Evil Virus of Doom...and other things.

Just a short post today.

Alex and I have been plagued with some terrible virus for the past week. Alex came home Friday with 104 temperature, and Saturday she had a terrible sore throat. I also started coming down with it on Saturday, and Sunday, Mother's Day, we were in the ER getting strep tests.

Luckily, they were negative, but that did not stop the horrible and searing throat pain. We were both unable to eat more than a few bites for three days, and Alex's fever stayed in the 103-104 range for three days. Finally on Thursday it broke to under 100 and stayed there, and I was able to start eating again. She has been fever free for 48 hours now, and can talk and eat with ease again.

All Alex could eat was Popsicles for two days.

Alex has never been so sick in her 8 years. It was very scary for me. She would not eat, could hardly drink, and did not say a word for three days. As most know, Alex is a talker. She talks NON-stop all the time. Yet nothing but head nods and shakes for three days. The few bites of food she would eat I had to feed her like a baby bird. She was so weak she could hardly sit up, much less feed herself.

Jack was very kind, he pretty much ran the house for the week. I was in bed for two days, only getting up to use the bathroom. He cooked and did dishes and got us anything we needed. It was very nice.

I did the dishes and ran the vac today, for the first time in a week, and tomorrow I am going to cook a real meal. We have been living off of broths and soups, as it was so painful to swallow anything, and we are all ready for something more substantial. So I intend to make steak tacos, and I have a giant seedless watermelon in the fridge chilling for dessert. I have been craving the melon like crazy for the last couple of months. I blame it on longing for Summer. ( Try not to gasp in shock over the fact I am longing for Summer lol ) It is the middle of May and we have had a few nights of upper 30's and low 40's. In Florida. I am still wearing jeans most of the time. My shorts sit in the drawers...waiting to see the light of day.

In other news, there are two weeks of school left, and even though we were so sick, it was nice not having to worry about living life by the clock for the past week. Sleeping when we wanted, waking when we felt like it. No rush to eat dinner and do dishes, or make sure laundry was done for the school week. I am really looking forward to a couple of months of that.

Also, we have been given a mediation date with Jack's former employers. It is set for the second week in July. Of course, I can not give any detail, but hopefully this hellish 2 year period of doom will all be over soon, in our favor. Jack had a doctor visit this week and the doc said he should have a fusion. Jack told him " No, thank you." The doc also told Jack that he was a record breaker. The Doc had never operated on one person 4 times in a row in such a short amount of time. Hell of a thing to be a record holder on, eh? There will be no more surgeries unless the alternative is to end up in a wheelchair forever. They keep hacking on him and he is still not fixed, and he is just done with it. There has been no improvements,  so now he just wants pain management and to settle, so we can move on with our lives.



So hopefully, soon we will come to the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel we have been navigating.

Source

Hmmm, what else?

Oh yeah, my birthday! I turned 34 on May 4th, and my Mom and older kids surprised me by taking us all out to dinner at Outback. It was scrumptious, and it was nice to be gathered with my family. The only down side was it was graduation weekend for FSU and FAMU, so the place was packed and very loud, which made talking almost impossible. One we got back to Mom's, I saw that she had made me one of her delicious cakes, which I adore. They also got me a humorous birthday card, with a sexy shirtless guy in it, and he sang happy birthday to me, but you had to rub his abs to get him to do it, and he was ticklish, so he giggled while he sang. It cracked me up. All in all, it was a very nice birthday, the best I have had in a very long time. I still smile when I think about it.

Mother's Day was a wash, due to us being sick, but Saturday, the day before, Jack made a great dinner and did the dishes, so it all worked out. He and Alex also got me a card each, and Alex also made me a handmade card. They both made me cry, they wrote such sweet things in them. It warmed my heart. They drive me crazy sometimes, but I know they love me, and I love them.

I think that is about it for now. My "short" post ended up being a little longer than I intended, but a lot has transpired since I last wrote lol.

So I will end  here, and I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

P.S. I am still looking for questions for my 'Ask Me Anything' segment. I only have a couple, and I am really wanting to do this. So please, send your questions in. Click the graphic in the upper corner of the left sidebar to be taken to the post with the details! Thank you! :D

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Sick, but thankful.

