Saturday, October 17th, 2009
This is not like, a dream I am aspiring to – I want to make that clear. This is just a dream I had last night, and like most dreams, you may wonder what it means, but it is just a dream.
I was sitting in the back seat of the car. I believe The Hubby was driving and The Boy was sitting next to me. But I also had a bundle in my lap – a wiggling little bundle, that when it wiggled around to face me, showed me his beautiful little baby face. You parents out there know what I mean – the absolute beauty and joy of a baby’s face looking at yours, recognizing you, stopping and staring at you.
Now, in reality, that baby of mine would be in a car seat, no matter how young he was. But this is a dream, and in dreams the rules of reality don’t necessarily apply. We were driving on the road, and I just had this little guy wrapped up in a blanket on my lap. He started to wiggle some more, turning his body towards mine, as if he was looking for something. Instinct kicked in for both of us; I lifted up my shirt and he started to nurse.
What almost woke me up out of the dream was the overwhelming sense of joy and peace when he latched on. It startle me with such a jolt – I truly hadn’t expected to feel that. But I pulled myself back into the dream to continue to nurse him, to see his eyes look up at me and to smile at me.
But…reality interrupted. I heard some little girl throwing a temper tantrum. It got louder and louder until I was fully awake and realized the tv was still on. I’ve never seen it, but I am pretty sure it was The Little Princess. Don’t ask me what it was doing on at 2 in morning – I’m not in charge of scheduling on Starz. I started to watch it a bit of it (I was awake, remember) and thought to myself, I really have no interest in this movie, I’d rather go finish my dream.
So I snuggled back into my comfy flannel sheets and fluffy comforter and closed my eyes. It doesn’t ususally work, but sometimes I can get back into a dream. Tonight it worked, although not for long.
I was back in the car, although the baby was done nursing. We were still driving, and he was still in my lap. Suddenly there was gun shots fired into the car (great way to get back in the dream, right?) I dove to the floor of the car, trying to protect the baby. I wondered where the driver and passenger (the ones I assumed where The Hubby and The Boy) were… because I was alone in the car with the baby.
After that little scene, I have no recollection of what happened. I don’t know if I woke up and lost the dream, or if it just stopped there, or if it kept going and I just don’t recall it.
But I still remember that amazing sense of joy when the baby first latched on. But it is just a dream, not the kind of dream I am trying to make reality. I am definitely done with having babies. The Boy just turned 16 this summer – to have 17 years between siblings is too much. I am done with diapers and midnight feedings and teething, but that also means I am done with holding a baby, breathing him in and holding him close.
Posted in Family Life, The Boy, The Hubby | No Comments »
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Chewie hasn’t been himself lately. He’s been biting and chewing at his back end/tail area. So much so, that he has torn out fur and been biting right on his skin. The Hubby went out a few nights ago and got him some spray to calm the irritation and an “E-Collar”.
Now, you might be tempted to think an E Collar is somehow shaped in a similar manner as the letter E. You’d be wrong. It’s one of those horrible collars so animals can’t lick or otherwise get to a sore spot. Of course, this makes it incredibly funny to watch. At first, Chewie would only walk backwards. Then, miraculously, he figured out how to move forward again. But then he couldn’t sit down. Once he figured that out, he still wasn’t sure if he could lay down. Eventually he figured out he could lay down – just like he always had, only with this stupid piece of plastic in the way. Although he realized there was no way he was getting under the bed with that stupid thing on.
So it just so happened that Pansy had a vet appointment today to get her rabies shot. Since Chewie is a bad patient at the vet’s, I make The Hubby take him; thus, I am off the hook and only have to take one dog at a time. The vet and the vet tech are both super nice, and start off by asking how Pansy is doing (although they forgot to ask how I was doing). I said that she was fine, but Chewie was having some problems. I told them about his itching and licking, and mentioned that I had just today seen a few fleas on Pansy, but not Chewie.
Apparently Chewie is having an allergic reaction to the fleas. It’s not the flea bites that are irritating him, it’s the mere presence of the fleas and their saliva. The vet used the analogy of a person being allergic to bee stings. Gee, I can totally sympathize now, huh?
So Frontline was recommended. I’ve purchased Frontline before and remembered it was horribly expensive at the vet’s. So I told them I would buy it at a store and just paid for Pansy’s rabies shot.
