January 20, 2009 President Obama, Danny's first date, Palpitations

It's Tuesday morning here, and although from where I'm sitting it feels just like any other Tuesday, today is going to be written about in history books, as the day that the United States of America swore in it's first African American President. We've really come a long way in a short amount of time. Although he wasn't my first choice, I hope with everything I've got that he gets in there and does some really great things, fast. America could certainly use some good news right about now.

Friday we awoke, back in 6 degree Massachusetts, and I cursed my decision to drive north. I should have thrown caution to the wind and followed my gut. I might have had to drive all the way to the Southernmost tip but warmth I would have eventually found. Dan and I did a little shopping then went over the the Mashpee Library for 1pm story time. The Waldorf school was there doing a little play, and there was a raffle for movie tickets that I quickly scrawled Danny's name onto. He sat and watched the play, I logged onto one of the library computers. A half hour passed quickly and I suddenly realized that someone was calling Danny's name. A bit alarmed I walked over to the corner and was surprised to find out that Dan had won the movie tickets to see Hotel for Dogs, he was very excited. We checked out a couple of books and since Buzz had the girls decided we'd go over there for a little while to let the kids play together. On the way, Danny asked if he could ask Seneca if she'd like to see the movie with him, like a date, he said. I laughed and told him it would be OK.
We arrived, took off our coats and shoes and the kids proceed to play. Dan asked Seneca to the movie. Very cute. Buzz and I decided we'd take them Sunday at 1:20pm. Saturday passed, and Sunday arrived. I asked Dan if we should met Seneca and Buzz at the movie and he said, usually the boy picks up the girl. I laughed, the boy is TOO much. We got Dan in the bath and dressed for his date, picked up Seneca and Buzz right on time. Walking into the movie Danny asked Seneca if she'd like to hold his hand, she said OK. Very cute. Dan gave the attendant their tickets, we got some popcorn and found a seat. The movie was cute, at one point I looked over at Dan and Seneca sitting side by side and swatted Buzz's arm. Dan was puckered up for a kiss, Seneca wanted no part of that and Dan went denied. We drove them home, visited with Jen and the other girls for a few minutes before we had to say good bye, so I could go to work. Fun day.

Monday was the MLK holiday but Mike had to work, Dan and I went to Kmart to pick up Big Brain academy for the Wii, brought it home and played for a while. Pretty cute game, and Dan can play by himself, we're doing all we can to promote some quiet alone play, as Dan will exhaust us otherwise.

Tuesday morning we planned for Buzz and the girls to come over here for the morning while their cleaning lady made their house sparkle. The kids played for a while, Buzz and I watched as much of the inauguration as possible with 4 children 5 and under running around. Ruby had school so Buzz and the girls had lunch and said good bye, the kids wanted to continue playing so we decided he'd bring everybody back after school and Joey's nap, and I'd make dinner. Dan and I ran out to the store. While there I felt strangely weird and my heart was racing. Not sure of what was going on, and having palpitations on a pretty regular basis, I decided to call my primary from the parking lot since I was already out and these episodes were starting to make me nervous. He was on vacation, I got the number of the on call doctor and decided to head home.
On the way, I felt my heart start racing again, and suddenly felt like I might pass out, not a good feeling driving 45MPH down a single lane road with no shoulder and a 5 year old in the back seat. I suddenly thought what might/would happen if I really did go out, would Dan know to find my phone and call 911, would someone stop to help, would that person really help. I think my panic might have exacerbated the issue. I remembered that if you were having a heart attack that you should cough hard and long and gave it a few tries. I did seem to help and the feeling was lessened. I immediately called Laurie who wasn't home, then Derek who lives next door. Quickly asked him if he could watch Dan when I got home, explained what was going on and thankfully he stayed on the phone with me until I pulled into the driveway. The feeling had passed but I could still feel my heart racing.

Once home, Dan safely with a friend of Derek's who was visiting, I called Elias, my dear cicada loving cardiologist from NY. Told him what had happened, he reassured me I was OK, but would need/want to see somebody today. Derek and I unloaded the groceries and put them away. I called Dr. Bowers' on call doctor who very coolly and calmly took my name, birth date etc. I found myself getting very frustrated with them, and realized it was starting again. Derek agreed to drive me to the hospital, we packed up Dan, made a quick call to Mike to let him know what was going on and we were on our way. Elias called en route and agreed if it was happening again I needed to be seen immediately. How lucky am I to have such a great friend. We arrived at the hospital only minutes before Mike, Derek agreed to take Dan home with him and watch him as long as we needed him too....lucky again, another good friend.

