Teddee Is Tired

I thought cortisone was supposed to really rev you up.  I went for a follow-up visit yesterday for the injuries I received when I fell several weeks ago and was told, based on some simple strength tests, that I had strained my right rotator cuff.  The physician's assistant in Orthopedics, affiliated with the Urgent Care facility I had gone to the day I fell, seemed fairly certain I had not torn the rotator cuff, which is good news, and says the pain I'm experiencing has nothing to do with the chipped shoulder bone.  She prescribed a muscle relaxant, which Humana refused to cover so I didn't get it, and cortisone.  I've taken the three tablets prescribed so far for the first day and really haven't noticed any difference...and, based on the last cortisone I enjoyed several years ago, I was really hoping to feel "shot from guns."  But that was given by injection, so perhaps that's the difference.  I recall feeling the best that following week that I'd felt since I was in my twenties!  Lots of physical and mental energy.  I was unaware of what I'd been given and asked for more and was, of course, told "No way."  Too bad there isn't something legal, that's not debilitating in the long run, we could take as we age to regain that get up and go.


That said, I haven't had a bad couple of days.  I left the cabin early yesterday and drove to the apartment in Boulder.  I snapped a photo of the newly seeded grass that's coming up in the park just to the west of the building.  They are watering furiously and it's looking great.  What a delightful view of the Flatirons...

I wanted to get to the apartment early because I needed to color my hair and while that was processing I got a few things unpacked and put in the kitchen cupboards.  It was a treat to be able to step into the shower and rinse out that hair color, I'll tell you.  It is so difficult to get the product out when you're rinsing by hand in a wash pan.  Additionally, you use a lot of water...good for at least one trip to the spring!  

I just made it to my medical appointment, perhaps a mile north of the apartment.  I really liked this physician's assistant.  She seems to know her stuff, didn't keep me waiting, didn't seem rushed, and answered all my questions.  She said if the lump remaining in my eyebrow is scar tissue in the muscle it may never go completely away.  The numbness, which I also inquired about, does seem to be less today than it was even yesterday.  She said the bruise remaining under my eye may take quite some time to completely dissipate.  I was given some simple exercises to do for the next four weeks for the rotator cuff, at which time I'm to return.  

After my appointment, I returned to the apartment and applied my makeup, which I hadn't had time to do earlier, then drove to meet my friend Paula for lunch.  Yes, it was finally the second Wednesday of the month when we get our Social Security checks, but Paula agreed to go to Olive Garden again so I could use the $20 gift card I had been given by management after the restaurant charged my checking account twice for my lunch the last time.  The food was good and we had a great visit but, once again, the service was not really up to snuff.  I still have enough for another lunch on my gift card, but I'm not sure I'll ever get Paula to go back, so may have to go solo!

After lunch, I went to Walgreens to pick up my prescription, then headed back to Nederland where I stopped at Ace for the paint for the secretary (whoopee) and at B&F for Cheap Chicken and Wednesday's senior discount on a few groceries including more kibble for the foxes.


This morning I heated lots of water and did dishes out on the patio then decided to drag out the ugly table and try to do a better job of painting it than I'd done the other day inside the cabin when it was so windy...

I'd put the first coat on with a brush, but could see brush marks.  Today I tried a roller and now I can see roller marks!  It was really too hot, I think, and I was right in the sun.  I may have to sand this a little and try again although, based on past experience..."It will never be noticed on a galloping horse at midnight..." and it's pretty much midnight in this cabin with all this charcoal brown paint!   I noted today, according to Ace, this paint is called Prancing Pony.

I also decided to use Prancing Pony on this old cutting board that had been an atrocious 60s or 70s yellow with some equally atrocious Pennsylvania Dutch designs on the back...

Maybe eventually I'll stencil some subtle design on this so people can actually find it when it's hanging against an equally Painted Pony wall!


Then, on to what I expected to be the fun project...the secretary!  I started out with the three drawer fronts...

This paint is Chestertown Buff, one of Benjamin Moore's Historic Colors.  It's more intense than it appears in this shot.  The one below is truer.

I had moved my painting around to the shade on the west side of the cabin, but the sun soon passed over the yard arm and I had to put up the umbrella.  I had given the primer on these a light sanding, followed by a rub down with tack cloth, and the paint went on, by roller, quite smoothly.  At one point, however, the very light breeze gave a little gust and I found myself picking out dandelion fuzz, and later gnats, from the wet paint, so this was not without challenges.  I'm thinking of adding to my bucket list more creative expletives just to keep the neighbors entertained.

I went on from there to the secretary base.  This is the piece I had attempted to prime with the spray Kilz, which went on so rough.  I really had to sand it down, inside and out and clean it thoroughly with the tack cloth before I could even start to paint.  I decided to paint the inside first...

...so put it on its back.  This went quite well using a brush for the edges and corners then filling in with the roller.  It is time consuming and brought back memories of painting the shelf unit back in the 80s that's now in storage, but has been such a useful piece of furniture in every place I've made a home since my first studio apartment in Chicago in about 1968! 

It started to cloud up and I decided to call it a day, bring everything inside, clean up and drive back to Nederland and get ice--I'm starting to think this old cooler is not doing its job.  The ice doesn't last long at all--and sugar so I could make syrup for the hummingbirds which have been without any at my feeder since the bear was last here.  

One morning soon after that last night the bear managed to empty the sugar water out of the feeder, I was sitting at the picnic table having my morning coffee and a hummingbird flew close over my head...

