Another one down.

We have another kid with the stomach flu. Youngest son started vomiting today, basically right around the time it became too late to take him to the pediatrician. Right now we're just waiting it out. I called the clinic to see what their hours were but I didn't think of that until they were closed too. The only option now is the ER but I don't know that he needs to go. I don't think he's dehydrated yet. We're just going to try and hang in there for the night.

The girl is doing okay now. She just ate some chicken soup and she's been keeping down her Gatorade all day.

What a way to ring in the new year!

Well, it wasn't over.

Twelve hours after the stomach flu began, we ended up at the pediatrician's office getting a shot.  She's sleeping it off now and my fingers are crossed.  I hope she's better in the morning!

Work at home possibilities.

These aren't for me because we don't have and can't get high speed internet, but I thought some of my readers might be interested. Someone shared these on a homeschooling list this morning.

West at Home

Cloud 10

Arise

Working Solutions

Tuesday! It's finally here! Just not like I planned it.

The day I've been looking forward to, my day of rest. The first day I haven't had to go somewhere since, I don't even know when. Weeks ago. It hasn't quite gone as planned though, so far. I was planning on sleeping late, trying to get rid of these dark circles under my eyes and goofing off most of the day, but I was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by my middle child, as she wanted someone to share the stomach flu experience with her. I've spent the last few hours cleaning out her vomiting bowl and holding her hair back. Right now she's asleep and I'm hoping it's over, just an isolated event. (fingers crossed!) Just in case, Dad is bringing home some anti-nausea medication.

I was kind of thinking we might do school today but now we probably won't. The boys will be happy, assuming they don't get it. Doing school, even during the holiday break, is preferable to the stomach flu.

Hey!

I survived the week. All we've got on the agenda today is a party. I can handle that. My mom's doing better but now her sister is sick in a very similar way. Hopefully she's much better today. Yesterday while I was gone to work, my husband and kids cleaned the house of the Christmas packaging and trash and it looks pretty good, so that makes me feel better. I like a clean house, I just don't like to clean it.

On that subject, I finished reading "The House Than Cleans Itself" and I would recommend it. Of course your house doesn't really clean itself, but it is packed full of good ideas to make cleaning your house easier and more efficient. I am going to get my own copy (this is a library copy) and try and implement the system this January, at least some of the tips.

I'm starting to be able to think past the holidays now and plan for January. There for a while, I couldn't think of anything but Christmas looming and not being ready for it, and then I spent a lot of time worrying about mom, but now hopefully, we can go back to normal.

It's probably your walrus.

Believe it or not, this statement made perfect sense this morning as my oldest son wondered what was in the bottom of his Christmas stocking and my daughter, who'd already found a chocolate artic animal at the bottom of hers, offered advice. He said "it's probably my WHAT?" It was funny, anyway.

We are having a good Christmas, although the adults in this family would like to find a way to get some sleep at Christmas time. Our youngest was up at 4:00 then 5:00 and around 6:00 he woke his sister up, who was whiny from lack of sleep and finally, I just let them open their presents and mom and dad went back to sleep for a little while. I've already set up a yahoo calendar reminder to myself, to ground anyone who gets out of bed before 7:00 a.m. next year!

I'm so glad my mom's home and out of the hospital to get to celebrate. We went there last night and my brother and I cooked dinner and had a very quiet low key celebration. Today, we're going to my mother-in-laws for brunch, something we look forward to all year.

Happy Holidays.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday season.  I am working today (Joy!) but I couldn't turn them down.  One of the other transcriptionists grandma is being buried today.  Can you imagine?  I have things to do, but nothing more important than she does.  I may just throw unwrapped packages at my kids later, but so what?  Wrapping paper doesn't matter.  What we eat doesn't matter.  I think my ICU stay has made me more focused on what really does matter.  Family.  Love. 

Merry Christmas.

She's home.

Thanks for all the prayers and warm thoughts. She's home and hopefully will stay home. I went to work tonight and stopped by Wal-mart and did the rest of the Christmas shopping. Just in time, hmm?

Home?

My mom may get to come home from the hospital today.  Please pray that she does.  My brother is staying up there today after staying last night so that I can go to work.  (He's on vacation this week.)  I really hate having a regular job with actual hours and as of yet, no time off accumulated.  If she doesn't get out, I'll need to go back up there tonight and relieve him after work and I'll have to find someone to keep the 2 younger kids because my husband has to go back to work today too.  My oldest son has been staying with his granddad while grandma has been in the hospital.  A friend has offered to let the kids stay there,  but her house is kind of out-of-the way and I may see if she'll meet me somewhere or I may just leave them all with granddad. 

