Life in Weyers Cave

So the word is in.... David has a kidney stone. But it hasn't dropped from his kidney yet so that is not the cause of his pain. Not only does he have to copy me, he has to one-up me. Isn't that just like a man! He has several hernias, plus the "flu" has settled in his abdomen, plus some diverticular disease that is not acute right now. Last night after the doctor didn't do squat, I gave him some anti-inflammatory medicine which solved his "problem" and the doctor even said today that was probably the right thing to do. Well, after thousands of dollars of tests, why didn't he say so last night? Today I am happy. I got a job with Lee's Angels going to a cafeteria at JMU and replacing a thermal printer in a kiosk. Normally, with Lee's Angels, it seems stupid obnoxious things go wrong. But the only thing that went wrong was that I had to park a mile away and walk in the heat, so I was wring-out wet when I walked in the door. I got to crawl...

Officially today, Cathryn is no longer a teenager. Because of the trip and my illness, I feel bad I didn't get a nice present to her. But I did mail some stuff and a card so we will see if she gets it in Alaska. Yesterday I worked hard all day long trying to catch up. I left at 2 to go into town with Dianna, then she dropped me off at 3 at the doctor's office and David came and met me there. We ran tests there and at the hospital and didn't get out until 11 pm and still don't know what is wrong with him, but he is awfully sick. Got home, cooked him dinner, did laundry, and unpacked so I could have a bed to sleep in. I was SO TIRED because it was much later Belgian time. David stayed up reading papers at the table. I have no idea what time he came to bed. We had a bad storm come through and the windows were open on his car so I think he got wet closing them. It is now early Friday morning and he is still asleep. We'll just have to see how he is this morning.

We made it home at midnight last night. Ten hours just sitting in airports, plus over ten hours on planes plus the travels to and from the airport mean that we left the flat at 6:30 am Antwerp time and got in at 6:00 am Antwerp time. I took Percocet as soon as I got on the airplane and did NOT suffer a bit from the kidney stones. But the seat still made my legs hang off funny and my knee was killing me from arthritis. Even the man next to me commented when he got on how obnoxious it was that his feet didn't touch either the floor or the footrest. And he was quite tall. Cat was overjoyed to see us. After the first hour I kicked her out of the bedroom so I could sleep. The house was gorgeous. Martha and Allen had apparently really cleaned the kitchen. There are little gifts around for me, and I wonder if TAT had anything to do with them. I feel bad I didn't get gifts for my friends in Belgium other than some chocolate. Ironically, David is the one that will get the first ...

I am looking forward to getting home to my little castle and being miserable in peace. I will drink until I float away and this stupid stone floats away as well. I went to lunch with my friend Sister Staepeles today to a lovely Bistro. The menu had a salad with flaming chicken on it and I would so liked to have tried it. But I stuck with the mushroom soup because I really couldn't even eat the whole bowl. I can't even eat the chocolate here. So I guess I can lose some weight, yes! with my luck, I will have gained ten pounds. In the middle of the meal, the pains came back. I took a Vicodin but it didn't help much. It did make it tolerable. I took the bus home and then David had an appointment with the doctor (thank you, thank you!) who gave me a prescription for something that is supposed to work synergistically with the Vicodin to make it stronger and hopefully get me over the ocean tomorrow. They have said that the changes in pressure at high altitudes can move th...

Of course, when bad luck comes for me it tends to come in clumps. I am at the flat and plan on returning to the States on Wednesday, stone or no stone. Yesterday, I got home about noon, and David went to take the Hallings shopping. I would have gone, but didn't feel up to it and was glad for the time to sleep, but really wish I had had the opportunity to go. They came back and we had to show them a few things, and this time I went. I guess we walked a mile or two. We pushed it, but I was fine. We stopped at a bakery and the chocolate shop, but food doesn't appeal to me, even chocolate. We went out to dinner which was another mile or two of walking and I was fine, but didn't eat much. It is seven in the morning and I haven't had ANY pain meds or pain since I got out of the hospital yesterday. But I really don't think I have passed the stone. I strained everything in the hospital and the doctor was quite certain it was still there. So I will just dope up big time ...

