Quirks, Irks and Mishaps

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?