Life and the Whirlwind

I realized that I haven't blogged since January and that fact really didn't surprise me. After all, anyone who knows me knows that my kids come first, and, these last months, that's all I've been about.

Allie has been in the hospital 3 times. The first was in late January (23rd?) when she was taken by ambulance TWICE in the same day for severe seizures. The first time the hospital discharged her after just a couple of hours even though I told them she's not done and we'd be back. We just happened to get the same ambulance crew the second time and they were ticked that the hospital hadn't taken me seriously and that this little girl was having to go through this still. They were even more upset / shaken when she seized pretty badly on the way up and she stopped breathing for them. She scared them and I'm fairly certain they chewed the docs out for discharing her the first time. We spent 3 days up there getting her stabilized, and consulting on getting a stomach tube placed.

February 13 saw us up there again for the surgery to place her stomach tube. The surgery went well, and we went home late on the 14th. We were back two weeks later, when she became infected and ended up being there another 3 days. Since then, things have gone well, and Allie is healed and doing well with the tube. She has decided she will be more picky about what she eats by mouth - after all, that can be pure pleasure now.

In the weeks since our last hospital stay, we've dealt with getting Doug a sports physical, realizing that he wasn't seeing clearly and getting him glasses (should be fitted for them today), getting Allie cast for AFO's (leg braces), and juggling our dwindling tax refund money between yard improvements and the need to give Doug a more "formal" room - something where the walls aren't just the backs of bookshelves. I'm not sure how we're going to do all this, but I do know it will all work out.

So, the whirlwind of life continues on, grazing our sanity, but doing no lasting damage. We know it will be back, and that eventually it will hit home, but I'm not going to ignore the blue skies for fear of rain. Right now, today, life is good, calm, normal. Well, normal for us. After all....What's normal anyway?

Tag?!?

Okay, it appears there is a blog-tag game going on and I've been called "it." Now I'm supposed to tell you six *interesting* things about myself. This could be a challenge....

1) I couldn't care less for fashion or entertainment news. Celebrity performers (film or music) are still just jesters - they are there to entertain / perform for us, period. We should not be "entertained" by their private life antics or lack of them, or even, God forbid, what they were wearing last week at the grocers.

2) I abhor religion. I do have faith, but faith and religion are as different as table salt and arsenic. I could go into detail here, but I think it's more appropriate for a whole other blog.

3) I don't like candy much, which is weird because I make tons of it during the holidays - even selling some. I also don't like Hostess products (twinkies, cupcakes, etc).

4) I'm probably the only poor woman under 40 who knows how to play Bridge. However, I've never even seen Pinochle played.

5) I went to Europe for 2 1/2 weeks with my Gram when I was 15. My favorite city was Vienna.

6) I didn't finish college for two reasons; a) I wanted to major in everything - poli sci, law, medicine, anthropology, physics, art (all kinds), business, education, archaeology, psychology, writing, sociology, basically everything except math. b) I realized that, no matter what I got a degree in, it would be wasted. When I had kids (and that was always in my plans), I was going to be a home mom, so why waste the money (which I didn't have anyway) on a degree I'll never use? If I still want a degree in a few years, I can go back to school and get one then. Of course, I'd have to revisit that "what's your major" issue....

Christmas is coming....

One week and counting... Until my husband's family decends on us like... I don't know what like, just that all of them will be here and I'm not sure I can handle it. Mentally, I mean. I have a tendancy to get a little edgy around all of them. His mom alone is no problem whatsoever. In fact, she is quite pleasant. However, I'm not sure how the added tensions of his sister and her family will change this dynamic. I guess I'm just a little unsure about the whole thing. I want it to be a really nice holiday, but I'm a bit worried about family tension getting to me and turning me into the Wicked B17ch of the North.

In any case, we have a lot to do before then. Oh, and the joy - one tub/ shower and 11 people. Yipes. Thank God there are 2 toilets.

Plumbing and Inexperience

I have a cold. A pretty bad one, but I'm on the recovery side of it now, so it's no biggie. I ran a pretty good fever with this one, and as is my custom, I took a hot soak to help the fever along. Now, I've only had a couple of soaks in our tub since we moved in, mostly due to time issue - as in there is never enough of it. In any case, this brand-new tub was installed by the former owner (he owned the house for a six month flip). This brand-new tub is rather shallow, and so in order to get nice and soaky, I have to run the water a little high and it slowly drains into the overflow pipe. IN THEORY. In practice and reality, it did not. Instead, it drained into my garage ceiling (tub is upstairs). We find this out because my son's room is down there. He headed down to bed and was hearing this "drip drip" sound, investigated and found a goodly sized puddle on the floor, and a nice large wet spot in the ceiling. He immediately ran back up to the kitchen, grabbed some pots and bowls, and yelled "we've got a major leak down here!" He was a trooper.

