Posts Tagged ‘Cyndie’
Probably Done
Despite the relentless drizzle saturating everything not under a roof yesterday, our contractor, Justin, showed up to complete the framing on the shade sail and remove the ground supports.
It looks a little spider-like due to the funky way I persuaded him to attach the 45° braces above and below the header boards on the four corners. I’m satisfied with the unconventional look, but wish we’d have achieved more stiffness from those additions.
There are two more things we can do to bolster the header boards, but it will take an additional lumber purchase, so I am choosing to wait and take those steps if we discover a need.
As soon as we removed the temporary lower support boards, I took down the barrier to allow the horses full access to the small paddock. They were way more interested in the grass that had been untouched for a couple of weeks than the strange canopy overhead.
Since they’ve watched it go up and probably viewed it in my head the whole time I’ve been imagining it, I suppose it’s not all that new to them.
Horses can be so matter-of-fact sometimes. Weirdly, they can also simultaneously appear somewhat flighty, so figure that one out.
I did some calculating to get an estimate of how long a braid I will need to wrap the 6×6 posts for a span of about a meter to discourage the horses from chewing on the wood or catching their tails or manes in splinters as the wood dries. I’ve completed only a third of what it will take for one post using the cut pieces of poly bale twine we have accrued.
It’s time to up my braiding game. Should have done that a long time ago.
Cyndie made use of several of the hollowed chunks I cut from the fallen maple tree.
They are becoming flower planters. I like! See why I am so smitten with her? Not just things like that, but she lets me make crazy things like the shade sail frame, and then tells me she likes how it looks when it is done.
I’m a lucky guy.
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Driveway Series
Imagine if Thursday the 13th was a thing. Today would be that day. Maybe it would have a good connotation, leading to “Happy Thursday the 13th” salutations! Maybe not. Just a random thought.
Walking back from the barn Tuesday afternoon, I spotted some things that prompted me to pull out my phone camera.
The first was the way icicles from a drip off the corner of the shop garage were forming on the branch of the pine tree there. There was just enough wind blowing around that corner that it caused the icicles to spread at a variety of sideways angles.
As long as I had the phone out, I saw a series of interesting shapes and designs as I walked toward the house. They have become my “Driveway Series.” It’s always difficult for me to single out one image, and in this case, I think they all belong together, to be viewed like links on a chain.
There is a story I remembered that I wasn’t able to tell before yesterday’s interview ended. I’ve hesitated to share it because it is really Cyndie’s to tell, but we have continued to laugh about it long enough that I think you all will get a chuckle out of it, too.
While in California last week, she and her friends visited a Korean spa for special salt-scrub massages. Cyndie and one of the friends had experienced a luxuriously dreamy steam and body exfoliation treatment on gold marble at a Middle Eastern spa in Vancouver years back and had visions of reliving that experience. However, this traditional Korean sauna did things differently.
Some highlights that Cyndie pointed out include the mandatory absence of any covering on their bodies to keep the water clean for all customers. After showering, they soaked in a hot tub that was so hot, Cyndie needed to sit up. She was instructed to get back down all the way into the water. When it came time for exfoliation, Cyndie said it felt like the tiny Korean masseuse put on gloves with 60 grit sandpaper and proceeded to “sand” Cyndie’s flesh from top to bottom, front to back. No time for tears, as the scalding hot coconut milk was poured over her and she was told to wash her face with it.
Then Cyndie was sent to the showers to wash it all off. Upon returning, it was time for the hot oil massage. She was ready for the soothing and relaxing massage, but received a bruising, sharp-elbow deep muscle massage.
Now, the part that we’ve been laughing about since. While massaging her, the masseuse finally commented, “Must been bad car accident, eh?”
Cyndie chose not to explain all her scars from joint replacements and other surgeries and simply agreed. Then, while her eyes were closed, she received an unexpected slap of a freezing cold seaweed facial.
The wonderfully sincere Korean woman then commented as she peeled back the seaweed mask, “You must have been very pretty when you were young.” She meant it in the nicest possible way, which makes it all the funnier to us.
The whole experience sounded like a rare massage where Cyndie came out a little tighter than when she went in. At least she came home with a memory to laugh about.
I must say, her back did eventually feel really soft after all the tiny scabs had flaked off.
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Gathering Facts
Taking advantage of Cyndie’s reduction in activity, we spent some time while she rested yesterday, creating a chronological outline of the medical issues she has experienced throughout her entire life. If each one were a chapter in her autobiography, the book would be more than 40 chapters long.
