Friday Felt Worse Than a Bad Monday!

So. Friday. We all look forward to Friday, right? I'm no different. But Friday last, was a no good, bad, very bad day. SO BAD. I mean .. I had what I would consider something of a meltdown in the middle of my work day which is something that hasn't happened in a very long time. It had been building up and totally crashed in on me, on Friday. My heart was racing, my adrenaline was flowing and if I could have, I would have shut down my computer and run away. As fast and as far as I could have. 

After a while I began to feel a bit better after unloading all my panic onto a sympathetic coworker, but it didn't make the actual issue go away. I may have just pushed it out further.

By the end of the day I was beat, just so tired, demoralized, and my confidence was at an all-time low. So what did I do? Exactly what people who tend to be emotional eaters do. I planned what I wanted to drown my sorrows in for dinner.

NOT my pizza

My choice was Chicago style, deep dish pepperoni pizza with cheese for days. I almost added chocolate, chocolate chip Haagen-Dazs to the menu but decided that would be overkill.

I should have added it.

Because what happened when I got my hands on that yummy, heavy, gooey, cheesy, pizza? It was burnt. A little bit on top, not enough to give it away at first, but when I cut into it - yeah, the bottom. It was burnt. I mean .. what ELSE???

I am at my desk now (on a Sunday night!), hoping to finish some things I needed to finish last week. I watched my granddaughter today and we made brownies which I shouldn't have eaten. But almost had a panic attack today thinking about the moment I needed to sit down and continue working, so thought I preemptively earned the brownie(s). 

That remains to be seen. Wish me luck you nonexistent readers. 

Long Day

Up at the butt-crack of dawn today, at my desk by 5:15am. Luckily my commute is super short and I was able to work in my pajamas. By 6:30 I was done and determined to go back to sleep. My sleeping skills used to be so good I could have taught a master class! Not so anymore, I wasn’t able to doze off. 

Went through my normal workday, left a bit early to pick up dinner at a drive-thru and my granddaughter from pre-school. Rushed her home, had some dinner with her, got her changed into her unitard, her hair up, and out the door to gymnastics. Spent 50 minutes watching her run, tumble, and roll, through glass, before it was time to get her back home. 

Her dad was home by the time we got there and I was back in my car, driving home to my house, shortly after. At home there were litter boxes to scoop and my regular nighttime tasks. Had my pajamas on by 8:45, it felt like midnight. I’m tired. 

Looked in the mirror. Whoops. I look as tired as I feel. This is a 62 year old woman with circles under her eyes, no makeup, no eyebrows, with a crooked half-smile and a saggy neck. No filter, just real. Me. It’s true, if I had the resources I would get some things done, not gonna lie. But I’m too tired to be vain tonight and I feel like being honest. Honestly me. 

Tomorrow is my 2nd IV iron infusion. Won't know for a couple weeks yet, whether it will make a difference. I'm just tired, ya'll.

Another day another poop in my shoe.

.

Adorable, right?

I've had a headache all day, and upon walking in the door from work what do I find?  Cat puke in the exact same spot I have been working on to getting the stain out from the 4362 OTHER times it has been puked on, and if that wasn't bad enough?  As I side-stepped the puke to go into my bedroom so I could at least change my clothes before I cleaned it up, what gift was waiting for me in there?  Yep.  Riley pooped in my new slippers.  My cute sheepie slippers.  


So, I was mad, right?  Get away from me Riley, you think I'm feeding you right this minute?  You've got another thing coming.  I turned on my computer and started to read my email.  


Apparently not a good idea.


Today was not the day to read an email from a family member who shall not be named - ever - forwarded to me.  Apparently she ..er .. he/she is not happy with the speed in which my mother's estate is being settled.  Estate, that's funny!  


Well .. let's just say my email in response was basically about how we might be genetically related but that's about all I'll ever admit to and how I thought it might be a good time for him/her to eff off and never contact me again.  


The sad thing is, I meant it.


To work off some anger and aggravate my headache (I didn't say I make the smartest decisions) I decided to go for a walk.  Wow!  Something positive, not self destructive or cruel to small animals but uh .. did I mention it's only 29 degrees here?????  


Tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better, tomorrow will be better ..

.

One day to the next.

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My glucose is all over the place. It's like nailing Jello to a wall - I can't get a handle on it. I have the same breakfast almost every day. Whole wheat bagel with Amercan cheese. I usually have some cucumbers in vinegar sweet and sour dressing mid morning. Don't judge. Lunch might be a salad or a small salad and something else, a sandwich on whole grain bread, whatever. Dinner, eh! Rarely the same, some days big - some days not. On days I think I've eaten very badly or been a total couch potato (okay, MORE of a couch potato) - frequently my glucose is better than I would expect. On my son's birthday when he wanted pizza and I gladly ate it, followed by cannoli (oh yes I did), my glucose wasn't that bad the next morning.



I can't think of a thing I did differently today from any other day except having a handful of peanuts (if I have nuts, it's usually almonds). Yet today I had the best reading I've had since I started bleeding myself on a daily basis. What gives?

Obviously I just don't get it.

*

Have a wonderful day!

~ * ~

~ * ~

Ever have one of those days . . .

Crap day at work. One of those days when you are crazy busy but at the end of it feel like you've been running in place all day and haven't moved forward at all. Toward the end of the day a co-worker came to visit my little cubby/office/room to tell me he had just resigned. Circumstances beyond his control forced his hand, and he is leaving. Forces having nothing to do with work. Suffice it to say he does not want to leave but his personal life requires him to right now.

ANYWAY! Can't I ever use just a couple of words? No. I should be used to my wordiness by now. So he came to tell me he was leaving and it made me very sad. Not only is he leaving, but tomorrow is his last day!

Have you ever had a new person start in your office, who you just knew was not going to fit in? And conversely, someone new who seemed to fill a gap you didn't know you had and just "got you" right from the get-go? Yeah, that's him. The 2nd one. A twinkle in his eye and fancy square toed shoes, a Latin dancer with a heart of gold. I will miss him bunches.

As I was talking to this guy/co-worker/friend - my brother called and left a message on my phone. My brother lives in New Jersey, and my mom lives with him. He is actually ill himself, but my mother wanted to live with "a man in the house" because you know, if the hot water heater goes out, he will know what to do. I didn't say it made sense.

He told me that mom has been falling down on a daily basis and she is starting to hurt herself. It's getting to the point that when he leaves for work he worries about what he will find when he gets home. It is time to discuss our next step. Brother #1 told me that brother #2 is visiting him and Mom right now, and apparently does not want to talk about "the next step. He says "oh but she'll be sad, she'll get depressed . . " and is coming up with all kinds of reasons not to even think about her living anywhere but where she is now. Considering HE lives in the northwest - all the freaking way across the country - it's easy for him to sit in his home thinking (hoping, wishing) that my mom is just fine alone all day when in reality she is probably going bing! bing! BING! And ricocheting around brother #1's house all day like it's a pinball machine. I'm not angry with him, and I'm not saying out of sight out of mind. It's just - if you don't want to face something - it's easier to do long distance.

We would all love to sit back and just imagine our mother is the same woman she always was. Well she's not. Time to grow up for all of us. Believe me, I would love to think my mom was aging gracefully and will be able to take care of herself until the day she dies. But it's not happening that way and we all have to put our big kid panties on and deal with it. It's irresponsible to ignore the fact that she may fall down, hurt herself, and could possibly have to lay in the same spot for hours until my brother gets home from work. Something she fears a lot, something happening and no one being there to help. She has her button - she can push it and get help fairly quickly, but it's simply getting to the point where she needs more than a button. We. Have. To. Address. It. Not a single one of us can stay home all day and take care of her. And not a single one of us is married (anymore) either. Hmmm, can you say dysfunctional?

So - I had to stop and pick up a prescription on my way home, and who can blame me for picking up some donut holes? Um. . . and a BabyRuth. That's it, I swear. But I AM going for a walk tonight. I'm an emotional eater, my weight is doomed.

A little of this, a little of that.

