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Our bedroom is freezing!

March 7, 2009 by Tricia

I’m so glad that winter is almost over! Yesterday it reached 18 Celsius (64 F) in the afternoon … but in a few days we’ll be back to the usual cold March weather. Hopefully this March won’t be as bad as last year! I remember a few snow storms and one of the worst of the year happened in March of last year.

Other than going outside in the cold I dislike the cold winter months because our main bedroom, upstairs, is the coldest room in the house. I wrote a post about it recently on my main blog – talking about how I hate getting ready for bed in the room because it’s so chilly that I end up covered in goosebumps! Some of my readers on the other blog suggested a variety of things but the main suggestion was to use a heated blanket. While that’s a great suggestion for once we get into bed, it does nothing to help with the too cool room.

When we first moved into our house in June of 2001 we noticed that the main bedroom – at the end of a long hallway far away from the stairs, didn’t have any cold air return. So we had some duct work done and had a cold air return added to the room. I’m sure that helped, but we still had drafts in the room once winter came.

A couple of years after we moved in we decided to tear down two of the bedroom walls … well the plaster anyway, to find the source of the drafts. We plugged up a few cracks that we found in the triple brick in the top of the wall near the ceiling and some near the base of the wall and then used drywall to close up the wall again. That fix made the room quite a bit warmer than it had been, but it’s still cooler than the rest of the house.

Since the room is cool in the winter we’ve always used some kind of electric heater to warm the room for an hour or so once we got to bed. We turn it on for a while prior to going to bed and since it has a timer on it we set it to run for about an hour after we’ve gone to bed. That helps quite a bit, but unfortunately our heater stopped working so we now need a new one. Believe me … that heated blanket is becoming more and more appealing!

We obviously still have some air leaks in the room because the room is too warm in the summer as well. Maybe we’ll have to tear down all the walls to find any other cracks that we missed.

Do any of you have the same problem? Is your bedroom a lot cooler than the rest of your house?

It’s snowing …. Again!

February 21, 2009 by Tricia

Well, I guess I can’t complain all that much that it’s snowing yet again. We’ve had a fairly nice week with temperatures either well above freezing or only just a little below freezing. All the snow that we had melted away. Nice for February … but the nice weather is over for a while.

Chris and I were trying to beat the storm this afternoon. We figured tomorrow would pretty much be a right off for going out and getting the groceries and other shopping done due to the storm, so we headed out late this afternoon before the snow started.

We had planned to go to Andy’s meat terminal off of Warden avenue to get two bags of boneless skinless chicken breasts. Man it’s a deal – 12 to 14 huge chicken breasts for about $35 bucks! The breasts are so big that we only eat one between us so each bag is 12 to 14 meals. Since we’ve been eating so much chicken lately we thought we’d get two bags. That’s a lot of chicken!

Well after we left the meat place we saw a Sportschek store and since Chris has come home complaining of sore feet and sore knees after every work shift for oh the last two or three months we decided to stop in and see if we could find him some good running shoes – well walking shoes since that’s what he does all day. Not only did Chris get a new pair of running shoes but I did too. The ones I’ve been wearing were at least two or three years old and they make my feet sore when I wear them while walking around a lot too. So … over $200 bucks later and we were out of the store and on to Costco to fill my prescriptions and pick up a few other items we needed.

By the time we left Costco at just after 6 pm the snow was falling hard. The city snow plows and sand/salters hadn’t been on any of the major roads were driving on yet either so it was a slippery drive home. It’s times like these that I wish we were on one of those Vegas vacations so we could escape the snow. Now that would be nice.

I think sometime in the middle of next week it’s supposed to warm up again so maybe this snow dump will all melt away again.

Ah … I can’t wait for spring!

Chris is home from the hospital – what a week!

February 8, 2009 by Tricia

Wow … I can’t believe I haven’t written in this blog for more than a week! That must be a record!

Well, if you are a reader of my other blog, Tricia’s Musings, you’ll already know that my husband spent some time in the hospital last week. That’s one of the main reasons I haven’t been writing in any of my blogs this week.

Last Friday, while at work (in the hospital) Chris started to get some chest pain or rather a strong pressure in the left side of his chest. He also felt dizzy and disoriented. This has happened before. Back in 2004 Chris was getting the same kind of symptoms and by the time he made it to the ER triage desk he passed out right at the nurse’s feet! At that time they admitted him and did several tests to see if he had a rare heart arrhythmia called Brugada.

