Bair Hugger

No that's not a typo, or at least not mine.  It may have started that way. The logo is a blue bear silhouette with a smaller white bear cut-out, the young one getting a hug from the older.

Steve is home now recovering from his surgery. Our alarms were set for 3 AM. We were told be be there by 5:30, and there was a lot of prep ahead of time, including two showers with special soap to kill germs on the skin prior to the procedure. I got to rub it in all over his back, since that's where they operated, and he - like most of us - can't truly wash his own back. Since surgery was at the U of M hospital system in Minneapolis, and it was raining, dark, and the route contained road construction, the alarm time seemed sensible. 

What they "forgot" to tell us was that the building was locked until 5:30. We had the best luck on all parts of our route, arrived half an hour early, and had the rare privilege of standing around in a cold breeze in the dark waiting to the doors to unlock. Of course we were both cold. So were the other five people who hadn't gotten the useful version of arrival time requirements. But following this is where Steve lucked out and I didn't.

Unless you've not been to get surgery you know the silly paper gowns they hand out for .... modesty? They certainly don't do much else. Modest can even be iffy. But you come in a  bit chilled, the operating theater and your room are a bit cold, and most times the best you can hope for is a thoughtful nurse who will pile several heated but thin blankets on you. 

They never quite do the job, cooling down quickly. Nurses stay busy with many tasks and blankets are not the top of their list, even if they are yours.

Steve got no extra blankets, just a paper gown, and a pair of socks to keep him from slipping and falling while walking on the floor. There was a pillow in a weird place, designed to keep a sore back in the most awkward, painful position available. His bed was more slanted chair than bed, so the pillow was unable to be pushed aside, and the footrest was set at an angle where he had to keep squirming to keep from sliding off to the floor. There was also this odd little inset in his gown.  When he held it up to show me, neither of us could figure why they'd put a cup holder in a paper hospital gown in a surgical unit where beverages had been banned for hours. How cruel can you get?

Knowing he'd be much more comfortable with his feet up, but unable to figure out how it worked, I wandered down to the nurses' station to request a bit of help. As soon as she fixed his footrest she reached over to the wall and pulled a flexible hose off  the Bair Hugger. It plugged into that weird "cup holder" which of course wasn't a cup holder, and a flick of a switch turned on a lovely stream of warm air that piled out of the Bair Hugger and floated around inside his gown across the skin, bring welcomed heat to every inch he could get under that gown, lasting until he was wheeled away to surgery. AHAH! Hence the "air" instead of "ear" or even"are". 3M came up with a good name for this gizmo.

Suddenly he was warm and snug, and I was a wee bit jealous. Then again, I didn't have to go through surgery while they didn't quite put one under so they can still talk to him about the placements of the electrodes they were implanting. Of course, in the event, he got stubborn and refused to wake up enough to respond to them, giving them what I'm sure was a polite version of "Go *** yourselves." Or if not, they didn't bother me with details while chuckling over the story. After all, everybody knows you can't be legally responsible for whatever happens under the influence of anesthesia. It's why you can't sign documents, or drive, or ... whatever.

He goes back in a week to get the planted electrodes charged up from the new battery. This is much more sophisticated than the one that needed to be removed. The electrodes each have sensors which tell some other part how much current is going through them and whether it's right in the Goldilocks zone, too much (like the shocks from the first one), or too little and effectively useless. In the meantime he's getting lots of sleep today, and has a handful of good pain pills to last him till the gizmo gets officially turned on. They hand out antibiotics as well to prevent infections, and order him to basically not move his back. No twisting, bending, or lifting. If it drops to the floor it stays there until - guess who? - gets to go pick it up. If it's off to the side, guess who fetches it? If it's heavy... well, it just might stay wherever it is till next year!

Meanwhile we're both catching up on sleep. Or he is anyway. I'm getting a lot of phone calls, and surprisingly they're not all about how he's doing. The last one was about the solar panels on the house we sold. And no, if anyone else cares to know too, the bird guards around them didn't do much good. Pigeons are pretty smart critters as well as messy. By now eggs should be rolling off the roof and breaking all over the ground again. Apparently nest building under solar panels just isn't a pigeon's strong point!

Not my problem any more.

What Do You Call....?

Scientists are excavating fossils from a site in Big Bend National Park. The bones are huge and so was the dinosaur, one of the long necked variety. It is believed to be the largest dinosaur to have existed in North America, certainly appropriate for upholding Texas's reputation for pride in size, and lived in the Cretaceous period, around 69 million years ago.  Similar fossils from this species have been found before in the park, but this is the most complete and well preserved.

