Random Ramblings - April 8th 2018 (FD & LBE)

It snowed a bit more after the cut off time for the events in my previous random ramblings post. Not much, but enough to replace what had started to melt throughout that day. There was still some snow on the ground on the following morning, when the post went live, and it started snowing a bit more that morning. Unfortunately, the temperature then rose enough that the snow turned to rain, which soon got rid of what was left of my snow.

We were promised more the following weekend, but none came. I don't mind though. Well, not too much. I always want more snow, of course. But we've done well for snow this year, and we had made it to the Spring Equinox by then, so the lack of snow didn't bother me in this particular case. After all, by then it was Spring for certain, whether you work with the calendar that says the Equinox is the midpoint of the season, or the one that says it's the start of the season.

Personally, I usually go by the one that says it's the midpoint of the season, even though the weather doesn't always reflect this. I often feel like I should apologize for this though, since me believing this so firmly resulted in an argument that got out of hand, and cost me an online friendship I'm still sad to have lost. I'm sorry for how I handled it. I'm sorry the argument happened, and that it got out of hand. I'm sorry it cost me the friendship. But I'm not sorry for believing what I do, nor for holding firm to my belief, even when others were disagreeing with me.

Anyway, the temperatures over the past couple of weeks still haven't been all that warm most days, but they've been staying above freezing as a general rule, sometimes hovering around 10 or 11 degrees C (52 or 54 degrees F). At one point it even got up to 12 degrees C (56 F). Though mostly it's been 6 degrees C (44 F) or lower.

As for actual weather: some days have been sunny, but there have been Spring rains happening quite often. No actual storms though. Not unless they were mild enough that I slept through them and didn't notice they happened.

***~~~***

We got some new teatowels, or "dish towels" if you prefer to call them that.

We kind of needed some new ones anyhow, but the real reason I ordered some was because the place where I order the bulk of our food shopping from had some with unicorns on them. Except the unicorns weren't in stock, and they aren't sure when - or if - they'll come back in stock. So they brought some butterfly ones to see if I'd accept those as a substitution, which I did, since we did need some, and I couldn't count on the unicorn ones coming back in stock. Unicorns would have been better, but butterflies are nice too, and I didn't want to refuse the substitution, and then find the butterfly ones weren't available either when I next did an order. The other ones they currently have are just plain different coloured ones, or basic patterned ones. Not as interesting as unicorns or butterflies.

I always have "allow substitutions" turned on when I do my grocery order, because most of the time I'm happy to accept the items they pick as substitutions for out of stock items (it's usually just a different brand of the same thing, so I usually accept it, unless I have a good reason not to). I'm given a chance to refuse them when the shopping arrives, so I can tell them to take back anything they've picked that I can't - or won't - accept as a substitution for the out of stock item I ordered, and this way there's less chance of me ending up without something I'd counted on as part of a meal.

Anyway, my tea towels are a set of three "butterfly print" tea towels. I don't have a picture, but I'm sure you can imagine what butterfly print would look like, and be close enough in your imaginings to be reasonably accurate.

Yes, I could have looked elsewhere, but chances are it would have cost me more to do so, and the butterfly ones were already here, so... *shrugs* I could still look elsewhere for unicorn tea towels anyhow, if I want to.

***~~~***



Towards the end of March, the landlord's workmen came to install that extra fire alarm the health and safety guys insisted on.

I might have mentioned this before, but... The reason a fire alarm was put elsewhere in the first place is because the kitchen is an area at one end of the living room, with no windows, so the fire department guy thought it would be better to have the alarm further away from the cooker. But the health and safety guys didn't like that because of the location of the stairs that are the safest - and only proper - exit from the building. Where the fire department guy put the alarm means chances of making it to that exit between when the alarm went off and when the fire blocked it would be slim. We see his point, and do agree that having more time to escape the building in the event of a fire starting in the direction of the kitchen - the most likely place in the home for one to start - would be a good plan. But it's still annoying that sometimes just cooking dinner will set the alarm off. Luckily Kelly's tall enough to easily reach to stop it when that happens. I'd have to climb on a chair, and even then would struggle to reach, since the ceilings are high and I'm short (and can't stretch up very well). Mind you, me climbing on a chair wouldn't be a good idea to start with. I used to be able to do that kind of thing. Maybe not easily, but certainly without a high risk of falling off. I could even - with the help of a chair to get me started - climb up on the kitchen counters so I could reach high cupboards. Not any more though.

