Wring me out

...like a wet rag.

I pulled all the carpet and underlay out of the living room, hall and front (computer) room over the past few days (namely Wednesday and Friday ~ I got called in to work on Thursday). Pried up yards of tack strips from along the wall edges. And yanked out hundreds (and this is no exaggeration) of staples that had been used to hold the underlay in place. Someone had an itchy trigger finger, let me tell you.

All in temps in the mid to upper 20s (Celsius, of course ~ this is Canadia, after all) with humidity in the range of 70%. Needless to say, that means it felt like about 38C. Which is about 100F. Which is bloody hot!!!! Especially if you are doing physical labour. It's lovely if you're lounging by the pool with a tasty umbrella'd drink in one hand, though. Unfortunately, I don't have a pool.

After doing all that, I loaded the detritus into my little truck and off to the dump I went. Cost me a $20 tipping fee, but hey, at least I don't have that slightly smelly and stained wall to wall carpet in the house anymore. (Found a few corners with old stains... some little creature peeing in the corners way back when? I know it's not my cats ~ they are religious about using their litter box and always have been.)

What I do have is several rooms with really old crappy worn and ugly fake wood looking 8x8 tiles that are chipped and cracked. Same as what was in the bedroom when I redid it. Given that there's probably asbestos in the tiles, it is staying put.

Monday is my surgery day. Carpal tunnel release on my left hand. Had the right done in 2005, so I know what to expect. I'm just glad I was able to get the carpet out and all that taken care of. Once my hand is healed, I will work on installing all the laminate flooring that is sitting in my basement, just waiting to be allowed upstairs!

Just call me Ms McGuyver

Went to do a load of laundry tonight. Water running, putting clothes and detergent in. I had a few things to spray with Shout so the tub filled completely before I was done. I went to close the lid to let it run the cycle...

And nothing happened!!!

The words that came out of my mouth were "aw fuck!"

Sunday evening. Nothing is open. I have a washer full to the brim with warm water (rapidly cooling), suds and clothes. Groping around, I discovered a piece of plastic wobbling just under the edge of the opening.

What's a girl to do?

Well, google the repair, of course! Discovered a faulty lid switch was the culprit. I found some youtube videos showing how to get at the lid switch, swap it out and put things back together again.

Since I had a piece of it in my hand, I wanted to see if it could be put back together again.

So I followed the video's instructions (it wasn't difficult at all) (yes, I unplugged the electrical first), took the control panel off, unclipped the lid switch cables and pulled the body of the machine off. I could get at the switch easily and discovered the adhesive that holds the upper and lower switch housing had failed. Hence the piece that fell out. The housing was gaping open.

So I put the piece back in, held it together and yes it clicked just like it should. So I got a strip of double sided velcro, wrapped it snugly around the housing (making sure it didn't interfere with the switch itself) and then put the whole machine back together.

Voila!! I am back in business and my clothes are merrily sloshing away.

Feeling blue...

And not just because it's been two weeks since Maart decided to be a single man again. It has seemed a much longer time than that, but I'm sure that has to do with actually being on holidays right now, and not going anywhere, or having anyone to do anything with. I did pick up a couple of shifts at work (did days today and will work an evening tomorrow) so that fills some of the time.

No, this blueness is the new look I've painted on my blog. I decided to stick the cat banner into Photoshop to play with it a bit more and once I was pleased with that, I had to do something about the background.

Those scattered flower petals did not go with the neon eyed kitties at all. So I played around with that too and finally found one in blogger that I think compliments the banner.

What do you think?

Under the knife

In 12 days, I will be having surgery on my left hand.

I have carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS ~ which is compression of the median nerve that runs into the hand by the transverse carpal ligament that is chronically inflamed), a result of all the repetitive things I do in my job as a Dialysis Nurse. The tubing used in a dialysis treatment has many little thumb clamps that we open and close numerous times during set-up of the machine, during the patient's treatment, and while returning their blood when treatment is done.

(See all those red and blue bits? Most of those are clamps.)

I've been doing this for 15 1/2 years. Unknown number of patients and treatments. Hundreds, easily. You can see how many clamps there are on one set. (That whole mess up there is one set.)

I had this same surgery on my right (dominant) hand in 2005. At that time, nerve conduction studies showed my left hand to have mild CTS. Although I've done the stretches and worn the splint at night on my left hand, the condition progressed to the point where numbness, tingling, loss of strength and shooting nerve pain became unbearable earlier this year. (Thank the gods it is not continuous.)

If you don't stop doing what caused it in the first place, it ain't gonna go away!

