Dr Visit

I put off the annual exams because of Covid, but went today (been 6 years, actually).  More questions from the Dr than I remember from past visits.  Alcohol and tobacco usage, diet, sleeping habits, socialization, happiness level, activity level.  All of which make sense.  I keep up with medical advice from trustable sources.

It's not like I smoke or drink much, but less is always better.  I probably won't change that, much.  A cocktail while I am preparing dinner and 2 small glasses on wine with dinner aren't exactly binge-drinking.  And I'm not the most face-to-face social person (but I did attend a small party at a neighbor last week, and everything went well).  And I just generally feel pretty happy with myself.  Some people can't stand being alone; I have no problem with that.  And the Dr agreed.

The tests went great.  Reflexes good, diet great, mental alertness better than average (he asked a few odd questions), general activity level satisfied him.  He had me stretch a few times, touch my toes standing up, and reach across my back to have my hands meet (they did, barely).  So, in general, he says I'm in better than average condition at 73 (and 74 next month).

There was the always weird prostate exam.  Woo-Hoo!  But he found no problem.

The technician said my EKG results were excellent.  I'm not sure about the blood pressure.  It was 163 over 80.  She said the systolic is always a bit high in the stress of an exam, so maybe reality is 140 over 80 and she said not to worry about that.  

I have to visit a separate office for a blood panel and a different one for a cancer screening.  And another for one of those general allergy tests (where they stick a board of needles in your back and see if one spot puffs up).  

There were also question about family medical history.  None have died of anything that seems genetic (well Mom had Parkinson's).  The main cause of death in my lineage seems to be old age.  So I might reach 2050.  100 would be cool (if it was in good health).  But personally, I'm willing to "check out" if things get too difficult.

But it was a really positive visit and I'm glad I went.  I even (oddly) feel healthier.  😀

Sister Visit, Not

I live 2 hours away from the town where most of my family lives/lived in MD.  When my sister and hubby decided to move to FL after retiring, she planned to visit me before leaving the area.  Well, moving is stressful and busy, and she couldn't get the free time.  I understood that.  I would have been equally pressed for time.

This April, she emailed that her hubby was returning to the old town to meet old friends and go fishing in Canada with them.  Susie decided to go along as far as the old town and stay with her daughter and visit old friends there.  She said she was going to drive the 2 hours to visit me one day here.

Things happen.  She decided driving 2 hours in a strange rental car (she doesn't like driving) was too uncomfortable.  We considered meeting in the middle, but that would have just been in a restaurant for or hour and that's not a great place to talk.  I considered some outside locations, but the temp is hitting 95+ and the heat index over 100, so that wasn't a good idea.

We decided to just keep talking on the telephone every so often.

I miss her generally.  She is not only a sister but a person I like.  I mean, if she was only a neighbor, I would like her too.

But with 2 months notice, I started fixing the house up.  I'm a single guy set in his ways; I don't worry too much about how the house looks inside.  But I repainted the bathroom, mopped the floors, washed other walls ( the kitchen really needed it), etc.  And I had yard stuff to show.  The new compost bin, the new deck (3 years old but she hasn't seen it), the enclosed garden, flowers everywhere.  Etc.

It would have been nice to show her the things I've done.  And to sit and talk to her.

But at least I have a nice clean house!  That should last about a month, LOL!

Cleaning and Projects

I kind of stay to myself and don't have many visitors.  I'm even somewhat of a hermit.  And the inside of my house is NOT my pride and joy.  I could almost be happy in a log cabin and thresh floor, given a decent kitchen, stereo, plasma TV, Internet and waterbed.  And I'm sure the cats would be happy too. 

So my focus is mostly on the yard, cooking, excellent TV when I watch it, cats, and sleeping in comfort.  Dust bunnies on the floors do not bother me and what I can't see under the furniture matters even less.  I can go longer without vacuuming than you can imagine

I've been in my house for 30 years and I still have some of the original paint and carpet.  I smoke and the walls need cleaning.  Mostly, if something isn't broken, I don't worry about it much. 

But sometimes there is a visitor and I have to clean.  I used to have to do that about  once a month, but since I broke off with a friend 6 years ago and Dad had to move on to assisted-living several years ago, I haven't done much at all.  My house and I were going to slowly deteriorate together.  That's half humorous and half reality.  Most of you would cringe seeing the inside of the house.