As I hear the mental dollar signs dinging away at a pretty good clip, I get out of the tub and start searching for the origins of the leak. Dan runs down to assess the damage and see if he could find an origin too. No obvious signs. So, I start thinking.... Hmm, the only difference between this and the daily tubs my daughter takes is....the level of the water and the use of the overflow pipe. So, I undo the overflow and sure enough, IT'S NOT HOOKED UP!!! The pipe is there, but it's not attached to the tub. I had some choice words and phrases for the former owner that commented on his skills as a handyman, and his general intellect, as well as calling his parentage into question. This is not the first thing we've found that he did like this. This is not even the second. This is one more in a long series of things done half-a$$ed and cheaper than dirt cheap.

Now, I've never installed a tub, but I can see that the pipe should be attached somehow. I looked over the equipment available and decided to peruse the online do-it-yourself pages to see how to fix this problem. I find a page and see that there is supposed to be a foam gasket between the tub and the pipe. I look at mine and see, aha, there is one, but it wasn't installed right. I look at the page again and try to see how to do it right - no luck. They just say - attach it to the tub. ??? How? I look at the assembly again and realize that there is a metal "flange" thing that is screwed down on the pipe with the foam gasket. Ding ding ding - the bottom of that piece goes on the inside of the tub, the top is attached at the screws and, as you screw it into place, it brings to pipe to the tub, with the foam gasket sealing the whole thing! Aha! Now why couldn't he have figured that out?!? If I've never even looked at tub plumbing before, and this guy does home renovations for a living, why did I have to fix my own freakin' tub?!?!!

Well, the ceiling is dried out, the tub is fixed, and it didn't cost us a thing. I'm very glad I decided to check the obvious before calling a plumber - I don't need to be paying $75 an hour to fix what should have been done right in the first place.

So, the moral of the story.... If you don't know what you are doing and the instructions aren't clear, USE YOUR BRAIN TO FIGURE IT OUT, OR ASK FOR HELP!!! Don't just leave something half-done and hope it all works out okay!!!!!
Now I just get to wait and find out what else he didn't do right....

Tis the Season...

So, it's not yet December 1st and I am almost completely done with my holiday shopping. This is not a bragging point, simply a notice of amazement and somewhat of disbelief. The knowledge that I have only to go and get XXXX for my brother, and maybe check out some XXXX for my dad (I already have one gift for each), and that everyone else is covered.... Well, that almost takes the excitement out of the season. I don't know what to do. It's almost anti-climactic. I mean, these already purchased items are even wrapped already and I'm kind of at a loss now. What am I supposed to worry about for the next 30 days? I happen to know that this year I kicked butt like Bruce Lee in the choosing of gifts people will like. If something should happen to me before Christmas gets here, no one will be stuck thinking "Why did she get me this?"

Okay, that is beginning to sound an awful lot like bragging. Sorry. My point is, what do all those people who get their shopping done before November DO with the rest of the season? My lights are up, my home is decorated (except for the tree, which we're doing tomorrow). What am I supposed to do? I've never ever been done this early. I think my record for earliest completely done is around December 12, and next closest is the 18th. Usually, I'm out on Christmas Eve, looking for those last-minute bargains and stocking stuffers, desperately trying to find something for one or both of my parents. I am usually wrapping stuff into the wee hours of Christmas morning, getting a whopping 3-4 hours sleep because of my late-night "wrap session." I can't even imagine why I'm done so early. What is pushing me this year? Maybe the world is coming to an end and this is some sort of bizarre nesting behavior? I don't know.

Actually, I do still have to go get XXXX for my father-in-law. And, I'm still waiting on the XXXX XXXX and the XXXX to arrive so I can wrap them for their intended parties. I did a lot of shopping online. But really, all of that's going to take like, 30 minutes.

I could stand to get something more for my oldest. He pretty much has one major gift and a couple of XXXX, which I know he'll like, but it might seem a bit of a letdown, so I might look for something else. Maybe. The major gift is pretty cool.... I don't know. I think I'm just suffering some holiday blah's. In any case, if I died in the next 5 minutes, everybody (except dad-in-law) has got something. Let me tell you, he is hard to buy for. Most of the stuff he'd be thrilled to get, my mom-in-law would kill me for - and rightly so. That singing fish is just too much....

Anyway, I just don't feel spirited. I think I must be one of those people who enjoys the pressures of the holidays. Kinda makes sense. I do my best work under pressure - whatever kind of work it is, I do really well under the threat of a deadline.

Speaking of , I have dishes to do and my hubby will be home in 45 minutes.... Gotta love those deadlines.

Elections - Good and Bad

So, the elections are over and Bush finally saw the middle finger that we've all been waving at him for some time now because the entire country used it to vote with. This was a good thing. So, like any teenager having a kegger, he reailzed Mom and Dad have just pulled into the driveway and he decided to blame / fire Rumsfeld. "It's his fault - he brought the beer!!" Bonus!!!

