Serendipity

 I will explain why I HATE this word, but there have been several events recently which I will reluctantly term “serendipitous”: a fortunate coincidence, somewhat related to “luck” but sounding more intellectual & fancy, dontcha think??

A.) finally having a Zoom meeting with Ferris city officials this afternoon to hear what they may or may not offer me as incentive to bring my veterinary clinic to their locale - fingers crossed that they will assure me I can get city water to that workshop property I want to purchase.

B.) I found an older mobile vet unit which we can use as temporary headquarters as our new place is being prepared - The only drawback is that it’s in Pensacola FL but hey, I’ve driven past there - it’s about 11 hours so I can hop a flight and drive it back to Texas. The serendipitous coincidence is that it is owned by an outfit which does medical & surgical facility design, kind of a counterpart to the guy I’ve been talking to here in Texas who will help us design my new office (they have no real connection, I just found it interesting to talk to him & he was certainly all-in when he knew I was a legitimate buyer: he is having new tires, a new back-up camera and new flooring installed in the unit since I won’t be able to get out there until the end of August) hopefully I can persuade Zach to go with me - we could conceivably have one day on Pensacola Beach and drive back the next.

C.) I gave a stack of portable fence panels to my friend Christina and her husband since they recently moved to her MIL’s acreage near Paris (Texas, that is - not France!) I will be planning to move what is feasible, sell off and salvage the rest in a more or less scorched-earth policy as I leave my clinic behind. This reminds me to call my HVAC man to see if it is practical to move my not-terribly-old unit to our new facility? He’s a long-term client so hopefully I can get him to store it for me as well if there is a delay in installation. Lots of moving parts here!

I wish my energy levels were better but at least my cardiac scan was normal, so we will be doing some pulmonary function testing to try to diagnose my fatigue, shortness of breath and exercise intolerance.

I’ve already scheduled my CT and MRI scans with Texas Oncology.

Izzy is helping out as much as she can!!!

And I realized that I failed to explain my strong dislike for the term “serendipity”: She Who Shall Not Be Named had a mare named “Serendipity” (yeah I know,  pretty damn pretentious for a backyard Texas ranch horse, huh?) - but as it turned out, she named the mare that in her sickeningly sweet explanation of how she found her “soulmate” - yeah you guessed it, my ex!  That bitch was way too old and wrinkled to be carrying on like some lovestruck teenager - when I came across some of her notecards it was really sickening.

Investments

 Only time will tell if these investments I’ve made were good or bad - concrete values like real estate are easier to measure. I think I cut the best deal I could on the sale of the clinic property, too bad the corporate entity didn’t go for my pitch to have THEM buy the real estate and let ME go to work for them - they are concentrating on prospects up in the big city, they’re not interested in a semi-suburban/rural practice out here in the sticks.

The value of Z’s little house in Mesquite has skyrocketed, at least according to Zillow. Saturday we made an expedition to IKEA to get him a new bookcase, a daybed, and a small dressing table as well as a couple of area rugs - we’re just gonna cover up that stained carpet for now. All those years of assembling Legos has paid off as Z got right to work putting everything together. (I’ll insert some pictures later after I go through the tedious process of emailing them to myself)

Next we have to acquire a mattress - the ones at IKEA did not seem sturdy enough for my 200-lb baby boy!

Sunday morning I taught my first yoga class at our gym - Claudia had asked me months ago, but I kept putting her off with my injuries & illness. It turned out only three older ladies showed up for it, which was fine - it was meant to be a slow-placed, meditative class anyway. (We had had a dozen on our sign-up sheet). I have committed to a month’s worth of Sunday classes and we’ll see how it goes. It was enjoyable but today I am surprisingly sore - even Yin yoga can be a workout, not to mention my step-counter showed 2.8 miles for hiking around IKEA and then getting furniture unloaded and set up at Z’s on Saturday.

