SUMMER IN THE CITY

While the rest of the world was plugged in to their favorite Michael Jackson tunes, Husband and I headed down the coast to escape the heat of the day but we were listening to The Best of Simon and Garfunkle (part of Husband’s Father’s Day swag).  It’s a beautiful drive through fields of strawberries, raspberries, artichokes and the the unmistakable odor of brussels sprout fields.  There were workers here and there but only a few.

The fog that acts as our natural air conditioning was pushed back to the shore by a high pressure front.  It clung right to the edge of the water so that while you had a clear view inland, you could only see a few feet (if that) of the water.  We were headed for Our Private Paradise, aka Big Sur.  We are typically there in April and I was surprised to see the brilliant display of wild flowers along the coast that had sprung up during May and June.  The fog was visibly rising just over the road – it was like driving through a kind of mysterious tunnel.  Cafe Kevah was enchanting, as always.  The view south that is always so magical was frosted with fog over the water.  This is when I found that the battery in my camera was dead.  Phooey.  It was sweet that 2 different patrons of the cafe offered to take photos of Husband and I and email them to us – nice, huh?  Although we declined, I appreciated the thought.

We came back to Pacific Grove and made a short stop at Asolimar for water and potty break for Husband and then parked along the ocean to watch and talk.  We bemoaned the closing of a little organic bakery where they had a little reading corner stocked with books and furnished with soft couches.  You could sit as long as you liked and on the weekends, there was live music.

At 6, we met Jen and SG at Phil’s in Moss Landing for dinner.  We finally found it this time…….:) They had been diving, snorkeling and generally enjoying the beaches and arrived somewhat sunburned but full of the joy that a day spent doing what one loves with people that they love can bestow.  We ate well, if in a somewhat chaotic atmosphere.

It’s even hotter today, and in a couple of hours we will escape to the cool and dark of the movies.  We are going to see UP in 3-D.  I’m not certain, but I think the last 3-D movie I saw was The Creature from the Black Lagoon!  I’m ancient and have the skin of the creature now to prove it!  We are promised some relief from the heat starting on Monday with the rest of the week promising only 80 degree heat.  Every year we have the “air conditioning” talk but so far we are still relying on the attic fan, the insulation we bought some years ago, the double paned windows and smaller circulating fans.  At night, we open the windows and turn on the attic fan to cool the interior of the house, then do it again first thing in the morning and close up the house and rely on the smaller fans.  Days like these we really miss that big old tree in the back yard that shielded the house from the afternoon sun.  We only have 1 big tree now and no patio cover.  If we pray to the Gods of Nature, we pray most beseechingly to the Fog.

Well this laptop is hot, so I’ll go get something cool to drink and sit in front of the fan.  Later and cooler.

FAVORITE THINGS

I think figs are my favorite fruit. These are the first figs I picked from my tree this summer.  I picked 6 more big, fat, juicy ones yesterday after work.  The plate they are on is another of my favorite things – Jen brought it to me from Barcelona.  It’s a little footed dish that says something in Portugese like “all fruits” or something.  I was SO sad when a spice bottle took a dive off the shelf and broke the edge of it!  I glued it back because I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

My favorite meal is so simple.  It’s olive oil, shallots, garlic, cherry tomatoes and fresh basil over pasta topped with freshly grated parmesan.  I could eat this every day, well, only really in the summer when the tomatoes are so sweet.  I was so grateful to have found a pasta that isn’t wheat that tastes good!  And it goes together in about 20 minutes – just depends on how fast you can get the pasta water to boil.  The bowl it’s in is from my favorite set of dishes – I love the color – it’s so cheerful!  Of course,  as soon as Williams Sonoma discovered they were my favorites, they discontinued the line!

Here’s part of the new flower bed by the front door.  You can see my little fairy, the bunny and the “tranquility” stepping stone.  Again, favorite items that greet me every time I leave or come home.  I have the same kanji tatooed on my left ankle. At the time (my 51st birthday), I thought the choice of kanji was a reminder of my goal in life.  Now, I think it was more of a cosmic joke.  I pulled out 90% of the ivy and planted double blossom azaleas, hosta, impatiens and some bacopia.  I love the way the hostas look and may put more in this weekend.   As you might have guessed, I’m a big fan of white blooms.

