Still Alive

I have been sick, sick, and sicker.  A croupy cough, snotty nose, gunky chest, hacking cough, more snot, a fever, then a round of coughing until I threw up for two days, then a few days later an actual stomach bug and more of the pukes. That was yesterday, actually.  I feel like I have been run through a wringer, my joints ache and I am still dehydrated, but bouncing back ever so slowly.   My voice still comes and goes.

A few things have happened.  I got new glasses, which feel very heavy after 5 years with my half ounce pair.  But they are so scratched up that I can't actually see with them on, so...these super heavy ones it is.

My father is trying to die, but for real, unlike my overdramatic attempts with this chest cold.  He's run down to the point of being worn out and I don't think he has anything in that reserve tank.  I've been running interference from afar, terrified of giving him this crud and actually succeeding in doing him in.  His wife says he sleeps all the time and has thrown out his medicine.  He's stopped doing anything he likes and is not even leaving the house anymore.  She's ready to kill him for the worry it's causing because it's not like him at all.  Sometimes she calls just to say, "Well, he's still breathing.  I can hear him in there snoring."

I am at a loss, he's a grown man who has never had a health issue until that stroke at Christmas.  Since then, he's been in increasingly worse shape despite physical therapy and about 50 doctors appointments.  He keeps being told how lucky he is, but to his mind and, he's right, he's always been very healthy.  It doesn't feel very lucky to have half your body feel like it's got an electrical current running through it.  His hand feels like it is cold, he can't hold things very well, he stumbles sometimes.  He's showing his age all at once.  The doctors have been useless, that I can sympathize with at least.  I'm wondering if acupuncture might help.  I wonder if he has apnea.  He's refusing to go to any more doctors.  I wonder if I can get him in a headlock.  He's pretty little...

I want to be over this crud so I can go look at him and see what my heart says to do.  I'm only getting filtered info and have not spoken directly to him in over 2 weeks.  I'm just getting this down as a point of reference, I don't expect blogging about it will accomplish anything, it's just been a big part of the last week or so and I'm having to make decisions without enough information, in particular about what HE wants.  Judy and I would prop him up with a drip and keep him hanging on another 20 years if it were up to us.  I just read a book I think he would like.  He still hasn't been out in the kayaks, we were threatening to drive to Maine together-him to get it off his list, me to actually SEE some stuff.

Anyway, that's the goings on.  Cairn kindly sent me a second water bottle after I tattled on Ben for stealing my first one.  I've joined a few camping trips and one manatee snorkeling trip that went from pretty basic to INSANE this past week.  I'm going to snorkel with manatee and then paddle around Florida in my wee boat a few days.  Those nuts can do what they want, whew!

Here are a few pics:

From the full moon trip to see the bats-which we actually saw this time.

Matt is skeptical about Kimberly's boat.  It does not match ours.  

Glasses:

Drove out to see the moon rise Friday:

The house is in that clump of trees

All of my moon shots were blurry.

Back at the house, the dogs had thoughtfully cornered this tiny possum.

The possum was less excited to see us.

It was on the other side of the fence from the dogs, but I guess it didn't really know that and froze up anyway.

I fully do not understand how freezing up is a good defense.  They are house pets, not the Jurassic Park T-rex.

Matt is off to Baltimore until Tuesday.  YES!  Yes, he did cancel our backpacking trip for my birthday because he did not want to reschedule his rehab appointment Monday.  YES!  Yes, he DID INDEED reschedule it anyway after he got the chance to travel for work!  NO!  No, he will not be home ON MY BIRTHDAY.
NO!  No, I am not irritated AT ALL.  WHY WOULD I BE?

Okay, I am a little.  :/
And it's rehab for a back injury, not a drug problem.

Januarium

Well, I didn't get my 84 miles for the month. But, I will have something near 70, so I am not too far behind.

Got our taxes filed today. So that's done. Yay.

