Kestrel Family

I had to let the dog out in mid afternoon yesterday, and the unusual noise had me looking up. We have a big pine tree, variety unidentified, but it somehow survives Phoenix weather... so far. It shades about a third of the back yard, and has been noted to host a variety of birds over the years. Sometimes I try to capture them with my camera, my most successful one previously being a hummingbird building her nest on top of a pine cone in a location I had a straight line open view from just the right angle where in the right light I could catch her siting on her eggs without startling her from the next. 

Good zoom lenses are great! Even better when they are attached to a camera weighing less than a pound.

Yesterday the odd noise had me looking up to see what was going on. Just half a minute before I'd caught a glimpse of a larger bird snatching a small critter off the ground just inside the back fence and swoop off with it in her bill over to the next yard, and then turn back and head for the pine tree. That's when the actual noise began.

There were two young, fluffed-out birds on the lowest of the huge branches left on the tree, about 12 feet overhead. It had been much fuller but the extra hot summer of 2020, also known "affectionately" as Covid Quarantine summer, cost the tree many of its branches, and cost us a higher water bill trying to make sure the tree survived. We'd had to hire a crew to come out and trim back the dead branches, leaving just whatever was green in place. A couple years later a self-described tree trimmer offered to "correct" the terribly botched job on our pine tree, for a fee of course. Since it was the tree which chose which parts to sacrifice to the heating climate, I was offended and sent him brusquely on his way.

The result is a fairly clear view up the main trunk and out several very major branches, with an airy canopy shading the drip line from a height of mostly 15 feet and higher. Several wide perching spots are left and the rough bark gives ample opportunity for young claws to find a secure  spot while trying out new wings and beg for their next meal, whether rodent or small bird, in yesterday's case.

I had been out with the dog - she's always watched even inside the fence because of coyotes - for about a minute before looking up to see three birds in the tree. I excused myself from guard duty to fetch my camera. I'd never seen these particular birds before, but the round heads and downcurved beaks initially screamed owl to me, even though the parent with food screamed small hawk. It was kind of reddish underneath, but having been up close and personal with a red tailed hawk before, I knew it was much too small. As I reemerged with my camera, one of the juvenile birds had just settled on a higher branch, while a parent was attempting to feed the closest one to me. It was a very clumsy process.

The very first picture I shot was one moving wing sticking way high as mama tried to keep her balance and junior kept stabbing at mama's bill trying to get its meal. Eventually there was success, as Mama flew away, junior settled down, and nothing dropped to the ground.

It wasn't quiet for long, as both young birds started demanding food immediately again, now both of them on separate, higher branches. I'd gotten a shot of Mama standing calmly on the branch, taking a much needed break, and several others of the closest youngster settled back on its new branch, mostly with one wing shoulder covering half of its face rather than tucked snugly along its side. I finally got one good one of that one facing me full on, head looking like a round ball of lightly speckled tan fluff over a body looking like a larger ball of matching fluff. I'd also taken some video, but very wobbly due to the need to locate one in its new location higher in the tree, and holding the camera up in a very uncomfortable angle for my shoulders. 

The sound quality was great however. After hearing it later in the calm of the living room, I recognized the sound later that afternoon coming from a few back yards away to the west, presumably in a tall citrus tree. The shots I got showed the distinctive black bars on the faces of all the birds, two on each side, all of them vertical and the forward one on each side going through the eye. I spent time on Google going through hawk photos, not finding anything like it, even though I did discover there were 18 varieties to pick from. After that I tried falcons, and found  photos of  kestrels with that unique face.

This morning, nice and cool at first light, I heard the same "feed-me-NOW!" call also to the west but from a different street while I was out clearing a pesky vine off the back fence. I wasn't going to try to chase the call, especially as I was doing yard work in my PJs, plus shoes and working gloves. Cat's Claw vine earns its name, and I had to crawl past both a huge ocotilla and a clump of yuccas up next to that same fence to get into the space to trim the vine that was busy trying to kill both of them. Unlike the morning before, I wasn't stabbed this time because I'd actually managed to locate all the pointy yucca swords and snip off the points before one had a chance to nail me in the forehead again like before. Or anywhere else either.

Around mid-morning, taking the dog out before I left for the club, I heard "my" birds again, back in the pine. I was trying to locate them when three flew out of the tree, over the back neighbor's yard and away across the street to the rear. But the sounds hadn't stopped. I looked up and finally located one, in a slightly different spot from yesterday, and not worth dragging the camera out again. It was even higher, and the morning sun shone harshly on its face while much of the  body was shaded. Too much contrast for a good shot, as opposed to the afternoon when birds and tree were fully shaded. So I just watched it for a bit, wondering why it was still asking to be fed instead of flying off with the rest of the family. Was it the runt, not sure enough of its wings yet to follow? Rich told me later this afternoon they were again in the pine, but by then I was tired, happy he'd seen them, and content with looking and listening tomorrow to see if they're still around. They are welcomed to all the rats in the neighborhood!