I think I have the plague y'all.

Alex had been sick for most of the last two weeks, and I have been sick for a little over a week. It will just not go away. We have all these meds and I have cleaned and sprayed disinfectant on everything. It sucks.

We had to miss Thanksgiving with my Mother because of it. As long time readers know, she only has the bottom half of her lungs. She had to have the top removed due to advanced COPD 7 or 8 years ago now. So we could not be around her, as if she gets a chest cold it can kill her. She was so nice though, when I called her Wednesday to cancel, she said that she would bring us plates on Thanksgiving so we would not miss out on all the yummy food. She called me and told me she was going to leave it on my steps, so I would not infect her lol. I stood in the doorway and waved and talked to her across the yard for few, and brought the food in. It was so good! I am still bummed I did not get to go over there though. This illness picked a bad time to present itself!

However, we will still get to celebrate. We got the stuff to make our own Thanksgiving dinner with a friend whom we do not get to see very much anymore, and Jack and I are going to cook a big dinner on Sunday. Jack is going to smoke a turkey, and I have a huge spread planned. I am excited, it should be great. I am just hoping I feel good enough to cook. This cold is kicking my ass. I am taking one more day of rest today, as tomorrow we will be power cleaning to get ready for Sunday, we we can cook and not worry about having to clean too.

I wish I had a nice huge house, so I could invite my Mom and a few other people...I would love to take over Thanksgiving every year, and let Mom not have to worry about it anymore, but I live in a postage stamp...we do not even have a kitchen table, so I can never invite more people than can fit on my furniture in my living room lol. Maybe one day :)

So that is where I have been. I have not been around to much, other than playing games on FB...that is all I have had the mental and physical energy for. I miss all of you guys and gals so much though, and I was bummed that I did not post here on Thanksgiving, so I had to come in today and suck it up long enough to let you all know that I am alive, and I am so very thankful for all of you. I have met some of the most amazing people because of my blog, and I am happy to call so many of you friends. I hope that those who celebrated had a wonderful day, and everyone else too.

I have so many things planned for the blog, so many ideas...I just need to get rid of this crud and get back on my feet.  I do not get sick often, but when I do, it more than makes up for time missed lol.

I love you folks, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I will be back soon!

Another busy day: NaBloWriMo day 16

Later and later these days. Sorry folks.

Today has been a busy day of writing and cleaning and taking party decorations down and washing, drying and folding a crap ton of laundry, plus Alex came home early today. There is a tummy bug floating around school and I am afraid she caught it, so even though she is feeling a bit better now, I am going to keep her home from school tomorrow just in case. So booo baby is sick, but yay I can stay up a little later and SLEEP in tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow I will be writing a special post, another teaser post leading up to my November 2nd post with Winston Emerson, author of The Object, among other things.

Mr. Emerson has a special request to ask of his readers to help with the promotion of his new book. I will post the details tomorrow.

I hope you are all having a wonderful evening, and I will be back tomorrow! Sorry for the short posts, but it is busy as usual around here lol. As long as I post, it counts, right?

Have a great night!

I kind of have it, but then again, I kind of don't....

Writers block of course. More like writer's will to be honest. I stay so busy, or so occupied with other things, when I sit down here at the computer these days and even think about blogging, my mind draws a blank.

I find that the more I have to write about, the LESS I want to write. Why does it happen this way? As a writer I should be dying to get the words out, to share the experiences. Instead I find myself guarding them like a child with a most precious plaything...unwilling to share it with anyone.

It has been a whirlwind of activity the last three weeks. I think the last time I posted was right before Samhain, which is when I went into the doctor to get my walking boot officially taken off. That all went off with out a hitch. Hell, I walked 5 miles the day before with NO boot on...not that I told my doctor that. But I did it with no ill after effects other than being tired.