It needed a name, of course. So, they picked a very Texas kind of name for the beast:  Alamosaurus!

Imagine how that battle might have gone if one of those was still around. I can just see that huge neck swinging back and forth knocking fighters off the walls. While I doubt somehow it moved vertically I can also visualize it's head pounding down whomping on the fighters to clear the area so it can get back to some peaceful grazing again... supposing it wasn't as arid back then. They haven't said whether it was carnivorous or not, though my uneducated impression is the long neck varieties foraged from the treetops. It comes, of course, from watching "Jurassic Park" repeatedly. I doubt a "Cretaceous Park" would be all that different in general form/function memes. The name just lacks the same punch though.

But "Alamosaurus"?  LOL

On the Edge

As time gets closer, the worries increase. That's Steve's reaction to his scheduled and long awaited surgery coming up. It's close to a year now since we knew he needed it, when the pain interrupter in his back began to fail, first by not sending enough current to the electrode tips to disrupt the spinal signals, and them by sending shocks instead. Not only was each shock painful in itself, but the resulting jerks which each caused created even more pain in his back. We had to totally stop charging it, which still gave it about two days to lose all power.

There was a combination of efforts to assist him. First was a pain specialist who worked with him to prescribe opiates to ease the pain, which did a pretty fair job until she moved her office far enough away that the ride in the car to visits became their own torture. Arrangements to switch pain control to his primary care doc resulted in a lesser medication being prescribed for him, one which both of us have experience with and find about as useful for pain as a sugar cube. So after discussing it, we both decided to add ibuprofin back into his regimen. He's not actually supposed to be taking it, but we make sure it is combined with a meal to minimize digestive issues.

Concurrent with that were visits with back specialists who understand the various problems his back has, the failed implanted equipment, and the need to remove and replace it with a different version (brand) without quite the same history. Nearly a year later, the roadblocks to getting surgery for a "non-life-threatening" condition are finally surmounted. Those roadblocks included having both surgeons getting their schedules together, plan their strategy of one removing the old while the other placing the new, in as close to a simultaneous procedure for each electrode as possible, and finally, waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for the shortage of sterile IV fluid to get him through the surgery to abate, after hurricane destruction of the factories. The diminished supply had to be held for truly life-threatening emergencies. Quality of life, or lack thereof, was not top of the list. As a result his inactivity resulted in its own set of health issues, one of the results being he now uses a walker to get around without fear of falling from lack of strength or balance.

One other thing that gave some relief, but only when used, meaning almost constant use, was his heating / vibrating "vest", which lets his back muscles relax somewhat. It doesn't actually cure the pain but keeps him from reacting to make it worse by tensing them. It needs standard household current to work, not a plug from the car battery, so basically he's become housebound. He orders groceries online and I drive to pick them up. I now do the same for my own, so it works out well enough... except for wear and tear on my shoulder, but that's another story, and I'm making my own adaptions.

Steve had to travel down to Minneapolis a few times, quite a trip in the car even if I manage to avoid every pothole and manhole-cover divot on the way. Unfortunately, I don't quite manage that. The surgery will be at the U of M hospitals, and the pre-surgical exams are held there. At least we know the route quite well now, which will be a good thing at 5AM, or what I refer to as O-Dark-Thirty. Yes, I know that's the wrong phrase for the time, but reflects what it will feel like when we have to wake to start the involved home pre-op process before we go. Plus it's a catchy phrase, even if I never saw the movie.

As long as it has taken, a bad as the pain has been, as frustrating as the many setbacks have been, Friday looms with oversized importance. It HAS TO work!!! Nothing can go wrong, the pain finally has to leave, and life has to change for the better. So of course Steve worries about it. 

Wouldn't you? Flip a coin, heads it works and he can start to resume a normal life, tails and the worst imaginable happens. There no longer seems a middle ground option. It no longer is maybe it won't be that effective, it's now thinking something will go wrong and he'll be paralyzed... or worse.

One practical thing we both agree on, because we've done it before but the documents are in Arizona, is both of us redoing our living wills. Before Friday! Since we first did them, things have changed, including geography, closeness to family, marital status... and the ravages of getting older and the realities of living with them.  What has also changed is the increasing strength of our love and the depth of our appreciation for the other, even in the simple things like me doing something for him that will save him moving his back, or his assisting me to get my arms into sleeves or pulling things down off high shelves because my shoulders won't cooperate. Such little things, yet so important: we work as a team, because we are a team.

