pain pill before bed and the other half in the morning and thereafter an anti inflammatory should be enough. Wrong. The anti inflammatory was decidedly not enough by itself. Fortunately, a text to my primary provider was enough to get him to call in 10 more of that pain reliever. I continued to take it, 1/2 a tab at a time, usually twice a day for the next week.

The sutures came out last night, and while I'm significantly more comfortable than I was last week, I'm going to have symptoms continue for a while. The wound itself is healed at least superficially. I'm still swollen, though less so, and it is still achy and stiff, though I have full range of motion and good strength. What's annoying is the inner aspect of my pinky is numb. There's a strip a 1/4" wide from the web at the base of the finger up past the first knuckle that's numb. The delineation is sharp; the palmar side and dorsum are fully normal. Add to it I'm getting shocks of pain over the past week, with certain movements and at times when there is pressure placed over the healing wound on the back of my hand. I'm taking the shocks as a positive sign, that the numbness is temporary, not a disruption of a sensory nerve, but a contusion of it. We'll see how this evolves over time.

The injury is annoying. It certainly could have been very easily, significantly worse and so I'm truly grateful it was not. However, it has left me out of sorts and less tolerant of the bullshit we're still having to put up with. I'll deal with that in my next post.

comments

Hurts so good...

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 02:11:33 GMT

I’m healing, at least I think so. My hand hurts, a deep seated ache and a tightness that makes movement limited, but at the same time, with me testing my limits.

So the back story.......

Sunday evening, I was enjoying some mindless television, when my husband marking the end of the month, went to give the canines their heartworm and flea & tick meds. The puppies took their meds readily. Arjuna, not so much. He took his meds and dropped then on the floor. LJ had no success. I was asked to step in.

I picked up his chewable tablet and offered it to him. He took it and dropped it. I repeated, as did he. I went to pick it up again and this time, he chomped down on me, opening a gash on the back of my hand.

I screamed, as much out of surprise, as pain. He let go, seeming as startled as I was. I looked down, seeing exposed tendons before blood obscured my view. Not good.

First pressure, then hydrogen peroxide to flush things clean, and finally two major bandaids to cover. Finger were able to move, & sensation, other than the searing burn where I was flayed open, was normal. That was a reasonably good sign. It was 7:30 pm. A fast check of my brand new Medicare advantage plan sent me to the same institution I practiced in until I retired 3 years ago. I drove myself cross county.

I left my husband at home. Look up squeamish in the Oxford. You’ll find his picture. Besides, I want him nowhere near a medical setting until both of us have been vaccinated. The other thought in my mind, was if I needed a tendon repair,I did not want him waiting there. So I drove by myself.

I left the house at 8, walked into the ER at 8:45, & finished my paperwork to be seen right at 9. At a quarter to midnight, I was taken into a patient room.

By 2, I had been seen, numbed, irrigated, x-rayed, sewn closed and re-vaccinated for tetanus. The extensor tendons to my 4th & 5th fingers had been exposed, but not torn. I had arrived ready to argue if the doc had wanted me to leave without antibiotics. My medical history is just too risky for me to forego that intervention. Unfortunately, it took almost another hour for the pharmacy to cough up one dose of pain meds and my first two doses of antibiotics. I got home at 3:45, had some supper; did I mention I got chomped before having any dinner & then ate nothing just in case I needed a surgical tendon repair.

I woke up at 8 am, clear that my hope my regular anti inflammatory would be enough for pain relief. Before going to sleep, I took one half of the Norco I’d been given. The epivicaine was just wearing off. The half got me to sleep. The second half when added to a Celebrex helped.

I'm now not quite 48 hours out. My hand feels achy and tight. It’s hard to flex and extend my rings and pinky fingers. It hurts to move them, yet simultaneously doing so feels good. It hurts to the touch, and I see some bruising at the edges of my bandage. My second bandage actually. I showered last night, and despite the plastic bag covering my hand and rubber banded in place, I still got wet and needs to redo it.

