Near Miss

 I almost died last week! I know that's a little melodramatic I don't know if I would have died or if I would just been maimed at more crippled than I already am. But it was and there's something experience no doubt about it. It all goes back to my power chair I like to blame everything negative one my power chair it's a poor thing to take as much abuse as I lay on it but it's true. Two things in particular on the hand control that drives my chair there's something wrong with the joystick and somehow it bumps and turns the chair off many times while I'm moving and also the device that hooks the drive to the chair has been bent up so severely that it puts my hand right in contact with on and off button my fingers curled as they are around the joystick could hit one of the off buttons and stop the forward motion of the chair. I don't know which one of these items happened the other day but I was at intersection getting ready to go to my meeting in Salt Lake so the day must have been Tuesday. I had to cross the tracks track and the train was stationary and I figured I had more than enough time to get across but as I was crossing the tracks the unevenness of the track rails caused my hand to jump up and down and suddenly my indicator indicated that the chair was stopping was turning itself off. When this happens it takes the chair about 30 seconds to recycle itself that 30 seconds feels like 30 hours no question about it. And of course I stopped with one of my front wheels straddling the rails of the tracks and the train was moving now towards me and I was trying to get the chair to cycle through as fast as it would so I can back my chair off of the tracks. It was one of those events for everything was going in slow slow motion but I remember most is that there are people at the intersection and one of them clearly saw me and I must have had thrown my face because all the sudden he throws the door open and starts coming toward me as fast as he could in at the same time my chair cycle through a nice able to dump the chair into gear and back my ass up off the rails and back into a safety zone. The train passed by quickly I took a breather, a big breath of relief. I know this probably seems tame to a lot of people but for me it was just another one of those points where one moment you would be there in the next moment you would be gone. As I get older and older for one reason or another I see that or those points more and more often in my life. The Reapers out there and it's ready to swing his scythe 

Walk away Renee

 The weather is not that good today and so I didn't have to and I didn't go outside at all today actually choosing to stay in and work on these silly letters. I printed out the letters today in the new ink worked fabulous! Today was coffee social and so we meet as a group a social group down in the large room, I've talked about this group over time. That's the closest thing to socialization I've done today. A lot of the characters that used to attend this function no longer do for one reason or another. It's hard to Corner these folks and find out what really happened and so I greeted folks early as they came in and then went over to the kitchen area and got my cup of coffee and then relocated to the table. I don't know what's happening but less and less people are showing up for the coffee social. In fact the coffee and various other edible treats have been been issued it but the population continues to decrease. I wouldn't be surprised if we called the whole thing off in another 3 months or so. This event is semi co-hosted by a conglomerate in the area that has a number of long-term care facilities and.  There is one person named Renee, acts like she's the coordinator from one of the long-term care facilities and she brings in all the folks a lot of folks to this group. We get to talking sometimes and she's been fascinated with my concept of learning with my late stays after group to assist cleanup. Renee is a great listener and once you start talking she can't really sit there and listen so avidly. The group of disbanded and Renee and I kept talking she started asking me questions about myself and that's always a mistake because then I start rattling on and rattling on about everything I know about myself which is a lot. Really is an inflator I mean I feel like I do or have done a lot of stuff in the Idaho Boise region and I have a lot of friends there. I told her everything didn't hide behind anything. When I tell the story it seems like I've done a lot which I may have it's just hard to do this on a turned over dishpan and the rest of my outfit.