It Passes For A Road Trip These Days

I had a reason to put about 150 miles on the car this weekend, all country driving. Some forest, lots of fields awaiting a farmer's touch, a stream or two, modest ponds with old blown cattails on their edges, and some good company for much of it.

I may as well been having a bird watching tour. Within the first ten miles I slowed for two different pairs of hen turkeys. For some reason it felt like they waited for an oncoming vehicle before wandering across. No hurry, just a surreptitious glance to be sure I wasn't going to change either my speed or my lane and actually endanger them. They might have been wondering where the toms were, but who knows what goes on inside turkey brains?

Shortly after those, several crows circled the road overhead, leading me to wonder whether they were looking for dinner that was alive or already dead. 

Shortly after those, there was some roadkill on the shoulder. It was only briefly, and unidentifiable both for being flattish and all black, as well as for being in the bill of an adult bald eagle after three quick tries to secure it, which quickly flew off with whatever it was.

That really made my day.

Much of the rest of  my drive was full of the usual. Up here that means miscellaneous ducks, mostly mallards, Canada geese pairs already defending patches of high ground above a patch of water, trumpeter swan pairs swimming in those patches of water or heads immersed hunting for bottom vegetation, and the rare solo sandhill crane silhouetted on the ridge of fields still stubble from last fall. The three I spied were still very brown from the dirt they work through their naturally grey feathers to rid themselves of buggy pests wanting to hitch a ride with their meal.

I did see one more bird I never see except in hunting season, and then only after the hunt has been successful: a ring-necked pheasant. This one was very much alive, strutting around on school grounds still short from last year's mowing, the grounds themselves backing up to more trees and fields.

All in all, a nice cure for winter's residual cabin fever.

Stupid Fan Use Tips

 In my list of stupid irritations, this ranks low on my list, but people keep posting it like it works. I keep running into it all over, but mostly from companies claiming it will save me money on my seasonal utilities bills.

In the winter, every time I log in to pay the bill, the "tip" claims I should keep my ceiling fan blowing air down into the room. It's supposed to warm me up.

In the summer, the advice changes to having the ceiling fans blow in the opposite direction, pulling air up to the ceiling and away from me.

These rank with the silly idea that keeping your very furry pet inside a long untrimmed coat in summer actually protects your pet from overheating, so don't bother trimming their coat. The same failure of the idea works in both situations.

Look, if our dogs need a lot of fur on a hot summer day to "protect" them from heat, we'd also be wearing heavy coats when thermometers soar, right? If you believe it's good for your dogs, go ahead and do it yourself and find out. "Protect yourself" from the heat by bundling up. Better have a friend nearby to call an ambulance for you.

If we - people and pets - were inanimate objects, the idea would have a point. AIR TEMPERATURE would change with the fan direction. We all know heat rises, or at least we do if we paid attention in, say, 2nd grade. Cool air sinks. But we are NOT inanimate objects. I'm not. You're not. Unless it's dead, stuffed, and posed in a corner, neither is your dog. (It might be a possibility if you left your furry dog with its long coat on in summer.)

So why are we different? As mammals, we all have something called a metabolism. It's the reason one way we measure our food is in units called calories, which are units of - ready? - HEAT! We take in food (potential heat) and our systems turn it into the warmth we need to keep alive. There's a very narrow range for body temperature that keeps us healthy, and the body has mechanisms for maintaining it. We find it so vital to life that we seldom give it much thought. When we are cold, we cover up. It might be with clothing, it might be under the blankets. We might even stand in front of a window with the sun pouring in. We also keep moving, when we can, to keep our internal engine processing calories, stored in fat, into the heat we need. If we don't, our body takes over with making us shiver, until it gives up and we stop. It's all but too late then.

When we get too warm, we feel desperately sick within  a very few degrees of change. We excrete water from our skin to evaporate and cool us. We shed layers, avoid sun or other sources of heat, take a cool shower, jump in the pool. Whatever it takes.

Another thing we do to regulate our temperature is either find or avoid a breeze. Too hot? Turn on a fan to blow past you so evaporation works better. Too cold? Find ways to get out of moving air so it doesn't rob us of heat faster.

WE ALL KNOW THIS!

