Category: Calendar

Up early, had to bathe this morning. WW Net starts in 50 minutes, so I am checking my E-Mail and drying off. Fortinet has been sending me E-Mails for a couple of weeks so I checked my firewalls for any misconfiguration. The only thing I found was there was not a firewall policy to block private address from reaching out across the ISP connection. I added policies for all my networks this morning to prevent that from happening. (Normally their gateways prevent private addresses, but we are only using their gateways as media converters.)

Lunch was COD the frozen fish and veggies.

Dinner was a bowl of soup and crackers while we watched Castle. I worked on my network for a little while and then bed.

Tuesday

Dr. Appointment at 9AM so we’re grabbing breakfast and heading out the door this morning. Then we found out it was raining, ewe! We got to the doctor’s office on time and they checked her arms and hands. Turns out that she has carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands. (Which causes tingling and weak fingers.) The doctor said to purchase a brace to wear in the evenings and while sleeping. We got to longhorn too early to eat so we went home for a nap. We went to Longhorn for lunch and then back home for another nap. We changed her pillow from the CPAP pillow last night and seems to be sleeping better. Morning headaches seem to be an issue of late and they can be caused by low oxygen when sleeping, especially for CPAP users. The oxygen sensor also indicates an reading in the mid 80’s at night. (I had to change the alarm for her since it vibrates my finger at 90.)

I found out while we were watching Castle tonight that her right foot is bothering her again. She’ll need to wear a compression sock and put a cold pack on it to lower the swelling. I also had to start a new medications document to keep track of how much she took and when. (Most of this will be on the pill dispenser’s log.) She took one 500mg Advil at 6:40 so she can only take one more until 9PM. (There’s only one more available in the dispensers anyway.) We put a cold pack inside a T-Shirt for about 15 minutes tonight, then she had to put her braces back in. That’s another variable, she cannot take Advil on an empty stomach. (We may need to take both pills at once before she goes to bed.)

We also created a sheet to tabulate her pains and what meds have been taken for it.

Wednesday

Did not sleep well, neither did she. My shingles is acting up and my kidneys seem to be unhappy. Her heel of right foot is swollen, her braces are tight, and she has had headaches most every night/morning. She is taking Tylenol for her headaches and Ibuprofen for her foot and wrists.

We went to Longhorn’s on Swanee Road for lunch, because it was closest to the Orthodontist. Lunch was just fried chicken bites that we shared and two side salads. It was a very cheap meal at 15 bucks. We arrived at the Orthodontist about 30 minutes early and that worked out well for them too. They took a bite CT scan and we paid them 300 bucks then headed home. They gave us another prescription Amoxicillin, but this one was for 875mg. We’ll have enough Antibiotics to last until our next appointment.

The 875mg Amoxicillin (Pink Pills) are HUGE! I loaded them into the tray and switched out her spares tonight. (We’ll reload her spares tray when we are awake.)

We were both too exhausted to participate in in the group session tonight, that makes two weeks in a row.

We got our SEVENTH pill dispenser today, it has a serial number of C on it. It is the only one that the seal was broken before I got it.

Thursday

No coffee this morning, I’ve had too much caffeine which has been seriously affecting my sleep. Checked in on the WW Net and then sat on JS8 waiting for Paul. We chatted for a little while this morning. I’ve had back pain for about a week at night that suggested it was my kidneys, so I got a UTI test yesterday.

The left one was from last night and the right one was this morning. I called the doctor’s office and they asked me to drop off a sample. I’ve not heard back from them yet.

My fasting glucose was 107 this morning, boy am I hungry. No breakfast today, dinner was COD fish and veggies. We need to make a grocery run today, we’ve got a doctor’s appointment again tomorrow.

Back from Wally World, we were getting low on staples. I called CF and we adjusted all the gifts to a point where they will all be in the monthly rollup together. Sending a gift in the last week of the month has a high risk of being delayed 30 more days. No visibility of the gifts made in November was possible from the associate that I talked too. She also told me that it was unrealistic to have a thank you letter in 60 days after the gift arrives in country. We’ve been giving gifts for more than 20 years, if the gift passes 60 days something went wrong. We also talked about the duplicate letters, that conversation also had inconsistencies of best practices.

It was an eventful evening her heart rate got up pretty high and erratic for about 20 minutes.

Friday

Didn’t sleep well last night, it could be from the 1/2 bag of potato chips I snacked on last night. I cut up some more of the 500mg acetaminophen tablets to get 250mg tablets for the pill dispensers. So far, we both get good results with the smaller 250mg tablet of Acetaminophen.

Picked up some flowers for the wife at a gas station tent. Their gig was to sell “Made to Order” flowers. I originally thought it would be just buckets of premade flowers. It took them better than 20 minutes to put this bouquet together.

Her heart was throwing PVCs for a short while after she got up from her nap.

I checked my glucose and ran a report on the last 14 days.

Saturday (Light Rain)

Up at 7AM, looked for KK4SAC and didn’t see him. Bands are bad, I can’t hear half of the stations this morning. Had Mexican corn tamales that our neighbor shared for breakfast.

Baked chicken legs for lunch, we forgot the veggies. We took another nap after we cleaned up the kitchen. I researched hoses and ways to combine CPAP hoses so that I could clean four of them at one time. What I ended up doing was taking four masks apart and using the hose connectors.

Braces on her wrists Tonight for the Carpel tunnel.

It’s a process to wash out these CPAP hoses. The idea is to run warm soapy water through them with enough water to clean them. I connected four hoses end to end and ran soapy water through them by siphoning water from a large storage tub.

Then I connected the end to the shower hose to rinse them. Last step is to run the shower to rinse the outsides off. (Oh, it’s a good idea to take the rubber seal out of the shower hose first LOL.)

I take the hoses outside and sling the majority of the water out the ends of the hose. The last thing I needed to do is run air through the hoses to dry them. For years I just let them dry hanging over the coat rack. Now I put a fan under the coat rack since only one end is facing down.

Sunday

I have toe fungus issues. I also have the typical cracking heels of someone with diabetes. The cracks in my heels will get infected if I don’t wear shoes/socks. If I wear shoes/socks then the moisture builds up on my toes and makes the toe fungus unmanageable. I’ve tried flip-flops, but they are uncomfortable to wear in small quarters. Socks do not last very long when worn as shoes either, but that’s ok.

In the past I have cut up socks to use for other purposes. The toe portion works very well for spot cleaning and wiping the dew off the car windows. I wear the heel portion over my testicles to keep them dry against my legs. (My dad and I share an issue with yeast infections of our groin.)

The heel portion I use on my testicles rides down from my ankle and cannot be used on my feet.

If I cut the entire toe portion off, the sock again rides back toward the heel. The solution seems to be to leave a portion of the sock between the big toe to hold the sock in place. That makes the socks Left/Right and I’ll need to dedicate an entire drawer to these specialized sock fragments.

No word from the doctor on my urine sample. I have seriously cut back on coffee to help with sleeping through the night. My Sucrose has been just over 100 for several days now. Hard to believe that my coffee affected my sugar levels that much.

I did a bit of research on acetaminophen. Acetaminophen is quickly metabolized in our bodies and has a short half life (time it takes to metabolize 50% of the drug) of two to three hours. https://walrus.com/

1. Homestead Exemption * homestead@gwinnettcounty.com, 770-822-8100
2. Glenn Wilk
3. Colonoscopy
4. Audible
5. Weekend book page CPAP cleaning
6. Apply for VA benefits

The Ibuprofen and the Hydro codons knocked her pain down enough that she slept pretty soundly this morning. I checked in on the WW Net and had 4 eggs, sausage and a slice of rye toast for breakfast.

Her cheek is noticeably swollen this morning. We called our dentist, and they said we’ve not been seen for more than a year, so we called Braces Now and it went to voice mail. We drove to Braces now and they were at a different location today. Worse the only person that showed up said that they were not dentists, but orthodontics. (*I assumed that was a specialty of dentistry.) We called our normal dentist office back and made an appointment for 10AM. I dropped her off and I headed home.

She called me about an hour later and I drove back to the dentist office. It’s now long past the time she was supposed to take her pain pills, and she was pretty miserable. The shock was that they cannot use the normal injection to relieve the pain if the tooth is abscessed. I held onto my wife as she screamed in pain while they pried her back molar out of the jawbone. (I was crying myself.)

Back home we’re trying to treat the hole in her jaw while getting back on schedule with her medications. We have one more tooth to be removed on Wednesday. I will have to look over the paperwork thoroughly, but I assume that the responsibility for her teeth was hers with her dentist and NOT braces now. (The assumption I made was that she was under their care, we paid them almost $6,000.00 just to have two teeth pried from her mouth today. (Implants will probably cost another $6,000.00.)

There is a very large lump on the side of her cheek. (Larger than the one above) that has me concerned for her health. We’ve both been under a dental surgeon and she could extract a tooth in about 20 minutes with almost no pain.

CF Philippines sent me a status of Josephine’s gifts saying they’ve been sent to the Local Partner. (They are still pretty late at 65 days.) The plan going forward is to withhold gifts without letters at three, that will save all of us a lot of time.

Tuesday (30 Hours to go)

She’s in a lot of pain this morning. We changed the Amoxicillin to 3x per day which is every 8 hours. She has 6 Codon’s left which will get her till the extraction of #30 tomorrow. (Both lower molars on her right side will be gone.)

