Another Eventful Weekend!

Sounds like this past weekend was an eventful one... I was in Denver for my company's Annual Conference which started with a 6:30am flight on Friday morning... Had the clock set for 4am and still did not manage to make to 4am since our dog woke me up at 3am puking all over Hubby's bathroom floor. Yes, our dog is not doing too good these days... I am deeply saddened since he is only 10 1/2 years old and I just lost my dog only a short year or so ago.. I really do not think I can take another doggie passing so soon. Sampson has had this ongoing breathing condition for months now that just kept getting worse. At first the vet said it was allergies and the next time they said his heart is enlarged and he seems to have congestive heart failure. They kept him overnight on diuretics to remove the fluid off his heart. He seems to be moving around a lot slower now since all that started. Well, he got sick again last week to the point where he was practically unresponsive when talked to or petted. Now the vet is saying he is severely anemic. He has also stopped eating for the most part. Hubby bought him a flat of wet dog food and he seemed to eat that over the weekend but as of last night he has stopped again. Of course our neighbors (the good ones) are devasted over this too since Sampson stays with them half the time. I do not want to even think about our life without the Warrior since he has been our "child" throughout our entire marriage and courtship before that. He is such a great companion and always provides us such entertainment. He woke us up again this morning around 3:45am gagging up stuff on our bedroom floor... All we can do is pray..
In the meantime, my 9-yr old nephew Austin managed to wreck his motorcycle this past Sunday on the farm... they didn't found out until yesterday that he broke his upper arm and now he is scheduled to go see the same orthopedic doc my Grandmother goes to! Since the break is so high there really is no way to put a cast on his arm... very odd. Oh well, no motorcycle riding, no fishing, no hunting, no nothing for the little daredevil- and that is what hurts him the most!
My Grandmother did not have a good weekend either- her ongoing unhappiness with everything, her constant negativity and her neverending refusal to do anything the Caregiver asks of her is just wearing them thin. She hates everything food-wise they give her, she tries to chew up her pills now (which of course taste awful) and everytime they touch her to bathe her or change her bottoms she screams like they are beating her. I am really beginning to think she has reverted back to her terrible 2's again... I am planning to go see her sometime this weekend for Mothers Day... but, that will be another blog topic later...;-D

Just Another BIG Reason To Get The Heck Outta Dodge!

Guess which drama queen strikes again? Yep! Our crazy old psycho neighbor is back to her old tricks again. After that whole show-down in our driveway last month (see THIS BLOG), I was confident we were safe from her anti-cable company antics for a long while... WRONG. Last week I received a voice mail from her informing me that the power line on her house was damaged by our cable guy when he worked on our cable (over 7 weeks ago mind you!) and that she was having a private contractor come repair it. Oh and she also also wanted to tell me that while this so-called contractor was there she was also going to have him disconnect our cable line off "HER" pole and have him them roll it up to the street and leave it. (This is her way of "getting back at that comcast").. her message continued on about how comcast won't address her issues because she is not a customer of theirs (duh!) and how she is just notifying us that we will not have cable/internet after May 8... How nice of her to "notify us" and give us the complimentary/neighborly heads-up- you freaking psychopath! I am SO over this woman and all of her cable-hatred driven drama!! Why cannot she just live out her retirement years in peace and leave her nice working neighbors alone? I am really starting to think she is just looking for some attention... So I called Hubby (who was outta town at his job site) and let him know the latest drama with the fruit-loop next door... I assured Hubby that I would NOT address this issue with her now or ever again- it is his turn! Besides, my sky-high level of anger towards her is not healthy and having to deal with her would only make matters worse for all of us. Well..... Hubby tried to contact the cable company and never got a response before he decided to just confront her directly (by phone). He asked her what was going on to which she responded that our cable guy had pulled her power line off her house... yadda yadda yadda... Hubby said that they were out over 7 weeks ago and she is just now discovering the loose connection? He told her that it could have been like that for months and she just did not see it... she of course automatically blames the cable man (who never touched the power lines or her house for that matter- besides that fact that the power lines are about 8-10 ft above the cable lines on the pole). He tries to explain to her that she cannot remove items off of a public utility pole and that there are hefty fines associated with it (including possible jail time)... she won't listen. He tells her that the pole is not "hers" and it the property of the power company... to which she says that it is MY pole since it is on MY property! He tries to reason with her and she just refuses to listen... she says that she "has" to take care of this cable company issue (of course, we really do not understand WHAT the issue is... except that she thinks their lines should not be on "her" pole).. Again, can you say psychopath?? By the end of the call, she tells Hubby that she just "cannot deal with that cable company's crap anymore" and he responds that "well, we cannot deal with your crap anymore"... and proceeds to inform her to never ask us for another favor in the future if this is how she wants to deal with her so-called "problem"... and then he hung up on her. Wow. For my Hubby to end the call on that note and hang up on her... just Wow. You go boy!
Well, since I was in Denver from this past Friday to Sunday, Hubby stayed home and worked in the yard (between rain storms) and fortunately never saw her! How uncomfortable would that scenario be? I personally think he should have carried a weapon for back-up protection... just in case... Oh well, I guess her self-imposed "deadline" is this Friday the 8th... thankfully Hubby will be in town and I guess if she gets her "private contractor" (who is her son by the way) to cut our cable on Friday or over the weekend, we will just have to call the cable company and have them come out and hook it back up. And hopefully we do not have to be there this time to "deal" with the stand-off that will happen between her and them once again for the cable re-installation.
Of course, Hubby is banking on her crying Wolf and not doing any thing. Personally, I am wondering if she is having her son do it for her Mother's Day gift... again, psychopath!!