On another subject, the 2 younger kids were still awake when I got home last night and we were all so tired, we had a very silly, very funny conversation that included the statement "A blest is thicker than a nubble"  (which actually kind of made sense at the time) and a new expression was coined, which was "oop-oop-a-hey" which basically means "hey, that's mine!" but is so much more amusing, especially when you are sleep-deprived, stressed out and completely exhausted.  Thanks kids, I needed a silliness break.

Out of the ICU.

Mom's out of the intensive care unit, but still not feeling very good and still getting IV antibiotics in a regular hospital room.  Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  I think I can feel it. 

Spoke too soon.

When I said Mom was better.  She got much worse last night and we had to call 911 and take her to the local hospital.  Then she got transferred from there to a large city hospital ICU.  I'm taking a short break to sleep and am getting ready to head back down there now.,

Another crazy day in the neighborhood.

I had to take my mom back to the doctor today and we ended up being there for hours.  Honestly that bugs me.  I think they overbook their appointments.  When my kids were little, we found this pediatrician who would only take a certain number of patients (and luckily I worked at the local hospital or I wouldn't have gotten in!) it was very exclusive and you actually had to have an interview, but they treated us wonderfully and we never, ever had to wait.  We still go there, but now that particular doctor has retired and her replacement, though lovely and wonderful, does make us wait sometimes.  Still, not as long as my mom's doctor though.

Anywho, the kids did school without me again, I totally have not been able to get my house cleaned up all week and now the social worker who was not going to come this month, is going to come next week and my house is crazy messy ... and we've got a birthday party tonight and I've got to work all weekend ... I wonder if I could get a maid for Christmas? 

Mom's better.

Mom's feeling better today after her trip to the ER.  Now, back to our regularly scheduled scrambling to get everything done by Christmas.

Difficult day.

Things didn't go as I planned today.  My mom is not feeling well.  I took her to the doctor this afternoon, but her fever spiked tonight and now my brother is taking her to the ER.  If you are a praying person, please do that tonight. 

Snow!

It snowed last night, about 3 or 4 inches.  The kids are very happy and have been playing outside.  I'm staying in making chili and trying to work on the house a little.  I was going to go get Mr. Cuteness (my nephew) and spend some time with him but because of the snow, I didn't want to risk driving this morning.  It's got some ice underneath it.  :-(  Maybe I'll get to do that another day.

The picture is from last years snow.  I'm too lazy to take a new one.  :-P

Sunday, December 14.

I'm getting creative with my title again today.  :-)  Yes, it's Sunday.  December 14.  Can you believe how quickly Christmas is coming this year?  I think we ought to rethink the 'slower than Christmas' saying.  It is barreling at us this year.  I've got to re-do some of my Christmas shopping because the place I ordered it from is not planning to ship it until December 26.  Hmmm.  That won't work for some reason. 

I'm sorry about the lack of blog posts lately.  I've been working the last 2 days.  I sat at work last night, typing reports from the same doctor over and over and over since the only reports that were left in the queue were the ones that no-one wants to do, the lowest priority work, and to occupy my mind, I started taking blog notes.  I was going to blog my day at work.  It went kind of like this.

1:00 p.m.  Arrive at work.
1:39 p.m.  Think "Good grief, how long have I been here, my shift must be half over" and then realize I've only been here 39 minutes.
2:00  One hour. 
2:00 - 7:00 p.m. is all a blur, typing, typing, typing.  I did take a lunch break during this time.
7:00   A coworker stops by to say hello.  I'm thankful for someone to talk to.   A doctor drops in to check for charts.  I wish he'd go dictate something so I can quit typing the same reports over and over and over and over with no macros, no word expanders, no shortcuts, only typing the same thing over and over and over and over and over, just for different patients.  Quietly.  Going.  Insane.
8:30 finally arrives and I am free!

Can you tell I'm still not loving it?  Really I don't mind it as much if there is some variety in the work.  Nobody was admitting or discharging patient's yesterday so the only thing I could do was chip away at the backlog of reports and that involved typing nearly identical pain management epidural steroid injections for 7 hours straight, which kind of got a little old.

Anyway, today I'll be Christmas shopping again I guess, after church.  Hopefully I will find all of the things I still need to buy.

42 degrees.

