Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

American Rural Health Care, You Stink

I have spent the past two days trying to get a chest x-ray, you know, because my chest is full of fluid and probably horrible fungal growth. I am concerned, you see. I am beginning to see why people just use the emergency room as their primary healthcare provider, because trying to AVOID such things and not go into debt over a cough is a pain (in my chest and brain).

So, I went to the nice little clinic in my home town that is not affiliated with the corporate mega-system I am not fond of. They said yep, my lungs are rattling and wheezing, so I needed a chest x-ray to help diagnose. I also got blood work, after two tries, because Worker A probably had never drawn blood out of a living human and left my arm looking like this:

Worker B then arrived and took the four endless vials of blood out of the other arm. Sigh. I won’t know if I have the fungal infection or other issue until the lab results come in. So, merrily I cough along.

Merrily coughing at sunset, when normally I’d be horsing around

I was so short of breath yesterday that I didn’t dare try to groom the horses or ride them, though I did sit and look at them while they ate, then spent a long time just hanging out with Apache and massaging his poll (top of head), since he asked for it.

The others were busy scarfing up leftovers

Anyway, of course the nice little clinic doesn’t have its own radiology department, so I consented to go to the only place in town that has a machine, which is operated by the company I am not fond of. When I arrived with my paperwork in hand, they informed me that their x-ray machine is broken. I could go to another town to another of their facilities, but I declined.

Goldie backed me up. She doesn’t like crowded scary places, either.

This started me on a health care odyssey to get an x-ray elsewhere. By noon today, I’d made six phone calls, left numerous messages, got many corrected phone numbers, and lost my patience. Usually I’m a fairly patient patient, but I didn’t feel very well, as I soldiered along recording myself talk and pausing to breathe a lot.

Let’s take a break and enjoy all the henbit that’s blooming right now. It will get mowed soon, so I’m enjoying it while I can.

Finally, after I’d gotten irritated enough to get in the car and drive back to the clinic to try to talk to someone in person, they called to say they’d faxed my orders to a place that was associated with my OLD doctors in Austin. Soon they actually called and said it had gotten through.

Did I make it to Temple, Texas in record time? Of course not. I got behind a very strange-looking semi-truck that plodded along at 60 in 70 mph zones, trailing up to twelve cars. Thankfully, they pulled over at a turn and let us all go free.

I thanked my lucky stars, as well as the moon, Jupiter, and Venus.

The place I went was clean, spacious, and NOT crowded. though a little hard to find. The facility did please me. How long did the x-ray take after spending 20 minutes filling out paperwork? I’d say 65 seconds. Now, let’s see if I get any results from all the testing and perhaps get treatment. That would be nice. I just do NOT want to get sick enough to go to a hospital. I really don’t like hospitals and all their germs.

I just wish we had our old local hospital back, where you could get an x-ray and labs, and get looked at quickly. However, it’s now the county office building. Rural health care in the US is sad. I can’t imagine how it would have been if I didn’t have insurance.

I promise happier news in the next post.

What’s a Temperature Blanket?

I may have mentioned recently that I was waiting on yarn to arrive so that I can make a 2023 temperature blanket. The yarn arrived yesterday, which made being sick at least a little less annoying.

Because I still hate moths, this will be in acrylic, but I chose the sport weight of Brava by Knitpicks rather than the thicker stuff I’d been using. I bought one skein of each color I think I’ll need until winter of this year. That’s because it didn’t get very cold here so far in 2023. Why does that matter?

A temperature blanket is a knitted or crocheted project that records the temperature at a specific place over a specific amount of time. Here’s an article from Modern Daily Knitting (MDK) about some projects they were working on. Click either of the links above or look at these Ravelry projects to see lots of photos and get an idea of what the deal is. I made one of the “official” ones (link is below) back when I lived with Anita at the Bobcat Lair, but I apparently did NOT put it on Ravelry or mention it in a blog. That’s annoying. I have no idea where it got off too, but it covered Austin Texas temperatures for I think 2018.

My blanket will cover College Station, because there’s no great data for Cameron on any weather site I could find. That was disappointing. Lee collects rainfall amounts, but not temperatures, as far as I know, so I can’t get them from him. I selected yarns to represent five degree increments going from 0 to over 100 Fahrenheit, knowing that I probably will not need the lower colors with all this global warming.

I wrote down 5-degree ranges and colors I’d ideally like. Then at right wrote down the yarn colors that vaguely matched my ideals.

