It was another busy weekend.  There was a short walk at the dog park with Jack and Heidi.  How did he get so grown up?  We talked about Lucy and her coughing which is getting much worse.  I told him that Lucy was sick and dying.  When his poppa got in the car, Jack said, "So, Lucy is dying."

Lucy looking pretty good for a dying dog but she is dying.  She can't get better and her congestive heart failure is getting much worse, even with medication.

We replanted my rubber tree plant, seen on the right of the photo, in a much bigger pot.  Of course I ended up with dirt and bits of ceiling everywhere.  The vacuum was brought out and Jack wanted to do it.  It also have a fiddle leaf ficus and another ficus that continue to grow and will need larger pots and a spot in front of a sunny window one day.  For now they sit on the kitchen table, facing southeast, enjoying the morning sun.

Most of my plants are planted now.  I'm still waiting for my echinacea and my lupines to get larger before I plant those.  

Mostly I'm just tired.  I have another endometrial infection and I'm taking antibiotics for that, so maybe that's the cause of the fatigue.  I have most of June off so I'm looking forward to that.  

Thank you for the jokes.  I can always use new material for my patients.

 

My lovely garden the other night not long before we had a huge storm.

I told Mr. Pudding that I would want dirty jokes, or even just regular jokes told at my funeral.  I thought I'd share my favorite joke here.

John O'Reilly hoisted his beer to his mates and said, "Here's to spending the rest of me life between my wife's thighs!"

That won him the top prize at the pub for the best toast of the night!  

He went home and told his wife, Mary, “I won the prize for the Best toast of the night”

She said, “Aye, did ye now. And what was your toast?”

John said, “Here’s to spending the rest of me life, sitting in church beside me wife.”

“Oh, that is very nice indeed, John!” Mary said.

The next day, Mary ran into one of John’s drinking buddies on the street corner.

The man chuckled leeringly and said, “John won the prize the other night at the pub with a toast about you, Mary.”

She said, “Aye, he told me, and I was a bit surprised myself. You know, he’s only been there twice in the last four years. Once he fell asleep, and the other time I had to pull him by the ears to make him come.”

Tell me your favorite joke.  I have a fondness for dad jokes as well.

My fritillaria has come up.  I love these flowers because they're beautiful, delicate looking and tough, all at the same time.  They don't last long but the wait is always worth it.

We had Jack all weekend and the poor guy was sick.  He vomited on Thursday night and then had diarrhea on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  He's also got a congested cough and is just off.  When we took him back home to Gracie, she was pissy, as usual.  Where were his new clothes?  Still in the laundry.  She never asked any questions about him.  She did say that he got sick from the daycare we take him to, the one she chose two years ago.  I pointed out that he was sick when we picked him up from her new daycare and she said, "Whatever!" and walked away.  

I'm trying to accept that she will never change but it's hard because I kind of want to punch her in the throat.  My grandson deserves a mom who cares about him as a human being, not as a doll for her to play with.  She also dyed his hair red because, "He asked me to."  Because three year olds want their hair dyed.  Fuck!

Deep breath.

Jack and the big guy at Coal Lake on the way home from Wetaskiwin on Saturday.

My father in law remains in hospital but has improved.  Each urinary tract infection knocks him down but he continues to get back up.  He is slowly sliding downhill though.  He also feels abandoned by his wife and he slips back and forth in time.  He told us last week that he's tired of working and wants to retire.  It's bullshit he said, this working.  We encouraged him to retire.  He was also complaining of having no money so we slipped a $20 into his pocket which made him happy.

He also said he wanted to see his other son so I tracked him down and called him.  My husband's brother visited his dad yesterday for the first time in almost twenty years.  Then he came over to visit us.  My brother in law was very stressed and nervous energy was shooting off of him.  I have a hard time with the energy of others, it seems to wash over me and capture me in it's wake.  Maybe that's why I don't spend a lot of my off time around people.  

That being said, on Friday, I visited my girlfriend after my podistrist appointment.  My girlfriend and I had a lunch of ham and cheese croissants we we drove out into the country to visit our favorite greenhouse.  It's the same greenhouse we visited a few weeks ago but it was busier and there were more plants.  Just walking into a greenhouse makes my shoulders relax and I breathe deeper.  I feel my whole body relax.  

Work on the rental house has begun finally after repeated calls and emails to the insurance broker and contractor.  Apparently I can be irritating enough to get things done.  

Today is a beautiful, sunny day.  I worked in the garden and got my tomatoes and bedding plants planted.  I even had time to tidy up the garden bed out front.  I only lost two perennials last winter, which isn't bad.  The photo below is one of the tulips up in my front bed.

 

And that's it.

