I wish there was a way to make myself sleep in...but my 3 children have internal alarm clocks that almost never go past 7:15...no matter the day. Sunday's are pancake days....but instead I went out to breakfast with my friend Pam...where I unloaded on the poor woman and broke down in tears. It's been a rough time with Allie....among other things.
After breakfast I colored and painted with the kiddos and did a little housework then met two more friends for late night Starbucks. I am a Dunkin Donuts addict. Never liked Starbucks. But after ten years of exclusivity, I decided I needed to branch out a bit....try new things. I am in love with the venti caramel macchiato with whipped cream. Oh my goodness...just saying that and my mouth waters. I am not a flavored coffee gal...at DD I always get an extra large regular coffee with cream and sugar....yeah I worry about the poundage from the cream later...in the moment, I am all about the coffee. Then home in time for dinner and to get Andrew off to hockey. Fun Fun!
(Oh Lord....I might be a hockey mom. I am NOT a fan (at all!!!) of Sarah Palin...so please don't lump all hockey moms with that lunatic.)
Tonight I have presents to wrap and hide. My kiddos are santa believers...the presents dont go under the tree until Christmas eve....which usually means I spend hours wrapping presents and cramming them into the closet under the basement stairs....only to retrieve them in the middle of the night Christmas Eve/Christmas Day...of course finding that the tape has now become unstuck in certain areas or there are holes in the paper from my 'cramming them into the closet'....which of course means I have to rewrap several gifts in the middle of the night....sometimes, if I've hit the Fusini's Christmas Party, then I've had a few drinks....those are always fun to see under the tree. The gift that's nearly impossible to wrap in the first place sober, becomes so much more fun to wrap after several glasses of wine. It's torture. I usually give up and it looks like a toddler wrapped the present. I have started saying that the elves wrap those ones. The kids buy it :)
I know I know....you are waiting for chapter two in "Everything you never wanted to know about hearts" but I can't go there right now. My thoughts are scattered and I haven't consumed enough coffee to take that journey. I will have more information anyway after Wednesday when we take her back to Boston Children's for more tests. This time it's not cardiac...it's immunology. I don't know which is worse/better....but I'd rather give blood than sit through a gazillion machines while they test heart/lung function. Just sayin'. Not sure but I think Allie would rather do tests than blood. After everything she's been through, you'd think the tests would scare the daylights out of her...but in actuality it's the bloodwork that sends her over the edge. She freaks out, runs away....we find her down by the elevator frantically pushing buttons to escape.
Anyway....I'm looking forward to the gym. I need to get my frustrations out on the machines. It's going to be a long week.....I just have that feeling.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Yesterday wiped me out...
I know I said I would come back and finish that post...about heart disease...but really, it's exhausting. I'll get back to it soon enough. I'll bet by the time I finish the whole thing you will be begging me to talk about something else!
Friday, December 3, 2010
Everything you never wanted to know about heart disease!
So....where to start where to start....
When I was pregnant with my 11 year old daughter, Allie, the doctor's at my regional NH hospital found, in a routine ultrasound, that they couldn't see the chambers of her heart easily. So they sent me to Boston for a level 2 ultrasound. They said that they found 'something' and sent me across the street to Boston Children's Hosptial for a fetal echocardiogram. I was 19 years old and 16.5 weeks pregnant.
5 hours later, they found and identified congenital heart disease in Allison. More specifically, they had it narrowed down to one of two different types of heart disease. Either it was Transposition of the Arteries...apparently that is when everything heart related is reversed....or it was Tetralogy of Fallot, which sounded so much worse. Tetra-meaning 4. FOUR defects. Pulmonary Stenosis, Overriding Aorta, Ventricular Septal Defect (hole), Right Ventricular Hypertrophy.Wouldn't you know it. Allie ended up with Tetralogy.
