Archives for 2019

Slept late after going to be so late last night, but when I got up I decided to do a quick repair on the toilet. I had repaired the bottom seal a while back, but had developed a little leak because I didn’t put in any teflon tape, so I decided to go ahead and do that two minute job this morning. That went fine, but at one point I needed to move the bathroom sliding door, and unfortunately, when I did that from the bottom, I accidentally knocked it off it’s tracks. Of course, it’s not a simple track type like in a house, where you can just slip it back on the track, oh no, this has to be a very difficult to align top track, where a slide on the top of the door has to be pushed into a hanging nut on a bolt, then a plastic lock has to be turned 180 degrees to lock it in (though I suspect the reason it came off so easily was because the lock was never properly engaged.) I tried to work on it for a bit, but had no luck at all, as it’s one of those 2 or 3-person jobs. As it turned out, some nice neighbors, Erin and Steve came over to visit for a while, and when they learned of my problem they generously offered to help. Thank goodness I accepted! I’m not good at asking for help, but frankly, I would never have been able to do that job on my own, and we’d have been left with a permanently open bathroom door, NO THANK YOU!! Anyway, the three of us fussed with it for over an hour, but we finally managed to get it fixed and LOCKED! End of problem! Thanks so much, guys!! I had hoped to get a quick ride in today, but with all the time spent on that job, it got too late to go. Eventually the campground emptied out except for two sets of folks who are staying an extra night. Unfortunately, the one nearest to us runs their generator all night, so it’s going to be another earplug night!

Worn out from yesterday’s dialysis, Hubby spent the day in the screen room reading and chatting with many of the neighbors who stopped by. One thing about this place, it’s definitely a community, and they were generous enough to make us a part of it! As a sort of thank you, Hubby agreed to provide some entertainment around the campfire this evening, performing the poem “The Man from Snowy River” as well as a few Shakespeare monologues, which were appreciated by all but a few diehard Ohio State fans that wanted to listen to the game on the radio instead (even though it was a rout!) We were joined by quite a few of the neighbors, and they all seemed to appreciate his skill. Again, it was nice to seem him interact with people, everybody loves Hubby! Stayed up later than usual, but did manage to spend a few quiet moments together before going to bed.

After morning chores I rand down to the office to check on my computer, and it wasn’t quite finished, but it was up to 92%, so it should be done by later in the day, yay!! I spent some time in the morning cleaning out Mike’s trailer and meanwhile, lots of people came into camp for the weekend, not surprisingly, and we had company come by quite a bit of the day. Eventually we started dialysis, but today we had a lot of problems. I don’t know if it way a poor cannulation or if there was something wrong with the cartridge (we had one box that was pretty crushed when it was delivered, and it was from that box), but his arterial numbers were just so high I had to lower his blood flow rate so slow that it took nearly 4 ½ hours to dialyze him. It was dark by the time we finished, and it was too late for me to reclaim my computer, but I’m sure it will be done by tomorrow. Then all I have to do is play catch-up with all the files since July 7!! What fun!! Grrrr!

After a long and tiring day yesterday, we had only enough energy to cope with Hubby’s dialysis today. Because of all the bruising from yesterdays surgery, he was quite tender, so it took an extra delicate hand to not cause him any further pain. I was worried that with all the messing around with it yesterday that I would have trouble getting him hooked up, but in the end, I managed to get a good flash and it was a good session. Thank goodness, because I felt so tired I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to handle it if we had a lot of problems. Spent a good portion of the day trying to download my files on Carbonite, but with only my Verizon hotspot as my Internet connection, that was a LONG slog. I only got about 5% down, so at this rate, it will be weeks! There’s got to be a better way!

Up bright and early as we had an hour’s drive to the hospital in Canton for Hubby’s fistula clear-out. Even though we just had this done on July 3, it seems the veins have narrowed enough to make it nearly impossible to do a good dialysis, so off we went to another hospital, this time Aultman in Canton. Arrived before our 9:00 a.m appointment time, and they were pretty quick at getting us in. I managed to log onto their wifi, but it was pretty slow, so I didn’t get very far downloading my files off Carbonite during the course of the day. They had quite a bit of trouble getting his fistula opened up, had to do some tricky procedures that took an extra hour. Worse, they felt his blood pressure was too low to give him a general anesthetic, which usually lets him sleep during the whole thing, but instead gave him locals, which kept him awake and aware the entire time, which meant he was very tired by the time they got done. It was after 4:00 by the time they finished, and we still had a couple of stops to make before getting back to camp around 7:00. Just in time to feed the horses and crash for the night!

