Tag Archives: The Squire

Two Very Frustrated People

6 Mar

In spite of what it says, this was written Thursday evening, the 5th. If I don’t post it before 7 PM, it shows up as the next day.

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After a lot of wobbling back and forth about the oncoming storm – should we stay or should we go – we left Winchester, Virginia about 6: 45 last night, with warm-ish weather and a steady rain. Not too hard, but steady. We made excellent time, getting back home a little after 9:30, and that included a trip to the grocery store for milk and eggs, plus topping off the gas tank.

Eddie was extremely glad to see us! He insisted upon sitting in each of our laps while we checked our email, and then tried to sleep with us, which is simply not allowed. I did not know a cat could make so many different sounds! He sat outside the door and cried from 10:00 until about 2:30. When I came back upstairs, he was on the bed, and stayed there all night. He followed The Squire down in the morning and actually sat on his lap while he ate breakfast.

When we woke up this morning at 7:30, it had just begun to snow. I called the vet to see about picking up the dog, and got a recording. OK, maybe they don’t open that early, so I just left the house at 9 and drove on up.

Nobody there, and the lot had not been plowed. I went on up to Bel Air and picked up 40 pounds of birdseed and a dozen blocks of suet and headed back down the road. The vet’s office was still not open.

To say I am distressed is an understatement. It is bad enough that Blazer is not being cared for (although I’m reasonably sure they must have automatic food and water dispensers, the dog can’t get outside to take care of business) but there must be other animals there who have had surgery or need some sort of attention, and they have also been abandoned. I sent an email to a friend who worked there before she moved to Chicago, to ask if she had any personal phone numbers to I could contact somebody at home, but haven’t heard back.

In the meantime, The Squire was doing battle with Comcast.  Over a week ago, he asked them to change us to  their “Triple Play” program, which includes TV, Internet and phone service for less than we are currently paying for just TV and Internet, and would eliminate the $40 we pay to Vonage for our phone line, which includes unlimited overseas calling. I don’t understand it, but apparently it would save us a considerable amount of money per month. Of course, we may end up paying that back out to cover The Squire’s nervous breakdown.

Instead of more TV channels, he has lost some of his favorites, and Comcast still has not managed to change over the phone line. Today the young lady to whom he spoke insisted it would be impossible to do this and allow us to keep the same number. Mind you, we were able to change from Ma Bell to Vonage without any problems, but Comcast is not able ( unwilling, more likely) to do this. We’ve had the same number since 1972, and it is an easy one to remember, with a nice rhythm to it.  He was on the line with them when I left to go get the dog, and was still on the line when I returned. He had been transferred five times, disconnected twice, and was about to completely explode when I got home.

Some young lady with a heavy accent called here in mid-afternoon, and said they would call us tomorrow to arrange to switch the phone number, but she still didn’t know if we cold keep the number. That may be the deal-breaker. We can always go with Vonage if Comcast can’t get their act together.

Aaargh!

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Dragging Home

4 Mar

We visited several grave yards over the past week, looking for old tombstones. At one point I discovered I’d lost my cell phone, and The Squire had to keep calling it while I wandered around the cemetery with one ear to the ground. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea where I’d dropped it; I’d bent over to take several close-up photos of one particular marker and I figured that was where it had fallen out. Ironically, I almost never carry my cell, much to my husband’s annoyance.

We’d lost some time due to the bad weather, so The Squire decided to leave Newport a day early to visit the library at Johnson City. I wasn’t very happy with this arrangement, but he has driven miles out of the way to take me to doll museums and waited while I’ve read every single label plenty of times, so off we went. Actually, the Johnson City genealogy section was just fabulous, and we both had a grand time, finding lots of information, so it was worth the trip.

The motel in Salem last night was not very nice – no heat in the bathroom or extra blankets – and The Squire decided to watch one of his science fiction shows. Agents of Shield, I think. I wasn’t very nice about it, I’m afraid. I don’t like science fiction, and I don’t enjoy violence, and I don’t like the volume turned as loud as it will go. My hearing is very sharp for someone my age, but The Squire’s CMT has caused the small bones in his ears to stop working properly, so he is very hard of hearing. At home, he uses the closed caption option, which is a live-safer ( and a marriage saver!) for both of us, but the TV at the motel didn’t have it.

We arrived at youngest daughter’s home before lunch, and will leave right after dinner. The weather reports are all different, but the general consensus is that we will have snow before morning, and we want to get ahead of it, if possible.

 

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It Won’t Work

19 Feb

That’s an old (fill the ethnicity or denomination of your choice) expression for “we’ve never done it that way before”.