7AM, 2x Ibuprofen and back to bed for a little while. 10AM is the next pill. I sent a message to Fortinet asking them why all the marketing E-mails are being sent to me.

I am running out of gas, needed a nap… We were very particular about her pills all day today and she’s almost free of pain. (It hurts to push against the cheek) We’ll take a 800 Ibuprofen before going to the dentist tomorrow.

Got a message from LiveFine about our pill dispensers. The E-Mail looks like it just wanted to verify our purchase (Under warranty and under customer service agreement.) There are a lot of discrepancies with this product. It looks like a value added product where someone can put their name on it and market it as their own. Which means the manufacturer is not interested in marketing the product themselves. In the current environment we have no idea who is selling product retail from inside camarketing.inc. There’s no way to hold anyone accountable for any failure of this medical device. (Which is crazy inside the USA.)

Wednesday

We’ve both taken a shower and I checked in on the WW Net as we get ready for the dentist this morning.

Dentist went ok, we left there with more questions than we had answers. We were given a referral to an orthodontist to try and save the tooth. The long story is that she could not guarantee that the pain shot would work and we’d be in the same situation we were on Monday. We called the Orthodontist and made an appointment for next Wednesday. That’s 7 days from now and we have enough antibiotics for 6 days.

My next problem is that keeping track of these four medications is proving to be difficult. Depending on the last pill taken and the current dose to be taken, changes when the next pill is taken.

Ibuprofen can be taken at 1:30 intervals, half of a tylenol can also be taken at 1:30 intervals, Codon’s at 6:00 intervals, and Amoxicillin at 12:00 intervals. So all of the pills can be divided into 3 hour intervals. What ended up happening is that we occasionally took them at a 4:30 interval. Then you end up with a piece of paper that looks like this.

To accommodate all these different times I had to use two dispensers, since they can only do 8 alarms. The two pain med trays are staggered by 1:30 so that one of the two trays can be used at any given time. The Amoxicillin was just put into her regular 12hr dispenser. (We had to take them at 8 hours for two days, that was tough.)

Or four pill trays that look like this. If we take the pills from these trays, we’ll not have to worry about taking them too often.

I exchanged callsigns with a station in Canada and California tonight using ONE Watt of signal! (That’s AMAZING)

Thursday

I heard back from Ignacio Customer Support Agent for Live Fine, he said “You should be fine, you should have any issue with the unit”. Ok, unit is singular and I was asking about the five other devices. How about risk to my network? I know that these units reach out to AWS over an encrypted channel.

I checked in on the WW Net while sipping on my coffee. I do have one tooth that is sensitive after I’ve aggressively flossed it yesterday. Lunch was ham with veggies served on warmed plates thanks to a gift we received over Christmas.

The pill dispensers can only do 9 dispenses a day so I have to use two dispensers for 16 doses. I thought it better to use alternate times versus morning and evening for pain management since there’s always a dose available. But the dispensers prevent more than three doses in a short amount of time. (When a dispenser moves you could have the previous dose, the current dose and the dose in the 2nd dispenser available to the patient.) That still would not exceed the maximum dose of either medication.

We’re trying to determine the minimum amount of pain medication and that’s been a little more difficult than I had anticipated. She didn’t take any medication for 5 hours and then she complained that her mouth hurt for the next three hours while taking the maximum (Incremental 90Minute) dose for Ibuprofen and Tylenol. She passed up her 6PM dose and took the 9PM dose with some pain present. I’ve pulled the Ibuprofen from every other slot in Meds 2 to reduce the dose just a little. I also changed both timers from 90 min to 2 Hr. increments to space out the medication a little more.

For the first hour the dispenser flashes blue requesting to take pills. After that it flashes red for an hour letting us know that we’re late.

Friday

Checked in with the HAM radio guys on the WW Net while sipping on my coffee. She again stretched out her pain meds past 5 hours this morning so we may be on the other side of all this pain meds. I wanted to get rid of Blue Focus before the next Insurance renewal. I’ve got three days left, the 10th is Monday.

My Glucose is still within range, albeit barely for pre-diabetes.

Hers has come back down to a normal range for us with the meds.

We went to get some cash and then to the eye doc to repair her glasses. Then we had a great lunch with our friends in downtown Lawrenceville. Back home for a good nap and some TV time. We made our coffee for tomorrow then went to bed a bit early tonight. Her pain meds are on a 4-hour timer for the next two days. She’ll have access to two 1/2 doses at any time. I thought about collapsing the regiment into just one timer but that might be a little premature. It’s no trouble to let these two dispensers run.

Acetaminophen comes in three dosages, 100mg for kids, 325mg for adults and extra strength 500mg for adults. Cutting a 500mg in half results in two ~250mg tablets. It’s actually pretty hard to cut them exactly in half even with a pill cutter. It’s far easier for me to cut them with the dog nail clippers where I have more control over the process. If she has a headache 250mg has been sufficient thus far. It’s not good for her to take Ibuprofen at all, let alone take an 800mg tablet.

Saturday

Her feet are swollen, and it is hard to get her boots on. The assumption is all the salt that was in the Mexican food we had for lunch yesterday.

We had scrambled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. My shoulders are a little sore and that’s a distraction from getting a head start on what I have to do today. Time to go through my morning list.

Our current chores list, it’s growing!

I’m staggering my 20mg omeprazole to reduce the efficacy to 15mg. Now when my stomach gets a little overactive, I just take a small sip of baking soda water for immediate relief. She’s taking 40mg / per day which is a huge pill and a lot of medicine.

I bought a new license for the new FortiGate, it should get here on Monday. The licenses grant me updates which are vital to a secure network.

Helped her do a little housework this morning from both of our lists.

I cut the end of the Invisalign tray off for the tooth she had extracted on Monday. We have one more tray in the series, but we haven’t worn them for more than a week with all the drama. With the crowding the doctors were pushing #30 towards the back so we don’t really need the back of the tray. They were pretty tight tonight, and she had to take Tylenol so that she could get some sleep.

Most of the thank you letters from our Child Fund children are at the edge of being overdue. Normally Mariel responds within 30 days, it’s strange that Her’s is this far behind. The gifts were sent in November, delivered to the in-country team in December and they should have gotten them about the middle of the month. The child has two months (Dec+Jan) to send a thank you letter back to us. Roughly Feb 15th all of those legs of the gift+letter have expired at 74 days, we’re at 69 days for all of them.

Vacuumed the house today and we’re washing her masks. (She changes them every other day.)

Our neighbors brought over some food wrapped in corn husks. Apparently it is a Mexican delicacy to wrap corn meal in a moistened corn husk.

Sunday

Had to change the dispensers back to 8 doses per day. With the braces in place, she needed Tylenol more often than I had planned. (Ibuprofen would need her to take out her braces and wait 30 minutes to put them back in.)

Checked in with the HAM radio guys on the WW Net and talked to Paul for a good long while. We had scrambled eggs for breakfast with sausages.

Church service went well, we went to CVS and picked up a prescription for Amoxicillin that will carry us through the procedure on Wednesday. The question is that the Dentist prescribed 3PPD and the original prescription was for 2PPD that ends tomorrow morning. We did 3PPD for a couple days after the extraction and then dropped back down to 2PPD. I mistakenly read the dentist prescription as 2 pills, not 21 pills. LOL.

Up very early this morning trying to figure out the inflation for our gifts. It actually looks better than I had anticipated for all that’s happened since 2015 when we started our 2nd round of sponsorships. The conversion rate is better, but the cost of living has gone up some. I was surprised that the cost of rice hasn’t changed significantly. The 2nd surprise was that 80% of households have a smart phone which provides them Internet and emergency communications.

Took a shower and checked in on the WW Net using my HAM radio. We have a doc appointment today and it’s raining.

Doc appointment was very quick and traffic both ways was not really bad either. We’ve setup the stove to bake chicken breasts with mixed vegetables at 12:00.

I setup an Access Point on one of my laptops and used it to collect the traffic from the pill dispenser. It reaches out to a few places, none of them are in China. Amazon Web Services appear to host the server side of its network. It reaches out to a college in UT for the time server. The traffic is TLS encrypted so there’s nothing to be gained there.

Baked chicken breasts (From Aldi) with fried mixed vegetables was delicious lunch. We heated the plates in the oven and kept the chicken warm on the serving tray we got for Christmas.

I think that I’m doing ok, it still could use some improvement.

This is why we went to the doctor the other day. Picked up a prescription after I took a good long nap. My body has gotten flipped around and I stay awake at night and sleep soundly during the day.

Ham sandwich for supper with potato chips with catchup dip. Met up with the 2M Net on my gifted radio from Uncle Paul.

Tuesday

Woke about 7:30, but the WW Net was too crowded for me to get onto it this morning. I heard uncle Paul though. He called me afterwards and asked if I had ever heard of COVID toes?

We drove to the skin doctor, and he gave me a lesson on using the skin treatment he gave me last year. We didn’t get outta there until 11:30 so we didn’t have time to make dinner. Longhorn provided a delicious strawberry salad. We took a good long nap after that and then wrote Mariel a letter. We needed a few things at Wally World and her foot was still bothering her. I stopped by our friends house and picked up a book that she left there on Sunday. Wally World on Rockbridge Road did not have any Diet Coke or Normandy frozen vegetables. Boo!

