Gettin' Better!

Gram's on the mend. They gave her an oil change, cleaned her carbourator, and replaced a fuel line, and she's almost ready to get back on the road.

Actually, it's amazing how quick she bounced back. She went into the hospital 87 pounds with a blood oxygen level of 60 (most people are no longer alive at that point), collapsed lung, congestive heart failure, and they quickly discovered an aeortic aneurism down near her groin along with a growth in her lung. She was so sick at first that they couldn't fix any of the things that were wrong because of all the other things that were wrong!

My poor mom was absolutely terrified that Gram wouldn't leave the hospital alive, her condition was so poor. Everyone was scared. Last Thursday there were a bunch of people in the room hovering and talking to Gram in a baby voice, like, "Do you want some waaaterr??" Aw jeez. This kinda pissed me off because I knew Gram was tougher than that. And they had her drugged to high heaven on something that was supposed to be mild, but instead she was konked out completely, twitching, moaning and blowing spit bubbles. That's fuckin' disturbing and I never want to see that again.

I got to spend some time alone with her when she was finally coming out of it so I was teasing her about what to watch on TV. She noticed they put in a new TV and I told her she finally got some cable and asked what she like to watch. "Oh, I like to watch TNT, USA, and Spike" (she's a total crime drama junkie). I said, "Hey Gram! You think they have the dirty movie channel on here?" To which she predictably replied, "Ohhhh, sheez," and tossed her hand at me. I know she hates Dr. Who, so I told her it was on and she said, "Oh ish!" I turned it to TNT for her and Forrest Gump was on, but she said, "I have seen that movie about FIFTY times." Then i gave up and just turned on the History channel. Then I made sure she ate dinner before my cousin and I left.

By the next day she was so much better everyone was amazed. They'd been pumping her full of saline, dextrose, and antibiotics, and she got well enough that the docs could perform some more tests. They extracted liquid from her lung and tested it. There were no free floating cancer cells, signifying that if it is cancer, it's not fast spreading. Then she got well enough to have her aneurism removed. I was really scared about her being under general anesthesia so long, but Gram was way more scared than I was, of course. She asked my mom to take care of some insurance paperwork, and took confession for the first time in nearly 30 years. But she's super tough and made it through fine.

She might even be able to go home really soon, which is all she can think about right now. She just wants to go back to her senior high rise and take care of her mom. That's right. Great Grama is 98 and still tickin'. When the occupational therapist came in one day I was there, Gram was talking to her mom, and said, "Ma, I gotta go, there's someone here now... ok... i'll call you in a little bit." The OT had this quizzical look about her, like my Grammy was maybe off her nut. "I don't mean to be nosy, but who were you talking to?" "Oh I was talking to my mother," and I piped in with , "Yep, Great Grama is 98!" because the OT was kind of looking like are-you-SURE-about-that?

My family doesn't have much in the way of luck or opportunities, but we sure do have some longevity! We just sometimes have to "rock on completely with some brand new components."

QUIT NOW!!!

I have had a cruddy day. First thing this morning I got a bad news call from mom saying that grandma is in the hospital and she's got everything under the sun wrong with her. She's been smoking a pack a day her whole life and she hates the doctor, so of course she's in bad shape: growths on her lungs, one of which has partially collapsed, congestive heart failure, an aneurism in an artery somewhere, she's malnourished and 86 pounds, low blood pressure, and she's on a nebulizer. Obviously my day was no where near as bad as Gram's, but I'm worried about her and my mom since she's the only person taking responsibility for Gram's care.

Right after I found out I started yelling at Hubby because he smokes a LOT. I was just really pissed off that this can repeat itself again and again in my life: my hubby, my mom, my sister, my brother. They're all standing in line to get buried with black whithered lungs and yellow fingernails. It's foolish to take it personally, but I still can't help but be mad at hubby because he's going to leave me all alone for the last 20 years of my life and buried in medical bills. It's just not fucking fair.

My weekend sucked so bad I am actually relieved to be at work this morning. WTF! Seriously.