Got another backpacking trip on the calendar to the Cohutta, which will be awesome! Going during the butterfly migration.

Accepted 6 friend requests from people I have not met IRL yet. That's borderline crazy for me. I'll probably panic when that sets in.

Started a joint blog with 2 other folks, it already has several followers and comments. We barely have anything going over there yet, I guess it just appeals to the right crowd. It's all hiking and backpacking stuff, one lady is a personal trainer, so she's covering exercises. I'm yammering and the other lady and I are writing up our assorted trip reports. People freaking love to read about trips! It's like I found my calling.

Got Matt a rain fly for his hammock, got me a rain kilt because I can't wear rain pants over a skirt, lost 4 pounds and an entire pants size doing an abs and back workout every day. I still can't do all of the exercises, I am in awe at how genuinely out of shape I am. I drip sweat after 2 minutes, half an hour later, there's me, outlined in sweat on the mat. I think my posture is better.

I also can't believe I am still so tubby. 27 days of sporadic walking and near-daily abing. I should be a size 6 already. That one size drop just gets me back where I was before Matt starting bringing home holiday goodies from work. So my normal clothes fit and I don't have to just wear the elastic waist pants. Hardly even seems right.

Have some social things lined up for the kids the next couple days, then backpacking this weekend with Matt and Melanie. Then it will be February and leap year to boot. Jake has a couple days off next week, so Monday won't be crazy for once.

I have not watched much of anything this month, it's been a weird month. I am still reading Station Eleven, still love it. Last night I stayed up overnight and read Grandma Gatewood's Walk in one go. The book was so good. Finished up The Abstinence Teacher today. Very interesting read, I like the insight behind beliefs, to see the process, even if it falls apart.

Matt and I are watching The Leftovers, a series based on a book by the same author and that has another angle on sects and beliefs that I am trying to puzzle out. Same thing in Station Eleven, though it's a gorgeous story about life and love and carrying on. I've never read a story about the end of the world that's given me such raw hope like this one.

Why do people latch on to what they do? What gap does it bridge? That's all we are, pocked and holey creatures who seek out people and things to fill those spaces and smooth us out, make rolling through this life less jolting, yo.

Wishing us all smooth travels.

Guntersville Museum and the Week

Started watching The Bridge in the original Swedish and Danish.  SO different from the Americanized version, but check out that last name up there.  Saga Nor&#233.  I can't even begin to pronounce that!

We have had some lovely sunsets of late.  This is out my bedroom window.

We have been home for a few days.  Saturday Matt dropped a tree on his hand and though it ended up being a fairly minor injury, the initial panic left him exhausted.  It took all 4 of us to get the tree off his hand, one finger was caught fast. He was in major pain and it took a few minutes to get the tree shifted.  I have rarely been so scared, I was certain he'd crushed it to the point of amputation.  He kept screaming and screaming.  When he got free, I thought he was having seizure from the shock making him shake so hard.

After we looked at it, which took a while to work up the nerve, it looked skinned a little and that was it.  I am not saying it did not hurt, but I am pretty sure the 'worst' of the experience was being trapped and that amplified everything else that happened.  I know he had some flashbacks or some 'what if' moments that night, poor guy.  We actually hand cut more wood Sunday and burned all the debris from the area we have been cutting trees down near the barn, hauling up smaller branches to the burn pile in the yard.  That took the whole day and netted just a little wood, the bigger tree Matt dropped is still laying there...

Monday the kids and I knocked out some personal projects and house stuff.
Tuesday bright and early, the guys were here to put in the central unit.  They were done well before lunch, it's amazing how quickly and painlessly that all went.

The kids and I spent the day on the Wii!  About 2 years ago, Matt redid some wiring and blew out everything that was plugged in to that relay-TV, dvd player, Wii, the stove.  I forget what all, but Jake had unplugged the Wii from the cords and it was fine, but the cords were fried.  We finally go around to spending the $17 for new cords (I know, crazy) and set that up.  FUN!  I kicked butt bowling and amazed them all by falling off places in Mario Kart that they did not know were ledges.  I am SO very bad at racing games!