We were eventually taken into the ER and met there by the two best nurses Jane and Mary, ever. I was assessed, blood was drawn, and port left. Hooked up to a blood pressure cuff, oxygen sensor and heart monitor, and seen by the doctor who quickly ordered a chest X-ray. It was amazing how quickly things happened once I was in, and it was only a minute or two from the time it was ordered until I was being pushed down the hall.

The X-ray was uneventful and I was back in Room 3 in no time. I'd asked Mike to run down to Stop and shop to pick me up some lunch since I hadn't eaten all day, so he'd returned and I enjoyed some sushi. Then we waited. X-ray came back normal, one of the blood test was a little off and the doctor said it could be an indication of a blood clot, and ordered a chest cat scan which I was again quickly whisked away to. This time dye was injected into my port and within seconds I felt warm and tingly all over, an interesting sensation. Back in my room and just waiting I was happy to see Jen who had just finished her shift upstairs, she came down to see what was going on and ultimately lifted my spirit and made the wait for those results bearable. (you never know what they'll find when they start looking) before too long and PCT came in with a portable heart monitor which was my cue that I was being sent home. 7 electrodes were stuck to my upper and lower chest and a playing card sized box was fastened around my waist by a belt, the CAT scan came back normal, there some question about a possible thyroid connection but the results weren't back yet.

I'm to return the monitor after wearing it was 24 hours and a cardiologist will assess the results and send them to Dr. Bowers. So I'm to follow up with him next week unless I hear from the hospital sooner or I have another episode. I was released about 9:00 and while calling Derek to check on Dan was told that he was making us dinner. Nice, we were hungry. Dinner was great, Dan was sad to leave but exhausted and was asleep before his head hit the pillow. I curled up next to Mike on the couch and fell asleep.

January 8, 2009 Harmon Girls, Emily's trip to VA

We had a mostly quiet day on Sunday, it was miserably cold and I can't help wishing I were someplace warm. I have a friend in Ft. Lauderdale who keeps nudging me to visit and since a trip down to help a friend move fell through I'm itchy to go. However Emily was the one we were booking a flight for very late on Sunday night when I got home from work. Emily will be flying Jet Blue Boston to Riohmond on Saturday January 10th and returning Thursday January 22nd. I'm glad she's going and I know she'll have a great time, although I'm still working on Mike to take Dan up skiing for the long MLK weekend so I can go to the beach. We'll have to see what happens. I did enjoy a wonderful Monday, I dropped Danny off at school at 9am - then drove to the Shinning sea trail in Falmouth for a run. We'd had icing the night before so the first mile or so on the trail was ice skating, but as the sun rose the trail melted and I enjoyed the much needed exertion. A long leisurely coffee break was followed by another high energy sprint back. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to do the round trip so Emily agreed to pick up Dan at school and since she didn't get to see the Tale of despereax with Dan and I on Friday decided she wanted to take him to see Disney's bedtime story. With time to spare I did some shopping and met them at home a little after 2pm. I had a terrific morning,was glad to have expended some much needed energy and have some time to enjoy myself. Since I had to work I set up roast chicken, mashpee potatoes and asparagus for Em throw in the oven.
Tuesday I had a doctors appt with a new gynocologist. My current midwife is in Wareham and with no future plans to have children decided it was time to find somebody closer. My primary suggested a doctor in Falmouth who is only a Gynocologist and just recently got appointed to chief of Surgery. We met only for a consult but I liked him instantly. I had orginally planned on taking Dan with me but Buzz was taking the girls to the CC children's museum and invited me to drop him off there so I could go alone, I agreed. My appt went a little long so Buzz decided to take all the kids to our house until I got home. It was good to come home to a house full of children. Joey ran into my arms yelling with arms flailing. I miss those girls sometimes! We fed them lunch and the kids played, Dan was so happy to have them there. We set them up with movies upstairs, Joey and Ruby took turns using Buzz and I as trampolines, we finally got them sort of settled down and watched Hook for a while. 5pm came and it was time for them to go. Dan wanted a toy with his birthday money from the Stop and Shop in Mashpee commons, the house was trashed and with only a vague idea of what I was making for dinner knew we needed to get moving. I decided to try making french onion soup with scali bread patti melts. Of course saw 3 people we knew at the store and arrived home at 6pm in a frenzy trying to get dinner made before Mike got home. With just about everything done, table set, swiss cheese happily burbling on top of a very nice french onion broth, and crunchy french bread cubes, 3 inch thick patti melt sandwiches nearly perfectly browned, Mike pulled in and declared he wasn't really hungry! UGH!!!! He ate a little anyway, dinner was good. I had made a piece of salmon for me, with some mixed vegetables. We cleaned up dinner and settled in for a quiet night.
Wednesday we woke up to rain with a one inch layer of slushy ice coating everything. I had to make a quick trip out to the store, so we dropped Seneca's bottle off with Buzz at work then went stopped at Cape Maid farms so Dan could play with the animals. On our way home we stopped at Stop and Shop in Marston's Mills to pick up dinner. Danny decided it should be ravioli, garlic bread and salad. We picked up what we needed and left. However I'd forgotten that Dan had brought his leapster into the store, we had used one of the car carts and accidently left it there. I didn't notice until I got home and since it's at least a 10 minute ride frantically called the store asking if anybody had turned it in. I got a very rude person who was no help at all. I drove back and thankfully found in right where we left it. That leapster is the difference between a nice quiet 4 hour flight to Florida in February or a very loud obnoxious one.

