From A Wide Spot In The Road

Discussion in 'Personal Diaries' started by Bill Boggs, Mar 25, 2019.

  1. Jeff Elohim

    Jeff Elohim Very Well-Known Member
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    Good.
    For more long term relief, peace of mind, see if you can get a copy of Fold Medicine by Dr Jarvis. Skip the first few chapter(s), as it is so boring. The later chapters are wonderful.
     
    #556
  2. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Thanks.
     
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  3. Shirley Martin

    Shirley Martin Supreme Member
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    Update?????
     
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  4. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Did I say update? Then update it will be.
     
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  5. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    We have been having some trouble communicating with each other. We both suffer a little from hearing loss. Both wear a hearing aid. So when
    I speak my voice is audible, clear sounding, sweet to the ear. On the other hand other I can not hear much of anything my roommate says. With out
    knowing it, I'm sure she mumbles, does not form her words so that sometimeI can not tll if she trying o speak or trying to whistle. Doesn't matter,
    she's going to get another hearing aid later this week. The one she is wearing is some off brand that wasn't worth bring home when she bought it.
    Or was it me that bought it? It spite of it all we're getting on if not well, then not too badly.

    Our daughter is visiting from from Round Rock. She came last Tuesday and her oldest will drive down and pick her up next Tuesday or Wednesday.
    It been fun having her here. We've eaten well at least I have and my scales has also noticed. It says I'm up about eight pounds. I would contest
    that butI don't have an attorney. My idea if thois weight gain is that bit by bit I'll drop it off, bit by bit, pound by pound. Hopefully sooner than later
    I'll shag it all.

    I wanted to go shopping with my daughter. We both like to shop. She didn't feel she was up to shopping and to tell the truth I wasn't either. I did buy
    a couple of tee shirts and some ear buds on line.

    My grandson here in Norman will graduate college in a few days. He has accepted a schooleship from Wisconsin University to work on his Masters.
    He's a math major. I don't think he's really sure what he'll study in Wisconsin. I hope something that will make him employable.

    I have been under the weather a bit. I'm on three liters of oxygen but that doesn't seem to be enough. I'm tired all the time and can barely do anything.
    I have consultd with my chief medical adviser and have her permission to up my oxygen to four as long as I understand the risk. And I thinkI do
    understand the risk,so I'm sitting here typing with my oxygen on just short of four liters. Not sure I did do the breeakfast and lunch dishes and have
    been sitting in front of my computer since morning playing my harmonicas. I was wishing I had the equipment and know how to make a video of me
    playing something familiar so that I could put it on line here and give you a listen. I was playing this morning and thinking, "Good, I'm good." I'm joking
    of course but I did think I sounded pretty darn good.

    Well, that's neither here nor there. I can't do it so doesn't matter.`

    For about a week I was ready to throw in the rope. I felt pretty darn lousy. No energy. Too weak to hardly get out of bed. But I'm better.

    I saw something i'd like to tell you about. I sometime sit at my computer and look out my back windows upon my grassy back lawn. I've always had lots
    of birds and for some years had bird feeders out. I have bamboo and trees along myback propertyline and the back yard has the feel of asafe place.
    Yesterday morn my neibor's kitten (although she growing), a grey and white short haired kitty they got fro a relative in Waxahathie, Texas.
    There is a board gone in the fence and my neighor's cats slip through the opening into my yard from time to time. Yesterday morn the kitten slipped into the
    back yard and spied a white wing dove, a young one in the yard. I was spying it also. The kitten bent down and started stalking up on her prey like big
    cats do. She got about halfway to the bird and got up and sauntered back to the fence, then turned around and walked slowly and obliquely, sauntering
    slowly toward the bird. The bird had not moved. I didn't know by this time if the bird was injured bcause it had no move or moved much. Whe the kitten
    was about three feet from the bird the kitten jump for the bird, the bird flew but the kitten's paws knocked the bird down and she was on the
    bird in a second. She bit the bird several times , then carried it home, back through the fence. I thought the kitten was a smart stalker but I've never had
    cats. I thought thekitten was teaching both the bird and I a lesson. My telling does not do justice to the view you could have seen had you been nearby.
     
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  6. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    Glad you're getting to visit with your daughter, Bill. (My oldest daughter lives in Round Rock, too!) Maybe she could make a short video of you with her cellphone.
     