I spent 2 hours in Animal Crossing for the first time in 2 years.  That was just as pleasant as always, I love a relaxing stroll around the town!

By Wednesday we were ready for some fun time, so we headed out to Guntersville Museum to check out the shadowbox display.  I sent out a head's up and Amanda and Sunni opted to join us.

This is the view from the restroom.  I squealed when I went in, it was SO lovely and bright!

The museum is free, it's at the old armory building at 1215 Rayburn Ave
They have Guntersville history via Native American artifacts found in Marshall County and they have info about the dam and the lake as well as a display about the Wyeth family, who have roots in the town.

The temporary exhibit is shadowboxes, which is what I mostly wanted to see.

I really wanted this one!  It was $169 though.
And to be honest, his face does not line up.  That would drive me nuts.

Afterward we went to lunch and then walked on the greenway along the lake to the playground.

They leaned in to make it spin faster, but I liked the way they looked crafty...

It's supposed to say 'Project Knowledge' but Chan blocked that bit.  Still, Chan and the trees, both established in 1998!  Baby Girl will be 17 in just over 2 weeks, it just blows my mind that they are perched on the brink, I want to yank them back so badly.

In other news, Matt's buddy from work, Bill, had a major heart...thing over the weekend.  Not an attack, there's no blockage, but the muscle is very weak.  They thought pneumonia, but that has been ruled out though there is fluid in his lungs and he was on oxygen a while, but just a CPAP type thing now.  His kidneys quit working and they did dialysis Monday and then again tonight.  He's not responding much.  Matt is stressed about that just in general and then because it's so well known they are close friends, he get asked all KINDS of stuff and when he does not know, they want him to call Bill's wife.  He won't do it.  I don't blame him. Betty from accounting really has no business needing his white blood cell count.  He's getting flack for that-he's exhausted.  He came in from work all week ready to go to bed by 8. It's still iffy if he will even live and Monday, Bill was supposed to move to a new project that was going to allow Matt to be moved up with a promotion AND a raise and now that's all back burner again while Matt does both of their jobs.  I feel badly complaining when it's someone's actual life on the line, but that promotion has been dangled like a carrot for 3 years now and it was just about to happen.  Now that they have Matt doing both jobs for what he's already being paid, no one will push to change things.  I think he just got screwed over at work.  Again.

His plan for if I go in the hospital is to tell everyone I died right off the bat.  So, fair warning.

This weekend is shaping up well, next week we have several things planned-I am determined to take advantage of this warmer weather!  I know it won't last.

Celebrations

It has been a stretch of good days, low key and low stress, filled with lots of warmth and occasional laughter.

We went to see Into the Woods with some friends and I did not like it as much as the play!  Though Chris Pine as the Prince was wonderful-best scene in the whole thing.  It was still very enjoyable, we had a great time and the kids have not seen the play 50 times like I have, so they could care less it was NOTEXACTLYTHESAME.

Ben has 2 banjos.  At Jake's birthday, Chan made signs for all the food, warning of gluten or dairy and there was cornbread and in another pan, also cornbread.  That sign got put on the banjo afterward and it was dubbed 'Also Cornbread'.  So now we say things like, "Are you bringing Also Cornbread to Katy's?"

We have spent the last couple of weekends cutting wood, though this past weekend was a really lame effort all around, no one (other than Matt) was in the mood to do anything and there was lots of just standing there and it ended up taking all day for what should have been a few hours of work.

