Busy Tuesday

Last night I fell asleep easily at the normal time but woke up 1 hour later with a mildly aching back and twitching back muscles. I thought I might have overdone it during the day but the feeling was not typical of that. The twitching kept me from getting back to sleep—then I finally remembered that I didn’t take my evening pills. That solved the problem. I keep telling myself that I will someday be able to quit taking some of the pain or NSAID medication I take. Although my back is feeling better than it ever has since my surgery, apparently what has happened is my pain is now being managed better by the meds. That last round of Prednisone did provide long-term relief. Of course I haven’t been walking. We will see if walking aggravates it or not. It didn’t seem to before the Prednisone.

So I got back to sleep but awoke at 3:30 and could not go back to sleep. I got out of bed around 3:50 and went out in the den. I turned on the computer to listen to Karen, made some toast and coffee and sat down to plan the day.

I’ve gone back to having a “Do” list the same way I kept track of things at work. As I remember things I have to do I add them to the list. Each morning I can check the list and see which tasks can be done or at least worked on. Today I chose to fix our sliding door (it was jamming just short of closing), build the trestle for the garden, change the oil in my car, return the library books, Run the generator and use the electricity to run the weed whacker, call Dr Silberberg about my thumbs (they are not getting better) and fix a broken sprinkler in the front yard. I got all that done today.

When Penny got up I made her breakfast and had myself a second breakfast and cup of coffee.

Our trip to Las Vegas is coming up soon so I went on-line to see that all is in order for our airline reservations. They are. For this trip we are leaving Jacksonville at 4:55 PM. When we go to Montana later this year we will be leaving at 6 AM. We’ve already given Karen a heads-up on that one.

I’ve got the garden set as close to maintenance-free as possible now. I will have to tie up the tomato plants as they grow and take care of insects but there is no need to weed, water or fertilize. It’s all in there already. The trestle will serve to support the tomato plant and the vine plants. It will also hold the bird net when the fruit is ripening to hopefully save the ripened fruit for humans.

You can see in this picture the pots are covered in plastic and each watering tube has a drip irrigation hose going to it. There also is a trough full of fertilizer, enough for the season under the plastic. It releases slowly throughout the season. I’ve got a dedicated sprinkler line feeding the irrigation system. Currently it runs for 5 minutes every day at 8 AM and fills all the reservoirs. The plants seem to really like the setup. The soil gets nice and warm in the sun under the plastic and the plant has water available all the time. Everything seems to be growing fine. I’ll provide garden update as we head toward a (hopefully) bountiful harvest.

Tomorrow probably won’t be as busy. The weather will be nice and Penny’s back is getting better. We may run off and play tomorrow. Now all I have to do is get a good night’s sleep.