Oh wait, I remember what my last post was about now. My best friend, who had lost her memory. Well she still has not regained it but she is coping much better, most days anyway. Nights are hard, as it is when she gets tired, she gets overwhelmed easily. But she goes day by day and her heart remembers even what her mind does not. You can follow along with her journey HERE if you like. It was a fairly new blog before she lost her memory and there is much more content after she lost it, but there was enough before to see how the stress of daily life and a million other factors that have happened over the last 15 years attributed to her mental vacation ( which is what I call it. )

So back to Samhain, the doc took Xrays and said it all looked wonderful. I do still have two small broken parts in the posterior of the ankle, they are to small to use any screws or plates or anything to fuse them back together, and since they cause little to no pain ( usually none unless something hits me on the ankle or back of the ankle, then I feel every damn splinter lol ) and he showed me in the xrays where the toothpick sized slivers and little porcupine ball of bone fragments were already "bridged" with new bone growth. Meaning there was a shadow between the stable part of my bone and the broken piece of bone, which is the new bone growth making a "bridge" between the undamaged and damaged bone. In other words, I am healing as I should, and in fact a little faster than they expected. I only have one more appointment with them, which is on the 30th of this month and then they will turn me loose unless the hardware bothers me later.

I have a pic of my xray...only one angle though, but it shows the plate and two screws ( well it looks like one screw because of the angle, but there are two there, much to my surprise. I did not know that before. ) If you look on the right, ( which is the left of my ankle lol ) there seems to be a single screw jutting up at an angle into my leg...but there are actually two screws there, one behind the other basically. Funny thing...every time I look at this pic is make the side with the plate ache a bit. The mind does funny things lol.

So for the most part I am now left to my own devices, which is fine. It still causes me pain at times, and it still swells, but it will swell for at least a year he said, and as far as pain, well, every time it rains or gets really cold, I am in for a ride, which I already have experienced. I can tell you it is going to rain three days before a drop ever falls lol. I am back to normal for the most part though. I do move a little slower, a little more carefully...but I am told this is normal and the more time that passes from the day I got hurt, the less it will bother me. One day I might not even think about my ankle, like I used to not think about it before I got hurt lol.

Since I walked in the breast cancer walk, weekends have been non stop, on the go action kind of weekends. The weekend after the walk we went to the St. Marks River lighthouse and watched the Monarch butterflies migrate, and we walked about 5 miles that day, me with no boot on. I was very proud of myself.

Here is a pic of the St. Marks lighthouse. It has history. Look it up lol.

Later that same day we went down to the other side of the bay and went to the old fort which is the
San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park. History there too.

The weekends since then have been filled with trips to the mail, and out to eat, and grocery shopping, and walking around the flea market. We all bought some new PS3 games so Jack has been playing the new Midnight Club racing game, Perth and myself play Skyrim, ( Oh yes, we have Skyrim, got it the day it came out lol ) and I am playing Grand Theft Auto 4 when I feel up to it.

I have not been playing much of anything for the last several days though, because I have the flu. Nasty, icky, shoot me now please, flu. So I have spent the last few days moaning about how shitty I feel to everyone who will listen lol. Jack even cooked last night. I just do not have the energy to stand up longer than a minute or two without feeling like I am going to pass out, so I just stay on the couch or in the bed or here in my chair. I feel different today though. Not better, just different. Yesterday I had sinuses clogged up so bad I felt like I was slowly suffocating to death, and today I can breathe better but my fever is up to 101, and it was only 99.4 yesterday. I will take hot and cold flashes over not being able to breathe any day lol.

I think that sums it up for now, It is a readers digest version, I know, but my energy is running out on me and I need to go rest for  a while. As these things usually happen, now that I have gotten over the hump of actually writing a post after not writing for a few days, that block will go away and I will be back more frequently. Once I stop feeling like ass that is.....

Happy Humpday folks!

Super Plague of Doom...

Yes, that is what I have. 


