Poor Poor Pitiful Me…

I’ve been running a high fever today along with neck and back stiffness and pain. Hopefully, I will be back tomorrow for a more informative post.

Something’s Amiss! Some Medications are Missing!

My medications are goofy. Many times the color of the pills change due to SoSec wanting cheaper generic drugs. I will give the pharmacy staff this, though: I would never be organized with regards to these Med-Packs helping me know what I need to take.

I was studying my medications after breakfast and my Trazodone is in my noon dose and there aren’t any Lithium in my noon dose as well. I called my father and he said to drive down to the pharmacy and he would check them out.

“Your Lithium is missing and your Trazodone should be taken at night,” he told me. “Everybody bowls a gutter ball sometimes!”

Dad gave me a correct Med-Pack which I had to wait a few moments for and got the girts started in making new Med-Packs right away. 

Back to the Hum Drum of Life…

I saw Tracy off to work after a big breakfast around 7:45am. I will see her again at noon when the animal hospital shuts down for lunch.

“Aren’t you about out of your medications?” dad asked earlier on the phone today.

He was calling me from the pharmacy and told me a pharmacy tech. has four Med-Packs made up for me.

“I’ve got two days left and will head to the pharmacy after I get a shower,” I told him.

It kind of takes a family effort with me sometimes and all the various things that keep me sane. You should see all the medications I take at noon and at night. I take each big handful with a big gulp which always worries my father I am going to get choked. I take ten pills at night in the hopes it will settle me down for sleep. Right now, we have the perfect combination, but it can change as well if bad luck and brain chemistry gone awry afflicts us.

“When is your injection?” he then asked worriedly as soon as a walked into the pharmacy.

“That's next week,” I told him thankfully. “Look at your next appointment card.”

I grabbed my bag of medications and two Cherry Cokes with his permission and headed home situated for another 4 weeks medication wise.

Yes! Back to the Safe Confines of Home!

I made it through the shadowy social veil of Mordor and emerged unscathed. (Lord of the Rings joke.)

It is about an hour’s drive to my sister’s house. Tracy kept drinking these all natural fruit drinks saying she was dire thirsty.

“You keep that up and we are going to have to stop at every gas station and fast food restaurant on the way to Alex City to use the bathroom,” I told her.

Well, it certainly happened. It took us an hour and a half to reach Mary’s house. 

My sister pulled me to the side at one point and asked,”Were did you find her? She is gorgeous!”

I smiled an “aw shucks” smile and said we met when I was volunteering at the Humane Society. It was the first time for my sister to meet Tracy. Of course, Tracy is a mostly social creature that enjoyed getting to know my family.

“You’re right about the grandkids being pod people,” Tracy told me on the drive home. “They walk aimlessly around with their faces buried in their tablets and phones.”

“I am wondering how they manage to keep from falling over stuff,” I quipped back jovially with a smile. “It must be pod people radar.”

Over Hill and Under Dale…

Tracy and I are soon driving to my sister’s house for Memorial Day today. Charlie’s grilling burgers so you know they are going to be good. His secret is Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. He lets the ground hamburger marinate over night in that sauce. Tracy is also fretting about what to wear. She has already tried on 3 tops.

“What sandals do I wear?” She just asked me walking into the computer room with a few pair dangling from her fingertips.   .

I just chuckled and told her she looked beautiful in anything she wears. That was not what she wanted to hear.

I expect for there to be a lot of people in attendance. My social anxieties are already working on me overtime. Many butterflies are fluttering in my stomach.

Obsessions…

I had this poor deluded soul who lived in Toronto reading my blog in the beginning. She had a vendetta against another homeless blogger named Crystal who she said had Munchausen's by Proxy. She actually found my parent’s phone number somehow and called my mother who gave my phone number to Diana (her name). She began calling me very regular – all a plot and ploy to ensure I was really homeless beforehand. She was an intense woman with a lot on her plate. She was also trying to get the loud ice-cream trucks off the streets and also kids on minibikes. Obsessed would be a better word to describe her. Yes, that would describe her to a T.