September 23, 2008 Otha Day and Oh no....canning....

I woke up this morning, walked into the kitchen, poured a cup of black coffee, and glanced at the very red tomatoes sitting on the kitchen window sill. We grow tomatoes every year. Most years we get one or two, due to a faulty raised garden I'll tell you about some other time. However this year, with the new garden, the tomatoes, even though mostly neglected have grown to an enormous size and are producing show quality tomatoes. Ironically, nobody in our house, except Dan, likes them. So we bring them in, put them in the window sill until they start turning brown, and I put them in the compost bin. I vowed today would be different and armed myself with my cookbook on the way out the door. As fearful as I am of becoming addicted to canning, I'm even more saddened by our wasteful ways.
Today we planned to see Otha Day http://www.drumtothebeat.com/otha-dayat Heritage Gardens. Buzz and the girls met us there and Dan had a great time hanging out with Seneca. Otha is a one man band, amazingly patient, and extremely talented. He arrived with more then 10 big drums, 8 tambourines, and lots of Moroccas. He encourage the kids to make lots of noise and taught us some fun songs.
Afterward we decided to take a trip down to the outlet mall to see if we could figure out what canning was all about. The lady manning the Corning Ware store was very helpful and within 10 minutes I had a new pot with a canning rack, an assortment of canning utensils and some canning jars. I had no idea what to do with my newly acquired assortment of kitchen ware but felt certain that in a pinch I could call Kristin and she'd steer me in the right direction. Next stop was the grocery store because I hadn't spent enough money to save any yet. We picked up some spices, onions and garlic for the spaghetti sauce, and while there I optimistically grabbed a box of pectin. On my run last Friday I came around the corner to the fire road and smelled one of my favorite smells. For just a couple of weeks a year this one area is fragrant with the smell of ripe grapes. I run faster thinking of the smell that I'll be rewarded with more quickly for a little extra effort. So I thought that this afternoon the kids and I would take a walk down there to see if there were any left. There were nearly two cups and I thought it was surely enough to make at least one jar of jelly. We arrived home, quickly switched laundry on and off the. It didn't take me long to make the sauce. I read the recipe to late to omit the skins and seeds but I'll remember next time. The sauce cooked down for 30 minutes or so. Meanwhile I sterilized the jars, lids, and rings. Once the sauce was ready I extracted the hot jars from their bath, filled them, covered them, secured the metal ring and put them in the canning pot on top of the rack filled with water. A few minutes later 4 jars were filled and in the pot. I covered the pot, and set it to boil for 35 minutes. While those worked their magic I started working on the grapes. Dan mashed them, I added water and boiled them for 10 minutes, strained the liquid and put the juice back in the pan, with some sugar and pectin and boiled it for the instructed 1 more minute, before filling the jar and immersing it into the hot water bath. The sauce had only moments before been removed from said bath and as Dan opened the kitchen door the jars one by one made the desired popping noise letting me know that a least for now they were properly sealed. They sit now on a cutting board on my kitchen table, cooling for the night. I'm curious to see if the great tasting grape soup will be jelly by morning.



I rescued this guy from Emily's bedroom. I believe he's a spotted tussock moth.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/164254

September 18, 2008 Dad's cell phone and baked apples

We spent Wednesday catching up. Dan stayed in his PJ's most of the morning, while I caught up on housework, bill paying, and laundry. It was a nice quiet day right up until 4:00 when my Dad called. He and Kathy have spent the last couple of week in the Azores with his brother and his family.
They returned home on Tuesday and was calling to check in. Very nice I thought, Dad wants me to know he's ok. Then came the question. I was left one task as he left here, one lowly mission for a daughter to do for her father. He asked me to take an envelope (containing his cell phone) to the post office and mail it to his house. "Simple... no problem" I thought. I put it in my van so I wouldn't forget. Turns out the place I picked to put it "so I wouldn't forget" was exactly the place I forgot. So when he called to ask, I insisted it must be there, I must have mailed it. But I couldn't remember actually doing it. With my cell phone in hand I went out to the car, opened the first stow and go compartment....and there it was. I'm sorry Dad!!! Our post office was already closed for the day but I promised to get there first thing tomorrow, I apologized and said goodbye. Today, I took Emily to work for 9am, then went immediately to the post office, walked up to the counter and told the clerk I wanted to overnight this envelope. He looked at the address, then looked at his screen, then looked at the address again and said, it's rural...best I can do is 2 days. Hmmm...I thought, 2 days...ok, I can deal with that. Then he realizes it's going to a PO Box and says that he can't guarantee it would be there before they closed on Saturday which would mean it probably wouldn't get there until Monday. Now we're up to 5 days and I'm wondering if regular mail would suffice. Had I been thinking, since FEDEX was an option, I would have just had it shipped to his house. Unfortunately I didn't think of that until after the postage was affixed, and Dan and I were headed down the road to the playground. I'm guessing, next time, one of my overly competent sister-in-law's will be given the task of mailing back the phone!

