Wow, okay. in Stuff & Things

May 12
So, I suck at this journaling thing. I can accept that. It’s been forever since I’ve updated you guys, huh?

The biggest thing that’s happened recently is that my best friends (OD’s t_crean’s kisa and her husband) found out quite by surprise that she’s pregnant again. They’ve been actively working to prevent babies, since they already have two, but of course that doesn’t always work. She went in for an ultrasound for something else the other day, and the tech asked her if she could be pregnant at the beginning like they do. Of course they replied “no.” The tech wanded around for a minute and basically said “yes, you are.” 14 weeks along and not a single symptom. The great thing is that she has a long miscarriage history, typically around week 13, so this is awesome. Things could still go pear shaped of course, she’s lost a few in the 21 week stage too, but it’s super exciting.

My mom got remarried. Wait, let me back up. My step dad of I think 22 years, Andy, passed away in April of 2013. My mom had a friend, Brett, that she had actually been The Other Woman for briefly (she and Andy split up for about a year at one point, she and Brett got together during this time without his wife’s knowledge). Well, not long after Andy passed, Brett and his wife separated and he and my mom got together. He’s actually really great. He treats he like a princess, has a good enough job that she can stay home instead of working through her disability, he writes gooey mushy things about her on FaceBook, he’s just great for her. Andy…I loved him, but he was a selfish overgrown child in a lot of ways and barely helped her pay bills or anything, preferring to spend all his money on gaming stuff. So this is really good for her.

Anyway, they got engaged pretty quick, and actually got married at the end of 2014(?) without anyone knowing until afterward. For tax purposes, they said, but who knows. He works in IT, and did work for one of the big hospitals in Portland. Well, here just recently, he got recruited to be some kind of IT manager for one of the big gaming companies that’s based in Reno. So the company flew them down to look for a house, paid for movers, the whole spiel. They have a huge house now that’s close to town, but far enough into the woods that they have a herd of wild horses and even a bear that have visited their land. And now, his parents gave them like 5 days at the parents’ time share on the island of Kona in Hawaii, so my mom who never had the money while raising two kids with two deadbeat assholes to so much as take us camping is on this dream vacation doing whatever her little heart desires. Pretty cool.

~~~Edit May 14 ~~~
Brett actually surprised her with a vow renewal on a beach that was for whatever reason covered in turtles, with vows he wrote himself. Super sweet.
~~~Edit over ~~~

What about us. Um. My brother’s talking about technically moving out. He’s a caregiver for our Grandmother, so he would basically go from working X amount of hours there to becoming a live-in caregiver, but he’d keep a room here so that he can escape when she pisses him off too bad and he’d still help here money-wise.

May 14
I actually stopped in the middle of a sentence the other day because there’s just. so. much. to catch up on I burnt out for the moment. Back to it though.

Michael has a good job at a home improvement store - think blue, not orange. His bosses all love him and they actually made up a special job for him to keep him in their department. Now if they’d just give him a raise to go along with it!! He gets paid pretty well, but he’s in charge of a whole set of their orders now and he’s bringing their numbers up out of the toilet like no one can believe, so you’d think they’d recognize that with more than just words. Maybe at his review in the fall.

Shady’s doing pretty good. Same stuff, different day. We’re fighting for her Disability, waiting for a hearing date right now. Our doctor of five years just retired, so that’s an upheaval for us both. We’re meeting the new doc for the first time next week so that’ll be interesting. She’s in Night Owl mode, sleeping a few hours in the mornings, then spending the late morning and afternoon with me playing on our tablets and stuff, then she gets a few more hours of sleep so she can be awake most of the night and that’s when she does the big chores, the laundry and whatever while Michael & I sleep.

Me… I’m me. I’m about to finish this year’s reading challenge: a combination of the PopSugar and Book Riot 2016 reading challenges, 62 books total. I’m driving again - my brother’s car died and needs expensive parts so my mom gave us a car she was trying to get rid of before the move to Reno. My brother’s depressed because the car broke down and swinging wildly between anger and whining about it, which I think is part of the reasoning behind him wanting to “move out.” However, it’s been incredible for Michael and I because I get to drop him off and pick him up from work and he tells me all about his day where as before he would tell Mick and then not want to go over it again after he got home. Plus he and I do the shopping together, which is hell on my body but again great for us getting to spend time together.