My point is I don’t want to be like this woman I so disdained with regards to my campaign against the truck driver in this neighborhood. I won’t write about it again until something more major happens. This is not going to turn into the Andrew vs. Big Truck Show. More normal posts will commence as of now.

Comment Replies…

Summer said...

Do you think he lives in your neighborhood or is he a trucker taking a short cut?

Andrew Replies…

Summer, he definitely lives in the neighborhood. He has some kind of fly-by-night freight service. Sometimes he will be in a big rig, and other times in will be in a large Penske rental truck like a U-Haul. The Penske truck is usually large enough to take out my cable drop as well.  

I Think I’ve Had a Bright Idea!

I’ve put some fresh batteries in my camera and sat it on top of the piano ready to film. Next time that Hombre comes driving down the street, I am going to film it all. Like Tracy said, it’s a matter of time before he shows up again. Then I am going to call the police and let them find where he lives in the neighborhood.

Yeah, I am Friends With the Key Disease…

Dad, me, my brother and my sister all got the key disease where we temporarily lose our house and car keys all the time. Charlie likes to say it is what put my mother in an early grave as my mother always knew where her keys were.

“Y’all all drove her crazy over all these years,” he says.

We inherited it from dad’s mom who could never find her house keys and car keys as well.

Last night, I ran to Kroger to get some sausage and milk for breakfast this morning. I purchased my items and walked back to my car. Well, I put my sausage and a gallon of milk in the truck and got back in the car and couldn’t find my keys. Marshall, a Down’s Syndrome man who works at Kroger, knocked on my window and said, “Your keys are still hanging in the trunk.”

I walked around the car and there they were – still in the trunk hanging from their key receptacle.

Well, dad loved hearing this story when I got home and called him. We both laughed and laughed.

“I can’t fault you, son,” he said. “I have the key disease, too!”

Let Tracy’s Voice Be Heard! She’s the Breadwinner!

The poor soul – missing all her favorite TV shows this week. She is scrambling and trying to catch up online.

“What are you going to do when another big truck passes down our street?” Tracy asked me this morning getting ready for work. “You know it is going to happen again. It is just a matter of time.”

She is always the consummate worrier and rightly so. I can understand now what she’s thinking after all we’ve gone through since last Friday and the other outage as well earlier in the month.

“I’ve got a pad and pencil on the piano by the front door and I am going to write down their license plate of the offending truck and call the police.” I told her. “We are going to start filing a police report every time it happens.”

“We always have plan B as well,” I then told her. “Charlie is big buddies with the mayor of our fair third world city, Kyle McCoy, and we are going to get semis in residential areas outlawed and off limits.”

“Who DON”T your dad and Charlie know in this town?” Tracy replied laughing. 

Tracy heartily laughed some more.

“Savory or sweet?” I then asked her changing the subject which is our custom every morning.

“Let’s try sweet this morning,” Tracy replied. “Let’s have some of those cream cheese Danishes we bought the other night in Kroger’s deli.”

This makes breakfast easier on me. I popped two Danishes in the microwave on a plate and breakfast was served.

I AM BACK ONLINE!

Let’s Try Again Tomorrow…

Well, for starters, they (WOW!) are knocking off half our cable bill next month. Tracy will be delighted. We’ve had no joy with regards to getting my internet back up and running, though. I saw the WOW! guy drive by the house and he didn’t stop. He was looking for downed lines on my street. Just one of the many mix-ups we’ve had this past week. Why he didn’t just stop and look at how things are at my address I cannot fathom.

I Feel Like a One Legged Man at an Ass Kicking Contest…

glittermom said...

Don’t you have other internets you could get? We have AT&T, directv,spectrum,wow and dish available to us. I have AT&T and they just ran fiber optic cables in my area so I’m hooked up to that now. Suppose to be better and faster.

Andrew Replies…

Glittermom, we have two main choices of internet in town and that is WOW! and Charter’s Spectrum. The fastest speed Spectrum offers is 100 Mbps. I am using WOW!’s 1000 Mbps service or Gigabit service. So you can see my conundrum. I want the speed, but it seems to be coming at a price. I would love to have fiber optic internet here as it is fast and reliable as all get out.

