Heather and David arrived this afternoon a little late because of the weather, but relatively happy :) We hung out while I made dinner, then we had a fun time visiting this evening. It's an early night for them (and hopefully for us as well). Tomorrow we'll head into the city and see some stuff.
I guess there's not much more to report!
Dad seems to have come through the surgery okay so far. They removed the balloon in the artery in his leg (from the harvesting of the vein for bypass), but he's still on the ventilator overnight since his blood pressure is still too low. Apparently he had low blood pressure coming out of the gall bladder surgery a few years ago too, so this isn't too shocking or upsetting. Before going into the OR, Dad told Heather he wanted her to go and bring back pics of our patio and everything else so he could see it all. Hopefully he and I will both be well enough in the fall for some visiting.
Other than that we're pretty much prepared for Heather and David's visit. The guest rooms are all set, the bathroom needs a quick wipe down and towels etc set out. Kitchen needs cleaning and the living room needs a couple things put away. I need to figure out how to work the grill tomorrow, but it might be moot with all the rain we've had today.
The good news is that we're on track for having the house put together in time for the visitors arrival on Wednesday. The bad news is we'll have two less visitors at least. Apparently my dad had been having chest pain for a few months, and my mom and dad finally decided to go to the ER at 3:30am yesterday. Diagnosis: one completely blocked coronary artery, two with calcium deposits, no blockage in the neck arteries, and the ultrasound on the heart indicates the valves are good. Tomorrow morning he's going in for open chest bypass surgery, and will probably be in the hospital for another 5 days after that at least. He was chatty today (the older I get, the more I believe in modern pharmaceuticals), and insisted that Heather and David still make the trip out here to visit with us. We'll make the final determination late tomorrow night, but it should be okay provided the surgery goes as planned.
I feel like I should be more worried, but I'm really just thankful that they caught this before he had a major heart attack. The doctors sound well trained and seemed to interact well with my mom (which is a biggie). I'll see how things go before changing my travel plans in June to go to NH instead of Philly with Richard for NANOG.
*Sigh* My wish for this year is that everyone is okay and everyone gets better.
Today was filled with two trips to Home Depot (this time at my behest), lawn work, digging and planting. The lawn mower is acting up, fortunately Hans does mechanical work on the side and was already coming by tomorrow to sharpen the blades. We did the lovely spray all the weeds and the grass in the beds with harmful chemicals dance. Trimmed along the fenceline whilst cursing the crappy neighbors the entire time.
Home Depot had my Endless Summer "Blushing Bride" hydrangea in a 7 gallon pot -- $49.99 well spent. It was super crowded in the lawn and garden department at 1pm so I gave up on fighting the crowds too much, and just came out with some planter boxes, a fern for the second bookcase in the family room, and that was about it. We went back in the evening for some soil enrichment for the hydrangea hole, some tomato cages and a chance to actually look through the plants. I didn't think they'd have the digitalis that I was looking at in the White Flower Farm catalog, but as I was giving up the fight, a woman passed me with her cart brimming with two prime specimens of the lovely Digitalis, aka Foxglove...score! I ran back and picked up two 2 gallon pots of full blooming plants, got another tomato, a generic habanero plant that looked relatively decent, and a pot of cucumbers, which I figure couldn't hurt since I haven't started seeds yet. Since we were running out of daylight, we only got the hydrangea planted, but I think I can handle the two digitalis plants tomorrow on my own.
Tomorrow, there's more cleaning, more random projects around the house, and general mental preparation for the family's arrival. I should also make some banana nut bread for Hans, and maybe some banana pudding for us (as there's a lot of bananas sitting around getting spotty).
It's been absolutely nuts since we got back from the trip on Saturday. Sunday we picked up Gbic and we took her outside and furminated her into a beautiful silky coat. Unfortunately later that night, Gbic had another small seizure. A quick call to our new awesome vet on Monday, and Gbic's back on phenobarbital to control the seizures. Poor pup, but she's doing well.
On to the good man! While we were in California, I started setting up appointments with various folks to tackle more projects around the house. Handyman Connection came through beautifully and hooked us up with Hans. Reasonable pricing, and most importantly, quick and quality work, has really made me breathe easier. I really had no idea how many nagging items we had to complete around the house, but watching them all fall off the giant punch list is awesome! Bathroom light, fixed. Octagon window, caulked. Outside faucet, replaced.
