Forty-one Years Ago

Today is my wedding anniversary. I have been married to the same man for 41 years.

Marriage is not easy. It is hard work, especially when you have two strong-willed and stubborn people living together. I was not and never will be a submissive wife. In fact, I removed that word "obey" from our wedding vows. Love, honor, and cherish only in this marriage. None of that obeying stuff on either party's part.

We both look at each other sometime and say, "Didn't we just get married about three weeks ago?" but there is a lifetime of memories behind those words.

There is the day we met.

The day we wed.

The day we moved into the home we built ourselves, each of us pounding nails.

The day I had the first of many surgeries, almost a month to the day after I went off birth control so we could try for a baby.

The day I finally had a hysterectomy, and the knowledge that the idea of a child was no more.

The days he became a lieutenant and each successive promotion after, until he became a battalion chief for the fire department in the nearby city.

The death of my mother and the death of his father.

The births of our nephews and my niece, and now my grand niece and nephew.

The day he caught his arm in the hay baler and the long recovery from that accident.

The day he had his ankle fused together.

The day he had his hip surgery.

So many days, all of them flying by as we aged, and time moved faster and faster as we acknowledged that our time was growing less with each passing moment.

 Those early jokes we made to one another about being old - now almost a reality (neither of us have dentures, but we have mouth guards).

And here we are, still holding hands when we walk through the store, still kissing in the parking lot, still holding on to each tightly in spite of the bad times and the good.

Still laughing at private jokes, making up silly songs to sing to one another, still learning who the other person is, even after all these years, because people wake anew every day, and you have to learn it all over again.

God love him, he has put up with a lot of crazy from me, with my creative bent leading me down strange paths, from writing to newspapers to editing books and doing other things that make a heart happy and a bank account poor.

Marrying him was the best day of my life. I hope it was the same for him, and I think it was.

Love. It's what the world is all about.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to my one and only fellow. 

He gets to celebrate his special day today.

He Is Morning

My husband is a morning person. He's also a fairly jolly guy, not prone to moodiness or depression, and generally a happy fellow.

He has a sunny disposition and if things bother him, he doesn't show it. He doesn't mope around or talk about the things that are on his mind. He goes about his business, doing whatever it is he has set up for the day.

He comes in at lunch time for a meal and a kiss. I fix him a sandwich, usually, because that is all he wants. Some days we do eat salads, because we're adults and are supposed to be eating healthy things like that.

Before he retired, he used to get up around 5 a.m. almost every day.

When we married, those many decades ago, I determined I was going to be the good, dutiful wife and wake up with him and fix him breakfast before he went off to the fire station or to help his dad on the farm.

This lasted about two weeks.

One morning, I woke to fix him breakfast and stumbled into the kitchen, all bleary eyed and barely awake. I got a dozen eggs out of the refrigerator and . . . splat! I dropped them, and they broke all over the floor.

I took one look at them and burst into tears. He laughed and told me to go back to bed. "You don't have to fix my breakfast," he said.

And from then on, I did not. Nor did I get out of bed at 5 a.m. He would wake me before he left to offer me a goodbye kiss, and generally then I would wake up and rise from my bed. He didn't do any other things that I could see aside from fix himself breakfast and leave the dishes for me to clean up - but he doesn't like a lot of breakfast, anyway, and these days he is happy with a piece a toast or a few sausage links, or something like that, for breakfast.

He has taken to fixing us breakfast on Saturday and Sunday in the last year, something that surprised me. He fries a good egg. He also has bacon.

He's a morning person, my guy is.

My Morning Person

Oops

Picture it: Friday, the day before my 40th wedding anniversary. My husband oversleeps, meaning he doesn't get his deer hunting in quite as early as he'd planned.

I also overslept. Everything felt "off."

He received a call that his motorcycle, which he'd sent to the shop to have repaired back in the spring, was finally running. However, it needed an entire engine rebuild. He told the man he'd pick up the bike.

My husband on his bike in better days.

I offered to drive him to the shop so he could ride the bike home, but the inspection sticker was out of date. I suggested he take it and have a sticker put on it, but he said no, he'd take the trailer and bring it home.

He arrived back here about a two hours later. I went outside and asked if he needed help.

"Yes," he said.

He had the bike on the trailer and there were tie-downs on it. He took several off but then had trouble with one. It was something called a "come along" that he'd bought at a tractor supply store. It hung shut and he couldn't get it undone. He went after it with a screwdriver.

I stood awaiting instructions, and I started looking at the remaining tie-down/come along thing where I was standing. I wondered why he was having such a problem with them, and I began inspecting it.

He moved to the toolbox on his truck. I hit some button on the come along, and zip! The thing came undone.

I felt jubilation for about 1/2 second that I had helped until I saw the motorcycle fall.

Motorcycles aren't supposed to hit the ground. Or the side of the trailer.

My husband had this stricken look on his face as he looked at his baby. I tried to help him set it upright, but the two of us could not lift it. He had to get his cousin to help him. They set the bike upright. The handlebars had hit the side of the trailer in such a way that the throttle cable was cut.

Otherwise, it appeared undamaged. But that was enough to make me feel mighty bad. Later, he told me the bike needed so much repair in the engine that it wasn't going to be good for anything but parts anyway. So, he wasn't as upset as he might have been.

And it was an accident. And he had not told me not to fiddle with the come along. He said he was having so much trouble with them that he never thought it would come undone like that. I had thought the motorcycle was securely seated on its kickstand. I didn't see that there was another tie-down on the other side (that's what pulled it over).