"Bump 3" Has A Name!

We've been referring to my granddaughter's latest pregnancy as "Bump 3" for a while now. It's bump, as in Baby Bump, and their third. (Call me Captain Obvious.) He's to be called David, with no middle name decided up on yet. With a caesarean required, we also have the convenience of a due date scheduled, exactly when I'd hoped it would be, so we can go see and hold him before we absolutely positively have to be back home again. That is, unless he gets impatient and decides to mess up everybody's schedules by coming early. 

Frankly, unless it's dangerously early, we'd love a few days earlier even more, giving us more chances to hold him. There have been a lot of children born recently on both sides of Steve's and my blended family, but they do tend to choose the inconvenient times of the year when there's cold weather while we're basking in the Arizona heat, so we don't meet them until they're crawling. One of them is approaching 3 or 4 now and we haven't even met him. The one baby we did get to hold while still a baby was when we weren't in AZ more than half the year since I hadn't retired yet.

Now we're traveling back and forth annually, picking various routes either for speed, or scenery and swinging by widely scattered family. The first trip post covid vaccine was nearly a two week trek to make up for staying home the whole previous year. But right now we're both as healthy as we can expect to be and we're hoping to again combine scenery and family in both directions, the most important family this trip being the one nobody's has seen yet, Bump 3. So we're leaving a bit later and staying north a bit longer, and can still fill our obligations back down here and schedule what we want along the way.

Planning has already begun. The one thing we'll miss is going via Trail Ridge. Other than the one potential disaster when the brakes ceased responding when we started down from the top, back a dozen years or so, it's a route we have loved for many years. Unfortunately, my head gets a little distracted by a perceived lack of O2 above 10,000 feet and I've had to turn around the last two times. In fact, last fall it was at Many Parks Curve, much lower than ever before.

Oh, by the way, about those brakes? Turned out they just needed pumping, a somewhat forgotten and neglected skill from lack of need for decades.

Warring Doctor Appointments

It's the schedule which had a conflict, not a conflict among warring doctors.  Pardon. I'm starting this while dregs of anesthesia are still filtering out of my system. 

Steve's appointment was the easy one. He needed to go see the cardiologist who saw him in the hospital, when his heart rate was down in the 20s a couple times. The plan was to give him a halter monitor (no, nobody's monitoring a halter) to wear for three weeks to check his rate over a longer time. He's been keeping track several times a day with one of those finger things which give O2 % and BPM. When his cardiologist heard it's consistently been in the 60s, and higher with moderate activity, the cardiologist just grinned and sent him home with an appointment for a recheck in the fall.  Easy peasy. On the wall calendar now, though instead of having to hold the pages before October up while writing the appointment info and fully spelling "cardiologist" or the man's name which I can't spell in the little square, I simply drew a heart, Steve's name, and the time.

It was my appointment that got more involved. First, I needed transportation. A friend from the club offered a couple months back, and I took her up on it but for a different reason than Steve having a conflicting need for the car. Back then his back was still killing him, requiring an opioid painkiller, meaning I'd have to drive but I'd be incapacitated. She was happy to step in, and brought a wire project she'd learned in the club which takes lots of attention to detail while waiting in the waiting room to drive me home. It's called Viking knit. Unfortunately she's had a lot of time in waiting rooms recently, first for her husband and then her Mom. Her Viking knit work is perfection!

I needed  a colonoscopy. Yes, go ahead and cringe! I've been doing the mail testing for a few years, and this time I needed a follow-up. They promised they now use propofol, rather than the 3 drug cocktail from a decade ago which in way too many cases left the "recipient" of the procedure awake, feeling everything, but paralyzed and unable to tell the doc to go to hell starting yesterday! I was one of those. At least that part of today was easy.

The prep has gotten more complicated in exchange. You start with a double dose of laxative, an out of pocket expense. While you need two, no packet comes with fewer than 25. That's 23 wasted, since Immodium tends to be more useful in this household. Not often, just more than once. I threw out the stuff from the last procedure untouched after 6 years, needing the shelf space.  There's  long list of instructions, dos and don'ts. A week ahead, no nuts. Dang! 2 nights ahead, 2 laxative pills, but be careful, they are teenier than aspirins we older folk take for... whatever it was for. Those had to be stopped several days ahead as well. So did anything with red dye in it so I wouldn't dye my own insides and confuse the Doc. No orange or purple either. I checked and my favorite root beer has caramel color, so I was good to go with that. "Soda (aka pop) was on the clear liquids list. I had to stop eating ahead of time, and not just the midnight before the procedure. 

So far, minor annoyances, but that's all.

The morning of the day before there's a gallon jug with some powder in the bottom: Gavilite-G solution. Quantity is 4000. They can't be bothered to tell you 4000 what. One might be persuaded that it's good for 4,000 squirts (ahem) after you take it. Once taken, however, 4000 is obviously a gross (!) underestimate of its potency.