After being sooo sick it sent me to the emergency room a few weeks ago, I thought I was finished with my super bad illness of the year thing for a while. Apparently 2011 decided to take it's allotment from the start of the year, instead of the end as 2010 did. I have been sick for 4 days now, and it came upon me out of the blue, and hit me like a ton of bricks. Full on flu. I must have no immune system at all I swear. Alex has a cold, and it mutates into the Plague of Doom in me. Jack has not been to work all week, he has...get this...SHINGLES of all freaking things. That would be adult chicken pox by the way. What is itchy and annoying in children is apparently agonizing in adults, and even potentially lethal in some cases. He has been in severe pain, and the docs have him on the strongest Vicodin they make, and he still hurts. So he has been home, Alex has not been to school this week, and I feel like crawling in a hole somewhere and croaking. Not exactly a fun week. 


Also, my Dad ended back up in the hospital most of last week. He had to have 3 stints put in after having a heart cath done. Then he kept bleeding from the incision in the groin and he bled for 3 days before they bothered to fix it. My Mom had to threaten to take him to a different hospital to get them to be concerned about it. So they sew him up and sent him HOME THAT DAY, after he had been bleeding for THREE days! He started bleeding again that same night, and had to go back to the ER the very next day, but they went elsewhere this time, had all the shoddy stitches taken out and they started all over. Now he is no longer bleeding. 


So needless to say it has been a trying week. 


I will be back soon, once I can get us all well!

Oh what a weekend it was...

Howdy folks.


It has been a most interesting weekend, to say the least. Some bad, some good.


The bad? Well I have been sick for about a week now, and Friday morning I got up and could hardly get to the bathroom. I was gasping for breath and I had to stop and rest 2 feet out of my bathroom door. Jack could hear me wheezing from across the house, and as he came around the corner to check on me, he stopped in his tracks.


"Go get dressed, I am taking you to the emergency room." he said.


"I...*gasp* do not *wheeze* need to go *gasp* to the ER *coughing fit*" I protested.


" Yeah and I do not want you to die. Your sick honey, your getting worse and your lips are blue. Let's get Alex on the bus and I am taking you in, go get dressed."


As I grumbled on the way back to my bedroom, I was coming up with all the reasons I did not need to go to the hospital. I hate hospitals. Alex only had a half day at school, and there was no way I would be done in time, and I had no one to get her off the bus if Jack was with me. My Mom was at work and my Dad would not have done it. I hate hospitals. It is expensive, since we do not have insurance. Well, I do not anyway. They never give me the right meds, they just tell me I am sick and go have some over the counter meds, here is your 1000 dollar bill and have a nice life. I hated to make Jack miss work because of me, as he is out of vacation days. So on and so forth.


I tried to voice these reasons to Jack but he was not having it. " Your going, if I have to tie you up and throw you in the truck and force you to go. Take it from someone who has chronic lung problems, you NEED to go, end of story."


Me: 'FINE.'


So we take Alex to the bus stop and away we go. I get in there pretty fast, and the doc came in, had a listen to my chest and told me I has some serious wheezing going on.


Me, internally: Brilliant. I would never have known that. *Sighs* I hate hospitals.


So he orders me some breathing treatments which were lovely, helped a lot, and after asking me did I have someone with me to drive me home, he have me a double dose of Hycodan. That is Vicodin laced cough syrup for anyone who did not know that. Great stuff. I had been coughing so much and so hard for days, my entire upper body felt like I had been beaten. It was nice not to hurt for the first time in a week. He also ordered a chest X-Ray which showed the junk in my lungs, and after a few more breathing treatments and checking me for flu by shoving a 5 inch swab up my nose, which made me all but crawl off the table, he let me go a few hours later with a Rx for a bottle of that cough syrup, a round of antibiotics, and an inhaler.


Due to the insane price of medication, I got everything but the inhaler, since I had a couple here already that are Jacks that he had last time he got so sick. I sterilized them and have been using them instead. The cough syrup was a trial and error experience let me tell you. It had been several hours since the dose they gave me in the hospital and the time I got my Rx filled, and I was coughing like crazy again. So stupid me gets in the truck when we got it, cracked the top without bothering to look at the dosage, and took a nice swig of it, like I would an cough syrup I needed right away. About 15 minutes later I started to feel great. 30 minutes after that, when we got home, I felt a little ill. an hour after taking it, I was pretty sure I was going to die. I was so high, and not the fun kind of high, I mean the "Omg I am going to die, I can not stand this feeling, I want to come down now" miserable kind of high. Kind of like the ONE time I tried a pot brownie and I was high for 2 days. MISERABLE. This coming from a former addict, so that should tell you something lol. I even tried to make myself throw up, I was that miserable, Anything to get it out of my system, but to o avail. I could not manage to hurl. So I had to ride it out.


