Being a home nurse

I am sure am glad that I have never said I would post to this blog more than once or twice a week. I posted last Sunday and I have been rather busy ever since. This is what retirement is all about. Specifically doing what I want to do instead of doing what some company wants me to do. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed working the years I did, I just prefer the lifestyle that I lead now.

A bit over a week ago I came down with a cold. I kept telling Erma and her Mother that the cold was mine and they were not allowed to have any of it. This was my cold and I did not like it so I wanted to make sure that I killed it totally. I did not need any help, I could handle it all by myself. Do you think they would listen? NO! They had to take some of it away from me. And they could not handle it as well as I could. I had to take Erma to the Dr. She was not able to breath like she should. The Dr gave her a nebulizer treatment and within ten minutes, the time it took for the treatment, she was breathing better, looking better, and feeling like she would actually breathe to see another day. She also got a shot and a prescription for some medication and a prescription for a nebulizer to use at home. Last summer she got pneumonia and spent two days in the hospital. At least she did not have a rebout of that. One good thing from last summer was the fact that we still had medicine to use in the nebulizer. She is slowly recovering and getting better every day. It will be at least a week before she back to normal. She is missing some line dancing and that is bothering her almost as much as anything else.

Now my MIL is somewhat different. She caught some of the cold I did not want her to have, not as bad as Erma but when you are 87 any cold will knock the props out from under your feet. But she did something else too. While getting to the table to eat one day she was refusing any help and actually fighting against attempt to assist her. So we simply left her do it herself. That was a mistake in itself. While we were on the other side of the table she fell backwards and hit the corner of a paper shredder that was setting by the TV. Anybody that fell on that thing would be hurting and she is. Now it is hard for her to do anything between the cold and a back that is hurting badly. I have had enough hurt backs to know what it is like, and I was a lot younger than I am even now.

One day earlier this week I thought I was going to have a quiet evening to catch up on some of the work that I needed to do at home and on the computer. It was not long before a friend of mine asked for help getting some music burned on a CD so that he fulfill a promise he had made to another person. For some unknown reason his computer will not burn a CD that is playable on the average CD player. So I am trying to get the music on to my computer and then burn a CD with my equipment that will play where it is needed. We got the job done finally. But it was starting to get late.

There was a knock on the door. Another friend was having trouble getting his e-mails. I brought up his e-mail account on my computer and made an adjustment and made a suggestion. Go home, try this and it should work. It didn't. He came back and I noticed that it was 9:30. When he came back I could go to his house and I was able to make some changes that seem to be working. At least I have not heard that he is having further trouble. I still have a couple people that I have promised to go help and I have to get that done soon.

There is a tool (template) that is used in quilling to allow the rolled paper to expand. Simply put it is a thin piece of plastic with a bunch of holes of different sizes drilled through it. Wit so many new people coming to class there is a need of many of these templates. The instructor has sold all the ones he made before he came south last fall. A week or so I made four of them and they were all gone the first evening. The instructor and I made nine more of them Tuesday. I got mixed up about the day of the week it was and missed dance class. But then I was also trying to play nurse to my ladies. It was also the day that I took m wife to the Dr.

On Wednesday our dance class performed five dances on stage at the park meeting. I think everybody had a good time. Most of the dancers must have been nervous because we are not in the habit of performing for a couple hundred people. Still it was fun. I have been asked to write a letter to the activities director here at the park to see if we can put on an evening performance some time next year. Several other groups have special evening performances.


DANCING AT THE PARK MEETING

Till Later This is Uncle Duck

Sunday Morning

This post is causing me trouble this morning, or actually afternoon now for some reason. I have tried several time to post it and it has failed. So one more time.

Here it is Sunday morning and the sun is shining brightly. Very soon it will be time to head to church. I am not sure that I will be appreciated at church if I get to coughing but I will try anyway. I woke up Friday morning with a cold. Thursday it was just a tickle in my throat. I should have started doing some then, but I never did anything. I have too many things to do to mess with a cold. I missed most of the dance class on Saturday. I stayed home to get some extra sleep. Maybe that helped because I feel better this morning.