I made this cutesy flyer - should’ve photo-shopped my face onto Ms Cute Young Thang 🤣😂

Steps in the Right Direction

 I could also have titled this “Adventures with the Autonomic Nervous System”

I thought I wasn’t doing too badly - that is, until I got up and got moving this morning! My R knee is stiff, my glutes are sore, my neck is “just-stiff-enough” that I’m on the verge of a headache, my eyes are puffy, itchy & swollen. (15 minute countdown until I can take some ibuprofen, spaced out from my thyroid pill)

Yesterday I had my stress echocardiogram which wasn’t too miserable - but just as well DS did not accompany me since I had to wear a ridiculous paper gown over my electrodes; good thing I’m not a shy and sensitive person since this left my tits flopping out for preliminary & post-exertion scans.

Zach had loaned me his lucky Grateful Dead T-shirt but as I said, I didn’t get to wear it anyway. I had to strip from the waist up, the technician pasted me up with electrodes, put me on the table for preliminary scans and then lined me up on the treadmill to march with increasing speed and incline until I reached a  target heart rate (at my age, this was 132 with maximum of 162) or had enough. I was getting short of breath with the familiar tightness in my chest (I wouldn’t exactly call it pain, just discomfort which is distressing enough) after about 8 minutes when she said she had what she needed - back on exam table for  another scan.

Of course the familiar phraseology: “doctor will read the scans & call me in a few days”. I’m not expecting anything dramatic - my symptoms are consistent with post-viral pericarditis/myocarditis. Hopefully things will get better with time. I made it home in time to make Diem’s Thursday night yoga class - I was a little too short on time and energy to do Bruce’s class Tuesday night, my “usual”. 

My attorney is drawing up an offer for the property in Ferris, so hopefully we will get that ball rolling. The avalanche of things to do teeters over me - there’s nothing to do but try to stay a few steps ahead of it.

Auburn by 5 AM (PST)

 Last Saturday was also the Tevis ride, the be-all if not the end-all for many endurance riders - this impaired my already shoddy productivity even more as I monitored their webcast throughout the day.

https://teviscup.org/about-the-ride/

Riders set out at 5 AM Saturday morning & have 24 hrs to make it across the Sierra Nevadas from Lake Tahoe to Auburn. This year in particular there seemed to be a preponderance of “Buckle Hour” riders who completed in that last precious hour between 4-5 AM - completion rate was also slightly lower than average (it’s generally roughly 50%, this year it was 45%). We had a fairly decent turnout of Texas riders (6 or 7?) but one friend had to bow out at the same point I did (22 yrs ago) - Deadwood due to a lost shoe.

It’s a three-day haul to get out to Northern California, giving lots of time for reflection especially if you’re going home with your tail tucked between your legs. “Why I Do This Here” ?

I got in a short ride Sunday morning with Mr. Bo, his first experience out on a real trail - with me, that is! I have no idea if his previous owner had ever ridden him outside of an arena. He did very well - of course my friends were full of plans for future camp-outs and rides. I’m having trouble seeing past the nose on the end of my face as I struggle through my malaise, and worry about clinic relocation. I did a walk-through on that workshop facility last night which has great potential, if only I can get city water to it and get the owner to agree to a reasonable price. Yet I’ll still be up to proverbial creek if & when we get there: short on staff, long on work and no help in sight! Discouraging.

Nothing to do but keep pacing forward - two more days until I hopefully get some answers with my cardiac center tests. I really hate the way I’m feeling these days but it isn’t as if I can walk off and leave this ol’ carcass - I’m pretty much stuck with it. I’ve got too many folks depending on me: mother, son, employees, clients - the suffocating weight of my responsibilities, indeed

I can’t even manage to get a decent night’s sleep - my bladder awakened me shortly before 1 AM and then it was fitful naps for the rest of the night, ugh!

Amarillo by Morning

 (Not really; en route to Ft Stanton that would mean swinging a little too far north - but “Abilene” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!)

By all rights I ought to be approaching the far Western aspect of the Texas Panhandle by now, that broad flat plain stretching before me. I think it’s a nice relaxing drive, but that decision has been made - I’m in no shape to make that haul, not with all I need to do around here.

