AWOL Caregiver

My anxiety level was up this morning, as the proverbial wrench got thrown into the schedule. K's caregiver didn't show up at 8, to take her to the 11am HBO treatment, and didn't answer her phone, so I called her company, and they were trying to find a replacement on short notice, as I bravely (foolishly? irresponsibly?) left shortly after 9am for my walk with our neighbor. The replacement showed up just in time, but K sent her home, having already rescheduled the 11am treatment to 1pm. We were halfway through our walk, when K texted me, and asked if I could hurry home, and take her to HBO, which I did. I had just gotten home after driving her up to Swedish and dropping her off, when she called to ask me to come get her, because her glucose level was off the chart, and they wouldn't take her today. So now we're back home, and struggling, agonizing about how much fast-acting insulin to give her, in how many shots, while trying to get the glucose meter to stop reading HIGH and give us a number instead, without driving her glucose dangerously low in the process. And so goes our crazy life.

Card info stolen

Not happy, hearing this morning on NPR, about the theft of 40 million Target Stores customers' credit card numbers. They said that anyone who used a credit or debit card at Target between Nov 27 and Dec 18 is at risk. K thinks she might have. Watch for unexpected charges!

I checked our Mastercard history, and yes, K made a purchase at Target on Dec 6. More anxiety. Then received an email from the bank, advising us that we have zero liability for fraudulent purchases that arise from this, but also asking us to watch our purchase history, and let them know, if we see any.

Nice work party

We had a really nice time at our work sponsored party tonight, at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We took over the whole place!

It reminded me of all those movies I've seen, where the high tech company has a fancy dress up affair, in a beautiful futuristic looking building. But we had more than just a fancy building -- we had dinosaur skeletons, and the MythBusters exhibit! The entire museum was available, for anyone to wander around and see the exhibits. And, the IMAX movies and Planetarium were operating all night.

K wore a pretty black long velour dress and matching shoulder wrap. Here she is, checking out the gift shop, which was all decked out with holiday lights around the windows. Her bright red shiny scooter added just the right touch of holiday color to her outfit.

We didn't get very far past the buffet line and dinner table. There was quite a selection of interesting and healthy foods, and tasty desserts -- everything from stir fry vegetables to chocolate parfait and Tiramisu. We spent the majority of the evening, sitting around gabbing, but that was plenty enough for us. We got to talk to a bunch of people I work with every day, and some that I rarely see any more.

There was quite the crowd. Lots of people stopped by to catch up on our life stories. I saw a few people up on the upper level balconies, waiting to see the IMAX movies or Planetarium shows, or just checking out the view from above.

I didn't want to leave Mandy home all night while we parted, so we brought her along, which is the usual way we deal with that. She waited patiently, sleeping out in her warm nest in the back seat of my car. I checked on her a few times, and she always had the good sense to stay under her warm blankets.

I'm still struggling with a dry cough, the last symptom of the cold I caught just before Thanksgiving. Maybe someday it will be gone.

On the upswing

I've pretty much lost the past two weeks to this cold. But I'm definitely feeling much better now! Not sure if it was just time passing and my immune system doing its thing, but it seemed like the 10 doses of Alka Seltzer Cold & Cough Gels that I took over the weekend really helped. Now, if that debilitating dry cough would just leave me alone...

Cold, Cold, Week

It's been really cold all week, with single digit lows at night, dropping down to -9 degrees (that's 41 below freezing!) overnight during the weekend. My walking buddy Ken and I agreed that we'd just go out for a hot breakfast, and not try to walk, all three days of my long weekend. I tried taking Mandy for a walk on Saturday afternoon, after she started bugging me to get out farther than the yard, but that was a bust. She came up lame after just a minute or two, with the bitter cold quickly biting into her feet. It's too bad I haven't been able to figure out a way to keep her feet warm. We bought her some pretty nice boots, but now we call them anti-gravity boots, as her feet seem to just float up into the air, when she has them on.

Got a cold

Rats. I'm fighting, and have so far been losing, the battle against what I have to assume is a cold virus. The sore throat started on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and it's been getting worse each day, with new and different symptoms. All of the usual cold symptoms have shown themselves. Last night was the first of the "can't sleep because of the coughing" nights.