Got Tam To The Doctor

     That's about all I managed to do yesterday; we had to stop and gas up the car, and, closer to home, do a grocery run and pick up some things for Tam's work nearby, but that was all I could manage; we returned home, ordered take-out food and I collapsed on the couch with an ice pack on my knee and pretty much stayed that way until it was time to turn the couch into my bed and swap out ice packs.

     Hoping to do more today.

     Ms. Tamara's visit was anticlimactic.  It seems medical thinking these days is very much against "figure-eight" support after a broken collarbone; research showed it didn't improve outcomes and made the process more painful.  They do, however, make much better slings, which I am told are more comfortable.

Trainwreck!

     I'm not exactly the best person to handle an unflaggingly hectic schedule.  With Tam out of action as far as housework is concerned and me slowed by a bum knee, it's a bit of a dance to stay ahead of things when nothing goes wrong.

     Unlike Tam, I can't sleep comfortably on the futon when it's in couch-like mode; I have to sproing it out flat, and have my sheets and quilt and big wedge pillow.  Take note of that, it'll be significant shortly.

     The new normal morning routine is, I get up, feed the cats, start water for coffee and a pan of breakfast, then go make up my bed and turn it back into a couch while breakfast is cooking, one cat is busy eating or having an after-breakfast grooming session and the other cat is shut up in the back of the house.  Then I can put an ice pack/soft brace combo on my knee (which needs it by then) and leave it on until shower time.

     This morning, I got breakfast started, turned to the living room....and discovered Rannie contemplating a good-sized pile of fresh cat-yak she had just disgorged.  Not on top of the quilt, but right on the bottom sheet.  At least I'd made the futon up with a fluffy quilt between the futon "mattress"* and top sheet, and thus the mattress itself was somewhat protected -- if I acted quickly.

     1. Turn down fire under breakfast.
     2. Remove cat from bed and clean up mess.
     3. Strip bed, sort bedding into "wash immediately" and "wash later" piles.
     4. Check breakfast; pour just-off-boil water over coffee.
     5. Go to basement, start laundry, make hasty check for replacement thick quilt (none) and flannel sheets (ditto).
     6. Dash back upstairs with two not-so-thick quilts, turn breakfast, pour more water over coffee.
     7. Sequester both cats in the back of the house.
     8. Lay quilt on bed, start to tuck under, check breakfast, flip breakfast.
     9. Go to basement, find regular sheets.
     10. Check breakfast, finish pouring reheated water over coffee, finish quilt, start bottom sheet.
     11. Take bacon off fire, start egg.  Tam shows up for caffeinated soda.  Dodge Tam. Start toast.
     12. Finish bottom and top sheet; start to lay out top quilt, realize it's not enough, realize egg may be getting unhappy, return to kitchen.
     13. Dodge Tam, turn egg.
     14. Go to basement, find light blanket.
     15. Lay out blanket, begin to unfold sheet, hear "thump-thump-thump of unbalanced load from washing machine in basement.
     16. Hobble back to kitchen, dodge Tam (now digging out ibuprofen to go with soda), limp downstairs, find washing machine has wobbled itself askew on concrete half-blocks† and turn it off.
     17. Call washing machine a bad name, get all four feet back up on blocks, rearrange heavy wet quilt, restart washing machine.
     18. Go back upstairs, remove egg from pan.
     19. Finish making bed and tun back into couch.  Release cats from back of house.
     20. Assemble breakfasts, squabble with Tam (shockingly, we're both crabby this morning).
     21. Carry coffee to office, start computer.
     22. Put on ice pack at last!
     23. Take breakfast office.
     24. Figure out something to post -- but what?   Oh, I know!

     Mornings like these are better remembered later than experienced in the moment.

     Edited To Add: And I seem to have blown up my knee, possibly on the basement stairs.  I'm out; I couldn't make it across the parking lot at work with my briefcase and lunchbox.
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* We don't use the word "futon" in English the same way it is used in Japanese, I'm told -- for them, the fluffy soft mattress is the futon, and the futon frame has its own word.  Possibly "spanner."

† The washing machine and dryer came with the house.  They were up on half-blocks, which I found convenient and only later realized should have been A Clue that the basement occasionally takes on water.  I need to improve it from the present one-block-per-corner system, and use blocks that don't have old mortar lines making them wobbly if placed wrong.

Tuesday Ramblings

     Got that birthday out of the way -- also spent a little while yesterday afternoon with my leg brace on, weed-whacking the back yard, since it had become too high to mow.  I may -- may, mind you -- try running the mower a little bit at a time over the course of this week, weather and knee permitting.

*  *  *

     Tamara's ongoing travails hardly bear repeating -- hardly bear it because they are so obviously painful despite her best efforts to pretend otherwise.  Tomorrow's orthopedic doctor appointment should help with that.

