Saturday, April 30
Apr. 30th, 2022 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Reasonably nice weather.
A quiet day at home.
I called Mom, and actually got through no problem (sometimes she is eating, or busy). She seemed pretty lucid and chatty today.
I spent a fair chunk of time just sitting in the pasture with the ponies/goats, letting Roxy root around.
I did a few putter-y yet useful things. I took a bunch of plastic bags from animal bedding and put them with the recycling. I put away the pony and goat blankets in the tack room on the trailer, and dug around to see if I could find a cooler I was looking for. I found it literally jammed underneath everything else. I had wondered if I left it behind at the other riding barn.
I picked up branches from trimming the hedge and took them out to the bush at the edge of our property to let them decompose naturally.
I dug a bit more grass out of the garden.
My Sweetie came home from work for one night. He took tomorrow off to help a guy build his garage (this guy came and worked on our house), and then will go back to work for the rest of his hitch.
It was his birthday a few days ago, and he was at work, but I baked him a super luscious carrot cake with cream cheese icing for him, and he can take it back to work to eat all week.
I luckily had enough of the ingredients to make it. I don't know how I pulled that off.
Then we did the big clean up, you have to be careful to wash everything and put everything away because of the animals.
I learned that giraffes have extremely high blood pressure, in order to get enough blood to their brains:
Giraffes have sky-high blood pressure because of their sky-high heads that, in adults, rise about 6m (19ft) above the ground – a long, long way for a heart to pump blood against gravity. To have a blood pressure of 110/70 at the brain – about normal for a large mammal – giraffes need a blood pressure at the heart of about 220/180. It doesn't faze the giraffes, but a pressure like that would cause all sorts of problems for people, from heart failure to kidney failure to swollen ankles and legs.
They have also evolved to deal with the problem of blood pressure changes when they lower and raise their heads, as well as NOT having blood pool in their legs from all that pressure, a different heart, a slightly different heart rhythm, organs that can deal with the high pressure, and are able to deal with higher blood pressure during pregnancy.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210803-how-giraffes-deal-with-sky-high-blood-pressure
Reasonably nice weather.
A quiet day at home.
I called Mom, and actually got through no problem (sometimes she is eating, or busy). She seemed pretty lucid and chatty today.
I spent a fair chunk of time just sitting in the pasture with the ponies/goats, letting Roxy root around.
I did a few putter-y yet useful things. I took a bunch of plastic bags from animal bedding and put them with the recycling. I put away the pony and goat blankets in the tack room on the trailer, and dug around to see if I could find a cooler I was looking for. I found it literally jammed underneath everything else. I had wondered if I left it behind at the other riding barn.
I picked up branches from trimming the hedge and took them out to the bush at the edge of our property to let them decompose naturally.
I dug a bit more grass out of the garden.
My Sweetie came home from work for one night. He took tomorrow off to help a guy build his garage (this guy came and worked on our house), and then will go back to work for the rest of his hitch.
It was his birthday a few days ago, and he was at work, but I baked him a super luscious carrot cake with cream cheese icing for him, and he can take it back to work to eat all week.
I luckily had enough of the ingredients to make it. I don't know how I pulled that off.
Then we did the big clean up, you have to be careful to wash everything and put everything away because of the animals.
I learned that giraffes have extremely high blood pressure, in order to get enough blood to their brains:
Giraffes have sky-high blood pressure because of their sky-high heads that, in adults, rise about 6m (19ft) above the ground – a long, long way for a heart to pump blood against gravity. To have a blood pressure of 110/70 at the brain – about normal for a large mammal – giraffes need a blood pressure at the heart of about 220/180. It doesn't faze the giraffes, but a pressure like that would cause all sorts of problems for people, from heart failure to kidney failure to swollen ankles and legs.
They have also evolved to deal with the problem of blood pressure changes when they lower and raise their heads, as well as NOT having blood pool in their legs from all that pressure, a different heart, a slightly different heart rhythm, organs that can deal with the high pressure, and are able to deal with higher blood pressure during pregnancy.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210803-how-giraffes-deal-with-sky-high-blood-pressure
no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 09:47 pm (UTC)She WAS in the hospital for about two months, just before she was transferred to the care home, because she fell and cracked her pelvis. This precipitated all the decisions that should have been made a while ago, and everyone was pretending didn't need to happen.
She was having a hard time walking when she fell, just getting out of her chair and around the house was hard for her. When I was home last autumn, I saw how hard everything was for her, and started making a lot of noise to have her moved to a care home, and my family was saying "we'll think about it"'. Then, pretty much as I was just getting back from my visit she fell.
She went through a brief period of physio where they tried to see if she could get better at walking again, but once the doctor determined that she needed to be in care, pretty much any attempts at walking stopped.
She is in a wheel chair, though I think she is somewhat able to stand enough to help the staff.
Her short term memory is pretty much gone. People can visit her and she forgets quickly that they were there. I wonder how that feels for her, because every time I talk with her she says no one has come to visit, except she knows that her brother comes almost every day, as does my Trainwreck sister, so even if she doesn't remember what they talked about or anything, she seems to know that they visit a lot.
She seems to know who we all are, at least. She isn't entirely sure sometimes where she is. Sometimes she thinks it's her home, sometimes it is just "here", without being clear that it is the care home.
She seems a LOT more cheerful than the last couple of years at her own house. She gets her meds on time, and gets real food instead of the junk food she was determined to live on. She has people around her too, and she seems pretty cheerful when I call.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 08:10 pm (UTC)https://www.thebienstockgroup.com/magnolias-hummingbird-cake/
no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-02 02:00 am (UTC)I don't bake much anymore, either. But yesterday I baked brownies. because the sous chef had a friend over. I went into sugar shock.