I am known by people around the park because of leading of the sessions of the computer class. They see me in front and listen to my presentations and know my name, but I don't know their names. The same thing is starting to happen with the people in quilling class. I am the guy that makes the quilling boards. The fact that I have only make four of them does not make any difference it seems. Evidently the instructor told the four people that got the boards that I made them and then they pointed me out to other people. I have enough material to make nine more boards and I think I need to get busy whether I feel like doing it or not.

When I make a CD I print a design of some sort directly on the disc itself, and there is a case insert that goes into the case that matches the design on the CD. I have a feeling that our dance instructor has shown these to instructors of other dance classes at other parks and thus there has been some indication that I may be asked to burn CDs for them too. On Saturday there was one instructor that was going to come talk to me about it but she got sick and did not come. What will come from that I do not know.

There is a group in the park here that calls itself "Little Theater". Once or twice a year (season might be a better word) they put on a performance for the park. One was yesterday. The premise of the show was a party at which each of the actors had to tell a true story about themselves or tell a funny story that they had heard. It was a very good performance and I enjoyed it a lot. Just the dialog leading from one story or joke to the next was funny. Something that I notice is that a high percent of the jokes that people tell are ones that I have already heard. There are very few "new" jokes. Now that does not mean that they are not still funny, the presentation is worth a lot. Out of the roughly twenty stories and jokes presented there was only one that I had not heard before. The Internet is a source of jokes that is beyond belief, and I am sure that most of the jokes came directly from it. One fellow told a true (he claimed) story that I had not read.

One mans trash is definitely another mans gold. We had a sunflower growing just in front of our motor home that had a few dozen flowers on it. We really enjoyed it a lot. It was growing taller and putting on more blooms and getting prettier few days. To us it was just about pure gold. Then this last week the maintenance workers came by with their weed eaters and cut it down and left a jagged dead stem. I know that to many people a sunflower is just a weed. I grew up in Kansas and cut down a lot of sunflowers because they were in the corn fields or bean fields. But I also enjoyed the sunny blooms when they grew along the fence rows. I miss my beautiful sunflower.


DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A BEAUTIFUL FLOWER OR A WEED?

Till Later This is Uncle Duck

A Day Of Dancing

The days pass so quickly that it is hard to believe. On Sunday we went to church as usual and then went to Mimi's Cafe. The food is always good there and I recommend that is you have not been to one, go when you can. I have not ordered anything that was a disappointment. I had their ribs and they were almost as good as the ones that Tony Roma serves. Tony Roma's gives you a hot towel to clean the hands at the end of the meal and that is really nice. We sure can get spoiled at some places. Mimi's is not geared towards ribs so they cannot be expected to provide all the services.

I have been helping more people with their computers. I don't consider myself really knowledgeable on computers. What I have found out is that a slight knowledge looks like high ability to those that know even less. I know this because I feel that way towards others that have greater abilities than I do. At any rate I try to do what I can for others and Sunday afternoon was spent that way. Most of Monday afternoon following the computer club meeting was also spent doing the same type of things. Some things are very simple, like how do you rip a CD to the computer and how do you burn information to a CD, or how do you adjust the font type and font size in a word document. That kind of information is the kind I can help with.

We had a fast trip today. My mother in law fell in the motor home and smacked her face into something and messed up her nose. My wife was sure that it was broken, so we quickly went to the hospital. By the time we got to the emergency drop off her nose was looking a lot better rather than a lot worse. The color was about normal, except for the skinned areas and what looked like swelling did not seem to be so swollen. So I told my wife to feel her nose and she did not feel anything abnormal and the MIL said it did not hurt at all. We turned around and drove back home. Tonight my MIL seems to be fine. That is if you consider a skinned nose fine.

