Life! So unexpected ….
Cleon encouraged me to write this blog. Normally we are private people. We enjoy sharing our birding experiences with all of you and I did share with you our ant-nests-in-the-bathroom-wall story, but we do not share our day to day lives or intimate details. Probably a generational thing. We are older and we feel differently about privacy – we were not raised with social media, cell phones, the internet. When Cleon was a child, his family did not even have a TV. I am younger but when my family got a TV, it was black and white and we had to get up out of our chairs to change the channel. Times have sure changed!
I apologize to all of you who have been following my blog and our livestream since the beginning. There has been nothing new for days and the livestream was down. But earlier today, I checked the numbers for all of you who are regularly on and reading this website, I am still at 32,000 followers, and many of you are still reading. Thank you for sticking with me!
Life turned upside-down here – and in a matter of hours. Last Saturday morning, Cleon – my wonderful husband and best birding partner – had a dizzy spell and had blurred vision. We went to the ER here at our local, smaller hospital and he had had a small stroke. He was transported to a much larger hospital and kept until Tuesday. He was discharged with a lot of medicine. Tuesday night, the same symptoms occurred, and we were back in the ER. He had a second small stroke so was once again transported to another larger hospital about 30 miles from where we live. Because of the bitter cold weather, high winds, and snow, I stayed at a hotel so I could spend all my time at the hospital. I am a strong advocate that no matter who you are or how old you are, everyone needs an advocate during a hospital stay. So, I was with him from early morning to late in the evening each day.
He is now home with all sorts of upcoming appointments with doctors and therapists, but the upshot is it appears the only damage he had was to his left eye. He has lost vision in it and what remains is a bit wavy. And his eyes are not working together very well. With therapy and time, we hope some of this heals. He was very, very lucky. But that explains why there has been no blog or nothing new added to the website for some time.
I do apologize to those of you who have sent me essays and poems – I will get them posted over the next few weeks and I hope tomorrow to be back to this blog. I have a few photos to post that were sent to me and I have 2 videos. So, this week, I should get back on track with this website which is important to me. I love sharing all this with you and also being able to post the things you send.
And what happened to the livestream? My good friend Justin is my camera and livestream guru. He is absolutely amazing at what he knows and what he can do. I think what happened was twofold. We got a power surge the same time the computer that runs all this was getting an update. I was not here – in fact I did not check the website the entire past week. And the livestream shut down.
Justin and his wife were cruising! Deep sea fishing, lounging on deck, swimming, exploring islands. He was finally able to get my text Friday and fixed everything today. He is now home and NOT enjoying our bitter cold weather and is wondering what happened to the buffet line. So it seems last week was full of whatever could go wrong – did. But everything has now righted itself. Cleon is sitting next to me as I type this – we are both enjoying the Patriots/Texans game. Luckily, he can watch our TV without too much trouble. He cannot read on his cell phone or computer screen or read a book, but TV – with breaks – is just fine. Justin fixed the big computer and re-started the livestream. Life is once again good here in central Illinois!