He Will Be A Fisher Of Men

Another great fishing tale... looks like my Nephew, Austin officially has the "fever" after hooking this 6 lb 9 oz. large-mouth bass yesterday afternoon after school ALL BY HIMSELF!! His Dad was not even to the lake yet!!
Fishing Fever= Fishing for Dad and Son 24/7... sounds like summer fun!!

Stuck In A Rut

I am deeply saddened today after spending quite a bit of time with my Grandmother last week while we were back home working on our land. Her mind is stuck on the same subject as it has been for the last few months- she spends who knows how long each and every day trying to figure out "how to get out of here"... every time I visit her she babbles and rambles on and on about "going somewhere else" and how "she can't take it anymore"... I cannot understand 90% of what she babbles but, the 10% that I can decipher comes down to her wanting to go elsewhere. I tell her that the only other option at this point is the nursing home and she then threatens that "I (she) am going to find me another place to go live"... I ask her why and what the problem is and get nothing in response. Again, she is stuck in this mindset and I do not know why I even try to reason with dementia.
My Mom and I took her to Callaway Saturday and she kept babbling the entire time about the same thing over and over and over. I fussed at her several times trying to get her off the subject and try to get her to enjoy the pretty scenery- to no avail. She is just plain ol' bitter and angry. It is sucks! When we "walked" her to the car that morning to head to Callaway, it took us over 10 minute to get her from the kitchen to seated in the car. And then as soon as I crank up the car, she starts steadily rattling on about how she can move home and take care of herself.... and I am steadily asking her how she can take care of herself with a broke hip.. who will cook and clean and wash clothes and drive her to her appointments ... and she just dodges my questions.. and then starts up again with the rambling. I called her yesterday and had the exact same conversation AGAIN only this time I could not get her off the phone. She just goes on and on and on about the same gripes... it makes me want to stop calling her... I just do not know how much I can take of the same conversations over and over with her. What's a girl to do?

The Family That Fishes Together...

My family is officially famous! Looks like my brother and nephew showed 'em all up at the local fishing tournament last weekend in Pine Mountain!

I am so proud of them! And the fish fried up well this past Saturday night during our stay last week... Good times with our family! Yeehaw.

Monday Morning Traffic Woes

Today was definitely a Monday-type Monday. I opted to not get up and go to boot camp this morning since we were in Pine Mountain from Wednesday morning to Sunday evening- we did not get back home until almost 10pm last night! Hubby was leaving early this morning for his 2-night trip to his project in Alabama and I needed more than 4 hours sleep in order to function at the office today. I hit the street around 6:45am and about 5 miles down Johnson Ferry Rd, the "Low Tire Pressure" light comes again- instant terror! I am thinking "no, no, no, not another flat tire!!!" I stopped at the next service station and got out and all 4 tires seemed okay... but, I went ahead and dug around in the trunk and found my pressure-checker-thingy... and wouldn't you know- the rear right tire was 10 lbs less than the other three. So I paid my $0.75 and filled it to the same. I went ahead and pulled up to the gas pump to fill up my car and then drove down to the coffee shop for a cup of joe to go. I measured again with joe in hand and the tire had already lost 5 lbs!! I made a U-turn and went to the Goodyear up the street... 30 minutes later and one nail less, I was patched up and headed back to the rat race. And then something worse happened... not to me, but to some poor soul on I-85 Northbound. I was going around 75 mph like everyone else and all of a sudden all these cars start slowing down (more like slamming on their brakes)and swerving around to dodge a white pick-up whose hood was vertical! I could not believe it! Some old Dodge Ram pickup and the hood was straight up and how he managed to pull that off the interstate with no damage is beyond me... I finally made it to the office safe and sound by 9am... whew!!!

Phase II Land Clean-Up

We have officially started phase two of our property clean-up back home in Pine Mountain. We rented some heavy equipment and Operators and starting pushing down trees, uprooting old stumps, etc. this past Saturday. Hubby and I ran our chainsaws cutting up the large trees into smaller lengths for easy handling- we buried some and burned others. We worked sun up to sun down on Saturday and then sun up to mid-afternoon on Sunday. We were so surprised at how much we debris we cleaned up! I forgot to mention that the previous owners used to dump their old junk on one part of the land too- I am talking YEARS of dumping...NOT fun to clean up other folks crap! Unfortunately, the bull dozer we rented cannot get close enough to all of the junk to relocate it... so we are renting a track-hoe with a grappling hook to pull the debris to relocate it. The track-hoe will be delivered tomorrow and we will be starting back to work tomorrow as well. Why not use up our precious vacation days to do manual labor for free? My kind of vacation! The worse part is the fear of ticks, inhaling all the smoke from the burn pit, non-stop sweating due to the high levels of humidity, and running around in uncomfortable work boots. I just hope the end product by this Sunday makes it all worth it. And I just hope we get our entire To-Do List finished by Sunday too.

After we finished our work last Sunday, we did swing by to see my Grandmother on our way home. Boy, she was full of bitterness that visit. It is so frustrating to spend time with her since she seems more and more bitter and angry all the time now- even Hubby got to witness it this time around. I think at this point in our trip down dementia lane I have just got to accept the fact that no matter how well she is taken care of physically, she will never be happy again- never be happy any where or in any place. It just seems like her record is scratched on the bitter groove and it just keeps playing over and over. I do not know how the Caregivers deal with it day in and day out. I know it has to be hard on them too- especially enduring it 24/7. This is just another reason I should count my blessings every day....