We came up with 15 surgeries and 3 or 4 medical procedures, starting with one before she was even a year old and not counting two pregnancies or the time she stepped on a rake and split her eyebrow open. In some of the occurrences that have happened since I started blogging, I was able to hunt for and find exact dates, including pictures.
I wonder if I have a picture for every surgery.
After searching, we couldn’t find evidence that I had blogged about the concussion she had that took us days to figure out because she didn’t remember what happened when she hit her head. She picked up a friend the day after and remembers telling her of having a severe headache. The day after that, Cyndie was home, and we were hosting a visitor. Cyndie looked fine in the morning, but in the middle of the day, I noticed Cyndie had developed a profound black eye that extended from her forehead to her chin.
Why I wouldn’t have written about that is a mystery to me. I was also hoping to find a picture of how vivid her bruised-looking face had become. That led Cyndie to make a doctor’s appointment, which resulted in her getting an MRI of her head.
She loves telling the story of the technician asking ever so gently if he wasn’t also supposed to get a view of her face since it looked so bad. Both of us laugh about her having already signed up for a Master Gardener class that she tried to complete despite the concussion but, in the end, wasn’t able to remember much of anything she learned.
It was a very interesting day-long exercise of dredging up past events and then trying to compile a chronological outline with dates so we could have all the information in one place. So many stories that we’ve told and re-told over the years, but never before locking in dates or the order of events.
It paints quite a varied portrait of incidents, both dramatic and mundane, in her medical history.
Now that we have the outline, I’m eager to capture some of the interesting details that can present a fuller story about what her experiences were like for each of the different incidents.
Maybe I’ll end up amending the subtitle of this blog to “*this* John W. Hays’ take on Cyndie’s experiences.”
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Results In
The doc says Cyndie has pneumonia in her right lower lung. Whaaat? She was tested for both types of flu, got a chest X-ray, and had a blood panel done. Interestingly, she learned she has a partially collapsed lung that is a possible residual from one of her surgeries with general anesthesia in the past.
They’ve prescribed an antibiotic and told her she should expect to feel better in 36 to 48 hours. It feels like a deja vu from my experience when I returned from our Iceland adventure. Based on that, I hope she is able to feel better as quickly as I did. I had assumed it would take me weeks to clear my lungs, but that wasn’t the case.
Now, I just need to convince her to behave like a lazy person so her body can recover without delay. That’s not going to be easy. While I was picking up her prescription in River Falls with Asher and then feeding the horses, she went downstairs and took the laundry out of the dryer, and then had dinner waiting for us when we got in.
See what I’m up against. Her excuse for making dinner was that she needed to take her medicine with food and wanted to take the first dose as soon as possible. Okay, dear.
Asher is doing his best to show her what to do to make it easier for her body to recover.
If she won’t listen to me, maybe she’ll pay attention to the examples he’s been demonstrating.
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Numb Fingers
Are you familiar with Raynaud’s phenomenon? It is a reaction where a drop in temperature can trigger blood vessel spasms, usually in the fingers and toes. Cyndie’s hands have reacted to cold in this way for a while, but on Saturday, she was surprised that it triggered so quickly in temperatures that weren’t that drastically cold. Also, it was only happening to one finger on her left hand and a small portion of two fingers on her right hand. Usually, it’s all the fingers.
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It was so dramatic that I asked her if I could take a picture of the colorless digits.
She looked up information on why it might afflict only certain fingers and one possibility for that situation pointed to torqued wrist positions. She realized she had been holding her hands tucked under her crossed arms as we walked with Asher for a bit before heading to the barn. Maybe that would explain it.
We are hoping for a more informed assessment of all the issues Cyndie’s experiencing after she visits with a doctor at our clinic this afternoon. She had been feeling off for almost a week before it finally manifested with the fever the last two days, which took things to a new level and got her to stop trying to carry on with normal activity.
After driving from the Cities in the worst of that snow burst we experienced, one of her legs cramped up in a wicked knot as she was trying to walk from the car into the house. It was so intense that she couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and it had her sobbing in pain.
She has been struggling to keep her core warm and was spending every opportunity with a heating pad on her torso or feet.
At this point, I have not experienced any symptoms similar to hers, so we have that to be thankful for. Asher, the horses, and I are all carrying on and keeping calm. Well, most of the time, anyway. When I stepped out of the barn to tend to the horses yesterday afternoon, they were in a tizzy about something that I couldn’t identify.
