slowly she turned

Saturday morning coffee pot post

May 22, 2021

^Statue on the corner of Walker and Elam Avenues, Greensboro, NC

It’s still comfortably cool on the front porch, but according to the weather forecast it will be turning to summer temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s soon. Dry, too, with some drought concerns beginning to pop up. When I was at the lake last time, the water was already pretty low.

Both of us have been in better spirits this week. Sandy is going to the Aquatic Center for water exercise classes and swimming laps, and he started the steroids on Thursday. He will be on them for a month and then the doctor switches him to something else.

I’m kind of craving a steroid shot in my wrist again since of course I have overdone it with the yard work and otherwise usually holding a book, Kindle, or phone in my hand until my Dequervain’s tendinitis in my left wrist has flared up and my carpal tunnel has flared up in my right wrist. So I’m typing this with two different kinds of wrist braces on, and will try to hold back on the gardening and weeding this weekend. However, this pain is old news to me and even though it is distressing (I had surgery on the left wrist 8 years ago) I don’t struggle with it as much mentally as I used to.

I bought some more tomato and pepper plants at Deep Roots Market on Sunday afternoon and planted them into the pots: Pink Brandywine tomatoes, hot banana peppers, and jalapenos. Then when we popped into the Bestway for a couple of things I noticed that they had a small pot of sweet basil with lots of seedlings crammed into it for $2.99. They are not particularly happy now that I’ve pulled them apart and planted them, but I didn’t really expect them to be. If I get two healthy ones out of the dozen or so that are in there, I win.

We both had massages Monday night and the therapist, who teaches it at the local community college so knows her stuff, basically said that I needed more work that one hour could handle. Ha.

Late Tuesday afternoon I saw my therapist for the first time since November, 2018, when the election results helped calm me down for a while. I told her that I was seeing her on my best day in at least two years and I couldn’t make the appointment to get help earlier because I was too depressed to do it. Such a vicious cycle, depression and agoraphobia. I really like her and was happy that I started it up again. There was also a nice surprise – my insurance doesn’t even charge a co-pay now. I don’t know how long that lasts, but yay.

Anyway, the point is that Sandy and I are both busy getting our shit together and back to living the best life possible. I have a podiatrist appointment on Monday, too, so new shoes will probably be in my future. We both need to do a bit of clothes shopping.

We are planning our summer – in two weeks we go up the road to Elkin, NC, for my Tapestry Weavers South retreat. I’ll be taking a tapestry design course from Tommye Scanlin on that Monday and Tuesday.

Speaking of Tommye, I set up a Bookshop of my own and right now I am featuring tapestry design books. I get a small commission, and a book wholesaler, Ingram, hosts the sites. It’s a way to support local bookstores and publishers online without going through Amazon. You can buy Tommye’s book “The Nature of Things: Essays by a Tapestry Weaver” or pre-order her upcoming book “Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond” there. The link is on my sidebar and also here: Slow Turn Books. I ordered “The Nature of Things” from my shop and it arrived within a week – what a lovely book! I have ordered from Boomerang Bookshop as well, and the entire Bookshop website is fun to search. You can order from many independent bookstores there.

I will be adding more book lists as the summer goes on – probably focused on the fiber art/mixed media/collage artists who I’ve taken courses from and love the most. I’m not trying to compete with any bookstores or make any money off this – just promote the books and art that I love and have some fun. I miss my bookstore days, but I don’t miss the poverty wages.

Here’s a wildlife shot: The mighty cougar stalks his prey.
Monday morning

May 17, 2021

Writing on the front porch, working from home still. Soon, that too will be a memory. This is the climbing rose that is technically on my neighbor’s property. I saved it from the landscapers that plowed up everything else because they think that two foot strip is on our side of the property line. We are going to see if we can root some of it and plant some in the back forty. It has a lovely smell. And of course, there’s the daisy fleabane that I let grow each year as a backdrop.