Hubby and I spent the whole weekend dealing with Apple technology horror. We each got an iPhone last week, so we decided to get wi-fi for the apartment so that we could do all our updates and sync the phones and have a good internet connection. Thus began major fiasco #1....

We called Comcast Saturday morning and they said we could save a hundred bucks and have internet the same day if we picked up the kit and installed it ourselves. We drove out to the nearest cable office and...oh. my. god... I had a major flashback of waiting all day in the county welfare office with my mom as a kid. Just a waiting room filled to capacity with the dregs of humanity, with listless, sallow-faced, semi-human punching bags staffing the counter. I'm just glad it didn't SMELL like the welfare office, I think I would have just aborted the mission.

We got our stuff home and Hubby started setting up and encountered a problem, nothing would work. So Hubby called Comcast again, and the phone rep said we were missing most of our kit. Real nice. And by now the local office was closed so we had to drive 20 miles to some god-foresaken sprawling neo-suburb to get to an office that was still open at four on Saturday. Luckily, though, we were the only clients there so we were in and out in five minutes--even with the rep checking all the equipment for us. So home again home again jiggedy-jog to finish setting up the wi-fi.

Thus began major fiasco #2....

Hubby was on the phone with his brother in Portland, OR for nearly two hours trying to get the cable to connect with the laptop and trying to update software. LOOOOONNNGG (tedious/boring) story short, Hubby got the computer to connect with internet, but couldn't set up security for some reason. Then, since we hadn't updated any software in like a year, when he tried to install the most recent update, the hard drive wigged out completely and all we could get was some black administrator login screen. We were pretty sure we killed the fuckin' thing. And I was ready to kill Hubby for taking his frustration out on me all day long, so we just called it quits and went to bed.

New day, new fiasco....

After FIVE HOURS in the apple store, we went home with a mended computer, a stern warning that the machine will likely fail entirely soon, and an external hard drive to back up all our stuff. We nearly went home with a new computer and $1500 more in debt to his parents. I wish I could tell you this is the end of the story, but of course it's not. We were up entirely too late Sunday night backing up the total contents of the laptop--estimated at 49 minutes but actually ran for over three hours. Once that was finished, we updated iTunes and the operating system.

We perched our selves in front of the laptop and eagerly plugged our shiny new iPhones into the iBook...and...NADA. Fuck this!! I stayed up till midnight on Sunday for nothing!! I gave up and went to bed. Alone. Hubby was like a dog with a bone, he wasn't ready to give it up. That foolish man stayed up past TWO in the morning futzing and reinstalling until he got the two gadgets to work together. Jeez. But it was kind of fun to get up in the morning and put music into my phone for the bus ride to work.

Unfortunately, that was the best part of my day yesterday. Right after breakfast, I realized that more of my broken tooth had broken off and I was feeling a slight ache. Shit! My fifteen minute break turned into twenty-five trying to find the number for the dentist and calling in to make an appointment. The must have been some sort of planetary alignment occurring because they were able to get me in same day AND I was able to get out of work AND my buses connected on the way home. But then the planets continued along their path because when I stopped at the drugstore for ibuprofen on the way to the dentist, I noticed that both rear tires were nearly flat! I knew I was cutting it close, but I stopped to put some air in. I put in as little as I could get away with and hopped in the car. At this point I was making good time, but once I got back on the road, I was so nervous that I went the wrong direction and ended up struggling to find my way out of the airport passenger drop-off! I called to let them know what happened so they didn't think I wasn't going to show up, and in the end I was ten minutes late.

They were SO nice there! I'm totally going back even though I am completely dentaphobic (is that even a real term??). I have had such bad experiences with dentists my whole life, so this was a real treat--aside from the blinding pain of the drill before I was fully numbed up, but when I yelped, he stopped and gave me more Novocaine and waited another ten minutes. WoW! I have had dentists in the past who have told me, "I gave you enough Novocaine, you shouldn't be able to feel that," accusing me of LYING about being in pain. This guy was smart enough to figure out that I've got really sensitive teeth, and if I can still feel the cold air from the hose I wasn't numb enough. So he kept testing with that instead of the drill.

