Jaci Dawn

Oh, where do I begin?

Faerieworlds? Grandbaby? Nephew? It has been a whirlwind of events over the past few weeks. Faerieworlds deserves its own post, but I cannot promise it will be timely to the event: we are back into a 90-degree (F) weather pattern and that makes the loft (where my computer is) stuffy & hot in the evenings when I have time to post. I could have posted last week, but somehow time slipped by – and there was no post. Time slips by a lot, lately.

There have been a lot of changes at work, not the least of which is that I am pretty much the “Last Woman Standing” from the “old” crew. All the accounting staff I started with in 2007, when I moved to the Closing Department of our company – all of them, except moi – are gone. The last one got married in July and quit by the end of July to start her new life with her beloved. She was my best friend at work and is sorely missed. I feel a little like I have just started a new job because I am learning the new personalities and quirks of an entirely new staff!

Faerieworlds came and went, and while I did not take a ton of photos, I have enough photos to share and a long blog post to write about the 2013 experience, which includes taking a new acquaintance to the event – and our budding friendship, which I hope blossoms. Faerieworlds deserves a post of its own and I am not in the mood to do that tonight.

Tonight belongs to family.

Last week, the day after Faerieworlds, I drove north to PDX. I timed it according to the internet: Arwen’s flight from Alaska was on time & I wanted to cruise through the arrivals exactly 10-15 minutes after her arrival to pick the kids up as they exited the concourse. Of course, their flight was early and they had to sit on a hard bench, waiting for me. Verity, just 3.5 months old, slept through the entire flight and wait and consequent ride to our house.

Verity looks just like her mother at the same age, but acts considerably less colicky. Arwen was a colicky baby. Maybe it was because I was a new mother. Maybe it is because Arwen is such a calm mother.

At one point, Chrystal & Brian, Arwen, Sam & Verity, and I were all together in the backyard. It was wonderful to have so much of the family together.

Poppa certainly enjoyed his second granddaughter!

They left on Wednesday. On Thursday, my nephew flew in from Minnesota.

It’s a long story: my sister died suddenly when she was just 40. She contracted Necrotizing Faciitis (flesh eating bacteria) and died within 36 hours. She left behind several small children and my oldest nephew (then 21? I think he was 21). Chrystal was the oldest, a full orphan at the time. She was almost 9. Mike was the next, a boy of almost 5 year of age. His father took him to live in Minnesota. Then J. J stayed in Nevada with my sister’s widower and his soon-to-be second wife. J is still there.

Mike just graduated from high school and turned 18. He flew out to see his older sister and this weekend, we barbecued with him and Chrystal.

Joe Cool. My nephew, fresh from Minnesota, savoring the steak barbecue. He’s just looking for family connections.

Grand-dog, Fen, came along. Fen has grown so much since his last visit! He’s pretty well-behaved and I think his next visit will be more of an open visit. We will let him meet Harvey outside of the kennel. Murphy would probably be the better playmate, but Harvey is less scary as a big dog. Harvey will be intimidated by Fen, but that’s OK. Harvey dislikes confrontation.

Fen – despite my preconceived dislike of little dogs – is a pretty decent little dog. Of course, he is my grand-dog. 🙂

Brian is the best guy in the world. Whether or not Brian knows it, I consider him my son-in-law. he is definitely the bast man for Chrystal. The three of them went through the only photo album I have that includes pictures of Chrystal & Mike’s mother. I wish I had more.

I wish I had stories. But I left home at 17 and my sister and I drifted apart. We wrote letters, of course, and somewhere I have all those letters saved. But we were worlds apart.

All I have now of her is her children. Her children are beautiful. I hope she knows that.

The first weekend of Summer is almost officially over. We had one nice day. Today, it rained. That’s pretty normal for this corner of the world, but it makes my toes cold and wet. I categorically refuse to wear socks in the summer.

I am trying out this nifty new product. I’m not sure if it has a name or not, but if it does, it’s an Ant Moat. It hangs between the hook and the hummingbird feeder and you fill it with water. In theory, it stops the ants because they can’t swim. Sounds logical and if it works (this feeder is in an area with heavy ant traffic), then I will purchase more of them. I should have washed the label off first, so next time…

This was a spur-of-the-moment purchase. A funky glass bird feeder that is probably prettier than functional, but I filled it and put it on a shepherd’s hook in the backyard. now to see how long iot takes the little birds to find it (it’s much too small to host the big birds – they’ll have to share with the squirrels out front).

