End of the Week

I have been fighting a cough and sore throat for the last several day and yesterday it finally got the best of me. I felt bad all day and by 1600 I could not take it any longer so I went to bed and slept until Kathleen woke me up a little after 1900.

I felt a little better this morning when I woke up but my throat was still pretty thick feeling from all the mucus. I had to spend a lot of time outside today as we were replacing our back door and unfortunately it was foggy early and cool and damp feeling all day long.

I put on one of my old flannel shirts and my Jeep vest to help keep my chest and maybe even my throat a little warmer. I still had on my shorts because I was not cold I just did not want to take a chance on getting a chill.

We had a half window it there before and now we have a full length window with built in blinds that fit between the two sheets of glass. It really makes for a clean look and seems to work really well.

The door is so well insulated that we may not need a storm door, but we will see how warm it keeps the mud room over the next week or so. We may just get one of those retracting screens if we do not need the storm door.

I would have taken a picture except that by the time we finished everything it was dark out.

Well, I got interrupted of about twenty-five minutes, one of my friends wanted some technical advice on hooking up his new TV to the converter box that I gave him.

Well, that is about it for today, I am pretty worn out as I did not get a rest time today, maybe tomorrow will be better.

Snow Early

When I woke up this morning it was clear out and after an hour or so when the sun started to come up I could see that it had started to snow a little and by 0800 it really had started coming down.

Kathleen came downstairs about 0800 and she made herself a couple of egg yokes and she fixed me the egg whites from this morning and also a couple from last Saturday. She also made some hash brown and while we were eating the whole front lawn was covered as was the street.

Stan got here a little after 0900 and had to go home to pick up a tarp and poles so that he could set up his saws and keep them dry. So when he got back I helped him set up the tarp and then after he got started working Kathleen and I took a walk around the block.

This first one is of Kathleen and myself; of course I had to bend at the knees quite a bit so that we all could fit in the picture.



The second one is a close up of yours truly in my American Buffalo Collection Stetson.



The last one is of full shot of me; notice the nice compression socks that I have to wear. It took me a while before I would wear them outside without long pants or jeans on but I was always so hot that I decided that even if it was not a fashionable look I would go for the comfortable look.



Tomorrow Stan thinks that he will be able to put the new stairs in place; he has been making the staircase level and has added cleats to the old riser so that the new stairway will be level and hopefully much quieter.

Well I have been rather tired lately and that is one of the reasons I have not blogged much. We also have been away from home during the afternoons and evenings so by the time we got home I was out of energy.

Saturday the Oregon Roushes celebrated a belated Christmas and December adult birthdays; Sunday Kathleen and I attended Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at church and again by the time we got home I was worn out. Then last night we had our small group and did not get home until after 2130 and mentally I was spent!

So Goes the Best Laid Plans!

Well, I had planned on doing a better job of blogging but stuff happens. We have been having strong winds for the last several days with gusts over seventy miles an hour and Sunday we lost our internet service. This meant that not only did we not have internet or cable TV service but also our telephone service was out. For that reason I was not able to blog on Sunday to do my weekend wrap up.

Then yesterday we had a lot of catching up to do and last night we had our small group and by the time we got home I was too tired to do it justice so I just went to bed.

To kind of catch-up a little, the downstairs bathroom is just about complete. We just need to seal the grout, put the light over the mirror, put the light switch and outlet covers on and hang the toilet paper holder on the vanity. Here are a few pictures of what it looks like today.

This is the vanity with the sink, faucets, and mirror above.


This is of the back of the tub with the double towel bar to the right; notice the two grab bars: one to get in and out with and the other oval one to help catch someone if they slip.


This is of the front of the tub with the faucet and the shower. The faucet allows one to keep the temperature the same and turn the water pressure from off to full force. The shower has a removable wand that showers and the water from the regular shower head continues to work along with the hand held wand for rinsing off.


In this photo is the new toilet, it is a Toto just like the one upstairs only this one is even more water conservative and like the one upstairs the flush last as long as one holds the handle down, so we will need a little practice to find out how long to hold the handle down, but the one upstairs does not require much water to completely flush.

The seat is a slow closing one so that one can just let it go and it slowly closes...no more toilet seats crashing down!!!

Catching Up Again

Well, I thought that I would try and do my blog this morning rather than wait until I was too tired to think straight.

Yesterday morning I had an appointment with the Urologist who did my cancer surgery, I have been seeing him ever since my surgery every three months and so when I got there I had my blood drawn and left a sample in a cup then went back to the waiting room to wait to see the doctor.

While sitting there my arm did not feel quite right so I looked down and noticed that my shirt was turning red; I had a five inch long and two inch wide soaked area that was soaked and so I took my shirt off and Kathleen went to the receptionist window and told them about it.

After a while someone came out cleaned off my arm, which was also bloody and redressed the area where they had draw the blood earlier. This time she used a cloth tape, put it on tighter and told me to keep pressure on it, so I did.

Anyway, my PSA was about the same as it was three months ago, almost none existence, so I set up an appointment for three months from now and after that if the PSA stays down I should be able to have visits every six months.

That will be nice as I am having more doctor appointments for the arthritis than I had and it will be nice not to have to spend more time in a doctor's office than anywhere else.

After finishing up at the doctor's we stopped at the credit union so that I could deposit a refund check and take some money out and then we went next door to the AT&T store so that I could buy another one hundred dollars worth of minutes for my cell phone.

I still had time left from when I bought it two years ago, but I have to buy a hundred dollars worth every year to be able to roll over those minutes, so I have been trying to use my phone more and having Kathleen use it rather than hers so that I can work the minutes down.

Kathleen goes through hers in less than a year, so if she can use my phone once in a while especially if we are out together it will keep her minutes and use up mine.

After we finished there we went to the DMV as Kathleen needed to get a new handicapped parking permit and she wanted me to pick up an application so that I could get one as well.

I have been reluctant in getting one as I have not wanted to think of myself as handicapped, but my hip has been bothering me enough that I decided to go ahead and try to get one. I still would like to not have to use it unless I really need it, but if I need it it will be nice to have.

After that we went to Red Lobster for some lunch; Kathleen had two kind of shrimp, fried and scampy. I had some crab stuffed cod and we both had a bowl of clam chowder. It was late for the lunch crowd so service was quick and we did not feel like we had to rush to free up a table.

When we finished eating we went to the Troutdale Outlet Mall to pick up a couple items and then we went to Lowe's to pick up some items to finish off our downstairs bathroom.

I took my can inside and used it and my hip did not bother me nearly as much as it did last Saturday at Home Depot, so I may have to start using it more when I go out. We did not finish up at Lowe's until after 1900 and by the time we got home it was 1930.

We had the SUV just about full from all the shopping that we did and it took a while to unload it so when Kathleen asked what to do for dinner I suggested reheating the pasta that was left over from the night before.

After dinner and cleaning up I was too tired to think about blogging so I just sat around the kitchen table with Kathleen and we watched CSI and than I went to bed.

He's Back

Well, after about five days of some kind of allergy I am starting to feel somewhat human again. I would wake up in the morning and my eyes were just about glued shut and my nose was plugged up with dried blood and I could hardly breathe. Then once I was up I would develop a really nasty headache and my eyes would start to itch and water; then my nose would start to run and that would irritate my nose again and it would start bleeding and on and on and round and round we would go.

Well so much for all the pleasantries, yesterday was really nice out so I went outside and pruned the roses that I had not pruned in November because they still had buds on them and if we had not had the freeze and snow for a couple weeks they would have bloomed.

Once I had the roses pruned I started on my lace leaf Japanese Maple taking out all the dead wood and then reshaping it a little as it has started to get wider than I wanted it to be. By the time I finished with that I was getting tired but even though I was tired I still felt better than I had in a week or so.

I got a pretty good nights sleep especially when one considers that Monday morning I awoke at 0200, I did the same thing yesterday morning except I was able to get back to sleep again yesterday and Monday I could not.

Stan has finished the tile, and all that needs to be done to it is seal it. So since I have another doctors appointment tomorrow, it will be my third this month, we are having Stan not come tomorrow so the Kathleen and I can do some running around.

Today I made and appointment with a Rheumatologist to see about my joint pain. I am tired of trying to take drugs just to be able to function. My biggest problem with the drugs is that they also make me so groggy that I can hardly function and unless I take a lot more than I am suppose to I still have a lot of pain.

Well this is all I have energy for tonight, I am hoping that I will be feeling better and able to sit at my computer and write something on a little more regular basis again.

Almost Like a Day Off!

Well, I slept in until almost 0800 this morning; I did not need to get up early as Stan was not coming back until Monday so that the tile will have a chance to set up. I also did not have any other place that I needed to go, so I had a very relaxing morning.

Kathleen came downstairs before I had a chance to make myself breakfast and asked if I felt like French toast, and I said sure. So we had some French toast with some heavy bread that Kathleen picked up at Harvest Mill Breadmakers and was called "Mountain Jazz". It had Wheat, rye, rice bran,flax seed, honey, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, so it was pretty healthy.

Then after breakfast I put the dishes into the dishwasher and then went outside and raked the front lawn. It was rather windy the other day and a lot more fir branches and cones had fallen again.

I was going to sweep off the driveway but I realized that I was getting tired and probably should quit before I got too tired. So I went into the house and read the mail and the paper, since I had not read it earlier.

By the time I got finished it was time for my lunch so I made myself a turkey sandwich on dark rye with some mozzarella cheese on top and then toasted it in the toaster oven. I also finished the rest of the lentil soup from last night.

Then after waiting a while I decided that I would try and take a walk, I had thought about doing that earlier, but wound up raking the lawn instead. I also decided that I was going to try walk slower than I normally did to see if that might help me walk further without the hip pain.

I managed to walk around our long block and felt relatively good by the time I got back. My hip was a little sore, but that could be from not walking much lately.

Well that is about it for today, a rather uneventful day, but I think that I needed it. With that I think I will go ahead and publish this and say good day!

Doctor Visits Day Two

This morning I needed to get up and have my breakfast early as I had an 0820 dentist appointment to have my chipped tooth repaired. So I got up a little earlier than I might have liked and by the time I got everything done it was time to leave for the dentist office.

I went there expecting to have a temporary crown put on and a cast made for the final crown but when the dentist examined the tooth she said that the tooth was in such good shape that she did not know if she wanted to grind off so much good tooth to put a crown on and than she gave me two other options. One was a tooth inlay which was as expensive as a crown and the second was to just rebuild the tooth for a couple hundred dollars.

She said that the rebuild would probably last ten years or so and that since it was about five times cheaper than the other two options I could have it replace several times and still be cheaper than the others.

So I wound up having my tooth rebuilt today, and I did not get out of the dentist office until after 1100. After two and a half hours in the chair I was ready to go home and rest as my jaw was starting to ache. So when I got home I took several pain pills and waited for my jaw to start feeling better.

Kathleen had her dentist appointment shortly after I got back so she took off and when she left I made myself some lunch and read the mail. She was gone for quite a while and when she did come back she said that she also needed to have a crown and a couple fillings.

So it looks like it is going to be an expensive month or so for the dentist visits. That is the one thing that I did not receive in my retirement package from Boeing, and while everything else is really good there was no dental coverage available as a retiree. While I was working there I had really good coverage, and I miss that.

After a while I got really sleepy so I went upstairs and took a nap; I woke up when Kathleen came in and I guess was trying to wake me up. I was still pretty groggy, but awake just enough that I could not get back to sleep, so I got up and by now the pain was a lot worse than when I had first taken the pain pills, so I took a few more and while it is now sore again is is not as bad as it was earlier.

I think it is from having to have my mouth open so wide and so long while the dentist worked on my molar although some of it I am sure is from the actual work done on the tooth itself.

Anyway, when I got up and went downstairs Stan had finished the tile and left; he will not be back until Monday to do the grouting of the floor and walls. So here is a picture of all the tile in place to give you an idea of what it will look like, minus the grout.



For dinner tonight Kathleen heated up some pre-cooked lentils fro Trader Joe's and added some ham, onion and potato and then made a soup out of it. It was really good and soft enough that it did not bother my jaw or tooth.

Well, I think that I need to publish this as I am starting to get really tired again and that would just allow me to ramble on endlessly.

The Start of Doctor Visits

I had a pretty good night sleep last night, of course taking Night Quill before going to bed last night helped I am sure. This morning I felt pretty good when I awoke; yesterday my eyes felt like I had just come out of a sand storm and my eyes collected most of the sand.

I had an eye appointment this morning at 0950 but I left early so that I would have time to look at the frames before my eyes were dilated so much that I would not be able to see very well. By the time I had picked out my frames it was time for my appointment, so that worked out pretty well.

They not only checked my eyes for vision, which was pretty much the same as it had been but also for cataract and glaucoma. He said that my eyes show no sign of glaucoma and only a slight sign of cataract, less than normal for someone my age, so all that is good.

He did prescribe a little stronger reading lens for my bifocals, but he said that was just to make reading a little easier. We spent a good deal of time talking about the medical system here and how it is good in many aspects but very large and cumbersome in other aspects. He is a young Japanese and I chose him a couple of years after my old doctor retired because I thought that he was fresh out of school and probably more familiar with some of the new advancements and techniques.

Shortly after I got home I helped Kathleen make the bed as she had stripped it and washed the sheets. Then I went downstairs and tried this weeks sample chicken noodle soup that I am testing for one of the major soup makers.

Then Kathleen left to meat with the lady from church around 1330 and after I finished eating I read the mail. Stan just about finished the tiling, he put the glass tile on today and tomorrow he will put on the topper, then he will wait a day or so before he starts grouting.

