I Feel Good
After a year, I finally feel good. It’s been a year since I bought my Hobbie kayak and hurt myself trying to move it to the porch. Where it remains. Now my shoulders are relatively pain-free, and I no longer worry about my hamstrings every time I walk up a few stairs. I was incredulous when the orth doctor said it could take a year to heal and, of course, added, “At your age…” But it’s done.
Now the work continues to keep as strong as I am (not very) and to grow stronger. I just failed my Dexa bone density scan, with scores of osteopenia in my hips (-1.4 for the left, -2.1 for the right) and osteoporosis for my spine (-2.5) and femur tops (-2.6 left, -3.0 right). I may have Steph paint these numbers on a sign, so I can see them every time I don’t want to do my exercises.
And to remind me I’ve made a commitment to take my calcium and Vitamin D for a year until my next scan. As I understand it, I have no hope of improving my scores, just trying to flatten the curve of my disintegration. In the meantime, my doctor, a enthusiastic resident, is researching what drugs I could take. I told him I have no worries about side effects. Any cancers or heart disease have had their shot. I’m likely to live another 20+ years, and I’d rather not be in pain from a disintegrated spine. Crossing my fingers he finds something.
His first shot was flying insect spray, which took out a few but didn’t do much. Note: we really didn’t want to kill the bees, but no one would come to take them away. The next morning, there wasn’t much activity around the hole, so he taped cardboard over it. Which the bees worked at until they had pushed it off. If only humans could work so well together.
I called another bee removal company, who happened to have a guy in the area Friday. He came while I was at Tree Board, so only Grant got to see his infrared scanning of the bees inside our garage wall. What neither bee company seemed to grasp was that the swarm had arrived less than 24 hours ago. They had not been building honeycomb for weeks. We did not have 20,000 bees in our wall. This was not a $500 job with holes cut and and a huge hive removed. We just needed to have the swarm killed in situ. Ants could help clean up the mess.
Saturday and Sunday morning, Grant sprayed some more insecticide in the hole and taped on more cardboard. All day long, the remaining bees successfully worked at removing the blockage. In the meantime, we bought Sevin at our local Ace Hardware and ordered a bulb applicator from Amazon. Monday morning, he puffed the powdered insecticide into the hole, and the bees died. I feel bad we killed them. I wonder where the original hive is. I am just thankful we were home when they swarmed. If we hadn’t seen them it would not have been a DIY project.
While Grant was concentrating on the bees, I began refinishing our front door. I’d noticed the varnish had begun to deteriorate, but I hadn’t realized how badly. After my sanding a while, and Grant taking a turn, we decided we needed to lay it flat to do a decent job. Dang that is a heavy door. We had to slide it on a cardboard path to the garage, then prop it up on milk crates before lifting it onto the sawhorses we’d borrowed from Kyle. Thank goodness Grant has been getting stronger with all the workouts Denny puts him through.
And thank goodness we live in such a safe neighborhood that we can have our front door replaced by an old sheet for 3 days. Annie got out once, but ran around to be let back inside, I don’t think she’s feeling well enough to go exploring. A trip to the vet is in her future. Gracie, however, does. She has become the veloci-cator and prowls at the front door, trying to make her escape. Fortunately, she runs out, then stops. She will come when I call so I’ve been able to scoop her right back up. We banished both cats to the porch, which made them unhappy. They sat with their little faces and big eyes staring at us. When we’d put the refinished door back up, with Kyle and Aiden’s help, both kitties had to sniff and sniff. Then flounce off in huffs.
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