Over the weekend, I accidentally dropped my computer and it hit the ground hard, so it wasn’t surprising when it wouldn’t boot up again. I tried to reseat the hard drive, but it was dead, so I took it to a local computer repair store in Ashland, and they fixed me up with a new solid state 1 terrabyte hard drive. Probably overkill, but last time I lost a hard drive, I had no idea how much data I actually needed (I have millions of old files I keep passing down, I really need to do some housekeeping on it, but just can’t seem to find the time!). Anyway, that took the bulk of the day, then when I finally got everything up and running and started to download my backup from Carbonite, I discovered that for some unknown, mysterious reason, they had stopped backing me up on July 7! Not a single file, photo or document saved since July 7! What the hell?? I had a long chat with them about it, and they still weren’t able to explain what happened. I understand that they might have had some problems when we were in a bad cell phone area, but I’ve been in a good 4G area for weeks now, and evidently, it never resumed! GRRRRRRR! A whole summers worth of work lost! Well, at least most of it has been put up online so I should be able to retrieve it, but that, of course, will take days if not weeks to recover. Not a happy camper at the moment! I started downloading using my hotspot, but that is going to take WAY to much time, but since tomorrow Hubby will be in the hospital all day getting his fistula cleared out (it’s been slowly getting more and more difficult to use his access for dialysis), I figure I can use the hospital’s wifi so get some of it done. That will give me something to do while I wait, I supposed. Oh, well, such is life!

Such a busy day yesterday, Hubby and I relaxed most of the day, though we chatted with a number of neighbors that stopped by during the day. I learned from one of them that Malabar Farms was having their “Heritage Day Festival” this weekend, and that there was going to be a Barn Dance with Square dancing tonight! I used to be a big square dancer in my youth, and I always enjoyed it, but I haven’t been in decades! Hubby decided he would come with me and people watch while I went dancing. So after a light dinner we got dressed up in our country best and headed over the Malabar. Though they didn’t have a shuttle service from the parking lot to the barn, we managed to get a volunteer from the foundation folks who were serving refreshments to get out his van and drive Hubby down to the barn where the dance was being held. We stood in a long line (well, I stood while Hubby sat on a bench until I got close to the door, as it was very busy, more so than usual because of the festival. I found out later they had over 350 people there! We found a good spot for Hubby, and then proceeded to start trying to find my way into a square, harder to do when you’re on your own, but eventually I got a spot, but it was playing the man’s role. After the first dance, I decided that changing genders was just too much to expect since I was already rusty, and I found a young man to take my place. I sat out the rest of that square, but when they started to form another one, I managed to get hooked up to an older fellow that apparently works on the farm, about the size of a jockey, but he was a very good dancer and was able to keep the square straight even when we had a lot of newbies. Some of the moves I had never seen before, so it’s obviously not the classical square dancing I’m used to, and someone said that it was a hybrid with Western style, whatever that means. I had trouble hearing the female caller over the music, and she did a lot more singing than calling, which I’m not used to, but I still have a great time. Whenever the band took a break, they had a recorder playing other music that got a bunch of line dancers on the floor, though I didn’t participate in that. Not a big fan of line dancing. Last time I line-danced was at Gilleys in Texas, and it all pales after that! Anyway, we had a good time, stayed until the dance ended at 10:00, then had our volunteer shuttle us back to the truck. A great time was had by all!

Up at the crack of dawn so that we could get to Hubby’s monthly clinic in Canton at 10:00, grabbing some breakfast on the way. That all went well, as usual, then on the way back we picked up propane at the Tractor Supply in Massillon, shopped at the Walmart, and headed straight back to camp from there. Even so, it was almost 4:00 by the time we got Hubby started on his dialysis session, so it was a late night. I just managed to get the horses fed before it got dark, so it was a short evening. Busy day!