Feets on Fire

A special morning posting before I forget.

I knew this was coming because both my parents had it, Mom from diabetes, Dad from 50 years of nicotine. And my doctor says I have lost a little bit of feeling on the bottoms of my feet. Diabetic neuropathy. But what the parentals described was just a fuzzy feeling - not being able to sense the bottoms of their feet. This morning at about 6 I woke up with excruciating pain in both feet, it felt like they were on fire. Or more accurately, like they were burning up from the inside.

Spook watched me from her doggie bed as I sat up, tried massaging my feet (didn't help), grabbed the cell phone and told google to look up neuropathy pain treatments. The Mayo Clinic said antidepressants were the hard core, not entirely effective route of last resort, but sometimes Aleve® or Motrin® help in the short term. So I hobbled to the bathroom and took 4 ibuprofen. That actually worked.

Before going back to sleep I put a Werther's sugar-free hard caramel in my mouth (my go-to bedside treat) and as I started to doze off it decided to try to slide down my throat. It was just barely small enough, but needed a couple of glasses of water chaser.

Back to sleep, at about 10 Spook jumped on the bed and wanted to be petted. Or more likely she wanted me to get up and give her treats.  Now I am up, and will be leaving the computer on most of the day as it does its backup of my RAID array, about 3 TB.

New plan:
exercise the car's gasoline engine with a trip to Yamagami's. They may have Thai basil.

Almost melted

After the foot fire incident, I stayed in bed till 10. Spook was up on the bed a couple of times to rouse me (she wants treats, bottom line). Took my time, there was a bit of a hunt for a TuneIn station to listen to. KCEA had no signal, KIXI is out - Sundays they are all about scam organic vitamins (paid ads disguised as info programs) the Milwaukee station which I thought was all big bands was a fluke, it was all polkas in Polish. Another fave, Smile Sussex, was playing legacy performers singing modern songs. Even Tony Bennett cannot make MacArthur Park sound good. Settled on Radio Sausalito, which was advertising the town fair in Mill Valley, reminding me that when I first moved to the Bay Area, Hayward, and was a field tech covering the entire length of Hwy 17, I spent a lot of time at Stinson Beach, usually stopping in Mill Valley for snacks. I was caught in traffic once for that town fair.

It was getting warm by the time I headed out, and as planned at 4 am, with almost no charge in the car battery I drove out to Saratoga, Yamagami's nursery, which I found in the process of major renovations. If I heard them correctly, the place has been sold, and a lot of the product placement is changing as a result. One glaring item is there are no roses. Used to be three or four rows of them in the corner of the sunniest part outdoors. Expensive ($25 and up) but mature plants, not the bare root wraps you get elsewhere. I was there for Thai basil, which used to be way at the back of the outdoor section, with all the herbs and veggies, but today all the basil (about a dozen varieties) was in the first row of sunlight. I bought two large purple leaf plants which are very aromatic, and four small plants labeled Thai basil, but which did not look like Thai. Also bought a couple of bright blue verbena.

By now it is almost 2 pm, and very warm. The car thermometer said 96. Drove two doors down to Summerwinds, which was having a sale on small herbs, I picked up what they had labeled as Thai basil, but looked like Mexican, and dill and thyme. Driving back, as I was turning onto the freeway, I watched as the thermometer went from 103 to 104. Put the aircon into Max. The trip back towards the bay got down to 90 eventually.

Home, parked all the big pots along the carport, and brought all the small ones inside, put them on water catchers on the kitchen table.

Cranked the aircon down to 76, watched TV after checking the backup was still in progress on the PC. Watched a Seahawks game which literally had a flag against one team or the other or both every play. Word is they will re-run it on June 14. Hawks handily beat KC. It took two root beer floats to get through.

4:30, time to drive to MV and meet Janice. Starbucks across from Costco has a nice outdoor seating area with a breeze and shade, and by then it was down to about 85. MV is right off the Bay so it's cooler than my place.

Had the usual catching-up chat, she had a good time in Salem, OR eclipse viewing with friends, and I told her about my not so good trip to Helsinki.

Home, found the recording of the Raiders game and watched the first half. I think it's still on pause. Dinner was pot roast and I attempted the Safeway pre-cut cantaloupe which had been unripe yesterday but on the kitchen table all day and starting to ferment, but it was still unripe and too warm. So ice cream it was.

Planted the purple basil and verbena in the front garden where the big shrubs had died. Lee came over to tell me I needed a big shovel dig deep enough. I told her that even the big shovel can't get through the hard clay. The trowel does okay.

Watered all the plants. Took out the garbage. Broke down all the delivery boxes and bundled them for recycling. Chatted with across the street neighbor Lou who thought I might have been in the hospital when I was actually on vacation.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - check the over the weekend test results, if I can remember how
1 pm lunch - maybe in MV
2 pm MV for doctor's appointment.