A.) call cardiology center because if by some miracle they have a opening or cancellation today or tomorrow I surely would like to get that echocardiogram done. Still feeling pretty crappy!

B.) see if my chiropractic acupuncturist can work me in today at my usual time - while I had told them I’d be out of town, I hope Dr. H still has time for me. I haven’t seen any huge benefits from these sessions but I need to feel as if I’m doing “something”.

C.) go by clinic to perform that constant routine of life - 2nd quarter sales taxes! - and scrape together a few other facts n’ figures for my CPA, can’t escape those Big Bad Federal Income Taxes either

It doesn’t do to dwell too much on “what might have been” - I hate the fact that I missed dear Roger’s memorial service yesterday (I couldn’t have made it there in time for that even under the best of circumstances), but at least I could peruse my friends’ pictures on FB.

I love that  “Quit farting around” motto - I FEEL SEEN!!!and I also knew that Sue was Roger’s second wife;  her daughters Becky and Peggy were adopted by him and raised as his own daughters. I now have several riding-buddy widows  - ladies whose older husbands have passed away;  most of them have stayed out on the trails!

Susurrations

  When I hit the hay last night, I could hear my own heartbeat, mildly accelerated but quite noticeable when I put in my earplugs. At first I thought it was the ceiling fan!

It took me a long time to get to sleep; I couldn’t help thinking of another cyber-friend of mine - I found her low-carb blog years ago. Tess was trying to treat her hypothyroidism with a Paleo-style diet. She refused to take thyroid supplementation, eventually slipped into heart failure and died. I believe she was around 65?

Whaddaya know? Her blog is still up - I guess it really is true what they say about the Internet being forever - I enjoyed her anecdotes as well as her recipe section.

http://tesspaleojourney.blogspot.com/

One of Fort Stanton’s past uses was as a sanitarium for the Merchant Marines - while I like to fantasize about making a healing trek out there myself, I’ve got to use these four days to get a lot done. If I don’t find a place to relocate, I need to hold a Big Fire Sale (figuratively burning everything down), fold my tent, and start looking for relief gigs. Kinda sad to think that I can’t lean on P (what happened to that “in sickness & in health” clause?) but he’ll hardly stay in the same room as me - I’m certain he won’t want to support this entire hobby farm plus an invalid wife, let along offering any support to stepson or “bonus son” Alex (the lovebirds are gonna try to spread their wings in their own apartment since Alex landed an $18/hr warehouse job). Yes, I’ve been helping Alex fill in the cracks here & there.

Speaking of work, it ain’t gonna wait on me today, better get after things.

Baby Steps & Sleep Aids

 I am an inconsistent follower of Marla Cilley, aka “FlyLady” - her cleaning system is certainly to be admired with her “baby steps” & start-small philosophies. Doing something is always better than sitting around & cursing the darkness!

But another form of “baby steps”  I have begun is very light PT - I’ve also been following “Kneesovertoes” Guy, an online coach who has rehabbed his own bad knees starting with the baby step of walking backwards… Remarkable! I could feel different muscles firing all down the lengths of my calves & thighs, it has made me a little bit sore!

The long Covid group I’ve been following recommends trying for 3K steps per day initially  - no doubt I accomplish that throughout the course of a normal workday, but I’m adding on 10 min of  backwards ambulation. Adding in some of his weight training exercises as time & energy allow…

My anxiety levels are high as something needs to be decided with my clinic THIS WEEK, so sleep quality suffers. New doctor suggested trazodone but even a fragment leaves me too foggy-headed in the morning - it’s not worth it. Another thing which seems to have suffered is the quality of my dreams - it would almost be a relief to have some of my old anxiety-fueled, chase & pursuit type dreams back, where I will have at least known that I achieved some REM sleep! After a miserably restless Sat night, I let the big dogs out about 6:45 AM, scooped up lil’ Izzy & laid back down - with her help I fell back asleep for an hour and 45 minutes which was wonderful, even though I was stricken by guilt at sleeping in when I should have gotten out of the house by then! (Needed to swing by and check on my mom early since we met friends for lunch yesterday) Each morning I carefully check Clarice to make certain she’s still breathing - she is very frail these days, but as long as she’s still able to stumble around & retains her voracious appetite, we’ll keep on truckin’.

