Desert View - Day 61 - Back to work

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5:57 am - Wednesday - January 10th - Grand Canyon - 29º F, 99% humidity (yup, that is correct!), wind 9 mph out of the west by southwest.....rained last night, then snowed, and and is still snowing this morning.  I've got the 'open' shift this morning......ugggh!

6:31 am, Wednesday

Thankfully, I had the 'close' shift on Tuesday, my first day back at work after being sick since Friday afternoon.  Now, the 'close' shift has been busy until recently, and I was not up to being too busy.  My energy level was not high, and I had spent very little time on my feet during the last 4 days.  I saw TLE off to work about 7:15 am.....she opted to walk so I could drive the car.....what a sweetheart.....I would have walked, but gladly accepted her offer.

The only thing I needed to do was dump the black tank, but I waited until mid morning when it was a little warmer, and the breeze had died down.  Once the tank was dumped I went inside to take one last nap before it was time to get ready to go to work.

I arrived at the General Store just before noon time, and quickly punched the clock.....the store was as quiet as a library.....TLE had done just $67 in cash sales all morning.....that was encouraging.  She stayed on until about 12:45 to be sure I was going to be okay....again, what a sweetheart!  By that time I sort of had my 'sea legs' back, and was beginning to get into the flow of the day, which began slowly, and stayed slow all afternoon.  I dropped just $70 in cash for my 'close' shift.  Not that I want the store to do badly, but my first day back it was nice to have a slow afternoon.

I was home by 5:30, and in my pajamas relaxing a few minutes later.  About 9 pm it began to rain steadily, and it continued raining until about 11 pm.  Sometime during the early morning hours it began to snow, and as I write this morning it is still snowing lightly.

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Desert View - Day 60 - 'About nothing'

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7:29 am - Tuesday - January 9th - Grand Canyon - 41º F, 60% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the southeast.....cloudy with a 50% chance of rain.....looks like we could have snow by tomorrow morning.  I'm feeling pretty good today, and will probably go back to work (noon) today.....BP 114/70.

TLE went back to work Monday afternoon......she's a better 'man' than I.....:-)  I was glad I decided to wait one more day as I was still weak, and had no appetite whatsoever.....I ate a little because I knew I should.....before I can take two of my pills I need to eat first.  

When you are sick, and you don't do anything but sleep and watch TV (reading hurts my eyes right now), there is not much about which one might write.  And so, here I sit, trying to write about nothing.  Hmmmmm.....well the skies the last three days have been very threatening, but have not yielded any moisture so far.  I only know what I am observing out the windows, because my body has not ventured outside since Friday.  I've been sort of living in the Newell cocoon for 4 days where time loses much of its context.  Thankfully I am content to spend time inside our tiny home, and I never feel like I'm getting 'cabin fever', if you know what I mean.

When you want to lose weight having NO APPETITE really helps a lot, and for the last 4 days I have had NO APPETITE.  On Friday, when I began getting sick, I weighed 198 even.  After 4 days of eating very little I am down to 193.4.  My goal is 187, for the short term.  Why 187?  Well, that was my weight after emerging from my double hernia surgery 3 years ago.  Clothes I had not worn in 3 years suddenly fit me once again, and I looked good!  Then we took off traveling again, and before long I was back into the mid 190's, and at one point hit my all time high of 215 about one year ago after my last cold.  TLE was up in weight too, so we pledged to each other to lose weight.  Over the course of the next 6 months I got down to 202, but TLE got down to a weight she had not seen for 25 years, and she has held that weight for the last six months.....I am very proud of her.  On the other hand, I could not seem to break the 200 barrier, and that was where I found myself just 11 days ago when I was being transported to Flagstaff Medical Center via ambulance with very high blood pressure.  

With the advent of my low sodium diet beginning with my hospital stay I am no longer retaining water and my weight immediately dropped to 198.8!  I stayed there until last Friday when I began to get sick and weighed in at 198 even.  Then along came the COLD, and NO APPETITE, and I have dropped down to 193.4! Obviously, now that I am on the mend and my appetite is returning I foresee a short period of weight stabilization, but I am within view of my weight goal......just 6.4 more pounds!