Dan and I went to the playground and were thrilled when Jen and the girls met us there. It's amazing how much children can grow when you haven't seen them in a couple of months. Seneca's little girl look is all but gone, Ruby's gotten very tall, and Joey's lost her babyish features, although she did give me a nice snuggle at the end. Dan was happy to play with the girls again and Jen and I had a chance to catch up. Hopefully we can make a regular plan to get together! Dan and I came home for lunch and nap. When he woke I showed him a recipe in our Family Fun magazine for baked apples. He thought they looked good so we decided to take a quick detour to the grocery store on our way to pick up Emily.
Emily had a good day, and was excited that she was assigned a radio (walkie talkie) at work. She was asked if she'd like to cashier as well as work greenhouse, and seemed excited to be learning something new. Progeny isn't hiring a receptionist right now, but when the do Emily is the first in line.
We arrived home and finished watching Goonies which we rented on Sunday but didn't finish watching a few nights ago because we didn't want Dan to have nightmares.
When it was over we got started with dessert. Generally I cook Monday-Wednesday nights and then we eat leftovers on Thursday, so it was a perfect night to make dessert. Dan had a great time trying to peel the apples and filling them with raisins and walnuts. Our baked apples cook while we ate dinner. Dan and Mike helped me clear the table while Em did dishes. Then we reset the table. I'm glad we made all 4 because they were really good! A little vanilla ice cream on top made them perfect. We all agreed we'd have to save this recipe for a special occasion. Dan was wearing most of it, so off to the bath he went. We washed him up, dressed him in footy pajamas and since he wanted to watch Indian in a cupboard I went up to the loft with him and set the up movie. He decided he wanted to have a black and white party, so he grabbed all his black and white stuffed animals and lined them up on his bed. I left a happy boy watching his movie with his best friends!

August 19, 2008 No more babysitting....

Monday started off pretty much as usual. Em drove us to work. Now that she's completed her 40 hours supervised driving with me we no longer need to keep a log, which is really nice. Her driving has come along nicely and I'm confident that when she does get her license in November she'll be more then ready. Dan and I went grocery shopping afterwards, then went home to unpack groceries and spend some time on the beach before lunch and nap.

Our town has lost two young men to the war in the last week. A 21 year old named Paul Conlon died in Afghanstan, and 19 year old, who's family we know, Daniel Maguire died in Fallujah on Thursday 8/14. I had to work last night but the community was holding a candlelight vigil in the veterans park across the street from D & D and since Laurie was planning on attending, I asked her to take Em, Sarah and Dan. The service started at 8:30, I was happy to be able to attend during my break. Here is a news broadcast of the event. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/17229345/index.html

Tuesday started off quietly. I e-mailed Jen and Buzz to let them know I'll no longer be able to watch the girls every 3rd Friday from 2pm- 7:30. Between my men's night, and working, and especially this week Mike being away it'll just be too much. I'm sad to not have that connection to them anymore, but I'm sure the relationship will grow and change in the coming months. Dan and I came home and went to the beach. The day is terrific, south wind and just perfect. A little after noon I heard a rumble and looked back to see a huge bank of black clouds. A quick check of the radar which told me we were going to get a good storm. Dan and I got the puppies in off the deck, and grabbed the clothes off the line just before the rain began. Dan and I had lunch and since the day had gone from beautifully sunny to perfectly rainy we decided a nap was in order. Dan and I climbed into bed, snuggled together and fell asleep. We woke 2 hours later to find another storm rolling through.

Mike called a little after 4pm to check in since we never heard from him yesterday. Seems Doug and Ron corrupted him last night and he didn't get in till after 1am. He was surprised to find while checking in at the hotel some of the cast of extreme home makeover standing next to him. Edward on one side, and Michael on the other. They surprised a family in Geneva Monday morning. http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/we_find_out_today_wholl_get_an.html
Very cool!