Mountain Mama's Point Of View

  Happy to report air conditioning at my house! Works almost too well. I like to be a little chilly while sleeping, but this was bone chilling. HeWho assured me that the temperature was set at 75. He was in a fetal position try to keep warm under the sheet and lightweight bedspread, but did not get up to check the temp. The register is in the floor on my side of the bed and was blowing in my face. I got up and grabbed my warm and cozy robe and tossed it over my shoulders. There are two thermostats and the one that I needed to get to was in a dark corner. I could not find a flashlight to save my life! This morning I located a flashlight and hung it on the hooks by the door that hold our keys. Then I took my pills and got ready for my appointment. I have grown tired of all the appointments and trips to see the doctor. Seems like that is all I do lately! Monday was a big day. We finally got our drivers license for the state of North Carolina. We were prepared with our birth certificates,

  Cujo here. Things have been hot and sweaty here. The man in the white truck finally came and did whatever these men called repairmen do and we are finally cool inside. Just in time for the really hot days. The nights are not nearly so hot. Last night after the man fixed the air conditioner, it was downright cold in our bedroom. I heard Mom ask HeWho is our Dad what temperature he had set the air on. He said 75, but Mom said that it could not be set that high because she was cold. What you should know about this, is that Mom is never cold unless she is sick! Did HeWho is our Dad get up and go check the thermostat (this is what Mom calls that thing on the wall that tells us what the temperature is)? No, he did not. Mom removed the blankets from the bed when the weather changed. I slept close to Mom and kept her warm. Bo sleeps down at the foot of the bed and he told me that Mom's feet were icy cold. Bo is a good sport and stayed with her feet until he warmed them up. Eddie got up o

  We are still without benefit of central air. Repair man came on Monday. It is the motor. Unfortunately, he did not have one on his truck and it had to be ordered. Next week it will be installed. It is not as bad as you may be imagining. The nights are cool, downright chilly. Good sleeping weather if your mate doesn't hog the quilt! Mr. BoJangles is the real culprit. He likes to burrow between the quilt and sheet. In doing so, he pulls the quilt off me and makes a mound in the middle of the bed around himself. For such a little guy, he manages to take up a lot of space. We have a temporary window unit in the living room that manages to keep the temperature down during the 90 degree afternoons. That unit will be going to the She Shed after the central unit has been repaired. Not in one of my windows, but in the outer wall. $500 for a new motor seems like a lot, until you compare that with replacing the unit. Such is life!

  The pool noodles have been installed and the net is covering everything. One noodle looks askew, but it is holding the net up. About those noodles .... I studied them carefully after they arrived. Something was different. I bought these by the dozens every year for the pool season and thought something was different. They are abut a foot shorter than they used to be! Not only did they raise the price by a quarter, they made them shorter! Looks a little like a circus, don't you think? It was a challenge to get the netting in place. I placed everything as close to the ravine as I could, so there was no walking around on the far side! It was quite the stretch to get the net over. It caught on everything. I hope it will be worth the effort. Up the hill, by the She Shed things are beginning to sprout. I am looking forward to some color. I still need to "hide" the soaker hose under the mulch. My next big project will be a fence panel on the end of the shed to hide the trailer

  When planning a vegetable garden, the sun plays a big part. I haven't really found a spot I like, so I haven't tilled up any ground. All in containers, this is my garden this year. Before we left on our trip, I covered everything with a net to keep the rabbits at bay. I had put everything together in a tight little area to be sure it would cover everything. Yesterday I spent the cooler morning hours taking the netting off and making sure all the containers were where the sun cold hit them all. I realized the net was bigger than I thought it would be. I mean, I could have read the description on the package to determine this but this was more fun. HeWho is my errand boy has been dispatched for some pool noodles from the Dollar and a Quarter Tree. My beans and tomato vines were growing through the net. This made it difficult to harvest any thing, not being able to lift the net easily. The pool noodles will create an arch over the garden and the net will lie atop the noodles. I

Yeah, I know it is Fathers Day. I have done my duty to the only father in my immediate presence today. I baked a cake to his liking and make his requested dinner, spagetti. Too hot to work outside until this evening, while the cake baked, I started sorting a box of photos. Remember when you could get doubles for just a dollar more when having film developed. You did it because it was such a bargain. But that was trusting that every photo was worthy of doubling without benefit of first seeing them. I eliminated quite a few blurred, out of focus photos and their doubles while the cake batter turned into cake. I didn't find any good ones of my Daddy in this particular box. I did find these pictures of me and my sister from 1955. That would be me on the left and my sister on the right. I look a little less than well groomed. I was about 2 and 1/2. My sister was almost 2 years older than me. We don't look like sisters, do we? I grew up very much in her shadow. Not her fault. She was

  Today took us on an adventure. It was a lovely drive even if we arrived late. GPS underestimated the time it took to travel. We went through three cities with traffic lights and seemed to hit them all at the wrong time. I was a little out of sorts at the beginning of the trip, but I like to see new places, so I perked up. I was busy pointing out restaurants and places to shop, all the while looking for the street we were were supposed to turn onto. Ten minutes late. I would have fought with anyone saying we had to reschedule. Fortunately they didn't and all the tests were completed. We left home at 11:30 and got back at 4:30. HeWho treated me to Wendy's biggie bag to eat while driving. No, I wasn't driving, because if I had been driving, we would have most certainly made a U-turn and gone back a mile to the 21,000 square foot thrift store I saw! No telling what treasures awaited me there!! 21,000 square feet could have kept me occupied many hours! We did stop at a produce

