Update - Wife

Since I have a couple of weeks off (not Covid related but I'll get to it), I figured I could take some time to throw some updates here.

Cheri

An actual recent photo - we don't take very many.

She's doing okay, I guess. With all her issues it's hard to tell. She wanted to go the chiropractor yesterday but they were closed and the guy she likes has Tuesday off so she has to wait until Wednesday.

She has finally taken some advice from me. I've been telling her for years that she needs to get a hobby. Her old "hobby" was sitting on her phone, playing games. She wasn't so bad that she ignored everything to play, just that it was all she did. It would annoy me that she would play while she was eating. She'd say something about me keeping my stats, or blogging about my cards. I would just say at least I feel like I'm being productive on my down time.

It was tough for her to find something because there is all kinds of things she would like to do, but her body won't permit it. She likes doing things with her hands but her hands say no. She used to do woodworking and staining and big projects like that. She really enjoyed the creativity of it but like I said, her body just won't let her do that. She googled hobbies and went down the list and finally settled on cross stitching.

I don't know that she absolutely enjoys it, but she feels productive and she is creating things which I know she loves. She dove right in on it and picked a pretty detailed picture for her first one. Made lots of mistakes that frustrated her but she also knows that she's still trying to figure out the best way for her to complete it. She finished it (it looked really good) but I can't show it as it is a Christmas gift and I'm not sure if that person would see it here or not. She's working on another one now for her mom for Christmas. I can show that one when she's done because her mom can barely figure out the internet.

She's now getting injections in her neck and back to help alleviate pain. She's done the neck one a few times and they have really helped with it and her shoulders. She has a bulging disc in her spine that they really can't do anything with so this gives her some less painful days. I want to say it'll last a few months. She just got some in her lower back a couple of weeks ago (I think). I don't think they were as helpful but any help is good at this point. We're waiting to see how long until she needs another one of those. If she decides to do them back there again.

All in all, she's better than she has been in awhile. She has actually gotten off a lot of her meds and is more reliant on herbs and natural supplements and they have helped her quite a bit. She has reduced how much insulin she has to take for her diabetes, her goal is to get off of it all together. Her A1C has gone way down compared to where it was. Even her doctor has told her to keep doing what she's doing. She's actually more active around the house and has even taken the dog for an occasional walk when the dog guilt trips her into it (and she complains about my guilt trips.)

So while she still has all kinds of medical issues, she is doing better.

I was going to do one post with updates on everyone but this one is now over 600 words so I'm going to cut if off after Cheri and come back tomorrow and tell you why I have a couple of weeks off work (again, not Covid related.) I already know that update will be a fairly decent sized post so maybe another post with the kids. We'll see. I have the time, just have to take the time to do it.

Hopefully see you again soon.

Randomness

Tuesday already?  It’s been a slow week already and they didn’t waste anytime on posting Saturday this weekend so it’ll be a 6 day week.  There’s still rumors going around about them still posting Sunday.  Considering once they post Saturday, production drops each day.  I’d say we will work it.  Especially with the 3 day weekend next week.

Samantha’s teacher is starting to piss me off.  I got a phone call from him on Friday just before he left the school.  I was in the shower so he left a voicemail saying that he needed to talk to me about summer options for Samantha.  So I’m assuming that once again, Samantha is going to be taking another session of summer school.  But that’s not the part that pisses me off.  Well, it does, but not at her teacher.  He told me to call him back and leave a voicemail, or email him and let him know when the best time for him to call me back was.  So I emailed him, told him anytime after 3:30, or he could text the number or he could email me back and I’ll stop by after work and talk to him face to face.

It’s now been 2 days since he’s gone back to school and I still haven’t heard anything from him.  Don’t freaking call me and want me to return the call if your not going to respond.  Now here I am, wondering if my daughter is going to have to miss Girl Scouts camp again.  Wondering if I need to punish her for lack of effort.  Wondering if she’s just not as smart as I think she is.  Wondering if she has a learning disability.  Wondering if she’s going to grow up to be a serial killer.

Ok, maybe not that bad, but you get the point.  I’d rather know the verdict on whether she needs to go or not.  Plus I want to talk to him to find out if she’s just not getting it, or she being a chatty Cathy and not paying enough attention.  Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that about her.

Wife and I sat down to watch “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” tonight and I pulled the DVD out of the Netflix envelope and thought WTF?

I went ahead and stuck it in the DVD player even though it was a burned copy.  I figured I could hopefully at least still watch the movie.  But I sat down at my laptop and loaded up the Netflix site and went to report the issue.  I know my luck and if I sent this back, I’ll have the freaking FBI at my doorstep with a warrant because they’ll think I burned a copy.  We’ve all read the warnings.  There wasn’t really an option to report this kind of problem so I found their support 24 hour phone number and called it.

I get the lady on the line and tell her “I received the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the mail and it’s a burned copy.”

She started laughing and said “I don’t know why the manufacturer did that”

Amongst our conversation, she told me that a bunch of people have called in about it.  She said they had to Google it because they don’t ever see the DVD’s either.

