What it could be...

My friend Caryl is laughing at me because I don't know what a cucumber is.  But, gee, I've never attempted to grow one before!

I bought a six-pack of cucumber plants, thinking I would put them in the raised bed.  Then, I realized that they would be too large for the raised bed and decided they should go live in Firewood Man's garden.  Only he kept forgetting to take them with him.  Not wanting to waste the whopping $1.99 I spent on them (so penurious am I), I put them into a pot.  Only that pot did not have drainage, so all the rain filled up the pot and it became rice paddy.  Then we had that crazy cold weather, so the plants began to freeze.  I needed a solution QUICK.

Back in the fall or maybe even last summer or last spring, I bought some diamond drill bits to try and drill holes into the bottom of the remaining old pot that I had.  The pots were from the woman who grew up here when her parents built this house back in 1920.  I had left one out too long in the winter and the water in it froze and shattered the pot.  I bought the bits so that I could use the other pot.  I actually had them when the pot broke.  I was just too nervous about trying to use them.  LOTS of You-Tube watching and still I couldn't manage to gird my loins.

Well, the sight of those wilted, freezing plants spurred me to attempt the awesome feat of drilling through porcelain.  I turned the pot upside down on the grass so as to minimize its movement as I drilled.  I tucked it beneath my two feet.  I held the hose with running water with my left hand (water helps drilling through porcelain), and I held the drill with my right hand.  It was a miraculous event in that I actually succeeded in drilling holes!

I put fresh Myrtle's Soil Mix into the pot and relocated the poor, beleaguered plants.

They are no longer beleaguered.

I knew that before you can have a cucumber, you have to have a flower.  It was my hope that the plants would use the fence as a trellis (two of them have) and I did get some flowers.  Then I waited.  What comes next??

Oh, my!  At the base of several of the flowers are these thickening spiky things.  Those are baby cucumbers!  I am soooooooo very excited!

My excitement wore Amos out.  He had to take a nap.

Of course, his exhaustion could be from chomping on all the lettuce.  Yes, he prefers the leaf lettuce to the left.  Baby Bunny eats on the romaine hanging over the edge.  And I have been eating a whole lot of butter lettuce on the right.  When I take Amos outside to tend his business, I regularly catch him taking a bite or three out of the lettuce.

It looks like I have barely dug into my lettuce crop, but in the past three weeks, I have only not had a salad twice.  That's 19 salads.  Clearly, I need a lesson on crop management!

From everything I read, the lettuce should be gone now with all the STINKING HOT weather we are having, but after wilting terribly, most of it resurrected with a huge rain we had.  I need some visitors who are craving salads to stop by.

I am also trying my hand at growing carrots, in addition to my usual herbs, but those are a little disappointing to me, so I haven't been taking any progress photos.

Today, I had the home visit with the social worker from the Parkview RN Care program.  I was nervous about it ... worried really.   I was afraid of being judged for things I have not done for myself.  What didn't help the situation is that this morning I discovered that for the past three days, I have taken double my dose of thyroid medication and half my dose of blood pressure medication.  The pills are different and I mixed up those two medications.  I remain very, very, very discouraged about that, a first for me, and wondered if it would be a Red Flag about my living on my own.  But her visit was not about judging me.  It was about supporting me.

I want to try and get Parkview to start a support group for chronically ill patients, maybe even an invisible illness group.  I know the need is profound all over the US, so it would be here, too.  I am going to try and write up a ... crap ... well there is a word for a one-page sheet outlining a funding messaging for a new project.  I want to try and write one of those to use as a way to approach Parkview's Foundation.  

We also talked about other needs and how I might possibly be able to qualify to have them met another way.  That discussion was not fearful or condemning in any way.  I actually enjoyed the home visit immensely.  And I welcomed the chance to talk through, once more, my meltdown and how I learned to process it.  Baby steps for me.

I admit that I had been stalling on the application for medication assistance because forms really overwhelm me these days.  I know I have a tendency to miss sections and put in wrong information.  I get overwhelmed before I start filling out forms, but as I work my way through them, the stress becomes a bit unbearable.  Well, the social worker told me to take a close look at all the different applications because most were filled out by the medication assistance specialist!  She mostly needed my signatures and my supporting documentation.  I had already fetched the summary of prescriptions from Target, so I really just needed to print out a copy of the tax return I eFiled.  So, this evening I opened the packet, finished my part, and put it and my documentation back in the mail for tomorrow's pick-up.

Since Parkview is trying to care for me holistically, I thought I would expand upon my M3C campaign and tackle one thing and attempt another.

I had yet to deal with the lack of proper cord management by the sofas ... mostly, because that would mean bending over and partly because the Cold From Hell knocked me flat and I am really only just now no longer so exhausted from it.

I ran the power strip behind the couch and behind the back leg.  I wrapped the cord around the leg a few times to shorten it, leaving the power strip right in the center of the couch.  I then separated the computer cord and the USB hub cord by wrapping the computer cord around the front leg of the couch and wrapping the USB hub cord around the front leg of the love seat.  That way they are separated and should not tangle as much.  I do so enjoy having skirts on my sofas so that they hide the cords beneath them.  

[Please ignore the need to vacuum.]

Back when I was working, I always took such pleasure and peace from wrangling all the cords beneath and desk and establishing proper cord management.  I used to have co-workers ask me to come do their desk.  Of course, I obliged.

The best part of the visit with the social worker was, when she entered my home, exclaiming, "Your living room is so inviting!"  Yes, my cockles were warmed.  She also asked me quite a bit about Amos (who wouldn't want an Amos in her life?) and about why my house was so ... clean.  I pointed out that it was not exactly clean but that it was picked up and we spent time talking about visual rest.  That is one aspect of the new living room arrangement I had not noted before:  It has greater visual rest because the things I have in it all have a specific place now and the space is even less cluttered.

I really am very, very, very pleased with how my living room turned out.  It is much, much more a space for me, as is the solarium.  I feel stronger for having claimed those rooms, working to make them what would serve me best and make my home more welcoming.  In a way, each time I look at the living room or the solarium, I think, "You did this, Myrtle.  What else can you do still?"

Yes, I have lost much.

Much more than most realize.

Or acknowledge.

But I still have bits and pieces of my to offer the world ... even if it is merely a comfortable living room where visitors can gather and rest. Or, perhaps, the encouragement to claim space in your own home and make it what it needs to be to best serve you.  Set aside what it has always been.  Explore  what it could be.