Color me miserable

I know I've used this photo before. I am in agony. Each cough brings SO.MUCH.PAIN. My sides ache so bad and my head hurts when I take a coughing fit. And it is one of those gut-wrenching, rib-clutching, horse coughs. I am surprised I have not ripped out my vocal chords.

When I feel a cough coming on I groan and I want to cry. Attempting to stifle the cough only makes it that much worse and twice as painful as the body reacts violently to the attempt.

My breathing whistles and rattles. My daughter wants me to go to the doctor, now. She went.  That is when the doctor sent her over thinking she may have pneumonia.  She went and they told her it was not pneumonia and that  they could do nothing for her. She had to ride it out.

I can still walk around and do things. Although I quickly run out of breath and have to sit down. I find myself not being able to catch my breath. I get restless sitting in my TV chair all day. It drives me nuts.

There will be no dinner today. I am far too sick to place myself in any body's house in this condition and I have not been grocery shopping in ages. We have been surviving on hot dogs, mac & cheese and take out pizza. The two "kids" I live with could care less about ham and potatoes and deviled eggs and any other Easter dinner treat you can think of.

Me? Oats and scrambled eggs. And Popsicles. And Gatorade. I don't like Gatorade. I went back to plain water.

I have sinus pain and pressure on top of the cough and my lower back hurts along with my back where the lungs reside. I don't want the "P" word and I don't mean pneumonia. A guy at work had pleurisy last week. I remember this ailment all too well. I have had it so many times I know the symptoms and I don't feel them yet.

Well, it is off to find the acetaminophen for what good it does. Do you purchase name-brand or generic over the counter medication? I seem to have a mental issue where I feel the generic does not work as well. It irks me because of the monetary issue involved with buying name brand products.

Watching Shrek

I babysat for this little tyke last Saturday. He is the son of my nephew's girlfriend. We watched Shrek and an Elmo video (that had to be repeated no less than three times). I had not seen Shrek in a couple of years (perhaps longer). It was interesting to hear about onions and layers and building walls to keep people out.

I repaired the computer that was in my sister's home. A song had been downloaded from the dreaded "Limewire" program that carried a virus. It took a while to clean up the system and perform all the updates. At one point I found a complete and unopened box of an anti-virus program which I proceeded to load onto the unit. They should be good to go. Of course they got a little lecture from me about downloading from this dreaded site (Limewire) and I told them about a program that I use at mp3panda where the songs are a nickel each. Yes, that's right: a nickel apiece.

Edit: I just logged into the site. Songs are now ten cents each and albums are no longer 99 cents but $1.14. BOO! I can see where this is going. In a few months they will be a quarter each and before you know it they will be a dollar each. Sigh. It never ends.

You must have a credit card or some way of starting out though, and that can be tough to come by for this younger generation who do not have any credit established.

Meanwhile, we are off to a wonderful week-end here in the Peruby household. It is full of people during this Easter holiday. I am going to kick into "Mom" mode and start to cook and bake and feed people. 'Cause that's what I do best. Besides fix computers, that is.

Open wide

I have kept this photo in it's original size (2592 x 1944). Still using my 5.1 mp camera from 2003. If you care to look at this sort of thing click the photo to see deep inside the mouth of this massive muskellunge fish. A.K.A. "muskie".

Note: You may want to set your browser to "NOT" re-size the photo automatically. For some reason when I download the photo (before I changed the browser settings so that it did NOT re-size the photo automatically) it saved it in a 400 x 300 pixel size. Boo!

In Internet Explorer, choose Tools. Choose Internet Options. Choose Advanced. Scroll down to the Multimedia selections. Remove the check mark from "Enable Automatic Image Resizing" and click Apply and click OK. You can view the photo in it's large format, now. You can return the browser to it's previous settings by going back through the steps and checking the box for "Enable Automatic Image Resizing."

In Firefox, choose View. Choose Page Style and select "No style". Warning: Your page format will change. Click on the photo to view the larger format. When you are finished viewing the photo, return the browser to it's Basic Page Style setting by choosing View. Choose Page Style and select "Basic Page Style."

My nephew (1984, I think) caught it last year or two years ago. They are just now getting it back from the taxidermist.

I can't sleep this morning. I awoke about an hour ago with a headache. I took some acetaminophen and am drinking a cup of java and reading blogs. The dogs are a bit confused. The cats are just angry that I have not fed them, yet.

I work today and am off tomorrow. That is all for the Easter break. Back to work on Monday. I am not minding so much because the weather forecast for early next week is lousy. Beautiful today and tomorrow. It may be tough getting through today. I am thinking of going to my little home town this evening for a benefit dinner. With not much sleep, I don't know how I will be feeling. I usually get a little "manic" when I am sleep deprived. Sigh. I suppose somebody will ask my daughter (if she goes) if I am on meds again. LOL!

Oh, and no April Fools' joke from me today. I love that Google changed their name to Topeka for the day. Of course they are trying to appear as if they changed it (as in for good) as an April Fools' joke. I know better.

Company

My daughter will be here for Easter, as well as my nephew. I don't think my niece will make it down from Toledo. So, when my sister called I invited her. Her family has mushroomed in the last month. Not only is her son staying with her but his new girlfriend and her two children plus my sister's daughter and her little one (above). Ooookay.