Wednesday's busy

 Today was wash day and that kind of acts as a stopper for me to be able to do anything else especially if I plan to do a workout at some point in time. I do 1 hour workouts Monday Wednesday and Tuesday which gives me 180 minutes meaning that the next day I only have to do 20 minutes to get to my 200 minutes of work out a week. My goal for the day had been to work on my letter since I got the ink replaced yesterday. But that just wasn't going to happen it seemed. Of course I stayed myself free to be alert to when the clothes need to have further coins dropped in for the last dry. It's after this last run through that I'm able to pull the clothes and take them back to the apartment. I came back had got onto my as mentioned and during my ride the phone rang and it was Diane but I couldn't visit with her cuz that's all strapped up in my arm bike. When I finished I ended up calling her back we visited for another 45 minutes after which it was basically time for dinner or close to it. So I went back into the bedroom where I stashed the dry clothes turn the basket upside down on my bed and begin folding shorts and then hanging up shirts. When I finish that call it was time for dinner or whatever close proximity I decided to do. Yesterday I built a beef stew out of one of the bags of beef stew that I had here. I wanted to make the do a little more Hefty so I microwaved a potato 3/4 of the way done and I still have some carrots carrot knobs or carrot babies and when I got the potatoes done I took half of it cut it into cubes threw it in the stew on the stove and then added a handful of the cut carrots baby carrots into the mix added a few more slices and that was my dinner for the night it was pretty good actually all things considered. I chased the stew down with bread that I turned into toasts hamburger or hot dog buns that split open and toasted then  microwave items. At first walking around 4:00 a.m. and I seem to have tossed and turned until it was time to get up at 6:00. There's something going on with my chair still and it either the bed doesn't go up as high as it used to be or the chair doesn't go down as far there as it used to because the seat is still pretty close to the level of the mattress. It's a little more difficult than usual to fall into my chair usually it's no problem I'm not high enough and I sort of cascade straight down but now I sort of just get over but over a little bit then work my way into the wheelchair. Something's different I'm not sure what I need to work this out right now I can still make the transfer and that's what's important to me. I also got called by my old buddy Greg but more on that later..

Waking to April

 I do not know what's happening to me but I have not slept well for the last 2 or 3 nights. Sometimes weird dreams of the times just waking up in the middle of the night and not really knowing what else to do but try to go back to sleep. This morning I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and finally got back to sleep again only to wake up around 4:30 a.m. and I don't think I went back to sleep after that and I thought I was going to be dragging all day but no I have not been actually. I must acknowledge that it did take me awhile to get myself dressed this morning luckily there was no meeting that had to go to this Tuesday so I just hung out at home. The weather was cold and wet with snow falling actually snow is being driven by North winds. I really wanted to stay in the apartment today but I also really wanted to get some positive work done on the kid letters. But then I found that I'm out of ink I ended up doing my bike ride/workout around 10:00 a.m. it was snowing today off and on for a good part of the day not a lot of snow just the last remnants of winter. But, I needed to seriously work on my letters but then I found out that the ink was gone and the printer and I had to get new ink so I figured if I put it on my winter coat I could get to the Walmart get my stuff and get back and work on my letters. I did that caught the bus up to the store got my stuff came back and then coming back something happened another snap I heard about my chair and then my I started listing over to the right more than usual and I thought I was going to fall over I couldn't figure out what happened. When I got home I could see myself in the mirror and I look pretty bad so I ended up calling my brother to see if he could come over and see maybe get the chair operational until I can figure out what to do next. He was at a family Sports function- - they do a lot of that in his family. But he would come over afterwards and he did and it was great having him in the apartment working with him and talking to him I always love having my older brother around. And as always he found out what was wrong with my chair and did a pretty good job of patching it up. It should be functional for as long as I need to but I need to schedule up an appointment to send this in to see if they can work on two to make sure it's done right. It's the first day of April tomorrow's Trump doing his April 2nd thing which could be somewhat frightening. I was kind of amazed to see how upset my older brother was with everything Trump is doing I thought it was just me but he's hating it as well we had some good discussion but then he was on his way and I needed to get back to what I was doing. I've got new grapes, ice cream cones, I made an interesting stew out of a package of Stew that I got from the food box people and then added a can of beef it turned out fairly good little heavy little protein but it made a nice dinner I have stew left over I don't know what to do with now maybe tomorrow. I hope I'll be able to sleep tonight I don't know what's going on with me and quite frankly it worries me to some degree but I'll get by I generally do happy April