After he and his cousin got it off the trailer, he stowed the motorcycle in the garage where it used to sit, but it reeked of gasoline and oil, so he put it back outside. The next morning, after he'd gone hunting, he put the bike back on the trailer (with his cousin's help, not mine) and hauled it down to the shed. Which, frankly, is where he should have taken it in the first place.

My husband is almost 65 years old. I have never told him not to ride his motorcycle, but he hasn't been on it much. After he injured his hand in 2014, one of his first concerns was would he be able to ride? He could, but he didn't. And then when he has his ankle fused together, that was another question. Would he be able to ride? He could, but he didn't.

And that's why the motorcycle has issues. It sat. It sat in the garage taking up space, and last spring when he got it out to start it, the gaskets on the carburetor blew and filled the motor with gas and oil. Or something like that. At any rate, the motorcycle is 20 years old. It still looks good. But his ticket to ride is null and void.

The Long Day

Yesterday, I took my husband to the hospital for MOHS surgery. This is surgery for skin cancer. About six weeks ago, I noticed a small black dot on my husband's face. It was different from his other skin lesions, and I suggested he have it checked.

It came back positive as a basal cell carcinoma and the primary care physician did not get it all in the initial biopsy. Of course, his came back as a rare kind since it was black. Usually, these things are a little white pearly bump. Basal cell is not that big of a deal and is fairly common, although no one wants to be told they have a cancer.

Anyway, the surgery to remove the remainder of his skin cancer was yesterday. We were told it could be an all-day event.

Actually, it took about as long for him to get this taken care of than it did to have his hip replaced.

When he went in, the woman looked first at a place below his ear, which we had thought was a cyst. She said no, it needed to come off, and since she was cutting on him, she did both places. The initial place was across from his eye and down about a finger's width on his cheek.

She did the surgery on both places, and we waited. The test results indicated she'd cut out all the cancer in the first spot, but the new second spot that she'd decided to go ahead with was positive (no one ever said what kind of cancer it was), and she didn't get it all.

So, we had to wait some more for him to go back in for a second surgery on this spot.

We had lunch at the hospital cafeteria while we waited. Then we waited some more in the waiting room. We were there about six and a half hours, and he came out with half of his face bandaged up.

When we returned home, he went hunting. He was supposed to take it easy today, and he mostly has, but he is back out hunting again this evening.

In the meantime, some other family things that are not my story to tell, but which are worrisome, have been weighing heavily on my mind.

It's made for a tough few days.

Happiness Challenge - Day 22

 

Today I am happy that my husband didn't cut his leg off.

He dropped a pickle jar as he was putting it back in the refrigerator, and it shattered. A big piece hit his leg and shaved off a good inch of skin. It wasn't deep, but it bled a lot.

I rushed around trying to take care of him and clean up pickle juice all at the same time. I was trying to keep the pickle juice from running under the refrigerator, plus there was glass everywhere, and he was bleeding somewhat profusely.

After I got him in a chair and his bloody shoes off of him so I could see what he'd done to his shin, I saw that he probably didn't need stitches. I hunted up the bandages and patched him up, then cleaned up the mess. After he rested and the blood finally stopped oozing, he helped me clean up. I was having difficulty with the mopping, so I was glad he was well enough to help me with that.

I told him I was not buying him anymore pickles. This is the second jar of pickles he's dropped and busted in the last year.

Pickle juice is very hard to get up off the floor.

The Legend

While we were visiting the Virginia Fire Museum Saturday, my husband saw two trucks that he was quite familiar with.

One was not being displayed, but he recognized the rear end of it immediately. It is a type of fire truck called a Quint. A Quint served as a pumper and as a ladder truck.

My husband hated it. I can remember hearing him fuss about that truck as if it were yesterday instead of 1995. He said it was absolutely useless on a fire scene.

My man reviewing the Quint he used to ride on at Station 13.

The other truck, though, was Ladder 1. This was a "real" ladder truck, one that bent in the middle and had a driver in the rear.

This was a truck he loved.

My husband rode this piece of firefighting equipment. In fact, he was on the committee that designed it and was instrumental in its setup.

I'm not sure how my husband fit in that tiny little place in the back.

While we were looking at the truck, my husband struck up a conversation with one of the men helping with the museum. He told him his name, and the fellow said, "Oh, I know who you are. You're a legend at the city."

My husband has never given himself much credit for the work he did at the fire department. It was an enormous job, being a firefighter. He saved people during floods, he worked car wrecks, he put out fires, he saw things people shouldn't ever see. He rose from the bottom of the ranks to Battalion Chief, and I was ever so proud of him with each promotion. He took his role as mentor to the younger firefighters seriously, setting aside time to help them train and learn. He knew where his people were on the fire scene at all times; he never did simply "surround, drown, and burn 'em down," - his people actually put the fires out and saved people and property. They knew they were expected to do their jobs when Battalion 2 was on scene.

I was thrilled to hear someone call him a "legend" at the city fire department. I know he is highly thought of, and he left on good terms. When he hurt himself on the farm in 2014, I had to ask to the nursing staff to keep the firefighters out of the room so he could rest after his surgeries on his hand. Nearly every one of them who brought a patient to the ER wanted to come in and see how Chief was doing.

He's been retired now for three years (I can't believe it's been that long.).

