Mom is home

I got a call around 8am this morning from Mom in the hospital saying she was being released.  I had already arranged with Croft to go pick her up as I needed to sleep to do my 12-hr shift tonight.  When I woke up in the middle of my 'night' around 1pm I went over and she was sleeping in her chair.  She woke up enough to give me the prescriptions she needed filled, so I ran over to Fry's and dropped them off.  I went back to bed and before coming in to work I picked them up.  The hospital gave her fairly complete directions on what to take when, and what she said matched the paperwork, so I have confidence that she will take the right thing at the right time.  This also helps me to believe that she has no lasting issues from the stroke(s).

The neighbors are all checking in on her, so I'm comfortable leaving her no-so alone.  When I left Buddy Bill was there.  I told him to keep an eye on her.  He thinks the sun rises and sets for her since she let his wife stay with her when they didn't have air conditioning after the big storm.  Mom also was one who set out food in the community room for the folks who didn't have electricity during that time.  From the number of folks who would stop me on my walks or drives through the park to ask about her, I think she will be well taken care of.  Favorite Neighbor knows I'm worried about her having food, so I know she will make sure there is food around.  That family is always trying to feed me anyway, so I know I'm hitting her strong suit there.

Mom is keeping her mobile home as warm as she wants now, so hopefully she will be more comfortable.  I'm thinking the sleeping was her finally relaxing after being gone for 5 days. 

So far, so good

Mom is still in the Stroke Center, in a very nice large room all by herself.  Her primary complaint is that she is always cold.  This is nothing new.  When they weighed her she was 103 pounds, and I know when I was that low weight I tended to be cold as well.  Her room is kept at 80 and she can request a hot (warmed up) blanket whenever she wants.  Now that she has figured out what foods she likes from the cafeteria she is eating again.

No obvious damage from the strokes.  Yes, plural.  She was told she has had several mini strokes.  As it is the weekend not a lot is going on and we don’t know if she will come home or go to rehab, and when it will all happen.  At this point she is where she needs to be.

Thank you for the prayers and good thoughts.

A detour

I was asleep Wednesday afternoon, with my third 12 hr shift ahead of me that night, when I heard Croft calling my name at my front door.  “Sorry, but it’s an emergency, it’s your Mom…”  I grabbed for clothes and my phone and ran over.  Mom had said she thought she had a stroke.  Norma and Kris were already with Mom, giving her an aspirin.  911 was called.  Off she went in the ambulance.  Half awake, calling into work to say I would not be in, I asked Croft to drive me to the hospital.  As he cycled through various gears in random order with my stick shift, we got there and Mom wasn’t in the system yet.  I gave them a few minutes, and then she was in the system but not in a room.  A bit later the reception guy walked over and gave us visitor badges.

Croft waited in the outside reception room while I went in.  Later, after finding me some breakfast, he headed home.  Mom had no obvious issues from the stroke, but she doesn’t remember Tuesday night.  She didn’t take her medicines and clothes and stuff were not where she normally puts them.  At 85, this doesn’t sound unusual, except that my Mom is as active and with it as I am (not that that says all that much lately…).

Yesterday a MRI determined that she did have a stroke and she has been admitted to the stroke unit.  Her handwriting and speech don’t seem to be affected at all, in fact I now see little change in her other than she has been mostly in bed the past 24 hours so is a bit shaky when shuffling to and from the bathroom.

Needless to say I haven’t finished my shifts at work this week.  I have plenty of vacation time accrued, so that is not a problem.  I appreciate that Croft and Norma and Kris jumped in and helped us, and that Favorite Neighbor went over to check on Mom when she wasn’t obviously active that day.

Breaking Radio Silence

I didn’t mean to wait so long to make another blog post.  Things are happening, but I get distracted before I can make a post.

