Not as bad as I thought

11/23/07 Friday
I’m not doing as bad as I expected regarding this body. It was a pain pill morning and I am shuffling around as I walk due to muscle weakness but there were no leg cramps last night. That used to be a regular occurrence in the first years after the coma but has subsided for the most part. It’s a good indication that my physical condition has greatly improved over the last six years. It was a bit disheartening to see the picture Cherie took of me yesterday pushing the wheelbarrow. Boy, that gut sure is there. Nothing like a picture to bring it out. All the mirrors in this house show above the waist so…out of sight out of mind. I can see how the baldness is spreading like a disease on the top of my head through pictures too. I really don’t care about being bald anyway but not being able to see the back of my head it is a surprise to see how much is gone.

So I’m not sure what I will do today. Mostly inside work I suppose though I do want to tackle the engine rebuild on the tiller soon now that the rings have come in. I did some cylinder honing with the hone we picked up at Sears a week or four ago but it will take a lot more to get the cylinder ready. The sand and years did a lot of wear on it. I am pretty tired right now. The eyes want to close as I write so I will probably take a short nap. It is pretty early for that only being 8:30. I usually go till two in the afternoon before the fatigue catches up but I put in a hard two days of work so I suppose that’s to be expected. It is always frustrating not to be able to keep up anything close to the pace I worked at before the accident. But I think I do pretty good all things considered. Sitting in this chair is murder on the back this morning so I will probably take this laptop to the bed where I will set up the pillows to lay back on as I type as I often do. Actually I pretty much do that all the time.

Cherie has gone shopping. She wasn’t at all interested in getting up at four in the morning to catch the sales. That surprised me cause she is good at getting the deals but the weather wasn’t encouraging. Fact is she isn’t getting any younger either so doesn’t keep her former pace just the same as I. That’s the natural course of things.
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2:54 – Cherie is back from shopping. She got lots of fantastic deals as I knew she would. The slippers and wallet she bought for me will need to be returned. I’ll need to be there when she buys a wallet because I suppose I’m a little picky. Not really, I just want something that will last and most of the stuff out there is rinky dink and wont last a year. Not in my back pocket.

While she was gone I finished making the chili I started a bit ago. What gets me is that standing at the kitchen counter cooking is much harder on me than all the work I did planting the rye seed. There is just something about doing things at a countertop height that produces killer pain in my back. What a paradox. Hard labor that has me sweating and breathing hard is easier than chopping peppers and stirring a pot.

Our tomato plants are done for with the freeze. There were about a dozen peppers left so I went and picked them for the chili. One was a cayenne and the rest were habaneras. Knowing how hot they are I decided to divide up the batch of chili, making one very mild and the other not mild at all. I was surprised when I tasted them a minute ago that the one with the peppers wasn’t all that hot. Guess I’ll have to add some more. Nah, I’ll leave it the way it is. It is hard for me to really judge this stuff because my sense of taste and smell are drastically reduced from the brain damage. Strangely enough that comes and goes so that sometimes I can detect every minor nuance. The rest of the time it’s just not there. Cherie bought some Irish crème coffee creamer because she knows I like it. We also have the French vanilla flavor. I never noticed it till I looked in the fridge and saw the label on the Irish crème despite drinking coffee every morning. So yesterday I took a sip and told Cherie “This Irish crème tastes really good”. She cracked up laughing but sympathetically touched my shoulder and told me it was the French vanilla because she knows this is a problem I have.

She is so good at understanding these things. Yesterday or the day before I told her that I emailed Jen and Wally and she laughed and laughed. The reason is that I had read the email they sent out that talked about being in the city of Columbo in South America. I emailed back saying that I didn’t know they were in Columbo but hoped they were ok and would be praying for them. Cherie laughed because Jen and Wally weren’t the ones in Columbo. They had sent out the Email regarding a couple from our Sunday school class who was over there visiting a missionary couple the class helps out. It’s not unusual for me to get confused about things like this. I don’t know if I just don’t see what I’m reading or forget details like who what or when minutes after I read. But it’s good to laugh about it.

I went to the John Deere dealer here in Stanton to show them the ad that was in the Farm Bureau magazine and see if they could match the deal. I was surprised to see my cousin, Darryl, in an office working. Didn’t know he worked there. But I don’t really know much about him as it is. He pretty much has shunned us ever since we arrived. He said “Hi Bob” after I said hi to him and that was it. No greeting, no getting up to talk, just an obligatory “hi”. It bothers me but I suppose I shouldn’t let it.

I have to lay down. The back pain is up there from cooking and I started to slow down a few minutes ago. I can usually sense when one of these partial seizures is coming. Done for now folks so see ya next time.