thisendoftheswamp

Last year, in the middle of a blistering heat wave, The Squire managed to snag the last window air conditioner Sears had in stock between Philly and DC. It worked beautifully, and I would recommend it highly. But winter is coming, and we need to remove it and put it away until next summer.

And we discovered you can’t get the fool thing apart to clean it.

Cleaning the filter is easy. Pull open the little trap door, remove the screen, wipe it off and slip it back in. BUT. The augers and grills which direct the air flow are not removeable by the average person. After two years of use, they had become covered with black mold, which you obviously do not want blowing around your house. The manual that came with the machine was no help, and when I contacted Sears’ on-line Help Desk, I “spoke” with three different people, none of whom knew how the remove the dirtiest parts of the unit.

 The Squire managed to find a very hidden clip, which popped the entire front off the machine. He had to remove the electonic panel from inside, and then I spent about a half an hour with Lysol, hot water, and an old toothbrush, scrubbing all the nooks and crannies. I was sorely tempted to put it in the dishwasher.

To top it all off, the inside of the unit is conscructed entirely of Styrofoam! Try to get that clean!

So now, the dismantled air conditioner is drying out on the front porch. We’ll see how it works when The Squire gets it put back together. 

Just before I had my most recent stroke, The Squire and I spent a day or two trying to clean a clog in the drain that carries the overflow from the pond into the stream. Recently, the drain has clogged again, and the pond was in serious danger of overflowing.  Remembering how much trouble we had gone through before, we decided to rent a “mini-rooter” from Home Depot, and The Squire went off this morning to collect this machine.

The first hour, the work went fairly quickly, as each pass of the “drill” pulled up a few bits of root.

And then it jammed. We couldn’t get the drill to go any further into the pipe, and even with both of us pulling on it, we couldn’t get it loose.

Great.

I headed down to the stream to see if I could push a hand-held plumbers snake up the tube, and slipped on the wet grass – flat on my back, all the way to the stream. Too late to worry about trying to keep dry – or clean – so I got into the water and mucked about with the plumbers snake.

And then I couldn’t stand up again. (Well, better me than The Squire.)

He finally managed to get a good grip on the cable, and the both of us tugged and pulled until we saw a bit of muck at the top of the pipe. And we pulled, and we pulled, and pulled. We also huffed and puffed a bit. I think I saw one of the trees jiggle a bit, but it might have been the wind.

At any rate, this is what we pulled out of the pipe. Twenty-five feet of roots and dirt, which The Squire promptly dubbed “the Ana-ponda”.

Sleep deprivation process is more like it.

I took my nighttime medicines before I left the house, and arrived at the hospital shortly before 9PM, pretty much ready to go to sleep. I had a zillion forms to fill out, most of them asking for the same information over and over again. Don’t these departments speak to each other? And then came the “wiring up”.

I had electrodes in my hair, on each temple, one on each cheek and another on either side of my mouth. Electrodes on each leg and two on my chest. There was also a nasal cannula meant to track how much air I breathed in, and a belt around my waist and my upper chest. All the wires were connected at the back of my head, and I was told to sleep tight.

Ha!

I have been trained practically since infancy to sleep flat on my back. Sleeping on your side, so I was told, makes one round shouldered, deforms your rib cage, twists your hips, and dislocates your insides. The gospel according to my mother.

I said my regular prayers and then prayed, individually, for just about everybody I could think of, from the President to the guys who collect our trash. Doors opening and closing, strange rattles, what sounded like a meal cart rumbling down the hallway, and my technician popping into the room from time to time added to the fun. Sometime in the night he did ask me to roll over onto my side, but after a short time, I rang back and asked how long I had to stay this way, because I couldn’t breathe. OK. He said he’d never had a patient that couldn’t sleep  on their side. I pushed the two pillows together and put my head in the space between them, so the wires didn’t press so badly into the back of my skull.

At one point I heard a repeated five beep sound, and I was hoping that meant it was 5 AM, as they were supposed to get us up at 6:00. The tech came into my room, and I asked him if it was time to get up, but it was only 3:30. It turned out the beeping sound was caused by the person in the room next to me having dislodged the oxygen sensor on his (or her) finger. Rats. My legs were giving me trouble (I have Restless Leg Syndrome) so I asked if I could get up and take another pill. That did, finally, put me to sleep!

The tech came in at 6, and disconnected me. I put on my clothes, shoved my wig over my gummy hair, and went to the bathroom to wash the goop off my face. I left the hospital at 6:30, was home a little before 7, fed the critters, and shoved The Squire over to his own side of the bed at 7:15. He woke me at 9:15, so I could go to a meeting at church at 10, but I came back afterward and slept another hour.

The only indignity I avoided was the staff trying to fit me for a CPAP machine. Many, many years ago, someone beat me up and then tried to smother me with a pillow, and ANYTHING over my face sends me into an Olympic-class flat spin. We’ve danced the CPAP dance before, with less than happy results. The staff even has to watch me when I come out of anesthesia after surgery, because if I wake up with the oxygen mask over my face, I flip out. It’s not a pretty sight.

So now it is about 8 PM, and I am going to take my meds and go sleep, unencumbered, in my own bed

The trouble with getting old is that you have to attend so many funerals. Yesterday, The Squire and I went to a memorial service for a delightful fellow, wonderful teacher, and devoted churchman, who died of Alzheimer’s at the age of 79. I knew Pete from my days as a church secretary, and both The Squire and I had worked with his brother at the old Equitable Trust Bank.

