Water World

Last week I got five and a half inches of rain overnight. Over the weekend there was an additional three inches. So, this is what my yard looks like. I'm glad my house is elevated on a thick concrete slab.

Above is my pond. Water is coming up from below the pond and is pushing the liner above the surface.

More rain is expected. If all of the liner is pushed up, there won't be room for the fish. It would be awful to have to cut holes in the liner in order to push it back to the bottom where it belongs. The whole thing is just bizarre.

Eating To Death

He came into the clinic panting and complaining of shortness of breath. Diagnosing the cause was easy. He was so morbidly obese that his lungs didn't have room to expand properly. Encircled by fat, his lungs could only expand enough to accommodate shallow breaths. He was no longer able to compensate by breathing faster.


He couldn't lose weight. He had tried countless times before and wasn't willing to try again. The doctor offered to give him a referral for bariatric surgery, but he wasn't interested. The doctor also recommended having a tracheotomy, so that should he suddenly go into respiratory failure, they would be able to quickly get oxygen into his lungs. A successful intubation on him seemed unlikely. He refused. He was sent home with oxygen and told to lose weight or he was going to die.


A little over a year later, he arrived in the emergency room in respiratory distress. He had gained another 150 pounds. They were unable to get a tube down his throat. By the time the doctors were able to cut his throat and establish an airway, he had been without oxygen too long and was in shock. The blood supply to his kidneys was shut off in his body's desperate attempt to maintain blood flowing to his heart, lungs and brain. He wasn't expected to survive the night, but he did.


It's been several months and the patient lives here now. His kidneys are dead, so he gets dialysis. We can't send him home to live with his mother where he lived before because he is too big to transport to dialysis. No institution will take him unless he loses 150 pounds.


The solution to our problem is obvious. He needs to lose weight. The problem is that he doesn't want to lose weight. He enjoys eating and it hasn't hurt his social life. Despite living on disability with his mom caring for him, he has two girlfriends who fight over him. Yes, if they happen to show up at the hospital at the same time, they argue over him.

He's not a pleasant person. He's one of those people we have to take turns moving around the hospital because it's not fair for one unit to have to put up with him forever. He can be verbally abusive if he gets a nurse he doesn't like. Even if he gets a nurse he likes, he is a burden because he won't stop using the call light for every little thing. The nurses fight over whose turn it is to take him. He's the cause of a lot of fights.

He finally agreed to go on a liquid fast diet. There was some delay in starting the diet because of a fight over which department was going to pay for the diet shakes. It was finally resolved and the shipment arrived and was locked in a cabinet because it is so expensive. The patient took one sip and said, "I'm not eating this shit."

For his next meal, I started to bring the shake into his room and he yelled, "If you bring that in here, I'm going to throw it against the wall". Not wanting to clean up the mess, I started to turn around. He demanded to speak to his doctor immediately about this diet. It was after hours, so he had to wait until the next day to negotiate changes.

The next day, his doctor agreed to let him have two small meals a day plus the shakes and they found him a flavor that he didn't mind as much. It looked like we had a deal. Yeah, there was a lot of begging for food and complains about being hungry, but nothing we couldn't deal with.

The next day, several empty Styrofoam containers were found under his bed. Someone, we assume one of his girlfriends, sneaked him in some food. We have been told to watch for visitors and take away food if we see any. Legally, I'm not sure we can do that. He is alert and oriented and entitled to make his own decisions, no matter how stupid. That would be an interesting legal issue to research, but I don't care enough to bother.

It looks like he is going to live with us the rest of his life. I'm guessing that it is going to be a short one.

He reminds me of some of our drug-seeking patients, except that his drug is food.

The Performance

So, this is the Beach Boys or what is left of them. Mike Love is front center and John Stamos is to his left. What? You didn't know that John Stamos is a Beach Boy? He didn't just play a musician on TV, he is a real one. And a good one and really hot and ...oh, don't get me started.

I don't know who else was there because they never introduced themselves. There were a total of three old guys who may or may not have been in the original group. Mike Love was the only one I recognized. A Fourth old guy came out and sang one song. He was good; they all were, but it's frustrating not knowing who they all were. The acoustics of the room were bad, but the band was true to their sound. The replacement musicians were a good vocal match for the missing members.

After the show, my friends took their daughter behind the stage to get autographs. I loaned them my pen.

A few minutes later they returned with autographs by Mike Love and John Stamos. I'm going to have to frame my pen. It doesn't seem right to treat it like an ordinary pen now.

My friends said that the Beach Boys were so nice and polite. Mike Love was a kind, grandfatherly type. The musicians even recognized their daughter as the little girl who slept through their performance. (It was no reflection on their performance. It was just past her bedtime.) I was a little surprised, though, that they could see us through the lights. They probably recognized Lindsay and me as being the people who came into their green room looking for a bathroom. And, instead of telling us to get out, they invited us in and showed us a short-cut. That's class.

