I’m home from church this morning not feeling very well, and even though I was awake for a couple of hours in the night, I am not really sleepy just now, so I thought I’d visit for a while. I am hoping for a nap while everyone is out.

We met with a hospice coordinator last Friday to discuss what their services involved for Great-Grandma. I had thought you didn’t call hospice in until death was imminent, but apparently that’s not the case. Technically one is supposed to have a terminal diagnosis of six months or less in order to use hospice, but certain diagnoses automatically qualify (like dementia), and they understand no one can predict when death might come in those cases. One of the biggest pluses with them is that she will be under a nurse’s care, and even a doctor can come to the house in an emergency. She had a low spell a couple of weeks ago where she was throwing up or gagging at meals, her heart rate was elevated, and she wasn’t smiling or interacting much at all. By the time her doctor could see her in his office, she was pretty much back to normal. Plus her doctor’s office is terrible about returning phone calls or handling prescriptions outside office visits. When we first moved to Knoxville and Jim was looking for a doctor for her, he had to call 31 doctors before he found one who would take a Medicare patient. 😦 So, all of that to say, it will be very nice to have someone we can call who can even come to the house if need be.They also send out a social worker who will help answer questions and help us prepare for all of that aspect of what we need to do to be ready for when her time comes. We were actually pretty amazed at all they do and wished we had known all this when we first brought her home almost two years ago. In fact, we really wondered why the social worker at the nursing home didn’t mention it as a possibility when she was making arrangements for her to come home.

I’ve been going back through some of my older posts, partly to see if there is anything I might be able to edit and use in our church ladies’ newsletter, partly because every now and then I think about gathering some posts into a book, and I wanted to take a look at what I had. I am amazed at how verbose some of those earliest posts are, and even more amazed that people read and commented on them! I don’t know that people would today. One of my purposes for blogging was to improve my writing by writing, and though I am still too wordy, I think I have improved in that regard.

I’m also sad about the folks I considered good blogging friends who are no longer blogging or commenting. I know it’s necessary some times, but I miss them.

Finally, I haven’t shared a picture of my favorite little guy in a while, and I just love this one of him:

Hope you are having a great Sunday!

I thought I’d share various “stray thoughts” on my mind lately, none big enough for its own blog post:

• The big news here is the weather. Of course, the southeastern US has not had it nearly as bad as New England, but then, we’re not equipped for it either. Counties can’t afford all the necessary equipment to just use once or twice a year. We were supposed to get snow and ice yesterday, but just got ice. Jim went on in to work but Great-Grandma’s caregiver didn’t make it here today.

• One of my main concerns is the power going out, especially in regard to heat and pureeing and heating Great-Grandma’s food (and, let’s be honest, I like having access to my media as well. 🙂 ) Last night I heard there were over 11,000 local people without power. Hoping they can get it all repaired soon. We do have one space heater, so we can all huddle together in one room if need be.

• This is the forecast for the rest of the week. Yikes! -13?!

• In other news….after my last oral surgery, I once again thought something that comes to mind often when one of us has some kind of procedure: I wonder why doctor’s offices don’t send you home with samples of the medicine or at least call it in while you’re there so you can just pick it up on the way home? Trying to drop my prescription off and answer the pharmacist’s questions with my mouth stuffed with gauze was fun. 🙂 And then I had to go back again and pick it up. Similarly, I felt bad when having to take Jim fresh from kidney surgery or one of the kids from wisdom teeth removal through the interminable drive-through at the pharmacy, get them home and settled, and then leave them alone to go back to pick up meds. I can understand small offices and clinics might not want to keep some of the stronger prescription painkillers on hand since it might increase the likelihood of break-ins, but hospitals would have them on hand. I actually remember the days when pharmacies would deliver prescription medications to your home. 🙂 That would be nice, but probably too expensive these days, and probably too much risk of robbery.

• Speaking of medical matters….It seems like every medical appointment I make, they tell you the time of your appointment and then ask you to come in 10-30 minutes early to fill our paperwork or do preliminary procedures. I wish they’d just give you the time they want you there. I look at the appointment card they gave me and have to think, “The appointment’s at 9, but what time am I supposed to actually be there??”

• Am I the only one that uses delicious.com to save links any more? Whenever I save something there, it tells me I am the first person to save it, and I know I am not the first person to read it, so I wonder how others save or make note of things they’ve read online that they want to remember. I’ve heard a lot about Evernote but it seems complicated.

