Busy waiting - how about you.

No, I haven't been sitting on my backside, but I have been waiting around. Our daughter is 34 weeks into a problematic pregnancy and has been restricted to bed rest. Angela and I have been babysitting our granddaughter, sometimes at our home, and some times at our daughter and son-in-law’s. It’s amazing how busy a 22 month old can be. It’s also amazing how busy she's kept us. Our daughter and granddaughter have come over each Monday evening and returned home on Friday morning when Daniel's parents take over for the day. How do we work out our schedules? We compliment each other by using our strengths - Angela’s a morning person, and I’m a night owl. I do the middle of the night (2 and 4 a.m.) wake ups that usually amount to a few pats on the back, a couple ounces of milk and an occasional diaper change. Angela takes over the early morning wake up call (5:30 or 6 a.m., which is a bit early for her, but she manages just fine). She changes Brooke and gives her breakfast. That allows our daughter and me to sleep in. We both fetch and carry for our daughter and have a ball playing with Brooke. So yep, here’s another Best Thing About Being Married to a T. On our "off days" we mow the lawn, clean the house, take care of bills and otherwise sleep in. Meanwhile, we wait and stay VERY Busy! - All Day. There'll be a new baby "soon." We just don't know "how soon."

Laughing together

It was one of those days when both of us had long job jar lists, were tired from a prior day of tree cutting, and our minds were fretting about our granddaughter's continuing bout with a stomach flu. We carefully managed each job and were actually feeling pretty good about whittling down our lists.

About mid-afternoon, we both seemed to run out of brainpower, I guess. I was mowing the back yard when Angela stepped outside onto the patio and motioned for me to ‘pull over and turn off the mower’. I did. She walked over with a big grin on her face. “You’d probably have more success,” she said, “if you put the blade down.” I looked at the yard and realized I hadn’t taken off more than a half inch of grass. I looked at Angela’s broad smile, put the blade down and broke out in guffaws. She joined me. She soon returned inside and I started the mower.

I put away the lawn tractor and headed into the house. The sweeper was going, so I walked in to report that her suggestion had resulted in a nicely cut lawn. I reached the hall and stopped dead in my tracks. Angela was sweeping the laundry room with the wand. The body of our upright Kirby stood at the doorway facing into the room. Dust and small debris the dogs had brought in was puffing out from the zipper area. A small, but growing, pile was forming in the hallway. A grin spread across my face as I stepped into the laundry room and tapped her on the shoulder. I waited for her to turn off the sweeper and then said, “I think you forgot to put the bag in the sweeper.” I pointed into the hall. She looked at the little pyramid of dust in the hallway and broke into a giggling fit. Ten minutes later, she was sucking up the mess with the shop-vac and heading to the Kirby store for replacement bags.

I love these times when we’ve caught each other in little boo-boos and can laugh together at our foibles. Ah yes, it's another Best Thing About Being Married to a T!

Hormones don't change everything or My T has a boo-boo

Hormones don't change everything. Angela still has that thing about not going to doctors that most guys have. So, while working on installing the new sink, she got a boo-boo - a scratch from a staple. It didn't bleed much, and it didn't seem serious, so she didn't worry about it. A couple of days later, she showed me that the area seemed to have become infected. I suggested she open it up and give it a good cleaning out, which she promptly ignored. Well, it got worse. I know that doesn't come as a big surprise to most of you, but it did to her. We left for our RV trip on Thursday, and by then, it had begun to show little spots of puss through the pores of her skin in the growing area of infection. By this morning, the area that had been about the size of a silver dollar, had grown to encompass the better part of her forearm. So, we headed for the local emergency room. We were shown to a room quickly, and Angela was immediately put on an antibiotic drip. She was also given antibiotics in pill form. The drip took a tad over an hour, and when it was all done, we headed for the local drugstore to fill the prescription. All is well, and her arm is already looking better. She has felt fine through all of this, but she will have to hear a few, "I told you sos" from me over not taking care of her injury when it happened AND NOT GOING TO THE DOCTOR when it starting looking bad! So, hormones may change many things, but it doesn't change hat old "no need to see a doctor" attitude. I still have the perfect T, but I have to warn you, Hormones Don't Change Everything!

Nurse Angela to the Rescue

Ninety- percent of the time it's me that gets to play Nurse, because Angela has a penchant for falling out off ladders, slicing and dicing fingers, legs and other parts of her body, and less frequently, heart episodes. However, Friday and Saturday it was Angela that got to hold the barf bag. She has had plenty of practice as everytime I've had even the most minor surgery, I've been sick from anesthesia everytime. So far, medical sience hasn't outfoxed my system - my body knows when anesthesia is used - period. I'm okay in the dentist chair though; go figure. Novocain must not count, at least not for me. Anyway, among the hundreds of things my Transsexual is great at, it'd be a hard choice between fixing everything and be a great nurse.

When one is under the weather enough that a barf container must be nearby, one really feels sick. So, it is definitely a comfort to have a good nurse on duty. Angela fits the bill. I'm not good around anyone barfing, nor am I worth a damn if clean-up is required. That doesn't mean I haven't had to be around a barfer, and heaven's knows, I've had to clean it up - as does anyone who has kids and dogs. But, Angela has made it a career. If I'm going under anesthesia, she knows the look and always has an emesis basin under my nose when needed. This weekend was just one of those things - flu, cold, bad food (I've eaten out for lunch for 4 days running) or water - but I certainly kept her hovering. I usually made it to the bathroom, but she was there, just in case.

Now, I don't know about you, but having Angela around when I'm sick is decidedly one of the Best Things About Being Married to a Transsexual!

