Snow Birds

 

snow birds

The weekend after we had the ice storm in Charlotte we ended up with a snow storm. Honestly, we moved here from St. Louis to get away from this kind of this crummy weather! I guess these snow birds did not fly far enough south. Our part of the state got 11" of snow. At least it was a light, fluffy snow and no ice like we received the previous week.

Most of us in the community left all our snow removal equipment back in the northern states we moved from. With the lightness of the snowfall, many used their leaf blowers to just blow it away. We have a gardening shovel that we used - not ideal, but it worked.

The goodness of our community was again brought to light as many neighbors came out to clear the sidewalks and drives of those unable to accomplish the task themselves. It's one of the huge advantages of living in a 55+ community. We definitely take care of our own.

The amount of snow kept us in the neighborhood for several days as they do not plow the roads in here or the county road we have to take to get to the state highway. We planned for that, so we were fine. Now the snow is all gone, and the weather has warmed up significantly. Hopefully it will stay that way for awhile.

Mountain Island Lake sunrise

The Iceman Cometh

No, I am not referring to the all-capitalized ICE. I stay far away from making any political commentary on social media, or most places for that matter. Our area was hit with ice in the form of winter storm Bern, a system that caused much chaos and damage across a large portion of the United States over the weekend.

Forecasts for the area were grim, with predictions of up to .50" of ice for our location. When ice forms that thickly, the likelihood of trees falling and taking down power lines rises dramatically. We were so fortunate that in our neighborhood we predominantly had sleet, which tends to fall to the ground and not stick to items in its path. While we were prepared for a loss of power, that did not occur here. We are so grateful that we avoided the worst of the storm. I'll gladly take being stuck inside for a few days over having no electricity.

We had plenty of food and extra water just in case, and are lucky enough to have a gas fireplace in the house. It has a battery charger in the event of power failure, so we would at least have had that as a heat source if the power had gone off.

Making sure that the bird feeder was full before the precipitation began was good for entertainment. The birds and squirrels were very active in the yard during the storm. I never get tired of watching them, and taking pictures.

backyard critters

There is still some residual ice on the side roads and walkways, so I will stick close to home again today. In fact, I cancelled my six month dermatology appointment for this morning as the secondary road out of here is shaded and never treated. I hated to do that because it is so hard to get an appointment with my doctor, but it was not an emergency and certainly not worth the risk of an accident.

There is another storm heading this way over the weekend, and hopefully we will again be lucky and avoid the worst of it. I guess we didn't move far enough south!

New Year Involutions

Involution is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the regressive alterations of a body or its parts characteristic of the aging process". That seems like an appropriate word to start not only a New Year but a new decade of years in my life.

Back in late October at my annual physical my blood work came back with an elevated TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) level. Because I had just had both the Covid booster and flu shots, we agreed to wait and retake a blood sample in four weeks to see if there was an anomaly due to the shots. With our travel I could not get in to have it redone until December 18th. I got the results later that day, and my thyroid level was even higher than before, which was not the result I was hoping to receive. The doctor put in a prescription for Levothyroxine, which is a medication for hypothyroidism. 

It is interesting that when the thyroid suppresses TSH release, too little thyroid hormone can cause your pituitary to make excess TSH. Thus the high TSH levels in the blood. It seems counterintuitive, but there it is. I began taking the medicine on December 20th, and so far have not noticed anything positive or negative about taking it. They do say it can take 4-8 weeks before you see any improvement in symptoms. Because I do not have any of the symptoms of hypothyroidism (fatigue, numbness, constipation, unexplained weight gain, depression, or being unable to tolerate cold temperatures), I have not experienced anything different.

The most annoying thing about the medicine is that they want you to take it at or near the same time each morning, waiting 30-60 minutes before eating breakfast. I don't wake up at the same moment every morning, so I keep as close to the same time as I can. Since you also should not take calcium as soon as you take this drug, I have just adjusted to taking all of my over the counter vitamins at lunch instead of first thing in the morning.

My doctor will see me again on February 3rd to see how all of this is going. I presume they will draw blood again to see if the drug is doing its job. Hopefully all will be well. I hope to stop this New Year Involution in its track.

the cold never bothered me anyway