Footprints on the Moon

I’ve had a pretty good weekend… it was sorely needed. Even with the marathon laundry and cleaning session from yesterday, it’s been pretty relaxing. That’s always a good thing as I’ve discovered my body has an adverse reaction to stress. (Who doesn’t?) It’s usually in one of three forms. I’m searching for the best acne treatment (my shoulders this time), I unconsciously chew the inside of my cheeks (got reprimanded for this at my last dentist appointment), and I get a headache (been battling this one since Wednesday). (Was that enough parentheses for you?)

Anyways! I’ve had a good day today… I actually managed to sleep ALLLL the way until 7am, which is just unheard of in this household. Spent the morning playing on the internet and going through the paper. Then I decided to take myself to a movie. I’ve been wanting to go see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, but don’t really know anyone too interested in seeing it. Rather than waiting for the DVD release as I’ve ended up doing in previous years, I decided to go ahead and go by myself! (Going to a movie alone also happens to be on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list.)

I did stop by the grocery store on the way home to get some things for this week, and that was decidedly NOT relaxing. But it needed to be done. I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon lazing around, playing on Facebook, and looking through cookbooks. I need to stop looking at the computer now though because my headache is most definitely coming back… if going to bed didn’t signal the end of the weekend, I’d definitely be thinking about it!

… or hardly working. Mostly a little of both. I’ve been spending my Saturday cleaning everything down to the copper sinks. Well, having the good intention to clean everything down to the sinks anyway.

I’ve been up since waaay too early this morning, but I have gotten a few things done. As of right now, I’ve washed the dishes, cleaned the litterboxes, washed and changed the sheets on my bed. The comforter is in the dryer as I write this, and my uniforms are in the washer. Hopefully none of my neighbors planned on doing laundry today because I’ll definitely be hogging it for most of the day.

Right now, I’m “taking a break” (from, you know, taking a break) watching some TV, playing some computer games and eating some lunch. There’s still plenty left to do… including but not limited to putting away all the laundry I’m washing, organizing 3 different closets, and vacuuming the floors. Funny though… I’m not nearly as motivated now that the sun’s come out as I was when it was still dark and dreary this morning!

I went to the doctor waaaay back on January 15th for my annual physical. In addition to the giggles of the usual girlie exam, this always includes a trip over to the lab for bloodwork. The doctor’s office had no issue billing my insurance right away, and correctly. The lab, on the other hand, has been a battle for the last 6 months. First, they billed me instead of my insurance, so of course I wasn’t paying that bill. There’s no point in paying for affordable health insurance if you’re not going to use it, right? So I called the lab, and it turned out that they didn’t get my new insurance information off of the paperwork from the doctor. (Curious how they didn’t seem to have the OLD insurance either… wonder how many people just pay their bills without asking questions?) So I spent several minutes on the phone relaying all the information from my insurance card, and was promised it would get taken care of.

Except it wasn’t. I continued to receive bills from the lab, with increasingly dire threats on them. I continued to call with no results. I mailed a photocopy of my insurance card with the bill. Still, they threatened to take me to collections. Finally, I looked up the fax number for the administration for the lab, and contacted them directly. I sent them a copy of the bill, a copy of my insurance card, and a very nice *cough* letter about how it shouldn’t take 6 months and several phone calls to get this ironed out, and what do I need to do to get this taken care of? I’ll be happy to pay as soon as it’s been sent to my insurance company.

Lo and behold, a few weeks later, I finally got a postcard from my insurance company that a claim had been filed on my behalf. More than 6 months and a lot of aggravation after the fact. Of course, my insurance company is only paying like $6 out of the entire bill, but it’s the principle of the matter. Besides, if I’m going to have to pay (almost) the entire amount of the bill, it’s damn sure going to be applied to my deductible!

But it’s finally settled, thank goodness! I was tired of getting threatened by the lab when the problem was entirely theirs!

That sounds like the name of a bad child’s book about life insurance rates and scary surgeons. A couple of times yesterday, I made off hand comments about being up at the hospital, and later I realized that I never said anything about WHY I was up there. I know it made a couple of people worry, so I thought I’d come back and explain.

My stepmother Gloria went to the doctor for chest pains on the 10th. After some testing, they scheduled some further in-depth tests up in cardiology at the hospital for Tuesday the 14th. They let her go home after the tests, but we found out later that if the right person had seen the results before she left, she probably would have gone straight upstairs then. Instead, she went back for a consultation on Thursday, and then a procedure on Friday. They were going to get a better look at her heart, and try to put stints in, but that was a no-go, so they scheduled a bypass for first thing this morning, and she stayed in the hospital on a Nitro drip for the weekend. She had 3 blockages, one of them almost complete.

She’s out of surgery now, and ended up with a quadruple bypass. From what Dad told me, almost 2 hours ago now, everything went very well in surgery. They did move from an intended triple to a quadruple, but as soon as they were done, her heart rate returned to normal. That’s compared to about half that before they started. If I understood correctly, their only concern was how well she’ll come off the respirator due to the condition of her lungs from being a smoker. She’ll be in the ICU until she’s off the respirator, somewhere between 24-48 hours from now. Then they’ll move her back up to the Heart and Vascular unit while she continues to recover.

So it was kind of scary for awhile there, but everything sounds very promising right now!