It had them racing around, jumping and rearing, and generally acting like the sky was falling. It made poo pickup a little more adventurous than I wanted. As soon as I served up buckets of grains, the usual calm settled over them. Food coma arrived soon after.
Then, I went back to being Nurse John, in addition to being a fine dining chef for the evening. I heated up some homemade chicken noodle soup that Cyndie had pulled from the freezer. For the record, no fingers went numb as a result of her doing that.
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Nurse John
Personally, I don’t find that my nursing abilities offer all that soothing a touch, and now our head cook has called in sick, so I am faced with pretending I’m a chef in addition to her nurse. No pressure. Only, I’m going up against the comparisons to a person who has nursed and fed me better than one could ever imagine whenever I’ve fallen ill.
It just seems like such an unfair circumstance for Cyndie when she gets sick. Laid low by a fever, she is currently confined to quarters and stuck with me as her primary caregiver. Luckily, she is a very patient patient, and repeatedly tells me I’m providing everything she needs. It never feels like enough to me.
Plus, there’s always the battle against her trying to do things for herself so as not to trouble me as I struggle to anticipate her next move and cut her off in the nick of time by getting her the ice pack or warming her heating pad in the microwave.
Nurse John is not that much fun when he gets grumpy as he is trying to soothe what ails the patient and serve Malt-O-Meal and toast before it gets cold.
I am thrilled with how sensitive Asher is to Cyndie’s not feeling well. Instead of being a pest and demanding more roughhouse play, he has chosen to mirror her as a way of showing his support.
Right up until he hears something outside that requires a rant of “big boy” barks followed by some half-hearted “woofs.” I’m sure that does wonders for her headache. At least he gets back to the mirroring part in short order.
That allows me to practice a little of that mirroring support of my own, although I suspect that technique is not included in the practices one would find in the nursing handbooks, not to mention that it leaves the kitchen looking a frightful mess.
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Turkey Feast
In classic Cyndie fashion, we did not have one turkey for our Thanksgiving feast; we had two. She soaked one in brine and purchased a smoked bird from a local barbeque joint.
A Thanksgiving feast deserves to be served on a royally set table so Cyndie pulled out family heirloom china and silverware and augmented them with her hand-crafted dried leaf place markers.
Speaking of leaves, we put all five extending leaves in the old Hays family table to provide generous elbow room for our modest-sized gathering.
While dinner was cooking, I guided a group down to the barn to offer the horses a few Thanksgiving carrot bites to brighten their day. I was greatly impressed with Light’s quick acceptance of my message that I had no more treats for her. She is prone to prolonged, insistent begging for more when we start offering treats. In this case, she reacted as if she totally understood what I was communicating and turned around to walk away and stand beside Swings, who had already given up on a chance for any more bites of carrot.
When we returned to the house, there was time for a little word-guessing game in front of the fireplace before Chef Cyndie made the call for “hands.”
Much feasting ensued.
All visitors were sent home with generous servings of leftovers, but due to some strategic pleading by me earlier, they made sure to leave a little for me, as well.
Today, Cyndie and I are heading north to spend the weekend at the lake, because we can. Our leftovers will be going on a road trip along with us.
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Thin Ice
The first extended freeze of the season has finally arrived. Could it be an indication we might get a return to a more wintery weather pattern than we had last year? Seems like it barely got around to freezing last winter, and when it did, it was quickly followed by a thaw.
I checked out the ice on Paddock Lake yesterday morning and found it wasn’t thick enough to support my weight yet.
No skating allowed.
By the time I went out for the afternoon feeding, the edges of that puddle were beginning to disintegrate by sublimation. If we continue to experience a prolonged dry spell, it may just disappear without ever melting.
I don’t think the horses will mind that one bit. In reality, they are intelligent enough to be very wary when it comes to ice. They probably don’t even like me joking about them doing figure skating jumps and spins.
Cyndie is in the midst of double-duty activities to rain Christmas decorations down on our living quarters while also preparing to host Thanksgiving day for our kids and a few smiley folks from her clan. I alternate between following requests to help and staying out of her way as best as possible.
Just to add a little excitement, our clothes-washing machine produced an error code in the middle of a load, related to it not draining. Several go-rounds of bailing water out and re-trying proved fruitless, and we opted to call an appliance repair service.
When I saw on a YouTube video that accessing the drain pump meant tipping the washer and working through the bottom, I bailed out (pun intended) on trying to do the repair myself.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be spent waiting for a repair person to disrupt life in our utility room downstairs.
