Spring

We set our clocks forward a couple days ago, so I guess it's really Spring now. Over the weekend we finished getting plants for the garden, and Jan is almost done hauling out bricks and rocks. There was a big wooden fan on the shed that he removed as well, since it was extremely rotten. We also got a bird house to attach to the shed, close to the bird feeder in the tree.

This weekend I mostly got shade plants and some flowers for the sunny areas. We also tracked down a 2nd blueberry bush! We tried the nursery in town first, but it sucks and the employees believe that "self-pollinating" blueberry bushes won't benefit at all from having a 2nd variety nearby. Everything I've read online says otherwise, ranging from "my self-pollinating bushes produce no berries" to "they produce about twice as much when cross-pollinating". Maybe the don't have teh intrawebs in Dutch nurseries and believe everything the manufacturer tells them :-/ The new bush we got will only hit about 4 feet, instead of 6 like the other. But both should have blossoms around the same time, and happily cross pollinate.

After getting the new plants in, I dug up the dense patches of tulips, crocuses, and those little purple things and put small clumps of them between the other plants, distributed around the garden. No idea if they'll survive a transplant at this time of year, but it's worth a shot. All that's left to do is taking a look at the front little garden area. It has a small plum tree surrounded by white pebbles, a small slow-growing hedge, and a nasty mound of ivy growing out of something that it completely obscures. I hate ivy :-P

The visit to the doc went well last week. She asked some questions and ordered some blood tests, basically checking for indications of the causes of my exercise intolerance problems. Most neighborhood clinics don't have a lab, so she marked a scantron sheet with the applicable tests to run, and I picked up an envelope from the receptionist on the way out, which had the addresses and hours of the hospitals and other clinics where I could have blood drawn. She suggested I make myself sick prior to getting the blood drawn, so that whatever was happening might be captured in my blood when it was drawn, versus going in when I was feeling fine. Very sensible! Though getting sick again (and an purpose) really sucked.

Jan took a couple hours off work to drive me to the hospital, since I'd have to take two buses each way otherwise. Catching and transferring buses is not good when my body is trying to shut down and insists on taking a nap. So I went to class in the morning, and walked nice and fast to catch the bus afterward, and just barely made it. Jan got home half an hour after I did, and we left for the hospital just as I was starting to feel icky. The main hospital is pretty easy to get to, but parking really sucks. Unless going to the emergency room, you have to park a 5 minute walk away, which wasn't much fun for me. Stairs were involved :-/

We weren't sure how to get to the lab for having blood drawn, so stopped at the reception desk to ask. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the first time someone goes to a hospital, they get a card created that contains all their data. The card itself is pretty similar to a credit card, with raised numbers, but also all the other data in raised type, like my name and my doctor's name, etc. It's all white, including the raised type. When we got to the lab, I gave the scantron from my doc and the white card to the receptionist, and she did something with the card and put the scantron into a little machine, not for scanning but for automatically printing the info from my card onto the scantron. Sweeeeet, formless hospitals!

I only had to wait a minute or two to get blood drawn. Both nurses (the first was newer and intimidated by my reclusive veins), were very nice and happy to chat in English when they realized my Dutch wasn't so hot. Everything was pretty fast and easy, but the biggest surprise was how relaxed and happy all the hospital employees seemed.

I should get results back in a day or two. My doc told me to give her a call then. In the meantime, I made myself sick again over the weekend with too much gardening :-/ Either I wasn't being careful enough, or my threshold of how much exercise I can tolerate is decreasing. Ick.