Gobble Gobble Goo and Gobble Gobble Gickel. I Wish Turkey Only Cost A Nickel

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I’m working tonight (Wednesday night) and then have to go home, finish a few devilled eggs I didn’t do yesterday, make a 7 layer salad and then try to catch a few hours of zzzzz’s. We’re eating dinner at my sister’s house at 1:00 and I don’t plan to get there until 12:30-1:00. Those bitches can wait on me. Dinner’s never served on time anyway.

I’ve done the head count a couple times and I think there’s going to be 15 of us. It should be fun. It’s my better side of the family. I’ll try to remember the camera. Getting pictures of people sleeping with their pants undone is always good for blackmail. Most will pay to keep that stuff off the Internet. *evil laugh!*

The only thing I'm not looking forward to, which my dear husband is, is the yearly broadcast of "Alice's Restaurant" played in it's entirety beginning at noon. Whooooo. Blake's gonna have a fit. I can hear it now. "Noooooot thiiiiiiis! I wanna hear the Ting Tings!" Goody.

My lips are turning blue and I haven't felt my toes since 10:15

Last night I worked and on the way home stopped to get some gas. ($1.76/gallon baby! Yeah!) Once I got home I made Emily put on some shoes (she had slept in her clothes, wtg Adam!) and then I threw her in the car and made my way over the bridge, through Moline, into the heart of East Moline for Emily's FluMist appointment. That took all of five minutes once we got there so we headed back through the heart of East Moline, into Moline, over the bridge and into our warm house.

After that I made Emily add some clothes to her current ensemble. From there we all dug through the corner basket that holds all of our scarves, mittens, ear muffs and any other diddy that keeps random appendages warm, then we piled in the car and headed downtown to the Festival of Trees parade.

I am so, so kicking myself for not bringing the camera, but truth be told, I'm not sure I would have even taken any pictures because it was SO FREAKING COLD! Though we were all dressed warm, none of us had on enough clothes. We could have brought more blankets. I should have brought a couple chairs for the kids to keep them from having to sit their cold butts on the concrete.

I'm not even sure the parade was over when we left. It may have just been a very large gap between the three story Mega Hunter balloon and some local high school band. We never even got to see Santa in his souped up coupe.

When we stood to leave my but was so frozen that I didn't even notice I had to pee until I actually started moving. My feet were so cold that I literally didn't feel anything from about my mid calf down. At one point I was nervous walking for fear I may fall down and be trampled by the thousands of parade-goers (or would that be parade-leavers) behind me.

It very much reminded me of the time I worked as a receptionist at a car dealership. (My first job). One Saturday I spent about two-hours sitting on one of my feet. There was really no reason for it other than I was just comfortable sitting in that position. The problem was when I got up and started walking across the showroom floor to go to lunch. My foot and leg were so asleep that I didn't even notice that I left one shoe (a flat) behind. Someone had to point it out to me.

"Hey Amy. How come you're only wearing one shoe?"

"Oh, because I can't feel my leg past my knee."

"..."

I'm surprised I didn't end up stepping on something ridiculous like a wandering tack or meandering staple. Then I would have formed some new strain of gangrene and end up having to be fitted for a new titanium foot. My luck the new foot would be smaller than my normal shoes and I'd have to forever endear the question, "Hey Amy, How come you're only wearing one shoe?" Then I would flashback to that fateful day in the dealership where a young girl dared to find comfort at her desk on the showroom floor.

So, yeah. It was really cold at the parade.

The Dad Update

In my last post I talked about how my dad went into the ER on Sunday the 9th. He was then admitted to the Surgical ICU unit, then was moved a day or 2 later to the Medical ICU unit. I think he was there a day before he was again moved to a regular medical floor on Thursday.

Friday morning at 5:45am my phone rang, which is never good. It was my sister. She said dad's nurse had just called her and that dad was missing. Had been missing for the last 15-20 minutes. This does happen every once in a while. I'll hear from security that a pt. has gone missing, they'll ask me to keep my eye out since my office overlooks the lobby. In all of the cases I've know it to happen, 100% have been found within 10-15 minutes. Usually they are outside smoking or in the cafeteria trying to score some food. So, when I got off the phone to call security, I was really expecting to hear that they had already found him. Instead one officer was out driving around town to see if he had walked toward home, the other was walking around trying to find him. He asked for a description because he said the nurses couldn't give him a good one. Uh...what????? He's been there for five days and NO ONE can describe him???

