We did get home on Friday, 29 May. We were able to put the motorhome in its new outdoor storage location easily. It is at the end of a row, and is one of the few spots that is long enough for us! Being on the end, we can put a slide out if we need to do things inside which is awfully handy. Then began the long, tedious task of getting it ready for storage. Everything came out of the refrigerator and freezer, toiletries, clothes, etc. I drove the truck home and came back with the new Subaru, and we got it all home in one load! Kevin didn’t unload the RZR until Saturday, but it all went pretty smoothly.
Remember the Navajo rug I bought? I opened it up for a picture. Isn’t it gorgeous?
Sunday was a big day at church. Our pastor is semi-retiring back to his home state of South Carolina, and there was a special service and a big potluck afterwards. The choir got to sing a fabulous spiritual with a soloist, a former member, who came back specifically for this service. I love blues-y spirituals! Pot luck was fabulous as pretty much all Protestant church potlucks are. (Side note: The only potlucks I think I have ever been to that were awful were in Utah. Limited amount and style of food, lots more people bringing chips and dip. My grandmother would have been horrified!)
On Monday we took my poor hail damaged Subaru into the repair shop. It was fixed (mostly) on Thursday and I got to bring it home. They had ordered 3 small pieces of trim incorrectly, so I will have to go back later and get those replaced. That said that would be a quick job. It was nice to get an easy to drive car back instead of the hard to park truck. We also got our new roof on Thursday which was a particularly nice thing. It was a good crew. They were respectful, only broke one plan 🙁 , and cleaned up the site extremely well. We still don’t know when the siding will be repaired, probably a couple of weeks.
I am also still waiting on when the siding will be repaired. It will probably be in the next couple of weeks, but no specific date yet.
And of course there were doctor appointments which will be a continuing theme all summer I am afraid. I was diagnosed with atypical ductal and atypical lobular hyperplasia (ADH/ALH) in the breast I had the lumpectomy for my ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Not cancer, not even a pre-cancer like the DCIS, but it does up my risk significantly. We decided to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. It is only a couple of hours away, and I lost confidence in the folks I used last time. I had my appointment on Friday, and I really liked the doctor. Explained everything, listened well, described alternatives, etc. I am starting tamoxifen and will be having a surgical consult at the end of the month. The doctor said the surgeon might not be recommending surgery since the spot was so small – crossing my fingers! If I do end up deciding to get surgery, I think I will wait until fall. It isn’t an emergency, and that would fit my schedule better.
And the reason to wait until fall? Kevin’s heart murmur turned out to be aortic stenosis. He has 3 days scheduled at Mayo himself at the end of the month for testing and decision making. But it is looking like they will recommend a Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR). It probably can’t take place before mid-July, and it might be later. With the recovery from that, we will be lucky to be able to get to the ukulele festival on 22 August let alone the late July planned RZR 3 day ride. Sigh. Getting older sucks.
We have had lots of rain over the last 2 weeks, and the landscaper says he needs about 10 days of dry weather to bring the equipment in the yard without damaging the lawn or irrigation system. I doubt I will get much planted this year since it is so hard on plants to get started in a hot Iowa summer. But I can start planning! Or at least, my beloved DIL can start planning. She has a tentative plan already, but it will need to be modified. Due to the new tree’s location, the landscaper decided it needed to be included in the bed as the picture shows. My backyard is really pretty small though my front yard is huge (pie shaped lot). The landscaper is going to pull out the current tree that is dead, add drainage and soil improvements, plant the new tree, dig out all the sod, edge the new bed with landscape blocks, and put 4” of mulch down. Big job! But I think I am going to really like it.
