Falling Back

Usually, I love Halloween. It's changing for me because my kids are no longer little and dressing up for school or for trick-or-treating. But, still... this year's Halloween, like so many things this year, sucked.

Sammy and his friend, Julia, had been planning this great Halloween party for weeks. The 'usual crowd' (about 10 kids, half guys, half girls) was meeting after school, hanging out then watching some scary movies that Sammy & I rented on Thursday. Then they were all going to go to a haunted house, and then, if time, a scary corn maze, then back to Julia's for more scary movies.

I had a PT appointment at 1:30pm, but left work about 11am to pick up my repaired car. I then had to go to the mall to the Verizon store to find out why Sammy's new phone has a black mark on its screen. They said it's a stress crack, so not a manufacturer defect, but they were going to give me a new phone for $50 even though we didn't get insurance on the darn thing. Sammy had it in his pocket all day at school, even though he is NOT supposed to, and somehow it happened that day. Unfortunately, after waiting for a very long time while the woman at Verizon went through all the activities necessary to transfer to a new phone for Sammy, when she took the hard case off Sam's phone and the new phone out of the box, she realized she had the plain ol' Voyager and Sam has the new version, the Voyager Titanium. And, of course, they were out of stock on the Titanium one. So then she had to undo all she'd done so Sam's broken phone would work until next Wednesday when they would get a new Voyager Titanium into the store. Oy. Cell phone stores have officially replaced the DMV for time wasting in my book. I can never get out of there under an hour.

I also had another errand at the mall. Joyce's HP laptop has been 'acting funny' for a few months, so the other evening she took it to Best Buy to have a Geek Squad dude look at it. We bought it at Best Buy and we bought the extended warranty. Long story, short... Joyce's subscription to her antivirus software ran out this past summer and she didn't renew it. She told me she asked me what to do about it, but I never gave her an answer, so she didn't do anything. Um... let's see, what was I doing this past summer?... Oh, yes... Vicodin and Valium! She should have renewed the subscriptions. From Limewire she got the Trojan virus. Best Buy wanted almost $400 to fix her laptop & remove the Trojan. I told her to tell them to go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks and bring her laptop home. I took it to "Computers To Go" at the Midland Mall, where they fixed it & removed the virus for $74. Yes, $74. Best Buy sucks. Computers To Go rocks.

So anyway, I was at Computers To Go, standing at the counter filling out the form the guy needed, and suddenly there was a loud BANG! right behind me. The UPS guy had come in and dropped this huge box on the floor. Seriously scared the crap outta me, and also the guy working there. He said something like, "what the fuck man" and then kinda apologized to me, and I said, "no I'm totally with you" and then I turned around and basically chewed the UPS guy out. Mostly because when it happened, I whipped my head around and then waves of intense pain generating from my neck went through me, followed by waves of nausea. I had to stand there at the counter for about 2 minutes doing nothing but hanging onto the counter until it all stopped. That's a long time to stand and say nothing when there's only 2 of you in the store. I finally told Joe, the guy working there, how I had some problems from a couple of neck surgeries. And could he please capture and torture that UPS dude. Oy.

Then I went to my PT appointment, where I laid down flat on my back on the narrow bed thing, with 2 pillows and a wonderfully hot heating pad under my neck. Usually, I have this round bolster to put under my knees, that that was in another room, so I had a large square block of foam. The foam block was too high up the back of my thighs, so I tried to scootch it down a little to get it to under the bend of my knees, and I think I lifted my head up to look... why I did that, I don't know. But it triggered a severe vertigo attack. Severe. The PT, Amy, tried to help me, but it only became worse. I had called Kev, and he and Joyce drove into town together, and Joyce got Sam's phone to deliver it to him and drove the truck home. Kev took me home in the car. It was awful. He had to use a wheel chair to get me out to the car, I was that bad. Couldn't walk. Couldn't sit in the car... I knelt on the floor with my head in my hands with a cold, wet wash cloth leaning against the car seat. I can hardly bear to think about that ride home even now.