One starts around 2PM. I wanted to get to bed early so I started at 1:30. Each dose of the mixed, chilled-in-the-fridge-since-morning concoction is 8 ounces. I got a measuring cup and poured 8 ounces into my favorite plastic cup to check the level. (Hey, no glass to risk breaking in the bathroom!) Drink one every 10 to 20  minutes. Unless you feel nauseous, in which case it's 20-30 minutes, which I figured would take one into the procedure appointment itself.  Take 1. watch TV. Take 2. Watch more TV. Nausea starts. Drat! Empty out the wastebasket, plastic with a solid bottom, close at hand. Nothing happens. I don't understand the nausea because the flavor we were warned about (keep a nice flavored chaser handy) was merely salty. Not table salty, just not awful. The stomach starts to feel over-full, so I wonder what's plugging the flow and when is there going to be room for the next dose? Both nausea and full feeling ease off, and suddenly, race down the hall!  Cleanup ensues. Clothing gets removed. Oh hell, toss the stuff! I could take some time standing at the sink to... oops, not a chance! Just made it this time, one of the advantages of having a tiny bathroom.

I am now officially wedded to the throne for the duration. I call Steve, and he brings me my laptop which turns out to need charging because I've been on it most of the day killing time. He also brings the kitchen timer, my gallon jug, and my plastic cup, and leaves quickly. I consider asking him to bring my phone and/or magazines, but figure I'll be busy enough without them. Bored, maybe, but busy.

There is literally no time window where it is safe to consider straying a foot from the throne. Yes, I'd like to get a couple things, but once the water mix decided to work it never stopped. One might get a minute here or three there, but there was never warning and no way of stopping it for a second. Inviting disaster was to mandate a cleanup one would never finish before another was mandated.

Time to just settle in. I spent some time working out how many cups were in a gallon and how long it would take to drink them all. Better not take that 20-30 minute window between drinks, especially now that nausea was not a factor. Let's go 18.  OK, try 15. That's only 4 an hour. How about 12? Hell with it, 10 and that's all! I just know that this particular wind-up timer isn't accurate in small segments of time unless one swings way past the half hour and brings it back. I also make sure that I set up the next drink a minute or two ahead of the bell so I'm not wasting another hour until bedtime, but take Only. Ten. Minutes. Exactly!

It wasn't just that I wanted sleep. I have come to the firm conviction that there is no toilet seat in the world that is comfortable to sit on for hours. My legs get nerve pinches in half an hour, verified by long phone calls at that location. (Not that I let any of you know.) So hours on the throne need mitigation which can't involve actually leaving the throne. Swaying, rocking, lifting and dropping them are involved at various and frequent intervals. I put the now warming bottle on the floor to one side of me, requiring a lean each 10 minutes. The filled cup I put over on the other for the same reason. TP had a 3rd location, the timer a 4th, and when none worked well enough, there were massages, sprinkled with grumbling.

Oh, and did I mention that bathroom is the hottest room in the house in summer? No AC vent there. Big south window.

Eventually I just HAD TO lie down. Fortunately I know exactly where the needed protection for the bed was and it was two feet away from the bed. I got a half hour respite, but it wasn't until the gallon was finally gone so I knew input was stopped. Output had to catch up to that fact eventually, right?

OK, so I was an optimist. But the legs got a needed reprieve before taking up the cause again, and eventually I emerged back into human company. It was time for more clear liquids. I wasn't feeling dehydrated, just finally approaching normal. But I was exhausted and a bit shaky from lack of carbs all day. I'd thoughtfully provided myself with all sugar free beverages for the day. My blood sugar was down to 83. Steve would have brought me some ice cream until I reminded him it didn't qualify as a clear liquid. We settled for my root beer, some boullion to take my bedtime pills with, and since I still needed sugar, a blue lollipop Rich donated to the cause.

Morning came at 4 AM. I dutifully had the one morning pill I was allowed before the procedure with a sip of water, watched some TV, took a shower, and waited for my ride. Everything went as expected until I was waking up and heard they only did half of it. I'd have to do the whole thing again!  Call their office in 2 days to reschedule. Apparently I can decide on  before we head north or after we get back.

I asked why, and was told that all those hours and all that gallon only cleared out half of me. Next time we get to do twice the prep. For twice the days.

Whee......

A Hail Mary Repair And Lessons Learned

Ahhh, glass. When I teach anybody else what I've learned, I always start with what I call "the Rules of Glass". First rule is is that glass does what glass wants to do. We can plan, and cut, add, subtract, give it different kiln settings, repeat with other settings, and try this and that, and in the process we can expect whatever we want. But it is the glass that decides what the final product is, and does it for reasons we are very lucky if we get to know what they were. 

It might be how we combined things, like a wispy over black where the bottom layer of wispy gets absorbed into the black, so only the black and the top layer wind up showing. That happens to be a favorite effect of mine.

