Weekend Wrap-up

This has been a rough week and I'm glad it's over.

At work, I spent 95% of the week typing /summarizing medical records for one of Carrie's personal injury defense cases. The plaintiff who's records I was typing is in his 60's and when all was said and done, we had over 45 pages of typed notes summarizing all of his records. Oiy! And then as I'm just about finished with that project, Steve comes out and tells me that next week, we'll be knee-deep in preparing for his arbitration in July! I'm thinking I could have gladly NOT thought about that over the weekend.

I had an appointment with my dr this week. What with my high blood pressure and other ailments, she likes to see me every 4 months or so, so it was a usual thing. But the unusual thing was that this time I had news, I'd joined Curves and was regularly working out. I was SO excited to tell her. She comes in and first thing, she notices that my BP was down and mentions that. She asks if I've been doing anything different and I took my opening and told her I'd joined Curves. At this point, I expected even a half-hearted kudo, but no, her response is to ask me how many days I'm working out. I tell her 3-5 depending on my schedule, but usually at least 4. Again... kudos? No, then she says, well, on the days you aren't working out, you need to be taking at least hour long walks and watching what you eat. I'm like, wait a minute. Last time I was here, she was all but begging me to just do something! And now, she's wanting it all in a blink of the eye? So this basically just pisses me off and I don't even mention the laundry list of things I wanted to discuss with her... like this thing that has appeared in the last couple of weeks under my left eye, or the fact that I've been waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat off and on for the past couple months,.. or the unusal mood swings I've been having. No, I was in the middle of one such mood swing and unfortunately for my list it happened to be a pissy mood. Sigh. Oh, and did I mention that she was 45 minutes late for my 8:15 am appointment?? How do you get THAT far behind by 8:15?

So the next day, I'm in a better mood. I had an appointment with my hand dr. I've got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and a worker's comp case over it, and yikes! Anyway, my CTS has been much better of late, and I truly believed that the doctor would agree and release me. And that's what he did. So now hopefully we can get the worker's comp case resolved and we can get all of that behind me. Of course, the next couple of days, my wrist was hurting as I was doing nothing but straight typing on those medical records, but that's not unusual.

So then the next day, Thursday, what I had been waiting to have happen, but as of Thursday was officially three weeks late, finally happened. And I felt HORRIBLE!! I could barely get out of bed. Before work, I hit a CVS to buy drugs and Ho-Ho's, and after taking said drugs and eating said Ho-Ho's and drinking a big ol' chug of Diet Mt. Dew, I was feeling more human. I ended up being late for work, but I was pretty sure that it would be forgiveable as they'd have had to shoot me and put me out of their (and my) misery otherwise.

Friday was the best day of the week. I was exhausted, but I finally finished the medical summary. I was back to my usual non-moody self, and even though there was the possibility that I might get called into work to help one of the attorneys on Saturday, I wasn't too concerned because I never end up getting OT when I'm told in advance to expect it. And as I'm sitting here at 2:37 pm on Saturday afternoon, that attorney hasn't called me to ask me to come in, so I'm good. I went and got the oil changed in my buggy this AM, after waking up at a leisurely 9am. I've cleaned the litter box, am in the process of doing laundry, and am shifting thru the apartment killing dust bunnies. Ok, not really killing them, but herding them into the trash can. Despite being 91 degrees outside, it is beautiful and the breeze is blowing.

There was one down moment. Mom called last night to let me know that my cousin, Sandy, had passed away yesterday evening. She'd been battling a brain tumor since October. It seems so short of a time. At the last family funeral in September, she was fine. My earliest memories of Sandy were when I was little and we'd go down to Granny Barger's to visit in Eddyville, Illinois. Sandy (who was very close in age to my parents) would drive me and my sisters in her car (in my memory it was a convertible or jeep or something) to Lake Glendale and we'd play on the beach there. The soundtrack that was playing was Three Dog Night - usually Shambala. That memory comes to me whenever I listen to Three Dog Night. Mom wasn't sure when the funeral would be, probably Monday or Tuesday, but I'll take off and go with mom and dad to say goodbye to Sandy.