I’m going to have along week. LJ will do the dishes for the time being, but the kitchen remains my bailiwick. It hurts to hold a knife when prepping, food, so it’ll be in my other hand for now. Time for some more pain relief. It’s been 10 hours.

comments

Dumbfounded......

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 01:13:26 GMT

<sigh>

I spent more time this year working for political change than since I was in my 20s. In January & February I canvassed door to door for Warren. don’t wanna think how many miles I walked going door to door. I just remember my ankles telling me, “this had better be worth it.” After lockdown, there was phone banking. I’ve always been a believer that politics is local and that my action needs to be local. I no longer hold to that. Not since my rights were stepped on during Prop 8, when forces from outside California funded the most vicious ads on our airwaves to deny not only the rights of my community to marry, but to undo my own already existent marriage. How dare you tell lies about me.

In September & October, I journeyed virtually to Pennsylvania, spending day after day phone banking in the get out the vote effort there. Vote Save America sponsored an adopt a state program and I opted for Pennsylvania. The adage tgat the state is Philadelphia in the East, Pittsburgh in the West, with Alabama in between isn’t all that far off. Remember the Mason Dixon line is the boarder between Pennsylvania with Maryland & W, Virginia. All this month, I moved my efforts to virtual, near daily travel to Georgia, in the get out the vote effort there for the Senate runoffs, jointing NextGen, Fair Fight & the New Georgia Project.

Personally, while I was unsurprised of the outcome in November in Pennsylvania given all the positive conversations I had in the 7 weeks prior to Election Day, I still feel the effort I put in, along with volunteers from all over the country, helped the cause significantly. Similarly, the last month in Georgia, the determination I heard from the Metro areas of Altanta, Macon, Savannah, & Columbus, kept me calling. I felt good about making sure folks knew, where and how to register, when to get their votes posted by mail or dropped off, and how to find their polling place. I cannot tell you how any times I got told, “we have to get this done!” At times I was unsure who was bolstering who I this effort. Yes, there were plenty of “please stop calling me”, but almost as many offered their thanks for what I was doing.

Went to bed last night relieved, Warnock having been declared the winner by the AP, and Ossoff holding a 3,600 vote lead with the majority of the outstanding ballots predominantly from Democratic urban bastions. Again I was unshocked, but deeply grateful. In September, I had felt confident the Senate would flip; I thought a minimum of 4 seats would change. I was dashed after the election, certain that although Biden wound take the White House, that McConnell would prevent and significant change in the new Senate and quash any attempt for progress in DC. Early on, I had serious doubts Georgia would flip the Senate. I went to sleep with incredible relief.

Today started with great hope, thinking last night’s Georgia news would be the main news story of the day. The staged drama in the House & Senate of objections to the acceptance of the ballots cast in the Electoral College might come in a close second. Instead, the news story of the day was a riot incited by the President. I’m incredulous. Protesters breeched the Capital, while both the House & Senate were in session no less. Someone died in the course of the protests, a woman shot inside the Capital. They smashed windows and there are photos of them closing in on and chasing solitary capital policemen. I was struck that many of the police were people of color; I saw no protestors they were not white. Not one. I was also struck the difference in the police response to white conservative protesters, in comparison to say how the protesters were treated the day the President decided to hold up a Bible in front of a church near the White House.

The insanity promoted by this charlatan in the White House cannot be over soon enough. I pray the state of NY is ready to indict him January 21.

comments

Surfacing for air.....

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 05:00:50 GMT

Well, I'm sitting at the dining room table taping away here, as the Instant Pot does its work. This is a bit of an experiment tonight.

A few years ago I started making avenotto, For anyone unfamiliar, it is a lesser known grain dish from northern Italy. Just about everyone knows about risotto, and many have made it. Well there are two similar step sisters to risotto, one from faro, the other from steel cut oats. Avenotto is the latter.

