Somebody seeking a handout

I should have taken a picture to go with this story, but it happened yesterday.  If you read my last entry, you realize I wasn't in the best of moods yesterday.  
After we left the doctor's office, we went to Subway for a sandwich.  I had our drinks in a cooler, so I went in, ordered our sandwich (a foot-long cold cut combo on Italian-herbs-and-cheese bread with pepperjack cheese and all the veggies and stuff that Subway offers.  WITH mayo and honey-mustard.)  
We got our drinks from the cooler and sat in the car, eating.  We noticed two men and a woman with a dog on a leash walking across the road toward us.  The guys had enormous backpacks, and one of them was walking as though he could barely put one foot in front of the other.  They passed us by and went to the other end of the strip mall in which Subway is located.  We looked at one another and I said, "That's strange."  
Cliff agreed.  
A couple of minutes later, the lady of the group reappeared, sans dog, coming straight to our car.  
"We're going home to Georgia," she said.  "We're HUNG-ry.  We don't want money, we just want a sandwich.  We're HUNG-ry."
At first I thought she had some sort of foreign accent, but as she kept talking, I realized she was talking the way people who were born deaf talk.
We never give money to people seeking handouts.  
Cliff said, "Do you have any money?"  
"She doesn't want money, she just wants a sandwich," I said.  
"Well, the only sandwich I have is this one, and I don't want to give it up."  
I thought about my loaded "groceries" envelope.  I had just added this months money to it, and there was quite a bit left from last month.  Who needs groceries if you're living in a hospital?  
For some reason I decided to give her whatever small bills I had in that envelope, which consisted of a ten and four ones.  "I've got fourteen bucks," I told Cliff.  "I'll give her that."
He checked his billfold and found a one, added it to fourteen, and said to her, "Here you go, that's fifteen dollars."  
She put up her hands and said, "No!!!!  No!!!! That's too much!" 
What kind of beggar ever says that?  Not only that, but she repeated it more than once. 
Cliff told her to take it and she did, heading back toward the other end of the strip mall from whence she came, turning and blowing kisses at us a couple of times.  
"Well," I said, "I wonder what they'll really do with that money."  
About five minutes later she returned and walked into the subway, smiling and waving to us on the way.  Pretty soon she came out with a six-inch sub in a bag, held it up for us to see, said thank you, and blew us more kisses.      
Now, I'm glad she got her sandwich.  My only thought was that there is a McDonald's across the road, and they could have gotten a lot more bang for their buck over there.  
Maybe that was one of those angels unaware the Bible talks about.

Hebrews 13:2  Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

The uninvited guest at our chicken-killing

Who knew?  Consider this your laugh for the day.

Cliff saw our family doctor today.  There really wasn't anything the guy could do, but since he is our first line of defense if we need advice or help, we needed to get in touch.  I'm a little depressed over this whole situation, thanks to Google (don't tell me not to Google; you know you'd be doing it too).  This whole problem apparently isn't a thing people always get over rapidly.  Biliary leaks don't have a "one-size-fits-all" solution, from what I've learned.  All the doctors can do is try first one thing and then another and hope for the best.  Meanwhile, the patient suffers.  
When the nurse came in this morning to take Cliff's blood pressure (which is running really low, 100 over whatever), she said, "How are you?"  
"Fine," he answered.  
This is a pet peeve of mine.  He refuses to be honest with the doctors and nurses.  In the hospital, when I could tell his pain level was obviously eight or above, he would tell them it was two; his excuse was that they would force a pain med on him, and pain meds made him sick.  I am sure his pain level is five or so here at home during all his waking hours, because the tube that runs between his ribs causes him great pain.  Not to mention that his guts are still in constant turmoil.  I know this because he hasn't gotten on a tractor a single time since he's been home, and there are tractor chores that he would normally love to be doing that are undoubtedly driving him crazy.  Not that he says that, but after living with someone for close to fifty years, you know certain things.  He isn't hiding a thing from me!  
So, I'm a little downhearted.  He doesn't deserve this.  

