Why it Pays (literally) to Read the Fine Print

Erie County Fair Creative Arts Entry Fee (includes five admission tickets, but not parking): $23
Four 8×10 prints, two of which will be submitted (hey, you never know how the print will look)- $13
Foam board: $4
Glue: $1
Posterboard for matting (not used): $2
Mats for Matting (used, then removed): $13

Premiums (read: prizes): Blue Ribbon $10, Red Ribbon $5.

Pride of not having to walk through the photo exhibit thinking, “Mine are so much better then that!”: Priceless.

(If I can find the time/remember, I’ll take pictures of my pictures before dropping them for submission.)

Keep on Keeping on

So, I’m at work, the mister is at home with all the food, utentils and dishes at hip level.

Against every moral fiber in my body, I went to Wal*Mart yesterday.  Mainly because he asked for a number of things I could not get at the grocery store or pharmacy alone.
Purchases: Lortab, thermometer (no, we didn’t own one), MORE chicken noodle soup, spaghetti-os, Football Preview, logic puzzles, laptop desk, TV tray, saltines (“Wow, these crackers are REALLY good!” he mentions.  “You’ve never had saltines before?”, “From the way it seems, no…”)

So, between today and tomorrow I have to matte two 8×10’s for the Erie County Fair Photography Contest.  Oh, didn’t mention that before?  Oh, I entered a photo contest.  And I still have a set of prints to pick up.  I have until tomorrow to drop them off.
But wait, tomorrow I have to take Beeses to the vet at 5.
Oh, and I haven’t been to the gym since Friday.
Did I mention that my other half had major surgery?
What about Catty Thursday?!

Where’s my drink?!

Accentuating the Positive

I return from the Nurses Station for the upteenth time (“How long till I can go home?”, “How long until I can go back to work?”, “When can I play golf again?”)

me: Well, they said that the only certain thing right now is that you won’t be driving for a while.
him: How long is a while?
me: A while.  I dunno.
him: At least we’ll save on gas.

Coulda Been Worse

yaaawwwwnnnn

Guess who just got back from the hospital.

Ends up the misters appendix was perferated (uh, not good) so out it came.
How’d it go and What’d they do?
Dunno.
I have to file a complaint with the hospital tomorrow because no one came to talk to me when Steve got out and before he got onto the floor.  (I chatted up the nurses to find out what was up)

Steve was in good spirits and super coherent, so yeah for that.  I think what scared me the most was how ashy/pale/green he was compared in the ER as compared to how pink he was in the room.
Also worth mentioning is that I did not cry like a madwoman when they wheeled him away, though my “Can I kiss him quick” came out a bit, uh, crokey, and I did have to blink a lot on the way to the elevator.
Once the doc looks him over tomorrow, we’ll know more about how long he’ll be down for.
le sigh.

Oh, and whoever put money in the malady pool and picked “appendicitis” gets the pot.

I’m just glad they didn’t remove his sense of humor-ix

And now, for some Hospital Humor-
As we’re sitting in the operating staging room, I start rubbing the back of my neck and I casually say, “I think I’m getting a headache.”
And he just looks at me and says, laden with sarcasm, “Awwwww, you have a headache?”

Pre-Update Update

Oh internets, I don’t know what to do.

Steve is at the doctor as we speak with a 101.3 fever, prepping for a blood draw and scheduled for x-rays.
Oh, and he has a low battery on his phone.
Grrrreeeeaaattt.

They haven’t said anything yet about what it is or what it could be and I do not think I could be happier that they upped my dose of Zoloft.
As I told Melissa, “Old Stephanie would be A Certified Basketcase.”
New Stephanie is just nervous about the time between when things started and today.
Not that I’m at all  happy about what’s happening, but I’m glad I’m not in hysterics as I know I have been.

New Update, 10:30am:
The x-ray showed “some” “blockage” so they’re sending him for CAT scans.
And then they’ll decide what to do.
He’s at the radiologist now and they’re waiting for him to process the stuff they make him drink.
So yeah…

Because this is what we need.

Without getting into too many embarrassing details, Steve’s been pretty uncomfortable since the middle of the night on Friday.
I even made the first-ever-middle-of-the-night-grocery-store-run.  (It was 3:15am and I passed two cars, one on the way there, one on the way back)
Few things bother me more then not being able to help the people I love.
Last night, he finally started eating again, which made me as pleased as punch.
He hops on webmd (the hypochondriac’s bestest friend), which he’s done a handful of times, to try and find out what the problem could be.
He even went so far as to take a consensus at work.  Me, personally, I do not discuss such things in the office.
Anyway, he informs me, via telephone, that he is going to the doctor first thing in the morning as it could be something as terrible as appendicitis.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
(and GnuKid, this is for you.)
him: I’ll be home in a few hours, I’ll try not to wake you up.
me: You should totally wake me up.  If you’re going to die, we should at least have sex one last time.
him: What if that ruptures it?
me: Well, you already asked around about other personal things, tell everyone that your wife really wants to get some but she doesn’t want to kill you, and see what they say.
him: alright.

