Happy (and safe) Holidays 2020

 

Here we are at the end of a very different year! Since we got back from Jamaica in April we have not strayed more than 10 miles from home. We have already seen more snow than in the past ten years put together. But with vaccines starting to roll out we can hope that in 2021 life as we remember it from before Covid-19 will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of the pandemic! 

Wishing you and yours Happy Holidays and a safe New Year!

Life in the Times of Covid

 This sure has been a strange year! When the pandemic struck we were in Jamaica. As things got worse in the US we started to wonder about how we were going to get home. We were originally scheduled to fly back north on April 17, but as things started closing down we decided to get out while we still could. We moved our departure date up to April 8. Then the flight was canceled. And then the new flight was canceled.  It quickly became apparent that American was not going to be flying out of Montego Bay anytime soon so we started looking at other airlines. The only flights we could find were once a week flights out by Jet Blue. We finally departed on April 11 on one of the last flights to leave Jamaica. Our friend Bob Hollenback got stuck down there and did not get back to the states until June!

Once back in Ithaca we hunkered down and did our best to not leave the house. Groceries got delivered, doctor appointments went to telemedicine and everything else got put off or canceled. Barbara started work on some of her many unfinished quilting projects and Tom got busy building fireworks for the annual PGI convention in August. The convention got canceled and for the first time in 26 years, we did not hit the road for our annual trip out west to the convention.

Despite our best hopes, the pandemic did not taper off but instead continued getting worse. We kept an eye on the situation in Jamaica. The government there did a much better job than ours here, but even so the thought of getting sick in Jamaica with no guarantee we could come home weighed on our minds, and we eventually canceled our reservations and decided to stay in Ithaca for the winter. Or at least until winter makes us just too crazy! It has been 13 years since we last endured an Ithaca winter...

Our local NPR station had a raffle as part of their fundraising campaign and much to our surprise we won a $1,000 prepaid Visa card! We decided that we'd spend it on something fun and now we are the proud owners of a 65" TV. The guy at the Best Buy store had a hard time believing that at 70+ years old it was our first TV! Of course, it broke right away - the sound quit - and we are now awaiting a visit from the Geek Squad to fix it.

Mark and Janet are planning on putting their house on the market and moving to New Mexico, so they have begun the project of whittling down their 50+ years collection of possessions. One of the things that had to go was a large pile of rough-cut oak boards that had been sitting in one corner of their barn for a long time. I agreed to take the oak and have been steadily processing it into trim for the pool room. That room has only been without trim for about 45 years, but what's the rush? 

So now we have a huge pile of trim parts that are gradually getting sanded, varnished, and installed. And it is snowing.

Stay well...

Coronavirus useful information

This is not a normal blog post, but these are not normal times. Barbara recently received an E-mail from a friend who is a retired respiratory therapist and it contained some excellent information.

Feel free to pass this on. Be safe!

CORONA Common Sense


Since they are calling on Respiratory therapists to help fight the Corona virus, and I am a retired one, too old to work in a hospital setting. I'm gonna share some common sense wisdom with those that have the virus and trying to stay home. If my advice is followed as given you will improve your chances of not ending up in the hospital on a ventilator. This applies to the otherwise generally healthy population, so use discretion.

1. Only high temperatures kill a virus, so let your fever run high. Tylenol, Advil. Motrin, Ibuprofen etc. will bring your fever down allowing the virus to live longer. They are saying that ibuprofen will actually exacerbate the virus. Use common sense ibuprofen and don't let fever go over 103 or 104. If it gets higher than that take your Tylenol, not Ibuprofen or Advil to keep it regulated. It helps to keep the house warm and cover up with blankets so your body does not have to work so hard to generate the heat. It usually takes about 3 days of this to break the fever.

2. The body is going to dehydrate with the elevated temperature so you must rehydrate yourself regularly, whether you like it or not. Gatorade with real sugar, or Pedialyte with real sugar for kids, works well. Why the sugar? Sugar will give your body back the energy it is using up to create the fever. The electrolytes and fluid you are losing will also be replenished by the Gatorade. If you don't do this and end up in the hospital they will start an IV and give you D5W (sugar water) and Normal Saline to replenish electrolytes. Gatorade is much cheaper, pain free, and comes in an assortment of flavors

3. You must keep your lungs moist. Best done by taking long steamy showers on a regular basis, if you’re wheezing or congested use a real minty toothpaste and brush your teeth while taking the steamy shower and deep breathe through your mouth. This will provide some bronchial dilation and help loosen the phlegm. Force yourself to cough into a wet washcloth pressed firmly over your mouth and nose, which will cause greater pressure in your lungs forcing them to expand more and break loose more of the congestion.