As far as Dish and DirectTV are concerned, they are alternatives, but if my memory serves me correctly, the upstream with those services is still old 56k dialup and latency reigns supreme with above 100ms pings.

As soon as dad gets finished eating his breakfast, him and I are riding back out to the WOW! office nearby. Dad is hoping his favorite receptionist and old customer is working today.

Flimflam Man…

I am still without my usual source of internet. I had the bright idea to piggyback off of an unsecured wireless connection in the neighborhood. The connection is slow as molasses, though. Hopefully, I will be back up and running soon. Be thankful for your internet service if they are reliable. WOW! is a joke. Dads already been out to their office once and they said they would send somebody out to look at it and they never came. I hope dad goes back out there this afternoon and raises a little hell. Thank y’all for putting up with my whining or whinging as the British would say.

The problem is semi trucks keep coming through my neighborhood and knocking down the cable drop to my house. Friday, I saw a Southeastern Van Lines truck passing down my street and I said to myself, “There goes my internet.” It was exactly as I foretold. My internet was soon down.

“Be proactive when they come,” my father told me the other day. “Tell them all about your cable drop and these big trucks.”

Internet service is down. I hope to be back soon.

Friday Comes In With a Boom and a Bang…

The alarm went off at 6:45am this morning followed by a very, very loud clap of thunder. Of course, the ubiquitous freight train was rolling through downtown as well, flanges squealing loudly on the curve, as it often does during inclement weather.

“Was that thunder?” Tracy raised up out of the bed and asked with a deer in the headlights look.

“Yes, it was!” I replied happily and I hurried to the computer room to turn my computer on and check the radar.

One small little complex of thunderstorms was just parked and sitting over the Valley and putting on quite a show.

“Is it raining?” Tracy then asked as she was getting in the shower.

“No rain,” I replied. “We are getting what Sally Lou (dad’s mom) would call an electrical storm.”

The rain and humidity would make Tracy’s hair extra curly and she already has an ample head of curls as it is – my girl with the curls and the curves.

I got in the kitchen and made us a simple meal of cheese toast and fried bacon. Maggie was underfoot the whole time I was cooking hoping to get some bacon as well.  

Tracy left for work about 40 minutes ago and Mother Nature is still putting on a grand show of lightning and thunder. It is music to these old addled ears as long as the power stays on.

Computer Woes! How Slow Can You Go?

Charlie’s Janice called me at 9am. I was cleaning up the kitchen after a big breakfast. Tracy hadn't been gone to work for just an hour.

“My computer is running as slow as ever,” she told me woefully over the phone. “It is aggravating to say the least.”

“I’ll be right over,” I told Janice.

She’s running Windows 8.1 with only 4 GB of ram and a cheap Intel Celeron processor. That is her problem. Well, I gathered up a plethora and mötley crüe of sticks of spare RAM and set about hoping one or two would work and fit.

“Surely, she’s still not running DDR2,” I said to myself with a hope and a prayer as I headed to my car.

Janice nervously watched as I took apart her computer on their living room floor.  

Two sticks of Corsair XMS DDR3 8 GB RAM worked much to my surprise! I was elated. That gave Janice 16 GB of RAM. I must've carried twelve sticks with me. It was like a whole different computer. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this first! I was thinking that Dell would have some proprietary RAM and nothing I had would work.

I didn’t leave without getting a big bag of regular and diet Coke which is Charlie’s payment for when I work on their electronic gadgetry. I was happy to get them.

Janice called me back after I had gotten home.

“I don’t know what you did, but you supercharged my computer,” she said with a relieved sounding laugh. “Bless you, Andrew!”

Late For an Important Date…

No one in my immediate life remembered my injection this morning. Not even Tracy and she is so keen on my injections. I was sitting in front of my computer at 9:30am when I realized my shot was due. I almost panicked. I hurriedly put on some clothes with time of the upmost importance and essence. The longer I waited, the busier Kamath Medical would grow. I could be sitting an hour waiting on a nurse.

I was then driving down the Valley to my father’s former pharmacy at a speedy rate – putting my trusty Honda Civic through its paces.

