Thanks....

Thanks for all of the offlines, cards, e-mails, prayers, thoughts and well wishes. I am starting to feel half way human again and hope to be back to terrorizing and pilfering chocolates from all of you soon. As far as what exactly I had, all I know is that the doctor's called it Cellulitist, which is a pretty broad term for an infection from a bug bite, spider bite, blister, scratch, etc. Now personally I hate that term. Cellulitist has to do with a skin infection but to me it sounds too much like that word "cellulite". I have visions of all of you scratching your heads and thinking, 'Vic is suffering from moldy cottage cheese thighs?'

But things are improving and I finish up the last of the anti-biotics this week. I will be glad for that as I have had a few side effects from them, one of which I learned was that it can cause problems with tendons, which explains the ankle tendon messed up now. The blood tests came out okay, there were a couple that weren't in yet but the doc seems to think everything is in order. I am a bit anemic though, which didn't surprise me, I am not a big meat eater.

Stink Pot the cat has bounced back and forth between, sprawling on or near me constantly or total aloofness, (yeah...she is the same as ever).

I hope to catch up with your blogs this week, and find out what has been going on in your lives. I can't have ya having too much fun without me! lol.....Take care and thanks...

Color Correction...

COLOR CORRECTION

Some days you can be just too pink...

I don’t know what I did exactly last week, I don’t know if it was a bug bite, spider bite, cat scratch, or something else. But I ended up with a blistery red spot on the inside of my leg, right where the knee bends. I couldn’t get a band-aid to stick so out I drug some gauze and adhesive tape and I taped that sucker on so well I knew it wouldn’t come off even if I went swimming. I guess that was the wrong thing to do... By evening the inside of my leg was so red and sore, I thought it was the tape and that it was chaffing or was put on too tight and pulling at the tender inside of my thigh. So I took the tape off and thought that would help. By morning I was sicker than a dog, nauseated, headache, fever. Still clueless, I thought I had caught the flu, I had been around family that had been battling the flu. So I laid in bed and shook for a couple of hours with chills and kept checking my temp. I ached all over, and my leg did too. When my temp hit 103.6, and I saw the redness was creeping down my leg, I knew I had an infection. I took some Tylenol and got into see the doctor just after lunch.

Waiting in his office I just sweated buckets, and all I wanted was water...just give me a glass of water was all I could think. The nurse took my temp and blood pressure and when the doc came in he asked what was the problem. I told him I thought I had an infection and needed an antibiotic. He looked at the bottom half of my leg and said yep, infection, and sent me on my way with a prescription. So I went home with my bottle of pills and lived on water and toast till about the third day. My temp had gone down, I wasn’t as nauseated, and my leg did seem not quite so swollen, but it had changed. My pinky leg had gone a mottled purple. I made another appointment and got in to see the doc for a second time.You just know when the doc doesn’t say anything but sucks in air thru his teeth that isn’t a good sign. So I went straight to the hospital and got poked and prodded and bombarded with a million questions when all I wanted to do was sleep and drink water. It’s funny how after everyone left I couldn’t sleep then. The nurses kept peeking in to check up on me, vitals every four hours, and some crazy lady across the hall who kept yelling hello. If only I could have gotten her to yell "Marco"...I could have yelled "Polo" back and it might have relieved some of the monotony.

The second day the doc came back in with a horde of people, interns I am guessing or some teaching class, but they had all come to garner a look at the lady with the purple leg. I tried to pretend to be half asleep, it’s hard to muster a lot of dignity when your leg is getting felt up by strangers with all of the "ooh’s and ahh’s". Two more docs came in later and sat and looked at my leg and threw back ideas for more antibiotics, as they thumbed thru their little electronic gadgets looking up info. Finally they came up with something that made them both agree and as they left, they said they would be back, one later and one at 4 o’clock. I told them both to come back at the same time and we would have a party. I am not sure if I was still a bit loopy then, or if it was just me, but I will blame it on the drugs.