My sister is visiting soon and I suddenly care about the inside.  I've been busy.  I filled 2 vacuum cleaner bags with dust bunnies.  I've been going around sweeping dust-webs out of the corners of the ceiling.  Tomorrow, I'll mop the vinyl and wood floors and vacuum the carpets. 

Today's project was to repaint the full bath.  It was overdue...  I had the tub and tiles replaced in May.  Of last year!  It had plaster repairs at the time, and I meant to repaint it then.  But there was always something else to do.  I have had the cleaning supplies, primer and paint and supplies sitting in a bag in the bathroom ever since. 

So yesterday I started doing it.  I used the TSP (trisodium phosphate) to wash the walls and ceiling.  The stuff works great, but needs several clean wipes after.  I used the (very clean) toilet has a convenient supply of clean rinse water.  It took 4 clean-water-wipes before I was satisfied it was gone.  When It all dried, I used a primer coat on the bare plaster.

Today I painted.  The taping of the edges was quite a job.  A bathroom has a LOT of edges (lights, outlets, tile, cabinets).  I have done a fair amount of painting (every apartment and house I've ever been in got thoroughly painted) because I don't like beige and white walls.  So the actual painting part is fairly easy.  Except that the ceiling needed painting also, that was awkward.

It only took 2.5 hours from opening the paint can to cleaning the brush and roller. 

I hated the color!  I didn't want a strong color in a small room, and a bathroom should be a relaxing color.  So I chose a very light green.  Picture  the innermost stalks of a bunch of celery and add a touch of gray...

I chose the color, the color matched the paint chip I gave the store, but it seemed so gray!  I decided I would have to mix more green into the paint and redo it.  But as it dried during the evening, it looked a lot better.  It was actually detectably greener as it dried.  It needs a 2nd coat, but it looks good enough for a visit.  And I still might add some green to the paint for the 2nd coat. 

At least now, I can rehang the shower curtain rod, the shower curtain, and the large mirror (for which I am surrounding with a stained wood frame that matches the cabinets and outlet covers).

I plan to do the kitchen Tuesday.  Everything is easier the 2nd time...

Wednesday will be for collecting clutter into boxes to hide away temporarily, LOL!  Also, cleaning the kitchen and putting all the stuff I use on occasionally into cabinets and closets.  And mop the floors.

Thursday is for grocery-shopping.  I will be due for that anyway.  My local meat/deli/liquor store (it is a weird combination) has a special this week on rib-eye steaks, standing beef rib roast, and large fresh shrimp.  I haven't decided which I will get yet.  But mostly, I buy fresh fruits and veggies, so that also means a trip to Safeway.

I have the outside looking reasonably good.  4 large new deck pots and 3 hanging baskets with flowers that are just beginning to bloom; possibly the first ripe tomatoes, beans, and fancy lettuce.  The new compost bin is "finished" (well, I will add a top later).  Flowers in bloom in the yard. 

I hope the cats don't panic.  It would be nice if they come out and greet her.  My sister is a cat person too.  Iza is most likely to come out.  She is generally fearless.  Marley is friendly but skittish.  Ayla routinely stays in the bedroom except at dawn and dusk, though lately she is going outside more often and so would have to pass through the main rooms if she wants to get out.

I feel like I will be ready for a visitor.  Sometimes, it is not so much how the house looks so much as how much better it looks that it did before.  Does that make sense?  Cleaner is cleaner, and showing a new improvement to the house (the bathroom and possibly the kitchen) matters.

The sad thing is that I have a list of home-improvement projects I will be starting in a few weeks.  When it gets really hot outside in July/August, I pay more attention to the inside.  And, in recognition of 30 years here, this is the year I'll be having contractors in to do stuff I'm no longer trusting myself to do properly or at all.

I'll be posting about those in a few weeks as I finalize choice of new flooring to replace old carpet,  extending basement siding and hung ceiling,  removing a basement washroom I've never had much use for, new driveway, and installing an attic floor for storage space.

I also plan to update utilities in the house.  The 30 year old water heater will be replaced with an instant water heater and a dedicated one for the kitchen sink.  A new refrigerator (the existing one will become a basement storage refrigerator for bulk vegetables), some damaged doors will be replaced, and there are various small things that need expertise I don't have.   I'm even considering one of those ceiling attachments you can hang skillets from for convenience.

I'll be busy with overseeing some work then.  I will probably be the last serious work I have done on this house.  

Catching Up

I'm surprized it has been 6 days since I last posted.  Well, I've been busy and put my posting efforts into the cats' blog.

