The Land of the Living

I think I am back among the non-Zombies again.  I think.  I went back to the doctor in a panic on Saturday thinking I was destined for hospital admission but thankfully the doctor saw things a little differently.  The entire top half of my thigh was purple.  I don't mean pretty lavender purple, I mean bright, deep, bruise purple.  In my mind, that meant certain death, or at least amputation of my leg (yes, I acknowledge the hypochondria).  I was wrong.  My doctor was overjoyed at the sight.  Really he was.  He explained that the purple meant that the tissue was actually bleeding and healthy.  I still have the gaping hole in my thigh but the outlook has greatly improved.  He did confess that he came very close to admitting me on Thursday but decided to give me 48 more hours to recover.  The infection was actually strep so he switched my antibiotics to those that actually combat strep and I should be on the road to recovery.  I'm just now realizing how bad this really was.  And to think that it started with a tiny, non-bump.  It still hurts pretty bad but I'm not taking pain medication.  I decided it was better not to take pain pills and drive, work, etc.  So I'm in pain and I wish I could stay in bed until I am bandage free but duty calls.  Must work for paycheck.  


I am a week behind with everything now.  I haven't watched the news, barely checked my email (only from my phone), communicated briefly with the office to let them know I was still alive and still not coming back to work, didn't cook, hardly ate and slept for the majority of the last 7ish days.  I did lose about 5 pounds and my appetite hasn't completely returned, that's the good part.  Maybe my appetite will stay gone forever.  Wish in one hand...

What Looks Like Crazy on a Normal Day

I wrote that last post?!  Surprisingly, it's accurate and coherent.  I don't remember writing in, must have been the pain pills.  Well, it's Wednesday and I'm starting to see a slight improvement in my leg but I'm still bedridden for the most part.  I close my eyes and imagine my paycheck just flying out the window.  <sigh>  The doctor repacked the gaping hole again yesterday and it didn't hurt at all, not like I was dreading it.  The pain is mostly still coming from a few places above the wound that haven't drained yet.  I go back tomorrow for more repacking.  

The pain meds make me itch.  I'm not talking just an itch here or there, I could handle that.  This is a major itch, all over that makes me want to take sandpaper to my skin.  So the 2 options I have are no pain pills (not fun at all) or pain pills + Benedryl to calm the itching.  I choose the Benedryl cocktail option.  Spending all this time in bed should have made me productive.  I could read, catch up on my Believing God Bible Study, organize some papers, read and toss some magazines...there's an endless number of things I should be doing.  I'm actually just sleeping most of the day.  I make sure to roll over every now and again just to keep from getting bed sores but it's been very relaxing, except for the pain.  

I know I look like a zombie.  I've even got the walk perfected.  With the location of the *thing*, it makes it hard to use my inner thigh muscle because that's where the open wound is.  So I stumble along like a zombie.  I'm sure if I stopped to look in the mirror, I would be convinced I was actually dead.  I can't get the *thing* wet so I've been taking sponge/baby wipe baths since Sunday.  I hate that.  I'm a 2 shower a day kind of girl.  This is killing me.  So my hair hasn't been washed since then, but I have managed to brush my teeth while holding on to the cabinet.  I'm sure my hair is pointing in a dozen different directions.  Yes, I'm starting my own legion of the undead.

I'm done whining now.

The Other Shoe Fell

It's been a few days since my last post & I'm having withdrawals.  Since I'm posting from my phone it should be full of misspelled words & general nonsense, due to the drugs, which is where the MIA originates.
It all started with a tiny little bump.  No itching or pain, just a little bump on the upper inside of my thigh (relative close to Ladytown).  It had a little black speck in it so I thought it was an ingrown hair & just lightly scratched it out.  Several days later, the bump was now a lump. Still not painful.  The general consensus was that it was a boil.  So I bought some boil cream to draw it out.  On Friday, it was very sore & I was convinced it was going to burst at any minute.  It didn't.  I came home Friday & just wasn't feeling well.  I went to bed & stayed there most of the day Saturday.
After D got home from church with the kids yesterday, I was in unbearable pain.  He took me to the outpatient clinic & the dear sweet nurse said, "Bless your heart, I know that hurts."  So without the most disgusting details, I will just say that she numbed it, drained it & packed about 1' of gauze in there.  I get to go back on Tuesday to change the gauze & then again on Thursday.
I'm now a walking medicine cabinet.  I have pain pills that make me itch, benedryl to combat the itch, antibiotics for 2 weeks & a strong shot of antibiotics to kick start the healing.  They should be able to tell me Thursday if it's staph or strep, but she is leaning toward staph.  So I'm off for the majority of the week, probably have a major blog update see if I can drag up more followers.  That is, if I get out of bed for any length of time!

