25 June 2010 Recovery proceeds

25 June 2010 Recovery proceeds


Gloria’s recovery is going well. Today she resumed morning iguana chores. Since this entails a certain amount of lifting and bending, it is a good marker for her progress. Her post-op pain is diminishing and she seems pleased with the early results.

While she trusts me to care for her iguanas she doesn’t think I do it as she would. No question about that. They’re her pets; they’re another morning chore for me. While I handle them as carefully as possible, and have done so many times in the past, she can’t help trying to look over my shoulder.

We opted out of going into town this afternoon. She still needs to stretch out and take it easy. And by the time I got back from the hike with Mike, I was soaked in sweat and pretty well lacking in any desire to experience the heat index in Johnson City. The post-hike shower felt very good.

Tonight’s dinner will involve romaine lettuce, leftover London broil, and Thai seasonings. Tomorrow’s will be light fare. Sunday’s will feature steaks and charcoal, asparagus, and a very nice bottle of Champaign provided by my mother.

Mike and I talked about the people who came to the door Tuesday evening. Like us, he believes their intent was to commit some illegal act. The description of the vehicle is sounding more and more like one involved in another attempt; one foiled when cops happened to drive by, in another part of the county.

Some pop-up rain showers seem to be developing behind us, along the ridges that are Unicoi County. We can use some rain – standard summer lament – to cool us off, settle the dust, and replenish the aquifer. The first real chance of rain appears to be Sunday.

David, Gloria’s nephew and his wife, Daisy, just had flowers delivered for Gloria. Today is their 5th wedding anniversary. We attended their wedding and then continued north into Massachusetts to visit some of Gloria’s family before arriving in Vermont to fish and then capping off the trip in Niagara Falls, Ontario. It was our desire to stay away from I-95 on the return trip, as well as route-planning around a series of land-falling tropical storms that led us to move to our present location. Lives hinge around such small matters.

Five years ago we were spending the night in a Marriot in Maryland after having grabbed a late meal at a CiCi’s pizza. We got up at 0530 to travel north. We grabbed what we could at the continental breakfast in the hotel and then had brunch about 0930 en-route to Boston. Somewhere between and Baltimore a dump truck shed a hand-sized chunk of rock that shattered a fog-light lense. We didn’t discover the damage until it allowed the lamp housing to fill up with water during a thunderstorm in New Hampshire, shorting out the fog lamp. At that point it was too late for the clear lense tape we used to hold it all together to prevent damage.