They still call him Chief when they see him. Sometimes they call. "Can I talk to Chief?" they will say.

It always makes me smile.

He is a legend. They don't make them like him anymore.

A Catch-Up Post

Healthcare

Thursday, I saw my cardiologist for a follow-up on my echocardiogram. I am fine, except for "old age" issues. I have a right ventricular valve that's doing a little splashing about, which has caused the new heart murmur sound that had my primary care doctor concerned.

But the cardiologist was like a different person. He was nice when I saw him the first time. But this time, he was, frankly, a jerk. As soon as I asked one question about statins - how did they mix with medications I am already on - he immediately said I wasn't interested in taking them so there was no point in discussing it. I told him my PCP had suggested Zetia and he waved that away as if it were nothing. Then he went on to say that if I weren't going to take whatever drug he offered me, there was no point in my returning to see him. I could try diet and exercise and good luck to me. He wouldn't discuss "diet" either, as in, what I should or shouldn't eat. He didn't even offer a handout with diet information on it. 

He was rather combative, actually, and I was appalled.

This is why I dislike dealing with the Carilion Health Care system in Roanoke. I do not get good care there. This surprised me because my husband was with me and usually, I am treated better when he is there, but not this time. Of course, he didn't speak up, either.

There are many medications I cannot tolerate. I haven't tried statins for about 20 years, and I couldn't take them then. I have no idea what may or may not have changed in 20 years, but he certainly wasn't going to discuss it.

So I left without any drugs for my high cholesterol (I don't think it's *that* high myself, although I know the doctors do). I mean, if this were 1983, my cholesterol would be considered low. But it 2023, and so it is considered high.

Even red rice yeast makes me feel bad. I take a little of that, along with flax seed oil, to try to help with my cholesterol but I have to be careful with it. It makes me have brain fog and I like to think properly.

My father and brother both also have cholesterol issues, so I am sure this is hereditary. I am not going to worry about it too much. Maybe I should, but I honestly think the numbers are more about selling drugs than making people healthy.

Sunday

Sunday began ok, with us sleeping in for a change. Then my husband spilled his sugar with a little coffee in it (he drinks it like it's a syrup), and that was a sticky mess. Then he went to check on his mother and discovered the thermostat on her air conditioning unit wasn't working, so he had to call the repair people.

While he was over there with her, I saw a huge coyote come from the direction where the cows are, so I called him and asked him to go check the cattle as soon as he could.

He discovered a dead calf, which he then had to bury.

Aside from the coffee/sugar cleanup, this was stuff that affected him more than it affected me, but I still found it a stressful day. Losing a calf is always hard, and this was another newborn. Not only does that make me sad, but it's also a financial hit. Selling the calves after they've been weaned is how we make money raising cattle. No calf, no sale.

Plus, we have to watch the mom cow now to make sure she doesn't go into mastitis or develop an infection. 

When the cattle roam over a large acreage, we can't keep an eye on them constantly, and with predators like coyotes and vultures roaming around, it's a certainty we're going to lose calves now and then.

And besides, what affects him also affects me. How could it not after almost 40 years of marriage?

*Bing AI produced the images.*

Insides of a Septic System

My husband retired from the fire department to install septic tanks, which was a second job he worked with his father until his father passed away.

These are photos of the insides of a septic system. Or some of it, anyway. The tanks are not shown; they're already buried. City dwellers have no clue about such things, but they're common out here in the sticks.

He's My Number One

Many happy returns to my beloved, who today celebrates his birthday.

We are celebrating by having fertilizer put on the hayfields this afternoon.

Tomorrow night we will celebrate more with hamburgers and apple pie (his request).

I gave him tools this morning for a present, along with a card.

So happy birthday to my fellow, one of the good ones, and he's all mine!

Bing Image. Tractor Birthday Cake.

Metal In Your Eye

Friday morning, as I hovered near the telephone awaiting word from other family members about surgery my father was undergoing, I noticed that my husband's right eye was red and swollen.

"I think you need to go to the doctor," I said, after he told me he'd gotten some dust in it. "You may have scratched something."

"It'll be fine. I'll use some Visine," he muttered. And his eye did look better after that, and I said no more about it.

My father had his surgery and was doing ok; he would be in the hospital all weekend. I called and texted to keep a check on him.

Saturday, as my husband helped me change the bed, I looked at him closely for the first time (I am not a morning person). "You're eye is swollen. It looks even worse," I said.

"I can't do anything about it, the doctor's offices are closed and I'm not going to the emergency room," he said. Then he told me his eye had hurt all night, that every time he shut his eyelid, he felt pain.

"We're calling the emergency number. They'll have a doctor on call who will open up an office and see you," I said.

He called the number for his doctor's office, and when they sent him to the hospital number, he hung up. "I'm not going to the emergency room," he repeated.

Sigh. Men can be so stubborn.

"Call back and go through and they'll let you talk to the doctor on call. Tell him what's going on." I handed him the phone.

"I'm not going to the emergency room," he muttered as he dialed again. He was put through to the doctor on call. She listened to him describe what was wrong and she said she thought she should check him out. Could we meet her at the office in Roanoke in an hour?

That was a 45-minute drive and neither of us were dressed, but we hurriedly shrugged on clothes, and I hauled him off to be seen. In the meantime, family members were texting me that my father was doing ok. I let them know I was dealing with a little emergency of my own.