So why am I reminding you? Because stupid people are still claiming that blowing air at maybe 70 degrees on you in the winter is a good thing and taking it away when it's 90 degrees in summer is as well. The only way that works at all is if, in winter, the air blowing on you is realllllly warm. Not the degree or two higher temperature it is near the ceiling, but warmer than you are plus the heat loss from evaporation from your skin. All that does is cool you down even more. And summer? Sucking air away as passively as it would leave in order to head to the ceiling would not be fast enough to aid in the evaporation you need.

We are our own heat pumps. When that goes out of whack for us, we have to recall the methods that really work, kicking in or protecting from the cooling of evaporation. More wind on us = more evaporation. It's not what happens to the room temperature and where that matters. It's what happens to ours. Because we also are our own cooling pumps.

Got it?

The Great Gift Card Hunt

Surely I can't be the only one, can I?

It started at the Christmas party, getting a gift card for a garden center. (Yayyyy, somebody knows me!) After folks left and I was cleaning up, I wondered where it had gone in the chaos. At least this time it only took 20 minutes to rescue it from a stack of crumpled wrapping paper, tape, candy wrappers, etc. It was a narrow escape, so I made sure to put it in a safe place.

Do you have "safe places" like mine? I'm not so sure about crooks being able to find them, but I know they always tend to be safe... from me! About a month later I remembered the card. It's not that I was ready to use it yet. I had mentally designated it for the outside garden beds, and with the ground frozen for winter, it wouldn't be called on until, say, April. Like today! That place I stashed the gift card a month earlier turned out to be a collection depot for stray pens, paper clips, remotes, papers, writing pads that accumulate from mail where people are trying to sell me something, so whenever I scratch notes or a shopping list on one of them I am supposed to be reminded of the company and do business with them.

Sure, like that ever works! If they did the kind of business I needed to patronize, they'd already have me as a customer and no reminder would be necessary. Those people don't need to mail me writing pads. The pads I do get are collected in a single spot, and are used to make notes from phone calls on, write down my work schedule, or start/finish a grocery list or similar shopping reminders. Sometime in late January I ran across the card again among the writing pads and decided that was a stupid place to have put it. So I put it in a safe place, one I was sure I'd look for it in when I was ready to go to that garden center. Steve even watched me do it.

Remember that: Steve watched me do it.

As you must have noted from my previous post, the ground is thawing, the first bulbs are blossoming, things are greening up. As a side "benefit" the squirrels have reminded me of the damage they did to my plantings last fall, defeating every single thing I tried to keep them from eating my bulbs. How did they do it? By digging out some more of them now, of course! It was time to go to the garden center for replacement, though this time the bulbs will be started indoors, and only planted back in their designated locations once any remaining ones which got missed are up and growing so I can tell where replacements are needed.

Today was supposed to be nice, according to forecasts. But yesterday I called the garden center to see if they still carried lily bulbs, since they are typically planted in fall. Yes! They had lots of varieties! Better yet, there was a sale on them, mainly to clear them out and give the store more room for summer planting stock.

It was time to dig out my gift card from its safe place. Yep, time to find that safe place. I went through my pocketbook, since it was logical I'd have put that card with all my other cards needed for shopping, right? Except it wasn't there!

OK, how about the other side of my pocketbook? I have lots of cards there too, mainly the ones relating to my health. You know, insurance cards. Pacemaker identification cards with referral phone numbers. Appointments cards for future doctor visits. Some photos like my granddaughter when she was a kid instead of a grown mom herself. Other stuff nobody else needs to know about. Even some actual cash money! Not a lot since I mostly prefer plastic. And no coins at the moment since I've been spending them at the library to get copies printed out of the bazillion tax forms I need to finish figuring our filing status and how much we either pay or get refunded. Selling a house makes that extra complicated, but hey, ask me about capital gains now, eh? At any rate, I just got the latest forms I need to fill out in order to find out whether I need to fill them out - because I'm doing it myself and the state forms' instructions simply aren't online, except when they contradict each other and require a 50-minute hold on the phone. I offered to give the library folding green instead, but got waved away from that with their comment that my being three cents short in my pile of coins for the day's copies was not an issue.

This is the long way of describing the challenge of finding a gift card in the most logical place I might have placed it. Obviously I didn't find it there. Now the house search began. Had I misremembered taking it out of the spot where the writing pads had accumulated? Check again. Nope. It was gone.