Back home with a ham sandwich for supper and a few potato chips while we watched Castle. I guess I had too many of them or it was dipping them in Catchup because my Glucose was high…

Took my Glucose and it was 159 so I took a walk to lower it to 106. When I checked it 2 hours later it was back up to 150. Took a nice warm bath and it was down to 117. ADA recommends that we take our readings TWO hours after a meal or just before a meal (Fasting). The readings above are AFTER eating potato chips dipped in catchup, so I am not terribly concerned about them. Also, I found out today that the warning reading after a meal is 180 mg/dL. She eats little meals all day long so getting a fasting reading will have to be taken before breakfast.

Wednesday

Woke at 07:30 and easily checked in on the WW Net this morning. Had my cup of coffee with two hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausages. Wrote a letter to Josephine in PH to let her know we’ve changed our support. Took my morning pills and checked in with my sweetie on our plans for lunch.

Very Low voltage (24V@6W) wires to power our electric blankets. If the power goes out, we can run them on battery. (The house is wired for 24VDC.)

She purged and organized our pantry this morning.

Both of our Glucose were 117 right before lunch which was left over Chicken breasts and mixed vegetables. We’ve set an additional alarm for 3:30PM to capture an “After Eating” Glucose reading.

My glucose was 107 before supper, which was ham sandwich on rye bread. Silver needs two front tires, and blue has four good ones and a spare.

1. The 16 lug nuts on Silver need to be moved to Blue.
2. The four tires on Blue need to be moved to Silver.

Thursday

Up at 7AM and made her eggs for breakfast. She had already eaten cereal. When I mentioned eggs to her this morning, she brightened up and wanted some. It’s going to rain today which will hamper moving the tires between the cars. I guess I can move the lugs first without moving the tires since there are five lugs on the rim. It will cost $700 to fix the radiator on Blue. another 1,400 for the antilock brakes and the door seals are all gone.

The rain is to the west of us, and I should have good weather to move the tires around today. Went to Aldi for plus up groceries and meat. They really are just tossing things in the cart without looking at it. (Cept the eggs, they did separate those.)

Firestone wanted $400 for a pair of tires and a front-end alignment. I knew that I had at least 4 good tires on Blue to replace some of them.

The wear on Silver’s front tire looks perfect, especially considering I hadn’t rotated them. I honestly do not agree with Firestone that Silver needs a front-end alignment! (He just wanted to run up a billing?) It is just barely at the wear bars. The sides are worn because it’s a front tire or maybe that the pressure was a little low. The wear on the left side is possibly caused from tight turns where the vehicle weight has shifted off the tire during a turn. It does have a very small turning radius!

Lugs, sometime in Silver’s past she lost all of her lug nuts. (I assume that they took the tires from the vehicle while it was in California.) The lug nuts on Silver were 21mm and the 19mm lug wrench in the vehicle spare tire didn’t fit them. Today’s plan was to change out the 21mm lugs on Silver and use those to secure tires to the Blue Focus. Take the 19mm lugs from Blue and secure the good tires from Blue onto Silver. Starting with the repaired tire from Silver I kept walking lugs and tires until all the lug nuts from Blue were on Silver and all the lug nuts on Silver were on Blue.

Battery changeout, almost worked as planned LOL.

The first thing I did was put battery boxes on both cars to keep the stored computer data while the battery was out. Then I pulled both batteries and swapped them. The battery in Blue is less than a year old and the battery in Silver is 2007 version. When I turned on the ignition on Blue the radio had been reset. (Boo!) The 4A fuse to the battery box, blew meaning that I shorted the positive terminal of the battery during the installation of the battery in Blue. Silver did retain the settings, the stations in the radio were still there and the dashcam was still running. I even read the diagnostics from the computer and all the closed loops were “Ready”.

Watched Castle while we ate a ham sandwich on Rye bread. We had rice cakes with creme cheese for dessert.

Friday

Woke up around 7AM and checked for Paul on 10M using Reception report website. I lowered my power to 10W, and no one came back. I tried 20W and got a good signal report this morning.

This couch has not been cleared for at least 4 years.

Other than a box of recycling and tools, you can see the floor.

Had a salmon sandwich on rye and a few potato chips for lunch. She went out with a friend and had a great time. She loved all the work on the living room.

Her tooth started hurting so we were trying to figure out what’s going on when we looked at the clock. It’s 5:30 on a Friday, our options are rapidly diminishing. The decision was to go to a Doc in the Box and get some antibiotics for her tooth. When I tapped on the tooth with a pick she said that hurt… They gave us some Amoxicillin and sent us home. We had some stuff the dentist made me buy to reduce the infection and she took the first antibiotic. It was a simple task to add the antibiotics to the dispensers, the prescription was 2x a day.

Saturday

My feet were both bothering me at 1AM so I looked up diabetes and tingling feet. It talked about Glucose levels far higher than either of us, so I am not sure that’s a factor. I did put on some padded socks “Muck Lucks” and sprayed them with antifungal spray. It seems walking around in bare feet is undesirable for a good night’s sleep.

I didn’t hear Net Control and most of the relays this morning. I assume that the skip is long making communication with nearby stations difficult. I did hear Paul though, he sounded pretty good. I checked in using full power 90W with the difficulty reaching each other.

My Glucose is pretty consistent, unlike hers. Her tooth/braces were tolerable this morning after taking 2x 500mg Tylenol. She’s taken her 2nd antibiotic pill with her other pills this morning. We MUST follow the Invisalign procedures to make sure we get this infection under control, or she could lose her molar. (That means follow her procedure book, and not just what she can remember.)

Lunch was salmon, veggies and sweet potatoes excellent! 30 minutes to clean up the kitchen… Time to brush, floss and rinse before putting her trays back in. I surely get tired after eating a large meal!

She has an abscessed molar that we’ll have to get looked at. Best guess is that the Invisalign braces trapped some food against her gums over the last year.

It is going to be a very long wait, people have kids so sick they are hurling chunks. We left soon after that with a prescription for Hydro Codon’s that we can’t fill until tomorrow.

Sunday

She is still miserable this morning, the pharmacy doesn’t open until 11 AM. I checked in with WW Net and I heard Paul this morning. He called me a little later and I let him know about her situation. I plan on going there about 10:40 this morning. I cooked 5 eggs, sausage and a piece of rye toast for breakfast.

Beautiful clear day today, it’s been nice for several days this week.

Dropped off her prescription and they said it would take an hour, AKA 12 Noon. As luck would have it, it was actually ready. I stopped by BK for lunch on the way home. She took the first round of meds, and we headed down for a nap.

We spent the entire evening trying to find anything that would lessen the pain to no avail. Her 2nd pill was taken a bit early at 5 so that the third pill would be at 11PM instead of Midnight. 11PM went very well, she took 400mg of Ibuprofen and soundly took a nap until 11PM alarm. She may wake up and need another 2x 200mg before 5 tomorrow morning.

Up at 7:30 and helped her with zipping up her boots. I also peeled the aluminum foil from her medicine pack for her foot.

The pill tray is working out great, I turned off the audio alarm since Alexa goes off at 9:15 anyways.

Turning on the fan increased the run time of the heater at 17 degrees outside. It didn’t change the target temperature of the supply air, but the differential dropped by about 7 degrees. The thermostat cycles at 15 minutes and run time is determined by heat requested.

With all the doors closed, the small bedrooms stay pretty warm. There’s only one supply vent to the living room. (That’s why it is so cold.) It is mostly heated/cooled by the return air of the other rooms.

With 17 degree temperatures the interesting tidbit is that the Master bedroom is by far the longest duct in our home. The temp is mitigated using four small heaters to keep the room above 72 degrees. The Master bedroom supply is significantly different compared to the small bedroom next to the air handler.

Chicken breasts for lunch after the Trump Inauguration with veggies. I tried cooking them in the microwave and they were comparable to the steamed ones. We went to the doctor to talk about our Glucose levels, and he was not concerned about an A1C of 6.3. So, we’ll keep checking and he’ll get back with us about the bloodwork.

We had a sandwich and watched the news for a little while. Then one show of Castle and we were done for the day.

Tuesday

It’s about 20 degrees outside and the heater has been running about 45% of the time. It never got above 31 degrees outside today. We didn’t get much accomplished before going to the Doctor at 3 PM. Dinner was Salmon with veggies served on warmed plates out of the oven. Doctor prescribed a medication to help her with her A1C which was 6.6. We have to cut the pills in half and that left two sharp edges on them.

But we put them in the carousel for tomorrow morning.

I had ordered another dispenser for me, but cancelled the $180 order once I saw one for $25 on EBAY. They also make a Bluetooth model, I was wondering if that would be more secure than attaching it to my network???

Wednesday

Baby it’s COLD outside this morning.

She ran a load of clothes, but I reminded her that the temp is only 15 degrees outside. Running the dryer at these temps puts a large load on the grid.

We laid them out on the bed to dry for an hour or so. We finished them off in the dryer, took maybe 5 minutes.

We took our Glucose at 9AM, hers was 126 and mine was 116. She took her first pill this morning so I am curious what the readings will be tomorrow.

Our street is covered in ice this morning, we’re staying put.

It’s amazing how quickly the heater responds to the outside temperature.

Took a GOOD LONG nap and I am trying to get organized. I ordered another pill dispenser, but I am thinking I should order two. That way we always have 14 days of pills in those trays!

Got to get ready for church services tonight and a doctor appointment tomorrow.