Like most people, I have mixed feelings about the new CDC guidance on wearing masks. On the one hand, I am happy about it and tend to trust the scientists. On the other hand, there is no way to tell if an unmasked person is vaccinated or is being a maskhole, so I’ll continue to be cautious and wear a mask in inside spaces and in crowded situations, but mainly, I’ll avoid crowds and inside spaces the same way that I did before. Plus, I am not yet sure what we will need to do about masks with Sandy’s medical situation, although the doctor did say it should be fine to go to Europe in September.

However, Sandy and I did eat dinner inside the Green Valley Grill at the bar last night for our anniversary. I knew that they were a safe space, and they had spaced out their tables and put clear plastic dividers every 2-3 seats at the bar. I had the pecan crusted trout – I always have the pecan crusted trout, I should try something else but it is so good – and Sandy had the Athens pasta.

We toasted my friend and colleague, Karl Schleunes, a retired historian of the Holocaust who passed away yesterday. I already miss Karl. He was a kind and funny man, a good friend. When I first began at UNCG, he was the associate head and I was his admin, then he was interim head the next year and his admin was on maternity leave, so I had a great working relationship with him as well. I never, ever was made to feel that I was anything but his equal, and that was rare in professors of his generation. Since his retirement, he stopped by our offices to visit often, and took “the history girls” out to lunch once or twice a year. I miss his smile and deep soft voice and chuckle.

Yesterday I mainly rested my feet, but we went to Deep Roots for groceries and Sandy rearranged the “living room” to a cozier, less cluttered space. Well, it will be less cluttered. We are still working on that part. It is embarrassing for us to have anybody come inside.

Sandy is starting to sound enthusiastic about going to Europe so I think that our situation will turn out okay as long as Europe lets us in by September. If not, I’ll cancel everything and we’ll figure out something else.

On Saturday afternoon I did a lot of weeding and filling containers with potting soil and adding a big bag of raised bed soil that Sandy had bought last year to the new hugelkultur bed. I’m still not sure what I will plant there, considering I watched four little groundhogs playing in and out of the holes in that cement block wall in the background this morning. One climbed a tree. Maybe basil. I planted pink Brandywine tomatoes, hot banana peppers, and jalapeno peppers in the remaining containers. There is still a whole lot to do, including killing a healthy stand of poison ivy growing around the maple stump.
34 Years

May 16, 2021

Sandy and I got hitched 34 years today. That seems like too many years, really! This is one of my favorite photos of us, at Mount St. Helens, wearing our traveling hats.
Saturday morning coffee pot post

May 15, 2021

I’m just starting to get the hang of this block editor, but I still haven’t figured out how to add the categories, which I have used since my first day of WordPress, and added to the old posts that I transferred over. I hope to add these to my newer posts one day since I find them very useful.

Dragged kicking and screaming into any new technological change, that’s me! I wouldn’t even use an answering machine for years, and I was one of the last people I know to get a cell phone that I actually used. You’d think that we’d be different in the O’Neill household, given our IT pasts, but my husband is even more of a Luddite with his phone. I never have liked the constantly connected culture, and I pretty much hate talking on the phone. From what I’ve read, that is common among introverts.

And the answering machine came in handy the week that an insane husband of a friend left threatening messages for me in the middle of the night. That little tape is still in a drawer somewhere. It stopped the phone calls when we informed his wife of its existence.

So anyway, I uploaded photos from the last week yesterday, and if you aren’t interested in our personal lives or my brain dump, you can stop right here and go back a post.

Our week began with Sandy again calling and calling the surgeon’s office to get them to send the lab results from his muscle biopsy to the rheumatologist’s office. Finally a staff member from the rheumatologist’s office got involved and got the results just in time for his appointment on Thursday. His biopsy was APRIL 1st. The results have been back for weeks. I never want to have any surgery from Central Carolina Surgery after this.