This is from a few weeks ago (she’s already beaten Z’s Easter prediction of “6 weeks”) - right now she’s still sacked out in the big bed 💕❤️

Summer of Broken Dreams

 This FB post made an impression upon me this AM: (it continued with The Religion/Spirituality Lecture which I omitted - that part was uninteresting to me)

Shelly Bender Barton

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  · 

When you die, don't worry about your body...

Your relatives and funeral staff will do it. I know this first hand. I’ve done it myself…

They will take you out of the house and deliver you to the funeral home of your family’s choice.

They will take off your clothes

They will wash you

They will dress you up

They will even apply makeup to make you look presentable

Many will come to the funeral to honor you.

Some will even cancel their plans and ask for leave to go to the funeral.

Your things--things you hate to be borrowed will be sold, donated or burned.

Your keys

Your tools

Your books

Your CDs, DVDs, games

Your collections

Your clothes...

And be sure the world won't stop and cry for you.

The economy will continue.

You will be replaced in work. Someone with the same or even better ability will take your place.

Your property will switch to heirs.

And don't doubt the small and big things you have done in your life will be spoken of, judged, doubted and criticized.

People who only knew your face will say, ′′Poor thing!"

Your good friends will cry for a few hours or several days, but then they will laugh again.

Your pets will get used to the new owner.

Your pictures will be hanging on the wall for a while, then they will be put on furniture and finally stored at the bottom of the box.

Someone else will sit on your couch and eat from it.

Deep pain in your home will last a year, two, maybe ten... Then you will join the memories and then your story will end.

It will end among people, end here, end in this world.

***********************************************************************

This summer has been almost nightmarish as I struggle on and seem unable to accomplish the simplest things… I was impressed when the cardiology center scheduled my stress echocardiogram for Thursday, but then called while I was at my acupuncture appointment to reschedule since their technician had some sort of emergency. We’re now on for July 21.

Meanwhile I sit here with my low-grade chest discomfort & shortness of breath, coming to the slow realization that I can’t haul off to New Mexico next week - that would be pushing it too hard, basically two days of driving for two days of riding. While that’s a “fair trade” I would’ve done anytime in the past, now I must consider being able to get back & be in a functional state at work - my efficiency is at an all-time low but at least I’m still able to drag through my workdays.

With the abrupt change in plans Thursday, I pivoted and was able to get my mom out to see the new Elvis movie (it’s great but dragged on for almost 3 hours). Since then it has resonated with me - poor Elvis, trapped by his obligations, the proverbial bird in a gilded cage!

I must use my time off next week to get something settled for clinic relocation and get tax stuff organized, here we are deeply into JULY! Ye gads…

Peran went to a “breathwork seminar” last night - as I hovered around an even quieter house, I half expected him to come home & make some grand announcement about our marriage, There’s something else that needs attention, but right now it’s all I can do to keep critters fed & keep my nostrils above the waterline.

One good screenshot from our 4th of July parade - Haylea on Miss Alex, my head visible above that gray gelding’s rump

Not-So-Sweet Dreams

 It felt odd to have a “real weekend”: I didn’t set an alarm on Sat or Sun. Sleep quality was fair, with my nights passing in their usual sequence of naps, but it was pleasant enough to to lounge around a bit each morning since there were no pressing needs for me to be “up & at ‘em”… After letting dogs out shortly after 6 AM Sun, I laid back down & drifted off until 8:45 - a very unusual occurrence for moi!

However, Mon AM I was jolted out of an unpleasant dream by my alarm - I had to get moving to get ready to ride in our neighborhood 4th of July parade. My subconscious was replaying Wednesday’s grim appointment - a good client brought in their rescued roughly 5-yr old Shep mix. We’ve been battling with an ugly infection in her RR foot, but now she had gone lame on her LR, with nerve paralysis. Radiographs revealed a horrible state of affairs: Dr. J’s working theory is that she was probably hit by car as a puppy, suffered a crushing pelvic injury and now has terrible degenerative disease of both hips. There is no other option rather than humane euthanasia - even if her resources were unlimited and I could send her to the surgery center for a total hip replacement, I think her pelvis is so damaged it could never work out. Understandably the owner took it rough; I prescribed a week’s worth of pain medication as I await her to do the right thing by this poor animal.