Thursday

Doc appointment first thing in the morning, we sipped on a cup of coffee while the car warmed up and melted the ice on the windows. Traffic was lighter than expected and the office visit went well. We purchased McDonalds for breakfast on the way home. We gathered our insulated bags and headed off to Wally World for staples we were seriously low on. (The ice storm disrupted our Tuesday trip.) Wally World was a little busier than expected, but it didn’t take very long. We put the frigerated food away and laid down for a quick nap before heading out to lunch at Longhorn’s #2. Back home we unloaded the staples out of the car and did some house chores like washing our CPAP masks and other parts. (I still need to wash our hoses and that’s a chore!)

Friday

Up at 7AM because we forgot to turn off the alarms we used yesterday. The pill dispenser batteries died last night, and it didn’t rotate to the morning slot this morning.

I apparently didn’t read the directions where it says to keep it plugged in in a USB-C power source. We don’t use standard USB wall chargers and cables for charging here in our homestead. Instead, we use DC-DC converters that can use a single 18V wall charger for the Echo Show to power five or six devices. They also allow the power source to be a very large distance from the pill dispenser. (The voltage drop is no longer a factor.)

My glucose was 126 and hers was over 200 even with the medicine this morning.

My firewalls (Both of them) were upgrading their firmware today, that took down the cascaded firewall I was using temporarily until I moved the network devices from it. Both the FortiGate 60D’s I was using are now powered but retired and the third is in a box. If I need more networks (Unlikely) I’ll setup V-LANs on a network switch. I caused a bit of trouble by setting up a VLAN on a switch port and ended up disabling the switchport itself while deleting the VLAN. I have one switchport and the DMZ ports left on the FortiGate 60F on Comcast.

I spent an hour or so adding the additional checks and tasks to my daily routine in my personal Daytimer. (Her procedure book has a similar page.)

There was too much to remember every day between both of us.

We had fish and veggies for lunch. Went to ALDI’s for a few things including meat for suppers. You just cannot purchase a lot of items at a time there. The checkout counters are maybe 4 feet. Bring your own bags and have a quarter to get the cart with. A very pregnant woman let us in line in front of her. It was one of those strange moments where she clearly had the need to get out of the store. But she chose to follow us through the checkout line instead. I don’t know if we followed her whether we’d had the opportunity to pay her bill. But her pregnancy gave her the power to place herself in the line wherever she chose to be. We rewarded her with $20 gift as we left the store. When I offered to take her cart back to the store we found out that it made her day because she had lost her job.

Ham sandwich for supper with some potato chips with Catchup to munch on while we watched TV.

My 7 Day average is 115, 14 day is 115, 30 day is 118

Her 7 Day average is 165, 14 day is 162, 30 day is 144

We received more supplies today. EBAY has them for about half the price of Amazon.

The three pill dispensers I ordered from EBAY are delayed until tomorrow.

Her left thumb was bothering her tonight. It’s something that was mentioned at our last doctor visit, but that visit was generally BOTH hands. Tonight, it was only the knuckle of the LEFT thumb that was bothering her. It also seemed to me to be damage to the knuckle as it significantly hurt her to bend it sideways. It didn’t hurt the other thumb or my two thumbs. We ARE getting beyond/past having the tingling fingers bother her.

Saturday

Up about 7:30 and checked into the WW net with the HAM radio guys. Drank a couple of cups of coffee while I shopped around for another humidifier from Amazon. We lost one of our gold filters for the coffee maker, so I had to buy a couple more of them.

The pill dispensers that I should have received on Friday arrived today. I also found out why they were so cheap on EBAY. (They are OLD) Kathy’s spare is at least four years old, both of mine are at least two years old. Kathy’s is current because we spent $180.00 on it. The dispensers have the ability to upgrade the firmware, but all of them displays that no upgrade is available. Norton AV refused my attempt to open their website. Next step is to use a Raspberry Pi to open the website and determine what support they provide for these devices. $180 is a hefty price tag for a product that the company is an LLC held by a holding company so that they would have a USA footprint.

It is a vulnerability to have devices on your network that do not have their security updates. I eventually put them on their own wireless using a VPN off our network, that way I do not have to worry about them.

All set, for the month.

We didn’t have our usual meal for lunch, so we snacked a little more than usual today.

My glucose was 127 and hers was 142

I am almost believing that her memory has gotten better over the last couple of weeks. Her tingling fingers is also gone. She still cannot answer how many nickels are in a dollar. 10?

Sunday

Up very early this morning, updating a laptop for use at today’s service. Researching how to protect my network devices from these pill dispensers. The latest idea is to attach these pill dispensers to the “Guest” network on my routers. (Which they don’t seem to have anymore.) My glucose is 134, so maybe I’ll go light on breakfast. Shower time….

Church services and lunch went very well, I had a good time. Dinner amounted to ham sandwiches and other items that would be served at a business lunch. I slept for HOURS after getting home from church services. We brought home a whole tray of vegetables and dip, which ended up getting eaten for our Supper meal.

My Glucose was 107 hers was 96 tonight after eating veggies with dip.

Got up in time to check in with the WW net. I didn’t hear him but Paul also checked in on the Net this morning. 2 eggs and breakfast sausage with coffee was my morning meal. We had ham with veggies for Lunch and our normal afternoon nap.

We checked in with Village Podiatry for tomorrow’s appointment. We have glasses to pick up and groceries to buy by tomorrow.

We got these two cups for Christmas. I was a little skeptical that I would like them since we have genuine Yeti cups. They are similar to the Stanley cups that were so popular at Christmas of 2023. However, after playing with them all day and the ice still lingering in the bottom, I like them. Their design has the option to augment other cups with additional insulation. I’ve had these old, insulated plastic cups for many years. But set these cups into the Frost Buddy with a little ice in the bottom and they’re good all day.

I got an E-Mail from Kenya with FIVE letters, four of which I hadn’t seen before.

Back to putting medicine on the side of my head for the precancerous cells.

Watched Hallmark movies while she cooled and elevated her ankle.

It’s been rather cold, but we’re comfy.

Tuesday

Got up in time to check in on the WW net with the HAM radio guys. We have a little time before the trip to the foot doctor. Made some fried eggs and breakfast sausages, had way too many of them though. (They fell out of the package.)

Her foot has Plantar fasciitis which is the tendons that connect the ball of the foot to the heel. She was using the balls of her foot to defend the heel which only made it worse. We got some steroids to help with the swelling.

My 7 Day average is 116, hers has been above 140 with her hurt foot.

Trip to the doctor went very quickly, we were about 30 minutes early. We stopped by Longhorn on the way home for lunch.

We picked up her new glasses and then home for a good nap.

We stopped by the stylist and got a new “Dew” as well.

I went to Burger King for a Whopper and the drink DOES fit into the FrostBuddy, I didn’t use the fitting ring. (It was a bit tight on the paper cup.)

I’ve had a bit of trouble with my two small wireless routers. They connect to NORD VPN and I use that connection to hide my DNS queries from my ISP. The Mango lasted for years and failed about a month ago. I replaced it with the faster Shadow after failing to reload the firmware and bricking the Mango router. The Shadow lasted a couple of weeks and then started faltering until I changed my network DNS off of them. Last night I put the Opal online with Nord, I am still wondering if there is something strange going on… (Hopefully that will be a more permanent solution.)

Wednesday

Spent the early morning working on my network. It’s working again, but I still want to reload the two wireless routers and try and figure out what happened to them. My HAM radio software was faltering yesterday because of the problems with the routers. Checked in with the guys on the HAM WW Net, I didn’t hear Paul this morning. She has a package of pills to take for the next week to help reduce the swelling and promote healing.

Not much for breakfast today, several cups of coffee and a couple mini baby ruth bars.

Her Glucose was 170 and the recheck was 171.

Now that she’s back on her feet, I can let her take over with more of the house chores. We made the bed this morning which was just flipping the comforter we sleep ON.

We had Salmon and mixed vegetables for lunch today. We warmed the plates in the oven and served the vegetables in an insulated bowl.

Took a good long nap then we worked on the grocery list. I had tuna sandwich for supper and we watched Hallmark until church services at 7:30. Put medicine on my face and covered it with a bandage for tonight.

Thursday

I didn’t get to sleep right away, but I did sleep pretty soundly. Woke in time to get onto the WW Net, I didn’t hear Uncle Paul. She’s going to continue to wear her boots until bedtime. Lunch with the guys today in Marietta at the Johnnie MacCracken’s Celtic Pub. It took 40 hard minutes to get home, and I was ready for a nap.

No new letters on CF website. The PO box payment went through on the 15th. They lowered my credit score a few points last month, they need to get a real job.

We went to Kroger for some groceries, we were out of meals. We used a large, insulated bag instead of two tubs and that worked out fine. We stopped by WH on the way home and gave the server a $50 gift. I cannot imagine trying to make ends meet with a WH paycheck. Our thermostat has two remote sensors and one of them stopped sending. I put rechargeable batteries in it and the air conditioner faults cleared up. It’s going to get cold, then wet over the weekend, then even colder next week.

This kid decided to destroy what remained of the large ball of snow today just after 5PM.

The new VPN router is holding up, I don’t need any network troubles occupying my time. Ran a bath and made a batch of cold coffee in the French Press for the Mrs,

I ordered more coffee beans for the Coffee Mill.

