OK – we’re back!

Got home last night after 2300, and actually made it to bed before midnight. The dogs seemed happy to see us which is good because we weren’t sure what kind of reception we’d get. Sometimes they can be down right mean when they want to be. Not mean in a physical way, but more mental, like ignoring you, or looking out the side of their face at you without actually turning their head in your direction. It’s very disconcerting when they do that. Ozzie does it best. But not last night. He was a happy little dog.

Perhaps he was most happy because when we got to LA, Diane texted Jennifer and asked her to please turn the heat back on in the house. It was off the entire time we were gone and I think Oz got chilly. Panzee? No way. She has fur to spare so she just doesn’t get cold. Ever. She doesn’t even get very wet when it rains. I think she may have duck feathers scattered in amongst the fur somewhere.

Sleeping in this morning wasn’t an option because I Diane forced me to go with her to the VA to get my flu and shingles shots – one in each arm. It’s been 7 hours since I got the shots and now my little skinny arms really hurt. Fortunately, I had the flu shot in my left arm because it hurts the worse than the shingles shot. The reason is because the flu shot had to be in the muscle, but shingles is subdural. That simply means the flu shot needle has to be, like, 3 inches long in order to get past the layer of fat on my arm, but the shingles was only about half an inch long. There actually isn’t a lot of fat on my upper arm, and there isn’t very much muscle either, so the nurse, Beauty is her name, had to go at an angle to ensure she could get the entire needle into my arm. Then she hit the plunger and pressed it as hard as she could. I could tell because she was gritting her teeth. It kinda makes you forget about the needle pain when the medicine squirts out of that tiny little needle hole into a space that’s just not big enough for the syringe contents. That’s why she had to grit her teeth, to get the medicine to rip into my muscle fibers.

For the singles shot Beauty grabbed a chunk of that flabby area on the back of my arm, where there isn’t any muscle, pinched it up to make a good target, then jammed that little short needle into my tender skin and forced the shingles killer stuff into my arm causing the same problem as with the other shot – not enough room for the syringe contents.

Now that it’s been a few hours, you’ll be happy to know that both arms hurt about the same since the shots. The “fortunate” part about getting the one that hurts the most in my left arm is that my right arm hurts all the time any way, so now they hurt about the same. It hurts to use either of them so there’s no immediate danger of favoring the right arm over the left. Maybe in a few days I can switch back to that routine.

Tonight I must facilitate our church council meeting, as I do every month. So, there is no resting this evening until I return around 2030. I might have to go a little early, with my propane torch, so I can seal up a leaky part above the narthex. As everyone knows, there’s absolutely nothing worse than a leak in your narthex. It’s very unsettling, and makes the carpet all wet unless you can get the buckets aligned just right. Since he leak is right smack in the middle of the doorway to the basement, getting around the drips becomes a challenge for those who wish to partake of after service snacks. And coffee. It’s a Lutheran church, so coffee is an absolute necessity. I say that, then must share that our Pastor does not drink coffee. Never has as far as I know. All the other Lutheran’s in the world, however, drink coffee. Just ask one of them.

I need to rest now because my arms hurt, and I’m hungry. I believe I’ll go smash a few eggs and make a sandwich. That’s one of the things we missed while in Mexico. I know, they have eggs down there, but we didn’t want to eat theirs and we didn’t think it would be a good idea to pack eggs in the food suitcase. Diane was really thinking when packing for the trip home because she knew we didn’t have any bread in the house, so she packed the few remaining pieces of the loaf of Bimbo bread we bought in Mexico. We’re not sure if we violated any immigration laws by importing bread from Mexico, but no one said anything. Hope they’re not reading this. If they are, I know a lawyer who may, or may not, be able to help extricate me from whatever jail into which “they” decide to incarcerate me.

Perhaps I should start a fund …

To end this, I’m including a couple of pictures from the trip. The first one was taken while we were waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive. The shuttle, by the way, was a very nice tour bus instead of a crampy little van like we had the day we arrived.

This next one is two of the 4 ‘greeters’ we met each morning when heading for the stairs or elevator. The rest of their families is scattered all over the place. They really aren’t a bother, but if you stop to look at them for very long, they come right up looking for something to eat.