I love mitered squares, as you may be aware, so I am making a blanket using that technique, with the high temperature for the day on the outside of each square and the low temperature on the inside. I’ll make ten days per row, and I’ll indicate the end of each month with a black square. The blanket will make a lot of sense if you’re used to reading Arabic or Hebrew, because it goes from right to left. It’s just how I always do my squares, so why stop now?

One square in weird light that makes the colors wrong.

I’m really looking forward to working on this. It’s a fun project, until you see just how hot it gets every year around here. Maybe it will cool down toward the end. I encourage you to learn more about temperature blankets. Another great resource is the one I found first, which is the Tempestry Project. They make wall hangings for different years in the same places and it makes the changes over the years VERY obvious. They have temperature tapestries from all over the world and for the US National Parks. It’s fascinating.

Here is my messy set of instructions for January and part of February. It didn’t get cold until the end of the month, when the ice storm hit.

Working on this project is a good distraction from coughing. I’ll update you on my attempts to get my condition diagnosed later.

Spring Can Be Sickening

Spring is in the air, at last. The weather is becoming warmer (perhaps too warm for February, but never mind – it’s nice for riding horses), birds are migrating north, and the days are getting longer. All those things are welcome to everyone who had to deal with the harsh surprises the ice storm brought.

I was happy to see that the cranes are now back in the skies, going the other way, and the killdeer have come back. Meadowlarks are also making themselves very well known.

All the tiny spring flowers are blooming, which you can see if you do “belly botany” like my botanist friend always recommended. It’s so good to see them.

While uploading some of the photos I took to iNaturalist, I took the time to see if one of my theories about what’s growing on our grassy areas was true. Sure enough, chickweed is so named because it’s used as chicken feed. It’s even grown as a crop in some places! Common Chickweed (Stellaria media) is darned interesting for a “weed.”

It is native to Eurasia and naturalized throughout the world. This species is used as a cooling herbal remedy, and grown as a vegetable crop and ground cover for both human and poultry consumption.
Stellaria media is edible and nutritious, and is used as a leaf vegetable, often raw in salads. It is one of the ingredients of the symbolic dish consumed in the Japanese spring-time festival, Nanakusa-no-sekku.
iNaturalist

I feel a lot better, because for the past few weeks I’d been feeding it to the chickens along with the henbit I’d read was good for them to eat (and whatever else comes up when I pull it up). They eat it like crazy.

Speaking of the hens, they also know it’s spring. Everyone has grown all their feathers back nicely, even Blondie, who had been bald on her back from the rooster’s attentions. And Betsy, the one who lays blue eggs, has ramped up production again. I think half the chickens are laying now (at least two of them are old enough that I don’t think they’ll lay at all). For a while I was just getting one or two a day, a white and a tan, but now I’m getting three…maybe up to five with the coming of spring.

The other great thing about spring coming is that the days are getting longer. That means I can get rides in on both horses after I finish work, which may help out with the fact that I’m not feeling very confident lately, especially with Drew, who is needing a lot of “firm corrections” as Tarrin calls them (he rushes rather than walking beside me when he sees grass, and just seems irritable). I am glad I can spend more time with my equine buddies, nonetheless.

So, why do I say spring is sickening? It turns out that I made myself sick when I was cleaning out the henhouse last week.

Let this be a lesson to you all: when you are sweeping up bits of hay and straw filled with chicken poop, wear a mask. I did not.

Thanks to that error in judgment, I now seem to have some kind of lung infection. I found myself wheezing and gurgling when lying down a couple of days ago, and since then, my lungs seem to be filled with fluid. At first it was clear, so I wasn’t too worried, but it’s getting worse, so I have an appointment to get my lungs looked at. Since I have NO other symptoms of illness (COVID negative, before you ask), all I can figure is I inhaled things that displeased my bronchial tubes.

The horses say I should spend more time in the fresh air with them.

Now, I live in Milam County, Texas, land of few medical services. I had an appointment for this morning, but it turns out the Internet is down at the local office. That’s so Cameron. I might be able to get in today in the next town over if my PA goes over there; otherwise, I have to cram an appointment with the other provider in tomorrow (my busiest day of the week), amid getting my spouse to the chiropractor for his messed up back, taking him to his Rotary meeting, and grabbing lunch with my friends. I predict all of that won’t happen.

So, readers: wear a mask when working in a dusty, enclosed environment like a chicken house. Or don’t ever clean it (not a good idea, since it gets stinky).

