MRI Tomorrow

The MRI is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 6:30 am.  Since I am an early riser this is no big deal.  I hope they have some one to read it quickly and get me the results by next week.  I need to know.

Mia and I are taking another three day weekend and spending it at our trailer in the woods.  At first we thought our grandson might be joining us but it looks as though he may have a couple of issues to deal with that will keep him home.

There probably won't be a lot of walking for me as the knee is still bothering me.  It hurt really bad last night when I went to bed but I was up on it all day.

I was very sorry to learn of the fire that lauraswesty.blogspot.com experienced just after installing a new engine in her wonderfully restored VW Westy.  I have worked with VW for years and have seen things like this but it is so disheartening to see it right after you restore and put a new engine into a classic.

Motor on and be safe.

Interesting Weekend

After standing around at the walk yesterday my knee had some pain when I got home.  It seems to feel tight at times and gets really painful after I sit for sometime, like driving home from the walk.  I went in search of my discharge papers and found a letter from the Commanding Officer, U. S. Naval Air Station, Seattle, Washington dated 3 November 1964 essentially telling me that I deemed unfit to serve in the U. S. Naval due to physical qualification and by reason of chondromalacia, severe, symptomatic, bilateral.  Since I apparently was born with the condition and the service merely aggravated it, I was left with no benefits of any kind.  I have been reading up on this condition and it fits what is currently happening with my knee which now bodes the question, what the hell is going on with my shoulder?  I will pass this information on to the doctors but I will not be surprised to find out that it has nothing to do with what is currently happening inside my joints.

I went to the store with Mia this morning and when we returned home I sat down for a bit.  I get so tired of sitting even though I know it is the right thing to do until we find an answer.  I got up and finished a project I started a couple of weeks ago.  Mia purchased some wall lamps for our bedroom and wanted them installed.  I had started by installing hers but failed to finish putting mine up.  So this morning I did just that.

Start with a blank wall

Add a mounting plate

Install the lamp fixture

Find a green light bulb

Put on a lamp shade and test.

So I managed to finish that project, clean up and put away my tools before I started to feel like I should get off my leg.  I sat down, surfed the internet, watched a movie on Hulu and once again got tired of sitting.

I hooked Honey up to the long outside yard lease and went down into the garage.  I have been going to cut a 2x4 to use across the bed of my truck as a divider so stuff I put in the back of the bed doesn't end up all the way up in front of the bed.  Really no big deal.  Cut it to 58" and presto you have a divider.  I then packaged up some tools and equipment for our three day weekend in Gold Bar next week.

I have a fairly short week this week.  Working in the store Monday - Wednesday, meeting all day Thursday and off Friday.  Got to love vacation.  Oh, MRI is the 13th early in the morning.  Not sure when I will get the results.

Hope you have an excellent week.

CCFA Walk and Saturday Flair Up

At around 12:30 pm today I got Honey ready for a road trip and headed over to my daughters house to pick up my grandson, granddaughter and a friend of theirs for a short trip up to the Warren G. Magnuson Park in North Seattle.  This was a U.S. Naval Air Station when I was a kid and was my home base during my short stint in the Naval Air Reserve.  Back then it was called Sandpoint Naval Air Station.  I spent several weekends on duty and training at this air station and went there for my four week boot camp during the summer of my junior year in High School.  With a little over a week to go I was hit with an issue that left me unable to stand up or walk.  I landed in the hospital for a couple of days before being ordered to go home and await further orders.  The orders came shortly after my senior school year began.

I was to report to Bremerton Naval Ship Yard to the Naval Hospital where I was interviewed and examined by at Naval doctor.  He gave me some big long medical term and said that I had what was called stress failure of the knee.  Anytime my knee was under stress (this case a 12 hour forced march) I could find myself having issues with swelling and pain.  Both knees were involved and he simply could not sign off on letting me go on to a ship for fear I might get trampled to death should an incident occur during general quarters.  Sadly I was discharged from the Navy with an honorable discharge for medical reasons.  I was not real happy about having to leave the Navy without having served.  They said they could do surgery and replace the knees but it was a 50/50 chance I would be stiff legged after they were done so I opted out of the surgery.  At the time I was told that I was not eligible for any benefits since I had not been on active duty so I basically got nothing.

