Welp. I did it. Got a steroid shot in the knee. Big sissy that I am. The doc very kindly, compassionately and succinctly, with my X-ray in the background detailed my choices: continue with ice packs/heat, acetaminophen, make lifestyle modifications, get a cane or try the steroid injection or knee replacement. When I told him I was worried about steroids on the knee causing more damage, he pointed to the Xray and said you can't damage that knee any more then it already is. Sigh. I'm already walking normally but we took a long nap this afternoon, Ami was on the end of the bed and I was crowded and twisted. Now my lower back, right butt, right outer leg, and lower front leg are icy-hot, burning and a bit numb. Doc said the same thing as Wayne, need to see a neurologist to have the stenosis revaluated.

Ya know. When I was younger, I did not know what's a big part of my social life, going to various doctors was gonna be...

Since kenzi has gotten where she can't really jump much anymore, nor does she see much anymore, I have somewhat gained my leg room back on the couch and I had gained all of my portion of the bed back, but Kasper has since decided to take up her place in bed. Luckily he isn't there all night but usually somewhere in the 3am range he makes his way in and I'm back to being curled into the fetal position mostly, or trapped on my side because he likes to lay along my legs (or completely over them). Heck of a foot warmer but we will see how this sharing goes as I get further along with this pregnancy. Hubs got me a pregnancy pillow that came recommended by some women at his work. It's huge. I tried one night and about cooked and it's still just too puffy for where my hips are at currently, but in that one night Kasper still found a way to nest into the middle of all that.

Welp, I had to go look at 'pregnancy pillow' - now I ain't never been pregnant (and have no plans on becoming same) that doesn't look even remotely comfortable.

My older pups have no interest in sharing a bed (or owning mine, for that matter) but Belle wants on the couch which I wouldn't mind if she'd keep he blithering tongue in her mouth!  In between licking and drooling, if she's on the bed for long I'm ready to get a towel!

People keep saying that time goes faster as we get older ... and this new year is now half over and, well, it's half over .... sheesh!!!

ETA: I really lie, Sky is one my couch if I'm not, she's not into sharing but she'll take her space if she can.

Supposedly the pregnancy pillow will be more necessary as I get further along. I'm only just getting into second trimester right now. If I feel a little uncomfortable a normal pillow between my knees seems to work fine. Too much puff in the pregnancy pillow for my pelvis right now and just ends up making my hip hurt.

Time does seem to be flying. I swear there's two months in there I don't even remember. To the extent that I forgot to renew the license plates on one of my cars. Usually I get a mailer notice and just do it online but no mailer notice came so I completely missed it. Literally been rolling around on expired tags and no one has said a word.

Silly puppy is a lot of fun but she's also going to drive me nuts!
Let's see, she barks when she wants out. Not a problem, really, it's not a shrill bark but when she's standing 5 feet away from me and barks it's like "Dog, go away!!" (( I'm not sure yet that the bark is "I want out." but I haven't figured out what else it might be.
When she goes out, she immediately goes over to chase a lizard (or two or three or ...) Now this is in the same area by the trailer where <whatever> bit her and this doesn't phase her a bit. (( BTW we have no venomous lizards in this part of Texas, according to the Nat Park ))
She hasn't been inside before when I've pulled the vacuum out, today when I decided the fluff had gotten deep enough she was laying a couple of feet from the shop vac when I started it - all she did was look up at it and then lay her head back down. Ms Calm.

So, what's everyone been doing.

