Thursday, May 23
May. 24th, 2024 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
The extra sleep I got last night. I needed it.
How wonderful it is to wake up with my sweet animals. There is NOTHING like sweet kitty snuggles when you wake up, and Roxy peeking over the side of the bed.
All the rain we've had. I'm so glad, it was a dry spring a month ago. Now it's all green and growing.
I did some more laundry, and worked in the garden again after letting everyone out into their pastures.
I got a lot more weeds pulled, and there is something satisfying about pulling out a giant dandelion root from fairly soft soil.
My Sweetie was talking to our "work friends" (people we help with big house projects back and forth) and was given the name of a guy who is a contractor who might be able to do some work for us (the other guy who was doing work on our window frames really is too old to be expected to work on ladders and such). We need work done on the soffits and fascia.
That guy came today to have a look, and my husband is even talking to him about getting the metal roofing installed (this guy would come work for us on his own, but he does work with a bigger contracting company that might do the roof). That would be a big leap on the outside of the house.
My husband is a lot more worried about getting a metal roof right now than I am. Our shingles are still good for quite some time, but for whatever reason he's more focused on that. I thought that was still more of a "ten years down the road" thing, but maybe he's seeing how hard it can be to even find a contractor to do that kind of thing.
It turns out that the vehicle we sold to R's daughter from the riding barn, is now NOT being sold to them. We are going to give them their money back and try to sell it some other way. Our mechanic found a leak in the engine that will be too expensive to fix for what it is worth. This is after we exchanged money and a bill of sale, and after his inspection two weeks ago that cleared it of major issues. I guess he had it up on the hoist going to start on some of the other work it needed (that they were going to pay for as it's new owners) and found the new problem.
Sigh.
Our mechanic is very sorry for missing this leak, as we never would have sold it in that condition without disclosure. He's going to help us get rid of it by taking it to a vehicle auction (full disclosure of findings) and not charging us for taking it there, or the more recent work he was doing on it. I think that's pretty honest of him.
Shortly before I went to my riding lesson, I talked with Sister E. It started out as a reasonably lighthearted conversation, about things like how pretty my drive back was. She started talking about her husband, that I know has diabetes and has had some serious health issues in the last few years. She talked about how he's "losing interest" in doing things like going out for supper with friends, or just any kind of activities. He's more and more just wanting to stay at home and sit in front of the television and not do anything. He's not "on top of" anything like bills or paperwork or things that need doing around the house.
I got a wave of recognition, as this was how a friend of mine described her husband at the beginning of his dementia.
So, I gently asked her if he's had any of the tests for dementia, and she kind of went quiet, but then she was like "oh...that would actually make a lot of sense". He is 75 now, and with diabetes doing so much damage to the blood vessels and causing circulatory problems, dementia is often an issue.
He was supposed to have a test for dementia, just because they often want to establish a baseline, but he's refused to take it. My sister says that she doesn't go with him to his doctor's appointments because "he needs his privacy", but she says now she's going to go with him and be more active in the process.
She's going to ask him to take the dementia assessment test, and even if it doesn't show any changes, that will still be important to know.
I really felt for her, the shock that it could be what's happening to him.
Then I had to go to my riding lesson. Wow, was I really not able to focus AT ALL. I tried.
It's funny, R right away asked me when I walked into the barn "how was my trip to see family (yay, it must have been so much fun!)". I didn't feel like pretending it was all sunshine and chocolates, and tried to find a way to not make it sound TOO horrible as I said something like "I survived". She probed a bit, and I said "it's really hard to see people getting older etc.".
I guess it must be strange for some people, to think that family gatherings can be stressful, and not just pure joy at seeing everyone.
We worked on our liberty freestyle, and I was all over the place. I haven't even worked with River for a week, and jumping straight into a lesson without having a chance to reconnect with him was not helpful. We did okay, found some kind of connection after a while, and I appreciated being with him again.
He actually is doing very well with the Spanish Walk while I'm riding, and only using the neck rope. He loves doing it now because he gets cookies for it, so he's doing it all the time without me asking (which we'll also have to discourage), which is kind of funny.
He did have hives, though, and we'll have to watch that. He could be reacting to some weird plant out in the pasture.
I came home and we ate and watched "Boardwalk Empire".
I'm going to skip a country for tonight, as this is already a very long entry.