The Fish in the Sink

Back when it was warm here (a couple of weeks ago), my kids were playing outside, going back and forth between the house and their favorite picnic spot near the pond.  I heard one of the kids come in the door and yell to their dad to "come identify this."  In my house, that almost always means something dangerous.  I decided not to overreact and just let Dad handle this one.  I heard them talking in the bathroom and then I heard him say "It's a perch."  So there's a fish in my house.  Perfect.  And then everyone went on about their business like there was absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.  There's a fish in my house.  Not in an aquarium, in my bathroom sink.  My 10 year old nature freak/child prodigy then explained that it looked like a turtle had eaten part of the fish and it was probably going to die anyway so she caught it (with her hands) and brought him in to die.  How nice of her.  Still, there's a fish in my bathroom sink.  Ever the wildlife activist, Dad says to just put him out of his misery instead of letting him suffer.  At this point, I'm yelling from the comfort of my chair, "I don't want to hear about this."  Apparently my wishes went unnoticed.  Dad and fish-catching daughter then had to discuss what the best way was to kill the poor fish.  Keep in mind that I'm getting louder from my chair..."Do you have to discuss this?"  Finally, they decided to just put the fish back in the pond.  Sometimes I wonder if all families are this strange.  

Fish-catching daughter is taking Hunter's Education this week.  Legally, she doesn't have to have it to hunt until she turns 16 or hunts alone but, being the overachiever that she is, she decided to take it now, at 10 years old.  To celebrate, Dad is taking her turkey hunting this weekend.  I'm not opposed to hunting anymore, I know that it serves a purpose.  I'm not a fan of wild game though and usually anything killed or caught goes to friends or family.  Both my girls killed their first deer last winter.  I thought I was going to get by with one girl who didn't hunt.  Not so lucky.  As soon as her sister killed a deer, the middle one decided she could too.  And she did, 24 hours later.  I wasn't surprised.  Once her sister does something, she feels the need to do it too, and usually does.  They are quite the pair.  

Still My Baby

My baby isn't a baby anymore.  I guess technically he hasn't been a baby for a while now considering he will be 7 this summer.  But he's still my baby.  My last baby.  There was a certain sadness that came with the realization that he would be my last child.  Then again, I wouldn't want to have another boy.  Not that I haven't enjoyed him completely, I just wouldn't want to take away what he thinks is so special--he's the boy.  As I type this, he's sitting beside me eating a popsicle and watching Harry Potter.  If he paid any attention to what I was doing, I'm sure he would read my post and object.  He pretends to be modest but he's really pretty outgoing.

On the way home today, we were talking about spring pictures.  Our school sends home the entire package of pictures and then you pay for what you want and send the others back.  I can't stand to send back the pictures of my kids because they just through them away.  I never throw away pictures.  I just can't do it.  I was explaining to him that buying all the pictures of him and his sisters would cost me $123, more than I make in a day.  He seemed to understand and thought a minute before asking, "Can you just buy mine?"  He's a pill sometimes.

My sister has a boy that is a few years older.  I remember when I was pregnant with Ethan, she told me that I was going to be shocked to realize that boys are rough and not cuddly like my girls were.  She was partially right.  Her boy is rough and has been embarrassed to be around her since he was old enough to realize she is female.  So far, my baby boy is still sweet, cuddly and charming.  He still climbs up in my lap and snuggles with me.  There are many mornings I wake up with him shoved between my husband and me.  

