Regularly Scheduled Programming in Everyday Ramblings

Talking about the light. We were talking about the light, right? Two of the guys I have been hanging out with lately are serious photographers, fancy cameras, the whole nine yards. One has a book coming out later this year about a local park he has been taking pictures of for a long time. It made me feel better when one said last week that he has 39,000 photographs and those are the ones he chose to keep.

That makes my, somewhere under, 14,000 in storage seem modest. Ha.

I am doing fine. I am taking the new meds and taking it easy. It took a little while to get the heart procedure scheduled for a week from today because my cardiologist just added it to his already full schedule without accounting for resources needed and the staff had to scramble to make it happen. It is an outpatient day thing, but I have to check into the hospital. Eek.

The advantage of living close to the medical center is I was able to walk down to the lab on Sunday morning and walk in after a three-minute wait to get the required tests done and not have to sit in a crowded waiting room. Sort of the opposite of what I know a number of you need to go through for the simplest things.

We are having this crazy heat wave. Alice is not air conditioned. I brought the big standing fan over from Fred and am learning the judicious use of closing blinds and opening windows, but this is wild. I need to water the gift tomato plants and basil every day here on the balcony and water the garden plot every other day.

Last night we had yet another thunderstorm but no rain. At least none that made it to the ground.

I don’t want to jinx it but after a week the sciatica discomfort is lifting. I was able to walk the long way to the garden today normally, a little tentatively, expecting it to return. Last time I had a flare up, sometime, last year or the year before, or maybe before that I studied the kind of simple exercises to do to help with where mine originates, which is in my back around L3.

Most of the exercises are done on the floor (or a PT table). Gentle backbends and leg extensions of various kinds. I was incorporating that into the one mat classes I recorded every week. But since I have been displaced, (a month today) I haven’t taught my mat class. Duh. Oh hello, there was a reason I was adding those moves in every week. This week I have been exploring the whole range of reasons for the nerve impingement that causes sciatica in my chair and standing classes and in prep doing all the movements and will continue to do so.

But as at least a couple of you know all too well, a day without the pain is just lovely. The ease of movement feels like a gift from the gods. Or goddesses if you are so inclined.

Mrs. Sherlock had a heart scare of her own last week, an episode of shortness of breath while hiking and she is having a stress test Thursday. We made a pact as we were going for a modest walk Saturday looking at gardens that we would do all the things to stay alive. She was scared by her episode thinking of those dependent on her and the anguish it would cause her friends to lose her.

That said, she is out hiking with those friends right now, in some pretty intense heat. I am not the only stubborn one in my life.

We both got our second bivalent Covid boosters last week. Half my students here did as they became more widely available.

Kes and Most Honorable came up on Sunday to hang with me in person and talk about the heart scare and bring my semi-annual supply of paper towels and toilet paper from Costco. Carlo was not okay having them here. He ran first and hid between the shower curtain liner and curtain and then after I coaxed him out (from which I have a scratch of my shoulder to prove) he parked himself behind the microwave on the kitchen counter for the rest of the visit.

He came out right after they left and was a bit wild and bratty. He seems to associate them with the displacements, and we need to work on that. Otherwise, he is starting to develop a routine and we know how cats love routine.

I admit, I kind of like it too. Someday this will be over and I can return to mine.