Yellow tree pollen

This stuff is the bane of my existence.  It doesn't make me sneeze so much as it gives me a big time headache.  Both Wheeler and I woke up with gonzo big headaches this morning.  Blick.

On the positive side, said trees and shrubs that generate pollen are beautiful.  Taken with my iPhone around the neighborhood the other day:

Reason #3,109 not to break your neck

#3,109: Pressure sores. 

[ highly disturbing graphic gory photo not pasted in here since its a G-rated blog and all ]

[ but trust me its U-G-L-Y ]

[ and scary ]

[ and disGUSTing]

Wheeler has a pressure sore on an existing flap surgery* site, right on the ischial bones (the "sit" bones on your butt).  Right now, he's looking at a minimum of 4-6 weeks in bed, keeping 100% pressure off of that sore, IF absolutely NOTHING goes wrong in the healing process.  (pardon me while I go laugh hysterically at the thought of nothing going wrong)

Sigh.  Poor Wheeler.

* if you are not spinal cord injury initiated, and don't know what flap surgery is, here is an article with photos.  But be prepared before you click that link.  Its gross.  And Wheeler has had two of these surgeries, one on each side (each leg/sit bone side).  Flap surgery is reason #3,108 not to break your neck.

A case of over-engineering

Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day, mid 80s, sunshine, light breeze.  Offspring and I were outside in the yard, having just gotten back from the neighborhood park.  My dad then drove by in his red convertible Corvette..... top down, music playing.

He stopped in our driveway and asked if we wanted to take the car for a spin.  Hell yes!

We drove around the neighborhood for a bit and then decided to go get ice cream at our favorite place.  We parked, and I pushed the button to turn the car off.  Yes, you push a button to turn the car off, there is no key.  I was worried right then because I realized that I would need the key fob to turn the car back on and my cursory inspection of the car turned up no key fob.  I hastily pushed the button and to my relief, the car turned back on.  Ahhh, problem solved.  Either the fob was indeed somewhere in the car, or it didn't need to be in the car to start it.

We got out of the car and I didn't bother trying to lock the car because its a convertible for Pete's sake - you could just reach in and take anything you wanted.  We walked up and got our ice cream.  My was pistachio ice cream - and there must have been $15 worth of pistachios in my serving, holy crap there were a lot of pistachios in that!  Offspring got his usual "N & Ns and sminkles", but they were out of "sminkles" so it was just M&Ms in vanilla.  Despite being able to pronounce M&Ms and sprinkles now, he still says it the other way because he knows I find it endearing.

Walked back to the car, got in, pushed button.  Nothing.

Great.

Pushed it again.  Nothing.  Kept pushing it, kept doing nothing.  ARGH!!!!

So I was forced to call my dad, who was actually mowing my lawn at that moment, so my mom answered his phone, to come rescue us.  She drove down, gave us the key fob and we were able to then start the car.

RANT.  Why the hell would anyone NOT want a key????  Just having a fob leads to this sort of problem.  And it has led to this exact problem on more than one occasion for me, in both the Corvette and their Cadillac.  It makes me insane.  Is a key really that big of an inconvenience that they had to engineer it completely out of the picture?  REALLY?  I think not!  Give me a key any day.  And if you have a fob, LEAVE IT IN THE *#@&(*%#& CAR, NOT YOUR POCKET!!!  Then when you get out and let someone else drive it, you won't leave them stranded.  RANT OVER.

Hands down the scariest flight I have ever been on

I took a quick business trip to Phoenix and the way back was a bit exciting.  And not the kind of excitement that I like.  I flew from PHX to Las Vegas, where I was to connect home to Raleigh.  Am connecting to Raleigh I should say, because I am actually posting this from the air.  There is WiFi on the flight from Las Vegas to Raleigh.  So I have given away the punch line of this story: I live.

The pilot came on near the end of the flight from Phoenix, at about 10,000 feet, to tell us the approach and landing in Las Vegas would be bumpy.  OK, no biggie, that happens all the time, <insert jersey girl here> whatevah.  As we got closer though, it became rapidly obvious that to even this exceptionally experienced and blasé flyer that he was not kidding about bumpy.  He came on again and said that winds were nearing 40 mph, and to be sure to fasten our seatbelts tightly. I cinched up my belt.

Down, down, down we went, and the plane lurched and skated, skittered side to side with truly frightening moves.  The wings were dipping up and down wildly, tilting us up and down 45 degrees at least each direction and then flopping us 45 degrees the other direction - all the way, doing that skating on ice sort of thing were it feels like the plane is sliding, which is from cross winds.  The luggage bins started popping open and bags fell out.  My backpack and other people's things dislodged from under our seats and slid all over the place.  I kept hoping and hoping and hoping and HOPING that we would swing around and try a different approach or return to Phoenix or go ANYWHERE but windy Las Vegas, but the plane continued to get lower and lower.  This went on for a good 7-8 minutes.  Trust me, this is a very long time.  Try timing it and see how long it is and then imagine lurching like that for 7-8 minutes.

I was sitting in an exit row and realized 'holy crap, I may have to USE this exit door!'.  As we got closer to the ground, the winds and turbulence only got worse, not better.  When the runway was in sight, I was absolutely petrified.  I was afraid for my life, and I am not kidding.  I was literally afraid the plane was going to crash, and I had good reason to be scared.  The wings were still tilting at alarming angles and I (and pretty much everyone else) was afraid one would slam into the ground before the wheels would hit the ground.  The flight attendant came on and said "Hold on everybody!".  I have never heard that from a fight attendant in all of my years of flying.

I braced myself, staring out the window at the wings, hoping and hoping and hoping that they wouldn't hit the runway when BANG, we slammed into the runway like an elephant onto a china cup, which of course caused even more bags to fall out and scatter.  But we were down, safe, and I could have kissed the ground. The flight attendant got on again and said "We're all still here!".  And I absolutely have never heard anything remotely like that from a flight attendant.   Navigating all of the bins and bags was interesting, trying to match bags to people as we tried to exit.  People were holding up bags and hollering "whose bag is this?" but we all managed to get our bags and luckily, no one was hit on the head by a falling bag.  

As it turns out, the winds were exactly 1 mph lower than the limit for closing the airport, so I did have good reason to fear for my life.  They did close the airport for 50 minutes shortly after our flight because the Raleigh flight was delayed on takeoff.  Trust me, that was one delay I was MORE than happy to tolerate.

Now let's hope for no wind in Raleigh, eh?

Coffee

So this morning Dogley took a great big slurp of my coffee.  He licked his lips forever and was poised to take another drink when I called a halt to such nonsense.  Wuzzup with THAT?!!!!