It might be that transparent glass tends to come up off the kiln paper cleanly, meaning you can reuse the paper, while opaque types tend to bring all the paper up with it until it disintegrates in a dust flurry no matter how careful you are to gently encourage it to sail dust free into the covered wastebasket instead of your lungs where it can do real damage. It's the reason most of us have been strongly encouraged to wear at least a surgical mask while anywhere in the glass room, and we close the door to the main part of the club while we're kicking up any paper dust. The exhaust fan in the room is supposed to suck it out, but it's never immediate and never complete.

The more I work with glass and have reasonable successes the more different things I want to try. It's more than different sizes, color combos, shapes, slumps. I've added tack fuses, stringers, precuts, decals, piecing smaller sections into a whole onto my skills list.  

Oops, jargon alert! Let's start with slumps. One puts already fused glass over a mold with different heights and shapes instead of a flat base, and the glass, with the proper kiln setting, slumps down into the shape underneath it. (Unless it doesn't: see rule 1.) A tack fuse is a cooler kiln setting than a full fuse so the glass adheres to the piece it's touching and smooths a bit without totally melting into the other, retaining some 3D shape. Stringers are pieces of glass like long thin threads. They are straight (can be melted and curved but I'm not there yet), easily broken into shorter pieces, intended or not, and fused with either method to other glass to decorate it. They come in all sorts of single colors and are usually sold and kept in a cylindrical plastic tube. Generally since they roll, glue is used to keep them where intended. Decals can be added onto the glass, and come in all kinds of shapes, colors and themes. After carefully cutting close to the piece you want since they come several to a sheet, with several seconds in water they separate from their backing and get put on the glass to dry before a special kiln setting. Results vary. Precuts mean somebody else cut out a particularly complicated shape and you bought it to tack fuse in place, keeping that 3D effect. Or, you full fused it so it left a smooth top surface while preserving the color and shape... fairly well.

My Hail Mary project started out with an ordinary combination of square purple/white wispy on black. But I decided to use some precuts left from another couple projects, some small white 5-pointed glow-in-the-dark stars. Hey, fun, right? Full fuse too, because another project's tack fuse with the stars left one star with points pointing up, thus vulnerable. (I'll full full fuse that again later.) But I decided it needed more deorating, and I'd just bought a tube of stringers in many colors and needed to use them again. White, of course, to match the wispy and stars. Complicate the design, not the colors.

I glued the stars in place, one biggeer in the middle, 1 small in each corner. Then took 12 pieces of stringer to make a starburst around the central, larger star. That was when they started rolling around, just because they could or somebody breathed (guess who?) or there might be an undetected irregularity in the top surface from the rolling process that manufactured it, or they just bumped into the next when getting placed. They needed glue too. However, they still moved, taking their glue with them. I had a mess! 

I had to pull them all off, wash all the glue off the plate, and start over. There was still enough glue on the stringers even after setting them on a paper towel that I didn't need to add more. Back they went. Problem fixed, right?

Wrong! There was still too much glue on them, and they were still moving around a bit when getting placed and placements were corrected. I took a wet paper towel and dabbed as much glue as I could off. Problem is when they they came out of that fuse, the glue I'd missed showed as dull patches along the stringers and even out between them.

Dammit!

I was just too stubborn to give up. I'd already put a lot of work into this and I wasn't ready to toss it. Time to take it home, and think. 

Meanwhile Steve had been requesting that I start reorganizing my glass, huge quantities of which had been used by now, but still leaving a lot of pieces here and there, some ready for being pounded into frit, others of a size and shape to be put into future projects. But table space was too crowded. I put the kind I wasn't working with now back in the library, the 90 COE, separate from the other 96, well marked so they'd not get confused. I reduced my piles on the table to one large and one smaller box. (OK, there were a lot of other things on the table too, but let's limit this to working glass.) I remembered from that big sorting process several small pieces - pointy slivers actually, of clear glass. I suddenly had my Hail Mary plan. If this didn't work, nothing would rescue that project.

I took those shards to the club and using the tools there, cut them into small squarish pieces. Those got set on kiln paper, not touching each other, and in a full fuse kiln setting, turned into little hemispheres. Perfect! The next day those were cleaned of dust, sorted, and arranged on top of the length of each of the dozen starburst pieces, where the glue spread from the sides of the stringers. Remember those had been full fused so the surface was flat. The little pieces with their flat bottoms fit right on top. Of course they needed their own glue so they'd stay put until the tack fuse. This time I didn't drop glue on the pieces, but into a small little cup, then dipped a toothpick into the glue and "wrote" a line down each white stripe. I'd had to move each line of pieces off their mark, but did it in order so I knew just where they went back to, and did only one line at a time.

There was still one big smear of baked glue on one end, but it happened to be at 12 o'clock if we think of our twelve piece starburst that way. I made a large circle of them around that stringer end, both covering the glue and looking more planned in the design than not. It was repeated at the 6 for symmetry. (I was only that messy once, I'll have you know!) After an hour to dry, in the kiln it went, tack fuse of course, so the bubbles would help diffract the light from the room, fooling the eye just a bit, rather than flattening into the piece.