Duct Tape Lingerie

If I had known that I was allergic to duct tape, I never would have stuck it to my boobs. The dress I was going to wear was backless and held up my two tiny straps. I didn't have a bra that would work, so I improvised with duct tape and falsies. It worked just fine until it was time to remove the tape. Ouch. Tiny, red itchy bumps everywhere.

Getting ready for the dinner concert took most of the day. I had to darken my roots and lighten my teeth. My hair needed to be curled. The dress was difficult and time consuming to iron. I decided to change the location of the straps to keep them from cutting into the back of my neck. The crinoline needed to be removed so that it would be less fairy princess like.

It didn't occur to me that removing the crinoline would cause the dress to be longer. I tripped on the dress all evening. I also kept stepping out of my shoes. Trying on shoes while wearing heavy sweat socks is never a good idea. I knew that and did it anyway because I didn't feel like removing my socks in the store. Now I understand dress rehearsals. Costume malfunctions can be a problem for anyone.

It is always interesting to me to see what other women wear to formal functions. Most of the women predictably wore elegant black. Usually I wear black too, but I just felt like wearing a real color for a change. Red seemed right for January. I was relieved to see that some others wore bright colors as well. Possibly being the only one in a big red gown had me a bit worried. I had a back-up dress in the car just in case I was over-dressed, but I didn't need it.

I was surprised by some of the dresses. Skin-tight, stretchy, skin-baring dresses look great on the actresses who walk the red carpet, but on pudgy middle-aged lawyers, the effect wasn't quite the same. Sorry if that sounds catty. It's just that I don't understand why people choose to flaunt their figure problems when they could just as easily camouflage them with the right dress and the correct foundation garments, such as duct tape.

The Beach Boys And I

We were looking for a bathroom. We had slowly worked our way through the packed crowd to where we thought there might be one. Instead, our route dead-ended at yet another bar offering all of the free fine spirits we could drink. Our glasses were already full of bourbon. We didn't need booze, we needed a bathroom.

Not wanting to walk all of the way back through the crowd, we decided to walk up a grand staircase to see if we might have any luck up there. Walking down a wide, ornate hallway, we came across a table set for dinner. It was just like the tables downstairs in the ballroom, only this one was all by itself. In a hallway.

The caramelized pear, bitter greens and goat cheese on a cracker salad were set out. We hoped this wasn't our table. Whoever sat here would miss the Beach Boys performing in the ballroom.

At the end of the hallway was a door. That would have stopped me, but Lindsay opened the door and spoke to someone inside. He motioned for me to come in. Inside were a bunch of guys hanging out. One of the guys said in a pleasant voice, "Oh, a girl. That's okay." Someone else said to keep this route to the bathroom a secret. We agreed, but it all seemed odd.

We followed the directions, found the bathroom and then our table. We got lucky. We were less than 20 feet from the stage. Dinner was served. In addition to the salad, we got fillet Mignon and salmon, followed by chocolate creme brulee topped with fresh berries for dessert. The food and wine were more than acceptable.

Next came the after-dinner speeches. In case you didn't know, trial lawyers are heroes who keep Americans safe from corrupt corporations, or at least, that was the gist of of the speeches. Not surprisingly when you're dealing with lawyers, the speeches ran long which was beginning to cause me distress. The Beach Boys were going to perform between 9 and 11 p.m. Every few minutes of speeches, meant fewer songs performed. By nine thirty, I was spitting mad. Really, what would you rather listen to, I love me speeches by lawyers or the Beach Boys?

Finally, the concert started. Of course it was great. At some point it hit us, though. Those guys hanging out upstairs who helped us find the bathroom were the Beach Boys. The dinner table in the hallway was for them. They are legends, but they need to eat too. We breathed the same air, ate the same food and used the same bathroom. (Sorry, that is how nurses think.)

I have photos and will post them as soon as I can get past the computer glitch that is keeping me from downloading my photos.

Drinking From a Urinal

It didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. I don't know why everyone got so upset. All I did was leave a container of ice tea in the kitchen at work. So it was in a urinal bottle, what else was I supposed to do? The hospital ran out of water pitchers.

They are all nurses, you wouldn't think that everyone would freak out by the site of a tea colored beverage in a urinal. Okay, it was in the kitchen, but I need ice tea at work. It was the same thing all evening. Someone would go in the kitchen and stomp out and yell, who did this? I would reply that it was mine. They would look at me stunned as I explained what it was.

The next evening, we were still out of pitchers, so this time, I made tea in the kind of container that we use for measuring liquids, like urine, vomit and watery diarrhea. This time, no one minded. I don't get it. The urinal made more sense to me because at least it has a lid.

I think we should give all of the patients water in urinal bottles until we get pitchers. It makes more sense than giving each person half a dozen cups of water, which tend to result in nasty spills.

