After Surgery, Work, Birthday in 2016

Surgery went well. I spent one night overnight (normally they discharge people in the afternoon but given my history they kept me overnight). They asked me to avoid lifting heavy objects for about 4-6 weeks after and to avoid lower back stress, and I was like, “No problem !” Then I go to work (on my birthday, no less–surgery was Monday the 23rd and I went back to work on the 26th even though they called me EVERY DAY to come in–why couldn’t they have called me during the week I had 10 hours ?) and look at my shifts for the next week and I’ve got operations shifts ! Which means late night/early morning, lifting boxes (I haven’t had these kinds of shifts for a year with the exception of one around Thanksgiving) ! I mentioned it to a couple people but luckily Nicole lifted a couple of the heavier boxes for me and didn’t mind.

I’m exhausted though. I know I was just complaining about not getting enough hours, but Sherrie had a slipped disc (?) in her back and she’s a full-time skincare person and is now on a LoA, so I’m getting a lot of hours. They have literally called me on ALL my days off since mid-May. I’ve picked up some hours, declined others. But my incision hurts and looks aggravated. I feel sick all the time the last week. I’ve been throwing up in the morning. The last four days I’ve gotten about 2 hours of sleep a night. The worst was yesterday morning. I worked Sunday 8am-5, had a store “dinner” (which yes, I could have bailed) from 7-9:30, got home around 10:15, couldn’t go to sleep, finally fell asleep around 1:30 AM and had to wake up a little over an hour later to have a 4AM-11AM shift. It was awful. Then I had a follow-up doctor’s appointment at 1 PM and a counseling appointment at 4. And groceries around 6, dinner around 7. No time for naps (I actually feel worse after naps anyway). Fell asleep last night around 2 AM (still in pain, couldn’t get comfortable) and woke up at 7 AM (ok, so I got about 5 hours of sleep) to be in for 9:30 until 3.

Tomorrow is 4-10, then 1-10, then 9:30-6. Luckily I have the weekend off but if trends continue, they will call me. By Saturday I will have worked 9 days in a row.

My birthday was the 26th. I worked. Mostly Cori and I celebrated earlier… we went out to eat on.... Tuesday ? I think. We were very low-key (by the way, “low-key” does NOT mean “literally”, that drives me crazy....) about everything, but it was the first birthday I’ve ever had away from my family. Mom left a voicemail on the 26th to sing happy birthday to me and she started crying on the phone ! It was emotional. Also it marked one year since I got SHOT AT on the highway, so… I didn’t get shot at this year, which means it was a successful birthday.

I may write an entry in my hardly-touched “nsfw” folder on here. It’s not that it’s actually nsfw, it’s more just the actual topic. I brought Cori to my counseling appointment yesterday because there had been (still is) some stuff going on that I couldn’t bring up to my counselor, despite how much I really like this counselor (third time’s a charm… although my first counselor was good too, but she was a student practitioner and left after her internship was up).

Also, because I guess I didn’t make the decision until after my birthday, we are staying in the apartment another year. The Ohio board that gives licenses out to counselors is taking WAY longer than we’d anticipated, so even though Cori has 2 job offers on the table, either job will start him at the beginning of the pay period. Right now the earliest he could start working would be June 20th. If he doesn’t have his license by then, then it would be pushed to July 5th (Tuesday). We had expected him to be working this week. Although I think my landlord would have let us have an extra month, we would have been trying to move in a couple weeks. Hopefully next year we will be more settled and will have been able to save money.

On the plus side, while I decided not to go with my parents to Wisconsin later this month, my LL said it would be okay if we babysat Evie ! So mom and dad are bringing her out on their way to WI and we will have my 8-year-old puppy (lol) for a little over a week ! I’m super excited. The bad thing is I was literally thinking of requesting off the week we have her, but I don’t think that’s feasible if Cori isn’t working. If he is, I’d like to only work evenings that week so that someone is generally here with Evie, even though she’s a quiet, lazy dog and would be fine on her own.

Also sad about what happened at the Cinci Zoo. Since Cori got us a membership, we’ve been going a lot, while we can. We had just been there Wednesday the 25th and one of the gorilla people (we actually hadn’t gone to the gorilla exhibit since we went for a special UC night in September 2014) mentioned that Harambe was turning 17 on Friday, and I was like “His birthday is the day after mine !” And then he gets killed the following day :( I am still in the camp that is preferential towards the gorilla, but at least the mom said the family wouldn’t accept donations and instead called for the donations to be given to the gorilla conservation project at the zoo. So that changed my mind a little. I had told my mom a couple months ago that if I brought Julie or Maggie (my nieces) to the zoo, I would get them red panda backpacks with a harness attached LOL Although I was somewhat joking, I think I’d definitely get one for Maggie. Anyway…

Didn’t mean this entry to be as long as it was. I have begun my last year in my twenties. On the plus side, people still think I’m anywhere form 19-22. Let’s see how long that lasts.

Last updated July 11, 2016