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In the thick of it
It seems I am probably a bit further into my journey to menopause than I realised last time I posted. During this time, one period was completely missed and my body is currently trying to play catch up so it’s wreaking a bit of havoc on the body, enough that I wonder at what point I should see a doctor. It’s a bit more complicated than that but it seems likely my hormones have been a lot more off than they had been. Still no hot flashes. :)
Yesterday I had all sorts of problems with my computer and it soon came to my attention that I no longer had Malwarebytes running on my system. It seems to have stopped back in July and after considerable effort (helped immensely by the Scientist) it was apparent my installation was corrupted. Eventually I was able to uninstall it and reinstall. All seems to be running fine at the moment.
The problems on my computer led me to finally getting two step verification on some email accounts set up so that I can access them on the devices I want to use. This took quite a bit of going back and forth between accounts and setting things up but that also seems to be working properly and I can now check the email accounts with frequent use on my current phone, old phone, Ipad, tablet PC and desktop with no issues.
My temporary/casual job finished on the 12th of this month so I am back to the usual day to day stuff. I kind of miss the idea of work as I was earning a bit of money to add to the family accounts. It is nice not to have so many days wiped out at the moment though, particular at those times when I have to take a child to an appointment.
It’s been several months since our old lawn mower died on us and over the winter, the grass had grown rather tall in some areas. The Scientist and I went to a few places to check out potential replacements and after some indecision, we settled on another low-end sort of electric one which is probably a bit better than our previous model. I immediately set out to mow our front yard and after well over an hour, had made good progress. I was mowing along the side of the driveway, back along the side of the carport when the power disappeared abruptly as I accidently mowed over the power cord. We’ve only ever owned electric and I’ve not done this before (although did run over the solar light cord under tree several years ago). Â I discovered that not only had I destroyed the power cord but caused the power to go out in the house. It was too late to do more mowing so I didn’t end up getting a new cord until the next day. By then it was raining so I’ve now had to wait for things to dry again. I did get enough done to make the front yard look much better, much bigger. It’s amazing how much space tall grass seems to take. The backyard is still untouched but I will hopefully get to that in the next couple of days unless we get more rain.
Cutting the grass soon will be quite beneficial for the dogs, who are off to the groomer tomorrow. Little boy dog will get a full clip and finally get all the knotted fur cleared out. It seems to get so difficult to manage once it reaches a certain length. Fortunately it’s now spring so I don’t have to worry too much about him being cold. We had the warmest recorded day in September on Saturday and on Sunday, the high was not much different than the low had been overnight. It’s been considerably cooler the past few days but seems to be warming a bit again. I know to expect changes in temperature but I would prefer to avoid such drastic changes.
I was very happily surprised to find out Neil Finn is playing a concert at a winery down in Margaret River in November. It’s a one-off show and features one support act I’ve not seen but would like to and another one I’ve seen two or three times before. The downside is it’s a 3.5 hour drive to get there, which means a return trip of similar length. We considered trying to stay overnight but it seems there aren’t many options due to this being during a food and wine thing happening during this weekend or week. Anyway, we are going to try to wing it. I suspect it will mean that the Scientist does the driving there and I drive back since I will be more awake.
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Plans undone
The plan was the three boys in the Scientist’s family would join their mum with their families at some villas in Mandurah (about an hour south of Perth) on Saturday for an overnight stay. Not much was planned but what little there was on our part was on on track until Friday. I was woken rather early by the mad barking of the dogs when I knock came at the door (my replacement trackball). As I need to be up fairly shortly, I didn’t return to bed. The Scientist said I looked really bad…like I was quite ill. My face was puffy and swollen… I didn’t think much of that as it was morning and I often feel puffy and swollen when I get up. I got ready and took the dogs to the groomer and went off the Coventry Village markets to get some ingredients for the chickpea and veggie patties I planned to make for the Scientist’s mum (this was to celebrate her 70th birthday last week). I was tired when I got home and had a nap before picking up the dogs. Then I spent most of the afternoon in bed. Tiredness and aches and pains had set in with a bit of a scratchy throat. Sigh…
I had hoped I’d feel better later on but didn’t so I stayed home while the rest of the family went off. It did save us putting the dogs in a boarding kennel…which I’m sure was an improvement for the dogs in their weekend plans. I actually had the house to myself for a whole day, something that almost never happens. Too bad I felt terrible. I did feel a bit better when I finally got up on Saturday. I chatted to my mom on Skype for a while then did a bit of cleaning around the house. Not a lot but just to make a bit of headway into some of the mess here. As afternoon wore on, my energy levels dropped again and I was back in bed…but at least I accomplished something. I spent most of the evening on the sofa, watching Saturday night tv…British detective shows on ABC1.