Thank God for Kevin. He got me settled in bed where I basically curled into a fetal position and wanted No Movement. Two antivert pills (basically now car sickness pills you can get over the counter) and two valium and Leave Me Alone Do Not Touch Me later, and the vertigo feeling finally started to settle down a little bit.

And then all hell broke loose. Got a phone call. Sam fell off from a deck at his friend's house, actually he was pushed by a friend, just goofing around (teenaged boys!), but Sam was sitting on the railing, so he fell down about 8 feet. Dislocated and fractured his right elbow. The dad, who was so great with Sam, got Sam to ER and Kev rushed around and left to meet them there. Since Joyce had already left to go to Bay City to Mike's that left me alone in the house. Killed me not to go to the ER.

As it started to get dark, the dogs all went nuts barking, and I saw headlights beam across the pond. I called my sister, Kathy, and asked if that was her in my driveway, and as I was talking with her, I heard footsteps on our front porch. It wasn't Kathy, she was at home. Kev didn't turn on any lights in the house, but he had turned on the porch lights. So our house was all dark. I don't know if it was trick-or-treaters or what, but they left. We live so far out and so far off the road, which is a dirt, dead-end road with pretty much no one else living on it, that we never get trick-or-treaters. But it freaked me out. Lying in bed, can't move without nausea let alone get out of the bed, with the house completely dark. So Kathy came over and babysat me until everyone got home. She also fielded all the phone calls, because talking on the phone made my vertigo worse, too. Once again, Kathy, my hero.

Mike and Joyce had delayed their plans for the evening and went to the ER to wait with Kev. Sammy's elbow was put back into place, and they had an orthopedic surgeon look at the x-rays. The doctor was in surgery and had about 3 more hours to go, so in the ER, they put a temporary cast on Sam and sent him home with pain meds. We have to take him to the surgeon on Monday, and it looks like he will need a pin put into his elbow to hold a loose piece of bone from the end of the humorous in place until it heals.

Sam was amazing throughout it all. Because it happened in front of all of his friends, he tried very hard not to cry and pretty much succeeded. Amazing. He did great at the ER, and he's been great at home. My baby boy is no baby, that's for sure. Yesterday, he even typed up a thank you note to the dad who took him to the ER. All on his own, his very own idea.

It really bummed Sam out to miss the Halloween party, especially the haunted house. Sam loves that stuff. And also, bummed him out to cancel his party that was supposed to happen today... for his birthday, he was having 5 guy friends overnight and they were going to play his new guitar hero that he got for his birthday. (We ordered it online, so it came in this past week, and I caved and let him open it. He and Joycie have been rockin' in the basement together ever since.) And since his birthday is on Tuesday - election day - we planned the family birthday party for Monday evening, but that's on hold, and likely canceled, because we don't know what's going to happen on Monday with the orthopedic surgeon.

So this morning, I was up at about 5 am, and feeling much more normal. I laid back down on the bed and watched the sun rise. Going to be a beautiful day. I suggested Kev watch it with me, but he wanted to watch it from a tree stand, so he's out hunting. Beautiful morning for it.

The kids, Sam, Joyce & Mike, are still sleeping. I am not only up and blogging, but I'm drinking coffee and dressed! Spent all day yesterday in my pajamas, between the bed and the recliner, walking like a drunk crazy person between the 2. My balance is definitely back today. I missed a baby shower yesterday, for Mike's older brother's son or daughter on the way. Bummed me out to miss it, I was looking forward to it. I was also looking forward to pottery Saturday morning with my sister, JoAnne, and had to cancel that, too. Since our school has Monday as a day off for the kids, I took Monday and then also Tuesday, Sammy's birthday, on vacation. So far, the weekend has not gone as planned. *sigh* But the sun's shining and the coffee's hot. Sam's fall could have been so much worse. And Joyce won $100 at the casino (their plans for Friday evening, which they delayed until Sam was home). So we're good. It is what it is.

What's comin' up...