I killed two chickens today

Those three Cornish Cross chickens I bought in March were eight weeks old, and having more trouble walking all the time.  I asked Cliff if he thought the two of us could get them butchered, and he said he thought so.  We really did not know what we were doing, even though we found wonderful instructions at howtobutcherachicken.com.  Maybe if we'd had the instructions printed out in front of us it would have been easier.  
Cliff has always done the killing of animals around here, but after he did the first one I said, "Let me try the next one.  I'll kill it like Mother did, by stepping on its head, holding onto its feet, and pulling."
I remember my mother telling me you can only kill young, tender birds that way.  Older, tough chickens have to have the head chopped off.  My grandma used a hatchet to chop off the heads of all the chickens she killed; I remember asking Mother why, and she said it was because Grandma was old and didn't have a lot of strength.  Since my grandmother was only ten years older than I am when she died, I have to admit that I had a few doubts about whether I could pull a chicken's head off using Mother's method.  Imagine my surprise when it worked!  
According to what I read, 145 degrees is the perfect temperature for scalding a chicken, which is something you have to do if you are going to pluck the feathers.  Hot water from our faucet is 135, so I didn't have to heat it up much.  
By the third chicken, I was tired of plucking and told Cliff to skin it, feathers and all.  All three chickens are chilling in cold water in the refrigerator.  Tomorrow I'll freeze them.  I feel like a REAL pioneer woman now.   

   
He's been on the couch ever since.  I think that was enough activity for today.

Life goes on (in which you get to see Cliff's scars)

Cliff is doing a little better every day, but it's slow going.  Today he drove for the first time in three weeks:  we went to close out the safety deposit box, since the local branch of our bank is closing, and got a new box in Lexington.  I returned a long overdue book to the library, and we went shopping for a few things.  OK, I shopped.  Cliff napped in the car.    
Saturday his St. Louis sister and her husband were here.  She mowed the yard and her husband did some maintenance on the Mahindra tractor we are babysitting for him, with Cliff overseeing his work.  Next-door sister's son did a lot of weed-eating, so our yard looks terrific.  This does wonders for Cliff's outlook on life.  
We've sold the Gold Wing; this is something we had already decided to do even before Cliff got sick, but that certainly sealed the deal.  Yes, it's hard to see it go, but we're not getting any younger. This time I truly believe the time has come.  
We also sold our bull, since none of my animals will be needing the services of a bull before December.  We evidently priced him too low, since we got a lot of calls, and sold him to the first person who looked at him.  Still, we used him on three cows and got considerably more money than we paid for him.  
Now, are you ready to look at Cliff's tubes and scars?  I did my best to keep it decent, although if you look really hard, you can see the top edge of his tighty-whities.  

Both tubes exit on his right side.  That fancy-looking top one comes through a hole between two ribs.  They had hoped to be able to go underneath his ribs, but since his liver doesn't come down as far as it's supposed to, they had to do it this way.  That one causes him considerable discomfort, as you might imagine.  The staples were removed from his surgical wound last week.     

Cliff eats a good-sized breakfast and dinner (lunch), but he usually has a nutritional supplement for supper.  For some reason he just isn't hungry at night.  We've found he likes the Walmart Equate brand much better than Ensure.  When we are trying to keep his weight down, bread is limited, but for now he gets all the bread he wants.  So he has toast with his cream of wheat, bread with his spaghetti, and every once in a while a peanut butter sandwich.  In fact, he can have pretty much any food he desires, because I'm so happy to see him able to eat!  I told him he had better enjoy it while he can.  
We visit our family doctor Wednesday.  Next Monday, if the CT scan gives us a good picture with no extra fluids hanging around Cliff's liver, he gets the tubes pulled.  In July, the stents will be removed from his bile duct.  We hope that ends this nightmare.  
I do want to thank all who have prayed and sent positive thoughts our way.  Cliff appreciates your good thoughts, and has enjoyed the cards he's received, one of which came from a New Jersey follower of my blog, as well as several from his cousin, Edna.  

It feels almost like normal around here

I'm sorry I didn't update sooner today:  I find myself sharing on Facebook, and then hours later I remember that many of my readers don't have Facebook.  
Cliff is back to eating real food, and plenty of it (not in excess, though).  I'm actually cooking again!  The drains produce less fluid every day.  In ten days the surgeon will have a cat scan done, and if it looks like there's no fluid hanging around where it shouldn't be, he can say goodbye to the Jackson-Pratt tubes, both of them.  
I may not have a coffee-drinking buddy any more, because coffee doesn't taste good to Cliff at all.  I'm still holding my breath, since we've had so many bumps in this road, but he does seem to be feeling pretty good today.  As I've said before, this "simple gallbladder surgery" has made the quadruple heart bypass he had seven years ago seem like a walk in the park.  