The symtoms and his ECG that he had in 2004 and has had occasionally since that time – including last Friday, all point to the heart arrhythmia, but the doctors couldn’t induce a heart arrhythmia when they did a special test called EP studies.

So back to last Friday … Chris had heart related symptoms and made his way to the ER. He was admitted after seeing one of our best cardiologists. As it turns out his cholesterol was high – both the good and bad cholesterol and his triglycerides were extremely low. So they decided to do an Angiogram on Monday to check to see if he had any blocked coronary arteries. So even though Chris was pretty much symptom free after the one incident on Friday afternoon he had to stay in the hospital until the angiogram was done.

As it turned out his coronary arteries were perfectly clear and the test showed no heart abnormalities. So we’re back to square one – he still has these weird episodes, but we don’t know for sure if it’s his heart that’s causing them … even though he has permanent electrocardiogram changes.

Luckily the hospital is close by as I spent Friday through Monday walking back and forth from home to hospital to visit with him. I also brought him one of our nice pillows from home (it’s a dense foam and it’s really heavy), all the things he might need (toiletries, undershirts, underwear, socks and reading materials) and my LAPTOP! Ahhh! Man I missed that thing. I live on my laptop, but even though Chris couldn’t get on the internet at the hospital he could at least watch the DVDs that I brought him and play some games etc.

I exhausted myself by carrying all that stuff back and forth and of course all that walking back and forth. Given that I’m not all that healthy myself what with my Crohn’s, vitamin D deficiency and worsening back pain, it took me most of the rest of the week, once he was home, to recover and kind of feel up to writing in my blogs again.

We did score a few things from the hospital. When I brought him a pillow from our bed he decided to take the cover off and use the hospital pillow covers. Since the pillow was too big he had to use two pillow covers to cover it. I was too tired when Chris was discharged from the hospital on Monday evening to remove the covers so we have them at home. (We’ll return them of course, Chris will be back to work on Tuesday and he can bring them in then.)

We also managed to get some promotional pens from the hospital. That was actually a catch, since there’s never a pen around at the hospital when you need one. As you might know I’m an ER nurse (on medical leave) and I had to have a stock of pens to bring with me to work and I had to guard them with my life as they would be “stolen” if I left one on a counter … so to actually get “hospital pens” is a rarity! LOL

So … that’s my long story as to why I haven’t been blogging this week. Chris is dong fine. He’s currently vacuuming for me! Baring any new symptoms he should be ready to go back to work on Tuesday. His groin is healed from where they did the angiogram and he’s on Cholesterol lowering medication (Crestor). I’m doing better too. Man is is ever stressful having your husband in the hospital – especially when you don’t feel all that well yourself!

I hope that you’re week has been better than mine and if you are in the North East that you are able to enjoy this slightly warm spell that we’ve been having. Our snow is all melting away and I expect by the end of the week, if the above freezing temps keep up, that our snow will pretty much be gone. Probably just in time for a new snow storm to sweep in! LOL

BTW there will be no Green Thumb Sunday post this week. I’m just getting back on track, so I’ll leave Green Thumb until next week.

I don’t hate winter – but I sure can’t wait for it to be over!

January 25, 2009 by Tricia

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I don’t hate winter, but considering I live in a cold climate I have to admit that Winter is my least favorite season.

I am thankful that we do have seasons though! As nice as it might be to live somewhere where the temperature is always a nice 70 degrees I think I’d miss the new greens of spring and the colorful fall leaves, even the extreme heat and humidity of summer. After a while I’d probably even miss winter – a little bit.

So for all the people that feel like I do … I guess you could say we’re bleeding hearts? Well here’s an actual photo of Bleeding Heart flowers. LOL

I love these late spring bloomers. For some reason my Bleeding hearts didn’t really grow or bloom last year. As wet as last spring and summer was the area that I have them in (side of house near driveway in tiny garden bed) was too dry. I’ll have to give that area extra attention this spring and summer to make sure all my plants in that garden bed come up and do well!

What’s your favorite and least favorite season?

Some color on a winter day

January 11, 2009 by Tricia

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I think I’ve got an “I hate snow” theme going on my blogs today. Yep, I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of the cold fluffy white stuff and I need some color in my life.

What better than a bright pink Cosmo flower then?

Aw … that’s better. Aren’t Cosmo’s pretty?

I grow this flower in my backyard garden and in the front boulevard during the summer. Everyone seems to love them.

Do you grow Cosmos? Oh and are you getting tired of all the snow lately too?

BTW if you want to see some bright summer color take a look at this cheery daylily!