Friday

We got a letter from our sponsored child Josephine. The letter it’s terribly late and a typed letter glued to a standard response form. (Strange.) She writes letters in English as far back as I can remember, like 15 years ago. But, she’s 20 years old has a child of her own so her days with CF are numbered.

Checked in on the WW Net and headed into the shower. We took our Glucose, and it was closer to normal than it was yesterday. She did a bang-up job cleaning the house today.

Chicken legs for dinner with veggies.

We tried cooking the frozen vegetables in a frying pan, they actually tasted better than when we steam them. (Which is also better than boiling them.)

We checked in with the doctor they’ve adopted Phreesia for their patient in processing. Phreesia questions are NOT optional and intrusive to say the least. It felt more like a survey whose answers are going to be sold, than it did as a questionnaire related to the doctor’s practice. Why does a foot doctor need to know when the first time she had her period and she’s 70!

We went to dinner with friends at B&W burgers and had a good time. We took our Glucose and then watched TV until we went to bed.

Saturday

Did NOT sleep very well last night, I got up often and in body aches. I did check in with the HAM radio guys on the WW Net this morning.

Her Glucose was 155 this morning. It has been rising for the last week or so. The average for the last 7 days is 169, 147 for the last 14, 140 for 30 days. We have an appointment with the Doc to discuss this on Monday next week.

I had one hardboiled egg for breakfast and my glucose was 127 today. My 7 Day is 115 and 30-day is 118 mg/dL, which means it’s not changing like Her’s is. That also means that what “we” are eating is not the cause of her high readings.

My skin yeast infection came back last night. (Air drying didn’t help.) I ended up doing a complete heaving soap sudzing, then letting it stand for a few minutes. A thorough rinse and then finished up by applying medication on it. I checked my Glucose last night and it was less than 100, so that was not the contributing factor. (We did eat a large late meal last night?)

She mentioned her heart rate was high on her Fit-Bit this morning. I recommended she put the O2 sensor on her arm. That gives us a much more accurate chart of what’s happening. If that is unusual, we take an EKG recording using the Kardia and send that to the heart doctor.

The two alarms on the Echo Show have become very necessary. It goes off at 9:30 in the morning and 7:15 in the evening. I double check that her pills have been taken and it’s becoming more frequent that they haven’t.

The $180 pill carrousel arrived today. It’s easier to load than the pill trays we’ve been using, and it talks to an app on her phone. When the alarm goes off the tray rotates to the next slot and lifting the dispenser shuts off the alarm. It records when the pills were actually taken, and the times appear on the app. The only real downside is that they have this stupid very unique key that is required to load the tray.

When we had to manage pain medications I got lost trying to keep up on paper.
I bought two more of them for a total of SIX and used them every other dispense.

They have the ability to do NINE dispenses per day

Took a nap and warmed up the oven for our dinner. Put the pork tenderloin in the oven and set the veggies on the stove to steam them. We’ll put the plates in the oven to warm them up while the pork tenderloin is resting. I need to set a timer, they do get a bit warm if I forget them.

Pork Tenderloin was perfectly cooked to perfection.

Tenderloin and veggies makes a great lunch.

Cleanup is easy too, leave the platter with a bit of water in it to soak.

Went to Whole Foods and picked up some breakfast food. We also made a trip to Aldi and picked up a few things like eggs. (They had a 2-carton limit for some reason, although it is going to snow in two days. It’s not much of a store, but we’ll probably go back.) We have five dozen eggs and enough food to last till next weekend.

The neighbors brought over some dinner and these HUGE servings of cake!

Sunday

Up at 8AM and checked into the WW Net this morning. Took my medications and she took her meds early using the app for her pill dispenser.

We just clicked “Take in advance” and it allowed us to take them.

We forgot to empty the washing machine last night, so the wet laundry went into the dryer this morning.

Downloaded the data to the above chart, my Glucose is 122 this morning.

Her Glucose was not taken yet today, but here’s the averages. I am assuming that the high reading in the morning is from the coffee creamers. Also we take two readings if the reading is really high just to make sure it wasn’t a bad reading.

We had the large meal the neighbors brought over for dinner and left over pork tenderloin from yesterday for supper after a good long nap. I washed the CPAP tanks in the tabletop roaster, there might have been just a bit of oil on the plastic from the roaster. But the tanks were spotless.

Pill timer can be set NOT to have an audio alarm and rotate to the next dose an hour before hand. That way we’re not waiting on a specific time, just because it was set that way. It has a flashing blue ring that indicates the next does is available but has not been taken. The door does not reset the timer, the tray has to be lifted and tilted before the timer moves on to the next dose. So far, I am very impressed, and yes so far it was worth the $180 bucks. The trouble with these things is if you go cheap and don’t get the features you need, your screwed.

Yep, it’s Jan 6th four years later! No letters from our sponsored children, which is surprising actually. It’s hard to believe a gift sent electronically in August doesn’t get acknowledged until December. Checked in with the HAM guys on the WW net this morning while sipping on my coffee. I turned down the shower with the Wife as I was busy cleaning the kitchen today.

Kitchen gets a little messy in the mornings.

Did the dishes for the MRs this morning

The Winix D480 air purifier stays blue most of the day.

Beef stew with carrots and potatoes for lunch. We served it with rye bread and a jar of brown gravy to thicken the stew.

The new CO alarms come with a remote mounting kit!

Covered our water meter since it’s going to be well below freezing.

Tuesday (No Amazon Prime)

Woke up late, didn’t check in on the HF radio. Paul called, we talked a bit about dentists which we have an appointment today.

One thing I’ve had to embrace is making a list of daily routines. I’ve learned the hard way that when you have to look after your spouse it’s impossible to maintain situational awareness of what we both have to do, and what we’ve done. I started with making lists for her routines so that she had an organized day. Then it became apparent that I needed a list to incorporate a list to check on her and do my routine. (Sheesh, this is a lot more work than I had imagined.)

Just got home from Braces Now…. She has “Trays” for the next 5 weeks. The tray for 14 Feb has not been given to us, we will wear the 29 Jan tray for the following 8 weeks. *That will be the longest time we’ll ever wear a single tray. If we break or damage the 29 Jan tray we’ll re-use the Jan 15th Tray. 18 Feb they will remove the current attachments, and the doctor will prescribe a new round of trays to Invisalign. On or about the 2nd week of March when the new trays arrive the new attachments will be placed on her teeth. We’ll start the next round of treatment with the new trays.

We were thinking of something to do to get out of the house so she looked up Chocolate Shakes at WH. We packed up for a run to Wally World and stopped by WH on our way. The server let us know that WH did not serve shakes! We thought about a glass of Chocolate milk until we saw the number of calories. We ended up ordering waffles (I know) and had a really good time. We gave a generous tip to the server and headed to Wally World. They were not very crowded and had plenty of battery powered carts to get around in. It took a bit for her to get the hang of driving and it was good fun while we picked up a few things. (We did fill the basket LOL)

Back home we watched Hallmark and measured our glucose before going to bed. Mine was 105 which suprised me since we just ate a waffle not two hours ago. Started the dishwasher after cleaning up the counters in the kitchen.

Wednesday (Brrr it’s cold)

24 Degrees, checked in with the WW Net this morning with 40W. I used to use 100W but they copied me 59 with 30W several days ago.

My Glucose was 121 this morning after a cup of Coffee.
Previous four are 108, 112, 106, 136 with a long AVG of 118.

Forgot to run the dishwasher, so I started that this morning after we took our morning meds. The Flounder we were going to eat for lunch had air in the packages. We bought the flounder at Wally World and do not know if it thawed and then was refrozen. Not taking any chances we went to Outback for lunch. We picked up the P.O. box mail on the way home and stopped by to get our new glasses we ordered last year.

Thin frames, I’ll have to be more careful with them.

Thursday

Up at 7AM, got breakfast for this morning for me and the MRS. Checked in on the WW Net with the HAM guys.

We might get 1″ of snow tomorrow, freezing rain is more likely with the cold ground.

I have a fault in the ceiling fan that’s tripping the GFCI breaker. I had to replace the breaker because it failed to reset when I pushed the test button. The new breaker is a combination GFCI/AFCI breaker, and it would trip immediately. It took a while disconnecting receptacles isolating the fault down to the ceiling fan. It turns out that the dual power ceiling fan tied the neutral on the fan to the neutral on the light, tripping the breaker. My only choice is to run a separate neutral from the light. I also found out that my front porch light is run off this bedroom circuit. (Why they didn’t use the living room circuit I don’t know.)

I have still not been able to clear the living room floor.

We had eggs for breakfast and I had a few breakfast sausages warmed up in a coffee cup. Coffee was terrific as always. We opted NOT to go to the store today since everyone is preparing for the snow tomorrow.

I dropped the ceiling fan down to where I could work on the wires.

Pulled a string through the fan using the lights blue wire. (That took several tries, there was not much room left.) Then used the string to bring the light’s common through the fan. Brown wasn’t my first choice, but that’s the color they use in UK. (I’ll flag the brown wire with white tape.)

Attached the lights and shortened the support string so that I could attach the wires to the fixture.

Connected all the wires and tested the fixture with the combination GFCI/AFCI breaker before mounting it. (Just in case I messed up the wiring.) The light circuit is protected by the GFCI, but not the motor circuit.

All back together again.

Took a good long nap after having bowl of cereal. No mail, I don’t know if she’s come by today. It’s a mish mash on the time that the mail truck comes by.

