Tale of a Shooting Star…

A.K.A. We’re Back!

It was a whirlwind, not a vacation. We babysat drunken people, served as designated drivers, I got to drive in thick fog in a city I don’t know.

Good news: I finally had a menstrual period. Four months after starting Yaz.

Bad news: It happened while we were in Canada.

Good news: I was prepared. 😉

Good news: I stitched a hardanger suncatcher for Grandma Magee in the car on Wednesday. Even cut out the hardanger sections and wove them while in the car. She loved it. 🙂

Good news: I got to meet Christine D. in person! Way cool! I will talk more about that in another post. 😀

Bad news: I had a sudden, severe IBS attack come on a couple of hours after seeing Christine. I mean, we were in the car, had to turn around and go back to the campground, I was beet red, stripped down to my undies and had to grab a bucket to take in the bathroom with me because I wasn’t sure which end it was going to come out of first. I don’t have them like that very often. Thank goodness! And my follow-up visit with the gastroenterologist isn’t until August 21st and can’t be moved to any earlier. I already tried this morning.

Good news: I actually drove my first long distance (4.5 hours) and drove through my first two toll booths on the way back on Monday.

Bad news: The decision to drive the entire 15 hours back in one day was not appreciated by my body; which was expressed to me in no uncertain terms by said body on Tuesday. I’m not sure that we’re going to Guam in October now because neither one of us can take the 22 hour plane ride.

Good news: I’m home!

That’s about it for me today. I’m feeling cranky and really don’t want it to spill over onto my blog, so I’m cutting it short. I have no pictures to share of the suncatcher that I made for Grandma Magee, even though I had my camera with me. Just slipped my mind. Same thing as before, just in purple (her fave color). 😉 I uploaded all of the pictures that I took of Terry’s Dad’s wedding into my photo gallery, if you care to take a look. Terry’s suit jacket didn’t fit him well because his shoulders are way bigger than his waist, so he looks heavier in the photos than he actually is. We’ll have to buy him a more tailored suit soon.

Well, I’m rambling and it’s time to leave to see Dr. Steve. Byeeeee!

Okay, not quite, but, for blogging purposes, I am. I will not have time tonight or tomorrow morning to do anything other than hope I have a sudden burst of energy so that I can complete everything that needs to be done before we leave.

Thank goodness I’m a mega-list-maker. I think that it’s the only thing which keeps me sane during times like this. Thank goodness I finally found a dress for the wedding last night, too! After visiting several stores, I finally broke down and drove out to the JCPenney store last night. I should have started there, but I’ve always had good luck at Boscov’s in the past (until this time). The first dress I picked up at JCPenney fit. And so did the second and the third. The tough decision was which colors to choose once they all fit. Then I bought shoes and a handbag. The dress was on sale and the shoes were on clearance ($16 for off-white dress shoes!). It doesn’t get much better than that. All I have left to buy are the pantyhose and I’ll pick that up during a WalMart run after work tonight.

Phoebe’s life jacket arrived today and fits well (the first one was too small). She looks so cute; I can’t wait to get a picture of her on the boat so that you can see. She’s such a preppy dog, thanks to her mommy. 😉

I’ll only put in 6 hours today at work because we ran some errands this morning, including shipping out return packages (like Phoebe’s too-small life jacket and the first GSP unit we bought for the boat, which turned out to not have all of the features that we wanted) and picking up a fresh print-out of Phoebe’s rabies vaccination certification from the vet to present at the Canadian border on Thursday.

More errands to do after work. Pick up some odds and ends at WalMart, fill prescriptions at the pharmacy and buy some cards. Terry’s dad’s birthday is Thursday, his grandmother’s is Friday and the wedding is Saturday. Whew! We never figured out what to buy his dad and Nancy (his bride), so I think an IOU will go into the card. 😆

Then, once we finally get home, frozen dinners will get tossed into the microwave to eat, all of the dishes piled up in the sink need to be washed, the dishwasher (clean, fortunately) needs to be unloaded, then reloaded, a couple of loads of laundry need to be done and then I can pack.

