Posts Tagged ‘waiting’
Struggling Here
Our connection to viable speed internet has been hit and miss for much of the last ten years since we moved to our central location in Pierce County, WI. We are not very far away from more populated communities but we are decades behind in digital connectivity.
There are options we could have paid for that would improve our situation but over a year ago we resigned ourselves to waiting for a promised fiber-optic connection currently being installed in the community by our local power cooperative. It seems now that as the fiber gets closer to our driveway, our usage has become increasingly taxing on our current limited bandwidth service.
This month has been particularly frustrating because I messed up and wasted gigabytes transferring documents and updating an application in the first days of our 30-day period. Coincidentally, our house sitter unknowingly used up data just days before. In the days since, I have been relegated to trying to navigate at the equivalence of 1980 dialup speeds to load 2022 page complexities.
It’s all based on overall traffic. Sometimes it works for me, and other times I can’t even get a page to load to read it.
It is also constricting my ability to create posts, so that gives me an incentive to see if I can pick a temporary option to get us through the next week and a half. All the while watching the end of our driveway for utility trucks to show up with our future.
A good connection is a luxury. Enjoy it if you got it.
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Mostly Waiting
Most of my day yesterday was spent waiting. Cyndie did almost the same amount of waiting, but she was anesthetized for part of it and in a pain-management-induced stupor for others. I had the easier job, despite the tedium.
Prepped and waiting, I snapped a shot of Cyndie looking her best in a very fashionable hair net and hospital gown. The procedure was a knee replacement, her second. We filled some of the wait time by chatting with her surgeon and later the anesthetist, who described a very interesting path to choosing his career. He served time on military mobile medical units and also was assigned to rapid response teams that travel to foreign cities where U.S. Presidents fly, providing “in case needed” precautions.
The woman who performed the surgery came highly recommended and lived up to a comment from one of the nurses that she works fast. For all the waiting before and after, the portion of actual replacement surgery took a little under an hour. The doctor came out to report everything went smoothly and suggested I get some lunch while Cyndie sleeps off the residual anesthesia effects. She said it would be at least an hour.
It was closer to two. When they finally called me back to see Cyndie again after she woke up, leg pain was her biggest complaint. Still, they had her up and walking moments later. After more waiting, during which they monitored vital signs and increased her pain meds, the medical transport team showed up to whisk her away to a hotel for overnight monitoring.
The view out her third-floor window:
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Maybe the new knee will turn her into an athlete. Maybe it won’t. At least they were able to make her more comfortable.
Does it show?
They had her hooked up to a machine that ran chilled water around the knee to control swelling and pain. I was allowed to end my waiting and head home to take care of animals and sleep through the night in my own bed. Nurses will be checking on Cyndie all night, something I am very happy the are doing instead of me.
I’ll pick Cyndie up this morning and take over primary care. It’s nice to have had the first night worry-free and know she was under the watchful eyes of trained professionals.
It’s one of the greatest honors of my life to be allowed to play the role of Cyndie’s closest supporter in times of extra need. The waiting part is over now. Let the healing begin!
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Sky Colors
We enter our third day of the current weather trend where rain is expected all day but comes in bands that are separated by reasonably agreeable conditions that don’t last long and end without warning. One minute it is actually a rather nice day and then, nope, it’s raining like crazy for a second but now it’s just a spattering drizzle.
During the week when I am occupied with the day-job, I rely heavily on the always interesting images that Cyndie captures while she is out walking Delilah or tending to the chickens. News is that our Rocky the Roo has become pretty frequent with his challenges to see if Momma is still at the top of the pecking order.
Cyndie has needed to conjure up her “bigger-rooster-than-you” posture and gestures to convince Rocky that he doesn’t want to mess with the humans in charge. I sure hope our lessons will translate to include all other humans who come to visit, as well.
I wonder if Rocky let out a hearty morning crow for this sunrise Cyndie captured.
The rain has quickly transformed the color palette of our landscape toward a much greener hue. In addition to the burgeoning buds on branches, the areas of mowed grass are looking almost summer-like.
The real feature of this last shot, though, isn’t the green grass. It’s the fabulous light from above Cyndie captured highlighting that billowing cloud.
I really, really hope we get a few breaks in the rain this morning like the ones in these pictures because my Ritchie® automatic waterer installer told me last night that he would stop by in the morning and that’s the closest I’ve come yet to getting him to commit to an actual day and approximate block of time since I first requested his assistance two or three weeks ago.
When the source of skills and knowledge desired is also a really like-able guy, it is easier to endure the anguish of waiting for him to eventually get around to it, but it sure tests a patient man’s patience. I will be exceedingly happy when (and admittedly, if) he shows up.
Maybe I’ll have time to take pictures of an interesting sky while I’m down there eagerly waiting in a couple of hours.
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Snow Going
We dodged a spring snow storm overnight. That’s what it feels like, anyway. Obviously, we didn’t do any dodging. We stayed right where we are and didn’t flinch, while the white stuff slid past a little bit to the south of our region. Too bad for those folks.
I guess we all get a turn at weather adventure.
This leaves us with the adventures of watching snow melt. I am fascinated by the way anything of color absorbs the solar energy and melts a perfect pattern into the otherwise reflective snow.
Meanwhile, that reflective snow mass is radiating an amazing chill that offsets some of the best efforts of warm air to tip the balance. Taking a walk across the crusty surface in our open fields feels like a trip down the frozen foods aisle in the grocery store. The sun is shining warmth, but, brrrr, there’s a cold draft wafting up from everywhere!
We can now see where my winter plowing has torn great gouges of turf from the edges of the driveway and sprayed rocks in a wide array across the grass. New cracks in the old asphalt of our neglected driveway look another significant degree decayed.
