Before I begin with 2024 let me give a recap of the end of 2023.  My birthday on December 22nd fell on a Friday and my sister Beth and her husband Mark treated me and my brother David to dinner at the Korean Barbeque restaurant.  It was a nice experience with the four of us sitting in a booth with a sunken grill in the middle in which you grill your own food.  After dinner we walked out to our cars where Mark gave me a birthday present of a cordless power tool set which he said was in appreciation for all the work that I had done for him on their lake house.

On Christmas Eve the family and friends gathered at my niece (Mark and Beth’s daughter) Coral’s house for dinner, which was very nice.  They all gathered again on Christmas day at Zack’s house where Beth and Mark have been staying since their house burned down two years ago but I didn’t go as they were all exchanging gifts, and I haven’t done gift giving in many years so I just stayed home and enjoyed the solitude.

The Wednesday after Christmas Brenda and Tom arrived from North Carolina and planned to stay several days with me and have a 50th wedding anniversary party at my house the coming Saturday.  Brenda and Tom’s were married on my birthday in 1983 at Westside Baptist Church here in Gainesville.  We spent Thursday and Friday preparing for the party which was from one to four on Saturday.  On Saturday David was the first to arrive around 12:45 then promptly at 1 pm our nephew Josh showed up.  Beth wasn’t feeling well so she did not come but Mark and his kids Zack and Coral with her kids came.  Brenda said she had invited around 20 people, mostly family and friends that had come to her wedding, so we were expecting more to arrive but by three in the afternoon no one else had showed up then Dan Mixson and his wife Judy arrived.  By four when it was to be over no one else showed up and Josh was the last to leave.  Brenda was disappointed, not even our childhood friend Janice who was in the wedding and lives in the area.  On the positive side we had lots of shrimp, cheese and fruit left over which we ate over the following days.

New Years Eve was on Sunday the 31st so Brenda and Tom went to church picking up David on the way.  They went to Westside Baptist Church, the church they got married in 50 years ago, but the church is at its new location and was not much the same as it was when they got married.  After church they met Dan and Judy for lunch at 43rd street deli.   While they were at church, I began preparations for dinner.  I had bought a small ten-pound turkey when they were on sale at 99¢ a pound and prepped the turkey and dressing which I put in the oven early afternoon so it would be ready around 5:30.  David had given me a jigsaw puzzle of Van Gough’s Northwest Starry Night last year and so Brenda and I started putting it together in the afternoon.  David came around 5 o’clock for dinner and stayed for New Years Eve which we watched the Dick Clark New Years show on TV until ten PM when we opened a bottle of champagne that I had got. (I knew we would not make it until midnight).  After the round of champagne, David went home, then Brenda, Tom and I stayed up until 11 and then went to bed reasoning that it was midnight and the new Year somewhere in the world. I had also planned to go to bed but did a bit of seated yoga in front of the TV for a bit when my cats Buddy and Alley came out wanting attention.  They had been hiding in my bedroom since Brenda and Tom arrived with their dog Books. By 11:30 to went to bed with the cats following me.  You know you are getting old when you can’t stay up until midnight.

January 1, Monday

Tom was the first up around six in the morning on the new year and took Books out for his morning pee.  I was half awake and heard Tom leave the house and then got up, fed the cats, made a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and turned the news on the TV.  Tom returned from his walk with books and commented on how cold it was, forty-five, and then he made a cup of coffee and joined me watching the news.  Brenda was up shortly after seven, made a cup of tea and then joined us.

Around 10 in the morning it had warmed up some and was a bright and sunny day.  Brenda and Tom wanted to go for a walk and wanted to see the work we had been doing on Beth and Mark’s Lakehouse so we combined the two and drove out to the lake house which is in Hawthorne, about an hour’s drive from my house.  We arrived and Brenda and Tom were quite impressed by all the work we had done.  It was quite a transformation from when they had seen the house several months ago when it was a total disaster with walls torn down and the kitchen totally gutted.

