Had a Health Scare and Our Pfundtner Security Team

Yesterday was a strange day....

Steveio called me from work about noon, saying he "felt weird" and "was forgetting stuff" ...  He sounded strange and it's not normal for him to even call me at all.  I knew something was up. Then his phone kept dropping signal at the park, and I could not get a straight story between his randomness and the phone cutting out. ARGGHHH!!!  He said he kept forgetting things.  A co-worker had to tell him the same thing five different times and Steve could not remember what it was.  I tried calling him back and get more details, but the phone kept cutting out.  I finally gave up and called his boss in the office to check on him.

It turns out that Steve had been cutting down trees with a crew, and he was doing the "grunt" part of hefting the cut trunk pieces into the bucket scoop thing.  The YOUNG guys were doing the non-strenuous parts!  That's my Steveio.   Geeesh.... with the heat and humidity plus he hadn't had a thing to drink since his morning coffee, no wonder he was feeling "off"!

The rangers checked him for signs of stroke.  Then they decided to take him into the Urgent Care....  where that doc then sent him to get a CT scan!  By now, I was waiting on pins and needles at home, hoping for any word by phone.  Finally they called and said he was heading in for CT and I should come now to be with him. He was 35 miles away.  I kept it under the speed limit, as I knew he was in good hands.  But of course my mind was zooming ahead a million miles a minute.

Well, Steve asked the technician if they found any squirrels up in his head.. .but she said no, not even a NUT!   LOL ... by now he was re-hydrated and feeling better.   They released him to me and said we needed to follow up with the doc in the morning.   Whew!!! I was thanking God all of the way home.

We came on home to find our workman we hired was here at the house...  workman?  workman? you say?   That can't be.... zoom zoom Pfundtners do all their own work on Our Old House!

A week ago or so our neighbor Diane was having some gutter work done, and this nice young man did a great job for her, and he came recommended. (she also knows his father!)

Well, we don't have a tall enough ladder to reach the top of our house.  But he does! There has been a missing piece of trim/edging/soffit whatever from the tallest gable on the south side of the house.  I talked to Brandon and got his card and asked him to come back when he had time to do a quick job.  I had all the parts and tools and white nails etc. ready for him to get to the job even if we were gone.

Here is where the piece of trim was missing....

Brandon set up his gear and went right to work----
plus he knocked down the old wasp nest too!

He carefully measured, double checked and measured again, and trimmed the metal to the exact size.  He was careful of the plants below, and made sure he was padded against the house siding where the ladders rested.

Having this guy going up and down on ladders

alongside of our house put the dogs in an absolute TIZZY! 

This is our Pfundtner Security Team in action:

For those of you who don't want to click on the YouTube link, here are a few still shots of the Pfundtner Security Team doing what they do best----

Intently watching him go up and down the ladder

(with tails swishing in watchful concentration) 

Finnegan on a little rest break...

in a basket of wool strips cut for weaving rugs!

Re-positioning themselves for a better vantage point of view

Brandon was done with the job in no time, and put away his ladders.  Steve asked for the final total... a mere $40!   Geesh!  I handed him $50 and told him to go have a beer.....   what a great job he did for a good price. 

We also talked to him about putting in some gutter guards on the front porch (the rest of the house already has them) and he will be coming back soon to install them for us.  Here is a blog post of Steveio cleaning out the gutters up on the front porch:  http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2015/06/thinking-about-couple-songs-tonight.html

Since Steve's recent face to face with the fact that he is aging and not able to do all the things that he did when he was 20....  it is a good thing to get the front porch gutters done so he doesn't have to go out on the roof again! 

This morning we were up early and having our coffee on the front porch in the sunshine.  It is gonna be a GREAT day!  The temps are down, the humidity is down, the sun is shining and it's a gorgeous day.  And to top it all off... .Steveio is feeling better! The sunshine streaming in early in the morning is one of the sweetest times of the day. 

By 8:30 we were in at the doc, all is good, tests look okay and the doctor said that Steve is supposed to remember that he is NOT 20 anymore!!!! He was mostly likely off on his electrolytes and de-hydrated.  He needs to take it easier on the hot, humid days and be more careful of his exertion.

And

of course... 

to drink MORE water!!

I did ask the doc to write up a note saying Steve had to retire now, just to bug his boss.  Heh heh.  But the doc said he would write up one for himself before he'd write one for Steve!  Steve is in better shape than he is.  LOL


And we are looking for special blessings and thoughts for our dear little granddaughter Allegra who is undergoing oral surgery this morning in Green Bay....  Be well, little stinker.  We love you!

Thinking about a Couple Songs Tonight....

Yes, I have a couple oldies songs running through my head this evening.
One of my favorite songs that I used to play in band class was "Stormy" 

And yes, we sure had "stormy" weather here in Wisconsin today.....  about 3:30 the skies turned black, the winds started to blow and rain began.  Wheeeeeeee  this pic is taken right from the front steps of our house.

It got dark so fast, and there weren't any warnings yet on the tv. I was surprised.  So I pulled in our American flag, shut all the windows and waited for it to hit.   It was getting very hot and humid and windy. Steve was on his way home from work in the middle of it.  I was getting worried when he was late (he was stuck behind finishing up something at work)

The next song is a variation of "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia"  errrr Chilton?
Then the power went out.  All over town!   Seems a big tree went over some lines and started on fire, so over 2,000 homes were without power as the storm rolled in.  I checked the WPS website and said it would be repaired as soon as possible. But no real time frame.

