Tuesday June 2nd 2026

Good morning!

Joe, hope you have a normal good day.

J22, hope you're okay. It seems most people I know that travel or go on a cruise pick up something these days.

But here I am picking up e coli and RSV in the same year. LOL

I meet my new GI doc today since my established one moved. He's in the same practice and I know him from being on call where I work but we don't interact much. I don't think he'll say much or do anything different. Hopefully he reviews my chart prior to seeing me.

Otherwise will do some cooking and make a pharmacy run for my sleeping med.

No overtime this week but I did pick up a day next week. We have people out on vacation and a couple of moved on. Three people are on vacation at the same time along with two nurses that left leaving us really short staffed. Oh well.

Egads, another evening of quite painful knees and aching thighs and hips! I plastered my right leg with Lidocaine patches, for all the good it seemed to do. It was quite hard to find a comfortable position for my poor legs. The reason I slept was because I took an extra 1/2 Xanax. I have found a, oh whaddya call it?.... a 'natural' pill called Hyland's LEG CRAMPS, which is Arnica, and it often seems to help more than the arthritis meds I take. I'm going to also try the same thing in cream form as well. Found it at Walmart, and the woman at the pharmacy check out said they sell quite a bit of it.

Actually went to bed at 9 PM, and to sleep before 10 PM. I as exhausted from being online, searching for info about where I am going to be moving and the location of the bank and cell phone provider, and all the etceteras. I can just transfer several accounts, but feel like I am chasing info down. I need a secretary.

Once I get down there I will be switching over to their provider from Gmail. I hope it goes smoothly; I'd hate to lose all my capabilities and my set-ups by doing so, but I am hoping against hope that I can hook back up with allnurses and Yahoo. I THINK my friends husband is adept at computer stuff; I think he may be, as he has been, from what I understand, a desk-jockey in his career. But this is a little advance warning to the hard-working JoeV, just-in-case! Anyway, I'll find out once I get down there.

I may have already mentioned I will probably head out about a week or week and a half earlier than the "must vacate" date. I am nowhere near packed, but today I plan to attack several sort, save, pack, and toss procedures, so I can actually SEE some progress....ie a growing pile of things to put in the POD when I get it, and a bunch of stuff in the discard trailer for BiL to tow to the dump when they get back from their vacation. But essentially I can leave most of the things I am not taking for BiL and SiL to clean up and do with what they will. I gotta say it gives me no small satisfaction knowing they will have to do that! 😆🤪

I have picked ticks off myself each day after walking Tink, and it is disgusting, because I try to avoid places where they ordinarily hang out waiting for a warm body, but somehow they find me more than they find Tinker! So far, two on my scalp, one on my arm, but thankfully none have dug in to the degree that they are expanded with my blood. But it is annoying as _____!

I have written so many emails that I don't know who I've told what, so bear with me if I repeat myself.

I have not done ANY dishes for THREE DAYS! AUGH! That is something I MUST take care of today, for sure!

Don't know if I mentioned that my friend said she will have her nieces move the furniture out of 'my' room so I can unload my bed first thing, to give Tinker a familiar base, and a place for myself to collapse between unloading chores. I am not going to launder a few things so that it will smell familiar to Tinker. My friend also said she has been researching "protocol" about how to introduce Tinker to their animals (one dog and one cat) to ease the transition for them. Right now that is the least of my worries.

So that I don't have to keep writing "my friend" or "her husband" I will hereforto ( or is that heretofor?) use "J" to refer to her and "S" to refer to him! If I remember to!

No more dawdling! It is almost 9 AM and I have to get dressed, walk Tink, and then apply myself to some of all the tasks I have at hand.

I will be here for most of the month but I will let you know when I will be temporarily out of commission------- Can't BELIEVE I am about to become a (northern) Floridian. But at least it won't be a move to Louisiana or Texas, or the Land of Dorothy and Toto!

