Organized Chaos

Hello hello

2009-02-12T10:21:00.008-05:00

Zaporah just jumped 3 feet into the air to catch a piece of sting she tossed up- no lie. And not a simple jump, but an Olympic-gymnast-not -even-a-cat's-body-should-twist-and-flip-like-that kind of jump. Meanwhile, HayZeus is looking down from his perch giving her the "Excuse me, WTF are you doing" look (as if he's completely sane). One of these days I'll catch it on video so y'all can see the craziness that happens in this house on a daily basis. I need to get a job just to get a way from these nut cases, I swear.

That might not be too far off though. Last week I took the state exam to be certified as a Nurses Aide. Now that I'm on the state registry I'm elligble to apply for CNA positions, which are rather abundant around here. I applied for a bunch on Monday and have already had two interviews and have been offered a job contingent on passing a background/reference check and a TB test. I'm sure there will be a drug test in there somewhere, which should be fun. Last time I had to take one I technically didn't pass it because I take benzodiazopenes occasionally for anxiety, but a note from my doctor got that cleared up. I only want to work 15-20 hours a week, maybe more when I'm not in school. It's at a private duty/home health type place, so I should be able to have some decent flexibility. So that's neat!

All in all things have been going really great around here. I didn't get accepted into UNCC's BSN program, which I expected as it is crazy hard to get into, but I'm still working towards becoming an RN via an associates degree at the college here in Concord (CCHS). I'm not in their program yet, but if all goes well I'm hoping to get in for the fall semester. I've also been accepted into a Masters of Public Health program at Des Moines University (DMU - it's an online prgram), which I've been trying to do for a couple years, so I'm actually working on an associates and a masters degree at the same time. Yeah, thats how I roll. It's like going backwards and forwards all at once.

Of course it's going to take me a while to chip away at the Masters degree because I'll only be taking one, MAYBE two classes every trimester so that I don't overload myself. Because I already have all my liberals and co-reqs done for the nursing program at CCHS, most of my semesters are only going to consist of 5 or 6 credits, so I should be able to take one 3 credit graduate class too. Plus, DMU works on trimesters, so I'll be able to get in a class or two when I'm not in session at CCHS. Joe and I decided that we'd sit down prior to each tri/semester and go over my options to make sure I'm not taking on too much.

It sounds crazy and confusing and too busy, but it's not. I'll probably be taking 6-9 credits a semester and working about 15-20 hours a week. This is doable. It's not like I'm raising a gaggle of kids and working 2 jobs while I go to nursing school (that was my mom), nor do I have a daughter that will follow me around bugging me and not letting me study or sleep(that was me). However, HayZeus could be a problem....he likes to "help" with my homework:

I did not help him pose for these, by the way. He got that pen in his paws on his own. Crazy cat.

So I guess that's the skinny around here. Things are well - I've been feeling absolutely fantastic, Joe is still enjoying his job, and we're both digging the weather down here. We are planning a trip to Michigan at the end of June/beginning of July, so we're looking forward to that. In the meantime, we love visitors! :)

time for an update

2009-01-13T09:28:00.002-05:00

Hello hello, it's been a while. Let's see, where to start...

I guess I'll start with our holidays, which were quite lovely. We spent quite a bit of time with Joe and Sara and the kids, which helped give it that "Kirkwood Chaos" kind of feel. As odd as it was to be away from the rest of our families I really didn't feel all that disconnected. Of course we missed them, which is an everyday constant, but I was surprised to find that it wasn't particularly exacerbated by Christmas.

We spent Christmas Eve at our house munching on hors' devours (or however that's spelled) and opening the gifts that had been sent down by my Mom and our Aunt Kae, as well as the ones Joe and I had bought for the kids. Christmas morning was quiet for Joe and I, but Joe and Sara's crew returned for Christmas Dinner that afternoon and the kids did what they could to destroy my house. In the end I found that they were actually rather gentle with the place. :)

On the Monday after Christmas my Dad and Teri arrived for the week. It was great to see them and I think they thouroughly enjoyed being away from the snow and in 65 degree weather. I spent Tuesday with them helping them shop (they didn't see the point in hauling gifts in their luggage) and we all got together for dinner that night. On Wednesday, New Year's Eve, everyone came over to our house and did the munchies/presents thing again and then had a HUGE Christmas dinner. We then rang in the new year and spent the next day playing Joe and Sara's Wii, which was a trip. I was extremely sore the next day - who knew that bowling and snowboarding on a video game could be so intense! We had so much fun having bowling tournements and competing for the best times on the sports games. Dad and Teri left on Friday and we were sad to see them go.

Since then things have been rather calm around here. I should probably mention that just before Christmas we adopted a friend for HayZeus, who was becoming a sednetary, lazy old bum. After a few days of adjustment they became friends and are constantly playing - I woke up a few nights ago at about 3 am to the sounds of them playing/wrestling in the bathtub!! In the few weeks we've had her, little Zaporah has whipped HayZeus back into shape - he's running and jumping and playing like he did before his surgery, albeit with a slight limp. We got them a kitty condo for Christmas and they love it - HayZeus spends most of his day lounging on the highest platform gazing out the window while Zaporah enjoys the little cave below. :)

Last week was a rather...down week. Not in the emotional sense so much as the activity sense. I got another mild upper respiratory infection (I had a nasty one for a week just after I finished the antibiotics for my previous illness), which slowed me down a bit, but I was mostly bored. When I don't have anything to do my time management skills and motivation go right out the window, so I was lucky to even get around to making the bed. I shook that by the end of the week though and starting classes this week has already put me back into "do" mode.

I'm taking more classes at CCHS this semester. I didn't get into UNCC's BSN program, but I'm reapplying for the fall semester. Nursing programs are very competitive, so it wasn't really a shock that I didn't get in on the first try. I've also applied to CCHS's associate degree program and to grad school (for my masters in public health, which is my ultimate goal anyway). First one to accept me wins!! :) I know that an associates degree isn't ideal given my circumstances, but really I'd just like to be able to get a good paying job sometime this century. Given my ultimate career goals a BSN isn't vital, although it's admittedly the best scenario. Anyway, we'll see, but in the meantime I'm taking a Spanish class, medical terminology class, and a mystery class the registrar hasn't figured out for me. Because I'm a freshman at CCHS I'm not allowed to take anything above a 200 level class...but since I have a million transfer credits there are literally no 200 level classes that I can take. Seriously, I've already gotten credit for every other lower level class I'm elligable to take. So we're trying to appeal and get me into a 300 level biology class. Given that I have a minor in biology I'm hoping they'll see that it's probably something I can handle. Yeesh.

So I guess that's the skinny around here. We took lots of pictures at Christmas, which you can view on our shutterfly sight: http://adventuresofmaryandjoe.shutterfly.com/

Ciao!

an interesting week

2008-11-28T13:38:00.003-05:00

It's been a very interesting week. Joe says I've been a living episode of "House", but he also thinks I have leprosy so he might not be the best judge of the situation. Last Tuesday afternoon I went my PCP for what I thought was a mild UTI. I started antibiotics that evening, but woke up at about 2 am with shaking chills, high fever, nausea, and vomitting. Last time I checked antibiotics were supposed to make you better, not worse, so I called the doctor. It was decided that the infection had just spread/gotten worse before the antibiotic has a chance to work, so I was to push fluids (which is lovely to do when it hurts to pee), take tylonal or motrin for the fever (which never broke), and wait for the bactrim to kick in.

That was Wednesday morning. So when Friday morning came along and I was still throwing up and running a fever I called the doctor again. By this time I was so sick/weak from a) not eating and b) running a fever for 3 days, that when I tried to shower I just ended up sitting on the floor of the tub because I was so dizzy, etc that I couldn't stand long enought to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. When Joe got home from work he had to help me out of the tub and into fresh PJs. (yeah, I know....what was I doing trying to shower when he wasn't home? Well, did you ever think that way when you were 24?) Anyway, it was decided that the bug had traveled to my kidneys and that it was resistant to the antibiotics I was taking. So I switched to a different one, macrobid, and I took that for the first time on Friday night.

On Saturday I woke up feeling much better. My fever had finally broke, I could keep a bit of food down, and I could stand long enough brush my teeth all by myself. That was when I saw the thrush on my tongue, which I was thouroughly annoyed by. But that was nothing compared to my reaction when I saw the rash on my chest a couple hours later. After a lot of swearing (I was pissed) Joe took me to the urgent care clinic where they told me I was having an allergic reaction (duh?) to the macrobid. So they gave me cipro, nystatin for the thrush, and told me to take an OTC anti-histamine for the rash. Ok, so I can get better now, right?

Not so much. On Sunday I woke up with swollen lips, tongue, face, hands, etc and the rash had taken over my entire body - everywhere but the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet. And then it started to itch. My fever was back, my head hurt again, and now this... I was smart enough to immediately cut off all of my finger nails, but naive enough to think that would stop me from trying to scratch my skin off. Ugh. Back to the clinic....more antibiotics....steroids for the reaction...anti-histamines (2 kinds) for the itching...continue the nystatin...push fluids...follow up in two weeks (after I was done with the antibiotics). I spent most of Sunday evening and night in a bathtub full of oatmeal and water, and when I wasn't in there I was in an anti-histamine induced coma. Monday night I finally started to feel human again and Tuesday was my first official day without a fever. Hey, it only took a week, right?

It picked a bad week. I got sick the day before I usually clean the house, so that didn't get done. I hadn't gone grocery shopping in forever and we were out of everything ...milk, bread, eggs....everything. I think Joe ate Ramen Noodles for dinner one night. I hadn't done anything to prepare for Thanksgiving, had a group presentation in my psych class, missed a test review in my algebra class, and caused Joe to miss his soccer tournement on Sunday. I told him to go, but he wouldn't have it...he actually stayed home from work one morning to keep an eye on me. So when Tuesday came I had a lot to do and very little energy to do it, having eaten only a few pieces of toast and a couple bowls of applesauce in a matter of 5 days.

I wasn't real thrilled about the fact that I needed to go grocery shopping two days before Thanksgiving, but I sucked it up and went. I've found that you can survive WalMart at any time, no matter how busy it is, so long as you go in a certain state of mind. If you accept that there will be an infinite number of rude, inconsiderate people in the store, then you can take a moment to rally all of your patience and calmness to accomodate those encounters. Take a deep breath, find your happy place, and embrace the experience. I think I'll call it Walmart Zen.

Oh, and make sure you're not on a schedule. If you're in a rush you're screwed.

Anyway, I spent two hours in WalMart getting everything from shampoo to sweet potatoes and went home, totally exhausted. Then, about 30 seconds after I walked into the house I realized I'd forgotten something. Something very important.

I forgot to buy a flippin' turkey.

Oh, and by the way, I don't actually own anything to roast a turkey in.

Eye yi yi...

But Joe and I went out and bought a turkey and roasting pan later than night and my very first Thanksgiving dinner that I cooked all by myself turned out pretty good. I was a little perplexed by the turkey itself...the Joy of Cooking said to cook it uncovered...but the Moms said to cover it...I don't have a turkey baster...does it really take 3 hours to cook? How the hell do you carve one of these things anyway? What am I supposed to use to tie the legs together? I found the neck, but where's the heart and all that junk? It was an experience, but it's results were tasty so I'm happy. Joe, Sara, Sara's Mom, Jake, Jonny, and Sam all came over for dinner, then we had pie and played board games. It was a pretty good turkey day, and it was kinda nice to make our own tradition this year.

So yeah, very interesting week.

Passing the time

2008-10-21T09:38:00.003-04:00

I miss the U.P. The weather down here is getting to me - it's not supposed to be 80 degrees in mid-October! The last week hasn't been as bad - it's stayed in the 60's and dropped to the 40's at night - but it's not "fall". I love fall - the colors, the smell, the way it sounds when the leaves crunch under your feet, how great it feels to put on a sweatshirt and sit outside on a sunny fall day. But I don't get any of that here. Half the time it's too warm to wear pants, let alone a sweatshirt. For the past week I've insisted on keeping our windows open so that our house would get cold and I could put on some sweats and snuggle up with a book and some tea on the couch (you just can't do that when it's 80 out, even with AC). I was finally forced to close them when we woke up on Sunday and the place was only 62 degrees, but I still loved every minute of it. I don't know what I'm going to do when December rolls around and there's no snow. It's a whole different reason to get the Holiday Blues. So yeah, I miss the U.P.

Besides the unsatisfactory weather, things are generally well. HayZeus is still hopping along, but at a pace that the vet is happy with. HayZeus is so excited to be allowed to jump onto things - for two weeks after his surgery he was on activity restrictions so he wasn't allowed to run or jump. Do you know how hard it is to keep a cat off the furniture? Impossible. We tipped our dining room table onto it's side, locked him out of the bedrooms and bathrooms, put the dining room chairs across the couch...everything we could think of to prevent him from jumping. But that little bastard still managed - open the bedroom for 3 seconds and he was curled up on the bed, right the dining room table to eat and he was up there with you....just impossible. Thankfully, we don't have to do that anymore. His incision is completely healed and his hair is growing back, although he still looks pretty freaky. :)

I'm starting to run out of things to do with my time. I go to class 6 hours a week, have about 20 minutes of homework for each class, and am occasionally insulted that I'm paying my algebra professer to teach me how to use a graphing calculator. I really like my algebra prof - she's a great teacher and I enjoy being in her class - but I'm not in middle school so I guess I'm expecting more out of the curriculum. I shouldn't complain because I put in very little effort to get A's in the class...but still, I'm paying for this? Ugh. My psych class makes me want to shove a pencil into my eye, so it's probably a good thing I only have it once a week.

So that leaves me with a lot of time on my hands. I've applied for a lot of office assistant type jobs and a handful of phlebotomy/lab related jobs but haven't had much response. I'm thinking about applying at the video rental place at the end of the road just for something to do. Otherwise I'm at home with little to do. Our house is always spotless, I cook a lot, make sure the bills are paid, bathe the cat, all that sort of stuff (I still don't fold laundry). It's been nice to have the time/personal space to explore some hobbies - I've been doing a lot of "jewel-crafting", as Jake calls it, meaning that I've been beading/making jewelry. Joe thinks I should try to sell what I make, which I'm considering. I'm also trying to remember how to sew (which is challenging because I don't think I ever really knew before) and last week I made throw pillows to match our couch/window valance.

I guess that's about all that's going on around here. Until next time...

Let's have a party!

2008-10-03T08:26:00.004-04:00

Here's my political rant for the week (they'll pop up a few times between now and November 4th)

Today the House passed the much talked about "bailout bill". I'm excited about this. While I think the bulk of the bill is crap and that we shouldn't pay for banks' mistakes, it was inevitable that something like this would go through. Thus, I've found my peace with it in a tiny little amendment the Senate quietly tacked on - in all actuality, this amendment was the basis of the original bill that the bailout package was added onto. So while the bill has been deemed the "Emergency Stabilization Act of 2008" it started out as the "Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008", which requires private insurance companies to cover mental health and addiction services on parity with medical surgical services. This includes treatment limits, co-pays, deductables, inpatient services (both in and out of network), emergency services, and out of pocket maximums.

This is huge. Our mental health coverage is horrible, as is many other Americans'. If the bill had been in effect in the past 10 months we'd have saved over a thousand dollars, and it will save us hundreds of dollars in future years as well. And there are many people out there that have worse coverage and more need for services, so I'm telling you I could practically throw a party with balloons and streamers and hats and cake.

Additionally, the Act also prohits insurance companies from discriminating against individuals based on genetic information - i.e. they cannot increase premiums, drop coverage, or evaluate enrollment eligibility based on the presence of a gene linked to any specific disease.

This is also huge - my Aunt has Huntingtons disease, which is passed on genetically. Each child has a 50/50 chance of getting the gene, and research shows that you cannot be a carrier - the gene is ALWAYS expressed. Thus if you have the gene, you will develop the disease. My Aunt and Uncle have three children. The oldest tested positive for the gene, but she's the only one who's opted to be tested, partly because of the possibility of discrimination based on the test results that can and does occur. So it's a little weight off the shoulders of those who have not been tested because they no longer have to fear loss of health coverage.

Anyway, I'm excited about that ammendment. There's a couple other ones that are good too - the ones that will actually help everyday Americans - but there's a lot of junk in the rest of it. I guess you sometimes have to trade the good for the bad.

So I've decided Congress isn't completely evil - at least not this week. Now if we could only get the legislative branch to follow suit...then I'd really have to throw a big bash!

Little HayZeus Hop-along

2008-09-25T21:50:00.003-04:00

So it's been a long time since I last updated...sorry about that. We haven't had internet for the last weekish, so I haven't really had the chance.

The big (and bad) news around here is that poor HayZeus had a little fall. He was up on the bathroom counter, and while he'd been removed from the counter many times, he wasn't getting the point, so he was sort of given a little help vacating the counter...and hit an open cabinet door on the way down. I suppose that there's really no gentle way to say we (aka Joe) shoved him off the counter and broke him, but that makes us (aka Joe) sound like cat abusers. But we love our kitty!

It actually took us a while to figure out that he was injured - since when does pushing a cat off of a three foot ledge do damage? Anyway, we realized that he wasn't out in the living room hanging out with us, nor had he come to greet us at the door, so we went to investigate. We found him hiding out under the computer desk, which happens to be about three feet from his litterbox. I started petting his belly, which he always bites me for (it's a love nibble, apparently I'm tasty), but he didn't even glare at me. So we knew he wasn't feeling well, and once we got him to walk we saw he had a very pronounced limp.

In the morning he still hadn't moved from under the desk and hadn't eaten or drank anything, so I took him to the vet. We figured he had a really bad bruise or a cut we couldn't see, but the vet took x-rays to make sure. When she came back in the room with the films and a model of a cat skeleton in her hands, I knew we were in trouble. Poor kitty had a broken leg. A broken femur to be exact - the articulating surface of the bone (big round part that goes into the hip socket) broke off from the rest of the leg. It would have to be repaired surgically, either in that office or at a specialist in Charlotte. The latter sounded really expensive and scary to me and carried more risk, but I wanted to do the best for our kitty. The vet assured me there would be no difference in his quality of life if we went with the simpler, cheaper (cheap is really not a word that should be used here) procedure though, so we decided we'd do that. He couldn't have it right away though, so he spent the weekend in my closet (I made him a little kitty kave) drugged up and immobile. :( I had to help him into his litter box the first day, but he learned to compenstate pretty quick.

He had his surgery yesterday and I picked him up from the vet this morning. He was VERY happy to see me and looked TOTALLY pathetic. He has a 8x5 inch bald spot on his right rear, an ugly (although clean) incision, bright green bandages on two of his legs (from the IV and covering his pain patch) and a great big cone around his neck. Just sad. He's doing really well though. We've been able to take the cone collar off because he's been sleeping where we can see him and doesn't seem to be interested in licking his incision (yet). He's not allowed to run or jump or walk too much for the next week, but he's already weight bearing and hobbling around. He likes to sleep where we are.

So, little HayZeus Hop-along is going to be ok. He might have a slight limp forever, but the hope is that his decappitated femur will form a false joint with his hip. He doesn't move around a ton, but he generally doesn't seem to care that he's been shaved and cut open. Plus, I really like the vet's office we took him to - it's less than a mile from here, has flexible hours, and the three doctors that worked on our kitty were really thourough and really nice. :)

Aside from HayZeus, things are business as usual here. Joe is clearly enjoying his job and has joined a soccer league. It's a co-ed league, which Joe kinda forgot to mention (not that I'd actually care), so I'm going to have to be at the games to peel all the girls off of him. I know nothing about soccer, but I'm going to try to be a crazy soccer wife that screams at the other players from the stands. Especially the chicks.

My classes are going well and I've been looking for a part-time job. Actually, my classes are boring me to tears and I'm having a hard time not strangling my PY150 classmates (they are all very, very immature and close minded), so I'm ready to take on something else. I have to be listed on the NC CNA registry in order to be a nursing student, so I'm going to take that test soon. North Carolina allows people to attempt the test without taking a training class, and most of the skills they test on were covered in my NMU nursing classes...so I think I'm going to opt out of the training. Joe's going to have to be my guinea pig and let me make the bed while he's in it and practice some ROM exercises, but I'm sure he'll be a great pretend patient. Anyway, there seems to be a lot of CNA jobs in these parts, so hopefully I can find something with decent hours.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll take some pictures of HayZeus so you can all see how wierd he looks. Poor kitty :( I'm glad he's going to be ok!!

I'm sure you've heard this rant before...

2008-08-27T09:40:00.002-04:00

Should Smoking Around Kids Be Illegal?

I stumbled upon this article today and couldn't help but think about all of my wonderfully nicotine addicted family and friends. So yeah, I'm going to take a shot at you guys, possibly below the belt. Oops.

It might suprise you to know that my answer to the question the article poses is "no". But it's not because I respect a smoker's right to parent their children or smoke in their home or car. I don't respect that, at least not in a case when you are knowingly poisoning your children. Such a law wouldn't be resonable on a legal level though - even if it did squeak through the Supreme Court (which it wouldn't, and if it did we're in trouble...then again the Patriot Act is still kickin...) it's not enforcable and I don't see the point in making a law we can't back up. It opens the door to too many other things, like calling child abuse when a kid eats a cheeseburger. They are totally different situations, but not everyone in this country has the brains to figure that out.

The solution? Just ban smoking. If people are too stupid to not smoke around kids, then they shouldn't be allowed to smoke. There are a whole slue of substances in the world that are illegal because of the way they damage the human body. And yet, one of the few legal ones damages not only the body of the user, but the body of everyone around as well. So why should cigarettes be legal? We won't let people smoke pot, which is not addictvie *chemically* and has less harmful (but still harmful) smoke...so why should we let people smoke tobacco? Here's the real bitch of it all - when people smoke pot, they're 10000 time more respectful of those around them, probably because it's illegal. So if we make cigarettes illegal, logic says the same will happen for tobacco, right? I'm an adult, I have the ability and means to choose whether or not I want to put my lungs through a smoky environment (which you may have noticed I don't do very often). But how is a 5 year old supposed to tell you they won't get in the car because you're going to try to kill them on the way to school? They can't, and if they do they're probably going to get punished.

Every single smoker I know smokes around kids, whether it's their own or someone else's. Sure, some of the smokers in this world have make their homes smoke-free, which I applaud, but what about your cars? Why would you make your 800+ sq. ft. home smoke free but then lock your kids up in a 4x4 space and bombard them with toxins? Yeah, go a head and open that window. It fixes everything. You wouldn't lock your child in their bedroom and pump carbon monoxide into the room...but you have no problem pumping their lungs full of it in the car. Brilliant.

Many of my family members have smoke free homes, which again, I applaud. But not one of them has a smoke free car and not one of them is afraid to light up in someone else's house when children are around. I get it, you people are going to smoke until you can stop making excuses and quit, which might never happen. I'm sure you're going to be just as happy with those excuses when (God forbid) one of the children in your lives gets lung cancer. Because there's nothing like looking into a child's eyes and saying "I'm sorry you have cancer Jimmy, but I liked smoking too much to care abour your lungs."

Get a grip.

Back to school...

2008-08-26T09:10:00.003-04:00

So today is my first day of school..for the 20 something-ith time in my life. :) I remember when I first started college that I always had my stuff all set and ready to go no less than a week before classes started - books bought, color coded schedule taped to the front of my notebook, three ring binder with sections for each class (listed alphabetically of course!), the works. But now....I have class in 5 hours and I'm not even really sure where my book bag is! Either I've become much more laid back or I've decided that organization is overrated. But let's be honest, organization is never overrated with me, so it probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say I just don't have my "poop in a group" (as my Dad would say). That's ok, I've got 5 hours yet. I've always thought procrastination was underrated.

It's rainy and gross here today and I guess it's supposed to be like that for the rest of the week. Since all of my classes are in one building (actually, the entire college is in one building) I could care less if it's raining. Maybe if it's not sunny out I'll find it easier to pay attention in algebra. I find this unlikely, as I despise algebra, but who knows. I also have to go to orientation today (after class?) from 4-7. I was supposed to go to it last week, but I didn't get the memo on account of our mail being forwarded. I must say, I've been a real pain in the ass (duh) for this college in the last week and they've been gracious, friendly, and very helpful. It's like NMU but cuter. And with a dress code - a dress code that is more stringent than the one my high school carried. Interesting.

I guess that's it. I should probably work on that book bag thing, plus I have to vacuum. I've deemed Mondays as vacuum days, but I didn't do it yesterday on account of my chiropractor beating the crap out of me. She's rough, but really cool. I just wish she'd be nicer to my poor spine :(

Just a little update

2008-08-18T12:00:00.003-04:00

It's another beautiful day here in NC. It's strange to wake up and know you're going to wear shorts and a tank/t-shirt everyday instead of watching the forecast to see if it will be warm enough to wear short sleeves. The only problem we're having with this is that none of my shorts fit and Joe only has two pair of shorts. The pair I'm wearing today is staying on my hips only because I've got a couple safety pins taking them in on the sides. I guess we're going to have to go shopping... :)

I get the feeling that the neighborhood we live in is pretty safe. I see a lot of people on the ground floors with bikes and things on their patios and I haven't noticed any of them being locked up. The people at the pool are friendly, the kids are all inside at a decent hour, and everyone seems to respect the quiet hours established by the property managers. The maintenance guys are fast (and cute!) and take the time to pet the cat. They got my newspaper wet when the were power washing the entry ways, but I'll let that slide on account of their cuteness.

On Friday I went to the DMV to get my N.C. driver's license. Thankfully, I'd done my homework and made sure I had all the required documents and had even reviewed some stuff for the exam. But I'll tell you this - all of you Michiganders need to give your clerk a hug next time you go to the Secretary of State. In Michigan I've waited 20 minutes max to do everything from getting a new license (I lose them a lot) to renewing license plates to transferring titles. This is not the case here in N.C. To get your license, you go to the DMV and to get your plates you go to a different office that's across town. Oh, and by the way, you're going to wait 2-3 hours for your number to come up. Yeah, 3 hours, sitting on the floor (there weren't any chairs available when I got there and I was definitely not going to let 60 year old ladies and pregnant women stand) while I waited for my number to be called. And let me tell you, this isn't exactly the kinda place you want to even touch the walls, let alone sit against them. It was dirty, probably hadn't been remodeled since 1970, and was cramped. There was a sign up that said it was unsafe and unlawful to exceed the maximum occupancy of 43 people...but at any given time there were over 60 people there, and that didn't count the ones that were waiting outside. Tomorrow I have to repeat this process to get the jeep's plates transferred and then Joe will have to do both to get his license and transfer the impala. I miss the Sec. of State.

