February!!!!

One of the worst Wisconsin Januaries ever  is over.  February and March will have bad weather, but the temperatures are climbing.  My spirits are climbing, too.   I am getting my gardening gear together to start planting seeds.  Tomorrow, cherry tomatoes. It's not too early.   Last year I was able to have pots outside on my deck by the end of March.  

I am starting to make plans to meet friends outside this house to combat cabin fever.   There is a certain danger though since the flu is out there running rampant and I don't want to endanger the process of getting this brain tumor dealt with.


Still, I am feeling better.  Today I began work on a new short story.  I am also doing some editing work on existing books.  It is slow going, but I have to keep moving forward.

My attorney suggested I should have my obituary written before the surgery.

Any suggestions welcome!

What One Can Do

""Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week."  --  Robert Louis Stevenson


I've loved that quote for most of my life, written by a man who alwayswas in anger of dying, yet pushed on to write Kidnapped and Treasure Island, plus A Child's Garden of Verses.

I am not near death, but this tumor keeps me from writing as I wish, so I am pushing myself to accomplish at least one thing a  week.


This week, I managed to get all the figures together for my tax returns.   It was important because I almost certainly will get a sizable tax refund which we will need to get that surgery done in March.

I made a list of all the paperwork I needed and began a week long search.  I needed figures on storytelling, writing, plus all the deductions I could find. This morning, I had everything and now the package of figures is ready to be mailed to my accountant in the morning.


It isn't writing .... yet.... but I am proving to myself that I can do things in increments.  Starting next week, I start my next book on coping with a brain tumor.  One idea at a time, one sentence at a time.  That book will be written.

Getting On

Gary just brought me my cup of hot chocolate so soon I must be off to bed.

Readers tell me that they can't go to bed until I've posted so I'd best get at it.

Temperatures are finally rising in Wisconsin, but that means other forms of bad weather.  Today, a snowstorm and slippery streets.  So we stayed home.

The tumor is still with me.  A slight indigestion problem is over.  But now we suffer from cabin fever along with every one  else around here.

I've never had trouble sleeping, but now it is a joy, a way to escape this endless winter.

I look outside, see the snow and throw myself on my bed.  Five minutes later I am asleep for at least an hour, a good solid sleep with no pain.

Once we go  to get the evaluation of the tests next week, we will make new plans. There will be surgery, but then we get in the car and start heading south for at least a couple of weeks to get a start on summer.

And when summer comes, my life starts new.

Meanwhile, sleep is my solace and my joy.

So, so bored at the Moment

I am a reader so I am seldom bored.

However, this tumor is making it difficult for me to crack a book.  Tomorrow, I will go to the library for some books on CDs and go rom there.  

There is nothing on television worth watching.   Cooking is not interesting me.

Gary is doing the best by getting me out of this house.  Today that was just a trip to get medical supplies and another for groceries.   I've always enjoyed gocery shopping, which is a numbers game, trying o get good buys with limited funds. So it went today.  I saved 32 % today and came away with bags and bags of foodstuffs.  

But then i went directly to bed and slept for more hours.  Sleeping is what I do best these days.

Tomorrow, I once again must dig into the bureaucracy and find out why Medicaid still wants to give me child care!  I suppose the fight will hold my interest.  The other task will be to finish locating all the information to take finish my taxes.

But I admit that right now I am looking forward with the most enthusiasm to having doctors drill into my head to dig that darn tumor out of there.

Friends have invited us to travel south for a few days for some beach time.  That may happen in another week or two.  Sounds good to me.

Cabelas

Usually, Gary spends his winters planning for our camping season.  We expect UPS and Fed Ex to mak deliveries daily of the latest gadgets.  But not this winter.   We have been preoccupied with my health and the Arctic Vortex kept us inside.

Today there was cold, yes, but sun and no blowing or drifting snow to stop us.  We took a drive to the new Cabelas store in DePere.  

I can't get very impressed with big name outfitter places but I could walk around and around and get some much needed exercise.

I stopped to talk to a fellow who was showing Cabelas camping loungers.  I told him I liked the one we had, but we never got it in a store.   Gary rescued it from a national forest dumpster.  People buy these expensive chairs and sit on them for hours next to their campfires eating and drinking beer.  The pounds accumulate and the chairs collapse and wind up in the dumpsters.  Usually it takes only minor repairs to get them working again. Gary stopped at a hardware store, found the proper screws for pennies and we had a Cabelas lounger.

Cabelas sells guns with the support of the National Rifle Association. Again, I talked to one of the workers.  You could buy one,she told me.  "I don't know about that," I said. "I write bloody mysteries and I currently have a brain tumor that is making me cranky."