Book Report: Lessons in Chemistry

This is the book everyone seems to be reading. I wish I’d loved it more than I do, but I don’t. Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus (2022) is full of varied characters and has great intentions. Garmus obviously put in a lot of work learning facts that make the novel seem realistic to fans of chemistry, cooking, live television, and rowing (yes, there’s a rowing subplot). I just wish she’d taken a little more time to not have every single character by a caricature of themselves and their role in society.

I have to salute any book that makes a big deal about the lack of opportunities for advancement for women in the last 1950s and early 1960s. So, hooray for that. This book makes no bones about it, smart women got a raw deal back then. But did every patriarchal and misogynist character HAVE to spew forth such predictable things? And why does every book-smart person have to be socially inept?

It got to be every time a new man showed up, I just waited for him to put the main character down, lie to get their own way, or try to assault some woman or another. And the female characters are no better. They are portrayed as gossips, nags, women in unhappy relationships, and whatever other sixties stereotype you can come up with. I’m giving myself the impression that I don’t really like anyone in the book, and that actually may be true. They just aren’t very nuanced. I was fond of the minister who was the protagonist’s genius husband’s old pen pal, though. He was thoughtful and kind AND didn’t end up marrying the heroine. There, one cliche avoided.

Sadly, I also guessed all the plot twists before they happened, as well. You can’t love them all.

But if you are a major fan of speeches about the inequality of women, like to talk about food in terms of its chemistry (I liked that part), socially inept geniuses of all ages, or rowing, you might enjoy this more than I did. I was pleased to not see any typos, too.

Animals, Accidents, etc.

Today was fun until it wasn’t. I mostly practiced Tunisian crochet, thanks to a little book called Tunisian Crochet Workshop that I found on Kindle for free. It has good photos and clear instructions, so I was able to get through a bunch of different stitches on a sampler.

Left to right, Tunisian double crochet, extended stitch, mesh stitch, reverse stitch, knit stitch, purl stitch, and simple stitch.

Simple stitch is the standard. The other ones I liked were knit, mesh, and extended. Reverse is icky. Good thing purl is similar. Anyway, now I know some stitches.

I spent some time today enjoying the dogs. I always hear them in the backyard barking. I realized they were barking at cows, but today I got proof that it’s fun for all involved.

The dogs bark, the mamas paw the ground, and the calves bounce up and down, trying to play. It’s so much fun to watch!

All the dogs were involved. 6 canines and 4 bovines.

Alfred didn’t want me too close to the scary cows. When he realized I was approaching, he got between me and the action and herded me back. What a sweetie.

I wish Alfred had been there to protect me later. I’m having a lot of awkward moments. Yesterday I hurt my shoulder tossing saddles around. Today Drew and I got entangled in a rope and both fell down! That could have been a lot worse. He got clover stains and I hit my head and hand. No one bled.

No photos of the accident, so here are my cute Black History Month nails.

I managed to get Drew saddled and we did all our stuff just fine, so I guess we weren’t hurt too badly. But when he was free, he sure rolled a lot. Thankfully, Apache is still calm and cool, so I managed to do fine with him. I’m so grateful for him. And glad Drew is forgiving.

Tomorrow I shall spend time in the hot tub. I need it.

Playing Tourist and Reconnecting

I enjoyed hanging out with my friends last night, and was up bright and early for some Saturday morning fun. Lynn and Don took me to breakfast at a pretty and sophisticated place called Stella, with farm-to-table deliciousness. The grits and biscuits were great, as was the pecan coffee. I took photos of the decor to show to our rustic renovators in the family.

After the food fortified us, my friends took me over to Texas A&M University, a place I’d never really seen, even though I’ve lived nearby for years and even renovated a house in College Station. First we visited the very fancy Brookshire Brothers grocery store near the football stadium. This was not at all like the sad place in Cameron.

It has beer on tap and a coffee bar. Plus there’s a stage! There was nicer food, too. I got some wine and a weirdly delicious strawberries and cream Dr Pepper.

Everything in this place says 12 or Aggie. They are fond of the 12th Man. It’s a tradition.

Well, I am incapable of describing this school, its fans, or its lore, but I can describe excellent gardens. I was so happy that the next stop on my tour was a teaching garden that’s being developed on campus. This place is worth a visit if you’re ever nearby. It was fun discovering signs of spring in the series of different theme areas.

I spotted so many wildflowers growing that I could just imagine how this place will look in a few weeks. So many bluebonnets! But I found blooming trees and other plants hiding in nooks and crannies. All the pansy blossoms were a bonus!

I want to go back here and bring more friends.