At her c-sectioned birth, she was 5lbs 4oz. 15 inches long. And I was 20 years old. I got to take her home after one week....back to my parent's house. I had given up my apartment and my single living because there was no way I could care for Allie on my own. She was this teeny tiny fragile child....and I was a child too. I learned everything I could about congenital heart disease. My insurance allowed for a nurse to be with us. Our first nurse dropped the ball....big time. Allie was displaying signs of distress at home and I was concerned but this nurse compared Allie to her other cardiac cases and brushed off our concerns, even calling me an "over-reactive mom". Well...that was my first introduction to the term....to be echoed throughout Allie's life thus far. Had that nurse actually listened to me, perhaps Allie wouldn't have ended up in the ER that night with a collasped left lung, filled with pneumonia, and in cardiac arrest at 15 days old. Who knows. I remember it vivdly, I had given up my car (no job, no way to make payments) so my step mother was driving me to the local hospital in NH because Allie was greyish....Main St was a mess and we couldn't get close to the hospital with all the traffic....I was scared. I jumped out of the car and ran down the street, carseat in hand, to the ER.
That was the night I woke up.
I remember standing outside the ER room where they were flying around trying to work on my 4lb something baby (she never gained weight). They called things like "respiratory stat" and"code blue". I heard doctors screaming at other doctors. I heard them talk about how the intubation equipment they had was too small and they would have to bag breathe her until transport arrived from Boston.
Then I was called into the room because they were getting ready to load Allie into an ambulance to go down to Boston. I remember walking over to the bedside and as I cme upon her, she was so tiny, and there was blood all over her. In the process of trying to intubate for hours they had scratched her throat so bad. There was a man standing next to Allie and his only job was to keep pumping this little bag....which went to a tube that then went down her throat inflating her lungs with air. I remember thinking that this man could be distracted at any time and forget to pump that bag. Nobody talk to this man! He has a job to do!
Boston Children's Cardiac Intensive Care Unit....in 1999 it was on the 6th floor of the Fegan building. There were so many bells and whistles. I felt like I couldn't touch Allie because sometimes when I did, alarms would go off and nurses would run around. She was propped up on her side with a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube down her nose. IV lines everywhere not to mention the monitor lines. It was chaos. She was asleep that first night. There was a little lobster stuffed animal that I had in her diaper bag so I took it out and placed it in her crib. The next morning the nurse had it under her ventilator, holding up her breathing tubes. Allie looked at me. I can't explain what that was like. She looked at me through all those tubes and wires. She didn't cry. She couldn't cry anyway because she had the tubes going everywhere.
The Surgeon came in...he was the cheif of cardiovascular surgery at Children's. He explained to me what was wrong and what was going wrong. Her heart was deteriorating fast, her left pulmonary artery was non-existant, and they couldn't wait for surgery....but they had to wait for the pneumonia to clear up a little. She ended up waiting a week on life support before they did her Tetralogy repair. Everything that happened during that week is kind of foggy. I remember sleeping in a chair. I remember not being able to hold her at all.
The day of her surgery....May 21 1999. She was the first case that morning for surgery. I kissed her tiny body and they wheeled her away and somone came to escort us down to the waiting room. Doris was the nurse liason (Doris is still there! Just saw her in March). She came regularly with updates on how things were going in the operating room. When she said "Allison is on heart lung bypass now" I nearly lost it. I mean, of course she would be.....thy have to work inside the heart. But just hearing the words...I remember feeling like I gave birth to a child whose heart doesn't work. And I remember feeling at that moment like it was all my fault. Maybe I missed a few days on those prenatal vitamins. Maybe I could have drank more orange juice.
It ws a long surgery and I had to wait even longer before I could go up to the CICU to see her. I was now in the waiting room of the CICU....waiting for them to tell me that I could go to her bedside. I could see doctors ripping in and out of that ward. I could hear things.
They finally called me to her bedside. I walked over to her. She was under a heater because in the OR they have to cool the body down so much and a blanket covered he chest so that only her head was sticking out. I came closer to her and bent over and whispered that I loved her. She was obviously asleep. But I knew that she could hear me. Maybe.
I wantedto see what was under that blanket. I wanted to see what was going on that I didn't know about. I mean I could see a million IV lines comig from under the blanket and I could see chest tubes coming from under the blanket and being drained into some bubbly machine on the floor. But I couldn't see her body.
Nobody prepared me for what I was about to see. What I saw, no parent should have to see. When the nurse pulled back the blanket, I stumbled, hitting my head against the heater. There were the chest tubes. not one but three. There was a catheter. There was a central line in her neck and regular IV lines in her arms. There was an external pace maker just laying there on the bed with the wires coming from out of her stomach. The incision for the open heart surgery was covered under a million layers of gauze thank goodness.
I just buckled.
How on Earth was I ever going to be able to take care of her?