“What are you doing here?” my father asked worriedly looking over his counter.

He thought something dire had happened for me to be at the pharmacy so early.

“My injection is due this morning,” I replied, proud of myself for remembering. 

I even puffed up my chest in bravado a little bit as well.

Dad checked my appointment card that he keeps in his wallet and looked up and said, “Good for you, Andrew!!!”

“I was just about to call you!” Rebecca, my nurse, told me as she called me back to an examining room. “I was just waiting for the clock to hit ten and I was going to be on the phone.”

I thanked Rebecca so very profusely for looking out for me.

I know it is psychosomatic, but I am already feeling better this morning.

Dido - Sand In My Shoes (Video)

Comment Replies…

glittermom said...

Did your mom have a recipe book where she wrote down her special recipes? My mom had one and I like to look through it and remember things she made that I had forgotten. She wrote in it long ago before there were ball point pens. We just had fountain pens. So her recipes are mostly written in pencil. Which after so long are fading.

Andrew replies…

Glittermom, no she didn’t sadly. I know many of her recipes by heart like her tangy chicken and sour cream and mushroom chicken. Those were always crowd pleasers when I was growing up. A lot of her recipes came out of Nadine Knowles’ cookbook Don't Forget the Parsley.  Search for it on the web and you may find a copy. It was printed in 1976. Nadine was a true Southern lady and she cooked Southern food.

Sometimes it is Hard to Say Goodbye…

“I want to be totally lazy and laze in the bed and be with you, Wheezy, and Maggie this morning,” Tracy told me sanguinely as she dressed for work. 

“I know you do, sweetheart,” I replied. “There is a vacuum in this house when you leave for the day. It can only be filled by you.”

Tracy and I also have to go grocery shopping tonight. We try to stick to our old schedule and we never arrive before nine. That’s a little trick my father taught me. Usually, Kroger is a wasteland by that late at night. I spend about eighty dollars and Tracy spends about eighty dollars.

“What’s for lunch?” Tracy then asked me excitedly before she left for work.

“I thought we would be Asian today and cook some soy sauce seasoned ground beef and cabbage over a bed of rice and crunchy chow mien noodles.”

“That sounds so delicious,” she replied to me. “I cannot wait until noon gets here!”

“It was mom’s recipe and I always enjoyed it when I was growing up.”

Mom Delivers Mexican Food On Mexican Night...

Mom went out to eat Mexican with her good friend Mrs. Sandra every Tuesday night. Mom would bring me a plate of food every Tuesday night as well.

Mom On Mother's Day...

I shed a few tears watching this video this morning. It is still hard to believe mom is gone and it has been over two years since she passed away so suddenly.

Charlie Arrives With Breakfast From a Few Years Ago...

Charlie had over 300,000 miles on his Chevrolet HHR pictured in this video. The joke was that if he ever turned it off, it wouldn't crank again. lol

And the Gods Took Great Pleasure in Meddling with The National Weather Service's Affairs…

It was supposed to be stormy all weekend. I guess the weather guessers got it all wrong again. We might get a little rain, but that will be it.

Sometimes it is the Little Things that Matter the Most…

“Are you and Tracy up and dressed?” Charlie asked me over our cellphones around noon. “I’ve got a special treat I want to bring you two for lunch.”

“We’re up and going Charlie,” I replied, glad to hear his voice.

“I’ve got two plates of the best chargrilled chicken wraps that you have ever eaten!” Charlie, the feeder, said.

This got me excited and Tracy quickly got in the bathroom to fix her hair and put on a little makeup. She was making herself presentable as she so often says.

Charlie finally arrived and said the food was payment for fixing Janice’s computer. The wraps were unbelievably tasty. I loved the addition of jalapeños amidst a smoky Southwest sauce. The chicken breast strips were chargrilled to perfection and were accompanied by ample portions of pepper jack cheese. Even the wrap was chargrilled on both sides.

“Call me back on my cellphone and tell me what y’all think,” Charlie told us in parting.