I’m amazed anything survives unscathed. The concrete apron in front of the house garage looks to have moved its slope another degree in the wrong direction, inviting the snowmelt and rain runoff to drain toward the foundation instead of away.
And in terms of heaving earth, the waterer for the horses in the paddock has shifted dramatically off-kilter so that one side overflows and the high side holds inches less water.
Where is all the hope and renewal of spring?
It’s waiting. Biding its time beneath the surface. We must be patient. It will come.
The trillium we have transplanted will bloom again. Volunteer maple trees will sprout in mind-boggling numbers everywhere we turn.
The snow is going.
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Better Place
As happy as we were with Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater, after 2 days it was beginning to feel like a hospital and we were ready to get Cyndie home to recover in the comforts of home. There really is no place like home.
To make it seem even more like a hospital, it took several hours of waiting, and then waiting some more, for staff to process the discharge order. It’s odd how exhausting it can be to sit and wait for an unknown amount of time.
Cyndie is in a better place now. Let the mending and strengthening commence!
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Anxiously Waiting
We knocked off a good number of satisfying chores yesterday, taking full advantage of perfectly summer-like weather. In fact, it was so summery, I found myself mowing grass. We also put fence posts in to split our back pasture, so we will be able to rotate the horses back and forth, allowing us to provide the turf occasional rest from the voracious foursome.
The herd spent most of the day lined up at the gate, anxiously awaiting access to the new green smorgasbord that is sprouting beyond the confines of their paddock. Cyndie captured a wonderful shot of them eyeing her as she walked past, sending their message of bewilderment over being neglected all this time.
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They won’t have too much longer to wait. We have shut them in for a few weeks to give the grass a head start, protecting it from both their heavy hooves while it’s wet, and their devouring ways.
While I was getting machines prepared for the day’s work, Cyndie drove the truck down to one of the older rock piles at the edge of our woods and selected perfect specimens to create a border for a new native wild flower garden that she is creating in the spot where we recently removed all the old barbed wire, stump, and brush.
Visitors will be greeted by a colorful splendor as it comes into view over the crest of the first rise in our driveway.
Cyndie has some of her own anxious waiting to do, for her vision of new growing flowers to become established and in full bloom on this wonderful spot she is creating.
It seemed like more additional work than I saw a need for, but once again, her ability to make things happen is bringing about another enhancement to Wintervale that will add even more charm to an already precious place.
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Online Waiting
It’s what I do. More and more lately, what precious little free time I have to be online is being spent in wait-mode. Whether it is solar flares, our rural terrain, or just a humming-bird sitting at some critical spot on the cell tower, our signal has been toggling on and off at a painfully frequent rate of late.
It’s exasperating, especially when it comes to loading images. Over and over I try, because it always starts out looking like everything is working fine, until it’s not. Then comes the mysterious pause.
Did it stop for just a moment? Did the connection get dropped and it is automatically resetting? Is it down for the count and nothing more will happen no matter how long I stare at it?
Today’s picture is so great, it is worth the wait for me to get it up, but if waiting won’t help one bit, the best picture in the world won’t do me any good.
Who wouldn’t love to see this shot of Delilah with wet hair after her bath?
Today is a rare Friday for me because I am at the day-job. Since I went back to work earlier this summer, I have been putting in a 4-day week, taking Fridays off as the first day of my 3-day weekend. There is just… Too. Much. To. Do. So much so that, not only am I working Friday, but probably Saturday, too.
What!?
I know. I am just as flustered as you. When am I going to get the mowing done? What about all the other chores!?
My sentiments, exactly.
It was tough enough getting thrown out of Eden and forced back into the long commute to industriesville. Now I’m additionally burdened with unending customer requests that exceed my ability to respond successfully.
I’m getting no sympathy from Pequenita. Instead, she just demands more attention from me, starting as soon as I walk in the door and continuing all the way through my feeble attempts to do some writing on the laptop before sleeping. Yesterday, while I wasn’t paying attention to her, she strolled out the open front door through which I was conversing with Cyndie out in the yard.
Suddenly our indoor cat appears calmly in my view on the front steps beneath me.
I don’t blame her for wanting to escape. I know exactly how she feels. I’ve got my eye out for the off-hand chance somebody leaves a door open at the day-job.
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Waiting Games
My patience has been tested the last few weeks, waiting for three different contractors to make appearances on our property. Unfortunately, nature isn’t going to delay the onset of winter just because my projects weren’t completed. Completed seems like a humorous concept, since I can’t even get people here to start. They all claim the reason they can’t make it is that they are too busy and behind schedule.
Yesterday, I received a token visit from landscapers who will put in drain tile to route water around the paddocks, in hopes of keeping them from becoming such mud pits. It was “landscapers” plural, because the first one was so over-busy through the end of the year he needed to contract it out to a friend. They took some final measurements and said work should be able to start next week. I can only hope.
It felt a bit like the experience I often have in a visit to the doctor. I check in to let them know I arrived at the time of my appointment, and take my place in the waiting area. After what seems like way too long to be waiting, I start getting agitated. When that feeling starts to morph into anger, a nurse pops out and calls my name.
That resets my angst, and I am happy my turn has finally arrived. Except, it hasn’t. I eventually discover that all they have done is move me from the outer waiting area to an exam room to continue waiting. It’s a great system, because I tolerate a lot more waiting when it is broken up by little moments of faux progress. It would have been an intolerable wait, had I spent the entire time in the outer chairs. Broken into two stages —the second one feeling like actual progress— helped me accept the overall total wait-time without making a fuss.
It feels like the landscape contractors finally made an appearance yesterday to reset my angst and make me feel good about them telling me the work should be able to start next week sometime.
Once again, it works wonders for me. My previous anxieties have been reset. I’m happy with their latest promise.
Here’s hoping they are able to live up to it.
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Relative Something 