In October –

Next week I pick up Joycie’s “old” computer... the one that Nathan built for her for her 16th birthday... it’s been at Computers To Go at the Midland Mall getting a major repair job. Joyce began having problems with it months ago, and then it would freeze up, so she would turn it off. Long story short, we think it was probably infected and the resulting crashing fried the motherboard, along with one of the RAM sticks. Since it wouldn’t boot up, we thought at first it was probably the hard drive, and I got an excellent deal on a hefty new hard drive at Best Buy... but the original hard drive is fine. So is the video card. So now we have a “slave” hard drive, too. Yay. Anyway, the diagnostics have taken some time, and John, the owner, is treating me most excellently. In the end, we’ll have an essentially brand new, very robust computer for a relatively small sum. I highly recommend Computers To Go. And also kudos to Nathan because the guys at Computers To Go said that whoever had built the computer for us did a really good job. Joyce is not so thrilled, however, because I’ve decided to officially kick Sammy off from my computer and put Joyce’s “new” computer into his bedroom. Joyce wanted it to go back into her bedroom, where she would actively retain ownership. But Joyce is rarely here, and when she is home, she’s not using computers... she’s been spoiled with the high speed Internet access on her laptop at college. So it is still Joyce’s computer, but it’s going into Sammy’s room, where gloom and doom (clever rhyming, huh) await him should he fail to treat it with the proper respect.

In a little more than 1 week, we will, hopefully, finally, finally have high speed Internet access. Getting high speed has become pretty important to me so that I can work from home more easily. I have investigated several providers in our area, such as speednet, Charter, etc, etc. A couple ISPs would pass the online test for our address, but once I called them, they would tell me no service. We are in a rural area, but apparently we’re in a border zone for several ISPs, or as a couple of them put it, so eloquently, a dead zone. So I caved and contacted Dish Network. We have our satellite TV through them, and I feel like we’re paying through the nose to watch so many commercials that an hour-long TV show is really 40 minutes of excellent drama (anyone else loving Damages?!!). But Dish Network it is... satellite high speed Internet for a mere $200 initial fee and $60 per month. Ugh. We currently have dial-up access through toast.net, and they are excellent people there. I get practically unlimited web space and 10 e-mail addresses, along with excellent tech service for under $15 a month. I checked with them first thing about getting high speed access, but... no service for us here. So, anyway, for the time being, I’m sticking with toast.net, using Dish Network high speed, and I’m going to somehow figure out that damn router thing they mentioned to make it wireless in our house.

Halloween! I love Halloween. I asked Sammy what he wanted to be this year, and he said he didn’t know if he was going out or not, that he had to check with his guy friends. *sniff*

November –

Sammy will be turning 13 years old on Nov. 4th, and I just don’t think I’m ready for that. Where the heck did all those years go? I was talking with my BFF Sandy yesterday, and we concluded that being a mom makes the years go faster and faster and faster. (Sandy is in South Texas this weekend visiting her daddy, and she was just fixin’ to make meatloaf from buffalo meat... mmm... and she told me it was 98 degrees there and the flowers were spectacular... I told her it was a cool, crisp sunny morning here and the trees were in spectacular fall color... I’d rather be here than there! I have had enough warmth lately... hot flashes galore lately. Oh it sucks.)

Joycie will be celebrating her 19th birthday at the end of November. 19. Oh.

And, I'm going to participate in NaBloPoMo again this November. It was fun last year. I hope I can stick to it this year... having high speed access will definitely help. Sometimes lately, though, I get home from work, get the few things done that I must, then crash on the sofa until it's time to go to bed... it's my literal pain in the neck. I still have a listing of blog post ideas that I created last NaBloPoMo and have kept maintained... that should help.

