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Good morning from the Mitten and baby it's cold outside! For Michiganders, that means switching from ankle socks to crew length. For this Michigander, it also means dinner in the crock pot and not going out again once I'm home from work. Pork chops, potatoes and sauerkraut cooking so I'll just add a veggie or salad when I get home.
I think I am finally over the tummy bug I had but now have the daily sinus headache, that isn't illness just another aspect of sub zero temps. But it sure does hurt! And it sure is hard to motivate myself away from my cup of coffee and out the door in the mornings. However, you won't hear me complaining about leaving my warm house to drive in my dependable vehicle to my good job.
Dean's dad is in a hospice room at the hospital for a few days. His mom had cataract surgery and felt she couldn't handle him as she recovers and also has doctor's appointments leaving him without a caregiver at home. We were worried about him being hospitalized even though it's a hospice room because from his perspective, it's still a hospital and he doesn't do well with hospitals. But with prayer and God's grace, so far he has been just fine. He'll come home tomorrow. He has gotten too physically impaired for Dean to take him out as he needs a wheel chair and cannot get into and out of the car without being lifted. He has a walker but do to his cognitive impairments he really isn't able to use it so he is falling at home more often. He is also starting to having urinary incontinence. He is losing his speech, unable to find words and using completely inappropriate words that leave you wondering what he's talking about. He's losing weight pretty quickly despite having Meals on Wheels as well as caregivers providing snacks and meals which he does eat, his body just seems to be shutting down. There are days when it seems as though we are holding our breath that he will make it through the next 24 hours and days when he seems "fine."
On a lighter note, I have discovered a household trick! I got a new (and relatively expensive) iron a few weeks ago and heated it up without realizing there was a sticker on the heat plate. If you can tell me why the serial number sticker would be a. transparent and b. with black numbers and applied to c. the dark gray heat plate; please let me know. You can imagine what happened, the sticker melted leaving this black hardened stuff that softens up just enough when I attempt to use the iron to leave black streaks on my clothes. Arrgh! After googling multiple fixes such as heating the iron and scrubbing it with nail polish remove, which seems dangerous, I stumbled across the magic remedy to my problem. Heat the iron, wrap a wet towel or wash cloth around a wooden clothes pin and use the end of the clothes pin to scrape away the burned plastic. Worked beautifully! In five minutes my iron was like brand new and no black streaks when I ironed my scrubs and lab coat today. I don't know that this will be helpful to anyone else in the world, but it makes me happy.
Time to start the truck and get my day going. Stay warm!