life goes on...

despite my coughing. the health report for the day. getting better. the z-pack is working like a charm, my spit is now a nice clear colour. that is over 24 hours now. no vomit for 24 hours as well. fingers crossed. still hacking my hole off (as my friend sandra would say, perhaps some canadian catch phrase, but it seems to apply). yesterday i decided to venture into the trails of north bivouac. it wasn't my best hike of the week. it was beautiful, but i had a tickle in the throat incident that led to some trailside wretching and puking. very attractive. i also had another incident both embarrassing and uncomfortable. as you can see blossom struggles above to get out of the heavy wet snow. coughing makes ones need to void more urgent. i tried to get off trail to use the natural facilities. well the snow is like thigh deep. dropped my drawers and fell into the snow. i was a bit wet and cold post trailside pee and it made for a less than pleasant walk to the car. thank god for my skhoop, it's like the skirt when you kayak, a privacy zone. came home and took a shower, followed by a nap. have watched alot of "the big bang" reruns over the past week. they still make me laugh so that is helpful. it's the little things in life. took 2 more nights off. have given up for the week and will try again next week anew. i know i've complained all week about my bronchitis, but it's just boredom. really, i know i have a fabulous life and that my pets live better than a great percentage of people i share this earth with. my home, by american standards, is a pretty humble abode, but i know that in some countries 4 familes would happily share this small space with it's indoor plumbing, heat and electricity. it would be a dream. my friend marcia called today. can't recall how it came up but as we get older we begin to see our parents as the actual people that they are. love my mom, but i was recalling a conversation i'd had with her several times while talking to marcia. my mom was complaining about thier financial woes. somehow she seemed to believe that God should bless her financially. she was angry that despite her paying tithes and such, god wasn't blessing her.
in the church i grew up in, at least the wards we attended, it seemed there was a bit of this undercurrent that if you were good, god made you rich or i guess that if you were rich it was because you were good. this was not a religious doctrine, more of a social idea. i expressed to my mom that it seemed blasphemous to expect god to bless you in certain ways. she was blessed. she has 7 healthy kids. we are all doing reasonable well in our lives, hold jobs and all that. we were never homeless, we always had food and clothing. if you believe in a god then i think you should also accept that this god knows better than you what it is you need. god is who decides how you will be blessed, it is up to you to be grateful for whatever blessings come your way.
loved my mom, but in a few areas i found later in life, she could have improved. i think she had in her head at a young age how her life would play out and then lived with the disappointment of it not playing out that way. this disappointment in turn became anger at my dad for failing her. life changes and i believe a huge part of our growth on this earth is our ability to adapt to the changes. life doesn't always follow some set path. you could wallow in it or you could just adapt and find a new path to happiness. in my early teen years my mom complained to me alot about she and my dads marriage issues. i had a tough relationship with my dad as it was and i remember being in the car with her yet again when this started up. i recall i finally just looked at her and said something like, " if you are this unhappy, then get a divorce, but you have to stop talking to me about all this, he is my dad". my dad and i did have a rocky relationship. i eventually made my peace with it. i decided that he was an excellent father, but i would have liked having a daddy. i am jealous of girls who have the dads who dote on them. my father was perpetually critical. i never did anything right. eventually, i realized that even though he could never say how he felt he was actually happy with how i turned out and even a little proud. i'm so happy that he was able to visit me in alaska. i could totally tell that he loved his time here and i knew then that he was pretty excited about who i'd become. that i was independant and living a life that brought me happiness. of the two of them, he was ultimately the one who most accepted me for who i was. as for the father part, he worked very hard every day, set aside his dreams, in order to keep a family of 7 fed, clothed and housed. he never drank, smoked, gambled, slept around or beat us up. he was everything his father hadn't been able to be for him. his reality was just different than my moms. from where my dad came from in his life, he was a huge success. my mom had just came from such a different world. he never had a chance. funny how people end up together. i've decided much of love is luck. luck wasn't my friend when it came to love, but having watched my parents marriage...being alone seems a better choice than being in a marriage that brings unhappiness. not sure why i'm dwelling on the parents marriage tonight. people across the globe live these lives that look different to those outside than the reality is. i think my insight comes from being the youngest. the dynamics just change. i see pictures of them when they were younger, who were those people?
