If you think it is cold in the house...

This is from a week and a day ago but some of it I felt needed to be out there so that events coming up make more sense.

March 13, 2017

8:14 am

If you think it is cold in the house…

…go spend some quality time in the barn with the goats.

If you think you already feel like crap and want to live on smoothies and tea all day…

…go out to the barn and remember that you need to move the huge round bale of hay to get to the remnants of the last one from last year before it’s only good for bedding. While you are doing that, make sure you breathe in lots of the dust from the hay so that you are assured of coughing and possibly having an asthma attack.

Good morning. Other than the cold and feeling like crap, which I can’t really admit to because everyone else either feels worse or has other things going on, life is okay. Not fantastic or even great, but okay.

My smoothie is good, albeit cold, and my tea, which I have to share with Kitty, is hot. Actually, it is no longer hot. It was hot before I went out to milk. Now it’s tepid at best. It is still good, though, and my smoothie is still cold. It’s 50 degrees in the house. Not much that is warm is going to stay that way for long. At least, well, never mind that thought.

In other news, Paul went to the doctor last Tuesday because he was having some pretty good pain. The doctor sent him in for a cat scan. That revealed a rather large kidney stone (9 mm). Heywood in Gardner sent him to UMass Memorial in Worcester. He had a stent put in Thursday evening after laying in the hospital all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday. Friday morning his boss picked him up and took him to work where he worked for a bit. Devon brought him home Friday evening.

Tuesday Seth, Joseph, and I went to see the LEGO Batman Movie. It was worth the watch. It was funny and even has some good life lessons. However, while at the theater, my phone slipped off my lap onto the floor which apparently caused the screen to become unresponsive to touch. Paul called me at some point Tuesday but I couldn’t answer. My phone went nuts with calls and texts Tuesday evening; I could see who was calling and texting but I could not answer or respond.

Joanna finally let me know what was going on with Paul via Facebook Messenger. I went down to Worcester and ended up waiting for Paul at the wrong hospital for about an hour. That was fun. I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten dinner and was thirsty so I got a bag of CheezIts and a bottle of water. $4. Good grief. I was there so long because Joanna was under the impression that Paul was leaving via ambulance from Gardner when she spoke to him. He didn’t actually leave until much later. Finally, the girl at the information desk was able to tell me he’d arrived but at the other hospital. Great. I had to pay $3 to get out of parking there and then go park at the other one which would also cost $3 to get out. And then, I felt like my presence was pretty useless. There wasn’t anything I could do. It was late, I was tired, he hadn’t been seen by the urologist, no one knew yet what was going to happen. So I left. With $3 for parking and a debit card for fuel.

Wednesday was a busy day with taxi service. I went to get the boys from Joanna’s because they’d stayed there overnight because I didn’t know where I’d be or what was going to happen. I mean, the first report I heard about Paul was kidney failure. A stone, while painful, looks a lot different than failure. So, a trip to Athol, which was nice because it’s always nice to visit with Joanna and Maddie and Lincoln (he was only there for a few minutes before we left). Then I needed to pick Amena up from a friend’s house in Oakham. That wasn’t too bad; it wasn’t really much longer than picking up from Quabbin. Then Amena had work. While she was at work, I went to Leominster so someone at the Verizon store could look at my phone.

This is looking down the stairs. One trail to the left going to the barn, one to the right going toward the end of the driveway where the cars are parked. You can't really tell by the time I took this on the 18th, but Hubbardston made the news for snow accumulation. In the driveway we had between about 6 inches and almost 2 feet.

At some point during the day, I’d left my phone in the car while I went in the house; it was useless to me, after all. When I went back to the car, the phone was vibrating. It wouldn’t stop. When I took it in to the store, the first young woman I spoke to asked if I’d dropped it in water (um, no) because that was a sign it had been. Great. I retained my phone and waited until someone was available. When I handed it to the young man who would be helping me, he first managed to get the vibrating to stop. He didn’t think there were any signs of water damage and said it was still under warranty so if I was willing to wait, he could get me a replacement sent within 3 to 5 days. Well, what is a person to do? I agreed.

This is the trail heading to the barn.

Saturday my replacement arrived so I activated it and got the old one ready to ship back. I need to drop it off at Staples today sometime. Paul wanted to go shopping once Joanna and Maddie were on their way home. I thought he was nuts but whatever. I went with him. I hate shopping with Paul because he tends to like to stop at five hundred different stores.

We went to Aldi’s for milk. We also got a few other things. Not as many of the things I’d like to have gotten but not as many of the things he wanted to get. Then we stopped at Big Lots. I’m not really sure why because all we did was see if they had any graham crackers discounted. We didn’t need any. Then I walked to Market Basket while he drove. There we mostly got fruit for smoothies. Pretty exciting. Lastly, we got diesel in the containers and gas in the car.

This is the trail heading to the end of the driveway. It looks a lot different now.

On the way home, Paul informed me that he would not be going to church the next day because he overdid it. Well, imagine that! I could have gone shopping by myself. Except that I couldn’t have because he doesn’t really have a budget and wouldn’t have been able to tell me what the dollar limit was for the day.

Just before I went to bed, I got a call from Katie. A client was in labor. So I got ready and drove north into New Hampshire. The only problem with that is that I put the wrong address in the GPS and by the time I was half an hour away, I had to pee so bad I was seriously examining the side of the road for likely places to stop. But I was so close, I never did. Then I realized I had the wrong address. Then my phone didn’t have a strong enough signal for Waze to work so I had to rely on the GPS. By the time I got to the house, I had to go bad. Holy cow.

And then there was yesterday. Which is a tale for another day because I need to get some things done and get school going for the boys.