• When I first started blogging, the prevailing advice was to put something interesting in the space that a person first sees when they come on to your blog, something that will make them want to scroll down and read the rest. Nowadays I see not only blogs but web sites that have almost a full screen photo as the first thing you see when you come to the site, and you have to scroll down to read any content. Funny how those things change over time. Neither way is intrinsically better or worse, but personally, I’d rather be able to start reading the blog post or article when I first come to the site rather than having to scroll down just to find it.

• Speaking of photos: I really enjoy the creativity I see on Facebook and Pinterest with different kids of photo set-ups these days. But if I could offer one thought to those setting up photo shoots for engagements, weddings, babies, families, or whatever: what your relatives and friends want to see, and what I think you’ll most want to look back on, are people’s faces. An occasional hazy or distant or silhouetted  shot in a larger group of shots is fine, but get some close ups of those loved faces.

• If onomatopoeia is words that sound like what they are (ping, fizz. etc.), is there a word for words that don’t sound anything like what they are? Like sublime, which means, according to Dictionary.com., “impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.; supreme or outstanding,” but doesn’t sound like any of those.

• Jesse was telling me about a cop that proposed to his girlfriend by having two other cops pull her over as if she were in trouble for something, and then he showed up with the engagement ring. I don’t think I’d be in much of a mood to discuss marriage after being pulled over. 🙂

• One of the app games I play with my sisters is very similar to Wheel of Fortune, and I thought I got the phrase we were playing as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – only I put Arc. Sigh. Sounds like a geometry story problem. 🙂

Well, that’s probably enough rambling for one day. Hope you’re having a good day and staying warm!

I tend to steer clear of politics here because feelings can run high and I don’t want to stir up unneeded heat and controversy. I have strong opinions on some things and voice them occasionally but try not to couch them in political terms. However, when I do, I believe in being respectful to people on the other side of issues and to leaders in particular.

I did not vote for our current president and disagree with much of what he does. But when I heard he was coming to our area, I have to admit to being a little excited. It would be a historic moment: it’s not every day such a personage comes to our state. And then, even more amazing, I learned he was coming to my husband’s plant!

He was coming to highlight and announce manufacturing hubs that would bring together universities, manufacturers, and government agencies such as the one here in the Knoxville area where the University of TN, Oak Ridge National Labs, and Techmer PM worked together on their latest project, a 3D printed car.

To be perfectly honest, 3D printing baffles me, and making something the size of a car that way baffles me even further, but it’s pretty cool! You can find more about the president’s visit here, a transcript of his remarks here, and more about the car here.

This visit didn’t get much press because the president’s first visit that morning to a local community college to announce a program for two years of free community college based on the Tennessee Promise program here generated a lot more attention.

There was a lot that went into getting ready for the president’s visit. The Secret Service was there about a week before to check things out. It’s a sad fact of modern society that they have to look for every possible angle that some crazed person might think of to do harm and to be prepared against it. But Jim said they were very nice and even joked with them sometimes – not at all the stoic faces in sunglasses and earpieces that you see on TV shows.

For the record, if the president ever comes to your area, know that his staff and/or the Secret Service calls all the shots. One lady called the plant to buy tickets and had to be told they weren’t selling tickets. She got quite angry. Someone else called and wanted to bring his son by to meet the president. I don’t think they realized that just because he was coming to a small town, that didn’t mean it was a small-town type visit. Not even all the employees got to hear him speak in person, partly because there wasn’t a venue big enough for that. They had one lottery for people to hear him speak and another for a “meet and greet”: my husband was part of the latter and did get to shake the president’s and vice-president’s hands. Unfortunately we don’t have a picture of that: they weren’t allowed to take “selfies” with the president or ask for autographs, but they were allowed to take pictures of each other, so he has a bunch of pictures of other people shaking hands and has shared them with those in the photos: hopefully one of them has a picture of him they’ll share.

The president was very personable, interested in what they were doing, and asked intelligent questions about their products and processing.

One incident that was funny to tell about later but not so funny at the time: UPS and other major carriers were called and asked not to deliver anything that day. Somehow one smaller company got overlooked, and one of their driver’s drove his truck past all the police cars to deliver his package. Naturally they stopped him and checked out and unloaded his truck. They found the package addressed to the company and had him open it. It as a lab instrument that was housed in a metal carrying case which, of course, looked like ammunition of some kind at first glance. When someone opened the case, it was identified as an  instrument for the lab, and the guy was free to pack up his truck and go, very much behind schedule. Even if he didn’t know the president was going to be there that day, it seems he would have realized something was going on with all the police cars there: why he didn’t stop and ask before driving in, we don’t know. If the president had actually been on the premises at the time, it would have been even more serious, I’m sure. As it is he has an interesting story to tell.

