Interview

So, I've heard back about one of the 3 jobs I applied for. I have an interview on Thursday at UVRMC. It's a secretary position on the weekends... which would work VERY well with our schedules! :o)

Strep

So... I hate being sick. Seriously.. it makes me SO MAD!! I also hate going to the Dr. and avoid it at all costs. So Tuesday night I started to feel some swelling, tenderness in the glands at the back of my throat. I was annoyed but hoped it was allergies with Utah deciding to change seasons every other day. I got in the shower to wash green streaks out of my hair.. (THANKS JESS) and then took each of my little guys and washed out their green faux hawks! When i got out of the shower this overwhelming chaos hit my head like a ton of bricks. I laid down and couldn't move. My head was throbbing... I KNEW I had a fever. I asked D for some Ibuprofen and took some. I seriously didn't even brush my hair after I got out of the shower. I just crawled in my bed and contemplated my nearing death. I KNEW I had strep. It always hits me like this. So DEBILITATING.

So Wednesday morning Damon comes in my room. I tell him I'm sick.. I can't... he gets Colton out of bed and plays with the boys until he has to go to school. I asked him to make sure the baby gate was up so Colton couldn't fall down the stairs. I'm laying in my bed, thinking about sending out an SOS via text message but not able to complete thoughts when the phone rings 4 times. Dominic comes in my room and tells me Justin is coming. (I asked Justin about the conversation, he says Dominic answered the phone and when Justin asked to talk to me, Dom told him I was sick and in my bed.) So a few minutes later in walk two of my brothers. They were stopping in to get golf clubs that D said they could borrow. Justin comes in my room and I tell him, I'm dieing. I can't get up. I need help. Charlie gets me some ibuprofen, while Justin goes around changing Colton, feeding him AND getting a hold of his wife, Jessica. He decides to stay with me and take care of the boys until she can get here.

So Jessica gets here, picks up my house, brings me some liquid to drink, reminds me to call the Dr. Offers to go get me anything I might need AND spends 3 hours or so at my house and then took my little guys to her house so I could go to the Dr. (she had to be home when HER OWN kids got home from school). At this point, I've taken Tylenol and Ibuprofen and I can at least MOVE. My fever is gone... and I set my alarm so I'll wake up for my appointment.

So after a few minutes and a rapid strep test, my doc tells me that.... I HAVE STREP!! Seriously, I love my Dr. but it is so annoying to pay money to have him tell me what I already know! So.. I'm taking Amoxicillin and tylenol and ibuprofen so I can continue to sort of function. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be feeling tons better. For now, we are out of baby food and Darin will have to go to the store this evening.

So... I want to pour out my gratitude for a minute. I don't know what I would have done yesterday if my brother's and Jessica hadn't been so willing to help me! THANK YOU!!!! I love having my family close for SO many reasons, but yesterday reminded me of just how blessed we are to have each other.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!! THANKS FOR RESCUING ME!!

Jobs

So for now, it seems that Darin has work. He will only be working 32 hours a week though... but WOW we are grateful he has work.

Today I applied for a few jobs. Of course I am applying at the hospital because health care is just sort of WHO I AM. :o) We'll see if anything happens with this. I would love to do medical transcription for the hospital! I love data entry and would be very excited to be able to work from home. (And thanks to being addicteed to AOL as a 14 year old... I type 80+ words per minute!) There are also a couple of secretary type jobs I've applied for that have needs on the weekends... which would be perfect for us! I'll keep people posted. My guess is that in this economy, jobs like these will have lots of OVERQUALIFIED applicants. Hmm... I guess whatever will be will be! :o)

Helpless

So the ONLY part about being a stay at home mom that is really hard is not contributing financially. Here we are in the midst of this recession that has mostly effected the trades in our state and our only source of income is IN THE TRADES!! This week Darin has only had enough work for about half of his normal 40 hour work week. Next week... we don't even know if he'll have work. Because we live off only his income, unemployment would not even come CLOSE to supporting us (and seriously, we don't need hand outs from the stupid government! There is enough people EXPECTING it in this country. We like being self-sufficient.) and THERE IS NO WORK TO BE FOUND!! It's not like he could go out and get a job with a different company which means... he could go work at wal-mart or something for less than half of what he makes. Honestly, with what jobs are available, we couldn't even make his income if BOTH OF US were working FULL TIME!!! But it might come to that. Working opposite shifts just to make ends meet. It seriously BREAKS MY HEART!!! We might just both end up working at the hospital, meanwhile I will be missing my children and my husband.