*  *  *

     I haven't mentioned the recent "school shooting" in the greater Indianapolis area -- up at the bedroom community of Noblesville* -- in part because the media already did, in part because seeking fame and attention seems to be a common thread with these shooters. It has garnered all kinds of national attention while they ignore Chicago's daily death-toll, even though no one has died as a result of the Noblesville outrage.   One man stopped it: seventh grade science teacher and middle school football coach Jason Seaman tackled the shooter, "swatted his guns away," and was shot three times in the process.  He is still in the hospital, doing well.  The shooter also shot and injured a student; she is in the hospital and said to be "steadily improving."  One man's actions made the difference.
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* A county seat in its own right, in the same county as Carmel.  At one time, Carmel was the "poor relation" of Hamilton County -- how things have changed!

Happy Birthday...To Me

     Yes, it's my birthday.  One of the ones that ends in a zero.  I'm not really good about it.  When did I get so old?

     Tamara gave me a really fine Waterman fountain pen.

*  *  *

     It's Memorial Day.  A day to remember the fallen.  Do that.  They answered when  the call came, and many never returned.  Spare them a minute, at least.

The Heliox Bridge

     When saturation divers die valiantly, are they welcomed to the Halls of Valsalva?
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N.B.: in saturation diving, panic can be deadly, as you will begin to breathe faster than your equipment can supply fresh and take away the bad.  Divers call this "breathing past your hat," the "hat" being their helmet.  Some of us can do much the same in free air at sea level -- don't.  Be like the deep-sea saturation diver.  Slow yourself, and live to come back up to the light.

Knee, Knee

     Starting to look like I have finally worn out my damaged knee.  The doctors warned me it was ticking  timebomb.  In 2006, after my scooter wreck, broken thighbone (a spiral fracture that started at the "distal condyle," one of the two knobs of bone on the end that are part of the weight-bearing surfaces of the knee joint), cartilage damage and  surgeries, I was told it was only a matter of time and that I might get ten years from the existing joint.

     Well, I got twelve years, so there, doctors!  Replacement knees are never as good as the real thing and have a limited lifespan themselves, so however far I could kick that can down the road short of retirement counts as a win.

     The knee brace helps and I used my cane all this past week.  At work Friday, I knocked a desoldering iron off the workbench.  Caught it -- they're heavy, fragile and relatively costly -- but someone had left it plugged in, and wouldn't you know, the bacon smell* was coming from the web of my left hand, right where the handle of the cane goes when you shift your weight over to it while the right foot is on the ground.  Skin thickened up and there's a blister underneath, a nice example of a second-degree burn.  So I'm sure hoping the knee brace is going to work out for a few days while that heals.

     Trying to get scheduled to see an orthopedic specialist -- maybe it's just something simple they can patch up and I get another four or five years, then swap the part out right before retirement.
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* Dreadfully enough, it would smell tasty if you didn't know the source.   You know what happened to the other hominids?  I'm thinkin' maybe our ancestors had them over for dinner.  Aw, shuddup and finish your Denisovan, it's been a long, cold winter.  Or to quote NatGeo, "Early results already suggest modern humans underwent genetic changes involved with brain function and nervous system development, including ones involved in language development, after splitting from Neanderthals and Denisovans."  Yes, language, which you need to communicate recipes. 

My Bank Is As Helpful...

     ...As a bag of wet mice.  My bank won't answer any question online, not the simplest of "is there a tax penalty when one transfers funds from a type X acount to  type Z account?"

     Nope, they want to have a meeting, or at least a phone call.  Their phone tree is of such complexity that you cannot reach anyone by name, and by-department is iffy at best.  The people with desks do have direct numbers -- but if that number is off-hook, the system often sends you to the entry point of the phone tree.  But say you're lucky; say you do get to leave voicemail for the subassistant vice-undermanager in charge of pipsqueak accounts: does he call back?  Oh, no, hell no he does not.  His assistant or maybe someone from the steno pool calls back, to "set a meeting."

     If I had free time to go have a meeting at the bank, I would have simply gone to the bank, and sat there in the bank's pretty glass-walled waiting room in my art-bedecked T-shirt and hoodie, Carhartt dungarees and hiking shoes like a sow hog in a church pew, until they had shown me to an office and an Important Fellow in an Important Suit just get my horrible declasse self out of their nice, clean bank.

     I have been lucky enough -- once -- to get a requested call back from someone at the bank who wasn't pushing me to refinance my house.  I had a straightforward question about IRAs.  She promptly try to upsell me on a CD!

     All banks suck.  Smalltime customers like me really are just a waste of their time, but they're kind of obliged to deal with us almost as though we were an important client, and to attempt to wring as much value from the interaction as they can.  My bank seems to be sucking especially badly these days and perhaps, after thirty years (and at least three different names on the bank), it's time for me to move on.

The Fustratioon

     It's Trash Day here in the neighborhood, since trash collection is tomorrow morning.  So that's probably all I'll get done this evening -- except somewhere in there, I need to pick up various kitchen staples and more cat litter.