We arrived at the Roanoke office before the eye doctor. She was prompt, though, hitting the door at the hour mark. She took us into the shut-up building, turning on lights as she went. She sat my husband in a chair and had him read a chart. His vision in the inflamed eye was poor. She added drops to his eye and some kind of dye stuff, then looked in.

"Flakes of metal. One big one and some tiny ones," she pronounced. "I'll have to get those out there. They will rust and cause even more problems. It's a good thing you called."

I had not considered the possibility of metal rusting in an eye, but it makes sense that it would. She poured more drops in his eye, and fortunately those swept away all of the small particles. The large one though, sat in the middle of his pupil. That one she removed and showed to me. It was no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence, really. But I imagine it felt like a boulder in my husband's eye.

She checked for rust, but fortunately found none. She gave him a prescription for antibiotic drops and sent us on our way. He has a recheck appointment later this week.

The first thing I did when I returned home and got him settled was ask him what his readers are in terms of magnification. He said he didn't wear his safety glasses because he needed to wear his reading glasses to see up close. But they make safety glasses with readers built in. I just didn't know what magnification to purchase.

Turns out, neither did he, so Sunday we made a trip to the local CVS so he could try on glasses and figure out what he needed. Having determined that a 2.50 or a 2.75 would work, I came back home and ordered him safety glasses with readers built in. They should be here today.

It's always something.

My father, meanwhile, is still in the hospital. He had back surgery for severe arthritis in his back. Today is Monday and he's still there. It was a big surgery, and he's 81 years old. So he's where he ought to be.

And my husband's eye is looking much, much better.

Sports

Virginia Tech's women's basketball team is going to The Final Four! They had an amazing game last night against Ohio State.

Regular readers are probably doing a double take, as I seldom write about sports. But I have watched the last two Virginia Tech women's basketball games. I generally don't root for the Hokies - we're University of Virginia fans here - but when Virginia Tech is playing the big dogs, we are Virginians first and root for them.

The team will be going up against LSU on Friday night. I plan to watch that game, too.

Just because I don't watch sports doesn't mean I know nothing about them. I may not be up on player names, stats, etc., but I do understand how most games are played. I think I like basketball best of all, as it is almost always constant action.

Some sports are slow. Baseball bores me to sleep, as does golf, bowling, and tennis. I have watched women's tennis matches before, but all that batting back and forth becomes monotonous.

I enjoy ice skating, as I find it beautiful, and during the Olympics we watch other winter sports like the luge or skiing. We watch the summer Olympics, too, but not as much.

My husband is a big fan of racing, so he watches NASCAR. Let's face it, the only reason to watch NASCAR (look, they're making a left turn! Now they're making another left turn!) is to watch somebody wreck. I lost my taste for that when I saw Dale Ernhardt die at Daytona in real time. My firefighter husband, watching the emergency folks, knew the driver was dead long before any announcement was made.

He does not watch football, baseball, or much of anything else, except for hunting shows. I suppose that's a sport, but it does not interest me. I'd rather do my shooting with a camera.

Since he does not watch other sports, I don't watch them, either. He reads the sports pages in the newspaper (yes, we still get a print newspaper), and I glance at them sometimes. Generally, I am more interested in the high school sports than anything else. I like to know how the local kids are doing.

Virginia Tech, at the moment, are the local kids.

It didn't take long to figure out who the stars on the team were. Georgia Amoore, who hails from Australia and is only 5' 6", is a stunning player on the court. She was free and easy with free-throws, and obviously a team leader. She dropped the ball into the net nearly every time with scarcely a thought (though she missed a number of 3 pt attempts last night). Elizabeth Kitley is also a strong player. She was the leading scorer last night.

So, go Hokies! Yay for the women's team!

Thursday Thirteen

About a year ago, my husband stopped chewing tobacco. His doctor would not perform his hip replacement surgery unless he gave up his nicotine. He was also told that returning to chewing would impede his hip replacement.

So, 13 good things about the end of my husband's habit in celebration of his year of going without the nasty stuff:

1. He isn't spending thousands of dollars on something he spits in a cup.

2. His teeth are much whiter.

3. There aren't bottles with tobacco spit sitting in my kitchen.

4. The trash can no longer smells like someone threw up a bag of Wintergreen Lifesavers.

5. There are no longer little flecks of black stuff all over the kitchen floor.

6. There are also no longer little flakes of black stuff all over the bathroom sink. (That's the tobacco he'd spill when he was putting it in his mouth; he can't see it anymore and won't wear his glasses.)

7. I don't have to worry about accidentally picking up a bottle and taking a swig of tobacco spit. (This only happened once, thank goodness.)

8. The probability of him developing mouth cancer has decreased significantly.

9. His muscles should be in better shape, as it is my understanding that the nicotine weakens muscles and keeps healing from happening. (That's what his doctor said, anyway.)

10. His breath smells better.

11. I don't know if the tobacco was a factor, but his blood sugar issues have decreased significantly.

12. His risk for heart disease was lessened when he stopped chewing tobacco.

13. My car (and I assume his truck) is cleaner because there aren't little specks of chewing tobacco or a stinking bottle of chewing tobacco spit in the vehicle.

__________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 798th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Got You on My Mind

Today's my wedding anniversary. We're at the big 39 years - wow. One more year until the big 40.

Some days we look at each other and say, "Weren't we just married 3 weeks ago?" because we have no idea where the time has gone. Here he is retired from one job as a battalion chief with the nearby city's fire department, while still farming and installing septic tanks, and I've managed to obtain three college degrees and a have a career as a news writer.

