The day to day aspects of life: what is happening around the house and in our family
Earlier this week I was relaxing in the back yard reading a book. It was about 6:00 PM, and was starting to cool down after reaching 25 degrees Celsius or thereabouts. I heard a rustling sound in the vines and some odd “chuff” noises from the corner of our gazebo. I looked in the direction of the sound, and saw Mama Raccoon hanging upside down and peering at me.
Earlier today, my wife and her parents noticed a raccoon walking through our back yard. Later, the ‘coon came back, this time poking around under our deck. This time, I got a look at her (I’ll explain the gender assumption in a moment): she is huge, easily twice the size of our largest cat. I’d speculate that she’s 30 pounds, give or take. And she seemed to have absolutely no fear: I stepped out into the back yard, and she turned around as she walked towards our gate and looked at me before walking off. Our cat Rommel was out in the cat run, and fluffed up/hissed at the raccoon at this point, who completely ignored him.
“Happy Easter” seems like a strange thing to say given the religious meaning of the holiday, but I’m not religious in any way so I’ll say it and not feel guilty. For me, Easter is sort of like Thanksgiving: a time to give thanks for all the good things in life and to spend some time with family over a meal.
Today was a good day. Irene and I met my Mom and sister Judy at the Casino for a bit- that’s always fun. We don’t really gamble much- it’s basically more of a chance to sit down and have a coffee with just the four of us. I put $5 in a slot machine, and came home empty handed: perfectly normal 🙂
Janet and Gord, friends of Irene and myself from Edmonton (they actually introduced us) came out here last week. Unlike ordinary houseguests, though, they came to look after us: they fed us, cleaned up, and kept Irene entertained.
We had a bit of an adventure last night, or more accurately very early this morning. At around 1:00 am, Irene went to get up and her surgical wound started to drain…a lot. It took half a dozen large paper towels and a big (2′ x 1′) surgical gauze mat to sort of stem the tide of mostly-clear blood tinged fluid, during which time I called the district health nurse. Irene started shaking and feeling faint, which isn’t too terribly surprising under the circumstances.
Irene went in to the hospital today for her second hip replacement surgery (left hip this time). Everything seems to have gone well: she was in pre-op at 8:00 am, entered the surgical ward around 9:30, surgery around 10:00 am done by about noon, out of post op by around 2:00 pm.
In the “my God, I can’t believe he took pictures of that…” department, I give you…pictures of my office cleanup!
For the protection of the squeamish, I’ve put the pictures behind a break. Click “Read the rest…” to see them…if you dare!
I mentioned a couple of days ago that I’m cleaning up my office. Stage 2 was supposed to be “re-do the wiring”, but that became “stage 3” when I decided I needed to add a new filing cabinet and a few other things to help organize.
Irene is going in for her second hip surgery next week. I’ll be working from home for a while as she recovers and gets mobile. In preparation for this, I’m taking *this* week off to re-organize my office and take care of a few other things around the house to make things ready for Robo-Irene.