Still cleaning. My daughter's bedroom is back in order and I am trying to focus on the downstairs laundry room area. My back only lets me work in spurts. I rest it as often as I can. I have not watched any movies, but I did download the latest House episode from Monday and watch it. My daughter was busy with friends over that night and it was a bit chaotic around here. This is the episode where one of the main characters committed suicide.

I used utorrent to watch the show and the characters all sounded like they had a serious lisp. Especially House. It was a bit hard to understand what they were saying. My daughter and I run closed caption on our television all the time. Some visitors complain, but we still do it. We are surprised at how much we actually miss them saying when it isn't on.

This was the first time I used utorrent and I don't think I'll be using it again. I didn't care for it.

Blue and gold Macaw

Beautifully posed at the zoo

The person who gave me our bird (Peru - for whom this blog is named) owned other birds. One being a blue and gold macaw. I never cared to own a bird of this nature. Too big and much too noisy. They live to maybe 80 years or so. The person almost lost her thumb so the bird had to go. She went through her varied strange animals. Snakes and birds mostly. Personally, I believe she got them for the attention. The stranger the animal the more attention it would bring.

As it is, I guess we all do certain things for attention. Take my daughter's hair. The triple color brings about three remarks on a day that we venture out into the world. At the mall or in Cincinnati, people make a comment. All positive. I suppose if somebody does not like it, they keep it to themselves. I would joke and say "Hey, at least it isn't a tattoo or a body piercing!" They would laugh and agree.

However it dawned on me today. If it were a tattoo or piercing, it would be over and done with. As for hair, it grows out and fades. The money thing never stops! Arrgghhh! Saturday we are looking at getting teal instead of red/pink. I guess some girl at school did the same "do" and we just can't have that now can we? We must be different. We must stand out in a crowd. She said she wants the teal like the color in the peacocks or the macaw. I am hoping that this "fad" fades quickly.

Nobody in the family has mentioned Easter dinner, yet. I wouldn't mind a quiet one. Usually somebody pipes up by now. Somehow I got to be the family go-between. I go between those with e-mail and those without. I make the effort to call everybody and get the show on the road. So and so is having the dinner, can you bring (usually what they enjoy making) and if not, whatever else they feel like bringing. Then, I call the person having dinner and fill them in on who is bringing what, who can make it and who can't, who will be late and who can only come for an hour before they have to be somewhere else.

My daughter wants a lemon meringue pie for her birthday. I have made a pumpkin pie and I have a made a no-bake cheesecake. My Mom made great lemon meringue pies. I never liked lemon pies so I never watched or took an interest in how she did it. I looked up a couple of recipes and I guess I'll give it a go. My Mom also made sea foam candy from time to time. Another candy I did not like. (I guess some call it divinity). Sugar, water and egg whites. Yuck.

When my daughter was young, I really got into throwing birthday parties for her. One of my favorites was when I dressed up as a fortune teller and told the girls' fortunes. (All good fortunes, of course!) I rented a costume and we had great fun. The past couple of years my daughter does not want any fanfare. Any at all. No cake, no party, no decorations. I feel weird with this decision. As if I am not doing enough or something. She wants to go out to eat (her favorite is Damon's ribs) and she wants to get her hair done. Pie and/or ice cream cake when we get home. Just me, her and her boyfriend. (And any other family that happens to be here that week-end). We are looking at a very quiet one, though.

Me? If I had my way? I would invite girls and boys, turn on all the disco lights. Blast the music and set up Dance, Dance revolution in one corner of the basement and karaoke in another area. I would decorate with green, purple and blue streamers with a tiki Island theme. We would have pizza, pepsi, chips and dip, candy and cake. I guess we already did that at the 11th or 12th party (before the boys). I recall one year doing the island thing. Oh, well.

Birthdays past involved skate parties, pinatas, limbo, Discovery Zone, Chuck E. Cheese and a handful of other crazy games and ideas. Sigh. Well, they were fun.

The lighter side of life

Cute chick from a HUGE Easter Basket

My sister won a huge Easter basket in some kind of drawing and she brought it with her to give to her daughter. Her daughter is 20 and does not like chocolate. So she is giving it to a friend of hers who has two children and one on the way. This little orange chick was one of the ten or so stuffed animals in the basket. The pink bunny was about four feet tall. There was so much stuff in the basket - even candy corn. Did they have the right holiday?

I think I am back to the lighter side of life. My previous posts were so intense I didn't even remember writing them. I would log on to my blog and read the post and think to myself "What the... ?" Hopefully that bug is out of my system. LOL!

I made the mistake of eating a Cadbury creme egg (from a smaller basket) today. Ugh! Why? Did I think my taste buds had changed? I didn't like them 10, 20, 30 years ago - what made me think anything would be different? They are way too sickly sweet for my taste. Goo! Now, I am drinking my second glass of water. I can handle the little Lindt truffles or a bit of white chocolate, but forget creme and marshmallowy stuff. Of course my all time favorite is peanut butter cups (milk or white chocolate).

I think I am over the chocolate covered almonds from Dove. I can only find them at Wal-Mart and I don't really like to shop there. However, I have found another candy that I like. Werther's caramel chews. Oy!