In a blink, it seems a distant memory. In my dreams, it catches up to me and I see it unfold like a roll of cloth, each turn revealing a different pattern. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly.

The minutia of two lives entwined.

While our marriage has been sturdy, I think how fragile it all is. Had we each made different decisions early on - like, not having gone to a high school football game where we met - we may never have known one another and lived entirely different lives. I am reminded daily, especially now that we're older, that it can all change from calm to chaos in a second - all it takes is a fall, a cut, an illness, an accident - and our lives are not the same as they were.

We are heading into the twilight years now, I guess. Still pushing, still working, still trying to be our best selves for one another and for this ol' planet we call home. We consider ourselves caretakers of the little land we manage, as we're only borrowing it for our lifetime.

Thank you, my best beloved, for these terribly beautiful 39 years. I'm looking forward to the remainder of our lives together.

When we were young, beautiful, and clueless.

Thursday Thirteen

My wedding anniversary is coming up, so I thought I'd list 13 things I love about my husband.

1. Big heart.

2. Loyal.

3. Gentle.

4. Understanding.

5. Smart.

6. Patient.

7. Informed.

8. Interesting.

9. He has the best giggle when he laughs.

10. Big hands with a soft touch.

11. Active.

12. Strong.

13. Handsome.

Isn't he handsome? I do miss that uniform since he retired.

___________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 782nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

The Death Knell of The Roanoke Times

My husband's howl of frustration early yesterday morning had me out of my office chair and racing toward the kitchen.

"They did away with the comics. We won't be renewing our subscription," he announced as I turned the corner from the hall into the great room.

With that, our mutual 39-year love affair with The Roanoke Times will soon be at an end. Our subscription is up for renewal in about a month.

From the looks of it, we won't be getting a daily newspaper for the first time in our long marriage. And I, who have been reading the paper daily at least for the last 55 years, won't have that bit of information and entertainment to preoccupy me at breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

I always did like to read the paper with a meal.

The Roanoke Times and I go back a long way. I remember sitting at my grandparents' kitchen table, reading the front page, when I was five. I overheard my grandfather asking my grandma what I was doing, pretending to read the paper. I promptly began reading it aloud to him. My grandmother assured Grandpa that I didn't really understand what I was reading, I just knew the words.

She was wrong. And right. I was five, so of course I couldn't really understand the headlines of war in Vietnam, the numbers about budgets, the discussions of race, the talk of hippies. But I began to understand, and I suspect I understood more than the adults around me thought.

One of the first things my husband and I did after we married was obtain a subscription to The Roanoke Times & World News, as it was called then. We received the afternoon edition, which ended eventually and in 1995 the paper changed its name to The Roanoke Times and only put out a single daily edition.

I wrote for The Roanoke Times & World News for a while, freelancing for what they then called "The Neighbors" section. This was a pull-out magazine type of news with feature stories about various areas in it. I also covered graduations and occasionally ball games, calling those stories in "old school" - from the floor of a payphone at the Salem Civic Center or the high school. I'd sit in the little booth, glancing at my notes and making the story up in my head. I repeated it on the phone to Charlie Stebbins, who taught me to say things like "end graph" and "sub headline" or whatever the story called for, while I was quickly scanning my scribbles about pomp and circumstance or jump shots, composing in my brain. It had to be done then in order for the story to make the morning paper.

There were no delays.

This was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I think. I did it for a few years, off and on.

I daresay few young writers today will ever have that experience, not with their laptops at the ready and the Internet satellites beaming their words instantaneously to the news editor's desk. They won't know what it is like to work with someone else to get a story out, not like that, anyway.

So, I have watched the decline of The Roanoke Times with dismay. It echoes what's going on around the nation, and I suppose the world. The younger generation turns to Instagram and social influencers for their news. They don't know the joy of reading a long, well-written and thoroughly researched article. They listen to podcasts to form their opinions, and we've created a vast echo chamber for one another. We can select to listen to only those folks we agree with. (And let's not forget to mention where the news actually comes from - newspapers like the dying Roanoke Times.)

At least in The Roanoke Times, which is not, as some people claim, a "liberal rag," there was a variety of opinions in the op-ed pages. Reporters' opinions were generally left outside of the story, though as the times changed and opinion reporting became more the norm in TV outlets, objective journalism began to fall by the wayside.

I still see good journalism, but most people, I have learned, read a story and only see what they want to agree with anyway, whether the story actually says what they think it says or not. Or at least that was my experience with the thousands of articles I wrote, because the Republicans thought I was one of theirs, and the Democrats thought I was one of theirs, and for decades I never said anything about which tribe I belonged to, and even today, when many people would label me a Democrat, I reject the label more and more, because there's not really a party out there that represents me. I am no one's huckleberry.

The Roanoke Times used to come to us on Sunday fat as a hog that was overfed the previous day, ads bursting from it, with articles from local reporters who busted their ass to investigate, and investigate thoroughly, the issue of the day. Some of those articles could be quite long, running on for pages.

I read them with relish.

But the advertising declined, and the paper thinned. Old reporters retired and were not replaced. Now, others have been forced out, and others still have jumped from what is obviously a nearly sunken ship.

The paper is attempting to go completely digital. Alienating those of us who still prefer paper is the way to do that, apparently, given the recent changes to the print edition. More and more, they want us to use our smart phones and hit the QR code (which is something I can barely manage, so I shudder to think what the older folks do) and visit the website.

