Scary Yankee Chick

We haven’t had much snow this winter.  A couple big storms, but most of the time they predicted snow it fizzled and we got an inch or two.  Or a couple inches of slush with a couple inches of snow on top.  Not fun, but not bad to deal with either.

This time I think we exceeded expectations….

Apollo’s 27.75″ at the shoulder, thats one of the shallower spots in the yard.

My husband snowblowed the driveway yesterday (Tuesday) at about 5:30pm.  At which point there was already over a foot of snow down, based on what was buried in the yard.  This is what was in the driveway this morning about 11am:

Depending on who’s weather predictions you like we’re slated to get another 4-12″ today…..

Pretty much everyone I know uses some form of ad-blocker to attempt to block some of the more annoying advertisements that websites have come up with.  Websites brought it on themselves, ads with moving video and audio, ads that attempt to take over the screen or page, popups, etc, all annoyed consumers to the point where some form of ad-block was required in order to just read the pages you want.

And a few sites have started putting banners at the tops of their pages saying something to the effect of “hey, we understand WHY you use an adblocker, but ads are what makes us money, so can you whitelist us please?”.  And for those I will frequently temporarily whitelist them to see how annoying their ads are, and if they aren’t too bad I will sometimes whitelist them, especially if they’re a site I frequent (it depends though, cause some of the things blocked also affect my privacy, so yah).  Because I do understand.

But recently I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.

Those are screenshots, taken today, of two different webpages.  One is an article from the LA Times, the other an article from Wired.

Now, I am aware, from conversation, on the blogs where I got the original links that not everyone is having the same issue, even if they’re using the same adblocker.  So I’m not sure how these sites are determining who to block and who to not block.  But the “whitelist us or pay us” technique doesn’t work for me.  Neither of these articles, hell, neither of these sites, is so important to me that I wish to give up on some fragment of my privacy much less deal with the annoyance of the advertisements in order to read them.

However I find the trend disturbing…….

It was indeed an ear infection, and the doctor agreed that it needed an antibiotic.  ThankYouGod.

By Thursday I was mostly back to normal.  Still way to much post nasal drip, but no ear problems, almost no cough, no sinus pain.

There’s just one lingering symptom that I can’t cope with.  I’m utterly exhausted in no time flat by even minor activity.

I can’t make it through a full work day.  I barely made it through a 4.5hr shift Friday.  Came home and laid down and slept for 2+hrs and still slept soundly that night.

I’m HOPING that its just the end result of being sick for three weeks straight on top of basically not sleeping for the first week of it due to coughing so much rather than a symptom of something else.  But its frustrating as hell to feel “pretty good dammit” and not have the energy to do much.

Otherwise not much going on.  I need to get more seeds started.  I need to get the greenhouses setup and ready to accept seedlings.  I STILL haven’t done taxes (dammit, maybe this week).  Still haven’t finished this woodworking project which was SUPPOSED to be done back at the beginning of February!

Arg!

The last few days have been absolutely lovely, temperature wise.  Yesterday, even as winds picked up as a front rolled through, temperatures were warm enough I not only didn’t want a coat, but I was considering finding my shorts.

Today?  Well, the predicted high is 30.  There’s snow on the ground, though not much thankfully.  And I woke up to see this out the back kitchen window:

The pictures don’t do it justice.  That exposed root structure is now twice my height.  Minor damage to one fruit tree.  Not a big deal.  The concern though is that there are several more of those giant huge pines running down the far side of the property line.  Two of them lined up such that if THEY went over they’d crush the garage and might even damage the house.

I backed both cars back towards the road by about 15feet, just to be sure they’re clear of any such.  And a check around the bases of both potential problem trees shows that neither appears to be as soaked and spongy as the ground around the downed one.  I’d thought that the wind was starting to die back when I did so, but now its picked up again.  Guess time will tell……

Monday (tomorrow) will be two weeks since my symptoms popped up.

I wrote the last post because I did (and do) indeed feel better.  But I’m not well by any stretch.

I made it through a full day of work Thursday.  And then I came home and crashed.  I won’t say I slept for 24hrs straight, cause I didn’t, but I did a whole lot more sleeping in that span than I should have.  And had no energy at all when I was awake.

Tried to go into work Saturday, made it through an hour, came home and slept for 4hrs.

