Spent the weekend shoveling

Is that supposed to be the grown-up version of playing in the snow? I'd rather build a snowfort.

We got 15 inches of snow starting Friday night. Half of it was on Friday night, so I got up Saturday and snowblowed and shoveled. I was actually enjoying myself. Then the other half came Saturday night, coupled with thunder, lightning, and high winds. Thundersnow is cool. And since I didn't have to go anywhere, the blizzard was cool too. Then Sunday I got to shovel more. I didn't enjoy myself so much that time. The snow was wetter and much heavier. And the snowplow left a pile in the end of my driveway that was 4 feet high and at least as wide. (It was equal opportunity - everyone got their own snow pile at the end of their driveway.) I enjoyed being snowed in this weekend though. It was a very relaxing way to end a stressful week.

My mom was discharged from the hospital on Friday. I actually got to talk to her. She sounded sooooo much better!!! It was good getting information directly from her and not filtered through her hubby.... We discussed that maybe in the future, she will authorize me to recieve medical info if she's ever in the hospital again. It turned out some of the info from her hubby was inaccurate. (In hindsight, I'm not surprised at that.) She was NOT jaundiced. She did NOT have a reaction to a medication. She was just infected. That's it. So they bypassed the oral route for antibiotics and gave them to her IV along with some fluids and *ta-da*! She's improved!

My friend, Medicine Man, has not heard a thing yet about his CAT scan results. To me, this is good news since I know that if it looks like something horrible, they call you ASAP.

Thanks to over-the-counter medication, my hoo-hah feels MUCH better.

And it turns out I was PMSing this weekend.... Go figure. Maybe I would've handled the stress better had the PMS not been part of it. I feel fine now. Thank you Cursingmama and Midlife Mutant for watching out for me. >smooch!<

I think I will celebrate now by taking a nap. :D

I'm having a...

...shitty week.

I worked extra this week, so that threw me off to start with.

I haven't been sleeping well all week. I'm waking up frequently in the middle of the night. No reason. I'm usually a pretty sound sleeper though, so it's bugging me.

My father-in-law/stepdad called yesterday to let me know my mom was hospitalized with diverticulitis and a reaction to a medication she was taking for the diverticulitis. (She became jaundiced.) So I spoke with him at 8:30 pm last night and asked that he call me again today to give me an update. I left a message with him at 9:30 this morning telling him he could call my cell phone as I would have it in my pocket at work today. He never called.

I talked to my sister-in-law though, and it turns out he had a moment to call her. Nevermind calling any of mom's daughters to let them know how their mom is doing.

I called again at 7:30pm tonight and had to leave a message since his phone is turned off. I tried calling the hospital because some of what he has told us doesn't make sense. Of course, the hospital won't give me any information because of HIPPA laws. (I had to try though.)

Then about 9pm, hubby called his cell phone and he answered. He had a bad signal though, so he said he would hang up and call back. When he called back, I could not talk to him. I was/am quite upset with him. I was already ticked after talking to him last night because he has this *knack* of ticking off the hospital staff. For whatever reason, when someone he knows is in the hospital, he thinks everyone should be spending all their time on HIS family member. Nevermind the more critically ill patient or the post-surgical patient or anyone else. He wants them all to jump and grab their magic wands and fix everything NOW. He was told to leave at 8pm last night due to visiting hours being over. He was telling me on the phone he was going to sneak back in. I hope he doesn't get arrested for trespassing on top of everything else.

Today, mom is a bit better. She's still tired and weak from the infection and still sore. But she no longer has a fever. They won't let her go home until she poops. Seems like a reasonable request since she's in there for bowel issues.

Another thing I'm dealing with - My best friend (Medicine Man) has been on my mind a lot the past 3 days. Since he'd recently told me he and his wife are having some troubles, I was chalking it up to that. Well, I spoke to him this morning - turns out I had good reason to be thinking about him. He'd been to the doctor due to a cough that wasn't going away. They did a chest x-ray and found a spot on his lung. So he had a CAT scan yesterday and is awaiting those results. For cryin' out loud, he's only 37! He can't have lung cancer! He doesn't smoke. He's not a healthy eater and not much of an exerciser. Maybe this incident will get him on a healthier track in life. (He tends to drink too much, IMHO.)

And to top it all off, I'm coming down with a yeast infection. Darn it all, I only had one in my whole life until the past few months. I've had three in the past 4 months. Grrrr....

So I feel like shit. And it's gonna snow this weekend. A lot. Sigh. I think the air will be just right for drinking.

I've always...

... HATED meetings. Most of the time, I think they are a useless waste of time. And now I present to you, results of a study that state "meetings make us dumber".

Priorities

Here is the current list of "most viewed" stories on MSNBC as of 10:50pm central time tonight:


• The Price of Survival (talks about the cost of search and rescue operations on Mt. Hood)
• Blair to announce Iraq troop pullout timetable
• Britney Spears checks herself into rehab
• Boys prove boring on 'American Idol'
• Gambia's president claims he has cure for AIDS
• Spears' rehab stint is her second attempt
• Drugmaker stops lobbying efforts for STD shots
• Audit finds U.S. anti-terror statistics inflated
• Surgeons who play video games more skilled
• Britney Spears shedding more than her hair

Let's discuss this a bit. Three of the top ten "most viewed" stories are about Britney Spears. One is about "American Idol". One talks about how much it costs to rescue people who climb a mountain. Another talks about how a vaccine maker has stopped lobbying to have states require the HPV vaccine. (Don't even get me started about how they called it an "STD shot".) And also on the health front, our surgeons should be playing video games, and a modern day medicine man (who happens to be president of an African country) says he has a cure for AIDS.