     It's not much -- I'm not hiking ten miles one way for clean water, and (so far!) we're not in the middle of a civil war or even an uncivil one.  But it's a sudden ramp-up of activity and I would really rather be icing up my bad knee.  I've got a leg brace or two, and they're coming out of storage.  Awkward things and they work better under a skirt than over dungarees, but it's time and past that I admitted my knee isn't getting any better.

     But there's good news: Tam tells me the two end of her collarbone came together yesterday afternoon.  She had me tighten up the sling when I got home last night and so far, the bone is staying in place.  It's a relief; that's the normal course of healing for such a break but it's not a sure thing.

Last Night's Dinner

     Ground chuck, sweet Italian sausage, onion, a fennel bulb, carrots and a Poblano pepper.  Canned crushed and diced tomatoes, a few kalamata olives and some little red "sweetie" peppers from the deli.

     Serve with Parmesan-Reggiano cheese over steamed yellow squash "noodles" that had a big lump of white truffle butter melted on them:

And So, Day Two--

     I'm not much of a nursemaid.  So it's a good thing Tam's determinedly self-sufficient.  Yesterday, she managed to feed the cats, quite literally single-handed.

     "So what," you reply.  Ah, you see, the cats of Roseholme Cottage include Huck, the Mighty Eater, who is spent his childhood as a feral cat and who will eat any food available.  Putting the food bag in a kitchen cabinet counts as "available:" he will open the door, chew through the bag and eat until caught.  Thus, the door to the cat-food cupboard has a stack of heavy boxes in  front of it -- and there's a stack of heavy boxes next to that. after he managed to move the first stack one afternoon and got the door open.  All that is in the far back corner of the galley kitchen.  So Tam had to move those two stacks, then bend down to the corner and get the heavy cat food bags out, all with her left arm in a sling, while Huck was frantically trying to help.

     I made up a couple of pre-measured baggies of food for the cats this morning, and stashed them in a disused cookie jar: I know Tam can feed them by herself if she has to, but the risks are non-trivial and I am home an hour after cat-feeding time at the earliest.

     On the subject of "earliest:" the orthopedic doctor had no open appointments until 30th May!  So it'll be eight more days of coping until there's a medically-approved course of treatment and plan of action.

The Drive To And From Dayton Was Hard Going

     I need to work out a better way to attend the Dayton Hamvention if I intend to continue going.  The drive was very rough on my body.  Several encounters with rain so heavy it slowed interstate traffic to a crawl didn't help -- I tense up as visibility drops, especially in traffic, and there's no using cruise control.  Add in walking on slippery, muddy ground and wet gravel at the Hamvention itself before driving sixty miles to the hotel and half again as much to Indianapolis the next day through another band of heavy rain, and my right knee is aching.  Iced it up some last night and the night before.  Lower back isn't so great, either, though sleeping on the futon last night might have helped.  Staying in a hotel near the halfway point undoubtedly helped; I don't think I could have made the trip at all otherwise.

     "Sleeping on the futon:" The futon frame in the living room converts into a bed.  Tam's attic isn't very well climate-controlled and so that's often one of her spots.  It's my spot now; with a broken collarbone, Tam can't unfold the futon.  The narrow space left for access once it is unfolded is a problem, too.  So she's got my bedroom, with the swing-out keyboard/laptop tray over the bed and a TV set conveniently in one's line of sight.

     Now to reschedule my dental checkup (it was going to be this morning), get Tam scheduled for the orthopedic specialist, and take care of housework....

     This morning's quote: I was getting a bit flustered being Chief Cook, Cat-Wrangler and Empress of Disorder, which had me stammering over something while groping for a word, and I was already limping around....  After the fourth try and still not getting the word, I looked over at Tam and muttered, "Nobody better serve me any mushrooms!"

     She got it.

Tamara Keel Needs Your Help

     She's going to fuss at me for this, but oh well.

     Tam fell and broke her collarbone early Sunday morning.  This is not a good bone for an adult to break, since about all they can do it put you in a sling or immobilizer while it heals, and it hurts considerably if you move wrong.  It hurts a lot more than that before treatment; she made it as far as the dining room before deciding that calling an ambulance was the only way forward.*

     The ER checked her over, did a set of X-rays and gave her a basic sling along with a prescription for a few days of painkillers and quite firm instructions to check with the orthopedic specialists come Monday.

     It won't be cheap.  She needs a working collarbone to continue doing the work to write the kinds of articles her readers enjoy, like the 2,000-round tests of a wide range of handguns, modern and classic.

     There's a PayPay tip jar on Tam's blog.  She's got a Patreon, which also gets you valuable extra snark and informed opinion.  Some money in either one -- or both, if you choose to -- would be a huge help to her.  Even warm, positive thoughts will be helpful.

     Healing time for a broken collarbone is around three months, minimum, and she'll be off shotgun use for awhile longer.
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* Tam and I both view calling for a flashing-lights-and-siren ride as a last resort, and aspire to a Stoic ideal.  Aspiration is one thing -- broken bones tend to trump that ace, decisively.  Accepting the inevitable is a Stoic virtue, too.