Man, I look tired in this picture! Feel tired too, for that matter! I’ll probably start thinking about heading for bed when this is posted, in fact. I can’t believe how quickly this weekend went by! Sarah and I hung out on Friday night. Saturday I spent the morning with Erica, and the evening up at the hospital with Dad and Gloria.

Today I got up and finally made the trip to the grocery store that I’ve been putting off for way, way too long. This week is one of my two “extra” paychecks of the year, so I took the opportunity to stock up on all the things I haven’t stocked up on since, well, my last extra paycheck probably! Two hours and $261 later, I am fully stocked again! You know it’s going to be bad when you hit $100 before you put anything edible in the cart… toilet paper, paper towels, cat supplies, trash bags, feminine hygiene products, dish soap, etc, etc you get the idea. Plus a whole bunch of fresh fruits and veggies!

The worst part is that I still had to come home and bring it all up a flight of stairs. I put the fridge/freezer stuff away and the rest of it is still in the middle of the kitchen floor. I need to rearrange the pantry before I can fit everything in there, so I decided to wait until later. When I’d recovered from hauling everything in, I showered and headed up to the hospital again. Now I’m back home, watching some TV and getting ready to go to bed and start a brand new week!

While we’re on the subject of wedding related stuff, let’s talk about engagement rings. Have you heard the rumors that Jon (of & Kate Plus 8 fame) is engaged to his new girlfriend mere weeks after filing for divorce? If your answer is no, then I have to wonder which rock you have been living under, but that’s not the point. According to the rumors, he bought her a $100,000 ring that has a skull surrounded by 4 black stones. Hmm… to each his own, I suppose, but that certainly wouldn’t be my cup of tea! It doesn’t need to cost $100,000 (in fact, it better not!), but I would like to have a diamond in my engagement ring, a real one. Just in case someone comes to you in the future asking for advice on my ring tastes… now you know. It doesn’t include black and skulls.

I won’t even get into what I think about Jon traipsing all over France with a skanky new girlfriend/maybe fiance when he’s got 8 kids at home.

I am not one of those girls who has “never thought about it” when it comes to weddings and all the details. I’ve got some ideas of what I want (besides the man, of course!), and I love to look at other people’s pictures. It’s never been hard for a friend to get me to help them look through bridal magazines and brain storm ideas when they were getting married. But recently, I saw the coolest wedding invitations ever.

A couple sent everyone a Viewmaster with a custom made reel that had all of their pertinent wedding information on it– both in text and pictures. I never would have thought of anything like that… I didn’t know you could DO that!! Click here to check out the pictures, if you’re interested.

No, I have nothing to announce, they were just so cool that I had to share!

Man! I need to go to the grocery store… or break out the best diet pills! Ever since I cleaned out my fridge, it’s been painfully obvious just how little food there is in my apartment. Which led me to order pizza for dinner tonight. (And breadsticks, of course!) Not good for my pocketbook or my waistline! And I may or may not have had salt and vinegar chips and leftover puppy chow for dinner on Saturday night. That’s not quite as bad as it sounds — I had a huge lunch that day. Needless to say, I need to get around to going to the grocery store… lots of fresh fruits and veggies on my list. Much healthier than potato chips!

Side Note: Pocketbook? I clearly have been reading too many historical romance novels lately.

Me and the lovely Miss Madelyn, from yesterday. I tried to find a picture of me and Aiden when he was about the same age so you could see how much they look alike, but I can’t find it at the moment. I’ll add it later if I do find it.

Hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend thus far… I’m not ready for it to be this close to over! Today has been a pretty good balance of being a lazy bum, and being productive. I have spent WAY too much time playing on the computer and watching Harry Potter movies on ABC Family (it’s a disease… I watch them every time they are on TV, I can’t help it…) But I have also cleaned out the fridge and the freezer, taken out several bags of trash, as well as the recycling. I washed the dishes, and have been working on just general picking up as well. All very sorely needed things as I’ve been neglecting the whole cleaning the apartment thing for awhile. I don’t think cleaning off computer desktops counts as being productive, but I’ve done that too.

I need to find dinner, but cleaning out the fridge has made it painfully obvious that I don’t really have anything here to eat. I was thinking about ordering a pizza, but that’s expensive, plus I’d have to wait quite awhile before it got here. I’m looking a little too rough to go out in public and pick something up… rock, me, hard place… guess I better go figure SOMETHING out!

I think there a couple different kinds of bloggers…. there are the bloggers that are open books. They share anything and everything about their lives, good or bad. There are the bloggers that share only the good things, sweeping everything else under the kitchen rugs and pretending like they are okay. And then there are the people who are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

I think I’m in the middle somewhere, closer to the under the rug end. Sometimes this is because the bad things in my life aren’t my stories to tell… sometimes it’s because I just don’t want to put them out there in the universe for everyone. I do go back and read through older blog entries sometimes, and I don’t necessarily want to hash through all the negatives again. There have been times that I’ve mentioned in posts that I was going through something I didn’t want to talk about, but I can’t always remember what it was when I go back and read through it later. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I’ve just seen quite a few people out there lately talking about how they just want to be honest about everything they are going through. I don’t really think keeping some things close to the vest is being dishonest, but I do wonder why I do it sometimes… “in real life” I’m pretty much an open book most of the time.