"He's a big guy. Probably around 275 lbs. He's got grey hair. He wears glasses but I'm not sure if he's got them on. He's had knee replacements, a new hip and new shoulders. This is not a guy that gets around quickly."

Then he asked if he had street clothes in his room.

"No. We took those with us on Sunday night."
"Well I should tell you that the nurses found his gown on his bed."
"..."
"So we're potentially dealing with a naked man walking around the hospital."
"I don't know what to say."
"Have you ever had any issues with him like this before?"
"Never ever. He's never even had so much as a senior moment. That's why I'm at such a loss. I really, really have no idea why he's doing this."
"Call me back in 10 minutes. I'm going to check the security cameras."

The next 10 minutes was the longest ever. I was perplexed as to whether I should get dressed and go over there or stay home because surely they would find him in the next few minutes. By now it had been about 45 minutes since he went missing.

I called security back and talked to the guard who had been out driving around. He said, "I heard he doesn't have any clothes. That's not right, is it?"

"Well, he didn't have any street clothes in his room, I can tell you that. I really don't think he would have left the hospital. Plus, if he really doesn't have any clothes on and was outside, someone would have called by now to report it."
"Well, why don't you call the police department and find out."
"...." (that's me, shocked that I'm being asked to call the police myself.) "Is it possible he just got up out of his room, got confused and then came back to the wrong room? Have the nurses on his floor checked all the rooms?"

"I don't know. Why don't you call the floor and ask. I tell you what, why don't you call the police then call the floor to see if they've checked the rooms. I haven't talked to the nurses."

(In this guard's defense, I think he was confused when I first called. I think he thought I was at work and would have had all of these numbers at my disposal. If that would have been the case, I probably would have already made these calls myself. I don't think he realized I was calling from home.)

At that point I decided to go there. My sister was already on her way.

When I was almost to the hospital my phone rang. They had found my dad. An hour and a half later they found him. He was underneath a stairwell. He went down six flights of stairs and found a resting spot under the stairs. They had wheeled him back upstairs and were in the hall outside his room when I got there. Our nursing supervisor said she thought she knew all of the hiding places for patients. Guess she knows better now.

My dad seemed completely back to normal when we got there, although he was pretty shook up and scared as to why he did it. He told me he went looking for French Canada. We're pretty sure it was the new meds they have him on, or the lack thereof, because they had just taken him off a bunch of meds and morphine the day before. We can't seem to convince him of that though. They think it may also have been a severe UTI that caused it. Either way it seems to be an isolated case.

Oh, and he wasn't naked BTW. One of the nurses had remembered changing his gown. He also stole his roommate's coat before he left, so he wasn't totally crazy.

Despite all of that they did end up releasing him that night. He ended up back in the ER the next day (last Saturday) because he felt like he was going to pass out. Turns out his pulse was spiking up to 180 due to a potassium and magnesium deficiency. He was released again last night and is now staying out at my sister's house. Now comes arrangements for home assistance and probably a new apartment. One without stairs.

Life in the ER and a completely different reason it rocks to live in an apartment

On Sunday I spent a few hours shopping with my sister. When I got home Adam ran next door to the grocery store to pick up a few things to make dinner. Right after he got home our new neighbor came up and invited us to her house for tacos. Rock on. All of our building regulars were there, as well as all of our kids and we ate tacos and hung out and had fun for about an hour and a half. That's when Adam left with our 2 kids to give them baths and put them in bed. He had been gone for a few minutes when he came back downstairs and told me my sis and BIL had been trying to reach us for an hour because my dad had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, my hospital I work at.

I ran out and headed over there, calling my BIL on the way. Apparently my dad had passed out at home. Just before that though, he managed to hit his Lifeline button to have 911 dispatched.