Mostly, I'm attempting to tolerate the heat. And catch up on plant annual pots and vegetables that have languished on the shed porch because of my knee. The steroid shot has helped immensely but, mostly, to date, has shown me how abysmally my stamina has plummeted with all the inactivity with my knee so deteriorated. Slowly trying to build strength and stamina as fast as I can before the shot wears off. Now that the knee is mostly functional ( still clunks when I walk and now starting to wake me after 5-6 hours with stiffness and ache. I'm hoping I get 3 months out of the shot but only time will tell. Had my first toasted marshmallow last night. Cooked hamburgers for Wayne and some boneless chicken thighs for me with a foil packet of onions and peppers. Chicken was sliced and eaten on corn tortillas with the veggies. Very pleasant out there under the lilac at dusk. Until the mosquitos made their appearance And then went to put away "Pool Boy Johnny" only to find him half way up the deep end just hanging out. Sigh. I keep a thermometer hanging from the diving board on a long length of baling twine. Which Johnny tried to eat with his rollers. That took me awhile to untangle but thankfully does not appear to be any damage. I'll run it this afternoon to see if that's true.

And my fence has been acting up. Woke up Thursday to the transmitter beeping. Isolated the fault to, I thought, the surge protector. Seemed reasonable since we had a ton of lightning the previous few days though none directly around us. Ordered new fence surge protector but Friday night the transmitter started beeping again (also lightning in the far distance.) Started troubleshooting with a loop test on the transmitter. Failed at that outlet but for some unknown reason, I tried at a different outlet and it worked. It was late so went to bed to figure out the conundrum in the morning. Plugged it back in the original outlet with the fence wires and now it works. I don't believe I've heard the end of that story however. I've a couple of theories. One is there is a suspicious splice I made last winter when snow and my knee said we'll wait til summer to do it right. And now temperature/humidity fluctuations are making it unstable. The other theory is the outlet is putting out inconsistent power but it is way out of reach behind a bookcase and I use a power strip. Power strip is old surge protector with flickering on off switch. So likely need to replace that. But since everything is working at the moment, am loathe to fix what ain't broke. And starting to track the fence into the woods has shown me just how out of shape I am. If I do have to track the whole boundary wire, will have to be done in stages, I just don't have the stamina. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm trying to cut back on my inhaled steroids, it's an extremely damp, probably moldy environment out there and high humidity makes less oxygen available. So I'm really, really hoping the problem is electricity supply or failing transmitter. Either way, from the overgrowth, looks like I ought to get out there and clear the brush, low branches from the wire path. And probably mark the path and the splices so if it fails when I can't track it, someone else can.

And guessing it's about time to harvest the garlic. Expecting small bulbs as it's really weedy this year. I want get a bed prepared so I can get on early before I have my knee done. Or, at least, husband or son can plant it for me.

So how are everyone else these days?

We've gotten through the fireworks holiday. Annoying holiday, but the dogs did better than past years. Mostly because kenzi is the main one bothered by fireworks and her hearing has gone enough now that she doesn't notice most of them unless pretty close. Next year will be the interesting one with a baby and idiots who want to party and shoot off sporadically until 1am pretty much any night of the week leading up to the 4th.

We are mostly trying to not float away otherwise. We got 5 inches of rain in two nights. Wouldn't be so bad except of those two nights we got 2.5 on one in about 2 hours and the other night we got 2.5 inches in about 3 hours. That has been the go of it this year. Having rain is great but we are pretty much only having downpours which our ditch can't handle and then dumps over the hillside directly into our shop building. We have dug the ditch deeper and wider. We've bermed dirt up trying to further divert runoff. We are at the point where we are debating trying to pour a concrete "sea wall" between the shop and the road. Preferable option would be to lift the shop frame and extend the foundation wall taller then reset it, but figured around $30k to do that. Probably not wise to do right now with baby on the way and an old furnace we've been waiting to croak so we can justify digging for geothermal.

Brought in garlic last weekend. I didn't have much out. Mostly volunteers I didn't do a good job of getting in last season so they aren't large. I figure to make garlic powder out of them. Same with the onions I've brought in.

Wow! That's a lot of rain in a short period of time! Hubs flirts with the idea of geothermal - we certainly have the land for it. But he sort of has inertia when it comes to spending large amounts of money " you never know what's gonna happen down the road when we get really old." He's more than a bit wary having had 2 melanomas, multiple basal cells and now prostate cancer ( low grade with surveillance recommended.) His mom had 3 major primary cancer plus a few basal cells (which are, they say, a marker for predilection for other cancers) so he's fairly pessimistic about his future health risks. Me? I look at his 97 year old father, his 2 aunts in their 90s and his uncle on his mom's side who lived well into his 90s.