Shady and I celebrated 12 years together this last February and Michael and I will mark 10 years the first week of June.

I finally retired from the flower shop. It was just too hard on me, especially after my super fun summer. Last June, I woke up in the 2-3 o’clock hours one morning with what I knew was the symptoms of a kidney stone. I called and got in to see my doctor the same day and hunkered down until the appointment. By the time I got in it had been about 12 hours and a lot of the pain had calmed down, so I figured I had already passed it. They did a UA that somehow showed that yes, it was a stone and yes, I probably had already passed it. He referred me to a Urologist, made sure I had enough Vicodin and sent me on my way. Went to the Urologist, who scheduled me for an MRI to see if there were anymore stones lurking. Sure enough, both kidneys had stones. So they scheduled the surgery where they physically go up inside and bust them all up. They did one side the first week of July, then the other side right at the end of July. Each time, they put in a stint to help keep the tubes open for awhile. With the second surgery, the stint started to come out by itself after a few days. I called the on-call Urologist since it was after hours and was told it was fine. I disagreed, but what the hell do I know, it’s just my junk this thing’s wandering around in.

Anyway, they took the stint out on their normal time line. About a week later, I woke up from a nap and couldn’t get warm. I burrowed under more blankets, went back to sleep and felt fine when I woke up. The next morning I woke up and again I just could not get warm, to the point of shivering. Tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. At some point Michael decided to take my temperature, and it came back 102. So I decided to call and try to get into my doctor’s office that day, not realizing that not only was it way too early to reach them, but it was a Sunday too. Okay, so we’ll go to Urgent Care. We bundle me up and the three of us (this was before my brother’s car broke down) go into town. Get to Urgent Care, they don’t open until 8:30. Well, it was only just about 8am, so I said fuck it and we just went to the near-by ER. By the time we got there, my temp was 104, but the shaking had stopped.

So they take a UA, turns out I had a septic kidney infection. I was in the ER about 8 1/2 hours between tests and waiting for a bed, then they put me in the ICU overnight, just to make sure the meds started to kill the infection and I didn’t get worse. Early the next morning, the doc did rounds and said I was doing much better so I could go to a regular room. I didn’t get moved until about 6 that night, so I was in ICU about 24 hours total. Went upstairs to a regular room, where it was coming up on shift change so I didn’t see any staff for about an hour. When they did come back, it was to tell me that the floor was really packed and they needed my room, so if it was okay with me they were going to move me to the maternity ward. Um, okay. I got moved from a tiny single person room to a huge room in maternity where apparently the nurses are only assigned two patients each, so anytime I needed anything my nurse was able to be right there. I was moved in there Monday afternoon and released Wednesday afternoon.

Michael stayed with me all day Sunday up until ICU’s visiting hours ended at 8:00pm. Then each day he would call before work, then have Mick drop him off when he got off work, which at the time fluctuated everyday, and he would stay until 8:00. So I was in 4 days altogether at the beginning of August. Turns out I had e coli. in my kidneys, which I figure came from the wandering stint. Fun, right?

The Urologist has been keeping track of me, I see her every 6 months or so. There’s not enough acid in my urine, so she put me on a medication the first time I saw her to help that. Then this last time, the oxalates were too high for her liking, so she gave me a list of stuff I can’t eat anymore: tea, chocolate, soy based anything, nuts, berries, carrots, celery, olives, potatoes, spinach…Michael asked me if I took her a list of my favorite foods to hack at!

Okay, I have to go get Michael, so more later.

May 16

I’ve decided to just go ahead and post this. This thing’s War and Peace already (cookies for you if you read it all!) and I think I hit all the high points. I’ll try to update more often, but since I can’t even be counted on to update my Instagram very often we’ll see how often “often” turns out to be.

And now “often” now longer looks like a word.