The Aluminum Asylum

The Aluminum Asylum
Our home on wheels

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Muskegon MI
Sunday

We again slept in till about 9. I made coffee and for the 100,101th time remade the sofa bed. It is very comfortable and not terrible to sleep in the main part of the rig but it is a PIA to setup and then tear down the bed every day morning and night. The hardest part is the air mattress. I sleep better on the air mattress than I do at home. It’s just hard to get all the air out of it all the time and on top of that, it weighs a ton.

It was cloudy and overcast. It had also rained quite a bit last night. There go my plans for a day lounging on the beach. Paul and I were off to do the laundry and do some errands. I wanted to post the blog and grandpa needed a prescription filled at Walgreen’s. Also, Paul pulled out two fuses from the converter or the inverter (I never know what he’s doing back there with this electric stuff). We hit the UPS store to connect to the wifi there. I downloaded and Paulie walked across the parking lot to get the fuses. For whatever reason I goofed up somehow and inadvertently changed the format of the blog pages. I will have to get on line when I have some time (without you know who’s waiting for me in the car cramping my creativity and writing style) and redo it again. Paul came back without fuses as the ones he took out were ok. We then dropped off the bottle for grandpa’s pills. Off to the laundry mat. We had about three loads and were done in less than an hour. Paulie decided he would get a battery charger and perhaps set it up so the batteries stay charged. Whatever. I am getting tired of hearing his bitching about it. Then we went back to Walgreen’s to get the pills and the stupid prescription was up. No more refills. Ya think anybody thought to look at the stupid bottle. Noooooo. We waste more time with grandpa’s prescriptions. I don’t know if he doesn’t understand some stuff or just forgets a lot. My bet is on forgetfulness.

We returned to the rig and had a bite of lunch. After lunch, my ears were pulsing something terrible so I went to lie down for a while. Paul and grandpa went to the store to get hamburger buns and some corn on the cob for dinner. Paulie actually made good hamburgers! He also grilled some Portobello mushrooms, onions and green peppers. Pretty good stuff. I wanted to go sit on the beach and watch the sunset, but neither Paul nor grandpa wanted to go too early and didn’t want to walk down to the beach. Ppffft on them. Old fogies. Like either of them have a sucky hip or bad knees. At least I was willing to try to do the steps. I even took some pills ahead of time. So instead I decided to write a little.

I talked to sister Jan this morning and also to Mom. I guess Mom wasn’t all that impressed with the old west although it sounded like they did enjoy Mt. Rushmore. She did enjoy the casinos around Deadwood. Figures. One of the most beautiful parts of the US and all she seemed to enjoy was the casinos. She said there was “no grass and it was hot.” Hello…this area is called The Great Plains for goodness sakes. Ah, my mom. Some things never change.

I am looking out across the campground, and guess what I see? A PALM tree! Yep, the trend setting Ziaja’s have started a craze! LOL! A lighted palm tree just like ours! They must have gone to Younkers and got a deal like us! I love it! I need to get some clips or clothes pins so I can put up my new palm tree lights. With the two lit palm trees, my herb planter, flower planter and our tomato plant, we are the hippest folks in this place!

Well, hopefully we can get some sunshine tomorrow. Plus I need to get cracking on Zack’s sweater. I haven’t knit a stitch on it in over a month. Christmas will be here before I know it and this sweater was supposed to be last year’s gift. *Sigh*. If it wasn’t so freakin’ big I’d be done by now.

Later

Dee

Monday

At 7 a.m. this morning, the rig shook and we heard a very loud thump! Then a groan. Yep, it was grandpa. He fell out of bed again. We made him lay there for a moment to assess if he was hurt. Paul got him up after a minute and he seemed to be ok except for a crick in the neck. We all settled back down and tried to go back to sleep.

I had tossed and turned all night which is nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t know what was keeping me from falling asleep this time. I had taken a pain pill; I was tired so that wasn’t the problem. It is so very frustrating to keep tossing and turning and clock watching only to see the hours slowly inch by and still be wide awake. Grrr.

Paul and I got up and made coffee, and the sofa bed. We were waiting to hear from Larry about getting our hearing tests done. He called and we made arrangements to meet at his office at 10:30. Grandpa got up and still seemed a bit stiff, but I guess that’s to be expected. He didn’t want to go with so I made sure he had his phone in case he needed to get a hold of us.
When we got to Lar’s office, I went first. I hate hearing tests. I am never sure if I am hearing something or not. My results were what we expected. My right ear is pretty worthless with about 80 to 90% loss and the left has about 60% left. Not good. Paul of course was almost perfect with some high frequency sounds lost but nothing unusual. Figures, right?

Larry wanted me to try a new type of hearing aide. Due to my Meniere’ s Disease, having a solid type of device inside the ear canal may not work. I have a lot of pressure in my ears almost continuously. So, this device is just a little plastic piece that has air openings in it, connected to a behind the ear hearing aide. Quite nifty. Larry plugged in my test results into his laptop and then put the device in my ear. He then attached a cable to the hearing aide and connected it to the computer. The computer programmed the hearing aide to my specific hearing problems. It was so neat. I was amazed at how much more I was able to hear. I am going to test it for a week or so to see if the little plug impacts my ear canal in a bad way. I am very much aware of the thing in my ear and find it itchy. I don’t know if I will be able to deal with this in my ear as they are already overly sensitive. We shall see.

We stopped by to see Sue and the girls and to pick up some birthday cake from her several celebrations! Gotta love somebody who gives away birthday cake. Once we got back to the rig, I started getting the spins. I surely hope it’s not the hearing aide. That would suck big time. I took it out and then laid down for a while. I got up once and no one was here so I went back to bed. I hate losing days to this stupid disease. It is a deadly combo…Meniere’s and fibro/chronic fatigue. I keep thinking when I die I am gonna stand in front of my maker and he is going to ask me what I did with the life he gave me. My answer…”sleep, of course…!” Just don’t think that’s gonna work very well on judgment day is all I am saying here if you know what I mean!

I would like to sneak off to Barnes and Noble this evening to work on the computer and maybe answer some emails. I haven’t done that in almost 5 weeks…answer emails that is. I also have some new pictures to download but really want to work on the layout of the blog. It was goofed up yesterday so I want to make sure I can remedy the situation. Sometimes what I don’t know about computers is overwhelming to me!

I have the hearing aide in and I am definitely very aware of it. It must be rubbing at my “virgin” ears (remember that line, LOL!) and causing a bit of an irritation. I will mention this to Larry tomorrow and see what he thinks. Thank goodness for the trial period so we can make adjustments if necessary!

Later.

Hugs

Dee

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