It was a long day with a lot of “hurry up and wait” time. They couldn’t go to their offices during certain hours: for security reasons they had everyone in certain areas. And, of course, as when any guest is coming, you hope everything goes well. Thankfully, it seemed to. The CEO and president of the company were very pleased. And now my husband can say he has met the president of the United States and shaken his hand. 🙂

Wow, last week was a crazy one. I feel like I’ve been pretty scarce around here even though I posted more than I thought I would.

First, Jim’s mom’s caregiver left before lunchtime on Monday due to some sleet and snow, so I had care of Grandma that afternoon. I think her caregiver has been pretty antsy about the weather since her accident during our big snowfall a few weeks ago, understandably. Then one day I just HAD to catch up on some neglected housecleaning and wasn’t on the computer much at all that day. Then Jim had to go out of town, and this was the first time since we’d brought Grandma home that he had been away overnight, so I slept in her room to turn her at intervals. I don’t know how he does that and still works the next day – I felt like I was in a zombie state until I got a nap in the afternoon. Then his birthday was Thursday, but since he was out of town we put off celebrating til Saturday, and there was shopping and ordering and cake-baking and present-wrapping to get ready for that. Not complaining about any of the above – that’s just life, which takes precedence over blogging. It was a good week though a busy one. But some days I didn’t get to the computer much or was too fuzzy-brained to write much.

So far I am not aware of anything “extra” on the calendar this week, so I hope to be able to sit down and think through some things. I seem to do that best when I’m writing – maybe there’s something about seeing words in black and white that makes them easier to process than when they’re swirling around intangibly. 🙂

It’s been another off-kilter week for me. Tuesday afternoon I had another episode of SVTs, supra-ventricular tachycardia, where the heart rate jumps suddenly into an excessively fast and irregular heartbeat. It hadn’t happened in years, so I was hopeful that the medication I am on was keeping it regulated. If you have to have some kind of irregular heartbeat, this is probably the easiest one to deal with. What I’ve been advised to do in the past is to wait a bit and try some different measures to get it to “convert,” as they say, back to a normal rhythm, and if that doesn’t work, to go to the emergency room. That’s what I ended up having to do on Tuesday. Thankfully Grandma’s aide was here to take care of her, and Jesse was here to drive me to the hospital. Jim met us over there, and Jason and Mittu came to our house to stay with Grandma after her aide left, and Mittu made dinner for us.

My sister asked me once, “Isn’t it the same as a panic attack?” No, it is a specific type of rhythm that they can actually diagnose from the EKG. It involves the electrical part of the heart and doesn’t mean there is any blockage or any other heart problems (although they do check blood enzymes to make sure I haven’t had a heart attack when this happens.) If it doesn’t “convert” on its own, they give me (or at least they have in the past) something called adenosine through an iv which, as I understand it, actually stops the heart for a second and acts as kind of a reset button. It feels really awful for just a second, and then usually everything goes back to normal. This time, thankfully, it converted before they got to that point, and the different ones in the room at that time jokingly took credit for “scaring it out of” me. They did still take an EKG, chest x-ray, lots of blood work, and kept me for a few hours. For some reason this time my blood pressure was low, so low that they wouldn’t release me until it came up a little. My poor dear husband’s attitude was, “We’ve done this before, we know how it works; when the heart rate converts, everything is fine and we should be able to go home.” 🙂 I felt that way a little, too, but this was the first time it happened since we moved here and the first time to deal with it at this hospital, plus it hadn’t happened in about 6 years, so I didn’t mind being put through the paces as much.

I’m supposed to follow up with my doctor, which I am doing today, and the ER doctor advised referral to a cardiologist. On the one hand, a cardiologist is probably going to say the same thing the cardiologist said when this first started happening: they usually attribute this to an “extra” nerve on the heart, and they fix it by going up through a blood vessel in the groin to the heart and zapping the offending nerve with a laser. Since this hasn’t happened all that often – maybe half a dozen times in the last 15 years – I haven’t been inclined to do that. (Now I am kind of wishing I had done it while we lived in SC, because the cardiologist I saw there was reputed to be “the” expert in the state on electrical issues of the heart). On the other hand, since it has been a while, it might be a good idea to see one here. Though I hadn’t had a full blown episode of SVTs for a while, I have been having more palpitations lately, so I’d like to ask about that (I had mentioned those to my family doctor last visit, and he just said if it kept up we’d take the next step to deal with it.) We’ll see what my family doctor advises today.