There seems to be a “sea change” coming in my life.

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Shakespeare (The Tempest)

I’ve been feeling it for some time.  Last Friday I allowed myself a Signature Hot Chocolate from Starbucks and was walking to the office.  As I turned the corner on my street, I got a physical sensation – hard to define – like hair raising on the back of your neck or that feeling when you think someone is behind you.  I remember thinking, “I don’t know exactly what is up, but I think it’s big.”  My mother’s health has been deteriorating rapidly and we had a little scare with Husband recently, but I’m not willing to accept any change with Husband.  Mom, OK – she’s so tired and misses Daddy so much.  What it turned out to be that day was the resignation of a younger associate in the firm that we all had counted on to be our “rising star.”  She’s leaving law altogether.  The attorney I work for is likely to be appointed to the bench later this summer.  She’s the anchor in the firm.  One of the partners was in my office last Friday with a “deer in the headlights” look – I just said, you know, the Universe is clearly rearranging itself and we just have to be patient.  I hope the sea change does turn out to be something rich – you can bet it will be something strange.

And, in times of ebb and flow, one needs favorite things for comfort and reassurance.  And this one particularly needs Husband to be ever present.

FIGS!

Getting home from work yesterday was something of an ordeal.  I never take the freeway route because it’s farther and more prone to delay.  I take a variety of surface streets and a very short stretch of freeway that typically get me to work and home in about 20-25 minutes.  Except for yesterday.

The officer standing in the street made everyone turn right.  I needed to turn left.  So, fine, I’ll turn right and then double back to the street I usually turn left on.  Except, that intersection was blocked, too.  I made a huge loop and ended up right back in the same place, only about 25 minutes later.  At least this time, I got to go the direction I need to go.  Finally, I arrived at home, cranky and without the promise of a soothing yoga session.  Because, “that woman” was subbing again.

I went in the back to water the pots and beds and found to my great joy that several of the first harvest figs were ripe!  The annoyance of the convoluted route home melted right away!  I pulled one off the tree, still warm from the afternoon sun and popped it right in my mouth!  Sweet and juicy and without that kind of musty taste that figs sometimes have.  I found 4 or 5 ripe ones that I could reach and brought them in.  These were washed and halved before eating.  Yum.  I need to go back with a ladder for a quite large one that is high in the branches.  I was also thrilled to see that the tree is literally loaded with figs this year!  I’ve never had such a bounty.  The branches may need supporting as they grow.

The blackberries are beginning to color and I saw a couple that are black, but not ripe as yet.  We’ll have at some wonderful jam this summer.

I went to gym early and just knocked off 3 miles on the treadmill in about 55 minutes while reading and came home.  My hips joints were less than thrilled – they prefer the gentleness of yoga – but my stress level was reduced significantly.

Another flower bed on the agenda this weekend – the one with the ivy.  I’ve got to till it and go get some azaleas.  I’m wondering if I can keep some of the ivy for groundcover.  I’m guessing it would require considerably more vigilance than I exercised before to keep it from growing through the rafters again.  We’ll see.

Sunday is Father’s Day and we’ll be dining out with Ashley and James – always fun.  I’ve ordered a little gift for Husband that will not, of course, arrive in time, but when it does, hopefully he will find it of use.  Husband deserves a day of expressions of love and appreciation.  I’ll do my part!

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

All week long I look forward to my Thursday night yoga class. I’m not very zen or really “into the practice,” I just like the peacefulness of the hour and the physical workout.  My regular teacher, Leigh, is in Paris for 2 weeks……if I didn’t like her so much, I’d hate her.  Her husband is French and his parents live on the outskirts of Paris.  Well, good for her.