I have some cutesy places in my room where I've been known to tuck things. No, I'm not telling you what those are! But the card wasn't in those either. I checked three times, twice yesterday and once this morning. You know, the way one does when frustration makes you doubt your own brain. Did I really check all of them? Might I have been stupid enough to ........  Never mind, I hadn't, at least not this time. There was a high location I didn't bother to check because of how it hurts my shoulder to lift something down, check inside, and replace it up high, and I'm not telling you what that is either, despite it being completely empty ever since it was unpacked months ago and is likely to remain so forever. I could change my mind, you know, and actually use it again because arthritic shoulders cure themselves, and mine might when I once again become as young as I was last time I used that location. We believe in silly miracles, don't we? Anyway, I didn't bother to check that place three separate times because each time I had the thought I dismissed it. Once I almost got my hand that high, but it hurt so I stopped. I filed the information away with a reminder that I hadn't actually checked that spot but wasn't desperate enough yet to try. There simply had to be better options left.

While having breakfast this morning Steve commented that he thought he'd seen me put the card in my pocketbook back when, just the way I thought I'd remembered, but where I couldn't find it. Had I checked absolutely EVERYWHERE? OK, time to go pocket by pocket, pull everything out before putting it back just to be absolutely sure. It turns out there were places I'd missed looking. One had store coupons over a year old from where we used to shop in Arizona. Badly expired, of course. Toss. There was a card for a free tow from a car insurance company I haven't used for several years. Toss. An old shopping list I'd saved because I couldn't find one thing on it at the time. Toss. I went front to back through every cranny and nook in the thing, did a thorough cleaning, and still didn't find the card. Oh well, I could spend cash at the store, right?  I put my pocketbook away where I could grab it before I left.

Then... wait! I picked it up again and checked the one spot I just skipped because I knew I had just totally emptied it out the day before in the library, the coin pouch. I'd turned the thing upside down to shake out every last coin! Apparently the gift card in its little paper folder had enough friction to stick in its corner and not drop out along with the change!

OK, I was ready to head out to the garden center. I filled the tank on the way since it was almost a 100 mile round trip, made a phone call trying to see if somebody was open to a visit (but who wasn't answering), and mentally reviewed the map of its location that I reviewed the night before, since it had been a dozen years since I'd been to that one. Once there I had a great time picking out bulbs, and even a small oddball begonia for inside the house. 

When I was checking out, I was informed yes, the sale was still on, but no, their computer system was down so I couldn't use my gift card today.

Sighhhhhh......

It's OK. I can go back another time. They've got really cool stuff!

First Signs Of Spring... Here

Spring has been indecisive this year. We get warm weather, then snow, then melt, then rain and snow, then melt, then snow..... 

It's confusing, and not just for people. Plants can't decide whether to stay submerged, or start to poke out. Squirrels are supposed to be relying on spring buds and blossoms as well as their remaining stores from fall, and instead are returning to digging up last years bulbs which should have stopped being bulbs by now, and instead have stopped being in the ground at all. New holes are appearing where protective cover has had to be removed because earlier blooming plants already need to be up. Last week a daffodil got dug up and promptly dropped because it took until it was out of the ground for the offending squirrel to realize it wasn't food they like. Unfortunately, since then it located several more of the summer blooming lilies it was feasting on last fall which it managed to miss back then. 

It didn't miss them this week. But now I miss them, especially after how expensive they were. Luckily I did pop into a big box store's garden department and locate some replacement bulbs at a much lower price for many of the same varieties. I plan to start them indoors next month so they are established plants at the beginning of summer, when I can see what if anything actually survived the squirrels, and plant the leafed out new ones in (some of) the holes. I may just go around to other stores to look for other varieties to safely pre-sprout indoors. There is that gift card from Christmas for a fancy garden center.....

The snow from two days ago has finished melting. Green tips are emerging. Some are obviously iris and others daylily leaves, but tiny ones hold the promise of scilla and crocus. I gave the garden beds a peek when I took some garbage out this morning.

The first thing I spotted was a bit of blue. Scillas! Still folded into buds, blooms should open in the next day or two. A few steps further to another bed...

...and the first fully open bloom showed a yellow crocus, close to the path where people walk between building to get to the new postal boxes in the community center/ storm shelter. It got finished last fall, so we no longer have to choose between a bunch of stairs or a 3 mile drive to a storm shelter without stairs when we need one. This one is two hundred feet away, tops

After clearing old dead leaves away which were covering last year's rhubarb bed, patches of green and orange-red emerged. I predict we will have some good picking this year despite offering some family members the opportunity to dig out some of their own plants. Last year we moved in after they had become unmanageable, bolted and gone to seen in a patch of tall seed clumps on hollow wood stalks, far from edible for the rest of the summer. There are plenty left now, for those interested.... Just get in line.

