Getting my ducks in a row

Watched four ducks swim by on the lake yesterday, side-by-side. I said, “They’ve got their ducks in a row.” I got a strange look from my daughter and continued, “If they were following each other, they’d be in a column.” A little Excel humor. She appreciated it.

Even on a rainy day, being out here near the lake is lovely. Michele was out there on the point somewhere practicing her inner Sarah Woodruff.

I guess I need to catch up on some stuff that has interrupted my flow the past while. Too long, if you ask me. Late last summer, I started having some significant sinus drainage that began blocking my nasal passages so thoroughly that I started sleeping with my mouth open. That dried out my mouth so severely that I would wake up several times in the night gasping for breath and needing water to open my mouth. I figured it would all dissipate once I got to Arizona and out of whatever stuff was in Idaho that was making me wheeze.

No such luck. The condition continued to worsen all through the winter until by mid-April it was rare for me to get a good night’s sleep. Not having learned from the winter, I assumed it would be better once I got to Idaho and away from whatever was causing it.

No such luck. I kept having lousy nights and it extended into days. I’d just forget to breathe and then start gasping for air. I felt like I couldn’t get my lungs filled. Okay. Enough sadness and panic.

I came down to Seattle Thursday and had a doctor’s appointment complete with x-rays Friday morning. Very nice doctor I hadn’t seen before (had to take who was available) got right on it. Some fluid in the lungs but not a pneumonia. Aggravated by sinus drainage, especially when I lie down. Bronchial infection. She put me on five days of Prednisone to be followed by a maintenance dose of Flow-vent as long as needed. Immediate relief from Ambusol. Continue taking Mucinex and dosing with Flo-nase before bed.

I cleaned up okay for the wedding, I guess. Got a lot of compliments on the hat.

I started with the Prednisone and Ambusol immediately and drove to my friends’ wedding several hours away (50 miles, 3.5 hours) feeling better. Still not 100% and had to leave the party early in order to be sure to get the 60 miles home that night. The breathing had also affected my appetite and I was able to eat very little of the fantastic food at the wedding. On the way home, I stopped after 20 miles at a roadside rest area north of Tacoma and slept for half an hour before I felt up to driving the rest of the way.

I went to bed with another sound dose of Ambusol and slept straight through the night for seven hours! Saturday was a much better day. Last night, I got a solid five hours straight without even getting up for the bathroom in the night. It’s too early for me to claim a miracle cure, but I’m feeling much livelier and more energetic today than I have in quite a while.

I might write a book.

Don’t be afraid to buy one if you are so moved!

Speaking of writing, which I usually do, both my pace and my subject matter have been off a bit this month while dealing with the drained energy. I barely got 20,000 words written this week which is the slowest week so far this year. (860,000 words so far this year.) I have managed to keep up with my Camp NaNoWriMo goal of getting a chapter published every day this month, but only barely.

There have been a couple of flat spots in the graph. Still, not too bad overall.

So that brings me to the next issue I’m dealing with. Travel. If you haven’t heard, I’m planning to head off around the world in October. I did that in 2015 and loved it. This trip will be a little over six months and will include places I’ve never been as well as visits to places I want to return to.

If I have a passport. I was ready to start making flight reservations and went to get my passport only to discover that I can’t find it. My travel docs wallet might as well not exist. I opened every door and every box in my trailer last week and discovered that I wasn’t just missing my passport, but all my personal papers, like birth certificate, bankruptcy, marriage/divorce papers, property ownership. Everything was missing.

I was officially undocumented. As a middle age white man, that didn’t particularly put me in danger because—white privilege. Still, I needed some of those papers in order to get a new passport. Proof of identity and proof of citizenship. I made a stop at my storage locker Friday and opened every box in it. Sure enough, I’d put all my personal papers in the box of genealogy materials where it would be easily accessible for family research. At least I’m not undocumented any longer, but I need to contact an expediting service tomorrow and get my passport replaced so I can get a visa for China so I can make my first flight reservation.

In the meantime, the hay in our community is all baled now. Thorp Fruit in Ellensburg continues to be a standard stop on my way across country.

And writing the next volume (5) of my massive series, “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” is progressing into the last volume, Double Team.

I’m continuing to work slowly on the sequel to Municipal Blondes and still expect to have Stocks & Blondes ready in about a month. In other words, life goes on. Keep up!