Posts

Showing posts from March, 2007

Sucked into a Jerry Springer Episode (VERY LONG)

The past week has been chock a block with scouting drama. Truth is certainly stranger than fiction and I've got plenty of strange truth to share, folks. When last you heard from me, it was the night of the Order of the Arrow ceremony and the revelation "Oops, sorry, you are NOT going to be the leader" from the pissy leader to be. I was furious, and vented my anger at the Cubmaster, . He told me that he really needed people like me and Ed and requested that one of us take on the den that he had led (he can't do both). I blogged about that part. I also sent him an email right after blogging to apologize for my behavior. Tuesday night, Pack Meeting. Committee Chair makes an announcement that there will be a meeting for all the leaders after the pack meeting. The meeting starts with her crying, stating that she's been told people were saying she's lazy and disorganized and she was upset, because she pours her heart and soul into what she does (I agree wit

Sacrifices

As I kid, I don't know when I learned my first lesson in making sacrifices to please others. I don't think I had to make that many when I was little. Our younger son has had to make quite a few for being so young. He didn't bargain to have an older brother with special needs, but he has one. This means that foods he'd like, activities he'd like to do and places he'd like to go all go through the test of "Can my brother do this/have this?" Far too many times, the answer is no. To his credit, he may be upset, but he doesn't complain too much. He just realizes its part and parcel of our lives. Scouting is something he rallied for big time. He REALLY wanted to do it, and wasn't going to be swayed by the argument that his brother couldn't do it. To his credit, he even got his brother excited about it. I honestly thought it would be HIS activity, but his big brother proved me wrong. While not as gung ho, he does look forward to Tuesd

It has clicked

When Amy kept recruiting me to come work for her employer, I kept resisiting. I told her to contact me when the sister company was hiring-since I had a much better knowledge of the products they sell. Not that I didn't like where she was, just wasn't as familiar. The past four months have really been a learning experience. I love the products, but there are so many to learn about. The management style is like no other specialty retailer-we have five floor managers and a staff that's nearly triple what I've ever had before. It's been an uphill experience. I'm used to being the best, knowing anything and everything. At Disney, I'd been nicknamed "Miss SOP", because I could recite the SOP's backwards and forwards. To not know it all is HARD. I'm finally getting it. I've always been a frustrated artist-what I see in my head never translated to whatever medium I'd try to use. This is different-my ideas are good ones and what I

Juggling kids

This week is one that challenges parents without daycare, like us. The boys have school break. Fortunately, I was able to shuffle around my schedule and work four closing shifts to coincide with Ed's work schedule. His job altered his schedule a bit-he leaves at noon this week. Yesterday was one of our days off together for the week. We took advantage of it by heading over to Busch Gardens for a few hours. Once again, I will state that the Gold Passport was a great purchase. Especially since we can have a small amount deducted from our checking account each month, as opposed to having over a thousand dollars to purchase APs for WDW. That is just not happening anytime soon. This was only our third trip over there as a family, though Ed and I went without the boys, and I've taken older son solo. As such, we did things we haven't tried yet. Heck, on days that I'm off and everyone else is occupied, I should just go over by myself for a couple of hours. The lines

Trained cub scout leader!

I forget who said it. There I was, in the hospital with a newborn baby boy. Among the congratulatory phone calls and visits, someone made the comment that the world should look out, because here comes a Den Mom. I am a type A through and through, and my need to run things has always been apparent-so for one of my friends or family members to say that wasn't that much of a stretch. Well, older son ended up having special needs and not being cub scout material. Or so I thought. My younger son got a flyer for a cub scout meeting in his backpack last year and bugged me incessantly. "Can we go? I wanna be a cub scout, will you take me?" He's the child that definitely struck me as being a scout. We went to the meeting, only to find there were 4 boys (two were mine) and it was a meeting to begin a new pack. Nope, sorry, I will be happy to help out, but I do not have the time to devote to getting a new pack growing. After a few attempts to connect with the packs close

Water, water everywhere...