The time has been spent, mostly, in yardwork and finishing the compost bin.  The compost bin is nearly finished; I'm really only deciding whether to put a solid top or a wire top on it.  I made the mistake of looking that up on the internet.  Naturally, people come down on both sides.  Some want rain to fall in to keep the composting material wet, others say it gets too wet and better to moisten the material as needed.

Don't laugh, but I'm doing both.  The lid will have a chicken wire top for normal rain to fall in, but also an attached plastic top I can drape over for torrential rains.  It matters because composting microbes need air and too much water fills up all the spaces where air can enter.  If there are 2 good ways to do something, I will generally find a way to do both.

But most of the outside work has been in the yard itself.  I started several projects last Fall and some new ones this Spring and have a couple yet to start.  The veggie garden has been a priority.  As much as I like flowers, I would rather eat a tomato than stare at a flower.

The tomatoes are my favorites.  I have 9 heirloom plants and 3 hybrids.  All are in places where I haven't grown them before (to reduce diseases).  The 3 hybrids are backups in case it is a really bad year for diseases.  My 2nd favorite veggies to grow are Italian flat beans.  Last year they just didn't grow; this year I am harvesting already and can expect to continue that until the 1st frost.  Italian flat beans are not the grocery store beans; they have a deeper, nut-like taste.  My 3rd favorite veggie is bi-color corn.  Yellow corn is too starchy, white corn is too sweet; bicolor is just right for me.

And of course, I have cukes, radishes, carrots, melons, kohlabi, spinach, snow peas, leeks, scallions, chard, beets, etc.  I need to plant my Fall crops of broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbage soon. 

The other major yardwork project is cutting down brambles in the backyard and killing wild ivy, wild grapes, and some persistent invasive vine from a neighbor's yard.  And there seems to be poison ivy cropping up everywhere! 

The flowerbeds are doing well, with one exception.  My oldest bed, along a fence, has gotten overgrown with grassy weeds.  That might be a Fall project (pull, cover, and smother) over Winter.  The meadow flower bed is doing wonderfully this year; much better than I expected from the poor growth last year when first planted.  The Hummer/Butterfly/Bee bed is newly-planted this Spring, but is showing some flowers now.  The oldest bed (Spring bulbs of daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths; Summer plants of daylilies is doing well enough, but I want to cover the Spring bulbs with sheet plastic to kill the weeds while the bulbs are dormant.  The daylilies are all along one edge and will of course stay uncovered.

My new Astilbe beds (1 in the front yard and 1 in the back) are struggling a bit.  I think I should have planted them deeper.  I put 3" of compost on the soil and planted them in that; it may not be what they needed to set grow out roots well.  The compost always seems dry.  The backyard Astilbes were getting too much sunlight and 1/3 have died.  I set a shade cloth over them last week and am watering both beds every other day.

So there is a lot to talk about.  I'll post on each part of the yard over the next week, with pictures.  But I wanted to get things listed first if only to make it easier for me to decide what to post about each day. 

And to add to the list of things I need to do, my sister is visiting in a week and I have a LOT of cleaning to do!  She hasn't been here for several years and THAT visit was focussed on moving Dad from here to an assisted-living facility near here.  So she hasn't actually "just visited" for almost 10 years.  It is a big event for me.

So...  More later.

Its Going To Be A Long Unhappy Night

Iza and Ayla have to get their annual vet visits this time of year.  They were both scheduled for them last Friday but things went wrong.  I put out the PTUs  (Prisoner Transport Units) or "Cat-Carriers" for those of you who don't read "cat" early in the morning.   

Marley wasn't a catch, but he had just been to the vet in one, so he panicked.  Iza seemed pretty relaxed.  Ayla was nowhere in sight as soon as the PTUs came out.  But there were hours to go...

The appointment was for 3 pm, and the vet is only 10 minutes away, so at 2:30 I picked up Iza to put her in the larger PTU.  She fought harder than usual, so it took almost 10 minutes of hard grabbing and brute strength to get her inside and locked in.  She complained a lot afterwards.

Ayla was nowhere to be found.  If she wasn't in DEEP-HIDING just seeing the PTU, she sure was after Iza yelled a lot!  I searched the house top to bottom with a flashlight under every bed, every closet, and all the hidey-holes I knew about.  Apparently, she has some I don't know about.  After 20 minutes, I had to give up and just take Iza to the vet.