It's been awhile since I've made this and this time, I decided to put the instant pot to work. This batch is a mix of veggies (broccoli, snap peas, thick stems of asparagus, red onion and mushroom, along with cubes of chicken breast. A highly seasoned chicken parmesan brodo is the cooking liquid. I used the instant pot on saute to do up the veggies and brown the chicken, and then I switched the settings to pressure, added the grain and the brodo, with enough garlic its unclear if its a seasoning or another veggie, and now it's doing its thing. This part of the cycle is only 5 minutes of pressured heat, followed by a slow vent on warm for 25 minutes. We shall see how this works.

Let's see; about life.......

I signed up for a MediCare Advantage plan this morning, then spent a large chunk of the day cleaning here. The Dyson needed to be pulled apart, cleaned/unplugged and then reassembled. Laundry got done. I signed up for 4 shifts over the next week to phone bank with the New Georgia Project, for their get out the vote effort for next month's Senate runoffs. MY great niece turns one on the 17th and I'm working on another hat for her. Not sure about this yarn however. It's pretty enough, but it's cotton, and when knit, I'm not thrilled with its elasticity. Actually not thrilled with its lack of elasticity is more like it. I may have to slip in some fine elastic cording into the ribbing around its rim, or just chuck it and go for some of the alpaca I've got spun up. That decision needs to get made tin the next day or two, as it should be in the mail before the 12th.

I'm pissed off, as usual, by the narcissist-in-chief and his continued attempt to undermine both the results of the election and more importantly, the transition. We are in the midst of a horrific pandemic, with the promise of at least two effective vaccines, likely more, on the immediate horizon. All this stonewalling could easily complicate to role out of vaccines. Moreover, the cavalier denial that this is a life threatening illness for many and the lack of a central policy in the nation re: mask wearing, and social distancing will result in so many more people becoming ill now and dying in hospitals that are overwhelmed by a tidal wave of cases arriving in their emergency rooms. I cannot help but find this simultaneously poignant and criminal with a likely end for this pandemic knocking at the door.

I understand.

We turned down Thanksgiving invitations this year. I did not travel across the country, the state or even the neighborhood. We planned a socially distant meal with one guest on our deck, and were relieved when said guest made it even more distant, by not showing up at the last minute. We're now about 10 days away from whatever wave is likely to hit our healthcare system due to Thanksgiving gatherings, What will our nation be dealing with by Xmas and New Years?

Time to go check the Instant Pot. It's beginning to smell like Tuscany in here.

comments

Didn’t expect that...

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 18:37:23 GMT

So I woke up this morning, opened the news on my phone and found nothing yet announced. After 20 minutes or so, I got outta bed & trotted off to the kitchen to make b’fast for us both. I turned on a podcast and went about my business. Didn’t see my husband’s text, a few minutes after I started with the dishes from last night, as the coffee pot started to drip out this morning’s dose of caffeine. Nor did my husband say anything when I walked in with the b’fast tray.

An hour and a quarter after the AP called the election for Biden, after declaring he had successfully taken Pennsylvania, LJ remarked, “my friend just texted from New York that people are out celebrating and dancing in the streets. Oh and it’s 70° there.“ I countered with, “why? And what the hell, it’s 70°!“

“Apparently you didn’t see my text.“

“What text?“

“Um, they’ve called the election. Biden has won.”

The moment or so later I felt a single tear snaking its way down my right cheek and disappearing into my beard. I had thought of many ways I’d react to the news of Trump’s loss. I hadn’t expected a single tear today to be my actual response.

I am feeling a profound sense of relief, not that we as a country don’t have a tremendous amount of work to do. This is just the beginning. Our polarization as a nation is far from over. While it appears there is a growing acceptance that the nightmare of a Trump presidency is now about to end, the undoing of all the damage that he has wrought to our government and our nation still remains to be addressed.