On the infrequent times when she misses a class, we usually have a sub named Chris.  Chris is tall with a dancer’s body and carriage.  He wears a bandanna tied on his head betraying his rather obvious sexual preference.  He addresses us as, “Class.”  “Now, class; Good, class; Stand tall, class.”  He’s something of a taskmaster.  I like him a lot!  But, he wasn’t the sub this week.

It was some girl.  Some really annoying girl with a perfect body and grating voice.  I don’t tolerate sing-song very well, particularly with a dash of disdain.  And, she didn’t turn off the lights!  Leigh always turns off the lights and you would be surprised at how much cooler it is over the span of the class.  And, there was only 1 person I recognized from our regular throng – it’s a packed class most Thursday nights.  Maybe the sub brought her own yoga posse.  Whatever, I was not calm, not peaceful and not happy.  She sang the names of the poses in what was probably Ancient Hindu which aggravated the hell out of me.  At the end, during corpse, she finally turned off the lights.  It was blessed relief, let me tell you.

After class I asked the one regular = what happened to our class and who IS this woman?  She said she guessed everyone decided if Leigh got a vacation, so did they and that whoever she was, we were stuck with her for a couple of weeks.  ugh.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  If she’s the sub for pilates, I’m just doing 45 minutes on the treadmill.

On NPR on the way home, there was a special on the “down and out in the midwest.”  OK, I’m sorry and spoiled and pathetic.  I have a nice house, a Husband who is alive and loves me to pieces, and who has a dependable retirement income, 4 beautiful and smart kids who have equally cool partners, 5 perfect grandchildren, a job that pays me probably more than I’m worth and I get to live in NorCal.  So, Cindy.  Do shut up.

WELL, THAT WAS FUN……..

Husband and I spent the morning at Kaiser.  He went to a group for fellow heart patients first (I skipped that) and then we met at the cardiology dept at 10:00am for a 10:15am appt to get his ICD read.  The tech is a sweetheart and put  up with (and patiently answered) my millions of questions.  Husband has had this device for several years now but I am just now really understanding the finer points.  At one point, she turned to me and said, “Are you a nurse?”  Uh, no, I’m the wife of a heart failure patient on a mission to keep him around for as long as possible.

Next, we saw the cardiologist, for an hour and a half.  We saw videos of his heart beating in the wonky way it does, the leaky (but not seriously) valves and talked about the volume and velocity of blood moved with each beat.  It’s all quite complicated but the Reader’s Digest version is that he is doing, “really well.”  Considering.  And we’ll take that.  We discussed options should there  be any more irregular beats – none of which we want to deal with.  So, we won’t be having any of that.

Then, Husband (out of the blue) drops the bomb:  How much longer?  Dr says if he found anyone to answer that question, he’d be lying or guessing.  But, the question triggered the “DNR Talk.”  Which, was decidedly NOT FUN.  Not a conversation you ever want to have and one that, for some folk, is going to happen.  The form is pink.  Once filled out and properly signed by the physician, the form is to accompany you every time you come to the hospital – even for a regular check up – even tho they have a copy – essentially, it becomes a part of your person.  Why not just have the text tatooed on your chest?  I haven’t looked at it.  There was talk about where to keep this pink form – oddly, the refrigerator was the place.  Apparently, the EMTs head for a beer before they start pounding on your chest?  I did take a peek at the result of the Google search:  DNR.  There was the suggestion that this form be kept, and I am not making this up, ON THE FRIDGE DOOR!  Shut UP!  Right there next to the postcards from Paris, pug magnets and drawings by grandchildren.  I think not.  So, you have friends over for dinner, and where do they always congregate?  In the kitchen, of course.  Great topic for discussion.  Your grandchildren ask, “What’s this pink form?”  “Oh, honey, that’s just Grandaddy’s DNR form!”  Why not  just write up the obit and post that?  Perhaps you include a copy in the Christmas cards – what we’ve been up to this year….suffice it to say, I had one of my famous “fits.”