Oh yeah.... There's this war thing going on in Iraq. In all the excitement over Britney, it looks like everyone forgot about it! Except for Britian which now has a timetable for troop withdrawl.

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I have a few stories I'd like you all to read. In all the "excitement" about Britney and Anna Nicole and American Idol, this type of information doesn't get enough air time or print space.

Wounded and Waiting

Soldiers face neglect, frustration at Army's top medical facility

The Hotel Aftermath

Yes, those stories are long. Not everything is packaged in a pretty little USA Today type snippet. But it is important that the stories do not get buried under troubled blond girls and lost weekend warriors. But when you're done, I have a couple questions for you - especially for anyone who has one of those "support our troops" ribbons or bumper sticker on their car. I want you to tell me, a) is our country REALLY supporting our troops and b) are you?

Of course, AFTER being publically blasted about this over the weekend, the Army is finally making some moves to fix things up. And some other folks are jumping in on the action as well. All I know, is that if any one of you went to visit a relative in a hospital room and it had molded tiles hanging from the ceiling, or dead cockroaches on the floor, or mouse droppings, or a hole in the ceiling of the shower so you could see the bathroom on the floor above, I'm sure things would get ugly pretty darn fast. And can you imagine having ALL of those present in one room? What a way to treat our wounded vets.

I think I just got an ultimatum...

As I tried to log in here tonight to type a few words, I got a page TELLING me to verify my account to ge the "New Blogger". In the past, there had been a little spot somewhere that I could click and just get to my old Blogger "dashboard". That spot did not exist that I could find at all tonight. Ok! I give!

So now I have this new version. I don't feel like poking around at it tonight. Another night I'll nose around and see what I can find.

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Did everyone enjoy Valentine's Day? I would like it to be just like elementary school - where you get to decorate a shoebox to leave on your desk and people just drop little valentines and sometimes candy in the slot that got cut in the top. Good times.... gooooood times....

Valentine's Day in our house is pretty low key. I have always forbidden my hubby from buying me flowers for Valentine's Day because they are just waaaaay too overpriced. However, he is welcome to shower me with floral gifts any other time of the year. Doesn't happen too often though. We did the card thing. And he got me a really nice card, not a silly one. It put a tear in my eye. I love it.

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I did our taxes recently. Looks like we'll get a decent enough refund. Hubby is asking that we spend it on him getting eye surgery so he can get rid of wearing glasses. He has an appointment the end of next week to be evaluated to determine if he's a good candidate for lasik surgery. If he's not, we're gonna discuss his fear of contact lenses. He's just so tired of his glasses fogging up in the winter. Especially in work situations.

It would be weird to see him without glasses.

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Lately, I've been struggling with my body image. I wish I was slimmer. As in a LOT slimmer. As in I need to lose at least 30 pounds. I just do NOT have the patience for a diet right now. And I've been too blah or busy to exercise. I think this is just a bad time of year to evaluate this. I should just push it aside and think about it more next month. And I should be grateful I don't need to lose 130 pounds. Or that I'm not starving. Or that I have cancer. Things could be so much worse. And I'm glad they aren't.

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Not quite as blah

When I got up Sunday, I was feeling like it was going to be a better day than Saturday. Saturday, I was just so *blah* - tired, headachy, a little depressed.

Sunday was just ok. I ended up spending a little bit of money (the last of my christmas money) on a pair of ice skates. For the first time in two years, there was ice on the rink at the park and it wasn't 40 below. All on the same day! I was dying to skate! A couple years ago, I rented a pair of skates for the winter. Hockey skates. I originally learned to skate when I was a freshman in high school and got a pair of figure skates. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't quite get the hang of it. A friend recommended I try hockey skates instead - they have a firmer boot so your ankle has more support. And without the *toe pick* thing at the front, you don't trip as much.

Or so she said.

Well, she was RIGHT! I loved it! She and I and Frodo skated quite a few times that winter. Frodo took lessons (and I watched and learned myself). It was fun.

Last winter, it was too warm, so there wasn't any ice on the rink at the park. This winter started out that way, but mother nature made up for lost time recently by dipping us waaaaay below zero for multiple days in a row. So now there was ice. And it was a balmy 18º on Saturday. Unfortunately, the parks crew has done a horrible job maintaining the rink, so it was all bumpy and even had some potholes that you could fit an entire child into. But we skated anyhow.

After skating, we came home and helped Frodo make his valentine "mailbox" for school. I remember making those in elementary school. It was so much fun. Prior to this year, Frodo's teachers just had them staple a couple pieces of construction paper together to make a pouch. I always thought that was lame. So hooray for this year's teacher!

After Frodo went to bed that night, my friend and I stayed up talking. For a few HOURS. She's been quite down the past week, so we talked about the differences between normal blues (because she didn't get a promotion she tried hard for and really wanted) and depression. We've both been down the depression road before. I think it helped her some just to talk to someone who understood. We came to the conclusion that if she doesn't feel better in a week or two, she needs to call her doctor and get her prescription increased.

Monday, I had all sorts of plans to get things done. Again, I felt tired, headachy, and a little depressed. By 11:30am, I was under a blanket on the couch and in short time, I fell asleep. I slept for six hours. Sheesh! There are some NIGHTS I don't get that much sleep! And even after that, I was still all *blah* the rest of the evening. I don't know what's going on. If this doesn't stop by next week, I'm gonna go see my doctor. (And probably just get the same old line I always get - "I don't know. Must be a virus." Whatever.) At least today I'm not as blah. That's good.

Blah.

That about sums it all up for me. I just feel *blah*.