The extra sleep I got last night. I needed it.
How wonderful it is to wake up with my sweet animals. There is NOTHING like sweet kitty snuggles when you wake up, and Roxy peeking over the side of the bed.
All the rain we've had. I'm so glad, it was a dry spring a month ago. Now it's all green and growing.
I did some more laundry, and worked in the garden again after letting everyone out into their pastures.
I got a lot more weeds pulled, and there is something satisfying about pulling out a giant dandelion root from fairly soft soil.
My Sweetie was talking to our "work friends" (people we help with big house projects back and forth) and was given the name of a guy who is a contractor who might be able to do some work for us (the other guy who was doing work on our window frames really is too old to be expected to work on ladders and such). We need work done on the soffits and fascia.
That guy came today to have a look, and my husband is even talking to him about getting the metal roofing installed (this guy would come work for us on his own, but he does work with a bigger contracting company that might do the roof). That would be a big leap on the outside of the house.
My husband is a lot more worried about getting a metal roof right now than I am. Our shingles are still good for quite some time, but for whatever reason he's more focused on that. I thought that was still more of a "ten years down the road" thing, but maybe he's seeing how hard it can be to even find a contractor to do that kind of thing.
It turns out that the vehicle we sold to R's daughter from the riding barn, is now NOT being sold to them. We are going to give them their money back and try to sell it some other way. Our mechanic found a leak in the engine that will be too expensive to fix for what it is worth. This is after we exchanged money and a bill of sale, and after his inspection two weeks ago that cleared it of major issues. I guess he had it up on the hoist going to start on some of the other work it needed (that they were going to pay for as it's new owners) and found the new problem.
Sigh.
Our mechanic is very sorry for missing this leak, as we never would have sold it in that condition without disclosure. He's going to help us get rid of it by taking it to a vehicle auction (full disclosure of findings) and not charging us for taking it there, or the more recent work he was doing on it. I think that's pretty honest of him.
Shortly before I went to my riding lesson, I talked with Sister E. It started out as a reasonably lighthearted conversation, about things like how pretty my drive back was. She started talking about her husband, that I know has diabetes and has had some serious health issues in the last few years. She talked about how he's "losing interest" in doing things like going out for supper with friends, or just any kind of activities. He's more and more just wanting to stay at home and sit in front of the television and not do anything. He's not "on top of" anything like bills or paperwork or things that need doing around the house.
I got a wave of recognition, as this was how a friend of mine described her husband at the beginning of his dementia.
So, I gently asked her if he's had any of the tests for dementia, and she kind of went quiet, but then she was like "oh...that would actually make a lot of sense". He is 75 now, and with diabetes doing so much damage to the blood vessels and causing circulatory problems, dementia is often an issue.
He was supposed to have a test for dementia, just because they often want to establish a baseline, but he's refused to take it. My sister says that she doesn't go with him to his doctor's appointments because "he needs his privacy", but she says now she's going to go with him and be more active in the process.
She's going to ask him to take the dementia assessment test, and even if it doesn't show any changes, that will still be important to know.
I really felt for her, the shock that it could be what's happening to him.
Then I had to go to my riding lesson. Wow, was I really not able to focus AT ALL. I tried.
It's funny, R right away asked me when I walked into the barn "how was my trip to see family (yay, it must have been so much fun!)". I didn't feel like pretending it was all sunshine and chocolates, and tried to find a way to not make it sound TOO horrible as I said something like "I survived". She probed a bit, and I said "it's really hard to see people getting older etc.".
I guess it must be strange for some people, to think that family gatherings can be stressful, and not just pure joy at seeing everyone.
We worked on our liberty freestyle, and I was all over the place. I haven't even worked with River for a week, and jumping straight into a lesson without having a chance to reconnect with him was not helpful. We did okay, found some kind of connection after a while, and I appreciated being with him again.
He actually is doing very well with the Spanish Walk while I'm riding, and only using the neck rope. He loves doing it now because he gets cookies for it, so he's doing it all the time without me asking (which we'll also have to discourage), which is kind of funny.
He did have hives, though, and we'll have to watch that. He could be reacting to some weird plant out in the pasture.
I came home and we ate and watched "Boardwalk Empire".
I'm going to skip a country for tonight, as this is already a very long entry.