"As long as you don't have a criminal record," you can buy one," she told me.

"So if I am a good murderer who has never been caught," I said, "I'm good to go."

Of course I never did buy a gun but I got the clerk interested in my mystery and by now she is reading it.

But I shake my head at how easy it is to buy guns in the United States.

So  I got out of the house and got some exercise. Gary found a pair of binoculars and  got to talking to a lot of people about camping.

I guess that makes for a good day. 

The Difference of a Day

Throughout this brain tumor saga,I've worried about how we were going to pay for the treatment. I certainly didn't want to wreck the financial future of my family.

Earlier in the week, I was trying to talk to someone about Medicaid but was told someone would call me to talk about aid for children living with me and food stamps.   Since Chris is 39 and not living at home, that was foolish.  Anyone reading this blog realizes food stamps would be a waste of time.  My monthly food budget is $75 a month.  I am very, very good at finding food bargains and turning them into nutritious meals. No, what I really needed was help with getting through this surgery.

What we forget is that in the middle of government bureaucracy there are good people who really want to help.  This afternoon I connected with Sheena in Madison.  She followed my problems with a deep and sincere sympathy and told me what I could do and told me the documentation I would need.  When I explained my constant state of befuddlement (I DO have a tumor after all!), Sheena arranged for me to be sent all the requirements by mail.  The packet will be here in three or four days.  Gary and I can go through it all then.

Then Gary talked to one of my doctors who has created a brain tumor support group.  He said that through the group, they would help me through it all.   So because there are good people in the world, including a sweet woman who proved that people working for the state  want to do their best for the people they work for.

So I went into the afternoon greatly relieved.

I took time to check the on line weather and realized that come the first of February, the temperatures here will begin to rise.   By the 4th, when we have to see our doctors to find out what all the testing revealed, the daytime temperatures will be in the double digits and the wind dying down. Not spring by a long shot, but it appears the Arctic Vortex will soon begin to lift. Along with it, it will take my Seasonal Affective Disorder, I hope.

Next, Gary did an Internet search and found a piece of property near Ashland that looks interesting. It's at the edge of a park with several lakes.  With a small pre-fabricated home, we would have a summer vacation spot. The electricity and septic system are already in place.  There's a nearby beach and miles of forest.  We could live there from May through October then com back to this area for the holidays.  Sounds perfect.   We will be going up there toward the end of February or the beginning of March to check it out.

Today, we paid the real estate taxes on this property.  For all our governor's talk about saving taxpayers money, I found he had saved me all of 9 cents for the year.  I would rather forgo those savings and  have him use pennies like that in saving lives ofWisconsinites that need help.

At the end of the day, I am in a much better mood.  Spring is coming, the forests are waiting for me to get over this tumor nonsense.

The Social Media and snow

It has been a terrible winter here in northeastern Wisconsin.  Almost every morning, we wake up to minus digits.  The world is covered in white. It goes on and on.  I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder horribly and many of my friends are close to the same madness.  And yet  it could be a lot worse.

A few years ago, I was doing a summer tour to the West Coast.  I stopped at a little diner in a town in North Dakota and talked to the owner.   The winter before, North Dakota had been hit with seven big blizzards in a row.   The owner told me that the town finally had Internet access.  During that terrible winter, she got on Facebook and was able to connect with far away friends.  "It saved my sanity," she said.

So in this winter, we stay glued to our keyboards and the social network.  I write daily on Facebook and Twitter and this blog, and think of the generations before who lived through Wisconsin winters like these.

First I think of Wisconsin Death Trip a collection of photos and newspaper clippings from the 1180's to 1910 from the Black River Falls area.  There was the horror of a Wisconsin winter.  These were the days before radio, telephones or TV.   Farm women were stuck in farmhouses for months with little or no outside communication.  On rare occasions, the farmer might hook up the cutter and go into town to the post office for mail and a newspaper.

Women went insane and killed themselves.

In time, rural mail service was instituted.

Next, telephone wires made it to rural area.  My father, a boy before the Great Depression, once told me that the party line saved my grandmother's sanity.  The phone rang and along the line, ten phones were picked up.  She could listen in and get all the news.   It was the first social media. She finished raising her children on the same farm I grew up on.  Then she moved into Seymour and created a social world with friends calling even in the middle of winter.

So, yes, there are farm women all around Seymour and they are all on Facebook.  They are calling their children or Skyping  with them.

So, yes the days are bleak here, but we are connecting with the outside world.  I don't see any of them going to the looney bin this year.

So no matter what people think of Facebook and the rest, they must admit there is a place for them.