Friday, April 22, 2011

Better than nothing...

John is home from Rome, safe and sound. He had a good time and took 245 photos and videos! It will take a while to sort and load all of them to Flickr, but they'll be there in a few days, I imagine.

I was enjoying some sunshine on the lower balcony this morning, when suddenly I detected a scent like tire air. Yuck! My brain finally came to grips with the stank after a few minutes and determined it was fish. It is ironic that the smell made me say, "Jesus Christ! What is that smell?!" on Good Friday, which is why there was the smell of fish cooking in the first place. I thought maybe it was the downstairs neighbors, but the absence of cooking smells in the stairwell made me think instead that it was the restaurant next door.

Hannah is on school vacation and is taking her loafing responsibilities very seriously. She had to get off the couch to set the table for dinner and said her head hurt and her neck was sore. That's because your brain juice seeped out with all the lounging around, I told her, but she was sure that wasn't it.

I cleaned the downstairs balcony a couple of weeks ago, the shared stairwell yesterday, and the upstairs balcony today, and I don't want to look at a broom or mop again any time soon.

Hannah loves the A-Team movie that was actually an xmas present from her Aunt Kee to John. She was rather put out yesterday that I didn't want to watch it with her, but was gracious enough to accept Goonies as a substitute. So she watched it by herself today while I did various other things upstairs. I'm not sure what the attraction is; probably an initial interest in anything with one of the actors from the Star Wars franchise--in this case, Liam Neeson--furthered by the attractiveness of some of the male stars.

In other Star Wars news, Hannah is addicted to a web video series about Chad Vader, supermarket assistant manager and Sith Lord. When she's not watching season 7 of Scrubs online (which hasn't been released here). She's managed to cram a lot of entertainment into 2 days of vacation so far.

--Nee in Germany says she'll take the general spring smell + marauding puffs over fish smell any day

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Draggin' Ass

I hadn't even noticed, but my last entry was my 800th post here. (!) I know I haven't been posting as frequently the last couple of years as when I first started this blog, lo those many years ago, but I wouldn't have guessed I had gotten within waving distance of 1000.

I am pooped out today after 2 bad nights of sleep. John is at a conference for most of this week, and I usually go to bed later and sleep lighter when he is not there. That was night 1. Last night, I was attached to a portable EKG monitor and woke up every time I wanted to change position and had to move it so I didn't lie on it or pull the cables out. I also discovered that I couldn't lie on my left side because one of the leads would press on a nerve or something and cause such a powerful buzz that it woke me up, twice. I think I was done with deep sleep after that.

While I had the device on yesterday, I did as many tasks as I could think of that might set off the fluttery feeling I've been trying to describe to my docs: washed dishes, fed the cats (which requires some flexibility due to the cat-food storage situation and the locations of their bowls), straightened up in various rooms, vacuumed, cooked, hell--I even quilted. For some reason, sitting in the recliner with my knees up and leaning over my work sometimes sets it off. Then this morning before taking it back, I did my Wii routine (earlier than usual) since some of the yoga positions also sometimes trigger it.

I got home from the doc a little after 10 and have been pretty useless since then. Good thing I didn't have any work waiting for me. Hannah's on Easter vacation as soon as she gets home from tutoring this afternoon, so we can veg out a bit this evening (I'll give her a break on the studying tonight, but then it's back to the coal mines tomorrow). [Speak of the devil and she calls you on her cell phone to tell you she is on her way home.]

Also, I still smell like that awful hospital combination of antisceptic and baby powder, so I need to get in the shower at some point, if I can find the energy to get off this chair.


I had to get up to let the blind down against the late afternoon sun and discovered that Eliza (aka Poofy, aka Scaredy Cat, aka You F*cking Furbag) has been napping on the extra chair in my office the whole time. This is the cat who is so skittish, she has only in the last year worked up the nerve to come into the living room while we are sitting in there ("we" includes her favorite person, John), who had to have her cat dish placed under the stairs in order to ensure that she has a fighting chance at some wet cat food each morning since my running the water to rinse out the cat food pouch or to make coffee scares her out of the kitchen. We are not sure if she is the "who" that somehow dribbled cat nibble on John's side of the bed, but since that is her normal hideout, it is possible.


In gardening news, I got the empty flower boxes on the lower balcony filled with dirt and seeded about 2 weekends ago, and now I have seedlings! I think the fastest seedlings are from seeds I harvested myself from our flowers last year. That would be an exciting turn of events. I also cleaned the ashes off the balcony floor, and John would like me to point out that when I talked about how they got there last time, I somehow magically described the whole thing without managing to mention specifically that *I* was the dastardly, ash-spreading villain. Unfortunately, in the week-and-a-half since then, we have entered that time of spring when anything left outdoors for more than 5 minutes will be covered in a fine dusting of yellow pollen and surrounded by a swirling cloud of puffy plant matter. I guess I'll be cleaning that up in another couple of weeks.


I was supposed to clean the common stairwell earlier this week (officially, we are in charge of it for this week, but earlier in the week is encouraged), but I ran out of energy yesterday and don't think I'll be finding any more today. Complicating the matter, we have new neighbors below us, and I think they may still be moving some stuff in. Oh well, I'll do it tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed no one slips.

--Nee in Germany says it's better to be pooped out than pooped on