Look out cause here I come

1/29/07 Monday
Good morning world, look out cause here I come. Sounds impressive don’t it? Sure it does. You got to talk a good game to have one. At least it helps. If I started out with “This day will suck” it’s pretty much a guarantee that it will. Didn’t get to sleep till after midnight cause a big part of the end of the day was spent doing the migraine thing so when it cleared up I worked on getting my journal entry written and posted. Gotta use the time I have.

We slept in, not waking up till 7:30. Partly from being up late. Cherie was online studying things for the sewing business she wants to start so she came to bed at midnight also. It will be a busy day. Cherie is going to Midland where she will shop and take care of some things that I don’t recall right now. When we went to Lowes yesterday of course I forgot some things. Part of this is because of the headache and the confusion that often comes when I am surrounded by so much that my brain must process. The main culprit though is not making and taking a list. I know better and always talk about writing lists, telling Cherie she needs to do so also. I need to practice what I preach.

So what to do today? I of course will work on getting our new woodstove installed. The two items I forgot to get yesterday are related to that. Need straps to hold the stove pipe in place on it’s journey to the top of the roof. Also could use an axe to split the wood I’ll cut with the new chainsaw. I checked prices on new ones at Lowes but they didn’t have the Homelite brand. Prices ranged from $139 to $350 for the ones close to the size we got. I may or may not have gotten a good deal but it doesn’t matter now. I’ll hate to run back to Midland and get what I forgot but I just remembered something else I forgot. That is some wood for making Cherie’s sewing table. I was planning on recycling some of the weathered two by fours but really don’t want to risk missing some nail or staple and tearing up the blades in the planer. Looked for a hand held metal detector at Ace Hardware to help find that kind of thing but they didn’t have one.

Looks like we won’t be doing any shopping today. Cherie is doing the math and it appears we pretty much spent what we had. There are funds coming but they won’t trickle in till tomorrow or Wednesday. It's always tight at the end of the month. One will be the life insurance payoff that Kim said would be issued today. That’ll be fifteen hundred or so. My VA pension check is reliable and is direct deposited on the first. Cherie was stressing about how close we are running but when I thought about it I told her to go ahead and go shopping cause she is getting things we need, no fluff. I told her to write checks instead of using the bank card. This goes against the rules I set up on how we use our money. “Never write a check if the money isn’t there” I’ve said many times. The bank card won’t work if the funds are not in the account but there is a three hundred dollar overdraft protection we have. This is as much credit as I will go for. No credit cards cause if we don’t have the money we don’t need it. Admittedly this causes hardships. We could have had a hot water heater a long time ago but have done without for two months. That will be taken care of shortly, either when the insurance check comes or the income tax check. If there’s enough left after our run up to Toledo we’ll get it then. Nate has a breaker box so we’ll be able to run wiring for it and the stove that’s setting in the garage for now.

I had a headache come on around 9:30 so took aspirin and the Hydrocodone I’ve been staying away from. It seems to be helping a little. It’s 10:46. For you new readers I use this journal to record things like this for doctors and such. They haven’t used it but I always get asked things like how many headaches I’ve had and how bad they are. When you sometimes can’t remember yesterday and certainly not the month it’s hard to answer. Usually I just guess, make up an answer that is conservative cause I don’t want to make things worse than they are. Despite the headache my brain is working at a 7 on the bob scale. (another note for new readers, using the term “bob scale” allows me to use it with the search engine thus accessing this information easily. That way I can graph the frequency and severity of the partial seizures as well as the levels of lucidity I have.)

Cherie is just about ready to head out the door and I’m good enough to get moving as well. Time to get out of these sweats and into work clothes. It’s cooler today and will remain in the forties the rest of the week. That’s the latest guess from the weather guy on TV. Lots of clouds and some rain. Suppose I’ll go online and post this. Don’t forget to check in cause I most likely will add to this as the day goes by. You guys, (that’s the way we talk up north in the mid west though it usually comes out Youse guys. The term is generic as far as gender goes) if you want to get notified whenever I post there’s a way to sign up for it at the bottom of each post.

I’ve made Cherie laugh as I always do. Actually making her laugh right now but I can’t tell you how cause she’ll kick my ass. She’s a wonderful miracle. Ain’t love grand! You bet it is. Got to get moving now.

I just looked at yesterday's post and thought I'd say something about the picture of me with the rather radical look. I adopted this look when I was wandering homeless, sleeping wherever I could find. This is shortly after I woke from the coma, actually about a year after. I was in no shape or condition to defend myself. Lost seventy pounds in the month I was comatose on top of breaking my neck amd being partly paralyzed. For me it was a self defense mechanism. Figured the crack heads, alcoholics, and mental cases would think I was crazy and leave me alone. Worked fairly well though someone did steal my dirty underwear at one of the homeless shelters. Not my favorite look but I thought an explanation would help. Here's a before and after shot.


Just got back from Lowes where I bought some more of the rock walk stuff we are using as a fireproof base for the wood stove to set on. I also got some steel that I can make brackets to secure the chimney with. Looked for some gasket material that I can seal the stove with. They didn’t have any. Went by the Bill’s Fireplace store but it wasn’t open. Got lots of the work done installing the stove and should finish up tomorrow as long as I don’t have any slowdowns or migraines. Done for the day now.