Tag: General

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It’s the wadded up sinuses, time of year

Everything is in bloom, including some native plants here that I haven’t seen in a while due to the drought.

This means during the day I’m pretty much okay. I can breathe with only a few sneezing events.

At night I get to sleep okay, then an insidious thing happens. One half my sinuses clog, then I roll over and the other half clogs, and by 2am I’m a full on mouth breather.

I know this because I wake up with my mouth dry as Death Valley and thirsty as a man in the Sahara.

Apparently my snoring disturbs the dog. He’s part of the reason that I wake up. He’ll hit me with a paw, or try to see where in my throat the snoring sounds are coming from. It’s disconcerting to have a dog who thinks he’s an Ear, Nose, and Throat Doctor.

He’s also the kettle calling the pot black. He snores, barks, and farts his way through the night. Sometimes he howls like a wolf in the dead of night and he’s completely asleep dreaming.

Did you know that there’s still a hard wired response in the human brain to wake up fully alert in fight or flight mode when we hear that sound close by?

I didn’t until I found myself waking up in a standing position on the bed, with a baseball bat in hand, and my back against the wall.

I see the dog looking at me in the darkness as though I was the insane one. My instinctive flurry of activity disturbed his slumber.

Since that night, I’ve heard him howl several times. He’ll be laying on his side twitching as though he’s dreaming then he’ll arch his back and howl. Usually by the time he gets to that point I’m by his side calling his name, gently stroking his ear or side. He’ll come to, look around very confused then snuggle against me. I’ll wait until he’s asleep again and then lie back down.

I don’t know what he’s dreaming about. I gather that he’s scared and lost in his dream based on the howl.

This is a new thing. It started happening over the last few months. Perhaps in response to the death of the other half.

We, the dog and I, just returned from a walk.

There’s a remote possibility that we’ll get some rain today. It’s cloudy right now but I think it’s all a big tease. If we were to get some rain It might clear the various pollens from the air but I’d bet that a day after the rain it’ll be worse. The added water will hit just when the little plants can use the boost to go full flower adding their unique pollen to the mix already blowing around.

At which point, I’ll be sleeping in a gas mask…

This time of heavy flower / weed pollen only lasts a few weeks. I don’t have a lot of trouble during this part of the year. I have trouble when the pine tree pollen blows around so thick it’s a yellow mist. Everything is covered in yellow dust and my sinuses feel like they’re filled with concrete. That time of year is yet to come. I think it’s going to be a doozy this year, I could be wrong, but with all the water in the ground, I’m betting the pines will be making up for the drought years.

For any of you humans who may be semen-phobic… I remind you that’s essentially what pollen is, so you’re already covered in, and breathing semen.

I’m sure some folks have just decided to live the rest of their lives in a hazmat suit.

Just to make you phobic folks truly miserable, remember why W.C. Fields didn’t drink water…

“Fish fuck in it.”

So there goes your option to run into the bathrooms and bathe.

Ahh, My work here is done!

Have a great day.

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That was surprisingly easy and nice.

It turns out that I don’t have to pony up a complete payment for the car.

That’s a mercy! The young lady asked first if I was wanting to refinance it, and I smiled back at her, “With these insane rates?”

She thought about it for a minute then looked at the current rate. “OH!” She said, “Let’s see if there are any other options.”

I patiently waited. After several phone calls, she said, “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gong to merge your account into the joint account and then that account will be yours alone. The car loan will then remain there and your automatic payments will continue as normal.”

WOW! Talk about super nice! I’ve gotta say that this particular credit union has been fantastic for the 30 – odd years that we dealt with them. After the fire, when literally everything including our IDs had been burned. It was this credit union that handed us debit cards, and gave us access to our cash because they had photos of us, scans of our signatures, and the smarts to identify us without our drivers license. The same cannot be said of two major banks we were dealing with!

It was amazing.

And once again, they’ve come through making the life of one of their customers easier instead of insanely over complicated.

This is a relief. Now I’ll move forward with putting new tires on the car and have the service done. (Why bother to do any of that if there was any question about me keeping the car?)

Then there’s this. I was out and about with my new iPad and was having a problem getting data on the cellular link. I tried a bunch of things, nothing helped.

