2021 Blog

 Another season, another set of masks.  This is my chief distraction now as we sit and wait for the vaccines to come out.  Making masks is sometimes satisfying and sometimes frustrating as I feel I’m doing the same thing over and over again with no let up in sight.  But people seem to like them and I do enjoy giving them away when I’m done.   It would help to have a real sewing area where the machine could be left up, decent work chair, etc., but you make do with what you have. Below are some of the holiday masks I got done to send on to Megan ahead of Thanksgiving.

We didn’t do anything for Halloween, but Megan dressed up at her school.   All of the teachers had to dress as characters out of books.  She’s Waldo from the Where’s Waldo book series.

Following the election, my blood pressure dropped to normal levels again.   I was really getting worried because over the past few months I had been able to decrease my medications and didn’t want to have to go back on them.   Turns out stress really does a number on all of us.

Dave and I had a quiet Thanksgiving this year.  Hopefully by next year we can have friends with us as we celebrate in the desert.    And yes, there were 2 bottles of wine on the table.   In fairness, the red was almost emtpy and I had to finish the last glass because it would have gone bad otherwise.  

We didn’t get to visit wineries this year, so we have been ordering from those we liked (after it cooled down enough to allow shipments into Arizona.).  These 6 bottles of Barbera are from St. Amant in Lodi, CA - we enjoyed this wine in 2019,tasting and purchasing at the winery, and look forward to enjoying these during the winter months ahead.

So Fall has arrived, notice the change in masks.   I am now starting on masks for Thanksgiving and Christmas!   My sister sent me a box of Christmas fabric - left overs from her quilting.   And I’ll be making some smaller ones as Megan has had a couple of students who don’t have a change of mask during the week so she has given them an extra one to wear.   Lots of families are barely making it.  

We have begun to now sleep WITHOUT the AIR CONDITIONING on since last week.  The night time temperatures dropped down into the 70s and we can sleep well with just an open window and ceiling fan on.   In fact, by morning the fan is off and the window is closed as it keeps getting cooler.   By this weekend temperatures are projected to be UNDER 100°.

My hair has gotten so long I bought a set of hot rollers to try and give it a little body and shape once in a while.  Trouble is, without heavy hairspray (which I no longer have) it only stays that way until I start doing something outside - it then ‘melts’ away quite quickly!     Maybe one of these days I will feel safe enough to go get my hair cut again!   

September has been a ‘tread in place’  kind of month.   We pretty much just do routine things.  A highlight was taking the car over to get the oil changed - -I had started getting notice from the car that it was past time to change it.   

The Fall/Winter RVers have started arriving in the park this week.  We have enjoyed the last several months without all the people, but it is nice to welcome them back.  Hopefully the COVID-19 problem will be over in the coming months so everyone can get together and enjoy all the amenities that the park offers.

Dave was able to get a shot of the Moon and Mars the other night - - it will be over 200 years before they are ever this close together again.  

I told you our life was pretty dull right now!

Lastly, Dave thanks all of you for the well wishes you sent him over the Spring and Summer months.  He is slowly getting back to his old self!  

We hope that everyone is staying safe.   

We trust everyone is voting this fall!

Not to say things were boring, but one of the highlights for the month was the trimming of the palm trees in the park.  And I do mean TRIM.  They took out all yellowed looking frons - you can see a  few were left on each tree compared to the palm tree in the park next to ours.  

Of course, they just didn’t cut the frons, they just let them fall.   And fall they did into our tiny ‘front’ yard and the street.  Took them about three days to get them all picked up.   But that is only the start, once trimmed then each strong wind brings large amount of the rough husks on the tree sides falling down.  The end result will eventually be smooth trunks but it takes a while.   So we are also dodging husks each morning after a good wind. And when you run over one of them you really know it.

That bright dot in the evening sky is the International Space Station.  We’ve been able to see it several times this summer as it passes over just at dusk.   It moves like a “bat out of hell” taking about 4 minutes to go completely across the sky in a big arc.   Got some video last time, but I haven’t learned how to edit it effectively yet.

We had a wind storm come through one afternoon.  Our neighbor had a couple of canopies set up to park his car under - you can see they ended up on the ground, completely mangled.  He hasn’t bothered replacing them, has been using the carport of one of the vacant park models for his car during the day.

You can see the tops of the trees really blowing, and the tinge in the clouds is actually smoke from the wildfires to the east of us.  Some nights it is very, very strong.   While everyone keeps saying, but it is a dry heat, when you reach 117° with a relative humidity of 9% we’ve gone way beyond ‘dry’!