Moreover, I am sitting here watching people in T-shirts & tank tops out celebrating in New York, Washington, and Philadelphia, while thinking it’s November. 70° in New York City is markedly abnormal for this time of year. I’m sitting in the heart of what’s supposed to be a temperate rainforest, one where the rains should have begun 2 to 3 weeks ago, yet we remain dry. My heart is lighter now than in much of the last 4 years. Though I see people out in the streets celebrating, I cannot help but focus on the reality of what we have done to this climate and how much worse it has gotten under the stewardship of this interloper, that’s about to get evicted from the People’s house. I’ll let others go out to celebrate for me and not begrudge them. Somehow, I’m not much in the mood to celebrate at the moment.

It still will be 2 1/2 months, before this man, this scourge, this sad excuse for a human being, is actually out of a position of power. Like a wounded creature, I have fear over what further damage he might wreak in that time left. Who will he pardon? What will he steal? What new norms will he break? How will he attempt to impede the new administration coming in? What will his enabler‘s do to support him?

If you’ll forgive the metaphor, how I feel at the moment is best described as someone who has had an enormous boil lanced. The immediate pressure is relieved and the poisonous debris is finally streaming out. For the moment, I’m feeling better, though I know the healing process is far from over. There will be pain to come; part of the healing process. But just like an abscess, it must be tended to to be certain it heals properly, so not close prematurely and thus recur.

comments

Angst and Anxiety

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 01:54:44 GMT

It's Monday evening and the sun is rapidly heading towards dusk here. My husband and I just finished a Zoom celebration with my extended family, in honor of Mom's 90th. Today is her birthday and almost 40 of us gathered behind computer and phone screens all over the country.

I'm grateful we could all be there, albeit virtually.

I am still plagued by a sense of foreboding and dread. The election is tomorrow, or at least the culmination of the country casting its ballots. I am filled with angst, concerned that the man who is an existential threat to our democracy and to our public health will not be successfully turned out of office. The rebuilding of the state department, the EPA, the Consumer Protection Agency, will take years to restore, nor to I have any faith there will be any handing over of the reigns with an accounting of what has been dismantled. Given all the damage he has done to the welfare of the nation and the structures that serve our public, not only must this man be voted out of office, but his enablers in the Senate must get turned out as well.

It's possible, but far from assured.

I remain dispirited by the polarization of this country, the tribalness that has reared its head and makes me feel both unwelcome and unsafe in much of the US. I have been othered by many on the far right, a symbol of much that they distain, a married, gay man, non-christian, child of an immigrant family, bilingual, liberal. That we have a president who could not condemn open antisemitism, could not call out white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville, chanting "Jews will not replace us". They openly carried rifles and other firearms, while they protested outside that city's reform synagogue as the congregation worshiped inside. The rabbi sent his congregants out the back door of their sanctuary that day, for their safety. My fear is that should this man stay in office, a lightening rod for the disenchanted of the far right who’ve taken control of the Republican party, a populist for the class that consider themselves the white aggrieved, how real is the risk for an American Krisallnacht? This is the man who went to Tulsa on the anniversary of the destruction of Black Wall Street, intent on gathering his minions to rally. Are the chants of "lock her up" in truth a new American Sieg Heil"?

There’s a litany of unbridled corruption of the unqualified members of his cabinet, some found out and forced from office, Tom Price, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruit, alas not before wreaking the havoc they were placed there to do, handmaidens to the desires of the Koch’s and their ilk. There’s the continued malfeasance of Betsy DeVos, Bill Barr, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross. It all makes me wonder if there is anyone of character and value there, any one with an agenda to benefit the country rather than themselves? If these as just the things on the surface, marring the facade, what damage has been done the carcass within?

As much as I want to have faith that this has all been an aberration, and that the American experiment will right itself, stand up and brush off the debris to the past 4 years, the haunting fear, that Trump is not the cause, but the symptom keeps me awake at night. After Obama prompted so many of us to stand up and say, "Yes we can", and 12 years after the Supreme Court of California granted me the right to look into my husband's eyes and say, "with this ring, I thee wed...", the adoring crowds that flock like moths to a flame, about the orange dumpster fire who has taken up residence in the People's House, to chant out his support, forces me to ask if I do indeed have a future in this country. This cult of celebrity, the white, christian, heterosexuals, who are out there chanting for that time in our history when all they thought you needed to be, to be a success in this country was to be white, christian, male and heterosexual, needs to give every one of us who do not fit into that mold pause.

