kissalostsoul

I haven’t been doing much for the last five days other than trying to recuperate.  I’ve taken a number of your suggestions and am putting them into practice.  I started out with just liquids, moved to soft easy foods, and am just beginning to add some solids.  So far so good.  The couple of meds I’m on make me feel a little whacko, but I’ll do the full course.  At least the pain is about gone.                              “THANK GOODNESS I GOT AWAY FROM THE KIDS FOR A FEW MOMENTS” I spoke with Andy today, and he is at home recuperating very nicely.  After the surgery he had some pain in his shoulder.  Turns out it’s caused from the air they inflate your abdomen with for the operation.  I guess it wanders around the body before it dissipates.  Who would have guessed?  Sorry to say, they will not...

I spoke to Andy this morning shortly before he was released from the hospital.  They performed the appendectomy late last night, and he was feeling much better this morning.  It sure seems to be an easier procedure these days. On the home front, I’m feeling a bit better today, and truly appreciate all the words of concern and support for both of us.  I’m still struggling with the CT scan stuff, but I believe the antibiotics are beginning to do their thing.  I’m still not doing any crane dances yet, but the pain has begun to subside.                       I was able to sit at my table today, and you know my camera was right beside me.  These pesky little guys reminded me that life goes on no matter what our trials and tribulations may be. I sure was glad that I could sit outside for a bit today.  I was certainly not up to dealing with 100+ fifth g...

I know it’s hardly been a half hour since I posted about my bad day, but it just got worse.  If you read that post you know that I was concerned about Andy and his family visiting while I was under the weather.  I just got a call from his wife, Kelly, and he is about to have an emergency appendectomy in Minnesota!   I guess this visit was doomed.  My thoughts are with him tonight…

About four this morning I woke up with a pain in my left side.  That seemed odd, but I was able to fall back to sleep.  By the time I took Emma for her first outs, I was struggling a bit to walk down the road due to the pain.  I went into work, but told the others that I just wasn’t up for dancing like a crane with the fifth graders today.  I answered the phone and sat in the VC for about an hour and a half, but that was it.  Good friend Diana said, “If you don’t feel well, go home.  We don’t need a martyr around here.”  It was a wake up call for me.  The best of friends tell you like it is.  So I slowly made it back to the rig to lie down.  About an hour later, Diana opened my door to check on me.  She had an arsenal of many reasons why I had better get myself to a doctor this afternoon. She was, of course, right.  I found a clinic and went in at 2:00.  Result was a diagnosis of diverticulitis.  A couple of antibio...

For four days this week we’ll be having 100+ fifth grade students from Ocean Springs each day to learn about the refuge and the cranes.  Since this school has been coming here each spring with their fifth graders for over twenty years, it’s quite an organized affair.  I believe all teachers and their classes rotate through this outing over the four days.  Today I had the music teacher at my station to help with ‘crowd control’. The school provides three stations of their own leaving us with only two stations to present.  The teachers do the nature walk, an art project, and one other station (I’ll get details on that one tomorrow).  That leaves us with crane biology and fire stations.  I have done environmental education with school groups at many of the refuges I’ve volunteered at, but this experience both last year and this year is the only example where the school involved actually takes charge of the four hour outing.  How refreshing is that...

That less than satisfactory meal that I had at a buffet on Easter Sunday played havoc with my innards, so most of the last two days have been spent inside only steps away from the water closet.  Ugh!  While confined to quarters, I did accomplish a few things.  Many fulltimers never make reservations, and I often don’t either.  In planning out my departure from the refuge, I decided that I wanted to be sure of where I would be spending some time along my very slow route to Alligator River NWR in North Carolina.  I don’t have to be there until the first of August, so that gives me three months to play around with. I’ve chosen to spend about three weeks to a month exploring Alabama.  Towards this end, my first two weeks will be spent at two Corps of Engineer parks.  You won’t ever find me spending a night at a Walmart or truck stop unless it is a dire emergency.  Traveling solo, I’m just not comfortable with those options.  Lots of people do i...

John, Diana, and I were off early this morning to do some birding at a couple of wildlife management areas along the Pascagoula River.  Among other things, we were hoping to find lots of Mississippi and Swallow-tailed Kites.  Turns out we got skunked in that department. Many of the gravel roads in the management areas we were visiting were flooded, so we didn’t get very far off the beaten path.  It was a gorgeous morning for a drive though. We stopped at the headquarters for the Lower Pascagoula WMA, and enjoyed a walk along the river.  The headquarters’ grounds had many huge live oak trees that were dripping with Spanish moss… And it was in these oaks that we found a flock of Northern Parulas busily working the trees for insects.  It was hard to ignore their loud rising buzzy song.  Warblers are often hard to photograph as they seem to be birds of perpetual motion.  While these two shots aren’t very good, ther...