Turns out the normal dosage is 5 to 10 ML...which is like a tablespoon to two tablespoons...and that swig I took was about 5 times that amount, I mean I had a mouthful. So you can imagine how bad I felt. I was nauseous and my head was hurting and I was all twitchy. Even after I "came down" the next day, I can not take a full dose. It makes me sick. I am supposed to take the 5 to 10 ML every four hours, but I only take a little less than a TEAspoon every four hours. That keeps the coughing at bay without making me feel all jacked up and icky. It is funny now, looking back, but man I was ready to go BACK to the ER to have them get that crap out of me lol. Needless to say I am much more careful now, and will be reading all dosage instructions on anything with a narcotic in it from now on lol.


The good thing is that Jack was the sweetest guy ever the whole weekend. He took such good care of me, he went out of his way to make me feel better. He even went to the store Sunday morning and got the fixings for my favorite meal: Steak, baked potatoes, salad and English peas. He cooked all weekend and made sure a had anything I needed. He was with me just about every second for three days and I missed him so much this morning when he went back to work!


I am feeling much better now, and better every day. I am so excited for Friday, since our tradition in my family is to open gifts on Christmas eve and then have dinner on Christmas day, and the kids are going to be so excited about their gifts this year!


So that is where I have been since I got my net back. Now I am doing my best to stay up for the lunar eclipse tonight but I am having a tough time. I am not used to being up this late anymore lol.


Hope you all have a great week!

Prayers for Ariel

While I was writing my last post, I learned some heartbreaking news.

My 17 year old second cousin Ariel ( daughter of my cousin Frank ) has been diagnosed with cancer, and there is little hope for her. She had been complaining to her doctor for a year that she was in pain, and the doctor told her there was nothing wrong with her, it was all in her head. Tuesday the pain was so bad they rushed her to the emergency room and they life lighted her to Shand's Hospital in South Florida, where they found the cancer, but there is very little hope, her liver is gone, eat up from the cancer, and they thought she might not make it through that night, but she did.

It is so tragic that a young life will have to end this way, due to a doctor who did not want to take the time to take care of his patient. Please, if you could, send prayers, healing, Reiki, kind thoughts, light a candle, or anything else you can spare for Ariel and her ( my family ). It will be most appreciated.

Not much of anything.

That is what I have been doing folks. Not much of anything. It has been great.

Alex has been in school for just shy of a month, and she loves it. She is doing very well and I am excited to see her first report card sometime this month. While I am still not a morning person, the getting up at 5 A.M. has not been that big of a deal, once I got used to it. I have started sleeping until almost 6 however, since that is when Jack leaves, as I simply can not tolerate his happy happy joy joy self in the mornings lol. The only down side to her being in school, even though it is one I totally expected, is that she brought home a cold almost immediately, and it mutated into a super virus in me. She and I have lived cut off from 98% of the population at large for three years, venturing out to my parents every so often or a rare trip to the store or out to eat ( Jack usually picks up groceries on his way home from work so I seldom leave the house ) so I knew the first cold would be brutal. She got over it fairly quickly, other than the sniffles, but I have had flu like symptoms for a couple of weeks now. Luckily, she IS at school so I can rest and not have to worry about taking care of anyone but me during the day, and I love that.

I have even gotten into morning TV, sorta. I watch Good Morning America and Regis and Kelly and The Doctors and The View every day ( altho everything past Good Morning America is really just background noise lol ) and then I either put a movie on, turn on the radio, or turn it to the Create channel and listen to cooking shows. I clean a little, read a little, eat a little, and play around on Facebook and read blogs and chat with my friends. I have projects I want to do, but I have been taking time to just decompress from 3 years of Alex care, 24/7. I have been cooking some fantastic meals for dinner. One day last week, the oppressive rain and humidity took a break and it was cool one morning, and I even went for a 2 mile walk. Once the cooler weather is here to stay, and I am not so sick, I intend to make it a morning ritual. Put her on the bus and take a walk.