Friday (Snow Day)

Our first snow of the season.

Driveway provided good clean snow on a hard surface for good packing.

Bottom ball is done,

putting the middle ball in place

Don’t forget to look both ways when crossing the street.

I could only find one slipper, so he’s only got one foot.

Ham and veggies for dinner today, keeping it simple. Spent most of the day talking about the snow LOL.

In home humidity was below 35, so I was helping the humidifier with this portable cooler. It puts out a pretty good amount of water as a mist in front of the unit.

Supper was a ham sandwich and a rice cake with strawberry creme cheese on it.

We watched Hallmark channel before retiring to the bedroom.

Saturday (Still Snow on the ground)

Her glucose has been high, 162, 142, 149, 119, 150, 154.

What we found out was that the test strips were OLD. I hadn’t thought of the 100 times we’d have to open the vial to get the strips out of the container. Each time we open the vial a little more air gets to the strips. Sunday when she tested it was 89!, which is excellent.

Checked into the WW Net on my HF radio, I could not hear the Net Control this morning. Had two eggs and breakfast sausages. Checked my Glucose and it was 129, not terrible but I did have coffee with Hot Chocolate in it.

My network is having issues with DNS for a couple days. Our private network uses a Pi-Hole to protect is from bad websites and it uses a VPN for all DNS queries preventing AT&T from snooping on what we are looking at. All of my streaming services won’t load with the Pi-Hole sifting my DNS queries?

Salmon for lunch, it was quite terrific.

Spent the afternoon preparing for the 15 Degree overnight weather. I considered connecting the duct in the kitchen to help the heater, but there’s some risk that I would change the distribution and make it worse. Currently, the ducts are heating the small rooms, and the return air is heating/cooling the living room/kitchen.

Sunday

Huge signal reports for just 3 Watts, but the propagation is very short.

Checked in with the WW Net while I sipped on a cup of coffee. We checked our Glucose levels and she had 2 eggs for breakfast. Mine was a normal semi high 125 after drinking my coffee. (Hers was 89!) Emptied the dishwasher and cleared the sinks of dishes from last night. We’re making a list of chores that “We” can sort through as each of us is able.

Bright sun, most of the snow is still here except for where the sun hit the lawn yesterday evening.

They did NOT pick up the garbage last week, nor did the mail truck come by and pick up the mail for Diane in Elgin. The snowman I made on Friday is holding up pretty well, the coin buttons did melt into the snowballs a little yesterday.

The new camera burns through 30 GB of storage in 24 hours. I really need 5 days of storage, say 128 GB SD card? Even then they won’t last very long writing that much data every day.

Heater has been running for 7 minutes every 15 minutes, which is a lot actually.

The return air from the rooms is about 68 Degrees, so I don’t know why it’s running so much. I moved the remote thermostat sensor to the bedroom, it should reduce the run time. (The living room will get a little cooler as shown above.)

Attic temperature is about 5 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, it does get some heat from the chimney pipe.

Well, the heater is running MUCH less, but the dining room is at 67 degrees.

The good thing is that the duct temps are NOT lower than the return air temp.

The heater is running MUCH less, yes, the living room is only 66 degrees. The rooms we occupy are still around 70 degrees.

Took a nap and checked CF for letters. Looked at the news and I got discouraged with the California drama. The Democratic government is not working out too well for them.

Ham for lunch, we tried some microwave veggies that were pretty good.

Picked up our prescription, it was a whopping $3 for three months. We took another nap after checking for the church service on their website. Watched Castle together, we didn’t like the show at first. Especially with the commercial breaks. I bought the entire run of the show and now it’s quite enjoyable. (Mom loved that show.)

Changed my DNS configuration, had to eliminate the NORD VPN DNS. It was getting very unreliable, and it would not let me stream content. I am using Fortinet DNS for now; AT&T will be able to copy all the queries which is undesirable.

I broke down and ordered a $180.00 pill dispenser/timer today. It’s been impossible to keep track of her medications. We have two one-week pill dispensers, and we have an alarm that goes off twice a day. We also have a journal to write down when she takes her meds. We still end up in the evening looking at the pill dispenser trying to figure out how both doses were missed, and nothing was written in the journal. ARG!

1. Put cart IN van
2. Homestead Exemption * homestead@gwinnettcounty.com, 770-822-8100
3. Glenn Wilk
4. Colonoscopy
5. Tennis Balls
6. Estate Taxes
7. Weekend book page CPAP cleaning
8. Apply for VA benefits

Up at 7AM, slept pretty good after bleaching my feet. I made the mistake of leaving my socks on all day yesterday without changing them. I also had to refrain from drinking three pots of coffee in a day. My body went whacky for the last couple days. Checked in with the HAM radio guys and then our morning meeting at 9:30.

Her ankle is still bothering her, our Doc appointment is weeks away. I have to push her a little to keep her off her feet. She IS wearing her boots that do give her some support, but house chores are a lot of twisting and reaching.

My Glucose varies a lot depending on what I’ve eaten before testing it. If there’s been some kind of exercise then the readings are close to 110. If I’ve eaten and been sitting around the house the readings are around 125.

My average Glucose reading is 115.

Tried out the heated serving tray today, 200W is perfect. If you turn it all the way up the surface can get to 300 degrees on just 200W!

We put the heated plates on top of the paper towel just before serving.

Then we can put the food on the heated surface to keep it warm.

We have insulated serving bowls for the vegetables and they work very well.
Great dinner today.

We went to Good Will to look for a wheelchair and we found a walker that will do just fine for now. It’s in really good shape and cost a whopping $7!

We went to Outback for supper, and they were really happy to see us. We hadn’t been there for weeks because the silverware was dirty more than once. The dirty flatware should have been noticed when it was removed from the machine. The flatware should have been caught one more time when it is handled by the hostess and wrapped in a napkin. It also should have been noticed a third time by the servers, especially if someone complains about it. She had two margaritas and a fried coconut shrimp boat. I had a boat of grilled shrimp and a beer then we headed home.

Put the new camera on the front porch to work on the settings before we mount it in the eave. It helps immediately because this camera has a microphone. I am on the fence about where to put the four cameras that don’t have sound and the two cameras that do. All four of the reolink cameras that came with the DVR are failing.

I think the first move is to replace the camera without sound at the bottom.
I want to avoid having cameras with audio near the driveway/sidewalk

Played Scrabble after checking on our neighbor’s house. The pieces were getting warn so we swapped them out of a standard cardboard set. We had to keep two pieces that were missing out of the standard cardboard set.

Tuesday

I measured my Glucose this morning at 140. That’s a bit high so I remeasured it at 131, which is still over my target. I found out this morning that I could not do a traditional pushup. I ended up doing 20 sissy pushups along with several other routine exercises for about 20 minutes. I remeasured my Glucose and it was a good reading of 92.

Two prunes a day keeps the plunger away!

She has had an issue with her right knee for a couple days along with her right heel for a couple weeks. I put a cold pack on her knee this morning to reduce the swelling. She was getting around using the walker we bought yesterday.

She cooked some eggs this morning and froze in front of them in a dream state. I was walking down my list trying to help her. There was laundry in the dryer, laundry in a basket on the floor that was asking questions and got no answers.

Making dinner went really well, we steam the vegetables to keep the flavor. Ham is super easy to warm up in a frying pan and the heated plates keeps it all warm while we eat it.

Took a good long nap after our ham dinner.

The bathroom doors are just barely wide enough for the walker if you tuck the legs around the door jam. We both had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and she headed back to bed for a quick nap. I am trying to catch up on my blogging LOL.

She’s practicing with the walker to keep the weight off of her right foot.

Ok, I have a new camera WITH audio this time facing East. I mounted it away from the front yard light on the corner to keep the nighttime vision.

Spent a couple of hours checking all the cameras since it’s New Years and I know someone is going to fire off their pistol! My dashcam in the silver Ford Focus is also running tonight, I’ll turn it off in the morning to keep from running the battery down.

Wednesday (Cleanup fireworks)

Up at 7:30 and checked in with the HAM radio guys.

A real man’s breakfast, coffee with Swiss Miss coco in it, it did raise my Glucose.
The K Cups are very convenient to add just a little to my coffee.

Keeping my eggs warm while I get breakfast sausages ready.

I need to clean up the floor today.

Learning to keep a diary to record activities we will likely forget.

The new camera looks good so far.

The Yard lantern interfered with the camera next to it, so I moved it about 4 feet.

It’s somewhat illegal to record audio without someone in the recording knowing they’re being recorded. I’m on the fence if that applies to the outside which is the reason I have a lot of cameras WITHOUT Audio. I don’t need audio of someone breaking into my home, but it’s absolutely necessary for a shooting!

Red potatoes and vegetables are easily reheated in the Crockpot while the pork tenderloin is cooking in the oven. We’ll toss the plates in the oven to warm them.

We took the dish out of the oven and put it on the heated surface to keep it warm.

We need to get serious about cleaning the dust collecting in our home.

I installed a new air purifier. This is red, the worst indicator.
It’s also Orange and Blue. It turned orange, then blue after an hour.

I turned off the air conditioning and let the purifier run in every room. The worst rooms were the bedroom and the den that we occupy the most. No indications in the other rooms except my cave, but I just drilled holes in a ceramic hard drive.

I sealed off my cave from the rest of the house and I’m working on cleaning up the dust accumulation.