My mother in law called this evening and my father in law is doing poorly again.  Then the police called and we were worried it was about Jack but it was about my son.  The police officer just wondered if I would make a statement regarding why and how I called 911 in March with regards to my son and his wife.  The phone calls upset both me and my husband.  

I didn't realize how much they had upset me until I started looking for something but couldn't find it; it was a hand written note I had made about some rambling voicemails my son had left me in February.  The voicemails made very little sense but I made notes and now I can't find them.  A lot of memories came flooding back while I was looking for those notes, none of them good sadly and now I can't sleep.

I'm feeling sad mostly.  Sad for my son, sad for his sons, sad for my father in law, sad for my husband.  I could feel myself starting to spin in place and decided instead to write it down.  The tears came but that's okay.  I'm feeling overwhelmed again but that too will pass.  I want to fix, to change things and can't.  I suck at acceptance and yet that's what is required.  

My father in law is dying.

My son is in jail.

My grandsons are okay.

I can't change these, no matter what I do. 

Nothing much going on here.  Work.  Make supper.  Clean up.  Do laundry.  Clean the bathroom.  I have a good book to read.  My foot is better some days than others but overall, the direction is positive.  I have more shockwave therapy tomorrow.

We've had snow again this week, but just gentle flakes and nothing stayed.  This morning it's sunny and warm.  My tomatoes are sitting in my new greenhouse, enjoying the sunshine and stretching up towards the sun as they do their thing.  I have zinnia, lupin and pumpkin seeds growing now as well.  My frittilaria is up and blooming.  The allium are doing well and the tulips are almost ready to bloom.  We have such a short season but the plants persevere.   Maybe that's why I love them so much.

 

I went back to work this past week.  I'm only working on the floor for two hours, which is 3000 steps approximately, and then I go into film library to make confirmations calls to patients for upcoming appointments.  My foot is bearing up, still a little sore, but not bad.  What amazes me though is how much less tired I am at the end of the day when I'm not on my feet all day.  It's quite shocking.  I don't feel like a bag of shit at the end of the day and still have energy to make supper and enjoy my evening.  Who knew?  I've been a nurse my whole life.  I didn't know how much less tiring desk work was.

Calling patients doesn't sound like the most interesting job, and it's not, but yesterday I talked to a new patient for half an hour.  She is younger than me and she was diagnosed with lung cancer a month ago.  I listened for a long time and gave her as much information as I could about how things work, what we need prior to treatment starting and also told her that her life is not over.  Yes, she has cancer, yes, it's awful, yes, it sucks, but her life is not over and when she comes to the Cross, she will discover a whole lot of people with cancer, living their lives.    

On Friday morning when we were just driving into the Cross, I noticed a Canada goose laying in the gutter in front of the hospital, which some feathers on the road.  I went back to check on the goose and it had been hit by a car but wasn't dead.  I did have some blood in it's mouth and seemed dazed.  I managed to convince it to get up on the sidewalk, out of the traffic.  Canada geese are military grade birds, large and dangerous.  This poor bird was so dazed that it let me touch it as I helped it get out of the way.

I started calling places to see if someone could take care of an injured goose and in the middle of that, the goose decided to start wandering across the road again to be with it's partner who was still waiting for it.  So now I was on the phone, herding an injured goose across a four lane road with cars who wanted to whizz by.  I did end up yelling at some people to, "Just fucking stop!", and they did thankfully.  The goose was feeling more itself because it hissed at the car.

The goose made it safely across the road and I don't know what happened after that.  It either survived or it died.  What really pisses me off is that whoever hit that bird, knew what happened.  You can't hit a Canada goose and not notice.  They weigh around ten pounds and this time of the year they're everywhere with their gooslings.  They also get right of way on the roads.

Gracie has been a pain in the ass this week, but I'm not going to go into it.  Jack is with us until tomorrow morning and he's happy.  He's been helping me in the garden and this morning he watered Big Red, the name I gave the maple tree that I planted in the back yard.  I've always wanted a maple tree and this year I did it.

I was also outside planting some wild lupins in pots to start them and transplanted my tomatoes into bigger pots.  Jack enjoys helping me in the garden.  Last night Jack and I went for a walk after supper and he held my hand all the way to the park.  On the way home I pretended I was a sportscaster narrating the race he was having with me.  He seemed to enjoy that and I had a lot of fun.

Wednesday was a bad day but my girlfriend and I went to a garden centre and the world was a better place.  Her and I talked and enjoyed the flowers.  We also both had hard cries.  She has cancer and her husband died suddenly in February.  I have Gracie.  Sigh.

Right now the dogs, my hubby and Jack are all napping.  It's quiet and peaceful.  I'm thankful.

 

Because we all need a laugh.