In addition to my experience at the DMV, I've found some other naiveties that have carried over from my small town upbringing. I established a PCP about a week after we got here, mostly because I needed a referral to make my first appointment with a psychiatrist. I knew it would take a little while to get into a psych, so I made sure I got in for the referral right away. All my meds are filled through the first week of September (some longer) so I figured I'd be all set up with a doc by then, three weeks should be long enough, right? Wrong. The first available appointment they had was for October 1st. I hope this long of a wait is only happening because I'm a new patient or I'll be looking for a different office, even if it means going to Charlotte. Thankfully my new PCP is really cool and had already called in refills for all my stuff before we even knew when the psych appointment was, just in case I needed them, which is awesome. But I'd been hoping to see a psychiatrist before my Ambien CR script ran out because I think I'd like to try something different given how much of a headache filling the Ambien has been. I hate the FDA and insurance companies.

I've also come to realize why people complain about WalMart so much. In Marquette the Walmart is clean, fairly organized, and the employees are generally helpful and nice. Sure, there are still some serious annoyances at that store, but nothing like down here. Walmart is always packed, people (both customers and workers) are either completely oblivious to that fact that there may be other people around and/or they are rude. The store is laid out in a way I don't understand (no flow). Oh, and it doesn't help that a little boy was molested in the bathroom there last week. So I've decided that I'm going to go somewhere else, like K-mart (which is less than a mile from here) or Target. I'm sure that keeping my sanity intact is going to be worth the extra money we'll spend.

Joe snagged us a cute little bistro patio set while he was in the U.P. (at Walmart actually...). Patio furniture isn't on clearance here yet...I'm not even sure it ever goes on clearance? It's really cute and sometime I'll post a picture of it but I don't feel like it right now. We spent most of last night sitting on the deck playing cards. The cat likes to come out with us, but wants to go in and out a lot. If we're out and he's not getting our attention to let him out he stretches up and tries to open the sliding door. If he only had thumbs.

My stomach is bugging me again today, which I'm not impressed with. This nausea thing is getting a little old. I can't seem to connect it with anything I do during the day, so I don't know why it comes and goes. And no, I'm not pregnant...why can't a woman be nauseous without everyone thinking she's knocked up? Yeesh. I'm thinking it's anxiety, but I don't feel anxious. I suppose I should see if a xanax helps anyway. I hate taking xanax, but probably not as much as being nauseous. Meh, I'll figure it out. At least I'm not having panic attacks, those really suck.

Jake starts school next week and he seems really excited. He's hoping his friend John that lives in 1304 (he's told me the kid's address like 10 times) will be in his class. John also has a little brother about 3 months older than Sam (but slightly smaller?) and Joe and Sara went over and met them all last night. They're excited to know someone in their neighborhood that speaks English well because they have a hard time understanding their other neighbors. Jonny didn't get accepted for the preschool program Sara was trying to get him into, but I'm sure that she'll appreciate having a break from at least one child everyday. The real cause of her stress is the combo of Jake and Jonny...they do everything they can to piss each other off. I hope they grow out of it, but I'm not going to hold my breath. They like coming to our house because they like our pool more than theirs. Since it's right out our door its not such a production to let them go for a swim and they've decided that the whole reason we have a second bed is for them to stay the night. Jake stayed on Friday and we spent a couple hours "jewel crafting" (that's World of Warcraft speak for beading), which he was beyond excited about. He made two necklaces, a bracelet, a pair of earrings, and a ring. I use the phrase "he made" very loosely...and I've gotta say I'm impressed with myself on the ring because it was my first time. He had a blast doing it though, so I think I'm probably going to have to get some more kid friendly supplies.

That's all for now. I've got stuff to do this afternoon, like go buy a picture frame, pick up my one hour photos from last week, vacuum (Mondays are vacuum day) and read up on IRAs and such so I can figure out where to roll my investments from Baxter. I guess they don't want to manage my accounts since I'm no longer an employee. Weird.

Toodles!

Bright and Shiny

2008-08-13T15:21:00.002-04:00

It's kinda crappy here today...only about 75 and rainy. So no pool for me today, although it's kinda nice to turn off the air and open the windows. The cat's driving me crazy - lays on top of everything I'm trying to use/read/do, is insistent about getting up on the counters, keeps screwing with the blinds, and now he's trying to eat my burrito. Earlier he was so curious about something I was doing that I nearly cut his nose off with the scissors I was using (on accident! that's my story and I'm sticking to it!). I guess he's just back to normal, but I didn't mind it so much when he liked us and was behaving.

I've spent my entire day thus far polishing up all the silver, which has turned out to be a much more time consuming task that I had thought it would be. And, true to my usual self, I've been working on it non-stop, no breaks. There are some that think I'm manic when this happens, but on the contrary it's kind of the opposite of mania - mania does not involve the ability to focus on a single task. It's just my personality. Same concept applies to my 8 hour cleaning session upstairs at camp - when I get in the zone, I gotta finish what I started (as opposed to starting and not finishing about 10 projects, which I've also been known to do).

So aside from the Tarn-x making me gag a million times, I'm pretty proud of my little project. All of the silver is bright and shiny, I polished the cabinet and washed the glass and have begun soaking the silverware (don't worry, I'm not soaking the knives. I just threw those in the dishwasher instead....I'm kidding!). The silverware was actually still wrapped in newspaper. The cabinet has a drawer but doesn't have any dividers in it, so I hadn't quite figured out a way to store the silverware properly. Then it came to me - the answer was the Dynamic Duo.

I should probably explain that last statement, hey? A few years ago my Mom gave me some material scraps from some pajamas and things she's made over the years. One of these "scraps" (about 1.5 yards) was a Batman and Robin fleece print that I think she'd used for p.j.'s for Phil. I've been moving it around with me for about 4 years, never using it. Well, I hate to break it to you folks, but Robin isn't exactly "cool" anymore, so I don't think I could plague any child I know with such a print. But I did put it to good use!

I cut a piece of the fabric and lined the drawer with it, figuring that would be good enough until I found some proper storage solution. Then it dawned on me that I still had a ton of this stuff and that I could make pouches! Seeing how focused I was on finishing this whole project, however, I wasn't about the bust out the sewing machine to craft some temporary pouches, so I did the McGyver thing and whipped out the stapler. Wahlah! 10 individual silverware pouches. My Grandmother's fine silver is now protected by none other than Batman and Robin.

Another interesting tidbit about the silver - for our wedding, Joe's parents gave us a gorgeous silver bowl from a company called Reed and Barton. It's called a Paul Revere bowl as the design was originally crafted by him and it's beautifully engraved "Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pilon September 29th, 2007 (that's our wedding date for those of you that haven't been paying attention for the last year). When I unpacked my Grandmother's silver pieces I noticed a bowl that was oddly more familiar than the other pieces (keep in mind I hadn't seen any of our wedding gifts in 9 months and I had not yet unpacked our silver/crystal, thus our bowl wasn't on the forefront of my mind). Later, when I unpacked our things, I took our bowl out of the box and set it in the cabinet, and that's when it clicked.

My Grandmother's bowl was a smaller version of the bowl we'd been given! I assumed it was simply alike in design and looked for some differences between the two, but when I turned it over I found a blue oval sticker that read "Reed and Barton" just like the sticker on the bottom of our bowl. How neat is that? I know it's a popular design (it's been replicated by a bunch of silver companies) but what are the chances that my Grandparents had the same bowl, made by the same company? I don't know the bowl's history, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a wedding gift to them as well. :) I've been really into family history lately (I'm collecting photos, send 'em if you got 'em) so this was very exciting to me.

One last significant thing about my day - Sam (our 5 months old nephew on the Kirkwood side) had his MRI today to check for neurological abnormalities that might be related to his cross-eyedness and it came back totally clear. He'll see the ophthalmologist again in a few weeks to start exploring ways to correct his eye alignment.

Other than that I don't really have anything exciting to report. It's hot all the time (today being the coldest day by far - like 10+ degrees colder) and it's not supposed to rain again in the next 9 days. I'm digging hanging out by the pool and I'm excited to have found a local farmer's market and a Trader Joe's (it's in Charlotte, but still). It turns out that there are a lot of neato things that you would normally have to travel into the city for right here in Concord on account of Concord Mills (giant mall). Oh, and there's a roller rink about 500 yards from my front door 0 yeah, I said roller rink. I didn't even know they still existed, but this one does and every Tuesday it's dollar night. I'll have a broken arm or head or something in no time!

I'm registered for classes but am waiting to get accepted to Cabarrus College of Health Sciences so I can declare myself as a degree seeking student instead of a non-degree seeking student. It's a financial aid thing, and don't even get me started on the application process. Apparently it's necessary for a person with a bachelor's degree to write an essay, submit HS transcripts, college transcripts, ACT scores, and two letters of reference to get into a community college. Whatever. If all goes well I'll attend UNCC in January (I opted to go to CCHS this fall because it's cheaper, closer, and transfers). I'm nervous about applying for the nursing program because my grades from NMU aren't exactly stellar, but I'm hoping my experience working in the healthcare field will make up for that. They give extra consideration for people who have worked (volunteer or paid) 50 hours or more in a healthcare setting...I think I got that covered.

Joe's in Marquette right now closing up the call center up there, so I've been flying solo and will continue to do so until Sunday. I recently discovered that we can get 9 channels via bunny ears, so I've been able to watch the Olympics and the news. Tomorrow I think I'm going to venture to Charlotte and check some stuff out...tour UNCC, visit Trader Joe's, see what other kind of trouble I can get into. Driving in the city will be a little nerve racking given the crappy brakes on the Jeep, but I'm sure I'll survive. Joe's bringing back the parts from Pat this weekend and some guy Pat knows down here (that's a mechanic) is going to put them on for us, so we're getting cheap parts and labor. I swear, Pat knows "some guy" everywhere.

At that I'm going to wrap it up - I need to shower to get all the silver polish out of my pores. Until next time...

Home Sweet Home

2008-08-05T20:51:00.007-04:00

Today we officially finished moving in. All of the boxes are empty, all of the pictures are on the wall, and all of our stuff is in it's permanent place. I can't even begin to tell you how awesome it feels to finally be settled, especially since I am completely in love with our apartment. It's the first time I've moved into a place and actually had the resources and time to unpack and decorate properly, and I'm very proud of the cute little apartment we've set up. Here are some pictures:

Our dining room - we haven't seen anything in this room (not one item!) in over 6 months. We never really got the chance to use our table at our old apartment...we've actually only used it for a total of 4 months since we bought it in 2006! The runner on the wall and the place mats were a wedding gift from Joe's Aunt Sue (she made them) and the contents of the china cabinet includes wedding gifts we never got to take out of the box and my Grandma Kirkwood's crystal and silver.

The Kitchen

Our living room, complete with a cat skin rug. :) The pink chairs were my Grandmother's, and we found a gorgeous table to go with them at a going out of business sale. It was originally $200 but we got it for $40!! Joe is slowly turning our place into a greenhouse as he becomes more and more obsessed with the plants, but they do look nice so I'll let it slide. The only thing I could possibly think of to add to this room is a coffee table, but we're not sure we want one. We like open spaces. We'll see.

This is the guest room y-all be staying in when you come visit. :)

This is our bedroom. I'm super excited to have the bed on an actual frame (the frame had to be stored before) and even though it's too hot to put my down comforter/duvet on the bed, I like the way it looks.

This is Joe's man bathroom, which he is just tickled about.

This is my chick bathroom - I'm also very excited.

And finally, this is our patio/balcony. You can also see our pool in the background.

Joe and I also have our own walk-in closets, which totally rocks (although I think he's more excited than I am...he has more clothes than I do and just as many shoes!).

When we haven't been unpacking we've been venturing out to find things like Walmart and grocery stores. I was surprised to find that groceries are generally more expensive down here, which doesn't make any sense to me. Wouldn't it cost more to ship stuff all the way to the U.P.? I was pleasantly surprised to find Leinenkugel's in the beer isle - we didn't think we would find the Wisconsin based beer we love down here.

We don't live very far from Joe and Sara or Joe's work and thus far we're finding our neighborhood to be pleasant. Most of our neighbors (especially all the kids) have said hi to us and we even had a girl come ask us to borrow a cup of sugar! I didn't even know people actually still did that. So most things are going really well. The thing I'm struggling with the most is the weather. It's hot and humid, which in itself is ok, but we aren't used to hydrating like this place requires. Also, since it's always so nice I'm constantly wearing sandals, which means my feet are constantly getting dirty....I'm not dealing well with that. I wash them a lot.

That's about it for now. Tomorrow Joe goes in for his first day at work in NC, which means I'll be at home with the cat (!). I'll probably venture out and try to find stuff like the DMV and the Post Office and maybe visit Sara and the kids. This weekend Jonny is having his birthday party at Chucky Cheese, and I'm looking forward to the bad pizza and screaming kids (for real). I'll try to remember to take some good pictures to post. :)

Ciao!

the big move

2008-08-02T08:04:00.002-04:00

So, after months and months of waiting, weeks and weeks of packing, and days and days of driving, we've finally made it to North Carolina. And now we have boxes and boxes of stuff to unpack! Yay! Truthfully, unpacking hasn't been bad. We haven't seen most of our stuff in over 6 months and we've never even used half of it (some of our wedding presents didn't have the chance to get out of the box) so unpacking is a little like Christmas here at the Pilon house...every box has something to get excited about in it.

We had some uhaul issues getting down here - first u-haul wanted us to drive to Wisconsin to pick up our u-haul (Joe promptly told them where to shove it) but they finally magicked one up for us in Gladstone. Sill too far, but whatever. We got the truck and Joe, Mike, Troy, and Aaron had it packed up in an hour flat. Then we had to put the Jeep on the back. There's some big long explanation about a drive shaft and transfer case or something, but basically the Jeep wasn't attached to the tow dolly correctly and every time we stopped Joe found that the straps holding the Jeep onto the dolly had slipped off. We weren't very interested in driving through the mountains with such equipment, so on Wednesday (day two) we tried to find another u-haul place along the way to switch out the tow dolly for an auto-transporter. Long story short, we spent 2 hours driving around Columbus, OH to get one only to find out there wasn't one in all of Ohio. On the plus side though, the dudes at the last uhaul place we went to figured out why the straps were falling off and once that was fixed we were good to go. Still a colossal waste of time.

With the uhaul fiasco behind us we were pretty frustrated, so we called it an early day on the driving front. So on our first day (Tuesday) we made it from Gwinn to Toledo, but on our second day (Wednesday) we only made it from Toledo to Logan, OH, which is almost two hours from the WV border. Not a very productive day, but oh well. I wasn't feeling well, so I was glad we stopped early.

When I woke up on Thursday I knew I was officially sick, since I could breathe out of my nose and my sinuses felt like they were going to explode. Ugh. We stopped at a Walmart before we hit the road and I spent like 20 minutes in the cold medicine isle trying to find the right crap...do you know how hard it is to find a cold medicine that doesn't contain a nasal decongestant? Really hard. I had to read a million boxes! (Nasal decongestants can cause insomnia and they keep me up all night, regardless of whatever sleeping medication I take, so I avoid them.) And then we drive through West Virginia and Virginia...in all of their ear popping, sinus pressure building glory. Nice.

We got to Concord at about 7:45 that night. We decided to stay at a hotel rather than Joe and Sara's because I didn't want to get the kids sick. We checked in and the Joseph Kirkwood family came by to see us. Since we were at the same hotel they had stayed at when they arrived in Concord, Jake and Jonny were more than happy to show us where the pool was and where we could "get our own breakfast." By the time everyone was out of the pool (I didn't go) I had a fever and was feeling particularly pissy, so I got ready for bed.

HayZeus traveled well and thoroughly enjoyed the hotels we stayed in. We'd gotten him some tranquilizers from the vet for the drive and he actually seemed to enjoy parts of the ride. He mostly stayed in the Jeep but when it got too warm he rode up front with us. When Jake and Jonny were here yesterday I think he would have gladly traded hanging out with them for another day in the Jeep!

After signing our lease and getting our keys, we scoped out the apartment. It's not as clean as I require it to be and from the smell of things the previous tenants were smokers, but I can fix that stuff. I took pictures of the whole place and wrote down any blemishes we found so we would have a baseline when we moved out. Joe and Joe pretty much unloaded the u-haul and brought everything up to our second floor apartment by themselves in 95 degree heat. I think they may have produced enough sweat to fill our pool. I wasn't exactly productive, but we still got a lot done.

The cat likes the new place. There's lots for him to check out right now and I think he actually missed us. I don't remember him being this affectionate, nor do I remember him being this calm. I suppose 6 months with a dog and a 3 year old can make you appreciate the calmer side of life.

I like the new place too (sans the smell, which I'm working on). Our living room is hugenormous, Joe and I have our own separate walk in closets and bathrooms, we have a cute little patio, and a guest bedroom that actually has a bed in it (courtesy of Mom and Steve). I'm hoping to get the rest of the boxes unpacked today and get out first grocery shopping trip out of the way...you know, the one where you have to buy everything under the sun? Eventually I'll post some pictures of everything, but not today.

It's nice to finally have our own place again. And our own stuff again. Living with Dee and Mastin worked out so well for us, but I was tied of living in a perpetual state of moving. I'm also really glad that Joe and Sara are down here. It's like having a little piece of the U.P. down here, which I think will be key for me in the next couple months. And then when we get sick of them, all you other Michiganders can start visiting (HINT). :)

Ok, I'm off to find breakfast. I think we might have since instant oatmeal in a box somewhere. It's either that or Doritos and M&Ms....maybe I won't look for the oatmeal....hmm...

the boogie man finally moved out

2008-05-09T12:49:00.002-04:00

I suppose it's no secret I've had trouble sleeping for months now and that I take quite a bit of medication to alleviate the problem. My inability to stay asleep started at the beginning of January when I went weeks getting only a few hours of sleep a night. I finally went to the doctor and started taking medication to help me sleep.

Something many people don't know is that sleep medications affect people in different ways. I started on a med called ambien, which allowed me to get in a couple extra hours a night but wasn't preventing me from waking up every hour or so. Rather than up the dose (which was really already maxed, but she said we could safely double it?) the doctor told me to take it as usual and then take another one if I woke up during the night. Sounded like a good plan.

Well, when Joe and I were at his sister's in LA a week later I was having a very difficult time (although I would quickly get worse when we got home). Sleeping in an unfamiliar place isn't exactly therapeutic when you're already having problems, but Becky and Fonsi had done a great job of setting up a room for us. It was comfortable and private. So I took my meds like a good little girl and tried to put on a happy face while we were there.

One night I took my ambien and lay down to sleep with Joe. He fell asleep immediately, so I just tried to turn my brain off and let the pill work. It's hard to describe what happened, but I found myself in this weird in-between state. It felt like my body was asleep because I had no control over skeletal muscle function; I distinctly remember not being able to move my arms or legs. But I was still awake, still thinking, still seeing, still hearing. I didn't understand it at all. Then I remember turning my head (or at least thinking I did) to the side. I could see everything that was on that side of the room - the door, the night stand, the carpet, etc. There was one thing, however, that couldn't possibly have been there. I was staring at myself.

I'm not sure I can explain how horrifying that was for me. I sat up sweating and hyperventilating and absolutely terrified. I woke Joe up and tried to explain what I'd experienced. He calmed me down and had me take another ambien and I made him stay up with me until it kicked in. I was afraid to let myself fall asleep because I didn't want to see that again, but eventually the meds knocked me out.

When I woke up the next day I was still scared. I thought I'd been hallucinating. It was too real to be a dream, which made it even worse. If I'd been hallucinating it meant that I was extremely bad off, much more so than I'd thought. I called my psychiatrist immediately after waking up and left a message.

She called back and explained that what I'd experienced was mostly likely something called hynagogic paralysis, more commonly called sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the bodily paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully conscious, but unable to move. In addition, the state may be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations which cause an acute sense of danger.

So it turns out I probably was hallucinating, but not in the oh-my-god-I'm-psychotic-and-will-have-to-be-sedated kind of way. But that didn't take away the fact that I was now scared out of my mind to go to sleep at night. I was afraid of the dark, afraid of my dreams, and afraid it would happen again. Since then I haven't been able to fall asleep without Joe with me or without the TV on, no matter how medicated I am (my psychiatrist switched me to an extended release medication, ambien CR, which I take a shit ton of but I no longer care that I can't sleep without it).

Well, last night something fantastic happened. Joe is out of town for work so I've been sleeping by myself all week, but never without the TV or a light on. But last night I was feeling good about going to sleep; I wasn't afraid to turn off the lights and be alone. So I turned off the TV and the light and tried to fall asleep like a normal person (after taking my medication, which I've been given a little more license over).

At first it was a little rocky - part of the reason I was unable to sleep before was because I couldn't turn my brain off...I'd think about anything and everything. But soon I found myself drifting off (which means I quit drifting, because if you realize you are drifting it means you've woken up to realize it, but I eventually drifted off totally). And then I woke up...because my alarm was going off. I'd successfully gone to sleep with a light or a tv or a Joe, stayed asleep, and didn't have any dreams or nightmares. This is a big deal, a very good big deal.

I've kind of come to terms with the fact that I'm going to need sleep medication for a long time, if not forever, at least intermittently. But I'm ecstatic that I am finally able to fall asleep and wake up normally, without fear, and feeling like I got a good nights sleep.

Actually, there are a lot of very good big deals going on for me lately. I've felt so much more like myself. I'm smiling more than I'm not smiling, social situations don't freak me out as much, I'm taking less and less xanax, and I generally feel good. My sense of humor, while forever sarcastic, is less cynical and more present. I have the concentration to read a book without having to re-read every paragraph. My appetite has stabilized, I don't have to be dragged out of the house, and I'm excited about things again. I have a few down moments here and there; there are still some things that automatically send me into panic, but that's ok. Those situations are manageable because I know how to help myself when they happen and because I finally know that I can get out of the hole I was in. I may take a lot of medication and still have to see my therapist once a week, but so long as my liver can stand it and my therapist is helpful I'm completely willing to keep on truckin'. I feel...well, I actually feel! And the feeling is finally good more often than not. :)

water bottles and staplers

2008-04-18T17:26:00.000-04:00

So my day is going along just fine. I've done the laundry, packed for our trip to Grayling, applied to NMU in case I decide to take summer classes, filled out my FAFSA...a very productive day I must say.

In an effort to have everything ready to go when Joe gets home, I decided to pack us a couple of sandwiches and stuff for the road and get everything put into the impala. Once in the impala I was going to head to the bank, although I can't remember why anymore (other than for money).

So I head out to the impala with our bag, two jackets, my purse, two books, our packed snacks, my keys, some mail for the mail box, and two water bottles. Of course it's raining, but I'm still feeling pretty good about the day, so it's not a big deal. Then the bag got caught in the door and I (inevitably, it would seem) dropped one of the water bottles.

It's weird when you drop something and you kind of see it falling in slow motion as you say to yourself "please don't break" or "please don't spill" or whatever over and over again. In this specific case, my thought was "please don't fall into the gutter" (as in the deep little pit in front of the basement windows). And of course, as usually is the case, that's exactly what it did.

So now I'm a little annoyed because I was excited to have to car perfectly packed, but nothing I can't get over, ya know? Deep breath and all that stuff. So I start walking to the car as the rain suddenly started coming down much faster. I fumbled the keys, dropped them into the mud, and then saw that I was going to have to wade through a puddle to get to the back door of the car to put our stuff in there.

At this point, I'm pretty much miffed. I got out stuff in the car and climbed into the drivers seat to head to the bank. As I'm sitting behind the wheel it dawns on me that I really have no reason to go to the bank. At all. Perfect, now I can relax and chill out after the unfortunate series of events that had just taken place.

I'm going to go ahead and throw the obvious pun out there - when it rains, it pours. I still have to get the stuff to the mailbox, but I've decided that a little rain is no big deal. So I jog over to put the item into the box. Earlier in the day I'd put some other important stuff in there for the post-person to get, but it hadn't been picked up yet. So I opened the already flag-up box to put the extra item in.

It should be noted that our mailbox has a slight "I've been hit by a baseball bat" look to it. And hey, I'm totally cool with mailboxes building character so what do I care?

I'll tell you why I care. I care because a bent mailbox doesn't close properly. And when a mailbox doesn't close properly it lets rain in. It rained today. So all of the shit I'd put in there earlier (i.e. my app to NMU, some documentation for our FSA, etc) was wet. My frustration is growing, no matter how hard I'm try to curb it. I took it out on the mailbox a little bit, but I swear it was only because it NEEDED to be bent a different way. Seriously, true story.

Ok, the bags are in the car, the mail is in the mailbox, I don't need to go to the bank...so all that's left is getting that water bottle out of the mud hole it fell into. Immediately I note that it's in an area that will put me directly beneath all of those huge drops/streams of water that come off the roof when it's raining. Absolutely no way around them, as if I'm not wet enough. But I can't leave it in there, so I went in.

I must mention something seemingly unrelated at this point. I only own two pairs of jeans. Well, that's not entirely correct, but let's just say I only own two wearable pairs of jeans The rest have stubbornly decided that they do not want to be worn on hips of my size, discriminating bastards. Obviously, I'm wearing one of these pairs. In fact, it's my favorite pair.

Back to the story. The only way to get to the water bottle is to get into the hole, nothing I can do about that. So I carefully lowered one leg into the whole as the other went into the squat position. And that's when it happened.

As soon as I heard the sound I knew it wasn't going to be some little tear. Without having to look I knew that I was dealing with a gargantuan hole. Further inspection proved me right - my favorite jeans had ripped from seam to seam on the inside of my thigh about 3 inches from my crotch.

I have my limits people.

This was the last straw.

I had no choice but to set the building on fire. Red stapler and all.

(Truthfully I just ended up coming inside, going directly to the computer and ordering new jeans...same ones, same color, same size. But setting the building on fire was a much better ending.)

validation

2008-04-15T08:47:00.003-04:00

While I wouldn't have believed it possible last Thursday, I've managed to survive a colposcopy. I was crampy and sorta sore on Friday, but I've had worse. Yesterday the doctor's office called to tell me the results of the biopsies weren't anything to be concerned about.

I asked the nurse to have Dr. Pond call me personally at her convenience because I think it's important that someone know how uniformed I was. I didn't even receive aftercare instructions, so if I hadn't dug it up on the internet I wouldn't have had any clue that I wasn't supposed to use tampons, have sex, use a hot tub, etc for a week. I also wouldn't have known that I should expect the "spotting" (holy understatement) to be gray or black nor did I know how long it was supposed to last. How would I have known that I should be keeping an eye out for excessive bleeding and signs of infection? I didn't even know what the signs of infection were! (Ok, well maybe I could have figured those out, but they shouldn't assume that) I also think I should have had to sign a consent for this, but I guess that's their problem. Along with worrying about the results, I think most of the reason I was so upset about the procedure was because I felt so disrespected. As if pelvic exams aren't demeaning enough. Once I talk to Dr. Pond I think I'll feel at peace about the whole thing.

In other news...