On the way back to Gainesville we stopped at Little Orange Creek Nature Park and Preserve where we first checked out the south side of the park where we walked around and checked out the pavilion but there wasn’t really and trail to hike so we crossed over highway 20 to the north side of the park where we did a short hike though the long leaf pines and oak trees.

After our hike we returned home where we at lunch and I took a short nap.  Around three o’clock David called Brenda and said he was hurt and thought he should go to the emergency room. Brenda asked him what happened, and he said he fell off the ladder while pulling Spanish moss from a tree his neighborhood.  This is one of the things he’s been doing for several months, it seems he doesn’t like the moss hanging from all the trees, which in Florida is just about every tree.  He had first cleared the moss from the crape myrtle tree of his neighbor across the street some months ago then he cleared the moss from most all the trees at the Lakehouse which took several weeks.  Well this time he was clearing the moss from another tree in his neighborhood when he fell off the ladder.  He managed to get home where he realized after he had trouble getting to the bathroom, that he was hurt worse than he had originally thought. 

David’s house, which was Dad’s house, is less than a five-minute drive from mine so with a few minutes of David’s call Brenda and I arrived in my car while Tom came in his where we find David’s car halfway into the garage with the hatch lid open and the ladder halfway sticking out.  I take out the ladder out, place beside the car in the driveway and lower the hatch lid.  With that done we enter the house to find David sitting in the lounge chair looking okay but after talking to him he explained where it hurt and we were worried.  With me on one side and Brenda on the other we carefully get David out of the chair and move go only a few feet before he has to stop as it was hurting.  After several more times of going a few feet and stopping we get to the car and with some contortion we manage to get David into the front car seat and off to the Emergency room we go.  Tom took David’s dog (once Dad’s) out for a walk and returned to my house.

We arrive at the emergency room which is only a mile down the street from where we live, I get a wheelchair from the lobby and with Brenda’s help we get David into it and wheel him into the lobby.  I look around and find there is no receptionist desk, there is a security guard in uniform behind a desk and a kiosk with a sign saying “Check in here”.  At the kiosk was a young couple staring at the screen trying to decided what button to press next, we would half to wait, good thing David wasn’t in serious condition.  The guard then said there is another kiosk around the corner and leads us to it. We wheel David up to it where he reads through the options trying to decide what to do next.  The guard sees this and instructs David though the check-in process which was completed in a couple of minutes. We wheel David to the chairs where Brenda and I take a seat and within ten minutes a nurse comes out and calls David’s name. Brenda asks, “Do you want to go with him or should I?” I respond you can go.  This brought back memories of taking Dad to that same emergency room more than once in his last year.  Brenda follows the nurse pushing David in the wheelchair through the automatic doors into the emergency room while I sit back down in a chair in the lobby to wait.  The doors remained open for a minute I see the nurse with David at the scale and height station which the nurse realizes David can’t get up out of the wheelchair so she askes him for his heigh and weight as the doors begin to close.

I get settled in the chair knowing it would be a while when in a few minutes the security guard comes over and asks about the name Mixson, that he had knows some Mixson’s when he lived in Micanopy.  I told him our family is from Micanopy and had been there for many years. I explain that we are related to many of the people out in that area including Feasters, Yawns among others and it turned out he new a number of them. 

Well I knew how it went, just getting behind the doors was just the beginning, they put you in a room quick enough but then comes the waiting.  I know the steps well enough from those visits with Dad, wait, nurse comes in asks questions, wait, nurse comes in and connect electrodes on you and connects you to a machine, wait, nurse comes in and put an IV in your arm, wait, and so on.  Some time later a doctor comes in and asks questions and examines you, and orders tests, xrays, cat-scans and then leaves.  An hour and half later Brenda calls me and tells me all this has happened and they are waiting for them to take David for cat-scan.  Another hour Brenda calls me and says the cat-scan was done and the orthopedic doctor looked at it and ordered another one and for iodine to injected into David which enhances the results.  Oh, and the first one was not good because David forgot to take off his watch. 