This morning I emptied the kiln and put a different piece in for a different purpose. My plan worked! If you look very very carefully, there is still a little tail of baked glue that wasn't covered in glass bubbles. So this one won't be for sale. But I do know somebody who would like it.

A Visit From HQ

I write about the club a fair amount. It is part of a larger parent organization in charge of clubs of all kinds from crafts to card games, recreation from individual exercise in large indoor facilities to golf or pickleball, and educational opportunities like a foreign language or learning how to garden in this particular climate. Some even involve getting groups together to travel, or show slides from places they've visited. Last time I checked there were something under 200 different opportunities for people to come together under their umbrella.

Of course those opportunities come with obligations and rules. A board of elected members make the really big decisions, like building a new recreation center and what activities can find their home there. Administrative offices handle the day-to-day, from taking in annual fees to participate, to authorizing tokens to members to open certain doors, to keeping staff in the centers or outdoor areas like golf courses for maintenance, or supervision in general including making sure dues have been paid before participation, to good & safe behavior in, say, the pools. 

Our club interfaces with administration folks on a variety of levels. The more complicated our activities are, the more rules and paperwork to go with them. And we're pretty complicated. We have our own large room, within which we have equipment for a variety of activities, working with rocks, metals, and glass. Not all is jewelry as we have recently branched out into larger, unwearable glass pieces. We also have a store which sells what our members make, lockers where they can keep their supplies on site rather than taking them to and fro with each visit, an office with typical office equipment including file cabinets, a safe, two computers and a pair of copiers. We even have a well locked supply room where members can purchase supplies for projects, starting with small kits for introductions to skills via short workshops. When we graduate to working with silver, it will be sterling, guaranteed by our suppliers and the fact that it comes from our supply room. There is a library for further information on skills and ideas for using them, even a mini fridge and microwave so some of us don't have to leave to stop for lunch, and decorations for theme parties and store sales. 

It's much more complicated than that, but this particular visit was due to our need to make an annual inventory of our furniture and equipment by item, quantity, location, serial numbers where appropriate, and estimated value. If that doesn't sound intimidating enough, the whole process got much worse for us just after I joined by a former president who decided our inventory had to include absolutely everything! Do you really want to go around counting our tubes of different polishes for lapidary or metals? If so, do you have to repeat it the next day when a new shipment comes in and an old empty something gets tossed? How about how many rolls of paper towels in the dispensers over the various sinks as well as in stands on tables? How many different hand tools should anybody care about and where they are among our many rooms and among any of 6 or seven kinds of pliers? Saw blades? Drill bits? Die punches? Templates? Measuring sticks? Portable vises? In fact the little things are kind of a sore point since a few here and there regularly "go home" with some member or another and are among the huge number of things which regularly get replaced.

What would logically be about a 5 or 6 page single spaced inventory is currently a 12 page one. And that's after a significant purge a couple years back.  One of the administrative staff informed one of our officers back then that we needed to just "count the furniture and whatever plugs into something."

Would you like to guess how well that was followed? Even we knew that it was insufficient. There are a lot of heavy, expensive tools that aren't run on current, but still have to be included. Some partial purging was done then, but we still have 12 pages of headache to deal with. Three of us worked on it for two weeks. In addition to the ridiculous quantity of items, so many were the same thing in a different room, or jargon names so we had to find somebody who knew what bore that name because it wasn't our specialty.

Why do we need an inventory? A cynic might think is was to make sure we weren't taking home the large equipment from the club. The official answer is that it's all for insurance purposes. Should the place  burn down, the insurance people need a justification for the humongous claim for replacing everything. No, any insurance company isn't going to reimburse the Rec Center organization for pencils, paper towels, chemicals, or miscellaneous supplies ad infinitum.

You might think it should still be pretty simple to change our inventory by simply dropping off 6 pages of little stuff. But there is a hitch. We very much need not to ruffle the administration's feathers, so to speak. Rumors are always rampant that "somebody" up in power is trying to close down this club. There was a mistake made back when I 'd just joined, a whole story in itself of who did/didn't do what and the consequences rained down from on high. We step lightly ever since. Paperwork has to be in on time and done well, every scrap of it. So a phone call had to be made.

That means by me, of course. I knew the person to contact, as I deal with her on a monthly basis at minimum. In explaining our dilemma, we got some information. But there were still questions. Specific details, whether this specific thing or category could be dealt with this way or that way. I wound up inviting her to come for a visit, along with somebody representing the insurance side of things for the organization's point of view, a give and take conversation with a tour to deal with specifics. 

I was genuinely surprised by her willingness to come for a visit. It so didn't go with the hard nosed reputation or its intimidation factor. It was loosely set for a week ahead, confirmation to follow, since somebody was on vacation. I informed the others involved in the inventory process, hoping they wouldn't find the visit intrusive, but they welcomed the input and the chance for clarity.