My sanity is on thin ice while turkeys are thawing, green beans are flying around in the kitchen, pots and pans are getting used faster than they can be washed, both ovens are doing double duty, pie fillings are dripping, smoke alarms keep pre-beeping close encounters with full panic mode, and all the while Cyndie simply floats around like a principal ballerina as cool as a cucumber, glowing like an angel while doing the work of 10 Chefs plus two.
Basically, it’s just a normal November Wednesday.
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Barely Noticed
We knew it was coming, so when snowflakes started to fly, we didn’t make much of a fuss over it. While Cyndie was in the middle of a phone conversation, I noticed her gesturing to direct my attention toward windows. The rain was changing over to sleety flakes.
Not a big deal, but it was enough that I decided to take a picture of the first snow of the season. Then, we got on with some rewarding indoor activities. I cleaned out some drawers of accumulated clothing and successfully took action on several things that have been stored for years and rarely worn anymore.
We were in the closet of winter gear, digging for coats to walk Asher and feed the horses in blowing rain and snow that was strikingly similar to Icelandic conditions. Cyndie decided to sort and give away worthy items discovered in there, and soon, we were on our way to earning a decluttering badge for the day.
The next time we looked out the window, we were surprised that we’d barely noticed how much the snow had intensified.
I thought it was still too warm for us to get any accumulation.
Alas, it was too warm for snow to last very long, and as fast as it arrived, it melted away again. It was a bit surprising to find we collected almost 2” of moisture in the rain gauge by the end of yesterday.
Like she often does, Cyndie found a way to squeeze in some baking between closet cleaning and crafting her latest secret art projects. She made a dozen small loaves of bread –six cranberry orange and six banana nut with chocolate bits.
The house smelled delicious when I woke up from an afternoon nap in the recliner.
Not a bad way to close out the month and usher in something that feels a bit more appropriate for November. Uncharacteristically, all my winter coat options are neatly organized and hanging in the freshly cleaned closet before I actually need to put them to use.
Mia got an early chance to wear her winter coat yesterday after Cyndie found her shivering excessively in the cold rain. Some days, I wish we could just bring Mia up to the house with Asher and us when the other horses are behaving like mean girls to her.
Swings stands under that overhang, warm and dry all day long, Light often by her side. Mix moves in and out a lot and rarely stays dry. Poor Mia barely sneaks her head under to eat bites of hay from a net bag, always ready to retreat if one of the other three decides to claim that space.
The precipitation moved away to the east last night, so all four horses probably headed out into the fields where Mia would be able to claim whatever space away from them she wanted.
We had the heat on and slept snuggly under warm blankets all night, barely noticing how far below freezing the temperature ultimately dropped.
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Board Replacement
It’s the second time in a week that I was able to make use of old deck boards that I saved after we refinished the deck however many years ago. The floorboards on Cyndie’s prized face-to-face wooden swing have seriously rotted so yesterday we replaced them.
She plans to apply a much-needed water sealant to see if we can’t extend the life of the swing for a few more seasons.
On the edge of the woods we put our lives at risk to complete this job because of the mosquitos. Teeny, tiny, or full-sized, they show up in droves. They find their way behind our eyeglasses and into our ears. Bites on my neck and the backs of my arms. I can’t tell if the itch is from an old bite or one currently happening. It sure hampers the experience of forest bathing.
In addition to getting several deluges of rain last week, we had days when the dew point reading matched the air temperature. That spells 100% humidity. The level of wetness around here is worthy of April more than a normal July. That would be, an April after a snowy winter. We just had an almost snowless winter and still the amount of standing water in low areas has been consistent for the last four months.
The mosquitos have never had it so good. We have come a long way since last year’s drought conditions.
Of course, this is all making the grass grow like it’s the first greening of spring. Two days after mowing, it looks like it’s already overdue for another cut.
The recent rains have foiled the baling of the hay that finally got cut in our field. Word is they hope to try for Thursday, weather permitting. What a difficult year to be a hay farmer. We just received a fresh batch of small squares of grass hay for our horses from a new supplier. They shared a lot of horror stories about how business has been for them so far this year.
They describe battling both the weather and difficult “clients.” Cyndie and I did our best to not find ourselves being labeled as difficult. It isn’t that hard since Cyndie gifted them some lemonade cake right as they arrived.
Food is one of the big ways she shows her love. Last night while dinner was heating, she baked a peach tart that became a peach crisp with the sweet crumble topping she ended up adding.
I definitely feel loved.
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Relative Something 