The good, the bad, and the ugly

One of the best things about this month is the lilacs.  They are prolific this year and I love them.  As I came out of my hair salon on Tuesday I walked right by a lilac bush.  I stopped to take in a deep breath and took a picture, which I posted.  The very next day my friend Kris knocked on my door with this lovely bouquet of lilacs from her back yard!  Her daughter had seen my post.  What great friends!!  The fragrance of lilacs is very nostalgic to me, because as a child we had a lot of big lilac bushes, and we would always bring huge bunches of them inside.  

Here's another beautiful sight.  Each Thursday morning for the past six weeks I have gone to the lodge at Calvary Harvest Fields for Abide - the women's Bible study.  I think it was cloudy almost every week until this morning, our last session.  I was finally able to get a picture of the spectacular view of the State College area.

And now I'm going to tell you a few of the unpleasant things happening in my life.  You may or may not remember my washer overflowing back on April 13.  I had wiped it all up with lots of towels, feeling sure I had gotten it all.  Dick figured out what the problem was, ordered the necessary parts, and fixed the washer.  However, on Sunday, April 25 when my sisters were here, I started smelling something "fishy" in the dining room, which is next to the laundry.  As the week went on it got stronger and stronger.  I was getting down on my hands and knees trying to figure out where the smell was coming from.  Dick looked under the house in search of a dead animal, but there was none.  This past weekend, during one of my floor sniffing escapades I suddenly realized it was really strong at the AC vent.  We keep all the AC vents closed over winter, and when I opened the vent, the odor was even stronger.  For the first time we started thinking that maybe this problem started with the overflowing washer.   Dick thought about the AC floor vent in the laundry, and that possibly some of the water may have gone down that vent.  

So on Monday I called our HVAC company.  A technician came on Tuesday.  The first thing he did was take the cover off the floor AC vent in the laundry, and of all things, there was water sitting in there!!!   Then he went under the house and ended up pulling out the big round AC ducts because they had water and mold in them!  He said he's afraid there is also wet insulation, but that was not his specialty.  He wanted me to call Erie, our homeowner's insurance company, before anything else was done.  These are the big ducts he took out. 

Today an insurance adjuster came out and also a rep from Service Master, a restoration company.   Thankfully we are having cool weather between now and when we leave for Florida on Monday, so we are not missing the AC.  We're giving permission for work to be done while we're away, and hopefully we'll come home to things all fixed up and smelling better.  And paid for by insurance, except the $500 deductible, of course.  

Meanwhile, the pins and needles in my left arm and hand, sometimes also in my right arm and hand, and the pain at night, have been ongoing.  Last week I had an EMG and was diagnosed with moderate carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand and mild carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand.  Yesterday I had an appointment with an orthopedic hand specialist.  He gave me a brace for each hand to wear at night (the one I had gotten by prescription of my general physician did not fit well), and he also gave me an injection of cortisone in my left wrist.  He said it might feel worse before it feels better.  Well, he wasn't kidding!  My wrist and fingers are really, really painful now and the pins and needles aren't much better, if any.  If the pain is still so bad tomorrow I'm going to call.  I feel like he must have hit a nerve he wasn't supposed to or something.  

I don't think I mentioned that last week was the regionals track and field meet in Florida, and this Saturday is the State meet.  Quite a number of Lisa's team are going!  Looks like Sophie will be doing the 100 meter, the 200 meter, and 4x100 relay.  

We'll be missing it by two days!  But when we were getting our airline tickets, Lisa wasn't sure if there would be limitations on spectators, so we decided to wait until after that meet to arrive.  She and Sophie will be less busy next week with track season finished.  

One last picture.  Alex's mother and her new puppy are visiting Destiny and Alex from Florida this week.  They arrived last night.  So this morning Elizer was both fascinated and terrified of this tiny Yorkie named Bear!  I got this adorable picture when we were Face Timing. 

That's it for tonight!