That was bad enough, but they both needed FIV shots started because after a year of them being indoors, I relented last Fall and let them outside again.  The shots have to be established 3 times (one shot every 2 weeks).  Marley had just finished him series, and I was royally tired of bringing any one to the vet every 2 weeks. 

Not bringing Ayla in at the same time as Iza means that they are both now on separate every-other-week schedules.  The vet says they CAN allow some overlap so I can get them both on the same schedule for the future shots, but getting them BOTH into PTUs the next time may be as impossible as this time was. 

I MAY have to just get used to taking them all to the vet one at a time!

Even worse is getting the stool samples for the annual exam.  I was lucky with Marley.  He obligingly pooped while I was in the basement in sight of the litter pans the day before his exam.  No such luck with Iza or Ayla.

So when I brought Iza to the vet last Friday, no stool sample.

Tonight is different.  I have enclosed Ayla in the basement with a clean litter box, food, and water, and a bed.  Iza is enclosed in my bedroom with the same.  Iza is in the bedroom because she demands to be near me more at night than Ayla does.  Marley sleeps out on the cat trees at night until dawn.  Of course, because Ayla is enclosed in the basement where the litter boxes usually are, I have a litter box at the bottom of the stairs for him. 

EVERYONE is going to be upset and unhappy all night.  Ayla in the basement, Iza in the bedroom, Marley not in the bedroom (and none of them able to sleep together or with me except Iza).  Its all a mess but the only way I can get the stool samples identified by cat.

I can best hope that both Ayla and Iza decide to poop in their respective enclosed rooms before I go to bed.  Oh happy thought.  But unlikely!  In the past (and I've gone through this before but not in such a complicated way) it has taken both about 12 hours before they would deign to poop after being so upset and restricted.  

My elderly Dad (who lives here now) says he can't imagine why I put myself through this for just a couple of "damn cats"and all the expense).  When  asked him why he used to have a boat that could only be described as "a hole in the water you through money into", he said he enjoyed the boat.  Well, I like my cats.    And a good bit more than he liked the boat.  Reminding him of all those nice weekend Summer days we spent scraping barnacles off the bottom of the boat and repainting/patching it endlessly didn't get through to him at all. 

But Dad complains about my aquarium, my garden, and flowerbeds, so there isn't much that makes him think effort is worthwhile except HIS favorite thing (watching golf). 

BTW, when he lived on his own, he watched golf when he could on his smallish old TV.  When he moved here with me, he commented that the HDTV was great.  Now that he is used to it, he thingks it is a waste of money.  If I dragged in an old 25" CRT TV like he used to have, he would gripe all day.

But this is about the cats, and I will not sleep well tonight knowing they are all separated from each other and 2 of them from me.  I hate this...

Sister Visit

My sister Susie and hubbie Walt visited Saturday.  Naturally, I never thought to take pictures.  Well, it's always so busy and good when they visit, I forget.

They loved the new look of the house.  I asked Susie for her opinion about what color to paint the garage and front doors (the siding is gray/green and the shutters darker green.  I was thinking the doors should match the shutters.  Susie has great color sense.  Florist experience, and she has a Martha Stewart tendency (a good thing - you should see her house).  She said leave them white, so I will.  The more I picture the green vs white doors, the more I like the white.

I cooked a chicken and extra parts in the slow smoker.  It turned out great (for once - I get lucky sometimes).  Susie brought a potato salad that was oddly familiar.  I make mine spicy and vinegary.  Susie said it was Mom's old recipe.  The dressing is mayo with powdered mustard and a bit of catalina dressing.  Ahh, a touch of flavor and memory from my youth!  I will sure make it that way next time...

I love Susie and Walt. Even if they weren't related, I would love to have them as next door neighbors.  I mean, if they were strangers and moved next door, we would be friends.  And I bet ours cats would get used to each other too.

[Marley - No we WOULDNT!]  Quiet Marley!  Yes you would.  Because the fence would be down between our yards and you would get used to each other.  Lucy is NOT evil!

Anyway. it was a great family visit, and Dad and I are going to visit Susie at Thanksgiving.  Dad doesn't know that yet.  There is no point in telling him until a a day before.  Eldercare sometimes means just announcing things suddenly.  LOL!

[Ayla:  Well, we all hid unner the bed fer a reason]  Yeah, you are are all CHICKENS.   Susie and Walt are "cat people".  You should have come out and got scritchies.  THEY know how to do them too, you know.

[Yeah but...]   Treat time!  All come out to the kitchen...  [YAY!]

Whew!  But the visit was great and it was so nice to see family again...