Yee-haw, y'all!

I've been lax in writing lately, partly because of the ability to provide quick updates via Facebook, partly because of a very busy work schedule, and partly because of life's demands. For those of you who look forward to these little updates of mine, I apologize.

So today, what am I writing about? I have no idea yet. I guess we'll figure it out as I write...

Since my last post in mid-October, life has been constant change. (I know, since when is that different?) M got put on a different schedule at work to help an injured coworker; my work has been steady and a bit overwhelming at times because the balance of project types has changed; I spent a couple of weeks in Nashville, IN, Gatlinburg, TN, in my trek to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of my friends T & M; my M got a new job, which he starts in a few more days, on day shift, so we have to switch from nights to days; and my mom just spent a couple days in the hospital again. We have done almost no winterizing around the house, no preparation, and have no idea if we'll be spending the holidays with family, friends, or both. Some of the trees in our orchard have lost all their leaves, some have all brown leaves, some are completely green, and some (the five-in-one trees) have green, brown, orange, and no leaves.

You want details, you say? Where do I start? The wedding in TN was a success. T & M were married. Despite some bumpy patches in the days leading up to and the morning of the wedding, everyone pulled together like seasoned pros, and the bride and groom seemed extremely happy at the end of the night. And the wedding party and friends had a lot of fun in the evenings at our gigantic cabin. We were a little crazy--at least the women; the men mostly played Munchkin, billiards, and video games. Still, I think it was all good.

Nothing much to report about the new job yet. He'll still be working 12-hour shifts, but his drive will be about twice as long as it is now. He'll work 4 days on, 4 days off. He'll start on days, then eventually go to nights, then back to days, then nights. We don't know details on how long each swing will be. He'll be a contractor right now. Year-long contract or until he gets hired full-time. Or they could extend the contract. The company seems to like hiring people out of this position, so it's promising. Plus, even though the job technically requires only a high school education, the company likes having people with chemistry or chemical engineering degrees--quite unlike most jobs, for which companies are afraid to hire people who are "overqualified." So yes, promising. Oh, and M knew he was going to receive almost twice the pay for this job as for the one he's leaving. He has since learned he'll be making even more. We are VERY happy about that, especially the possible added flexibility it gives us in some aspects of our life.

My mom went to the hospital a few days ago because she was in a lot of pain in her abdomen, like with her flare-up last November and leading up to her intestinal surgery a couple of years ago. The hospital did an X-ray and found a a blockage in her intestine. They gave her some pain medicine and put in an NG tube and an IV. Within a few hours of checking in, she was transferred to a larger hospital, the one where she had her intestinal surgery back in 2008, so she could be seen by one of the doctors who had conducted the surgery. They did X-rays when she got to the larger hospital, and they found the blockage was gone. We don't know what did it. Some theories are that the NG tube had something to do with it, or Mom vomiting while they were trying to put the tube in, or that prayer did it. Or a combination of the three. I look fondly on the idea of all three, as we had several people praying for her before she got transferred to the larger hospital. If you don't like my theory, choose one of your own. :D Anyway, last night, Mom was given a liquid dinner, and today she was given a breakfast of soft solids. All went well, so she was discharged. She's at home now. She says if she feels up to it, she's going to go deer hunting tomorrow. We'll we know where I get some of my orneriness...

Tonight is the last night for M at this current job. We have a few days to get back on a day schedule, then he has two days of 4-hour orientation (yes, 4 hours each day). And he might start his new job the next day, or that weekend, or the following week. We won't know until sometime during his orientation. This should be a fun week. In the past month, I've already switched from nights to days, then back to nights again. Now I get to go back to days. Yeehaw!

* Stringham high: New doctor (neuro-ophthalmologist) in a few days.
* Stringham low: Today? Nah, it's all good, but I hear one of my mothers-in-law is feeling not so great. Keep her in mind, if you would, and pray/send loving thoughts and energy.
* Stringham super-highs: M starting a new job; most recent season of Doctor Who begins arriving via Netflix on Monday.

Remembering Together so Sadness Loses Its Power

A year ago yesterday, I was told I may never read anything but large print or braille again. A year ago this Wednesday, I had double optic nerve sheath fenestration performed to halt my vision loss. Some of the loss was reversed, so I can read normal text and still work, though I can't see very well in the dark or drive or see much of anything in my periphery.

To all of you who prayed and/or sent positive thought and energy my way then, thank you for being part of that miracle. I will forever be eternally grateful.

To all of you who still pray for me and send positive thoughts and energies to me, please keep it up. I have a lot more vision to be restored, and right now, modern technology can't help, though we are moving closer. Right now, you, me, the power of positive thinking, the Divine, and our combined healing energies are the only ones who can make the miracle continue!

* Stringham high: Being able to work and read.
* Stringham low: Meh. Why get bogged down in that stuff?
* Stringham super-high: Amazingly supportive friends and family like you.