So How Do Penguins Pay Tarriffs?

The Idiot in Chief just released his tariff schedule for the rest of the world. I say "Idiot" not just from ire, or political disagreement that prompts insults. Sure, those are part of it. But I say it because he just so plainly proved it.

There were a lot of small "countries" who were charged 10% tariffs on whatever they might try to export to us. Of course there was just this tiny, silly, little hitch in his tariff giddyup: many of those named simply don't have populations. Not of humans anyway. They are mostly small southern hemisphere islands. Some are volcanoes with glaciers, or still active volcanoes. Some look like sandy atolls from aerial views. There might be patches of green. Or not.

Some actually are inhabited. With penguins. Maybe a few seals too, or at least during breeding season. I can't say how year-round those populations are in residence, mostly because I've never heard of these places before. Woefully poor attention span in school geography class, I expect. Yeah, that's it. Poor attention. Mea culpa.

I fully anticipate that you, like me, have difficulty imagining penguins and seals finding anything to export off their islands, much less have heard of us or even "have a concept of" exporting something here. No doubt those tariffs would stop them right in their... uh, flippers? webbed claws? long before they'd dream of cheating our economy by not paying tariffs, eh?

Some names look suspiciously like something out of the renowned "Onion". Or maybe somebody handed the Idiot In Chief a list on April 1st because it was his day. Not that he'd ever check them out personally, of course. There's a pair  of islands well off Australia, for example, named Heard and McDonalds. I gleefully imagine  he just churned those in his brain until it seemed reasonable that indeed, yes he had "Heard of McDonalds" and they sounded like they could bring in a whole lot of money from their imports. (Of what? Penguin Burgers?) I also strongly doubt our Idiot, like many stupid people, would admit to unfamiliarity with them, and as a result simply added them to his list. I mean, who would dare mock him this way?

Now the question is begged as to whether his staff is protecting him from awareness of how stupid his tariff list is, and what a laughingstock he is for yet another reason added to all the other reasons, both domestically and internationally. No, he'll just revel in his assumed brilliance and go on to the next way to destroy what's great in this country - or was.

But if he finds out, I'd keep my ears tuned for some staff firings in the West Wing. Maybe a run on ketchup bottles too once he throws his remaining supply on the walls. As he does.

Congratulations Senator Cory Booker!

For a record breaking 25 hours and 4 minutes, Senator Booker filibustered the US Senate with a speech designed to "cause good trouble". He not only beat the previous filibuster length record, by Strom Thurmond,  a racist determined to stop civil rights in this country, he did so under much more grueling conditions. He was not allowed a bathroom break, unlike Thurmond. He was not allowed to sit down, again unlike Thurmond, and while he was allowed to take questions so he could rest his voice for a few minutes, he was still required to stay where he was.

For those of you hiding under a cabbage leaf, or something else keeping you from noticing what's happening in this country, Booker took this action to help stop the destruction, by our nominal President and his unelected pet attack dog Musk, of everything good about this country, starting with our constitution and branching out into healthcare, Alzheimer's research, veteran's jobs, healthcare, social security, Medicaid, our ability to fight measles, or TB, or even to educate our children, and totally destroy the rule of law. I could go on as the list is seemingly endless, but Booker's 25 hours plus did a pretty good job of covering it. Unlike previous filibusters, Booker didn't do silly things like read from a huge phone book (do we still even have those?) just to continue making noise. He made his time count!

As an American, I am proud of Senator Booker. I wish others in Congress had the courage do do something similar. I hope more have the courage to make their votes count toward saving our Democracy.

And I hope a lot more of us have the ounce of courage it takes to join the many demonstrations scheduled for this Saturday all around the country, making our voices heard loud and long, signs held high announcing our beliefs, our fears of what tRump/Musk are doing to this country, antagonizing our allies, kowtowing to Putin's wishes, isolating us from the world. We don't have to stand for 25+ hours. We can let our signs talk for us so our voices hold out. We can bring chairs and sit, bring food and beverages to drink, blankets and heavy coats to keep us warm. We can take bathroom breaks. We can chat with friends we carpooled with, or meet new ones.

Most of all we can show up and be counted!

And once we're back home we can call our congress people and let them know what we think as well, even if they're too chicken to come to a town hall, explain their actions, or answer our questions. Let them know we see them!!!

And keep calling.

