06 Tuesday May 2025
Posted in casa azahar, home, homecooking, sevilla
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Ridiculously happy with my cute new salt cellar (actually a sugar bowl), which perfectly holds a freshly opened box of Maldon flakes. No more rummaging around in the box. Yay.
05 Monday May 2025
Posted in casa azahar, home, sevilla, spain
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Last week’s massive power outage – el gran apagón – made us all take heed of the 72 hour survival kit recommended by the European Commission earlier this year. It seems pretty basic, but I was surprised to see I don’t have everything on it. Have you got something similar at home? Anything missing?
✅ Bottled water (minimum 5 litres per person)
✅ Easy-to-prepare, non-perishable food needs update
❌ A battery-powered radio
❓ A flashlight it’s around here somewhere
✅ A spare cell phone battery two!
❌ A portable stove or cooker (and bottled gas) NA
❌ Fuel NA
✅ Matches
✅ Cash
✅ Medications usually 1-2 week’s worth
❌ Iodine tablets what?
❓First aid supplies some
✅Adhesive tape
✅ A fire extinguisher
✅ Hygiene items
My additions…
✅ Cat food
✅ Cat sand
❌ Tea candle lanterns (3) going shopping
❌ A multi-use knife
❌ Extra batteries (for radio & flashlight) need to stock up
I always say that I could probably last for at least two weeks off what is in my pantry, but I should probably rethink that a bit in terms of practical meals. And I always have enough cat food and sand to last for a month! Priorities. But will also get extra water in for them.
The tea candle lanterns… a must have I think. It’s like having night lights and they are cat-proof. And there is no way I would last long in the pitch dark without dying of a panic attack. Also… cute!
02 Friday May 2025
On Tuesday afternoon, after Peter had returned the Holter to the hospital that morning, I got a call from the Cardiologist. He said that based on his findings he was prescribing two drugs for me to take and they were already on my medical card. Okayyy… I said I would pick them up in the morning and he said… no I needed to start them NOW. Wut? Peter was about to leave for a tapas tour but popped over to the farmacía and came back with just one of the prescriptions, saying they told him the other one wasn’t available for three days. Again… wut?
Anyhow, these are the two drugs I was prescribed. Apocard 100mg (Flecainide) which is used to treat tachycardia. The other, Luxiana 60mg (Edoxaban), is a blood thinner. You can see above that he also prescribed a blood pressure med Bisoprolol, maybe without checking that I was already taking Losartan for that (???). Obviously I can’t/won’t take both. But can I get in touch with him again to clear this up? Nope.
I mean, you know me. I hate taking meds unless absolutely necessary. But as I already had the Apocard and since it was apparently URGENT that I start taking these meds NOW, I started it on Wednesday. Twice a day. And I was able to get the Luxiana yesterday so am now taking that once a day. Along with the Losartan that I’ve been taking now for a couple of years.
But there was no explanation. Just that I was at high risk for having a stroke. And when I tried asking him more he switched to English saying it didn’t seem like I was understanding him in Spanish. Again… wut?? His English wasn’t all that great and he thought I wasn’t “understanding” him because I had to keep asking him to repeat the drug names. So frustrating. But until I can get the heart ultrasound done – and who knows when that will be – this is supposed to prevent me from dying of a stroke in the meantime.
Not exactly feeling instilled with confidence about all this because I don’t know if this Cardiologist is taking into account that I’ve had tachycardia issues since I was a young and thin 25 year old (I did tell him on Monday) or if he’s just going by the protocol for treating fat 68 year old ladies. Have any of you taken any of these meds?
01 Thursday May 2025
Posted in blogging, casa azahar, sevilla, writing
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Wow, another year already! And the most boring blog on the internets is still going! For any newcomers, the reason for so much randomness here is that since my cancer days I have been putting up a post a day, no matter what (or what about), simply because if I stopped for a while then I’d feel like the next post would have to be about something important or even of interest. Also, whenever I want to know when I last bought sandals or went to Córdoba… well it’s all here!
Thanks for sticking around.
🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂
🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂 🥂
29 Tuesday Apr 2025
Posted in sevilla, sevilla shutdown, spain
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Well heck. After getting the Holter strapped on at the hospital yesterday I stopped for some brekky on the way home, and then settled in for a low-key day mostly in front of the computer, whatever, just another day. UNTIL 12.30. That’s when the lights went out. At first I thought it was just our street (the fuse box was intact so it wasn’t that) and then shops started closing their shutters. At that time there was still some patchy internet and a few minutes later I saw a comment on substack about there being no electricity in Portugal. Whaaat? That’s when things started getting freaky.
My first thought was… thank god I didn’t get home a bit later and get STUCK IN THE LIFT. Can you imagine? Especially as the electricity didn’t come back on here until 5.30, by which time I would have been dead of anxiety (recorded by the holter). I mean, we had no idea how long this massive outage would last. Meanwhile many other barrios in Sevilla had no electricity until 10 pm or later. Indeed some areas, such as Almería, didn’t get their power back until 6 this morning. So it was a bit like total chaos or kind of just another day, depending on where you were and what you were doing.
I mean, people did get stuck in lifts (gaaaah) or in the metro, also on trains out in the middle of nowhere. And traffic was a complete mess. Apparently hospital emergency equipment kept things going. In fact my friend Pedro (he of the VERY BEST papas aliñá in Sevilla) went in for knee surgery yesterday morning, the op was supposed to be at 3 pm. Nope. They needed all the resources they had to keep people alive.
Meanwhile many bars stayed open as long as the beer held out, their terraces packed with tourists. Other tourists didn’t fare so well, having to rough sleep either outside or inside train and metro stations. What can I say? It was a real mixed bag experience.
But what it really brought home was the very disturbing reality of how dependent we are on our infrastructures and how vulnerable we would be to any sort of hostile action. Apparently this wasn’t any sort of “cyber attack” or similar, but it was the biggest power outage in Spain’s history and it happened in a split second. Anyhow, still processing this. It somehow feels bigger than what we actually went through. More to come. Maybe.
casa azahar 