And now for the educational segment of this post! For those who are interested, the title on my blog page links to a short video bit about how science is helping some people see. There are somewhat similar techniques being worked out for blindness caused by other issues (for example, people who have damaged corneas), all slightly different because several things can cause blindness and visual impairment, so they all have to be "fixed" differently. They're also working on reversing damage that happens in the normal course of aging, which is pretty similar to the damage to my eyes. (That's why I sometimes make a crack about having "old" eyes or "old people" eyes.) Researchers haven't quite figured out how to make it work for people like me yet, because my retina is actually physically damaged rather than "simply" deficient or undergoing natural atrophy. Still, someday soon, maybe extreme visual impairment won't have to be so scary and debilitating for so many people.

Preparing for Hibernation

It's been a busy, yet calm, sort of two weeks here in IN. We've been trying to fit in garden and yard work in the waning daylight hours and around the rain and cold weather on M's nights off. We got potatoes not long ago (see previous post), then mowed and weedeated several parts of the garden and other patches of yard to put in winter cover crops to improve the soil further. We found volunteer tomato plants hidden amidst the weeds where we had planted the corn this year. Today, while pulling up weeds and tomato cages, M pulled up a few turnips from the test bed--very large but not very globe-shaped. He also found a few red bell peppers, of all things. This late in the season, with the cool weather we've had--4 palm-sized red bell peppers. Very sweet, very tasty.

A week ago, the kitties managed their very first mouse kill all on their own. We got home from grocery shopping to find that they had a mouse cornered, and the next thing we knew, it was dead on the floor. Go kitties! Let's hope they take that newly learned skill and run with it with pride. We were late getting out poison in key spots this year, and the corn in the fields around our house came down earlier than we were anticipating, so our furry little houseguests moved in early this year. :(

That's all we have to report. Life continues to run. Halloween is approaching, as are the nuptuals of my friends T and M. Bridesmaid duties call.

* Stringham high: autumn
* Stringham low: meh
* Stringham super-high: Halloween

Revisiting Autumn

After a bumpy start to my evening, I finally managed to be calm, even cheerful, for most of the night. I've had a crockpot meal cooking, and several windows open to let in the fresh (and cold!--49 degrees) air. It smells like fall in our house, with the combination of fresh cold air and cooking pork, onions, and green chiles. That's great, the smell of fall, and it makes me happy.

But then I got a headache spike a little after 2 AM. It wasn't terrible, and it resolved after a few minutes, so I attributed it to the weather, as we've got a couple squall lines moving through. But then I felt anxious out of the blue. I was working--editing--and felt anxious, then started thinking about the hospital and going in for my D&C last fall. (It was a warm and rainy night when we went to the hospital with my heavy bleeding, but the next afternoon when they wheeled me down for surgery, they had the doors to the basement open and I talked with one of the doctors about how great the new first cold air of fall is, because it had just arrived that morning.) My feelings of anxiety, like my pain spike, went away fairly quickly and are mostly gone now, but a trace of them lingers, in the way that the feel of a particularly peculiar dream hangs around for a few hours after you wake up.

I wonder if these ups and downs are going to be common for the next few weeks, over the anniversary of...well, anniversaries, I guess...of the hospitalization for the miscarriage, the D&C, the beginning of my vision loss, my weeks of pain, and my eye surgery. It's been nearly a year since I've driven a car. Nearly a year since I've been able to look at my husband's face and see all its details all at once without having to shift my gaze just so.

Normally, I love fall. This year, I'm not sure how it's going to go. The next month promises to be an interesting revisit to an...interesting combination of bad and good.

Normally, I might expound upon the thought that's been chasing around in my head about autumn being the death of things preparing for rest and rebirth, and the cycle of life and healing, but tonight, I think I'll leave that for another time.

*Stringham high: autumn
*Stringham low: not-so-happy anniversaries (see above)
*Stringham super high: happy anniversaries (my parents' 36th year of marriage, my friend B's 1st year of marriage, my and Mike's 7th year of being together)

**Title links to a song that I'd like to "dedicate" in honor of those happy anniversaries and to our child, whom we never got to meet.

This Spud's for You

M and I dug up our 4 rows of potatoes this evening. We were fairly disappointed after our first row--golds. Most of them had been nibbled on by mice and were being further broken down by nature's composting helpers. We managed to save a few for "immediate" use, but we certainly didn't get a return on our investment. Not enough for storage to even register on our scale when we tried to weigh them.

At the end of that first row was a transplant or two we had discovered early in the year as volunteers in other parts of the garden--a couple of reds. They did really well, those two. They produced almost as many potatoes as the entire row of golds.

The second row was our russets. Not a huge number of potatoes, but boy, were those things big! We got a paper grocery bag of russets, 17.5 pounds. They won't go very far, but they'll store. Still, we were wondering if the potatoes were a return on investment, as russets aren't really expensive in the store.

The third row proved to be much more fruitful. This was a row of reds. They went hog wild. Most of them were nibble free and had grown without snarls and damage. (Yay!) We had so many potatoes from this row that when M started to uncover the fourth row, I had to sit down to clean and sort the reds from this row. It was certainly more than just a handful of potatoes to wipe the dirt and bugs off of...it was an entire pile. Now we were thinking we may have gotten our investment back in seed potatoes and straw and fertilizer--not to mention the richness that the potatoes and straw seemed to be adding to our once low-nutrient soil. It was clear where the potatoes were, as the soil was much darker and richer, though still more compact than we'd like.