Well, you can buy Frontline at the store — if you use their online store. Most of the big pet care chains — cough, cough, PetSmart, Petco — either don’t carry it or only have it online. I got some decent pricing at 1800PetMeds, but it’s Friday and it wouldn’t even ship until Monday – so it’d be mid week before there was any relief. The pricing at Costco was great, but we’d have to renew our membership for $100 to buy the stuff at the cheap price. We did manage to find it at the pet store at the mall – the same place we bought Chewie, actually. So, $112 later we have one box of Frontline Plus for Dogs and one box of Frontline Plus for Cats. I opted for the Plus version since it has more killing power. And basically, you want as much killing power as you can get when dealing with fleas. Plus it will keep those nasty ticks away. I will order some (much) cheaper Frontline Plus online and not have to worry too much about the shipping times. Hopefully I will just have to do it for the next 3 months and then, with a little luck and the onslaught of winter, the fleas will disappear instead of my money.
So as The Hubby and I were driving home from the mall, I looked at the package. And I swear this is the truth – the packaging used the word “bitches”. As in, this product is safe to use on pregnant, lactating and breeding bitches. I mean, how often do you get to see that on a package? So I look a little further. The manufacturer of the product is Merial, a company based in Duluth, GA. But — it’s manufactured in France. Figures! Only the French could get away with that wording on their packaging…
Posted in Animal Life, The Hubby | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
We tend to celebrate birthdays in batches – summer birthdays and winter birthdays. My mom, my niece and my nephew have their birthdays in August, so we generally celebrate summer birthdays in August at our place. And this year was no exception.
So Saturday we had about 20 people over for dinner. It happened that our church was having a take out lobster dinner that night, so I offered people the choice of burgers and dogs or buying the lobster dinner from our church. It was split 50/50 – half did the lobster and half did the grilled stuff. The Hubby grilled as I went and picked up the lobsters. We had ice cream, ice cream cake, brownies and cookies for dessert. Yum!
As it got dark, The Hubby pulled out the fireworks we had gotten in MO on our cross country drive. He and The Boy, with occasional assistance from a cousin or two, set them off to lots of “ohhhh” and “ahhhh” from the crowd. I have to admit, those were some pretty decent fireworks. When The Hubby set off the first one, he didn’t think it was going to be very loud, so he didn’t bother taking the dogs in. He should have. Chewie went absolutely nuts. I got them in the house and behind our bedroom door for the rest of the show. But Chewie was so upset, he wouldn’t go out of the house for the rest of the night. Pansy, however, was more than content to hang out by the fire pit and get attention from the little cousins.
My brother, his wife and three boys spent the night in a tent in our backyard, and my parents brought over their camper and parked in my driveway for the night. Sunday morning we had fresh farm eggs, scrambled up by The Hubby, as well as sausage, hash browns, bagels and juice/coffee. Everyone stayed until noontime and then it was time for my brother to head back to Boston.
Both The Hubby and I were dead tired, but we had promised to go to see Inglorious Basterds with friends in the afternoon, so away we went. It was a pretty good movie – I’m not upset to have paid money to see it. We had our friends come over for dinner after since we still had so much food left over from the party.
But, reality was setting in – by 9, I was totally ready for bed. We snuggled up and watched True Blood and Hung, and I could barely keep my eyes open. It was one of best nights of sleep I have had in a long time!
Posted in Family Life, The Hubby | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
Epi Pen.
I can’t believe the weekend I had.
The awesomeness started on Friday when my computer died (again). I also got head-butted by a runaway goat Friday night. (There’s a great bruise growing on my leg right now).
Saturday The Hubby and I were going to tackle the mulch pile. It’s been in the driveway for what seems forever. So he started mowing, and I started weed pulling under the deck. As I was sitting there, my left hand ran across something that pricked me. I thought it might be some berry bush growing, but it turned out to be a bee. He bounced off my wrist and glanced across my chin. I ran out from under the deck and into the house, getting some ice cold water running on my wrist and holding a baggie of ice cubes to my chin.
I decided to get something liquid into my system as I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for a few hours. I sat outside on the step, watching The Hubby mow and trying to take it easy. I started to feel hot and generally just “not right”. I went into the house, took off my shoes and socks (my feet were really hot all of the sudden) and laid down on the couch. I started to feel itchy and it seemed like my eyelids were puffy. I called The Hubby in and told him what happened.
He looked for some Benadryl, but couldn’t find any. I was feeling worse and worse, so he decided to drive me to the pharmacy, pick up some Benadryl, and go to the walk in center. He gets the liquid medicine, and the pharmacist told him to double the dose as it was children’s benadryl. So I took a double dose. Then I took a look at my arms – they were all red and white splotched – hives were breaking out every where.