But our house would need some modification, and certainly upgrades to the envelope to make geothermal a reality. We currently have electric baseboard, only a 54" crawl space, leaky windows everywhere and I suspect the damn squirrels have done a number on the insulation in the attic over the family room ( a school house built in the early 1800s.) Not to mention the damage mice have done to the insulation behind the knee wall in the front upstairs bedroom. I've been fighting mice in that room forever, traps, poison only briefly successful. And there's no food up there, they bring seeds into the house!

Sigh. I'm guessing after we die or when we are forced by health to move, this house will be one of those fixer uppers that first time home owner purchase. If some private equity firm doesn't small it up for outrageous rental costs. (Sorry. Don't get me started)

Jenn - since you're entering the 2nd trimester, you shot begin to feel boundless energy and well being, a very productive time. As long as you don't let yourself get hungry

Al - I energy you the young dog energy in the house. Ami is approaching 12 and slowing down. Attached was here for a day and both dogs were limping when it was time for him to go home. And Ami had trouble getting into the car when we went out to eat (always a place with patio dining so the big boy gets an outing. With my knee and Wayne's hip, ain't a whole lot of walking going on, unfortunately.)

Jenn, do you have any idea what we'd give for 5 inches of rain? Well, how about 1/2 inch? What rain we do get gets soaked up so fast that ... well, humidity isn't a problem for more than a day, maybe two. 40% is way high since we're normally in the single digits, maybe teens.

Fireworks, you'd figure with a national park and tourists that we'd have more than our share but with federal (nat park), state (on the highway) and county monitoring everywhere looking for fires I almost dare anyone to light even a sparkler! We are so dry that we've been under an enforced burn ban for something like two - three years. Burning trash is only when there's no breeze. I wish we could convince either the ranch ( a pseudo development ) or the county to set up roll-offs like they have in Florida but they've indicated that personal trash is a personal problem ... and don't get me started on Texas politics!

Amy, with avalanche approaching 14 and Sky a solid 13 the 2 year old is a puppy! Picture this: We're standing in the doorway for Avalanche to go out, I have Avalanche by the collar with one hand, reaching for or have his lead in the other hand, Belle comes up and grabs Avalanche by the hock, I can't do anything, my hands are full, Avalanche can't do anything 'cause he can't turn around ... and Belle is having a ball! There've been a few times where Belle plays and Avalanche says "Nope!" and Belle sounds like he's killing her ... but that doesn't even slow her down.

Avalanche has reached the point that he has trouble getting up into the Jeep so I'm gonna have to get the ramp I used for Sasha out (don't even want to think about that!) He wants to go when I do but it's getting more difficult ...

I've gone through one crop of Tomatoes and have flowers and small growth for another crop. The fruit isn't particularly large, just right to cut into quarters and munch on. Wonder if I can take cuttings and winter them over ( after summer gets out of here )? Figs didn't do anything, set some small fruit and then dropped it before they got any size to them, I wonder if they'll set and produce this fall.

Dropped my Jeep off at one of our local mechanics - the one I would prefer to use has disappeared - with luck I'll have it back Wednesday ( wish in one hand ... )
Replace the driver door latch, I looked at that to do it and it ain't gonna happen!
Shift boots (upper and lower) ditto above comment
rear brakes ...
I figure somewhere around $750 but we'll see.....

Al - most definitely take cuttings of your tomato plant. They root super easy. And if they start to language over winter, take cuttings of your cuttings. What kind of lie temps do you get, anyway? You may have better luck getting tomorrow in fall or spring without the killing temperatures. We've got 88⁰ coming today. I'll cope by doing errands in the 4 Runner. Had functional air conditioning. Otherwise it's lazing around in bed with Ami and the air conditioning (only room in the house with an air conditioner - central air want needed here until the last several years. Another plus for potential geothermal)

I looked into geothermal and discovered they banned it here because of what it did in pagosa springs.