M dug up the fourth row while I cleaned all the reds. We knew the fourth row wouldn't be too productive, as the plants hadn't gotten very large this year, but M was digging and uncovering almost the entire time I was cleaning that huge pile of reds. This row seemed a mixture of russets and reds for some reason. Again, we had more of these damaged like the first row.

It seems our experiment of simply working up the first inch or two of soil and mixing in some fertilizer worked. We simply laid the seed potatoes on that softer earth and covered with straw, then kept covering the plants with straw as they grew. Yes, that was much better for growing spuds this year than putting them in the heavy, clay-like, waterlogged soil so prevalent on our property.

All told, we brought in a lot of potatoes this year:

21.5 lbs (mixed) for "immediate" use
8.5 lbs small reds
17 lbs medium reds
11 lbs large reds
17.5 lbs russets

Grand total: 75.5 lbs of spuds. With all those tasty reds, we're going to have a lot of garlic mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!

* Stringham high: gardening
* Stringham low: disappointing gold potatoes
* Stringham super-high: almost half of M's body weight in potatoes for the year!

My Moment of (un)Zen

I'd like to say I'm posting about the woes of garden pests.
But what I'm really posting about today, dear reader, is my heebie-jeebies.

From our driveway today, I saw the allure of bright red globes. They peeked at me through dense foliage, calling my name. Ah, more tomatoes! I thought. I moved toward them and started collecting them. Then my hand stopped just short of possibly the biggest tomato hornworm I've ever seen.

Yes, I was raised in the country. Yes, I should be immune to such things. I had an aunt who used to play with snakes. Seriously. I was never one of those kids who played with bugs and worms and caterpillars as a kid. You know why? Worms and caterpillars and grubs all give me the heebie-jeebies. Maggots too. Snakes, too, though only when they move. (I won't just kill things I don't like, either. I recognize their importance in the grand scheme. I just don't want to touch them. And I really prefer not to see them.) Tomato hornworms, though, they are garden pests, mostly not at all beneficial. Still, I don't like killing them. And they don't even move much--they mostly just get in the way while they look like giant bumps on logs. Scratch that. They look like giant logs attached to much smaller logs. But they still give me the heebie-jeebies. Probably because they camouflage so well. Right next to the tasty, tasty tomatoes. Last year, we watched for them, but they covered well. We teamed up, and M took down the worms while I reached around the spiders and spiderwebs (those were good--we wanted to leave them intact). I dealt with his heebie-jeebies, he dealt with mine. But now M's at work and the hornworms have come out in force in the past 5 days. They're everywhere. I saw no less than 8 without having to look for them. No small feat, considering my damaged eyes. Of course, they've stripped the foliage off the tops of all the tomato plants, so they aren't hiding as well as they did last year when only one or two usually made it to adulthood. (Three or four are "hiding" in this picture.)

Well, here we were thinking we had good soil and such and were having no problems with the worms this year. Guess we thought wrong. I sent pictures this evening to M at work to show him how many there were, and how huge they were. I guess he's having a rough day, because he told me to "Just get a pair of f**king scissors and kill them." Ew. First off, they're huge. Second, ew. Third, I know they'll pop all over me if I cut them. Fourth, ew. Fifth, when did I ever tell him to just get over it and smash the damn spider? Sixth, scratch that last question; it might come back to haunt me.

Still, I might have been okay. Honestly, I went back after seeing the first worm. I thought maybe I could get most of the tomatoes and just leave a few until M gets home to help me. That was when I saw all the others. And I saw some of them eating (like these two). Which is to say, I saw their heads moving as they sucked on green tomatoes. That was the worst. Ick. Ick, ick, ick.

Okay, if you aren't already, you are more than welcome to laugh at me now. I just had to share, because I couldn't scream at the top of my lungs outside how disgusting that was.

* Stringham high: Yummy, gorgeous, red, ripe tomatoes.
* Stringham low: Hornworms
* Stringham super-high: Possible opportunity to work a contract job for a few months (meaning not losing 45% of my money off the top to taxes of one sort or another)...

The Beauty of a Country Morning

No complaining today, just the sharing of a beautiful morning. I looked outside to see fog hemming in our backyard. It's not a deep backyard, so those of you who've seen it can imagine how surprised I was to not be able to see past the edge of our yard.

Still, it's a lovely fog--light. One might almost want to use the term "fluffy." It was so pretty, I had to take a few pictures--very few, as it turns out, because my camera


battery died. When I stepped outside, however, the fog was even lovelier. (Yes, I keep using that term. There is nothing better for it.) The fog was more of a light mist, as it turns out. I could hear the slight drip of moisture collecting and running down our downspouts and feel the very gentle gathering of dampness on my skin. The air temperature was cool, but not cold, without even a hint of summertime heat or the chilliness that often accompanies heavy fog.The mist seemed almost magical, it was so light, so cool, so lovely. It dampened noise but didn't mute it. Everything simply seemed reverentially hushed, like worshippers entering a holy space. It was like Peace took a moment and descended on our little home. See for yourself: