A few days ago (Tues or Wed, I think), the circuit breaker for the back end of the house kept tripping. It controls all the lights and outlets at the back end of the house — bedroom, bathroom, laundry area, and the “dining room” overhead light. It’s not really a dining room, just a place where a small table and chair could fit if I didn’t have all my other stuff in here. 🙂 BUT… the water heater, washer and dryer have their own circuit. Doesn’t do me much good if I can’t see what I’m doing. Hence, I can shower, but not really shave safely. Whoopee!

Someone recently mentioned they take their blood pressure meds at night instead of in the morning, and there were some articles that seemed to indicate this was beneficial. So, for this week, I decided to try taking my bp meds in the evening. I suppose it works okay …. IF I remember to actually take my evening meds. My morning bp reading way higher than it normally is. And my body was stiff, sore, and uncomfortable. Damn. I really need to remember to take my meds.

Also, for the last several weeks I haven’t been diligent about taking my walks. I HAVE been up and about, though, getting back into the work routine of pulling yarns, dyeing yarns, and all the other physical acts of my work, so I’ve not entirely become a shapeless blob on the couch. But this morning, with the stiffness and higher bp, I decided to take my walk. I only went as far as Manor and came back. Feeling pretty good about it, not nearly as much pain from walking as I was having a while back, so I am definitely ‘getting better’ if not actually and fully ‘better’, if that makes sense. And I do generally feel better over all these days.

My baby sister was supposed to have been coming through Houston next week. Her foster mother is dying from colon cancer, and her foster father is in a home now with Alzheimer’s or dementia of some sort; he doesn’t remember anyone. So instead of flying (totally unsafe to sit with strangers for hours on a plane), she decided to drive from North Carolina to California to see her foster mom, and was stopping en route to see other family along the northern route, and planned to take the southern route back home to see our brother in Phoenix, our sister in San Antonio, and me and some of my kids here in Houston.

That’s all well and good. But now that she’s in Santa Barbara and ready to come back home, we find she hasn’t been masking with all the other family members along the way. I won’t go into all the back-and-forth discussions, but the bottom line is that she’s not coming to Houston. I’m disappointed, since it would have been nice to see her, but with my own health issues and risk factors, I’m not willing to visit unmasked. The fact that she’s been doing COVID testing at work (she’s a nurse) for a while before taking her trip, and then not masking during her visits with a bunch of people I don’t know, I just don’t feel comfortable taking a chance at this point.

Realistically, there’s only a slim chance I would get sick. But, I mask up when taking food or grocery deliveries outside on the porch, or when I go make groceries (mandated now, anyway). It was only six months ago I had tubes and wires and monitors all over me, and I am just not willing to put myself in a situation to repeat it or have something worse. That situation was planned, everyone knew what they were doing, it was only temporary, and I got through it. The stories I hear about people with COVID are multiple times worse. No, I’m really not willing to take that risk, even if other family members don’t mind.