Dont get me started on weather. Trying to explain that 82 is a heatwave to texans just doesnt seem to compute. But watching them look like they took a bath in borscht is hilarious. They seem to miss the concept of uv and that at 8400 ft, the uv is actually 70% stronger then at sea level.

Lucky for me other then barking my dogs dont really care about fireworks, 3 of the 4 are bombproofed (thank you air force) amd spider doesnt care.

Speaking of spider, she has been banned from my mechanics shop. She has a curiosity about things that is sometimes bad. Its one thing for a dog to not care about power tools but a dog that eants to play with power tools... not good. And i have never seen a dog get in the way of dropping a tranny like she tried to do.

So al finally took the jeep in? And maybe you can explain something i keep hearing because maybe my brain is melting or im missing the insult. Customers keep saying "and god bless texas" when i say have a nice rest of your (insert day here) now i would expect hearing that in texas but since this is colorado is that a polite way to say "fuck you" or did the heat melt my brain?

Jenn congrats, im slightly jealous because i gave up and went on birth control after the 6th miscarriage, but im also extremely happy for you.

So here we can get a rebate through our electric cooperative to go with the federal tax rebates (while/if those last) and when it's all done you aren't in geothermal anymore than you would be into a new hvac system. Think when I looked it would cost us about $12k, which by the time we shell out $5k for a new heat pump and condenser unit, plus modification to the '90s setup for a modern system, and then installation there's no difference in cost to us. My biggest crux is I don't want a horizontal run system, I want the vertical wells. We have space for horizontal but I don't want the yard dug out in every direction so we would have some wait time on the one company that does it that way around here. The soil where we are is pretty safe for geothermal, now you go further north and the karst gets worse and poking holes in it can be iffy.

Last year we would have killed for a quarter of the rain we've gotten this year. Rain stopped in April last year and we didn't see a drop at our house again until pushing October. My parent's ponds almost dried up and they are deep ponds.

I'm not going back on BC after baby. When I went off it after 13 years my mental health made a huge turn around. I knew the stuff was giving me rage fits because I could feel it, that weird anger that just sits there for no apparent reason. Spent years controlling it and that all went away when I went off BC. The natural me doesn't really have mood swings, even pregnant I haven't, and so I am firm in not going back on the toxic stuff. Just really makes me wonder how many women who struggle with mental health do so simply because of their BC that they have been put on for a whole host of non-contraceptive reasons.

Jenn, wondering if the BC you were using had high progestins? I never used hormonal BC - back in the late 60s when it first came out, the first patient my dad prescribed it for, a young woman just getting married, stepped out and died. The pills were very high estrogen in those days. But the story sort of scared me off, big time. I used IUDs (with much monthly distress, unfortunately) and after my third baby, tubes were tied. But I still had rampant PMS with the family walking on eggshells 2 weeks a month. After my hysterectomy, went on a bioidentical bucchal troche and I can't believe how it evened out my mood (once we ditched the progesterone - that was rage City and created a storm in a local grocery store with 2 make store managers that probably still don't know what hot them .) I still use it today - mostly for bone health and colon cancer risk reduction.

I've been on several different kinds of pills over the years. Never did IUD or shots. Always just pills that would get changed every couple years as my body would break free of their scheduling.

Welp, today was a throwaway day. Remnants of Beryl, a system descending out of Canada and other complex weather phenomena have had the region on alert most of the day. Not just heat but, I think, the highest potential for tornados ever seen around here. Ten percent chance. There were warnings coming at us, skimming by just to the north and ditto to the south. I took down the pool umbrellas, all small side tables in the shed, potted flowers on the shed porch and electronics unplugged. Talk of torrential rain ( which my pool could have used.) the severe storms and tornados skipped us completely. Thankfully. And though there was rain, not sure it was even measurable. Not sure about areas around us, they were pretty much orange and red on the radar and more tornado warnings them I've ever seen up here. But I think they were probably minimal.