Also, by November it is possible Kev will have moved to a different job at the plant where he works, and this would mean 2 very wonderful things, 1) no more midnight shifts, and 2) no scheduled weekends. Having a 5-and-2 schedule (this means Monday-Friday, not a regular working schedule on any weekends) would be very nice, but not having to work midnights would be absolutely wonderful. The job would be days and afternoons, so every other week, Kev would work from 3:30pm until 11:30pm, and we wouldn't be with him in the evenings. That sucks, yes, but midnights are so difficult on him from both a physical standpoint and resulting mental-standpoint-from-lack-of-sleep that I would love it if he didn't have to work midnights ever again. The downside is, of course, an initial cut in pay (which is what happens whenever one moves to a new job where Kev works, kind of as a deterrant by the company for employees moving around frequently from job to job, which makes perfect sense). Also, the new job would have less overtime hours, so less pay annually, but more Kevin time at home. That falls most definitely into the "plus" category. Fingers crossed.

January 2008 –

I will be having surgery on my neck on the 18th. I explained that I have an extra bone growth on the right side of my C6 (cervical) vertebra, and it is pressing against, or as the neurosurgeon phrased it, abutting my spinal cord. This has caused the pain I’ve had, from the nerves being affected. The 2nd neurosurgeon I saw recently described the surgery exactly as the 1st neurosurgeon had described it, so I’m convinced. This 2nd doctor is the one who did surgery on my Dad’s back a couple of years ago, and all my family just loved him. He’s brilliant, and he cares about his patients. His conclusions differed from the 1st neurosurgeon in one extremely important area... whereas the asshole neurosurgeon I saw first told me the surgery was “elective” and when I finally pressed him, he said that meant when the pain got too bad, I could elect to have the surgery. The 2nd brilliant, caring neurosurgeon told me that he suggested I have the surgery as soon as possible for two reasons: 1) I have already lost strength in my left arm, and that will likely progress until this situation is fixed possibly resulting in permanent nerve damage, i.e., I could potentially lose the use of that arm eventually, and 2) that piece of extra bone abutting my spinal cord presents a danger where a simple accident from which the typical person would get up and walk away could leave me paralyzed or worse... it is like that piece of bone is a splitting maul wedged against my spinal cord waiting for the proper pressure to slice through it. Ain’t that a lovely thought. For the surgery, which will be done by the aforementioned brilliant, caring neurosurgeon, he’ll go into the back of my neck, basically carve off that extra bone matter, and then stabilize the C6 to the C5 with permanent pins on both sides of the vertebrae. So I’ll be hospitalized for a few days, then having a rough 4 weeks of pain, with a few more weeks of recuperation before I can return to work from that surgery. Having it on Jan. 18th lets me get through 4th quarter & year-end close, and be back at work in time to prepare for 2008 1st quarter close. I explained my job to the surgeon, and he agreed that would be excellent timing, also because he probably couldn’t fit me into his surgery schedule until January... he said it was important to have the surgery ASAP for the 2 reasons he mentioned, but that he didn’t consider it an emergency situation. Then he told me not to plan any trips to Cedar Point. Duh. But then we talked some more about how I should behave until the surgery, by not taking any unnecessary road trips... do the driving I must do in my normal life, but where possible, don’t get in the car as a driver or passenger. The biggest risk, of course, would be if I were in a car accident, such as being rear-ended... I told him no problem, that I didn’t plan to even walk on an icy sidewalk! He didn’t laugh with me at that; he told me that is a very good plan. So having high speed Internet access so that I can easily work from home has become very, very important to me. On those days of snow storms and icy roads coming up, and until Jan. 18th, I’m not driving into work but will instead be able to work from home without the hassle of slow connections.

This situation is one of those where I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. I’m lucky, though, coz once the surgery is done, that’s it, my problem is solved. The surgeon did say that the surgery isn’t being done to help the pain, and that hopefully it will help, but I could likely have neck pain from here on out. I can live with that. The tingling numbness down my arm is gone now anyway, and that, along with the itching palm thing were more of an annoyance than anything. Having the surgery will allow me to be less afraid of what’s around the corner, if ya know what I mean. I can resume my version of a normal life. I’m lucky. A friend of mine at work learned recently that his wife has an awful type of leukemia, and their lives have been turned upside-down... and they have 2 children, ages 11 and 12 or so. So you see, I’m very lucky. By the way, her name is Kelly, so feel free to include her in your prayers.