Anyway, it was not good news, but I didn’t expect good news, having done a lot of research on what the doctor suspected. The diagnosis is polymyositis, a rare auto-immune muscle inflammatory disease where the immune system attacks healthy muscle tissue and destroys it. Part of the reason it might be rare is that it is hard to diagnose without this muscle biopsy. It mimicked some symptoms of shingles so much that Sandy was absolutely convinced that all of his problems were from long term shingles. His GP diagnosed shingles as soon as she saw the rash. I’m still confused whether he actually had shingles or if the shingles was in addition to the polymyositis. The doctor did say he was sorry, that he knew that Sandy thought that it was shingles, and he asked him where the rash had appeared. Apparently a rash can be one of the symptoms of polymyositis.

Since Sandy is doing much better as far as his muscle weakness, they took some more blood to see what dosage of steroids he should be on. After about a month of steroids, his meds will be shifted to what they call steroid-sparing, because you can’t be on those good-feeling steroids for long.

I really want to have a one-on-one talk with his rheumatologist. Fortunately, they let me sit in on the appointment, because Sandy was an abused kid and his way of dealing with stress and bad news is to zone out and go into denial. He misses a lot of details. For instance, he thought that he wouldn’t be starting his medication until after his next appointment in June. He needs to start this asap.

I asked the doctor whether we could still take a trip to Europe in September, and he said that by then, Sandy should be able to do it. So that’s the good news! I’m so glad that we were both able to get vaccinated before he goes on immuno-suppressant drugs.

Also, this is the kind of disease that comes and goes into remission, and even though it is incurable, the meds should keep him in remission. Thank God for modern medicine.

Sandy started taking water aerobics classes at the Greensboro Aquatic Center a week ago, and this has been a very good thing. His instructor is also a massage therapist and he scheduled massages for both of us late Monday afternoon. That’s a nice thing to look forward to on a Monday, especially since I plan to do a lot of yard work this weekend. The weather is gorgeous.

In the meantime, I decided that it is time for me to get my shit in gear and re-enter the world. For an agoraphobic, this is more complicated than you would think. Agoraphobia is not what the general public thinks it is, which is why I had my own problems getting a diagnosis. I know the red flags when it is coming back, and my red flags started waving about a year ago. It is hard work staying ahead of this mental illness, but I don’t intend to get housebound again. I have even been avoiding the front porch, where I am sitting and writing this post right now.

I went to my GP and got my own lab work done, which I have been avoiding, and talked to her about my problems with my feet. She said that she was referring me to a podiatrist but I haven’t heard anything about that. If I need surgery for this cyst on my foot, I want it in time that I am over it before traveling to Europe. If not, it will have to wait until late October. It is far enough under my high arch that it isn’t painful. I also have Achilles tendinitis which makes me pretty hard for me to walk and disrupts my sleep. I think that will be more easily solved and it is the main issue. My lab work was about the same – high cholesterol but otherwise normal. I gained five pounds, no surprise. I need to get in better shape if I want to do a lot of walking in Ireland and Lisbon.

After Sandy’s appointment on Thursday, we went out to lunch at Kiasco on their patio, and when I mentioned how good he will feel on steroids, he said that he didn’t want to take any more drugs. This is a huge warning sign and once I got home I curled up in a little ball in my bedroom for a few hours. Sandy can be extremely stubborn and self-destructive if he makes up his mind about something, and won’t veer off that course even if he sees that he was wrong. I decided to give him a few days of space to get used to the idea, and have only mentioned the steroids and how much better he will feel a couple of times.

I can see that this is going to be a rough road for both of us emotionally and for me, mentally. So I made an appointment with my therapist for Tuesday afternoon. I’m actually feeling better than I did a year or so ago, or I wouldn’t have been able to make the appointment. I want to stay ahead of what my brain might mistakenly instruct me to do. And then, depending on what happens, I may ask him to go with me.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about my upcoming travel plans and the progress with the Back Forty, if any!
Friday Afternoon

May 14, 2021

I thought I’d post a few of the photos from this week before I go on to my Saturday post tomorrow.

Here are Frida and Bernie in the big cage together. They were pretty stressed at first. Frida was adjusting to her new space and Bernie was thrilled to have a new playmate and wouldn’t leave her alone. Now they seem to be fine, although I notice that Frida closes her eyes a lot, as if she is tired.