We speed up the highway (just one exit away, thank goodness!) to the walk in clinic. He parked on the side of the building, got me into the office and said – my wife is having an allergic reaction to a bee sting – can you see her right now? Luckily for me, they were pretty slow and they rushed me right in. We explained what happened, how long ago, what medicine I took, etc. and the doctor told us that since I took the liquid stuff, she wasn’t going to give me the shot. The shot would have worked in 10 minutes; the liquid was going to take an hour. Then she looked at the dosing and figured out I took too much. The dose is 2 teaspoons, but the line on the cup is at 3 teaspoons. So I took an extra 2 teaspoons of medicine – and she pretty much promised I’d be out for most of the day.
We stayed there for an hour or so – I was mostly out of it. The hives and itchiness went away. We got the prescription for the Epi Pen and steroids and went on our way. After a stop at the pharmacy, we got home and The Hubby made me some lunch. I ate about one scrambled egg and that was all I got down before I fell asleep around 12:30. I slept until 4:30.
But The Hubby was determined to finish our project. So he finished weeding and started up mulching. He got most of it done before 4:30, with breaks to check in on me to make sure I was still breathing. What a great guy!
So, now I have to practice how to use this darn Epi-pen. And keep it with me all the time – one in the house and one in the purse. And we now have tons of Benadryl in the house (and my purse).
Posted in Family Life, The Hubby | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
So we are traveling to Denver (actually, Salida), CO for a family vacation. And because we like to be challenged, we are driving there. Nothing like a road trip to bond the family together, I guess!
I am going to post all of this after we get home, so bear with me on this.
We left CT on Wednesday night; drove into Milton, PA and slept. Up several hours later and continued through PA, OH, and then the I states – Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Thursday night was a hotel in Des Moines. And Friday morning (today for me as I write this), we take off for our final destination. It’s going to take about 12 driving hours to get to Salida from here.
Saturday is my sister in law’s wedding, which was the whole reason we came out. I’ve already gotten a little emotional thinking about it, so I made sure The Hubby will have a handkerchief for me when I start to tear up at the actual wedding. We will get to see a whole bunch of The Hubby’s family – some I have never met, some I met once or twice over 20 years ago, and some I actually know (like his mom and sisters).
The driving setup has apparently evolved over the years. Now, generally speaking, The Hubby drives, The Boy sits in the front and I sit in the back. This works out best for our “car sickness”. Not that anyone really gets sick, but everyone is best suited to those seats. I took a turn driving on Thursday for a few hours, and because I am so short, the seat has to be pretty close to the wheel. That, in turn, gives the person in the back a TON of leg room. So The Hubby sat back there and did some work and generally relaxed for a few hours.
After we got past Chicagoland, The Hubby pulled over and let The Boy drive. It was his first experience with highway driving, and other than being a bit challenged on the onramp, he did just fine. We may not have him drive today as we are pressed for time (sort of), but on the way back it will be flat and straight for miles and miles as we head to Kansas, so I suspect he will get tons of time practicing then.
Well, it is 6:30 am and time to start getting on the road. Happy trails!
Posted in Family Life, The Boy, The Hubby | No Comments »
Friday, August 7th, 2009
Somewhere else… probably stuck in someone’s hard drive or the internets or something.
Life has been very busy and there hasn’t been to much time for posting. We took a trip to Denver (details will be forthcoming – it was an interesting trip) and of course, after a vacation, you come home to a mountain of laundry and work to catch up on.
That was my main goal this week – to get caught up on work stuff. It turns out both my bosses took this week off, so I had a great start in getting dug out of the paperwork hell I was in. I had piles and piles and piles (literally – I had three piles) of paperwork to double check was entered in the computer and then scan and then file. I completed pile #1 on Monday. On Tuesday I completed an online project (so I could work from the bedroom and clean up 15 episodes of General Hospital). On Wednesday I completed pile #2. Thursday – not so productive.
I went to tai chi class – something I haven’t been able to do for the last six weeks. It felt good, but man, am I out of practice! Then, I did some work for the three guys who hadn’t gone on vacation, and I must admit, I probably goofed off a bit as well. So, not a real productive day, but – hey – there’s always Friday, right? Plus, The Boy is camping with The Grandparents this weekend, so it’s kinda like he’s back in school or something.
Friday. Ah, sweet, sweet Friday. I started with good intentions. I had four loads of laundry washed and out on the line by noon. The Hubby came home for lunch…but really to pick up his Camaro convertible. Shortly after he left, he called. He had spilled some gas additive on his shoes when he filled up the Camaro. Then he called again… it wasn’t just on his shoes – it was on his socks and pants. I offered to run him up some clean clothes, and he didn’t hesitate to say yes. So… off to his workplace with clean clothes. He had baked a cake (yes, he did all himself!) for his administrative assistant’s birthday, so I stayed for a piece of cake. So, about an hour down the drain there. I was going to head over to the church to pick up some boxes, but one of my guys said he needed a letter asap. So off I go home to take care of that, hoping I could still swing by the church before dinner to get those boxes.