The positivity rate has gone down in Arizona since the mask mandates went into effect and businesses started being strict about it.  Even so, the minute it was announced that Walgreens had Flu Vaccines in stock, we were up there.   This was the first time Dave had been anywhere besides a physicians office since last March!  It has been a slower recovery process than we would hve liked, but Dave is feeling much better.  Unfortunately the heat has been so oppresive that walking outside isn’t possible.   And to make matters worse, just as he was starting to feel better, and we were going to use the air conditined fitness center at the park, all gyms, etc., were closed by order of the governor.  That ban was lifted this week and next week the fitness center is going to reopen - just as the temperature is beginning to fall and we are doing more outside!  

 I have been busy sewing masks for Megan, her teacher’s aide, and other teachers in their school. She will be doing ‘hybrid’ teaching with some students in her class and others will be logged in from their homes.   We worry about her even though we know she is taking all of the necessary precautions.  You never stop worrying about your child no matter how well they do or how old they are.    Luckily Kenneth is teaching all his courses online this fall.   He’s filmed all of the labs so the students watch him do the experiment and take notes, fill in the data and complete the questions for the laboratory report.  

So my project has been making more masks for Megan since they will be doing on-site teaching by the end of September, as it now stands.  I ordered some “Back to School” material and made masks for Megan and her aide for this fall.   I’ve also experimented with using old pillowcases (hold them up to the light to make sure they aren’t thread bare) - I have several of them, somehow the sheets wear out but pillowcases don’t!   Have used a couple for linings on masks and they work very well.     Luckily Kenneth will be doing teaching from home this fall, but not Megan.   

This is another view of the masks streatched out.  I love the preformed elastic pieces with adjustments on them.

So we aren’t doing anything besides running to get groceries and carryout a couple times a week.  We now have a 4 week reprieve from physician visits - Dave needs lab work done the last week in August.   We had thought about trying to go up into the mountains for 3 weeks or so, but it is even hot in the mountains and I don’t want to try getting the coach set up in this heat.   So we will just ride it out.

The only local excitement was they were out trimming the palm trees this morning - all over the park.  They started at 6:00 am.   In another part of the park there is construction on the addition to the office entertainment complex and they are pouring concrete at 3:00 am!   When your low is 91° there isn’t much option for pouring concrete.   

Here’s our street.  All the old frons have been chopped off - the one you can see with yellow frons is in the adjacent park.    

This is our front yard right now.  They moved the piles so we can back the car out, and will pick up early Monday morning.

Yes, that is our entertainment for the month.  I hope everyone is staying safe and that next year will be better for all of us. 

BUT, that’s no excuse.     First, the sunsets have been beautiful as the heat and dust descended upon the Phoenix area.   We are now getting used to 110 degree days and our limited ability to go anywhere.   

I get up at 5:00 am most days; if I have ordered groceries to be picked up, I get them at 6:00 am.   I also do laundry at that time of the day - it is too hot otherwise.     Speaking of hot, our freezer is out in the shed, which is NOT temperture controlled.   110 is just to hot for a freezer to function in, but a wet towel over the freezer cools it down as the water evaporates from the towel.   Really hot days require re-watering of the towel in the afternoon!    But it works!

Dave’s recovery hasn’t gone smoothly.   After his open heart surgery they put him on a beta blocker that was supposed to help his heart function well and keep his blood pressure down.   It did a good job at keeping blood pressure down, but it also reduced his pulse rate to the low 40s/high 30s.    Which is way to slow.   So they discontinued the beta blocker and his pulse rate came back up and his blood pressure stayed down with a very small dosage of another BP medication.  But he still wasn’t feeling good and his EKGs were showing some abnormality.   He wore a ‘heart monitor’ for 48 hours that did continuous monitoring and they found out that his heart would stop for up to 3 seconds at a time.   So he needed a pacemaker.   

We got it scheduled, and just before he went in for the implantation (with light sedation and local anesthetic) the cases of corona virus EXPLODED in Arizona.  So again, I had to drop him off  at the hospital (he had to be tested for the virus first) the day of the surgery and pick him up the next morning.   They sent him home on an antibiotic to make sure he didn’t develop an infection at the incision site.  Unfortunately, it turned out that he didn’t handle the antibiotic well.  He had a bad reaction and ended up in the ER 4 nights after the surgery.   After ruling out a heart attack, they sent him home after about 5 hours, saying that it was probably just the muscle twitches he felt and they didn’t now why his feet were swelling and in pain.    He was so tired when he came home that he didn’t take his antibiotics (it was 4 pills a day for 7 days) until that evening.  Sure enough the next morning his feet started to swell again and he didn’t feel quite right.   We stopped the antibiotic and the swelling started to go down, and he started feeling a little better.  The physicians put him back on the beta blocker and he feels much better.  He’s doing some limited walking - they closed all the gyms (including our fitness center at the park) so there is no where that he can do any walking in air conditioning.   So a little VERY EARLY in the morning is all he can do.   Our life now consists of physicians office visits and staying home!  