So, to anyone who reads this, If you have not done so already, GO VOTE.

comments

The President is a public health hazard....

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:57:21 GMT

This is to be cross posted to my Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and FaceBook accounts.

I realize there are people who will see this title and read no further. So be it. I cannot speak to anyone who chooses not to listen.

I preface this with notice I’m a retired physician, residency trained in the University of California system in Family and Community Medicine. I was board certified in Family Practice. I spent 35 years working predominantly with immigrants, at times serving families that spanned 4 and occasionally 5 generations. Some family units in my practice were as large as 70 family members. Why is that important? It gave me clarity just how interconnected family and community units are for disease clusters, both for contagious and non-contagious conditions.

Poverty affects not only access to health care, but access to healthier food and lifestyles. It is not an accident that hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, heart disease and obesity are rampant within poorer communities. It is a point easily argued that any economic, social or political system that keeps people from climbing into a higher socio-economic class, dooms them to remain in poverty and more often than not, dying at an earlier age of diseases that could have been delayed, if not prevented altogether. I believe this has been fostered by much of the Republican Party in power, but that is not the point of this essay either.

I am talking directly at this point of the president’s current behavior that puts anyone in his immediate vicinity at risk for contracting Covid-19. It appears to be the culmination of his denial of the scientific, medical & epidemiological information he has been given over the past 10 months, and his refusal to accept it, let alone abide by it.

I remain gob smacked that face masks have been made a political issue. I defy ANYONE on the far right, to tell me they would be comfortable undergoing surgery where the surgeon or anyone on the operating room team refused to wear a face mask. Those face masks are predominantly for the protection of the patient. Since the bulk of people who have spread Covid-19 are either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, mask wearing by people who feel perfectly well, is to prevent the ones who don’t yet know they are infected and contagious from spreading this disease. Yes, you have a modicum of personal protection afforded by your own mask, especially if it is a properly fitted N-95, but the main reason face masks limit the spread of Covid-19, is to stop infected people from infecting others. FULL STOP. I repeat, it’s to stop symptomless infected people from infecting others.

Instead of sharing the message that masks are crucial to prevent disease spread and modeling that behavior to the American public, the president has undermined that message from the get-go, along with any meaningful modeling of social distancing, which brings us to the present and my main point. Cramming people into tight spaces, even out of doors, and simultaneously discouraging use of face masks are exactly the circumstances that cause what epidemiologists label super-spreader events. This applies to Trump’s pre-debate preparation (likely why former Gov. Christie wound up hospitalized with Covid), to the Rose Garden presentation of Amy Coney Barrett to a throng of political dignitaries sitting shoulder to shoulder, and to Trump’s donor appearance at Bedminster after the presidential debate, and after his close aide and advisor Hope Hicks had been diagnosed with Covid infection and the entire White House staff should have been quarantining. Even the debate put people at unnecessary risk for infection. The Trump entourage after arriving too late for onsite viral testing, entered the venue, sat and then each removed their masks. The hubris flabbergasts me.

Trump was hospitalized after being short of breath, febrile and hypoxic at the White House. He was given early on a large number of Covid treatments, some experimental and many of them simply not available to most of the American public as soon after diagnosis as he was given them, if available at all at any point, given much of the public’s access to state of the art care. Note that Covid death rates have been significantly higher at public and rural hospitals, than at University institutions where the staff to patient ratio is significantly lower. We must recognize the President was been given the VIP treatment, something 95% of the population, if not more, will never be able to receive, and even for those that get it, not with the speed the President did.