Prayer requested for Rod Ivers, Retired Rod on my sidebar.  If you read Sandie Dixon’s blog, also on the sidebar, you know he went in for tests and they found a brain tumor.  He is back in Kansas City under the care of his doctors at this point.  I did go over to see him the evening before they left.  He seems to have accepted whatever happens.  I’m hoping he is back here next year, as we all are.  Sandie is in contact with Rod’s family so we can hopefully keep up with what goes on.

I am transitioning back to night shift.  Monday night will be rough as for the first 2 weeks I’m doing 12 hour shifts, 6pm to 6am.  I go back to 4 10 hour shifts a week after that.  I am glad to finally get back on nights.

I’ve been doing my best to take food in to work that I have cooked myself rather than eating frozen dinners.  I am getting a bit tired of my own cooking, though.

Soup’s On

I guess there are those who are lucky enough not to hear all the cool things one can buy these days who haven’t a clue what I was talking about in the previous post.  An Instant Pot is a combination electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, saute pan, steamer, food warmer, and many more things I’m sure.

I got the recipe from the Instant Pot site.  First I pressed the saute button.  Then I remembered I need to plug it in first.  I put coconut oil in the inner stainless steel pot and again pressed saute and it started heating.  Dumped in the chopped onions, garlic, and curry powder.  Cooked until I thought it was cooked enough.

I then put the rest of the ingredients in, which included a can of coconut milk, the cubed sweet potatoes, and frozen container of chicken broth I’d made a few months ago.  I ended up setting up a worst case.  Not intentionally.  That is just how things tend to go in my life.  Such as, I probably should have considered doing this last night and taken the chicken broth out to thaw instead of dumping it in as a frozen chunk.  Not the least of the reasons being I splashed coconut milk/curry on my top as it slid in.  When I put all the rest of the ingredients in and it didn’t look like enough liquid so I pulled out the carton of Silk Coconut Milk (for drinking?) I had and tasted it to see if it was still good.  It was, so I added some to the pot.  I’m probably a bit over full here from what the instructions say. 

I set the pot to 10 minutes on high pressure.  It came up to pressure automatically, stayed at high pressure for 10 min, then went to keep warm and let the pressure down as it sat.  I just wait for the beeps.   I did the trial run with water last night, and I have to say that even releasing the steam pressure manually is easy and safe.  That is why I got this.  I’m finding I need cooking appliances that turn themselves off automatically, as I get distracted these days.  I forgot I was toasting an English Muffin yesterday.  It was cold, but not burnt to a crisp, since I used the press down toaster function on the older toaster oven I have and it turned itself off when it popped up.  Hopefully the InstaPot will keep me from burning down the kitchen in a similar situation.

This is what it looked like after I let the steam off and opened it up.  I wasn’t ready to do anything with it yet, so I turned it back on keep warm and put the lid back on.  I ran around and did some errands, one of which was to pick up the rest of my order from Walmart.  Since I ordered this from the Evil Empire, it came bundled free with a Ninja blender/food processor.  I went and got it (shipped separately from the Instant Pot) and blended the soup in it.  No more pictures. though.

The verdict is that it is good.  Especially since I love squash soup and I have never had the nerve to try to make it myself.  It needed less liquid or more sweet potatoes.  I need to stop cooking for an army when I cook as I’m running out of freezer space.  It needed more spice, a common issue with my cooking.  The curry gives it some heat, which I’m enjoying as I somehow picked up a cold the past few days.  All in all, the soup, the Instant Pot and the Ninja blender seem to be keepers.

More cooking with Shadowmoss

I broke down and bought an Instant Pot. Today I make soup. The recipe is for Indian coconut butternut squash soup. I have sweet potatoes (yams) and no ginger and I'm using coconut oil instead of olive oil. Wish me luck.
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Another blogfest picture

Sorting out the email function yet again. This is Ray with his doggie bag.
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Blogfest 2016

Better a bit late than never.  I didn’t take many pictures and then couldn’t find my blog email address to post them directly from my phone while I was there yesterday.  Need to get that part set up better.  Anyway, here is the one picture I did take early on as folks were beginning to arrive.  There were so many cameras out that I know there will be a lot better pictures out there in blogland this morning.


