flu shots

I'm going to mention this one time in my blog, and that will be it; nobody wants to read somebody's complaints about minor aches and pains.

I've gotten the seasonal flu shot every year for at least twenty years, and I expect some soreness in the arm that receives the shot; that pain usually fades away in a day or two.

This year, though, the pain is still with me a month after receiving the vaccine. I especially notice it when I'm putting on my coat, or changing clothes. It's painful to lift my left arm above my head.

I went to Dr. Google and found THIS DISCUSSION that troubles me somewhat, because there are people who are still hurting more than a year after the shot! Some of them seem to think the shot was given to them too high up on the arm, and that caused the problem. I have not mentioned this to my doctor because I have a feeling that mentioning a pain in the left arm might lead to all sorts of tests to rule out heart conditions or some such thing, and trust me, this is not that serious.

It isn't anything I can't live with. I'm sure aspirin or ibuprofen would help, but I'm not one to take pills if I can help it. I hope from now on my family physician will have the vaccine at his office so I don't have to resort to getting my shot at Target.

Have any of my readers had this problem?

Somebody give me a kick to get me started

It was nice, letting my mom do my blogging for me for a few days. I think I got too used to it! The truth is, right now I don't have a lot going on that's blog-worthy. I'm still getting used to the Mac, and I spend an unbelievable amount of time figuring things out and discovering nifty new things. Every day I learn a dozen new things and forget half of them by the next day.

Strange things happen when you have a completely different kind of computer: For instance, I totally lost a couple of pictures I took yesterday. This takes me back to my first PC with Windows 98 OS. Something like that was always happening.

Anyhow, I'm learning, little by little.

My oldest granddaughter recently started working at a new Target store in Blue Springs, and when I told her Cliff and I couldn't find anyplace that had the influenza vaccine, she said the Target Pharmacy has them; she checked to make sure, gave me a call, and sure enough, Cliff and I got our shots yesterday. One of the pictures I misplaced on here was of Cliff getting his shot. Since I lost that one, I'll share one taken a couple of weeks ago: Did you know Cliff was a hairdresser?

When Rena wants to highlight her hair, she has Cliff pull little tufts of hair through that cap with holes in it; I'm sure many of you ladies are familiar with this procedure. It's nothing I've ever done. Rena gives Cliff his haircuts since she lives next door, so he owes her this.

So, here you have it: a blog entry by someone who has nothing to say.

Rainy days aren't so bad if you have a good book

A few days ago I wandered over to Kansas City Sinic's blog, and she sang the praises of a book called "The Glass Castle". It sounded like something I could get into, so I went to Amazon.com, found a used copy, used my $5 Amazon gift card (thank you Swagbucks) and ended up paying only $2, shipping and all.

Believe me, it's keeping me spellbound. I've had my nose in the book off and on all day.

We're up to two inches of rain so far, it's still coming down, and there's more in the forecast.

Last week I saw in our local newspaper that flu shots were going to be given today, from ten till noon, in our little city hall. I woke Cliff up around ten, telling him there was no hurry because we had until noon. We were puzzled to see no cars at all in front of City Hall. I went inside and saw not a single person, although I detected a faint medicinal smell... maybe alcohol. Returning to the car, Cliff decided I must have gotten the date wrong.

As we were about to leave, "Wild Bill" (that's what his pickup says, although he doesn't look that wild) drove up beside us and told us they ran out of the vaccine early on.

It's time for Cliff's quarterly visit to the doctor anyhow, and I need to see if they can give me a blood pressure med that doesn't make me cough; I quit taking the last prescription after three weeks of miserable choking and hacking, and it took three weeks off of it before the coughing stopped. Anyhow, we'll get our flu shots then.