Anyway, the installation of the new fire alarm is done now.

They came one day, when we thought they'd be doing it, just to look at where it needed to go. They kept us waiting for a couple of hours, since they wouldn't give us a firm arrival time, came in and looked at where it needed to go, and then left, saying they didn't have the things they needed with them, so they'd be back the following week to put it in. It always irritates me when they do that, especially when I know for a fact they were given instructions on where it was meant to go before they came out. Why couldn't they just bring the stuff they needed with them when they came to look? It would have been a lot less hastle, wouldn't it? I always wonder if they do the extra visit just so they have an excuse to charge for a bit of extra time spent on the job.

Yes. They came the following week, as promised. But still didn't have the right part. So they left their tools here while they went to fetch it. They weren't gone more than 20 minutes or so. But it took a couple of hours to actually do the job, because there was some issue with the wiring. I'm not sure what it was, but whatever they were doing to fix it kept causing power surges that made me glad our computers have surge protectors.

So, that's one more job out of the way.

Now the landlords just need to sort replacing the living room door for a fire door like the health and safety guys want them to do, repaint our bathroom from when they replastered the wall after that water issue, fix the speaker for our buzzer thingy (because something happened to it to make it that we can hardly hear the people asking to be let in through it, and they can't hear us at all, though we can still buzz people in to the building) and replace the windows. I have no idea at the moment when they plan to do those things though. Hopefully soon, but we'll see. They still have a load of problems to deal with because of the issues they've had with workmen in the past, as well as some new ones that have cropped up and are more important than the things we need them to do. When the work in our place will get done depends where our stuff is on the long list of tasks they have. We know they're working on things though, and they know they still have those things to do in our place, so all we can really do is to be patient, I suppose.

Besides, first they have to see to the new leak in the roof, which set off the fire alarm when the water got to the wiring for the one in the downstairs hallway. An event that meant I spent my Easter weekend in hospital.

Well, if truth be told, I hadn't been feeling well for ages. I mean, I never feel fighting fit or anything like that, but I'd been feeling very unwell for a few months, even for me. But the incident with the fire alarm sort of pushed me in to doing what I should have done a few months back, but was reluctant to do after a bad experience with a doctor who thinks being over weight is the cause of all the health problems in the universe.

You see, that doctor took away my medication. I was meant to be on iron tablets because I'm anemic, and inhalers because I'm asthmatic. But blood tests came back normal for the anemia - bearing in mind, they were done while I was on iron tablets, and had been for a while - and the doctor decided my asthma would get better if I exercised more. He basically said all my issues were because I'm over weight, and suggested I go for regular runs along the beach or something. I'm blind, have issues with my right leg because I've torn the tendons in my ankle (twice) and knee on that leg, I get dizzy from the anemia, and out of breath from the asthma. But he wanted me to go run along the beach to get some weight off. Uh-huh... Sure! So, should I call an ambulance before I start running, or have someone ready to do it after I either fall, pass out, or can't breathe? Yeah.. Needless to say, I didn't take his advice. However, I did find myself without medication.

A similar thing has happened before, and it once again ended the same way as it did this time: I eventually end up in hospital, and back on iron tabletts and asthma inhalers.

So, what does this have to do with water setting off the fire alarm? Well, what happened was this:

The water got in to the fire alarm, setting it off. We, of course, didn't know that was the problem until we got downstairs. All we knew was the fire alarm downstairs was going off, so we had to get out as quickly as was safe. So we just grabbed Lilie and left. We felt bad about leaving Joshua and the chinchillas, but there wasn't anything we could do. As it turned out, we could tell at once when we got down there what had happened, because it was raining in the downstairs hallway. So we stayed down there long enough for Kelly to enter the code to make the alarm shut up, and went back upstairs.