Thursday

Her foot is still swollen, she just won’t stay off her foot and let it heal. It felt much better on Tuesday, and she started doing housework again. Now we’re back to it hurting so much she can’t walk on it.

Checked in with the guys and she made eggs with ham. I am grateful for the breakfast, but I’d been happier if she stayed off her feet and let it heal. I know when it’s swollen because it is difficult to zip up her shoes.

I found this brown/grey slime in the dishwasher filters this morning. There are two filters, this material was behind the second filter. I cleaned out the jets in the sprayers and cleaned both filters this morning.

We discussed what we need to capture on paper for a couple of hours and then we retired to our afternoon nap without starting lunch. It was too late to prepare lunch so we ended up at Outback sharing a dinner.

Made a Wally World run to get some groceries after we got back from Outback. I ordered a few XXL bags to replace the tubs since Wal-Mart now sells them. (They are asking to scan them at the checkout.) I got them at THD a LONG time ago. I updated my THD account today so that I can use my discount again.

I am trying to get her to capture things on paper since when we go to the doctor’s office, she tends to say everything’s fine. Her foot hurts, her fingers tingle, she’s constantly hungry for sweets and she’s intermittently forgetful.

We’re headed to bed, been a long day for me.

Friday

Woke in time to check-in with the HAM guys on the WW Net this morning. I made a pot of coffee at 3AM but she already made one and put it in the thermos. Plenty of coffee to drink today in a large Standly Thermos.

Gathered all the Child Fund letters and made a spreadsheet of all the gifts. Sent in the list to CF corporate to fill in the holes of the data. There’s a gap between the information they give us and the information that’s on these gifts. The Chit# that is on the gift they call DFC is not visible to the donors UNTIL the child writes a thank you letter.

Dinner was leftover Pork Tenderloin with mixed veggies, I didn’t get to the store today and I really should have gone to Kroger.

We had supper at Mexican restaurant with our friends, good times.

I worked on paying a couple medical bills and my cameras before joining her in a movie. We’ve cancelled our Prime membership as of Monday. They are adding advertising to the movies that we’re paying for?

Saturday

Up at 8AM, a bit late for getting onto the WW Net. I poured a cup of coffee while I was waiting for my turn to check in. I did a load of laundry along with some of the other house chores today so her foot could heal.

No new letters from our four sponsored children, it’s been a while for two of them.

We had salmon with veggies for lunch, it was really good today. We heated the plates in the oven and put the hot dish on the serving tray to keep the salmon piping hot.

Went to Kroger to pick up some meat for next week, it wasn’t very busy which was not expected. (I thought Fridays were always busy, maybe everyone is tired of Kroger prices?)

Watched some TV and headed to bed.

Sunday

Got out of bed about 8:30 and Wayne was surprised I hadn’t checked in earlier. Had a banana, but I need to jump in the shower while the water is still running.

Joined the church service online today to prevent making her foot any worse than it is already.

Turkey chili for dinner today, it was served piping hot.

We worked from our lists pretty well today. My Glucose was generally 115ish with the exception of the old test strips being wildly inaccurate. Had a really hard time getting to sleep tonight.

Up at a late 8:30, just missed the Waterway Net. No new letters on CF which I am a little surprised at that. I am really behind on my list. Had 4 eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast, I used the last of the Cran Grape juice.

The missing O2 sensor was behind my nightstand. YEA! Took a long NAP and she woke me saying dinner was ready. Turkey chili, but she forgot the macaroni that should have been made. We ate about 2/3rd of it, so we’ll have to plus up the left-over meal. Salmon is planned for tomorrow’s meal. She took a shower already, I don’t remember hearing the shower run?

Time for my shower and a trip to our friend’s house.

6W Sympa Cordless Table Lamp

I took one of them apart since it took much longer than a similar light. It looks probable that this one is good and the other needs a battery. I’ll do a run test and see how long they stay lit at full power. (I’d have a hard time setting the brightness the same.)

Totally unnecessary to Remove the rubber bottom and screw.
(The bottom is glued to batteries and cannot be removed anyway.)

Remove the silver button, wire and screw.

(You’ll never get the silver button to work again.)

This is the guts of the lamp. The two batteries seem to be in parallel and are protected cells that don’t apply power to lamp until called for.

Tuesday (Christmas Eve)

Up in time to check in with the WW Net who is in Marietta about 30 miles away. Coffee was in the thermos, so that didn’t take any effort at all.

Run time test, full brightness, one light is out at 1:45. The longest time is just under three hours. Pulled in the neighbor’s trash can and changed the sheets in the bed.

Tuna sandwich for dinner and we watched a Hallmark movie before retiring to bed.

Used a camera to record an accurate runtime of each lamp while we slept.

Runtime of the lamps is very inconsistent, I can’t say I know why. I have to check the luminance of lamp #4 since it ran so much longer than the others. I assume that lamp #1 has a bad battery since it’s about HALF the runtime of the others.

Wednesday (Christmas)

Up about 7:30 and checked on the charging of the lamps while checking in on the WW Net.

I am going to recycle the top two lamps. There’s something wrong with them.
(I cannot open them without destroying the ability to control them.)

We made a turkey breast (Frozen), potatoes and veggies. When it was ready to eat the neighbors brought a HUGE meal of empanadas and cornbread. We had to take our Turkey meal and put that in the refrigerator. We still have salmon from yesterday AND we have turkey chili. Gee Whiz!

CPAP doctor tomorrow morning 09:30, my scores look pretty good.

Thursday

We’ve got a Dr. Appointment today with Southeastern Lung care with our CPAPs in tow. I’ve done most of the steps in my procedure book this morning. Her foot is really bothering her today, it is slightly swollen. We do need to make hard boiled eggs the night before we have an appointment early in the morning.

CPAP appointment went well, we disagreed with their terminology about appointment time. There are TWO times, arrival before the appointment to allow for paperwork that needs to be filled out. Appointment time should be reserved for actual time intended to SEE the doctor. Emory is very good at laying out exactly what’s being asked of us.

We went to a friend’s house to water the plants and check on things. I am shocked that their power comes from a transformer 100′ down the street and their power line is terribly small for a 200A service that’s 200′ from the transformer.

Went to Kroger to pick up a few things that we were out of. I assumed that Wally World would be a zoo after Christmas. We watched some TV, ate some supper and sat down for some reading of our path forward.

Friday (Another Shooting)

A little after midnight I heard 5 shots while lying in our bed. I did a little research and the shots were fired a good way East of all my cameras. I did have several cameras with good audio and a time stamp that was about 9 seconds off.

The last time someone shot at the house was in September. I assume that the light in the eve of my house that looks like camera illuminator deterred this activity.

Same silver car that’s been involved and they always happen just after midnight.

Took a good LONG nap. We had turkey breast for dinner with potatoes and veggies.

I don’t like the inconsistent charge or run times of these lights!

Saturday

Up at 7:30 listening to the HAM radio, I cannot hear Mary. 40M seems to be very long this morning.

Didn’t get much accomplished today. I did upgrade one more camera and I bought two more outside cameras that have microphones in them.

Sunday

Checked in on the WW Net, with KB1WE on 25Watts LOL. Delivered the cones to the church this morning. They’re so funny, now that they are “their” cones they want to bring them inside every week. We never should have left the cones out of the buildings during school breaks anyway. I didn’t realize that they are not in school for another week since New Years is on Tuesday.

Posted the church service to their website. We had flounder for dinner with potatoes and veggies. We put the books back onto the shelves in the sewing room. We watched OAN for a while and had a bowl of soup for supper.

I had to buy another camera; Sound is becoming necessary for shootings. It’s not needed for security since thieves will seldom offer voice evidence outside.

Woke up a little late, it was a rough night with all the turmoil from yesterday. My rash is back and I’m trying to get it under control again. I did enjoy some Friends outtakes very early this morning.

I checked in on the WW Net and talked to Uncle Paul. Had a couple boiled eggs for breakfast and spent most of the day debating things at the kitchen table.

Leftover Round Steak for dinner and a nap.

Watched a Christmas movie and some Friends Outtakes.

Tuesday

Woke up this morning about 8AM and checked in with the HAM radio guys. No breakfast today.

9:30 Alarm, spent all morning debating things again today.

We went to Outback for lunch and plan to never return. The silverware had soap marks on it, and we know that they’ve been having issues with the dishwasher. We can’t take the chance on dishwashing detergent making her sick. (It’s very caustic.)

Took a good long nap and had deli meat sandwiches for dinner.

19:30 Alarm planned Wednesday’s activities, took our medicine and then we watched TV until we went to bed.

Wednesday

Did not sleep very well last night, took a shower about 7 and laid down until I had to go to the dentist. Back home around 10 and laid down until 11 when I needed to drive to Marietta to meet the gang for a Christmas party. I was too tired to really enjoy the party very much. I was safely home at 15:00

Got a box in the mail, she opened it before I got home.

Took a good long nap, I do not feel very good tonight. (I felt pretty good when I drove to Marietta, not so much at the end of the party.) I took my sugar levels, and it was 127 which is high, but not terrible. I should have taken it when I got home because I felt awful. It also occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten all morning, because we were eating lunch. So, all I had today besides a ham sandwich was 3 beers, fried shrimp and tater tots. YUK for a 70 yr old. I finally feel a little better, but it took until 22:00 for my body to recover.