I finally got to sleep a few hours by the third day and it’s funny how things go thru your mind. I couldn’t help but think if only I had a webcam and laptop, I could do a live webcam of my leg and you all could watch it turn different shades, but I guess that would be about as interesting as the cornfield they have on webcam for the farmers to watch the corn grow. Still I though of all of you, any time I surfed the TV channels and came across the shopping network, I couldn’t help but think of Sleepy lady, which got me to thinking about MkChippy, and then onto the rest of you and what was going on in your lives and blogs. I thought of Morgan and her band of merry pirates and how I really was going to end up being "pegleg vic". By the fourth day I was climbing the walls and ready to go, sick or well, just wanted out of there. My arms were starting to match my leg from all of the needle pokes, blood draws, and IV’s. It seemed a line would never last more than a day and then it would infiltrate or leak and then it was back to the other arm to poke around some more.

Finally on my last day, with yet again another different doctor, he thought maybe I was well enough to go home as long as I was loaded down with antibiotics. They found a drug store open on the week-end and had them deliver the medicine out to the hospital. The woman would not let go of that bag of pills though till she was paid. Thank goodness I had my check book with me, or I think she would have gone back to the pharmacy with the darn pills. It just floored me, but I guess that is how our health care system is going. Money up front or it’s no deal.

I am doing a bit better, the leg is more mauvey-pink now, except for my ankle which still looks a bit angry. I think a part of that though is I feel like I have torn my Achilles tendon while walking on the leg when it was so swollen. At least that is what it feels like, so it may take longer for the leg/ankle to heal up than expected. Sitting seems to aggravate it more, so I haven’t been sitting up much with it. I go in later this week, and hopefully I get a good report. I already know it is going to be another round of antibiotics but pretty soon I should be back on here and in the pink...but not so pink that I am purple...

Born Free...

 Yesterday for a short while, Stink Pot was a fugitive... she had escaped. It was awhile before I realized it was awfully quiet and then I noticed the cat was nowhere to be found. I searched the house high and low for all of her favorite spots and finally determined she must have snuck outside unnoticed. She has made her run for freedom a couple of times and usually I find and capture and return her back inside within a few minutes. I am not sure how long Stink Pot had been missing but it could have been an hour or more.... I felt so guilty.

So I walked around the house softly calling "here Stink"..."here Stink"... and then louder..."here Stink"... just hoping the neighbors weren't outside to hear me. I was worried, she wasn't answering. I looked high and low and still no Stink Pot. I went back inside and looked again. Frustrated I stood looking out the back bedroom window and called again.

Then I saw her. She crawled out from among the shrubbery onto a rock and looked up and meowed and ducked back underneath a bush. She continued this game every time I called her. She knew she wasn't suppose to be outside. She knew she was in trouble. The more she ignored me, the more a dark cloud settled over me.

That darn cat....

I begged and called her to come, while she frolicked among the shrubbery. I mentally kicked myself for planting the shrubs in the first place. I had a mixed border of wiegelia, spirea, viburnum with an assortment of perennials mixed in. She chose the biggest shrub to hide under, the one that was blooming profusely and covered in bumble bees... I hate bumble bees...

After so long I realized I wasn't going to get near her, she was going to have to come to me. I then thought of the bright idea of dangling a piece of string, and hoping with her playful nature, she would take the bait. ...I could not find a piece of string..or yarn...or anything... I momentarily considered dental floss, but pulling a piece of it out of the package, I realized it was just way too thin. Finally after digging in my closet I found an old belt from a terry clothe robe. I stood at the edge of the border and coaxed her with it till she crept closer and I could grab her...

She hissed...she growled...she spit...

I hissed and growled, (but didn't spit), right back.

We spent the rest of the day ignoring each other. She sitting in the window and pouting. Me fuming that  most of my morning had been wasted trying to catch an obstinate cat. I know cats can survive on their own outside, and some would say to let her be an outside cat. I have considered it. She loves to stalk,  hunt, and be on the prowl. Goodness knows how many twist ties she has attacked and brought down with her stealth-like manner. She will do a little ceremonial dance around the offending twist tie, pounce, and then do an odd somersault roll. She does this odd roll every single time. I am not sure if it is some kind of animal death roll for it's victim... if she has been secretly watching the WWF while I am not at home, or if it is all for my benefit and she is expecting me to hold up a piece of paper, giving her a 6.0 for her dismount. 

