Day Twelve

I did not write quite as much yesterday. I only managed 4235 words, which brought my total to 44,934. So I still have a little better than 5K to write sometime today and/or tomorrow. The biggest problem is that my story is done. I wrote the Epilogue. Even wrote The End at the end. I have no more to add to it. Some suggestions given to me by fellow NaNo'ers is to write a prologue, have my character write some emails to her children and include them the story line somewhere, maybe even write my Christmas Letter from the viewpoint of the MC (Main Character). I am not sure what I will write. At this point I am tired of the story, tired of the whole thing. Maybe that is because I still am not feeling 100% healthy. Which leads me to the next paragraph …

This post could have just as easily been titled "It's Your Sinuses, Stupid!" Yeah, I know I said earlier in the week that I did not think my vertigo was related to sinuses, but now I think I was wrong. By yesterday afternoon my head was hurting and there was that telltale pressure behind the eyes. When I finally fell to around five in the afternoon that my head was hurting due to sinuses, I broke down and took a sinus tablet. Today the head is better, although the dizzy still feels there a little bit, mainly when I am sitting motionless. Very odd.

Plus, my eyes are tired from my marathon days on the laptop Monday and Tuesday. And now I am tired from sitting at the car dealership all morning, waiting for them to diagnose why my check engine light is on when they supposedly fixed it last week. It did not take even a day for the light to come back on last week after they "fixed" the problem. After sitting there all morning, they found the problem (under warranty, thank goodness), but it will take most of the afternoon to fix. So they gave me a ride home and when the problem is fixed, they will send their shuttle van back out to pick me up. Ugh. Making chit chat with the van driver all the way back in to the dealership again, oh goody. Have I ever publicly stated here how much I hate making chit chat, social pleasantries, with someone I do not know? Well, I do. Hate it, that is.

So I am home, catching up my blog and trying to figure out what I shall write to use up 5+K more words! Tomorrow is the last possible day to finish. Check back and see if I make it!

Oh! And a shout out to my friend Lisa … hey knitbits! Happy Birthday!!! And yes, she's a knitter. Whatever gave that away?

Day Eleven

Another excellent day of writing yesterday. I added 8870 words to bring my total word count to 40,699. Just a little more than 9K to go and I will have done it!! Hurray!

The vertigo seems a bit worse today after being better yesterday. Not a lot worse, not like it was on Monday, but enough to notice. If I remember rightly from the last time I had a full-blown case of vertigo, the doctor prescribed some medication, but I think those meds were just designed to make you sleepy so that you would rest. I can do that without meds. If it continues much longer, though, I may decide to make a visit to the chiropractor. Bill has visited our new chiropractor, but no one else in the family has yet.

Double the Wishes

Today is my youngest sister's birthday. Happy Birthday Jen!! Jen is a great mom and a wonderful person and today is one of those days that I wish we lived a lot closer to each other. But she is in Colorado where it snows! And I am in Florida, where there's humidity. So the likelihood of us ever living very close together is not very high! Enjoy your Colorado summer, Jen!

And today is also Father's Day. A day of special meaning this year, since we (my siblings and I) almost lost our father earlier this month. Heart attacks. Triple By-pass. I think we've always thought our dad was invincible, since he's always been so strong and healthy. He's doing great now, though, walking several miles each day and his doctor gave him the okay earlier this week to drive again. It won't be long before he's dancing again! Happy Father's Day Dad! I love you!

Am I Home Yet?

I know I have not made an entry here in over a month, but I've been busy! It sure would be nice to be able to stay at home for a few days and begin to settle in here in Tallahassee. Here is a brief recount of the past couple of months:

April 5th - Drove to Evansville to pick David up for Easter weekend.

April 9th - Drove back to Evansville to take David back to college.

April 11th - Drove to Tallahassee, Florida

April 12th - Bill's job interview in Tallahassee

April 13th - Drove to Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida

April 14th - Home again to north Alabama

April 18th - Bill received the job offer, but had to wait for all forms to be processed before giving notice.