Yesterday, before going to play outside, my daughter looked at the temperature on the thermometer and announced "42 degrees.  Not too hot.  Not too cold.  Just right." 

They've been playing outside a lot lately, which surprises me, but I guess they like the cold weather.

Clumsiness and other things.

I have been so clumsy the last couple of days. I know some of you are thinking so what's new, but even for me, I've been clumsier or maybe just less lucky?. I tripped in the kitchen yesterday and fell into the table and hurt my arm and my back. A shelf in the mudroom fell on my head when I was trying to get something off of it. I knocked our crayon bowl off the shelf this morning and it shattered and I had to clean up all the glass before I'd even had my coffee. (I have no idea why are crayons were in a glass bowl, my daughter did that at some point and we just left them.) I knocked over my tea glass yesterday. Monday, I spilled a Coke at work. Maybe I'm just not paying attention to what I'm doing. (!) Anyway, it rubbed off on my oldest son and he slipped on the back stairs and fell yesterday. He's pretty sore today.

As for homeschooling in the midst of all these calamities, yesterday, we wrote out observations about the bacteria and we grew crystals from borax on pipe cleaners and made Christmas ornaments with them. They turned out cute and I hung them on the tree this morning. I don't think they'll last until next year as the crystals tend to fall off. Anyway, they're pretty now. They sparkle in the tree lights.

Today, we're doing school, just the regular lists. I'm going to have to modify them again now that my work schedule is the way it is. It's hard to get used to. I'm not sure what to do with myself on the days that I'm home. I have a lot of things I need to do, but I'm not good at prioritizing. I need to work on that. Yesterday, I got some more shopping done but not all of it. Still not all of it. Maybe today?

One good thing that happened is that I requested a bunch of books at the library and yesterday they came in. Our library purchased 3 of them and got another one for me on interlibrary loan, so I've got some books to read. I love books. The most interesting one I have now is called The House That Cleans Itself. I've brought it home and hopefully now my house will start cleaning itself soon!

Update.

An update on the bacteria cultures. The toilet culture is growing a ton of stuff. The other ones, the kitchen sink and the phone are growing a tiny bit (probably 100,000 or so!). Max's mouth culture has one little spot and mine, as far as I can tell, doesn't have any visible growth. Maybe all that tooth brushing does pay off!

Not much.

That's what I got done yesterday.  Not very much.  I started out to go to the grocery and took a couple of kids with me.  One of them wanted to go to Family Dollar, so we went there.  Then the other child wanted to go to Walmart so we went there and ended up staying for a long, long time.  Then, we finally went to Kroger where we grocery shop, got that done and came home.  I also got the pictures done for the Christmas cards and got them uploaded so that I can pick those up tomorrow.  That's something I guess.    I really need to do better today!

Off!

For the first time since starting my job the first week in November, I'm working the planned schedule.  Every week there's been something going on and I've had to change something, but this week, as far as I know, I'm going to work it as planned.  I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep working there.  Yesterday wasn't too bad.  I'd still rather work at home at least part of the time.  I guess most people would, especially in the wintertime. 

So anyway, I don't have to work today, tomorrow or Thursday and I'm really looking forward to the time off.  I want to get the house in order, finish getting ready for Christmas and do a lot of school stuff.  I really need to look at my youngest son's work and do some more focusing on some of his basic skills.  My oldest has finished his computer class and I need to find him a replacement.   He wants to do computer programming now, so I'm looking for something reasonably priced for that.  I've also got a doctor's appointment today.  I may postpone that until after Christmas.  I don't know.  It's not an emergency or anything, just a check up.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get done even half of what I need to do these next 3 days!

Busy weekend.

I pretty much got all the Christmas shopping done this weekend. I made one trip to Wal-mart and then shopped online the rest of the day yesterday. I'm not sure where we are going to hide things this year though. Some things are pretty big and it's going to be a challenge keeping them hidden for the next, what 17 or 18 days? The Christmas tree box is a possible location, but I don't know if it is big enough. I need to get some of those bicycle bags to put gifts in because I do not like to try and individually wrap them and that is the compromise I've come up with. It helps the kids, especially the boys, identify whose gifts are whose, because sometimes their stuff overlaps.

Funny.

Tonight we were playing the game Love it or Hate it.  The category was books and we had to name a book and then whether we loved it or hated it.  Every single one of us wrote the exact same thing:
"Books, Harry Potter, Love It. "

Is that crazy or what?   All 5 of us.  Exactly the same thing.