Another hour Brenda comes out and tells me what’s going on. David had slightly fractured three of his lower vertebrae and perhaps something in the hip joint and might need surgery.  Also much of his right side including his arm was bruised from where he fell on it.  They were going to transfer him to the hospital but wasn’t sure when it would be as there needed to be a room available.  They only allow one visitor at a time, so Brenda stayed in the lobby and I went in to see David.  He was in pretty good spirits but was worried about going on some of his adventures he had planned for the next few weeks.  I talk about it with him and then sat with him for a while until tells me that he will be ok and for Brenda and I to go home.  As I leave the room he askes me to turn off the light and he was settling in when I closed the door.

Back in the lobby I update Brenda, it was nine o’clock or so by this time and the nurse told me that it would likely be tomorrow before they would transfer him to the hospital. Brenda calls Tom and he says he is at Davids with Lucky as when he was at my house Lucky whined all the time since David wasn’t there.  I tell Tom to bring him back over that Lucky will be fine, that from times I took care of Lucky he would settle down in a while.

When we arrived at home Tom was there with Lucky who was happy to see me and sat next to me on the couch the rest of the evening until we went to bed.  I think he knew something was going on with David.

What a beginning for the new year.

January 2, Tuesday

Brenda and Tom had planned to return home today but with David’s accident decided to stay another day.  I called the hospital around eight in the morning and found that David was not there but was still in the emergency room, so Brenda and I stopped by his house and got him some clean clothes and his phone and then went to the emergency room to see him.  The place was pretty quiet, so they let both Brenda and I go back to see him. He was doing pretty well, he said as long as he didn’t move too much it didn’t hurt but even sitting up in bed to pee did, but he was in good spirits. He said they planned to transfer him to the hospital sometime during the day when a room became available.  After Brenda and I talked with him for a while we returned home where had lunch and sat around until around 2pm when David called and said they were soon going to take him to the hospital and even had the room number at the hospital. He did get transferred and was in his room by 4pm.  Around 5 Brenda and Tom went to the hospital to see him while I stayed home since Brenda and Tom were leaving the next day and I would see David the following day.  Brenda and Tom returned home after a couple of hours and we foraged for dinner on the leftover turkey, shrimp and things from the party.

January 3, Wednesday

Brenda and Tom were up early and when I woke up at 6am they were taking the last things out to their car.  We said our goodbyes and they were on their way by 6:15. I was thankful they were here to help with David.  Mid-morning I called David and he was very optimistic, the orthopedic doctor had seen him and said that he didn’t need surgery and the he should heal in four to six weeks. That made David feel better but he would not be able to go on his beach walk trip next week. The doctor said that he probably be ok to fly out to Colorado for his sky trip the first of February but would not be able to sky but he would be fine for his Everglades kayak trip in April. He said he had a physical therapy session in the morning in which they only got him up out of bed and stand up.  He was supposed to do it without using the bed railings as he would not have them at home, but he said he had to use them.  He said that the monitor in the room said he had a check out time of 2:30 but they hadn’t said anything about it.

In the afternoon I talked to him again and he said he had another PT session which they had him get up out of bed and use a walker to the window and then back to bed.  He said it was much harder than he expected and that they said they wanted to keep him another night at the hospital.  I went to seem him around 4 o'clock and brought him a coke which he really wanted.  He was in pretty good spirits even though he had to stay another night.  We talked about him retuning home or perhaps to my house for the first few days but he thought he would prefer to be at home.  After an hour or so the case worker came in to talk to him and said that they recommended that he got to a rehab facility as they didn’t think he was well enough to be home by himself. He was said he was fine with that and the case worker said she would return in the morning with a list of facilities that he could choose from and they would arrange it.  Around 6 o’clock they brought him dinner and I returned home.

January 4, Thursday

I talked to David this morning and he said the case working came by and he selected the Palm Garden rehab facility and the case worker would work on arranging it.  He said that there was no need for me to come up to see him that he was doing fine.  He called after lunch and said he called Palm Garden and they said they had already heard from the case working and arrangements were being made. He said they told him that his insurance would pay for most of his stay but he might have to pay $200 a day and he was fine with that.