Last Saturday afternoon we went to the department get-together at Oden Brewing, where there was a good band playing called Who I Are and a Korean bbq food truck with an amazing bulgogi cheesesteak. Yum, yum. Maybe the best food truck food I ever had – certainly the best cheesesteak sub. I loved the James Brown doll in front of the stage, and the new ESB at Oden is excellent.

I did get out the string trimmer (or weed whacker, as I prefer to call it) and cut most of the yard, at least until I ran out of electric cord. I worked on the new hugelkultur bed by shoveling in the dirt, potatoes, and one garden snake out of the whiskey barrel planter that was falling apart. I moved a lot of rocks around since I took this photo and made hugelkultur bed look less like a shallow grave. My niece won the comment of the day on Facebook when she said, “Where’s Uncle Sandy? Don’t say out in the garden!”

See that cement block wall in the background? I was over there taking a photo of the may pops and a little groundhog came out of the burrow on the other side to check me out. It rushed back in and is just out of the photo’s sight although I could still see it. My neighbor across the street has been feeding the groundhogs so there is not any hope of me getting rid of them. All the neighbors think that they are cute. I scream at them. Oh well. There is a red fox family around too. I think that I heard one bark the other night, and Sandy saw it in the same area. So nature might take care of the problem.

Leaving you with a foxglove and a snapdragon – the volunteers are many this year. Tomorrow I’ll probably have a lot to say, given our medical news this week and my travel plans evolving.
Saturday morning coffee pot post

May 8, 2021

My neighbor is mowing his front yard and I feel envious. We don’t have a working mower at the moment, and even though I actually enjoy mowing and weed-whacking, it sets off my tendinitis. I’m considering getting the weed-whacker out anyway. The yard guy that I was so thrilled about came by when I was at the office on Thursday to mow and clean up the yard, but he couldn’t find a parking place so he left. So frustrating! The Back Forty is looking like a prairie, which I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t breed tiger mosquitoes.

There’s something about clearing paths and breaking trails that lights up my brain when I mow. Mowing was my job growing up, and I liked it so much that I would mow neighbor’s yards, the sides of the road, and the community building lot too. Now that I have hindsight, I guess that was one way that I coped with my anxiety.

This week was the last of the semester, and things should calm down for a while, but you never know these days. We used to go on vacation in May for this reason. This year our best-laid plan is to go to Ireland with a side trip to Lisbon, Portugal in September. Hopefully the EU will be open for us by then – it sounds like it is moving in that direction. I have good deals on AirBNB apartments in western Ireland (for a week!) and in downtown Lisbon, near the museums and the river in one of the arty neighborhoods. Both can be cancelled up to a week before the rental begins. I hope that my sister and brother-in-law will join us, but that’s beginning to look doubtful. In the meantime, we’ll probably go back to the lake once or twice in the next few months.

Beautiful weather today. Sunshine and breezes, high around 70. I’m glad that I can enjoy it because I had my second shingles vaccination late Thursday afternoon and it kicked my butt yesterday. I barely felt the shot, but afterward I barely slept and had a headache for about 24 hours, not to mention an extremely sore arm. Last night I finally fell asleep with an ice pack, slept for 12 hours, and awoke feeling good. Later we will go to a get-together for our department at Oden Brewing, which has a nice outside beer garden just around the corner from my house.

We moved Frida into the cage with Bernie yesterday. After trying to catch her (we never have handled her) we finally held her cage up to Bernie’s cage and opened the two doors between them. She flew into Bernie’s cage. It was that simple. They are both exhibiting stress behaviors and Bernie has been chasing Frida around more than she’d like, but otherwise they are getting along and were kissy-kissy this morning.

I have so much that I’d like to get done this weekend. I didn’t get any weaving done because I stabbed myself in the finger with a knife on Sunday! It didn’t hurt much, amazingly, but boy, did it bleed and I thought that I might have to get stitches because it was deep. Of course my vaso vagel syncope popped out and I had to lay on the kitchen floor for about 30 minutes. Sandy stayed with me and helped me. We did pretty good first aid because it has closed up nicely and hasn’t hurt much, but working in the yard and washing dishes and weaving were out for this week. Hopefully I will have a few photos by tomorrow evening.
Garden time!

