Ugh

I woke up yesterday to a cold sore right smack dab in the middle of my bottom lip the size of Fukushima Diichi nuclear reactor #4. I'm that attractive...and deadly.

I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks and tomorrow is my first day back at work and I don't imagine people will be asking me too many questions about my trip. I think it will probably go something like this, "Hey, (oh God, what is that thing on her lip? did she bring half of Savannah back with her?) Umm, I want to hear all about your trip, but I'm really busy right now, gotta go! (yikes, that was 'invasion of the body snatchers' scary)

I'm using all the remedies I can think of right now to lessen the likelihood of a complete and total meltdown....of my face. Hopefully something will work or I'll have to wear a surgical mask to work and pretend the air quality is pitiful and my asthma is acting up. I dunno...the dogs don't seem afraid of me yet so maybe it's not as bad as I think it is. Who am I kidding, this thing should have been included on the last US Census.

I'm too weirded out to write about our fabulous trip. Maybe in a few days if it doesn't engulf my entire face.

Heartbreak

This is pretty much how I'm feeling these days. Sara has been asking me to update this blog for weeks now because she's sick of looking at my Christmas picture (can't say as I blame her) but I don't have anything witty or even in the least bit silly to write about. I'm looking at this picture now and this is exactly how I feel. Almost six years ago we took a young girl into our home and hearts. At the time we were very conflicted as to whether we were doing the right thing considering it was our youngest son's girlfriend. But, she was so easy to love and needed some stability in her life that it seemed the only thing to do.
Due to an unfortunate decision on her part, they are no longer together. I've thought about this over the years, how would this affect our family dynamics should a breakup occur, and would it be awkward? I guess I always assumed that if they were ever to end their relationship that it would be a mutual decision where they had just grown apart, or if not that, cordial, perhaps bitter and hurtful for a time and then eventually we would still be "family" and I could still buy belly dancing outfits for her, or meet her for lunch with lots of hugs and sincere happiness with just the thought of being with my daughter.
Apparently I'm still naive in my advancing age because as things stand, I can't see it ever happening. Too much has happened, too many twists and turns...and yet I still feel conflicted. If I just shut her out of my life now because of her actions, does that mean all the feelings I've had over the years have been fake? Has calling her my daughter been a lie? My heart is aching for my son right now. The emotional upheaval he is experiencing is ripping me apart. As a mother my first instinct is to comfort and protect him. But what about her? I'm angry, hurt, disappointed and well, disgusted with her right now and I'm finding it so very, very hard to feel my motherly instincts for her....and that makes me sad too.
She's out of our lives by her own choosing...so I guess I'm left to do the only thing I can do under the circumstances which is to take care of my son the best I can and hope that someday the pain of all this lessens and I can let her back into my heart. I just can't do that right now and I feel guilty and then I sway the other way where I think, well, she apologized for what she put us through by text messaging me and honestly was kind of "matter of fact" about the whole thing so it doesn't seem like she needs me, she's getting all her advice and support from her new friends.
I don't know. All I know is I was listening to my iPod at work this morning and a song started up that was "her" and I had to close my office door for a few minutes to compose myself.
It's hard for me to think right now. My thoughts are jumbled in my head and I can't seem to unravel them into coherent sentences. I'm broken.

Merry Christmas

Oh how I love this time of year! I get to put on my little Santa number, throw on a little lipstick and hit the party scene! I'm tellin' ya, it's exhausting to be me. I swear I get invited to more and more parties every year and everyone and his dog wants to have their picture taken with me. Isn't that sweet? I'm definately the belle of the ball and I'm lovin' it!
Well, I'd post more but it's 8am and I need to start getting ready for the next party that starts at 7 tonight. It takes a lot of effort to look this good you know. Merry Christmas everyone!