  I am happy to report that I am much better. My voice is still not working as well as it should, but I am in hopes that it is intelligible as I am sitting here, on hold. I gave the task of appointment making to the person for whom the appointment is being made. Should have known better. The appointment needed to be in Jasper to make the results readily available to the doctor, at a hospital in the same system with the hospital in Atlanta. The testing can easily be done here, but the results would be delayed a day while they downloaded it to send to the doctor. First available appointment in Jasper was not until October. I was listening as the person on the other end was finding solutions for a sooner appointment. First she told him Canton. Canton is about two and a half hours away. Jasper is two hours away. She suggested Atlanta, which would be a nightmare of traffic and probably close to three hours. All of this was rumbling around in my head. Then she found an opening in Elijay, 63

  Cujo here. This is me in Minnesota. I was being such a good boy that Mom let me stay out longer than the others. We stayed in a lot of places on our trip and had a great time. This campground charged extra for each dog. My mom never charged extra for pets. I have heard her say that she likes dogs more than people. That does not apply to me. I like MY dogs okay, but I only like Mom. Eddie is my best buddy. Martha and I have an understanding. I don't really care about Dora, the turtle that Mom pets and makes cooing noises over. Hey, it is a reptile, and I am a dog. We have nothing in common, well, except Mom. The trip was fun until Mom got sick. She coughed and coughed. It was quite annoying. It kept us dogs up. HeWho is our dad seemed to sleep through it. He doesn't wear his hearing aids at night while he sleeps. He has learned to put them up when not using them. All thanks to Mr. BoJangles chewing up two of them. I will tell you a secret. Mom and I laughed about it. You would

  Driving home after a visit with the vascular surgeon's nurse practitioner and a visit to the grocery, the thermometer reported a temperature of 100 degrees. HeWho was told to turn the air conditioning on before we needed it just to make sure it was working properly and failed to do so, was all a tither about the heat.  "We are turning the air on when we get home!" he proclaimed. It made it sound like I had previously forbidden him to do so. I didn't. The mornings have been so nice and cool before the sun comes out, and again in the evening when it goes down that we have not needed to turn the air on. I just looked at him and said nothing. It is still quite the effort to force sounds through my throat, so I don't talk unless I have to. The visit with the nurse practitioner went well. We will have to go to Piedmont Hospital in Jasper for the CT scan of his legs, abdomen, and his carotid arteries. If a procedure will be of benefit, we will need to go to Atlanta. I

  Still no voice. Good thing I can write! Our primary care office is closed on Friday. After another night spent doubled over coughing non-stop, HeWho drove me to the ER. That is what the prompt on the phone message suggests. I am not a big fan of going to the ER with things that can be handled in the office. I was so miserable, though. My foot was hurting, and all wrapped up in an ace bandage and I had HeWho's cane to lean on. I was coughing and I know how bad I looked because I looked in the mirror before I left, my hair was .... well, I could have been a candidate to stand in for England's prime minister. I was clean, just not groomed. I had a chill that morning, so I took a hot shower to warm up. This was after the cool shower I took earlier because I was sweating and hot. I hobbled into an empty reception area and a person at the desk brought me into what I assumed was a triage area and sat me down. She handed me a clipboard full of documents and told me to fill one out, t

  My grandmother used to use the term "weak as snot" to describe how bad she was feeling. I don't know that it applies, as I find snot to be very strong! When I lie down to sleep, it starts slipping down the back of my throat and causes me to cough violently. Medical professionals refer to this as postnasal drip. Once again, drip does not apply. More like a constant waterfall choking me and causing violent spasms of coughing that bring me up and out of the bed. It started Sunday on the trip. I have seasonal allergies and they were in full force. I feel better sitting up but have not figured out how to sleep in a sitting position. Why is always worse at night? I can soldier through the daytime hours, not 100%, but doable. The coughing makes my entire body ache, right down to my fingers and toes. If only I could sleep. Sleep makes everything better. I had high hopes for last night in my own bed. Mucinex Nighttime Severe Cold and Flu did not stop my coughing. I was up and do

We will be home tomorrow. We are in the bowels of Kentucky now, stopped riding at 3:45. I have walked the dogs, done the dishes and washed some unmentionables in the kitchen sink. Remember, back in the day when ladies did not disclose words like bras and panties? Gone, those days are gone. Not that I think anything is wrong with the words, just like the sound of "unmentionables" as it rolls off my tongue. Actually, no words are rolling off my tongue at all. Cottonwood trees were blooming in Minnesota. Well, not exactly just blooming, but the blooms were floating through the air at the graduation ceremony that was held outside. I noticed it but thought nothing of it. I take Zyrtec every morning and Singulair at night. They serve me well under normal circumstances. I think it was the lilac tree in my son's yard that took my voice away. I can whisper, but my voice sounds like a frog croaking. HeWho is audio impaired can understand nothing I say! We text or he reads my lips a