Scattered Thoughts . . .

This has been a very strange winter. After a little bit of snow the other night, last night the temperature warmed up into the 40s and we had driving, pouring rain all night long. The rain was coming down so hard that it kept me awake most of the night.  Why would rain keep me awake? The back section of our house is covered with a tarp because the roof needs to be replaced... roofing joists as well as the roofing material. It is in bad shape requiring demolition and rebuilding. My health has not really been well enough to tackle this enormous project so we are just waiting for my health and the weather to be in sync so we can repair/rebuild this section of the house. In the meantime, whenever we have heavy rain or heavy snow, I am constantly expecting the worst. As Sheila drove to work this morning, she noticed flooding in all the fields. Actually, the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning and the flood stage was in the "Action" stage. Common sense

This morning we awoke to some snow on the ground which is highly unusual this winter. There was only an inch or two of snow out there but it was nice seeing everything covered in fresh snow for a change. Other than quite a few patches of very slick ice, our landscape has been far from winter white! By 8am, the snow had turned to sleet and, unfortunately, it is raining out there now. Actually, it is pouring rain out there now... 32 degrees and pouring rain... fun.  While everything was clean and white outside, I decided to grab a camera and shoot some photos out our living room window. I limited myself to using my longest lens (just like yesterday while I attempted to get my first bird photo of this year) but I used a different camera body than yesterday. I chose another old, cheap camera (freebies because they are so old) just like yesterday but this one is so tiny it is difficult to hold steadily. I managed to capture a few decent photos though. I think it is supposed to cont

It has been another quiet morning here while my health finds its "new normal" and I recover from a lingering cold amid the usual Systemic Mastocytosis symptoms and spinal pain. I did a little bit of light physical therapy for my spinal injuries and then noticed that there were some birds outside our kitchen window. I grabbed my old... very old... camera which has a Kodak sensor. I grabbed this camera only because my longest lens was already mounted on it. It is a noisy sensor and not great for overcast days like today but it was convenient for me this morning.  I went back to the kitchen and slowly opened the window... the birds scattered... but they returned within a few short minutes.  While I was waiting for the birds to return, I set the white balance, checked my aperture, checked my shutter speed and chose an ISO of 400 (which is the upper limit on this particular camera). It would be a challenge to get a crisp photo of a small bird under these conditions with this

My spinal injuries have been screaming for the past month but that is nothing new. My breathing has been rather lousy for the past eight months so that isn't all that new either at this point. This morning, however, I am feeling both problems and both are rather significant. My lumbar spine is hurting all through my lower back to my hips and buttocks... with pain all through my groin and lower abdomen... and even up toward my kidneys. The pain is bad enough to keep me from sleeping. Needless to say, I'm exhausted even though it is still only mid-morning. I'm going to attempt to get back to some light physical therapy today. I attempted this a few days ago when my lingering cold was feeling like it was almost gone but that didn't go over too well... my cold got worse and that made all sorts of symptoms worsen. I'll attempt to get back into my daily physical therapy today if even a very light therapy involving only stretching. That should help my back at least a l

Helping Gee make some brownies... I'm still feeling rather lousy but we had the kids, Liza and John over yesterday anyway. It was a nice change of pace and nice to socialize for a little bit. I've hardly wandered from the house over the past three weeks other than to pick up some food, pick up medications or see a doctor! The kids helped Gee make some brownies... Lukey helped me prepare our pork roast (and liked taste-testing my dry rub)... we made some blackberry mint tea... we watched some movies... I slept for an hour or so... and we had a nice dinner.  Today I head back to another medical appointment for imaging of my lungs. This appointment isn't a moment too soon since I had great difficulty breathing last night. In the past eight months or so, I've had consist difficulty breathing but last night was significantly worse. This sort of worsening health happens from time and time and can be expected but it will be nice to find out why... whether it is due to