The Squire, as I have mentioned before, needs new shoes, which necessitates a trip to North Carolina to get a mold made. He has relatives in the area, so whenever we go down that way, we always stop in and see everybody.

He left home a few days after he graduated from high school, and every trip he’s made since, he’s gone to Newport, Tennessee, first, as it is the farthest, and then worked his was back up north, through Asheville, and Canton, NC. Well, it turns out the friends with whom we were going to stay in Newport are having company during the time when we would be there, and it just wouldn’t work out that we’d even be able to have dinner with them, let alone a decent visit. “Well, why don’t we just do the trip backwards? We can do Newport last.”

“We can’t do that. We’ll just visit my sister and we won’t see Dick and Jane.” I love his sister dearly, but she smokes non-stop and my poor lungs just can’t hack it. (Pardon the pun.) She knows this and understands it, but it means we’d have to stay in a motel. Dick and Jane are friends from the early days of our marriage, and we’d both miss the chance to spend time with them.

Finally, I pointed out that if we did the trip backwards, we could get the molds for his shoes made on our first day on the road, instead of the last, and the woman who makes them would have a week’s head start.  Now, that got his attention.

This morning, my back surgeon gave me permission to travel, and the weather down south will be in the 40s and 50s, while up here it will be in the teens and 20s, so we’re good to go.

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Brrr!

15 Feb

First time for everything.

Fr. M decided to cancel church services this morning. At 10:30 (right now) it has warmed up at bit; the temperature is 8F, with a wind chill of -14.  Last night when we went to bed, the wind chill was -27.  Our car won’t start, and the kitchen pipes are frozen. (We will NOT go into the numerous times I have suggested to The Squire that we wrap them with heat tape.) Fortunately, we still have running water in the bathroom, so we’ll manage.

Everything is sealed as tightly as possible, with a blanket over the kitchen door, and the dining room drapes shut and then pulled up and tucked into the window sill. That window is already triple-glazed, but you can still feel the cold reaching through the glass.  The thermostat is set on 70, but the dining room is only 61 degrees. We are ensconced in the den, with an electric heater running.

Last night, we turned the heat down to 63 when we went to bed, but because the furnace was chugging along trying to keep up, our bedroom got so hot I had to open the window!

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A Larger Can

5 Feb

It has been said that when you open a can of worms, you always need a larger can to put them back.?????????? All of this mess on this end of the table came out of one of my mom’s tubs. Even at that, it’s not as bad as it could be, as I have tossed a lot, and mailed off scads of pictures to various relatives.  Just to add to the  fun, The Squire decided this was a jolly good time to go through his genealogy pictures.

We are both handicapped by the fact that nobody thought to label the back of their photos. My dad had a scrapbook dating from before the time he met my mom, with lots of pictures of Carol and Mary, but no last names. There is also a small mountain of pictures from pre-war Pearl Harbor. The landscapes are all labeled, but who does he mean by “the three of us”?

The poor Squire is doubly frustrated because his aunt kept a perfect scrap book, with names, places and dates, and when she died, her daughter promised faithfully to send him “all of mom’s pictures”, which she did. By ripping every single one out of the book. When he received this lumpy package, he called her, and she was astounded that he wanted “ahl thet ol’ wrahtin’ an stuff. I just tossed that in the far.” (You need a strong Tennessee accent to do that line properly.)

I’m down to the last one or two inches of this second tub, and I may just dump it into the third tub and go do something more productive, such as catch up on my ironing.

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Back – Again

4 Feb

The Squire and I went up to Bel Air yesterday for yet another injection in my back.  Generally, I can drive myself up and hop in the car to go home, but the last two trips I’ve had to have an escort. This trip did seem to be a bit more involved than the last few, and I had more trouble walking than I anticipated. My leg felt fine on the outside, but when I got up to walk across the recovery room, my muscles were numb on the inside, and I moved like a person with an ill-fitting prosthesis.  I had intended to swing by Joann’s and select a pattern to make our great-granddaughter a spring dress, but The Squire put the kibosh to that, and insisted we go straight home.

Just as well. He helped me up the stairs, fixed me an ice bag, and I slept for two hours.

I was showing my doctor my thumb, and told him I had regretted ever having it done. He admitted “it’s a tough one”, and referred to it as Game Keeper’s Thumb. Apparently, back in jolly ol’ when the Laird shot a mess of pheasant, it was the Game Keeper’s job to go collect them all and wring the necks of the birds that were still alive. (Not exactly a Game “Keeper” in my opinion, but who am I to argue?) He would grab the bird’s neck with both hands and turn in opposite directions.  Eventually, the twisting motion would dislocate one thumb or the other, and the poor guy would be out of a job. I guess he could feed the chickens or something. The Squire said he just grabbed the chicken by the head and swung it around a couple of times.