On Friday I saw Dr. Moore, my psychologist. I've definitely grown to like him and am comfortable talking about everything with him. On Friday we talked about my job and how I'm scared that once I'm healthy enough to return to work that I'll just crash again. I don't want to put all this effort into making progress just to have Biolife take it away. He asked me to explain why I felt that I would have a hard time returning to the center, so I went over how I felt strung along and how I perceived the management and working environment. He analyzed the situation perfectly (as psychologists do) - the number one issue I have with my job there is that I feel completely powerless. And powerlessness is not something that a person with my particular personality and disposition deals with well.

I'm not able to sit back and watch as my managers disrespect and abuse my coworkers and are so unethical and apathetic when dealing with things like safety. At the same time, however, speaking up only makes me a target for them. I'm not scared that I'll get fired, but I can certainly recognize that my work environment would suddenly become "less pleasant." This "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation is so stressful to me that I'm nothing short of miserable from the moment I walk in the back door. Even since I've been off work I find myself worrying about how horribly my co-workers are treated and feel somewhat responsible for how much harder they have to work since management refuses to do anything about our staffing shortage. Since I know that an improvement in my mood isn't going to change the dynamic of my work environment I'm plagued with anxiety about returning. But when I recognize that I'm feeling that way a part of me convinces my brain that I'm just trying to avoid having to work.

To my great relief, Dr. Moore immediately dismissed the idea that I'm trying to dodge having to work. He said his observations have shown that I am not the type that wants to sit at home without purpose, and he's right. Not being able to work makes me feel useless, so I busy myself with keeping the house clean or making sure our finances are managed appropriately or taking our cars in for maintenance or doing the grocery shopping...the list goes on. Anything I can find to make me feel like I'm accomplishing something for someone other than myself.

In addition to assuring me that he didn't think I was trying to avoid working, Dr. Moore told me something even more significant. After allowing me to explain the conditions at the center and the reasons I was so worried about returning, he told me I wasn't the first patient he had heard such things from. He'd heard from many people (some patients, some not) about the hostile working environment at Biolife and said I wasn't the only one that had such anxiety associated with the center and it's management. I can't explain how relieving it was to hear my feeling validated. He suggested that perhaps I should find a different job, but once I explained our situation with moving he agreed that quitting wasn't necessarily feasible. He said that he wouldn't recommend that I return to work until we've resolved my anger and angst toward my current employer, no matter if it took 20 minutes or 20 sessions. I think my sigh of relief was both audible and physically noticeable to him. I was so worried that my general improvement would force me to return to Biolife and ruin all of my progress. Wanting so badly to return to normal while concurrently being petrified of it is a contradiction that's very hard to sort out.

I still haven't called the center to "touch base" with them, but I don't care. Really, my health isn't any of their business. My human resource department placed me on FMLA and communicates with my short term disability company on whether or not to keep me there. So if the center's management can't figure out that HR handles this, well that's their problem. If they want an update, they can call HR. In fact, I believe that's their job and I don't feel like doing it for them.

There's that anger thing.

To end on a positive note, Joe and I (aka me - one of those things that makes me feel useful) are planning out the remainder of our time here and are excited about all of the things we're going to do. Not all of our dates are set in stone, as we're waiting for some confirmation on a couple of things, but this is our current version:
April 18-20: Visit Grayling
April 26-27: Visit my Mom at East Paint Lake
May 3: Graduation Party for some of Joe's fraternity brothers
May 5-9 or 10: I'm possibly going to visit my Grandmother and other family in Denver
May 10: Mary to take a bead class with sisters...PS, it's my birthday. If you need an address to send cards and gifts, just ask :)
May 16-18: Joe and I will drive to Grayling, then I'll carry on to Flint for Kristy's Bridal Shower.
May 22-26: Driving to North Carolina to house hunt, etc, with my brother Joe and his wife Sara
May 31-June 1: Possible date for Mackinac Island, depending on my Dad's schedule
June 7: Tentative date for a joint going away party, since Joe and Sara are going earlier than us
June 14-15: Back up date for Mackinac Island
June 13-15: Camping at Tahquamenon Falls
June 26-29: Visiting Grand Island with my Dad, Teri, and Joe's parents and brother
July 3-5: Fourth of July festivities in Gwinn, Little Lake, and Marquette
July 17-20: Travel to Kristy and Cason's wedding in Grand Blanc

So at this point, we really only have one or two open weekends for the next three months. About half of our dates are tentative as we try to coordinate with family, but that's the general idea. We're also planning on taking a pictured rocks cruise as well as a hike through Dead River Falls, but that will either be on a weeknight or on an open Sunday. All of our family members are invited to join us for any of these adventures. Hopefully our busy schedule won't be too wearing - most of our activities should be fairly relaxing.

We're both really excited to have actually made plans for all of the things we'd like to do before we leave. :)

i've been violated.

2008-04-10T15:17:00.002-04:00

So when Dr. Kroll's office called after my most recent yearly PAP smear and told me that there were abnormal cells I was a little freaked out, but I was able to get over that. They referred me to an gynecologist and scheduled me for April 10th (today). I remember being told that the GYN would take a closer look at my cervix and put a solution on it to determine what strain of virus I had. In fact, I was really under the impression that I was having another PAP smear with more advanced cytology and pathology testing. PAP smears are no picnic, so I wasn't looking forward to it, but you deal with it. That's life as a woman.

So I get to the office and sit in the waiting room, surrounded by pregnant women. No, really, every one of them was pregnant. The nurse calls me back and takes my weight and BP and all that normal stuff they do when you go to the doctor. My BP was actually a little high, but since I was about to have a huge metal apparatus shoved up me I figured that was normal. She asks me to give a urine sample (which means I peed on my hand because I've never, ever managed to pee in a cup without doing so) and then met me in the hallway and took me to the exam room.

That's when she dropped the bomb on me. It turns out I was having a colposcopy today. For those of you who haven't experienced this, allow me to enlighten you:

-The doctor came in, talked to me, then proceeded to shove the aforementioned metal thing up in my vagina and spread it apart. Not confortable, but no big deal. SOP for gyn exams.

-Second, she took a q-tip and wiped vinegar all over my cervix. It doesn't tickle, trust me. But again, it's manageable.

-Third, she took a pair of high tech binoculars and checked out the inside of my vaj jay jay and my cervix. She saw white cells, so she scraped them off. Yes, I said scrape. And not with that bottle brush looking thing they use for PAP smears. I am pretty sure she used a machete.

-Fourth, and this is my favorite part, she tells me to give her a big cough on the count of three. I'm amused by this because it reminds me of the "turn your head and cough" part of a dude's physical. But I wasn't amused for long -as soon as I coughed she shoved something up into my cervix (like where babies come from) and cut a chunk out of it. That's when I started to cry (and don't you dare call me a wuss until you've had a part of your body cut out without any anesthetic). Better yet, we repeated that 3 times. That's right, THREE times.

-After that things got a little fuzzy, but I will tell you that there was more poking and scraping around in there. I was just too lightheaded to remember exactly what she said she was doing.

-Then my uterus began to cramp in ways I didn't realize it was capable of...oh, and I started bleeding. Pretty significantly, at least until she smeared this stuff all up in there to help it stop. And I'm talking all UP in there, which means she was basically poking the areas that she's just ripped off a chunk of with a q-tip.

When she was done she told me to take my time getting dressed and she'd see me in the hallway. I laid on the table, my legs still up in stir ups, too scared to move. I was in so much pain and I was sure that moving would make it worse. So I probably laid there for a solid 5 minutes. Eventually I took my legs down, one at a time, and slowly got my clothes on. I felt like I was going to pass out at any minute.

And I can't tell you how excited I was when she told me that if the chunks inside my cervix come back abnormal that I get to come back and have the inside wall of my cervix removed. If they don't numb me for that I'll probably murder them with the speculum. Speculums aren't sharp, but I'm positive I'd be able to do enough damage.

No one told me that this was going to happen. NO ONE. I didn't find out that I was getting pieces of my body cut out of me (without anestetic) until I was in the room half naked. I'm not happy about this. Someone should have informed me...Dr. Krolls office perhaps? Could the Ob/GYN associates have included a post-it note in my patient information pack they sent me? No, that would be too logical, too ethical. Why would they tell me beforehand? And PS, shouldn't I have had to sign some sort of consent? They technically just stole part of my body from me...we had no prior agreement that they could have it.

I don't know what giving birth is like, but after today I'm soooooo not interested in it that I think I might consider celibacy, just to be sure. Abstinence, after all, is the only 100% effective method of BC.

2008-04-07T11:00:00.002-04:00

I'm told my blogs are entertaining, so even though I think they are too negative I guess I'm going to continue writing them.

Things have been kind of up and down lately, which is to be expected I guess. I think I've gotten better, but I'm not sure if it's improvement or just change. My life has definitely regained some stability and I'm sure that's helping quite a bit. But I still don't feel like myself. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm depressed and I've stopped denying how down I really am. Sometimes I tinker on the line of self-pity but I try to be vigilant and positive. It's exhausting.

When I first took time off work my biggest concern was my anxiety. I just couldn't handle being at work; it was nearly impossible to try to pull myself together and appear normal. I felt like I was barely able to keep my head above water and at some point I really couldn't. I didn't feel well on my days off either, but I was certainly more at peace than when I was at the center. I knew I was not happy with my job but I'm not sure I really recognized how miserable it was making me. Beyond it being a horrible work environment I'm generally dissatisfied by where I am career wise. I don't have any sense of pride in what I do and I expect myself to be doing something more. I didn't struggle through 4 years of college to work somewhere that requires me to have a high school diploma. What happened to my ambition?

When I started back at Biolife I was given a very strong impression that they intended to take me beyond a line staff position. I was encouraged to apply for a few different positions immediately and was optimistic that I might be able to make something more out of my time there. I probably should have figured out last summer that this wasn't the case, but I was distracted with planning and paying for a wedding. Even when I was made full time I think they were just trying to pacify me. Not to sound arrogant, but I was passed over for positions I was far more qualified for than other applicants. I think that's about the time I started to realize I hated everything about my job and that center. And it's not even worth explaining how horrible the management team has become...once Jeff left the whole center went to hell. My experience with the center has left me angry, disgusted, and disappointed. Mostly with myself.

I'm ready to go beyond this sort of job, but I'm scared to take that step. I don't really see my particular degree landing me a job I'll actually like...or at least not one that would fit into the lifestyle I'd like (schedule wise). Now more than ever I need stability in my life, not ever changing shifts or crazy paced projects. So where I do I go from here? The easy answer is back to school but I don't think I should be making such a huge decision right now. People shouldn't commit to life changing experiences while depressed, the results are often less than perfect. So I'm waiting. I'm also not entirely certain how we'd pay for such an endeavor, although Joe doesn't seem concerned about this at all. I trust his judgment, but I still worry.

I fear the possibility of failure if I chose to take this path. Pursuing my first bachelor's degree was a train wreck. I'm too intelligent to have earned the grades that appear on my transcripts and to have abandoned a profession that I've wanted to pursue since I was 14. I convinced myself that I wouldn't like it, that I hated everything about it. And I really did hate my classes, but in retrospect I know that it wasn't because of the content. It was because I couldn't tackle them. I couldn't keep myself together. Not to knock all of us poli sci majors out there, but it's a degree that is much much easier to obtain. The difference is beyond measurement. I'm glad that I managed to graduate, but in the end my current degree means little to me without the other; I'd always intended them to compliment each other. College defeated me...sometimes it occurs to me that I was lucky to make it out alive. So even though the circumstances are completely different and I know that the only one I'd be disappointing is myself I'm terrified of screwing it up again. At some point in my life I have to start accepting that the people that love me don't love me for my accomplishments.

I don't want to go back to my job at Biolife. That's not to say I don't want to go back to working once I'm healthy enough to do so. I still hate being unable to work...it would be totally different if I was home with a broken leg or something. I'm tormented by my own personal stigma of mental illness...one minute I'll be certain I can return to work and to next I'm curled up in a ball praying for the panic to pass or the meds to work. The roller coaster of it all is so frustrating and I'm not sure I'll ever be convinced that people understand.

I don't want to convince myself that I shouldn't go back to my current job, but the fact is that a majority of my panic attacks are preceded by thoughts of going to work. Apparently they thought I was coming back this week and I found out on Friday that I was on the schedule, full time. I have many issues with this - first, were they going to tell me I was scheduled? Did they think I would just magically know that I was supposed to come to work? Second, full time? Are you kidding me? Third, the idea of being back in that center scares the shit out of me. I can't even answer the phone when they call. I had to have Joe check my voice mail for me. It's not about going back to work, it's about going back to Biolife.

So at this point I'd rather quit my job than return when my health improves. But then what? We're moving in July...finding a new job seems idiotic to me. Not only would I have a hard time finding such a short term job but I'm not too excited about the prospect of being tied to a job in which I'm not invested. We intend to use our remaining time in the UP to enjoy our surroundings and our family. I'm not going to give that up for some temporary job that means nothing to me or my future. This problem presents itself at Biolife as well. I had to use all of my vacation before I used my disability. This means I'd have no time to go to North Carolina for house hunting, no time to spend on Grand Island, no free weekends for camping or going downstate to see Joe's parents, no time off to attend Kristy's bridal shower. And if I go back part-time I'll still end up working 4-5 days a week because part-timers do short shifts in the afternoon. This is not acceptable to me. We can survive without my paycheck, but it will be difficult to do all of these activities without a second income. Still, I think I would rather be poor than miss the opportunity to enjoy our remaining time here. On the priority list of life money doesn't rank very high for me.

On the plus side of things my irritability has decreased, which I'm sure is a huge relief to Joe. I've also think that I'm getting better at interacting with Mastin (Dee's son) when he's here. It's really easy to get pissy at a five year old because, well, he's five. He's got more energy in his pinky than I do in my entire body in a week. I really hated that I was annoyed by him so much because he's a really sweet kid. It wasn't just him of course...the list of people that I've been bitchy about isn't exactly short and the younger you are the higher you are on the list. I mean I have a brand new nephew and I think I've held him for a total of 10 minutes. I've been avoiding children (and certain adults) like the plague. Since when do I not like kids, seriously? I was once everyone's favorite aunt and now I'm avoiding them? That's not me, and yet it's been my attitude for a long time.

I have less generalized anxiety but have had a significant increase in panic attacks...I can't decide which is worse. I certainly hated being antsy and worried all the time. You know that feeling you get when you get pulled over? That's what its like all the time. So I don't miss that, obviously. But panic attacks are no picnic. In truth they're terrifying. Most of the time I can get through them on my own but there are times when I feel so horrible that I can't believe I'm going to get through it. These are the ones that require a lot of xanax and knock me out. It's strange the kind of physical stress it puts your body through. And it seems like these are the ones that happen when I'm by myself and everyone else is at work and unavailable. I'm only going to call Joe at work bawling my eyes out so many times, my Mom stresses me out, and my sister(s) are at work. So I try to deal (save it Laura, I can only find so many people to hang out with during the day).

My last thing I'm going to complain about today is that I'm bored. So bored. Heinously bored. I'm not one to sit still (especially not right now!) but I'm out of ideas. I've been trying to read, started making jewelry, have been hitting the gym, and have been trying to get outside and take walks. My weekends are generally my best days. I've been seeing friends and family a lot more. But I've also lost interest in a lot of things - cooking, baking, writing to my Grandma, stuff like that. I need to figure out how to expand the number of things I can actually find joy in, because Joe coming home from work can't be the only thing I look forward to anymore.

Here's Sammy

2008-03-26T13:21:00.006-04:00

Here's some pics of new baby Sam with his brothers, Jake (7) and Jonny (3 1/2):

The pictures don't even begin to do his fat lil cheeks justice! Jake and Jonny are both enjoying being big brothers - Jake insists on sleeping in Sam's room so he can help out in the morning and Jon actually stole Sam from his crib and carried him to the living room to hang out with him (in the very early am, when everyone was sleeping). His parents had a minor heart attack at this, but it turned out that Jonny navigated the stairs well with a newborn - Sam didn't seem to mind at all and is completely unscathed. Still, his parents have made sure he won't do it again.

Sam is now 10 lbs 6 oz. He is getting longer and his head is getting bigger, so his chubby cheeks are thinning out a bit. When he was first born it seemed like his cheeks were actually preventing him from opening his eyes, but he's opening them a lot more now. Sara is also doing well - she looks fantastic, although sleep deprived. :)

nobody panic!

2008-03-18T13:53:00.002-04:00

Except for me maybe? :)

My sense of humor seems to be in good form today, which is nice. I've spent days at a time in the last couple months without so much as a chuckle. I think I'll watch a comedy this afternoon.

What's happening:

-Our new nephew, Sam, is huge! He's got the cutest, fattest cheeks I've ever seen on a baby. He looks a lot like his brothers did at birth, just bigger. He's a cute little chunker. His two big brothers are very involved. Jake (7) actually sleeps in Sam's room so he can "help out." I don't think an atomic bomb could wake Jake up in the middle of the night, but it's a nice gesture. And he does help out in the mornings according to his Mom.

-My teeth have finally stopped hurting from the work I had done about three weeks ago...hooray for chewing! But I go back for more the week after next...eye yi yi!

-I actually went to the gym on yesterday, and then again today. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying it...so weird for me. I've discovered that if you read while you're on the treadmill or stationary bike that time just flies, so I've been checking out the chick magazines they have there. My concentration still isn't the best, but I can usually get through a couple pages about lipstick or fashion or face cream. I couldn't care less about any of these issues, but it does the job. I hit the pool today, but it turns out I can't swim freestyle in a straight line anymore! I don't like backstroke, have never properly coordinated my breaststroke, and will never have the abs for butterfly. So I tread water for a while and called it good.

-We had corned beef and cabbage at my Dad's house last night. It. Was. Awesome. I like visiting my Dad, but Joe had to push me out the door last night. We got into a discussion about my health. My Dad is a smart guy and is very science-y, but he absolutely positively does not understand mental illness. He doesn't get why I can't just will myself better, no matter how much I try to explain the chemical/physiological side of it all. I know it's how he expresses concern, but it's frustrating. Joe very smoothly geared us up to leave before I got upset.

-Our former landlords are trying to keep over half of our security deposit, so we're disputing that. Unfortunately for them they waited too long to give us our list of "damages" so they have to give it all back no matter what. Our settlement statement is dated 2/26 but was postmarked 3/12, which is more than beyond the 30 days they have to send us all this stuff. So they've essentially screwed themselves. We could have spray painted the walls and they'd STILL have to give it back to us. Even better, if they don't give it back to us we can take them to small claims court for double the amount. I'm a little surprised at their ignorance of these laws, but I suppose a lot of tenants don't dispute stuff like this so it's easy money for the landlords. Sad. I get all fired up about this kind of stuff (which isn't actually good, currently) and I'm going to the post office later to send them our dispute via certified mail. I love being right.

-Hmm. I'm not sure I have much else right now? We'll try tomorrow.

Update

2008-03-15T15:07:00.003-04:00

All in all, this has been a pretty tolerable week...except for Tuesday:

On Tuesday, my PCP called and informed me that my pap smear was abnormal, so I've got to see a GYN on April 10th. The cells were positive for HPV, which I was a little taken aback by...actually, I was pissed (currently my most visited emotion). Never at Joe, just pissed...who knows when I was exposed to it, that's life. I called my sister and talked to her about it and felt better after word. I was totally freaked out at first, but I've discovered it's not worth it to be worried. The whole reason women have yearly paps is to catch stuff like this. On the 10th I guess we're testing to see what strains are there and then we treat from there. I'm starting the Gardasil series on the 1st, which I'm a little puzzled about. I'm going to trust my docs on this one.

I also saw my therapist and I'm always uneasy after that, but we established goals and a treatment plan. So that's good. After therapy I went to get my haircut. As she was starting the cut (she'd just made her first cut - 5 inches off the bottom) my psychiatrist's office called and said they'd had a cancellation and wanted me to come in....so Steph had to power cut my hair so I could get the the doc on time. It looked like total shit when I left the salon, as it was soaking wet and as it dried it got all puffy.

I was a mess at the psychiatrist's office. Rather than being relieved about getting in to see her, I was oddly nervous. I was either going to panic at any moment or I was tinkering on hypomania. I was scared about the inevitable medication adjustment - I can deal with my current side effects, but I am worried what different meds will bring. I was worried she'd put me on a benzo on a regular basis (instead of PRN), which I don't want because the risk of dependency is sooooo high. To say I was agitated is the understatement of the year. You could argue I shouldn't have been driving, both to and from her office. She decided to increase my anti-depressant and told me it was probably going to make me have more panic attacks before it levels out, which takes 6 weeks. Fan-fucking-tastic (excuse the language, I'm venting).

I disagree with her medication adjustment. I'm definitely still depressed, but the depression isn't currently ruling my life. Sure, it makes me feel like shit most of the time, but it's not TOTAL shit so I can handle it. It's the anxiety, irritability, agitation, inability to focus....my memory has gotten so bad that sometimes when I'm typing I forget what word I'm supposed to be spelling. I can't finish a task, I get so distracted that I'll be on the computer and suddenly have 1o tabs open in Mozilla, all of which are different subjects I suddenly NEED to look into. One could argue that these are all symptoms of depression, but since I feel like I've had 5 cups of coffee and can't keep up with my thoughts I would argue otherwise. Then I crash. I'm afraid the anti-depressant will make this worse.

But I didn't go to medical school so it's ultimately not my decision. As they say, the doctor that treats thine self treats a fool. So we start another 6 week trial and error process. I'm off for another month from work. The extra meds are giving me headaches, but they're manageable. I'm having some issues with the amount of medication I have to take (which is common) but I still take it all (perhaps no so common in BP patients). Mostly I'm bored, so I'm trying to find a hobby. I'm trying to be positive about getting better. I'm doing the right things and eventually the combo will work. Next week I'm going to try try try to start getting out of the house everyday and going to the "W" (community center) to start getting some regular exercise. I'm reading (slowly) a book on managing bipolar disorder. We're working on my anger in therapy. I'm trying to get into the habit of charting my moods. I'm trying, I want to get better, and I will. But I think my Tuesday could have knocked anyone on their ass.

Now, the good stuff!!!

Our newest nephew, Samuel David, has arrived!
He was born on March 13th at 4:38 pm via C-section.
He's 10 lbs 4 ounces, 21 inches long.
The doc barely got the word c-section out before Sam's Mom was signing the consent...they knew he was going to be a bog boy :)
We haven't been to see him since Joe's sick and I don't want to carry his bug into the OB unit, but we'll visit him at home later this week. I'll put some pictures up when I get some.
We now have 10 nephews, 2 nieces, and another niece on the way. Our siblings have been busy over the last 16 years :)

Joe's boss put in his notice on Friday, so Joe's job description changed quite a bit, as did his salary. He's been working his butt off and is getting recognized for it. I'm very proud of him!

Our claim for the car (I was in an accident a few weeks ago) is going to be covered under our broadform policy. Hooray for no deductibles!

It looks like we are going to be stuck up here for a couple few more months, but there are definitely some positives to this: I will probably be able to go to Kristy's bridal shower, we'll be able to spend more time with our families before we move so far away, and we'll be able to save more money while our rent is so cheap. Actually using our savings account makes me happy.

My hair, while looking horrible when I left the salon, actually turned out really well. I'm enjoying it.

So yeah, minus Tuesday, not a bad week. Perhaps this coming week will be even better!

Thursday already?

2008-03-06T09:40:00.002-05:00

I had no idea that today was Thursday already, but that's what day my pill container said it was so it must be true. It's strange - I feel like the time I've had off from work has both flown by and dragged on, all at once.

Tomorrow I go back to see Dr. Kroll for a follow-up. Monday is the end of the two week period she wrote me to be off, but I have a feeling she'll extend it tomorrow. I'd like to go back to work, but I don't want to go back only to have this happen all over again. Joe suggested that I shouldn't go back until I stop having such severe anxiety any time we go somewhere, such as grocery shopping or out to dinner. I'll admit that he has a point. There's also the fact that I really haven't had any time with my therapist and the fact that my hands still shake most of the time. All these arguments aside though, I really just want to function at a normal level again.

I'm running out of stuff to do during the day. I did a lot yesterday, but I was allllll over the place. The stuff that took me all day long to do could have been accomplished in about 2 hours, but I was far too scattered. Yesterday was a very anxious day, but I'm really starting to consider Dr. Moore's suggestion that these periods might be hypomania. But while I think the pieces might fit the symptoms of a hypomanic episode, that doesn't really put me any closer to controlling them. I'll have to do some reading on how to treat such mixed symptoms, as I'm already on a mood stabilizer. It occurs to me from time to time that I'm far too undereducated about bipolar disorder.

I haven't told my mother this yet, but I've sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to continue seeing my current psychiatrist. Other than the ones at MGH, there are literally no other psychiatrists in Marquette. The only private doctor recently joined the inpatient staff when Dr. Von Grief retired. That's right, the last name of the doc on the psych ward was grief. I always found that hilarious. Anyway, of the 4 doctors at MGH's behavioral health department, 2 of them are addiction psychiatrists. So I'm seeing one of the 2 adult psychiatrists, and I'm not interested in seeing the other one. She's far far far too conservative with meds - I've known many bipolar patients of hers that she hasn't even put on a mood stabilizer. Not gonna fly with me. But I don't think that Dr. Kroll will a) want to and b) really be able to manage my medications. She's a wonderful doctor, but she's a family practitioner, not a psychiatrist. Specialties exist for a reason.

So I'm back to not seeing a psychiatrist until the 17th. I'm currently not on the schedule at work and they won't put me on it until I tell them to do so. Even without a doctor's note saying I'm unable to work I'm on a personal leave of absence - up to 16 weeks, no questions asked. After I deplete my sick and vacation time however, I won't get paid unless I'm on STD, which requires the doctor thing. I understand that I need to be off work right now, but I'm worried that my STD claim will get denied. I don't know why - there's no reason for them to deny it. But sometimes, when I'm at home and seem to be functioning ok I feel like I'm playing the system. And then I do something like spill soup because my hands tremble too much to keep it on the spoon. In the end I think the problem is I hate admitting weakness, something we're sure to address in therapy.

Today I'm going to make my Grandma a birthday card and start harassing our old landlords about our surety because they still haven't given it back. We moved out on the 25th of January, so they've had way over their 30 days. I'm also going to work on getting the paperwork for Joe's medical records to be released to Dr. Kroll's office so he can get a physical. I don't think he's had one since he was in sports in high school and everyone should really have one every year or so. Our insurance covers it 100%, and while I'm sure that I'm making our insurance worthwhile (even though the mental health coverage sucks), he should use it too.

Something else I'm pondering since my physical on Monday is the HPV vaccination. The PA brought it up and we discussed whether or not it was something I should consider. She said I fell into a gray area - I'm in the "at risk" age group, but I'm also married. That being said though, I still have the whole STD panel run every time I have the exam. As I told the PA, I have absolutely no reason to think I'll get an STD, but I also don't want to be naive and be convinced that my life will always be perfect. Plus, our insurance pays for that too. Blue Cross Blue Shield isn't going to make a dime off our premiums! I'm fairly certain that Blue Cross will cover the Gardasil series as well, so why not? I'll have to do some reading and think about it.