May 2, 2021

My front garden is getting into full swing now. The foxgloves reseeded themselves down in front this past year. I have not had to replant foxgloves for years now, although I have moved them around.

The roses that I saved that are really on my neighbor’s property have come back. Most of the flowers over there were plowed up and mowed down, but they don’t know or care that this little strip is on their side of the line. I always let the daisy fleabane at the end of the path bloom.

This borage was a nice surprise volunteer.

I reduced the size of my hugelkultur bed in the front in anticipation of needing to roll the jet ski out to the street, although that hasn’t happened yet. I made it deeper and I like the smaller size better. Yesterday I moved a few herbs around and planted a couple of swamp milkweed plants for the monarch butterflies. I repotted and potted containers with one plant each of Cherokee Purple tomato, Big Beef tomato, Better Boy tomato, Sweet 100 tomato, red bell pepper, and Anaheim pepper. Today I’ll plant a couple of English thyme in different places. It is my favorite herb but I’ve never found a place where it is happy. I’m still trying!

My neighbor offered me some rich looking dirt from where he dug out his driveway to pave it, and so I set up another hugelkultur bed, this time without digging the wood in. The dirt ended up having a lot of gravel in it, but that’s okay, I found a use for it!

Not sure what I will plant here, but at least I remembered to get a before shot.

(more…)
Lake Waccamaw, April 2021

May 2, 2021

I spent a few days and nights down at the lake house with my sister last week. Lisa spent most of her time with me since she was having her bathroom remodeled at her house, which is within walking distance. It was the first time we have seen each other since July, and it was a good time.

Other than to ride with Lisa to get takeout meals from a couple of places and to walk down to her house, I didn’t leave the house. The weather was a bit cold the first couple of nights and we discovered that the heat is not working. Lisa brought out her electric fireplace from storage and it made the place very cozy. Then the weather turned perfect, although still too cool to get in the water. By Wednesday afternoon when I left, it was getting hot.

Happily, my weaving muse came back finally came back and I starting weaving on this tapestry that I began three years ago at a Tapestry Weavers South retreat. It is an abstract interpretation of a photo I took of a calm reflection on the lake when it was just barely raining and a little bit of blue sky was reflected on the tea colored water.

All but a little bit of the darkest color are silk threads that I have dyed with natural dyes at various times. Sometimes I threw them in with a bundle of fabric or paper or tied them around a bundle, so those are variegated. The blue is from indigo, and the warm brown coppery colors from black walnut. The other browns and grays – I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed designed from the perspective of the threads, and adjusting the design as I go. Not my normal process, and maybe this was why I had a hard time getting going again on it. Decision fatigue! I am very happy with it, but it won’t be finished in time for the TWS show, I’m afraid. My eyesight gets too blurry to work on it very long. Guess I need to make an optometrist appointment.
Sunday Sweep

May 2, 2021

Preface: this is a Sunday Sweep post, in which I am clearing out a lot of anxious and depressed and just plain neurotic thoughts, so you might want to skip this one. I will be doing a couple of more posts with photos about more cheerful subjects.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but everything is fine. Not great, because we are still wondering about the results of Sandy’s muscle biopsy, but he is able to walk and lift his feet much higher, so he is improving quite a bit. His back and neck hurts a lot, so he saw my chiropractor and will see him again. A lot of the problem is that he was so sick for so long and could not walk for more than a very short distance, so he is trying to exercise more each day and strengthen his muscles.

I am quite pissed off at the surgeon and the rheumatologist for not getting back to us with the biopsy results. He has appointments with each of them later this month, but considering that it has now been a full month, I think this is inexcusable. If it was me, I would be raising hell and I have considered doing so anyway, but I try very hard to stay out of my husband’s personal decisions about his body, just as I expect him to do for me.