Easy way to carve pumpkins

I think that we were already with Sammy trick-or-treating on Halloween night when he realized that we didn't carve any jack-o-lanterns... Truthfully, I didn't even think about it. Sam was not happy... "I can't believe we didn't carve pumpkins" was said about 3 or 4 times. Joycie & Sam did gather the pumpkins from Joycie's garden over at her grammpa & gramma's, but that was about as far as we got on 'em. I was not the only one to forget about carving pumpkins.

Joyce had set a few of the pumpkins at the base of a big oak tree with some corn stalks, also from her garden. I noticed the squirrels did some carving...





I know it was squirrels because I saw them in action. They love those pumpkins. I showed them to Sam and said, "See, pumpkins were carved here this year." Cue eye rolling.

Mountains of candy

Last night for Halloween, Sammy dressed up as a gorilla in a leisure suit and he carried around an old briefcase for trick or treating. We met up at one of his friend's houses, and Sam, along with 9 of his friends hit the hot spots in the neighborhood. It was so fun. One house had set up a scary maze and another had a haunted house thing. Both had put a heck of a lot of work into them, and the boys had a great time. So did Kev and I. At the maze, one girl successfully scared the crap outta Kev, and at the haunted house, a young boy dressed as a skeleton scared me half to death when he rose up out of the "cemetary" and shouted at me. Very cool.

Two churches in the area did "trunk or treating" and the boys went through both. Trunk or treating is where the church parishioners set up trick or treating for the kids out of their vehicle trunks in the church parking lot. It's well lit and well-attended, so it was like a grand parade of kids in costume. The boys got to see a bunch of their friends, and their friends go to see them... and they got to be admired and laughed at/with for the costumes... and they got a ton of candy.

At one church, a very tall man was dressed up as Moses. He was awesome. He also had a large telescope set up and focused on the moon, so everyone got to view last night's waxing gibbous moon close up in the beautifully clear Halloween sky. Again, awesome. I don't know much about telescopes, and it wasn't until we were walking back to the car to leave that church that I realized through the telescope the moon appeared waning, not waxing. One for research...

Then we went to family so Sam could trick or treat at their houses, and get his photo taken (with his Grampa, above).

Joyce stayed home and handled the many trick or treaters we had at our house last night. A whopping zero. Like usual. We're too far back in the woods and off the beaten track... But she did dress up for that party the other night, and she made an adorable Little Red Riding Hood. The party she went to, though, turned out to be pretty lame... it started at 8pm, and Joyce and her friends got there about 9pm... and I think they left shortly after 9:30pm. They went to Melissa's house and watched the TV show, 'Brothers and Sisters' & had a much better time.

Joyce said that she felt quite overdressed at that party. Lots of skin being shown by some of the high school girls there. I know I've never seen a woman fire fighter dressed in short-short hot pants... One girl had a pair of rabbit ears on her head and the rest of her costume, Joyce said, was basically skimpy lingerie, with the bottom half of her butt cheeks hanging out. Sweet. There's a proud parental moment in the making. And I know her parents. I'm guessing they didn't know about her costume. I'm proud of my girl... she knows the difference between sexy and skanky.

All in all, a very good Halloween.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the 10 bags of candy I bought... because we sure don't need them here at home. I thought the trunk or treating meant we also handed out candy... but no... so it's all sitting here on the counter with the haul that Sammy made. The kids would love to keep it all, but that is far too much teeth-rotting, butt-enlarging, sugar-high-making, non-nutritional crap for one household of 4 people.

A mother's guilt... aka thank God it's payday

My sister, Kathy, called me this morning to talk about my post from yesterday. She said that neither of her kids want her help with Halloween costumes this year, and it's the first of many years like that in the future... and she said other stuff, too. But that's basically when the guilt started.

Made me think about all the Halloweens we've had, and how fun it was making costumes and watching my little babies have so much fun getting all dressed up and getting candy, candy, candy! Ah...