We went up to an adult day care center to dance today. It was very hot in the center and the humidity was rather high so it was not the best conditions to dance. The floor was a beautiful tile that should have been good to dance on, but I think the humidity caused it to be sticky and hard for dancing. The people really seemed to enjoy our dancing and did an lot of clapping and moving with the music. We wer invited to come back any time and dance again. One of the workers said that this coming Thursday they were having a live band come in to celebrate the 49th anniversary of a couple there. She said that they would be dancing a diferent type of dance and Erma asked her for a demo for us. Two of the worker ladies grabbed a couple men and showed us what they would do. In fact at one point one of the guys got a Bentsen Grove girl to dance with and the woman got me to dance with her. I don't think I have danced like that since I was in college. And that is a long time ago. I think everybody had a good time. We went back to the hall and practiced our dances after we left the day care center. I heard a lot of comment that indicated that the dancer had a good time.

I was given several small quilling kits by a lady here in the park along with a couple tool. She said to give them to someone that would use them. Three different ladies took the kits and some sort of card making tools. There was a couple tools that I can use. Every class seems to have some new people that want to learn and tonight was not any different. One lady said they came down here for a week and want to stay longer but can't. She learned as much as she could and said she would be back next year for longer. Now where have I heard that before.

It is getting late, so more later, I'm tired. I have had a long day.

Till Later This is Uncle Duck

More Busy Days

Here it is the end of Valentines Day and it is hard to believe that so much time has passed. Half of February is gone already. Spring is not far behind no mater where a person lives and I think it is already here in Mission.

In the last three days I have spent about as much time in the homes of other people as I have in my own. I had tried to help a fellow set up the access to the web using a cell phone last week. I failed to have success. He went back to the phone company and they took a couple hours to accomplish what I was never able to do. They had access to several computers and sites that are not available to me. The next step was for me to help the fellow get connected at home, which I did to some extent and I thought the problem was solved. We had looked at his e-mails and even deleted some that he knew were garbage. When he came to my door and said that he could not get his e-mails open I was perplexed. So, on my computer we made an adjustment and looked at a couple of the e-mails. He went home happy and I thought he was out of the woods. Don't get too optimistic! At dance class the next day he said, "I can't get my e-mails open." Oh! Now that is a good joke! Right? Wrong! He really couldn't get them open, but I thought he was joking.

Next evening he came by the Vectra and asked me if I could come help him. So I did! And everything worked like it was supposed to, for me. Ever take your car to a mechanic and the problem does not appear? G-mail does not cause problems on a regular basis. Still it took a while to be absolutely positive that the e-mails were acting the proper way. He and his wife were finally able to open, save, delete, send e-mails on their own. Some times computers can be so frustrating.

Another lady lost her hard drive at the end of January and lost all her pictures and information that she had spent hours gathering off the Internet. She had backed up her info on the computer itself, so when the hard drive went down the info AND the backup was lost. It is impossible for me to emphasize too much that backups need to be done on EXTERNAL drives of some sort. At any rate she bought a new computer, new software to make cards and some other stuff. I have spent a lot of time helping her to get back to the point that she was before the crash, and there is still a ways to go.

Another couple has asked me to help with their computer. I put on an Office suite from Open Office, and an anti virus program and made sure that it was working. Pretty simple stuff and much more geared to my skills. In exchange for that I have been given the priviledge to use their workshop in the back of their home. That is an exchange in which I have gained a lot more than I gave. Also they gave me some bird figures that are designed to be placed on the inside and outside of a window. The two parts are held together by magnets and it looks like the bird is flying through the window. They are really neat.

I have already taken advantage of the shop offer. The leader of the quilling class made some quilling templates to sell to the new students. They are simply a series of holes drilled through a thin piece of material, like formica or 1/16" thick plastic. He sells them way too cheap, but so what. He ran out of templates early on this year. I found one of the residents of Bentsen Grove who gave me a piece of plastic, from which I made four 6" squares. Then using a drill press in the shop I drilled a bunch of holes through the squares to make templates. The instructor did some deburring of the holes and sold all four during the first class. Now I have to make more for him. He is selling these too cheap too, but so what. At least the student have tools to use. It is worth while.

