Unuseful guide to obsolete farming equipment

....and Liam is back home.  WOW, that was fast.  Per the Drs, all she needed was a good dialysis.  Not sure that I'm buying it, but Dr. Rachel is in charge.  I'm just the take-out-the-trash-dammit guy.  If the Dr is happy, then so do I.  Really nothing happened.  Liam  was admitted to the hospital yesterday late morning.  She had a scheduled dialysis.  Did not get any additional medication to what she gets at home.  Slept good at night, and returned home today.  Maybe she just wants to see if the insurance company is paying attention.

Tractor
I was never a good sleeper.  It started at a very young age - probably infancy - in the kibbutz.  At night, I could hear the wolverines (the Israeli version of them) howling at night, the small owls hoo-hoo'ing, the rooster with the always off alarm clock, the geese in the petting zoo trying to shoo away a mongoose - or just being impatient for their breakfast.  All these night sounds in the valley kept me awake, and scared.
When I finally got over my fears, there were the tractors going out to the fields when it was still dark who woke me up.  It doesn't take much.  In the quite, rural, agricultural valley, a single tractor can be heard quite loudly everywhere.  And tractors were used for everything.  Even if it wasn't corn or cotton or apples season, tractors still were still used for service in the community - hauling trash "wagons", collecting and distributing laundry, mowing the lawns, etc.  Almost at all times you could hear a tractor's engine.  They all kept me awake.  I need perfect silence and perfect darkness to sleep well.

When Liam stays at home, we often use an oxygen machine.  This "tractor" is located only a few feet away from us.  We also keep the TV on for her.  Yet, with all this noise and the glare and the fact that I'm on the couch next to her and Liam herself moaning, I still manage to sleep.  Sometimes I feel like going back to the northern valley, to wake up the wolverines and the owls and the geese and the tractors - just to test that I can still sleep.


Pump
Liam's heart rate goes from restful and "normal" - 70-90 ticks per minute - to a dangerous range - 140-170 - in a split second.  It's caused by a dysfunctional nervous system.  Nothing anybody can do about it - I think.  It used to be pretty scary when it happened first.  I guess we sort of got used to it now.  The surprising fact is that many times when that happens, her blood pressure is just fine.  I referred to my hydrology notebooks from my water engineering degree.  There it was stated clearly:  when the pump is working harder and the pipes don't change in diameter, and the number of valves/emitters is the same, and the friction factor is the same, the pressure must grow.  I scratched my head (just to verify no new hair grew back, you know).  That was puzzling.  After all, I "graduated with excellence" from this 18-month course.  And I designed, installed, and maintained many water infrastructure systems as well as acres and acres of irrigation.  So what's wrong with my calculation.

I decided to ask a Dr.  He told me the same thing I already know for years:  you wasted your time studying irrigation engineering, you dumb ass.  Alright, I'll stick to what I do best:  watch sports and drink beer.  (The solution to the puzzle, BTW, is not simple at all.  That's because our bodies are not like a pumping station and piping system.  For example, the diameter or the veins DO CHANGE depends on many factors, blood pressure just one of them.  It foes on and on.  It'd take me 7 years and residency to explain it all.  Back to the TV.)

So tonight Liam's back home.  The tractor will work in the field, the pumps will pump, the monitors will warn us about heart rate and oxygen level, and Curious George will play all night on the TV.  But I'll take all that busy street any day I-man-night of the week to have Liam next to us.