Back to the reason for the trip to the old military base, now a Seattle park.  Each year the CCFA (Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America sponsors a fund raising walk of roughly 3 miles through the beautiful park that lies right next to Lake Washington, Seattle's biggest body of fresh water.



The family that own's the business that I work for, has several members who are living with this disease and they participate in helping the foundation raise money towards the hope that one day someone will discover a cure.  We always support the family in this walk.  We have gone every year since I started working for them.

While I was unable to do the walk because of my current health issues, I did go out of respect for my boss and his family.  Mia and Zach participated in the walk and they were the first two walkers that I saw cross the finish line.  We left shortly after they finished as we had some other projects to accomplish.

Corvettes do attract the lookers

Chaplin's tent, Mr Chaplin in dark glasses to the right, you can see his head behind the lady with the red hair.

A large crowd gathered at our tent

Other tents on the way to the start line

The back side of our tent.  Mia in the yellow coat and Zach with his back to you in the hat and grey sweatshirt

Day Off

I have a lot of vacation to use up between now and next March so I have started to take a couple of Fridays off each month.  This is the first of 17 or so that will be spread over the next few months.  I haven't got anything planned since we have an engagement that we need to attend tomorrow afternoon.  I suspect today will be a nothing day because I have been up since 1:30 am this morning.

 I awoke with a lot of leg pain and an ankle that felt like it was on fire.  I got up and took a pain pill and tried to go back to bed but it didn't work so I got up.  I have several appointments scheduled over the next few weeks so the doctors can try to figure out what is causing all the aching and pain in my leg and shoulder.  I just hope they find out soon because pain is the most debilitating thing I have ever experienced.  It makes me tired, angry, depressed and short with people.  I don't like nor do I wish to be the person it wants me to be.

We attended the graduation of a friends daughter last night.  She is an amazing young person who persevered in spite of her circumstances.  Even though she isn't technically a relative she invited us to attend her graduation and I could not think of any place I would have rather been last night.

I have written about our societies disregard and lack of respect before and last night showed me some of the root causes.  As I have said, I tend to be early for all my engagements because that is the way I was brought up.  Respect the other persons time and be on time.  Last night our group was early and seated ready to listen to the speeches and watch the graduation.  Seven o'clock arrived and the assistant principle began the program.  Using a microphone he started to speak while several members of the audience continued to talk for a couple of minutes.  During some of the speeches I heard cell phones ringing.  People arrived late and walked past others who were already seated.  The late arrivals went on for almost fifteen minutes.   It is not wonder that kids today don't respect others or their time when their parents, guardians and friends show a total lack of respect for them by showing up late to their graduation.  I was shocked.   At my graduation the administration locked the door and if you were late, you were out.

Bloggers

Mia is still sleeping so I made coffee and sat down to read the blogs that I follow.  I had time this morning so I decided to respond to several of them.  It was kind of nice to leave a remark.
I read Rick and Paulette's RV Travels and Rick was discussing another bloggers layout.  I went to the blog he mentioned,  Bob (How To Love Where You Are and EAt Where The Locals Eat) and discovered that I wasn't following him or several of the blogs that he follows.  I often look at other bloggers sites (especially ones I have just found) for new sites that I haven't looked at.  I continue to add some to my list of blogs that I follow.  I know find I have this really long list of blogs that I am following and wonder how the heck I will keep up with all the exciting adventures and make comments.  Just the few I added this morning gave me 44 new posts to read.
It is kind of nice to have nothing to do early on a Sunday morning.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I heard an ad on the radio about things kids learn from parents.  I thought it was interesting that it mentioned one of the things that kids learn is that if your not five minutes early, you are late.   Both my parents and my military experience taught me this valuable lesson and I am still punctual today, sometimes more that required.  The doctors office tell me to check in 15 minutes early, I usually arrive 30 minutes early.  I have never been late to work.  Personal issues, bad weather, snow, traffic have not kept me from getting to my job site on time.