one day i decided to paint my bedroom. this was another day when i got insight into my mom and dads relationship. my mom constantly complained about our house and all the work it needed. i bought paint and supplies for less than $25 and the room was painted and looked much better after one day of painting. my mom never took that initiative to just do the little things to improve the house, she just waited for it to be done for her. when i realized how little effort it actually took, it changed how i viewed the dynamics of the relationship they had. before that i had blamed my dad for all, finally i saw that they both had flaws. probably opened the door for my dad to recover our relationship somewhat. my mom should have just taken some responsibilty for her own happiness. there was stuff she could have done, she just didn't think it was her responsibility. my parents are both gone now. no more chances to repair any relationships. i felt pretty good at the time of thier deaths that we were okay. my dad and i weren't to part with the warm, fuzzy relationship i had once hoped for, but we had come to understand each other and respect each other. they were just two people who met, married and had a family. they were dealing the best they knew how with what had been flung at them. overall, they did okay. we were raised with all that we needed. though my teens years were rough, the early years had more laughter and love. there are still questions that i come up with that i wish i would have asked them. i wish i could have heard more about my dads early days in life, but he never spoke freely about such things and i wasn't capable of asking. it occurs to me that it may be the hycodan taking me down memory lane. like truth serum.luckily for me my dogs do not have opposable thumbs, lord knows the things they have observed about me. living alone you don't get that check and balance that comes with living with others and being observed. the roads were supposedly icy today so i opted to stay close to home. the coughing is exhausting and i have slept more than usual. only woke once last night with a coughing spasm so it's all improving as i said. life with bronchitis. soon i will just have a dry nagging cough that will last another several weeks and then it will be gone too. rio joined us on a walk in the bog. in the picture above you can see the shine of the ice that is now the surface of everything. i about killed myself when i ventured out to check the mail tonight.
i am extremely grateful to whomever took a shovel to the entrance to the bog at the end of my street. before we had a mountain to climb over. a bit rough for rio i think. happily some kind soul cleared the path and put a few snow steps in. sweet! there are nice people everywhere. life does go on beyond my bronchitis. not always good stuff. just makes me simple life seem all the better. some guy in utah lost custody of his kids and proceeded to go after them with a hatchet before blowing up the house with him and them inside. the poor case worker who was there to supervise the visit had the door slammed in her face and stood helplessly by. those poor kids and that poor woman. it's just unfathomable that anyone could do that to thier own children. i mean how could you do that to anyone, but your kids?
more close to home a 3 year old is dead and the 1 year old sibling hospitalized due to severe neglect. they were apparently naked in a bedroom that had the window open to the severe weather outside. in barrow, where this occured, the temps were like -30 or something. obviously alot that nobody will know happening in that house. it always leaves me thinking...why do people like this have children at all? in other sad news, an 18 year old barista was taken from the stand she was working at. that was over a week ago with no apparent leads that i've heard reported. that can't be good. blossom with her kitty cat. she tries to act indifferent but i think secretly she really likes her miss breezy chatterbug. my hycodan is making me sleepy, soon i will be snoring away like miss rio catalina is right now...well hopefully not as loudly as she is. love watching the animals sleep. always makes me feel thier peace. they have a happy life and have no expectations. they are what they are, they live day by day, minute by minute. the other night rio was dreaming and her tail was wagging. love when they wag in thier dreams. makes me think i must be doing right by them. raising good dogs is much easier than kids, less at stake, but it's still fun in it's own way. my readers digest arrived today, as did my alaska magazine. don't think i'll get much read before i'm out. thanks for visiting. always fun checking my stats. peace...out...

sleep by night, expectorate by day...

didn't actually sleep all that well though. i got freaked out about my new bottle of hycodan syrup. it tasted different. it usually tastes good, now it tastes mediciney. plus through the night i was extremely whipped by the drug. i usually know just how much to take. i was in a drugged out state much of night, concerned that they had perhaps mixed it wrong. called the pharmacy in the morning to be told that nope, it's pre-made, they had just switched to a generic brand. i got a big bottle of bad tasting generic. bummer. i will request the real stuff next time.