I have endometriosis so the bc helps with things but it does make me weird sometimes. Weird sometimes beats half the month in bed or only partially functional. Other then bleeding half the month i was controlling it fairly well with tramadol. Then the docs here all signed contracts saying they wouldnt prescribe it for more then 3 days and i had to explore other options. I have adhd so im already prone to weird moods.

Nothing but hot and dry here. I put the ginger outside yesterday. I will see if it can handle the uv. Like my rose that should love full sun will burn if i let it have full sun and not sure about the ginger.

I'm going to have to back up a bit since I haven't had anything to say to any of the last few days posts.

@amymeme - definitely going to take some cutting of the tomatoes since they've been blooming and bearing (sorta) all summer long and in this heat most tomatoes just wither and die.  I picked up the plant at our local (80 miles is local, right?) Home & Garden along with the Strawberries ... I'm going to have to see who the vendor was but I do remember that neither plant had a 'breed' on the tag.  The strawberries are suffering a bit in the heat but still blooming ... but not producing.  Sokay, we'll see what later in the year brings.

Y'all were talking about something called 'BC' and since I have no idea what that is, I guess it's not something that pertains to me.    Oddly interesting though.

I'll ignore the discussion about geotherm ... it's always been an interest of mine but it seems to have a need for electricity and getting enough solar panels and batteries to make one work would be, I think, prohibitive. I've wondered a few times about using 'heat' to cool the house. Warm house, a field of pipe with a lay that causes the air to come in from the outside, run through the pipes to cool off (relatively) and then into the house -- air being pulled into the house by the hot air rising and being pulled out. Don't tell me, it makes sense to me ....

In Texas, at least, electricity co-ops don't have to 'buy back' solar energy (if the house produces more than it uses) so there's no incentive to bulk up on panels.  But then Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) seem to be hand in glove on how to use our money ...

Beryl, it's not fair that Beryl went north!  Y'all already have more water than you need and we didn't get more than some shade (which sucks when you're getting electricity from solar!) For all y'all I hope it isn't as bad a summer for hurricanes as they're predicting. We could use the water and we have a pretty steady breeze anyway ... but Louisiana (where a friend lives) has no standing trees if I listen to her. So wet that it doesn't take much to just blow them over.

Had to laugh at the (relative) puppy.  She and Avalanche have had the same discussion a few times ...  both sprawled out asleep on the floor and Belle stretches ... Avalanche thinks someone is infringing on his space so wakes up enough to tear her (what'd *I* do??) a new one.  They're gradually learning to leave a little more space between themselves ... but they both tend to be slow learners at some things.

Yeah the "bc" i dont think you need to worry about getting pregnant.

https://www.drought.gov/states/colorado/county/rio%20grande shows us as having the 3rd wettest june in 130 years.

I get the idea of a cold room using pipes as a heat exchanger. I looked into it as a way to both cool and heat a greenhouse. But here i would have to do a sset of flowing water pipes in the floor along with the ceiling pipes. Seems like you could do a closed loop water system. My crazy neighbor built a wannabe perpetual motion machine that he uses during power outages. And yeah a real perpetual motion machine is even less likely to exist then a time machine, but his has a very small battery powered motor that kicks in to restart the machine when it goes too slow. I think if i was somewhere like west texas where its hot and dry most of the year i would look into energy generating bricks

We had considered doing a heat pump water heater. Pulls heat from the air to warm the water in the tank and then expels cool air pulled off the water. Would have been a nice little boost to our AC system in the summer. Our machine room in the basement though where it's already 60 degrees most of the time so we nixed that. If our machine room was upstairs where it's naturally warmer we would have went that route rather than a traditional water heater this last time. We had intended to go tankless but our water heater went down a little more suddenly than expected and didn't have time to do all the extra electric work to put in the tankless.