My son turned 12 on the 26th of August, and we had a little party on the 28th at my Mom's, which was nice. Mike had a friend over, and Mom made a wonderful cake. ( Her cakes are the BEST! ) We stayed from 10 A.M. till 8 P.M. and it was a great day full of laughter and good conversation and good food.

Malorie is out of the hospital, and is in physical therapy, and doing great. They should be back up here in October, and are going to take classes at a local college up here and start FSU in the Summer, for which both Mal and my cousin Shelby have scholarships. My cousin is going to be a Dermatologist and I think Mal wants to be an OB/GYN, if I remember correctly.

It is Labor Day weekend, and Jack took a 4 day weekend. He has two weeks of vacation built up, but he is the type to take a day here and there, especially during hunting season and income tax time, as opposed to taking it all at once. So he has Monday off anyway and took Tuesday off so we could have a day alone once Alex goes back to school. She is NOT happy about not getting to go to school tomorrow! She informed me this morning that she "did not like this bacation ( vacation ) stuff" lol. She still has no concept of the fact she will be in school for the next 12 years, minimum, so she still has it in the back of her mind that one day we will say she can not go anymore. I may or may not exploit that way of thinking with the occasional " If you do not clean your room you can not go to school tomorrow!" statement lol. Hey, she has never kept her room so clean , leave me alone lol...

Over the next couple of weeks I intend to do a complete overhaul on my blog, now that I am getting over the new and blissful feeling of having 8 hours a day to do nothing at all. New layout, new widgets, new content hopefully. I hope to have new pictures to post in the coming weeks, as I can feel the breath of Fall in the air, and I will be spending more time outside when it finally gets here. I can not wait to be able to open my house up and air it out! I also have more indoor painting to do, and some more weeding out of stuff in the house.

As it stands, I will not be able ( or really even have to ) go back to work until the first of the year. My truck has a flat tire, an invalid tag and no insurance, so other than on weekends when Jack is home, I am parked for a while, until income tax time gets here. I hardly ever go anywhere anyways, so it just makes sense to let my truck go until income tax time, and just keep his valid and insured, since his costs next to nothing to insure. Plus, if some things keep going in the direction they have been, I will not NEED to go to work, since all I was going to work for is grocery money. Plus with Alex's school schedule, and no one but me to get her on and off the bus, any job I had would have to be some pretty odd hours. It is hard enough to get a normal hour job around here with the economy, so finding one with the hours I needed would be next to impossible. So if all goes well, that will no longer be something we have to worry about.

I guess that about sums it up for now. I have wanted to blog but at the same time my brain just wanted some time off, and my body too since I have been sick, so I have been listening to it and doing what I felt needed to be done..which was nothing lol. It has been great, but I think I am about over that stage and ready to get some stuff done I have been putting off for the last three years. So let us move on to the next phase shall we?

Have a great holiday everyone!

The other side of 31....

Well it is official. I now have BOTH feet firmly planted " in my 30's " lol....

Tuesday, the 4th, was my 31st birthday. Remember when you were a kid, and 30 felt like it was an eternity away? Yeah, well kids, it is not as far off as you might think lol.

 Things were pretty much the norm on my actual birthday, being in the middle of the week and all. A friend gave me some spending money, which I quickly gave to Ebay lol, and Stag gave me the most awesome Harley Davidson Fountain Pen...which made me squee because I collect pens for one, and I ADORE fountain pens for two, and the fact it is a Harley Davidson Watermark Pen put me over the moon. *Pets it again*

Fast forward to Friday, and the end of that evening was I got food poisoning. Yeah. Horrible, painful, agonizing food poisoning. I was in agony all night, did not get to sleep until 7 AM Saturday, and slept in fits for most of the day, horrible stomach cramps waking me often. I got up about 6 that night and watched the race, and went back to bed about an hour after it was over.