I walk into the office. Everything looked the same… everything looked fine. But it was not fine. Folks, I hate to tell you this, but THE BITCH IS BACK AGAIN. Yes, my laptop pulled the same stunt as last month. It would not start. I almost cried.
But I am a big girl, so instead I called customer service. After a couple of minutes explaining my situation and trying a little troubleshooting over the phone, Diane (very nice Diane at Lenovo) suggested I send it back in to The Depot. I said – what other choice do I have? in that disgusted-I- give- up tone. Well, she said, you DO have another option. I can pass the case to Customer Relations. They are the big guns – the ones that can authorize things such as a new computer. So, after a bit of discussion, I tell her to move me over to Customer Relations.
Now I have to wait 3 to 7 BUSINESS days for them to contact me. The Hubby advises me to just tell them outright to get me a new computer as they clearly can’t … or just aren’t interested… in fixing my computer. I certainly would like a new working laptop. We’ll see what kind of attitude I get when they call.
But for now, once again, I am back on The Hubby’s old desktop, trying to control my bitchiness and deal with it.
UGGHHHHH!!
PS – just to top the day off, there were goat issues at The Grandparent’s place. I now hate goats.
L
Posted in Family Life, Technology, The Boy, The Hubby | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 10th, 2009
That is the question The Hubby asked me this morning as he was getting ready for work.
It’s Friday
It’s the last day of the work week
It’s the start of the weekend
It’s the 10th
Oh, wait… today is the day I get my computer back!
Yes, folks, the computer is on it’s way back to me. I am a bit apprehensive about it, though. When I talked to the customer service rep on Wednesday, I was told “they fixed the hard drive – it was improperly installed”. I wasn’t aware you could have an “improper hard drive installation”. I figured if you don’t have it in correctly, it won’t work. I mean, I installed 15 programs on this “improperly installed” hard drive last Thursday. I installed, rebooted, installed, rebooted, etc. multiple times and never had a problem until I put it into “sleep” mode at night.
So my plan of attack today will be to install Firefox and Mcaffee – nothing else. I’ll putz around the web for a bit and then put it into sleep mode for a while. If I can get it back, I will feel safer about installing the rest of my programs and files. But if it doesn’t come out of sleep mode, I will be making yet another call to Lenovo. I am seriously considering telling them they need to just give me new computer since they clearly can’t fix this one. It’s still under warranty (plus, I purchased the extended warranty from them when this whole thing started), so we will see how that goes. I guess I might be borrowing trouble, but sometimes it pays to be prepared for your next action.
Posted in Technology, The Hubby | No Comments »
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
the continuing saga….
I called the computer company on Tuesday. I still hadn’t heard (either by phone or email – both of which was promised to me!) if they had even recieved my computer. So imagine my surprise when the customer service rep told me it was on it’s way back to me and should arrive on Thursday.
I was happy about that, but a bit puzzled by what she said after that. She said that they hadn’t found anything wrong with it – they re-formatted the hard drive and it worked fine. It was a power drain issue that they could have walked me through over the phone. Actually, when I heard that last bit, I wasn’t puzzled…I was pissed. So I had sent my computer out to Texas for no reason? Been working off an external drive on an old desktop so my laptop could “vacation” this summer?
But, I was happy enough that it was on it’s way back to me to overlook, or at least not dwell, on those little questions.
Thursday came… Fed Ex came… I opened the box, put the battery back in, plugged it in and everything was fine. I loaded up about 15 programs and started to relax. I hadn’t gotten to loading up any of my files, but I was ok with that. I wanted to buy a hard drive dock and be able to get some files that had not been backed up onto my external drive. I figured I’d do that over the long weekend and come Monday, it would be like everything always had been.
The Boy had The Girlfriend over for dinner. He actually made dinner for her (and, by extension, us). He decided on a chicken parm dish, so I pulled up the trusty website, A Year of Crockpotting, to come up with just the right approach to the meal. He got up in the morning, made the chicken parm and got it into the crockpot. When she got here around 5, it was ready, so he boiled the water for the pasta and made the garlic bread.
The Hubby and I ate in the bedroom and the kids got the dining room. She was very impressed (I think, anyway!) with the thought that went behind the meal. They were celebrating their six month anniversary, so it was very sweet of him to do this for her.
So after dinner, The Hubby and I hang out in the bedroom, both of on our laptops, happily putzing away the night. It gets to be time to drive The Girlfriend home, so I put the computer into sleep mode and head out.