These are our 4th of July masks I made (for us, my sister Margaret, and Megan and Kenneth) to give myself things to do.   I’ve ordered “Back to School” material to make some masks for Megan and her aide for when they start back to school in August.   I shutter to think about her going back into the school with all of the problems Texas is having.   

Hope you are all staying safe and have a great 4th of July and summer.   We will be hibernating here and hope everything keeps working.

Well Dave is now walking about 1/2 mile each day;  he was doing it during the day but the HEAT has arrived in the Phoenix area, so now we walk after dark.  The only ‘out of the house’ things Dave has done is going to his the Cardiologist.  They are still tweaking his meds, trying to find that combination that keeps blood pressure low but does result in his resting pulse rate of 40 beats a minute - which equals his being tired all of the time.   

Our street is thinning about, only about 5 people left on our street, and the other streets are the same.   We have decided to just ride out the summer here.  Maybe we will try to get up into the mountains for a few weeks if they open the RV parks, but otherwise, we will just stay hunkered down here.

Luckily, we are use to it just being the two of us.

This was taken on one of our evening walks as the sun was setting. Once the sun goes down, it cools quickly and we have been sleeping with the windows open.  We do know that this will not last as we get into June-August, but for right now it is ok.   And  during the day, our patio is covered and is comfortable most of the time, especially if one isn’t doing anything more strenous than shouting on Twitter.

I was finally able to find Flour again, so I can do a little more experimenting - like making kidney-friendly apple-cinnamon muffins using the sodium and potassium free baking powder products.   Though with the heat, it means getting up early to do the baking, but I am enjoying it.   I also do laundry early in the morning or late at night .

Since summer is here, I need to make a couple of light colored masks this weekend.    Also have a lot of ‘scraps’ of yarn and have been doing 12’” blocks, time to start putting them together for an afghan.

Hope everyone is staying safe and finding the things that they need.    

We started self-isolating before Dave’s surgery - we wanted to make sure that we didn’t come in contact with anyone who had ANY disease, let alone the Covid-19 virus.  The week before Dave’s surgery and the week after, I did venture into a grocery store for a short period of time.   Since Dave came home on the 25th of March, I have gotten groceries via pickup (as well as take out shown below) ONLY.   No way to I want to endanger Dave’s life by bringing home an illness.

Our world now revolves around what things Dave can do each day.   It has been up and down since he came home.  The week that he spent in the ICU really affected his overall muscle strength which he is just now starting to get back.

By the third day home, Dave was able to walk down the hall all by himself.   I had purchased a shower stool that he could use to sit when taking a shower and not get so worn out.  It worked well, and I am so glad I got it.   But after one week, he was able to take a shower without the stool present - though I do stay in the room to help him as he still can not move his arms behind him easily.   It is a slow process but little by little things are improving.

Last Friday, Dave spend about 1/2 hour outside getting a little sun.  He said it felt good soaking into his bones.

His long, long incision on his right leg is visible in this picture.  

Those were good days, other days he was very, very tired and last weekend started having more trouble sleeping.   We had a tele-med visit with the kidney doctor who said we might need to add back in the diuretic as they had taken him off a lot of his medications after surgery.  So, we did that and then today met with the cardiologist.  

We had a long walk down the hallway from the elevator in the building to where the cardiology offices were located - and Dave did it all without stopping to catch his breath today!   Not only that but when we got ushered into the office the first thing was to take his BP and it was 120/65!   Just where they want it!

After the EEG was done, the cardiologist came in, took one look, and  changed  the amount of the one blood pressure drug (yes ONLY 1) Dave is taking to 1/2 of the normal dosage as the drug had Dave’s heart rate down TOO LOW.  38-39 beats/ minute is why he is so tired.   He also decided on a slightly more active drug for the diruetic to help get rid of a lot of accumulated fluid.  The one Dave was taking was just not quite enough.   But he reassured Dave that he was progressing and the the first few weeks after open heart surgery involved a lot of tweeking to get the correct combinations to enhance the recovery effort.    When we left, Dave walked almost all of the way to the elevator, and only had to sit for a couple of minutes to catch his breath.  

Like others, we really miss not being able to go out for meals once in a while.  So we have started to do pickup orders or door delivery to help these small restaurants weather the storm.  Last week we had cinnamon roll french toast from Sassy’s Bakery.  Yes, it was as gooey as the name sounds, absolutely delicious and the portions were so large, we had enough for second breakfasts a couple of days latter.   We’ve also had a local pizza pace deliver a white chicken pizza, and today I did a pickup order at Panera:

I had the Mediterranean Grain Bowl with Chicken and yogurt/dill dressing.