The next morning was more of the same....except she was puffy from all the fluids.
I think by night 4 post surgery she was extubated and I was finally able to hold her late that night. I had wanted to hold her for so long....and this nurse came to my chair bed and said "It's time, you can hold her". It was the most incredible experience of my life.
They discharged Allie to go home 10 days after her 1st open heart. She had an appointment to go back to Boston a week later. We hired a new visiting nurse and got a new pediatrician. No one was EVER going to blow off my concerns again.
Fast forward one week. It's now June and we are back in Boston for an echocardiogram. She coded.
As they were administering the Chloral Hydrate she coded. I remember the nurse pushing the button on the wall...you know, the big red one that says EMERGENCY and makes alarms go off and people start running....yeah that's the one.
NOW WHAT????
The doctor performed an echo...and then I was able to hold her and feed her...seemingly as though nothing had happened. As though that whole "she coded" thing...never even happened...
As I'm feeding her...she goes black. The nurse grabs her out of my arms and runs wth her down the hall... and pushes the red button again.
They admit her to the CICU again......it would be a long time before Allie saw daylight again.
Several tests performed showed they couldn't figure out why Allie would be fine one minute and in respiratory failure the next. I had a few people tell me what their hunches were....but no one could say anything solid. She would have a few good days and then they would move her to the step down unit....only to be bumped back to the CICU a day later. One day she was in the step down unit and doing well....we were on a roll....people were talking about discharging her that week. I went downstairs to grab breakfast. Came back to her room 20 minutes later to find the crash cart outside her door and 10 doctors in her room. I was screaming and crying. I remember a doctor telling me "you are going to need to learn to roll with the punches a little better. She's not like other babies. She will never be able to be in daycare"....and I'm sure he filled his rant with other things....but that's all I rememeber.
July came and they decided that Allie had been intubated long enough. They needed to act. The surgeon came to me and said they were going to do a trach tube and with positve ventillation, she would be discharged. Hmmm.....
I called a meetig with the cardiologist and the cardiac surgeon. I begged and pleaded. "Just trust me....it's LOWER than that" I said. They must have believed me. They themselves went back to the drawing board. They scheduled the trach surgery but the night befoe the surgery was to take place, they came to my daughter's bedside and said "we found it.". They had gone back over the fleuroscopy, bronchoscopy, MRI, CAT scans...they found that her aorta was wrapped around her airway. Another defect. A major one.
"We've never seen anything like this before".
You never want to hear that. Not by them. Not at this hospital.
They couldn't "fix" the situation...but they could temporarily attach the aorta to the breast bone to get it off the trachea to give that a chance to harden. That was the slated goal anyway.
Back to the operating room.
Cont. later....I am starving and in desperate need of coffee!
When I was pregnant with my 11 year old daughter, Allie, the doctor's at my regional NH hospital found, in a routine ultrasound, that they couldn't see the chambers of her heart easily. So they sent me to Boston for a level 2 ultrasound. They said that they found 'something' and sent me across the street to Boston Children's Hosptial for a fetal echocardiogram. I was 19 years old and 16.5 weeks pregnant.
5 hours later, they found and identified congenital heart disease in Allison. More specifically, they had it narrowed down to one of two different types of heart disease. Either it was Transposition of the Arteries...apparently that is when everything heart related is reversed....or it was Tetralogy of Fallot, which sounded so much worse. Tetra-meaning 4. FOUR defects. Pulmonary Stenosis, Overriding Aorta, Ventricular Septal Defect (hole), Right Ventricular Hypertrophy.Wouldn't you know it. Allie ended up with Tetralogy.
At her c-sectioned birth, she was 5lbs 4oz. 15 inches long. And I was 20 years old. I got to take her home after one week....back to my parent's house. I had given up my apartment and my single living because there was no way I could care for Allie on my own. She was this teeny tiny fragile child....and I was a child too. I learned everything I could about congenital heart disease. My insurance allowed for a nurse to be with us. Our first nurse dropped the ball....big time. Allie was displaying signs of distress at home and I was concerned but this nurse compared Allie to her other cardiac cases and brushed off our concerns, even calling me an "over-reactive mom". Well...that was my first introduction to the term....to be echoed throughout Allie's life thus far. Had that nurse actually listened to me, perhaps Allie wouldn't have ended up in the ER that night with a collasped left lung, filled with pneumonia, and in cardiac arrest at 15 days old. Who knows. I remember it vivdly, I had given up my car (no job, no way to make payments) so my step mother was driving me to the local hospital in NH because Allie was greyish....Main St was a mess and we couldn't get close to the hospital with all the traffic....I was scared. I jumped out of the car and ran down the street, carseat in hand, to the ER.