January 5, Friday

It was a bright and sunny day, high in near 70°. Didn’t do much, worked some on the computer updating my story about Dad and Leigh Hall. In the afternoon I spent an hour or so working in the backyard cutting down and bagging plants that had grown since summer.  I called David and he was doing OK. I said I would come see him at the hospital in the afternoon but he said they planed to move him to the rehab facility at 2pm but later said they changed it to 6pm.  He texted me at 6:30 and said that he was in the rehab facility. 

January 6, Saturday

I went to see David at the rehab facility today.  He earlier in the day had sent me a text of five things to do for him…

                Things to be done at the house:

1.  Water plan on dinning room table. Place in kitchen sink to do so, soak to overflowing. Or water carefully on table.

2. Water outside hanging plants if not done already. (he had been telling me this for a couple of days now.)

3. Turn hall thermostat off.

4.  Get mail, box #9, upper right corner. Put on dinning room table. Key in pantry on keyring far right. Bronze key.

5.  Take photo of check routing # from checkbook in computer room on desk shelf top right.

6. Thank you.

At four o’clock I went over to his house, took care of items 1,2,3,4 and got the key to the mailbox and left the house.  I stopped and picked his mail up on the way out the neighborhood.  I arrived a the rehab facility and parked right in front.  After checking in I went back to his room but didn’t see him in it and his name wasn’t on the door. There were two beds while one was occupied, the other looked liked someone was using it. I turn and there was a nurse who asks who I’m looking for and I tell her David and she says he down at the dinning room at the end of the hall.   I walk down to the dinning hall, a good hundred feet or so thinking if David walked this, even with a walker, he must be doing better.  Upon reaching the dinning hall I find David seated with two other men waiting for their food to be brought out.  I give David his mail and talk to him while he is sorting through it. As the service person brings out the soup, I gather up the mail, what is to be kept and what is to be discarded, say goodbye, then leave and return home.  I am encouraged that he was doing so much better.

January 7, Sunday

Didn’t do much today, mainly worked on a story based on the past couple of days.  I did get out and take down the Christmas lights and then did a quick mow of the front yard more to pick up the leaves than to mow.

January 8, Monday

I went out to the Lakehouse today and helped Mark install the exhaust pipe for the microwave, the shower curtain rod in Beth’s bathroom and the door to the guest room.  The house is getting close to finished. Mark’s latest date to move in is this coming Saturday.

David texted me at 8:30 in the evening saying he wants to check out tomorrow. He said the physical therapy was not all that helpful.

January 9, Tuesday

Got up around 6, ate breakfast and watched the news until shortly after seven then spent most of the morning writing on the computer.  David called around 9:30 and said the doctor was supposed to come by to see him at 10:00am and he was going to tell the doctor he thought he was well enough to go home.  Around 11 David sent me a message that he would be ready for me to come pick him up around 1-2 pm and that then we could go by Walmart to get him a walker.  I went online and checked to see what Walmart had for walkers and found they didn’t have any in the store but one could be ordered for pickup the next day.  I then checked CVS and found they usually had them but none of the nearby stores had any in stock.  I next checked Walgreens and found the one near me had one in stock.  Around 2pm David said he was ready to be picked up but there was a cold front coming through with severe weather predicted and it had started to rain.  I told David that I would pick him up after the front had passed as I didn’t think it was a good idea to pick him up in heavy rain.  By 3 pm the storm was getting quite worse, every five minutes the radio was having alerts about severe thunderstorms, high winds and tornado watch.  The alerts started in the counties west of us but every ten minutes or so got closer and the tornado watch became tornado warnings. The rain was coming down horizontally from with the wind blowing.  A good thing I didn’t go pick David up.  It moved through quickly and by 3:30 the worst had passed and I messaged David telling him I would pick him up at 4pm.  He said they had moved all the patients from their rooms into the hallway and had closed all the doors due to the storm. 