When Steve finally got home, there was a lull in the rain.  So we grabbed our uncooked dinner, our laptops and cell phone (which also doubles as a mobile data hotspot) the doggers and their dinner dishes.... We went on out to the motorhome in the back yard! Just as we got into the motorhome it started raining again.  We made a good choice to run when we did.

We have four deep cycle marine batteries of power stored and fully charged from the solar panels, and we could kick in the generator if need be.  Steve settled in playing his favorite game of cards on his laptop while I was cooking up supper on the propane stove. I was able to recharge our lagging cell phone battery as well as plug in our laptops to power up. The doggers thought we should be going somewhere, and were a bit confused.

We decided to settle in for our next song:   "I Love A Rainy Night"  

The rain came down for a while, and we ate our dinner and watched the storm pass on the tv weather stations. We had radar tracking on the laptop and the weather station on the tv to follow along. Soon it was over and the sun came out again!   The power didn't come back on yet, so we stayed in the rig.  The dogs had now figured it was fun time camping and cuddling and snuggling. Could the next song be Donny Osmond's "Puppy Love" ???

About 7 pm my friend Sarah messaged me that the power was back on.  Sooo the next song of course has to be the gospel hymn :  "I Saw The Light"  as we craned our necks out of the motorhome side window to see the back porch light come on. 

So we moved kit and kaboodle back into the house.  

sooooo along comes John Denver, singing

"Back Home Again"

The house was pretty stuffy and hot being closed up all afternoon and evening.  It was hot and humid outside.  So we kicked on the central air to cool it down.  We started thinking it was time to get the little window air conditioner unit for the window upstairs installed for the summer. 

See, last summer we figured out even with the central air running in our house, on hot evenings we weren't getting cool enough temps up in our bedroom.  With the thermostat on the main floor, of course it was cool down there as cool air travels downward... and the heat stays in the upstairs bedrooms.  Even with shutting all of the registers on the main floor, it was not enough to boost the air to the upper floors.  We have to run it at a considerably low temp setting on the AC thermostat downstairs for a long time to push the cool air upstairs.   And by morning the downstairs is freezing! 

I asked Steve to think of a song now with something "cool"  in it....  all he could come up with is "Long Cool Woman in A Black Dress"   oh geesh! 

Our solution was to buy one small window air conditioner for the bedroom.  But since our bed is right near the two front windows, it would be blowing right across us, not to mention the noise factor.  Our creative thinking caps figured out to install the small window air conditioner unit in our closet!  Yes, our big walk-in closet has a window.  Imagine that, in a 100 year old house, to have a window in a closet?  (also the grandtot's bedroom closet has a window too) 

If we keep the closet door open at an angle to blow the air into the bedroom, we are comfy and somewhat peaceful without having the noisy unit right next to the bed! 

And that brings us to our next song.....  "Up on A Roof"   because Steve has to crawl out of our bedroom windows to get on the front porch roof to remove the outer storm window. It's the old fashioned kind that has to be removed from out there, not inside like the rest of the windows.  Once he removes that, he is able to install the unit from the inside.  

Once he got the outer storm window off, 

he passed it through to me waiting inside. 

Then he came inside to remove the trims and remove the lower pane of the inside window.  We discovered last year that the closet window is so small you can't leave the lower pane in an upwards position, the AC unit won't fit.  So it takes a real re-vamping to get this to work. 

Carefully he lifted the ac unit into place 

and I moved over to hold it there as soon as I snapped this pic. 

I was the person handing the tools and holding the unit in place while he put the trim boards back on. Now he had to put the large support board on to make sure that it never falls out the window and rolls down off the porch roof! 

See how this configuration works now?  The noisy unit is in the closet window, and if we leave the closet door open on an angle, it helps the flow to come into the bedroom.

The unit even has a remote that has a mode called "feels like" which you can set a comfortable temp on the remote and set the remote in the portion of the room you want that cold.  Then the AC unit runs until the right temp is sensed by the location of the remote, not over in the closet.  Neato!

Curtain back in place,

all done! 

While Steve was out there, he decided to clean all those danged whirly bird helicopters out of the front porch rain gutter.  All of the rest of the gutters have covers on them, just this one and the garage are the older open type and need to be cleaned.  Paula Freund who grew up in this house remembers having to clean out that gutter, and in later years they send her son out there through the window to do it for the grandparents! 

so that brings to mind David Grays "Gutters Full of Rain" 

 Out he crawled back on the roof to scoop out the gutters....

they were all wet and goopy and full of saturated helicopter mush! 

Mr Zoom Zoom didn't even wait for me to get him a small trowel 

or to fetch a set of work gloves.  

He used a plastic bag on his hand and scooped them out, 

tossing them to the ground below! 

That is another job well done

around Our Old House! 

He safely got off the roof and back in the house, 

all in one piece.  

Whew! 

Tomorrow I will write up a blog about our weekend fun and the baby shower at our daughter Heather's house on Sunday.