Dave had the Spring Chicken Salad with strawberies, blueberries, and walnuts in a lemon-poppy seed dressing.    To say they were deliious is an understatement, especially since I didn’t have to cook.

We know that it will be at least June before we can leave here, assuming Dave’s healing keeps on going well.  The problem is, will there be RV Parks open for us to use as we travel northward to get out of the heat?   We have a lot of people around us that are staying through the summer, most who have RVs are looking at renting a Park Model for the hot months.   I need to have our air conditioner serviced to make sure that everything is ready for REAL heat.  

Hope that everyone is staying safe and doing what they need to do to protect themselves and their families.  I know that one day this will be stories that great-grandkids will roll their eyes at.  We can only hope that we learn from this and take things seriously in the future.

Then it went downhill - his kidneys didn’t like that and proceeded to just say go away.  As fluid built up it was decided to do temporary dialysis to see if giving them a rest would help.  So for three day (Wednesday-Friday) of last week they took off 2 liters of fluid each day.  Saturday, during the day, Dave was pretty down, as no urine was being made and Dave was resigned to having to go on dialysis.  This was a known complication and so we weren’t shocked by it.  But Saturday night the kidneys decided that ok, they felt much better, and would work again.   Yes, it is strange to say I become excited because my husband was peeing!  But it really was great!!!!    

Of course there was another little wrinkle in the whole process - remember, we never, ever, do things in a normal, easy fashion.     Wednesday, the 18th, the decision was made to close all of the hospitals in the Phoenix area, at least, to everyone except patients.  Women giving birth could have one person with them and so could minor children.  Otherwise, only if a patient was dying was a family member allowed in.   So I had to keep abreast of what was going on via phone chats with the nurses.  Luckily, several of the nurses in the Cardiac ICU had iPhones, so every day I got to FaceTime with Dave.  The nurses at Banner Desert Medical Center were absolutely fantastic.    

Once his kidneys started making urine Dave’s focused shifted to how soon he could get released.  On Tuesday, March 24th, he was moved out of ICU into a regular Cardiac Care room.  Most importantly, his bladder catheter was removed, as well as the temporary dialysis lines.  And removing the catheter was the best procedure of all as far as Dave was concerned!   I was able to get him some underware and his phone (they had nurses at the drop off point at the front of the hospital collecting things for patients) and he started doing several walks that day. 

So yesterday morning (March 25th) all of his different physicians came by and signed off on his going home, and I was able to pick him up on 5:45 pm and BRING HIM HOME!

So now we will work on getting his strength back and see how things look at the end of May regarding travel for the summer.   I just might be that we will need to spend the summer here - so glad we decided to get this little place as a ‘just in case the world starts to collapse’ place to hunker down.

We hope that everyone is safe and taking care of themselves and their loved ones.  I promise, I will update more often this spring as Dave recovers and we figure out things to do that involve only the two of us.

And this is the product that makes it all possible, from a company in Seattle that sells on Amazon!

You have to use double the amount of baking power/baking soda that the recipe calls for.  Through trial and error I’ve found that the amount needed is at least double what the recipe calls for.    So I’ve been using my cookbook and trying things and then adjusting the recipe.  The first try with biscuits wasn’t great, but it is getting better.   And as Dave told me, it is better than NOT having them.  Of course the down side is that everything has to be from scratch, so takes a little more planning on my part.

I decided I had had enough with tripping over vacuum cleaner cords and lousy suction and so I got a belated Christmas present.  It’s a Dyson vacuum cleaner and I really like the ease of use and NO CORDS.  Did I mention how much I hate the cords.   Since both the motorhome and the park model are pretty small, this has made cleaning a breeze.   In the motorhome there is a central vacuum, which instead of a power cord, has this LOOOOONG hose that you have to maneuver around as you clean and thus  even more cumbersome than an electrical cord.   So this new unit will go with us when we hit the road in the Spring.

And the reason that I’m so late in getting this out is because Dave had to have an angiogram done the first part of January and the results kind of set us on our heels for a while.  His physician found blockages that were not amenable to additional stents, thus he will have to have a double bypass surgery performed, about the first of March, so it will probably be the end of May before we can get out of the Valley, if we are lucky.   The wait is for his kidneys to recover some from the angiogram - the dye did a real number on them.   So we are kind of in a ‘holding’ pattern for the next few weeks waiting to see what the next round of lab tests show.   Just another hiccup and something we will deal with and work around.