He got there around 7pm and I got there at 8:30. He was awake but in a lot of pain. He had bouts of diarrhea there in the ER so bad that even the nurses were gagging. It may be terrible and gross but you have to give yourself a high-five if you've got it bad enough to gag a nurse, that's my opinion anyway.

So after a couple hours they did some xrays and a CT scan and the ER doc had a strong suspicion it was colitis, or a blockage of the colon. He said the strong odor was what they call "dead bowel". Ack. He was in a lot of pain and there was talk that they were going to have to call in the surgical team. Once the CT results came back and the surgical doc was called, they confirmed their diagnosis but decided to treat him with anti-biotics to avoid surgery. They want his colon to clear itself, which it seems to be doing. At 2:30am they finally secured a room for him in the ICU and we finally left the place at 3:30am.

My BIL had taken my sister's car home with him so I drove my sister back to our apartment and we got there around 4am. I knew the kids would be up around 6 and our neighbor was bringing her 2 sons at 7:30 to hang at our house until the bus comes. I had intentions of just staying up but went to bed a little after 5, getting up at 7:15.

After all the kids were on the bus my awesome neighbor downstairs took Blake for the day so my sister and I could concentrate on our dad. We went out for breakfast and headed back to the hospital.

My dad arrived at the ER without his bottom dentures. He said he had thrown up in a trashcan next to his chair at his house so my sister and I knew we had a nasty task ahead of us. This afternoon we went to dad's apartment to make sure it was all locked up and to try to find his dentures and glasses. I was really dreading going over there, fearing what we would find. I grabbed a handful of rubber gloves from my dad's room in the ICU before we left.

My sister was in front of me unlocking the door. I lagged behind, waiting for the horrible smells to hit my nose once the door was opened. She opened the door and said, "Well, it doesn't smell." Good! We walked in and you would have never known my dad had been through hell that afternoon and early evening. His apartment was practically spotless. Seriously. Imagine yourself sitting at home when suddenly you get stricken with severe stomach pains, you get diarrhea, throw up and just before you pass out you call for help. The next thing you know you're outside on a stretcher with paramedics and firemen all around and you're asking for the trashcan you knew you threw up in before. Now imagine what your house would look and smell like the next day. Grody, right? Not my dad. His house was cleaner than mine.

Fortunately or unfortunately for us the trashcan was no where to be found. After a lot of phone calls we decided it had been chucked somewhere and dad was just going to have to be without half of his teeth for a while. We went back up to the hospital to give him the glasses, which we did find, today's newspaper and to deliver the bad news about his choppers. He was like, "Well, I was due for new ones anyway."

We came back to my house since Emily had just gotten out of school and my sister started going through dad's big bag o' meds. There in the bag was the lost dentures. Hip-hip-hooray! She took them up to him tonight.

So the awesome neighbor who kept Blake today agreed tonight to keep the kids on Wednesday night because I have to work 3rd shift. I can't tell you how great it feels to have people you haven't known for very long step up for you and help you out. Adam is still working out of town and I was starting to feel a bit stressed about what I was going to do. I have a strong feeling a couple other neighbors would have volunteered as well, had they been asked first. Adam and I are indebted to these people forever. I think this is what they meant by, "It takes a village..."

Tomorrow I have to call my manager about my schedule. Since my dad was the only sitter I had to watch the kids when I was scheduled to work on first shift, I'm going to have to take myself off the availability for first shift. At least for a couple weeks until Adam gets laid off for the winter. I don't like to do it this way but I really have no other choice and it's only for a couple of weeks. Then they can schedule me for just about anything, but right now I need to concentrate on my family. Adam and I have already had a discussion about child care next year when he goes back to work. We know that we are going to have to find someone else because we knew, even before this, that my dad was getting too tired to deal with the kids, even for a few hours. We're going to retire him and let him just be "Papa" for a while, coming to visit every few days just for a little while.

As for my dad, they're keeping him tonight too and will likely let him go home sometime tomorrow, if everything continues to look good. I'm pleased as punch about that.