They weren't exactly delighted that once final confirmation came through for the visit, it was with a ten minute ETA, when they didn't expect to show up in the club for another 45 minutes themselves. (I'm an early bird.) Both of them beat our visitors in however. Not because they they hurried up and got dressed and out of the house, but because our guests were half an hour late. It was welcomed breathing room, a chance to save face for not being late themselves, and time to take a breath and organize their minds around all the questions they needed to ask.

We are officially welcomed to make a listing of small hand tools without specifying types, quantity, locations. We just have to draw a line through all of them after preparing an addendum saying just the category and a value by adding all the previous numbers in the category together. Several other categories can be created the same way. The walking tour commenced at that point so multiple picky questions could be asked and rulings handed down that were specific and clear. Several things stood out, like the blanket statement that our supply room's contents wouldn't be counted. BUT our club is different from, say, ceramics, because our supplies are not clay but sterling and copper, with likely well over $10,000 value in there at any given time. An investigation of contents followed. We do actually have an in-club inventory system of those supplies which took a year to fully install, with barcodes on packages or items, which keeps track of quantity of everything as well as price. It also sends a notice when some item is in need of being reordered so we don't run out, especially when our snowbirds stock up before heading home so they can work on projects there, or again when they return so they can submit items to the store before our biggest sale days of our entire year, after Thanksgiving.

There were even things which weren't on the inventory which needed to be added, like our display items - cases, shelves, those things I call "fake necks" for displaying necklaces for lack of a better name. Our treasurer had wondered why the form wasn't done on an Excel spreadsheet because it would be so much easier to make those big changes to it that we were talking about. The simple answer was that the very ease of making those changes is the reason why the clubs weren't given the inventory forms in that format. It would be too easy for clubs to "lose" items if we could change the forms rather than just count what was there from previous years and note what is different. People started separating in smaller groups to look at various specialized details before we finally ended our meeting. It had started amicably and ended even friendlier. 

Now we have 6 days to get the final changes in to them, but our top two people with those skills and experience are on it. I have a couple pieces of my own paperwork to complete and send in with the same deadline.

I've Got Mail!

Two interesting pieces arrived today. Both were mildly amusing in their own way, but some days I'll latch onto any humor I can get. Been just a bit of stress lately.

The first one had pink paper showing through the cellophane address window. Ooohh, somebody with no return address wants to look important. What the heck, pick this one first. I thought I knew what the other one was anyway.

My new home warranty may be expiring! I should check with them about renewing it before it expires! 

Wait, what? - my home has a warranty? Who knew? Maybe I could have checked in with them instead of those claims to the insurance company. Just a quick question first however. By "new home warranty" do they mean my 62-year old home is still considered new? That hadn't occurred to me.  Or do they mean there's somehow a new warranty on the house that is about to expire? If so, I wonder who bought it. I sure didn't. Who's been paying the bills on it? I have  questions. First, what do they want with my warranty, and second, why are they letting it expire... now? Do they hate me? Hard to figure out this stuff, right? Maybe I should call the number I saw on the... oops! Looks like the "dog just ate it". Must have gotten dropped into my dinner. Bad dog!

Sigh.....  Sorry girl, you're a good dog.

The second piece was from my friendly local (!) Medicare folks. I get these regularly when I "spend" their funds getting either medical services like a checkup, or renew prescriptions. It's a breakdown of what was charged by the optimistic provider, how much of that Medicare approved and paid, how much secondary insurance paid, and any balance if some was mine to cover. In the case of prescriptions, from the start of the year I've been picking up some of the cost. Apparently my coverage changed when I wasn't paying attention by adding a deductible. The envelope held 4 double sided pages, the top of each page proclaiming in bold that this was not a bill!  I hadn't been worried. It never was. Meds get paid when I pick them up or I don't get to pick them up. I have on occasion just noted these mailings arrived, decided I was busy for now, and set them in the "later" pile. "Later" may or may not actually arrive. I'm considering rethinking that policy.

I actually opened each sheet looking for numbers, out of curiosity. One always offers me a plethora of languages to get these announcements in. Immediate recycle. The second one I opened also said "check enclosed."

Wheeee!

This happens when I get charged for blood sugar test strips. It's always been a mistake to charge me for those. But I always pay just to get them, rather than arguing with the pharmacist. It's difficult enough anyway, with Medicare paying only for 90 strips per 90-day period. My strips do not come in bottles of 90. They come in 50 or 100. I've tried for several years to see if my doc can somehow get me 100 at a time, mostly because when we're up north and I try to refill that particular scrip there, it's always a hassle. Mid summer last year I was told their store was being audited and those items were "not available". I went a month without getting my refill.  Why the problem? Too many people test irregularly, and then sell the remaining strips. You see signs along roadways offering to buy them, along with a phone number. The problem is they are terribly expensive and the poor and homeless mostly can't afford them at the prices charged and don't have health insurance.