I set out sweet potatoes and other plants today, and hoed places that needed it in the garden.  I sprayed the fruit trees.  It looks as though neither the peaches nor the apples were harmed by the freezes or the late snow-fall.  

Here's a picture of Penny eating through her gate... and no, she isn't stuck.

Here's the picture after David, the photographer, got hold of it.

I think that's all I have to report for today, except to tell you that I need a nap!  Two weeks of sitting around in a hospital have gotten me totally out of shape.  

Vanity

I hadn't read the book of Ecclesiastes for quite a while, or even thought about it, until this morning.  I went out to milk Jody and bottle-feed Penny, and that's when it began:  "Vanity," I heard the voice in my head say, "it's all vanity."   
Just for today, I wish I hadn't started a garden.  I wish I had not bought those stupid chickens.  Right now, I could sell every cow on the place and not blink an eye.  
The other day I fried up a big mess of morel mushrooms and they didn't even taste good, because Cliff wasn't enjoying them with me.  
Two of my apple trees are blooming for the first time this year.  I couldn't care less.

Ecclesiastes 2:4-6   ⁴I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. ⁵ I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. ⁶ I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove..... then on to verse 11: 

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done
And on the labor in which I had toiled;
And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.
There was no profit under the sun.

I don't care what's growing in the garden.  Oh, I go ahead and plant and hoe and till, because to not do so would mean I have no hope of anything getting better than it is right now.  And of course, things will get better.
Cliff is so tired of hurting.  It seems that anywhere I touch him, it hurts.  I have never seen him more depressed than he is right now.  
So today he will go in to have the stent removed that was placed in a bile duct last week, and a longer stent put in.  That means he'll have a very sore throat again, since this procedure involves the doctor going down his throat with some kind of instrument.  
He could barely talk last weekend as a result of this same operation.
On the bright side, he ate two honest-to-goodness meals yesterday and enjoyed them.  

Forgive me for being such a downer.  I usually have so much fun in my life.  I love sharing my adventures with my readers.  I hesitated to do this entry, but sometimes I just want to "keep it real".  This is what's been going through my head this morning.    

 1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

² “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher;
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

³ What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
⁴ One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.
⁵ The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.
⁶ The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.
⁷ All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
⁸ All things are full of labor;
Man cannot express it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear filled with hearing.

⁹ That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
¹⁰ Is there anything of which it may be said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
¹¹ There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.

Yesterday

Cliff's brother took us to the hospital where we had a one o'clock appointment for Cliff to have a guided CT scan in radiology.  A needle would be inserted between his ribs to draw off a pocket of water below his liver (the nurses called it an abscess, although the doctor never used that term) and a tube would be inserted so the drainage could continue.  Now he has twin tubes, but he does seem to feel better except for soreness where the needle went through.  His poor liver has been through the wringer.  When they were done prying his gallbladder away from it the other day, they cauterized it.  Now this.  
He was awake for this procedure, because they had to have him hold his breath at times, but they used the same sort of drug to relax and semi-sedate him that is used during a colonoscopy, as well as a local anesthetic.  Because they had the needle so close to his lung, an X-ray was taken after they were done to make sure no damage was done to the lung.  
When he was brought out of the procedure, his color was better than it's been in two weeks.  He is sore from the needle, and he's taking Tylenol for that.  He has a prescription pain killer, but because it messes with his stomach, he refuses to take it.  
Let's hope he continues to improve.  I don't mind our having to deal with the tubes if he can get to feeling better.  Somewhere along the line it was mentioned that he might have to have the stent in the bile duct removed and a longer stent put in.  I don't know if that's a for-sure thing, or just something they were considering.  My brain is on overload.  
Once Cliff was in recovery yesterday we sent his brother home and called the oldest grandson to come and take us home.   When we arrived home, the whole yard had been mowed by our son-in-law, which was a load off Cliff's mind.  

The grandson and I went down in the woods Monday evening, and he fixed the fence.  Now the cows will have to stay home.  As always, Titan was right in the middle of things.  We intended to hunt for morels when we finished this job, but by the time we scaled the steep bank of the canyon a couple of times, we were out of the mood.

      
I set out some tomato and pepper plants yesterday morning, and planted a row of green beans.