Cozy Field Mice and Daddy's Bad Spill

So, we're back in Texas. It's hot. I expected that. The cat and dog are both depressed about not having their deck to spend the long days. I'm having allergy problems. So is the cat. We did hire someone to come rake up these leaves and haul them off. Getting ready to have the real estate agent out on Thursday, so we're trying to spiffy things up for her. I cleaned the upstairs, packed up two boxes of books I don't want to keep, and uprooted a mouse who was making a nest under the bathroom sink up there. Guess this happens when you leave a house empty for two months. The mice move in. Anyway, my SO set traps, so maybe we will catch this thing tonight. You know the cat is sick or otherwise that mouse would've been history the first day we arrived.

While we were gone, I found out this past Friday, Daddy had a bad fall. It could've been worse, I guess. He could have broken bones. What he did do is rip the skin off his forearm, from his elbow to his wrist. He couldn't staunch the bleeding so he drove himself to the Emergency Room. There were no stitches to be taken but they bandaged him and advised him to report to his doctor on Monday. He did, and for the last four weeks he has been going in three times a day to have silver sulfadiazine burn ointment applied to the wound and a new bandage. I think it scared him enough he's ready to get Life Alert. I had the home health people here send me some information on that service. The most troubling thing about this who incident, at least to me, is that he can't remember what made him fall, and nobody, not even his regular doctor, seemed to think he should be tested for TIAs or something else that could have caused that fall. 


And here we are going forward with plans to put the house on the market and move permanently to New Mexico. It's a hard call but one that makes sense financially as well as logistically. I was thinking today as I cleaned upstairs, that at the other house I would have been done with the entire house in the time it took to clean just that one-third of this house that I managed to maul through. We don't need this large of a house and with this Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas boom, it is hopefully, the right time to sell, too. The only misgivings I have concern Daddy.


Wonder of wonders -- I was writing while we were there. Something new and not ready to be discussed but it felt so good to get lost in words again, even if it was short lived. I think all the reading I was doing there was partly responsible. I tend to forget how inspiring just simply reading books can be for a writer. I also seem to have more time to correspond with writer friends and that also is inspirational, just to talk about writing, like a REAL writer. I had a couple of stimulating telephone conversations as well. 


So it will be August tomorrow, when we get up in the morning. The hottest time of the year. I know I will be ready to get back to the mountains when we leave again in two weeks. I'm already counting the days.


Onward ....