As usual there’s always way too much going on in daily life
around my place, hence I’m a bit tardy with this post.
When I was eating breakfast about a week ago, I heard a loud
thud on the large windows we have in the family room. We have three windows across the house facing
the desert and many a bird has met their demise by hitting them while flying at
full speed.
The first thing that entered my mind was the fact I was
going to have to find a shovel to bury another bird, thinking it was probably a
quail, or pigeon, or perhaps a dove. I was
not up to this task because of the mishap I had while we were preparing for the
tile job in our master bedroom and closet.
But I hate to throw dead birds into the trash bin because I think they
do deserve a proper burial. I guess maybe
this is a quirk of mine.
Wow! Isn't this something?
I got a surprise when I looked out to see a bird of prey knocked
out on my patio. This never
happens. They are too adept at flying
and usually chase other birds they’re hunting into the windows. I grabbed the camera and stood there taking
pictures and willing him to wake up and fly away.
I’m happy to say he did eventually come to his senses enough
to fly into the desert where he probably sat a spell until he was revived
enough to carry on with his daily routine.
The mishap I mentioned earlier is to my right hand, which is
still bandaged three weeks later. I
guess this is going to mean another trip to the doctor. My mistake here was not going to the doctor to
start with and treating myself at home like I usually do. I’m sure this will just be another battle
scar of life to the old bod.
Isn't this beautiful tile? It looks like wood.
As mentioned earlier, we put tile in the bedroom and closet
so we had old carpet and pad to tear out before the tile layer got here to
start the job on the first of November.
Just getting this stuff out and the rooms down to concrete was such a
big chore that it wore us out. Of course
all the furniture had to be moved first before any removal could be done as far
as carpet and pad were concerned.
The first day was spent draining the water bed and getting
that out of there first, and then came the frame pieces and finally chairs and dresser
and chest of drawers, etc. Then we had
to remove everything from the lower half of the closet. We took four days off work to get all this
done, which we needed and then some. We
had furniture, bedding and clothing in every room in the house. Of course, my cats loved all this excitement.
Raven snuggled into the bedding we had piled on the couch.
The next day we had to rip the carpet out and then the
pad. The first thing I did was step on
the tack strip barefoot. Duh! How stupid was that? I was hauling loads out of the closet and
working in the construction zone barefoot.
It was all rush; rush because we only had a couple of days to prepare everything
for the tile guy.
By the time we got to the carpet pad we were worn out, but
had to get down on our hands and knees with putty knives to scrape up the
remnants. I really don’t know what kind
of glue they use for carpet pads, but I think it’s meant to stay there a
lifetime. We made the mistake of leaving
all the pictures and sculptures on the walls.
I got up to get the hammer to pull out a tack in the cement floor and
fell against the wall because I was so tired.
This knocked an Indian metal sculpture off the wall and it gashed me
good and deep across my right hand in two places. I’m lucky it missed my head.
Of course I ran for the bathroom sink leaving a trail of blood
behind me. It did cross my mind to go to
the emergency room. My hand looked like
a fillet of meat. I thought I may need
stitches. But it was late in the day and
the emergency room would have cost a fortune, not to mention hours of time we
didn’t have, so we finally got the bleeding stopped enough to use a band aide
to patch it together.
So I kept doctoring this hand twice a day and bandaging it
up. After about a week I decided I should
probably see the doctor for it. Of
course, this was impossible too because you can never get an appointment when
you need one, so I spent an entire day sitting in the waiting room to see the
doctor on call for the day. They gave me
a tetanus shot and also an antibiotic shot along with a prescription for
antibiotics. They said I had done a good
job with it so far. I can say that shot
in the rear end made me forget my hand for a while because it hurt so bad I could
hardly walk for about three hours.
I headed to the pharmacy and then to Walmart to get a new heating
pad. Mine is about twenty years old and I’m
not sure it even works anymore. I got
home just before dark. I couldn’t believe
it took all day to deal with this.
I’m back to work, but doing easy demos while my hand is
healing. It’s still a bit swollen and
red and itches like mad. I think I’m
allergic to the ointment they gave me, the bad aides I’m using, or something,
so I’ll have to make an appointment on my next day off and see if I can get in
again to have them look at my hand. I’m
ready for this to be well, so I can move on to other things. I have to keep it dry so I have to put on a
glove and rubber band around my wrist so I can take a shower. It’s getting old.
This is my hand these days. I wasn't thinking about the camera when this first happened.
I’ll end this long post with the irk portion. Three of my neighbors have Xmas lights up
already! Good grief! This is even earlier than last year! Doesn’t anyone celebrate Thanksgiving
anymore? I know the house down the block
at least remembers Thanksgiving is after Halloween and before Xmas because they
have a whole new load of large “blow up” lawn ornaments for Thanksgiving. As annoying as this looks, at least it’s not
Xmas lights yet. It irks me a great deal
to see Xmas decorations go up before Thanksgiving.
This is one of the prettiest sunrises I've seen since living here. The whole sky was like this. It was amazing. It was about 50 degrees but I stepped out on my patio in my pj's and got this shot.
We should all be so thankful for all the blessings we have every
day. But the holidays have become so commercialized. Decorations are showing up in the stores
earlier every year. I just really hate
this, but I know it won’t change. We had
Halloween costumes in Costco in August and then Xmas trees up in September. Ugh!
What is this world coming to?