did eventually get out of my hycodan haze and out on the trails. it may have been well after 1pm. i was ready to venture beyond the bog today. took the dogs to rovers run. i'm sure we took much, much longer than usual. blossom was perfectly happy to chase her tennis ball for a longer stretch of time though and rio is always pretty accomadating. i know people heard me coming before they ever saw me. i get out there and i hack and cough and got some pretty yellow/green chunks up...it feels so good to expectorate!! what can i say, at this point it's the little things in life that bring me joy! out is good. people weren't too chatty on the trail for some reason and passed by quickly. i really felt like i should be wearing a biohazard sign on me. happily, dogs don't judge! did run into luke and emma, a few labradoodle friends we know. thier mom was out for a ski. i made her keep her distance from me and we exchanged pleasantries as the dogs did the same. i do believe i'm on the winning side of this bug though. i will still have my usual bronchitis crap to deal with for the next several weeks, but i felt well enough for that walk and to run a few errands afterwards. luckily, i wasn't the only person coughing at the AT&T store. they replaced my iphone case for free. a section just broke off....and no i didn't drop it. they all seemed to ask me that. so i have a new case. check. cat litter box cleaned, check, laundry, check, dishes done, check, bills paid, check....so happy to be able to actually get a few things accomplished for the first time in a week! now before i get too confident on the recovery process my body decided to give me one of those tickles in the throat i so loathe. this resulted in another coughing/vomit event. so i'm not there yet. i'm am on the right track. caught blossom in the act of being a bad doodle. if it's really possible to be a bad doodle. she's so dang cute i sneak in and take a picture before i give her the most commanding reprimand for bad doodle behaviour. this has become a post meal habit of hers. the dogs finish, she hangs back, i go to let rio outside and when i return she is dryer surfing for leftover cat food. bitch...i can call her that cause she really is one!
how could she misbehave when i took her for that nice long walk and threw her tennis ball for 3 miles...not only that i took them to petsmart for supplies and sniffs. i'm coming to prefer petsmart over petco now that we have both. they are just super friendly with the dogs at petsmart. i'm a sucker for dog attention! i do like the rawhide bar at the petco though. spent more than expected at petsmart today, i blame it on the hycodan haze i was still under for half the day. bought this moving mouse for the cats. really for miss breezy chatterbug. caught blossom with it once as well. you push the button and it "runs" around. breezy seemed to enjoy monitoring it's activities, but i suspect she isn't a natural mouser, she never got to close to it. i also broke down and bought one of those furminator combs for pogi. they were on sale. crazy how pricey those things are. i expect the dang thing to be motorized or something. it really just looks like a glorified flea comb. started trying it on pogi, but the price doesn't include a cooperative kitty guarantee. will have to work on that one! lots of people read the blog yesterday, thanks for visiting. apparently, my misery is entertaining. hehe. watched, "blindside" last night. great movie. time to get this girl to bed. thanks again for coming and checking out the blog. hopefully soon i'll be out taking more entertaining pictures and talking about something besides my mucous production issues.

every so often we all do stupid things....

last night mine was deciding to go into work. i always hem and haw about the calling out sick thing as i mentioned in my last post. guilt, guilt, guilt. after calling out 3 nights in a row i decided in my demented brain that 12 hours would be no big deal. longest 12 hours ever! not a smart idea at all. they would have coped though in truth they were short handed with me there as it was. the day charge had to stay until 11pm. we hear help is coming...by the time it arrives the censes will drop and then we will all be floating to nicu and complaining about having too much staff. sunday i walked the bog and then wandered out into the neighborhoods and up to patterson, then back home. just lengthens the usual bog walk. change of scenery anyway.many of our usually wide streets have been turned into one lane roads. kinda dangerous to walk the streets. sunday though so not bad. luckily people seem to be driving slower on the side streets, at least yesterday they did. the post office has to find your mailbox to deliver mail. felt reasonable yesterday. i always seem to conviently forget about "break up". never a good thing. either it's a relationship gone bad, the mess that comes post winter but before spring or in my case...all the crap in my lungs begins to mobilize and make it's way north. this means my coughing increases exponentially and i get miserable. my cough is the worst! i've had neighbors tell me they almost called 9-1-1 it sounded so horrible. generally, when my cough is worsening i am feeling better. that really wasn't the case last night. i'm sure staying awake all night didn't help. talking doesn't help either and it's not easy to not talk on a 12 hour shift in a hospital. i wore a mask in patients rooms. i'm sure they were concerned though. this is keva, a