The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey July 20, 2014

Cool July

We've had several days of unseasonably cool weather. I'm not complaining, mind you. But all the same, it's weird. Temps in the early mornings in the high 50's, and barely breaking into the low 80's. Who'd a thunk? But they let me take Lexi on a two mile walk this afternoon without arriving back home as a sweatball holding a dead dog. The garden, it fares poorly. I gave it virtually no attention in the days leading up to Marcia's surgery, nor in the weeks that followed that event. Bugs have killed my zucchini plants, the tomato plants are small-ish…

Brian Bilbrey July 14, 2014

Feel the Power

Outage Reported: The power outage in your area has already been reported. We anticipate having your service restored by 7/14/2014 7:45:00 PM. Generators are good. We just had a big thunder storm, lots of lightning and noise, with half an inch of rain delivered in about ten minutes. Just as it was wrapping up ... flash, sputter ... power is out. It tried a couple of times to spin back up within the first two minutes, then nothing. Given rain and a sump pump, I figured I might as well spin up the generator. Now everything except the air conditioning…

Brian Bilbrey July 13, 2014

Improbably So

A relatively lazy day for me today: just shopping, laundry, and coffee roasting. Yard stuff consumed the Saturday. Hot and muggy, still tonight, but storms are coming, and cooler weather is (unusually) due by mid-week (yay!) The garden is starting to produce some tomatoes and more peppers to join the zucchini and cucumbers. Maybe first salsa next week! Marcia's doing great. Up and down the stairs like a champ ... a hobbling champ, but much progress every day. She may be done with the cane by the end of this week, too, which is stellar. In my tiny elective time,…

Brian Bilbrey July 6, 2014

Summer Arrives in Force

Yeah, we're making mid-90's and up this time of year (both temp and humidity), although that storm gave us a couple of nice days in the mid-80's, Friday and Saturday. Marcia news: She's mostly tapered off her pain meds, with a plan to be fully off by week's end (or earlier), and driving, too! She got fed up with the walker by Friday, and put it to the side. Now she's using the cane everywhere, which is much better for her in several ways. Her gait is better, and she leans less on the cane than she did on the…

Brian Bilbrey June 30, 2014

At the Edge of the Woods

We're not out of them yet, but there's more scrub brush at the edges, right? Stuff that needs pushing through before we can be out of the woods? Yeah, that's it. Overall, Marcia's doing well. We got here home midday on Wednesday, and had formal outpatient PT on both Thursday and Friday. We managed a lot (relatively) of exercise yesterday, including a couple of walks up and down the sidewalk on our block. So she's improving rapidly. Today: blood test (for effectiveness of blood thinner) and PT. Me? By the time I was done with all the chores plus the…