Do you understand why I have not missed these last few months where I have not had normal dream time?  I seem to be climbing out of my pit of minor vaccine reaction - I was able to prep my three ponies for the parade yesterday. Jamie came out to ride Baraq, darling Haylea rode Miss Alex, and I rode Scarlett. While it felt great to be aboard my big red mare again,  by the end of the ride I could tell she was short-striding on that right front again - obviously her endurance career is over which never ceases to fill me with deep sadness. It was great while it lasted Scarlotta!

Saturday night I also had to perform an errand of mercy for my friend Karen - her elderly gelding was going downhill and we decided to send him off on a fairly good day since she had managed to arrange for a gravedigger. Her household continues to be beset with personal drama as her daughter ricochets around between home and the baby daddy (baby A just turned 1). Sunday night she made a snap decision to go visit him in Missouri where he recently relocated with his family. Of course I’m only hearing these things through Karen but it doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship. I’m going to try to have a talk with her when she comes back;  supposedly she’s only gone for the week. 

I also struggle with my concern over my Z’s mental health: it doesn’t look good to me for him to be staying up all night, sleeping most the day and living in filth. When I went by yesterday I nagged him into showering and changing his clothes while I changed the poor kitties’ litterboxes and took out some trash. To me his household it’s like a precarious house of cards - he’s keeping everyone fed and cared for but I fear it could fall apart at any moment… I will not tolerate animal neglect.

My photographer (Mr.P)let me down yesterday but I’m hoping someone else will post some decent photos on Facebook - here is Haylea and I from 2014!

A Hard Day’s Night

 …followed closely by a hard night’s day - ??!!?? Doesn’t quite have the same resonance, nor the catchy tune accompanying it.

Nevertheless, I’m hitting another hard stretch of trail, with nothing else to do but keep moving forward (obviously). I like the new doctor - we’re running lots of bloodwork and I’ll get that long-overdue cardiac workup scheduled. (She also nagged me about colonoscopy and mammography - yes all these fun-filled diagnostic tests for which I’m overdue) but she also talked me into a Moderna booster which I was highly skeptical of - she claimed it has helped several other patients with long Covid symptoms similar to mine. It does make sense to try to kick the old immune system in the rear end, even though it’s really rough this morning facing a full workday with a sore arm, a dull headache and a resurgence of the same old nagging malaise that has dogged me for these past seven months. I’m attacking it from both sides with Western medicine’s mRNA vaccine coupled with Eastern therapies in the form of acupuncture, yoga, meditation and my herbal potions…

She also did my gynecological exam and another overdue test - my good old-fashioned Pap smear. (Nothing seemed to be amiss OJ ;-) She even played psychiatrist as I explained my dissatisfaction with MDA & recent attempts to find a GP to coordinate This Fine Mess of Val’s health care. She wanted to hear all about my pharmaceutically-resistant depression - maybe I never gave any medication a fair shake but I hated all side effects! I actually wasn't doing too badly with my good ol' "3-legged stool" of diet/exercise/sleep management that is, until my recent trials & tribulations...

Zach’s R shoulder has been paining him (again) but my young man has not committed as to whether he’d rather go back to his surgeon or have my chiropractor evaluate him (he’s got tingling pain and numbness of his outer three fingers). Mommy’s got enough on her plate, darling - I’m happy to help (musculoskeletal injuries seem so much simpler, even though my heart bleeds for my dear boy, probably facing a lifetime of low-grade misery as a consequence of having his arms wrung like a chicken’s neck in high school wrestling matches) - but he’s got to CHOOSE!

Mr Binx chillaxing 

     Beautiful male anole at Z’s

Nice office, hope it’s a good fit for me