April 19th - Bill accepted the job offer in Tallahassee.

April 30th - I drove to Tallahassee, looked at a lot of houses and apartments to rent, settled on one apartment complex and came home on May 3rd.

May 1st - Bill gave two weeks notice at his current job.

May 5th - Drove to Evansville to bring David home for the summer.

May 10th - Son-in-law (Shawn) received a promotion and notice that his new job was in Albany , Georgia.

May 11th - David went to Kat's to help her pack up her apartment.

May 13th - Shawn left for Albany, Georgia, to begin his new job the next day.

May 14th - Kat arrived, with Miss Munchkin and their cat in tow, to stay with us until we go to Tallahassee.

May 15th - Bill's last day at work.

May 17th - Picked up the moving truck.

May 18th - Loaded the moving truck. Discovered that the a/c system on my van was not working properly. Left it at the dealer so they could order the parts and fix it. Picked up a rental van to drive for the duration.

May 19th - Finished loading the truck. Went to the Hobo Dance and stayed up way too late considering how early we had to leave in the morning.

May 20th - Drove to Tallahassee. Shawn arrived in the evening to pick up Kat & Miss Munchkin. We kept their cat.

May 21st - Unloaded the truck.

May 23rd - Bill began his new job.

May 25th - I drove back to north AL to return the rental van and pick up my van. Drove back that same day (arriving in the wee hours of the next morning). Saw my dad, who had just gotten back from vacation, a vacation he cut short because he wasn't feeling well.

May 26th - Drove to Albany, Georgia to pick up Kat and Miss Munchkin. Life in a motel was not working out so well with a fifteen-month-old!

May 27th - Received a phone call from my dad that he had had a heart attack and was in the hospital, scheduled for a catheterization on Monday and possible installation of a stint.

May 28th - They were unable to do the stint on my dad as he had too many blockages. By-pass surgery was scheduled for Wednesday.

May 29th - Drove to north Alabama to see my dad before his surgery.

May 30th - Dad's surgery.

May 31st - Dad moved in to a private room less than 24 hours after the completion of his by-pass surgery. They did a triple by-pass. I visited with him there before heading back to Tallahassee; he was doing great.

June 2nd - Took Kat to Albany, Georgia, so she and Shawn could go back to north Alabama to move their stuff. Kept Miss Munchkin with us for a few days. Dad called to tell me he was back home, having been released several days early due to how well he was progressing.

June 5th - Drove to Albany to take Miss Munchkin back to her Mommy and Daddy and also to help unload their truck. A long and exhausting day.

June 6th - Today! Slept late. Have done little to nothing. Hopefully I will have more energy tomorrow. There are still boxes to unpack! And things to do! A new life in Tallahassee to begin!

December update

I just checked when I last wrote here and can't believe it was so long ago. Where did December go? It's been a month of ups and downs and not one I'd like to repeat for a long time to come.

Mr. Algae-Eater seems to have recovered nicely. I bought some sort of aloe juice medicine that was supposed to be for sores on fish and added it each day for a week. It seemed to do the trick. He's back to his old self.

We did take a trip to Tallahassee last week and Bill interviewed for a position with a company there. He liked the company, so now we are just waiting to see if they liked him enough to hire him. Or if they thought they needed his experience enough to hire him, as they have a huge mess to clean up. Hopefully we'll hear soon. Bill and I really liked it there. The sunshine, the warmth, the beach, the seafood. It was very nice.

Christmas was a quiet day. Several of us have colds, others have been stressed and working too many hours. So we just watched movies and played with Miss Munchkin and tried to keep the wrapping paper out of her mouth. The best gift seemed to be the Flexible Flyer horse we got her. It didn't take long for her to figure out how she could move to get the horse moving. It is going to be a while, though, before she'll be able to ride it herself.