Next I got a tour of the campus, which features many, many state-of-the-art athletic facilities, as you’d expect from an SEC university. Athletics rule. I also got to see some of the interesting older buildings hiding among the bland 70s buildings and a gorgeous new central campus park. It’s good to drive around a school on a weekend! I got no photos because I was busy looking.

Our final stop was the Bush Library, where Don volunteers. We didn’t go in, but I’ll go back later (been meaning to). There are always interesting exhibits. My favorite part of the grounds is this statue of horses breaking down the Berlin Wall. I’m not sure why there are horses, but the wall is cool. It has graffiti copied from the real wall. A moving tribute to some of the contributions George HW Bush made.

I appreciated this tour! I now feel like I know the area much better. But I needed to go home and visit my precious animals.

I’m relieved to say things are getting better with the horses after a rough re-entry. I’m slowly getting them back into their routine. Drew was a little squirrelly earlier, but today he got down to business after I made it clear he needs to focus.

Apache, in the other hand, has become so consistent! I’m so proud of him. He pays attention to what I ask and just seems like he is having fun with me.

I’m relieved I’m feeling better about these guys, though I don’t think either is ready for a virtual show this quarter. Drew and I sucked last time and I still haven’t had any experience or guidance doing dressage with Apache. I think I’ll work on next quarter and take my time with my equine boys.

I’m not sure what I can do with Mabel. She is sweet but doesn’t like contact. I hope someday the decorations on her mane will fall off! I’d love to groom her but don’t want to stress her out. We will see.

Let’s also see if I can get back into my rhythm. I started a new craft, so that’s a good sign. Here’s the first Tunisian crochet I ever did correctly.

More Travel to Exotic Locations

Oh, just kidding. I’m in the greater Bryan/College Station area, right here in Tejas. After a most frustrating work day (interrupted by seeing Anita for coffee at the fine new local coffee shop, which was good), I took off, once again.

The reason for traveling was the wedding of my former neighbor, Kayla. Actually, she got married with only parents around last October, so this was for the rest of their families. Cathy, Kayla’s mom, is who Sara and I went to high school football games with for years.

Other than the wedding being 1.5 hours late, it was very sweet with many touches of humor. I enjoyed chatting with some of the groom’s family at dinner, too. I am glad I went. Everyone was so friendly and seemed so happy. Awww.

Bonus: the little Baptist church had really comfy pews, for which I complimented the minister, who sat next to me. That gave him a chuckle. (Some other guy performed the ceremony.

Flower girl and ring bearer were siblings. Note I didn’t show their faces.

The other bonus of heading all the way over here (45 minutes, not far) is that I got to visit my friends Lynn and Don. We watched Young Sheldon (funny) and I played with their cats. One licked my hair.

This one, Beans, wanted more petting. She was a fine kitty.

I like cats, just at other people’s houses, you see. Anyway, I’m safely in a big mesquite bed and looking forward to breakfast with the friends tomorrow. That’s cheered me up!

Welcome Routine

Today was the first “normal” day back at the Hermits’ Rest. It felt so good to do my normal things in the normal order. I think the animals are equally happy to be back to the routine, though I really appreciate the work my son did caregiving the ungrateful chickens and horses (he was challenged by escaping horses and hens who wouldn’t get off their eggs.

I have treated the chickens to delicious spring plants like henbit, chickweed, and this, corn gromwell, which is a great source of nutrients.

Last night it was pretty late when I got back from buying horse food (they’d run out and no one had been able to get more), so I’d quickly fed them. Today I got to enjoy the normal routine. It’s so nice to see them quietly go into their pens and wait. They were not such model citizens while I was gone. Escaping and kicking occurred. Sigh.

I’m happy to see they are dirty but ok. Once I found the bottoms of Apache’s feet, it didn’t look too bad. Sara was worried he would have thrush from the damp. No, he’s just a bit stiff.

He looks better here. I took a video to check with Tarrin, and these are screenshots. I’m lazy.

Note that you can see ribs on Apache above. It doesn’t take long to lose weight. Mabel really looks thin again, but I’ll get her full of oil and coconut again.

The horses know the days are getting longer, because they’ve started to shed. The chickens know, too, because they’re giving three eggs a day (not bad for older hens). As a reward I cleaned the henhouse. The poop and straw I cleaned out will be great composted for Sara’s garden.

I had swept all the old stuff into a pile this morning, planning to sweep it out later. By the time I got back, they’d re-spread it! So, when I put hay on the clean floor, I didn’t bother to smooth it out. I knew the hens would take care of it.

As I was leaving and the henhouse door was shut, I walked by and heard pecking and kicking. They were arranging the floor their way! Ah. Glad to be home.