I had a total blast yesterday.  After I posted the blog I loaded up and went to pick up Croft.  After loading up his stuff amid directions from Norma on how to store the tray of whatever we got for the snack and other important things we headed to Frys and picked up the first cheese tray we found and stuck it in a totally different cooler.  I did try to do it the way Norma had suggested…

The little red car didn’t loose any time heading out to Quartzsite (looked up the spelling this time).  We figured the gas mileage on the way home and  I got 40 mpg on this trip.  Woo Hoo little red car!  I got off at the first exit and cruised slowly through town down to the McDonalds.  We went in and got breakfast and I texted Rod to say we were in town.  He was held up at his ham (amature radio) end of the week prize drawing, but would be out as soon as it was over.  I wanted to look at a couple of class B rv’s I’d noticed on the way through town, so we stopped in.  I let Croft keep the salesman busy, as I’m sure the salesman thought he was smoozing the decision maker of the two of us while I checked them out.  Nice rigs but more than I can go even used.  There was a 2000 Mini Winnie that was only $20k that was in good shape and that is probably the range I’ll end up with.  Nice to see what is around used.

We went to the big tent.  I did some creative parking out along the edge as I’d rather walk than crowd in to get a better parking space.  Croft and I meandered through the maket and tent.  I spent some money on a set of 5 toys, the rubber balls that splat flat when you throw them, then gather themselves up into a ball again.  Sorry, they make me smile and I think I’ll use them to take out my frustrations.  I also picked up a couple of the small folding step stools, one for me and one for Mom.

At the blogfest Sandie Dixon came out to greet me and whle Croft caught up with George and Suzie I went over to Doug and Toni’s rig and talked to Jim and Sandie and them while they polished off a spead of food Toni had put out.  Folks started arriving and signing in and putting on name tags.  As we went around the circle and folks stood up and introduced themselves I would be surprised ‘Hey, I know that person!’ over and over.  Folks like Merikay and Craig, Glenda, Ivan, Mark and Bobby, and so on.  I did meet the ones I was most looking forward to meeting, Pheebs (and Al and Kelly of Bayfield Bunch) and Yuma (with Doug and Dolly of Miss Adventure Travels)  Miss Fergie, Yuma’s older sibling was adorable in a cute dress.  Dolly said the problem when Yuma came to live with them was that Fergie didn’t know she was a dog until then.

I know that others are all typing out their own stories of the day.  I was totally blown away with just how NICE everyone is.  Folks I thought wouldn’t give me much notice at all talked to me for several minutes and I loved talking to them as much, probably more, than I enjoy reading their blogs.  I came away with a few resolutions.  One is to start doing things I can write about.  Time to get out of this rut.  Another is to get serious about dealing with the things I need to in order to get into my own rv and get out there and enjoy the life these folks are so obviously having so much fun living.

Heading to Blogfest

I have directions and GPS co-ordinates.  I’m fixing a second cup of coffee, and getting ready to pack water bottles and peanut butter sandwiches to eat on the way and ham and cheese sandwiches to eat during the day.  I’ll pick up Croft in a half hour as he is riding over with me, and we’ll stop and get some kind of ‘snack’ to share with the group.

I’ve never been to Quartzite (probably spelling it wrong…) when everyone is there, so I’m excited to see what it is all about.  I want to tour the Big Tent and see what all they have.  I envision it like the flea market used to be at Dayton Hamfest.  It should be fun to meet some of the folks whose lives I read about on a regular basis on their blogs.  I may email some pictures to the blog while I’m there.

And so, I’m off.

Info for Ed:

Or anyone else who is interested in learning HTML, web design or coding with free on-line classes.

Try the free site Codecademy. 

https://www.codecademy.com/learn

You sign up with an email, and they walk you through HTML and on up as far as you want to go.  I’ve used it sporatically, more because I have difficulty sticking with anything consistently.

There are others, but that is the one I personnally have used.