August 13, 2021
Dear Everyone:
Things continue to
Look Up. That’s what I try
to remind myself as I hobble around the house.
“Look up!”
That’s what the Physical Therapist advised me to do when using
the walker. Looking up,
instead of watching my feet, raises the whole skeletal frame and puts
the effort where it belongs, along the shoulder bones and muscles
instead of making the lower back muscles do all the work.
My lower back totally and enthusiastically agrees with the
Physical Therapist.
Speaking of which,
all the Therapists and the Visiting Nurse have signed off on my
progress. This means that I
don’t need for any of them to come back again.
I will, of course, continue to follow their advice and perform
all the exercises to maintain the improvements.
In the meantime, the
Pain Beasties in my lower left leg have been subdued from Screaming
Agony through Mildly Excruciating to Merely Annoying.
Earlier this week, I actually made my way to the carport, got
into my car and drove, at 4 mph, to the mailbox where I sent out some
mail and picked up what had accumulated in my box since “Jeannie’s last
visit.
In The Real World,
walking to the mailbox and back would take me about five minutes.
This time, it only took slightly over an hour.
Nevertheless, this counts as Progress.
In the meantime, I
have survived yet another Household Crisis.
When I first heard-and-felt the deep grumbling
vibrations, I thought one of my neighbors was having their bathroom
renovated and was tearing up the old tile to make room for new flooring.
It wasn’t until the deep grumbling vibrations started up on a
Sunday morning that I thought, “Really?
You’re doing this now?”
But I had my suspicions.
Bear in mind that it was Sunday, thus I was running the
dishwasher, one of several loads of laundry, and taking my leisurely
morning shower when it happened.
Later, when the deep grumbling vibrations came back, I looked in
the closet where the HVAC and water heater live and, sure enough, it
turned to be my own water heater that was acting up.
More importantly, it
appeared to be spitting water out near the bottom, into the catch basin.
This was alarming.
Keep in mind that I
just had the water heater replaced near the beginning of June.
Also, I had agreed to pay for an annual “club membership” with
the service company that did the installation.
This is where that
“membership” paid for itself.
They had a technician at my place the very next afternoon.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was.
Another technician arrived the next morning.
He quickly deduced that the water heater wasn’t doing anything
wrong. There were
“extenuating circumstances” involved.
He got the heater
working in short order. Two
days later, he came back and spent four hours dealing with the
“extenuating circumstances” that had actually caused the problem to
begin with. Bottom line:
My water heater is working as it should be.
Three cheers for hot water.
In the meantime…
“Jeannie” has been a
real trooper through all of this.
She comes to my place at least once each week to deal with the
mail, take out the garbage and recycles and so on.
She also takes me grocery shopping.
She drives to my
place, then we switch to my car as it has all the equipment and room for
purchases. Once we park in a
Handicap Space, I stay with the car while “Jeannie” goes inside and gets
one of the store’s little electric scooter carts.
It has a basket, but it’s much too small for a week’s worth of
groceries. So “Jeannie”
follows me with a real shopping cart.
I pretty much know
where everything is in this particular store.
So I whip up one aisle and down another while “Jeannie” tries to
keep up. Purchasing some
things depends on whether or not there is a special.
For instance, I usually get two to three 2-liter bottles of
life-sustaining Diet Coke®.
But sometimes there
is a special: Buy four
bottles and get a better price.
So we get four bottles.
But it’s a pain to haul all four bottles out of the cart and up
onto the belt at checkout.
So I made up some numbered tags.
Each tag has a large number (“4”) written on each side, plus a
rubber band attached to it.
The rubber band goes over just one bottle, which goes onto the belt.
The cashiers know me,
so they know that the “4” means there are a total of four bottles, and
they just need to scan the one bottle four times.
It’s much easier for them as well.
Naturally, “Jeannie”
thinks I’m crazy. But the
cashiers think it’s a really cool idea.
Love, as always,
Pete
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