Book Report: The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination

It’s a good thing I have a book report for you today, because I wasn’t in a good mood and was pretty down. But forget about that! Let’s talk about my most recent book, The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination, by Jens Andersen (2022). The translator was great, too (it was originally in Danish, as are all things LEGO).

This book is both a book about how a business was born and nurtured and a story of a family and their relationships with each other. The same family has run the company that makes LEGO for five generations, which is pretty impressive.

The Christiansen or Kristiansen family (they spelled it different ways) seem to all have had a creative genius to them. I enjoyed reading about Ole Kirk Christiansen, who founded the company that made innovative wooden toys, to Gotfred Kirk Christiansen, his son who grew the plastic bricks we’ve come to know and love, to Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, and on to Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, who is apparently still in charge.

One of the themes of the book is the strong Christian faith of the family (ironic, given their name). They were members of a group of Danish Christians who stuck together and from what I can tell were darned cheerful and practical. Ole Kirk got through THREE fires that burned down his factory and many other challenges by just declaring he’d be fine, because the Lord would provide. I’m sure hard work and perseverance had a little to do with it, too.

That Ole Kirk was both talented and resilient. He had a vision of what LEGO could be and nothing was going to stop him! He, and his son and grandson, are examples we can all follow, in that they were willing to try new things and if they failed, regroup and use what they learned to try again. As well as LEGO has done in the long run, they had some big failures and challenges. Interestingly, they kept their headquarters in Billung, Denmark and are still there today. That’s consistent.

It is a lot of fun to see how the LEGO brick concept grew and changed. The key was putting those circular tubes on the bottom that hold them together. Before that, you could stack them, but they couldn’t be picked up. Genius. Another genius idea was the LEGO figures of people. They were so carefully designed to be able to move and to be very versatile.

The final things I got out of the LEGO story were a lot of ideas about business management practices and philosophy. They tried many different techniques from very lax to top-down management, to a blend. No matter what they did, though, they respected their workers and encouraged their creativity.

The company philosophy has also been laser focused on the needs of children to play and learn. Even when they made all those commercial connections to Star Wars, Harry Potter and all that, LEGO philosophy never wavered and still hasn’t. That makes me feel good about the hours and hours my brother and I spent building towns from our bricks, and all the things my own kids built.

Just as much as I enjoyed the positive aspects of the company and the family who runs it, I enjoyed learning about their disagreements and squabbles, because they also learned a lot from that and ended up creating a company and subsidiaries that respected their individual needs and talents. As a member of a family-run company, I got a lot out of how they divided responsibilities and shares. They were kind, fair, and good to each other, even when they disagreed.

This isn’t the usual kind of book I read, but I sure learned a lot and I must have liked it, because I keep telling poor Lee about it. Now, go introduce your children and grandchildren to LEGO blocks!

Why I Wish I Could Fly

I flew home today, on a plane, not a broom or anything. It was as pleasant as I could have hoped. The Hilton Head Island Airport is just about the best check-in experience possible. No crowds, nothing but pleasant staff, and a lovely terminal.

Even the carts and rollers your stuff goes through in security is new and shiny. Despite this, they’re building a new terminal. It’s such a convenience to fly from there.

My first flight was fun, since I sat next to a nice woman and we chatted about Hilton Head and dogs. We even walked to our connecting flights together. Much of the passengers on that flight cracked up because the SECOND the plane stopped a guy ran from way in the back so he could get out first. Thinking back on it, maybe he was claustrophobic or not good with flying, so I shouldn’t have been so judgmental.

We did giggle when we realized we were making our connection faster than him. It was like ending up at the stoplight next to the person who had zipped around a bunch of cars trying to get ahead.

Wait, why do I wish I could fly? I always have, actually, but that’s when I wanted to be Supergirl when I grew up. Now, however, I wish I could fly so that I could see the contours of the earth from up high.

On my second flight, I looked out the windows and enjoyed mountains and hills. Mostly, though, I enjoyed looking at creeks, rivers, lakes, and drainage patterns. Seeing all the places where rivers have changed course is so fascinating. Oxbow lakes are where bits of river get cut off. But there are also meanders, marshes, other fun formations.

A big lake and a cloud made by a big fire.

Fires are also interesting to see from above. The smoke goes so far!

I’d just love to be able to check out all the rivers, all the beautiful mountains, the clouds, the deserts…if only I could fly. Sigh. I’ll never have the ability to fly everywhere even in a plane, so until then, you’ll find me in a window seat watching the weather and the land.