I arrived at the physical therapy place a few minutes before four and went to David’s room where I found him ready to go. He was able to get up out of the bed without help and, with the walker, we slowly progressed down the hall to the car where he managed to get into without help.  I returned the walker to the lobby since it belonged to the PT place and we then went to Burger King drive thru where we got David a hamburger, fries and coke.  When paying for it the person asked if we wanted a crown, I said yes, my brother wanted one so she gave me a crown which I gave David which he put on his head while eating.  After leaving Burger King we went to Walgreens where I went in and bought David a walker and then drove to his house.  After pulling into the driveway I got the box with the walker out of the trunk and started putting it together next to the car door but it started raining so I opened the garage door and put it together while David sat in the car.  After assembling the walker I wheeled it over to the car where David managed to get out of and with the aid of the walker went into his house.  After getting David settled in I then returned to my house.

January 10, Wednesday

Went out to the lake place today and helped Mark do more trim work and replaced two doors. The place is looking really good and is close to being finished such that Mark plans to move in on Saturday.  Mark called a U-Hall place and arranged to rent a truck so it might actually happen.  There is still some trim work, caulking the trim, and a few other details to be done but things he should be able to get done by himself.

January 11, Thursday

Spent most of the day writing on the computer.  David came over at 5:30 to watch Oak Island that I had recorded from Tuesday night.  He’s been coming over to watch the show for the past couple of seasons and we order pizza or I make dinner. I made chili tonight.  Him coming over was kind of a test to see how he did getting in and out of his car and using the walker.  He did very well but was quite slow.  He didn’t seem to be in pain, or at least didn’t let on to be.  When I asked him about pain he said he was still quite sore.

January 12, Friday

Did some writing this morning then worked on fixing the microwave handle which broke some time ago and was hanging on by one screw which was now about half broken. Had to take the door apart, glue several plastic parts of the door attachment, find longer screws and additional washers for added strength.  I left the glue to harden until the afternoon then met Jane for lunch at Mildreds.  We first met at Mildreds over a year ago after a yoga teacher introduced us. At the time we met several times for lunch or dinner and did several activities, kayaking, hiking, hikes together but after a few months we saw less of each other then not at all but we both watched and commented on each other’s Facebook pages. In December she texted me one Saturday asking if I wanted go with her to some event with her but I was busy.  The day before my birthday she texted again asking if she could take me out to lunch but I was again busy.  So earlier this week I texted her to see if she wanted to meet for lunch and so we did.  I do enjoy her company, she is a quite interesting person and does all sorts of things. I enjoy her company but I am not interested in an intimate relationship.  I think we are likely to do more things together.

January 13, Saturday

Cold with a high of 58. Worked mostly on the computer copying old CDs to micro SD cards.  Another generation of storage media going away. The bane of computer storage. I started with 8-inch floppy disks, five inch floppy disks, 3.5 inch floppy disks, Zip disks for a short time, CDs, DVDs and now micro SD cards.  With each generation of computers that I had bought over the years each stopped supporting the older media. My new Dell computer didn’t come with an internal CD reader but I did order and external drive but found it had trouble reading some CDs so I booted up my old computer and been copying CDs. Good thing I didn’t get rid of it yet. On the positive side a 64GB micro SD held over a dozen CD/DVDs that had pictures on them.

January 14, Sunday

Cold 48 degrees this morning, high of 56 today so stayed inside and continued copying old CDs to SD.  Also installed new front door light switch that can be controlled from the Apple home app.

January 14, Monday

January 15, Tuesday

January 16, Wednesday

January 17, Thursday

January 18, Friday

January 22, Monday

In the morning of January 1st, before the tragic events later that afternoon, Brenda, Tom and I had visited a local park which had a historical marker sign about the William Bartram trail that ran though the area. I had never heard of William Bartram but evidently, he traveled up and down the east coast exploring from North Carolina to Florida in 1773. I didn’t think much of it at the time but then I received the new issue of Smithsonian Magazine and there was an article about William Bartram, described as one of the country’s great environmentalists. Really? I never heard of him.  A couple of years ago the book club read a biography of Henry David Thoreau and discussed how is considered the father of xxxx & the Indians , but Bartram was a hundred years before Thoreau

Larry Mixson, 10-14-2024