C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 184

got Jane to the doc…

…yesterday.

I tell you, a really good chiropractor is worth his weight in gold. She went down there with numb spots and serious pain and stiffness, and came back in much, much better shape, so that I feared she was going to take to shoveling and rototilling again today. Took about half an hour, various pushes, pulls, and a couple of neat tricks. One thing I like about Dr. Shane (and Dr. Mike when we were going to him) is that he'll show the other of us how to do some of the things that aren't ...

So what does Jane do?

She buys 3 more azaleas, with two not yet planted. And it's known what I plant dies, so she wants to do it.

We're idiots. But she wants rhodies and azaleas so badly, and we now know what's happened with the defunct ones. Turns out our water is alkaline.

Tomorrow, if I can get the chiropractor to return my call, she's going to the doc.

Jane threw her back out…

I think it's the shoveling and raking: but she is in acute misery. A day on muscle relaxant, and she's still having spasms—something about planting: a dogwood, a magnolia, 2 rhododendrons, an azalea, pulling weeds from the entire garden path (about 300 feet loop) raking grass, sorting pine cones, pulling (a real tug of war with our pond pump) and washing the algae filter…

Yesterday we went out to the valley and got some nice water hyacinth to clean up the water in the pond. This soft plant...

Lost cell phones

No, not ours. For once we are innocent.
Recall that our friend and skating coach Joan had had an accident at a company dance—in which a woman in stiletto heels crunched Joan's foot and gave her a 'stress' fracture on the outside of her foot. For a skating coach, this is depressing—and she's unable to work, and it's right before the fancy Las Vegas vacation she'd been so looking forward to after a very rough year and two stints in the hospital. She'd gotten clothes. Shoes. I mean, this is a...

If you want to see pix of the yard work…

Jane's got them—link to her site (The Captain And Lime) on the left sidebar. You can see the sterling plumbing job done by the guy who installed the sprinklers (it deserves to be on the Kludge Lol site)—and the pile I'm having to move because the guys we hired to strip the lawn could neither run the machine properly nor follow common-sense instructions about where to put the grass pile. I gave up and told them put it where it is—but it can't stay there. So I'm moving the whole thing, while...

What else can happen? The pond caught fire…

…well, the UV filter did. It's a long UV bulb that fits in a slot in the skimmer, and I'd changed the bulb a week ago and had it running.

We've had a lot of algae, which means cleaning the filter every 3 hours or so, so we'd left the skimmer lid off. That's one lucky break. Lucky break #2, we happened to be working right at pondside just 10 feet away, planting some items, when Jane smelled smoke and investigated. If we hadn't been right there, we'd have had an electrical fire possibly...

everybody in Oklahoma—are you ok?

Scary stuff. A Love's station we used to visit got hit. Various places we're real familiar with are on the news. People in hospital, etc.

Tulrose said she was battening down. Norman, Oklahoma's lost water, due to damage at Lake Thunderbird, and Norman, the City, and Moore have people in hospital, not to mention the property damage. That twister that showed on the Norman footage looked like an F5. Thoughts are with you guys. Jane and I have had to dive for cover way many times, and we always...

I have a feeling this book is going to be a little longer…and the fish that will not die…

the book…longer than the last one, I mean. It's just feeling that way, in the pacing.

But we'll see. Sometimes pace is difficult to predict, even with a close outline.

The fish: it's been off-again on-again with the weather today, warm, then icy chill and raining, then sun-warm again.

We've had one poor fish that developed a fungus, a very bad one that's eroded his fins somewhat, and sheeted thickly over his back, and then turned green with algae. This happens because the bacteria wake up...

Feeling much better today…

I've got to go out there in the back and figure out why our UV filter light is blinking on and off, whether it's badly seated or its the ballast. And I've got to haul out the pond vac again and get the algae out. Sigh. Yesterday no matter what I did, I got wet. I'd change clothes, something else would come up and I'd get wet again. If it wasn't the pond it was the leak in the sprinkling system. 2 Aleve overnight and I can move without pain. Yesterday I couldn't stay still without pain.

We...

Neither Jane nor I can move, we're so sore…

She was on muscle relaxant yesterday and slept nearly 12 hours; I got out and attempted—well, DID move the two trash bins that she'd filled, killing her back; I exhausted myself getting them to the curb, and I threw MY back out. She slept all day. Got up still sore. Now I'm sore.

And what happens the very first thing this morning? The sprinklers come on to water our new trees, and a fountain erupts out of the dirt of the stripped front lawn. The Mantis had clipped the irrigation line. Wah...