A couple things. Finally went for my first mammogram since all my testing last year. Sheesh - I felt like I was in so much trouble - because I had not come when I was supposed to, because I had a doctor's order for a follow up on one side but it was time for my regular screening which obviously would be both sides. I was almost chastised for doing the whole thing incorrectly as if I didn't take it seriously.

I took it seriously alright, but with a couple mammograms, an ultrasound, and a mammotome which is basically treated like surgery, I decided to wait until I had paid off the hospital before I went back for more tests. I know, how novel.

Yes I have insurance. Yes, they paid for a good part of it. But I did come out of it owing the hospital enough to have to set up a payment plan which took me months to pay off. In the end - when the tech pulled me aside to tell me my results, I made sure she knew the reason I had put off having further tests so she knew that she treated me like a naughty child based on some false assumptions, and I really hoped she felt like a chump when I left. Maybe she'll think twice before she jumps to conclusions about other patients and their motives behind how they handle their healthcare.

It wasn't her place to judge me.

The other thing I wanted to mention, or maybe rail about is - where did all these people on the roads come from??? Where were the normal jerks I usually share the road with in the mornings and evenings on my way to and from work? Today - it was holiday traffic. People who apparently don't drive any other time of the year and come out on the roads, drive in whatever lane they want to, and make sure they drive at least 5 miles - preferably 10 - under the speed limit. And they don't care if they are driving side by side with another driver in the lane next to them, also going 10 miles under the speed limit and effectively blocking normal traffic and causing other people behind them to have spontaneous strokes and aneurysms bursting all over the place.

GET OFF MY ROAD!!!

Whew, I feel better. Thanks for listening.

Oh, and my mammogram was fine, all looks good and I won't be due for another check for a year. Woo hoo!

~ Sincere Gratitude ~

To all of our Veterans, today - and every day.



~ * ~

A room without a view.

I have moved. From my beloved desk with the big windows, surrounded by the people I have worked with since forever, to a room upstairs in the back corner of the building that I will share with a co-worker who does the same thing I do. To put it bluntly - they needed my desk downstairs.

I could have been offended but it seems I am much more laid back about these things than I once was. I have seen so many changes at my workplace in the last 5 years that it barely fazes me anymore. Well, and I know I'm just upstairs from all those people who I would miss terribly if I had to move to a whole different facility.

The room I am sharing is actually a nice size for 2 people, and will be more conducive to the kind of work we do. There are 2 big workstations, cubes if you will, a bookcase, standing coat tree, and a fridge. Ahem. Fridge. Hey - my daughter only used it for 2 semesters at school, so now - I am using it. At some point we will acquire a microwave and that will be enough to keep us happy.

Plus being upstairs has already had me huffing and puffing a couple of times going up and down today, so if I continue to take the stairs and not the elevator - this move could even be very healthy for me.

If it doesn't kill me first!!! Sheesh! Huff! Puff! Talk to you later. Cough, cough, wheeeeeeeeze !!!

Spiders, June bugs and memory dumps

So I am up and running again. I did one of those – I’ll wait till later and try to turn it on again, as if waiting 2 hours is going to make a difference. Except it did. Hmmm. My fan has been running loudly and non-stop for a while now. It has been suggested that my laptop is over heating. I guess that’s a possibility.

I vacuumed any vent I could see hoping to suck any dust and or cat hair out of there. Don’t know if that helped or just letting it completely cool down did. The error I’ve gotten twice in the last few days was scary, Windows just shutting down and giving me the blue screen. “Beginning memory dump.” WHAT??? “Memory dump complete.” Argh-h-h. (see Shelagh? Even my computer says it took a dump!!) :)

After that one I did what I would normally do – look the error up on the internet! Found the only real suggestion I could do was a scan disk, essentially, and to load Microsoft’s newest service pack. I was also advised to make sure that anything new I may have installed, is installed properly. Well how am I supposed to know that?

I’ve never seen a program pop up and say “just a friendly note to let you know I’m not installed properly.” No, I get things that say “A disk read error has occurred” Uh huh, what’s that? And when I try ctrl+alt+delete to restart a couple of times, I get another message “No bootable devices – strike F1 … yada yada yada.” And then … No boot device available – internal hard drive ..” It all sounds so bad.