Aspartame Withdraw: Night One Results

Steve and I are kidnapped (along with most of the county) and forced into these like, camps, to see who is strong-willed and strong-bodied enough to support the new country.
There were probably about 30 of us in our group and one by one, people stopped coming back.
The captors would test us to see who was true to the country and then show the results to everyone else.  For example, this one woman heard noises like a nightclub and she wanders into the club where she is trapped by a bear trap and dragged across the ceiling to whereever people like her end up.
Then there are about five of us left and we have to sleep under this tarp with no side walls and no heat.
Good behavior was rewarded, but we never knew what the perimeters for good behavior were or when one would get rewarded.
On the site, there was a general store and I convinced Steve to “buy” me a piece of fruit.  I say “buy” because you’d basically earn credits for items in the store and I didn’t have enough for fruit, but he did.  And “buying” items for people who shouldn’t get them was off-limits.
Steve walks up to the counter with what he wanted and my fruit, gives the clerk his name and ID number.  She looks to the other clerk and says  our last name again.  The second clerk says that Steve is scheduled for release and they cross-check a paper and they scamper off to see if he is getting released.
I walk up to the counter to see if my name is on the sheet and it’s not, but neither is Steve’s.  So I start wondering if the clerks knew he was buying for someone else and they were going to punish him/us.

And then the alarm goes off… rather it must have been going off for a while because by the time I heard it, it was ear-blisteringly loud.

Adventures in Medi-cye

Last night was another follow up appointment to make sure that my anti-depressant/anti-anxious isn’t making me more depressed/anxious.
*** Note that the ACTUAL doctor has a WONDERFUL sense of humor.  The PA is the one I saw previously.***

We’re discussing my dosage and how it’s effecting me, life and everything.
DR: So, how’s it going with the Zoloft?
me: Okay.  My OB/GYN suggested bumping up the dose.  I didn’t want to do anything without checking with you though.
DR: I think that’s a good idea.  What do you think?
me: You know more about this stuff then I do, I’ll think whatever you tell me to think.  I have no aversion to bumping up the dosage.  If we do that, will it even me out even around my period?  I ask because for two weeks out of the month, I feel like I could rip the spine out a  man.
DR, putting the mobile cart between me and him while he backs up to the wall: And what side of the two weeks are we on now?
me: You’re okay.
DR: Whew!  Okay, well, the max dose on this is 200.  If 150 doesn’t change much, we can bump you to 200, if that doesn’t help like we need it to, we’ll look to changing meds.
me: k

We also discussed the nightmares, which ends up may be a result of my recent love for diet soda.  So I have to suck up the extra calories (or stick with water) to avoid waking up screaming.  Can do.

And, after much hampering by Steve and mom, I get my ankle checked out again.  (backstory: 13 years ago, I took a nasty spill down some wet stairs and hyper-extended my Achilles tendon.  It’s never recovered.)
While I could take a cortizone shot IN THE ANKLE (and of course Steve’s all ‘YEAH!!!!’), there is a good chance that the tendon would rupture.  Neither DR or I am ready to make this trade off, so I have to strech the tendon, take motrin when it flares up and make friends with the ice pack.

Oh, and super bonus, the scale in the office is four pounds in my favor.
The nurse was like, “You’re happy with x?”, becuase a) I don’t look like I weigh x b) x is not a favorable number for my height.
“Heck yes I’m happy.  I was four pounds heavier at the gym last night.”

Earning my Keep

him: So if you could do me another favor…
me: yeeessss?
him: Can you see when we, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you’, can get Bailey into the vet?  She’s overdue and I’ve been going crazy…. just living the dream over here [at work]…
me: By ‘dream’, you mean ‘nightmare’, right?
him: Exactly.  Plus, I got you flowers AND an iPod.
me: I know.  I was there.
him: Speaking of which, can you track those for me?

Keeping on Track: The Goal

This Saturday marks the 3-weeks-to-go mark of The Plan.

Yesterday, I purchased some motivational material from Newport News.  What?  They were having a sale and I scoured for free shipping and 20% off coupons.
Hopefully, well, the idea is, I will get said items in the mail and they will motivate me to keep me on track.
I saw something and I’m like “Wow, I want to rock that.”  Add to Basket.

Yesterday was a successful day at the gym; I can tell because I’m achy today.  I reluctantly hopped on the scale and was pleased to find out that my water-weight-gain had fallen off and I was actually in better shape then I was before Aunt Flo.

What is my goal, you ask… well, as Melissa put it, I am in no way a lard-ass, but I have self-esteem issues due to my body.  Wait, that makes me female doesn’t it…  By the middle of August, I would like to see me in photos and not want to cry on the inside.  Oh, sure, I mean, I feel so much better then I did before, but I’m my own worst critic.
I’ll stop bitching now.

(p.s. he added a re-furbed nano to his order yesterday.  Cake and eating it too!)