I finally got the dishes washed! I also started pulling stuff out of the kitchen... some to take with me for my use down in Fla, , and some to save in storage for when I eventually (hopefully, though I don't know how) will have a place of my own and will need to have kitchen stuff, rather than having to buy all new things. The rest of it, SiL and BiL can pick through, but more likely they will toss.

I discovered I have a $42 credit on my JC Penneys card, so I am casually wandering through my brain to see what I might want or need from there, but no rush. It's just nice to know I have the option.

It was actually quite COOL when I took Tinker out to walk the yard. So far I don't THINK I have any new ticks on me!

I have been resting my body and my tired brain, but methinks I want to get up and do some more SOMETHINGs toward my goal of getting ready for THE MOVE. Maybe more stuff that I will store once I get down there, like my artwork and several boxes of writing I will want to sort through at a later date.

It is 3:30 PM and I will want to be eating something soon. Fortunately I had cooked some fresh foods from the fridge that would otherwise got spoiled or dried up or not worth doing anything with except 'donating' to the trash.

Oh me oh my, I am so happy to be able to leave this place by the end of the month!

Moving is always such a pain. Good luck with everything.

I can't believe it's been 34 years since I moved to Florida and 26 years since I've been in this house.

There's a joke that northern Florida is part of the South and Central Florida where I'm at is part of the north or something else, because everyone here is from the North and the vibe is not Southern. My ex, who is from New England (may he rest in peace), moved from here to there for work and hated it. Plus he said it's hotter there than here in the Summer.

I had a good visit with my GI doctor and we've decided to stay the course. He said ordinarily after the three months which I finished, he would do a three week taper, but my prior doc prescribed a 3-month taper. He said because that doctor knew me and my history he would stick to the 3-month taper and see how I do at the end of it. So far the lowered dose I'm on for the next two months has been going well but it's only been a few days. Fingers crossed as he said recurrence of symptoms is common.

I washed my comforter and did some cooking. I'm meal prepped for the next few days.

Got Tinker harnessed up for a walk and I always look at both sides of her to make sure she had both legs IN the harness. (it's a new one), but somehow when I went to pick up the leash as I was opening the back door, she slipped OUT of the harness. Of course, you know she made a beeline around the side of the house and ran right across the street and wouldn't listen to me at all. I could see her as she ran down through everybody's front yards, and I was trying to walk fast, but it was a bit hard with my knees talking cuss-words at me, like, they hurt! About the 7th house down the road I saw a older man in the back yard and hollered, "Can you grab her? She doesn't bite." and again I called to her to 'Come on! Come here!' But, instead, a big old friendly blonde Lab came around and did a fast walk right to me, smiling and wagging. Then when Tinker saw I was about to greet the other dog, she beat it right over to us, and I was able to grab her; she was busy growling at the other dog so she was nicely preoccupied. I told her that the other dog behaved better than she did! Then I had to carry her back to our front porch so I could sit down on the steps and put her harness on her so she couldn't get out of it! I didn't dare put her on the ground to bend over to replace the harness, because my knees wouldn't have tolerated it, and if I had ended up on the ground myself, it would have been very difficult to get back up. Man, I just HATE it when Tinker runs off like that.

I better go up and grab some of those Arnica caplets; they will help me get through the next few hours until it is time for my "real" meds.

I reckon I will do moving activities tomorrow.

NRSKarenRN said:

No Stars, best wishes with the move. Try adding pickle juice for leg cramps, helps my SIL tons, especially post her immunotherapy days.

I never have heard of pickle juice for leg cramps! I can deal with that! Any particular kind of pickles? I'm heading up to the fridge right now to see if we have any pickles!

Yeah, bread and butter pickles, so I guzzled about 5 good swallows. Then I looked on the jar and it had a use by date of 2023! Well, maybe even old pickle juice will work just as well! They've been in the refrigerator the whole time and there was nothing weird growing on them, 😄 so here's hoping!