neighborhood friend. last night i brought everything i thought i would need to get through the night. it all pretty much failed me. right at shift change i culminated in a coughing spasm that sent me to the back room to try and control myself. coughed so hard i doubled over and proceeded to puke into my hands...luckily, i haven't eaten much over these last several days. it was totally disgusting! didn't do too badly overall through night, but this morning i was exhausted and losing it. i pinned my hopes on swinging by employee health on the way out and getting some perscriptions called in. i was hacking when i arrived, but the lady at the counter said that they had no room for walkins that morning. she said i could return at 10:15. there is no way in hell i could get back at that time. i was stretched emotionally and was about to burst into tears so i just left. in retrospect, if i'd burst into tears they would have no doubt actually seen me then. dang me for trying to be so tough and independant!! i then thought i'd drive to where i remembered a urgent care center being. it's no longer one. in my exhausted state the best option was to go home and sleep a bit and then try again. the monday walk was out of the question for me. they went on without me. it was such a pretty day. the pictures they texted looked like all were happy. :-) patterson...they have these cool sidewalk plowers in town. they are pretty quick in my opinion at getting out there on the main roads. when i woke a few hours after i'd fallen asleep i called employee health. they had an appointment available in like 20 minutes so i took it and loaded up the dogs. everyone was so nice and the nurse practitioner upon hearing me coughing asked if i'd been there in the morning. she recognized my cough it was so uniquely pathetic and horrible. she apoligized for them not getting me in and basically gave me anything i wanted. i was still on edge emotionally and almost started to bawl in the office. that is what lack of sleep, food and fluids does to you.
tonight in a happier home, blossom and miss breezy chatterbug enjoy the fire.after employee health i headed to the dog park with the girls. i took no pictures today though it was pretty out. we couldn't do the loop the normal way as there was a rather annoyed moose out there. some dogs were harrassing the poor thing. the moose are hungry, tired and irritable...i can totally relate! anyway, we backtracked and crossed the lake. the dogs enjoyed the change of scenery as did i.
figured i'd head to the pharmacy to see how long it would take to get my z-pack and hycodan syrup. it was all ready when i arrived! my day is improving!!! these are just pictures from the bird activities...and squirrel activities in my backyard feeders. the squirrel is like a pet..blossoms nemisis. he seems happy with him living situation and the birds are happy to so i don't chase him off. i think he lives in my shed. i took my first ab's and my first dose of antitussive and settled in for a nap. blossom woke me at dinnertime but i must say it was the first time i'd felt good for days. less cough, more able to breath. rest is critical! this is my sad tale in a consolidated state..though i doubt it sounds that way.did i mention taking a small dry erase board to work and trying to write on it and avoid conversations. i wrote, "trying not to talk, makes cough worse". i used it a few times, but it's hard not to talk in the course of a night at work...especially for some of us more than others!! off to what hopefully is a health inducing slumber and a better day tomorrow!

i am a snot factory

at least lately i only get the big bad bronchitis once a year. i get it pretty bad though. all the coughing is just exhausting. it also seems to burn alot of calories. i am hungry all the time, but too tired to cook really so i just snack on various items that don't look or taste at all appealing to me. only to feel totally hungry a few hours later. these are the days when being alone sucks, but then my coughing and snot is so bad i would feel terrible for anyone trying to live with me anyway. so far i haven't done the cough then vomit thing. close, but not yet. read, watch tv, play some games on the iphone, sleep...repeat. that is pretty much the last several days. poor blossom didn't get out for a walk thurs or friday. today was beautiful and i wish i'd had the energy for a longer walk, but we did manage to get out to the bog for a loop. blossom was thrilled. it always does my soul good to be walking, even if i'm slow and short of breath. took a few pictures, mostly because i had to stop so often to cough and blow chunks of snot out my nose. i feel terrible that i've called out sick 3 days in a row. i tend to go back to work too early due to said guilt though and my coughing makes others give me those looks that say what the hell are you doing at work sounding like that. i have some history with sickness and guilt though. when i was a kid and was febrile i would be haunted by this short, fat guy and a tall skinny guy. they would taunt me that i wasn't really sick and say horrible mean things to me. they were just bad dreams, but they came everytime i was sick. also had one boss call me at home when i was home ill and accuse me of lying about it. always paranoid. i have chronic bronchitis, which at this stage of life really means i have a reactive airway issue. when i get a cold bug it doesn't just run it's course like others colds, it turns into an airway issue.
