All the plans I had yesterday to get those 25 miles of boxwoods trimmed got nixed rather early. The good news is that Perry came with his A-game and did most of them for me while I made another visit to the doctor with Mom. More on that, but first…
Let’s talk about hair. Some have it. Some don’t.
And sometimes, those who have hair can’t keep it from blowing in their face. 😏
This photo was taken BEFORE I made a doctor/hospital run. My poor Mamma can’t catch a break. If she’s not having issues with her foot, it’s her wrist. Swollen, red and extremely painful, her physician got her in within a few hours after my call.
Not sure what was causing the problem, he gave her antibiotics and sent her for x-rays and blood work. But before that, he “tattooed” her wrist and told us that if the redness or swelling got past those marks we should go to the ER immediately.
I took the obligatory doctor/hospital selfie. It’s obvious she feels awful. 😔
No broken bones.
The blood culture test results won’t be back for 48-hours and she’s started antibiotics. I checked on her around 11:00 PM and am typing this after returning home at around 2:00 AM. I’m pretty sure she’ll be feeling good enough by early next week that she can finish trimming those darned shrubs for me while I catch up on sleep. 😉
On a happier note.
I sent the following image to Mom via text a couple days ago. She responded, “How true.”
TIL (Today I Learned): Mud Dauber Wasps reproduce by building tubular nests out of mud, then going out and gathering spiders by paralyzing them then sealing them inside the nest with an egg. The offspring will then consume the paralyzed spiders when it hatches.
MasterSbilt Race Cars has a guard dog and I was personally introduced to him yesterday.
Waylon, the guard dog.
Waylon greeted me with a growl. After I was seated about 5-minutes, he started smelling my legs… presumably checking out Dharma and Merida. Shortly thereafter, he jumped in my lap where he happily remained for the next 10-minutes or so.
Once I got tired of holding him, I picked him up and put him on the floor at my feet. He turned around, growled, and tried to bite me. The little turd!
Then I found out there was also a shop cat that Waylon is afraid of. After getting snapped at after allowing the hairy little shit time on my lap, I would’ve fed him to the cat if I wouldn’t have gotten caught. 😉
TIL (Today I Learned): Mariah Carey demanded a $50 million inconvenience fee from ex-fiancée James Packer after they broke up. She received a multimillion dollar settlement and kept her $10 million engagement ring. (Inconvenience fee? Wow!)
Less than 4 hours sleep a couple nights ago, the next night before bed I had the weird ‘no sleep’ brain thing going on. You ever do that?
It’s when you’re so tired you have short bursts of numb-nothing thoughts. Experts say the brain on no sleep does things in a similar way to what it does when you’re drunk. Exhausted neurons respond more slowly and send weaker signals. What experts didn’t mention is that it could cause you to dream something ridiculous.
My dream was like a movie.
I was walking outside somewhere with several people I guess I knew because we were talking. Then came a zoomed in, close-up shot of a piece of chewing gum in a silver wrapper. Probably Doublemint because that’s my favorite. I open it slowly and pop it in my mouth. Then, that one slice of gum soon felt like 10 pieces of hubba bubba!
When the gum got so huge I couldn’t keep it behind my lips, I had to start picking it out… gobs of it! I didn’t care that my friends saw me doing it because even that was better than having it burst out of my mouth in some volcanic blast. I spent the whole rest of this dream (who knows how long it was – it felt like hours) pulling gum out of my mouth. No matter how much of that gunk I raked out it just kept growing bigger.
What a waste of brain cells, right? Thing is, when I woke up, I wasn’t thirsty and my mouth felt normal.
Then I had a bad dream that was real.
Always an Apple fan girl, I’m used to trading in phones to get a new iPhone. Apple sends you a box filled with packing and a label already affixed. All you need to do is put your trade-in inside the box provided and shove it in any UPS drop off box… and there’s one just down the street from me.
Trading in a phone to Samsung is an AWFUL experience. They send you an email with a PDF of a label. You have to find your own suitable sized box, print your own label and you have to take it to a FedEx shipping center. You are NOT allowed to drop it in a box… you must get a receipt. The nearest shipping center to me is on the other side of Columbus. ARG!
There was only one perk.
The only good thing about the horrible Samsung trade-in experience is that I spent the afternoon with my son and favorite granddaughter… and we ate lunch.
And then I got lucky.
I was able to secretly catch Ben acting totally goofy — jamming to a song that Coco demanded he not change to something else — and I’m now actively planning a blackmail scheme.
TIL (Today I Learned): Lewy body dementia (LBD) is a disease associated with abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein in the brain. These deposits, called Lewy bodies, affect chemicals in the brain whose changes, in turn, can lead to problems with thinking, movement, behavior, and mood.
The reason I learned about LBD is because Robin Williams’ autopsy revealed he had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout his entire brain and brainstem — he had Lewy body disease (LBD).
If you’re old (like me) you probably remember the TV Show, “Hee-Haw” that was on the air from 1969 to 1992. And… if you ever watched a single episode you probably remember the song Buck Owens sang about deep, dark depression and excessive misery.
That’s what doomscrolling will get ya!
Doomscrolling (or doomsurfing) is the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of negative news. First it was COVID… now it’s Russia and the Ukraine. Oh… and high gas prices and inflation and a bajillion other things that point to a gloomy future ahead.
Doomscrolling is not healthy. When social media networks push trending topics, the problem intensifies.
Current events are bad enough without doomscrolling.
Take Bill Zollars for example. He was appointed to the board of USPS by the current administration. Zollars was under a federal probe regarding defrauding the Pentagon in 2011, and he’s currently associated with companies that compete against USPS. So why appoint him, Democrats?And you won’t likely find that info by doomscrolling.
Watching news on TV in excess can be bad too.
Check out the body language and expressions in the photo below…
When learning more about what’s going on in the world makes you feel like they look… unplug. 🙂
Turn off the TV and stop negative online surfing. Close your Twitter app. Talk to your spouse or friends or read a good, relaxing book. Listen to music. Play with your dogs if you have them — inside or outside, they don’t care. (They just don’t want to be outside if you’re inside — and vice versa.)
TIL (Today I Learned): The first three fictional artists to reach number 1 in the Billboard Hot 100 were all groups: the Chipmunks, the Archies and the Partridge Family.
My son informed me he is going to run for Mayor. It’s his opinion that there are two things in Seymour that should be priority that aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
Drainage and trains.
The train situation is being worked on, I guess, but not sure how much longer that’s going to take. Currently, it’s a huge delay and concern.
US 50 floods — and with all the recent construction, it’s still only two lanes. Village Green is under water right now. Seriously underwater. Cars in driveways with water above the frame. Water is over the road at the Presbyterian Church, but not bad at all around the hospital. No standing water there as evidenced by the standard ‘out the window while at the doctor with Mom‘ photo I always take:
The outside photo is always taken in conjunction with our standard selfie when Mom goes to her doctor’s office. Neither of us appear to be having the best day ever. The rain did a number on my hair and we both look like we’ve been punched in one eye… mine is the left, and hers is the right:
The good news is that she’s healthy and I feel better than I look. 🙂 Carl and Mozzie are doing just fine too…
One thing I found interesting when speaking with her doctor is his opinion on COVID. He thinks we’re currently in a lull of sorts, but numbers will rise again. He said there will be no more boosters, but we’ll move toward a yearly injection. I hope he’s wrong about the increased numbers of those getting ill — especially seriously ill — but so far believe he could very well be correct.
TIL (Today I Learned): Ethiopia has a unique calendar which is 7-8 years behind the rest of the world. The current year in Ethiopia is 2014.