A kidney stone! Yes, if you were one of the lucky ones who guessed that I had a kidney stone and THAT is why I have felt so bad all week, you are right! Things I have learned from this experience: If you have stones in your kidneys and go high up in a plane, the change in pressure can loosen a stone and it gets into the little tubes to the bladder. That's when it hurts. If you have arthritis and go up in a plane, that can make the arthritis worse. Especially if the arthritis is in your back right beside your kidneys. Belgium hospitals don't give you towels. In Belgium, they put in the IV without giving you a gown. You just wear your clothes. If you do get a gown, it is for a quick test like a cat scan and then they take it back, which is good because Belgians are pretty skinny. If you want to change your clothes once your IV is in, well, tough. If you NEED to change your clothes, um, tough. Breakfast in a Belgium hospital is a choice of three pieces of white bread or thre...

I had promised David we would go to Brussels today to see the Atomium and have lunch there before picking up the Hallings at 3:00. Fortunately, he was as tired as I was this morning and didn't want to get up early any more than I. In fact, I got up at 8, dressed, and left and didn't get back until 9 and he was just getting up. Dianna and I went to the bank, the bakery, the post office, and the farmer's market. We picked up a few groceries, then came home to deposit them. Then we went out again and got more groceries and a lot of maps since the Hallings were coming in today. We looked at some shoes for Dianna but didn't get too excited about anything. Then we got on the bus and rode to Brussels to pick up the Hallings, who were about 45 minutes late. We took them back on the bus and then went out to dinner with Jim and Liliane. Then a quick walk around the old part of Antwerp and we are home at almost ten. Seems you get little done in Belgium compared to America f...

 

 

 

 

No type, that is the city we visited today. Got up bright and early, gotta run, gotta run, gonna miss the train -- and Dianna and I dragged ourselves down to the train with four minutes to spare! Or was it three - I don't know because I don't even own or want to own a watch. I could have looked at the cell phone, but it wasn't charged. Well, we were on the train BEFORE it left and that is all that mattered. Tongeren is about an hour and a half away and is the oldest city in Belgium, predating the Romans by quite a bit. There was some excavating done and there were buildings on top of buildings on top of buildings. But the lower levels were before Christ and I went down and touched the stones. It SHOULD have been cool, but they were just rocks. Maybe it is all a scam. (Now would you really want to do business with them???) So we went around the outside of the city and looked a tall the old walls, some built in the fourth century and others in the 13th century. It was a ...

        The next few shots I took off of David's and Dianna's cameras -- they are asleep so it is fair game, right? Besides, mine is broken (all may spend a moment of silence over this). Anyway, these are the small city of Han-Sur-Lesse that we visited today because it has some very old caves. It was about three hours each way on the train, then bus to get there, and there were others things to do as well. Quite a tourist place. There was a big game hall called the Speleogame Game 4D where each person (about a hundred) sits in a chair with 3D glasses and has a joystick on their right and a number in a circle. I was 88. I had to use the joystick to maneuver the 88 on the master screen to get points as we pretended to be bats flying through a cave. Apparently the 4D was mists of water that were sprayed from time to time, but I was spared that! Plus a nice little cave museum. This is in the french-speaking part of Belgium which is really different culturally from...

  It drives me nuts that you can't have a real glass of water in Belgium. This little bottle cost us five dollars! My whole lunch was only four! (Okay, all I had was a bowl of soup, but still....) They say it is because of the calcium in the water (kidney stones). They suggest you use a Brita filter for the calcium. But Brita filters don't take out calcium! And mineral waters usually DO have calcium. You can see here that the water in Antwerp is higher than most places in the USA, but still in the same order of magnitude. And at the risk of sounding like a chemist, the bottled water here has 91 ppm calcium, while tap water in Antwerp is 90 ppm. So it really is more of a social stigma/fear type of thing from back when water really was unsafe to drink.