On the way home from work, I drove straight to the local fire station to speak directly to the EMTs.  At the fire station, you ring a buzzer and wait.  Then, 2 drop dead gorgeous young men open the door with a puzzled look on their chiseled faces.  I explain the reason for my visit, they sympathize, tell me they hope they never come to the house, and give me a great big pill bottle.  It’s called The Vial of Life.  Inside is a form where you fill in all the meds your patient is on and put a copy of the dreaded DNR form in it…and put it in the refrigerator.  In the door, on the bottom shelf next to the expired bottles of salad dressing – not in a place you see every time you open the door, because, you know….that’s just goulish.  Might as well put it on the door, right?  In the bottle is also a little magnet – you know, like the one the plumber gives you – for the door.  The magnet alerts the EMT that there is something other than beer inside.  So, before the guys get out of the “bus” do they do rock, paper, scissors to see which one gets to be the “fridge guy?”  We decided, however, that the first line of defense is the MedicAlert bracelet.  Husband has one already, so we’ll have to get a revised version.  We’ll do what we are supposed to do  with that damn pink form and THEN NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.

OUCH!

Saturday morning I went to the plant nursery and badgered the manager for awhile until I finally bought some replacement plants for the front 2 flowerbeds.  I ended up with star jasmine and some foxglove.  When push comes to shove, whatever is in there needs to be simple, soft and bloom.  I bought a little trellis for the middle of the larger bed and some dirt (3 bags full) and a bunch of star jasmine.  Wedged all that in my little Jetta and came home.  

I pulled out all the old lavender in both beds, tilled them with my new Mantis, added some ‘good dirt’, and dug 14 holes.  On the first swipe with the tiller, a rock got lodged between the blades and the axle and so I had to stop and get Husband to help take off the blade and free the rock.  But, once that was cleared up, it was pretty much incident free.  Speaking of rocks……….I think where we live must have been a riverbed at one time.  If you just scratch the surface, you find more rocks than dirt.  I tried to throw all the rocks I dislodged over my shoulder as I dug – which meant, of course, what when I stepped back from the job I stepped on the piles of rocks!  Filled about 4 gallon containers full (the empty star jasmine pots).  One rock was actually more of a boulder.  Crazy big.  Anyway, I would love to have front beds that are remarkable and unique but remarkable and unique translate to remarkable work and upkeep.  Plus, I can’t decide.  So, simple and relatively inexpensive?  Who knows – that stuff adds up – let me tell you.  Anyway, it took a long time but it wasn’t hot or too sunny, so that helped.  I was dead tired when finished and the clean up was just the last straw.  I still don’t have edging – I know what I want but I haven’t found it yet.  I’m sure when I do, the price will be prohibitive and I’ll have to start over.  Anyway, here’s a picture.  I have to buy a hose bowl to keep the hose in – when we had the pipes under the house replaced with copper they put the faucet in a different place.  It’s convenient to turn off from the porch but it’s not a great flower bed object!  We’d been running the hose through the lavender to the end of the house, but I think until the jasmine gets a lot bigger so it will hide the hose, a bowl is in order.

The foundation air holes (I’m sure there’s a scientific name for them) are particularly unattractive, especially the one with the hole in it.  How did that get there?  Whatever.  The jasmine will eventually grow tall enough to cover them, but for now hopefully you will just admire the foxgloves.  I thought about buying a rain chain to replace the downspout but the one I found is $100 and it occurs to me that it might not work all that well.  We’ll see.

One nice surprise I got as I was struggling to put away all the gardening tools was that I noticed that the plant the lady across the street gave me is blooming again.  Isn’t it beautiful?  I really don’t even know what it is, but the bloom is stunning.

Lydia and Dan live across the street with their son, Kenny, who just graduated from Bellermine.  Dan is a CPA with his own accounting/tax business, Lydia is an LVN.  I remember when Kenny was born!  I don’t think 2 nicer people exist on the planet.  Lydia dug one of the bulbs up and gave it to me a few years ago – I just put it in a pot and it keeps coming up every spring and blooming.  Maybe I should move it to the flower bed under the japanese maple in front.  It matches the door!