That was the night I woke up.
I remember standing outside the ER room where they were flying around trying to work on my 4lb something baby (she never gained weight). They called things like "respiratory stat" and"code blue". I heard doctors screaming at other doctors. I heard them talk about how the intubation equipment they had was too small and they would have to bag breathe her until transport arrived from Boston.
Then I was called into the room because they were getting ready to load Allie into an ambulance to go down to Boston. I remember walking over to the bedside and as I cme upon her, she was so tiny, and there was blood all over her. In the process of trying to intubate for hours they had scratched her throat so bad. There was a man standing next to Allie and his only job was to keep pumping this little bag....which went to a tube that then went down her throat inflating her lungs with air. I remember thinking that this man could be distracted at any time and forget to pump that bag. Nobody talk to this man! He has a job to do!
Boston Children's Cardiac Intensive Care Unit....in 1999 it was on the 6th floor of the Fegan building. There were so many bells and whistles. I felt like I couldn't touch Allie because sometimes when I did, alarms would go off and nurses would run around. She was propped up on her side with a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube down her nose. IV lines everywhere not to mention the monitor lines. It was chaos. She was asleep that first night. There was a little lobster stuffed animal that I had in her diaper bag so I took it out and placed it in her crib. The next morning the nurse had it under her ventilator, holding up her breathing tubes. Allie looked at me. I can't explain what that was like. She looked at me through all those tubes and wires. She didn't cry. She couldn't cry anyway because she had the tubes going everywhere.
The Surgeon came in...he was the cheif of cardiovascular surgery at Children's. He explained to me what was wrong and what was going wrong. Her heart was deteriorating fast, her left pulmonary artery was non-existant, and they couldn't wait for surgery....but they had to wait for the pneumonia to clear up a little. She ended up waiting a week on life support before they did her Tetralogy repair. Everything that happened during that week is kind of foggy. I remember sleeping in a chair. I remember not being able to hold her at all.
The day of her surgery....May 21 1999. She was the first case that morning for surgery. I kissed her tiny body and they wheeled her away and somone came to escort us down to the waiting room. Doris was the nurse liason (Doris is still there! Just saw her in March). She came regularly with updates on how things were going in the operating room. When she said "Allison is on heart lung bypass now" I nearly lost it. I mean, of course she would be.....thy have to work inside the heart. But just hearing the words...I remember feeling like I gave birth to a child whose heart doesn't work. And I remember feeling at that moment like it was all my fault. Maybe I missed a few days on those prenatal vitamins. Maybe I could have drank more orange juice.
It ws a long surgery and I had to wait even longer before I could go up to the CICU to see her. I was now in the waiting room of the CICU....waiting for them to tell me that I could go to her bedside. I could see doctors ripping in and out of that ward. I could hear things.
They finally called me to her bedside. I walked over to her. She was under a heater because in the OR they have to cool the body down so much and a blanket covered he chest so that only her head was sticking out. I came closer to her and bent over and whispered that I loved her. She was obviously asleep. But I knew that she could hear me. Maybe.
I wantedto see what was under that blanket. I wanted to see what was going on that I didn't know about. I mean I could see a million IV lines comig from under the blanket and I could see chest tubes coming from under the blanket and being drained into some bubbly machine on the floor. But I couldn't see her body.
Nobody prepared me for what I was about to see. What I saw, no parent should have to see. When the nurse pulled back the blanket, I stumbled, hitting my head against the heater. There were the chest tubes. not one but three. There was a catheter. There was a central line in her neck and regular IV lines in her arms. There was an external pace maker just laying there on the bed with the wires coming from out of her stomach. The incision for the open heart surgery was covered under a million layers of gauze thank goodness.
I just buckled.
How on Earth was I ever going to be able to take care of her?
The next morning was more of the same....except she was puffy from all the fluids.
I think by night 4 post surgery she was extubated and I was finally able to hold her late that night. I had wanted to hold her for so long....and this nurse came to my chair bed and said "It's time, you can hold her". It was the most incredible experience of my life.