And I bought her a stocking that had the head of a cat at the top of it. I was going to make her a stocking. I got all of 4 rows done on it. I'll have to finish it next year. But the cat stocking was a big hit. Miss Munchkin loves "fluffies" and all day long she'd carry that stocking around and put her face right down into the cat's face and make her "kitty cat" noise, which is sort of a cross between a meow and a purr and a dinosaur growl. Very cute. That's what she's doing in these pictures, in addition to trying to eat the nose of the cat!

Crazy Day

Well, Bill ended up going to Evansville by himself to pick up David. Charles was sick enough yesterday that I didn't feel comfortable leaving him alone today. He was much improved by bedtime, but still had a pretty rough day yesterday. And after his improvement on Sunday and then relapse on Monday, I wasn't going to leave him alone. So Bill went by himself.

He had two appointments in Nashville, but the directions to the first one were not very good and he got lost. By the time her found the place, did what he had to do there (which took longer than it was supposed to), his second appointment time had come and gone. Unfortunately, the second appointment's time was booked up for the afternoon, so I guess he'll have to make another trip to Nashville to meet some other time.

In the meantime, David is calling at 11 a.m. to let us know that he is ready! I told him he better get some lunch, because it's going to be around 3 p.m. before Bill gets to Evansville.

It's been a quiet morning and I've updated two more e-mail lists pages on my website and fine-tuned some other pages. Also washed some dishes and done some laundry. And now it's time to go begin cleaning a path to David's bed! Actually, what I wanted to do was make room here in my office for Miss Munchkin's port-a-crib so that Kat could spend the night Friday if she wanted to, provided we're not all sick with the bug by then. Shawn's work schedule becomes pretty hectic for the next month or so, so I thought she might like to stay here one night while David is here to spend more time with her brother. To do that, I've got to remove a huge amount of stuff that is piled on the floor in my office and then move Miss Munchkin's things from David's room to here. And then maybe there will actually be room for David in David's room!

Guess I better get started!

November update

I checked my blog yesterday because I could not remember when I had last written. November 1st! Imagine that. What a busy month November has been. As you can see by my NaNo count, though, I have not been busy writing my novel.

So what have I been doing? Mainly updating my website. Rewording some pages. Making better intros. Checking links. Adding ads. Trying to make my website pay me back something other than just the satisfaction of knowing I have helped other homeschoolers.

I did write a small amount (500 words) yesterday on my novel. And actually got another 500 words written early this morning. Charles woke me up at 6 a.m., sick again. So after Bill went to work, I stayed up and worked in my office, which is right next to Charles's bedroom. He was quiet for about an hour, resting, but not sleeping. So I was able to write then. But since about 8 a.m. he has kept me busy: needing drinks, vomit pails emptied, covers on, covers off, baths drawn. I am not accomplishing much today!

Charles came down with this nasty stomach bug on Saturday. He was sick, sick, sick on Saturday. Stomach cramps, vomited, diarrhea, fever. He was better yesterday. Slept most of the day and woke up hungry. Announced he was going to karate on Monday. But this morning he is worse again. Not as bad as Saturday, but still sick. The one good thing seems to be that Charles has not had a violent recurrence of his post-tetanus vaccination reactions. He has had a couple of mild reactions, which were quickly squashed with some antihistamine, so hopefully the after-effects of that vaccination are slowly receding.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Evansville to pick up David. Bill took the day off and we were both going to go, but with Charles still sick I am not sure whether I'll be going or not. It will be a long day for just one driver. Of course, David does have his driver's license, but it's been a few months since he's driven. Penelope is a nice easy car to drive, so maybe he could help out some with the driving back home. He'll be home until Sunday, when we have to take him back to college.

So I guess that's all the news today! I need to try to get David's room cleaned out a bit. We have been using it for the "catch-all" room since he went away to college in August. I'm sure he would appreciate begin able to actually get to his bed, let alone lie down on it!

