Thursday Evening

Today the visiting nurse came and put in a new catheter for Fred and this evening he had me call and get someone out here to redo it because there was blood in his urine and very little urine. Well, this is verging on TMI but that is how things are these days—fine for a while and then BAM! a step back. We had a very nice male nurse who was on call and he did what was necessary and I hope it has all cleared up. Fred says he is not worried about it because he knows how to take the catheter out {you don’t just pull it because there is a balloon filled with sterile water in there holding it in } and he will manually catheterize himself if necessary.

The young man who came out was actually from Mississippi {where I spent 30 years} and we did the usual Southern thing of finding out exactly which families we were related to. It turned out that he actually knew my mother and father-in-law! He lived in Wayne County which was technically where I lived because of the side of the road I lived on. If I had lived on the other side of the road, I would have been in Jones County which is where I worked. When I told him that, he said, “Oh, you lived on {name of road} then.”  It was interesting that the only hint of the South in his speech was that he said “Miss’ippi” which is how my seventh graders taught me to say it! He has been in Vermont for five years and before then he was in New Hampshire and he goes back to Mississippi two or three times a year to see his mother. Hmmm, I must be doing something wrong here because my children don’t come to see me; I go back once a year to see them! LOL

Being more practical, today I have put away Christmas and sorted out {in a rough sort of way} Fred’s pile of clothes. This means I have put all his summer clothing into the two boxes stacked in front of the cupboard {after I  put the Christmas stuff in the cupboard.} I then made three separate stacks of his clothing; sweat shirts, sweat pants and sweaters. His jeans are hanging on hooks in the corner and his socks, underwears and handkerciefs are all in drawers where he puts them. I just got the big piles of mixed summer and winter clothing piled on two chairs sorted out. Now, if I can get him to put stuff into the laundry bag…

I also made a loaf in the bread machine and went for a 30 minute walk.

We have had several inches of snow today with more expected tomorrow.

Tonight will be a half-Klonopin night. I react very badly to setbacks…

Until later…