Anyway, last week I spent most of the week at Lake Waccamaw with my sister. I would have posted from there, but I didn’t bring a USB cord that would connect my phone to my laptop. That will be the next post, and then a garden post.

My spirits are much better, although I still have some deep dips into depression and part of my frustration is that I don’t understand why I get so weepy. Why am I having such a hard time? My life is pretty sweet compared to most people – we live modestly but with very little debt, we are financially stable, my job is pretty awesome, and we live on a wonderful street and our city is a great place to live. I am physically healthier than I have been in some time, except for being a bit fatter and some foot pain…I am not nearly experiencing the kind of back, neck, and hip pain that drove me to get monthly massages and lose sleep at night. Working from home has been a huge improvement for my body. Now that Sandy and I are fully vaccinated, I feel a huge weight lifted and we have been going out more, although I still draw the line at eating or drinking indoors.

Thursday I received a staff excellence award from the College of Arts and Sciences, which will bring me a little extra cash to spend in Ireland. I was honored in a Zoom ceremony, but unfortunately I was so appalled at the photo that was shown of me that I don’t remember much of what was said – basically it was brief and vaguely worded. I am going to ask K to let me read some of the nomination letters to make me feel better about it.

In the past at in person ceremonies the recipients of these awards went up on stage so I figured that they would show me in person. I fretted over this, but I found my makeup, set up a background in Zoom that didn’t show my mess behind me, and I made up my face to look pretty attractive, going back and forth to the mirror repeatedly to touch it up since I was in Zoom meetings all day. Then I didn’t appear at all – it was a PowerPoint presentation, and after a couple of professional head shots of the first two recipients, somebody had pulled a photo from one of our department newsletters five years ago of me in a staff uniform after a department graduation ceremony and cropped my other two co-workers out of the photo. I was so embarrassed, then I felt embarrassed about feeling so bad about something that was a good thing, and then I washed off my makeup and I cried for an hour. I wish that the college had asked me for a photo instead of mining our website for one. I wore a uniform for a couple of literal blue collar jobs in the past and I’ve always resented when I have to wear one in what I consider to be a step up in the world for me. I guess that’s hard to understand for someone who hasn’t lived my life. Generally I am not vain about my looks at all. I rarely wear makeup and wear the same clothes for years, often clothes that I’ve bought at a thrift shop, and I couldn’t care less about fashion. Why this bothered me so badly, I can’t say. I guess that I didn’t feel respected. This is nothing new about how I feel about the administration where I work. I know for certain that my department values and respects me greatly, and they nominated me, so I have come back to that, and I feel better. Really, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with.

Sandy tried to make me feel better by saying that the photo was not so bad (it wasn’t – it just made me look like a janitor) and then took me out for a couple of Rogue Nut Brown ales on the patio of a local rib place. Friday I worked in the office, then on Saturday, we went to the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market and I bought some plants from Weatherhand Farm, pink grapefruit soap from Mimi’s Soaps, and a couple of seasoning packets from Cornerstone Farms. It was really good to get out there. We then stopped at a big yard sale on the way home that benefited Unity in Greensboro, where we got some great deals. We got a pair of hand weights, a cat carrier (one of ours was held together with bungie cords and is now in the garbage), a couple of nice curtain rods, and an almost new Pictionary game all for less than $10. I am looking forward to playing Pictionary on the front porch.

We came home and I worked in the yard a while, then we went to a local hardware/garden supply store to buy potting soil. We walked in and Sandy forgot to pull his mask up so I reminded him. One of the employees walked out without a mask and told me that he did not have to put a mask on, and I sharply said, “Yes he does, he has an auto-immune disease.” I was really not so worried, but it annoyed me that somebody would stick his nose in our business that way. The other employees were masked and polite.

On the way home, we stopped downtown and went to a small outdoor festival with music and food trucks and some craft vendors at South End Brewing. We got a late lunch from the trucks and found a place to sit in the shade on the patio of South End. Both of us drank a blackberry wit which was pretty good.

