When's It Gonna Get Warm Again?

Photo taken by my neighbor (about 1 mile west of my home) 3 weeks ago when it was storming here. Rainbow ends on my home. Pink things on roof (insert) are solar panels. I wish i knew how to improve the image resolution......need to get the scanner book out and become less illiterate. If you double click on the photo, however, it calls up a GIANT photo where you can see the colors and the house much clearer.

i've been freezing my dupa off here in TUS for the past month!

i never thought i'd say this, but in the winter, i actually do miss the 10 degrees warmer that it is in Yuma compared to Tucson. i don't, however, miss the 70-100,000 snowbirds that clog every road, restaurant, supermarket, and square inch of desert within 50 miles of Yuma from October to April every year.

i should hush and be grateful for our 60-degree, pleasant sunny days...... i just wish the days were lonnnnngggger and the sun's azimuth higgghhher so i could swim laps without getting frostbite. yeah, yeah...i know...go 'head and remind me that PA's Benton Creek is colder than a witch's ***** in mid-July...i have REALLY wussified since moving to AZ, haina???

Vern's Aunt Margaret (82) passed around 9 pm EST yesterday. her health had taken a precipitous nosedive after a nasty fall in late summer that fractured her femur. after surgery to repair the bone, her recovery was derailed by an E. coli infection (septicemia), kidney infection, pneumonia.... you name it, she caught it.....docs got the infections under control with meds then sent her to a 'rehab' hospital for physical therapy to learn to walk again.

when vern and i visited her there on our trip to TN in November, we found her sharing a room no bigger than a telephone booth with another very ill patient. it was a hateful place....i could see a great sadness in her eyes--one that revealed that she'd fought the good fight and was really really ready for the final journey.

vern is flying to TN on Tuesday a.m. (New Year's) for her wake and then funeral on Wed. Margaret was very close to him and his brother, Jeff....they spent many summers on the family farm with her and their grandparents.

Margaret's sweet nature and spirit will live on in our hearts. i have no doubt she is with me as i write this, grateful that she passed peacefully into that long good night.

i had a fun phone visit with my cousin Diana this morning. She called for her parents, my Aunt Betty (Wargo) and Uncle Joey, to thank me for flowers that I'd sent to brighten their winter. Hadn't seen her since my mother died in 1990, so we had a LOT to chat about. She's about to be a gran'mama! Talked briefly to my aunt and uncle who are in their mid-80's and still entertaining one another with "gin rummy" (wink-wink).

Son Steven came down from Tempe for a few days over Christmas.

We did the traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve supper, albeit abbreviated, since he and vern are finicky eaters, and my pierogies come out of a box, not molded with love by my own hands. Steve has a B average at Az State, where he is working toward a degree in Design Studies--Urban Environment. He should finish his B.S. possibly by the end of '08.

i am off until Wednesday this week, then leaving on Sunday for a week in San Diego (tough job, huh?) to assist my blind student with a training class. See http://www.paradisepoint.com/ to check out our digs for the week.

Happy 2008 to all my peeps!
a

Jaw Breaker

the word used to refer to jumbo gumballs that one could get for a penny at the corner market.

in the context of this blog post, jaw breaker refers to my experience with Dr. Richard Weiss, who drilled for oil in my jawbone on Wednesday and may have struck the motherlode. he set two titanium posts into the bone as a prelude to screwing in two porcelain implants 4-6 months down the road.

why am i spending the big bucks for implants? well, i figure i don't have to save up for the "other" kind of implants due to God's good graces....and i have 2 spaces in my mouth that were originally covered w/ a dental bridge that kept breaking cuz of my fierce bite! Dental literature says that the primary reason for aging adults (yup, i'm a one of 'em) having a jaw that recedes til its akin to that of a wicked witch is becuz of dentures or for those who prefer the natural look, no teefff (aka zoobies: Ukrainian origin).

a full complement of dentures or an empty mouff w/ no zoobies contribute to the loss of bone in the jaw. if there ain't a tooth in the bone, it ceases to have a reason for being, and soon erodes to dust.

hence, i opted for the implants and now my lower left cheek (the one north of the equator) is blue-violet....yes, exactly the hue that one finds in a box of Crayolas......AND the lovely hued flesh extends outward about 3 inches a la Jay Leno.

