A Friday Update

I’m glad we have this blog to share updates. Sometimes it can be a bit challenging for us to keep people up to date while we care for Karen, and this blog makes that a lot easier. I’m glad you are reading this. Thank you. Click through to read more…

Sometimes the blog posts may suddenly wander off in a new direction, and that’s because I rarely get the opportunity to sit down and write a post in one sitting. More often I’ll start a paragraph and then do something for Karen, then write another sentence or two, and then watch TV with Karen for a few, then when she starts napping again I’ll write another few sentences. I started this post early in the morning.

You might even see contradictory information in a post. For example I might say that she hasn’t gotten sick in a while, and then later in the blog talk about her being sick earlier. Or it may start upbeat and end sad, or the other way around. I take the opportunity to write a little for you whenever I can, and it may not always follow the same line of thought. Thanks for the understanding.

Now onto the landscaping info I promised, and an update at the end.

Karen and I had some funds set aside for retirement. When she was diagnosed with cancer we decided that that we’d raid these funds. It was my thought that she’d either be cured, and we’d be grateful for that and be glad to start our savings again from scratch, or she wouldn’t be cured, and I’d be glad we took the opportunity to use those funds for her when we did. It was a no-brainer for me, but it took some convincing to Karen, as she’s always thinking about others.

I cashed out a good portion last year and she used most of it on her study and landscaping around the house, including a fire pit. When things started looking a bit grim last month I cashed out her 401k completely. Once again, she decided that she wanted to spend the funds on landscaping around the house.

The weather hasn’t really been cooperating, but now that it is, things are in motion. Mike (from Mike’s Landscaping in Circleville) has an army of people out here taking care of things for us, and is supervising the project himself. Karen has them putting some really nice Mexican Rainbow Cobbles in the flower beds, with a new natural stone border, and planting ground cover plants. Even in this she’s thinking of others, and how the beds will look in the future, since she won’t be able to see the ground cover plants fill in the beds. Right now they’ll just be the baby plants.

The above pic shows a completed portion that represents what the finished product is going to look like (minus the ground cover plants). We had all the mulch taken out and are using a combination of natural stone border, the rainbow cobbles seen above, then the ground cover plants inside the cobbles. The various beds have different patterns and it should look really nice once those plants fill in. Karen spent a lot of time choosing the plants (cat safe, even though our cats don’t go outside), and there are actually three different ground cover plants used in the various beds.

The above is just started, and will contain the cobbles and ground cover very soon. But you can see the new stone border around the  bed.

I’ll show the rest of the pics when her project is completed. The front hadn’t been done when I got these pics, so there will be some new pics when I post that.

She hasn’t been feeling well, so hasn’t seen how far they got today. I had her up earlier for a shower, but we didn’t get much else done. Today she wasn’t able to keep her medication down, so I’m a bit worried about that. The medication keeps her lucid by reducing the ammonia in her blood. It’s a foul tasting concoction, and not easy on the taste buds. Other than that she’s been okay for keeping food down. Except for Gatorade. We’ve determined her body just won’t tolerate it anymore. And it used to be one of her favorites.

I know, that was a lot in one post. I’ll probably not get so wordy tomorrow. I just had more time today, since Karen’s been sleeping most of it.