More notes and observations...

I mentioned rigida the other day and how fast it's growing.  I took it down this morning and took a photo of one of the super-sized leaves...

Not only is it large, but it's also nicely speckled.  It's turning into quite a nice plant.  I had a bit of trouble with in the first couple years I had it (I got it as a cutting from Awanda in '08), but the last couple years, and especially this year, have been good years for it.  It's still in one of those small 5" hanging pots, so I may have to move it up soon...

I wonder about the summer solstice...  So it's the 24th today, which means we're back on the other side of the solstice, days getting shorter now.  But I suppose that means that the few days before and the few days after are the longest of the year.  Here's something I noticed just this morning on two of my plants - that's two that I look at carefully every day because of their strategic locations.  Each had a new set of leaves that were not there yesterday when I observed them.  Not particularly tiny leaves, either.  Not big, but big enough to make me say "wow, where did THAT come from???"  You know how it is - I usually notice little leaf nubbins (as I call them), sometimes they're preceeded by a tiny vine, sometimes not.  But I'll see the little nubbins just starting to form and go, "yay! look at your new growth coming!"  And I watch as they grow and start to look like actual leaves, and pretty soon they fatter and bigger, and fatter and bigger...  Well, these two plants both had leaves that I would say would normally be two or three weeks down the road from growth nubbins, and they just **BAM** appeared overnight!  (Or throughout the day yesterday, because my look-sees are usually in the a.m...)  Could this be a phenomenon that happens during the longest days of the year?  I notice LOTS of new growth this time of year, but few of my plants get the close daily once-over these do, so I couldn't usually say, "hey! that just appeared overnight!" 

Anyway, I also wanted to show photos of aldrichii's flowers as they advance.  The first one that started to bud is looking like they could burst open any minute...

There are two other peduncles budding up that are less far along.  I find the little alien tentacles surrounding the flowers interesting!...

It's hard to see them in the photo, but look carefully - they look almost like muted Dorstenia flowers!  They obviously disappear once overgrown by the fattening flowers...

... So I started this blog on the 24th.  I've been meaning to document what happened later that day.  It was life-changing.

We were sitting at the dinner table, just having finished dinner.  I asked Mark to pass me a tissue - they were on his side of the table.  He reached out, his hand hovering over the table, nowhere near the tissue box.  He seemd confused, picked up an empty plastic grocery bag and handed it to me.  I said, "Mark, that's not a tissue!  They're right THERE!" and I pointed.  I thought he was messing with me.  His hand hovered over the table once more and he picked up a movie CD that we'd gotten in the mail a few days earlier and handed it to me.  Now I was really concerned.  "MARK!"  I said, "The tissues are right there, RIGHT THERE!!!" and I put my hand on the box.  I said, "Something is WRONG!  Something is VERY VERY WRONG, Mark!"  He pooh-poohed me and said something silly, like all tissue boxes were different, then saying, well, no he knew that wasn't true.  Then he got up and said, "I'm going to check my e-mail."  I continued to tell him something was wrong and he could be having a stroke - I should take him to the hospital.  (We live just a few blocks from the UNMC Med Center...)  He couldn't figure out how to get into his e-mail, something he's done a million times before.  I was SO concerned, I told him I would call an ambulance and he said, "If you do, I won't go - THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!"  He thought I'd lost my mind, seriously!  He said he was going to see his friend, Scott, and I started to cry.  Now if you know me, you know this is NOT something I do.  Ok, granted, since I've been in menopause, little things will make me teary-eyed, but I was all but hysterical, which is NOT me.  He really thought I'd lost it and said he was fine, "I'm going to see Scott."  Through my objections, he left.  I knew, I KNEW something bad was going to happen.  

I jumped in my car and went to my Mom's - a couple blocks away - and told her the whole story.  I was so scared.  Mark called my cell, I answered, and he said, "Where was I going?"  "WHAT?  MARK!!!!!!" I yelled.  He laughed and said, "I'm just kidding!  Quit worrying!"  I said, "Call me when you get to Scott's, ok?"  He agreed.  So I waited at my Mom's to hear that he'd arrived at Scott's - and waited, and waited.  I tried calling him.  No answer.  Tried again.  No answer.  I don't know Scott's number (or even his last name) so couldn't call him.  I went home and Mom & I agreed if we didn't hear anything within an hour, we'd go looking for him.

At about 8:35, I got a call from the hospital.  He'd been in an accident and that was all they would tell me on the phone.  He was at the Med Center.  We rushed up there and here's what happened in a nutshell...

Within 20 minutes or so of leaving the house, he ran a red light, hit another car hard enough to roll it on its side.  The driver, a young lady, was with her son - she had minor injuries (I heard she hurt her hand) and her son was pretty much uninjured.  (THANK GOD!)  Mark got out of his truck, apparently looked in the car, everyone at the scene thought he was drunk (he was acting weird), he got back in his truck and drove away.  Apparently, he got a couple blocks away and his tire went flat, and by the time he pulled over and got out of his truck, the cops were pulling up.  The cops said he seemed somewhat coherant at first, and he does remember them asking him if he had been drinking or if he was high, but then he went into a full-blown grand mal seizure, which lasted a half hour!  

He wasn't really injured at all in the accident, yet he was in ICU for 4 days, and in the hospital a total of 9 days.  They could not figure out what caused the seizure (apparently they never know in about 50% of the cases...), and they see evidence that he also had a mild heart attack (I'm thinking most likely due to the stress on his body of a 30 minute seizure!!!)  They did about a bazillion tests, which will probably bankrupt us, found nothing conclusive.

He was released on 7/3, put on all new BP meds, cholesterol lowering meds (in spite of having a cholestrol number of 111!), and anti-seizure meds.  And the state automatically suspended his license for 3 months.  AND he has to appear in court for the accident, running a red light, and leaving the scene of the accident.  WHAT A FUCKING MESS!!  (Pardon my French...)  

And now I'm going to stop thinking about it.  Every time I let my mind go there, I get the fluttery stomach, the sweaty palms... thinking about how this mess could ruin us financially, just when we were pulling out of our 3 year financial funk.  We're actually talking about getting divorced so that it can all fall on him - why?  Because how will I stay in business if this ruins my credit?  Then what???