The maybe post

This morning the alarm clock went off at 7:00.  I have no idea why, I must have set it out of habit when I went to bed last night.  Five minutes later I got a text from Hubby with a picture of Sonny Boy in a ground blind with a pink sunrise behind him.  I was awake.  I debated getting up, coffee sounded fantastic but I had stayed up reading last night and knew that the siren song of a nap would call me, so I forced myself back to sleep to wake up at 11:00 with nice headache going.  I hate that.  Now I'm drinking coffee and hoping the ibuprofen is up to the task because if I take my migraine meds I'm pretty much done being productive today.

Another week of near daily medical appointments has passed.  Monday I took Igor into the orthotics maker guy to be casted for new shoe inserts.  Hopefully insurance will cooperated as the doctor said insurance doesn't like to pay for his specific kind of orthotic anymore.  A work around exist in the form of prescribing a bigger (and probably way more expensive) brace and then cutting it down to only the nest the needs.  I hate when insurance plays doctor,  I think my child's doctor ( who happens to be head or orthopedic surgery at the #3 ranked children's hospital in the country) is capable of determining what he needs.  I digress.   Tuesday I went to the doctor who sent me to a gynecologist on Friday with hopes of managing my night sweats.   Gynecologist played with some meds however they aren't in at the pharmacy so I have to wait till Monday to start them.  Mom had an appointment with a kidney doctor as well.  Doctor appointments are a part time job for me.

I finally ram rodded mom into hiring a cleaning lady.  I brought in three candidates for her meet and for them to give estimates on the mess.  The last service wouldn't do things like a load or two of laundry or dishes so they were ruled out.  I think the place scared them actually.  Hopefully the girl hired will work out.  I have a semi-guilt complex about forcing mom to pay somebody because in actuality I really could do the work, and I probably would if it was just the heavy cleaning but she doesn't even make attempts at cleaning up behind herself, heck my kids at least throw their garbage and recycle away (most of the time).   I also spent a good amount of time digging through a massive paperwork pile that was her dining room table finding items she swore she never got and a mess of bills that make no sense to anyone.  I still have loads of papers to dig through and organize.  I have decided I'm just going to handle all of her bills and such forward and told her that.  Honestly, I think she's so stressed by dealing with daily life it paralyzes her into inaction.  I've really started to see a decline in her cognitive skills in the last few months.  Until recently I think she could mostly pull the wool over a strangers eyes regarding her abilities but more often lately I can see people's expressions of "she's not all there is she?"

The weather has been beyond beautiful the last week.  I managed to get out and mow, and  spent a massive amount of time with the weed eater.  Hopefully today I can get out and prep my flower beds for winter so hopefully they are not too straggly.  For now though I'm going to drink some more coffee, and take an excedrin (probably give myself some caffeine shakes) and hope this damn headache slacks off.


I wrote this like two weeks ago and never posted because I thought it needed more editing that I felt up to at the time.  Now I'm just posting it warts and all because I no longer care.

Neverending list

It seems I'll never catch up with my to do list lately.  I don't really think it's because it's so lengthy (though it grows daily) I just have immense sense of inertia I need to overcome to even start it.  Therefore I decided to write a blog post, procrastination at it's best.

Mom called me yesterday and asked me to come over and sort some of her meds.  She was convinced she suddenly had a new med she had never taken before.  She didn't of course, but she had several duplicate bottles of the same med, and a sorting mess.  I sorted stuff out, and laid all her pills out for the next seven days in the pill sorter she has.  I then took her Rx list, insurance cards and debit card and brought them over and set her up for a new thing I found on line.  It's called Pill Pack.  When I showed it to Hubby he was excited enough to start finding out if he could sink our savings into investing in it.  Basically it takes your prescriptions and sets them up in little baggies for the day on a roll.  In Mom's case she'd have three baggies a day with all the meds she needs to take at each time sorted all ready.  It will be fantastic, the bad part is it will take a bit for everything to pan out and end up in the packs due to prescriptions being refilled at different times etc so  I'm doomed to an even more confusing set up for the next month or so but after that it should be way simpler. 

Hubby came home from his business trip to France on Saturday and promptly packed Sonny Boy, Callie (dog) and himself up and left today to go duck hunting.  I'm not overly amused and have made a severe point that I don't think his planned deer hunting trip should occur due to finances.  I made it clear I find it silly that I worry about scrimping and saving on groceries and household stuff so we can live within our means while he schedules hunting trips.  I think he got the message.

Well I guess I should go do something, it's not like finding something is hard.

Balancing Act

I finally got the Botox injections this week. I tell ya, I didn't think the insurance and then the appointment waiting was ever going to happen.   The actual process was a piece of cake.  The needle was tiny, and while the meds stung a bit it wasn't bad all.  A couple of times it must have hit a particular sore spot or nerve and was more unpleasant, but on the scale of medical stuff it ranked unworthy of a mention.

The doctor said 5 - 7 days for full effect and I'm only two days out now.  I do think I can tell a difference in the tightness of my neck.  The huge knot that lives at the base of my skull seems smaller and not quite as hard and my range of motion seems better with less pulling.   Probably the biggest tell is the amount of neck popping, sounds like popcorn.  When the muscles are very tight my neck doesn't pop at all, I just don't have the range of motion to do it.

I've had some amount of headache unfortunately, nothing utterly miserable but certainly there, I'm hoping this will abate as the effects grow.

The week has been long.  Hubby is in France for work and with the time change and his schedule I don't think we have spoken more than 5 minutes since last Friday.  I miss him.  I don't think I've had more than few minutes of conversation with an adult since he left, my brain is mushy.  All in all the week has gone fairly smooth.  The kids fell into routine easier for this trip than in the past.  I think the kids are finally getting the idea we continue on with normal life when dad is gone.

I'm at a parenting condumdrum.  Sonny Boy is hitting the age where he should start taking more responsibility for his affairs School projects, scout stuff, hygiene, etc.  I do believe he tries pretty hard, but his ADHD brain makes this very difficult for him.   Right now most days are a series of reminders for tasks he needs to do.  Mostly things are greeted with an "oh yeah!" And he'll go do them, but give him an oral list of three things and all bets are off as the dog will wander by and a game of fetch is on.  I try to let the natural consequences of not having his act together play out, however when I do this he gets so overwhelmed and stressed things melt down into even bigger messes and the "I can't do anything right" attitude kicks in.

Damned to play his secretary/wife until he has one, or kick his self esteem to curb.  What a balancing act.