Yes, it’s red.  A bit lighter in value than I had pictured but the poor painter had worked so hard and the first color he put on the door was so awful (nearly purple), that I just decided this color was fine.  Ideally, it would be a bit darker, more brick.  But, Husband likes it and it is cheerful.  The neighbor across the street (2 doors up from Dan) who came over on Saturday to ask if I had done all this work by myself (yes), even digging the holes (yes) and brought his dog who promptly pooped in the yard (he cleaned it up) said it was Christmasy!  Whatever.

There are still 2 beds to replant.  The one you see under the maple and the one on the east side of the house. The east bed is going to be a booger – it’s big and very wide from the old roses.  The one by the maple has the remnants of ivy in it…..I brought some killer but haven’t used it yet.  

The crazy thing about Saturday was what got me the most were my feet!  I was wearing some rubber gardening shoes and by the end of the job, I was getting cramps in my right foot and the bottoms of my feet were sore.  The pedicure I got later was the best I ever had – felt wonderful!  My hip joints and shoulders and all the other muscles in my body woke me up about 3am giving me grief for putting them through so much that day, but I’m good today!  Only a little stiff.

Saturday night we had shrimp and coconut rice.  The recipe I found for the rice wasn’t quite right – it was too gummy – I think there was too much coconut milk in proportion to water.  I’ll change that next time. Was good if you didn’t mind the texture – which Husband didn’t!  Then, I made some red, spicy rice today and that was really good – shrimp and lime juice and cilantro – but no cilantro for Husband.  Tried a new frittata recipe – avocado and feta.  Was good but I think I’d like artichoke hearts in place of the avocado. Tonight, it’s fresh mushrooms, peas and tomatoes with creme fraiche sauce over pasta.  Too fattening but too good, especially with such beautiful farmer’s market mushrooms and peas!

Dr appt tomorrow with the cardiologist.  I’ll take him some strawberry/raspberry/basalmic jam – maybe he’ll give us some not bad news!  We’re fine, here.  Just fine.  In fact, we’re better than fine – we’re happy as can be and grateful for every day.

FACING THE WAVE

I want to add to the last post.  One of the reasons it was hard for me to write was because I knew Husband would read it and feel badly that I was such a wreck.  No one wants to be the cause of distress to those they love.  I don’t want him to feel badly.  It’s my fear and anxiety that needs to be corraled.

I was talking awhile ago with someone whose partner has MS.  He asked me how I was doing and I said I might ask the same as we both had partners who had chronic health issues that from time to time made for some emotional situations.  He thought a long while and then said that he felt privileged to be able to be with his wife through this and give her whatever love and support he could.

I thought that was a wonderful reply and should have included it in my last post.  There are times that make you want to crawl under the biggest rock you can find and not come out, but you can’t do that.  It’s human nature to want to avoid the hard things that come at us but it doesn’t do any good to try to avoid them.  It’s like when you are in the ocean and there’s a big wave coming.  If you turn and run, it will knock you down and tumble you over and over until it spits you out on the shore, bruised and breathless.  You have to face the wave and dive directly into it – it’s definitely counter-intuitive, but it’s the best way.  You hold your breath, dive directly into the coming wave and come out the other side much less battered than if you ran.  I think I’ve been turning tail for more than a little while and I’ve got the wounds to prove it.  I need to perfect my dive technique.  I have no doubt that life will oblige me with opportunities to practice.  Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I  too, feel privileged to “stand by my man.”  He’s worth every effort and while I wish with all my heart that he didn’t have this health issue, I can’t change that.  But I can love him to pieces while we hold hands and dive into the coming waves.

I DON’T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT TO SAY…

I t has been awhile since my last post.  One might think that nothing of interest has  been going on during that time.  One would be very wrong.  There has been a LOT going on, but I didn’t (and kind of still don’t) want to blog about it for many reasons.  Mostly, it’s because the events are both personal and fraught with emotion and the most emotional part has to do with Husband and his health.  I don’t want to put anything out in the blogosphere that he feels might compromise his privacy.  So, I’ll relate other events first.