They discharged Allie to go home 10 days after her 1st open heart. She had an appointment to go back to Boston a week later. We hired a new visiting nurse and got a new pediatrician. No one was EVER going to blow off my concerns again.
Fast forward one week. It's now June and we are back in Boston for an echocardiogram. She coded.
As they were administering the Chloral Hydrate she coded. I remember the nurse pushing the button on the wall...you know, the big red one that says EMERGENCY and makes alarms go off and people start running....yeah that's the one.
NOW WHAT????
The doctor performed an echo...and then I was able to hold her and feed her...seemingly as though nothing had happened. As though that whole "she coded" thing...never even happened...
As I'm feeding her...she goes black. The nurse grabs her out of my arms and runs wth her down the hall... and pushes the red button again.
They admit her to the CICU again......it would be a long time before Allie saw daylight again.
Several tests performed showed they couldn't figure out why Allie would be fine one minute and in respiratory failure the next. I had a few people tell me what their hunches were....but no one could say anything solid. She would have a few good days and then they would move her to the step down unit....only to be bumped back to the CICU a day later. One day she was in the step down unit and doing well....we were on a roll....people were talking about discharging her that week. I went downstairs to grab breakfast. Came back to her room 20 minutes later to find the crash cart outside her door and 10 doctors in her room. I was screaming and crying. I remember a doctor telling me "you are going to need to learn to roll with the punches a little better. She's not like other babies. She will never be able to be in daycare"....and I'm sure he filled his rant with other things....but that's all I rememeber.
July came and they decided that Allie had been intubated long enough. They needed to act. The surgeon came to me and said they were going to do a trach tube and with positve ventillation, she would be discharged. Hmmm.....
I called a meetig with the cardiologist and the cardiac surgeon. I begged and pleaded. "Just trust me....it's LOWER than that" I said. They must have believed me. They themselves went back to the drawing board. They scheduled the trach surgery but the night befoe the surgery was to take place, they came to my daughter's bedside and said "we found it.". They had gone back over the fleuroscopy, bronchoscopy, MRI, CAT scans...they found that her aorta was wrapped around her airway. Another defect. A major one.
"We've never seen anything like this before".
You never want to hear that. Not by them. Not at this hospital.
They couldn't "fix" the situation...but they could temporarily attach the aorta to the breast bone to get it off the trachea to give that a chance to harden. That was the slated goal anyway.
Back to the operating room.
Cont. later....I am starving and in desperate need of coffee!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
One of those days...
You know what I'm talking about...those days where from start to finish you are completely occupied. As a matter of fact, I am multi-tasking now as I type!
Wake up...this time I set my alarm for 6:30 because after Tuesday's debacle of getting Allie to tutoring 20 minutes late and forgetting lunches, I learned my lesson. That extra half hour in the morning apparently makes all the difference.....not! I realized as I am packing up lunches that I forgot to go to the grocery store last night on my way back from the gym! In my defense, I work out in a skort and it was 30 degrees outside last night...not grocery shopping attire. Darn it! Had to write checks for lunch money. Getting everyone dressed Andrew announces that his throat still hurts. WHAT?! Race around trying to find tiny flashlight...can't find it....but I find enormous Mag lite..."open up and say AHHHH"....holy smokes...his tonsils are the size of golf balls! ok maybe not golf balls....but at least walnuts! Great.
A little sidenote before I continue with this rant is that my daughter, Allie, has heart disease and is currently dealing with immune system issues. Specifically, her IgA ad her IgM immunoglobulins are MIA....missing in action. IgM=reoccurrant infections. She catches EVERYTHING. Her body loves to catch Strep.....and she has caught Strep 5 times since March....when she had her tonsils and adenoids removed. We don't want Strep. Please don't be strep please don't be strep please don't be strep.
Race down to school to drop Allie off. Saw the math teacher. Decided to take a moment to thank her for making a difference in Allie's life. Allie loves math now....and she loves this teacher. I could see that made teacher's day. Allie made a card for the teacher. Jump back in the car....race home...get Ryan on the school bus by 7:45. Call Dr. for Andrew at 8....doctor's appointment for 9. Race across town.....Dr. says he doesn't think it's strep...but will test him anyway. SURPRISE.....it's strep. UGH.