2008-03-03T13:51:00.003-05:00

It's 2 pm and I am exhausted. I spent the first 6 hours of my day seeing my new therapist and having my annual physical, both of which were uncomfortable and nerve-racking. It's gorgeous out and I should really take a walk, but all I want to do is veg out on the couch. That and I'd probably break every bone in my body - it's sooooo slippery outside because it rained last night.

The only word I can think of to describe my session with my new psychologist is predictable. He asked your standard "get to know your patient" questions, discussed goals, established the beginnings of a relationship, etc etc. I have no problem with this guy, don't get me wrong, but I miss my previous psychologist, Dr. Matthews. He was wonderful, but he retired. Such is life.

When I left his office I felt emotionally tired and bit upset about some of the things he told me. He said he didn't think I would meet my goal of sleeping without medication and that he thought I expected far too much of myself. I guess I knew he would say the latter, as I've been told that a million times, but I don't think he'll get me to lower my standards. Perhaps, however, he'll help me figure out healthier ways to meet them. He also asked if perhaps my anxiety was mania in disguise, which is something I'll have to think about.

As soon as I was done there I went to see the PA at Dr. Kroll's office (my PCP). I've heard some people aren't huge fans of the PA, but I love her. She's remarkably thorough and easy to talk to, even at the height of the awkwardness of a woman's annual physical. She went over my labs from last week, which were basically normal. My BUN and creatinine were on the low side, but nothing to be concerned with...I've always landed on the lower sides of the ranges for basic metabolic tests.

What she was concerned about was the 6 pounds I've lost since I was there last Monday, which I explained were due to my lack of appetite. She and the therapist asked me the typical eating disorder questions, but I gotta say I can't imagine ever bingeing or starving myself. I like food and hate throwing up wayyy too much to put myself through that. I simply do not have an appetite, thus I have to remind myself to eat. I suddenly find that it's 4 pm and all I've eaten is a bowl of soup. And unless I'm really into the food at hand (such as Joe's Mom's pie this weekend) I just am not hungry enough to eat a lot of it. I probably would have eaten an entire rack of ribs at the Lodge this weekend (once Joe convinced me to order them) but I was having a tough time not bursting into tears while we were there. That's kind of an appetite killer, ya know? But I'm working on it, now that I'm a little more aware of the problem. If all goes well I'll have those pounds gained back by my follow-up on Friday...not that I need them so much. :)

With the exception of the fact that I had some serious anxiety issues during dinner and for a while thereafter, Joe's parents visit was great. When we got home from dinner I went upstairs and waited for the xanax to kick in, and once it did I was 100% comfortable again and had a great evening with them. Joe's Dad had suggested that they go back to the hotel early, I think to give us some space because I wasn't feeling well, but Joe assured him it was ok to stay. I'm very glad they did so - I would have felt horrible if they'd left because of me and I genuinely had a good time with them once I calmed down. We were going to play some cards, but I probably would have zoned out staring at the queen or hearts or something, so we just vegged out. I hate how drugged I feel with the xanax, but I can't argue against it's effectiveness. It's a trade off I guess. We all had breakfast the next day and I was sad to see them go. We don't see them enough.

I've got to make a note on a couple good experiences I had today. First off, while I was at Dr. Kroll's, I saw in the hall and she asked me if the medical info form she filled out was ok for my STD claim, which it was. I could tell she wanted to ask me more, but she was on her way out the door to, get this: a house call. Who does those anymore? Dr. Kroll, that's who! I remember her coming to see my Grandma at home a lot.

Also, I went to the post office to mail a package to Crystal and I just love the guy that works at the office inside Brown's Store. It's the same one that was there when I was in high school. Despite his ridiculous shirt and tie combo (which I kind of found endearing) he's so cool! Very high energy, super helpful, the kind of guy you could stand at the window and chat with forever. I've forgotten how much I love the atmosphere and attitude at Brown's...it's a little gem that for which I'll never find a substitute.

That's it for today. I'm going to go make myself lunch (which, let's face it, is going to involve finishing off the pie) and then I think I'm going to allow myself to relax. My Mom called just as she was getting ready to order lunch at Applebees, so I told her to eat some for me. She told me to eat some bonbons for her. :)

PS - I've looked up what bonbons are! Actually, there are so many different kinds it's sort of confusing, but here's the top definitions:
-a ball of ice cream, about the size of a cherry, covered in chocolate
-a candy, the simplest being a sugar coated almond
-any confection with a fondant center, often with fruit or nuts, covered in fondant or chocolate, or any other confection consisting of a sweet centre covered by a loose sugar or flavoured coating

I dunno, it sounds to me like it's a catch-all for little bite sized thing that taste fricken awesome.

2008-03-01T09:04:00.002-05:00

I can't remember the last time I was up, dressed, and ready for the day by 9:00 on a Saturday morning. But a schedule is a schedule!

It's absolutely beautiful outside this morning. It's sunny and we've gotten some fresh snow in the last 24 hours or so. Sunshine on fresh snow is always pretty. Harry loves the sunshine.

I guess I should mention who Harry is...when Joe's grandfather died last January we brought home a small plant that someone had sent for the funeral. Joe watered it and took care of it all winter and in the spring I set it out on our porch. Shortly thereafter, a strong gust of wind took the plant off the porch and onto the ground a story below. I think we both figured that the plant was a lost cause, so we left it. This summer, however, we found that the neighbors below us had set the plant upright and had been watering it. So it was still healthy and we brought it inside. Despite HayZeus's multiple attempts to destroy it and/or eat the leaves off of it, it was still kicking when we moved in with Dee. But just barely.

Dee and Matt immediately took the plant in and slowly nursed it back to health. When Matt was home during the day he would move the plant around to make sure it was in the sun at all times and Dee checked to see if it needed water every day when she got home. One day I came home and Joe, Dee, and Matt had decided to name the plant Harry (in honor of Joe's Grandpa). Since then Harry has had to be repotted and probably needs a bigger pot yet again. So Harry is healthy as can be and is basking in the sun this morning, as Matt has already moved him into the light of the window. That's Harry's story.

I spent the last tow days organizing, uploading, and printing out photos. When I went to pick some out to send to Crystal I found that our pictures from our wedding and honeymoon were very hard to navigate, so I reorganized them. I've also been promising to upload them onto a photo sharing site for months and months, so I did that as well. That took a day and a half, but they're all up there now. And I did manage to print off 10 or 15 photos to put in the package we're sending to Crystal. I'm a little peeved that it took me so long, but I'm glad it's done.

Last night Joe and I went to Marquette (the first time I've left the house for a reason other than to see a doctor) to grocery shop. There's a grocery store here in Gwinn, but unless you're only getting a handful of items it's totally worth the drive to Marquette. We ate and Big Boy and then went to Walmart and SuperOne. By the end of the excursion I was very unsettled and anxious, but I was able to use my medication to prevent myself from totally freaking out. That's how it's supposed to work.

I was very tired by the time we were done putting things away and such, in part I'm sure because the xanax knocks me out a bit. Although the doctor says it's fine so long as I don't take within the same half hour or so, I'm a little hesitant to put sleep medication on top of a benzodiazapine. Also, the last two days I've actually had to be woken by my alarm and was still sleepy, so I thought perhaps I could get away with taking less of the sleep meds. I was wrong. I was up at 4:30 this morning staring at the ceiling for a long time. I think I finally fell back to sleep around 7 or so, only to hear my alarm at 8. Oh well, at least I tried.

Joe's parents are coming up today. I'm excited to see them, but I'll admit I'm a pretty nervous about it. I don't like being around my own parents when I'm like this, let alone Joe's. Still, we haven't seem them since Christmas and it will be nice to spend some time with them. Hopefully my nerves will subside and I won't have to be medicated all day...but even if I am it will be good to see them. I have no idea what we're going to do all day though. We're going to dinner at the Up North Lodge, which has phenomenal food (I used to work there) and I'm hoping I'll be able to handle the busy atmosphere of the restaurant. We've also invited my Dad and Teri to join us. This adds to my nervousness, but I'm sure it'll work out.

I've found that when I've been home these last couple days I'm much more relaxed than I was even earlier this week. I get crabby and pissy from time to time, but I'm not nearly as on edge. I have absolutely no appetite and frequently realize it's 4pm and all I've had is a bowl of soup when Joe was home for lunch. I'm fairly certain I've lost 5 pounds in the last few days and I know that's not water weight because I drink about 80+ ounces of water a day. The two major side effects I get from my meds are excessive sweating and dry mouth, but I think the dry mouth is mostly because I'm dehydrated from sweating so much (Yes, I really sweat that much). I've got a prescription antiperspirant that's helped a bit, but I still sweat through my shirt a couple times a day.

On Saturdays we have coffee hour (or two) - Dee, Laura (sister in law), and my sister congregate for coffee. This weekend it's at our house, which is exciting because I get to participate. I don't like going to Missy's because they smoke in the house and it bothers me and my lungs a lot. So I should go, because the coffee's on and Missy and the kids will be here soon.

PS - Ben and Jerry's was stillll on sale at Walmart last night, so we got more. Maybe I can gain those 5 pounds back in ice cream.

homebody

2008-02-28T11:41:00.005-05:00

I'm going to be off work for a while I guess. I saw my primary care physician on Monday because I needed a couple days off and I couldn't get into my psychiatrist. I burst into tears the second she walked into the room...I don't think she's seen me cry since I was like 7. Thus, she refused to write me a slip for two days...she insisted on a minimum of two weeks. I fought that pretty hard, but by the time I left the office I was resigned to that fact that she (and apparently everyone around me?) was right.

I've been working on getting better for about a month now, and I really thought I was on the mend when we got home from Florida and California. But when I went back to work I struggled. I couldn't joke around with my co-workers who eventually realized I was so touchy they didn't try. My hands have been shaking for weeks now...not so much a good thing when you're a phlebotomist. Halfway through my shift I just fade, which is usually about the time we get busy. One afternoon my stomach suddenly started to clench up, my chest tightened, and I felt like my whole body was shaking. My heart rate was over 120 and I was suddenly petrified about everything that I could possibly think of. It wasn't until all that subsided that I realized I'd had a panic attack.

I told my psychiatrist about this when I saw her a few days later. I hadn't had another attack so to speak, but I hadn't been able to relax much. She prescribed a benzodiazapine and sent me on my way with 3 months of all my meds, come back in 3 months. So she didn't really address the panic thing other than to give me 20 pills to use PRN. I was having a decent day though, so I didn't think much of it either.

The next day I had a severe panic attack at work. I managed to get off the donor floor just before I broke down, but just barely. I sat on the floor of the locker room bawling and quickly took one of the xanax. My supervisor came back, told me to take my lunch, and got me some kleenex. After 20-30 minutes I called my Mom to see what the onset was supposed to be for the xanax and to see if I should take another since I didn't really understand the label.

She didn't answer. Freaking out, I called my sister who had just been discharged form MGH that morning after gallbladder surgery. She immediately found my Mom (although I don't know how) and was in the process of trying to find Joe's work number before I agreed to leave work. Laura picked me up from work and brought me to her office while we waited for Joe, whom I'd pulled out of an interview to come get me. It was literally three hours before I calmed down and I took an entire milligram of xanax to get there. Eventually I just fell asleep, but had another minor attack that night.

I can't imagine what it's like for my family when I'm like this. They worry, they check on me, some of them seem to have a sixth sense...my Dad and brother Joe rarely call just to chat, but both of them did this weekend. Neither had any idea what was going on. What I think they've learned though is that I won't do the things I need to do to get better until I am ready. My Mom is really good about pushing me towards those things, but sometimes that results in me avoiding her altogether. She practically had to dial the phone for me to go see Dr. Kroll after sitting with me until I agreed to take two days off. The whole fam was very glad to hear I was taking time off.

I fought the doc hard on taking two weeks off. Actually, two weeks was a compromise. She said I needed to be off work until I was set up with a therapist and was effectively using other anti-anxiety techniques. She didn't change my meds because they really aren't at peak levels yet, but she did draw some labs. I haven't had labs done since August of 2006 and considering I'm on 6 different medications, it's time to check out my liver, etc. Another one of my Mom's ideas. She had me write down everything I needed to tell Dr. Kroll. Yesterday I finally came to terms with my need to be off work. I went into the center to drop off paperwork and what not for my leave of absence. I sat in the parking lot for 15 minutes collecting myself beforehand. When I finally went in I didn't even look at any of my co-workers, who are my friends. I went directly to the managers office, did what was necessary, and bolted from the building. I was about 2 blocks away and I had to stop and collect myself again.

So here I am at home. I don't feel better, I don't feel relaxed, I just feel lazy and upset that I can't function. What a piss poor attitude, hey? Mame told me I was not allowed to sit on the couch in my pajama's and eat bon-bons for two weeks (what the hell are bon-bons anyway?). I don't think I would do that anyway...TV doesn't do much for me.

So instead I've made a list of things I can do to keep myself busy-ish and to make me feel a little less useless for not working. The top of the list was finding a)a therapist and b) a new psychiatrist because Mame has finally put her foot down about my current doctor. Oh, and I eat Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia instead, as I've been addicted to it since we got back from California.

Finding doctors has proven problematic. I'm certainly not going to open the yellow pages and pick a therapist at random, but all the ones that been recommended to me are scheduling in the middle of March. Also, Marquette is kind of low on the psychiatrists, minus the ones at MGH, but those are also pretty scarce. So I'm still working on that.

In the three days I've been off so far I'm most bothered by my inability to multi-task. It killllllssss me. That's how I function, it's how I work. But I can't. So I have to choose one task for each day and take my time. I hate it i hate it i hate it. swear I'm not a negative Nancy all day long, this is just one of those moments.

I'm also on a (self-made) schedule, which I've based off of the one I was on when I was an inpatient. I'm not allowed to sleep past 8:00 and I have to be showered and dressed by 9:30. Joe comes home for lunch now which is good mostly because it forces me to eat. 3:00-5:00 is my free time...thats when I can watch TV or just relax on the couch or whatever. No naps though, I've just recently regulated my sleep. Dinner is around 6:30-7 and I'm in bed no later than 11:30. I've also decided I am going to update my blog at least every other day. Writing has always been therapeutic to me, so I'm going to start doing it more. Especially until I can actually see a therapist.

Since my appointment on Monday, Joe has suddenly altered his schedule - he goes to work for 8, comes home for lunch about noon, and tries to be home around 5. He has to bring work home, but that's ok. I really appreciate that he's coming home to be with me. I think he's frustrated because he doesn't know what to do to help, but this definitely will. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, he's is (as usual) being completely wonderful and taking exceptional care of me in anyway he can figure out. I'm very lucky.

Today my project is all about pictures. I'm getting photos together to send to Crystal and starting the process of finally getting pictures uploaded onto a photo sharing site. That's it. That's the whole day. I'm still not done. But at least I've got it rolling - it's totally ok if I have to finish tomorrow. I've got nothin' but time.

PS - Everybody chill out. Or at least don't let me know you're freaking out. It stresses me out when y'all freak out (y'all - practicing for the move down south). And I don't need stress - I'm fragile, remember? :) Probably don't call either - talking on the phone about this stuff gives me the willies. I don't need those either.

If you want, you can email me. Better yet, you can bring me Ben & Jerry's, because I DO need that. Currently, it's on sale 2/$5 at Walmart. I'm willing to clean out the freezer to accommodate multiple pints.

Look at that, I'm already not being such a Debbie downer. I knew this writing thing was a good idea.

crash

2008-02-09T23:45:00.000-05:00

Things have been difficult lately; it's taken its toll on me and I would assume, in turn, on Joe as well. To say we've been stressed out is definitely an understatement. Joe has been working long hours (although I think he enjoys them), I'm not particularly happy with my job, and then there's the moving. The endless moving.

I haven't been well. Not surprisingly, I severely underestimated the effect all this would have on my mental health. I was at least three weeks too late getting myself to the doctor and have had to return almost weekly since the 8th of January. I haven't cycled in a long time, but I'm still bothered that I missed the signs. I suppose I shouldn't dwell.

I don't remember my last night of sleep that wasn't assisted by medication. The only night I tried to sleep naturally since starting the meds was horrifying - I had vivid nightmares that I found hard to separate from reality and felt like I was stuck somewhere between sleep and consciousness; it was as if my body was sleeping but my brain was still awake. I think I probably only slept for about an hour the whole night.

Even with medication, I'm not sleeping through the night most of the time. I wake up around 3 or 4 every day. I used to be up for hours, thinking about the most irrelevant things until I was finally able to drift off around 6 or 7, only to be woken by my alarm a few minutes later. Now when I wake up my brain doesn't have much to say - it just tells me that I'm awake, that I should see what time it is, and tells me if I can take another ambien and still be able to function in the morning. If there's not enough time, it tells me to lay back down and wait to fall asleep again, which still takes at least an hour. The controlled release form of the med didn't help much, so we're forever increasing the amount I take. I'm still having trouble with an 8 hour work day, but at least I'm not as exhausted as I was a couple weeks ago.

Moving out of our apartment was disastrous for me, which was made worse by the fact that it happened so suddenly. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor and crying while I tried to pack or unpack things. Joe tried very hard to keep me out of the moving process, but he finally reached the point where he accepted help. Thankfully we got some helpful hands from my family, namely Mike and Laura, but it was still very hard. I was unable to go to work for a couple days and was barely functioning when I returned. By the time we were completely moved out and had cleaned the apartment it was Thursday and we left for Florida/California the next day.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't miserable the entire time we were gone. It had nothing to do with where we were - we had wonderful hosts in Florida and it was great to see Becky, Fonsi, and Christopher in L.A. But I was not in the right state of mind to enjoy myself. It took so much energy to try...even to just relax and watch a movie (which I didn't have the attention span for). We did what we could to make the best of our trip, but the only thing I wanted to do was go home. But I didn't know where that was...home to me was our apartment in Marquette on our couch in our living room, but we'd left that. The apartment was left empty, our couch in storage, and I couldn't even picture what our new living room looked like. It was a conscious effort to not stay in our room constantly and Joe had to guide me through my tears every night.

Poor Joe. I worry about him and how he's been dealing with this. While I'm certainly better than I was two weeks ago, I know I'm still taxing. He gets the brunt of my irritability, agitation, and anger. I fear he feels he's responsible for bringing recent stressors into our lives. But it's not about the stressors, its about how my brain and I deal with them. And since no one can control whatever cocktail of neuroreceptors my brain wants to mix up, that can be a toughie. He's been absolutely amazing thus far and I have no doubts that will continue....but I can tell that sometimes he's working hard to not be angry or annoyed with me, like at 2am when I ask him to stay awake with me until my sleeping pills kick in because I'm too afraid to let myself fall asleep naturally because of the nightmares. I know that would piss me off. And yet he's my rock, always understanding and supportive, always ready to let me drench his shirt in tears. I wonder if he knew what he was getting into.

So now we play the medication game, trading side effects for serotonin; headaches are tolerable if I can muster up the concentration to read a book, sweating is fine if I can just stop shaking with anxiety at work, nausea is manageable so long as I have interest in eating. I attribute most of my improvement, which has been relatively little, to the amount of sleep I'm forcing upon myself. The med I'm on is classified as "miscellaneous" anti-depressant, so I don't know what rules it plays by...I'm guessing it takes 2-6 weeks. This is the beginning of week three.

Its odd how one day your therapist tells you you're moderately depressed and the next you're forced to accept that you have a life long mental illness. Odder still is looking back on your life and realizing that you can't argue otherwise; seeing that everything you've ever done spells manic-depressive. But what I can't get over is even after all the hell it's put me through, I've forgotten to respect the condition. I can ignore it for as long as I want, but it will not ignore me.

Decisions, decisions

2008-01-07T14:06:00.000-05:00

I hate waiting. Not at the Post Office or on the phone or in line at the grocery store. While annoying, those are all necessary waits that are only made longer and more difficult to weather if you allow them to bother you. So I don't mind waiting for the cute little old lady to count out her change when I only need milk. And I don't mind when the lone worker at the Post office is being monopolized by an impossibly needy person when I just need to buy stamps. But even the most patient person on earth will admit that there are some waits that are seemingly unbearable.

A month ago, Joe's company announced that they were looking to consolidate all of their U.S. operation under one roof....a roof in North Carolina. Everyone was told that their job was available to them in NC once the company was relocated, Joe included.

You would think most people in Joe's position would be upset/fearful about the idea of moving or possibly losing his job or the uncertainty of his future with his company. But not Joe. No, he was terrified of one thing and one thing only: asking me to move for the fourth time in two years.

And I'm not gonna lie, I'm not very impressed with the idea. I actually love the idea of relocating to North Carolina (took a little while to sink it, but now I'm on board with it) and the idea of actually getting outside my comfort zone (and Michigan). What I do not love, however, is the act of putting everything I own into boxes. And then taking it out again. Especially not for the fourth time in two years.

Now comes the waiting part. When they announced the relocation they weren't yet prepared to provide information on relocation packages, i.e. moving benefits, salary changes, etc. Those details are scheduled for release this week. So I should feel like the next person in line at the Secretary of State, right?

Wrong. Because while we'll get that information soon and will be able to use it to make our decision on whether to stay or go, those details will not include a time frame. So we might know we're moving but will have no idea when. Thus, I've gotten to the counter and the clerk has told me I need a document that I can only find at the County Clerk. Just one more line, right?

But wait, there's more! Our lease is up at the end of this month. We can a)sign a new lease b)stay here and pay a higher rent amount in addition to a month-to-month fee or c)move out of this apartment to a cheaper place with no lease that accepts pets and hopefully has a lot of storage because if you think I'm going to pack all my shit into boxes just to unpack them at a new place so I can turn around and put them back into the same boxes you're off your rocker. I'd rather hang myself. So basically the County Clerk just told me they don't accept plastic so I'll need to head to the bank. I can do this, I swear.

Just a few more bumps, right? I was planning on going back to school in the fall, but now I don't even know where I'll be living. I hate my job and want nothing more than to quit it and move onto something else, but there's a serious lack of something else around here. We'd probably need to go check out the area in NC, but we'll be in Florida and California from the 25th through the 2nd and we have to commit to our decision by February 12. Oh, and PS, Hilary Clinton is leading in the national polls and she scares the hell out of me, but we won't know how that pans out for about 10 more months.

Somehow, I'm back at the Secretary of State and they've told me to take a number. Currently, they're serving number 29. I look down at my piece of paper:

∞

(it's the mathematical symbol for infinity)

I hate waiting.

must...have...more...space...bags...

2007-12-28T16:20:00.000-05:00

So apparently you're supposed to have a vacuum with a hose attachment in order to use space bags, but I've found that a little bit of body weight and a good set of lungs do the trick.

Problem is the goodness of my set of lungs is questionable, so I feel like I'm going to have an asthma attack at any moment...

But I'm still thoroughly convinced that everything I own needs to be stored in one of these bad boys. Bedding, pillows, jackets, sweaters, the cat...

Everything.

Must have more space bags, and possibly a refill for my inhaler.

Hooray for vacation!

2007-12-27T14:52:00.000-05:00

Ahh, vacation. I'm catching up on sleep, enjoying some quality apron time (that's what my boss calls it when she hears me telling everyone I can't stay late because I need to go home and cook dinner), and getting a bunch of other small projects done. I haven't cleaned the house, but hey, I'm on vacation right?

Today I spent a large portion of my day sorting through bills, filing stuff, that sort of thing. I filled out the paper work for reimbursement through my health savings account, printed return labels for a few things we're returning to amazon.com, found my passport (not that it's any good to me now that my name is changed) and checked Hayzeus's medical records to see when his next set of vaccinations are due.

I spent at least an hour writing a scathing letter to MGH's Emergency Department because their billing department is completely incompetent. In November of 2005 I went to the ED's Walk-in clinic for some symptomatic treatment of a respiratory infection. They billed my Dad's insurance in November of 2006, a full year later. Basically the insurance company denied the claim because it was over a year after the time of service and because I was no longer receiving benefits from the policy. So then, three months later in February of 2007, MGH decided to bill me for it. I called to find out why it took them 15 months to bill me and they told me it was because the opening of the new ED caused delays. Piss poor excuse in my book, so I told them I was absolutely not going to pay the bill, especially since my insurance would have covered it if they'd submitted the claim in a timely manner.

They kept sending me bills and I kept telling them I wasn't going to pay it. Then, in August, my bill had a mysterious payment made on it. I soon found out that my Mom had made a payment on her account and they'd credited it to mine because we had the same first and last name. I called them and told them it needed to be credited to her account and the next bill they sent me had the credit removed, stating it had been transferred over to account #XXXXXXXX. So not only had they failed to double check they were applying it to the right account in the first place, they also listed my Mom's account number on MY bill.

It turns out that account numbers associated with individual patients are considered Protected Health Information. Can anyone say HIPAA violation?

But the last straw came today when I called them about a different bill. When I hurt my back at work I went to the Express Care clinic at MGH's ED. While I was there I game them the forms from my employer authorizing them to treat me and informing them of our worker's comp insurance company's name, address, and claim number. Still, I recieved a bill in the mail for the services provided to me that day. So again, I called to tell them they had their heads up their asses and they simply proved my point by telling me they didn't have any record of the letter from my employer authorizing them to treat me nor did they have record of our worker's comp insurance company's name, address, and claim number. I told the lady on the phone that I'd provided all of that information at the time of service, but she kept asking me for it as if I had it in front of me but was trying to keep her in the dark.

So I spent a lot of time tracking down my old insurance information, asking my Dad to look for the Explanation of Benefit forms to go along with the November 2005 visit, researching HIPAA, and composing an extremely curt letter for MGH's Emergency billing department, which I plan on sending copies of to the CEO of MGH, the Better Business Bureau, JCAHO, and maybe even my state rep, just because I can. I don't even care if they all think I'm some crazy person so long as MGH writes off my bill from November of 2005.

I also went to the dentist today and had the first of three crowns put on. It's weird having a whole tooth where I used to have fragments of one, but I'm pretty jazzed about it. I'm also excited because Joe and I beefed up our health savings accounts to pay for all my crazy dental work (and other health expenses he and I will certainly accrue) so the expense won't seem as painful for us.

The day after tomorrow we're going to my Mom's for Christmas. I guess that's Saturday, but I don't really know what day of the week we're on right now so I'm taking Joe's word for it. Right now I think I'm going to go make a beef pot pie with the left overs from last night's pot roast (and gravy, which I recently learned how to make from Joe's Mom!).

Christmas Time's a coming...

2007-12-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

I think we're almost ready for Christmas. At least I am...but Joe says he still has major shopping to do (for me) this weekend. Ever since Thanksgiving we've been avoiding WalMart and most other shopping holes like the plague because of the crowds the holidays bring. While I've been able to do the majority of our Christmas shopping online or at small local stores we've finally reached the point where we need to go shopping for non-Christmas items - stuff like toilet paper, shampoo, etc etc. So tomorrow I'm going to try to get that done before work (at like 7:30am). Then I have a handful of things to pick up at the grocery store after work, no big deal. On Saturday Joe and I are both getting our haircut at the place in the mall (our stylist works there, we love her) and while he's getting his done I'll snag the last two items we need and then I'll get mine cut and go home. Joe says he's going to need a couple hours to shop for me.