The house painting is complete.  It’s lovely and was painstakingly done and the effort shows.  Our front door is now red!  It’s a bit lighter shade that I had envisioned, but Husband really likes it and I do, too.  It’s cheerful!  The flower beds are a wreck, but the tiller arrived and I picked it up on Friday.  It was Sunday afternoon before it was properly put together and we got it started.  I managed to attach the handles backwards, but others (read: men) fixed my mistake and put all the parts together.  And, there weren’t any pieces left over !  (Yes, David, again.)  I’ve decided to put azaleas in the east bed, bush bougainvilleas in the south beds and either azaleas in the garage wall bed or a mixture of azaleas and gardenias, with some low ground cover and bulbs for the spring.  Lots of work ahead to make that happen, and probably more money than I’d like.  The beds need soil additives and the roses are already 2′ tall coming back from the stumps, so there is stump killer in the future.  I feel like a murderer.

I’ve made the summer’s first batch of jam.  Fanny was a real mess from being stored for so many months.  Strawberry, raspberry, basalmic jam – excellent.  I’ve looked through Mes Confitures and identified some new recipes to try this year.  The blackberry vines are covered with hard little green fruit that promise to ripen into sweet and juicy berries – the blackberry/raspberry jam may be my favorite.  Figs are plentiful this year – I’m eager for them to be ripe.

I’ve started eating shellfish.  Shrimp and crab, at least.  I’ve made shrimp tacos twice and found two new things about Husband I didn’t know!  One, he doesn’t like cilantro.  Poor guy, I love it and have covered everything remotely mexican in nature with it for years!  Two, he doesn’t like the taco format for food – he likes the burrito.  Tacos are too messy.  Which I understand.  So, I guess from now on his shrimp tacos will be made with a large flour tortilla and technically be a shrimp burrito.  With no cilantro.  Which is kind of too bad because homemade tortillas are WAY better than anything available commercially.

So, now for the anxiety portion of our little drama.  Husband has an ICD – implantable cardioverter defibrillator.  It rests just below his left collarbone and is kind of a Big Brother for his heart.  If  it beats too slowly, the pacemaker component gives it a little nudge.  If it should beat wildly too fast, it first gives a few “pacing shocks” and if that doesn’t do the trick, it gives a shock that sets you on your butt and hopefully knocks the heart rate back into line.  It stores information and transmits it electronically once a week to some mysterious place in the ether.  Every quarter, he goes into the hospital and a tech “reads” it.  In April, the tech said he had experienced 2 episodes of “non-sustained ventricular tachycardia” – NSVT for short.  One happened in February and the other in March.  These are very rapid beats lasting less than 30 seconds in duration that resolved back to regular rhythm on its own.  This triggered a round of blood tests (all within the normal range) and an echocardiogram which indicated that his ejection fraction appeared to be lower than before – which is saying something because it’s a mystery how he can function with as little blood as is being pumped from his heart to his body as it is.  This led to a nuclear stress test complete with a nuclear tracer chemical and a chemical called adenosine that stresses the heart while a gamma camera hovers all around him like some giant robot looking for someplace to pounce.  All these photos are taken with arms overhead – pretend you are being suspended by your wrists and given a heart attack and told DON’T MOVE for several minutes.  There were 4 scans – 3 on 5/25 and another early on 5/26 – fortunately only 1 with the heart attack chemical.

Now, for those of you who have not lived through a heart attack followed by an angiogram and quadruple bypass surgery, post-surgery atrial fibrillation (heart rate in the 180s that can’t be stopped except by stopping his heart and starting it over), ICD implantation, double hernia surgery and an emergency colonscopy in the last 3.5 years, this may not seem like any big deal.  As for me, I suffer from PTSD in a big way and it put me in a big downward spiral.  The prospect of any more invasive procedures seriously reduces me to a quivering mass.  The thing that is most telling is that right before the heart attack and right before this last ICD reading, I was actually in excellent spirits.  I was beginning to almost feel normal before the last situation….you know, breathing and sleeping and not minutely inspecting every press release or educational seminar on heart failure that came along.