It’s about 11:30 when I get back, so clearly it’s time for bed… not computing. I woke up around 7:45 this morning and went to turn it on to get the news and my email. Hit the power button… start to hear the sound wave.. then it dies. Hit the power button again.. absolutely nothing this time. I decide not to waste any time and bring the computer upstairs to the office and call the computer company.
So I spend the next 20 or so minutes with my new best friend, Derrick. He tells me that the notes on the account indicate they just reformatted the hard drive and turned it on to verify it worked. And it did. So they sent it back to me. No where was there any note that the tech they sent out to me had put in a new hard drive, seen that it wasn’t a power issue, and recommended a new motherboard. NO WHERE. So, it being a Friday, he can send me a box with a prepaid label, but that wouldn’t even leave Texas until Monday, then take two days to get to me, and then a day to fix it, then two more days to get it back to me. That puts it roughly around Christmas, I think. So I ask if I can send it back myself (I do have a box for it now) just to get this party started quicker. He says that will be fine and will cut down on the turnaround time for me.
So I hustle it over to the UPS Store in town and get it shipped out today, for delivery on Monday by 8:30 am. So my sincere hope is that it will be a WORKING computer, back in my hands by Wednesday at 4:30.
The Bitch is Back, people.
Posted in Technology, The Boy, The Hubby | No Comments »
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
Ok, it’s not as good as the movie “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, but, hey, we don’t live in Roman times with Phil Silvers or Buster Keaton.
We were driving The Girlfriend (yes, The Boy has a steady girl) home last night. Usually it is just me and The Boy on this trip, but The Hubby decided to join us. We dropped off The Girlfriend at her house (about 30 minutes away from our house, by the way) and started our journey back home.
We started to talk about our plans for Sunday and general family chit-chat. Up ahead, we saw some flashing lights from emergency vehicles near the stop light on the divided highway we were on. We get to the stop light, and it is clear that something big is going on just past the curve, but we can’t see it. Soon there are other off-duty emergency personnel showing up (you know, the “regular” cars with the nice blue lights – volunteers on the ambulance corp, etc.) and the best we can do is to stay in our lane and stay out of the way.
It becomes very clear we are not going straight onward… in fact, a police car pulls up and blocks our half of the divided highway. So, we have to decide whether to turn left or right. Turning left, we are 95% sure there is no way home. Turning right, we are 90% sure there is no way home. So, considering the odds, we make the split second decision to turn right and go up the hill.
We follow some other cars up the hill who have made the same decision. But it becomes clear no one knows where to go. The car in front of us puts his blinker on for the first left, and we plan to follow. But instead of turning, he keeps going up the hill. We turn, just as The Boy points out the One Way road sign. So now we are going the wrong way on a one way street, with no idea where we will end up. Very quickly, we see the divided highway below us, with traffic coming up the one way road (in the right direction). So we pull into a driveway and turn around.
Now we have to fight our way to take a left to go back up the hill. Now there is a lot more traffic coming up the hill. We manage to squeeze in, and go up the hill a bit more.
We see several cars put their blinkers on to turn left, and not ones to find our own way, we turned left with the crowd. Quickly we saw traffic turning around in the dead end circle of that street. So, back to the hill we head.
By this time, the GPS has finally found itself and I can plug in “Home” for a destination, careful to press the “avoid freeways” option. We continue down the hill, and miraculously, we know where we are and are free to continue on our journey home.
Of course, that is not the end of the story, my friends.
As we are going down the road, we see the railroad crossing has the arms down and is making its’ merry little tune. There are only a couple of cars ahead of us, so we assume that we got there just as the arms were going down and we would see the train pass us by, and then we could continue on.
Nope.
We sat for four minutes, listening to the ringing bells, warning us of the impending train, but train was to be had. We saw someone in the oncoming lanes actually get out of his car to peer down the tracks. Now we were in the mass exodus of cars turning around to get out of that traffic. We ending up driving by the route we would have taken if our original path hadn’t been interrupted. There was no traffic coming down that road… so clearly something major must have happened.
Now, I don’t mean to imply that whatever accident happened on that road should be taken lightly. I suspect several lives were impacted with the events of the night.
But for our family, it was a night of adventure – full of little missteps and happenstance… a fond family memory.
Posted in Family Life, The Boy, The Hubby | No Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
We hardly ever take pictures of the house at night. Not sure why, since we apparently love our house (1200+ photos of construction, photos every spring, photos every home improvement project)…
But The Hubby recently took some, and it looks great at night!
Beautiful Sping Night
Posted in Family Life, The Hubby | No Comments »