Today we rented a pickup truck from UHaul, and went to Costco to pick up the patio set we've been drooling over since early April. When we got to Costco, they'd rearranged since the weekend, and it looked like they didn't have the patio sets anymore. Oh no! Thankfully, they had just moved it back further into the store. The set has 6 cast aluminum chairs, and a stone topped table. It comes in three boxes: one with the chairs and cushions, one with the base for the table and the cover for the whole set, and then the gigantic flat table top. Costco employees were kind enough to load the set onto the flat dolly, and kind enough to load the boxes onto the pickup bed. Then... we got it home. All of the boxes were too heavy for me to move (Richard had a conference call, so I was trying to be helpful), but I was able to cut open the box with the chairs and remove those piece by piece. 24 cast aluminum parts later, Richard came out and put all the chairs together and I carried them to the patio in the backyard.
Then we stared at the slab. 'I wonder how heavy it is?' we asked each other. I suggested we use the appliance dolly to move the slab to the back patio and then put the table together (since it's not gonna move after we get it together). We got the slab on the dolly, got the strap secured around it, and Richard worked to get it through the fence. Our neighbor ran over to help navigate and push with us to get that sucker up on the patio -- she's a doll. When we got the top down (still on the dolly, but horizontal) we saw the weight -- 211.2 pounds! Holy crap. That table's not going anywhere in a storm, that's for sure. We did get the bottom on the table, but unfortunately we didn't trust ourselves to get the table up off the ground. Hans will be able to help us tomorrow, so we'll finally be able to enjoy our backyard!
Tomorrow, Hans will be changing out the ceiling fan in the family room; hanging curtain rods in my office; installing new smoke/carbon monoxide detectors; swapping out can lights in the kitchen; installing a new showerhead in the guest bath and doing some caulking in there, and a few other things. Then we will be in a very good place for the familial invasion next Wednesday. Yay!
We've returned from a very productive and enjoyable trip to the bay area. Richard is now more elite than ever having passed a test that only 429 other people have in the world, and while I've always known he was special, that is quite an accomplishment. I tagged along because it's Cali, and even without crappy weather locally, I love my Cupertino and Sunnyvale stomping grounds.
In far less exciting and productive news, I hit up Cupertino Village and went through all of the asian shops. I picked up more paper star paper and lots of other origami papers, yay! I also took a trip to 99 Ranch market and picked up some various tapioca pearls, some black sesame seeds, some jelly mixes, agar agar, and some rice flour. The rice flour is to make dutch crunch bread so that I can recreate my beloved Togo's #5, Turkey with Cranberry sauce on dutch crunch bread.
We've got a busy week coming up -- the last full week before my family arrives, so there are a lot of small things to get done before they arrive. Curtain rods, ceiling fans, pillows, towels, etc, all arriving for the big day. Combine that with the herbs and pepper plants arriving this week, and it's going to be tough keeping up :)
And the kitties were happy to see us home. Tomorrow we pick up a hopefully clean and nice smelling Gbic.
A quiet anniversary, but an appreciated one. I'm sad that for the second year we've not been able to celebrate it with Leslie and Adam, but despite everything, it's been a pretty awesome year. I still feel incredibly lucky to have found someone who loves me enough to allow me to be me, and to support me no matter what comes our way.
Yes, it's early. Lots of not much going on; Richard and I are both dealing with relatively minor medical issues (unrelated to my major medical issue), and it's getting old. Spring is here along with the grass growing like gangbusters. The work Richard's put in last fall and earlier this year is really paying off... in lots more healthy grass to mow. While it definitely firmly entrenches us in suburbia, it also reminds me how I long for a more rural existence. Oh well, someday in the not so distant future, I'll have that life. For now, we keep up with the neighbors in the riding lawn mower wars.
Cookingwise, I've been in a rut. Salads with chicken are standard fare here -- not a bad thing, but definitely not exciting and new. I've bookmarked several recipes, but I've had such a high percentage of misses lately with the internet recipes that I'm still gunshy on expending the effort and ingredients for these new, untested ones.
In the garden, the good news is that all the plants are still alive, indoors and out. After our brief trip to the bay area next week, the peppers and herbs should be arriving the week of 5/18. It shouldn't be too much to get in the ground, but I will do as much prep work as possible this week.
Boring as usual...
Just as 7:45am last week was not between 8:15am and 10:15am, 7:05am is not between 7:45am and 9:45am. I would apologize for not being showered, but let's face it, y'all were lucky I had clothes on, period.