Today, we all went over to my parents house for my birthday/mothers day dinner. (Happy Mother's Day to all the Magical Mamas out there by the way! ) Mom made one of my favorites, Chicken and Dumplings, with English Peas and Chicken and Rice...and it was awesome. I was still in pain and not feeling great, but I did not care, there was NO way I was going to pass up my Mama's good food! She made me my favorite cake, yellow with chocolate frosting, ( she makes the most awesome cakes too! ) and for a present, I had asked for her to make me some of her special chicken salad. There is no chicken salad on Earth as good as hers, and I have already eaten half of the big bowl she made me lol..

Yes, I am all kinds of miserable full and in pain still but I do not even care, it was THAT good! They also got me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, ( of which I have not taken pics of yet, but will soon lol ) and a card, and my eldest girl made me a special birthday card! I know people might think "Chicken salad for a gift? Really?" but all I can say is if you ever get the chance to taste it, you will see why it was a request lol. So we had a good visit over there, and then we came home and I took some meds for my tummy and sat here for a little while, and I was feeling better for about an hour and I ran the vac and did the few dishes from Jack and Alex's breakfast. I should note here that Jack was a doll this weekend, he took very good care of me while I was so ill. He cooked and cleaned and did the dishes and let me rest. He was a sweetheart. So after I did that it sapped what little energy I had and I have been here ever since. That in itself is an accomplishment since sitting upright for longer than about 10 minutes causes me stomach pain so I was either on the couch laid out or in bed for the most part. Man I tell you, food poisoning is some awful stuff.

I feel better now than I have since Friday so I am hoping that I will feel even better tomorrow.

 I have been thinking a lot ( before I got so sick of course, the only thing I really thought for the last two days was "Please shoot me and put me out of my misery" lol ) about where I am in my life, and where I want to go from here. That is a blog post for another time, but I have thought a lot about my family and my friends, and about heading back into the work force once Alex goes to school in the fall, and dealing with the fact that my "baby" is actually GOING to school in the fall lol. One thing I have learned is I am to damn old and have to little patience to play mind games anymore, and to try to be something I am not for anyone's sake. If people have issues with that, or me, they can talk to me about it like an adult, or they can move on with their lives, without me in it. I am going to be okay either way. I posted a status on my non Bella Facebook page to that effect the other day. That page has all my (Mostly Christian ) friends from back in the day, and a few family members and such on it, and while I have never been in the broom closet, I did sort of curb myself on that page because I did not want to listen to them all preach at me, so I said that I was Pagan, I was proud of it, and if they didn't like it, they were free to remove me. I have felt pretty good after saying that, and happily no one removed me ( that matters anyway lol ) and no one said anything unkind, so that was a plus.

I will stop here with that line of thought, like I said, it is a blog post for another time lol.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and a Happy Mother's Day!

It has been a long week..

Well this week I had planned on working on my kitchen, bathroom, and Alex's room, but fate had other plans for me.

I took Monday and Tuesday for myself, if you read the last post. Good thing I did, because I would need the energy I regained.

Wednesday afternoon, 20 minutes after Jack got home, his cell phone went off and said he had a voicemail. He was in the shower and told me to listen to it and see who it was. I did, and it was my Mother, telling us that she needed to take Dad to the hospital and she needed me to come stay with the kids. ( If you don't remember, my older two live with them just down the road..)

I called her back and asked what was up, and she said that Dad was having chest pains and was all swollen up, he looked pregnant, and he was short of breath. I told her Jack was in the shower and as soon as he was out I would be there, since the kids are old enough to stay by themselves for a while. She said ok and I went to tell Jack what was up. He was still in the shower and he said to just go ahead and take his truck. ( Mine is out of commission right now ) I asked him about him going to work the next day, and he said do not worry about it, he would go in late if need be. So I got Alex and I dressed ( no way would she have forgiven me for not taking her to spend time with her brother and sister, whom she adores.. ) and we left.