Luckily, the previous weekend everyone was either in high spirits or was tired of listening to me doom and gloom about the upcoming COLD and opted to shut me up with a stack of wood to the ceiling.  We burned nearly ALL of it.  It was COLD. Single degree temps for 3 days! It did not snow at all, so I imagine there's still that looming this winter...though I am pretty okay with that, it's a nice change and short lived.

none of these trees were harmed in the making of firewood

 We had lunch at Amanda's one afternoon and it was nice to just hang out for a while.  We kicked around camping ideas, but this time of year when it's cold, we tend to dream bigger than budgets will cover.  Ski trips and scuba diving, weeks on a houseboat and driving cross country.  One of those, sure, but not all.

On Matt's Friday off, we went to Shakalaka so he could jump.  Ben LOVES Shakalaka and rock climbing, they both use so much muscle and he's so strong and fast now, I know it must be pure joy to feel that capable and healthy.

Chan, upside down again!

The lighting in this place is HORRIFIC.  The fastest I can set my shutter is half a second, which SOUNDS fast, but not faster than a flipping girl!

Look how HIGH he can get!

Matt flipped on the trapeze and landed on the back of his neck, which hurt him pretty badly.  He spent the rest of Friday and overnight on the heating pad.  Then Saturday morning he got up and ran the chainsaw for 3 hours, then split wood with the maul for another hour.

I feel so inadequate!

On Sunday, Matt's band practice got cancelled so he came to Owen's birthday party with us!

We intended to leave around 5...we got home just after 1 a.m. and Matt's alarm goes off at 4:30.  And he did not even call in.

I was on the couch talking and hanging out and Inde came in and climbed me and put her cheek on mine and whispered, "I am sorry about Kaiju."  I nearly lost it and there was no 'nearly' for Matt.  It was SO sweet.  That meant so much.

It was SO COLD, we cut wood all day Saturday in 35 degree weather and ended up peeling off shirts and jackets to leave at the house, Sunday was nearly 50, but windy and damp and it cut through you.  I watched them play, quite happy to be in a toasty house!

After the party, Kurt got out the Red Stag and something else, Crown Royal Black Label?  Mainly, Red Stag.  We had a glass and decided to play Cards Against Humanity for a little while so no one was driving home after having a drink.  It was only 7, after all.  5 hours later, we were all aching from laughing and no one wanted to leave, but everyone had to work.  Next time-Friday night games with a sleepover planned!  

The last bit of good news is that the central unit will be replaced within the week!  HEAT!  But mainly AIR CONDITIONING!  The winter is not so bad, but last summer, most of our stuff was mildewed and that's gross.  Things that did not mold over were damp and the coats and blankets stored in the closets smelled awful this winter.  

I filled out an application online with the credit union this morning, they approved the amount and gave me a much better rate than I had hoped for since it was unsecured.  The payments are the same as what we have paid the past 6 years on braces every single month, so there's not even really an adjustment to the budget.  I just paid Ben's off in October.  It was surprisingly painless and 15% lower interest than a cash advance on the credit card!

Next up-redoing the shingles on that one side of the porch roof until we can manage a new metal roof.

Catching up, photographically speaking

 Dae's 16th birthday party:

Our weekend home alone, movies, mud masks and enough junk food to make me gain 2 pounds right before my physical:

Monday at Monte Sano:

Tuesday at Monte Sano:

I set up a 2-day volunteer time at the state park before we left for Disney for folks to come up and drop in and work for an hour or two.  It got great feedback, lots of RSVP's.

In the end, the ranger I spoke with actually did not make any type of list and was unprepared for volunteers at all AND no one but Katy actually showed.

Can't blame the weather, I call "LAME" on everyone.

We walked around for 2 days picking up trash.

The kids were awesome, they worked the whole time without any griping, other than a little lamenting over lack of people to hang out with.

They made the best of it, though.

Tomorrow we have game day at the park.  I added a small 'Halloween' type element to it and I am pretty sure attendance will be way off because of it.  Oh.  Well.

The rest of us (doomed) folks will enjoy ourselves.  The weather has been phenomenal, but just chilly enough at night to remind me...we have not cut the first piece of firewood this fall.