Murphy Is Alive And Well After Hibernation

 You all remember Murphy, don't you? He's that infamous lawmaker, decreeing whatever can go wrong, will, and in the worst ways possible.  I met him yesterday. I would have written about him then, but, well, I was kinda busy and in pain.

The plan had been to go to work, just in the afternoon instead of early morning. After a rainy/snowy weekend, I figured I needed a bit of a thaw to be able to open iced car doors so I could get scrapers out to clear off windows, and if necessary, splash window antifreeze on stubborn ice rather than antagonize my shoulders by scraping them. Everything I needed to do that was inside the car I needed to be able to open. Because of course. Late morning I looked out and saw snow had slid down the hood and parts of the windows. It was time.

It started with sweeping off the porch steps to avoid falls, especially if Steve had to use them. Not that he was planning on coming out for anything. The sidewalk and much of the parking pad had cleared from morning sun, while the grass still had enough fresh snow remaining for clear mouse tracks to lead the way to the garbage cans when I took bags of trash out that had stacked up over the weekend.

Then I approached the car, keys in hand, to unlock the doors. No ice left!  The windshield snowpack released the wiper blades easily, so I let them stand up while I shoved snow away by hand. More needed to be done, but I wanted to go once around the car before returning with the broom to clear the top, using the best combination of hand and tools to do the job comfortably.

There was still a large deposit of snow on the rear hatch door window, it being the north side of the car, with that wiper blade holding it securely in place. After lifting that and clearing loose ice from it and pushing snow down, I stepped over to continue my  preliminary circle and suddenly found myself on the ground, painfully so, landing mostly on my left hip. I considered myself very lucky I hadn't hit my head on the way down, falling so fast with no time to react. 

It seems there was a single small piece of very slick, wet ice behind the car, formed by drips, disguised under water running off toward the street and a bit of freshly knocked off snow. I tried to roll off it but my hip disabused me of any desirability in pursuing that particular activity. OK, time to call Steve...

I immediately discovered I hadn't bothered to put my phone in my pocket. I was only going to be outside for a few minutes, right?

It was just the day before when Steve and I were laughing at how we grew up without the neurotic fear of going anywhere without that phone. Phones stayed in the house, attached to walls. How the world had changed! We take them into the store so we can talk to each other and/or find each other to discuss shopping from different locations. They are in the car with us in case we needed something, or somebody wanted to contact us, or even to announce to the store we had arrived and could they please bring out our groceries? Yet, because I was only going to be out a few minutes, here I'd left mine in the house. Where Steve was. Where help was, if I could just get his attention so he could make a phone call for me.  IF I could just get his attention... by calling him... on the phone I didn't have... and could have bypassed him with entirely by making my own call from my spot on the ground.

Thanks Murphy!

OK, so you're wondering why I just didn't get up off the ground? Even though the hip hurt - still hurts - nothing seemed broken. Just slide off the ice and get up? Seems simple enough, except, like Steve, these days when either of us goes down, we pretty much have to stay down. First hurdle is our knees. All four have been replaced, meaning we no longer have kneecaps, and kneeling is exquisitely painful, even on soft cushy surfaces or in gel kneepads. I bought a pair of those a couple years back. They are a great help to those who don't need them. Kneeling is to be avoided whenever possible. Age has robbed us of muscle mass. Steve's back barely allows him to move at all, and my shoulders, after years of repeated rotator cuff injuries followed by arthritis, don't do much of anything useful including lifting a cup of water up inside the microwave over the stove. I can manage but not happily, and always with at least some winces. It's maybe a pound and a half to lift, cup plus water, no problem as long as it's under shoulder level. So where to people build in their microwaves? Riiiiiight.

My first option was to check who along the street is out and about. It's a senior community here but anybody would have a phone, either with them or back in their house. It was just that time of day - and year - where the ones who weren't snowbirds were out somewhere, or maybe inside with the TV on or even napping. At any rate, nobody was out walking or even shaking a rug off their porch. Scratch that for help.

I still had some option for movement. I was sitting on wet ice, so the first thing was to sit elsewhere. I learned to butt-walk as a kid and could still do that - probably a good indication that the hip I landed on was not broken, only bruised. As it got colder from still frozen ground, it was harder to tell its actual condition, but butt-walking was possible.  15 feet away was the little porch. I'd shoot for that. Maybe I could get myself up a step or two so I could manage to stand from there. Ten minutes later, including a few pauses and after figuring out how to turn myself around so I could sit on the steps, I discovered I'd put myself down in a hole. My shoulders wouldn't lift myself up and out by themselves, and the pavement was covered in formerly invisible sand, just enough to forbid any traction from my supposedly high-traction shoes. I already had given up on being able again to wear the new knit slacks I had on, thinking them likely full of snags and holes, though much later close inspection impressed me with their sturdiness. Final decision awaits laundry results.