Beryl went through earlier, gave us a couple nice days and about 5 more inches of rain. Now we have a heat index of 110 today. Our humidity is through the roof and it's just gross out.

Since our humidity is normally in single digits - except for when I cuss it! - we don't normally concern ourselves with the heat index (and I don't know how to calculate it in the first place.  On the other hand since Beryl threw her weight around it's been hot and humid over here (86° w/ 56% humidity.)  We've had a couple of nice (for the water tanks) showers but really need more much more my tanks are about 1/4 full - say 2000 gallons - and that's not going to make it through the next summer -> spring.

ETA:  Oh, this is how you calculate the heat index .... right!

The house weather station said 93 degrees with 71% humidity when I got home from work yesterday. Gross would be an understatement. More rain possible today into tomorrow then heat should break.

We had another round of severe weather yesterday with tornados reported (though not, I think, yet verified.) High winds and up to 3" hail.Tons of damage, trees down everywhere and widespread power outages, many still ongoing (suspect a portion of our linemen crews are down in Texas ). We personally did not get hit with any of the masters but the wind and rain were wild for about a half hour. Was a bit worrisome as hubby was down running errands in the worst of it. In a convertible. After looking at radar and researching the warning, I tried to phone him to find a car wash to hide in our else park and go in store. Unfortunately our cellular connection was abysmal - I could hear him but he couldn't understand me. At one point he was sorry of trapped between two fallen trees (about a mile apart) but was able to backtrack and remove the smaller one. He finally stopped at a Chinese buffet to wait out the second round. But he was soaked when he got home.

And, today? Another round with a tornado warning blatting on my phone. Didn't last long before heading east and I didn't think it touched down. Only issue for us is high wind, brought some vulnerable plants inside and, wind being from the south, the pool umbrellas are safe with their backs up to trees and brush that form a nice windbreak ( the umbrellas are closed up tightly and in heavy cast iron bases. The tables are that metal mesh so they don't catch a lot of wind - but if that wind were from the north, is be scurrying!

Sigh I had a canine tooth filling replaced last week and since, I've been having upper and lower, intermittent, brief but severe nerve pain. Which oddly enough, does not involve the canine. Really hip it settles down 'cause it's a b*#$h when it happens. When suspects trigeminal neuralgia which is not funny in the least. I think if I were a more vulnerable person right now, I might shoot myself. Instead, I'm just mighty irascible

Welp. Is a root canal good news? I have a big cavity under a3 piece bridge. They're gonna try to drill through the bridge but if they can't thanks it's pull the tooth.

Sigh. I hate my teeth. They've been trouble since I was 6 years old

Owowowowowowowo That doesn't sound like fun unless you're a confirmed masochist! Good luck to you with that.

Let's see if I can really mess this up. Much of my childhood I lived with my grandparents, our drinking water came from a spring that had a high iron content. As I understand it, iron replaces the calcium in a persons teeth and eventually that iron leaches out and you're left with a mouth full of rotten teeth ... yep! I think the powers that be that I don't very often feel anything. A cavity rots out and pieces of my teeth fall off but seldom is there any pain ... and tylenol take care of that ...

Oh yeh @amymeme you have my sympathy ....

Thanks, Al. I was beside myself last night, Tylenol wasn't touching it. Wayne tried some gentle traction since it felt like it was worse with head flexion/extension. Tried warm compress on the side of my face. Finally in desperation I took half of I've of those CBD gummies Wayne got me for my knee. It didn't do much for my knee but was a miracle for the nerve pain last night. The dentist kept apologizing over and over, saying it's not visible in clinical exam, only shows on xray. Started back on antibiotics today - I finally got my stomach back to normal, about 2 weeks ago finished my last course of famotidine. As soon as I mentioned antibiotics, I remembered the multiple courses I was on last year with that root canal. Suspect that may have been what messed about my stomach. Hope it doesn't happen again. Will be eating lots of yogurt, berries, cabbage family stuff, try to keep a good microbiome population.

Like my mom said "getting old is not for sissies. '