On the bad side. Locally, our election was no surprise, except for the ballot measures. Oregonians on the whole voted stupidly this last election. Mind you, these are not the candidates at issue here, but the measures. We voted against state term limits, voted for free prescription drug coverage for rich people, and voted to have only judges from the two major metropolitan areas make the decisions about the rural areas of Oregon. We voted against being informed if our child is having an abortion - she can't get a mole removed at the doctors or even take an aspirin at school without our permission, but she can get an abortion and it's not our business (this was not even an anti-abortion measure - it was anti-parents). We voted that insurance companies should continue using our credit rating as a guide for our rates, instead of using our actual loss / claims records. Example, we have moderate credit and pay would $45 a month to insure a 1987 Dodge Caravan. My folks have sparkling credit and are paying $17 a month to insure that same exact car - and with more coverage. We, neither me nor my husband, have not had any claims, losses, accidents, or even so much as a speeding ticket in the last 11 years. My parents have had, together, 3 speeding tickets, and two accidents in the same time period. AND YET... because their credit rating is excellent, they pay nearly $20 a month less than we would to insure the same car against ACCIDENTS! If the insurance company was a LENDER, then they would have a reason to base the rates on credit ratings. But, they are an insurer against accidents / losses and other claims. My credit should be none of their ^%$$%@#!!!! business!!!!! We're low-income and our credit will never shine, no matter how well I manage our money (and I do manage it well). So, I am angry because the voters decided to continue punishing the poor with high costs for insurance, and reward the rich, who wreck their expensive cars, with cheaper rates.

^*%$%^#$%*&*%*!#$*&^#%^$#$$%$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We also voted against putting a reasonable spending cap on government - we voted against a measure that would have regulated the legislature by stating that you can only increase the budget by the percent of increase in population, and the increase in inflation combined. We even more stupidly voted down a measure which would amend our state constiution to allow laws to be made about campaign spending. The subsequent measure, which is to be a law that limits campaign spending, passed, but is now unconstitutional because the amedment measure did not pass. We have a bunch of arrogant dummies here in this state. I'm sorry, but that's basically it. They saw the words "Amends Constitution" and freaked out and voted "no" automatically. They couldn't be bothered to read the actual text and comprehend that it was vital to the following measure. And, they were too arrogant to let it be known that they didn't understand that - God forbid they ask a question!!! OOPS - can't say GOD forbid - it might infringe on someone's religious freedoms.

While I am happy about the turnovers in the federal house and senate, as well as the democratic dominance in my own state legislature, I am genuinely ANGRY at the blind idiocy that the constituancy tends to display when it comes to ballot measures. I would love for the voter's books to be written in plain English and not a dialect of legal-confusion. Maybe that would help the voters understand the measurs. But, that would require a vote of the people, and, quite frankly, they wouldn't understand the measure because it would still be written in non-plain English. Kind of a dog chasing its own tail kind of thing.

And, it's not going to get better because we are doing a worse-than-poor job of educating our kids now than was done when the current generations of voters were educated. The days of progress are gone.

Busy Busy

Blogligation
Category: Life


Okay, I'm typing up a blog. It's not that I actually have anything of value to contribute this minute, but I haven't blogged in over a month and I kind of feel guilty about it.

Let's see, what's happened since I last blogged....

My mother got a major kidney stone. Last Monday I spent a good part of the day with her at the hospital while she got a CT scan. The scan showed a stone too big to pass, so they sent her to a specialist.

The next morning (yes, Tuesday), we are driving to the 8am appontment with the specialist and get a call from my Aunt. My grandfather had died. Wow. Not a huge shock - he was nearly 90 - but still kind of out of the blue. So, I get to be the one to call my dad and tell him his dad died. Great. I've never had to do that kind of thing before and it felt awful.

We're still reeling from everything that's going to snowball at us from Grandpa's passing when the specialist says to my mom "You need immediate surgery. What are you doing tonight?" My mom didn't get it, so I answered for her - "Getting a kidney stone out?" So, not quite ER level trauma, but still an emergency, knock-your-butt-out surgery. This was a serious stone. And, it turned out to be even bigger than the specialist expected - how's about them apples?

So, the funeral was last Friday. Food at mom's for 20+ and trying to remember etiquette and all. Kinda crapped out for Saturday, so we took it easy (played board games with the kids). Sunday afternoon and I get a call from Doug's science teacher. "He's got a 63% right now." Midterm grades were coming out and she didn't want us to be too shocked. Turns out he's not turning his assignments in. Damn. Where there's smoke there's fire. "Science won't be the only class," is all I can think to myself. Sometimes I hate being right. Turns out he bombed a math test a two weeks ago (52%) and is missing 3 assignments. He's got a 67% in math. And English is a 59% - missing 7 assignments and bombing one quiz.

On the brighter side, he's getting an A- in Geography. Whoopee! So, this weekend will be filled with make up work and extra credit for 3 different classes. Joy of joys. Good thing we don't go to church anymore because there just wouldn't be time for this stuff if we did.

God only knows what he's getting in P.E. or Band. I'm not sure I want to know.

Oh, and here's a link to a video montage I did of my sweet Allie. The song is "Amazing" by Janelle.

Get MySpace video codes at onetruemedia.com