Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland. Since much of my news these days relates to trying to age gracefully, this series might be called The Geezer Gazette.]
5/17/25
Aloha Guys!
This wasn't exactly a pleasant week here. For one thing, the weather has been downright sucky -- grey, cool, and rainy. Since we returned it has been this way, and the locals are grumbling -- at the most we might get a day or two of this kind of weather, but this is way beyond the norm. My PV system is taking an extended snooze and even the hot water solar has needed a supplemental boost several times to give us warm enough water for showers. One positive result is that I've been putting our garden irrigation on hold most of the week because we have been getting more than adequate rain. Of course the plants love this weather, including the weeds, but conditions for working in the garden have been wet and muddy most days.
Another thing detracting from our usual pleasant conditions is that I've been nursing a cold all week. I had
a slight cough last Sunday but I was able to ignore it. By Tuesday, however, I was feeling downright crappy. I haven't had a cold in years and I forgot how uncomfortable one can make you feel -- achy, drippy, lethargic, and toward the end a nice chest congestion that settles in for a few days. BTW, I know this is a cold and not Covid from the negative results of 4 self-tests. Actually, the two times I've had Covid the symptoms weren't as bad and didn't last as long as this. Maybe my cold virus antibodies haven't been activated in such a long time that they were asleep on the job. My system is loaded with Covid antibodies from all my vaccinations and they headed off the virus early and more completely. Also, it is likely I have a cold and not flu because I don't have a fever. But it doesn't really matter -- crappy is crappy. Of course, my stress test had to be rescheduled from Thursday to two weeks out, May 29. This should still be in plenty of time to get my clearance for my hernia surgery in June. My life is increasingly and depressingly revolving around scheduling medical procedures. Damn!
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| Nastius Culpritis |
a slight cough last Sunday but I was able to ignore it. By Tuesday, however, I was feeling downright crappy. I haven't had a cold in years and I forgot how uncomfortable one can make you feel -- achy, drippy, lethargic, and toward the end a nice chest congestion that settles in for a few days. BTW, I know this is a cold and not Covid from the negative results of 4 self-tests. Actually, the two times I've had Covid the symptoms weren't as bad and didn't last as long as this. Maybe my cold virus antibodies haven't been activated in such a long time that they were asleep on the job. My system is loaded with Covid antibodies from all my vaccinations and they headed off the virus early and more completely. Also, it is likely I have a cold and not flu because I don't have a fever. But it doesn't really matter -- crappy is crappy. Of course, my stress test had to be rescheduled from Thursday to two weeks out, May 29. This should still be in plenty of time to get my clearance for my hernia surgery in June. My life is increasingly and depressingly revolving around scheduling medical procedures. Damn!
In more pleasant news we celebrated Karen's birthday on Sunday with a low key picnic dinner of Thai takeout on the beach just north of town. My cold hadn't fully developed yet, so it was an enjoyable outing. Karen told me she didn't want anything from my usual go-to categories of gifts, so I had to get creative -- a new serrated sickle for gardening (her old one was very dull) and a deluxe personalized sharpening of her favorite pair of hand pruners. Romantic, right?!!
A final piece of Geezer Gazette news is also pleasant -- I saw my retina doctor on Tuesday and didn't need a shot. Very little edema in either eye, low pressures, new lenses are staying in place. My acuity is stable (not great, but workable) and my new glasses seem to be helping a smidge. I'll take it. Next appointment is in a month, and by then I may need shots, but for right now there is no need. Yippee!
The 22nd episode in Kilauea's lava fountain show started early yesterday morning and ended 10 hours later. This was a good one, though short, with lava spouting up to 1000 feet for a brief time before backing down to 500 feet. Like the previous 21 episodes, this one has ended, but the volcano is probably recharging for the next one. No one knows how long this unusual pattern will go on, but so for it has been pulsing like this since December 23.
Ok, that's it for this week. Remember, morality, ethics, and integrity aren't mythical qualities, though many prominent people seem not to have them......
Carpe Vitam.
2 comments:
Colds are miserable. I may have had one in Jan. It plagued me for the next month or two in various ways. Hope you have a much better outcome.
I am reviewing a gift I received from a neighbor, whom I considered a friend at the time. That gift has affected my long lived "cold" symptoms. He gave me two pads from a prickly pear cactus. I had one pad and its progeny taken down after the wind blew it over and I drug it to the parking area with my 4X4 truck. Where 2 men spent half a day loading the cacti into a bigger truck and hauling it away. That was 20 years ago.
Said 4 X 4 went down the road since then or I would put it to use. I am dismantling pad #2 and it's accomplices with a pole chain saw and a regular chainsaw and a Swedish ax. After 3 days of dismembering and hauling away in a motorized garden cart. I may have reduced the mass by 1/4. I think prickly pear is the ultimate in full employment retirement program. It is sprouting new pads as I write. It will catch up with the trimming by June. I meant to take old prickly clear down, but now am unsure I can persevere to that point. The pads morph into arms and joints and each section weighs in at 20# plus, so a cart load can weigh a few hundred pounds when full with side racks. You remember side racks as you grew up in CO where farmers are tough and side racks keep the sheep and horses on the back of the truck.
My neighbor has since left the neighborhood and maybe the state. Good idea as I was thinking of repaying him for his generosity. However, it would take too much energy to deposit this behemoth to his former residence let along Friday Harbor in WA where he spends the summer.
What's this have to do with a cold? The work involved seems to irritate the inflamed chest that started with the cold. So I am exceedingly slow.
Say, Dick, I can send you one of these prickly pear pads in the mail! I'm sure it will thrive in your garden!
DN
Yikes! Planting a prickly pear sounds like one of those ideas that seemed ok at the time but later turns out to be a HUGE problem. My first experience with that here was planting 3 small banana trees. Two years later I had a dozen very, very big trees that were very difficult to get rid of completely. You can only eat so many bananas but these were producing hundreds of pounds at a time. Good luck.
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