Speaking of bird feeding: for three years in a row, I have had zero fortune with growing sunflowers. I’ve never had such a black thumb with such an easy plant to grow, but there you are. This year, my husband decided to not mow down the volunteer sunflowers that sprang up underneath the front yard feeder.

He made that decision after I sprang for six sunflower starts at Portland Nursery, which are also doing quite well. I took this photo before I added the old croquet balls to the yard decor. There are only four croquet balls left from the cheap variety store set we purchased when our kids are little. The brandboys used to roll them down the handicap ramp out back, but now that they live far away, I’m turning the set into yard decor.

I like random yard art. The door knob is one of three that came inside a chest of drawers I purchased at Goodwill. They’re just funky plastic door knobs still attached to part of the door. Inexplicably, someone saved them and I repurposed them to the garden.

The gazing balls are just cheap plastic ones. I positioned them on the roots of a bush that died in my garden. When I dug it out, I decided I liked the shape of the root ball and rather than toss it away, I am using it for yard art.

An old lawn chair becomes support for the Russian Sage. By the time the sage blooms, it will be tall and prone to falling over. The chair fits over it perfectly.

The remains of an old stool become a tomato cage for one of my struggling tomato plants. My wire art hangs from two store-bought tomato cages. And my grapevine is beginning to take over the corner.

We’ll have grapes this year if the birds don’t beat us to them!

Speaking of random yard art, Daphne has taken up residence on my cheap garden bench.

So did the cast iron bird. You can see my bench had an accident. Eventually, I will recycle the bench into yard art as it is cheaper and easier to just purchase a new bench for $40 than it is to find replacement slats. I just have to decide what I want to do with the old bench first.

I bought this at the Farmer’s Market. The artist called it “Bird on a Stick”. She had dozens of the birds & even sold sticks, but I told her I had plenty of sticks in my yard to use.

I did some planting on Saturday: the peppers are staked with old hot-wire stakes. The stakes consit of rebar with a ceramic insulator at the top. I have about 8 of them that I picked up out of an old barn on some property we lived on long ago. They don’t make hot wire stakes like these anymore and I’ve used them for a variety of purposes over the years (Christmas lights, plant stakes, gate stops, temporary fence for horses that I no longer own).

I have no idea why I took a photo of our one and only tree. It’s a dying Lodgepole pine. Two bird feeders and two suet cakes dangle from it. We call it a “Habitat Tree” because it attracts so many birds to our yard. As such, it can’t be cut down. Sadly, it’s completely dead on the north side and slowly dying up the other side. My dad suggested it has a fungus. We know it has tiny black borer beetles. It’s not tall enough to be a threat to our home (the towering Douglas Firs across the street are a bigger threat), so we’ll just let it stay there as long as we can use it for the birds.

This is Earl’s House. Earl is our resident (and brazen) star-nosed mole patriarch. We don’t know how many Earls live in the hole or what Earl’s wife’s name is. Earlene? Chrystal named Earl when I was trying to teach her dog to mole hunt. There will be more blogs about Earl as I am getting ready to wage war with him (humanely, if possible).

War was actually declared by Earl the night before Father’s Day. He came out of his hole while Harvey was standing there, did the little gopher dance from “Caddyshack”, and then retreated into darkness when I tried to point him out to Harvey.

Speaking of Harvey. It’s an on-going battle to keep him in the yard.His last escape attempt was at this gate. He figured out that if he kept jumping on it, it would eventually unhinge and open. Fortunately, I caught him in the act. I stapled a tomato cage (opened and flattened) across the weak point so he’ll stop pushing on it. So far, so good. Another temporary foil until he finds a new weak spot in the yard.

Sometimes I just have to resort to funky with the big dogs. This is my funky “do not pee on this bush” fence. They’ll probably pee on the wires, but they’re still too far away to kill the bush.

Why do we have dogs…?