4. Eat healthily and regularly. Gotta keep your strength up.

5. Once the fever breaks, start moving around to get the body back in shape and blood circulating.

6. Deep breathe on a regular basis, even when it hurts. If you don't it becomes easy to develop pneumonia. Pursed lip breathing really helps. That's breathing in deep and slow then exhaling through tight lips as if your blowing out a candle, blow until you have completely emptied your lungs. Then you will be able to breathe in an even deeper breath. This helps keep lungs expanded as well as increasing your oxygen level.

7. Remember that every medication you take is merely relieving the symptoms, not making you well.

8. If you’re still dying go to ER.


I've been doing these things for myself and my family for over 40 years and kept them out of the hospital.

Catching Up

It's been a while since I last posted a real blog entry, so this one has some catching up to do! The weather has been pretty dry since the Christmas Eve deluge, but the flowers seem pretty happy.

One of our big palm trees has been blooming on a regular basis. We know a new bloom has blossomed even before we see it, as we can hear the roar of the bees!

Our animals continue to entertain us. Stripey is very pregnant (maybe "was" - we haven't seen her in a couple of days), Fluff is just plain weird but gradually becoming much more friendly,  and Peter the Patoo was out on our porch for a bit after crashing into our sunscreens.

JC's crew of local kids have come by a time or two.

Estelle and her friend Donna were down and we got to have lunch with them.  She also got up to Valley View to see the incredible amount of work that has been done on Bob and Nicelee's 

In mid-January we had a visit from Steve and Marilyn Trebacz, friends of ours from PGI conventions. They own a Stained Glass store and wanted to do a bit of tile work while they were here. The result was a very nice Prarie style panel.

Nicelee joined Bob for the last two weeks of his stay. Her visit overlapped Tina Spiegel's visit, so they got a chance to get acquainted. Tina was here for three weeks and got quite a few improvements made at the Spiegel residence. We all got down to Mis Sonias for a meal. 

Work on Bob and Nicelee's house has continued since they left, with Tom and Barbara keeping an eye on things.

Tom and Binghi have been tiling, finishing a couple of columns and starting on another of the arches.

Barbara has kept busy with her quilting, re-painting the grate from the top of the hill, and cooking on the barbecue grill.

Last week Barbara's brother Stephen and his wife Margie came for a visit for the first time in 13 years. Quite a bit of change since then!

And of course, the sun sets every day!

If you are interested in more frequent updates from us, check us out on Instagram at pyrotomdimock. I have been posting there on a daily basis to keep Bob informed of progress on his house, and throwing in some other pictures too.

Valentines Day

Just another quick note. It's Valentine's day, and the crew working on Bob's house serenaded Barbara.

https://tinyurl.com/BarbaraBirthdayInJamaica

Earthquake!

Just a short note to let everyone know that we are fine. The earthquake was a 7.7 quake about 77 miles NNW of us. It shook the house, but not hard enough to do any damage. A novel experience - neither of us had ever felt a significant earthquake before - but not one I'd want to do on a regular basis!

Rain, Fireworks, and on into 2020

At about 10 PM on December 23 the rain started. By 6 AM Christmas Eve, 6 inches of rain had come down. In the years that I have been tracking rainfall, the previous high for a 24 hour period had been 3.5". The good news was that our water tanks were topped up, the bad news was that the power was out. It finally came back on about 7 PM that evening. Christmas Day was pleasant and we had a nice Christmas dinner with Bob.

Our resident cat Stripey has a kitten! We have named her (him?) Fluff. Fluff is still very unsure about us, so this photo was taken through the window screen, making it a bit blurry. We're sure Fluff will get to trust us before we leave.

Bill and Lisa Turner and Bob's friend Al all arrived in Jamaica after Christmas, completing the "Bomb Squad", as Bob's house crew call us.  Bill and Lisa stayed a few days with us at Valley View, and Lisa began work on a tile piece she has designed.

Tom and Binghi have also been working on tile, with Tom continuing with his Alice in Wonderland theme and Binghi doing a dramatic sunset depiction.

New Year's Eve arrived and we were all off to our respective fireworks shows. Bill was back at Tryall golf resort, Bob at the Round Hill resort, Al working with Alfred in Negril, and Tom celebrated his 71st birthday doing the show at the Grand Palladium resort.

The shows all went very well, and we all gathered at Alfred's on New Years Day to share stories.

Alfred has that great big grin on his face because with Al's help he had put on his biggest show ever, an 11-minute extravaganza. Then it was back up to Valley View to begin 2020. Work on Bob's house has been proceeding at a rapid pace, and Al was put to work fabricating grills for the windows.

Lisa tore herself away from the beach to come back up and work some more, finishing her field of daisies. Tom has the Queen of Hearts almost ready for grout.

And of course, we finish each day with another fantastic sunset!

Have a great New Year!