(Days like today it is hard to write while other days it just flows effortlessly.I guess the old prime motivator upstairs is acting on shaky ground today.)

The Storm That Could? No, the Storm in Absentia…

I’ve watched a strong line of storms push across Alabama all day. I grew more and more excited as it closed in on the Valley. It finally arrived about the time Tracy was pulling into the driveway after work. There were strong straight line winds, torrential rains, but where was the lightning and thunder? It turned out to be a bust. At least my power and internet didn’t go out like they often will do with a big storm. The storm looked awful nasty on the weather radar, though. I thought we were going to get a big one!

Comment Replies…

Summer said...

Is your dad over the moon with the new royal baby?

Andrew Replies…

Summer, he has watched about every news clip he could find on YouTube and AppleTV. He especially loves the video of Prince Harry casually walking out to announce the new baby to the press. He has watched that over and over like a man possessed.  

Ah, That Lasagna…

I had made homemade chicken salad for lunch. Tracy thought it was delicious.

“Kudos to the Chef!” she told me.

I garnished our plates with a dill pickle spear and some sour cream and onion potato chips. I was pleased with myself when I asked Tracy what she wanted for supper.

“Let’s have some of the Stouffer’s lasagna and some garlic and butter Texas toast,” she told me.

We are going to be 300lbs, but I said okay. I headed out to the grocery shore after Tracy left for her after lunch second shift at work. She called me while I was in Kroger.

“Cook it twice as long as it says on the package,” Tracy told me seemingly an old hat at this dish.

I got the family pack just to play it safe. I thought it would burn cooking so long, but Tracy was right. It tasted much better cooked doubly long. The sauce wasn’t runny and grew creamy and spicier. .

Supper, Tracy, and Janice…

I’ve got mom’s recipe chili bubbling away on the stove. The house smells wonderful. Tracy should be home in about 30 minutes. Charlie also called me this afternoon and said Janice’s computer is acting up. I’ve already got a good idea of what’s going on and I haven’t even seen it yet. I will have to walk Janice through the process of removing the programs she doesn’t use and thus de-clogging Windows 10’s registry. She probably has forty programs and background processes that open on start up whereas I only have ten. My computer would run rings around hers as well. Charlie is so miserly that he buys Janice the cheapest computers except for the laptop he buys her every few years.

“Can I come pick you up in a little while?” Charlie asked. “Her computer is stalling.”

Charlie rolls into town around seven getting home from work.

“Sure,” I replied. “I hope I can fix Janice’s computer.”

Lord knows, Charlies done enough for me over the years. I am thinking of giving Janice one of my decent spare computers.

The only other thing I did today besides straightening up the house and getting lunch and supper started was to buy two surge protectors for my father’s TV and computer. He thought those little power strips were surge protectors. I woefully shook my head. It is getting that time of the year where we get to experience frequent electrical storms as my grandmother would call them. I wanted to get dad protected. His TV is especially sensitive to power surges and outages. 

For Glittermom...

Not a very good photo as Maggie was showing her underbite (She looks vicious, but wouldn’t harm a fly. Cats and the meter reader are her only quarry.) and she wouldn't quit moving around. Also, the morning light was terribly bright shining through my computer room window very early today.

A Pleasant Morning to You, Sir…

“Charlie’s coming!” I exclaimed to Maggie this morning and she jumped up on the couch to look out the window.

It was almost 9am so I felt Charlie would along any moment now. About as soon as I turned around in my computer chair in the den, I heard Maggie yelp.

“Yes!” I said loudly as Maggie barked jubilantly. Tracy also went with me to meet Charlie at the door.

Charlie was holding three biscuits and two large diet Cokes in a drink caddy.

“Is that Maggie?” Charlie incredulously asked. “She looks like a different dog! I didn’t recognize her at first.”

You can actually see Maggie’s face and eyes now without all that hair around them.

Did Jesus Come in a Boat or Did He Descend From Heaven?

Maggie started to bark in earnest yesterday and then there was a very loud knock on the door. This sent Maggie into a greater state of alarm as she barked ever louder and more frenzied.

“It’s the Mormons,” Tracy said stepping into the computer room. “What should I do?”