Photo courtesy of Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center, Nederland, Colorado

...descended toward the deck on the opposite side of the table and commenced this bizarre routine just a few inches off the deck, popping up and down very rapidly and turning figure eights in a very circumscribed area and just generally causing a stir!  Then it rose to about table height, repeated the performance and flew off.  I wasn't wearing anything colorful, so unless it was responding to the new tablecloth, I think it may have been trying to communicate that the feeder was empty!  I love animals.  Teddee 

My Lucky Day

I didn't post a blog yesterday.  Instead, I met my friend Paula for lunch at the Olive Garden in Boulder.  The restaurant was my choice.  I'd been craving that all-you-can-eat green salad.  The food was great and we had a good visit, but when our waiter brought our checks, things got confusing.  Our orders only differed in that I had iced tea, but he had initially just split the ticket when we asked for separate checks, then realized this was inaccurate and recalculated.  We received a shower of receipts, along with an explanation, but he assured us we would only be charged for the check we signed.  Of course, when I checked my bank account this morning, I had been charged for both amounts.  I called the restaurant and the manager said this often happens with debit cards and she was pretty sure the wrong amount would "fall off" within five days, but I should call her if that didn't occur.  In the meantime she was sending me a gift card.  Thank you Neptune!  (The local astrologer Karen Anderson told me recently that after 144 years, my ruling planet Neptune has entered my sign or whatever and this is like having an ally). 

After lunch I had to pick up my 2010 income tax documents from H&R Block which had been reviewed for free and found accurate. By the way,  after Thursday's rant about the IRS, Uncle Sam was satisfied with deducting the rest of the 2010 taxes I'd been paying on a monthly basis from my 2011 refund and did not take out the monthly payment as well, so I take it all back and I'm a free woman! (Neptune again?).

Then I stopped in Savers which is just next door.  I got a couple of cardigan sweaters with part of the $20 my friend Cindy sent me for my birthday.  Thank you Cindy! (Neptune was on duty.  Cindy actually sent $20 in cash, silly girl, and the post office equipment had tried to eat the card, but the $20 bill was unscathed).

Here are the sweaters.  Identical, but one black and one brown.  They are a little large under the arms but these pleats flatter my "figger," as one of my grandmothers used to say.  No discount (Savers is a notoriously stingy thrift store), but the sweaters were only $6.99 each and I filled a punch card which translates into 30% off my next purchase.



There may be need for those sweaters by tomorrow.  Our unseasonably warm weather which, I believe, is setting records, is ending.  Today it was supposed to be 59F degrees here in the mountains (my thermometer says 60F degrees at 5:30 p.m., so I think it was warmer than that).  NOAA predicted  77F degrees in Boulder.  The Eldora forecast is 30% chance of rain/snow tomorrow with 38 mph winds, 60% chance of snow tomorrow night, 50% chance of snow Monday and a 40% chance of snow Monday night with a low of 17F degrees.  I'm not sure we'll be able to adjust. 

Goodwill was having a 50% off Saturday today, but I decided to forgo the pleasure.  I needed to tote some wood from that pileout by the car in preparation for the return of cold weather...

 
...and I'm saving myself for the Beautiful Junk Sale next Saturday in Golden, Colorado. 

I think this is my third visit.  The subtitle is "Jefferson County's largest bargain sale with 10,500 square feet of discount treasures."  It's held inside at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds' Exhibit Hall.  Admission is $3 and they deduct $1 if you bring two cans of food.  I didn't think the last sale was as much fun as the two previous events, but it's always fun to see what they have and there's never a bad community garage sale.

After Savers I finally got out to the Walmart in Erie where I needed to purchase a gift card for my great niece.  I've given my great nieces and nephews (or is it grand nieces and nephews?) these gift cards for their birthdays and at Christmas for years and they really seem to enjoy them.  I also needed ink cartridges for my printer and those aren't cheap even at Walmart ($32.97 for a Kodak color/black and white combo).  My shopping list had grown considerably waiting for the second Wednesday of March to arrive.  Those of us who receive our Social Security checks on the second Wednesday of the month had one of those months in which that was not until the 14th.  The second Wednesday in February was the 8th.  Those extra days can really make a difference.  Paula and I agreed yesterday that having the government issue these checks on a specific Wednesday each month instead of a specific date really causes hardship.  Why don't they just always issue them on the 10th?  Maybe I'll start a campaign. 

My grand total at Walmart added considerably to their bottom line.  Walmart's owners are among the richest of the rich who just get richer as pointed out in that book I just finished and blogged about, Winner-Take-All Politics:  How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.  (I'm still waiting to hear back from the authors).

According to a December 14, 2011, on-line Forbes article, the "six members of the Walton Family...have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans."  "...they are collectively worth about $93 billion."   According to an MSN on-line article dated 8/12/2009, they were worth only $23 billion when founder Sam Walton died in 1992.  In the intervening nineteen years, their wealth had increased by $70 billion!

In a way, it's too bad their prices can make such a big difference in how far a Social Security check goes, let alone the convenience of finding almost everything one needs in one store--I had been wondering where I could find a cobbler (do they even exist anymore?) for some of those sticky traction things you can put on the soles of shoes and boots to keep them from slipping and, lo and behold, there they were among the shoe polishes.  My shopping list went from toothpaste to needles, cat food for the foxes to drill bits, the gift card to the ink cartridges, rubber gloves to poster mount (which I hope I can use like Quake Hold to keep things from vibrating off these shelves next to the cabin door) and I found it all as well as a few groceries. 

I didn't get back until dark.  I have a porch light, but had forgotten to leave it on, so had to leave the car door open for the bit of light the overhead interior light provided, pick my way across the meadow to the cabin, turn on the porch light, grab the flashlight and make numerous trips to unload the car.  My neighbor across the road drove up the canyon behind me and, I think, deliberately left his multiple very bright back porch lights on until I got my car unloaded.  I've only chatted briefly with him once.  Maybe it was coincidence.  If so, it was nice coincidence.

So that's my good luck story.  What's yours?  Teddee