I think the dogs were feeling out of sorts as they were quite hyper through the day, which required a fair bit of attention on my part. Their routine was totally undone by the lack of the remaining family members. But come bedtime they were happy enough to sleep away on the bed with me. Even though there was more space in the bed, I still seemed to have a dog squashed up against me in the night. Reminded me of when Lego Lover was small and often pushed me right to the edge of the bed, despite his small size.
I was having a decent sleep, I think, when it was completely broken by the sound of the phone ringing. Any time the phone rings in the night, I am worried it will be bad news. I picked up the phone and it turned out to be an old friend calling from the US. She had mistakenly thought it was about three hours later than the 4am I saw on the clock. Once it was clarified how early it was, she hung up and said she’d call later. Getting back to sleep was then the problem of the hour.
A few hours later I woke to noise from the dogs. I got up and opened the door so they could access the pet flap and go outside as required. It didn’t seem either ended up going out and they were soon sleeping again. Moving forward a couple more hours and the dogs were getting a bit antsy. I saw that it was past time for their food and got up to feed them. It is as this point I discovered the screen door was closed and the pet flap was useless. The poor dogs couldn’t get out and the cat couldn’t get in.
My face was again puffy and swollen on Sunday, much like it had been on Friday. But I did feel a bit better as I was up and about. My friend called again and we talked for a while. It was a rather awkward call as we had loaned some money to the friend recently and now it had been spent and she was asking for more. I assume that was the urgency which required her to call so early, even by her calculations. I told her we couldn’t help any further. We talked a bit longer and then she had to get going.
I pottered about the house a bit and washed some dishes before settling on the sofa and playing Animal Crossing on the Wii then playing some games on my tablet. Before long it was mid-afternoon and the Scientist and boys had returned. It was good to have them home and I got to hear all the stories of the weekend within short order. The dogs were quite happy to have life getting back to normal at home.
It’s a day later and I’m still feeling a bit tired and run down but I’m hoping some activity will change that. I am sure I didn’t have the flu and not even a cold. I’m guessing it might have been some allergy thing as most of my symptoms could be consistent with an allergy attack of sorts (although it usually manifests itself into a head cold or something similar). Most of the reason I stayed home was fear of spreading germs so I possibly could have gone there but might well have stayed in the villa and slept much of the time. Ah well, another time we will go again…The Scientist and boys liked it so well they want to go back again and show me Mandurah.
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Chaos of life (also known as odds and ends)
After I posted about the thefts from our car, I did contact the insurance company, only to find out our policy had lapsed some time ago and we’d have been in major trouble if we had anything major happen. So it turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise as who knows when we’d have discovered the problem. It all came down to some poor communication when our bank, who acted as agent for us, changed to a different company and we wanted to stay with the one we had and our actions were a result of a misunderstanding of procedure at the time. Â Anyway, we are insured again and will just replace items stolen out of pocket.
Even though I really loved my camera that was stolen, I’m a bit excited at the idea of choosing a new camera. There are a few possibilities that present themselves and all of them have yet to be released here. I won’t buy without having a model to hold in my hands and try out it might be a few weeks until that is possible. The current contenders are Canon’s new G15, which I believe is due for release any time now. This is a couple steps up from the camera that was stolen. Canon is the brand I’ve been buying for some time so the advantage is familiarity with their system and a certain amount of trust on the quality. I am also eyeing a couple of the Olympus mirrorless PEN cameras. I was rather keen on the current mini model that was released last year, partly due to the option of getting it in purple. Alas, the newer models don’t have those color options so I will likely stick with something more traditional. But it would have been neat to have a purple camera. :)
I was invited to a Nutrimetic party last Friday and decided I’d go despite the product line being full of makeup, which I don’t usually wear. I hadn’t seen this friend for a couple of years or more and I was rather keen for us to reconnect in the real world. We’ve been in touch online in some vague sort of way most of this time but we haven’t had a good chat in a long time . I’ve been to my friend’s house before but it was during the day and has been a few years. These days I would just use my gps but now we don’t have one so I decided to use my iPad and hope for the best. Maybe it would have worked better if Google maps was still an option. The new Apple maps didn’t do a great job. I did get there but had to stop about five times to figure out where to go. It tried to send me off onto side roads instead of waiting until I got closer to my destination. Then when I finally found the street, it couldn’t help me get to the address so that I was driving back and forth along this street trying to figure out where the house was. I did get there, but was fifteen minutes late. Once there, it took me a while to settle in and I was a bit anxious with so many people I didn’t know. It did get better later on and I met a couple of people who I really liked. I didn’t buy anything though as we had another major expense show itself a couple hours before I left home. I will get to that shortly. By the end of the evening, I had a chance to talk to my friend and discovered our sons (who belonged to the same D&D group) are in similar situations with their lives and somewhat isolated. So we now have plans to reconnect properly and get out boys together too. It made the journey well worth the trouble. I had similar trouble getting out of the neighborhood when I left and ended up going in circles. The iPad app was most unhelpful and I had to stop and examine the map several times to work out where to go to get to the main road again. The program could pinpoint where I was easily enough. But giving me instructions on where to go didn’t happen…it assumed I was at another location and directed me from there and I never did work out where the starting point was. I did get home after a few mistakes of my own.Now I must backtrack a few hours to Friday afternoon. The Scientist and I went to the gym after he finished work, as has been our habit. We came home and he went off to have a shower while I took the dogs out for a walk. When I returned, he had not had his shower due to the hot water heater having died that afternoon. Always has to happen on a Friday, of course. The upside was that it wasn’t a long weekend and it’s not winter. I had to have a shower so went ahead and took one and expected it to be icy, but it wasn’t. Seems there was still a bit of warm water in the tank so that it was never uncomfortable for me. That was replaced yesterday and we are now $1500 poorer.