Race to pharmacy to pick up meds. Car is dinging at me that it would appreciate some gas, you know, if it's not too much to ask. Cars like that kind of thing. Speed over to gas station where attendant says "hey I heard you on the radio yesterday" and proceeds to bend my ear about all things political. I think it's written on my face that I am a target or something. Like my body just gives off that vibe that screams "I'm having a bad day...gimme some more". Finally I find myself in the parking lot of the grocery store....me and my little strep positive offspring. Milk Cheese Bread....milk cheese bread milk cheese bread....no ice cream no ice cream! I've been going to the gym every single weeknight....ice cream would negate the kick a$* leg workout I did last night~!
Jump back into the car...get the mail.....JURY DUTY. Seriously?!? Didn't I like JUST serve or something???? UGH!!!!!!!
I have been summoned twice. Once I served and once I was dismissed.....after a whole freaking day of waiting. The time I served...it was a really bad case. And it ended in a mistrial. And I had nightmares of the case for years. Great.
So now I am home....with just enough time to write a quick blog before Ryan gets off the preschool bus. Then at 4:45 Allie has an hour long therapy appointment....where I will just sit in my idling car in the parking lot watching 'Finding Nemo' for the 5 millionth time because I keep forgetting to put new movies in the car. Then I will race to McDonalds where I can feed my kids for $10 on the dollar menu because I was apparently very naughty on Black Friday and Cyber Monday....(I feel you judging me....don't judge! There's no way I have time to cook a dinner! Besides....a little "chicken" never hurt anyone....did it?? Don't answer that!) and then I have to be at a public hearing for the Commission on the Status of Women. Oh....did I tell you? I am a Commissioner. I can't wait for the hearing actually. I look foward to hearing the testimony of the issues surrounding women and girls in Berkshire County. It's going to be such a great thing fo the women and girls in this community to feel like they are being heard!
Then hopefully if I haven't collapsed....I hit the gym around 9pm...till roughly 10:30. LOVE IT. It's where I unwind. But tonight the work out is ARMS. My least favorite thing to work.
Ahhhhh......
Somewhere in there I have to squeeze in baking 4 loaves of pumpkin bread for the church bazaar...which is this weekend but baked goods have to be dropped off in advance. Like TODAY or TOMORROW. And then there are the 50 cookie swaps for the month of December. Ok I am exaggerating. But I have a few ;)
Laundry....dishes....Allie's homework....and who knows what else. Days like this.....I am tired just typing it all!
Wake up...this time I set my alarm for 6:30 because after Tuesday's debacle of getting Allie to tutoring 20 minutes late and forgetting lunches, I learned my lesson. That extra half hour in the morning apparently makes all the difference.....not! I realized as I am packing up lunches that I forgot to go to the grocery store last night on my way back from the gym! In my defense, I work out in a skort and it was 30 degrees outside last night...not grocery shopping attire. Darn it! Had to write checks for lunch money. Getting everyone dressed Andrew announces that his throat still hurts. WHAT?! Race around trying to find tiny flashlight...can't find it....but I find enormous Mag lite..."open up and say AHHHH"....holy smokes...his tonsils are the size of golf balls! ok maybe not golf balls....but at least walnuts! Great.
A little sidenote before I continue with this rant is that my daughter, Allie, has heart disease and is currently dealing with immune system issues. Specifically, her IgA ad her IgM immunoglobulins are MIA....missing in action. IgM=reoccurrant infections. She catches EVERYTHING. Her body loves to catch Strep.....and she has caught Strep 5 times since March....when she had her tonsils and adenoids removed. We don't want Strep. Please don't be strep please don't be strep please don't be strep.
Race down to school to drop Allie off. Saw the math teacher. Decided to take a moment to thank her for making a difference in Allie's life. Allie loves math now....and she loves this teacher. I could see that made teacher's day. Allie made a card for the teacher. Jump back in the car....race home...get Ryan on the school bus by 7:45. Call Dr. for Andrew at 8....doctor's appointment for 9. Race across town.....Dr. says he doesn't think it's strep...but will test him anyway. SURPRISE.....it's strep. UGH.