Which segues into other critters, like snails, slugs and fairies. Here I have the supplies to build a fairy house. A real one, not the sort I make in my studio. The kind that attract real fairies. However, I haven’t done much with it because of the snails and slugs. If I build a hollow, the gastropods will invade it and make it their home. I don’t want to put slug-and-snail bail down inside a fairy house because it’s probably toxic to fairies (not to mention the matter of aesthetics and dead slugs/snails.

I have an idea, but I need to commit it to paper and then visit a hardware store and make a tiny model first. I think a faerie house on stilts with a place underneath to kill slugs and snails? I could post slug bait warning signs for the fairies and the birds wouldn’t be getting into it, either.

Or the dogs.

More on critters: there has been a dearth of these in my yard this summer. We started out strong with the honeybees and bumblebees, but two things have happened that have affected out population. They moved a huge hive that was building outside of a church steeple in early June. My husband said they were relocating them back inside the steeple. All I know is this: the honeybee population in our yard took a dive. It’s starting to come back (I saw six honeybees yesterday).

The other blow was to bumblebees. I still have them in my yard, but it seems like there are far fewer and I’m concerned that what happened in Wilsonville (50,000 bumblebees dead) has happened closer to home. I worry, too, that individuals purchase the insecticide Safari and apply it in their own yards, indiscriminately and because most people think bees, wasps, and hornets are the same thing.

I joined the Xerces Society.

While I was chasing down the honeybees for a photo, this guy kept buzzing me. It’s a young bald-faced hornet. They can be pretty aggressive, but if you don’t get excited and swat at them or you don’t get too close to their hive, you’re usually pretty safe from them. This one definitely let me know how close I could step to the lavender while taking pictures of him. Of course, maybe he was just posing for the lens.

And then there’s the dogs. In a classic move, Harvey, the submissive, hides his treat from Murphy, the domineering. Murphy won’t force the issue (these dogs have never gotten into a fight), but he’ll hover in case Harvey drops the treat.

“Please drop it, Bro!”

“Nope, nope, nope. Yumm.”

And last, a little interlude from Earl the Mole’s cousin:

Guess what I did today? I went hospital surfing. I’m not certain it will catch on as a sport but I am certain some family members will be put out because they didn’t know I went hospital surfing. I do hope they will read the whole blog and will understand that 1)there really wasn’t anything to report and 2) I was dealing with my own issues on top of lack of sleep, so something as simple as making a phone call kind of went out the window. Fatigue will do that to you.

My alternate title for this blog is “Things to do on Your Day Off at the Hospital.”

Or “Why is there a blue latex glove on the ground outside my house?”

There really was a blue latex glove on the ground outside the house this morning.

I really did have the day off, too. I had two appointments: a 10:00 with the dentist to set a crown and a 2:30 with a CT Scan. I figured that between them, it wasn’t worth driving to work in between. As it was, I never made it to the dentist appointment. That was rescheduled for Friday at 3:00.

Last night, Don & I met in the kitchen to talk. We do that frequently when the weather is too bad to go sit outside in lawn chairs (which is most of the time here). He leans against the kitchen sink and I stand by the stove and we recount our day, our concerns for our kids, what we have planned for our immediate future and long term future, and everything under the sun. Don poured a second glass of wine for both of us and I contemplated how soon I could get into bed even though I didn’t have to get up early in the morning.

He turned a funny ashen color and looked around nervously. “I feel dizzy.”

“Do you want me to help you walk to your chair?”

He nodded and mumbled, turning paler. I stepped forward to put my shoulder under his armpit but he just collapsed in front of me. Kind of slid down the front of the cupboards, landing gently in a sitting position with legs akimbo and eyes wide open and blank. He wasn’t there.

I reached for the phone and dialed 9-1-1. I detailed quickly what had just happened, where I lived and that my husband had a history of A-Fib. Sometime during the first few moments of the call, Don roused himself a little and looked up at me.

“Why did you call 9-1-1?”

<pause for you to absorb that line>

I finished my call with the operator by explaining that I had to secure our two big dogs before the paramedics arrived. Then I hauled the pair of them outside and into their outdoor kennels. Hurried back in, realized I was bra-less and corrected that (a girl has to do what a girl has to do to save the minds of unsuspecting paramedics).

Oh, sure, laugh. But I want to know: how many of you who wear bras during the day time, ditch that torture device as soon as you walk in that front door after work?