I layed around for the rest of the day waiting to get the feeling back in my face. The shot of Novocaine to the back of my jaw made my whole tongue numb and I kept sticking it out to make sure I didn't swallow it. The told me not to eat till the feeling came back so I wouldn't bite it, but I had some applesauce anyway to get the terrible taste out of my mouth. I finally got my face back at like 7:00.

Please God let the rest of the week be easy.

I never get sick of Fridays!

I love having weekends off, I'm still getting used to it from so many years of getting the shaft at poopy retail jobs. I can't wait until Christmas and New Year's--because I will have BOTH of those days off. PAID. Man, I just don't know how people can survive their whole life in retail. Sixteen years was enough for me.

So happy Friday to all you cube-farming motherfuckers out there! Here's to sleeping in on Saturdays and watching TV all day Sunday!

Heeyyyyy!

I thing I'm falling in love with Google. They have a site for creating documents! The office programs on our iBook have been kaputski for like a year and a half ever since I loaded some Apple fonts into it (I told you I am super LOW-tech, and I ain't kiddin'), so I was pleased as punch to see that I can formulate docs online and save them. AND I can publish them directly to my blog. Sweeeet!

It's Hubby's BIRTHDAY!

His papa helped him get an iPhone. And THEN then he helped Hubby get one for me!

Holy crap, I got an iPhone! I am so LOW-tech, it's totally weird to own this gadget. Last night I stayed up too late playing with the settings and watching YouTube and other nonsense.

road bloggin

Hubby got an iPhone so since he is driving I decided to try my hand at blogging at 65mph in the carpool lane. This is frickin cool!

My Neighbor Across the Cube Wall

He is SO NASTY! He just coughs all day long straight into the phone--into peoples' ears! Ugh! Can I move to another cube?

I Got a Man

And he's rediculous. 

Every time I get engrossed in something, a movie or tv show or anything, he starts up this pain in the ass routine. 

First he'll test my interest level to see if I'll give in and let him change the channel to something he wants to watch. If this fails he'll start sulking around the apartment, go outside, come back in, go outside again. Then he sarts in with the whining, "I'm BORED..." "Well then watch this with me." Maybe he'll sit down, but he'll flip open his phone and get on the internet, and despite the fact I've already said nine times "I'M WATCHING THIS," he'll go, "Hey babe, check this out, if we switch to this phone company we can get two phones and yak yak yak..." Or, "Babe, listen to this: some political fund-raiser jumped bail meow meow..." OMG SHUT IT! I'm watching something!

So then I get "Fine," and he goes back outside. But only for two minutes. "Babe, turn on the weather channel, there's lighning." "Big deal, it's going to rain, I don't WANT to watch the weather channel, I'm watching this movie." "C'mon! I wanna see what the weather's doing!" "If you want to know what the weather's doing, then go stand in the fuckin' yard." Out he goes again. Five minutes later, here is, standing dripping wet in the middle of the living room with his arms held out to each side, "Babe, look I'm soaked. Last time I went outside I called the rain god a pussy, and now lookit, I'm all wet! Come on, get up and come outside with me, it's pouring..."

Seriously. I got to watch about 50% of my movie. He's lucky I've seen it already.

My man is not just rediculous when I'm trying to pay attention to something other than him, he's like this full time. EVERY DAY he asks me where his keys are, where his hat is, where his wallet went, have I seen his cigarrettes. Christ, he handles these items a hundred and fifty times each day, and he can't even manage to put them all together in the same place, much less find ONE place to drop all these things. Then again, this is a man who will stand IN FRONT OF A CLOCK and ask me WHAT TIME IT IS!

He'll also ask me questions and not listen to my answer. He asks me the same questions over and over, and he gets mad when I refuse to answer for the third, fourth, or fifth time. I tell him to rewind the tape in his brain, the answer's in there already, just look.

Did I mention he is ADD? OMG, if you only knew... He is and endless source of entertainment to be sure!