It seems that as soon as I burn a CD for the dance class someone wants to buy it. This year I think that I have burned something like thirty CDs. I am out of them again and have to make more of them. I was also asked by the instructor to show an instructor at another park to show her how I made the fancy CD inserts and picture that I print on the CD itself. The picture below is the latest cover I have made. It seems that there is plenty to do for people.


ONE OF THE CD CASE INSERTS

This picture is printed on the CD as well as on the case insert. On the backside is a list of all the songs and the dances that go with them. The oval picture is fifty of the ninety some people that have signed up for lessons. There are more men in this class than any other park has. Our instructor is really pleased.

Well duty calls to other things.
Till Later This is Uncle Duck

Busy Days

There was a time that I have made a statement like, "I need to go back to work to rest up from vacation." Right now I almost to need to get back on the road so I can rest up from the activities of sitting at home. Yesterday was one of those days.
We started the day by going to an adult day care center to dance for the people that are there. There was at least twenty-some of us that went to dance. While we were there we taught the people a very simple dance. A lot of them really seemed to enjoy doing it. I don't care much for the music that we do it to, but they enjoyed the dancing.

BENTSEN GROVE DANCERS AND THE DAY CARE RESIDENTS

When we got done dancing there we went back to finish our dance class lesson. Then grab a quick lunch and go to a performance of the the Bentsen Grove Texas Cloggers. These ladies really put on a good show. I would never survive that much activity with my legs. The are much too fast on the feet.

I had obtained some material to make some expansion templates for the quilling class. A lot of new people are coming into the class and the instructor does not have enough tools. I have developed a friendship with a couple that bought a park model here that had a well equipped shop with it.

Till Later This is Uncle Duck

A Busy Day

There was at time that I said that a vacation was a time in which I did so much that I had to go back to work so I could rest up from the vacation. I may have to start saying that I will have to go back to the road to rest up from staying in one location.

Teaching About Blogs

It is odd to think that I only learned to do anything with blogs in mid-January and today I was displaying my knowledge to other people at the Bentsen Grove Computer Club. I am sure that there is at least one person in the meeting that knew more about what I was telling than I did. She was willing, thank goodness, to speak up and help me when I hit a stumbling block. And believe me there were some stumbling blocks. For one thing I think that I was too much in the middle of the room to get a great Internet connection.

I have gotten into quilling this year. Myself and a WHOLE bunch of other people are starting it for the first time. The instructor is running out of tools for people to use. I have recently become acquainted with a couple that bought a home here in the park that has a shop in the back. Because I have gone to their home and worked on their computer I was invited to use their shop anytime I needed it. So I took them up on their offer. I went there today and made a couple tools that are needed by quillers. If the instructor or I can make a few of these inexpensive tools that can be sold for a couple dollars instead of making the people buy expensive tools it would be a good thing for them. If they get into doing a lot more then they can justify the purchase of higher quality and more expensive tools later. Maybe we can improve the quality of the class. The next step will be to find somewhere we can get some formica, cheap.

There is a new post at dougpeaceontheroad.blogspot.com as of about an hour ago.

Till Later This is Uncle Duck

Uncle Duck And Making Tracks

Since this is the first blog a bit of history is appropriate I think. I have a nickname of Uncle Duck because of my nephew. When he was small and learning to talk he could not say Uncle Doug and it came out as Uncle Duck. The family picked up the name and it has stuck for around thirty years. The tracks is due to my making tracks all around the United States in a motorhome for the last four years.

As this blog is activated in the coming days, weeks, years it will be a place for me to keep readers informed about the more day to day activities of my life.

May the all your roads be smooth and by beautiful scenes.

Till Later This is Uncle Duck