Maintaining, or losing weight while living as nomads is always a difficult proposition, and it is the continual topic of discussion wherever nomads may gather.  It is difficult to maintain an exercise regime, and there are food temptations everywhere.....micro breweries, pub food....you name it.  My recent diagnosis of hypertension has renewed my determination to be more diligent regarding good intake, and exercise.  It's easy to get complacent....sometimes it takes a health scare to get one more focused on what is really important!

Well, there you go.....a blog mostly about nothing.....thanks for stopping by!

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Desert View - Day 59 - Anatomy of a cold

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7:25 am - Monday - January 8th - Grand Canyon - 28º F, humidity 67%, wind 1 mph out of the southeast....cloudy today with a 40% change of rain.....forecast high is 50º F.

The last few days have been a blur......I started getting sick Friday morning, and by Friday night had a full blown cold.  Usually my colds come on slowly, and last for about 10 days, and that was not something to which I was looking forward.  By Saturday I was wondering if I was going to die I was so sick.  I would be overtaken by these violent coughing spasms wondering if I would be able to catch my breath before I passed out.....serious!  My chest hurt from all the coughing.  Then about mid afternoon things began to turn around.....TLE had brought home some Benadryl (I can't use most of the over the counter cold remedies as they react badly with blood pressure medication, but my doctor said Benadryl was okay).  I took a single Benadryl pill, and within an hour my cough stopped, and I began to feel better.  By Sunday morning I was feeling much better, but as weak as a newborn baby.  

Sunday I spent the day just relaxing, taking one nap after another........the kind of naps from which it is hard to awake.  I'm not 100% by any means......maybe 85%.......but it appears this cold may be one of the shorter lived ones I have had over the years.  I'm going to take it easy at least one more day before going back to work.  As I sit here typing Monday morning my nose has stopped running, I'm getting my appetite back (lost 3 lbs. over three days), and still coughing about once every two hours, and even then not very much.

So, for the present, I am on the mend much more quickly than is the norm for me....I will be cautious and take it one day at a time until I'm sure it is safe to return to work.  TLE missed one day of work due to her cold....she rarely ever gets sick, and when she does it doesn't last very long.

The weather outlook for the next two weeks is for temps mostly in the 50's once again.....maybe two, or three days in the 40's, but generally warmer than normal weather for this time of year.....

.....so we've got that going for us.

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Desert View - Day 58 - WOW!

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6:16 pm - Sunday - January 7th - Grand Canyon - 36º F, 54% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the east by northeast.  I don't know what the high was, or how the weather was, because I didn't go outside all day long for the second day in a row.

Sorry for not blogging first thing this morning as I always do, but the cold I have has really kicked my butt.  I have been sleeping in my recliner to keep from coughing, but finally early this morning I went back to bed....my cough had mostly gone, but I was completely wasted.....not enough sleep for two nights in a row, and feeling like I would never get better.  Now, as I write, I am feeling much better.....surprisingly better.

Saturday I called in sick, and just sat in my recliner all day coughing so much my chest hurt, and my throat felt like it must be close to hemhorraging.  I had no appetite, but ate some grapefruit just to get something into my stomach.  Being on blood pressure medicine, and blood thinners rules out a lot of the usual over the counter cold remedies.  The doctor said I could take Benadryl, so TLE brought some home from work, and when I took that I my nose stopped running, and my cough began to abate.

At any rate, I am feeling better.....maybe another day off work and I'll be ready to go once again.  

By the way, my doctor's appointment on Friday went well.  The doctor is pleased with my lowered  blood pressure, and I my next appointment is in one month.

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Desert View - Day 57 - Cold

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5:51 am - Saturday - January 6th - Grand Canyon - 25º F, 72% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the south.....forecast high for today is 56º F with partly cloudy skies.....BP 132/87....last night was one for the books......very sick with a bad cough....had to sleep in my recliner most of the night to minimize the coughing fits.  To quote a good friend....."I feel like I have been drug through a knothole backwards", and "my mouth feels like the inside of a trash can".   What's the other well known quip?  "At first I thought I was going to die.....then, as the night went on, I became afraid I might not die"......all these apply to me this morning.  I guess it was inevitable.....everyone else around me has gotten sick in the last two weeks, including about 1/2 of our customers coming through the checkout line.