Spring

Spring is certainly here. Here in Fresno we are already having temperatures in the high seventies, and that means lots of yard work. My back and shoulders are already aching just thinking about it! You know what, though, Angela is the one that has to do all the hard stuff, and she never complains. It's sprinkler-fix time. Yesterday afternoon, while I was having lunch with friends, she dug out three sprinklers, replaced them, and had them up in running in the two hours I was gone. Now, if you live in a place where the soil is nice and sandy, that would not be a challenge. BUT: around here, we have this dreadful thing called hardpan. So, digging a hole that's deeper than about 6 inches is a real back breaker. So, I bless her little heart (and strong muscles, even though they are far less strong than when they were before David's transition ! Yeah, hormones sometimes work in reverse too.).

I get all the fun jobs like mowing the lawn, weeding and planting the garden. When I started laying out my vegetable garden, Angela quickly got involved. She got out the graph paper so my plots were perfectly measured out. While I helped dig the sixty-foot trench for the main line of the sprinkler system for my irrigation, she designed it! Not only does it work perfectly, but the row of sprinklers is detachable so I can get them out of the way for rototilling and harvesting. It's great to have a mathmatical whiz in the family. She has all the design savy of a decorator and all that logical brain stuff from her years as David!

Oh yeah, we're going to have to take down a tree. Dast oh dear! Retirement has its blessings, but having lots of ready monies for hiring people like tree trimmers and gardeners is not one of them. So, we have to take down the tree; It's roots are getting under the patio. The last time we did this it was a math project, so I'm sure this one will be all the more so because it's near the house. There are also several other trees in the back yard, so this particular tree must be dropped in exactly the right place. I know it will be triagulated, measured, and cut perfectly, so I have no worries. Again, Angela is my mathmatical angel.

Yep, spring makes me aware of many of the Best Things About Being Married to a Transsexual!

Seeing, doing and learning

Some of great things about RVing is seeing the scenery go by and leaning new things.

It's spring and many of the trees are blooming; wildflowers too. Other trees, still barren, remind me of animals or people. I should have pulled off to take some pictures with titles like Spooning Trees, The Rooster, The lookout, and many more.

While on this trip we passed a Windmill Farm. Yep, you heard me, a Windmill Farm where the family collects windmills and “plants” them in rows in the front yard. If you want to see for yourself: head East on State Route 88 off Highway 99 in California. It's on the North side of the street.

The RV Park was having a new water well put in. So, we took the opportunity to talk with the workers and learn about the process. Later in the week, we enjoyed watching the rodeo crowd roll in. Some of the young competitors had their "practice bulls" which are much like the mechanical bulls you see at arcades and bars except they are "hand driven." Another person must provide the “action” for the rider. It was also nice to add whinnies and donkey brays to the sounds around us. We were in Gold Country, so we learned how the placer miners lived. The area is full of museums and parks - wineries too.

Guess what? We were also Out-of-Touch with the whole world. Why? Our phones and Internet connections didn’t work 99% of the time because we were in the mountains. We felt like we’d stepped back in time a few years. Instead of being worried about our latest phone or email message, we thought about how the gold miners lived. We enjoyed chatting with fellow RVers, we caught up on reading, and we played with and walked our doggies.

Get an RV and ENJOY!

Work, Work, Work

It has been a good time to have an RV, but THIS week did NOT turn out to be all we had hoped. It has been raining, you see. It has been raining a LOT, particularly in the area where we had planned to spend a nice, relaxing weekend with friends, walking the dogs, catching up on our magazine reading, and generally taking it easy. It didn't turn out that way though. We arrived at the chosen RV park and found it soggy, to say the least. RVs were getting bogged down left and right. Even the van conversions had to be pulled out of mud holes. We quickly decided that at 27,000 lbs, and 39' there was no chance we were going to escape sinking to our wheel hubs. So, we opted out of our 4-day weekend plans and headed back home. At least it was a lovely day for a drive. We had left at 9 a.m. and arrived back home at 4:45. Yes, we may have to forfeit our prepaid dollars, and yes, we still used up the diesel, and yes we will miss all the camaraderie with friends. But, we won't have all the muddy cleanup we would have had, not to mention possible repair costs if we'd had to have been pulled out of a bog by a tractor. Anyway, not going on an outing means Work, Work, Work.

It's spring. There are weeds to pull, gardens to prepare, and lawns to mow. All of it needs to be done RIGHT NOW, of course. So, one must prioritize, right? One should also do the hardest jobs first, I suppose - darn. Well, I chose to combine both an easy and a hard job. I began with spraying for weeds. With 2.8 acres, there are a lot of areas that need to be sprayed with "kill everything in sight - forever" stuff. That was the easy job. It only took a couple of hours. Next came the hard job: digging out weeds that may overtake trees and plants. There were more than plenty of those, I'm sorry to say. After all of that, I got out the weed and feed fertilizer. Needless to say, I was glad to see Thursday's List done.

Friday's list is short: dig-the-trench. Since we doubled the size of our vegetable garden area, additional watering systems must be installed. Its my garden, so its my trench to dig. The good news is the ground is wet.

Today is install the new watering system and finish the roto-tilling. I'll just have to ignore sore muscles over the next few days.

Angela fixed and shade in the RV that fell down, on Thursday. It was a big project because the plastic casing broke. She also did all the design for the new water system on Friday and made all the purchases. Today we'll install the watering system together, and we'll have a lot of fun doing it, mud and all.

Tomorrow will be mow, mow, mow for me while Angela cleans house and does the laundry. I love having a wife that is a handy person and a good housekeeper too! It's just one of those Best Things about being Married to a Transsexual again!