After shopping we'll head out to my Dad's for Christmas there. I'm hoping to be there by 2 or so, but realistically we won't make it until 3 or 4. After we're done shopping we still have wrapping to do and then we need to get everything together for our trip to Joe's parents house on Sunday. We're still debating on whether or not we'll come home after my Dad's house and then leave from here on Sunday or if we'll just stay down there and leave from good ol' Little Lake. It will probably depend on how prepared we are to leave, etc. etc. Plus, we should come home and pet the cat before we go to Grayling...he'll never forgive us if we don't.

Tonight I have one last Christmas craft project I need to finish up and hopefully I'll get to do a little wrapping too. We also have to make an appearance at a co-worker's Birthday dinner. I probably should have done some wrapping and stuff last night, but we relaxed, had some pizza, and watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3. So today, tomorrow, and Saturday will be action packed days...but what's Christmas without chaos, right? :)

Random Christmas Stuff

2007-12-16T14:07:00.001-05:00

We put our tree up last weekend while Joe's sister and brother were here. Much to our surprise, HayZeus hasn't destroyed it yet. He's actually made himself a little lair underneath the branches. More often than not (assuming he's not running around the house like a madman) he can be found here:

We also acquired a china cabinet from my Mom and Steve last weekend. Joe put all of the nice glasses and such we got for the wedding on display in it:

Apparently the cat thinks he's one of the nice things we got for the wedding.
On Thursday I stayed up wayyyy too late to finish up my contributions for the cookie exchange at work. I'd regretted signing up the instant I put my name down, but it was too late to drop out so I sucked it up and made up some bags of assorted candies. I don't like making cookies...I don't mind making the dough and putting the first cookie sheet into the oven, but after that I get bored/tired/distracted and I usually end up burning half of them. I try to stick to candy and bars instead.

Unfortunately, by the time I was done with everything on Thursday I was throwing things and swearing a lot. Nothing ever goes right when you're overtired and trying to dip truffles into chocolate that just won't melt correctly. On the plus side of things, I think I'm nearly done with my Christmas confections - I have a batch of Chocolate Raspberry Crumb bars in the oven now and have two more bar recipes I want to try.

Last night was my work Christmas party. The dinner that management put on was fine I guess, although you could tell half the people in the room didn't want to be there. That was the half of the room I was on....along with all of the people that had attended Andy's Pre-Christmas Party Party. We all got together at his house beforehand and worked on a quarter barrel of Bud Light...I think there were about 25 of us there. Words cannot describe my hangover today, but we all had a great time.

We also spent some time yesterday at Joe's co-worker's house for a cookie decorating party. I spent over an hour decorating cookies, and these are all of the ones I made:

Yeah, over an hour on four cookies. This is why I don't make sugar cookies.

Anyway, back to the kitchen to finish up. Then I think I'm going to catch up on ANTM and Grey's via the internet. Toodles~

Baking Woes

2007-12-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

On Sunday I started in on my Christmas baking/candy making. I got my ingredients organized, made a couple batches of fudge, and decided I'd finish out the night with a batch or two of Butter Brickle.

Try more like 4 batches...only one of which is edible.

For some reason or another, I was always under the impression that Butter Brickle was difficult to make. So until last year, I never made it. I also don't remember liking it as a kid - crunchy candies weren't my favorites, so I would usually just lick the chocolate off the top and slyly leave the rest on a napkin somewhere. But last year (or the year before?) I decided I would start making my Grandmother's recipe as part of my Christmas confections.

After making it for the first time last year I remember thinking how dumb I was for assuming it was difficult to make. The recipe has 5 ingredients, including the Hershey's bar melted on top! Combine sugar, water, and butter and cook until golden brown (hard crack stage), stirring constantly. Add pecans, put in pan. Rub Hershey bar on top when set but warm. Use wooden spoon and medium heat. So no big deal to make it this year, right?

Wrong.

Everything was going fine until I got to the almost golden brown stage (soft crack stage). Suddenly the butter started separating out and the sugar began to crystallize. By the time I added the pecans and put it in the pan it was a mess! Just a bunch of burnt sugar with butter standing on top. Gross.

So I did what anyone would do. I tossed it and tried again, figuring I'd stirred it too much or not enough or that I'd added something wrong, etc etc. But the same thing happened again.

And again.

At this point, I was in tears because I was so pissed that I'd messed up such an easy recipe. I'd called my Mom and asked for advice, I'd tried adjusting the heat, I'd read like the whole Joy of Cooking, I'd tried everything. I even broke out the candy thermometer, which I never do because I purposely don't make candy that requires one. And still, just burnt sugar with butter on top.

Finally, I started to scour the internet. No way was I going to quit. So I searched and read every candy site I could find. My first problem was that Butter Brickle is really a type of toffee, but once I found that out things were easier to look for and I finally found my answer.

Salt.

I'd picked up butter at the day before, and it was in a cooler with two types: salted and unsalted. I didn't think anything of it...just grabbed the two pounds I needed and went on my way. I'd picked up unsalted butter, which really should make much of a difference in most things....except candy.

Salt, I read, helps to stabilize the mixture, therefore keeping the butter from separating out and the sugar from crystallizing.

Simple chemistry.

I hate chemistry.

Perhaps more now than ever before.

Anyway, my fourth batch finally turned out. I'm certain Joe thought I was insane - crying, growling, yelling out the temp at different crack stages. Total lunatic.

So today I decided I would make another batch before work and a batch of peanut brittle, another easssssssy recipe.

The butter brickle is too soft and the cashew brittle is a watery mess.

I give up. Everyone's getting store bought candy and cookies this year.

The cat has gone bananas

2007-12-05T17:50:00.001-05:00

Hayzeus is trying to eat a banana out of the fruit bowl.

I'm sorry, but that's totally fricken weird.

A Snowy Weekend

2007-12-02T16:28:00.001-05:00

Over the past 48 hours or so we've gotten somewhere around 8-10 inches or more of snow. I'm loving it. I'm personally of the opinion that if everything is going to look dead and it's going to be cold and gloomy then it might as well be white! Plus, it's just not Christmas unless it's snowy outside. Here's what the trees near our parking lot look like now that it's stopped snowing

Snow puts me in a Christmasy mood, so I've been doing a lot of online shopping. I'm also getting the urge to bake, so I spent some time taking an inventory of the ingredients I have on hand as well as making a master list of everything I'll need. Then I cross checked them and made a grocery list. I've been slowly accumulating baking necessities over the last month or so, which is nice because now I won't have to endure the shock of buying everything at once.

I was also craving chocolate. No, that's not quite the way to put it....I REQUIRED chocolate (you ladies know what I mean). It's been months since I needed chocolate that bad, so I had to make some no-bake cookies, which are like all chocolate (otherwise I probably would have eaten an entire bag of chocolate chips). Not exactly on my diet, but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.

Mame and Steve got married this past Friday. Mame spent two weeks looking for a dress--buying many and returning all of them before finally settling on one that was soooo the opposite of a wedding dress. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to go shopping with her. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the quality time with Mame, but I'm not a shopper. Mame, on the other hand, has to touch everything in the store. So it's rather excruciating. I almost got my sister to take her, but in the end Missy guilt-tripped me into going along. It was a lot more tolerable with both of us there though. And like I said, quality time with Mom is a plus.

I took Friday off and Mame and I went to the cosmo school and got pedicures, which were good, especially considering they were only $10. Missy came over when she got off work at the hospital and Joe got home about 3 with Missy's boys in tow (he'd picked them up from daycare on his way home). Mame went home to get ready and we all gathered at the courthouse around 3:45. In attendance were: Myself, Joe, Mike, Laura, Missy, Timmy, Odin, Julie, Mame's Boss and her husband, another co-worker, Rick and Cheryl and Lax and Katy (practically aunts and uncles to me) and two couples that are close friends of Mame and Steve.

And so they got married at 4:00. I think the ceremony lasted about 4 minutes and I somehow got appointed the photographer, so I'll share a few:
Before the Ceremony (with the flowers and boutinere that I made for them)

Vows and Such

Rings:

At the restaurant afterwards:

Uber cute pic of Joe and Timmy at dinner

(For those of you who haven't noticed, I intentionally refer to my mother by her first name. I do this for two reasons: first, to get revenge for my grandmother, who hates that my mom refers to her as Betty, and second, because I've found that she flat out doesn't respond to "mom," no matter how many times you say it, yell it, scream it, etc. etc. So it's not a respect thing. It's just more practical.)

Other than that, Joe and I did very little this weekend. I cleaned the house, read two Harry Potter books (I'm re-reading them all), and sat around in sweats. We've barely left the house really, and it's been wonderful.

In other news, Baxter has decided to restructure Biolife. The company finally figured out that the phlebotomists have the hardest job in the center and that we pretty much control everything from yeild to cost per liter and has thus decided to compensate us accordingly. They gave everyone in the center a raise and also decided to cross train everyone at the basic level for every job in the center. They renamed everyone Plasma Center Technicians (instead of Phlebotomist, Medical Historian, and Sample Prep Tech).

The main phlebotomy team was given a raise on top of the center wide increase and we're all training to become "Master Plasma Center Technicians" because we're all advanced trained in what is now being termed "plasma collections". Once totally trained, this will put us "Master Techs" at more than $4/hour than we all started at - most of the phlebs were given a pretty big bump in pay this week. Unfortunately, I didn't qualify for the first round of raises because I was already the highest paid phleb on the floor (except the few that are already cross trained, because they fell into the new middle position - Sr. Plasma Center Technician). I'm a little bitter about this because I was previously cross-trained (first time I worked there) and have been told for months that I would be retrained in that area, but it never happened. On the other hand, I should be a "Master" by the spring and will get a raise at annual compensation time in addition to the yearly COLA (cost of living adjustment).

In the end it's just a lot of title changing with new, significantly higher, pay ranges for the different titles. Still, it's kind of nice to know they they finally figured out that the success of a plasma center rests on the quality of the phlebotomists. We're no longer the Interrogators and the Bruisers (our old softball team names at the annual center game) because now we're all on the same team....but some of us rock way more than the rest. :)

Hooray for a short week!

2007-11-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

It's a three day work week for me this week! The center is closed on Turkey Day, I took Friday off and I don't work Saturdays, so I've got a four day weekend. Score!

Interestingly enough, the only day we aren't celebrating Thanksgiving is on Thursday. Somehow I convinced nearly all my siblings to travel to Kenton to my Mom's house for dinner on Friday and we'll have dinner at my Dad's on Saturday. Most of them have in-laws to visit in Gwinn or Marquette, so this works out best for everyone. I think Joe and I are going to get together with a couple of his brothers that can't get home to see their families.

I'm actually pretty glad we're not eating dinner anywhere special until Friday, as I'm not entirely certain how much I'll be able to chew. I'm having some dental work done on Wednesday...something like 3 crowns, a filling, and something else that sounds unpleasant. I'm going to be at the dentist for 2 and a half hours and she didn't seem to think I'd be very interested in chewing for a while. I'm also not very interested in paying the bill, thank you. Yikes.

This is the first year that Joe and I haven't gone to see his parents for Thanksgiving, mostly because we thought they were going to be in South Dakota. While I wish we could have planned things to see both of our families, I haven't actually been home for Thanksgiving in a couple years. I think we managed to make it to my Dad's last year, but definitely not my Mom's. Plus, I think my Mom is really pleased we're all going to her house. We'd thought about going downstate the weekend after Thanksgiving, but my Mom is getting married that Friday so we had to trash that idea.

And then there's Christmas. I'm trying to get my family to make some decisions about Christmas, but I'm not expecting much. We just nailed down Thanksgiving plans on Friday even though I've been emailing everyone for over a month. We're really still struggling to set traditions since my parents got divorced. We used to all get together on Christmas Eve for the day, people coming and going as needed, then everyone went home so Santa could come and if you were available you came for dinner on Christmas night. Now no one seems to know where to go or when. We usually get together with Dad on the Saturday before or the Saturday after, which works out great, but it seems a little different every year with my Mom. I'm the only one that has to drive more than half an hour to see my in-laws, so it's difficult to get my siblings and parents to have the foresight to plan stuff more than a week ahead of time.

I've decided that this year I'm not going to make the same cookies I always do, mostly because I don't actually like either kind very much. Thus, I'm shopping for recipes. Suggestions welcome!

Alright, off to work.

Worker's Comp

2007-11-04T14:38:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I feel at work. In the back of the center we keep all of softgoods (saline, anticoagulant, disposable sets, needles, plasma bags) stacked on pallets. At the end of a shift we have to restock our phlebotomy carts, as well as put back-up stock into bins so they are easy to grab when we use up everything on the donor floor. Unfortunately, our center wasn't really designed to handle the amount of donors we currently process. Thus, the softgood area is very overcrowded, with our boxes of stock stacked too high and wedged against each other. In addition to this problem, the pallets we use are not really safe. They have large divots in them, which are just perfect for say, someone's foot to slip into.

While I was stocking on Monday, these two problems came together. A large box I needed to use to stock our bins was pinned between two large stacks of solutions (saline and AC). In order to get the box out, I needed to get behind it, lift it to chest height, and push it over the boxes it was wedged between. While climbing over the box, my left foot slipped off the edge of the pallet and my right foot slid into one of the divots in the pallet, causing me to fall. The box broke my fall, but my left knee hit the corner of the box, causing me to twist a bit as I landed straddling a box that is about 2.5 feet wide. The stack of boxes behind kept me from falling backwards, but I still still essentially in the splits. My knee started to bruise immediately, so I put some ice on it and filled out an incident report.

On Tuesday, my back started to hurt. Truthfully, I figured it was PMS since that's how it usually starts for me (in hindsight, that was a pretty dumb assumption since it didn't really work out on the calendar). On Wednesday my left hip was hurting, and by Thursday morning my leg was tingly and it hurt to pull my knee to my chest and to rotate my hip outwards. I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep that night. I was a little bewildered - I've had back and hip problems for a majority of my life, but always on my right side, never my left. Finally, it dawned on me that this was probably because of my fall.

I went to work on Friday morning (I'd had Thursday off) and told them about my back. They immediately sent me to Occupational Health to be examined. I was pretty confident that nothing was seriously wrong, since my pain was muscular, but the pain was pretty intense. I'd been taking 800mg of Motrin and it wasn't touching it, so I was mostly looking for some pain relief and a chance to rest, since being at work only made me more miserable.

The doc at occupational health did an extremely quick (albeit pretty thorough) exam and said I'd strained my lumbar region, which I expected. He didn't however, address my hip pain or take any x-rays. He gave me a prescription for Cataflam, which I'd never heard of, and cleared me for work immediately. My shift for the day was over by the time I left the office, so I was able to go home, but I was going to have to work on Saturday. And after looking Cataflam up I discovered he'd basically given me Motrin, which I'd already told him wasn't doing anything for me. Still, I figured he was the doctor, so I followed his orders.

I probably should have called in on Saturday, but I'm stubborn and didn't think I should have to burn my sick time for a work-related injury. In addition to that, we were already significantly short staffed and I like my co-workers too much to strand them so short handed. By the end of my shift I knew that I'd made a mistake, as I was now having shooting pains in my back and the medication wasn't working on my pain. I informed management that I needed to go back to the doc, and since occupational health was closed they sent me to the ER.

The PA at the ER was extremely nice, but he did a horrible job of covering his surprise that I'd been released to work so quick, especially without x-rays or adequate pain control. So we took x-rays, which showed scoliosis but no fracture, and decided I'd strained not only my back but also my hip, probably worse than the doc at Occ. Health had though. He sent me home with Motrin for inflammation and anexsia for pain and wrote orders for a 1-2 days off work and light duty for a week after that. I'm supposed to return for a follow up in 10 days, sooner if I don't get better.

While I understand that these things happen in the workplace, I'm a little frustrated by it. 70% of our incident reports (according to the nurses) are related to the softgood area, and most of the phlebs have commented on how dangerous the new pallets are because of the divots. What bothers me is that I'm nearly certain that my injury, nor anyone else's incident, will change the way things are stocked in the back (because that's how our management rolls). But I'm also not very sure what I'm supposed to do about it, which is even more frustrating. It's not really my style to let these things slide.

Two Hours Later....

2007-10-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

The Office is clean!!!

And as a bonus, a super cute pic of the furry one:

What is this, three in a week? Woah!

2007-10-30T10:11:00.000-04:00

I think I'm going to try to update a little more often.

No, seriously this time!

Mostly I'm updating right now because I need to clean to house, so I figure if I put it off it will clean itself. Our landlords are coming today with their bank inspector, so I think it's time to clean up the office. Because, um, it's bad:

The Bath and Body works bag in the middle of the picture (by the pillows) contains my wedding dress, veil, and shoes, just stuffed in there. Yikes...don't tell my Mom.

On the plus side of things, they gave us a $5 gift certificate to Family Video for the inconvenience of the inspection. If our rent wasn't so high I would be sad to leave this place when our lease is up.

Another plus-Check out how awesome our bedroom is with our new sheets and duvet:Kitty likes it a lot, and I like it even more because his hair doesn't stick to it as bad and it's a lot easier to wash since it's a duvet. Plus it's a dream to sleep with! :)

In other news, it sounds like out photographer is almost done editing our wedding pics. She sent me a few teasers:
The middle one is the one I've been hoping for...all of the other shots I've posted so far have mostly (but not all) been the work of my sister-in-law Sara, and they are gorgeous! But I was lacking a great one of Joe and I looking at the camera...you know, your classic wedding photo. I'm excited to get a print of it to put in our wedding frame.

Also, we finally purchased a new vehicle. It is inevitable that my car will eventually die (although not soon enough for my liking) and my Dad and Teri offered us their Jeep Cherokee for a great price since they recently purchased a new car. We're both happy to have something with 4 wheel drive for the snowy days that Joe has to drive to Gwinn for work. Otherwise, I'll use it here in town, since I don't do much driving and the Impala gets better gas mileage. I would post a picture, but I'm too lazy to go take one. But since I know you're all dying to know, I will tell you that it's green and has a CD player (hey, those are the first questions I always ask).

Hmm. I guess that's it for now....time to clean the house. :( Tonight I'm making cookies or other baked good for the kiddie Halloween party at Joe's work tomorrow. Any ideas on some neat-o Halloween themed goodies? Shoot them my way!

Toodles!

Marital Bliss, etc etc

2007-10-26T11:35:00.000-04:00

Ok, so now that I have that massive post about the wedding all set, I can update on everything that's happened since the wedding.

Our honeymoon was a blast. We took 400+ pictures and I'm working on posting them (along with all of the wedding pics) on a photo sharing site for everyone to see. I'll keep y'all updated.

We put an offer in on a house, but it got rejected and we refuse to pay any more than we offered, so we're back to looking.

This last weekend we finally had the time to open and put away our wedding presents. At least most of them...our second bedroom is a WRECK, but at least the rest of the house is finally clean. It's just the cat's room anyway!

I was offered and accepted a full time position at work, which makes me happy. I pretty much work full time now (I average 34 or so hours/week) but now I'm guaranteed 40 hours and only a few, if any Saturdays. Also, when I take vacation or sick time I get paid for 8 hours instead of 4. Score!

I have successfully written all of our thank you notes and sent almost all of them out (gotta buy more stamps). Joe helped too - he was the adhesion specialist (he licked the envelopes, put on the stamps, and attached the return address labels). I'm glad to have that done, although I must admit I really don't mind writing thank you notes.

I'm trying to get my family to start coordinating Holiday plans, which is proving to be difficult...ugh...

We were given a KitchenAid Countertop Mixer for the wedding. Thus, it seems like all I've done since the wedding is bake, which means I have a lot more cookies and a lot less room in my jeans....yikes.

I officially changed my name, but my bank just can't seem to wrap their minds around it. They want me to hyphenate SO bad. But I can't, because legally I'm not hyphenated. Plus I don't want to. And then they get mad at me when I call them to tell them my name is wrong on my debit card or statement..."well your name change card has a hyphen on it"...which I can guarantee I didn't put there. So I finally just had to convince them to skip any middle initials and put my first and last name ONLY on the card. And that still took two tries.

I started Christmas Shopping the other day, and I'm a little...wierded out by that. I mean, it's not even Halloween...but it will feel soooo good to have it done early...

I think we are going to go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show tonight. I've never been before, and neither has Joe. Tomorrow we're going to a costume party. I'll post pics of our costumes.

OH! We found our camera, which had been missing since before the wedding. It was tucked in a gift bag in the second bedroom, perhaps from the bridal shower. I'm so glad we found it!

The Wedding

2007-10-26T09:55:00.000-04:00

Hmm, I'm not even sure where to begin on this one topic (could be a long blog!). I guess the weekend officially started when I got out of work at 6 the Wednesday before the big day. When I got home, Joe was just arriving after picking up Erika, the first of my bridesmaids to get here. Then we picked up Kristy and Cason (MOH and Usher/recently engaged best friend and her fiance). Later that night/early Thursday morning Crystal arrived and our house was officially chaotic.

Thursday was a day of running errands: getting my engagement ring cleaned, my haircut, Kristy's hair cut, picking up the cake server from the engraver, gathering up the last minute supplies I needed for Joe's wedding gift, buying some beads for some jewelry items Kristy was going to make, that sort of thing. And everything went beautifully, until I realized that my flowers weren't here like they were supposed to be...

The plane our flowers were coming from California on hit a really bad storm. So bad, in fact, that the windshield of the plane cracked and it had to make an emergency landing. We found this out after many, many phone calls to the wholesaler and my friend Derek who works at UPS, and it eventually became clear that the flowers would not be arriving until Friday afternoon. Since the flowers were supposed to rest overnight before we arranged them, this was a problem, but the girls at the wholesaler assured me that it would be fine to arrange them Friday night after the rehearsal dinner. This was clearly not great news, but since I couldn't really do anything about it I decided it wasn't an issue. My Mom certainly thought it was (and in the end she was right), but I did what I could to calm her down and not let her freak me out.

Thursday night Becky, Fonsi, and Chris arrived, as did Brad (B. Man), Lauren (bridesmaid), Ruth (Joe's Mom), Teresa (best friend) and Kurt (Usher/cousin). I made a huge batch of spaghetti for everyone and we all ate and drank a couple (read: Mary had like 5, oops) glasses of wine (it was from a box, therefore weak) before Crystal kicked us out of the kitchen - she had a cake to bake!! So we all did the smartest thing we could think of - we went to the Third Base.
9 am Friday brought us our nail appointments, and about....930 am brought me a ridiculous hangover. I asked Missy (sister/Matron of Honor) to get me some orange juice, she brought me champagne. By the time my nails were done and my feet were pedicured I was ready for bed and possibly an IV. I was home for about 20 minutes before the flowers arrived though, so I was kicked back into action mode (arguably the best cure for a hangover, although it never seems that way at the time...). Kristy, Missy, Julie, Erika, and myself went to the hotel to get the flowers in water, after the super team of groomsmen hauled all of the decorations, flowers, luggage, and whatever else I asked them to take to the hotel. They were great!

We got the flowers in water, cut the stems (mostly Missy on that one), and peeled the outer later of petals off of the ones that needed it. We'd been in the hotel room for about 3 hours and it was TRASHED - it looked like the jungle book had puked on the floor. But we left it like that and went to the Church for rehearsal.

The rehearsal was pretty typical, minus these details: This was the first wedding the priest had done, so I basically ran the rehearsal. During the mock processional was the first time my Mother was informed that my sister was a bridesmaid. Teresa informed me that my Mother is now engaged. You know, run of the mill stuff.

After the rehearsal a lot of the bridal party went to the Landmark for a drink (resulting in a chunk of them being wasted at dinner), but Kristy and I went straight to the Villa. Honestly, I still don't know where my husband to be was at the time...which was pretty much the case until I walked down the aisle. Anyway, the rehearsal dinner was great - we ate pizza and salad and everyone got a chance to mingle. Perfect.Back at the hotel we started arranging the flowers. At least, most of us did. One of my bridesmaids was MIA (a theme for the weekend!) and a couple of other people that were supposed to be helping out didn't come through. It worked out though, because we had some unexpecteds show up - like my Aunt from Colorado, my Mom's friend Cindy (that I've known all my life, but met for the first time that Friday?), and a few other wanderers. Turns out that I'm either a)really bad at flower arranging or b) was too distracted to actually arrange them. Thank goodness for the Moms here...they slaved away all night.

Glenn came around 10 or so to put my hair into curlers, which is about the time that my Grandma showed up and told me I was too young to get married. Then there was a fiasco with the front desk being idiots, which I corrected while in my curlers and face mask (that was fun!) and eventually I went to bed. I think I slept for like....3 hours. Yeesh.In the morning we ordered bagels and Glenn came to do our hair. Mine was just how I wanted it, and I can't even tell you how great my sister's was! He also did my Moms and Kristy's. This happened at everyone was still scrambling to arrange flowers and as my sister-in-law Laura and niece Brooklynne slaved on the reception space. Suddenly it was time for me and bridesmaids to go for pictures and we realized we didn't have a way to get to pictures...so we called in Steve, Mom's fiance. He bussed us to the Cemetery for pics, which were a lot of fun (especially the ones where my bridesmaids somehow got me up on a tree branch without killing me).
Then is was back to the hotel for a break before the Church.

This is when things started to get sticky for me. Suddenly I couldn't remember my vows, my Mom was freaking out, and I wanted to take off my dress and sit quietly. So I did. And while I sat there, my bridesmaid stood 4 feet away talking about whether or not I was ok. Two of them were like..."wow, she's so calm"...and my sister took one took at me rocking on my heels and was like..."Yeah, not so much. Someone get her a drink"...and Kristy was already pouring me a glass of wine. Sister in law Sara (who was with us taking pictures-gorgeous ones!) ran to McDonalds to get us something to eat and then we again realized we had no way to get to the Church. So we drove ourselves...good idea for the bridesmaids maybe, bad idea for me.

I went to the wrong Church.

Kristy very calmly informed me that I was, in fact, at the wrong church and I pulled out the parking space I was working on parking in and carried on to the correct Church. Once at the Church, it felt like things were falling apart at the seams. The groomsmen didn't have their boutineers yet, so Lauren tried to pass them out, but gave the wrong ones to the wrong people...we didn't have any pins for the flowers...my hair was going flat on one side....one of my bridesmaids was being a real pain in the ass....my cousin (who was supposed to wrangle the flower people) was running late...and my Mom was missing...WITH MY DRESS. (It should be noted that she was probably late because she was arranging flowers til the last minute)

So I sat in the nursery of the Church with my Brother In Law Troy while we watch his 2 year old and our 3 year old nephew play. Sometimes I paced, sometimes I rocked on my heels, sometimes I just sat and took deep breaths, solaced by the fact that I knew Missy was somewhere on a cell phone screaming at my mother.