But – it came back up, slowly, told me it had recovered from a serious error which I found absurd but – okay. So I’ve had my computer going down and back up again and giving me strange messages. I had ants in my kitchen today and what I didn’t mention earlier is that I could not get my oven to work and my toaster oven decided to toast only from the bottom now. Yay. How many strikes do you get in one day??

A little while ago I hopped in my car with a raging headache to drop a package at the post office. Leaving the house the wind was starting to gust and I felt a web go across my face as I stepped off the porch. I hate that! You don’t see the spider but you know he’s there. Watching you. Ee-e-w-w. And what was gracing the window next to the door as well as on the screen on the door? Yeah, June bugs. They’re close, it’s getting toward the end of may. They are a lot darker this year for some reason, makes them even creepier.

I may hate the beetles but they make for some good clean fun for Abby, she’d love it if one of them actually got in the house. At least she thinks so. In reality my cats rarely know what to do with a bug other than bat at it till it just gives up and dies and they lose interest. Jake is usually the only one who will actually chase one and eat it.

Click on the picture to better view the bugs. Ick.

Anyway, now I am at my computer – using a chill mat of my son's that he had but had never opened. And really, the bottom of my laptop is much cooler to the touch. So we are alive again, whether or not it is temporary remains to be seen. I’m hoping for a better and more productive day tomorrow without a major headache or computer problems. And ants, I don’t want anymore ants. Blech-h-h.

**Edited to add - Try the daily jigsaw on the right sidebar! I actually have a jigsaw program on my desktop and I find it very relaxing to do one or two now and again, so I had to try this widget when I found it.

I should change the name.

This is the risk she takes when my daughter comes home from school and does not put her belongings out of the reach of the cats.

To them it's a new opportunity to nest.

Mark my words ..

I will never, ever, in my life have 4 cats all at one time again. Ever. Did I mention never?


Don't get me wrong. I love these cats, I do. If I had a bigger house with a basement room just for litter boxes and could afford to pay someone to come in and vacuum and de-fur every single day, I would probably have more than 4.


But this house isn't that big and I don't vacuum every day. The litter boxes are in the utility room because there is no basement. And the cats are everywhere. Or so it seems.


I only meant to have 2 and I think that is a reasonable, manageable number for most people, and I have told how I came to have more. I'm really not sitting here plotting how to get rid of any of them and I'm not waiting impatiently for any of them to die. But oh, the hair.


My daughter did not tell me how allergic the new boy is. The idea of someone who may be severely allergic to cats coming into my home makes MY throat start to close. I can vacuum, I can wipe down furniture and poke into the corners and crevices where hair can hide and it would still never be enough. I can de-hair to my heart's content but if someone is truly horribly allergic none of it will make a difference. I cannot get rid of all the dander and cat bits that can't be seen with the naked eye.


So, for Mother's Day I am hoping my daughter will come home and I will meet the new boy without having to jam an epi-pen into his leg. Wish me luck, will you?

And for all of you mothers out there, I wish you the best day ever!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I didn't see anything this pretty today

Because yeah, it snowed. Again. It was a rainy, snowy, and very gray day. Sigh-h-h.


Male Northern Cardinal seeking a little shelter from the snow. Puffed up bird with snowflakes on its head and chest is sheltered in a Hawthorne Tree near the Ryerson Forest Preserve in Riverwoods, IL.

From one day to the next

If you live in the Chicago area your whole life, or maybe for just a week - you understand quite clearly that the weather is ever changing. We tend to flip from one extreme to another in a matter of hours which will catch people unfamiliar with this place without the proper clothing or with an umbrella when they need a parka.

Recently we've had some winter days like this -

and this ...

After a few days of freezing temps and windy gray skies we got this-

Brilliant blue skies

and this ....




Days so beautiful the trees are growing the snowballs FOR you!

And yeah. I just did a whole blog post about the weather, you wanna make something if it???

It's your birthday, it's your birthday!

~ DANI ~

You've always had your own mind and your own style Honey. Although it IS a bit more sophisticated now. :)


Wish you could be home for your birthday but we will celebrate when you are able to make it. Happy Birthday Sweet Pea.
Love you! Kisses!

~Mom~