One of my prevailing thoughts when this first started on Tuesday, and it looked like I was going to have to go in to the hospital, was that this really wasn’t what I wanted to do that day. I had been inwardly rejoicing that I didn’t have to go anywhere that day, and didn’t have anything that “had” to be done, so I had been looking forward to getting some other things done. Then later in the day I read of a friend’s dad who fell and hurt his head and had to go to the hospital, so, I was reminded that we all have to deal with unexpected events that we’d rather not have to deal with some times (he was ok and was released the same day.)

I was trying to work on a post yesterday concerning a recent attack someone made on homemakers, but I was too fuzzy-brained and it just wasn’t coming together. I have another post in the works about the process we have gone through with Jim’s mom as she has needed different levels of care. When we were first having to think about what to do, there were a couple of blogs dealing with such issues that were helpful to me at the time. Those blogs have gone silent now, but I thought perhaps sharing our experiences might help others with older parents. It’s turning out to be rather long, though, so I might have to break it up into parts. But hopefully if available time and working brain cells come together at the same time, I’ll be able to finish those posts soon. 🙂

Random things on my mind lately:

Why do I love sleep but hate to go to bed? My natural tendency is to be a night owl, but getting up at 6 or 6:30 doesn’t work well with late bed times. Somehow I still have a hard time making myself go to bed when I should.

When you have a medical procedure or get released from a hospital, they often send you home with prescriptions, and then you (or your driver) have to stop by the drugstore first thing and either wait or come back, all while you are not feeling well. Why don’t they give you your meds as you leave the doctor, dentist, or hospital, eliminating that need to stop by a pharmacy? They could keep a supply on hand and add it to your bill.

Speaking of drugstores, whose main purpose is selling drugs, why is the pharmacy and drug section of the store all the way in the back so that a sick or injured person has to hobble across the whole store to get what they need?

I don’t quite get the current fad for chalkboard art. When I think chalkboards, I think dust, but even the non-dusty printables don’t appeal to me.

Same for chevron patterns. Maybe because I remember from a home interiors class that angles in decorating can be agitating and curves are more pleasing and restful. I guess it depends on one’s preferences – a lot of people use angles in different ways. For a while there it seemed like every decorating article or show I saw advocated setting the furniture at angles rather than following the wall layout. That thoroughly throws me off when I enter a room.

I am not as inclined to click on a link or Pinterest post for “100 such-and-such” as I would be for maybe 10 or so. 100 sounds very long and cluttered, like it would take a long time to sort through and find what I liked. 10 sounds easily readable.

Looking back over this list, I am afraid it sounds a little curmudgeonly, but I assure you I am feeling quite mellow at the moment. 🙂 Here is a little something to leave you with a smile:

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

It’s been quite a nice first few days of October, even though I still can’t believe it is October already. Here are some favorite parts of the last week.

1. Pizza and movie night with the family. It seems like it has been a while since we’ve done that.

2. My Fitness Pal. I especially like the little bar code reader on the iPhone app that inputs all the nutritional information from packaged items. Very handy!

3. Take-out from Cracker Barrel. My dear hubby brought some for me even though he doesn’t like anything from there. Especially loved the Coca Cola Cake. Mmmm…

4. Losing 5 lbs. Woot!! I haven’t been doing anything really drastic yet – walking 30 minutes 4-5 times a week and cutting back on sweets (except for occasional splurges like the Cracker Barrel cake. 🙂 ). There is more I need to work on, but it seems to work better for me to take small measures a little at a time rather than overhauling everything at once.

5. Hope for Jim’s eye. Some of you may remember that my husband had surgery for a detached retina back in April. Unfortunately his vision in that eye has been getting much worse. He saw his eye doctor and was told that he had a wrinkle on his retina now. That may fix itself over time, or it may require additional surgery – for now they advocate waiting on it. But they did say he had a cataract, which he had been told might happen due to the excessive laser work during the retina surgery. Now he is scheduled to have that removed in November, and it’s much less invasive, less recovery time, etc., than the retina surgery. We’re hoping we can get the date moved up, but we’re just glad that there is hope this will improve his vision.

Happy Friday!