the trail opening to the bog is usually level with the street. currently we have a mountain to climb up and over to get to the trail. the first picture is in bog today, the second is blossom getting ready to climb back to street level. blossom swims through all our snow to get her frisbee. i required a nap after this walk...as i seem to after any activity. it was my plan to hit the supermarket right after this walk, but it took me til 9pm to do that. i'm happy i did if only to start the engine up on the car. haven't gone anywhere for days. my brain is so foggy that as i was in the cold remedy aisle i noted that i had several items at home that could have been helping me these past few days, but i just totally forgot them. i like that vicks rub and i also have a humidifyer that i can put the vicks stuff in right by my bed. did buys some smaller nosestrips as i had accidently bought a larger size and now have ripped off a chunk of my nose. ouch!more of blossom in the snow. she refused to go out there again and instead carried her frisbee to the other side of the field. she woke me up several times last night. not sure why. i'm wondering now if my breathing was concerning her and she was actually just checking on me? would a dog do that? one cool, happy thing from the week. when i was christmas shopping i found these little solar operated flowers. you put it in the windowsill and when the sun comes up, the little thing starts bouncing around. silly thing brings a smile to me every morning now and i watch it slow back down and stop at night.read a book this week, "remarkable creatures", a novel by tracy chevalier. have read several of her previous novels and have always enjoyed them. she just writes a book that is easy and entertaining to read. about fossil hunters out beachcombing. i guess parts of it are based on true stories of a fossil hunter who made some discoveries. a different time and women had different roles as well as classes being more delineated. always fun to read about rebellious women of years past making a mark in the world. it wasn't easy in those days at all.also watched a lot of mind numbing tv shows. several realities. a new one tonight i'd never seen before. "cat from hell" or something like that. a sort of harley dude cat whisperer. couldn't figure out why he kept bringing a guitar case in with him to talk to clients until he opened it and it was all set up with various cat toys/treats. very funny.have also spent time between naps playing bejeweled. i am at level 80 i think. not too impressive really as i have it in zen mode so i am thinking you can't lose in zen mode. i'm chill with that this week. i feel like a loser enough. i'm sure there is dried snot on my face.also watched one of the netflix movies i have sitting here. "stupid, crazy love". wasn't bad. just not my most favorite messages...like, don't worry a guy who has spent years as a total womanizer will surely settle in with one and be totally monogamous if she is the right girl. it spend a great deal of time on the whole soul mate thing. soul mates are a bit of a pet peeve for me. i mean everyone in america marries thier soulmate and yet marriages frequently end in divorce. in this movies case...they are "soulmates" and yet she has an affair and then seemingly without a though requests a divorce. he then has like 10 affairs but since they are soulmates they miraculously get back together. sorry for the spoiler. do i believe in soulmates? i do believe it is possible that a few people have a somewhat cosmic connection with thier mates. i believe if it exists it's the exception not the rule. i also suspect it's not something people say of each other after dating a short time. i've met a few older couples where you just though, wow, they were just one of those lucky magical matches. i just think people want to believe that thier connection is something more than maybe it is. when they are treated like crap a movie like this gives them a false hope. not to say i hated the movie, it's just that whole soul mate thing was overdone and silly in the flick...as it is in our society. really tough to show the amount of snow we have out there. this is my view out my bedroom window...i know pretty sweet, right? at some point you do worry that the snow will become too much for the roof to handle. seems a bad idea to be out there shoveling it though. our avalanche risk is high.blossom covered in snow.did have to spend some time outside shoveling yesterday. i did it like all the activities i've attempted this week . short bursts of enery followed by exhaustion and a nice nap. hope i sleep better tonight. i so want to wake refreshed and feeling better. i'm already sick of hacking my brains out. i'm trying to stay off the phone too as talking just gets me coughing more can hardly see my car in this picture and you can see the snow level is over the front deck.these are from a bog walk wednesday. it snowed that day as well.almost time for meds and vicks. sorry to whine and complain. hopefully, my next post i will be more perky. was so depressing to have all that fresh snow and no energy to go snowshoe in it. pogi and ms breezy chatterbug. i've decided she isn't my cat, but really is blossoms cat. have never had a cat that adores the dogs and ignores me. she'll play with toys and stuff with me, but really she loves the dog.what would the cat whisperer think of that? goodnight....