Oh, what a week

Oh, what a week it’s been. I haven’t posted anything for eleven days – sorry. Beat me with a piece of lutefisk then, if you must.

I’ve been trying to get my yard in order because the Ya-Ya’s are coming out on Thursday afternoon. We’re visiting each other’s houses to see our flower gardens. And I’ve got weeds that are higher than my flowers in some places. Things have really gotten away from me this year. It’s either too hot to work outside, the bugs are too bad, or it’s raining. Do I need any more excuses? We had one cool, windy day last Saturday and I managed to get a lot done, so at least part of it looks good. I’m on my way outside now to spray some more thistles – better living through chemistry you know. You just can’t dig those suckers out because of their long taproot, and not all sprays will kill them. So I’ve managed to come by a farm chemical that Farmer Neighbor Dave introduced me to, and when you hit those babies with this spray they’re dead – they just don’t know it yet. So MAYBE I’ll have everything ready for the Ya-Ya’s. Then we’re going to sit by the fire pit and have a margarita or two.

Ole was going to make us margaritas and a burger or two on the grille, but I think that went by the wayside. I think Ole will still be hobbling around and maybe spending a better portion of that day on his back in bed. Remember me saying that every time we have decided to take a trip ever since last spring, something has happened and we’ve had to cancel? Well, that might be happening again.

Last Wednesday night Ole went to bed feeling just fine. About 3 o’clock in the morning he woke up in a terrible amount of pain in his neck, shoulders, back and legs. He was running a temp, hot and cold, all the symptoms of a good old-fashioned flu. During this time he wouldn’t eat anything because he also had a sore throat. Didn’t matter what I did, he wouldn’t eat, and if you’re a diabetic, you know that doesn’t work very well. Friday afternoon the end result was that he started to go into diabetic shock. Really scary. I told him if he wouldn’t start cooperating I was going to call 911 and get the First Responders out here. And since he IS one, he thought that might be a bit embarrassing, so he drank the orange juice and the regular Coke that I gave him and ate the PB&J toast that I made. About 45 minutes later he felt better in that respect. Damn men – you have to beat them over the head sometimes, right?

Then I noticed that his left leg was turning bright red from his ankle to his knee. About 30 years ago Ole was in a motorcycle accident and crushed some of the surface veins in that leg right above the ankle. Diabetics have issues with circulation in their legs anyway, so those crushed veins didn’t help his current situation. His leg was red and hot to the touch and swollen and I was afraid a blood clot was developing. I tried to get him to go into the walk-in clinic on Saturday morning, but again – men – beat them over the head with a stick and they still don’t cooperate when it comes to medical things.

So Monday morning I picked up the phone and told him I was dialing 911 and he finally consented to let me take him into the ER.

Well, if THAT wasn’t an experience. We waited an hour and a half to see a doctor (very kind man) who ran ultrasound tests and determined that there was no blood clot – thank heavens – but that he has a bad case of cellulites. That’s bad enough, but at least much more easily treated than a blood clot. He received an IV of some very strong antibiotics that took two hours to drip and then was told that he has to report back to the ER every 12 hours for the next 3 days to receive a 2 hour IV drip each time. From then on he’ll be on oral antibiotics for at least 30 days. But, according to the doctor, at least we’ll be able to go on our trip. We would both have been extremely disappointed if we’d had to cancel again.

So Ole was scheduled to go back to the ER last night at midnight. What a zoo. You can’t imagine what comes out of the woodwork between midnight and 2 a.m. in an ER. They’ve recently done a remodel of the triage area in the ER. All the nurses previously were out in the open or in a little cubicle. They are now all behind walls with bulletproof glass in the windows and steels doors that are locked. I can understand this in big cities like New York or LA, but our little town – it’s only 150,000 people.

In between all of this the county fair opened and of course Ole, Lovely Daughter and I always enter exhibits. Ole entered two bottles of homemade wine this year and won Reserve Grand Champion on one of them. He’s pretty proud and of course plans to bring a stash along down to Tombstone so the Javalina Hunters can all sample. And Lovely Daughter won Grand Champion on an afghan that she crocheted. She was amazed that she had gotten Grand Champion, but she did a beautiful job on this particular piece. I didn’t enter any photography this year. Things have just gotten away from me this summer and I didn’t have time to get anything ready that I thought was exhibit quality. Oh, well, there’s always next year. And with our upcoming trip I hope to get some great pictures.

Then also in the midst of all of this commotion we had to deal with the dike guys. We’re trying to get our property diked so that we don’t have to worry about the mighty river flooding our property every time we get a heavy rain. When we first moved out here back in 1974 we didn’t have all these problems. If they got 3 inches of rain upstream from us you wouldn’t even notice the river rise. Now if they get 3 inches of rain upstream from us the river goes up 3 to 5 feet within a matter of 36 hours. So there is a program in the state of Minnesota where the feds will pay for 50% of the cost of a dike, the state will pay for 25% and the landowner pays the other 25% to have a ring dike built around your property. We’ve been dealing with the Watershed Board for two years and they finally agreed they would start proceedings by having the soil tested to see if it’s stable enough to support a dike. You can’t imagine all the hoops you have to jump through to get something like this done. Then the board has to get permission from FEMA and from all the landowners for many miles surrounding our property to see if there are any objections and run tests to see how our dike will impact the water flow and the level on everyone else’s property. I won’t go on because I just get angry, but at least the proceedings are started. We’ll see how far we get.

I took little Lucy in to the vet this morning to get spayed. I will be able to go pick her up this afternoon sometime. I have errands to run in town before I pick her up. Need to go to Best Buy and buy some lens filters for my new camera. I particularly like a star filter and used it a lot on my old camera, but haven’t gotten that far yet with my new one. Also need to pick up a stand and a case for my new keyboard, as Ole wants me to bring that along in the RV also. I’m not sure why, because we’ll be spending most of our time on the bike, but I’ll bring it along to humor him.

I know this is a cartoon about a dog getting neutered, but it still fits with Lucy getting neutered. Hope you get a chuckle out of it.


I’m also chairman for a parking lot party that our church is putting on Wednesday night. We’ve hired a band to play in the parking lot and will serve free ice cream and lemonade throughout the concert. We just want to do something fun for the community and show them we aren’t a bunch of stodgy old Lutherans, and especially the Finlander Lutherans that K-lo wrote about recently. The band is a group that has been together for many years, from the local area, and they do a terrific job on the old 50s and 60s stuff so we hope to have a great turnout.

Now I need to go get busy and start packing the motor home.
Later Guys - -