aches a bunch....i've been in and out of la-la land for 3 days now, first day cuz of the Valium and nitrous oxide (oooooo, i luv that sweet gas!)...yesterday and today cuz of a combination of Motrin, Darvocet, and amoxicillin.

i can't eat anything that crunches for a week.....goodbye buttered popcorn.... the only thing soft enough to bite down on is a sugared donut....well, not the only thing, but the only thing that looks and tastes yummy.

so here i sit on my sugar high, waiting for the next hunger pang to force me to open the Hostess box and find me another legal drug to ingest.

on a totally other random note, i've got some ramblings in my brain that i am going to share with the world in a future post....have given lots of thought to what ails humanity and want to express it before Old-timer's sets in.

Y'all have a merrrrry merrrry and offer praise to the Almighty however it feels right.

Love and peace to all my homies!

Happy Holidays!

In just a few days, the feast upon which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ will be history.

Even as a small child, I was never one who found excitement in the merchanting hoopla that accompanied Christmas and New Year.

The only hoopla that interested me was directly related to the anticipation in my gut for the traditional foods that my mother and others in the family prepared from scratch.....pierogie, Polish ham, kielbasi (smoked in the back yard over pear or some other fruit wood), poppyseed loaf, babalki, and myriad cookies filled with dates, prunes, nuts and assorted spices. And for the camaradarie that the holiday brought as we supped together to honor our Saviour.

Christmas to me and my family was all about family and church.....never, ever the rush to find the best gift for kin, sweethearts or special friends. As I've mellowed into the golden years, I am impossibly impatient with the emphasis people (or as i call them "sheep") place on material goods. A new whatchamacallit is not even in the same league as the priceless feeling of well-being that embraces me when i am with those whom i love.

I reminisce in my heart about our visits to Pennsylvania...the long white-knuckle drive on oft-icy roads with carsick critters under seats, on your lap, on the dashboard.....finally pulling up to 62 Wyoming St in Lee Park with the joy of knowing my parents and Aunt Annie were just moments away from big hugs and kisses and we were just minutes away from a stock pot full of pierogies.

It's not the same anymore, no matter if I take the lead and prepare the pierogies or poppy seed or other foods for the traditional Christmas eve supper. My mom is gone almost 18 years, my dad 6, and most of my aunts, uncles and other kin are celebrating with them in heaven. I feel their presence as they find a comfortable vantage point in various corners of my home over the holidays. I also feel them with me when i am elsewhere, but the longing to touch them at special times is overwhelmingly melancholy.

The only gift I want for Christmas is to have them near me, within my heart and mind, warming the deepest recesses of my soul.

Hristos Rozdayesha to all!

Finally, A Diagnosis

after working 3 days this week, i just couldn't pull it together to go in to the office yesterday.
when vern came home he took me to the ER at the Tucson Heart Institute. we went there because i'd read that it is small and underutilized by the public.

after many tests and xrays, the diagnosis was urinary tract infection, but not in the bladder, but in the kidneys. malfunction of renal system caused muscle aches and pains associated with dehydration.

i've had twinges of pain in my lower right back for a couple months. thought it was from swimming laps, never had a kidney infection, so never even entered my mind.

i'm on sulfa drug. kidney area still hurts, but other muscle aches have subsided. dull headache remains.

postponed the journey to east TN for a few weeks so that i'll feel like partying! we rescheduled the flight to Oct 30 and will hang around til Nov. 10.

meantime, i'm drinking agua agua agua.
later.

Catching Up

Trip to Denver, 9-24 to 26....whirlwind of air travel. Great class on involvement of native peoples in the NEPA process.

Back late Wed. evening, exhausted and still fighting the chest congestion. Worked some from home Thurs, off sick on Friday, in the office Sat evening to approve a report that had to be done by midnight EDT on 9/30. Despite feeling puny, i swam laps both Sat and Sunday.

Today was dedicated to re-entry at work.

