May 16, 2012

I've got my new knee!

Got to the hospital at 6AM, surgery at 8, woke about 10, in the room by 11.

Pain management has been great, once they figured that morphine drip leaked out onto the bed. All the medical personnel are terrific, ready to help and answer all my questions. I'm really surprisedat how alert I am. I know I wasn't after my previous surgeries!

Tomorrow I won't be so cheerful - physical therapy starts.

May 12, 2012

Tuesday is it

Tuesday I get my new knee! I won't know what time until sometime Monday evening - it's like jury duty. I have a number to call to find out the time.

I'd hoped they would do both at once, but with my weight, asthma, high blood pressure, family history of blood clots, and other health crap, they won't do it. So I get my left knee Tuesday and work my ass off doing the physical therapy do I can get my right one before the end of the year.

I think I'm ready- wrote a new will, living will, health care directive. Got people to take care of the horses and the farm. Have food frozen for my husband while I am in the hospital and in rehab, and enough for a while once I get home. I even have an easy needlework project to work on during my down times at the rehab place.

I hope I will be back on before Tuesday, but I've got a lot of things to take care of to get ready to go. If not, see you in a couple of weeks!

May 4, 2012

Democratic Caucus SATURDAY May 5 - in Leon County!

I only know about Leon County but there are probably caucuses all over the state.

WHAT: Leon County Democratic Caucus

WHEN: Saturday, May 5th, 2012, anytime between 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Every registered, Leon County Democratic voter is eligible to vote, and it takes just a few minutes.

WHERE: Tallahassee City Hall, 300 S. Adams St., Tallahassee, FL 32301


I'm going and dragging my husband along. Anybody else from Leon County going?

April 8, 2012

Organizations sending out emails need to identify themselves!

Recently with the lead up to the real campaign, I've been getting more and more emails from the various political organizations and campaign groups. An increasing number of those emails come from some individual with a subject header that does not give a clue about what group the email is from. MY policy is that if I don't recognize the person and if the subject header does not include an organization or something that tells me WHO sent the email, I delete it. There is no telling if some anonymous email will have some virus or malware in it, so this has been my habit for decades.

Today, I got an email from some woman at Emily's List with a subject heard "Photos". I was curious so I right clicked the email in the list, selected Properties, Details, Message Source so I could see what the email was about without actually opening it. It was an innocuous email asking me to donate to a campaign in some district not in my state. I have no idea how many emails from Emily's List have gone in the trash over the years because it was an unknown sender with an ambiguous subject line. Now Emily's List has been added to the many groups I've unsubscribed to in the last month.

It's simple enough for the people associated with these groups to add some basic information to their email subject headers - every message I get from a commercial organization has the name of the business as the sender and in the subject header. Even the little local native plants nursery I get a weekly email from includes their business name in every email subject header, and believe me, those people are NOT tech savvy!

Please if you are associated with any liberal group or any Democratic campaign, tell them to be sure to include the essential information in their messages!

March 24, 2012

Some Other People Who, by Geraldo's Standards, Are Asking to Be Shot

March 13, 2012

Mass Dolphin Rescue Off Rio Coast

A dramatic video showing 30 beached dolphins being rescued by beachgoers in Brazil.

Another longer video:

March 12, 2012

This afternoon pretty much sucked and ended badly

It's already been a trying week so my knees hurt like hell last night. I ended up taking doses of both medicines for my knees - something I haven't done in over a year. As usual when I take Vicodin, I woke up with a really bad headache, plus the anti-inflammatory no longer does much good, so my knees still hurt like hell.

I dragged through the morning then decided to go look for some things in our storage shed. On the over, I saw the kid who has horses out here trying to catch a horse he has on commission and went to give him a hand. The horse was caught, loaded and the kid took off. I found the stuff I was looking for and headed back to the house.

As I passed the broodmare pasture, I realized their gate was down and both mares and the foal born last month were just standing in the opening. Then I got closer and realized there was a second foal on the ground, not moving much. I propped the gate up, noticing it was covered in blood, and rushed to the house to get my husband. Then I called the kid which turned out to be a good thing. I also called my vet to give her a heads up but she was one of the vets on duty at an international horse event and couldn't leave - she did have a vet on call for her and told me to call back if I needed help.