Halloween / NaNoWriMo

It's Halloween and all my children are healthy, I think. When they were little, it seemed as though every Halloween at least one of them, if not more, were sick with a fever, cold, sore throat, something. Of course, Charles is just getting over a cold, so maybe he counts? Nah. And I don't really know whether David is sick or not, but he sounded just fine on Saturday when we talked to him. So I'm going with "It's Halloween and all my children are healthy."

Kat was over on Sunday with Miss Munchkin. She had picked up the cutest Halloween costume for Miss Munchkin. A strawberry! It had a little stretchie hat that looked like the hull of a strawberry on top. The suit part was red, with velcro in the back so it went on and off easily. Sleeveless, so it wouldn't be too warm. I'm hoping Kat will get a picture of Miss Munchkin in it this week, as she didn't bring my camera with her on Sunday. If (when) I get a pic, I will post it up here. She looked so cute, although I do agree with Shawn that it was also mildly disturbing at the same time!

Miss Munchkin had a new game Sunday. She is now waving all the time as people come and go, or just when she looks around and "discovers" they are still there. Sunday she would crawl from her mommy to me, get on my lap, turn around and wave and grin at her mommy. Great fun!

I added a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) participant link to my description here on my blog today (check the right description column). I've never done NaNo before, never finished a novel before (although I have a couple partially written), so we'll see. The plot and characters all came to me within about 10 minutes of reading about NaNoWriMo back in September, so I think I was meant to write it. You have to write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. No editing, that comes later! That's almost 2000 words a day. With all my job hunting for hubby and updating of my website, I'm not sure I'll have time to write 50,000 words. Probably my posting here will be a bit sparse, so check my progress reports (clicking on the the links to the right) and give me heck in an e-mail if you don't see an updated word count each day!

Getting Ready for College

I would have never imagined it would take this much time, effort, and money to prepare a child for his first year of college. Well, I sort of suspected the money part, although there sure are a lot of additional costs besides the tuition and room/board. The paperwork, though, did surprise me. And the sheer amount of stuff necessary to equip a dorm room and the child moving into it! Here's just a portion of what has consumed my July:

A Health Form to be filled out by David, myself, and then his doctor, which meant an appointment with said doctor. This took two trips to the doctor's office, one for the physical and one for the follow-up on the TB test that the college required. It also took two phone calls to the college to find out for sure that a medical waiver was possible for the required tetanus shot.

Medical Waiver stating David did not need health insurance from the college, that he was covered by our medical insurance policy.

The paperwork to set up the automatic payment plan for David's tuition.

Checking with BlueCross to make sure David will be still covered by our health insurance plan while he is in college.

Getting the final transcript sent in to UE.

Checking to see if our homeowner's insurance will cover David's dorm room items in case of fire or theft.

Making a list of all the items he needs for his room and then finding all those items. These include things like trash cans, desk lamp, laundry detergent, clothes basket (he has to wash his own clothes!), and any food items he might want for snacking purposes.

Ditto for clothes. Most of his are a bit threadbare out, so it's practically a complete new wardrobe for him, down to swimming trunks and sneakers!

New sheets, blankets, pillows, and bath towels.

Rental of the Bedloft, which will free up some floor space in his small dorm room.

Rental of the MicroFridge that seems to be an essential part of dorm life these days.

Make sure his computer is ready to go.

Got the battery for the laptop.

Still need to find a printer/scanner/copier for his room, although he does have access to printers in the computer lab and is allotted 200 printed pages each semester.

You might ask what is left for the month of August? He still needs to get his driver's license, if we can get that done sometime in the next couple of weeks. And we still need school supplies (notebooks, pencils, printer paper, that sort of thing), along with personal supplies (manicure set, vitamin C, shampoo, etc.). I believe he'll have to find a winter coat up there in Indiana sometime before the snow flies. Oh, and the most important thing for August? Cleaning out David's bedroom!!! He is so looking forward to doing that!