Gary, I Love You

So first, while mom and I were in Fishers this past weekend (and my sister's house was hit by lightning?), I guess there was a bad storm here, too. And it knocked out my internet at home. I'm super concerned about my Webkinz and their garden. Sigh.. I couldn't call until I got to work on Monday and got on the internet at work and printed off my bill (since I have paperless bills) to get the customer service phone number and my account number.

After work Monday, I went to Curves and by the time I got home, I was exhausted, so I didn't call. I called Tuesday after work and Curves, and spoke with a very nice lady in the Phillippines, and after trying all sorts of things, she set me up for some test and told me that someone would call me back after the test to tell me if they figured it out. Didn't make sense to me, but again, I was tired and in a mood, so I didn't really care.

Tonight, Wednesday, after work and Curves, I got home to a message from my DSL company telling me that according to their diagnostic, my internet is working fine. I go in to check it, and it's still down. Sigh. So I called the Phillippines again. Well, I assume it was the Philippines. Anyway, this time I talked to Gary and we figured out that the storm had made my modem reset. So after walking me thru resetting it, I was up and running. Before hanging up, I told Gary that I loved him. He told me not to tell his wife, and I promised him that it was our secret. So if you're reading this, Gary's wife, I'm sorry you had to find out this way.

I logged on, and sure enough, my garden was dead. It looked like a weird version of the elephant burial ground scene in the The Lion King, only instead of elephant skeletons, there were skeleton-esque pumpkins and tomato plants. I did have a cabbage to pick. Snuffles was very happy to see me.

I'm logging off to go to bed. As I fall asleep, I'll be thinking of Gary. :)

Natalie - Who Knew Ya Had it in You? :)

So this past weekend was my niece Natalie's graduation from high school. Mom and I drove up to witness the blessed event. Dad wasn't feeling too great and travel just exhausts him, so he and the gnomes stayed home.

Now, Natalie is a sweetheart, but from what I've gathered, her studying skills leave something to be desired. And there was some question of whether or not she'd missed too many days of school this year to actually graduate. But nevertheless, like hopeful pilgrams, we trotted out to the Pepsi Collesium at the State Fair Grounds to be there, just in case. :)

No, she graduated and we were very proud. I took pics, but due to the size of the place they are rather dark. After the ceremony her father and I trotted out to find her in the melee and grab her before she turned her gown in for her actual diploma. But wouldn't you know it, the turd already had dumped it. So I didn't get a pic of her in the gown, but we do have some pics in the hat and holding onto the blessed piece of paper.

I don't recall my high school graduation very well. (That being SO many years ago and all.) But this one was very nice. The speeches weren't as boring as they could have been. And considering there were like 500 kids graduating, it didn't take THAT long to shuffle them through. I did take a book however, so after the B's were over, I read until I started hearing W's and then I put my book away.

One really good thing came out of it, though. The very last person in line was someone named Nargis (yes, that was her first name!) And when I heard that, I thought, what a wonderful gnome-gname! And since part of my graduation gift to Nat was a gnome of her very own that she could take to Purdue with her (assuming they'll still take her despite her grades.) Uh.. lost my train of thought there.. oh, yeah, so it was a perfect name. After Nat opened the bag with the gnome in it, I told her she'd need to name it and then humbly suggested Gnargis. Everyone agreed that it was a fine name.

Back to Holly's house which, BTW, had been hit by lightning the previous night (almost made me wee in my nephews bed!) and had the AC, the hot tub, and the stove knocked out. We survived, but as a part of the soiree in celebration of Nat's graduation, Holly was making ribs, and that required an oven. Now, we could've just gone and picked up a bucket of fried chicken, but Ho's ribs are really pretty stinkin' good! So she packed up the ribs and the "Uncle Ben's Special Mop Sauce" that she'd made (and that's our Uncle Ben, not the rice guy) and trotted it all over to Haley's house and Ha babysat the ribs under Ho's specific guidance. And they were MARVELOUS. The only downside is that I didn't smuggle any back home with me in my bag. Sigh..