The foal's condition was concerning - he was thin, breathing was labored and he just was not moving very much. When he did try to move, he was floppy and uncoordinated. While I was evaluating him, the kid's parents and sister arrived. We got the gate rehung, moved the other mare and foal to a different pasture, and checked over the foal. While he was big enough to be full term, he just didn't look or act right.

The biggest worry was that he was a "dummy" foal, usually caused by something at birth that cuts the oxygen to the brain and causes enough damage that they don't have a strong suckling reflex or the coordination to stand. But he was a beautifully formed foal and we hoped it wasn't true. We all watched him for hours. Every time I was ready to say he was definitely not going to make it, he'd try again to stand. We got a nipple and bottle and some artificial colostrum (first milk) and tried to bottle feed him. His suckle reflex was weak to non-existent.

My vet called back after two hours to check and we decided to give the colt a little longer. Finally, I called back and she had a break so could come see what she could do. She tried putting a tube into the colt's stomach and pumping colostrum directly into him. Any stress at all, he could not get enough oxygen and would go a little blue.

He got no boost from the milk we did get into him and I had to make the call. That beautiful colt is now buried in our bottom field near the grave of his great-great-great-grandmother. This was the last foal of the stallion - he died of old age last fall. This may be the last foal for this mare - we had trouble getting her settled so I guess this foal was not meant to be.

This sucked. This is only the third time in over thirty years of breeding we've had to bury a new born.

March 9, 2012

Seamus the dog derails another Republican

Today at lunch I was meeting with some needlework groups of the needlework group I'm in. As we were leaving one of the ladies asked about the colt we had a month ago and wanted to know what we finally decided to name him.

I said, "Seamus" and started laughing. One, an avowed right winger, asked, "Seamus?" and I answered, "Yes, I named him for Mitt Romney's dog."

This completely confused her since she knows that I am a flaming liberal so another member and I were explaining why Mitt's dog is sort of famous to our side of the political spectrum. The right winger had not heard the story of Seamus and the Romney clan trip to Canada.

At first she thought we were joking, because we were laughing about it but then she realized that we were serious about the incident with the car carrier on the roof of the car - and she was OUTRAGED! The right winger is an animal lover and could not believe any sane human being would be so callous as to travel with a dog in a carrier strapped to the roof of their car. She got REALLY pissed when I told her about Mitt stopping to hose down the car, carrier, and dog only to continue on the trip.

We all agreed that someone who would do that to a dog is just not right in the head. I can't wait to see how she deals with it in the future, though she could easily be one of the Tea Party types that doesn't like Mitt anyway.

March 6, 2012

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

It's almost heartwarming.

March 6, 2012

The article on Daily Kos yesterday about the 16 year old is linked by the Obama Campaign

I've spent the past 2 days trying to convince my 16 yo she is not a slut

I don't have a link to where the campaign connected to it - it may be on FaceBook or Twitter - my husband is on one or the other of those (I'm not) and got a message tonight from the Obama campaign with a link to this article and came downstairs absolutely livid about what has happened to this child.

My husband's take on it, "Any man with a wife or daughter who heard Limbaugh make those comments and not get upset deserves to have his head cut off."

This is my sweet, mild mannered husband who normally has to calm me down when I get worked up about things. We were both young adults when Roe v Wade was decided. Before I met him, he helped two friends get abortions . They weren't his girlfriends, just friends who needed help. He's helped friends buy birth control, given lots of good advice to a lot of our young women friends, helped a lot of friends and acquaintances out of abusive relationships.

He's more of a Women's Libber than I am. And he's almost never violent in speech and never violent in action.

But he is PISSED at Rush Limbaugh. Not just for what Rush has said about Sandra Fluke or what he's said about every woman in this country that uses hormones for whatever reason.

My husband is pissed that a gentle 16 year old girl is being harassed because of the hate Rush Limbaugh has injected into this country.