Literally 2 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, my Mom could be seen running through the church with a very large pink bag (my dress). And so we were ready to start.

I was in such a hurry to get down the aisle that I really didn't wait for everyone to stand before I started. The ceremony was beautiful...Joe was as unprepared as I was when it came to stuff we were supposed to memorize, and I thought I was holding it together pretty well until HE started to cry, at which point I lost it. And the whole chuch "awwwww"ed when he pulled a kleenex out of his pocket for me. His vows were perfect, so much so that I had trouble reading mine, and I had a really hard time not leaning over and telling him all about all the things that had happened since I'd seen him last.

During one of the readings though, I did lean over and ask "Joe, did you bring the marriage license?" We sent my cousin Kurt to get it after the ceremony. :)

And then, before we knew it, we were pronounced husband and wife:

After that it was pictures, pictures, pictures. Then we took the limo to the beach and took more pictures. The reception was amazing...even my sister's drunken speech! :) The food was great, the cake was gorgeous and delicious ( I have no idea how to even begin thanking Crystal for that cake...it was so amazing!), and I danced until Joe dragged me from the floor. I was rather shocked when I started crying while dancing with my Dad, but the song he picked was great (and he sung parts of it to me!). My maid of honor followed me around all night with water, and Joe and I made sure we said hello to every person there. Finally, at the end of the night, Joe informed me that I was to meet him in our room in 15 minutes.

I went to my room and gathered up my stuff and stopped at the front desk for a key to our suite. And I would kill for a picture of me hold my train in one arm and dragging my suitcase with the other as I walked down the sidewalk to the annex of the hotel, where our room was.

Joe met me in the hallway, took my suitcase from me, and picked me up to carry me into the room (like in the movies!!). Inside the room there were no less than 50 candles lit, and the jacuzzi tub in the room was full and bubbling. I was speechless.

I think I've always had pretty high expectations when it came to the idea of my wedding and they were certainly met, if not exceeded. A few things went wrong here and there, which is unavoidable, but it was still the way I always wanted it. But what I finally figured out is this: while all the details make for great memories, the only thing that really matters is the person across from you when you say your vows. And I never could have expected to see such an amazing man standing there.

Getting it together

2007-09-16T00:37:00.001-04:00

After a series of long, focused, deep breaths I finally think things are totally under control. And I haven't even gone to see my shrink yet! :)

Of course it's probably a bad idea for me to do the deep breathing thing right now, since I just filled the room with chemicals from the spray glitter I just shot my veil with....No matter though!

I had Friday off from work, so I spent the day sending out some emails to get a few things organized and trying to get the house picked up. Truthfully Joe and I never have a dirty house (because neither one of us can stand it) but it does occasionally get cluttered, which is just as bad in my book. So I did what I could to take care of that. Last night and tonight I concentrated on the "office" because it was trashed with everything from shower gifts (we've decided not to start using anything until after the wedding when we have everything) to wedding decorations to my bridal emergency kit.

What's a bridal emergency kit, you ask? Well, it's a collection of things that a bride might need on her big day. Things like:

Hair pins and bobbie pins
gum
mints (because if I so much as think about popping my gum during the ceremony Joe might leave me at the altar)
bottled water
straws (so I don't mess up my lipstick while staying hydrated)
granola bars (you never know when I'll get hungry)
clear nail polish (for running panty hose...not that I'm going to wear those pain-in-the-ass things
hair ties
Tide (TM) stain pen
cold medicine (non-drowsy)
motrin
safety pins
tampons, etc
lotion
chapstick
bandaids
tums

Anyway, I have tamed the office. I even took some arts and crafts time to write all of our attendants' names on ribbons to tie on their champagne glasses and to make super-sweet reserved signs using left over invitation paper and a wax sealer. So it looks pretty good (well, right now there's an old sheet on the floor and my veil is hanging from the fan, but that's temporary).

I have at least one last WalMart run to make for a few random things and I'll need to get some groceries on Tuesday or Wednesday before the wedding so I can feed the people staying in our house. On Thursday I'm going to make spaghetti so that everyone that's in town won't have to go out to eat and all that. We have a white board keeping track of everyone's arrival....flight times, where they are staying, who's picking them up...the works.

Tomorrow Joe and I are going to tackle our bedroom, which is pretty cluttered (his help in contingent on his health...he is STILL sick). Then next weekend we'll super clean the house and make sure we have all of our bedding washed for the people staying here (we have a FULL house) and all that.

Today we picked up our wedding rings. I was going to have Joe's engraved with an Irish Gaelic saying, but he picked out a titanium ring, so that's out of the question. I do need to take our cake server to the engraver though. Joe purchased flasks for his groomsmen (minus his brother, who he is still shopping for) and he's going to have them engraved when they arrive. I got some super cute stuff for my bridesmaids, but I can't say what they are since some of them read my blog.

Tonight I organized all of our decorations into boxes. There is a specific box for the church and for the gift opening (not really decorations so much as napkins, cups, etc) and the ones for the reception are all labeled with the contents. I typed up some instructions for decorating - I've put Teresa and Julie in charge of decorating, but they are definitely going to need some help. I'll have to see what kind of bodies I can come up with.

This week I really only need to work on emailing everyone who's invited to the rehearsal dinner and getting together the wedding weekend itinerary. Oh, and figuring out how to get my Mom to show up on time to everything.... :) Just kidding Mom....I already have a plan for that! :)

Night!

Feeling Better

2007-09-13T23:44:00.001-04:00

After a rough couple of days I'm feeling better, more relaxed, and less exhausted. Oddly enough, I think the trick was to take a break from everything I thought I needed to do.

On Monday and Tuesday this week I worked from 9:30 am to 6-ish pm, and when you're at work for the entire business day it's very difficult to get anything done. Pair that with feeling exhausted and it's no wonder I started to stress out!

On Wednesday I didn't have to be to work until 2, so I went for my final dress fitting and met with our photographer in the morning (I try to stay on Joe's sleep schedule no matter what time I work, so I tend to be pretty productive in the morning). Knowing that my dress is altered, paid for, etc was nice as was getting the details of pictures worked out. I love out photographer. She's totally laid back but very professional and seems to have a great sense of what kind of photos we want. I'm certain we'll be pleased with her work - plus she's about 1/3 of the cost of other photographers (because it's kind of a moonlighting thing for her).

I also made a doctor's appointment for next Friday. I'm not thrilled because it's with my previous psychiatrist at MGH, but she was the first available and I'm fairly certain she'll respect my wishes for meds. Unfortunately she has zero personality and tends to fall back onto older meds...but we'll see.

Wednesday night I decided that when I got home I was going to do nothing but relax and rest. So instead of organizing the reception decorations like I planned on doing or writing my vows like I need to do, I sat on the couch and watched a movie. Joe recently complained he needed to get to bed earlier...and then admitted that really he just needed me to shut up once we were in bed! So I told him to make a point to chat with me sometime before bed without the TV on or the computer on one of our laps. Apparently that was the trick, because when we went to bed I didn't keep him up talking....nor did I keep myself up thinking.

Today I felt great. I worked 7:30-1:30, which is one of my favorite shifts and ran a few errands once I got out (returned some wine glasses to WalMart, bought the mints and nuts for the tables at the reception, picked up the flowergirl's dress from the seamstress). Joe left work early today so we could go get a marriage license and then we went and looked at a house in the Harvey area. Unfortunately that's when the night went slightly downhill...because we came home and accidentally took a nap for 2+ hours.

This was probably best for Joe, who's been sick allllll week, but not so much for me. Now it's midnight and I'm AWAKE. I've decided to use the energy to be productive (after I'm done blogging) and make sure I'm sleeping by 130 so that when I get up tomorrow at 730 I'm still relatively well rested. Still, I might have to take a sleep aid.

But for now I'm going to go put my Proactiv Refining Mask on my face, a white strip on my teeth, and see what I can get accomplished in the next hour.

It was only a matter of time....

2007-09-12T12:38:00.000-04:00

...before I started to stress out.

I'm not really sure why I'm stressing out (I mean besides the obvious getting married in 17 days thing). Things are falling into place just fine. I'm well organized, have most things ready to go, and have a boat load of willing, helpful people just a phone call away.

But my oh my am I stressed.

I'm still functioning well and all that, but not with the ease I crave. And I've been so easily pushed to the path to negative town lately. Like on Saturday when I had to defer a donor for 8 weeks because of a red blood cell loss....he was super upset because apparently we were his only source of income. Of course I feel horrible for him, but normally I can let it go. I'm still dwelling on it 5 days later and it makes me sad. When I feel like this all of the sadness in the world jumps up and slaps me in the face.

I've also felt pretty much exhausted for the past few days, but don't do so well with falling asleep. I'll be too tired to do anything productive so I'll go to bed...and be up for another hour thinking of things I could have gotten done that day. It takes everything I've got to keep me in bed instead of getting up and cleaning the house, running to WalMart, writing a to-do list, etc etc. So instead the house is a wreck, I write my to-do list in the morning, and try my hardest to relax at night. And occasionally take a benadryl to put me to sleep.

So it looks like I probably need to go to the doctor. Problem is I don't actually have a doctor (yes yes save me the lectures, I know). I don't have any urge to see any of the psychiatrists that MGH has to offer, I haven't found any others up here, and I'm not sure who's in my network insurance wise.

Oh, and on a side note...Joe's insurance with his new job is outstanding, with one minor defect - his mental health benefits are a joke. Ugh!

Guess I should probably stop typing and start making some phone calls.

blogging it up

2007-08-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

Busy isn't even the word for how things have been lately. Yeesh.

Wedding plans are going well, although according to my checklist on theknot.com I'm like 80 items behind....whatever. As the date gets nearer I feel myself getting a little more anxious, but I still have a feeling that I have things under control. I guess I'll find out soon!

I've been having dreams about the wedding lately, and they're not good. I've been seeing groomsmen show up in camo and jeans, my hair look like a bee's nest, and some other interesting and disturbing things. Supposedly this is all normal, but it's still unsettling.

My dress was supposed to be in over a week ago and I haven't heard about it yet, so I'm going to call today. I need to go try it on so I can buy the stuff to wear under the dress...sooner the better. So far I have shoes, jewelry, veil, hairpiece, garter, and a bag. Kristy's mom made me a bag and garters and they're really pretty. Glenn and I are still working on my hairstyle, but we're planning on getting together sometime next week to try some stuff out.

In other news, Joe and looked at a house last week when we were in between bouts of the stomach flu. The house we saw is TRASHED. It looks like the people that lived there before got chased out of town or something. They left the fridge and chest freezer full of food (there hasn't been power to the house for months....YUCK), kids bikes in the yard, pictures on the wall, and the place was just filthy. Still, it has some serious potential. The place is structurally sound, but it needs lots of paint, new floor coverings, and I'd personally gut the bathroom. Right now we're looking into what it would cost money and time wise to do all that stuff. The house is extremely cheap - it's listed at least $40,000 less that similar (but cleaner) houses in the surrounding area are selling for right now. If we bought it, our mortgage payment + taxes + insurance + utilities would be less than we pay in rent right now. So we're thinking about it.

This and that

2007-06-28T09:03:00.001-04:00

I love the mornings that I get to sit home and drink coffee before I have to get my day started. As much as I like getting out of work earlier in the day, I usually enjoy my afternoon shifts much, much more. Even though we're 10 times as busy in the evenings and I'd prefer to be home around 5 or 6 when Joe gets done, I really like the people I work with in the afternoons. Plus, we often form impromptu gatherings for after work. Last night we decided that we would all go out to Presque Isle and grill out once the center was closed (about 8pm). We had a great turnout and we were out there until about 10:30. It was a blast...I wish I would have brought my camera!

On days when I have an afternoon shift I usually have to be to work between 12 and 3, depending on my schedule. On those days I try to get up about the time Joe leaves for work (7:30ish or so) so I can get some things accomplished, like run errands, grab breakfast with a friend, clean the house, and so on. I also frequently see clients for the paramedical company during these times. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment about my day. Today my task list is pretty small, but still significant.

The most important thing on my list for today is to find a dentist. I've had dental insurance for months, but I'm not a huge fan of the dentist. Plus, knowing that I need a significant amount of work isn't a great motivator. My childhood dentist is in the area and I could easily go to him, but I'm just not impressed with him. He did a root canal for me just before I moved to TC and that tooth cracked and broke off on Halloween last year. Also, I have so many cavities (mostly from when I was young) that my fillings are actually causing me to have more cavities because they provide crevices for bacteria and such to create more problems. My dentist in TC recommended I have inlays put on many of my teeth - basically they'll remove the fillings and place one solid piece over the top of my tooth, sort of like a crown but not around the whole tooth. In addition to that I need to crown the broken root canal tooth and I'm sure I'll have to look at options for one or two of my baby teeth, which is a whole other issue.

When you're born, you have both your baby and adult teeth in your skull, waiting to come in. I was born without 5 of my adult teeth, so those particular baby teeth never got replaced. One of them abscessed when I was 15, so I have a double porcelain bridge where it used to be in my mouth. I still have the other four, and while they are holding up, at least one of them is starting to decay at the gum line. So we'll have to problem solve for that one.

Before I was 16, my dental insurance wasn't too interested in covering all of these bridges and such because of my age. But I continued to see my dentist regularly from age 16-22, so I'm left wondering why he didn't suggest any of these solutions that the dentist in TC did. I had excellent insurance (my Dad works for the State) so they would have been nearly covered in full. This leads me to the conclusion that he either didn't know about these technologies or just didn't practice them. He is probably closed to retirement anyway.

So today I will find a dentist. I'm hoping to max out my coverage by the time Joe and I get married, then get added to his plan and max that out before they both reset next year. I plan on carrying both of our dental insurances until I'm done with all the work in there and then we'll drop one.

Also on my list of things to do today are the following: get the title of my car switched into my name (it's in my Mom's although I don't know why) so we can possibly trade it in for the truck we're buying, go to Alltel and discuss an issue with some incoming calls I've been having with my cellphone, catch up on my paramedical work, and possibly start the search for a psychiatrist here in Marquette. I'm not real excited about that last one - I've seen or worked with most of the shrinks up here and I don't like any of them, but I'd prefer to not manage my bipolar disorder through my primary care. She's a wonderful doctor, but she's not an expert. Sadly, my therapist retired while I was in TC, and while I'm not certain I need one right now I know I should probably look for a new one. *sigh*

Well, I'm off the to coffee pot and the rest of the day!

ugh.

2007-06-16T23:11:00.000-04:00

I am sick.

I started feeling icky on Monday or Tuesday, but I thought I was experiencing seasonal allergies. I normally get allergies in the fall in the form of a scratchy throat, sneezing, and eventually the loss of my voice for a couple days. So when I started to get a sore throat Monday night I wasn't concerned. Tuesday brought some nasal congestion and Wednesday a dry, hacking cough. On Thursday my throat was wicked sore after work - just the sensation of air passing over it was painful. By Friday this has subsided a bit and my cough had become productive, so I figured I was on the upswing.

I was wrong. By the time I got to work my breathing was pressured and slightly painful, my pulse was in the 120's, and around 3:30 or 4 I spiked a fever of 101.7 (I'm sure I was a sight hooking myself up to the IVAC on the donor floor, but once I suspected a fever I knew I needed to confirm it and go home).

For the past week it's been in the high 80's in Marquette, which means our apartment is in the high 1000's. Still, when Joe got home he found me on the couch wrapped in a couple of blankets, still in my scrubs. The end table was covered in all of my sick-time necessities: sudafed, tylenol, a thermometer, cough medicine, kleenex, and propel, and my baby blanket was wrapped around my head to keep the light out because it hurt my eyes.

I don't deal with being sick very well.

I had to call into work this morning. I probably should have called in last night, but I always assume I'll have a miraculous recovery. I hate calling in sick. So much so that I had quite a few (most likely drug induced) dreams about it. Turns out I actually called in twice this morning because I couldn't decide if I'd dreamed that I called in or if I actually had.

I slept a lot today and have been feeling better in patches (right now is one of them). I woke up drenched in sweat around 4am, so I'm assuming that's when my fever finally broke. It's been under 100 ever since. I can't kick the headache or the cough and my body still feels like it's been hit by a truck, but I think I'm getting better. Based on the progression of my illness I'm guessing it's viral, but if I get another fever or am not feeling drastically better tomorrow I'll probably go to the doctor. For now it's fluids and rest though.

As I mentioned, I'm a huge baby when I'm sick. I'm whiny and pissy and not fun to be around. Joe has been doing a wonderful job taking care of me, which he attributes to the fact that (these are his words, not mine) the only time he gets to take care of me is when I'm sick because I'm always taking care of him when I'm not sick. It's very sweet of him to say that...but I know I'm a huge pain in the ass right now...so he gets some big time kudos. :)

Wedding stuff

2007-06-07T15:54:00.000-04:00

As the weeks go by I've been picking away at all of the wedding plans we need to get into place. So far, here's what we've accomplished:

I've chosen my dress and gotten measured for it.
My bridesmaids have all been measured/ordered their dresses. As of right now I'm short a bridesmaid, but I'm not concerned about it.
Joe has picked out the tuxedos for himself, my Dad, the groomsmen, our ushers, and his Dad (if his Dad chooses to wear one).
We have booked a DJ and a photographer.
The Ramada is booked for the reception and we've set aside rooms for our out of town guests. We'll also have the gift opening there on Sunday.
Joe's sister has agreed to make our cake! (And Joe's brother's birthday cake).
We've chosen the readings and Gospel for the ceremony.
We've purchased various decorations and favors.
The flowers are picked out and ready to order from www.2groses.com
We've purchased the paper, envelopes, and other necessary items for the invitations.
I've booked a hairdresser for myself and my bridesmaids.
I've set a date for my bridal shower/bachelorette party (Aug. 24).

I'm sure we've gotten some other things accomplished, but here's what I know we need to get donw soon:

Print, cut, assemble, and address the invitations
Purchase postage
Choose/ask ushers
Choose a flower girl
Arrange transportation for the day
Nail down the details of the rehearsal dinner/bbq

We had a wedding planning session on Monday with some of the wonderful people at St. Paul's that are helping us through this process. Our ceremony plans are coming along well, but there are a few keys things we need here too:

Confirm musicians
Choose a few more pieces of music and corresponding performers.
Ask a few people to be readers.
Chose the specific language we'd like the presider to use
Set up our pre-marital counseling

All in all I think things are going well, but there's still a lot to do. I guess I better get to it!

Grand Island Adventures

2007-05-30T08:17:00.000-04:00

Traditionally Memorial Day Weekend is a weekend that my family camps. Half of them canoe down the Escanaba River and settle in Rock, MI and the other half settle in on Anderson Lake for the weekend. Last year Joe and I joined the crew at Anderson Lake and were planning on heading out to Rock this year, but it seems no one followed "tradition." For a number of reasons the Rock trip was canceled completely and the Anderson Lake faction changed locations to Little Lake, across the lake from our camp. This made Joe and I scratch our head a bit.

Because no one was going to be in Rock and neither of us wanted to go camping across the lake from camp, we decided to head out to Grand Island with Dad and Teri for the weekend. Grand Island is located just off of Munising in the UP (www.grandislandmi.com). It's approximately 23 square miles and it part of the Hiawatha National Forest. Most of the island is owned by the US Forest Service but there are a few chunks of privately owned land. Teri has a cabin on a piece of land that is on a 99 year lease from the USFS right on Echo Creek and also owns a small parcel on the "Thumb" of the island.

We were a bit rushed to get out the Munising to catch the hopper, but Joe did a wonderful job of getting us packed and ready to go while I was at work. Dad met us at Williams Landing and loaded our stuff into the "Ghost," which is an old utility truck they keep on the island for quick transport. It's about 4 miles from the landing to camp, so it's nice to not have to haul all of our stuff.

Once we got settled we decided to go fishing on Echo Lake, which is one of the largest beaver-made lakes in the world. Teri's Dad keeps a boat at the Echo Lake landing for fishing with a little 4 HP motor on it and my Dad told us to take their poles down and hop on in. When we were about 20 feet off the shore Joe informed me that he'd never actually operated an outboard motor, but soon got it started anyway. We motored about 3/4 of the way across the 1 mile long lake trolling the whole way. Joe asked if I wanted to keep trolling or if we should "risk turning off the motor." I told him to turn it off, as my Dad had assured us it would start up with some effort.

About 15 minutes later it started to rain and the wind had pushed us almost all the way to the north shore, so we decided to head back to camp. Joe began to work on getting the motor started and soon we realized that it wasn't going to start! So I said well, if we're going to be stuck out here, we might as well fish. Suddenly, I got a bite! Moments later we hauled the biggest fish I've ever caught into the boat - a northern pike! I was pumped, but Joe didn't seem that impressed. But it should be noted that it was raining, he hadn't had the chance to do much fishing, and I began singing a little song that went like this:

"I caught a great big fish, a great big fish, a great big fish! I caught a great big fish and you didn't catch anything!"

Hey, I was excited.

At this point we realized we might as well row the boat to the other side of the lake. The problem was we only had one oar. After about 10 minutes of me paddling and getting us nowhere, Joe took over and paddled us all the way back to shore stopping only when I said "Honey, get the net!" as I hauled in 2 more pike. (Note - I thought these fish were HUGE, but it turns out they were just over legal.). By the time we made it back to camp my Dad was super worried (He'd come down to the landing but couldn't see us, and while he knows I'm a strong swimmer he was concerned) and we'd missed dinner but we'd had a blast. We got something to eat and settled in to play some cards.

The highlight of the next day (other than the awesome breakfast we had) was digging for wild leeks. Leeks are a cousin of onions and they grow like crazy on the island. So we went off the find them, and boy did we ever! We went through the woods and found hundreds and hundreds of leek clumps like these:
So what you do it take a spade and dig up around the clump because if you try to pull them up they snap right off. The root system on these things is crazy. After filling two huge garbage bags with leek clumps we went back to camp to clean them up. When they've been cleaned they look like this:

Joe and I ended up with two big ziplock bags full of leeks - that's a TON! So far I've made about 1/3 of them into stock that I put in the freeze and made Tortellini Leek soup with another 1/3. The soup I made equates to about three meals for Joe and I, so I froze a bunch. Here's how I made the soup:

I sauteed the leeks and a little bit of onion in some butter. When they were caramelized I de-glazed the pan with some chicken brother and added some pepper. Then I added some baby spinach until it was well wilted as well as some crumbled bacon. I added more chicken brother and some water before adding fully cooked three cheese tortellini. To serve I topped it with asiago, Parmesan, and Romano cheese. It was awesome. I got the idea from Teri, who's an excellent cook.

Today I'm probably going to make Potato Leek soup in a similar way, but this will be a cream based soup. I also found a recipe for leek and wild mushroom wine sauce that's to be paired with Salmon. Yum!

Sunday night we played some card and sung songs by the campfire while Dad and Teri played the guitar and on Monday Joe and I took the four wheeler over the Trout Bay, which is were we camped last year after reading "The Face In The Rock" by Loren Grahm. It's the story of a famous Grand Island Chippewea and I highly recommend the book. Here are some pictures of Trout Bay from last year:
All in all we had a great weekend. We're hoping to make it back out there a couple more times this summer - once to camp on Trout Bay and once to hang out with Dad and Teri at the cabin. We're both in love with the island.

Bringing it up to speed

2007-05-14T11:19:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while and while I'd love to claim being busy is the reason, I think it's been more along the lines of laziness. I don't like posting unless I've got something good to write....and then when I do have something good to write about I never think I have time to give the event/topic justice. As if my life is that interesting.

Mostly things around here are pretty routine. I work around 30-35 hours a week at the Plasma Center and have recently been seeing quite a few applicants through my paramedical job. It's been nice to be back in the swing of a regular job. I really missed my friends at the center and its nice to have people to grab a beer with after work again. Mostly I go to the Vierling with Derek, a co-worker that shares my love of vier-beers. Actually, I think he was the one that got me hooked. So we go once a week or so and unwind after a night of slangin' plasma.

I feel very appreciated at work because I can tell that my supervisors, managers, and even old co-workers are glad to have me back. I completed my "training" in about two weeks (its usually a 6 month process) and should begin cross training sometime this week. I was cross trained when I left so retraining should be a breeze. My supervisor, Michelle, has already approached me about possible promotions. She didn't offer me a position or anything, but encouraged me to apply for the three spots that they'll be hiring for soon. Near the end of the summer they should be hiring for the Training Coordinator/Operational Manager position thats vacant right now and I'll definitely apply for it. It would be a big raise, full time, and I think I'd really enjoy it. One of the nice things about working for Biolife again is knowing I can move up. At Munson there really wasn't much room to advance - when I left I was making more than some of the people that "trained" me (because of my previous experience) and wasn't far from topping out the pay scale for my position.

In the last couple weeks I finally got angry at Joe for not letting me get another dog. I tried really hard not to resent him for saying no but it finally caught up to me. We talked about it and out of the blue Joe agreed we could look for a new pup. He had even tried to go to humane society and look! (They were closed). So we're keeping our eyes open for a small dog that likes people, dogs, and cats and can be trained. Oh, and it can't sleep at the head of the bed like Molli used to - partially because it makes Joe all stuffy and partially because thats where HayZeus sleeps. On my head (see below).
We're also toying with the idea of buying a house. For what we're paying in rent we should be able to find a decent house near Marquette. Now is actually a great time to buy in this area because the real estate market is just starting to pick up after being down for a couple years. Thus, we should be able to find a house that will see a pretty good increase in value by the time we're ready to move. Joe has noted that Enterprise won't let him stay in Marquette forever, but I highly doubt Joe will stay with Enterprise forever either, so we'll see. We might as well invest our money in a house instead of paying rent though...we might even end up saving money.

I've been chipping away at wedding planning. We have our invitations designed and I'm going to go pick up the paper for them today. We're making them instead of buying them because I couldn't find anything I liked and was willing to pay for - they are so expensive!! We also scaled down our guest list a lot, although I'm still wrestling with how to inform my Mom that her friends that I don't know aren't invited. She really wants to invite a few of her and Steve's friends...which I would be fine with if a) money grew on trees b) I hadn't removed some of my own friends from the list and c) I knew these people. Plus there's the fact that Steve is at the top of my "list" (that's what my grandma always said) of people I don't even want at the wedding but must invite. I've never been shy about the fact that I'm not his #1 fan, but recent events have officially moved him to my "people I dislike greatly" list. And I don't see him moving off of it anytime soon.