I potted up and planted most of the plants I bought at the farmers’ market and I was pooped for the rest of the day. That was a lot of activity in one day for me, and I need more days like this.

Sandy has been pretty snappy with me since I’ve came home on Wednesday and right now he is gone to the used bookstore and I guess to lunch with his brother. I was invited but I declined. My guess is that it is the chronic pain that is loosening his will power to behave as loving and polite as he has been, and I don’t think that he is aware of how hurtful it is, but then again, it could be that I am truly annoying instead of trying to be helpful. I can be a bit of a bossypants. I can also be quite snappy myself. I have definitely been neurotic. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind having a few days alone right now. My emotions have been swinging so widely.

Bernie and Miss Freda have been singing to each other every day and we are going to put Miss Freda in the big cage with Bernie soon. I’m beginning to think that I was wrong about Bernie being male and now I think Bernie might be Bernice or Bernadette, which would actually be good. No mating.

The weather is perfect and I am happy on the front porch right now. Once I finish blogging, I will get back to weaving the tapestry I was working on at the lake. You can see this photo in the upcoming lake blog post. I need to do some photo editing first.
Saturday morning coffee pot post

April 17, 2021

Okay, here goes.

I was getting ready to drive down to Lake Waccamaw for several days, see my sister and brother-in-law and work remotely from the lake house. I put it off until tomorrow because of a dinner invitation (!!!) and my sister reports incoming mayflies. That is normal for this time of year, and I don’t think it is going to make a difference in my decision since I can sit on the screened porch looking out at the lake, but I do enjoy sitting on the edge of the lake unless it is in a swarm of mayflies or midges. I usually do a Easter visit every year but we missed this year because of Sandy’s health issues. (Update: I just had a crown come off a molar, so I guess I will go to the dentist on Monday instead. Damn it.)

Sandy will stay here. Apparently the lab results are back but the doctors haven’t looked at them and Sandy needs to make an appointment. He has been busy because YAY! He sold the condo! As is, a little over tax value. I am so glad to have this burden off our backs. It seemed like every time we went out of town for more than a couple of days something major would go wrong at the condo. This last renter was okay, but we have had a couple of nightmare renters in the past, including one who we had to evict who stopped paying rent and then trashed the place. This condo was my mother-in-law’s residence in the late 80s/early 90s.

Anyway, he is heading now out the door to meet the buyer and do the transfer. The buyer has a real estate license so hopefully this will be quick and simple. A friend recommended him so we feel pretty good about it.

This week’s other big news for us is that we adopted another parakeet. Meet Senorita Frida.

A farmer friend of mine posted this photo on Facebook after she was found in her chicken tractor! So I wrote to her and told her that Bernie could use a budgie friend if she didn’t find the owner. Fortunately we did not get rid of the other big cage that we bought for Bernie and Liz, the one we bought before Sandy ordered the HUGE cage for them. Miss Frida is isolated in the next room over from Bernie for a month, then we will move her close to Bernie, then transfer her into his cage.

She is tame, although a bit traumatized and angry. Right now she is very active. She likes hearing the budgie video and chirps and climbs around the walls of the cage, so I think that she will be fine. She has been very tired. We have no idea of how old she is, but she is definitely an adult. She and Diego gaze at each other calmly and so she seems to have no fear of cats. This is probably not a problem with Diego, as he went to the shelter at a week old and didn’t learn about hunting, but it is a problem with Pablocito, who has jumped at Bernie’s cage a few times. Bernie figured out a while back that he is safe from the cats in his cage, but if Pablocito jumps at the cage Frida is in, it is much more lightweight and he could knock it to the floor. So he needs to be kept out of that room.

Anyway, as I have said before, we are accidental parakeet people. Bernie and Liz were rescues from a relative who had them in a very small cage and they seemed to be an afterthought to him. We do not like the idea of birds in cages, and we don’t want to contribute to the pet bird industry. Sandy has enjoyed the keets and my fondness for them is growing. It is nice to have a tame one, although we haven’t handled her yet because we are trying to give her a little time to adjust to her new home.