Trying to get my shopping done!

Because our internet is so slow, it's taken me 3 days to get my online shopping cart filled up.  Actually, I've been working on it for 3 days and I'm still not done.  Maybe today I'll get it.  It's not that I'm buying that much, it just takes a long time for each item.  Still, it's better than going to a mall and trying to find everything.  I guess.  Christmas is just coming too quickly this year!  The kids said last night it was 19 DAYS!!!!! 

A few words.

My Dad had cataract surgery yesterday and today he's seeing everything in "high definition".  That's a direct quote.  He's very happy he had it and it was pretty much pain free. 

I worked last night and I'm off to work again today.  I'm still not thrilled to be there, but I'm surviving and tolerating it.  For now.  Kind of hoping I'll win a lottery though.

Our daughter had her first sleepover last night and is sleeping it off right now.  I think they slept a total of an hour and a half? 

It seems like I've only got a few words on each subject today, I'm just not very wordy   Weird.. 

A few things.

Yesterday we did get school done.  We are still working on microscopic science, but we left both of the science books we've been using and used a few pages from a Klutz book my son got last year for Christmas, it's a science museum in a book or something like that.  Anyway, it had some agar in it to grow bacteria and examples of where to get bacteria from to grow some, so now, instead of mold growing in our kitchen, we've got bacterial cultures from the various places around the house and,  what the kids are most interested in, a bacteria contest to see which is cleaner, mom's mouth or the dog's mouth.  Both Max and I got swabbed yesterday and we'll see who wins, me who brushes and Listerines daily or Mr. Max, who chews on every disgusting thing in the yard. 

We also went to the library and ran some errands yesterday.  Today, we've got skate night, game night and a birthday party at skate night (I love it when outings are combined!).  I may do some Christmas shopping earlier today.  We need to do school, yes, but we can always do it in late May and early June.  I really can't do my Christmas shopping then!!!!

I had a halfway decent day at work yesterday, despite being in a really bad mood when I went.  I hate leaving the kids home and going to work.   I know they're big now and my husband was here but sleeping, but I still hate it.  They did their schoolwork mostly on their own and had it done and all checked off when I got back.  We've got a lot of school related things to do today and hopefully, we'll get them all done.  I hate when we get behind or I feel like we haven't done enough.  We still haven't really looked at the mold we're growing in our petri dishes and drawn pictures of it like we are supposed to do for our science book.  We'll do that today and then throw it out.  I'm going to keep the petri dishes to grow some bacteria later though. 

Work was okay, I guess.  I just type and type and type.  The computer is old and mean and grouchy and the dictation system is identical to the one the hospital had that I started working at 15 years ago.  It's antique!  All the books I'm supposed to use are dated 1999, but thankfully I can use Google and Onelook, otherwise, I'd be going crazy (more crazy, I mean).  Since the spellcheck is pitiful and there is no autocorrect, I'm discovering 2 things about myself.  There are a ton of words that I can't spell, like aneurysm and Z-Pak (?)  and I've started listing these on the side of my monitor after I look them up on the internet.  There is also a set of words that I can't consistently type correctly, things like "hospital" and "patient" (which come up surprisingly often in medical transcription!).  These come out as "patinet" and "hopsital" most of the time.  Even with all that, I'm hanging in there for now.  I know (having learned recently) not to make any decisions while PMS is even a remote possiblity and I really want to give this job a chance since this is the closest hospital to me and it's my best chance for a job with paid time off and retirement, so I'm not going to quit now.  If I still hate it this much next spring, I will try and find something else. 

.

We need to start focusing on school again.

We've been barely doing the minimum for weeks now and we need to get going again.  I could probably go back and read my blog over the last few years and see the pattern of doing well with school and then slacking off, doing well and slacking off.  I know we do it.  I'm not sure why. Sometimes life just gets so busy.  The trick is to make sure at least the basics are always being covered.  That's what we try to do and then when everything's going well we add in the enrichment activities and fun stuff.  I hope I hit my stride soon with this job, but it doesn't seem likely.  Maybe in 6 months?  If I don't quit before then.  It seems like too much on top of all the other things I do.  Every one of the days I have off, I have something else planned, it seems like.  There don't seem to be any blank days on the horizon at all.  I need my down time!

Pretty good day today.

We had Mom's Day Out with the homeschool group today and it was fun.  We went to The Cheesecake Factory again and out shopping.  I actually bought 2 Christmas gifts, so I offically have started Chrstimas shopping now!