What did the President do in the wake of his hospitalization? A photo op from a sealed limousine the day after his hospitalization, putting two Secret Service members in the vehicle with him at unnecessary risk. Even masked, I wouldn’t be willing to enter a closed vehicle, in close quarters with a patient newly diagnosed with Covid. I know of too many health care workers who have died from Covid contracted in the confines of the hospital. There is evidence that the size of the initial dose of virus when you first get infected may significantly affect your outcome. Secret Service members are alleged to be willing to take a bullet for the President; apparently for some it could mean they were willing to get infected for him as well, for a photo op.

However, even more disturbing behaviour came with his return to the White House. Hours after Trump tweeted, “…. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”, Trump climbed the stairs to the White House balcony by himself, and at the top of the stairs, somewhat breathless, and on camera for the entire country to see, he removed his mask and only then entered the White House. If he felt better than he had in 20 years, why did a single flight of stairs leave him visibly short of breath? Moreover, he was actively infected and supposed to isolate from others until he no longer infectious. Was there no one else inside the White House? Was there no one inside those walls not already infected?

“…Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life….” The cavalier recklessness of this offends me. According to a former director of the CDC, Covid-19, a disease that did not exist a year ago, is currently the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, after Heart Disease and Cancer. 220,000 Americans are known to have died of Covid in the past 9 months, and the death rate for the same period is up almost 300,000 from the year prior, which forces me to question how many people died secondary to undiagnosed Covid. On average, 1,000 Americans die of this daily. Further, these statistics say nothing about what long-term or permanent consequences survivors may have. Covid has touched my family. Both my siblings, also healthcare providers have had it. There are at least 8 in my extended family who have survived it. Someone I know personally, 20 years my junior, appears to have some heart problems secondary to the infection, now 5 months on.

What we have seen from the president is a total disregard for anyone other than himself. He has by example put way too many Americans at risk, and in the past month, super-spreader events tied to this White House directly, have resulted in more cases of Covid than in New Zealand, Viet Nam and Singapore combined, for the same time period.

What harm is done by wearing a mask? What harm is done by protecting the vulnerable? Yes, a face mask is often not the most comfortable thing to wear, but watching a neighbor, a colleague, a friend, a loved one, ill, hungry for air & gasping for breath is much more uncomfortable. So is the guilt of finding out you were likely responsible for spreading that illness to them.

This simple request, that all of us mask up whenever we are out in public and maintain an adequate social distance is for each other’s safety. This current sense of American exceptionalism, that it’s “my body, my choice”, isn’t defending your right to choose whether you take risks with your own health or not. It’s defending your misguided right to be Typhoid Mary, your right to put the health of others in your immediate vicinity at risk. If all of us recognize that, the choice to mask up is clear, and each of us needs to treat others who choose not to wear a mask in public as the pariahs they are, just as in California the bulk of the populace recognizes that someone smoking in your immediate space is infringing on your right to clean and safe air.

The Kansas legislature has created a rather dramatic experiment. Their governor, a Democrat, imposed a state-wide mandatory mask requirement for everyone when out in public and the legislature, controlled by Republicans, rolled back her authority to so. It has resulted in some counties having the mandate and others not. Roughly two months after this went into effect, the rate of Covid infections in the counties observing the mask mandate is half of what it is in the counties where the mandate is not in effect. Half.

It grieves me more than I can express, that a concern for public safety and for the public's health was made into a political issue. Wearing a face mask should never have been a mark of one's political party. Keeping one another safe, and keeping the resource of our already overburdened hospitals from becoming overwhelmed should have been a uniting message for every single American in this country. We were able to pull together in the face of warfare in both the First and Second World Wars. We all stepped up here at home to protect our American society from a threat from abroad. We rolled up our sleeves as one country. Yet this time, instead of trying to address something that was an existential threat for so many in our midst, we have failed. We have fallen into partisan bickering and politicized something that should have remained apolitical.

As a result, our current death toll from Covid-19 is more or less 300,000, and half of that could probably been prevented.

.

comments