August 21, 2013

Aches and Pains When it Rains

Wednesday,  August 21, 2013

In many ways, this has been a difficult day.  For one thing, I just spent an hour writing my blog and then it disappeared.  That is a first.  So I will try again.

Today I woke very early due to pain in my arm with the healing elbow.  It was hurting too bad for me to go back to sleep so I read a while before my vibrating alarm clock went off.  During the night we had a thunder storm and a nice amount of rain.  You may recall I mentioned a couple of weeks ago at Physical Therapy I mentioned to the therapist that my arm was hurting more that day.  He told me I would be able to predict weather better than the weatherman from now on by the pain in my arm.  Today's pain was much worse than it was the day we had that conversation.  There is a tropical wave in the area and tropical activity normally lowers the pressure, so maybe that is why it was bad today.

 On the way to the office I stopped to pay the utility bill and then headed on to work.  Once there I took some over-the-counter pain medications.  The arm was not getting any better and I wanted some relief.  Ron left on several jobs and was gone for about 3 hours.  I stayed busy with customers while he was gone, but many were ones I could not help so there were frustrations.  Hearing was not a problem.  Getting them to understand me was more of a problem. 

Ron brought me some lunch when he returned and then left again for a while on a couple of jobs.  He was also having pain in his leg from the weather, but had some jobs that had to be done.  Once he got back he offered to let me go home.  I accepted without a second thought.  I delivered one lock for him on my way home.

Time spent in our yard usually relaxes me, so I headed out there when I got home.  As soon as I opened the door to the backyard, this female Mallard, hopped out of one of our ponds and headed to the man-made lake out back.  It baffles me why they prefer our ponds to the large lake.  Silly birds!

I spent time photographing some of the flowers and checking on the birdbaths and ponds.  This is a new plant (an ixora) that we just got last week and it is still in the pot.  There are four of them that need to be planted soon.  While in the yard I could hear some of the birds but they weren't coming to the feeders today.

The rain over night had rinsed the dust off the plants and perked them up so that the yard looked lovely.  It was nice to see these hibiscus bushes covered in blooms and looking even prettier than a few days ago when I shared a photo of them.

I spent most of the afternoon doing Immersion Reading and finished the book I had been working on.  It was a good story, but had a little bad language in it.  I do get spoiled by the Christian fiction that I normally select.  My favorite Christian authors are sometimes available in the format for the Immersion Reading, but their books are more expensive.  By the time I purchase the Kindle ebook and the audio book the cost is around $20 on their books.  After I finished the book, I went to the computer and selected some others that were more affordable.  They should be good. 

This evening I tried to talk to two of our sons and one daughter-in-law.  I was only able to hear one son well enough to converse.  The other son and the daughter-in-law just couldn't be heard by me tonight.  It was frustrating.  I don't recall if I had tried talking to the daughter-in-law before, but the son I couldn't hear is often hard to hear.  I don't know if it was me or the connection or what. 

Now that I have had more pain medication, I am heading to bed and hoping the arm pain lets up enough to allow me to get some sleep tonight.