He is going to grout the floor and the walls at the same time, as it is easier and they both can be drying at the same time. After that we will need to seal the grout and after that we will be able to put the toilet in. That should just about finish the downstairs remodel project.

I think that all we will have to do after putting in the toilet is find a mirror for over the sink, install the light for over the mirror and then buy and install the knobs for the draws and doors of the vanity and cabinet.

Stan left around 1700 tonight as he wanted to stop off at Joe's and look at a new pair of binoculars that they had on sale. So after he left I took a couple photos of the tile, so here they are:



Tomorrow I will try to take one that is a little closer up that will show the white tile, the green glass tile and the topper better. The tile on the long wall is two tiles high and it follows all around the room until it gets to the vertical section that outlines where the mirror will go.

More Work on the Tile

This morning I woke up pretty refreshed, something that I have not felt lately. Kathleen got up before I had a chance to make myself breakfast and so she made egg yokes for herself and one egg yoke and her egg whites for me. She also made some hash brown potatoes.

After breakfast, I loaded up the dishwasher and Kathleen turned it on when she finished putting things in it.

Our plumber arrived about this time and hooked up the show/bath fixtures and also the sink fixtures. When Stan arrived he cemented the sink to the vanity top and then cemented the slab to the top and the sink. So now we have water to the bathtub and sink but we really should not use it until the tile is grouted and sealed.

Pat, our plumber finished around noon and after he left Stan started working on the tile again. Here are a couple pictures of the tile, the shower/bath fixtures and the sink fixture.



Well, tonight is our small group and so I need to eat and then head out so I am just going to publish this and call it good for tonight.

More Snow

Well, before all the snow had a chance to disappear it started snowing again tonight. I think we got about an inch already and it is suppose to continue until early this morning.

This morning I woke up as to Kathleen's alarm going off and I was still pretty groggy but I got up as I had slept for nine hours already. I felt like my brain was still in a fog so I decided that I would not try and make it to church this morning. It was also cold and my thumb joints were really bothering me.

I did gather up the towels and washed, dried, folded and then put them away. So after reheating yesterday's buckwheat pancakes I unloaded the dishwasher and then went into the living room and read the paper.

After that I gathered up the kitchen rugs and shook them out, swept the kitchen floor and then mopped it. While it was drying the rugs were being washed and I also vacuumed the rest of the downstairs.

This afternoon Kathleen took a white Cyclamen over to our neighbor. She bought a couple the other day and we have one on our kitchen table. Our old one is outside in the flower pot just off the front porch.

It had been blooming until the first snow storm three weeks ago and the snow is off it now and the blooms of gone but it is still green.

While she was there I changed out the upstairs bathroom door knob and put the one that was on the bathroom on our bedroom door. We still need to buy a few more doorknobs for the upstairs and another one for the downstairs bathroom.

The one I put on the upstairs bathroom was the lever kind as apposed to the knob kind and we are planning on putting the same kind on the downstairs bathroom when it is finished. That way we can tell people that the bathroom is the one with the lever as it will be different from all the rest.

Well that is about it for today, I am feeling better or at least somewhat awake. I have gotten over nine hours sleep the last two nights so I guess that is making up somewhat for the three or four hours sleep I was getting the previous five days.

Welcome Another New Year.

Well, I still have not figured out how to get more than three or four hours sleep a night. I think for the last four nights I have only gotten fifteen or sixteen hours sleep total.

Yesterday morning I woke up and felt like I had brain fog, kind of a dull headache and no matter what I took for it I could not shake it. Needless to say I did not get much done yesterday.

Then I woke up around 0230 this morning and could not get back to sleep until around 0400 and then only for another hour; so I wound up getting up at 0530.

Then this morning as I was eating my oatmeal and I felt something hard in it so when I fished it out of my mouth I discovered what looked to be part of a tooth. I did not feel any pain and did not think anything of it, but I went into the bathroom and checked it out.

I did not see anything in my bottom teeth so I went downstairs and asked Kathleen to see if she could see anything and she said that she did. After a while I could feel it with my tongue, so I called my dentist, but they were not open today. They had an emergency number but since it was not hurting I decided to leave a message to try and get an appointment for Monday.

After a while it developed a very dull tooth ache feeling, nothing too bad just really annoying. So I kept taking Tylenol every few hours.

Early this morning Aaron and the girls came over after their dentist visits for cleanings and waited for Tami to finish with her cleaning appointment. Kathleen gave each of the girls a start from one of the house plants that she had up in her sewing room and the girls planted them in a couple little pots that I brought in from the potting bench in the garage.




Stan came while Aaron and the girls were here and started ding the tiling; he got here just before noon as he had a power outage and was trying to get his generator started.


Well, it is after 2100 and I am going to try and get some sleep tonight.