18 August 2023
I’m not sure those juicy, delicious mangoes, available for two months, are worth the 10 months of raking. I may have to reassess. Of course, it’s my neighbor’s tree but she’s allergic to them.
I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I never got my afternoon nap yesterday so I turned out the light at 8:30 pm and got out of bed at 6 am. I got up a couple of times to pee but that was it. There was no drain to constantly reach for and reposition.
I know it’s a small thing but having the drain out allowed me to put my phone back in my left pocket. As a creature of habit, when wearing shorts or jeans, my billfold always goes in my left back pocket, handkerchief in might right rear pocket, phone in the left front and keys in the right front. I can now shift the phone back to the left front pocket. I feel completed!
I managed 1.5 miles on the walk this morning. It was a startling 74°F when I started out and it was overcast which made for very nice walking conditions. I’m not sure when the last time we were in the 70’s during the night.
I’ve mentioned one of the houses I walk past on one of my four routes. It looks like a jungle and I took a photo of the perfumed passionflower there. As I walked by it today, a cascading orchid caught my eye.
I believe it to be a dendrobium orchid. I used to be better at orchid identification after I took several orchid classes down at Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami but I’ve forgotten most of what I know. I do know there are more orchid species in the world than any other species of plants. What used to be a special find of an orchid in Mississippi is a pretty mundane event in South Florida since most everyone has them growing in their yards.
I would teach all day at the college, drive down to Miami for night classes at Fairchild, get back home after 10 pm and start the day anew the next day. I can’t imagine doing that today. I have to admit all the classes down there were very well done and taught by experts with years of experience. I also took some palm classes down there and as a sometime member of Fairchild, I still get notices about their classes and there are always some I would like to take. I would have to get a hotel room down there these days because I don’t like driving at night.
Remember me writing about the Peter Pan diner? It was just voted the best diner in Florida according to Reader’s Digest. It has a nice article on the MSN website and talks about the original owner (still alive) and his son who now owns it and a waitress who has worked there for 25 years. Yea, I know, I’m a trendsetter.
After raking leaves, sweeping the walkway, cleaning the pool filter, washing the iguana poop off the pool deck, cleaning the pool, and washing down the patio, I headed in for my first shower since July 31. It was a little bit of heaven! It’s kinda nice to only have the surgical scar from the mastectomy and a bandaid to cover the insertion of the drain.
One thing I’ve noticed about the surgical scar is there still seems to be a shiny film over the scar. Hopefully, after enough showers this will fall away. At the moment, the film causes a little pull to the area.
I did order some lotion that contains cocoa butter to soften up the skin around the scar. When I was a kid, I fell and hit my head and had a pretty good gash on the front of my face where the hairline is. The doctor told me to rub it every day with cocoa butter. If I remember correctly, cocoa butter is a little gritty. The web pooh poohs the idea of alleviating a scar with cocoa butter, but you’d be hard pressed to see a scar on my forehead. Just don’t look for the hairline as an indicator. I figure a little lotion on the surgical scar couldn’t hurt.
I can’t believe I still have some of the side effects of the very first chemotherapy infusion. I have much less underarm hair and I can’t believe the difference. That area seems to chafe due to the lack of hair. Another thing I am fighting is mouth ulcers. It makes eating a challenge. Who knows what more Monday may bring?
Looks like we might start up a zoom meeting with some friends tomorrow. All of us have our woes and ailments and using zoom allows us all to at least catch up a little, even if we all try to talk at the same time.
Stay tuned!