Time for plans B, C, and D.

There was a bed of rocks next to the porch. With metal siding, maybe I could make enough noise that Steve could hear... if he was in this end of the house and the TV volume was down. I started hitting the siding, first in single loud taps, then in threes, then in S-O-S. He's a former military guy after all, right? Of course there's usually some kind of outside noise around, somebody roofing or building a shed or making a repair or who knows what all. We're used to it. We pretty much ignore it, at least as far as going to look out the window to see what's happening. No results to my tapping. Steve might even have gone to take a nap and be in the wrong part of the house.

Plan C was to take my keys and use them to make the car horn beep. You hit the lock, then hit it a second time and it beeps to let you know you did... or where your car is in the parking lot or whatever. I found if I hit it 4 times in a row, the last three beeped. I did that for a while. Nobody noticed. Or nobody around here knows that three somethings is a distress signal. Lost and need to be seen from the air? Lay out three visible equal things spaced side by side - driftwood for example along a shore. Big sticks or bright clothing in an open field.  It's not natural so it stands out. I guess don't count on deaf neighbors to hear car horns though.

Plan D was wait for SOMEBODY to come by. Eventually they would, either driving, or walking on their way to get their mail. The only question was when? Mail probably wasn't due for another hour. I'd already been down half an hour.

By now my butt was really cold. The rest of me had sun, but it soon would be blocked by the house. 

I finally heard an approaching engine. I could stick my arms out past the stair railing and wave them to draw attention. As it turned out, it was the FedEx driver, and he was delivering a box to our house a day early! Take that, Murphy!!!! He called 911 for this "elderly lady", and within 5 minutes there were two squad cars and an ambulance here. Of course everybody waited for the paramedics to lift me up to a stand, and only after a consult with me to understand why I couldn't get up and whether lifting me might, say, further injure a broken hip. Once they heard I'd butt-walked my way over from the car, broken hip concerns vanished, though we all realized things might change once I was standing, putting weight on it. Leaving me on the ground rather than yanking my shoulders was also common sense as well as a kindness, and the paramedics wound a sheet around me under the shoulders to put the strain on the torso instead. After sitting so long and being so cold, my first steps were a bit wobbly, but they supported me to the car to sit down while lots of questions were asked and vitals taken. Yep, my blood pressure was way up after all that, but eventually they let me go.

The cops left, after one of them taking the broom I had outside, pushing the remaining snow off my car, and spreading the salt, which I'd stupidly left up on the porch, over the ice patch hidden behind the car. Every person who approached had wanted to step right there, and I had to keep warning them. A dog-walking neighbor stopped by to check things out, and the paramedics prepared to leave, after having me sign that I declined a ride to the hospital. I told them thanks, but they'd given me something much better than a ride.

They'd given me a lift!

Once back in the house, it turned out Steve had been close to where I'd been stuck. He hadn't heard any of the noise I'd made, and hadn't worried that I hadn't come back in because he'd thought I was heading straight to my job rather than just clearing the car of snow/ice and coming back in. When the ambulance pulled up in front of the window next to him, he just figured some neighbor needed something. It happens around here. The squad cars were out of his line of sight, and no sirens were used, so logically, no real emergency, whoever it was.

I'll be making sure in the future to keep my phone on me, rather than laughing at our paranoia about having them handy at all times.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, I dosed with ibuprofin, and huddled  under my double-polar-fleece lap blanket trying to warm up. Sleep was a whole 'nother issue. The sore hip is on the opposite side of me than my worst shoulder is. I'm a side sleeper. There was no comfortable position, both were wrong. Somehow I managed almost 4 hours, despite aggravating the hip in finding out just how unforgivingly hard toilet seats are and how perfectly positioned to hit the bruise.

Murphy may have taken a break for a while, but refused to be ignored for long. This morning even the cushion in my recliner is too hard in all the wrong places. At least walking reassured me that there was no bone problem, but I'm taking a second day off from work since I never made it yesterday. Of course, the weather forecast calls for the same rain/freezing rain/snow combo that started this in the first place. And that's no April Fools!