There's something glorious about reading a paper, a thrill that I do not get reading the same thing on a computer screen. It's similar to holding a paperback instead of my Kindle; it's really not the same experience. It's also not an experience that folks under 30 comprehend, given a conversation I had today with a young friend who doesn't understand the allure of getting a little black ink on your hands while you are eating your chicken salad sandwich at lunch.

A newspaper is a work of art, full of other art forms. The advertisements could be an art, the comics are art - the writing frequently was (and sometimes still is) of the level of art. The newspapers I remember - not the skinny little things of today - were feasts of delight that had a little something in it for everyone, a virtual potluck of information and entertainment unmatched by anything else available.

And to think that the owners - hedge fund operators, really - have let this artform languish to the point of death is ghastly and appalling. To know that it is because of the almighty dollar bill is gut-wrenching.

To think that it was likely inevitable is the most depressing thought I will have today.

Thanks for the good times, The Roanoke Times. I salute what you once were and mourn what you have become.

Husband Update

Husband has been released from his doctor after a post-op checkup earlier this week.

He can do anything he feels like doing.

So yay.

At the moment, he's taken over some of my duties while I try to get the swelling out of my hand and get it back to working properly.

When he was off sick, we had no rain. Now he could work, but it is raining, and a farmer doesn't cut hay in the rain, generally speaking.

Maybe next week he can start back to work on the farm.

I am very pleased he did so well with this hip replacement surgery. They have come a long way in techniques so that the healing process is not as bad as it once was.

Husband Update

The husband is doing well following his hip replacement surgery on June 20. He has his post-op appointment last week and was told to continue his physical therapy exercises and do whatever he felt like - including driving.

The physician's assistant suggested he drive first in a parking lot and stomp on the brakes a few times to see how it felt. If it hurt, then don't drive and try again in a few days.

My husband tends to brake with his left foot anyway. He has more trouble getting in and out of vehicles than anything. His truck suits him much better than my Camry.

He is still no ball of fire, but it's only been three weeks, and I think he's doing well for that period of time.

The incision appears to be healing well. I don't like to look at it but I see it when I help him dry off his feet. He still can't bend over far enough to do that.

Fortunately, he can now put on his own socks.

Hip Replacement Update

We're now into day 9 of post-surgical healing.

Husband is still using a walker, and the physical therapist (?) person came and removed his bandage on Monday. The cut is about six inches long; the bruising covers most of the backside of his leg and some of it has moved down into his calf. I am keeping an eye on that.

The biggest struggle has been compression stockings. He is to wear these every day, and I have struggled so to get them on him that I have sprained my left hand (which obviously doesn't help with the situation). My fingers last night were swollen; I had to ice them. My hand is swollen today, too. His right ankle, the same side as the new hip, was fused together in 2019, so that foot is especially difficult as he can't bend any to help slide the socks on. What a workout every morning!

He has physical therapy exercises that he tells me he is doing, but I can't exactly see that he is doing them.  I can't see if he's sitting there squeezing his butt cheeks together or pushing his knee down like he's supposed to.

The physical therapist told him to continue using the walker until he sees the doctor next week, although I personally think he should be using a cane more, like for short trips to the bathroom. The longer a person holds onto a walker, the harder it is to get them off of it.

He is getting up a lot at night, and he can't get back into the bed without help, so I am not getting much sleep. If I can catch a day when there isn't much going on, I need a long nap.

It is too hot and sticky for him to spend time outside because then he'd have to shower again, and I can't handle drying off his lower legs but once a day. With my abdominal issues, all of that bending over is difficult.

The hospitals really should ask if the caregiver is actually capable of giving care, and maybe a nurse should have demonstrated how to put the damn compression stockings on before surgery. I think true health care would focus not only on the patient, but also on the immediate family, because it affects them as much as it does the patient. I mentioned numerous times to the doctor, the PA, and anyone else, that I was disabled, but no one cared nor asked about it. Had someone asked me if I thought I could deal with this, especially the physical aspects of it, I would have said no. I can fetch and carry and feed him, but these other chores that require bending and physical force are almost (though obviously not entirely) beyond me. The fact that I have hurt my hand doing these things is a good indicator that I shouldn't have been doing them, in my opinion.

I see my chiropractor to get my back adjusted, because I've pulled it out struggling with the compression socks. I'm not sure how long an adjustment will last under the current circumstances.

Anyway, we're still plugging along, and I'm doing the best I can, and that will have to be good enough.

The Husband's Hip Replacement

I have not said much about my husband's need for a hip replacement, because this has been his issue. While it affects me greatly, my input in how things went down was minimal.

I'm just the little woman, second class citizen and all, anyway. (Yes, I'm writing this after the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS decision. I will discuss that more some other time.)

Also, I cannot speak to his pain. I know he was hurting, and I know he was having problems, but pain is subjective. I've lived with what I consider a be a level 5 - 8 pain since my gallbladder surgery in 2013. Some days it's doable. Most days it isn't. Some people (generally women, in my experience) can withstand pain better than others. He has said his pain ranged from a 3 to an 8, depending on what he was doing.

I can't speak to anything else about this entire event except from my perspective. So that is what this is. This is what happened to me while my husband had surgery.