I am almost down to the bottom of tub #2, and once this is empty I’ll take a break for a while, and maybe work on a dollhouse. I have one that desperately needs to be finished up, and is very close, except for a bloody thatched roof.  At least I can get The Squire to help me with that; sorting photos was strictly a solo performance.

 

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I’m Gonna Kill Him

13 Jan

I had a bad night last night, and didn’t come downstairs until almost 10:00. (There are benefits to being retired.) Since I can’t eat for an hour after I take my Synthroid, it was after 11:00 before I was ready to eat.

I asked The Squire what time he had gotten up – 7:00 – and asked if he was hungry. “I need something on my stomach. I can either have a bowl of cereal now, or we can reheat that stew** and have lunch together.”

“I’m not hungry now. Why don’t you go ahead and eat?”

It is noon. I have just returned from placing my bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, and he says to me, “You know, I am feeling a bit hungry. I think I’ll go fix myself some lunch. Do you want something?”

** “That stew”, to his eternal credit, was a recipe he’d seen on Rachael Ray’s show while he was riding the bike at the Y. He’d purchased all the ingredients and put it together himself.

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The Birdseed Blunder

27 Dec

The way we blow through birdseed around here you’d think they were going to stop packaging it.

We get most of our seed, a blend called Tree Nutty, at a place called “Wild Birds, Unlimited”. It’s a bit pricey, but they give us a nice discount, plus a $10 rebate for every $200 we spend, and I hate to admit how much we’re “earned”.  And then there’s the peanuts…

This is supposed to be a bad winter (although it is nearly the New Year and the temps all week have been in the 40s and 50s during the day) so I purchased a couple of bags of really cheap seed at the grocery store. When it snows we get starlings and grackles; they push everybody else out of the way, and shovel down whatever they can find, so “let ’em eat milo” is my attitude. Not even the blue jays will touch the stuff! (If you don’t know what this is, it resembles miniature dog kibble. I understand pheasants like it, but that is one of the few birds we don’t have here.)

When we went to the Y on Monday, we were running low but we figured we’d be up there again Wednesday morning, and could stock up then. Well, first The Squire and then I came down with bronchitis, and we not only didn’t make it to the Y, we didn’t get to church, or to Christmas Dinner with the in-laws.

Thursday (Christmas Day) I had to break open my stash of emergency birdseed, and let tell you, it was NOT greeted with enthusiasm. We have two feeders on the hook closest to the house, and the squirrels frequently get the square one spinning, so it comes unscrewed and falls on the ground.  I just left it there and filled it with the seed. Rather than eat from the tray at the bottom, the squirrels stood on their hind legs and reached down into the feeder, looking for something fit to eat. One enterprising fellow finally climbed into the feeder and was digging around, wildly throwing seed into the air, all willy-nilly.

This morning, The Squire hauled himself up the road and got Tree Nutty and finch food, so all is forgiven and there is once again peace in the valley.

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Waiting for Charon

25 Dec

The Squire says he is feeling better. Not well, but better. Wish I could say the same. I was hoping that this go-round would not be as bad as what I had last July, but is seems to be well on the way. I was suppose to read last night, and The Squire and I were to usher, but nothing doing. I’m not getting near anybody, especially little kids.

I’ve spent most of today in bed, which is, of course, exactly where I should be. I dragged my aching body downstairs at 3:00, and would probably still be there if the dog hadn’t barked at me. A wet nose and a loud noise in your ear will generally jolt most folks awake.

So, the foxes are fed, and I am going back to bed.

 

 

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

23 Dec

Everybody’s getting sick.

An elderly couple at our church are in separate hospitals. He is very unsteady on his feet, and has been sleeping in the recliner, as he finds it easier to get up and down from there, rather than the bed. Monday morning, the caregiver found him sleeping on the floor. He had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and missed the chair when he went to sit back down. Rather than disturb her (she lives in) he just stayed there.

She couldn’t lift him, so she called 911 to have him taken for observation.

Then she went to the bedroom to get the wife out of bed and found her on the floor. She had had a stroke during the night, so there was another call to get an ambulance to take her to another hospital. She has bleeding in the brain, and things look “iffy”. He came back home this morning.

The Squire is continuing his personal tradition of sleeping through major holidays, and has come down with bronchitis.  He is sleeping in the guest room, and confined to quarters for the duration. I picked up bronchitis when I was in the hospital with my most recent stroke, so I am just praying that what he has is not what I had.

Have had to contact any number of folks to tell them we will not be attending Holiday parties, etc. The only bright spot is that he didn’t get this when we had our Open House. That would have been just wonderful.

Or not.

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