Things happened very quickly from that point on: four burly firemen came into my kitchen and stuck pieces of tape onto Don’s body (and even shaved some of his chest although I warned them that I like men with hairy chests – none of that body-builder shaved chest look for this woman!) and asked me questions about his health. Don was somewhat coherent at this point, more bewildered than anything. I’m sure he was thinking, “Did Jaci wash the dishes in the sink? Don’t let them go into the bathroom. It’s a mess…”

Then the ambulance arrived and the second shift came in. These guys came with Don’s own special guerney.

They also convinced me that they should take my husband to a hospital more capable of dealing with heart issues than the one down the street. So off to Meridian Park they headed. I made a last minute sweep through the house, called each one of the kids and gave them a five second “head’s up”, and then locked the door. I went a different way than the ambulance and beat them to the hospital.

From that point on, it got incredibly b-o-r-i-n-g. Don’s vitals were normal. They drew blood. We were left in an ER room behind a big curtain that zips together. Don had a roommate on the other side who said random things (loudly) like, “DON’T TALK LIKE THAT, THERE ARE SMALL CHILDREN HERE.” Once in awhile, between snores, snorks, and inarticulate grunts, said person would hear a nurse sneeze. “GEZUNDHEIT.”

Around 2AM, they determined Don would spend the night and they started the process of securing a room for him. I left. All the bars were closed as I drove through Oregon City – I can’t remember the last time I was out later than the bars were open. I let the kids know I was home and it looked OK.

At 4, I fell asleep. At 7, Murphy woke up and went looking (again) for Don. At 8, Murphy woke up and started to go looking for Don but I yelled at him and he lay back down. I called the dentist and canceled my appointment. At 9, the garbage men picked up the trash and Murphy went ballistic. At 9:30, I punished him by shoving him back into his outdoor kennel and leaving him. Take that, Murph!

Darn dog, anyway.

I reached the hospital by 10. And NOTHING WAS CHANGED – except, of course, that Don was in a room. Finally. He said he didn’t get a room until 8AM. It was that busy at the hospital although we were in the ICU wing and it seemed rather quiet there.

It was a long day of just sitting and waiting. I read three YA books that a friend mailed me a week ago. The Rugendo Rhinos Series. I hope the link works. It’s an aside, but I have a friend who grew up in the same mission as where the books are set and it’s kind of like a peek into that friend’s childhood.

I had to leave before the doctor got up to see Don because I have my own issues. Yes, I italicized that.

The whole reason for taking today off was so I could fit the CT Scan in. At another hospital, although if I had known I was going to be hanging out all day at Meridian Park, I certainly could have scheduled it for there. As it was, I had to hospital surf. I drove back to Willamette Falls Hospital so I could have an IV put into my arm (also) and iodine solution pumped into my veins.

You see, that stupid kidney thing is back. At least, we think it is in my kidneys. We don’t really know now that kidney stones have been effectively removed (from my kidneys and from the bigger picture). We’re back to the first imaging that was done in early 2011: the CT Scan with an iodine solution and diagnostic x-rays.

Meanwhile… well, if I can talk about remembering to put my bra on before paramedics show up, I guess I can throw this bit of TMI out, too: I pee red. Blood clots. Yeah. It’s all very mysterious and pain-less.

So if I didn’t call anyone, it’s because I was sort of preoccupied with my own stuff today. Hospital surfing. It’s a sport for the strong of spirit and weak of stomach (I avert my eyes when an IV is mentioned).

Anyway – the upshot of Don’s imprisonment is that the blood pressure meds they put him on during the original episode seem to be making his heart beat TOO slow. He spent the night restless because every time he drifted off to sleep, his heart rate dropped to 30 and he set off alarms. Otherwise, he’s the picture of health.

They took him off of that med and told him to follow up with his GP next week. I got to bring him home.

My issues? Well, we’ll find out Monday if they could find anything.

One last thing: Don *is* still talking to me even though he thinks the whole night-in-the-hospital was a waste of time (his) and resources (ours and the insurance company’s). I told him the moral of the story is simple: “Don’t faint in front of your wife. Ever. Not ever again.”

It’s not allowed.

Oh – and if you’re a family member that didn’t get called and you’re miffed, look at it this way: I am secretly practicing to see if I can beat your record for hospital surfing. Because we’re all becoming pretty good at this as we age, don’t you think??