    #561
  7. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Maybe, I don’t know. We’ll see.
     
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  8. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Daughter’s face swollen from chemo. She wanted no photos other than private family photo, sorry, no video.

    I have been down almost totally with shortness of breath. I was good lying in bed but when I sat in my
    wheelchair or stood anywhere, I was gasping for breath. I awoke this morning feeling different. I went to the
    bathroom with no help, then went into kitchen and put on the coffee. I had to sit down for a while, then got into my wheel chair and can not do much, I am not in fear of dying from shortness of breath like has been going on.

    i have tried to finish a couple of books I have been reading but interest has waned.
     
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    Last edited: May 10, 2021
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  9. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    I have two bird feeders I’d like to get going. We have no pets. But I have enjoyed watching birds
    in the past, identifying new birds and photographing one on occasion. but I need help with this. I
    can not remove the feeders to clean and fill them. I will have to find some help. So this is an
    ongoing project.
     
    #564
  10. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    I was watching a tv show a couple weeks ago and it ended with a “to be continued.”
    I never found the program the following week and couldn’t remember the name. To
    day I found it again. It’s Midsomer Murders on PBS and is, I believe, a British
    series. I’ll watch later tonight if I’m feeling perk.
     
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  11. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    Bill, I'm sorry about your shortness of breath. Did upping your oxygen help any?

    I totally understand about "chemo face." The steroid I get makes my face puffy and I get a red rash across my cheeks. Sorry your daughter has to go through this.

    You had mentioned that you wanted a video of yourself playing the harmonica and I was suggesting that perhaps your daughter could video YOU. I apologize for not being more clear about that. :oops:
     
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  12. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Yeah, I wasn’t clear either. I wanted to make a sound track of my playing so I could place it on the forum pr sendto a friend who is muscal and plays a number of instruments. Guess I’d need a good recorder.
     
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  13. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Well, being an individual of no large talent and having a lung problem and thinking blowing on my harmonica
    helps my condition and encouraged by my doctors to do so and feeling like it, I played my harmonica for almost two hours this a.m. Most harmonica players I am sure use their tongue a great deal to get a wayward note. Some
    few use only the note hole. I do as most players do and do both. I have a solo tuned harp from Seydel that I really like. It is Solo tuned but the draw notes play like a regular diatonic harp, so yo can play both solo and still bear down on the blues notes. i have it in low C, I comes in low D and low F, also in G and A. All because of stainless steel welded reeds. I play the low C together with the Db. I’d like to have all those solo tuned harps. But one is
    enough to know they sound great and they are not loud. Spent over an hour on that one harp this morning.
    Blood Oxygen was very good when I quit.
     
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    Last edited: May 10, 2021
  14. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    Bill, you sure do know a lot about harmonicas. And I suspect you are a lot better player than you let on.
     
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  15. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    @Nancy Hart
    It is said about harmonicas, the easiest to play; the hardest to master. I have had a harmonica in or near my paws
    for fifteen years. The harmonica was not easy for me to learn, maybe for some pre conceived notion, the state of my health when I ventured upon my first harp, or some mental block about my inability to learn an instrument. Yet when I read some of the biographies of players who earned fame or some acclaim in later years playing the harmonica, many took ten or twelve years to play as they wanted or to take the harmonica seriously. I am too short of breath to play really well but I am happy with my playing, proud of myself that I can play as well as I do, and delighted I finally learned to play something associated with making music.

    I have played all the major brands of harmonica, Hohner, Tombo or the Lee Oskar, Suzuki, one of the best, and Seydel, another German harmonica company.
    Most of their harp use stainless steel reeds and they are the only company t do so. Other companies use brass reeds or a brass alloy. The stainless last about five times as long as the brass reeds do, or so it is claimed. I have also played the Fender which was made by the Chinese company Eastwood and they are beginning to turn out some good harps, although they have not caught on real well yet.

    I know quite a bit about harmonicas because I am a reader. I read about things that interest me, as we all do. Harmonicas have been a part of my later life
    because of a lung disease. The little harp has helped me breathe better and I think has helped sustain my life because I am forced to exercise both lung and diaphragm. I wake up some mornings yearning to get up and blow my harps, something like an itch inside my lungs.

    How good am I? I don't know. There's so much I don't know but but I don't need to. I'm enjoying what I have, what I do and that's enough.
     
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    Last edited: May 11, 2021

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