August 16, 2026 Sunday

Greetings!

Been another week much like last week as far as my health.  But Dagan ended up in the hospital emergency room again last Monday.  He thought it was his appendix and they'd be driving to Minneapolis but it turned out it was colitis giving him stomach pain.  More antibiotics and he's feeling okay again.  Whew!  Never thought we'd be glad to hear colitis--lol!

Leah has been sick for 4 days with a sore throat, stuffed up head, cough, and exhaustion.  Liam started coughing Friday night.  Not sure if she got it from me.  Seems unlikely since I've been sick for three weeks now, but who knows?  We both wore masks when I went to the eye clinic on Friday to be on the safe side to not infect anybody.

My eye was a little improved!  I'm still on the "how many fingers do I have up" kind of testing, but I could answer faster and guess correctly from farther away.  I am having surgery to remove the silicone oil on Monday, September 14th.  Then I go back the next day for a followup and again in a week.  The oil is keepig the retina in place while it heals, but you can't keep it in too long or it can cause problems.  One out of four people's retinas detach again but he is hopeful mine won't.  It has been looking pretty stable he said.  I think then they fill my eye with a gas that will dissipate over time...or saline...not sure.  I don't hear well, as you know, and a nurse also talked to me about saline.  Whatever.  Now--just got to try and get well before the surgery.  

Last Sunday Dagan was down and Leah came down after a while, too.  I had gotten the new colorful "tree of life" knobs one day.  The others came a couple days later.

I did manage to change the shower curtain.  Wildflowers this time.

Allie was right there to supervise.

Anyways, Dagan put the new knobs on the hutches and it was easy as pie because he could even use the screws that were in there.  The tree of life ones went on the living room hutches.

The mexican art ones went on the studio hutches.  Hard to see but it does make a difference on all the hutches!  :)

Leah hung up the plastic shelves I ordered to hold the chalk and erasers.  She even added all the magnets, too.  As you can see the boys got into the colored chalks, of course.

Liam made the concentric circles with smilely faces and people on them.  Ian made a rainbow with a person on top.

They wanted me to draw something.  Not too original--lol!  Hey--I've been sick forever and Rita is shorter than Gramma.

The boys spent quite a bit of time at my place a couple different days.  Liam takes breaks from Leave It To Beaver to color mandalas.  He added another one to the frig. 

 This time used my click-it marker pens.

Laim was more interested in Beaver this week.  Ian and I love the show and can focus on it for a long time--with a lot of laughing--lol!

Allie is much more used to the boys being around now.  She knows they aren't going to step on her or be rough or anything.  They are good with animals.

I opened an email in my old Yahoo account and got locked out of my laptop.  I have been unsubscribing to a whole lot of companies and I thought it was a place I may have ordered seeds.  Was going to unsubscribe and bam!  Had a male voice repeating how you must not shut down your device and call that number.  Yah!  Like Microsoft was patiently waiting to take over my laptop just in case I got any spam--lol!  

I didn't touch it all day till Dagan could come down and deal with it.  My cursor wouldn't even work.  Apparently Dagan knew how to get the cursor to work without the mousepad by using the keyboard.  It was just fine and the email had disappeared.  They had just wanted me to call that flashing number.  I know better.  I know not to touch anything.  (Years ago I tried to "fix" things and made them so very much worse--LOL!)  What would I do without my techie crew!?

So that's how it went.  I slept during the night but then also most of the day into the early evening on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  I think I am better for a day or two and then go back to the exhaustion and coughing jags.  I told Leah to take the weekend off to rest and get well.  The one thing I wanted done was to remove the tops for the bookcases that didn't fit from this corner. 

They didn't fit because the ceiling ended up being a good inch or more lower than we estimated.  Not the fault of IKEA.  But they won't take them back because I bought them about four years ago.  Well, you know how long it took to get this apartment done enough for me to move.  There's a place you can bring larger items in town.  Dagan said they might even let the boys take a hammer to them to break them up for the heck of it...just because that is something young boys would love to do--lol!  Doesn't matter to me.  They'd probably fit in the car easier broken down.  Leah tried to sell them or even give them away on Facebook marketplace, but it's just too specific.  Plus the nearest IKEA to anyone up here is down in Minneapolis over 250 miles away so there probably aren't that many Billy bookcase owners up here in town--lol!  And it would have to be the blackish color, too.  Oh well.  Things don't always go as planned, eh?

Anyways, I want them out of there so I can use that spot for the art rollie carts.  Now that the boys are down here fairly often...they share the red chair a lot and want to put the back of the chair down...which hits the rollie carts...and they seldom notice...grind...grind!  Awk!  And Gramma can't hear worth a dang.

I'm afriad they are going to damage the chair or the rollie carts.  So hopefully Dagan will do that today.  Right now they are definitely in the way since I started unpacking and organizing.  (Not that I've been able to do much of anything in there for a couple of weeks...sadly...but soon again, I hope.)

I just got up to take the picture of the rollie carts and Allie decided to beg for ice cubes.  She is absolutely thrilled with the new frig where I can get ice in the door.  I made the mistake one day of putting some ice cubes in her dish to see what she'd do.  SHE LOVED THEM!!  Sits there and licks and licks and licks them.  Since she has never forgotten how much she loves ice cubes, whenever I go to put ice in my water mug she comes running and cries for ice for herself--lol!  Cats.  I thought it was elephants who were never supposed to forget?  LOL!

Well, this week it's the lab and a virtual visit with my rheumatologist.  Leah brought down a headset for me to use because it is hard for me to hear the doctor.  That will be interesting.  I am more than happy to stay at home and talk to her on my laptop.  What a world, eh?  I will rest and try to get better.

Well folks...I hope you have something in your life you love as much as Miss Allie loves ice cubes--lol!  Till next week, my friends.  My best to you and yours!  :) :)