On the weekend, we had to make an emergency run to the vet when little boy dog got another seed in his ear. He didn’t cry out like last time but his behavior was quite uncharacteristic. He didn’t even bark at other people and animals when we got to the vet. Â It took a bit of work to find the seed and get it out but he was back to his normal self when he came out and ready to take on the world.
And today the Scientist and I went for our long overdue eye check ups. I’m getting new glasses as my current ones aren’t quite doing enough for me, especially when driving at night. I’ve had my current pair for at least five years now. I didn’t need any changes at my last appointment so I can’t complain too much. I’m not totally sure if the optometrist was as thorough with my eye tests as he could have been. I told him from the beginning about a field vision test I’d been given a few years ago that had a few issues and was supposed to have been follow up on. I didn’t get a recall on that back then but he didn’t suggest any follow up either. Also, I was somewhat disturbed that he took my glasses away and looked at them and was totally unaware of the fact they are multi-focal lenses until I pointed it out when he was offering possible options on new glasses. I’m thinking of going back to the previous optometrist and asking either for a follow up or copies of my records to take to the new one.
And this Friday, my first-born child will pass from childhood to adulthood. At least on paper. I have more to write on that later. Also, I still want to write about the visit Lego Lover and I made to the art gallery to see the Modern Masters  from Picasso to Warhol recently.
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Spring has sprung
The season announced itself with quite a splash this weekend with the temperatures reaching a glorious warm high of 29C yesterday. It’s days like yesterday that make you want to never turn back to the damp and chilly days of winter. Our yard has become quite overgrown with grass and weeds over the winter so the Scientist and I have plans to get out and cut it all down before we start attracting snakes or, more likely the nasty moth infestation that has hit us the past two years. I have ideas of planting beans in the big planter I used for tomatoes last year. I’m also contemplating buying another planter for the tomatoes to be place in a shadier location in hopes of it lasting through the season this time.
I managed to take dogs out together for walks both weekend days. This was a first post-surgery and Saturday went pretty well considering it was a novel idea. Little girl dog seemed to enjoy going out more with her sibling along for the walk. Yesterday didn’t go quite as well. I had both on the leash and opened the kitchen door to go out when little boy dog started barking like it was an emergency and nearly pulling me over. This started little girl doing similarly…it seems the cat was under the car and that made the world totally wrong, at least in little boy’s eyes. As the dogs were both straining quite hard on the leashes and both out of control, I required assistance from the Scientist to return some sanity to the proceedings. The actual walk wasn’t so bad but there was much more straining of the leash from both and it often meant they were headed in opposite directions. Little boy dog did his share of mad barking whenever we encountered another dog or other people. I much preferred their behavior on Saturday.
The gym routine is continuing pretty well so far. I think my knee is gradually getting stronger. Sometimes it’s quite deceptive because I feel like it’s totally back to normal when it’s still just getting there. I have to force myself to slow down when I feel that good as I have such a bad habit of overdoing it at such times. I decided to try using the cross trainer going backwards the other day and realised I’ve neglected to work on those muscles. It was quite difficult at first but I seem to be building up strength much more quickly than when I first started using the machine. It’s still a bit early but I think it might be helping me get better at handling steps. I tested out my ability on a step stool and I was able to get up even though I was a bit unsteady during the process. I have to believe it can only get better…so far, getting that leg to lift me up just hasn’t worked so I think it’s progress.
The big trade-off with this lovely warm weather is my body’s reaction to all the pollen blowing around. I think all the rain from last month has pushed the flowering plants into overdrive and there is pollen everywhere. I usually get mostly stuffiness and nasal congestion but this year I started with the runny nose and the sneezing…and today got the stuffiness too. Not sure how I can have both at the same time but I do. I nearly took a Claratyne tablet last night as I was feeling pretty icky but I’m glad I didn’t. My body has gone really dry, presumably due to the Sjogren’s syndrome, so the anti-histamine would have made it that much worse. I am just glad I started on the Beconase last week before the allergy symptoms started kicking in.
A couple posts should be coming up, including:
- Lego Lover and I took a trip into the city in order to see one of several exhibits being displayed here from the Museum of Modern Art in NY.
and- A dental appointment, also involving a trip into the city