She thinks she can take on anything. Whether that is from lack of sense, or a huge ego, I don't know. She will do her little dance around me as well...hopping in circles, waiting to attack my ankle. All my finger shaking and mumbling to her,.."hey I am bigger than you"..., has no affect. I think if she were to be an outside cat, her nine lives would be gone within a week. I know that being an outside cat her life expectancy will decrease dramatically. I don't think it's quite fair to my neighbors either having a roaming pet. Somehow we will have to come up with some sort of compromise, Stink Pot and I.

She wants her freedom, and I want her to live... For now she will just have to make do with practicing her WWF moves while I hum the theme from "Born Free". If you listen really quietly you can hear a little thud....yep, another twist tie take down.

She is a natural.... a natural born predator...

O' Pioneer...

 When I was a kid I use to love to read stories on the pioneers and read about the hardships they faced. I found it fascinating that they just packed up and moved westward to unforeseen territory and dangers to build new lives. It took guts, determination, and a strong will to forge that path. It seemed everything they endured, and life in general, was full of hardships with endless work just to survive and eke out a living.

They were tough, those pioneers...

I remember sitting at my grandmother's table and listening to stories of hard times, and what people did just to keep body and soul together. My grandmother would often tell stories of her own mom's life and all the work she did around the farm to keep it going. I knew my great grandmother, I grew up and always remembered seeing her sitting at my grandmother's, her daughter's, table. She was always dressed in a cobbler's apron over a cotton dress, hair in a bun,... and she would just sit. It was hard for me to visualize her as the woman my grandmother spoke of. My great grandmother would point at things she saw that needed to be done......swat that fly...sprinkle the paprika on the deviled eggs, ...and other small insignificant details she saw while sitting. She didn't seem so tough, she just seemed old. I guess she really was when I think of it.... no wonder she sat, she must have been tired.

My great grandmother was a school teacher for a year or two, eventually married great grandpa, and they then moved to one of their farms. Their folks were rich, and they were rich, until the great depression and they lost all but one small acreage. Great grandpa was a jack of all trades...a truck driver, a barber, he also broke horses, but if there was hard work to be done on the farm, one of the hired hands did it or great grandmother. Listening to my grandmother speak of her mom, it amazed me, ...she amazed me. Great grandpa would fell the trees and great grandmother worked the wood up by herself. She milked the cows, she grew a huge garden, planted trees, ..it sounded like she did most of everything, and I am sure she felt like she did too. She was to me, a pioneer...a strong pioneer woman like I read about in my books. She was strong, she was fearless, she was fascinating...

The other night I got to thinking about those pioneers in our past when my electricity went out and I was without those modern conveniences we have. It was storming, skies were brewing, rain was falling, there had been talk all day of monster storms that could erupt. Tornado watches had been issued, flood warnings, wind warnings,... all kinds of warnings ...

I watched the skies, and the layers and layers of angry clouds roll past. I watched them til it became too gray and rainy to see them any more. I wandered thru the house, hoping for the smallest glimmer that the electricity would flicker back on. I couldn't find a battery operated radio, I couldn't listen to the news, I was cut off...all alone from the outside world and I was.....bored.

How in the world did those pioneers do it? An oil lamp, lit, didn't give off enough of a glow to do any thing. How they managed not to go blind by using them to work by in the evenings is beyond me. How did they fill their evenings? Or did they? Did they just go to bed once it got dark? It was hard for this nightowl to comprehend. Usually I adore sleep... there is nothing better than curling up and taking a nap on rainy days, or staying in bed as late as you can on a week-end morning....but I wasn't tired... I was bored. The storm raged...and I fumed, peeved at my inconvenience of no conveniences.

So I did what all good pioneers would have done in my situation. I grabbed my tiny flashlight and made my way thru the house. I perched the flashlight carefully on the counter and I dug in the cold darkness til I found it. Moments later I was back perched by the window, peering into the darkness, the flashlight and two scoops of chocolate chip ice cream by my side.

I had saved the ice cream from certain melty oblivion... Okay maybe the carton didn't seem that squishy and I had to put a little more muscle into scooping out that first scoop, but it wouldn't go to waste. Everyone knows how fast ice cream melts...or would be melting soon in my powerless fridge. After awhile I finally just gave up and went to bed. Ten minutes later and the electricity came back on.

I had persevered. I even in fact felt a little pioneer-ish. I had kept my sanity, I had survived the storm, I had been totally powerless,....for an hour and fifty-five minutes...


This pioneering stuff ain't for sissies...