We've known since late December that my husband would need to have his hip replaced due to arthritis and degeneration of cartilage and all of that. However, before the doctor would operate, he required that my husband be off nicotine for six weeks prior to surgery. My husband does not smoke, but he chewed tobacco, and had for as long as I'd known him. I'd tried unsuccessfully to get him to stop, but the surgeon was able to do something I could not.

My husband quit chewing tobacco.

However, that took a long time, the weaning off of it, and in the interim my husband opted for a steroid shot in his hip, which also meant a three-month delay in the surgery. By then, it was spring and there were septic tanks to install, and the first cutting of hay to get up, and all of this other guy stuff that he wanted to deal with. He had his ankle fused in the winter of 2019, and we lucked out and had a mild year as far as freezing and snow then. Husband realized that even if he has to pay someone to make hay in July (which we will have to do), he'd be better off to do the surgery in the summer because the cows can take care of themselves during warm weather. They don't need to be fed and the watering troughs aren't going to freeze. They are giving birth, and we've already lost one calf to vultures, but generally speaking our cows are on their second or third birth and are good mammas. He would lose some septic tank installation work, perhaps, but since Covid and with a recession here (it's here I don't care what the economists say), work has been slow anyway. A cousin and a friend agreed to check on the cattle a few times a week.

As for me, my doctor insisted I get the fourth booster for Covid if I had to spend a day in the hospital waiting room, so that was my only personal preparation aside from attempting to strengthen my endurance and walk more, which succeeded only in making me hurt more. On Friday, June 17, the young woman who helps me with the heavy housework performed a thorough cleaning, and we removed rugs and obstacles.

Monday, June 20, was the big day. We had to be at the hospital in Roanoke at 6 a.m. My husband insisted we get up at 3:30 a.m. on Monday to get there, even though it's a 30-minute drive, especially at that time of morning. The traffic is worse after 6 a.m. He had to take a special shower using an antibacterial cleaner and some kind of cloth with an antiseptic wipe, too.

The drive to Roanoke was uneventful. We had to go to the North Entrance of Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Fortunately, there were handicapped parking spaces readily available there, and since I have a handicapped parking permit, we were able to use that, and I didn't have to worry about valet parking. This also put the car within walking range of the waiting room, so I was able to leave a cooler full of water in the back seat instead of traversing the entire length of the hospital (which is about two blocks long or better) to obtain a drink from a vending machine.

After our arrival, we checked in. We had on KN95 masks, and the hospital required masks for entry. They were handing out thin little surgical blue masks, though. More on that later.

We sat in a waiting room filled with chairs that I feel sure were there when my husband's father had a heart attack in 1995, and they were not set apart. The hospital did away with the Covid distancing on May 23. I was not happy about that, since I am still careful and wear a mask in the grocery store. 

I do not like hospitals, but I especially dislike Roanoke Memorial. It is the dreariest, creepiest, scariest place I can think of. I have never had a good experience there myself, not in any of the multitude of operations I have there. The facility is dull and uninspiring, with nothing to catch the eye. The place is absolutely, totally unremarkable, oldish looking, and in need of a face lift.

The outpatient waiting room is especially bad and was no better than it was in 2019. Old furniture, crowded - I think at the high point during the day there were at least 100 people in there - it's simply an unappetizing facility with no imagination or creativity about it whatsoever. Chairs lined the hallway near the entrance as well. They were spaced out better and that area was not so crowded, but it was also difficult to hear the nurses call out people's names in that area.

At 6 a.m., we sat in the ugly waiting room and waited for them to call my husband's name and take him back to pre-op. We waited some more, and my husband became agitated. They did not take him back until 7:59 a.m.  About an hour later, someone came and asked me to go to be with my husband in pre-op, but I couldn't go back until I took off my KN95 mask and put on one of their flimsy little blue surgical masks. I considered this to be among the stupider things I had seen in a long time, to have to remove a better mask to put on a worse mask to go into the bowels of a fricking hospital during a pandemic.

The volunteer led me down a long array of corridors, dreary even though they had stars painted on them. They were lined with gurneys (fortunately no one was in them), and it was a long, tiring walk.

I found my husband in a gurney, with tubes running out of both arms, his head covered with a little net, and an IV of saline running into him. He had on green socks with rubber on the bottom and a blue paper gown. They'd shaved his entire right side and leg. I watched him shove globs of iodine on a stick up his nose (to keep him from getting MRSA) and held his hand and said all the good wifely things one should say at such times.

The main reason they bring the family back is so someone can take control over the clothing and belongings. (I do not for one minute think it's because of empathy or sympathy for what the patient and family is going through.) I don't know why they can't stick the personal belongings under the gurney but suspect it has to do with their fear that someone will leave a tape recorder running and they will be sued for saying something like he has ugly feet or some such.

The operating room nurses came in around 10 a.m. and hauled him away, and I went back to the waiting room, which was two blocks away give or take a couple of steps, hauling his big shoes and his shirt and short pants in a bag with me. In the waiting room, I sat and watched an older gentleman try not to fall out of a chair that apparently was falling apart. Another man read Stephen King's The Stand, and a lady in the corner had a laptop with a very loud video on it. Everywhere there were clings, clangs, songs, and dings as people's cell phones alerted them to texts or phone calls.

Soon I felt claustrophobic as the waiting room filled with more and more people, so I wandered out to my car and drank a Boost and a bottle of water. When I came back in, there was a seat available in the hallway where the chairs were further apart, so I sat there and breathed a bit easier. In front of me was a long stretch of windows, and I could see outside. My Blue Ridge Mountains were in the background, the sky was clear, and a little greenery from the bushes and grass along the side the road made me feel more at home.