Mom and Dad were still there when we got there. I feel so bad for my Mom, she has so many health issues herself, ( a double lung reduction for starters, she only has half of each lung ) and she has been sick with a cough herself, so she was already tired. Dad DID look pregnant, he is a slender man, and his belly, face, hands and feet were very puffy. They left shortly thereafter, and I spent time with the kids and fixing their three computers. I got there at 4:15 in the afternoon, and Mom did not get home until 1 AM...and they said they wanted to keep him overnight for more tests. They gave him a diuretic and apparently he was peeing gallons, so did in fact have a lot of fluid. ( I should point out here that my Dad has had a triple bypass done several years ago, and had to have heart caths done before. ) I got home around 2 AM and went to bed at 4 AM...

I called Mom the next afternoon and she said that they were going to do a heart catheter on him later that day, and she needed me to go back to her place and look after the kids. ( Sad dad is in the hospital but LOVING all the time with my babies without anyone's interference lol ) I told her as soon as Jack got home I would be on. She said that she should be home by 8 at the latest that night since Dad would have to lay flat and rest for the rest of that night.  I talked Jack into coming with me, as I has seen him 20 minutes in two days and we missed each other horribly.

We got to the kids and I made dinner, and then we all went outside and playing for a while, tossing a ball and a Frisbee around. Jack usually goes to bed at 9, since he gets up so early, and he still had not had a shower, so at 8 when we still had no word from Mom he was a little antsy. She finally called at 9 that night and said she was on the way, and got home about 10 till 10. 

It turns out he had 5 blockages in his arteries, all of them 90 to 99% blocked. The doctor flat out told my Mom that within a week at most he would have suffered a massive heart attack and died. This confuses me a bit, because my Dad is on meds for these things, he does not eat junk food or fatty foods, and he goes to the doctor regularly. I asked Mom about that and she said the doc told her all it takes is a tiny blockage in the artery, and within a couple of days it can get blocked up just that fast. Scary when you think about it!

Poor Mama was so tired, she looked dead on her feet. I had the kids do dishes after dinner ( Yay for teens old enough to do dishes lol ) and I set the coffee pot for Mom the next day. We left shortly thereafter and Jack got a shower and went to bed, and Alex was not far behind him. I stayed up unwinding and talking to Stag, and then it all caught up with me and I crashed.

I called Mom when I got up this morning and she was on her way home with Dad, and he had strict orders to take it easy for a few days.

We will be over there most of the weekend...and as far as I know Alex is spending tomorrow night...we are going over Sunday to help cook Easter dinner, although to all of us it is just Sunday dinner lol. I figured plans would have been cancelled but with Jack and I helping, the weekend can continue as planned I guess, which is good, we do not get to spend much time together as a family anymore with my parents.

So that is how I have spent this past week. I am so glad that they took Dad into the hospital, this was a very close call! But he is home now, which is a good thing, and I have gotten to spend a lot of time with the kids, which does not happen near enough.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and that your loved ones are healthy and happy!

Still Alive...Mostly...

No, I am not dead...although I would probably feel loads better if I was lol. I have caught some horrible flu like bug thing...and it has been brutal.

Fever of over 102, full body aches, it felt like I was on fire. Headaches, and my throat, omg, I swear it feels like I am trying to swallow battery acid every time I swallow. The fever dreams were interesting though...

My memory is spotty, apparently I got up and made tea and fed Alex and set her up with a movie on the couch...and I do not remember it. I talked to Jack for 5 minutes on the phone, and do not remember it, but I was out of it enough that he came home from work at noon...and he is the type who will not leave work early unless someone is bleeding to death lol.

I have only eaten a few bites of soup and a half of a ham sammich in two days, and I am pretty sure swallowing live bees would feel better....

Ever since I stopped smoking, I have been sick..so I am starting to wonder if it was worth it lol. Not that I will start again...but you know what I mean.

Dude, my HAIR hurts.....

SO anyway, there is the quick update, I have not killed over yet, but never in my LIFE have I wanted a full body rub...with Vapor Rub...more....

Ta!

*Music of the Moment: Doctor Doctor by The Thompson Twins*