        The Safari was included in our day pass with the caves, so we went. We got on a 100 year old tram and drove through miles and miles (should I say kilometers and kilometers?) of roads through the beautiful mountains to view the animals. Many came up to the tram to look for treats. Some were obviously in cages. David had a lovely three year old facing him on the tram painting David's pants with the mud on the tyke's feet.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the caves, but you can see we had a choice of taking the Nederlands- (Dutch) or French-speaking tour. We took the Dutch one because it was smaller and no kids for David to complain about. Big caves, but we were disappointed there were no cave paintings as we had been told.

  No kidding, they actually had a fire at one end of the room and the chef came out and cooked the steaks, potatoes, and heated the bread over the fire!

  No kidding, these are the steps down into the exclusive restaurant we went to. I have never seen such steep steps and no decent hand rail. Would never get by in America with something like this! But we were able to get an excellent meal and the ambiance was outstanding!

 

Delft is a beautiful peaceful small town in the Netherlands. It is where they make Delft pottery -- yeah, the blue stuff. A tiny budvase retails for about fifty dollars, so we didn't bring any home. I had gone there with my mother last year and we had had a lovely time. So I took David and Dianna. Just sitting outside listening to the bells on the church was thoroughly delightful. The weather decided be idyllic, and the crowds were more than manageable. There is an old church and a new church to visit, each with their own histories and tombstones. William of Orange is buried in the new church in the late 1500's. Leewunhoek, the founder of microbiology and inventor of the microscope, is in the old one. But mostly, there are just lots and lots of carved stones on the floor of the church marking the graves that you have to walk on as you go through the church. Many of the dates are worn off. The names are no longer remembered, and it is humbling to think that these lives i...

The trip over "the pond" was, as always, fraught with difficulties. We were to leave on a 3 pm flight three miles from our home. We left church at 12:45, got to the airport at 1:30 and the personnel were standing out in front watching for us, having just called our house and heard from Allen that we were on our way. They said our flight had been canceled, and they didn't know why. They had rebooked us through Philadelphia instead of DC and through USAir instead of United IF we hightailed it to Charlottesville an hour away for a 3:30 flight. They said they could probably get us two first class seats over and three back to make up for the inconvenience (DJ is the third, of course.) We ran over there, getting stuck behind all kinds of excessively slow cars through the mountains (I was pretty green around the gills - speeding through the mountains doesn't agree with me). Got there right at 2:30 and the guy behind the counter was not the brightest bulb nor the frien...

Friday and lots to do. Thursday night there was a terrible storm that knocked the power out for several hours. It came back on at 1:30 am and of course woke us all up because all the lights and sounds came on. So much pain! I had crawled around on my knees fixing a 100 pounds 42 inch television on Thursday and apparently the pain didn't hit until I was asleep. After 20 minutes of pure agony, I gave in to the painkillers. Friday, my lunch appointment with Addie was canceled since her water pump had been knocked out by the power. Still, plenty to do. I went to town with Dianna to take down all of our broken cameras -- four of them, actually. (or was that Thursday?) Also, we had to go with Martha to get the truck to go to Costco to get 40 bags of charcoal for the chicken barbecue. Then had a 2:00 in Grottoes to fix the I/O board on a Hewlett Packard. Sliced my finger open and got blood EVERYwhere, including the new bedspread. But a delightful visit nonetheless and they were coo...

I have been seemingly more negative lately, and that isn't right since really I am enjoying my life immensely right now. I just blow off on the blog. Sorry. I love my husband and kids, my house, my office (thanks to Cathryn for her old bedroom and Jeff for fixing it up for me), my church, my Ruritans, my Bee Box, my comfy bed, my friends. I am really sitting pretty in one of those halcyonic times of life. If I appear otherwise, it is because the snapshot view of the blog is warped. I have been thinking a lot about friends, particularly best friends, lately. I knew someone who had a best friend for over 60 years and still going strong. Talk all the time and share lives. I'm not really that kind of person. I have friends I like to do X with or discuss Y with, and a nice contingent of dear friends, but no one overall best friend and I don't think I could handle that. I know some people say their spouse is their best friend, but there are things I can't discuss with hi...

