2009-03-15 The Son Also Rises

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

I apologize for the scarcity of updates and assure those who have asked that everything is fine here, despite my making daily posts here.

It's been an interesting week, weather-wise. We had a few inches of snow overnight several days ago that was gone by the time we got up so no pictures exist. Shelby likes to spend as much time as possible outside and there's a little spot next to the house with grass, some mulch and Terri's Eris statue.

We have to keep an eye on her (Shelby, not Terri) that she doesn't stay out too long, as she gets cold and requires extra blankets and time to warm up.

The snow was less of a problem than the rain of the past few days, and that was only a problem in as much as my GFI keeps kicking out. I spent the better part of a day working on it, trying to isolate the cause of the problem, which I strongly suspect is the single outside electrical plug. I mentioned in the first week of the blog that we had an outage during the time the snow was melting from the roof.

This outside plug is mounted directly under a seam in the roof gutter, and a steady bead of water travels down from there, jumps off the ski lift of the stove air vent. Some of the water does the Wide World of Sports Skier Wipeout Thing where it travels off the side of the jump and beelines for the socket.

It's only a hunch and I have to wait until it dries out, then I will attack the socket with some clear Silicon I purchased yesterday for the purpose. In the meantime, the good news is that the furnace is not on the GFI circuit so it and the fridge work just fine. I am being very cautious with the lights inside the camper on the supposition that they are running off the battery (I might be wrong on this) and using some portable LED's and getting used to doing things in the dark.

This has been an excellent lesson in appreciating the things we tend to take for granted. Running water. Heat. Electricity. Luckily, Terri's art studio is a mere 30 feet from my camper and has a great bathroom with shower and even a mini kitchenette.

Speaking of Terri, I can now reveal the principal reason I came to see her when I did.

She has posted on her FaceBook page a link to a video entitled What Matters To You: Scleroderma, and for the first time to my knowledge has publicly revealed that she has Scleroderma.

Her family and I have known for a while and she is now of the mind that she wants to raise awareness of this disease, which allows me to now mention it here.

This is a particularly nasty illness, described as follows on Wikipedia:

"Scleroderma is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by a hardening[1] or sclerosis[2] in the skin or other organs. The localized type of the disease, known as "morphea",[3] while disabling, tends not to be fatal. The systemic type or systemic sclerosis, the generalized type of the disease, can be fatal, as a result of heart, kidney, lung or intestinal damage.[4] It is currently not fully understood what exactly causes this disease, although there are various theories."

I wanted to get here to spend time with her before she begins treatment. Tomorrow, she and Kevin are driving up to Northwestern University in Chicago to be evaluated for a radical treatment program being offered there. They will be gone several days while Shelby and I keep a couple pairs of brown eyes on the farm.

Despite the terrifying prospects of what she may have in store, she is a force of nature and good karma. We're having lots of laughs and fun, and are making plans for a vegetable garden, bee hives, and a vineyard. They have plenty of room for all of these and I hope to help at least as long as it takes to get the crops in. Whatever that means.

So for those of you who were concerned about my lack of posting, it has to do with a number of factors, including bandwidth and time, but trust that everything is fine, except my cell phone coverage. The only bars my cell phone can find are Honky Tonks, so I have forwarded my cell phone to my Skype-in number. While I am at the computer I can get calls immediately. Otherwise it will take a voice mail and I will get those the next time I am on the computer or near a cell phone tower.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for the help and support. Special thanks in this post goes to Wild Bill Morrison, who spent quite a lot of time explaining the intricacies of electricity and GFI's.

The only thing better than being smart is having smarter friends.