So much for a nice long nap. It was almost 2 hours. I was peacefully snoozing when the power went out. That’s always a rush! The oxygen concentrator and CPAP stop and the concentrator screeches. Then there’s the mask on my face that makes me wake up feeling suffocated. Fun, fun, fun. I tried to go back to sleep once the power came back on again…but my heart was pounding too hard. Dang it!
The air is smoky. Must be from wild fires? I listened to the above video and then just let new ones keep playing. I love Jimmy Buffet. I love Key West. But….it’s making me sad listening today. There was a guy here who always wore Hawaiian shirts and a ball cap. He was like a bit of Key West right here in the building. Unfortunately for him, he embodied that spirit a little too much. He was an alcoholic and it killed him.
Yesterday a lot of his belongings were brought down to the community room to be given away. I was amazed at the depth of his personality. I learned a lot more about him in death than I ever knew in life. That poor guy had dozens and dozens of books about addiction and recovery. He must have struggled mightily. He was only a few months older than me. What a waste 😦 I hate drugs and alcohol and their power over people!!! I snagged a copy of his memorial service. Sooooooooo sad 😦
I kept one of his many AA books, some paper, file folders, a box of anatomy flash cards and a box of skeletal system flash cards. It will take a while for the worst of the cigarette smoke to fade away. Right now, the smoke instantly swells up my neck lymph nodes when I look at the books and flash cards.
I opened my apartment door and discovered the source of the smoke! Someone has been broiling meat. The smoke is very thick 😦 When I looked down, there was a package from Woman Within. It’s a polo navy shirt. Thin material. Looks like it will be good loungewear around the house. Thank you 🙂 I put it in the laundry, because like all the new clothes, it comes with lots of chemicals. I need to go to the laundromat and wash all my scatter rugs one of these days….and whatever other laundry has piled up by the time I have enough strength to go.
Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, except I started out weak, felt reasonably alive after my shower, then in late afternoon I got the same butterfly rash on my face and I was burning up, even with the A/C on full blast. Thursday night I vacuumed the bathroom and kitchen. That very well might be all I do before inspection. That hurt 😦
Oh….when I put on my biggest undergarment shirt, it was so tight it popped up over my hernia. Wow! That enlargement of the hernia happened fast! It has only been a week or so since I put that one on last! When my shrink came to visit Thursday afternoon, I molded my skirt around my hernia to show him how much bigger it is and his eyes popped out. He has been watching the progression all along. Sigh….
Wrote the above and like an idiot clicked on update. Like a couple of updates before this, it turned my chromebook into a brick. I just went 13 hours without it working. Can you say traumatized?!?!?!?!?! If I am in this apartment, there’s not a whole lot to do except read things online. I hate actually watching TV. My eyes and head hurt too much to read books for long. The cat was getting worn down to a nub from petting her 😛
I tried all the stuff I had written in my notebook last time, but nothing worked. I did a few dozen hard resets, turned the computer off and on…sometimes impatiently, sometimes giving it time to think about being naughty. It had no shame. Each time I signed back on, I could use the cursor once before it disappeared. Usually things like the up, down and sideways arrows would not work & enter would not work. I tried power wash a few bazillion times. I could click the button, but nothing happened.
At 8 AM Friday, as soon as the computer room was opened, I went to use their computer. I looked up everything I could find and wrote down more instructions. Nothing worked. Then, for some reason, the tab button suddenly started working. I was able to click power wash. It said it would be as if the chromebook was new. So far I am surprised that the only difference is that I need to retype passwords. With a chromebook, most of it is “in the cloud”, not in the laptop. I feel immense relief. I have very little life without getting online. Pathetic.
It’s after 11:30 and no one has showed up to inspect my apartment. I have been wearing clothes for hours. What a bother! I did take out the garbage at 5 AM and vacuumed the rest of the place at 7 AM. Good enough. It’s almost always pretty darn neat and clean because I do some sort of cleaning each time I get out of my chair, hour to hour…day to day. My left chest hurt REALLY bad after vacuuming. It seems to hurt more on the exhale than the inhale. Unusual. Depends…sometimes either one hurts…or both together.
Whew! 11:50 and they showed up. Glad to have that over with! I was also amused to hear the inspector say they needed to do work on my A/C. I have been trying to get a filter for awhile now. I bet it will suddenly, miraculously happen! The woman inspector liked my salt lamps.
About an hour after the inspection was over, the Relief Society president came to my place with a cart of food and toilet paper 🙂 She also gave me a piece of paper for a Costco membership. When she first got here, my voice worked. Then it was quite broken. After she left, my left lung hurt so bad that I was restless. I went over to the pharmacy to get a bottle of generic Miralax. Then I figured maybe I should try to go to Costco and get my new ID card made. I almost turned around part way to TRAX. Would have been a good idea!