So, yeah, I left work early and met Joyce and Sammy at Halloween USA, where I dropped over fifty bucks on an adorable Little Red Riding Hood costume and black net tights for Joycie. Carpe diem and all that.

Joycie tried the costume on, and she is going to look so cute for the party! She's taking one of my smaller Longaberger baskets to wear on her arm. It's one that is signed and dated 1998, and has been hanging on a hook since I bought it (well, I do take it down to dust it every year... or so...). That darn thing is probably worth fifty bucks, too, so hopefully it'll come home with her, and in one piece.

The big picture is that both my kids are planning to have an excellent Halloween, and I've done all I can to assure they will feel the fun when they put on their costumes.

I suppose that's important to me especially today because I learned of the death of a young man from our community. He was only 19 years old, and he had been battling a rare form of colon cancer for a few years. He lost the fight this morning, and he died in his mother's arms with his dad at his side. His name was Aaron. He was a friend of my nephew, Michael, and Joyce knew Aaron, too. Aaron touched a lot of people. If anyone would understand the importance of having a fun time, from what I've heard, Aaron would.

Carpe diem.

Discombobulation and other messy matters

I feel like every conversation with my daughter lately is a discombobulated mess. Am I the yoyo or is she?... One minute she's nice and the next she's quite disrespectful and condescending. And, uh... just got interrupted for a conversation with Sammy and Kev... What the hell is in the air?... Simple conversations lately are turning into tense almost-arguments.

I'm really tired of the last-minute bullshit, too... I know that's something that every mother deals with on a regular basis, but this week I'm sick of it.

Joyce is trying to decide if she wants to go to some Halloween party this Saturday, which would mean she needs a costume. So she looked through the old dress-up trunk half-assedly. She was thinking maybe a pirate, and when she explained what she'd use for the costume, I just asked a simple question... "what about all that would make one think you were a pirate?" Discombobulation ensued. Well, excuse me. It was just a darn question. A valid question.

And p.s., our old steamer trunk filled with a wide assortment of stuff for a quality dress-up session stinks. By 'stinks' I mean it smells bad. Like an old, dusty attic. And smelly feet. So much of the stuff in there is too small for everyone now living in this house... Joycie & Sammy sure had fun with that stuff when they were little...

There's a black, very nice, very subtle pinstriped suit jacket in there (from when hSam was a headless man one Halloween... I bought it Salvation Army), and it fit Joyce very well. There's also this really old stuffed monkey with super long arms and legs that have velcro on the ends, so you can pose the monkey on yourself. I told Joycie she should wear the suit, maybe with the fish tie that's in there, and pose the monkey on her back and go as a business-man-cocaine-addict. She didn't get it. Discombobulation ensued.

So now Joyce is over at one of her aunt's houses seeing if they have any Halloween costumes on hand that'll fit her and of which she'll approve. I'm guessing she'll want to hit 'Halloween USA' tomorrow... and if you haven't been into one of those temporary seasonal stores, give it a whirl. What a great lot of crap they have. Sam & I went last Saturday and got his costume... a gorilla mask and hands, very life-like (and over $45! jeez). He's going to wear them with a tan leisure suit with brown stitching, circa 1973 or so... from the dress-up trunk. It's hilarious.

The problem with being young woman in high school & dressing up for Halloween is that you want to go as something nice... and for most girls that translates into sexy... think the Mean Girls movie. Blatant, revealing sexiness is not really Joycie's style (thank goodness). I would do the goofy hobo thing, which is also not Joycie's style... don't ask me, I don't know what her style is anymore...

I used to love Halloween. I've even decorated our half-bath near the kitchen in a sort of tribute to Halloween, with photos of the kids & nieces & nephews, etc. in their costumes through the years, pumpkin carving, trick or treating. This year, Halloween seems almost too much trouble. Too much money. Too much cause for words that start with 'dis'... dismay, disruption, disturbance, disrespect... Mostly, it's the tension everywhere that's sucking all the fun out of it. Methinks I need some distance. Or perhaps a distilled beverage. On the rocks. Just a splash of Coke please.