This is his 2nd year in kindergarten.  That was a big decision and I consulted everyone I could think of before we held him back.  Not that I didn't trust my instincts, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't holding him back so that he wouldn't grow up.  I have a teaching degree, so does my husband so I felt like we were fairly qualified to make that choice but it wasn't the obvious choice.  He did very well in kindergarten last year but he's a July baby.  At the end of the year, he was still immature, but smart.  He doesn't talk completely plain and he is tiny.  I just still saw "baby" when I looked at him.  Ultimately, I know we made the right decision.  He has really progressed this year and I think he has developed into a good kindergartner.  He was pretty bummed when he learned he wouldn't be going to 1st grade with his friends.  We did soften the blow by promising him that he would get his favorite teacher this year (pre-arranged with the principal of course!)  So Ms. Austin made it all ok.  He is still tiny.   I'm sure someday he will grow.  Until then, he's just the right size for my lap.

The Cheese Touch

If you have watched the movie "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," then you know what the "cheese touch" is.  You also know how horrible it is to be the one who has it.  Being the rather odd and unconventional parent that I am, I started passing around the cheese touch in my family.  I think that this is actually the cheapest fun we have had in ages!  The laughter has been endless this past week.  We have even made some simple cheese touch rules:

1.  You can't give the cheese touch back to the person who gave it to you.  If I give it to my husband, he has to give it to one of the kids.  

2.  You must be creative when passing the cheese touch.  You can't just touch the person randomly and pass it.  You must be slick.

3.  Not really a rule, more of a suggestion...if you pass the cheese touch quietly, the rest of the family will lose track of who has it and won't be expecting to get it from you.

I am always amazed at the creative things my kids can come up with.  Last night after bedtime, my oldest got out of bed and came to our bed.  She had an odd look on her face and said she didn't feel good and was cold (the sure fire way to get checked for a fever in our house).  I put my hand to her forehead and she grinned and said "cheese touch."  She got me good with that one.  Hopefully the cheese touch will continue to go around our house.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid 

We never did find the two missing puppies, and another one escaped and disappeared.  We are down to half of what we had before.  One of them has another home to go to which just leaves us with 2 precious boy puppies.  My husband has grown attached to them and I have a feeling we will keep them if nobody offers to take them.  Our pet food bill is outrageous.  

On a related note, my Sassy cat disappeared for 2 days and then wondered back up in the yard like she had never been missing.  Nearly sent me into a major panic.  She is very special to me.  My very old cat died about 18 months ago.  She was my first baby.  I had her before children, even before the husband.  I cried for days after she died.  Even though I had other cats in the house, they didn't have the same personality as my Alley and I missed her.  I still do but her death has been softened some by Sassy.  A few weeks after Alley died, I stepped out on the back deck and this huge cat just walked in the door like she belonged there.   I kicked her out of course but she wouldn't stay away.  Once when I picked her up, I discovered that she didn't have any front claws.  She was definitely someone's cat.  I started feeding her and checked the paper for missing cats.  I even ran an ad on our local community information tv station.  Nobody claimed her so we adopted her as our own.  I'm not a believer in reincarnation but Sassy has my Alley's spirit.  I become more convinced of it every day.  I truly believe that God sent her to me to help me heal from Alley's death.  Unlike Alley was, Sassy is an indoor/outdoor cat.  She comes in at night and spends the majority of her day roaming the woods or just chilling on the porch.  She does have a hunter's mentality though; she likes to bring me *presents* of her most recent kill.  It's hard to believe that a cat with no front claws can hunt like she does but she has captured lizards, snakes, chipmunks, rats, mice, etc.  She is something else.  I will definitely post a picture of her with my camera, when I get it!  


I went consignment store shopping yesterday with my oldest daughter.  We hit the jackpot with designer kids clothes.  We were both pretty impressed with our loot.  We are planning to hit the miles of yard sales at the end of the month.  She's a good student and it won't hurt her to miss a day of school and shop with me.  I'm starting to rub off on her.  Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not!