Via TRAX
Last time I went to Sam’s and Costco to check them out, the lack of sidewalks with curb cuts had been traumatizing. It’s a very busy road with multiple lanes. I figured this time I would get off TRAX and go to Costco from the north (1300) instead of south (2100). BAD IDEA!!!!! Not only did the curb cuts disappear…so did the sidewalks. And I thought last time was scary! 😮 Well….at least I know not to do it again. I will either have to find a bus that gets close, or get a ride with paratransit on a day when I qualify for a ride. Oh, great! I looked it up. There is no way to get there on sidewalks with curb cuts and no bus that gets closer than TRAX does….but….from State Street to Costco may or may not be a road with sidewalks and curb cuts.
Via bus
1700 S looks like decent sidewalks on Google….but then it’s the same old no sidewalk stretch on 300 to get to Costco. Pffffffttttttttt!!!!!!!!!
The chest pain has not let up today. Must be because a weekend is coming up. Sigh….
Wendy The Wanderer 
With all those books about alcholism, he must have been trying so many times but failing. It is so sad.
It is a bit of a coincidence but I have been reading a book about emotional eating, it is sort of like a workbook. You write down stuff from your own life. I have learned some about why I stress eat. Now I am on to the ways to eat more positively. Also not to feel guilty about food. Yesterday after PT, we went to look at what kind of exercise equipment they have here. I was excited to see that they have sit down bike with back support. Yay! I used to ride a stationary bike a lot (two of them wore out, the metal ground down and broke). So now I want to start using the machine. The seat was leather but it has cracked open and the stuffing is coming out. maybe I can lay a dish cloth on it.
Glad that you received a shirt made of cool material!
I tried to fix my AOL problem by downloading the software again. A light bulb lit up above my head finally. It was not working before because I was keep the favorites, etc. and the one file that doesn’t work when I downloaded it. Before. I got on-line at about noon. What I did is to keep my files but at an earlier date. I am hoping that it will work again tomorrow. I have been so frustrated with AOL. I have a free copy which they allow but that means that they will not help you if something goes wrong. So you are on your own. I don’t think I had better change my computer software since my brain is getting worse.
I had been struggling with this problem for days, hobbling along with Internet Explorer. The last straw was not being able to open AOL at all.
I woke up this morning thinking that it was Friday and I was late in taking the pills and eating. I even laid out the clothes I was going to wear. About 9 a.m. I told James that we are going to be late. It took a while for him to figure why I was talking about PT on Saturday!
I think I am grieving for my brain. Some of the time I am OK but other times , I don’t make sense. I used to look at the calendar and figure out what day it is. Now I use the computer to do that. That is because I have to.
So glad that the inspector showed up. The no sidewalks thing is terrible. I refuse to walk out on the street. It is so dangerous even without wheelchair.
I watched a cooking show this morning with my bird. He had gone down in the gap and the pillows. I think he was checking things out. Not too safe an idea. When a commerical came on, it blared Early Bird Sale over and over again. Speckles quickly squirmed out and was real excited. He didn’t know that when they said ‘early bird” they didn’t mean him. LOL
Ha! That’s pretty funny about Speckles 🙂 Yup…I grieve for my brain, too….but then I forget what I am doing 😛
I don’t understand the role of AOL nowadays. Why would anyone want it? In the old days I needed it for dial up access because it was the only game in town. I’ve tried a bunch of different email companies, but gmail is my favorite and is available anywhere, with any computer or phone I might get online with. They have the best spam filters. When I transitioned from AOL to gmail, I set it up to forward the AOL mail to my gmail account. I never went back. Because I have a chromebook now, I use Chrome, but my favorite browser used to be Firefox, on both Mac and Windows. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
I use AOL software for its organizational qualities, I get lots of mail, like book review requests and I like the top tray of icons to find things easily. I don’t get charged for it because my Internet connect is through Frontier. I also have gmail for the bank communications. Complicated backstory for the bank. I am signed up for several book blogs but I noticed that gmail used to bring them into the current mail and later they put them into promotions. Now, they have been to I don’t know where. AOL does something weird with too. They bring the mail in for three months and then you have three months without the e-mails. I never used that browser. Long time ago, I used Yahoo but found that google is much better.
You can choose how to sort…or not sort your gmail. I miss having my own in-home tech support. I would have had a heck of a time without Heather in the beginning of my computer learning almost 30 years ago. I have a hard time keeping up with the constant changes over the years. Until Heather showed a pic of her iPhone deciphering Chinese characters via the camera, it was inconceivable to me that such technology was already available. I miss my brain cells!