I'll be there and I'll follow you...

check out the link to the right. Now you can follow my blog and have your beautiful profile pic featured on my site. Who's gonna be the first to do it? Will it be you? Hmmmmm....

Remember, once your mug is featured on my blog, it will give YOUR blog that much more exposure. Can you handle it? I think you can.

Well she didn't get THAT from me...

On Thursday when Emily came home from school she said the girl she is assigned to sit next to on the bus was giving her a hard time. I asked her what she said to her and she told Emily that her breath stunk and that she doesn't sing well. I guess she made other comments too. I figured this was an older girl but no, one who is also in 2nd grade but in a different class than Emily. I swallowed my instinct to find the girl and push her over and told Emily that she needed to report it to the bus driver. What the girl is doing is essentially bullying, which the school has a zero-tolerance for. So zero-tolerance in fact that a boy who lives in our complex, who annoyed the kids and parents every day this summer at the pool with his over-the-top behavior, got kicked out of Emily's school for bullying. He had to be transferred. He's in maybe 4th grade.

I wasn't looking for this girl to get kicked out of school. I don't however, think Emily needs to tolerate some kid with a nasty mouth. I mean, this is 2nd grade. 2nd grade! I would have never even thought to talk to someone like that in 2nd grade. I could have understood if it would have came from and older kid. I would have suggested to Emily that she still talk to the bus driver, but I would have not been as surprised if the kid was older. And a girl! Who are her parents??? Wait. I know who they are. They are the adults you see out in the store, in the bar, wherever, that make you say, "Geez. I hope they're not someones PARENTS!"

Anyway, Emily really wasn't that upset about it. I asked her if she said anything back to the girl and she said no. I asked her how she felt about what she said and she said it just made her annoyed, mostly. She said she would say something to the bus driver and we left it at that.

I started to think about how I would have reacted to that situation if I were her age. I probably would have been more than annoyed by it. I would have been hurt and angry. I would have told everyone I knew who had any type of authority to try to get the girl in trouble. That's just how I used to roll. In some ways I'm still like that, to a point. Maybe not so much to get people in trouble, but more to find the drama in situations. I don't like to admit it but I like drama. I do. I really do.

So Friday afternoon when Emily came home from school she nonchalantly said that the bus driver was going to move her to a different seat. Like, that was the end of the conversation. As though I would want no more details about what happened. I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did u say to the driver and what did she say?"

"I asked her if she could move me and she asked who I sat next to and I told her and she said, 'Oh yes. It will be done by Monday.' and she wrote my name down."

"Did you tell her what had been happening?"

"No."

"Did you talk to the driver when that girl was there on the bus???"

"No. She gets off at a stop before mine and I told her after she got off."

Wow. Was all I could think in my head. She totally didn't dramatize the situation AT ALL. She very simply asked to be moved and got the job done. She didn't rub it in the girl's face or even do it in front of the girl. She waited until the girl got off the bus and then talked to the driver. If she didn't already have my face I would think that my REAL child was switched with some other good moralled child at birth. Good thing Blake likes to tattle. I'd hate to be the only drama queen in a house full of do-gooders.

Dorothy Harris: Are you coming along?
Young Forrest Gump: Mama said not to be takin' rides from strangers
Dorothy Harris: This is the bus to school.
Young Forrest Gump: I'm
Forrest, Forrest Gump.
Dorothy Harris: I'm Dorothy Harris.
Young Forrest
Gump: Well, now we ain't strangers anymore.

FSA Update

Remember my problems with my FSA account? Yes, that's the one. The one from close to FOUR MONTHS AGO!!!! Anyway, it's been resolved. I don't want to get too much into it for fear of being drug into my HR office (again) but it turns out it was the hospital's fault. I really don't understand all of the details, mostly because I didn't listen to the voicemail much after "I've got it all straightened out" but basically the hospital ran the charge through twice due to some computer something or other. Anyway it's done. Now I have two months to spend approximately $550 out of my FSA. Luckily Adam's glasses were recently broken so we get to spend a large chunk on that. After that, well it's a helluva lot of band-aids, Vagisil, Tylenol and various other OTC meds. Whoohoo!

Obama fo yo mama!

