Catching Up
Many of us spent a fair amount of time at Mom/Grandma/Great Grandma's bedside the past few days, certain that she would be gone from us sooner rather than later. She is one tough Finn!
She's comfortable for the most part but it seems once each hour we need to alert the staff that she's in pain and needs morphine. She will open her eyes and get the most desperate look on her face, maybe reach out with her arms as her whole body goes rigid with pain from her broken pelvis. The staff is quick to respond but it's often 10-15 minutes of agony for her until the medicine is administered and begins to work. That was my main concern as I left her tonight; that the nursing staff will be there hourly to check on her and give her the drug. I hate to think of her lying there any longer than necessary in that sort of pain.
I just phoned Keith who is still by her side with Tracee where they've both been all day. He said her breathing is down to around 4 shallow breaths per minute and he doesn't think she can last much longer. I hope he's right.
Tammy and I had plans to attend the Minnesota State Fair today but we canceled them. It was to be our one and only day this summer where we'd be together with no cares to concern us. Rachel was going to tend to her grandmother for us all day and night while we enjoyed ourselves but we decided to forgo our plans due to a concern about the noise at the fair and how it would be detrimental to the fragile hearing in my left ear. It's probably just as well because I was able to spend most of the day with Mom. I don't think we'd have enjoyed our time at the fair all that much with our thoughts continually going back to her. It was the right thing to do.
Catching up.
We had Vineland Tree Care service back out at our home last week to trim four of our trees. Three of them are Ash trees and I was hesitant to put any amount of money into maintaining them with the Emerald Ash Borer lurking out there in the not too distant future threatening to devour them all but I opted to have them trimmed anyway. I hope to get at least another several healthy years from them.
When the bug finally does make its presence known, I don't think I'll try and save my trees. I'm planning to have them taken down and replaced with Evergreens or some variety of slower growing Maples.
I've been heating our garage during the winter months for the past 6 seasons since we had it insulated and sheetrocked.
I don't let it get much above 40ºf (4.5ºc) inside the garage in the winter but even at that temperature, the heater runs a considerable amount when the outside temp plummets. Our garage doors were standard 'builder's grade' stock with no reputation for retaining heat until we had them replaced last week by the fine folks at Action Overhead Garage Door with a much more insulated and robust door that I'm confident will help to show a marked reduction in our heating bills. They're nothing fancy, just your typical style door that most everyone else uses but they work well with our home's look. The guy installing them said they're the best doors they sell. Perhaps he was just trying to curb any buyer's remorse I may have been feeling.
But what I like most about our new doors is the Liftmaster opener with some quite cool technology that lets me know via an app on my Droid if the garage door is open or closed and also allows me to activate it from anywhere. Imagine the peace of mind I could've had if only I'd had this sweet app when Rachel was in high school and sometimes forgetting to close the garage door at night? I had to laugh because I was out with friends recently and someone was talking about leaving their garage door open. What a perfect segue. I showed them the app on my phone which noted that my garage door had been closed for 47 minutes! They were impressed!
I couldn't have scripted that any better!
She's comfortable for the most part but it seems once each hour we need to alert the staff that she's in pain and needs morphine. She will open her eyes and get the most desperate look on her face, maybe reach out with her arms as her whole body goes rigid with pain from her broken pelvis. The staff is quick to respond but it's often 10-15 minutes of agony for her until the medicine is administered and begins to work. That was my main concern as I left her tonight; that the nursing staff will be there hourly to check on her and give her the drug. I hate to think of her lying there any longer than necessary in that sort of pain.
I just phoned Keith who is still by her side with Tracee where they've both been all day. He said her breathing is down to around 4 shallow breaths per minute and he doesn't think she can last much longer. I hope he's right.
Tammy and I had plans to attend the Minnesota State Fair today but we canceled them. It was to be our one and only day this summer where we'd be together with no cares to concern us. Rachel was going to tend to her grandmother for us all day and night while we enjoyed ourselves but we decided to forgo our plans due to a concern about the noise at the fair and how it would be detrimental to the fragile hearing in my left ear. It's probably just as well because I was able to spend most of the day with Mom. I don't think we'd have enjoyed our time at the fair all that much with our thoughts continually going back to her. It was the right thing to do.
Catching up.We had Vineland Tree Care service back out at our home last week to trim four of our trees. Three of them are Ash trees and I was hesitant to put any amount of money into maintaining them with the Emerald Ash Borer lurking out there in the not too distant future threatening to devour them all but I opted to have them trimmed anyway. I hope to get at least another several healthy years from them.
When the bug finally does make its presence known, I don't think I'll try and save my trees. I'm planning to have them taken down and replaced with Evergreens or some variety of slower growing Maples.
I've been heating our garage during the winter months for the past 6 seasons since we had it insulated and sheetrocked.
I don't let it get much above 40ºf (4.5ºc) inside the garage in the winter but even at that temperature, the heater runs a considerable amount when the outside temp plummets. Our garage doors were standard 'builder's grade' stock with no reputation for retaining heat until we had them replaced last week by the fine folks at Action Overhead Garage Door with a much more insulated and robust door that I'm confident will help to show a marked reduction in our heating bills. They're nothing fancy, just your typical style door that most everyone else uses but they work well with our home's look. The guy installing them said they're the best doors they sell. Perhaps he was just trying to curb any buyer's remorse I may have been feeling.But what I like most about our new doors is the Liftmaster opener with some quite cool technology that lets me know via an app on my Droid if the garage door is open or closed and also allows me to activate it from anywhere. Imagine the peace of mind I could've had if only I'd had this sweet app when Rachel was in high school and sometimes forgetting to close the garage door at night? I had to laugh because I was out with friends recently and someone was talking about leaving their garage door open. What a perfect segue. I showed them the app on my phone which noted that my garage door had been closed for 47 minutes! They were impressed!
I couldn't have scripted that any better!
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