Finally, something that works

This is my new best friend in the whole wide world. I would marry it if I could and living in Las Vegas, it just might be legal.
Anyway, this is the story of our new relationship. Some years ago we got sick of the carpet, sick of the laminate flooring and had the brilliant (read stupid) idea to put ceramic tile throughout the entire downstairs of our house. While tile in and of itself wasn't such a stupid idea, it was the light color we chose that was by far one of the most stupid things we have done in our married lives. Well, moving to Las Vegas wasn't the best idea ever, but that's for another time. We're talking floors tonight.
So, back in the olden days when I had housekeepers from time to timeI always insisted that they not use PineSol on the floor. (It leaves a sticky film on the tile that attracts more dirt.) Not that any of them ever paid any attention to my insistance as my entire house smelled of PineSol everytime I came home. Over the years the guk built up and scrub as I did, the floor just never really looked clean to me and I hated my life.
Scott and I thought this Thanksgiving weekend would be the perfect time to have our floors professionally cleaned. I checked out a few places online and about puked when I saw how much they wanted...over a thousand dollars. Gad zooks! Scott found a guy through a friend at work who said he would clean the floors for about 650.00. Crazy amount, but obviously a lot less than Stanley Steemer. We booked him for this morning at 9 and spent the better part of last night moving all the furniture out of the house. 3 couches, dining table and chairs, chairs, bookshelves, lamps, coffee tables, all that stuff.
By 9:30 this morning when he hadn't shown up, I had Scott call him. He was having "mechanical" problems and said he should be here within the hour. By 11:30 and no word from him, I was angry and ready to tell him to take a hike, if he ever showed up. I looked outside and great...it's starting to cloud up and look like rain...and oh goody, the wind is kicking up. Fabulous. To make this long and boring story a little shorter, I decided that we needed to just rent a machine and do it ourselves. We checked out a couple of places and everything looked pretty bogus and then Scott got the idea to check out Oreck. For less than what we would have paid the guy, who by the way called at 4pm and said he wasn't going to make it today and most likely not tomorrow either, we bought this great cleaner. Scott was skeptical, and I had faith that it would do the trick.
It's fabulous!!! I'm so happy with the results I can barely stand it. (I'm so easy to please)
The only down side to this entire thing is there was a part of me, and I'm just a tad bit ashamed to admit it, that hoped robbers would come over during the night and steal all our furniture so we would have to get all new, pretty stuff. I love to dream.
It's past midnight, gotta get up early to finish up all this cleaning business. Who knew I could get so excited over sparkling clean floors? Pathetic.

fall

A few weeks ago I took my mom on a little road trip to Bishop California. We've gone on our "fall trip" for the past three years and while this wasn't a trip back to New England like we would have liked...it was still pretty and good to escape the heat and stress of everyday life and home.

The aspen tress were beautiful and I everyone and his dog was up there taking pictures. I don't think I have ever seen so many tripods in one place.

I love taking pictures of roads. It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem which is one of my favorites.

today is my day off and unlike the past two Mondays that I had off, today I have kept my promise to myself and stayed in my pj's and worked on editing some of my photos. I could get used to this.

It's 2pm now and I think it's time I got up and actually do a few things around here. Can't be lazy all the time you know. I have something like 20 pumpkins to gather up and put in the garbage. All my kids were home for Halloween and they had friends over to carve pumpkins and pretty much just hang out and enjoy the beautiful autumn day. All I know is this...I had a wonderful weekend and the tired I feel today is a "good" kind.

last time you'll have to read about this

I'm done. No more doctors. No more trying to get someone to manage my care. This trip to Mayo Clinic was a complete waste of time and money. Not to mention emotionally what it did to me.
I still don't know which vitamins and calcium I'm supposed to take for my liver disease, and SIX, yes SIX doctors have been told about the edema in my legs and yet nothing has been done. I was told by the doctor here that I needed an ultrasound of my legs....they didn't order it.
Anyway, I'm sick of talking about this. I'm sick of everything. Guess they don't want to see or hear from you until I need the transplant.
Oh...and the highlights? Having the doctor give me my MRI results. I wasn't sitting in his office in a comfy chair....I was pulled over on the side of the road on a highway in Phoenix. Classy.

hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Mayo I go

At the suggestion of my ophthalmologist I went online to make an appointment to see some doctors who actually know what they're doing (I hope) in regards to my liver disease. I was quite surprised when the called me back and offered me an appointment like NOW. So, I'm going to drive to Phoenix on Sunday and my appointment is Monday. Don't think you can come to my house now and jack all my stuff because not only will the 3 attack wiener dogs be all over you, but my Chuck Norris "kick your butt" type husband will be there and so will 2 of my kids who who have been kicked out of every school in the county for fighting and are proud card carrying members of the NRA.
I'm lying of course. My husband has never kicked a butt in his entire life, and I made all that up about my kids. The wiener dog stuff was completely true though...oh, and so was the part about all of them being here. I'm going by myself. The appointment came up so quickly that Scott wasn't able to get coverage to take the time off, and since I'm not sure exactly how long I'm going to be there (they said to plan on 5 days) I just thought it would be cheaper and easier if I just drove. Plus, I can take just the snacks "I" like. Roadtrip for Ruth....yes!
As anyone knows who has accidently stumbled upon this blog for the past couple of months, I've been having a fabulous time with the medical community and my liver disease. I've been unsatisfied from the beginning and not happy about having to YouTube or Google my disease to get my information. So...let's hope that these doctors will actually be able to give me the guidance I'm looking for. Let's face it....I know I can't be cured and I don't expect that. What I do expect is a doctor or two who will actually listen and offer up some help/suggestions. Here is a perfect example of what I've been going through for the past few months. In July I told my internist and my gastroentrologist that I had swelling in my legs. Both of them told me to ask the liver specialist in San Francisco about it. (passing the buck 1) Hepatologist in SF paid no attention to me, didn't even look as I was showing him, but simply said, "It's not your liver" (buck passing 2) Swelling gets worse, showed cardiologist, "it's not your heart, you don't have swelling in your hands or feet." (3) Went to the GI for followup, "make an appointment with your internal medicine doctor. She needs to order an ultrasound of your legs." (4) a week later cuz that's the soonest I could get in to see her, she looks as I push my finger into my ankle and it looks like I'm punching down bread dough. "Yeah, that's your liver." "Um, the liver specialist in SF said it wasn't." "It is. It's your cirrhosis." "Um, I didn't think I was in the cirrhosis stage yet." "......." no response, just given a prescription for some Lasix in hopes that I can pee it all away. Me: what about my severe depletion of vitamin D? She writes a script for a ridiculous dose of vitamin D. Me: aren't I supposed to take calcium with that or it's useless? Her: yeah, you can take some. Me: well, there are different kinds of calcium and how much?
Her: any kind is fine, and just take the recommended dose.
that's pretty much when I decided that I'm in the market for a new doctor. I stole a magazine on my way out. And I don't care. And it was one I wanted too. And it was a new issue, not an old one from 1997.

So what else has been happening???? hmm, had a birthday a few days ago. Got beautiful flowers from my daughter (thanks again, Sara) flowers from my husband and other kids, and a nice night with family. I missed Sara though. :(
Scott knows I love hamburgers. He also knows that I'm pretty much wiped out all the time so he thought it would be nice just to have everyone come to our house and grill some burgers instead of going out. He talked to my mom and left money for Kris and Betina to take her to the grocery store for all the fixins'. Everyone was here when we got home and Scott went to work right away making up the burgers. I walked passed him in the kitchen and noticed he didn't have such a happy face. I looked down at what he was doing and the hamburger meat looked funky. And I do mean funky. Red on the outside, brown/gray on the inside. He points to the label on the wrapper that says,"Reduced price for quick sale". Ohh, great. Then I hear my mother tell my vegetarian kid and my vegan kid that she's going to eat a black bean burger with them tonight. Of course you are, you know you bought tainted meat and you don't want to die tonight!!!! Her excuse for buying the ball o' e-coli was this: "You know how the grocery store sales go from Wednesday to Wednesday? Well, today is Wednesday and it was going off being on sale." WTF??????? That made absolutely no sense whatsoever and she just looked at me as if to say, "Go on bitch, say something else, I dare ya, I double dog dare ya." So basically I think I ate meat that had been sitting at Albertson's for a week. Needless to say, I did not enjoy my birthday dinner. P.S., Jeff and I were the only ones who ate the hamburgers...and he doesn't really count cuz that kid eats some pretty disgusting things.


I got my eyeballs fried today...on purpose. Since the stupid eye plugs fell out and I wasn't willing to go through that torture again my doc decided to cauterize my tear ducts. Yes, it's as gross as it sounds. Remember that rhyme from childhood, "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye"? Yeah, well, she stuck lots of needles in my eyes before taking a branding iron to them. I don't know about you, but I'm all about torture these days. Weirdest damn thing I've ever done, I'll tell you that right now. My eyes feel....well, burned right now. I love how she tells me, "You'll notice little black dots that look like mascara....don't rub them. Then in a few days it will look like white mucousy dots...don't rub them." eewww and gag. So of course I had to run to a mirror right away and check that shit out. She was right. The Lidocaine wore off pretty quickly and I'm driving home on the freeway thinking, "maybe this isn't the smartest thing I've done this week...driving with bar-b-qued eyeballs." It's all good now. Little pain, semi-alot of burning, and wishing I could poke them out with a stick. I was going to say "with a hot poker" but that's already been done today, thank you.

So that's my crazy life right now. there's a piece of grocery store birthday cake in the fridge that's just calling my name so I think I'm going to claim it as my own and call it a night. It wasn't reduced for quick sale so I think I'm pretty safe.