I still have massive amounts of post nasal drip going on, though almost no sinus pain.  Still coughing some, though a large portion of that may just be the post nasal drip.  My ears are still fucked all to hell though.  I’m having trouble hearing some quieter things.  And I noticed Saturday at work that I was having to concentrate on walking in a straight line.  Its not vertigo as such, but my balance is definitely off.

A couple folks at work who had the same thing told me that they spent 3 weeks from beginning to end before they really felt well.  Which isn’t comforting.  I guess I need to call my doctor again…..

Right, so last week, Tuesday, the Urgent care told me I had viral bronchitis.

Wednesday evening I added sinus infection symptoms to my list, and Thursday my doctors office was still backed up, so back to urgent care.  Still viral.  No drugs!  Well, here, have a Flonase nasal spray.  Don’t come back till its been a week or you have a fever!  On the good side of things apparently  my lungs still sounded good.

Yay.

Monday, yesterday, the large majority of the sinus infection symptoms had faded, though weren’t completely gone.  But my cough was worse, and my lungs were acting screwy, and I’d not gotten a single solid nights sleep since this started thanks to the coughing, which was only helped some by the cough suppressants.  I did however manage to score an appointment with my regular doctor.

She REALLY didn’t like the amount of fluid still in my ears (remnant of the sinus infection), but since my ears aren’t really bothering me right now decided to let it slide for now.  She didn’t like the way everything was lingering, looked disapproving when I told her no as an answer to whether they’d done a flu swab or a chest xray at urgent care.  Flu swab and chest xrays were done (both came back normal).  Since most of the symptoms were fading, and my lungs were still clear she didn’t prescribe an antibiotic, but she did give me a course of steroids and an asthma inhaler (and instructions to use it at least once a day for a couple days).

Cross fingers!

When I get really stressed my immune system gets a workout.  I know this, so I started popping Vit C and Zinc supplements to the max recommended dose a couple days after my MIL died.

Either I wasn’t fast enough, or it wasn’t enough this time.

Several of the folks who came for the funeral (including my mother) were coughing.

And of course I work retail, so if its in the community I’m exposed to it, and I specifically work a department where I’m going in and out of the cold several times a day.  I try to be sure to grab jacket and hat and gloves, but I’ll admit it doesn’t always happen.

Monday I woke up with a cough, a nice deep chesty sort of thing that feels like it’s bringing up crud (though if it was it was clear).

Tuesday morning I woke up seriously dragging ass, and headed into Urgent Care since my Doctor’s office was backed up.

Sure enough.  Viral bronchitis.  Its apparently making the rounds in the community.  And of course, unless I get a fever, or start coughing up nasty looking crud, they aren’t inclined to put me on an antibiotic.

Just what I needed.

I still need to do our taxes.  And I need to figure out what seeds I’m going to start when.  And I need to finish this woodworking project thats 90% done.  And…….

I’m going back to bed now……

Saturday morning I got a phone call from my Sister-in-law.  I’d barely sat down with my coffee, my husband was still sound asleep.  And she knows our normal schedules.

But it was indeed urgent.  Her mother, my Mother-in-law, had collapsed in the middle of my Inlaws living room.  Apparently a massive heart attack.  The EMTs were working on her.  But when I asked what hospital they were transporting to the response was “I don’t think they’re going to”.  I went to wake up my Husband, and sure enough, less than 5 minutes later we had another phone call.  They had not transported.  She had likely been gone when she hit the floor, though the EMTs did their best.

She was due to retire in June.  Age 65.  No known heart conditions other than a murmur she’d had since childhood.  She had been diagnosed with a colitis or Crohn’s or something (the doctors couldn’t make up their minds), and the doctors had been trying different drugs to try to get things under control.  Maybe she’d had an undiagnosed condition and the drugs aggravated it?  No way to know now, and no point to an autopsy.  If that had been the case the doctors had been doing their best with the information they had.

Saturday afternoon spent at the funeral home figuring out arrangements.  My Husband and his brother pretty well non-functioning, and my FIL not far behind them for all he put a good face on it.  Thankfully my SIL had picked herself up and was able to help us answer questions, cause I sure didn’t know the answer to most of the questions.

Sunday was spent sorting through her accounts and financial paperwork to figure out what had to be paid right now to keep things functioning, who had to be called right now to keep things from going bad, and who could be put off a week two.

The funeral was Tuesday.  Her family and her husband’s family are both very large (she was the youngest of 8 children), and so things were packed with cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and so on.  The family resemblance is strong, it was surprisingly easy to pick out who was from her side of the family.

Dear 2017, this really wasn’t how I wanted to start out my new year!