Busy Days

Has it really been a week since I last posted here? Wow! I've been so busy with office duties and running kids here and there. My desk is a lot cleaner! And the bills are all current! So some things have been accomplished! Unfortunately, updating my website was not included in that list of accomplishments. That was July's agenda, but somehow here it is the 25th and I've not even begun. And boy, do I have a lot of updates.

Yesterday Charles met with Dr. Debra Gilliam from Alternative Medicine Associates. She seemed pretty sure she would be able to help Charles and I sure hope so! It was an expensive visit and none of it covered by our medical insurance. He now has several supplements and homeopathic remedies to take over the next 12 weeks, along with some dietary changes to make. And then on October 16 he return to see if all this has helped any. She also suggested that Charles keep a food diary, but I don't see that happening! The most difficult dietary change is no gluten, no wheat. I bought some oat flour and some spelt flour, both of which the naturopath suggested would be better for Charles than wheat.

David has his college physical tomorrow. Which reminds me, I still need to double check with the college that a letter from his doctor will be all that is needed for a medical waiver on the tetanus shot. My mom wrote me last week to tell me that she had suffered from an allergic reaction to a tetanus shot about fifteen years ago and her doctor told her then not to ever have another tetanus shot or it might be fatal. She thought she had told me that before, but mentioned it again after reading my blog entry about Charles' latest "episode." I sure don’t' remember hearing about that before, but I'm glad to know it now. Perhaps it will provide added incentive for the doctor tomorrow to provide that medical waiver.

The kittens are getting cuter every day! Today the one's here in my office finally got brave enough to escape from their box, or at least I discovered one of them out this morning when I came in to check my e-mail. I think it's just about time to move them outside, as I do not want to have a litter box in here. The other kittens in the living room just have their eyes open, but I may have to find another spot for them. The mama kitty seems to be disrupting the wires back there that are hooked to the TV and receiver and our TV reception has been disappearing. Somewhere there's a cord loose!

Well, time to wake up some boys and begin working on the website updates. People are e-mailing me asking me when I'm going to make the changes that they sent me weeks ago!

To sleep, perchance to dream

Another night of interrupted sleep, another day of hiding yawns and thinking of a nap! Normally the cause is the occasional bout of night sweats or the more frequent waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. But not last night, or rather, early this morning. This morning at 3:45 my cell phone rings and I know instantly that it has to be Charles. Which means that he's having troubles again with his "funny feelings" in his head that preclude full blown episodes of violence. Luckily this time he woke up before it had reached the full-blown stage, so a dose of antihistamine, some talk about how he was feeling, how long he had been awake and how long he had been asleep prior to awakening, and then he went back to sleep. But I didn't! I was wide-awake from then until Bill's alarm went off at 6. And only then did I begin to doze off for a few minutes before I had to get up and made Bill's breakfast.

I had been worried about the possibility of Charles having another episode. Sunday we went over to Kat's and mowed her lawn. Bill got into the kudzu on the edge of the property with the weedeater and had Charles go behind him with the push mower. Unfortunately, Charles found a bee's nest and got stung on his legs several times. He seemed fine yesterday, but still, I wasn't surprised when that phone rang this morning. The episodes seem to hit when his immune system is working hard to overcome illness and so I thought bee stings have the same effect as a fever.

May 26th was the last time Charles needed the antihistamine to ward of an episode, so it's been less than two months. Prior to that he went just about three months. I had hoped that the time between would have lengthened, not shortened. That would have fed my hope that this whole nightmare would just eventually fade away, that his body would recover on his own from the tetanus vaccination. But it doesn't appear as though that is happening. Time to make that appointment with the naturopath, since both his pediatrician and the neurologist he was referred to were not able to find anything wrong. And I'm hoping that the pediatrician will agree with me that David doesn't need a tetanus vaccination for his college physical. The college indicated that they might accept a letter of medical waiver from the doctor. I've got to double check next week when the person in charge at the college's health department is back from vacation. But I am very leery of unnecessarily exposing another child to that vaccination! It certainly has wreaked havoc upon Charles' body.