The postlude was Mozart’s Alleluia. Wow! What a way to go! (Pete shared a birthday with Wolfgang.)  I think I will have that for my postlude. I had asked for the Overture of 1812, but there was some quibble about the live cannons.

Blazer here, coz Mom’s busy.

Today I got to go over to church and meet a bunch of other dogs. Most of them were really nice, but there was one little snippy dog who must have thought she was a lot bigger than she really was. She barked and snarled at me; I could have swallowed her in one gulp, but I just knew Mom wasn’t going to like that, so I just backed up and let her think she won. Papa says that’s the best way to handle women, anyway.   Fr. Matthew was there, and his friend brought their two beagles. They were sweet little dogs, and I wish we could have played together longer.

Anyway, we all sat down in front of Fr. Matthew and he gave each of us a blessing.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but the lady who was at church last year did it too, so it must be a Good Thing. I even got a little card with my name on it. And then, a nice man gave me a little bit of dog food. It wasn’t my usual brand, so I wasn’t sure about it, but Mom said it was OK, so I ate it.

Mom and Papa have to go out to a funeral – I don’t know what that is either, but they seem sad, so I’m going to go give them kisses and hope they feel better.

Oh! Somebody sent Mom this picture of me. People say I have a nice smile, but I think I look a little goofy.

Because we do not have a fence, when Blazer is out alone, he has to be tied. We have a forty foot wire between two trees and a thirty foot lead, so he’s not exactly suffering out there.  This evening, he was barking his head off (a deer, probably) but when I went out to get him, he was gone.

The wire was “pulled out by the roots” and the dog was nowhere to be found. I called him. The Squire whistled and shouted and called him by name. Nada. I walked across the front yard and checked up and down the road. Not there, thank heaven.

As I was starting back up the drive, I saw him at the foot of a tree. He’d managed to drag all seventy feet of line behind him, and was well and truly crocheted around half the trees between us and the house next door.  From the looks of things, once he’d gotten caught, he’d tried going first one way and then the other around the trees. It took me a good while to get him unwound, and then I sent him back to the house, while I unraveled the rest of the rope. If I had returned to the house by walking back across the yard, I’d have never seen him.

And with all the barking he did before, do you think he’d at least answer me when I called him?  Ha!

Some body sent me this shot of The Squire and myself, taken shortly before I got “killed”. That T-shirt was the gag of the evening, and as close as he’d agree to wearing a suit. I do love him, though!

By the way, I was shot by his brother because I planned on taking over their joint travel agency. Yeesh. Just because I was going to force him out of his own business was no reason to get all upset.

Last Saturday our church did one of those “How to Host a Murder” parties. The setting was a wedding reception, so lots of people could participate.

After much waffling around, I was chosen – on Thursday – to be the bride. Oy! I went to the local Good Will, but could not find anything that would zip up, and the local thrift shop wanted $230 – for a dress which had been donated! They could have sold it for $10 and still made a profit!  As a last resort I stopped at a new shop called “Abbey Rose”. I’d been told the shop has consignments as well as overstocks from other stores, so it was worth a look-see.

I told the young lady why I needed the dress, and didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg, and she pulled four dresses off the rack. First one fit fine, and I was delighted. I dug up Youngest Daughter’s wedding veil, which was still gray after two trips through the washing machine, and I was all set. The Squire, on the other hand, flat out refuses to wear a suit, so he wore a black T-shirt with a tuxedo jacket printed on the front. (I swear, we never look as if we are going to the same place.)

Lots of mingling and asking questions, and suddenly, in the middle of our first and only dance, a shot rang out, and I fell to the floor. Kaboom! Someone raced over and tried to find my pulse, but I was pronounced DOA. Fortunately, our church isn’t named Resurrection “fer nuthin'”, and I was able to get up and sit down at the table, looking pale and interesting.

After I had recovered sufficiently, The Squire and I had a chance to cut our wedding cake, although I don’t remember us feeding each other a slice.

The original plan had been for me to fall over dead in my spaghetti, but I nixed that idea very firmly. Over my dead body, or something.

I have no idea how yesterday’s post turned up with today’s date, but ignore it.

This morning, The Squire woke me a little before 8 (early for me) saying he was dizzy, weak, and nauseated. Up and at ’em! His skin felt cold, but he was very wet and sticky.

I very quickly put Blazer out and fed him, got myself shoveled into a heap, eased The Squire into the van, and drove off to Patient First. Didn’t get very far – the dead tree he’d been muttering about decided last night was the perfect time to fall across the drive. It was only about as big around as my calf, but ten feet of it was more than I could move. We ended up driving across part of the neighbor’s yard to get to the street.

It was just 8:30 when we arrived at the clinic, so we had the place to ourselves. The Squire told the doctor he had awakened about 7:30, and the room was spinning before he even opened his eyes. He’d managed to get down to the bathroom, but came back up and collapsed across the bed. My side of the bed. (That’ll get you out of a sound sleep, let me tell you!) His heart rate was down, his oxygen levels were low, and he was severely dehydrated. All of this sounded horribly familiar. The clinic arranged to transfer him to the hospital, and we were there until about 3:30. More blood tests, a CT scan, EEG, and EKG. Nada. The only thing the doctors could come up with was that he’d gotten some sort of hit-and-run virus.

We are home shortly before 4, and in bed by 4:15.

I called a friend from church when we got to the clinic to ask him if he’d bring his chain saw over and cut up the tree. His wife called the Rector’s Warden, who called us and the Rector. I don’t know what people do who don’t have a church family to rely on!