I woke up Friday feeling like I was getting a cold, and as the day wore on it became more obvious that I was, indeed, getting sick.  I had the 'open' shift which meant I had to be at work by 7:30 am......I normally walk to work, but on this day TLE suggested I drive since it was so cold, and I was not feeling well.  Additionally, I had a followup appointment at the Grand Canyon Clinic at 2:30 pm to check on my high blood pressure status.  My doctor at Flagstaff Medical Center made the appointment on my behalf.

As the morning progressed I felt worse and worse, and by the time TLE arrived at 12 noon I was ready to count down my drawer and get home to rest for a little bit before I had to make the 25 mile drive over to the clinic.  Fortunately I made it over the clinic and back by 4 pm, and then collapsed in my recliner to rest some more, slowly feeling worse and worse.

TLE arrived home from work just before 5:30......she had taken out a nice filet for me to grill, so I had turned the Sea-B-Que on just before she arrived home.  Grilling that steak will probably the last time I do that for a week, or two while I fight my way through my annual cold.  It was an extra thick steak so I left it on the BBQ for about 16 minutes to get it to that favored medium/rare status.  It was probably one of the best steaks I have grilled.....ever.

We watched a couple of recorded programs before slipping off to bed before 10:30......because of my deteriorating condition, I didn't really get to sleep until after 2 pm....too much coughing....finally I moved out to the recliner and finally was able to sleep 90 minutes at a time the rest of the night.

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Desert View - Day 56 - ROKU

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5:54 am - Friday - January 5th - Grand Canyon - 30º F, 31% humidity, wind 1 mph of of the east.....forecast high for today is 56º F with partly cloudy skies.....BP 126/73.  Just received sad news that another good friend of 50+ years has passed......another gone too soon.....RIP Scott Smith!

I was off Thursday, and TLE had the 'close' shift.  My big goal for the day was to install the new 32" LED TV we purchased in Flagstaff back on Tuesday.  It is slightly bigger than our old Phillips LED TV which I believe was 31".....at least that was the diagonal measurement of the casing.  The brand on this new TV is TCL - ROKU TV.....I have never heard of TCL before, but it was the only 32" SMART TV they had at Walmart on Thursday, and it was on sale for $135.  I remember my first color TV was a 17" JVC and it cost almost $500 back in 1972.....the TV's today are so inexpensive they are almost like throw away TV's.  No one seems to get TV's repaired anymore.....it's cheaper just to buy a new one......

.....at any rate, with TLE's help I was able to lift the new TV into place, and then plug all the HDMI cables into it.  I will probably have to remove it next week on a day off to drill new holes for the wall bracket so I can lower it about 2"......right now it is hitting the ceiling of the Newell.....for now it's fine, but it will need to be lower when we begin to roll our wheels again in March so it can be properly stowed and secured.

I wasn't feeling a 100% Thursday.....I think I'm getting a cold, and that really disappoints me.  After installing the new TV I downloaded the ROKU programming, and within minutes was able to watch TV.  The advantage of ROKU TV is that you can watch a lot of streaming TV if you wish.....right now we watch Netflix, Hulu and Vudu using 'streaming TV, but not any network channels.  If we felt comfortable 'cutting the cord' and let DirecTV go we would be able to pretty much watch all TV via streaming.  What keeps me from doing that is even though I have unlimited data from Verizon, I am limited to 15 gigabytes  when using the hotspot on my phone, and I must in order to connect the TV to the internet.  If I was stationary and had hardwired internet, then I would 'cut the cord' tomorrow.

The rest of the day I just pretty much rested, except for one 30 minute stretch when I rode my stationary bike to exercise.  As I sit here this morning (Friday) I am definitely getting a cold.....my throat has a tickle in it, and I am developing a cough.....😕

TLE was home just before 5:35 pm and quickly set about preparing hard shell tacos for dinner, so at least I had that going for me as I slowly slip into 'COLD' status.

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