After explaining it again to my doc, and asking if he could somehow find out how to order 100 strip refills for me, I got a call that they were ready to be picked up. Actually 100 this time!! Of course I was charged. Enclosed in this envelope was a partial refund of that. 

$1.15!

Next time I have a check to deposit, I'll try to remember I have this one too. It costs more in gas than the check is worth to drive there just to deposit this one. I used to be able to drop by Joan's for a chat on my way home if she was up to it, but no more. Her urn of ashes is well beyond my capacity for an understandable chat. I just went to make a deposit at the beginning of the week with two other checks, and do not expect having another to deposit till next month. Perhaps I should tuck it into my checks pad. I always refer to it when I make a deposit here, since it goes up to their "sister" credit union and I always have to check the 9 digit code for them to deposit into when I endorse it.

The principle of the thing is nice, however. 

Now let's apologize to the dog for a while.

From Crisis To Waiting Game

Steve is home now, catching up on TV, Facebook, and sleep, having missed all in the hospital.

It started when he complained early Tuesday morning that he was having trouble breathing. He didn't look like he was struggling for air, no wheezing, gasping, nor any other symptoms, so having been there myself I immediately pulled out the blood oxygen & pulse finger monitor. His blood ox was low 90s but his pulse was in the low 40s. That has been happening more frequently in the last couple months. He never quite thought it was an emergency, and usually it stopped quickly. I'd made him promise if it got worse, or even happened that badly again, that we'd call 911 this time. Part of that was the frustration of getting no response from his primary doc about a referral to a cardiologist. We both knew if he showed up in an ambulance he'd get immediate attention, rather than the current usual of sitting in the ER for hours, ignored.

Just to verify our plan that morning, I called the nurse help line, giving them his heart rate number, and was told to call 911. No dithering. So I did. With my MN area code on my cell, they always ask where I was. Then what I needed. In less than a minute an ambo was on its way. Just as I was getting that assurance, along with a request that I stay on the line, my battery died. Because of course. It waited as long as absolutely necessary, but then reminded me that I tend to forget to charge it these days. When I worked, I'd charge it every night because I was on it all day. I even had a car charger for when I wore the battery out anyway. But now I can go three days without giving the phone a thought beyond putting it in my pocket before leaving the house. I doesn't occur to me that I may have missed calls I actually wanted, until I  browse through the voicemails.

Anyway, I decided to walk out on the driveway and wait for the ambo to show up. We have our house address along the street and on the house itself. I figured an anxious wife could provide a faster address ID. It did. While they were unloading their gurney, I informed them I knew I had to relocate the car in the driveway so they could get the gurney past, and proceeded to do so. The first paramedics followed my instructions as to where to locate Steve while I was moving the car.

As soon as I got back in, he was already getting hooked up to the sticky-tab leads connected to their monitor. They registered what they read, and started packing him up for transport.  He was still in the low 40s. There was no question as to whether they would transport, it was how soon they could get him there. Steve and I had a quick discussion of what I'd need to  do/bring before I could follow and he was gone. The rescue squad truck which had arrived during this process also left as soon as he was in the ambulance.

Steve told me later that the hospital doc met the ambulance as soon as the gurney was inside the ER doors, even pushing the paramedics aside while giving Steve a quick exam. He was still maintaining around 40. Instructions were given and he was wheeled into his room, hooked up to even more hardware, given blood draws and whatever else needed before I got there. What did happen during his wait was, while hooked into the monitors and thus recorded, his rate dropped into the 20s a couple times. Thank goodness it's not like taking the car to the mechanic just to find it won't make the noise you brought it in for until after you leave in it again! Steve was getting serious attention!

It was early enough in the morning when I first got there that there were still a couple parking spots in the lot outside the ER doors. The hospital had built a fancy addition on since either of us had last been admitted, but visitor parking and ER parking were now combined, without planning on a much larger parking lot being needed. They do offer valet parking (to where?) and signs suggesting Lyft. By the time one is there hunting nonexistent  parking spaces, Lyft is much too late a consideration. I did manage to find the last space each of the three times I parked, after passing cars stopped at the head of aisles waiting for somebody, anybody, to pull out.

In the ER I was sent straight to his room. We killed a couple hours there before I left to get things he needed once we knew he'd be admitted. The deciding factor for that was having his pulse rate drop as it did. While I was still there he was given a nebulizer treatment, with meds in it both to make sure his lungs were wide open and to help increase his heart rate, back to 55. He had the usual electrodes, plus now a pair of huge patches front and back surrounding his heart and attached to a portable machine. This one was in case they needed to shock him. It would be available in an instant rather than another 20-30 seconds fussing. Staff was always helpful, informative, and responded quickly, except for interrupting a very busy doctor just to answer a question they mostly knew how to answer by themselves.

Once home, I gave myself a couple hours. Some of it was to relax, eat, and walk the dog, and some to hunt down his glasses, charger cords and a couple pair of comfy knit shorts that hadn't made it back from the clean laundry pile to his room. Rich helped.