There’s nothing quite like thinking your Husband has actually survived a by-pass surgery and is progressing normally and then getting a phone call from a strange dr telling you that your Husband (who is in San Francisco in the hospital and you are in San Jose in your car on Friday afternoon) is experiencing a complication from surgery.  Oh, his heart rate is about 180 and we can’t actually seem to get it to stop.  If we can’t stop it with medication in 18 hrs, we’ll have to do a cardioversion (stop it and start it).  No big deal, happens in 40% of post-op patients, but, you know, you might want to come up here.  OMG.  You have no idea where to stay, you have to leave now, and you don’t know what to do or what you’ll find when you get there.  Talk about panic.  Long story short – got there – stood in the hall sobbing while they did the cardioversion – on Saturday and then we came home on Monday.  Yeah, something of a nightmare and proof positive that when things are going well, you better damn well look out.  Something I never want to live through again – no one to give you any information, and I mean ANY.  Oh, there’s a sign in the cardiac waiting room that tells you that you don’t have to pay for parking on the day of your loved one’s surgery.  But you have to go downstairs and negotiate with the woman at the desk when all you want to do is sit in the corner and cry.

To say I was on pins and needles awaiting the tests and then the results of the test is just beyond understatement.  I had a knot in my stomach for days, didn’t sleep for a week and dropped everything I picked up.  It didn’t help that when the dr’s office called after the tests on Wednesday, they announced they wanted his ICD read one more time before we met with him to get the results.  I was sure there was evidence of some other terminal development.  I was on the verge of tears or screaming from, oh, say Wednesday morning until Thursday afternoon when I finally emailed the dr in absolute panic and found out that the test results were “stable.”  He just wanted to be sure he had all the information for me because he knows that I go over his results with a fine tooth comb.

The irony of the situation is that Husband is probably doing better than he’s done since the surgery.  He’s going to they gym 6-7 days a week and working out for about an hour, he’s lost 35 lbs, he’s in good spirits (when I’m not making him crazy) and all his blood tests are in the normal range.  Even his kidney readings are maintaining a “stable” reading for him – not getting any worse.  A big deal in these circumstances.  So, what the hell is going on?  NSVT puts you in a higher risk category for sudden death.  His ejection fraction is already just minimal, so how it could be any lower and he maintain the level of physical activity he does is really quite mysterious.

We have an appt on Monday 6/8 to have that ICD reading and then meet with the dr to go over his test results.  I have a million questions.  I can at least breathe for now and have actually slept pretty well for a few nights.  But, it was impossible for me to voice any of the above until just about now.  It will be a long week until Monday, but I think I’ll survive.

Max and his parents are coming to see us the weekend before Father’s Day.  Hooray!  I’m going to focus on that and then try and make this Father’s Day really special for Husband.  I’m so damn grateful he’s around, I can’t tell you.

BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS!

As I’m sure you know (unless you live under a rock or outside CA), the CA Supremes ruled on Prop 8 today.  Essentially, they said Prop 8 would stand (bad news in my opinion) but that the 18,000 gay/lesbian marriages solemnized during the few months of 2008 would also stand (good news).

I’m no legal scholar but just for the record, while I understood the ruling in a legal sense, I was disappointed.  Having worked in law for nearly 20 years, I do not have the confidence in the system that I had when I first began working in the field.  I know there are absolute whack jobs on the bench who make rulings that wreak havoc…..and keep the Court of Appeals in business.  And, I also know that guilty sometimes go free and the innocent are sometimes convicted.  I just really do believe that the Judicial branch of the government exists to protect the minority from the malice of the majority.  Having lived through 2 initiatives in this state aimed at absolute, unvarnished discrimination (malice) against the gay population (minority) and denial of their civil rights at the most basic and intimate level, I am disappointed that the nasties have essentially won again.

This particular battle may be lost, but the war is still waging.  We’ll be at it again soon enough.  And, I’m quite certain that the forces of darkness are even now gathering their forces and licking their chops in anticipation.   Well, bring it.  The bigots are old and dying off, it’s a matter of time.  I’m just hoping it won’t be so very long.

made me cry…………

this did……….

someday, i’ll learn to embed videos, but for now, this will have to do.