Race to pharmacy to pick up meds. Car is dinging at me that it would appreciate some gas, you know, if it's not too much to ask. Cars like that kind of thing. Speed over to gas station where attendant says "hey I heard you on the radio yesterday" and proceeds to bend my ear about all things political. I think it's written on my face that I am a target or something. Like my body just gives off that vibe that screams "I'm having a bad day...gimme some more". Finally I find myself in the parking lot of the grocery store....me and my little strep positive offspring. Milk Cheese Bread....milk cheese bread milk cheese bread....no ice cream no ice cream! I've been going to the gym every single weeknight....ice cream would negate the kick a$* leg workout I did last night~!
Jump back into the car...get the mail.....JURY DUTY. Seriously?!? Didn't I like JUST serve or something???? UGH!!!!!!!
I have been summoned twice. Once I served and once I was dismissed.....after a whole freaking day of waiting. The time I served...it was a really bad case. And it ended in a mistrial. And I had nightmares of the case for years. Great.
So now I am home....with just enough time to write a quick blog before Ryan gets off the preschool bus. Then at 4:45 Allie has an hour long therapy appointment....where I will just sit in my idling car in the parking lot watching 'Finding Nemo' for the 5 millionth time because I keep forgetting to put new movies in the car. Then I will race to McDonalds where I can feed my kids for $10 on the dollar menu because I was apparently very naughty on Black Friday and Cyber Monday....(I feel you judging me....don't judge! There's no way I have time to cook a dinner! Besides....a little "chicken" never hurt anyone....did it?? Don't answer that!) and then I have to be at a public hearing for the Commission on the Status of Women. Oh....did I tell you? I am a Commissioner. I can't wait for the hearing actually. I look foward to hearing the testimony of the issues surrounding women and girls in Berkshire County. It's going to be such a great thing fo the women and girls in this community to feel like they are being heard!
Then hopefully if I haven't collapsed....I hit the gym around 9pm...till roughly 10:30. LOVE IT. It's where I unwind. But tonight the work out is ARMS. My least favorite thing to work.
Ahhhhh......
Somewhere in there I have to squeeze in baking 4 loaves of pumpkin bread for the church bazaar...which is this weekend but baked goods have to be dropped off in advance. Like TODAY or TOMORROW. And then there are the 50 cookie swaps for the month of December. Ok I am exaggerating. But I have a few ;)
Laundry....dishes....Allie's homework....and who knows what else. Days like this.....I am tired just typing it all!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Whew!
Today is one of those yucky weather days...rainy (it's only right that I wear my plaid wellies! Never get to wear them!)...windy (wind is never fun...pieces of my house fly away and I am out there picking up siding from my neighbor's lawn)....and a million appointments. I have nothing witty to put there. There is nothing fun about "hurry up and wait". I dislike people who think that their time is any more important than MY time. If you take the time to make an appointment with me, especially a 9am appointment, you should know that I am coming to your office with the minimal level of caffiene in my system....leaving me grouchy. If you should then decide to be late for our 9am appointment, you should be required to provide additional caffiene at YOUR expense....or suffer the consequences. Now I have a headache from grouchi-ness and lack of coffee in my veins....and a sour meeting. Time for a conference call. Oh joy! I think people need a refresher course in how NOT to run a conference call. I hear from tiem to time, people placing orders through a drive thru, people coughing up a lung, people yelling at other people who are not on the conference call. There is a MUTE button for a reason! *6.....use it! Buh-Beep....who just joined us? I love that I have to listen to that for the first 10 minutes of the call. Then the obligatory, "call me when we hang up"....yeah like I want to continue the conversation! If you want to yell at me, please do it in front of everybody! I like witnesses! ;)
I am finishing up my Christmas shopping this week. Oh fun times. Is it just me or was "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" a total bust this year? I mean, I think I was expecting an ipad or Barbie's dream townhouse to fall into my lap for pennies. Instead I lost out on both (at a severely jacked up price) and landed $6 pillows from Macy's and something that resembles an at home donut maker.....which I will never use but hey it was $10....and who doesn't like kitchen gadgets for $10. Someday I will get really bored and decide to make donuts from scratch because I have nothing better to do. Riiiiigggghhhht. I'll store that right next to the at home sno-cone maker I got 4 years ago (haven't been that bored...yet) and the "Set it and forget it"....which I have used twice....but not since 2005 when I accidently left the rubber gloves on the top of the machine...melting them into my nice rotisserie chicken.
The point is, I was expecting deals on TOYS....plastic toys or electronic toys....and I left with pillows. My "fun meter" is out of whack. It's called GROWING UP. I'm struggling with it, I think!