I Just Need A Bigger Fireplace

Some mysterious substance was coming through the windows. I had gotten up at the usual time, come into the kitchen and couldn't believe my eyes. It was sunshine. The big, bad tree that blocked the sun was gone.

The gardener came to take the tree out as expected, but it proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated. He couldn't get the root-ball out of the ground. He wanted more money because he didn't realize how big the tree was. I could have held him to our contract, after all, he had seen the tree and root system before he made his estimate, but I took pity on him. I agreed to pay him nine hundred dollars instead of the original six hundred and he agreed to also remove a huge stack of dead branches that have been accumulating and fix the sprinkler. He would also cut up the tree trunk for firewood. (Sorry, Bulldog, I promise to have my fireplace cleaned regularly to prevent chimney fires from the pine.)

I went to work and came home to chaos. The dogs had been locked up all evening and Kelsey was sick. Vomit and diarrhea was all over the carpets, both upstairs and downstairs. Kelsey's latest chemo didn't agree with him. (The vet has agreed that it is time to stop the chemo. It isn't helping, it is making him sick and it is costing a fortune. He is now getting steroids and pain meds.)

I spent a precious Saturday off shampooing the carpet. It didn't get rid of the odor. It needs to be done again. My house is starting to remind me of my grandma's house. She was one of those cat ladies you read about who rescued stray cats and had dozens of them living with her. They weren't house broken and opening the front door almost made me do a back flip in reaction to the overpowering stench. My house is becoming like that. At least it's warm enough that I can leave the windows open to dilute the stench.

Back to the tree problem, I now have a huge stack of firewood, but there is a problem. The wood is wider than my fireplace. I really need to start putting contracts in writing and being more specific. How was the gardener supposed to know that I didn't have a six-foot fireplace? It was my fault. It was also my fault that when we agreed for him to fix my sprinklers, that I meant the underground pipe that was broken and ripped out of the ground by the falling tree. He thought I meant for him to replace a cracked sprinkler head.

At least it is sunny and warm.

Lucky Me

It was 7 am and I was lying in bed listening to the gardener's roaring equipment waiting for them to hurry up and finish so I could go back to sleep. The door bell rang. I knew what this was going to be about. I wrapped myself in a robe and answered the door.

The gardener asked, "Did you know that your tree blew over?"

I could have given a sarcastic answer, but I just said yes. Really, though, how could one not notice such a thing? Even when I found it in the middle of the night and couldn't see it through the darkness, I knew something wasn't right. The house is never that dark, even in the middle of the night.

He told me how lucky I was. If it had fallen the other way, it would have taken out the wall. If it had landed a little differently, it could have smashed the house. He wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know, but I just politely agreed.

He offered to remove it for me. I didn't know he could do that kind of thing, but I'm glad that he can. It is one less thing for me to have deal with right now.

Because the tree is dangling over the patio cover, there is some risk that when he starts cutting the tree, it may cause the patio cover to collapse when the tree falls. If it happens, I will deal with it.

So, Friday is tree removal day. If nothing goes wrong, it's just another six hundred dollars from my bank account.

After our agreement, I tried to go back inside the house, but the door had locked behind me. I was barefoot and naked, except for a robe, locked out of the house. I went to get the hidden key that I have for such purposes. The key in a jar was submerged in a flower pot filled with rotting rain water. Reaching in the gunk to get the jar, I expected the jar to be be filled with water too and the key to be corroded, but it was fine. Once again I was lucky. Things didn't turn out as badly as they could have.

My Grandmother's Coffee Table

Kelsey likes to stand with his hind legs on the couch and his front legs on the glass coffee table. He's been doing that for the last 6 years. Today, his luck ran out.

He wasn't injured in the crash and the dogs are so much happier now that they have more room to play on the carpet where the table used to be.

Wet And Windy

I don't know what I'm going to do about this. On the bright side, I will have a few years worth of firewood and one less tree to worry about catching on fire. On the dark side, I have a big tree dangling from the patio cover and a badly broken sprinkler pipe. It's always something.

Whimpering Georgie

In the middle of the night, Georgie started whimpering. I petted him, thinking that perhaps he was just awake and lonely. As long as I petted him, he was quiet, but as soon as I stopped, the whimpering started again. It occurred to me that he had never done this before and perhaps he was sick. I decided to get up, turn on the lights and examine him, but first, I needed to go to the bathroom.

As I was walking to the bathroom, Georgie took off running down the stairs and went out the doggy door. A minute later, he was back in bed all snuggled up and ready to sleep. The whimpering had stopped. His only problem was that he needed to go to the bathroom and rather than go outside and take care of it, he preferred to whimper all night.

I do understand. There have been times I have suffered with a full bladder or been freezing cold and rather than get up and do something about it, I preferred to stay in bed and suffer. Dogs and people aren't all that different. No one likes getting out of bed on a cold night.