“Answer it if you want an earful,” I replied.

Tracy was kind, answered the door, and listened to what they had to say. I could hear Tracy say “good luck” as the boys headed down the steps and to the house next door. She then shut the door.

“What did they tell you?” I asked.

“Oh, just some spiel about Jesus coming to the New World,” Tracy told me. “And how it is chronicled in the book of Mormon.”

“Let me tell you one more thing,” Tracy then said fanning her face and smiling devilishly. “Those boys were hot they were so good looking. One looked like a young Tom Cruise.”

I laughed and told her to not be running off with any Mormon boys on me.

Blessed Be! The Little Lady of the House is Home…

Sweet Jeebus! Maggie’s home! Maggie looks like a different dog as well. I didn’t recognize her first when they brought her into the lobby after her grooming. She recognized me, though, immediately ran over to me and started whining. I picked the chunk up and put her in my lap. She was trying to give kisses as well.

They wanted me to bring her in twice a week to be bathed in a special shampoo. I told Dr. Thomas just to give me a bottle of the shampoo and I would bathe her myself. I will never get Maggie out to the Vet’s office twice a week for a few weeks. That would be playing with fire as far as Maggie is concerned. 

Goodnights Are Better Than Goodbyes…

Sometimes I feel like I am caught in groundhog day – each day repeating itself ad nauseum. The alarm clock once again shrilly rang out at 6:45am. Tracy climbed out of the bed with a moan at being woken so abruptly. I turned off the alarm and escaped to the screened porch to have my first cigarette of the day.

“Just think!” I said excitedly as Tracy dressed. “One more day at work and you have the weekend off.”

“Let’s pray I don’t have to work Saturday until lunch,” Tracy replied.

“It is so strange not having the Magster in the house,” Tracy then told me. “It is too quiet!”

“She’s going to be so mad at me for putting her through all that,” I replied with a weak chuckle.

Maggie should be home around 2pm. She’s getting the “works” including a grooming and teeth cleaning. It is going to take some time to do all they were going to do to her.  I keep thinking of her having to sleep on those cold concrete kennel floors. I know she must’ve been uncomfortable last night.

The smell of breakfast is still lingering hours after I cooked this morning. I fried some sausage patties and baked some Mary B’s buttermilk biscuits. It made for some mighty fine sausage biscuits.

Dangerous Liaisons…

Maggie’s watching me on the floor as I type this. It’s a good thing she can’t read as she would shoot out that dog door and not come in until sundown and the coast was clear.

Dad called me this morning and said he would help me get Maggie out to the veterinarian this afternoon. Her tenaciously persistent yeast infection on her chest and neck is back. It worries me deeply. She smells almost like a bakery. She has been scratching constantly lately. It must itch something terrible.

“You’re going to have to drive while I hold her,” I told my father.

“She’s also going to pout with us for a week after doing this,” I added with much caution.

“Be sure to bring a clean towel,” dad replied. “In case she releases her bladder in the car and/or in the lobby.”

My biggest and most deep seated fear is that Maggie will escape us and we can’t catch her. She’s as wild as an Indian when she gets off her leash or her collar comes loose.

And the Laptop Ascended into the Light of Heaven and God Said in a Loud and Booming Voice, “This is good!”

Well, I copied over Tracy’s old drive to her new solid state drive. It took about an hour. I was just putting the finishing touches on Tracy’s laptop when she came home from work for lunch. I screwed back on the cover protecting the sodimms and turned the laptop back over.

“Here,” I said handing the laptop to Tracy. “Turn it on.”

I about couldn't suppress my elation any longer. Even a jaded computer guy like me was astounded at the difference.

“You didn’t lose any of my data, did you?” she asked worriedly.

“Just turn it on,” I replied insistently.

Tracy sat down on the couch and turned her laptop on. Normally, it would take her laptop several minutes to boot up. Now, it only takes a handful of seconds.

“Oh my god,” Tracy exclaimed. “That is incredible.”

“And to answer your question, no, none of your data was lost,” I replied.

Tracy gave me a big and long hug and dished out many kudos and attaboys.