I watched passing traffic, and I could see my own vehicle. People came and went without anyone stopping them, and given the recent shootings, I couldn't help thinking how easy it would be for someone with a semi-automatic gun with a silencer to take out first the valet parking person, then the single secretary checking people in, strafe the folks like me sitting the chairs in the hallways, and then wipe out the other 80 or so folks in the waiting room long before anyone even knew what was going on. I doubted anyone would have time to call 911 before the shooter went on into another corridor, taking out doctors and nurses as he went.

So, I imagined that little scenario in between trying to read Lord of the Rings and watching the little screen with my husband's special number on it that told me when he was out of surgery and into recovery.

That happened at 11:29 a.m. I breathed a sigh of relief, since that meant he'd made it through the surgery ok. You just never know when a surgery might go wrong.

My cell rang and it was the surgeon. He told me everything went as expected, and my husband had a lot of arthritis in the hip that they'd cleaned out, and he was in recovery. Someone would call me later to tell me he was in a room.

I remained in the hallway and began contemplating lunch. I had a ham sandwich on ice in the car, but I didn't really want it. I called my brother, whose office isn't far from the hospital, and asked if he could bring me a sandwich. He said he would, but the nurse called and said my husband was in a room, so I texted my brother to abort the sandwich mission. Then I went in search of my husband, now on the 9th floor instead of the 4th, where I was.

The elevators stared at me like the monstrosities they are before I sucked in all the air I could and boarded one for the appropriate floor. I dislike elevators and intensely dislike these particular elevators as they come to a nauseating stop on every floor. (Many years ago, I walked off of these elevators and fainted dead away, so there's that.)

However, I made it to the 9th floor only to find my husband wasn't in the room I'd been given, but instead was in another room for whatever reason. He was sitting up and the nurse was taking vitals or something when I arrived. Also, his socks were now grey.

They brought him a turkey sandwich and a fruit cup, along with Baked Lays Potato chips, which he doesn't like, so I had his potato chips for lunch.

I cheered him on as he got up and on a walker. A physical therapist walked him around the hallway. He finally urinated, and that was all they needed to send him home. While we waited on the discharge paperwork, the hospital brought him an early dinner (it was by now 4 p.m.), and he didn't want it. I ate it since I'd not had anything but a Boost and potato chips all day. For hospital food, it wasn't bad, or maybe I was simply hungry.

Then the nurse came in and said he would be discharged at the front of the hospital and not at the North Entrance. It was 4:45 p.m. We'd asked and been told that anyone could leave from the North Entrance, but one could not get back into the hospital after 5 p.m. at that entrance. The nurse said ok, we'll take him out the North Entrance, but you'd better go get your car because that's not exactly what we were told. "We'll try to get him down there by 5 p.m.," she called after me as I raced from the room.

I hustled off to stare down the monstrous elevators again, and then make my way to the car. Once there, I called my brother and asked him to meet me at my house in about a half hour. I pulled the car into the patient loading area and the nice valet man said he'd put in a courtesy call to the 9th floor to tell them I was waiting.

At 5:10 p.m., they loaded him into my car. This took a little time. We'd both been concerned about the bucket seats in my Toyota, because his knees weren't supposed to be above his hips and my husband is tall. His knees are above his hips in most chairs.

I had brought extra padding for the seat to raise him up, and that worked. So off I went, driving home down the interstate during rush hour. (I dislike driving on the interstate during rush hour. Blah.)

My wonderful brother was waiting at the house when we arrived. I opened the garage door, and he went through and opened the patio door. I drove the car up to the patio and my husband took his walker from my brother and shuffled into the house.

And that was the doing of that deed.

We've been home since then, and he is mending. He has, however, worn me out. Since I can't bend and stoop without pain, this has been problematic for me and caused me to look longingly at his pain medications while I tried to tamper my pain with my normal meds (which are not narcotic). For one thing, the man drops everything he picks up. If I dropped stuff as much as he does, I'd have worn out my hip, too. I gave him one of those long doohickeys that people use to pick things up with to alleviate some of that.

He's needed to wear compression stockings. Getting those things off and on is a struggle. The pair they sent him home with were so hard to get off I thought we were going to have to resort to cutting them off of him, but I finally managed.

The next day, he called the doctor's office and my brother picked up another pair of compression socks for him in a larger size. I can get these on, but we are both breathing hard by the time I have them on his big ol' feet. I have to wash them every night.

He could shower on Wednesday, and I have to dry off his legs and feet. More bending and stooping.

I have not had a good night's sleep since Saturday, because he is up and down a lot and requires my assistance to get in the bed. I made a grocery store pickup on Thursday because we were out of a few things, but he had a visitor, so he wasn't alone while I was gone.

A shout out to my brother, who has been very helpful and attentive, and thus deserving of an A+, to my father and stepmother, who brought us dinner Wednesday night, and my friend Cathy who brought us dinner Thursday night. Also, a shout-out to my young cleaning help, who made a special stop by my house this morning simply to run the vacuum for me because I was in so much pain I couldn't do it and I am trying to keep the house clean, so my husband doesn't develop an infection. Additionally, my mother-in-law has been bringing us the newspaper and the mail. Many thanks!

We will see how things go from here. My husband is hoping to be back to work in six weeks.