“OH NO, I have to call Apple.” Surprisingly I got someone who knew her stuff, she was in Canada and was very pleasant to talk with. We walked through everything and on the Apple side everything should have been working.

She was very sorry but had to direct me to my carrier. It was okay.

Elapsed time on the phone 10 minutes including hold time… Nice!

On the the cellular carrier. Again, got right through to a lovely lady in Idaho. We stepped through normal stuff and then she called someone with a bit more experience. A gentlemen came on the line and said, “I’m going to reset some things on our end, would you please reset your network settings on your iPad? “

I said, “Sure,” and set about that process.

Boom everything started working properly. Elapsed time including hold time about 10 minutes.

So 20 minutes grand total and the iPad is working exactly as it’s supposed to.

Today the power will be off for about 6 hours. Oh goody!

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Today is gonna be hard

It’s taken me a while to get the harp consignment lined up. I thought it was never going to come together but now that it’s here, I’m uncertain.

I know that I need to get the harps into the right hands so that they can go to new homes. The harps should be played, loved, used, and bring joy to others.

That being said, they were a big part of his life they were also part of my life to a lesser extent.

The harps defined him. To be without them, feels like letting go of him.

I know this is the right thing to do, but it’s going to be hard.

Wish me luck.

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One of those days

I can’t get focused. I’ve been trying, but thoughts appear and vanish before they’ve fully formed.

I’ve been dreaming a lot. I have no memory what those dreams were, I only remember waking up in the dark to a concerned puppy face sniffing me. He insists on sniffing both of my ears before allowing us to go back to sleep.

I don’t know what that is about but it’s become ritual.

After the sniffs, he’ll lay down with his head on my chest or a paw on me. It’s almost as if he’s saying, “You’re not alone”

I’m fairly certain that the dreams are bad ones. I base that on the expression the dog has. It’s his “What is your problem,” expression. So I may be talking or shouting in my sleep.

On the plus side I’m only waking the dog. On the down side when I get ready to sleep with someone, or have someone else in the house I’ll have to warn them to wear ear plugs.

There’s a lot I should be doing but it’s warm, and the sun is shining, I may put off some of those things I should be doing for another day.

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O’Dark :30 Blues

We’ve all had them.

Either we can’t sleep or a child, dog, or spouse is unwell and we find ourselves shuffling around thinking we should be in bed dreaming peaceful vacation-like dreams.

Instead we’ve grabbed some clothing against the early morning chill and are debating the reasonability of just turning on the coffee machine, while cleaning up after our sick loved one and getting on with the day.

On the bright side, dawn can be very pretty and the birds are very vocal this morning.

My particular morning started with the distinctive sound of a puppy working on vomiting. I hadn’t slept very well myself. I suppose I was awake / asleep / whatever? I call it skip sleeping. That’s what it’s like from my perspective, I’m kind of asleep but mostly awake, aware, and not getting even the benefit of a good nap. But at the same time the clock will advance 5 or 10 minutes in an instant.

This morning, I was in this state and noticed that the dog was making unusual sounds. It sounded just like the sloshy sounds I make with my stomach is upset. He was, I think, asleep, then suddenly jumped up and made for the door.

He made it to the deck outside, hurled, then looked at me guiltily. I saw this by the purplish golden glow of sunrise beginning.

The dog skulked off into the yard and I could hear from the deep shadows the sound of him hurling again. As the purple gave way to golden light I rinsed the deck and told him he’d been a good boy.

He seemed content to lie out on the dry end of the deck so I left the back door open, then went back to bed.

I couldn’t get comfortable much less sleep. I’d resolved to lay there and close my eyes in hope of a few more minutes of sleep. Then I heard the poor pup hurling again in the back yard.

Nope! I’m not going to be sleeping, I got up turned on the coffee pot, comforted the pup and watched the rest of the dawn.

I just noticed, those birds who were so loud announcing the coming of the sun while it was still dark have completely shut up. Those guys need a snooze button!

It’s going to be a warm day and perhaps I’ll get a nap in.

The dog usually naps through the heat of the day. I think I’ll join him this afternoon. Hopefully after making some progress with cleaning more stuff from a closet and perhaps laundry.

Enjoy your sleepy Saturday morning. I’m getting another cup of coffee.