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We’re officially on Staycation!

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My husband and I are vacation for the next two weeks. No we’re not going to some exotic local … uh huh … we’re just doing a staycation this year.

We simply can’t afford to go away for a week or two, let along even a weekend!

What we’re going to do is take advantage of the many things that are going on in Toronto. There’s Caribana – a two week long Caribbean festival ending in a huge parade this coming weekend. The Beaches Jazz fest that ended today, which we went to last night and I’m sure we’ll find a few other things going on for us to enjoy.

One thing I’d like to do while my husband is off work is go to his Aunt’s house where we are storing our trailer. One of the beds broke a couple of years ago (that’s how long since we’ve used the thing!) and we need to get it fixed. Hmmm I wonder if that rv extended warranty will cover the damage and repair? Hmmm I’ve got to check into that too!

Otherwise, I guess we’ll just be hanging out here in Toronto, enjoying the garden, having some barbecues – maybe inviting some friends over and of course attending some of the great events going on here in Toronto.

Are you or did you have a Staycation this summer or did you travel somewhere for your holiday?





Don’t you hate when home repairs don’t work?

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Darn! Darn, darn, darn!

In case you can’t tell I’m a little frustrated right now. I just spent some time writing a post on my other blog detailing how we tried to fix the constant drip from our basement shower head.

I thought it was fixed! My husband told me last night once he finally got the old faucet back on that it was fixed …. but, after a quick visit to the basement to see if the shower head had really stopped dripping I discovered that it’s still dripping. At a good rate too! The washers my husband put in didn’t help.

Darn!

We have NO spare money at all. I guess we’ll have to live with the dripping for a while longer (yes we do shut off the water supply to the shower, but it still drips!). It’s been dripping for years and I don’t want to leave it too much longer. I guess as soon as we do have a little extra money I’ll spend some time trying to Price Pfister faucets and Moen Faucets and try to find one that fits our budget.

It figures that when we can’t spare any money on household repairs something needs fixing! Has that happened to you?

Summer’s off to a busy start!

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I’ve been so busy over the last month or more that I’ve barely been posting in my blogs. I think the hectic period is finally over and I can start posting more regularly on my sites. I hope it is anyway.

Got a Light?

I guess life just got in the way of things and for the most part that’s a good thing.

My husband and I have spent most of the last four or five weekends keeping busy – working in the garden (mulching, weeding, tidying – works done now), visiting family and doing things around the city like going to Woofstock, going to that big attempt to break the worlds largest guitar ensemble, attending two ribfests and one waterfront festival, a concert and on and on!

Do you find that once the weather starts to get warm and or the snow melts you’re life suddenly gets a lot busier? I’m not complaining, I love getting out and doing things, but I must say my blogs have suffered from my lack of attention!

My Husband is NOT a Guinness World Record holder – unfortunately

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I was hoping that I’d be able to announce that I’m married to a Guinness World Record holder this evening, but I’m afraid that I can only say that my husband attempted to break a Guinness World Record and unfortunately failed because enough people didn’t show up. Shame.

Sp what am I talking about? Well, earlier today a large group of guitarists gathered at Toronto’s Dundas Square in attempt to break the record for the largest guitar ensemble. They needed 1803 guitarists to break the 2007 German record of 1802 guitarists playing Smoke on the Water, but they were apparently short by about 123 people.

My husband was disappointed when he came home, but he still said he had fun playing Neil Young’s Heartless and meeting several other guitarists. Oh well, maybe they’ll try to break the record again next year. He was so excited too … he even wrote a post about the attempt to break the world record on his guitar blog.

I was going to go to watch the event, but I wasn’t feeling all that well. Remember I have Crohn’s and it’s acting up lately. To tell you the truth I kind of feel like I’ve taken a colon cleanser today. That’s what life with Crohn’s is like.

If Chris had only been going downtown for an hour or so it wouldn’t have been that bad, but registration was supposed to start at 2 p.m. and he heard on the radio at noon that people were already starting to gather so he left at about 12:30 pm. All the guitarists didn’t start playing the song Heartless until 6 p.m. so that would have been a lot of standing around for me. Still … I would have liked to have gone as I’m sure I would have taken some cool pictures of all those guitarists.

Chris is home from the hospital – what a week!

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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.

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