By the time I returned  he was in his own room for continued observation.The huge patches were still there, stayed on till he checked out, but the machine had disappeared. He was still officially NPO, meaning no food or water in case surgery was needed, but that got lifted just in time for him to order supper. He'd missed lunch, so that was brought an hour before supper! People paraded through, some for administrative stuff, some to check on personal needs or show him the bed, phone, and TV controls. Typical hospital stuff. I was assured that continued through the night. He didn't get much sleep. He says it wasn't any, but I suspect he dropped off briefly at times.

The next morning was also Senior (1st) Wednesday at the grocery store, conveniently after many SS checks go through, meaning we'd been waiting to stock up on groceries for a few days until we could buy them for 10% off everything. It's the busiest day of every month, needless to say. I did my shopping early, meaning I got there before 7, and emerged at 8:20 with an overflowing cart and $250 dollars poorer. Kinda tired as well. Rich helped carry everything in the house so I could put it away. What I didn't do was get Steve's list. First, his writing is something he's capable of reading, but...  Second, when he says "salami", he knows what brand, variety, and  quantity. I don't. Our solution was to bring Rich on my morning visit to Steve, along with Steve's laptop, its charger, mouse and pad. He's been ordering online for months now, so instead of him hiking to the scooters, riding through the store, to the car to unload, back to the store, and hiking back to the car, we simply drive over and have the employees load his groceries in the hatch, all prepaid and any existing coupons and discounts applied even if you forgot to ask for them during the ordering. Rich was needed both for carrying everything,  and hooking him into the hospital wi-fi properly. His company was a bonus. The order was to be picked up that evening between 6 and 7, something I was sure we could follow through on.

When we walked in, Steve was on oxygen. Possibly as a precaution, possible because they registered the confusion he was showing when I last talked to him the night before. This visit we learned that there would be no pacemaker at this time. The doc had stopped his beta blocker and Steve was gradually easing off on the bradycardia. We're not even sure why he was on this med. I'd been given the same med years ago for A-fib, which Steve never had, and wound up with the same problem from it, so needing to stop was no surprise. What was a surprise was how well he responded to the changes. By this morning at home he was back to 70 bpm, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Rich & I left with the assurance that Steve was to be discharged later that afternoon. 

He was also back on the schedule for his 3x a day pain meds, something that got somewhat neglected the day before. The wonderful thing about those is every day they are getting better at eliminating his (formerly) intractable back pain, knee pain, and his recent hip pain. This one repairs damaged nerves. I might have thought they'd register pain more efficiently, but it seems it stops them from continuing to broadcast old pain, supposedly long gone. He no longer takes any other pain meds, including and especially the opioids he was starting to have problems getting. Never abused them, just a blanket policy change because too many others have been. This improvement means for him that even though the hospital bed, like all of them, never quite matches the curve in his back, and he should have been wretchedly in pain, it was a minor irritation.

Remember that expansion to the hospital?  The official visitor's and main entrance is now over on 103rd Ave. The old entrance, complete with a parking ramp, i.e.shaded parking, is now all for employees only, way on the other side, 105th Ave. The hike to Steve's room of course is from 105th to the 103rd end, with some zigs and zags to keep it both interesting and longer, and once to the west end, plus an elevator ride, it's back towards the middle again. I'd had enough exercise, thank you very much, by the time I'd visited him twice in his room, besides the ER visit and a long morning in the grocery store. Before I left with Rich, being informed he'd be sprung later that afternoon, I asked him to please inquire whether they would be willing to wheel him to the old main entrance, now the employee entrance. Once he was in the car, and a couple of times since, he assured me the young lady wheeling him out to the car was more than happy to have her trip cut much much shorter.

Today he had a visit with his primary, a post-hospital update. I came along, better able to fill in some details than Steve, who'd been a bit fuzzy during much of it. The guy is my primary too, and I'd just been in to see him last month. There is an appointment now with the cardiologist who saw Steve in the hospital. Turns out this doc is in my cardiologist's clinic. In fact (checks appointment card for my next visit) he's my official cardiologist, though we've never met. My old cardiologist left the practice shortly after I got everything fixed, and I only see his nurse practitioner and the tech who checks my pacemaker. 

Steve's appointment is not "within one week" that doc requested, but the appointment staffer was unimpressed. Best he could get is... because of course it is... the same day I'm getting my long awaited procedure postponed from January due to covid patients delaying treatment and only now catching up. Sans office masks of course. It's a good thing I didn't turn down an offer of a ride to/from mine, way back when, from a friend in the club, as I won't be able to drive after anesthetic. I knew I might not be able to count on Steve either, since he was so day-by-day back then. Since we're both postponed, I have no interest in changing either appointment. Steve can drive to his own now, practically next door to mine but a almost the identical schedule. His just won't last as long.

For both of us now it's a waiting game.