Trouble is, by the time I got downstairs I was a bit out of breath, and by the time I got back up, I couldn't breathe at all. No amount of breathing exercises were fixing it, and every time I even tried to use any, I ended up coughing so hard it stole whatever breath I'd managed to catch. So Kelly called an ambulance.

The ambulance guys managed to get my breathing OK, though I was still coughing a lot and had some wheezing in my upper right lung, but my blood pressure was through the roof, and my heart rate was even worse. My blood pressure eventually dropped to 170 over 100 after half an hour with them, but that was still too high, and at that point my heart rate was still 150, which is WAY too high. So they took me to hospital.

Giving me access to asthma inhalers eased the cough, but there was still concern about the rest of it, so I ended up with a couple of EKGs, a chest xray, several hours on a heart monitor, a bunch of blood tests, a CT scan to check for a possible blood clot - since my anemia made them reluctant to give me anything for any potential clot, since it would make the anemia worse - a blood transfusion, and a weekend in hospital.

They checked my kidney function too. It's always been low, ever since I was born, and still is. At one point it dropped down in to the range where things needed to be done about it... That was when I was a small child, and the reason for some of my many hospital stays. But my kidney function is staying in the safe zone at the moment, so that's good. I'm not sure if I mentioned on here, but I eventually found out that my kidney problem is part of the reason for my weight issue (because of water retension) as well as the original cause of both my anemia and the hormonal imbalance that causes the irregular bleeding that's now pretty much constant bleeding. I also get a lot of urinary tract infections.

The only good thing about spending the Easter weekend in hospital was that I got to meet Emma, and we had a fun Easter Sunday, because it was just the two of us on our ward for a lot of that day, so we had a good time with her family, and then watched movies on her phone. At least I was lucky enough to spend my time in hospital with someone as lovely as Emma. I do feel bad that she's still in there though... I wish she could have gone home after the weekend too.

My Mam's still in hospital as well. She went in a week before me because of an infection in her leg, and still isn't well enough to go home yet. Different hospital to me though... She's in the one where I had my eyes out in Wales, actually.

Oh, and my Grandma's now in hospital too, having gone in this past Friday with breathing problems. She's doing OK though.

Unlike Mam, Grandma, and Emma, I'm mostly doing OK now. OK for me, I mean. My asthma's still playing up so I won't be wanting to go without inhalers any time soon, I still need iron tablets because of the anemia, and we do need to watch my kidney function. But those things are issues I have to deal with all the time anyhow, and aren't anything new, so... *shrugs*

Well, that and the infection I ended up with during all this, which resulted in a return trip to A&E this past Friday. Thankfully I didn't get stuck in this time, but was sent home with antibiotics for it.

Anyway, let's hope this time the doctors leave me on the stuff, and don't decide that a good test result means I no longer need medication, which will eventually result in another hospital trip. Honestly, this pattern is getting beyond annoying.

So... Yeah... Our Easter celebrations ended up being me going in to hospital and then us eating chocolate eggs at home afterwards. Well, that and how I spent my Easter Sunday in hospital with Emma. Carl (my brother) says I fail at Easter hospital trips, because I didn't make sure I had an Easter egg with me in case I got stuck in. I had my Kindle and phone, and their chargers, but that's about it. I was wearing bunny rabbit pyjamas though, so he said I get some points back for that. Haha! Kelly would have brought me some in, but we had a slight problem: he couldn't leave Lilie, doggy sitters aren't easy to get at short notice (especially on a holiday weekend) and Lorna and Andy (our friends) were away for the weekend. They came home about when I was coming out of hospital. As it is, my ride home was via Lorna's friend, Anne. Who, by the way, I'm very grateful to for the ride home. Lorna and Andy would have helped out if they could. They helped a lot by arranging Anne as my ride home mind you. So I'm grateful to them too.

So... How did you spend your Easter weekend?