I scored $5 comfy pants on cyber Monday.....whoa, look out. What are they, you ask? Who the heck cares! It's a pair of pants for $5! I struggled with the purchase actually.....more so than I usually do. I sat there saying "don't check out....don't check out"....thinking about how far I could take that $5....all I thought about was my truck and how much gas I could buy and how far I could go with that gas. UGH. 'click'....shipping info correct....send confirmation. DONE. $5 comfy pants. I envision cold winters....and me in my fleecy $5 comfy pants....making donuts and sno-cones...with my 3 delighted children (in my dream, they are all smiling and getting along). *sigh*
Back to reality.
I think a tag sale in the spring is in order.
Ever had a tag sale? Oh those are fun.....NOT. You have to drag boxes up from the basement or down from the attic. You risk alienating your in-laws by selling the crap they give you for nickels. You risk your kids seeing that you are selling the junk they haven't played with in years...but the second they see it out on the lawn it's all of a sudden their favorite toy. You have to tag it all yourself. You then have to wake up super early and cart it out onto the lawn, all the while dodging the so called 'early birds'...cute name for vicious people who start your day off haggling your already low price down to virtually nothing....leaving you the rest of your day to curse them because you know you could have gotten so much more for that collection of shot glasses from your college days....I digress.
Really though, I don't like people looking at all my junk. I feel like they are judging me. "oh my goodness SHE owns THAT?" "She wants THAT price for THAT?" Ugh I can't take it. I would rather give my stuff away and make a million people smile than to sell it and make any money at all. I held ONE tag sale.....in my whole life.....I made close to $800. It was only fun because my neighbor was with me. Well that neighbor moved....and the fun is over.
OK got to run....real life is calling.
I am finishing up my Christmas shopping this week. Oh fun times. Is it just me or was "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" a total bust this year? I mean, I think I was expecting an ipad or Barbie's dream townhouse to fall into my lap for pennies. Instead I lost out on both (at a severely jacked up price) and landed $6 pillows from Macy's and something that resembles an at home donut maker.....which I will never use but hey it was $10....and who doesn't like kitchen gadgets for $10. Someday I will get really bored and decide to make donuts from scratch because I have nothing better to do. Riiiiigggghhhht. I'll store that right next to the at home sno-cone maker I got 4 years ago (haven't been that bored...yet) and the "Set it and forget it"....which I have used twice....but not since 2005 when I accidently left the rubber gloves on the top of the machine...melting them into my nice rotisserie chicken.
The point is, I was expecting deals on TOYS....plastic toys or electronic toys....and I left with pillows. My "fun meter" is out of whack. It's called GROWING UP. I'm struggling with it, I think!
I scored $5 comfy pants on cyber Monday.....whoa, look out. What are they, you ask? Who the heck cares! It's a pair of pants for $5! I struggled with the purchase actually.....more so than I usually do. I sat there saying "don't check out....don't check out"....thinking about how far I could take that $5....all I thought about was my truck and how much gas I could buy and how far I could go with that gas. UGH. 'click'....shipping info correct....send confirmation. DONE. $5 comfy pants. I envision cold winters....and me in my fleecy $5 comfy pants....making donuts and sno-cones...with my 3 delighted children (in my dream, they are all smiling and getting along). *sigh*
Back to reality.
I think a tag sale in the spring is in order.
Ever had a tag sale? Oh those are fun.....NOT. You have to drag boxes up from the basement or down from the attic. You risk alienating your in-laws by selling the crap they give you for nickels. You risk your kids seeing that you are selling the junk they haven't played with in years...but the second they see it out on the lawn it's all of a sudden their favorite toy. You have to tag it all yourself. You then have to wake up super early and cart it out onto the lawn, all the while dodging the so called 'early birds'...cute name for vicious people who start your day off haggling your already low price down to virtually nothing....leaving you the rest of your day to curse them because you know you could have gotten so much more for that collection of shot glasses from your college days....I digress.
Really though, I don't like people looking at all my junk. I feel like they are judging me. "oh my goodness SHE owns THAT?" "She wants THAT price for THAT?" Ugh I can't take it. I would rather give my stuff away and make a million people smile than to sell it and make any money at all. I held ONE tag sale.....in my whole life.....I made close to $800. It was only fun because my neighbor was with me. Well that neighbor moved....and the fun is over.
OK got to run....real life is calling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)