David had his 2nd sleep study last night. They put what he called a "snout" over his face to force air into his respiratory tract. He stopped breathing 54 times per hour in the first test. The 2nd was done to see how the machine (snout) worked. Let's hope it was successful or we're out about $300 for the tests and no relief from his sleep apnea. If the test was successful, they outfit him with his own personal snout to use every night. People who use them sleep like babies (i've heard personal testimony to such.)

David stopped by his Dr's this afternoon to try to get me in for a visit before we head east. I want to know if indeed i have valley fever or just what is keeping me fatigued and coughing a lot without much congestion.

Wednesday is the great boob-squeeze adventure at Radiology Ltd. I sooo look forward to the cold metal clamp on what was meant to be suckled and sustenance.

......manana,
a

Weird Dreeemzz

i had one heckuva night of weird dreemzz....most of them spent back in Yuma, which, when one is conscious, let alone unconscious, can be a nightmare in itself!

there were some good parts of the technicolor drama.....at one point we were visiting some folks who were living in a house that was shown on House Hunters last nite... it was in Spain, but of course, my dream said it was Yuma.

so there vern and I were looking out of a glass-enclosed veranda as it poured down rain.........definitely a dream, as this happens maybe once every 5 years (rain) in Yuma...........after the rain, the sun came out and the huge yard was full of beautifully colored birds [a rainbow colored dove pecking at the ground, two multicolored (red, white, black) cardinals on the branch of a tree, woodchucks, squirrels, rabbits, deer]. the yard was wooded in some areas, and steeply sloped with rock swales in others (definitely not Yuma; except for the elevation when one rises onto the Yuma mesa, the town is flat as an ironing board).

after the rain, we were invited to sit thru some audition performances in the house by several novice comedians. i don't have a clue what that was all about, i just know one of them was pretending to talk to someone on the phone and was not very funny.

we left and went to get into my previous green volvo with the tan rag top. had to cross a golf course, and i was dodging active sprinklers as we walked....along the way, vern stopped at a small concession stand and was asking about train travel from Tucson to Yuma (huh???).

when we got to the car, i was pissed at him for asking and ran away from the car across the street to a neighborhood on the golf course. it was beautifully landscaped and had a huge rock-climbing wall which enthusiasts could scale. the wall made my fleeing impossible, so i returned to the car.

vern was seated on the passenger side in his orange jersey UT sweats (which i don't think fit him anymore) and we departed for Tucson.

i know i had another wild one, but can't remember it at the moment. i'll post it if it pops into my brain later. oh, and i'm not writing these down for anyone's amusement. since i was a teenager, i've liked to write down my wildest dreemmzz for my own introspection.

i leave on Monday for Denver training with the Institute for Indigenous Resource Mgt. Rachel, my student trainee, will accompany me. The class is going to present ideas about the Federal environmental impacts analysis process from the perspective of native Americans, including Alaskan and Hawaiian indigenous groups. Oughta be interesting. I previously attended one of their short courses on environmental justice issues. Because the presenters all represented minority and low-income populations, and were not WASPs or other doughy white folks, it was quite enlightening.

personal news: but not really, vern's pulmonary doctor left a voice message yesterday, asking for a return call. most likely about the results of his CT scan and the second sleep study that they scheduled.

uncle dickie called last nite to see if i sent him a package. yep, it was me, it was a 10 Commandments plaque, a belated birthday gift, and something he'd asked me previously to procure from him. i ordered it from christianbooks.com. he told me he'd gotten lost when going out to retrieve the newspaper from his driveway the night before. he wandered up to a cross street where a young girl who was out jogging went up to him and asked if he needed help. she said she recognized him from his sitting out front on a white chair with Max. she took him home and made sure he was safely inside. he told me it was "scarrrry". i told him to stop being so adventurous for a blind man.

adios mi peeps.

Too Much Toosday

work pc needs to be migrated to a different Forest-service wide directory....sure enuff, mine has ancient hardware on it that is blocking all helper nerds attempts to migrate it.

spent 3.5 hr on phone with help desk today as they worked their cyber elves to the bone... with zero accomplished.

my diagnosis of a co-worker of relapsed valley fever seems to be on the money...took a diflucan yesterday and today and am rid of the pleurisy-like pains in my chest and the feeling like i was flattened by a steamroller.

heading out toward mi casa and the big bad refreshing pool.
manana.
a