I have made it a personal agenda to arrive early enough to be completely prepared for what the day has in store.  Our store opens at 8:00 o’clock A.M. and when it is my responsibility to open the store, it opens five minutes early even if there are no customers waiting.

Most personnel from earlier generations see no problem with arriving late to work.  All kinds of excuses follow as they saunter into the store and take their time getting ready to go to work.  And they wonder why I can’t understand that it is okay for them to stay up late, sleep through their alarm and slip into work late or have to be called to get up.  They can’t understand when I drive 30 some miles to work through all kinds of weather, why I take exception to them telling me they can’t get to work when we have a couple of inches of snow.

I am somewhat upset when my own grandson admits his generation is lazy, lax and could care less.  Don’t thinking that I am judging everyone in any given generation.  I am not.  I have late people in my generation, just not as many.

 I think we need to teach respect.  Respect for other peoples time.  Respect for others regardless of who they are.  Good manners, not bad language. Being tolerant and accepting of differences  Respect for elders.  Respect for others property.  Respect for life and how precious it is and that it shouldn’t be wasted without justification.

Pain and Suffering

It is a dreary, rainy, early Saturday afternoon as I sit in the trailer and pound out some blog entries and work on other things using Word.  No point in going outside as it is raining off and on.

 We didn’t make it to Gold Bar on Friday night like we usually do because Mia had to work a little later than she had expected.  That was okay because I would not have been real comfortable in the trailer. 

I’ll get to me in a minute, but first I’ll inform you of an issue that arose a little over a week ago.  We noticed that Honey was favoring one front paw.  We suspected she might have something in between the pads as Mia had seen what looked like dried blood.  But we never saw the cut and she didn’t seem to get any better.  By last Sunday night she was hobbling pretty good and not putting a lot of weight on it.  You know it has to hurt if she isn’t putting any of her weight (she is really small) on it.

Mia took her to the vet on Monday and was informed that Honey is suffering from a serious shoulder inflammation that could become chronic if we aren’t able to get it cured.  So for two weeks, no long walks for Honey and she has to be carried everywhere and can only go out to go potty.  They gave her some pills and they tend to keep her quiet.  She is not a happy camper because she loves her walks.  She makes like she wants to go outside hoping someone will take her for a walk.  It is very painful to watch an otherwise active dog go through something like this.

Likewise it is painful to go through a similar circumstance.   My shoulder is still bothering me.  Sometimes the aching is so bad I just want to scream.  I am working full days and trying to keep up but the pain is so bad sometimes that I just want to crawl off into a hole.

Add to that, my managerial decision to allow the guys who  work Saturday to have Monday off thus putting myself up to fill the empty holes on the counter and sure as heck something else is going to pop up.  I have and MRI scheduled for the 13^th and I suspect I will (I hope) finally find out what is causing the shoulder pain.  Being on my feet all day last Monday left me suffering from knee pain that night.  An ice pack and rest and it seemed better on Tuesday.  I didn’t have to work the counter Tuesday so things were fine until Wednesday when one of the guys didn’t come in and I was put back on the counter to assist.  By the time Friday came, my knee was really sore and I hobbled in the house last night, took a pain pill and went to bed early.  The shoulder pain I have had up to now was nothing compared to the pain that developed in my right leg after I went to bed.  I thought more than once of having Mia call 911.  I suffered for two hours and finally fell asleep.  I awoke at midnight to discover no pain in the leg or knee but my shoulder was aching again, so I got up.  It was 1:30 am when I climbed out of bed.

I could understand all of this if there was swelling and/or obvious inflammation.  But nothing, absolutely nothing.  I will continue to work through it.  I suspect I’ll have to have my knee looked at after the shoulder is diagnosed.  I said something to my boss about all this stuff late last week and he looked at me and said, “Ain’t getting old a bitch”.  I responded with some words he hadn’t heard me say very often and I won’t repeat here.
This should be interesting.  I have a weak wifi signal from the park office.  Wonder how long it will take for this blog entry to download.