Joe has been thinking about joining the National Guard. Last winter he informed me that he's always wanted to serve in the military and I basically told him if he enlisted he'd be doing so single. Perhaps I overreacted back then, but I'm still very, very, very against the idea. However, if its something he wants to do as badly as he says, I told him I'd be ok with him joining the Guard or the Navy and nothing else. Truthfully I'm not OK with it, but its not like I can just tell him he's not allowed to do something he's always thought about doing. I just wish he'd wait at least until Bush is out of office or we have some clue at when we'll be leaving Iraq. He hasn't spoken with a National Guard recruiter yet (but did see the Marine recruiter-which I flipped out about) so we'll see. The whole idea makes me want to throw up.

I'm still thinking about getting my masters in public health, but I'm hesitant to drop another 20K on school when I'm not certain its what I want to do. I thought college was supposed to help you figure that out, but I came out more confused than when I went in. So for now I'll be a plasma goddess.

I guess that's about all I have to update on. Our cat is still psycho and is constantly trying to escape for a stroll in the parking lot. We grilled with Joe's Boss, Lori, and her husband this weekend and had a great time. We're excited to have friends that are our age and in a similar spot in life. All of our college friends keep graduating and leaving. :(

I miss my dog.

2007-03-15T16:39:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I'm a little blindsided by how much I miss Molli. I truly believe that I've moved on from grief to just plain old loneliness. For me, there's a level of companionship that dogs can offer that I haven't found anywhere else. They don't question you, judge you, abandon you, or get an attitude with you. They just love you unconditionally and want nothing more than to hang out. I like our cat, but he just doesn't fill that "void" like Molli did. And I really don't think Molli is the only one that could fill it.

I'll never replace Molli and I'll never stop missing her. But I feel cheated. When I adopted her I expected her to be with me for longer than 30 months. I depended on her to be the unchanging source of smiles in my life. When I moved to Traverse City it was her head/body/shoulder that I cried on when I was lonely and upset. Even though I knew how sick she was when we moved back to Marquette I was still depending on her to take me through the transition (as strange as it sounds, moving back "home" wasn't as easy for me as you would think). So when I had to let her go so quick it left me feeling pretty lost. I know she's gone and that there's not another dog like her, but I still yearn for the companionship I found in her...and the cat isn't filling that order.

I want another dog. I knew I would, I just didn't expect it to happen so fast. I want another being that will go everywhere I go, that will play with me and lay with me and share my french fries (kinda seems like I just described Joe, hey?). Joe says I'm bored, which I am, but I don't think he gets it. I know he doesn't. He's not a dog guy; he could go the rest of his life never having a dog and not be affected by it in the least. But I can't.

Joe says we're not in a position to get a dog right now, and I can't decide if he's right or if that's an excuse. We live in an apartment, true, but I don't want a 90 pound dog. I want one around 25 pounds. And even Joe will agree that as apartment complexes go, ours is pretty much perfect for dogs. Just across our parking lot there are woods and we're practically on top of the city's bike path. I have an abundance of dog-loving family members in the area that would gladly watch the dog when we're out of town. It is true we lack a yard with a fence and all that, but I really don't think we'd be doing injustice to a dog by having it here.

The humane society has what I would consider the perfect dog for us right now. She's still a puppy at 7 months but has been trained quite a bit already. She's an AKC registered puggle (half pug and half beagle) that her previous owners had to give up because their son developed asthma. She's trained to ring a bell when she needs to use the bathroom. She's about 20 pounds and will grow another 5-10 pounds at the most. She knows how to fetch, sit, and stay. Her teeth are beautiful and her breath is just fine (two parts of Molli that weren't so hot haha). She's got short hair and won't need to be groomed. It kills me knowing such a great dog is available and we can't get her.

The worst part of this is that there's really no compromise. One of us wins and one of us loses. I keep telling myself that eventually the puggle will get adopted and then my want for a dog will calm down a bit, but I think that's probably a little unrealistic. I'm still going to want a dog to walk on the bike path and one to take to camp so she can swim and run and play with the other dogs. Joe says he doesn't have the energy for a dog, but I don't think he knows what kind of energy they really require. Joe never had to care for Molli when she was healthy, so he can only make that judgment based on the times we spent cleaning up after her, changing her bandages, taking her to the vet, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying that dogs don't require energy, but I am saying he might be a little jaded.

So for now the idea is that we'll wait to get a dog because Joe doesn't want one "right now." But like I said, I don't really think he'll ever want one, I just think he'll accept one. That sounds a little harsh, but the point is I don't see Joe seeking out a dog on his own. Joe loved Molli to death, so his stance is a little confusing to me, but I can't change it.

So for now I guess I'll just continue to miss my dog.

HayZeus the Helper

2007-02-26T08:21:00.000-05:00

I'd love to say that my excuse for not posting anything lately is that I'm so busy, but when you consider that I've been off work for over a month you know I'd be lying. It's amazing what kind of things you find to fill your day when you have all day to essentially do nothing. My time management skills are non-existent when I have this much time on my hands.

One productive thing that I have been doing is getting myself organized and prepared to do the paramedical examining that I got hired to do. I'm working for a company called Great Lakes Paramedical. Essentially, when someone wants to take out a life or health insurance policy, most companies require the person to go through a paramedical examination - they give a urine and blood sample, have their vitals taken, and are asked questions about their health history. So that's what I'll be doing. I visit "proposed insured" persons in their homes or office, draw blood, collect urine, take their vitals, go over their health history, and sometimes do an EKG. It's a nice little "side gig" (as my Dad calls it) since I'll be part time at Biolife (if I ever get to start). Not exactly intellectually challenging, but it's actually pretty good money. Examiners in bigger areas make upwards of $50,000 a year.

In preparation for this little "business," I've spent a lot of time getting our second bedroom set up as an office. We bought a printer/scanner/fax/copier that I've been using constantly to print off the forms I need for the exams I do, print off wedding stuff like out guest list (which is a whole other headache), or to scan some photos we have laying around in boxes. Soon I'm hoping to get a file cabinet, because the box I'm using for my files now isn't going to cut it for much longer.

During the time I've been spending in our "office" I've had a very loyal companion/helper. HayZeus, it turns out, is a top notch printer monitor and is learning how to type. Unfortunately, he frequently falls asleep on the job.

He and I have had a lot of time to bond lately. We chat (I meow at him, he meows back), and he does everything he can to drive me insane. He always likes to be where I am, which is nice most of the time, but its really hard to type with him lying on my hands and impossible to write stuff down when he's sitting on my paper and has knocked every single pen off the table. His love for pens and pencils is flat out unhealthy.

Other than all that office-type stuff I've been working on some wedding planning. We applied to use St. Paul's Episcopal Church for the ceremony and I've picked out bridesmaid dresses and invitation paper. Our main focus right now is the guest list. We are planning for no more than 200 people at the reception, and since about 25% of those you invite don't come (on average) we don't want to invite more than 275 people. So Joe and I made our preliminary list and then went through and slimmed it down. The problem is everytime we take people off, someone reminds us of someone important we forgot or requests that additional people be added. It's a headache and I'll be happy when we've got it all done.

My sister in law says I'm way too organized with this wedding stuff but I just can't see how thats a bad thing. I mean I get it, September 29th is a ways away, but I don't want to be scrambling in July or August. When my brother Joe got married I hand made all of the invitations in a period of two weeks because they didn't figure out who was marrying them/where the ceremony was/at what time until 8-10 weeks before the wedding. I don't want to deal with that. By the end of March I want those details taken care of so I can get my invites printed and labeled. Maybe I'm a little anal retentive or OCD about this stuff, but oh well! Plus, it gives me something to do while Joe's at work.

Joe's sister, Crystal, sent me a recipe for lamb stew on Friday and I think I'm going to make it today. Instead of lamb, though, I'm going to use venison that we got from Joe's Dad. I'm anxious to see how it turns out. :)

Bad Mood

2007-02-15T17:51:00.000-05:00

I've been in a bad mood for like three days now. At first I thought it was Valentines Day, but now I'm thinking it's PMS because I have zero energy. Weird though, because I usually don't PMS.

Joe and I are getting engagement pictures taken on Sunday and I'm trying to decide whether or not I should get my hair cut before hand. My hair is super long right now - the longest it's ever been in my whole life. I kinda like it though, so I'm thinking I might not mess with it. But what am I going to wear?

I feel stressed out, but I don't have anything to be stressed out about. I don't even work (at least not for a couple more weeks). And while I'm enjoying the time off, it's longer that I am without health insurance...which is a big problem for someone who requires prescription medication every day. So maybe I'm stressed about that, because it's an issue I need to address ASAP. I wonder what my non-generic available meds would cost without insurance....yikes.

Black Wednesday

2007-02-14T14:49:00.000-05:00

Today is Valentine' Day....and I hate Valentine's Day. Which is a bummer because I'm pretty sure Joe doesn't hate Valentine's Day. So it's weird. Because I don't do Valentine's Day...but I'm not about to ruin it for him too? But then I get all excited and mushy (which is normal for me on every other day of the year - I'm a total sweetheart, you just don't know it)....and then I'm always horribly disappointed.

Not because Joe isn't wonderful don't get me wrong. I just get tooooo excited and I expect something a little more creative than the norm. Because on Valentine's Day, the norm just isn't going to do it for me. Which is why I hate it.

It's cyclical. I hate it because I never (used to) get anything out of it. And now that I do get something out of it I'm so bitter about it that I expect something extravagant (not materially, but creatively) and when I get something less I'm disappointed and start hating it again. I've been digging this hole for myself for years.

It doesn't help that I think the whole holiday is BS. We spend 364 days building up to a day that we spend doing things for the people we love when we should actually be doing those things all the time. Not just on Valentine's Day, but on the day after the Super Bowl or on Tuesday before bowling or 10 am Saturday when you're just getting out of bed. The whole thing frustrates me.

And every year its the same thing - get her flowers! cook him dinner! get her a card! put a note in his lunch! spend money on each other!

Look. I love flowers. I really do. And Joe even got them for me once (he thought I was mad at him, which I was, but not after I returned to my Canadian hotel room to a huge bouquet...smart boy...). And I certainly wouldn't think less of them on Valentine's Day. But hey, we're in love 365 days a year, not one. And I do cook him dinner. Nearly every night. We get each other cards for our "half-birthdays" (now thats a kickass holiday). I write cute little notes for his lunch on random weekdays. Get it?

There are a million rational reasons to think this day is BS.

But I'm a girl.

So I'm going to be all pissy all day long because it's Valentine's Day and it won't live up to my expectations.

But hey, at least some random day next week or next month will kick ass for me. Take that one Hallmark!

Getting Settled

2007-02-13T08:30:00.000-05:00

So I guess we've been in the UP for about three weeks now and we're finally getting into the routine of daily life. I'm still not working because of a ridiculous hold up on my background check, but I will start on the 26th. The first two weeks I had off were really nice since our first week up here was so chaotic. I was able to get everything unpacked, find a place for most of it, and get things to feel "normal" once again. I'm enjoying how all of my days are consistent - I sleep the same number of hours, go to bed and get up and the same time, eat around the same times, etc. And what's great is that my daily pattern shouldn't change very much once I'm back to work.

The other thing I've had a lot of time for has been wedding planning. We're getting a lot of the big details worked out. We'll meet with our banquet coordinator this week and sign our contract/put down our deposit and I've picked out my dress and the bridesmaid dresses. Joe's sister, Crystal, is going to make our cake and we're both super stoked about that. Kristy is going to make the jewelry for the bridal party as well as do some art work for the invitations and I have a sample of the invitation paper coming any day. My flowers are picked out and I'll be getting samples of them soon as well. It's all coming together.

That leaves one very important detail: the ceremony. Joe and I are both baptized Catholic but decided a long time ago that we did not want to get married in the Catholic Church. Neither of us are practicing Catholics and we feel that going through the 6 months of preparation just so we can have our ceremony inside the building isn't right. So I've spent hours and hours researching marriage requirements in other churches and religions. We considered the steps inside the courthouse (they're marble and gorgeous) but the courthouse won't open on a Saturday for such a function. There is a theater we can rent and they'll set it up like a church, but I've been trying to get a hold of the rental office for the place for the past week and have thus far been unsuccessful. We know of a retired judge that can marry us, but we need a location. And we know better than to plan an outdoor wedding for the end of September in the UP. So that brings us back to a church.

Truth be told I think I'd really like to get married in a church. The Cathedral in Marquette is gorgeous, but I just don't feel right getting married there. I have many, many objections to the ways of the Catholic religion at this point in my life and I feel like I'd be using the Church wrongly if I go through the motions of marriage prep with the religion. If the bride doesn't feel worthy of communion at her own wedding then why would she get married there? I don't know, it's hard to explain.

There is an Episcopalian Church on Ridge Street downtown that I visited yesterday. I spoke with the secretary about having a wedding there and looked around a little. St. Paul's is a breathtakingly beautiful. It's an old Church, complete with stone walls, stained glass windows, and horribly uncomfortable, solid wood pews. I didn't get a great look at the altar but it certainly seemed to fit with the rest of the church. The secretary gave me a form to fill out about the wedding. It's a $300 fee to rent the church for the day and we have to provide our own clergy. We can ask the pastor of St. Paul's to do it, but we have to discuss that with him, where as a committee at the church will decide if we can use the building. Basically, anyone could marry us there, we'd just be renting the space...which is what we've been looking for all along.

My mother thinks it's outrageous to pay $300 to rent the church when we'll have to pay clergy on top of that. And she might be right, I don't know. But after being inside St. Paul's yesterday and having the chance to play through the idea in my mind, I know I want to have the ceremony in a church and I'm pretty sure I want it to be at St. Paul's. She wants me to look into other churches, which I'll definitely do, and she suggested I find out how much it would be for a member to have a wedding in the church and then find out what we'd need to do to become members. I'm not going to do this. A cheaper wedding ceremony is the wrong reason to join a church, and I know that. Maybe the $300 is just a little punishment for being disconnected with God. :)

When Joe and I sat down and talked about it, we decided that the ceremony is the one area of our wedding day that we're not going to cut corners. We're already saving a lot of money in other areas - we went with a cheaper reception site, we have friends doing the DJing and photography (hopefully). His sister is making the cake (and even if she does let us pay her for it, I know she won't let us pay her what we'd have paid retail). We're getting the flowers wholesale and arranging them ourselves. I know that the final price tag for our wedding is going to be hard to swallow, but there are some things I just don't want to skimp on - and the ceremony is at the top of the list.

The Big Nap

2007-02-04T23:55:00.000-05:00

I think I've finally centered myself enough to sit and write about Mollidog. I've tried a few times these past few days, but I've found myself too distracted and sad to come up with coherent thoughts. But I refuse to miss out on the therapeutic benefits of writing about it, so here goes.

I spent all of last weekend preparing for our trip to the vet. As I previously mentioned, we were in Minnesota for Joe's Grandpa's funeral, which was very difficult for me. I had this sense of time running out and wanted nothing more than to be home snuggled with her on the couch, soaking up every last minute I could with her. Still, I think being with Joe's family and even attending the actual service helped me start the healing process. Maybe it helped put things into perspective - I really felt like a jerk crying over my dog while at the funeral of someone's father and grandfather. But I also know my heart has never broken for the death of a human as it did this dog.

As odd as it sounds, I think I may have needed a break from the stress of caring for her in order to see that it really was time to let her go. After a mere three days with her, Mame said she couldn't believe that I'd been nursing that leg for nearly four months. And I'll admit, it wasn't easy. And I was far from perfect. But yes, I loved that dog enough to sit with her up to 4 or 5 times a day and remove her blood soaked gauze and tape, wash her leg or entire body, and re-wrap the cancerous sores on her poor little leg. And I just accepted that I couldn't keep her from oozing onto the couch or the bed. And I knew it was up to me to keep her pain free. I just never considered there to be another option. She was my Mollidog.

While we were in Minnesota, Mame and I spoke once on Saturday so I could tell her that we'd made it. On Sunday we spoke twice - once so she could double check Molli's medication dosage and once because another tumor on her leg had burst. On Monday Mame called 5 times. She was going to take Molli to the vet for more medication and to discuss possible amputation (which we all knew wasn't going to work, but we all felt better exploring the option). On Monday night, she called a 6th time to tell me Molli couldn't wait for the weekend for her nap. I gave permission to make an appointment for Wednesday afternoon and the vet gave enough medication to keep her as comfortable as possible until then.

From then on, there was a faint "tick-tock" sound in my head.

My brain told me it was time. She was in pain, and she would only get worse. Our apartment is carpeted and I could never keep up with the bleeding. She was getting weaker from the blood loss. I just couldn't take care of her anymore. But my heart wouldn't stand for it. It argued that she had too much spunk left - that she still wagged her tail, even when I changed her dressing, and that her eyes would still light up at the idea of going outside. And every single time I took her out, up the the very last time, she would limp out there, throw herself on the ground, and roll in the snow like it was her job. And really, it was.

Still, I knew it was selfish of me to keep her here. I knew she would only suffer more. And even though I knew I'd have guilt and maybe even regret for putting her down, I also knew that I would never forgive myself if I made her suffer more than necessary. And so I was resolved.

I should mention that while Molli never lost her spunk, the light in her eyes, the wag of her tail, or the perk in her ears, it was clear she wasn't well. A healthy Mollidog would not only wag her tail at the prospect of food or perk her ears up at the mention of "ride in the car" or "outside." No, a healthy Mollidog would bound from the couch, jump in the air, twirl around, shift from foot to foot excitedly, and if you really got her riled up, bark and try to tackle you and lick your face. But she just hadn't been up to it. Mame said she rarely left the spot she'd settled into under the chair in the living room the entire time I was gone. But the instant I walked in the door to pick her up, that pup was in her feet, bounding for the door, jumping, spinning, barking, the works. In and instant she was on a chair with her paws on my chest licking my face like it was the best tasting thing she'd ever encountered.

Talk about crushing my resolve....she walked all over it. I was having trouble with the idea that in less that 24 hours this energetic puppy would be gone. At least I was until I got her home.

Molli needed a bandage change right away. So we got her home and got down to it. The last week or so I had been having Joe help me - he would hold her head so she wouldn't lick the wounds while I worked on them (she would lick his hands instead). So I got out all my supplies, slapped on my gloves, and started cutting away the old bandage. For months now, Molli's cancer has had a scent about it, but it's never bothered me. I'm an pretty strong stomached person - blood, guts, smells, etc don't get to me. So me telling you that I had to choke back vomit more than once while changing her dressing should give you an idea of how bad the smell was. The lower part of her paw was necrotic and infected. Things other than gauze and tape fell from her leg when I removed the outer wrapping. If it hadn't been my Molli's leg, I probably would have thought it was cool. If I hadn't been convinced before we got home that it was time, I certainly was after that. So I took a few deep breaths, got ready for bed, and snuggled with her under the covers for the last time.

In the morning I got up and Molli and I drive Joe to work. We ate breakfast together - I made myself some toast I didn't eat and made her some chicken noodle soup. We went for a walk down to the mailboxes and we stayed out until my ears were frozen. We made Joe lunch and drive over to give it to him and wish him a happy birthday. We went to Target and the laundromat. We hung out at home and glared at the cat together. And she ate half a bag of dog treats.

Later in the afternoon we went to see Laura at the Title Company to give her some extra dog food and so Laura could say goodbye. Then we drove to the vet (in Gwinn) the long way - Molli always liked the back roads because I'd go slow enough for her to keep her head out the window. So I cranked the heat, rolled down the window, and we cruised to Gwinn. About halfway there she ran out of energy and couldn't keep her little head out the window or her little eyes open. So she snoozed on the seat next to me as we spent our last hour together.

Mame and Steve met us at the vet. I walked in the door with her and was doing quite fine until they asked me what I wanted to do with her body (I'm sure they asked it in a better way). Then I started to cry and lost a contact. It had fallen into Molli's fur, so I told her she could keep it and I popped in a new one. I did a lot of nervous chit chat before I went into the room with the pup.

When I first brought Molli home, she always slept on this really soft blanket I got for Christmas a few years ago. So whenever we'd travel, I'd bring that blanket and she'd curl up on it and snooze like she was at home. I brought that blanket with us. I didn't want her to have to lay on the sterile metal table. And so I lifted her onto the blanket on the table and she laid down on it. I folded one corner over her bad leg so that it wouldn't be a part of my memory later. The vet came in and started the IV, which she yelped about but still wagged her tail. The gave her an anesthesia, so she got sleepy and I bent over and wrapped my arm around her and kissed her on the head. I told her she was a good puppy and that she'd get all the treats she wanted and get to go on tons of rides in the car and everything. Her tail stopped wagging.

It really all happened quite quickly. The vet ran the med through her IV. Her respirations slowed and got labored. She had a mini convulsion. And in about 15 seconds, I knew she was gone. A moment later the vet checked for a heartbeat, but I knew it had stopped. That little light behind her eyes had clicked off and I knew she done suffering(her eyes didn't close, and I really wanted them to). And so the only thing left to do was sob....which Mame was already doing, along with Steve. Of the three of us, I was doing the best. I snuggled with her body for a little bit, and when I was ready the vet picked her up to take her to the back. The vet was so gentle, and when she gathered Molli in her arms, Molli's head was cradled in her elbow like a baby's. Finally, Molli's eyes had drooped and the way her little head was positioned made her ears perk up. She looked so adorable. And that's the last time I saw her.

I swallowed the lump in my throat for the rest of the day. It was Joe's birthday and I was hellbent on celebrating it. So I picked him up from work. I made corn muffins to go with the chili Molli and I had defrosted and put into the crock pot. I took the bottle of wine I'd opened the night before and poured us each a glass. We ate dinner. Then I gave him his present and cards.

While we'd been at Target earlier in the day, Molli and I had been picking up Joe's birthday present and card. While I was choosing a card, a card with a dog on it caught my eye. I was a birthday card from the dog. I know these have existed for a long time, but this was the first time one caught my eye. So I picked it up, took it home, and Mollidog signed it. Here's what it read:

FRONT
This birthday card is from me. The Dog. I know what you're thinking.

Where did the dog get the money to buy a card?
How'd the dog get to the store to buy the card?
How'd the dog even get the card into the envelope?

INSIDE
How'd the dog send a card all the way from puppy heaven? (this one was in handwriting that looked a lot like Molli's)

Let's just say I know people.
Happy Birthday from...that's right....the dog.

That was the first card he opened. Then he opened the one from me (and the cat) and opened his iPod shuffle. All the while we continued to talk normally while tears streamed down my cheeks. Finally, I lost it. I was hysterical for the better part of an hour. Not just crying, but violent sobs. It was only a matter of time I suppose. I've done better since then. I've cried myself to sleep once or twice. I burst into tears at the sight of the cat drinking from Mollidog's bowl on Thursday. But when Kristy brought over this gorgeous charcoal of Molli that she drew for me, I was able to stay composed. I'm a puddle right now of course, but that's a given. Tomorrow I'm going to work on the shadowbox Joe got for me to put her stuff in. One day at a time.

But I miss her.

More than once I've called her when I go outside. I started talking to her the other morning (when I was home alone, I used to tell her my plans for the day - i.e. "Ok pup, I'm gonna get in the shower and then we're going to go to the post office"). When I wake up at night (which is more often than not this week) I do a double take because I think the shadow next to me is her. And everytime I drop food on the floor I have to remember to pick it up because she's not there to eat it.

The crazy thing is I was never a dog person. And truthfully, I still don't think I am. I'm certainly more inclined to like them now, but I'm not your typical dog person. But for some reason or another, three years ago I just knew I needed to adopt a dog. And it took me months to do so. I went to the humane society twice a week for two months before I found her. The day I adopted Molli I was there to look at a different dog for the second time to decide if it was the right dog for me. But I never made it to Bertie's cage because I stopped dead when I saw Molli. I looked at the dog tender and said "I want to see that one" and she's been my pup ever since.

I'll never find another Mollidog, and I really hope I'm not dumb enough to look for one. She was a one of a kind pup, and even though it really hurt to have her take her big nap I'm forever grateful that I got to be with her as long as I did. I'll always love my little Mollidog.

Quick Update

2007-02-01T14:33:00.000-05:00

I apologize in advance for my brevity, but I've been extremely busy. Here's the skinny on my life:

My last at Munson was peachy. Paul bought us all lunch, I said goodbye to everyone, and I went out on the town in TC with the girls from the lab (whom I'll miss very much). The next day we went to Lansing for Joe's Holiday Party and I had a very surprising amount of fun. They had a chocolate fountain out for dessert and I want one at the wedding.

I spent the first part of last week packing, mostly by myself, and feeling quite pissy about it. Joe and I got the uhaul, he loaded it, i cleaned the apartment, we threw the couch in the dumpster (which we're not sure was a legal move) and hit the road. We spent Wednesday night in Grayling where I had a hard time sleeping because I was worried about Molli in the garage (she was fine, I just wanted to sleep with her - ps the bed at Joe's parents was UNBELIEVABLY comfortable and now I'm very jealous). Thursday we made way for Marquette, taking a longer route to avoid weather. I got into town at about 3 pm and signed our lease/picked up keys. Joe rolled in half an hour later and dropped my POS car off at his work. Then we set out to unload the uhaul.

Joe was listening to his voicemail as he was lifting the gate on the back of the truck. His Mom had called to let him know his Grandfather had passed away (this was somewhat expected, not that it makes it easier). The funeral was planned for Monday and she really wanted him to come to Minnesota for it. As soon as Joe decided he would go there was never a question of whether I would go with him. So we attempted to get settled in the 24 hours we had in Marquette before the drive to Minnesota.

Joe did very well with the news. I expected it to suddenly hit him, but I think he just dealt with is all little by little. On Saturday, the day we were to meet Joe's dad in Escanaba to ride over to MN with him, I had an extremely hard day. It has been well over a year since I felt so unstable. When I was in my psych nursing class, we went over this mental health questionaire and some of the things that were supposed to make someone vulnerable to mental upset were moving, change of job, death of a family member, and change in personal realtionships. Check, check, check, check. I was a wreck.

I was sedated for the majority of the drive to Minnesota and was ready for bed the instant we got there. I felt like an absolute jerk being so upset (and crying for 20 minutes once Joe and I went to bed) when we were there for Grandpa Harry's funeral (whom I didn't get the chance to meet before he passed away). I felt like I didn't have what I refer to as a "safe spot" - a place that I knew I would be able to recenter and recover. I was aware of the fact that we no longer lived in TC, but I am just now starting to get the feeling we live in Marquette. I didn't have any place to depend on, if that makes sense. And then there's Molli.

I knew when we left TC that Molli didn't have long. We were planning on Superbowl weekend for her big nap. While we were in MN, she stayed with my Mom (who is probably the only person I would have been ok with - Molli needed someone she loved and someone who could take care of her - Grandma, RN to the rescue). My mom's excellent care aside, however, Molli got significantly worse and needed to take her big nap a lot sooner than planned (more on that later).

I struggled a LOT while we were away. It wasn't until Tuesday that I started to feel much better. I was on the verge of tears 90% of the weekend, but as most of my family and friends know, I'm a master at disguising this (there's a reason most people can't believe I'm bipolar). Almost everyday we were there it seemed like everyone was waiting on Joe and I to get somewhere - which is not because we were doing something dumb like making out or tickling each other or some other silly thing that we do all the time. It was because I was having a tough time with the simple things, like getting out of bed or putting my socks on.