So David and I are the Happy Anniversary WSVA winners for last week and received a bunch of gift certificates in the mail. Happy, happy, joy, joy. One is for a professional portrait of the two of us. Also, an ice cream cake, lunch for two, and a housewares certificate at a nice homemaking store. Sorry, no Home Depot, but I'm happy. I was rejected today from giving blood. Iron is too low. Guess I need to gnaw on some nails. Dianna gave for the first time, so I am very proud of her. She was a little dizzy, of course, but really did great. And I was so disappointed in Chili's today. I took Gail to lunch there, and they had NO lunch specials and prices were really high. I had a side salad and still spent $4 on it. And yes, the lettuce was even brown. They have no low-carb foods either. Service was so-so. So I guess I need to write them off. And I get to learn how to replace plasma screens tomorrow and an I/O board on Friday. :)

I am enjoying being one of Lee's Angels. Yesterday I took David with me to a clothing store in Charlottesville. Okay, so I thought it was at the mall and it was two miles away at Barrack's Road so we were five minutes late. No big deal. When we got there, the place was locked with people inside working and no one to let me in. It took fifteen minutes of knocking and looks and holding up my laptop, etc., before someone opened the door, asked for my license, and ran off to make a copy of it before they would let me enter with David. The job was a site survey, where I had to write down everything they had there. There were all kinds of wires and stuff, and the phone board was for it as well as several of the stores in the same strip mall. It took just over an hour. The people were friendly and helpful, although a little stand-offish because they didn't know what was going on. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.) David was a great help, because he understands the...

David and I went out to quiet romantic dinner at Simple Pleasures Restaurant. He is feeling better. I overate so didn't even help him with my obligatory one bite of French Silk Pie. It was very nice. I borrowed a carpet cleaner from April and worked all day yesterday scrubbing down the carpets. Just upstairs, and it took a LONG time, but I think they look so much better it was worth it. I still have to go downstairs and do those. Cathryn posted on her blog, and I have been more active on FaceBook lately. What a hoot!

So the new things, Faraday no longer wishes to reliever herself in anything other than a spotlessly clean litter box. Not only does she need the water turned ON for her every time she is thirsty, and need only the most expensive canned foods, which she changes her taste on from day to day, but now she will meow uncontrollably if her litter box is dirty. She is 14 years, 4 months old. That is seventy-four in cat years: Cat Age Calculator So I guess I need to be patient and loving. But hey, some patient, loving help from some of the OTHER members of this family who aren't 74 would be appreciated. Anyone want to clean out the litter box downstairs??

Allen is now an official member of the United States Army. Dianna finished the GED so she can move on with her early acceptance to college. David has been in Chicago for week, caught a vicious bug there (I'll spare details) and was supposed to fly home yesterday. His flight was delayed due to bad weather in DC and he got in several hours late. His flight to Weyers Cave was canceled so he stayed in DC last night, going into relapse. He is supposed to be on the 12:50 flight. The lawnmower is kinda fixed and sitting in the back of the house. It is HOT! We had a quickie storm last night, lightning and the whole works. It knocked out the surge strip that protects the modem into the house for the computes. Totally dead. I had to replace it to get on the internet, but sure am glad to lose a ten dollar strip that is a quick replace than the modem or a computer.

I have always been scared of opening a laptop, but I did it. I added RAM to my laptop to move it from 512 to 1.24 MB. It was tough, since the directions weren't on the internet anywhere for this model, and it turned out I had to go in under the keyboard. This is a tiny 2 pound laptop, so I can see why it would be different. Then it didn't take the first time because it wasn't seated right, so I had to do it again. But the processor is only 1.1 so it is still slow. I shouldn't compare it to my desktop, though, and it is fine for the things I do on my trips to Belgium, which is th main reason I have it. I'm happy, and I learned something. I also finished editing the book "Jake Podlowski" and found it a nice read. I have a client who is getting ready to self-publish it. All power to him! He is also a painter and an interesting character, as anyone who answers the phone when he calls can easily attest to.

