December 3, 2021
Dear Everyone:
Thanksgiving didn’t
work out quite the way we had planned it.
But then, when does it ever?
“Marshall” had agreed to come up from Fresno to stay at
“Jeannie’s” place, with her two cats, and spend Thanksgiving with us.
His only stipulation was that, instead of the traditional turkey
dinner, “with all the fixings”, he wanted pizza.
That worked out fine
for me. There’s a place in
Danville (only two exits up the freeway from here) that specializes in
“East Coast” style pizza and even features “half-baked” selections.
I planned to pick three up on Tuesday.
The Monday before
Thanksgiving, “Jeannie” called me to announce that she had an intensely
painful muscle spasm in her back.
She wanted me to come to her office and take her to the Emergency
Department (ED; they’re only called “ER” on television.)
Having just emerged from my morning shower, I hastened to throw
some clothes on and headed north to Concord.
She subsequently
called me to say that someone from her office had already taken her to
the ED and for me to meet her there.
At that point, I had to ask, “Which hospital?”
There are a number in the area, plus something called “Urgent
Care” in various locations. Her
answer was “John Muir in Concord”.
Fortunately, I knew how to find that one.
It’s in an older part of Concord where old roads suddenly turn
into “you can’t get there from here” one-way streets.
I found her sitting
in a wheelchair in the lobby.
Eventually, a nurse’s aide wheeled her into an exam room with me
hobbling behind as fast as I could go.
In time a physician’s assistant took her symptoms and prescribed
an oral muscle relaxant and pain relief.
These worked quite well.
After a while,
another nurse’s aide rushed the wheelchair to the sidewalk outside,
again with me coming up a slow second.
Got “Jeannie” into my car and made our way to the pharmacy, where
prescriptions of more of the same were waiting, and hence home.
“Jeannie” was feeling much better by then.
Once I was sure that
she would be alright on her own, I drove back to my place.
I found out later that she had called “Marshall” and told him he
was “uninvited” for Thanksgiving.
She couldn’t possibly clean her home up in time for his intended
arrival with all the pain, etc.
I was OK with this
decision since I had awakened that Monday morning with a “stiff neck”,
something I have not been afflicted with in literally years.
Taking a shower that morning involved a lot of painful yelping on
my part every time I tried to reach up or over my shoulder for the
shower head. Also, I
couldn’t move my head to either side and couldn’t check my blind spots
while driving, depending entirely on the side view mirrors.
“Marshall” called me
on Tuesday to confirm that “Thanksgiving has been cancelled”.
I assured him that Thanksgiving was not cancelled, merely
postponed. We would get
together some time before Christmas.
Or maybe after.
It reminds me of a
Supervisor I once had who was so disorganized, so ill-prepared, so
frankly incompetent that she couldn’t pull together taking a half-dozen
people to lunch for Christmas.
We eventually had our “Christmas Luncheon” the following
February.
Anyway, “Jeannie” is
feeling much better now.
Meanwhile…
The hummingbird
feeder on my patio has been such a success that I decided to try a tube
for feeding small birds like finches, chickadees, and the like.
I figured the tiny seeds would be easier to clean up and less
attractive to other critters.
This proved to be
wildly popular with the itty-bitty birds.
The tube can accommodate over a half-dozen voracious feathered
friends at one time. They
cling to the wire mesh with their tiny talons, a feat that the larger
scrub jays and mourning doves can’t hope to emulate.
The finches busily pluck the seeds out with their miniscule
beaks, breaking them open to scoop out the edible part and dropping the
empty husks on the patio floor.
So far, it’s fairly
easy to blow the husks out under the patio fence like so much black
dust. Apparently the
landscapers haven’t noticed any extra bits mixed in with the top soil.
The trick is to clean the area up before “Jeannie” comes by on
the weekend. She’s happy to
use the blower, but seems blissfully oblivious to the fact that her
practiced side-to-side technique tends to blow half the detritus into
the living room.
By the way, I now
have a heating pad specifically designed to go around a person’s
shoulders. It “cooked” that
stiff neck away in a day or so.
I highly recommend getting one before the next time this happens.
I would also recommend that “Jeannie” get a regular heating pad
before her next muscle spasm occurs; but even if she did, the cats would
just hide it from her.
Love, as always,
Pete
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