Nick is still doing really well at school. He is still participating and mostly staying out of trouble. His biggest problem is staying awake in the morning. I think it more has to do with him staying awake for 2 hours after bed time yapping at himself. I've been having him take Melatonin but it doesn't always do the trick. He did have a bit of trouble a few weeks ago but he had an excuse and I think he controlled himself pretty well. You see, I was in the hospital. It's the first time he has had to deal with a big illness and he didn't get to see me while I was in the hospital. But he explained to his teachers what was going on and really did a good job of stepping back when he got upset.
Yeah the big news that happened since the last time was me ending up in the ER and then being admitted a few days later. I missed 3 1/2 days of work. Heck, I have yet to work a full weekend since before Thanksgiving. Anyways, on the 28th I went to work in some serious pain. I couldn't do anything without wanting to cry but I couldn't afford to miss work. Well by 3pm I was in so much pain I was crying so I left. My folks didn't seem to think there was a problem and sent me home with Nick. I took some pain pills and later took a nap. When I woke up at about 7:30 with a fever of 104.8. I called the help nurse at the clinic I go to and she recommended I head to the ER. Called my folks and Dad took me in while Mom took Nick back to their place so he could get some sleep. Had a bunch of blood work done and they said massive UTI. I did one bag of fluids with antibiotics in it and was sent home at about 2:30am with a scrip for more antibiotics. I spent the next two days only moving enough to take the kid to school and bring him home. Wednesday morning I was still in so much pain I called my urologist with the intent to ask for a pass for the weekend because it was my kidney stones causing the UTI and back pain.
Well the doc starts looking at my chart and discovers that the ER had tried to call me the day before to recommend I be admitted for a day due to bacteria growing in my blood! Doc ordered me to the hospital asap. I had originally intended to just call my mom to let her know I was heading to the hospital but I broke down and freaked. The last time I was in the hospital was when I had Nick and that was 1999. Mom ended up taking me in and I spent the next 3 days on IV antibiotics. I had two surgeries done. First was to insert two stents to help the kidney stones gtfo of there so they would stop blocking things up and causing the UTI and pain. That was on Wednesday within like 2 hours of being admitted. On Friday I had one of the stents removed and the doc used a laser to blast the hell out of my stones. I finally got to go home that night but I still didn't get to see Nick until Saturday afternoon. He spent the next week hugging me and telling me he loved me. :) He missed his momma. I had the other stent removed in the office about 10 days after I got out of the hospital. Not a real comfortable procedure. I recommend being knocked out for it if your insurance will cover it.
Well, since this whole mess I have been one tired chick. OK, so I am normally pretty tired but I've been really tired since I got out. I'm no longer peeing blood and no longer feeling any stone pain, which is good. What sucks is that the snow and cold showed up while I was in the hospital. And of course my snowblower doesn't want to work. The belt that runs the blades slips and only works when it wants to. So I've been having to shovel the drive myself. Most of the time I feel like I just went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. It feels like the palms of my hands are bruised but there is nothing there.
And, of course, the neighbors are still refusing to shovel at all. I ended up yelling and, regrettably, swearing at one of her kids for climbing on one of the piles of snow next to my drive and tossing snow all over the place. The snow in the driveway has been the only thing I've been able to control lately and here was the kid of someone making that more difficult just destroying my drive again. I was livid. I've been stewing about the whole driveway ordeal and I just exploded. I don't even remember what I said to the kids. It was either "shit" or "damn" but I was so mad I don't remember what I said. It makes me feel about half an inch tall thinking about it. I know there is no excuse but I've been having my ass kicked by the snow. I'm constantly in large amounts of pain from shoveling and they twit next door just plows right through the snow and refuses to shovel. Hell when they can, they drive through the end of my side of the drive and onto their side because they are too lazy to shovel where the plow has buried the end of the drive. She has lived there at least 4 years and I've only seen her shovel 3 times. This is Iowa. It's not unusual to have to shovel 3 times in one DAY when it's snowing bad unless you want to wait and have it take you 2 hours to shovel the drive when it stops. sigh I know I need to let it go but it's hard to keep my side clear when her side is full of snow and she doesn't give a crap if the snow ends up on my side when she drives across it.
But in good news, I did finish the shawl I started last month. It's quite small and I really want to a larger one in thicker yarn at some point. I'll be using beads instead of doing nups though. I hate nups. And what is cool is that I used yarn that my friend Summer sent me for the little shawl and Summer sent me some of her handspun as a pick-me-up gift and I'm knitting a scarf from it. It's the Moon River Scarf available free on Rav. I deleted 2 repeats of the pattern on the scarf because it was getting too wide. It's a very easy pattern and I'm loving my first chance at knitting with handspun.
I've got all the Christmas shopping done thanks mostly to our annual Christmas bonus card for Wal-Mart. I ended up overdrawn on my checking account though thanks to a huge ass heating bill. I got used to maybe a $70 bill but the last one was $189 and it wiped out my checking account just as my internet and phone bills came in. Thankfully my check was deposited the next day so I'm back in the black. I'm going to have to try and work some overtime after the new year to make up the $75 in overdraft charges though. Oh and yes, I called the gas company and I'm now on an even payment plan. I think it's something like $52 a month. Much, much better. I'm already on even pay for my light bill because of a huge unexpected bill when it was so hot this summer. And in other shitty financial news, I got picked up the Monday after I got out of the hospital for expired tags. Had to borrow money from my folks to pay for new tags but I still have to pay the fine yet. I want to talk to the judge and hopefully only pay court costs but the weather has been so bad I haven't been able to get into town for traffic court. I really hate this time of year. Really and truly hate it.
I'm depressing myself here so I'll quit. Suffice it to say I will be doing my taxes the moment I get my W-2 from work. I need to go cash in the scratch off winner that my supervisor gave me ($1) and get me a lottery ticket. My luck has got to change sooner or later.
