This might be a slightly abbreviated entry, with 90+ degree temps and then a full belly, my energy level is a bit low, but I did want to write and fill you in on the latest. Last week when I wrote, I explained how the doctors at Mayo had fixed my clogged cardiac artery and was just waiting for the effects to kick in. They said it could be anywhere from a couple of days to 2-3 weeks. My best day after the procedure was actually the next day, Friday. Saturday was a little worse than Friday and by Sunday, I was feeling no better or maybe even a little worse than before the operation.
Monday morning started out kind of rough, so I decided to pass on going to the Memorial Day service they have at the Jacobsville Cemetery. Nora, Grace, Nora’s brother and his wife all went and I just hung out on the couch at home. After a while, it felt like I just needed to get out of the house and get my mind off things, so I headed to the shop and fiddled around with some things and even did a little straightening out. After about 30 minutes at the shop, I started to feel better and in another 30 minutes, I was feeling REALLY good. Gone were pretty much all of my symptoms I have been dealing with for the past 3-4 years. While being cautiously optimistic, I also did not put a ton of hope that this was the “new” me.
As it turns out, it pretty much is the new me! While I have some days that are not as good as others, none of them since the switch flipped on Monday have even been close to as bad as they were in the past. Life around here is much more active for me. Instead of being a slug, I can help Nora and Grace and that is a great thing.
Most of my work still has not been ultra physical. I have been doing things like cutting grass and even helping pull some old, scraggly, even dead bushes out of the ground that were in the front of the house. Many were beyond hope of making them look good again and others were just plain old dead.
So yesterday evening, I fired up Big Red and grabbed some rope and Nora, Grace and I went about getting the bushes out of the ground. The first row of bushes were right in front of the screen porch. Initially, the plan was to pull them out by putting a slip knot at one end and letting it cinch around the base of the bush and pull it out of the ground with the tractor. Well, that went OK, but a lot of the bushes did not have many branches and that allowed the cinch to just slip off. We did get a few using that technique, but then I came up with another idea. I would just use the end of the forks to dig up the root ball and plant. That technique worked like a charm. In just a little bit, all the bushes in that spot were gone.
The next spot was in front of the living room window and just to the left of the porch. There a tangled mess of Holly were growing, with about half of the plants dead and the others not really doing much like flowering and producing berries. These were much bigger plants and took a bit more work do get out, but that extra effort proved successful, as they came out one by one.
Bleau sat right by the window and seemed to enjoy all of the deconstruction going on. It got late as we were nearing the final scraps of the Holly and the bugs were also starting to get nasty, so we called it quits for the day. Today was just too darned hot to do anything outside, well anything buy lay on a hammock under the trees. We hit 93 and while the dewpoint was not outrageous, it did get to 68.
We had a lot of luck yesterday with the heat, or better put, escaping it. Our temp was rising and it was looking like we would get into the upper 80’s or even low 90’s, but around 2 o’clock, a beautiful lake breeze kicked in and our temp went from 83 to 66 in around 15 minutes. It then stayed in the upper 60’s the rest of the day.
The week ahead looks to be pretty good. I know everyone in the Midwest could use rain, but as things stand right now, not much looks to fall to the north and east of a line from around Kansas City to Chicago to the thumb of MI. Our temps will be backing down some, but still look to run in the 70’s and even some low 80’s most days. The plan for this week is to get the pool put up so we can start enjoying it. I then hope to start doing some work in the shop. Nothing too physically demanding, but work work I have been wanting to get done for around 2 years now.
Good Night from the Keweenaw..
–JD
