This and That Tuesday

Daughter-in-Law called around 8 a.m. to let me know that the tech at Son's cardiologist office informed them this morning that Son's nuclear stress test showed no abnormalities. This would be happy news if Daughter-in-Law hadn't also said that Son has experienced more episodes of chest and arm pain, and that he also complains of being tired. Son is to see his primary physician soon to get information on a diet and exercise plan, and I'm hoping that at that time his doctor will see fit to further explore the cause of Son's complaints.


At 8:30 a.m., I went to Cardiac Rehab, where there was a crowd this morning. For the first time since I've been attending, there were more women than men...four of us to three of them. The reason there were so many patients at the session this morning is that Cardiac Rehab closed this afternoon and will be closed tomorrow while techs install a new heart monitor/computer system. Scheduled patients had to be re-scheduled to other sessions, so the 9 a.m. one was completely full, as I'm sure all the others today were, too.

Because there were so many of us, someone else was occupying my favorite treadmill, and since all the other treadmills were occupied, too, I had to use a machine that works much like a bicycle. But instead of ordinary handlebars, it has shoulder-high rotating handlebars for upper body workouts. I didn't use the pedals today. I just used the arms feature, which I felt mainly in my shoulders. I'll probably be somewhat sore in those areas tomorrow.

Most days, it has taken a while for my heart rate to go down after a vigorous workout, so today, instead of strolling, I walked briskly from my van to Cardiac Rehab, which raised my pulse enough that following my workout today, my heart rate dropped to acceptable limits pretty quickly.

Nothing of consequence happened for the rest of the morning. After lunch, Mother and I met a 12:30 p.m. appointment to get haircuts. Both of the hairdressers who cut our hair are on Weight Watchers diets, and are interested in gathering good recipes. We'll go through ours to see what we can provide.

Since we were ready to leave the beauty shop a little after 1 p.m., we decided to stop by our local home improvement store to attend an Extension Homemakers workshop on how to save money through simple home fix-its using inexpensive materials like caulking, electrical tape, liquid nails, etc., plus ideas on saving energy by using fluorescent bulbs in lamps, foam insulators behind electrical switch plates, winter window treatments, and insulator blankets around water heaters.

The workshop was open to everyone, so Hubbie attended, too, and was already in the store when Mother and I arrived. He picked up several of the suggested items to use in our home. I'm particularly interested in finding out how the dry film lubricant will work on our sliding glass doors. He also bought a laser straight edge tool that I think will be very handy the next time I want to hang pictures...in the past, our yardstick method has been pretty haphazard, resulting in multiple nail holes in the walls in our effort to align pictures.

We were back home by mid-afternoon. Hubbie said Daughter-in-Law called earlier asking for craft ideas for children two to four years old (she's babysitting grandchildren while their parents are at work). The craft ideas I have on hand are aimed at children at least school age, but I visited several online websites that have ideas for younger children. I printed some of those to send to her, since her home computer is down right now. Daughter-in-Law also asked for homemade dry mix ideas, like taco seasoning, for using in recipes, and I'm sending what I have.

Later this afternoon, I got a call from a lady at a technical school in a city near our capital city asking if I'd be interested in doing an after-school photography workshop for middle school kids during the first week of October. She's to send me details soon, so I can decide if it's something I want to do.

By this time, we were ready to prepare veggies for a veggie supper...yellow summer squash and new potatoes that we cooked in the steamer, breaded okra sauteed in a bit of canola oil, along with Chinese beets, and sliced tomatoes. Yum.