It has been so hot lately that just getting into the car is a chore. I hate it. So I try to stay in. I went out today to see Gail and show her the internet. We showed her the Tetris game and also did a search on dolphins and another on what the Irish wear under their kilts. Or don't wear.

  Can you see the tornado over the Everglades?

  Bryan and John, his roommate who works at the Key West Aquarium, caught this octopus while they were scuba diving. It inked on them so they had to put it in a different container. They said getting it out of the first one was tough because they couldn't see it.

  Bryan and his roommate John caught this ugly fish too. Apparently they found out later that it is deadly if you touch it. I think it is in the scorpion fish family and is called a stonefish.

  Queena Stovall was an artist in Virginia in the 60's. She went to auctions, remembered what she saw, and came home and painted the scenes. When Mom got her store in 1981, she found this print in the back of it and started looking at it closely. She recognized. Mrs. Poindexter against the tree and John Travillion as her favorite auctioneer. Every Tuesday was auction day, and she remembered this particular auction as one where she had bought me a lovely birds-eye maple dresser. Mom had polio in her legs in college and has a unique posture and walk. She was pregnant at the time of this auction. I went with her and remember wearing the blue sweater she had knit for me that hangs in my closet today. The family of Queena Stovall insists that they can identify the pregnant lady in the front and little red-headed girl in blue on the steps as members of their family. But I know better.

One of my octogenarian clients has written a 250 page manuscript which he paid to have typed. Now he realizes that he has to have it in electronic form to send to the publisher. He gave me the pages which I scanned and OCR'd into electronic form. Then I was to take the headings and page numbers out and we would be done. Not quite so easy. I hate to tell him, but there are loads of mis-spellings and punctuation mistakes the typist made. So I am editing it page by page -- the small stuff, not with the ugly pencil, so he will probably never know. It is an interesting read about an old curmudgeon in the Catskills whose daughter and three bratty grandkids from Colorado come to live with him. I ordered a computer for friend from Dell yesterday, but the build date is the 27th. I guess they are backed up with the back-to-school stuff. Dianna is off finishing the GED. Ridiculously easy. I still say that you shouldn't get to vote until you have completed high school or the GED. I...

It is amazing how far behind you can get by being gone for a week. My tomato plant recovered and bore eight lovely tomatoes, which I hope the deer who got seven of them enjoyed as much as I would have! David said it was a groundhog, but he never has liked Jason. But joy of joys! There appeared on my front stoop yesterday a small bag with three lovely tomatoes AND a yellow squash. Margie, my mystery benefactor, has promised me a summertime supply of tomatoes! With no deer drool! David bought a lawnmower yesterday, since the riding tractor now has broken a front axle so is out of commission. This has been the summer of bad lawnmower luck, hasn't it? But, I repeat, it is NOT MY FAULT! DAVID was ON the lawnmower when it broke. Family News: Allen is joining the Psychological Operations branch of the Special Operations in the Army and will learn another language. He will report to basic training somewhere on the east coast (Fort Bragg or Fort Benning) hopefully by the end of the...

Not a lot to say, since we spent pretty much every minute in the car yesterday, leaving at 8 in the morning and getting here to the hotel at midnight. We did see a tornado off in the distance over the everglades, and got stuck at a dead stop in the middle of Florida for two solid hours because a beer truck had jack-knifed on a bridge. The rains came and went most of the day, sometimes very hard. We were going to stop in Jacksonville to see David's parents but his mom is back in the hospital. Chestpains, but her heart is fine. So today we have about six hours of driving and then have to be home for a Ruritan Board Meeting tonight at 7. Hopefully, an easier day than yesterday.