While I saw the surgeon in late January, and could have had the surgery in February, I elected to wait until vacation planning had been done in March before setting a surgery date. I figured if I could wait... I would really like to have the summer off! I never get summer holidays because I just don't have enough seniority at work, despite having worked there for 11 years.

Well, this year, I managed to get the last two weeks of June for holidays, so I am off work right now. And the OR date is June 30th, which is when I should be returning to work, so from that date on, I will be off for eight (8!) weeks to allow things to heal and to do some physio. If I just had some kind of an office job that didn't require much use of that hand, I could go back in a couple of weeks. Given that I will be going right back to doing what caused this in the first place, I need that time to rehab properly.

So a little scheming on my part has resulted in me having summer 'holidays', if you can call it that! I won't be doing any projects around the house. I won't be riding my bike. Thankfully I had the foresight to buy one of these for cutting the grass:

It weighs all of 10 lbs, has two batteries (which is enough for me to complete front and back ~ my yard is quite small), and the trimmer pops out of the mower deck lickety split to trim around trees and curbs and such. I can handle it with one hand. I've practiced!

So in the time between now and the surgery, I am attempting to get the rest of the wall to wall carpet pulled out and the laminate flooring installed. I may be able to enlist the help of my nephew, who has said he'd be happy to help me with things as he's not working right now. He's my most favourite oldest nephew who just turned 40. (40!! I have a hard time wrapping my head around that, but I was just 16 when he was born.) He is a sweetheart and I love him dearly.

So when all is said and done, my hand will become more normally functional again... and... I will have matching scars!

Changing it up

Since horses no longer factor into my life in any way other than past memories, I decided to change my blog banner to more accurately reflect the creatures that share my life.

With minor enhancements.

More in line with my future aspirations to be a crazy cat lady.

What's that on my forehead?

Is it a big 'L' for Loser?

Or 'Friend Only'?

Seems to me that either I am doing something wrong, or the men I date find something wrong with me that causes them all to say 'you're a great woman but I don't want to date you anymore; I hope we can still be friends.'

Things with Maart had, I thought, been going really well. We hadn't had any real disagreements on anything. We're both pretty easy going. We enjoyed each other's company and spent quite a bit of time together. Having the same weekends off (when working in health care, as we both do, that can be a huge issue) meant we spent each of those weekends off together at either his place or mine.

We went on a couple of vacations together and had a great time. He helped me around my house and I helped him around his. We cooked for each other. He was always affectionate and demonstrative. We held hands whenever we walked somewhere. He treated me well. I met his family and he met mine. Same thing with close friends.

His birthday was May 17th and the evening before, we both got a little tippled. Walking hand in hand around his neighbourhood late in the evening, we chit chatted and laughed and he told me who lives where (he's lived almost his whole life in this one little town) and tidbits of background on the area. When we were going to sleep, my alcohol addled brain told him I loved him. Which I do. But up to this point, I'd not said anything because past experience has made me rather skittish about revealing that. I'd never held back showing him how I felt, but had never told him before. If he said anything back, I don't know what it was, because I was asleep pretty much as my head hit the pillow. He had always been openly affectionate with me, although he'd never said he loved me either.

Last night, he came over for the evening before heading to work, bringing Chinese for supper. At one point, he turned to me and said "I'm sorry." Before anything else came out, my heart had already stopped. He told me he didn't love me, that it was mostly him and a little bit me ("You're an awesome woman but also sometimes you're frickin' annoying. But then I'm sure I am too.") and that he didn't want to be boyfriend-girlfriend anymore but hoped we could still be friends. That he wanted to be open to date someone else if that opportunity came up. And no, he didn't have anyone else on the side. That he didn't want to let himself fall in love again because he'd done that twice (first: his wife, who came home one day and told him she didn't want to come home anymore (their kids were 11 and 12 at the time); second: a five year relationship with a woman he met at work who apparently became a nightmare when she hit menopause and had horrible mood swings and general nastiness towards him and his kids) and it had hurt too much when things went tits up both times. He's not a cold hearted kind of guy at all. In fact, one of the things that attracted me was his generosity and warmth. Okay, so that's two things. There were lots more as well.

Well, I am sure you can imagine the tears. The heartbreak.  The "why didn't I see this coming?" thoughts. But in thinking about it after he left, I could see that there were subtle signs. Since his birthday, although he never rebuffed my sitting close to him, or holding his hand, or moving in for a hug or a kiss, he wasn't initiating any of that anymore. The sex never suffered... go figure.

So I am living in Singlesville again. All I can say is, fuck the online dating thing again. I am so not going there. I spent the six years prior to meeting Maart going through all that crap, over and over ad nauseum, and I just don't have the stomach for it again.

Maybe I'll just become a crazy cat lady. I think I need a few more cats to fit the description properly, though...