Well, anyway, enough of that. I need to get back to work. I’m trying to tie up some loose ends before I leave and, so far, I’ve been fairly successful!

I may not blog while I’m away, depending on whether or not I have a reasonable connection available to me, but I will be thinking of all of you!

Not stitching, that’s for sure. I haven’t picked up a needle in over a week. Oh wait, that’s a lie. I did put in a very few stitches while at the hospital on Friday.

So, let’s see. I last posted on Wednesday.

Thursday: Bought a sailboat. Sailed said sailboat with the dealer to get a feel for what it can do. Towed said sailboat home. Mangled the swim ladder while backing it down the driveway in the dark because the ladder, which is not supposed to fall down, fell down from the up position and we backed over it, bending it backwards and wrenching it and its brackets sideways. Gouged the driveway a bit, too, but meh, who cares? It’s all fixable and at least we got our first owie to the boat over and done with quickly. Oh yeah, got a really bad sunburn on a few sections of my back that I apparently wasn’t reaching every time I reapplied the sunblock spray. Doh!

Friday: Spent the day at the hospital. The Upper GI with Small Bowel Study that normally takes 1 to 3 hours took me 7 HOURS! I’m not going into details, in case others who read my blog happen to have a need to go through this procecure in the future. Let’s just say that some mistakes were made by the radiologist, I think, and it turns out that my large bowel (large intestines; colon) is longer than most people’s. As such, my appendix actually resides in the middle of my lower abdomen, instead of on the right. Good to know in case of appendicitis pain. Bad when the radiologist keeps looking in the wrong spot for my appendix and the junction between my small and large bowel. For hours upon hours. Until one of the chief radiologists is called in out of sheer desperation (and the fact that it was 4:45 PM on a Friday and the staff wanted to get out of there).

My abdominal muscles feel like they have served as someone’s punching bag. Oh wait, they have! My back hurt like … (insert appropriate simile here) due to laying around in rough cotton hospital gowns on hard metal tables much of the day. Not nice for bad sunburn from day before. My back, neck and shoulder muscles went into spasm from above described laying around. I was unable to stitch during most of my waiting time because I was subjected to laying in different positions in order to try to get the barium to move through my system.

[note] For future reference, my digestive tract doesn’t like barium. [end note]

Saturday: Towed the sailboat over to the house of friends who live on the water. Went to their community’s boat ramp, rigged the boat and tried to launch the boat. Were unable to launch the boat due to poorly engineered boat ramp (it goes down a foot or two, then levels out) and low tide in shallow area. Waited around for an hour or so on the community beach for tide to start coming in. Gave up for a bit, went back to their house, ordered and consumed dinner. Went back to boat ramp once tide had come in and given us a foot or so more water to work with. Finally floated the boat off of the trailer and went motoring and sailing for an hour or so. Got boat back onto trailer, towed to friends’ house and unrigged in the dark. At this point, I had developed a migraine and the bugs were attacking the easily-seen white person (me) with a hunger, so I went inside and left the boys (which ended up pretty much being Terry by himself) to de-rig the boat. Sorry guys! Towed the boat home. Backed it up the driveway without incident (whew!). I immediately took a Maxalt and went to bed.

Sunday: Woke up very late with shoulder muscles in spasm and a bit of a headache. Ate. Watched some TV. Went upstairs to work on OSL accounting and entered a bunch of new inventory into the store. Check it out! Writing this blog entry, then going to bed.

We’re back to work tomorrow and Tuesday, then leaving as early as we can manage to drag ourselves out of bed Wednesday morning to head to Canada. We’re most likely splitting to drive into two days, stopping somewhere in Maine (perhaps around the Old Orchard Beach area) for the night, then continuing on to Saint John Thursday morning. I should get lots of stitching done in the car. At least, I had better, because I have things to do! 🙂