Thursday (Emory)

Up at 07:30, got onto the HF radio and checked in with the WW Net this morning. We got a pile of letters from the Philippines this morning a very nice picture. Time to get ready for the appointment this morning with the doctor.

Doctor visit went very well, we shared experiences and ideas for a good while. We got in a good nap and then picked up the prescription for her. I went shopping at Kroger to pick up a few things.

We planned the day tomorrow including what we’re making for dinner. We watched Christmas Angel _IMDB for the third time and an episode of House. We were in a bit of a panic since she forgot her morning pills today. We took those at 7:15 and then at 9PM we were going to take her evening pills when I realized that the prescription we replaced today was still sitting in her daily tray. I will have to take a larger role in our home, I am assuming too much and then having to backtrack what actually happened.

Friday (Cold 36)

Up at 8:05 and checked in with the WW Net. Took out the recycling and looked for the calendar pages for my small Daytimer, with no luck. (I may not need it since I am headed into just having a procedure book like the MRS.) It might be nice to have just the calendar pages for 2025 though. She started a load of sheets that we had decided to change and wash next week. 3 HB eggs and sausage links for breakfast.

We printed pages for her book so we can get organized on what we need to do when.

Dinner was round steak in the Insta-Pot. She added sweet potatoes which was a bit different. We had rye bread with it at the table.

Forgot to take my meds yesterday, the timers were over 48 hours. I noticed that my stomach was a little upset.

We also found the lid to the tomato sauce can in the Insta-Pot after it was cooked.

We put a freeze back under and over the hot food to help the refrigerator.

The brush in the Vacuum needed to be cleaned.

I had no idea! There are TWO filters on the DC07 One is before the motor (I knew about that one), and one AFTER the motor! I ordered both filters, they should be here tomorrow.

The heal of her foot is still hurting her, we put an ice pack on it today. We may have to make an appointment with the foot doctor since she has been dealing with this for a couple weeks.

Watched a Halmark Christmas movie and some Johnny Carson before bed.

Saturday

Up at 7:30, had a bowl of cereal at 2AM when I shifted to the lounge chair to sleep.

Glucose was 107 this morning even after having a bowl of cereal. I checked in with the guys on the WW Net this morning, I could not hear Net control station.

Talked to Uncle Paul and had our 9:30 meeting, we do not have all the ingredients for lunch today. (Mostly because I don’t have a recipe that she does by memory.)

Ended up at Longhorn’s for dinner, we just could not get the momentum to make a Wally World run before lunch.

Landon’s package arrived today.

Made our run to the neighbor’s house to water their plants and our new filters arrived for the vacuum cleaner. I vacuumed the floor and there was a bit of a smell from the new filters.

We watched Hallmark Christmas movies until we got tired and went to bed.

Sunday

Woke up at 7AM and had a normal bowel into the toilet that didn’t flush. What I didn’t know was she had a large bowl that plugged the toilet and now my bowel made the water nasty. I tried to plunger the toilet several times until finally the bowl spilled over onto the floor and my feet. I had to pull a towel from the rack to mop up the water and haul the rug and my clothes into the washing machine. My feet have open sores on them, so I had to quickly disinfect them with bleach water I keep in the bathroom. I ended up taking a washcloth soaked in my bleach water and wiped down the bathroom floor using her Swiffer wand.

I checked into the WW Net, she apparently didn’t hear my whole call sign 🙁

There was a pill laying on the counter at 8PM, she said that she didn’t know why it was there. When we looked at her pill trays one was completely empty (Never should be) and the other had duplicate pills in it. We filled her pill tray, and I made examples of her morning and evening pills in plastic bags.

Lunch was leftover round steak. We found a bowl of chicken soup that has been in the microwave all night long. I poured it down the garbage disposal, but I should have used a utensil and not my fingers. I am surprised that it didn’t smell bad. Like at all?

CPAP Tank washing day.

I had to create the same kind of book that she uses, I am getting lost too.

Woke several times during the night, I am listening to the HF radio and the propagation is horrible. No letters from the Philippines this morning and the Homestead exemption has not been processed. I tried to chat with them but it’s a different department. (Not unusual, collections always answer but exemptions have a long line.)

2 H Boiled eggs and breakfast sausages for breakfast. Grandma’s chili for lunch today. Eye Doc said I was good for using the Fluorouracil Cream on my temple, the nerves are below the skin. We also ordered $600 in glasses before spending a whopping 20 bucks at the dollar store.

We were invited to Christmas breakfast, and I declined the invite, then my home ended up in turmoil about not seeing the grandkids.

Tuesday

Up at 7, another heavy overcast day. Checked in on the WW Net while I ate my two HB eggs and breakfast sausage. Talked to Paul a good while and I am headed into the shower. We have chili for lunch, so we drove to Whole Foods for some cereal and other dry goods. It has been raining all day, so we decided to eat lunch at Outback SH on the cheap. (Share a meal.) We got grilled shrimp and two salads. It was a pretty good meal, and they were really busy!

Back home we planned out tomorrow, we have a Dr. Appointment and these appointments at lunch time are hard on us. We normally eat between 1`2Noon and 2PM every day. We take a nap at 11AM so it takes a bit of organization to make that happen. Tomorrow is beef stew. We’ll have to start that about 9AM to eat it at 12 Noon and leave for the doc at 12:15.

Cleaned CPAP hoses today.

We had a couple of hoses from 2019 that I tossed in the trash today, most of them were 2021 or later. (I don’t have any that say 2024, even the ones still in their bags.)

Using the De-Humidifier to dry the insides of them. (I used to put a fan underneath the hoses in the closet to dry them.) There was a time that I just allowed them to air dry. (But now we’re using eight of them each month.)

Wednesday *Busy Day

Up at 7, checked in with the WW guys on the HAM radio and found the following message on my phone an hour later.

I checked Amazon where they have a link to check for recalls on products you’ve purchased and nothing! I reported the text message to Amazon.

I ordered new CPAP supplied for her and myself this week. I was trying to save on the hoses, but Google Foo says 6 Mo to a year max. (I had some from 2018) I tossed all the hoses from 2019 and kept the ones 2020 and beyond. The new ones are dated two years in the arears, so even the 2019 ones I may not have opened until 2023.

Now I mark them when I put them in service, that way I know for sure how long I’ve been using them. We have about 8 hoses that the date is after 2020 and about 6 new hoses in the bag. We also have two hoses that we’ve ordered this week.

We made beef stew in the Insta-Pot today.

We transferred it to a low-profile Crock Pot for serving. We added beef gravy from a jar to thicken the sauce just a bit and it was delicious.

Doc appointment was very quick, and we decided to have some fun at Outback. We also bought a couple of coats at Burlington Coat Factory.

Well, it’s warm LOL

Home for a long nap.

Thursday (Tub Overflow)

I made a mistake and left the shower run with the tub toe pop down. There was an inch of water in the bathroom by the time I found it. The water had run underneath the walls and into the carpet on all three sides of the bathroom. (Bad Move Dad)

I put this carpet in, so it was easy to pull up.

This carpet is about 29 years old, it’s a bit more difficult to clean.

Ended up pulling up the carpet to help the drying process… What a mess!

The sewing room did not dry out because of the bookcase at the outside wall. The bookcase had compressed the padding and allowed the water run into the room. It’s about 10AM and we’re about halfway through the recovery.

Can’t say I am happy about the dirty edges though.

The carpet and pad finally dried out, time to put things back.

Two eggs and breakfast sausages with a glass of Cran-Grape juice for breakfast. Just finished a very much needed nap.

Chicken breasts for lunch.

Both of her pill boxes ended up empty and we’re short on one prescription. It’s awfully hard to “Trust, but verify” when you’re busy.

Friday

Ok, Amazon added even more ads to their Prime Video service. It’s about time to throw in the towel if I have to pay for video AND watch ads.

Used a camera to see inside the wall so that I could fix the wiring.

There’s a wire that runs directly from the garage to the den to supply the television with power from the solar panels in emergencies. I accidentally pulled the extension cord into the wall and between the other wires. I had to pull ALL the wires out of the wall today before I could get the extension cord below the house wiring. It took four trips into the attic and all the way across the home to get the wires back down the wall.

Saturday

Day one using Fluorouracil to attack the precancerous cells on the side of my face. It’s taken me a little while to figure out how to put this medicine that clearly says not to use near the eyes. This is the best idea I could come up with to prevent me from scratching or rubbing the medicine into my eyes. I marked the dividing line with a permanent marker and then wiped my face with alcohol.

Dinner was Round Steak in the Insta Pot, it was delicious.

Sunday

Got up and checked in with the HAM radio guys, Leftover Chicken for dinner. I’ve had to set an alarm for 9:30 to remind us to STOP and plan our dinner! It never fails that we end up at 11:00 with no idea what we are going to eat in an hour.

Church was ok, it was a very brief service, and I posted the video on the website about 3 PM.

We had leftover chicken breast for dinner and then laid down for a nap. It was another difficult day, and we didn’t get much of anything done. Grocery list was not started and it should have been.

I did manage to make about four contacts on my HF radio today.

1. Put cart IN van
2. CPAP Tanks
3. Homestead Exemption * homestead@gwinnettcounty.com, 770-822-8100
4. Glenn Wilk
5. Colonoscopy
6. Estate Taxes
7. Weekend book page CPAP cleaning
8. Apply for VA benefits