I guess now that I look at the DVD closer, it has a rating on it, that should have given it away.  I felt like a dumb ass but at least she was cool about it.  We were both laughing the whole time.

I’d like to get back into reading books again, which means I need to cut down some of the blogs I read.  So I’m going to be deleting some out of my Google Reader sometime this week.  I follow a few MS ones where the patients are really bad off.  I’m not going to follow those anymore because one, I’m not dealing with someone who is that bad off yet (and hopefully never will be).  Two. it’s depressing to know that my wife may end up like them in the future.  Most of those that I’m deleting have the MS where the symptoms are there most of the time, where my wife has the remitting kind where the symptoms come for a few days then goes away.

So it’s not that I don’t appreciate these bloggers and what they are going through.  If I had the time, I would keep reading them.  But I have to delete some and those are the ones that will lose out.

Also some of the mommy blogs will go.  Mainly the ones that deal with their autistic kids.  Again, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate what they are going through, but it doesn’t help me any.  So I’ll be weeding some out throughout the week.  I’m averaging about 2 days behind as it is now so I need to get those down so I can enjoy books again.  Kim Harrison’s latest “The Hollows” book is out now and it’s on top of the list.  I need to finish the Harry Dresden series too.  Plus I’ve probably gotten about 20 free books on my Kindle that I plan on getting to as well.

I know this is a long post, but I want to leave you with one more thing before I go.  My daughter just got done in the shower and I sat outside the bathroom door for about 5 minutes waiting for her to come out.  I scratched at the door like I was the cat wanting in, she opened it, didn’t see the cat, then shut it again.  So I kept scratching but she didn’t come out.  So I just sat in wait.  Here’s what happened.

Yes, I’m rocking my PJ’s with a hoodie.  That’s how I roll.  My son opened his door and said “Good scare, daddy”

Genetic Disaster

For those that don’t know, my wife has MS.  What most people don’t know about MS is it comes and goes, or at least the symptoms do.  She can go a long time without feeling anything and then BAM! it knocks her on her ass.  But what seems to be more of an issue, is my wife can’t just sit her ass down and take it easy until the symptoms pass.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she doesn’t let the MS get the best of her.  And she doesn’t let it stop her.  But on the other hand, I see how much pain she’s in when she does decide to take it easy.  Of course, for her, taking it easy is only doing the laundry and straightening up instead of everybody else’s taking it easy of sitting on their ass and doing nothing.  I respect her for pushing it and giving the disease a big “FU” but I hate seeing her in pain.

If you don’t know what MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is, the best way I’ve had it described to me is that she has lesions on her brain, multiple, if I remember correctly 15 of them.  And for the most part, they are just there.  But what they do is block her brain from sending signals to the rest of her body.  For instance, when she takes a shower, the lesions block the signal to the rest of her body to cool down.  She comes out of the shower and starts to sweat where as the rest of us start to cool down.  That is a daily symptom that she deals with.  Actually take the time to think about that, think about how warm your body is when you get out of that hot shower.  Now think about staying that hot, while your trying to get dressed or doing your hair.  There’s days where she gets out of the shower, turns on the fan and lays in bed just to cool down.  So you can understand why she hates to take showers.

Her “flare up” that she is dealing with now is her legs.  They are just weak.  She explains it as her legs feel like the day after she just worked out for the first time.  Or for me that would be the way I felt a few months ago after my brother talked me into playing basketball again.  My legs were dead for the next week.  But at least I did it to myself.  She has no choice.  Yesterday she went shopping with her sister.  I love when she does things with her sisters because she has such a good time and for 20 years, she hardly saw them so she loves spending time with them and really enjoys seeing her niece’s and nephew’s.  But all the time away from just sitting and relaxing in her recliner has kicked her ass.  I don’t want her not to go because it’s a good time and she gets away from home for a day, but on the other hand, I don’t want her to be in more pain.

Of course, her being in pain is relative.  She’s always in pain.  Just because the MS flare’s up doesn’t mean she isn’t in pain all the time.  Along with the MS, she has fibromyalgia, hashimoto’s disease, diabete’s and arthritis in her lower spine.  I’ve linked all those to the symptoms of each disease.  Every one of those has fatigue listed.  Fibromyalgia is essentially pain everywhere.  There is no cure, there is only pain management.  So she is on a wide range of drugs to help with the pain.  Which all have their side effects, that she takes more drugs for.  So as you can see, it is a vicious circle.

So to break it all down, as her daughter calls her, she’s a genetic disaster.  But with all these issues, she still gets my kids up and to and from school, takes care of the housework and has supper on the table most days.  She is a marvel and is amazing.  She takes care of everyone through all of it.  Sure she has her issues, she can be moody and short.  But knowing all she does for everyone, I look past it.  I just wish the kids could see all she does for them and understand why she gets that way.  That includes her 16 year old who takes advantage of her on a daily basis.

I guess I kind of went off of what I was originally planning on talking about.  Hopefully you got something out of this.  I guess by posting this, when I bitch about her mood’s, you all can look down on me for it instead of her.

I know I promised some humor.  But I usually like to post 5 toons or pics and I only have 4.  I will look for another one today and maybe post them tomorrow.