Have I mentioned that I'm just not that fond of getting older? I have? Let me just mention it again then. Just as my knee is finally healing up, I pulled my lower back out somehow when exercising on Thursday. Yesterday when I got up it was sore and I had trouble bending, but I didn't let that stop me from my planned shopping. I still went even though driving was painful and I had to move the seat way forward so I didn't have to reach for either the wheel or pedals. I slept badly last night and this morning when I got up, there was no position that I could get into that didn't hurt. Lying down, standing, sitting, walking - nothing gave me any relief. And going between those positions - doesn't bear talking about. I nearly couldn't feed the cats.
So I took a painkiller on an empty stomach. Not my smartest move ever. At that point I was in pain, nauseated, light-headed and sweaty. I didn't think that painkiller would be that strong since it was an old one prescribed in 2003. I expected it to just have enough strength to take the edge off the pain, not to make me sick and dizzy. Maybe taking it with the INH was what caused that reaction because I usually don't have trouble with those things. Although granted I usually don't take them on an empty stomach.
Anyway, I got into my recliner with a heating pad behind my back and waited. After about an hour I felt human again. The rest of the day hasn't been too bad. I'm fairly mobile when I need to be, although I need to sit in my softest recliner when I'm sitting. No hard chairs. Plus I slept about 3 hours this afternoon, to make up for the lack of sleep last night. I'm hoping my back will let me get some mostly uninterrupted sleep tonight.
Okay, enough health complaints. As you can see from the picture, the squirrel randomly decides that the red bird feeder is his exclusive property. Little devil. He was out there a couple times today, displacing the birds. He's acquired a serious taste for sunflower seeds.
I thought I'd also post a picture of the two hanging baskets out there. The spider plant isn't thriving as well as the wandering jew, but it's slowly gaining ground and looking healthy rather than looking like a brown-tipped plant refugee from a war. The wandering jew is VERY happy out there as you can see.
The shopping I took a day off work to do yesterday was to find a cocktail dress that fits me for my up-coming trips. Plus I stopped at a bank where I can order foreign currency and ordered some Turkish Lira. I'll need it upon arrival for taxi fare and I try only to exchange money at an airport as a last resort. They usually have seriously bad exchange rates. Then I went grocery shopping. So I got all my shopping in, but did aggravate my back doing it. I was going to run some errands this morning, but that didn't happen. Oh well, they'll keep.
The cat-kids like it when I lay around the house doing not much. They tend to get more attention, more treats and get to go outside more. So they're not unhappy that I'm not very mobile today. The trick is to get them to let me read or use my computer while they're taking up my lap. I'm typing this post using one of my small travel laptops in my lap sitting in my recliner currently.
I got a free lawn fertilizing yesterday morning. While I was drinking coffee waiting for the stores to open, I let Zoe out into the back yard. Suddenly she came flying back in. I looked out there and there was a guy fertilizing my lawn. I thought - that's weird - because usually my lawn service comes on Thursday and it was Friday. So I went and looked out the front and the service truck was not from my lawn service. I opened the front door and pulled the service invoice that he had left on the door and it was for my neighbor's address! So I stopped him as he was starting a weed treatment and told him he had the wrong house. You can imagine his comments. I felt sorry for him, but he was really not paying attention. The house numbers in this neighborhood are very clearly marked.
I guess that's about all for today.
I really have nothing to blog about today, but I have a bunch of nice pictures to post so I guess I'll just ramble on about nothing.
The first picture is the male of the cardinal pair that hangs out around here. I can always tell without looking when they're out there because they're noisy. Constant chip, chip, chip. Luckily they like the sunflower seeds most so they have a tendency to stick to the red feeder that he's on, which has only sunflower seeds. This year's batch of new sparrows and finches are eating me out of house and birdseed. Several times a day they all descend in a ravenous horde and have a feeding frenzy and squabble for the six places on the feeder. Mostly it's the sparrows squabbling. The finches tend to use the feeder out on the tree, although occasionally they'll join the squabble.
Also joining the feeding frenzy on the ground under the feeders is the squirrel. This morning I caught him twice on the red feeder, trying to get the sunflower seeds out, and he didn't really run when I went out there, just moved to the satellite dish and waited to see what I would do. As soon as I went into the house he was back on the feeder. So I filled a squirt bottle with water and got after him. He fussed about that but he ran away. I had my camera battery out and charging or I would have taken a picture of him on the feeder. If that feeder's on the ground one of these days when I get home, I'll know what happened.