It's hard times and I know we need to just do what needs to be done to live. It's so frustrating that Darin has dedicated 4 years of school and 7 years of work to a career that is obsolete. So NOW WHAT? I just don't even want to think about what the future holds, but I also can't just not worry about it because it could be staring us in the face TOMORROW!! And then what?

Chocolate cookies! YUM!

We were at my mom's yesterday and she had these 100 calorie packs of cookies. I figured it couldnt' kill him right? So maybe the shirt is doomed... but LOVE these pics!

Catch up!

So I have a couple videos I wanted to post for your enjoyment. The first is Jaydin doing a back handspring. I recorded when they were using the down slope... but he does do it on the flat surface as well....

The next one is just Dom and his love for Mama Mia! Seriously cracks me up!!

And just one more...

Otherwise.. life is life. Some days are good. Some days I struggle. I've been disappointed with my weight loss this month but can't really sweat it too much since I've lost 19 lbs in 6 and a half weeks! Darin is still working. (This is a big deal in this economy where so many guys in the trades are out of work.) My kids are healthy (finally) and happy. All in all, I have no real complaints. Tomorrow is a whole nother day so who knows what it will bring!

Are you freakin' kidding me?

Hmm... I think I should change the title of my BLOG to the title of this post! It's how I feel lately about pretty much everything. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm a pretty positive person but.... I do have a severe intolerance to stupidity, mediocrity and ignorance and unfortunately... the world is full of all of these things! So lately... I've been having a severe allergic reaction to alot of things around me which results in me proclaiming... "ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? NO SERIOUSLY???"

Apparently, my dad (who is 54 years old) has been complaining of chest pain for over a week. My mom has been way busy and hasn't had time to really see how much he's hurting and my dad is frankly SICK OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM!! The first time he finally went to the hospital for chest pain he had a quin bypass, then 3 months later he has a HEART ATTACK and ends up with 3 stents. In the first instance he did not have an actual heart attack but in the second he did, which resulted in cardiac tissue damage. The heart attack was caused BY 3 of the bypasses FAILING so they went in and stented the ORIGINAL arteries. (MY translation??? HE DIDN'T NEED THE BYPASS!!! THEY SHOULD HAVE STENTED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!) I mean SERIOUSLY, why go to EXTREME measures like... I don't know... open heart surgery... without at least attempting something much less invasive like angioplasty and stent placement? UGH!!! Okay so a little while later he had more chest pain which ended up with a diagnosis of reflux. After that he decided he is just suffering from paranoia so he doesn't want to go to the hospital.

He also COMPLETELY changed his eating habits. He eats almost NO saturated fat and exercises more than I do which is saying A LOT!! (I'm at the gym 6 days a week!)

So yesterday I'm at my mom's and my dad is talking like he thinks he is going to die soon. He's complaining of chest pain still and my mom, is asking him if he needs to go to the hospital. I'm like YES!!! Take him!!! So he takes a nitro pill and they take him to the hospital where the EKG and bloodwork come back normal. This time though, they are able to rule out reflux and his cardiologist is NOT comfortable with assuming everything is okay and insists on doing "more tests". HOORAY!!! GO DR. FRIESNICHT!! So he does ANOTHER angio and finds.... (drum roll....) a STENT HAS COLLAPSED!! Are you freakin' kidding me? What the H. E. double hockey sticks is up with that? So they re-stented his right coronary artery and now he is just hanging out in the hospital. Hopefully he will be home later today.

I finally googled stent info and found that stents are little mesh wire tube like things that are inserted via a small catheter that gains access into the heart from the femoral artery. (I already knew this but I didn't know what MATERIAL the stent was made of.) I can't for the life of me figure out how this tube could collapse. I can't find any information on the likelihood of that happening.

It's so hard to think that my dad's heart would fail him again EVEN when he is working so hard to be good to it. The likelihood of the bypass failing was VERY low and still 3 of the bypasses collapsed. I'm sure the likelihood of the stent collapsing was equally as small and STILL it happened. The likelihood of him dieing at a ripe old age from being old is VERY SMALL... but hey... my dad does everything else different from the norm... so here's to AT LEAST 30 more years of having my dad around. I LOVE MY DAD!!!

UPDATE: My dad just called and told me his Dr. said the collapse was caused by a build up of scar tissue around the stent.... go figure!