I hate feeling that way. It scares the shit out of me. I lack the ability to be rational when I feel that way. I lack the ability to keep myself safe when I feel that way.

Turns out that all the medication I take and all the hours I spent in therapy are worth it, because I've managed to get back to feeling positive. For starters, I've taught myself how to cry in the past few years, which helps immensely. I've also managed to surround myself with a lot of very positive people. Joe's parents dropped us at our car in Escanaba on Tuesday, and as we exchanged our goodbyes Jack gave me a hug and told me Molli would go to heaven. Even though it made me cry, I think it was in that moment that I knew I would be able to handle her "big nap".

2007-01-15T18:05:00.000-05:00

It's my last week at Munson, and I'm suprised at how...unaffected I feel. I guess I don't feel that attached to the place, but I think its mostly because I'm moving on to something familiar. While there are a lot of new people at Biolife in Marquette, the people I enjoyed working with and hanging out with outside of work are still there. So instead of me being the new hire that everyone has to meet it will be like they are the newbies I have to meet. When I went in on Friday to talk to Trudy (my boss at BLPS) and sign some papers she said they really needed my experience, but I still have to retrain for all of the tasks I used to be certified to do. It will be really hard to restrain myself in the meantime....to be standing next to a machine that's alarming and not be allowed to fix the problem even though I'll be one of the most experienced people on the floor. I supposed that will pass though...and Trudy is starting me at the same wage I was at when I left, so once I'm all "trained" up I should be making a little more than I do at Munson, I'll just be part time as opposed to full time (for a while).

I wish I could say Joe and I are actively packing, but so far we've only managed to pack up a couple bookshelves. It's so hard to figure out what to pack when we're still working and living and all that...but I guess we'll get it done somehow. Right now the plan is to start packing hardcore on Sunday and load the uhaul on Wednesday. Then we'll drive it over to Grayling, stay at Joe's parents, and head to Marquette Thursday morning. Jack and Ruth are planning on coming up to help too, which will be really nice. I'm going to try and arrange for them to meet my Dad since he's the only member of the family they haven't met yet.

Holiday Update

2007-01-10T09:07:00.000-05:00

We had a very busy holiday season, but here's the jist:

First things first! Joe asked me to marry him when we went to dinner at Bower's Harbour Inn a few days before Christmas (of course I said yes!). We purposely kept this a secret so we could tell our respective families in person over the holidays. Here are the details:

While we were eating we were discussing when we would open presents because both of us were working 12+ hour shifts on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th. At this point, Joe asked me if I wanted to open a present right then and went to retrieve the gift. When he came back he said we should go upstairs (the restaurant is an old victorian house) to open the gift. When we got upstairs we spyed a huge Christmas tree, so thats where he gave me the dvd sized box. I opened it and found a beautiful glass rose Christmas ornament (Joe seems to be making this a tradition ever since he told me my christmas tree had no character-he gave me an ornament last year as well). So there I am thinking it's a very sweet and thoughtful gift when I see the ring around the stem of the rose. I began to cry and he asked me to marry him. I stuttered something along the lines of yes and continued to cry. It was all very romantic and sweet. :) Here's a picture of the ring I took when we got home that night:

While we had previously gone ring browsing, I was still pretty impressed with how good of a job he did picking out the ring. He even managed to remember my ring size somehow!

On the 26th Joe's sister and her fiance flew into TC, so he went and picked them up from the airport while I finished packing and getting things together for our holiday travels. Then we all drove to Grayling to Joe's parents house. His sister Crystal and her boyfriend Zach were already there, along with Joe's parents and brother Tommy. The next day Joe's Grandma joined us, and I must say she's absolutely adorable. We opened gifts together and took some photos before sharing a great dinner of both venison and bear.

Holidays with the Pilons are much different than the holidays I'm used to experiencing. In my family, holidays tend to be busier and chaotic. I would imagine this is mostly because of number of people involved in a Kirkwood Christmas or Thanksgiving, and I always feel blessed to have all of those people around me during the holidays. Interestingly enough, however, after spending two very relaxed and comfortable holidays with the Pilons, I found I had to re-adjust to the hustle and bustle of the holidays in the UP. Fundamentally its the same idea: open gifts together, share a meal, take some family photos, perhaps play some cards or just hang out and chat. But the dynamics of this routine change drastically when you add 6 or 8 small children into the mix - especially children like Jake and Johnny. All in all, I'm enjoying the diversity in my holiday experiences these days!

We left Grayling on the afternoon of the 28th. I really didn't want to leave - I was having a wonderful time and wished we could have stayed longer. Also, I was disappointed we had to leave so soon after Joe's sister Becky was finally starting to feel better (she had not been feeling well for the first 24-36 hours we were there). I almost had Joe convinced to leave me there while he went to work, but in the end it was nice to be able to go home and regroup before leaving for the UP on Friday.

We encountered bad weather during our drive to the UP on Friday, so we decided not to make the trip to Marquette for my Christmas celebration with friends and headed straight for Gwinn/Little Lake. We dropped the animals off at camp and ventured to my Dad's to tell him and Teri about our engagement. Both seemed genuinely excited - a state I scarcely recall my father being in previously. We then visited my Mom and Steve - I hadn't even finished giving my Mom a hug before she noticed the ring.! After those visits we met up with all of my siblings at Brown's Tavern - they had all been shooting darts (they're in a league) and had stayed after to celebrate my sister in law's birthday. After being there for about an hour we finally told them all - I was quite suprised no one had noticed the ring since they always seem to be looking for it.

On the 30th we had Christmas at my Dad's, which was a lot of fun. We had a wonderful meal and enjoyed opening presents with everyone, the kids especially.

Timmy on his Dad's Lap:

Phil with his new graphing calculator:

Megan and Brooklynne oogling their earrings:

Jake hoisting his LEGO ship:

Johnny checking out his viewfinder:

On New Year's Eve we had Christmas at camp with my Mom. Again, a great meal - Steve had made spagetti sauce using some venison from a deer he shot this fall and Mom made regular spagetting and meatballs. Both were delicious. This time Joe and I gave the kids presents to unwrap and my mom had presents for the both of us.

The Twins with their Spiderman Laser Tag:

Jamie with his Guitar Player's Repair Kit:

That night all of the kids went to Pat and Nicole's with a babysitter and we all celebrated the New Year at camp. On New Years Day we all went out to breakfast. On the 2nd, Joe and I went to Marquette to open bank accounts, look for an apartment (we found one) and so I could interview at Biolife (got the job). Joe and I had a great time, but were also very glad to sleep in our own bed on Tuesday Night.

Still Recovering

2007-01-10T08:40:00.000-05:00

I'm still recovering, and no, not from New Year's Eve. I'm just starting to feel normal after a nasty course of pneumonia I managed to catch over the holidays. On one hand I managed to extend my vacation by four days...but on the other I was at home in bed with a fever and an elephant sitting on my chest. Not fun. I basically slept for the first 24-36 hours I was home, but once I was able to stay awake long enough to figure out how to use the remote for the tv, I discovered VH1's mega marathon of America's Next Top Model.

I normally don't watch these kinds of shows. I call them "trash tv" because of how shallow they are - celebrity focused and usually not very entertaining.

I watched 5 seasons of ANTM. And when Joe got home from work, I made him watch with me. I'm almost embarassed. Joe, however, should be the one who's embarassed...while I adore him for watching the show with me instead of going into the other room and flipping on the history channel, he was snuggled under the covers with me discussing who was going to win and who took better pictures. Too funny.

So anyway, now that I'm almost done with my antibiotics and finally sleeping through the night (I was waking myself and probably Joe up with my cough) I feel like I can return to my normal routine. So I went back to work for two days....and now I have three off. Life is good.

I feel like we should be packing, but we haven't even acquired boxes yet. I hate the idea of living out of boxes for the next two weeks, but not as much as I hate the idea of having to pack everything in a couple days. So I'm hoping to get some things packed today. I'm going to start by cleaning out the closests and cupboards and getting rid of the things we don't need/want/have space for at the new place. Our apartment in Marquette is certainly comparable in size, but not in closest space because one of the bigger closests is taken up by a washer and dryer (i'm so NOT complaining about that, mind you). So we're going to have to a little smarter about storing things.

We're headed to the UP tomorrow night because I have to do some pre-employment stuff on Friday. I'm also going to call and see if we can meet the with banquet coordinator at the Ramada about out reception - we're penciled in at the UpFront, but we got their price list in the mail and it's sooooooo expensive, so we're going to explore other options.

Fights and Bites (to eat)

2006-12-23T18:55:00.000-05:00

So I didn't exactly finish my cookies last night - I got distracted (this happens easily - for instance I'm probably going to forget I have cookies in the oven right now). But I am almost done baking them tonight. I ended up with 38 Kiss Cookies...it probably would have been a full 3.5 dozen but I kinda ate a lot of the dough. It's ok though, because two of them are deformed. The will have to be sacrificed to the cookie gods (aka my stomach).

Here's the finished product of my baking:

The white ones are pecan sandies. For the first time EVER I actually followed my Grandma's recipe and they turned out really well. I usually use walnuts because I always forget to buy pecans and the recipe says to form into logs...i usually do balls. Also, I end up with for less cookies than the recipe says it will yield. But this year I was dead on. Grandma said 40 cookies and thats what I got.

I've come to the realization that I'm really more of a candy maker than a baker. Sure, my brownies are famous, and yeah, I make awesome birthday cakes for the kiddies....but i don't think I'm as good at baking as I am at candy. I always seem to either under or over cook baked items. Here's a sample of the candy I've been making:

Clockwise from the silver wrapped ones: Million Dollar Fudge, Butter Brickle, Million Dollar Fudge with Walnuts, Oreo Truffles, Snickers Fudge, and Cashew Brittle.

And yes, I wrapped every piece of that fudge myself.

As my time in the kitchen has increased lately, I've noticed that when the cat isn't trying to eat the dog, he seems to be picking fights with the refrigerator:

the staredown

the attack

Meanwhile, Molli does to her toy what I'm sure she'd like to do to the cat:

But still, we can't help but remember the peace that once was:

busy bumblebee

2006-12-22T20:56:00.000-05:00

Just call me Betty Crocker.

So far today I've made:
6 dozen Oreo Truffles
3 dozen Pecan Sandies
1 pound of butter brickle

and in a little bit I'm going to go finish up my batch up Kiss Cookies (the dough has to be chilled).

All this is in addition to what I've already completed:
1 pound of Million Dollar Fudge
1 pound of Million Dollar Fudge with walnuts
2 pounds of "Snickers"
a batch of cashew brittle

I love to bake but it seems I only do it at Christmas time....which is probably a good thing. Otherwise I'd be a blimp.

Now I just have to finish wrapping all of the presents Joe doesn't have time to wrap. I'm actually kind of surprised he's letting me wrap these, as he really seems to love wrapping. Also, he's the neatest male wrapper I've ever met.

HayZeus seems to like wrapping too:

He and I exchanged gifts last night because it was the only time we'll really get together (alone) for the next week, minus the drive to the UP. We went out to dinner at Bowers Harbor Inn (www.bowersharborinn.com) and had a really romantic dinner in front of the fireplace. It was really fun to get all dressed up and splurge on a fancy dinner (Joe really did most of the splurging). We took some super cute pictures too:

Afterwards we came home and unwrapped presents, had some cocoa and curled up in bed. Basically, yesterday was our Christmas!

I'm excited for all of the festivities coming next week. I really like that we're basically celebrating for a whole week...kinda like Hanukkah :)

So I put my notice in at work on Wednesday - I'd been super nervous to call my boss and tell him because of our staffing problems (and let's face it, no one wants to lose ME as an employee, haha). He was really understanding and thanked me multiple times for giving him a full months notice. Now that I've got that worry off my mind I think I'm even getting excited to move back to the UP. We're hoping to have the chance to look for a place to live when we are up there, but as of right now Joe doesn't even have the time off we're supposed to be in Grayling for (grrr...don't get me started). So I guess we'll see. Either way, I have to interview at Biolife on the 2nd (as a formality) so if he doesn't get things worked out we'll have to take two cars up there...booooooooooooo.

On a downer, Molli isn't so hot...her breathing is frequently labored and her pain meds don't help that situation. The vet had to increase her dose because she couldn't even walk on her leg. Poor pup. I've decided that after the holidays she'll probably be ready for her big nap. Joe got me a shadow box and a kit to make an impression of her paw for Christmas so I can make one last reminder of her. For now though, she gets to go on all the car rides she wants, sleep on the bed, and can have her fill of the beggin bones she loves so much (but is only supposed to have 1-2 times a week).

In other news, the cat keeps trying to eat the dog. Still, they seem to coming to some sort of a peace agreement:

And I swear I didn't position them like that.

Well I must be off. I have photos to pick up from Walgreens and then I have to pick Joe up so I can hit the hay (5am shift tomorrow.)

Goodnight!

Stressball city

2006-12-15T11:08:00.000-05:00

I've been a mess for the last 48 hours...a complete and utter stressball. And it was my day off for crying out loud! ugh.

Ok...long story short: Joe's been offered a promtion, but the position is in Marquette. Yeah, thats right, Marquette. The place we used to live.

The problem is I don't know if I want to live in Marquette. I kinda like it down here...I'm not in love with TC, but I am in love with being away from my hometown. And I hate to say it, but I also like being away from my family. I love them and miss them very much, but it's hard to figure yourself out when you're surrounded by expectations and the drama my family creates.

More than that though, I'm afraid of being that girl that went to the hometown college, got her degree, and then worked at a job that a high school grad could do. I'm not that girl, since I would be pursuing my masters while we're up there, but still. At least down here no one knows I don't have that great of a job, and even if they do I get respect for "finally getting out" (of the UP).

Oh, and PS, tons of people up there probably assume I'm a nurse by now, which I'm not. I'm 150% ok with that - I don't want to be a nurse - but it's annoying to have to explain that. Plus, I'm still pretty pissed at myself for failing peds, even though I'd be miserable if I hadn't. I still consider my biggest failure, since I know I have the brains to pass that god forsaken class.

On the other hand, Joe would be making more money and I'm 98% sure I could my old job back, which I enjoyed. Actually, they have a supervisor position open - something I would have been considered for when I was there before. Also, cost of living is lower up there, so we'd have more money to put away for an expensive event (hmm, what might that be?). An internship would be a breeze to set up because I know so many people at the Marquette County Health Dept, and we could probably consider buying a house since Teri would help us with the title insurance and closing. And how sweet would it be to actually have friends in the same area code again? :)

It's a lot to think about, and the wheels are a-turning. Joe has a meeting early next week to find out some specifics of this promotion and to see if it will be worth our while. I'll tell you one thing though - after the bitch-o-gram I sent my managers this morning about how we shouldn't be using our trainees like we are no matter how short we are...I'll feel like a jerk quitting.

Thank goodness I have Christmas under control or I'd probably fall apart.

Deep breath. In with the good air, out with the bad...(my therapist taught me this awesome breathing exercise).

Yeah yeah, get off it...I've been busy.

2006-12-06T20:29:00.000-05:00

Actually, I'm not sure if I've been busy. But when you get up at 3am, your day seems absolutely packed...I think because I'm so tired.

Let's see...where to start...

AMAZING weekend with the ladies. We went to a Jimmy Buffet restaurant, the mall, a Mexican place, a kickin' house party, and we had a reallllly nice hotel room (because I rock at making plans). AND on top of all that....Chris asked T to marry him! And *I* was the first person on earth they told. Ahhhh I rule. Of course now I have to deal with the "when are you getting engaged" thing, which is really, really annoying. Because A) Not my call B) It's not a race and C) What's the rush? I don't need some shiny ring to know what I'm doing for the next 100 years, puh-lease. Not that I don't want one, but I don't need it. But seriously, I'm happy for those two.

OH OH OH and on the SAME day T got engaged, my sister found out she's pregnant. We just keep multiplying. On a downer note though, she says she's thinking about Elizabeth or Isabelle for the name (if it's a girl) which I'm super pissed because I've had those names reserved since like...1902. It's ok though, because she's going to have another boy. Just wait. (side note: I told her she couldn't use those names and she replied "whatever, you don't even want kids." NEWS to me...and Joe would throw a fit!).

I know I once gave Joe a hard time about his disdain for the cat, but I'm seriously considering giving him back to the Humane Society. Every single night this week he's woken me up and I've been unable to get back to sleep. So I'm like...UBER crabby. The kind of crabby where Joe asks me if I've had a nap. YIKES.

That being said, I have to go to bed. I was a busy bee today and made enchiladas, walnut fudge, and chocolate-caramel candies (aka snickers). Doesn't sound like much but my enchiladas are awesome and those snickers have 4 tedious layers. But they are sooooo worth it. Night.

2006-11-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

Hmm, it's been a busy week. Let's start at the beginning.

We had an absolutely fabulous Thanksgiving in Madison at Joe's sister's. The ride down was a little tight with Joe's parents, his brother Tom, Molli and HayZeus (we dropped them in Gladstone with Mame), but it wasn't all that bad. Crystal is a phenomenal cook - she even spent three days making gravy. At first I thought she was nuts, but once I tasted it I decided it was worth it. I'm still dreaming about some of the other dishes she prepared, especially the curried lamb stew. It was nice to have a holiday that a little less chaotic than your traditional Kirkwood Thanksgiving, but now I'm even more excited to experience the craziness we call Christmas in the UP.

We got back from Madison on Sunday night, relaxed a bit and got the house ready for my brother, Joe, who arrived Monday night to stay for a while. He's looking for a job down here, so he's our house guest while he hunts. Hopefully he'll find something good and maybe even move down here, which will dramatically increase the amount I see Jake and Johnny. Now I just have to get the rest of my siblings to move here. :)

Other than Thanksgiving and Joe's arrival, things have been pretty calm. I've been working all this week but I have the weekend off. I'm going down to Lansing for a little reunion - my best friend Teresa is having a birthday, and a bunch of us girls are gathering to celebrate. I'm coming from TC, Alyssa is coming from Marquette, Lauren from Detroit, and Sara from Mt. Pleasant. I'm very excited and we're bound to have a great time.

For now I must run, as I have to be to work in an hour. Work work work. I'm very tempted to try an instigate some change at work, but also very hesitant. Something to contemplate.

This is how it works: random stuff

2006-11-21T16:19:00.000-05:00

I have the next five days off and it's a darn good thing. If I had to get up at 3am one more time this week I'd have lost it. I'm still recovering from yesterday: I got off work at 10pm Sunday and had to be back by 5am Monday. For a twelve hour shift. I'm not even sure that's legal, but I'll never, ever do it again. Plus I had to be there at 4am today and was supposed to work at 4am tomorrow, but a coworker called me today and offered to take the shift off my hands. Twist.

HayZeus went to the vet today. He's just peachy...they took some blood, gave him a couple shots, and declared him a cat. Dr. Peck, whom I really like, also gave me some steroids for puppy. She's going to be totally buff in no time.

Just being in the vets office made me sad. Last time I was there was when we found out MD is on her way out...and now with her breathing getting so shallow and labored at night its becoming more real everyday. I can't even wrap her leg without crying anymore. So I'm super worried about being away from her this weekend. I know she's going to be fine with Missy, but I just wish I could be with her every minute. Someday, I'm going to be the Mom that calls the babysitter every half an hour to see how the kids are.

Lyrics from a new song I'm obsessed with:

this is how it works
you're young until you're not
you love until you don't
you try until you can't
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe until their dying breath
this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some--someone else's heart
pumping someone else's blood
and walking arm in arm you hope it don't get harmed
but even if it does you'll just do it all again
on the radio you'll hear novemeber rain
that solo's awful long
but it's a good refrain
On the Radio by Regina Spektor

I have decided I'm going to write a life list. Kinda of like Ellen's - things I want to accomplish in my lifetime, big or small. Everyone has such a list in their head somewhere...but I'm going to write mine down and see if I can't start checking things off. Here's my start:

Take piano lessons
Learn a foriegn language
Take a class in photography
Live in another state
Learn to knit
Work for the WHO - volunteer or otherwise
Obtain at least one Masters Degree
Backpack through Europe

For now, though, the only things I'm checking off my list are going to walgreens, making supper, and watching Good Eats.

roller coaster of life.

2006-11-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

I had to work today (of course) which isn't a big deal...except when your shift starts at 5am. A 4am alarm shouldn't even be legal, let alone necessary. I had trouble sleeping last night, so it was a rough start. On the plus side of things I think I may have been sleeping during rounds, so I don't really remember the first couple hours of my shift. And after that my work day was great - floors were quiet and I had a great talk with one of my bosses. She's going to talk to the boss that makes the schedule and see if we can't get me back on my rotation. Turns out the root of the problem is essentially that I'm too good at my job. Paul says I'm too versitile and dependable to commit to a gravy shift (it's the first to go when we're short). I told him I felt like I was getting screwed, so now that we're both on the same page I should see some positive changes in my schedule. So that was a good chat.

Another definte up for my day was a chat I had with a different boss ("I have eight different bosses Bob. So when I screw up I hear about it eight times. Eight, Bob."). We had a situation a week or so ago involving improper patient ID procedure...on the spouse of an administrator. I tried to warn my co-workers about it by sending out a very non-specific memo on making sure we're all doing things by the book, but we still got nailed. Turns out the administrator went to the head of the lab to chat about it (as I anticipated) so each and every phlebotomist will have to sit down individually with the director of the lab and be talked to about patient ID - except for me. Because I was the only person that was recognized as performing proper procedure. Score on my part! :) (Side note: I recognized the administrator the instant I walked into the room. While I'd like to think I follow our procedures to the T, I know I'm not perfect. But you better believe I was perfect in front of her! Duh!)

It wasn't until I got home that I hit the real downers of the day. First of all, I'd left the oven on over night and Joe wasn't real impressed by that one (not that I blam2e him). Secondly, Mollidog was covered in her own...well lets call its drainage, because it's not 100% blood. I guess it would be classified as typical serosanginous (never did learn how to spell that...I personally preferred to chart "pinkish-red") drainage. She had to be bathed and then I had to figure out how to let her dry without getting her oooze all over everything...it was a mess. And I pretty much cried through the whole thing. I mean I try to stay positive about her health, but I think I'm just lying to myself. Last night she soaked through an ABD pad in about an hour...so today I've got her tripled up...but it's next to impossible to keep up with her oozing unless Im home 24/7. So after I got her all bandaged up I layed on the couch with her and fell asleep with tears running down my cheeks. I slept for two hours, which probably wasn't wise considering I'm already having trouble sleeping.

Needless to say I was in a pretty crappy mood after that, but Joe did what he does best and brightened my day up. We went out for supper and rented some movies, so now I'm ready to put on some sweats and hang out on the couch.

Lots of ups and downs today, but I suppose that's ok. I hate knowing that things are only going to get tougher with the pup but I can't change that so I might as well start dealing with it. I just wish she could just go in her sleep sometime, becuase even though I know it's for the best, I think I'm always going to feel guilty about putting her down when the time comes.

Sometimes I can't believe how attached I am to that dog.

Happy Tails

2006-11-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

Mollidog is now an internet phenomena. She can be viewed at http://www.upaws.org/happytails.php?who=81 I wasn't kidding when I said I'm slightly over-obsessed with my pup.

In other news, MD and HayZeus are getting along better:
Ok, so maybe we tricked them into it. But they are still adorable. Every once in a while we catch them touching noses...but then HayZeus tries to catch MD's tail and the pup isn't too fond of that. They're both big fans of sleeping with us though, which we allow now that HayZeus has gotten over his anxoius meowing syndrome. (See, I told you all he needed was some love)

Today is my only day off until Thanksgiving (I had last weekend off, but that's it) and my boss called to ask if I would come into work. I wish there was a professional way to say "hey, go stick it," but there's just not. So I just told him no. But if he doesn't give me my 7/7 shift back soon I might set the building on fire...

Joe finally made some doctors appointments and will start using his insurance. I find this interesting since I started using mine 6 days after it kicked in. I think he's just been jealous of all the "thank you for choosing us" notes I've been getting from all of my providers. By the way, is that a new thing? So far my primary care, dentist, and eye doctor have sent hand written notes. I've never had that before...but I guess I've had all the same doctors since I was born.

I had my first appointment with my psychiatrist's office today. I saw the NP and she was great - much more enjoyable than my old shrink, who had the personality of a piece of lint. Originally it was just supposed to be an appointment to establish myself as a patient (a crisis it not a good time to shop for a mental health provider), but I've been struggling to stay upbeat lately and have also had trouble sleeping, so she prescribed some new meds. Not only does she have personality, but she actually listens to what I have to say about meds - which means I didn't get stuck taking 4 pills twice a day that would
a)make me a zombie
b)kill my libido
c)make me gain weight
d)give me withdrawls if I don't take them at exactly the right time
e)won't make me sick when I have a glass of wine with dinner
I mean sure, there's a chance that I could get a potentially fatal rash...but at least I'll be happy about it.

Oh come on, that was funny and you know it.

In all seriousness though, thus far I've been extremely pleased with all of my choices when it comes to doctors. I absolutely love my PCP, and both my dentist and eye doc are totally good looking. And lets face it, that's a bonus.

A new beginning

2006-11-14T15:18:00.000-05:00

A new blog. Maybe I'll even update this one...it's too soon to tell. But since I visit blog spot so much to read Crystal and Becky's blogs, I figured I might as well try. Plus, I can't put pictures in my other blogs.

I guess I might as well start with the picture I've been promising. Here's HayZeus:

Isn't he adorable? I have some better pictures, but they are at home and I am at work (shocker, hey?). So that'll have to work for now. Mollidog isn't all that impressed by his presence, but they are getting used to each other slowly.

Speaking of the puppy, she's doing ok. The tumor on her elbow is bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball. It's been an open wound for a few weeks now, and is threatening to develop an infection. The lymph nodes in her neck are palpable and she's got two small masses on her paw, but she's not in pain and is still full of her trademark energy. Mollidog won't stop being Mollidog, cancer or not! She does need a haircut though.

In other news, I took my sewing machine to the repair shop today and the sewing guy pronounced it DOA. I guess that's what happens when your mother KNOWINGLY gives you a BROKEN sewing machine to complete your christmas projects with...jeeeez Mom. Thank goodness I started so early. Turns out the sewing guy might have a used one he can sell me for a good price with a warranty, so I'm hoping that works out. Tick tock tick tock.

I also called Cellular One and told them about my broken phone today. My replacement should be here Thursday.

Other than those few things I'm essentially knee deep in Christmas prep, which is wierd because I usually pretend Christmas doesn't exsist until after Turkey Day. Or maybe it was after final exams. I can't remember. Either way I'm working on getting my gifts figured out and I'm excited to start baking.

Oh, I forgot to mention - Joe and I went ring "browsing" on Saturday. But that's no big deal, right? :)