Weight has been an issue for me my whole adult life. As a youngster, I was the stringbean who could eat anything and everything. It didn't set me up with the best eating habits. Once I started college, I gained that freshman 15 and eventually the sophmore 15 because I wasn't constantly at the Rec with my dad, swimming while he worked out. When I moved to Maryland, eating became something of a solace and I quickly mushroomed to a size 16. For a long time, I yo-yo'ed, losing weight to get into my wedding dress and then back up again. My dad at one point made the statement "If you're eating so much, you've got to ask yourself, what's eating you?" At the time, probably the abusive relationship that I didn't see as one. The ex left, and surprise, I lost 40 pounds in two months thanks to the anxiety diet. For the most part, other than the pregnancies, I hovered around a size 8 or size 10. When I started working for Disney, I was a size 8 and nurs

Life's weird coincidences

My sister, who is new to the internet, has a habit of sending me forwards. Most of them I've seen before, sometimes not. Seems like anytime someone gets a a computer this happens, so I'm used to it. It's happened a lot over the 18 years since I first got online (remember Prodigy? I was BRKN98A, lol). If it's something that's relevant, I clean up all the junk and send the forward along. I used to go hard on the newbie, now I realize that it must be a stage of getting comfortable with the internet and emailing. Last week, she sent one of those forwards that spoke to me. It was about religion, church and inviting God into our busy lives. No, I don't have a church home, but would like one. That said, I believe that we do not have to have be at a church to have a relationship with God. The church home we'd found in Maryland-it was probably a once in a lifetime deal. I did clean that email up and sent it along to a few people in the netscape email addr

The camping thing...

...it was FUN. Yeah, I know, several of you witnessed 'the camping trip from Hell', the one that I came back from and GAVE AWAY MY CAMPING GEAR. Oh, the horror. The tent, the cooking gear, everything but the sleeping bags. Well, a funny thing happens when you have kids. You do things to make them happy. Sometimes you do things you absolutely swore you would never, ever do again. Like camping. Last October, we ventured forth with new gear, old gear and the idea that the weekend would be lots of fun. It wasn't exactly that: 95 degree temps, no shade to be found and two porta potties for about 150 people isn't exactly the way to get me to commit to camping again. However, there was enough fun between the sunburn and the heat headache that I agreed to another try. Even looked forward to it, imagine that! This time, the trip had enough interest for me. Fort Wilderness. It's Disney-what's not to like? Toilets, running water and showers-saves my sanitation ge

A camping we will go, a camping we will go, but first, the usual leg update...

Today is the day we head over to WDW for the long awaited scout camping trip. It was easy to get the boys off to school the past few days-any protests of going to school were met with "you want to go camping?" and voila, no more problems. :) One problem is that I am supposed to pack Ed's car up and run some errands, but I don't have the key! The leg is slowly improving, but you know hives, they don't just disappear. It'll probably be another week before they're gone. I'm torn between putting the next Unna boot on now (I was given the supplies) or waiting until the hives are gone. If I do that, then I might squeeze in some swimming this weekend. Tough choices. I have a call in to Nurse M, as the Lyrica scrip was written for me to take a pill in the morning and another at night, but I'm taking four pills a day now. As much as I knocked it at first, I have to say the Lyrica IS making a difference on the RSD. It's not as good as the Neuront

update on the leg

Hives. What a lovely thing to deal with. Let's see, the medical allergy list now looks like this: Penicillin Indocin Cortisone Hydrocortisone Percocet Iodine surgical adhesives benzyl alcohol (used in injectible medications) Neurontin Calamine lotion (contains iodine) hibbaclens Do you get the feeling that my medic alert bracelet is going to be pretty big? Yes, we have further proof that I*am* a freak. I'm looking on the bright side here, at least I didn't suffer through the Unna boot until the 14th, the original date it was coming off. I called Dr. J's office promptly Friday am and told them I was on my way. Nurse D fit me in as soon as she could-and apologized, saying that the hydrocortisone was her thought to prevent the itching that everyone complains about with the Unna boots. I go back on Monday and get to shell out another 20 dollar copay. Basically, they didn't do anything on Friday for the 20 dollar copay-they just looked at the leg to see where we

Warning: you will laugh so hard you won't breathe!

Possibly the funniest link I've been given in a long time... www.cavemanscrib.com Have tissues handy-you'll laugh so hard you WILL cry!

Unna Boot from Hell...

Image
Another 1am entry. This is getting so freakin old. I would love nothing more than to have a normal health issue with normal treatment and no complications. However, this is me we're talking about, so things will NEVER be that way. To whit: I had my follow up with Dr. J yesterday morning to have the Unna boot reapplied after he looked at the progress with my wounds. Unfortunately, he did not get to see them immediately after the first boot was taken off-they were dry and looked good. The six days in the boot made them noticeably shallower. Dr. K's nurse dressed the wounds in Xeroform, a moist dressing I'd been using. It made the wounds look 'soupy', as Dr. J so aptly described it. Fortunately, he listened to my description of what my ankle looked like upon removal of the boot. We discussed the visit with Dr. K and decided to go with another Unna Boot, with a change in two weeks. It was also decided that I'd be given dressings to reapply them myself (with