Go Obama! That's all I have to say. WTG!

There's more Balwin brothers than that.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past 16 months, you should know that tomorrow's election day. No matter what else you've got going on...VOTE!

I love this commercial. Everything Jonah Hill says cracks me up. Also Sarah Silverman is hilarious:



Or, don't vote. This is one of my favorite 'Hollywood wants you to vote' videos. I especially love when Neil Patrick Harris, who in the last year or so announced he was gay says, "I vote because I fell in love, and I want it to matter." Plus, you get to hear Justin Timberlake say, "I can do anything. I was in a boy band."




If those videos don't convince you. Maybe Justine Bateman can.

Pictures!

Whoa!

I almost went to bed without posting today. Would have screwed up my NaBloPoMo on day 2! Not good. Anyway, here are a couple Halloween pics for your viewing pleasure. I'm heading to bed. Gotta work tonight. Booooo!

A Halloween complete with no pictures

Well today is the first day of NaBloPoMo and I've got another boring post for ya! It would probably be a much more exciting post had I remembered to take my camera with me to Blake's school party last night. Actually I did have the camera, however I forgot it in my sister's car and didn't really think about it until much later. Bad mommy! I'm definitely going to try to get some of the pics my sister took and then publish an update because some of the kid's costumes were AWESOME and there was one particular old man that just has to been seen by the whole world.

Everything came off without a hitch yesterday. I did some cleaning in the morning, made the kids mummy dogs for lunch as their "super-special-Halloween-lunch" and then we all got ready to go. My sister met us at the house sometime close to 4:00 and we took the kids over to Walgreens to get free Halloween pictures taken of them. I could have picked the pics up today, had I not forgotten until just now. Maybe then my post wouldn't be so picture-free.

From there we headed to our local pet store so I could get the birds some more seed. We've been having an issue with moths which our "bug guy" says is due to the seed. They are attracted to the seed. Ack. Poor Jake and Sam. Emily and I totally cleaned out the bird cage, the bird stand, the container we keep their seed in and dumped out all of their food except for a small amount we put in their bowl. Now we're keeping the food out on the deck, although I've heard it works well to keep it in the fridge too so once it starts getting too cold to head out on the deck, we'll be storing the food in the fridge.

Once I got the seed we made our way over to the church where Blake goes to preschool for their Wild, Wild West festival. I had given the kids a choice of going there or trick-or-treating and this is what they chose. I told my sister it figures that we'd be INSIDE at some festival on Halloween night since it was nice out. The last 3 years it's been freezing and the kids have been out in the cold with their costumes under heavy coats and hats. The church had a free supper of hot dogs, baked beans and chips, which was pretty good. The kids got to play lots of games and won a ton of candy. Adam was even able to join us for the last hour and a half or so. He's still working out of town but got off early enough to make the hour and half ++ drive.

Once it was over we headed home, put the kids to bed, hung with the neighbors for a bit and then Adam and I played a bit of Rock Band. I got to show off my mad drumming skills. I even finally made my way through "Green Grass and High Tides" which has been kicking my ass for the last few days.

Today I started to clean up our bedroom which literally looks like a laundromat exploded in there, however I lost interest after about 3.4 minutes. Adam was nice enough to clean out my car, which was another mess, and then the fam and I headed over to my work so I could do a few days of the on-call schedule. November is my month to do this, but since I only work part-time I have to do several days at once. I had started it when I worked on Wednesday night but our company Intranet was down and once it came back up I had spaced it off, so it was my own fault that I had to come back in on my own time and get caught up. Oh well.

After that we got some lunch, groceries, came home and we all played Rock Band for a bit. Emily loves the song "I Think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage. She'll tell you she thinks the name of the band is silly because their songs are really good. She actually does an awesome job on the song. Blake likes to sing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. Basically he screams, "Should I stay or should I go now" over and over the whole time and we end up getting kicked off the stage 2 out of 3 times.

So now I think I'll try to get some more cleaning done in our bedroom. Right now Adam's working on some songs with one of the guitarists for the 2nd band he's in but I'm hoping he'll come in soon and help out.

Happy November everyone!