The little pine continues to grow strongly as you can see, but it's a little yellow-ish in areas. I'm vacillating back and forth about whether to leave it outside or bring it in, because of the yellowing. Maybe little pine trees don't like the heat we've been having. It can get really hot on that patio, and it's been windy as hell. But besides the yellowing, it's growing so well that I'm afraid to jinx it by bringing it in the house. I gave it some plant food this week, so I'll see if that helps. When we start having 100 degree temps, I probably will bring it inside, unless it perks up and looks a lot better than it does now.
I dead-headed all my roses and am waiting for them to blossom some more. These peachy colored roses are from my back yard. I have several around the yard of this variety and color and the edges of the blossom kind of curl under, giving them a fluffy look. They're pretty. They don't have as big a bloom as some of my other roses, but I like them.
The roses and the azaleas are about the only things that bloomed/are blooming this year. Well, the quince did until the ice killed the blooms. The hawthorne didn't bloom, and neither did the amaryllis, nor the crepe myrtle, nor the bottle brush. Still, I'm glad everything's green and growing, even if it didn't bloom.
The other day I had a little Carolina wren checking out my hanging basket with the wandering jew in it. I wonder if he's considering it for a nesting site. The wandering jew and the airplane plant both seem to be thriving out there in the hanging baskets, and the aloe are starting to recover from the massive sunburn they got when I first put them outside this year. It looks like everything is going to do just fine.
My cold cleared up nicely. I only coughed at night for about 4 nights and then quit coughing period. The cold was pretty much completely gone just over a week after I came down with it. That tells me I'm much healthier than last year when all my colds dragged on a good month at least. On top of that, I'm in my last month of taking INH. 25 days and counting.
I'm running for President of my national association again this year. It's funny. I ran last year and thought I had a pretty good chance of winning, but I lost. Kind of felt like just one more bad luck moment in 2013. This last Friday I just found out who I'm running against this year. I actually don't think I stand much chance of winning this year, against this person, but what the heck. If you don't try, you have no chance of winning. Plus I enjoy the association and all my friends in it, so I'll just enjoy the running and be happy either way.
I did my exercises today using a knee brace on the knee I blew out doing Zumba. It worked fine. I bought the brace yesterday because the knee is not healing. It's still fairly swollen. And I need to be able to exercise. Plus if I'm going to be able to do those hikes I like to do at all this summer, it'll be with a knee brace. Those hikes are steep, which equals really hard on the knees. So I want to get used to using one.
So that's about it for my rambling today. Later.
As usual, it didn't take long for the temperature to go into full Summer mode. It's hot today and supposed to be in the 90s all week. And of course, we've had no rain to speak of. Even though we have gotten rain a few times lately, we're still more than 7 inches below normal for this time of year. And it's been windy as hell, which just sucks what moisture there is, out of everything. After spending some time outside this morning looking at the growing things, I changed my sprinkler system to run every three days rather than every four days. I predict water restrictions this summer are going to be fierce.
So I'm complaining about the weather again. Hmmmm. How about if I complain about my health instead? I jinxed myself, I guess. I had been bragging about being cold-free since last July (which cold dragged on almost into September). But then since September and my diet changes, I haven't been sick. So I was depressed to come down with a cold this week after my trip to Washington DC. It's a nice cold too - all settled in my chest. I'm at the coughing at night stage now, which is one of my least favorite, and I've been suffering with a head that feels like it's stuffed with cotton, and really low energy levels. I actually slept 11 hours last night and also last Wednesday night because I took Thursday off to try to recover a little. Plus my sciatica kicked up, either from the plane ride or from babying the knee I injured doing Zumba.
And worst of all, I gained 3 pounds. *laughing* Okay, that's not worst, but still now that I'm on the mend, I need to begin exercising again, although I'll take it a little more slowly than the Zumba, which was fun but totally blew out that right knee. And anyway I can't exercise hard right now without coughing up a lung. But I can cut back on eating everything in sight, which is kinda what I've been doing. I know the old wives saying is to feed a cold, but I think I've gone overboard a bit.
I need to do some house-cleaning. Between being busy and not having much energy, the place needs some work. I'll get right on that . . . one of these days.
I had an MRI of my brain done last Monday. I've been having some minor facial numbness and the neurologist I see for my migraines wanted to rule out all the bad stuff. Which the MRI did - rule out any bad stuff. Nothing abnormal in there, and actually it's kind of nice to have written proof that I do possess a normal brain. Or just a brain, come to think of it. So the facial thing is just another in a long list of symptoms that you can just put down to "aging" and add to the list of things to learn to ignore. Gotta tell ya, not wild about this whole aging thing.
Anyway, this is a short post again today because I don't have much to blog about again. Just wanted to post the roses at the front corner of my house which are blooming nicely, and another picture of the little hummingbird.
