Monday, May 31, 2004

Yesterday, we had friends over and the women folk cooked in the kitchen and brought out drinks while the men worked on the chicken coop remodel. With nearly 50 chickens, we need a bigger coop than the one that the 22 chickens are in, so we're converting the metal three-sided shed to a four-sided shed with a door that the chickens can spread out in. Right now, we've got everyone mushed together and the only way they're not beating the crap out of each other is that the big girls go out and take dirt baths during the day, while the babies, who we just raised and who just got their feathers, linger in the coop, too chicken to go outside with the big girls.

I've got the half dozen babies in the livingroom and I'm training Tweetie to let me pick him up and pet him without him screeching his little chicken alarm system while I do it. He usually gets a good whiff of me and gets warm in my hands and falls to sleep while I pet him with my pinkie. I guess I make a good momma chicken.

Once we get the girls transferred to their new digs, we're keeping out about a half dozen badly defeathered birds and dosing them up on antibiotics because they look like shit and we don't know why. Most of the birds look okay, but about 5-6 look like shit, so we're going to separate them and let them heal and regrow their feathers. We don't know if they're sick or not, but a couple have really bright red chicken butts, so we think they may be sick.

Tomorrow, I also start putting in my garden. Mike tilled the garden for me today, so tomorrow I slather up in spf45, put on my straw hat, and jeans, and garden. That's how skin cancer candidates garden at 5000 ft. It makes me feel old and decrepid, I tell ya.

Wait! I am old and decrepid -- too late.



Thursday, May 27, 2004

I am sleeping better these days -- almost too much. I don't know if that's because my asthma is better and my thyroid is still kicking my ass or what. I called my doctor yesterday and asked if I could get a thyroid test sooner than three weeks out because I'm still feeling pretty lousy -- and that was after two weeks of feeling terrific. It sucks when at 4PM, you're just ready to take a nap. I've had about 5 weeks of medication, so it wasn't too unreasonable or anything. He said sure, so this morning, I got up at the asscrack of dawn (anything before 7AM is the buttcrack of Eos in my world) and drove to the lab to get blood drawn. I played solitaire for about 45 minutes before I finally got seen.

My mom is reminding me why I am doing the right thing with my asthma -- she got a chest x-ray and it was so bad that she actually has pockets of trapped air in her lungs because the passage ways are so swollen. She's JUST now getting on inhaled steroids -- which I've been begging her to do for years. She and my dad visited my brother and apparently, my brother told her "people DIE" from asthma and suggested she was well on her way. Especially, last year, she coughed so hard she broke the cartilage between her ribs and had a miserable summer. I've been telling her for YEARS. If I had been there, I would have simply driven there, picked her up and driven her to Hanover -- which is the nearest good hospital in the area.

God, I hope when I'm old, I don't do stupid stubborn things like refuse to go to the doctor when I clearly need to go. What's worse is that when they are in Florida in the winter, she has no doctor there to see. Find one, dammit.

I told her yesterday that I was worried she was going to be one of those little old ladies in the supermarket, carrying her oxygen tank in tow and that I didn't want that for her. She admitted that she doesn't either.

I guess on the plus side, it's good she finally did something, but it KILLS me that it took that stubborn broad that long.




I'm getting used to the rhythm of being a stay-at-home mom with Genny and so is she. She was brutally difficult for a week or so, and now, she's not. She tells me when she's going outside. She lets me know where she's playing. We get to read together, draw together, play computer together, and sometimes, we watch Sesame Street together, though I usually take my shower and dress for at least half of it and do dishes in the kitchen, if at all possible. I don't mind the Count, Big Bird, Grover, or Oscar, though Oscar's wormy friend is on my "feed the birds" list. However, the sound of Elmo's voice simply makes me want to rip all my hair out in clumps, after which I dream of shoving my tufted fist down his red furry throat to shut his ass up.

He's just not cute, has NEVER been cute, and will never cease to get on my everliving nerves. Of course, because I loathe Elmo, Genny adores him. What's worse is that she also likes Barney. She'll probably like rap, too.

I saw a Weird Al video last night that showed Barney getting killed and I could simply not restrain my enthusiasm for his demise. On the BBS boards, there used to be a die.barney.die newsgroup. I'm sure it was not started by adolescent boys/men, but rather by annoyed and frustrated mothers of toddlers.

Die. Annoying Stupid Toddler Creature. Die.


Thursday, May 20, 2004

I'm back to not sleeping again. I hate to take Ambien because Genny's not sleeping either and I cannot unglue myself from the bed after I've taken an Ambien no matter how much Mike cusses at me at 2AM.

I think it's because I'm still sorting over the IEP meeting from Tuesday in my head.

I told my kids' group:


It was a 2 hour IEP meeting -- a marathon of IEP-ness. Part of it was that there was a lot of material to cover -- lots of test results to report on and lots of implications to consider. Part of it was hashing out all the details, so that we met his needs, documented what they were doing or going to do, etc., which I am still not clear we did as well as we could have. The occupational therapist didn't have all the stuff she needed from Mike and I, so she had less time than she would have liked to review things, so her stuff was lacking. I want to call her and talk to her a little bit and get her private views.

I am not sure if I'm totally happy with the results. I need some time to process everything and then I will probably have more to say about it. For now, I will say that it was generally positive, that it resembled teamwork, and the principal, who is normally an idiotic b___h, was strangely silent with the District Representative and my advocate from the law center present. *evil grin*

I brought homemade (to die for) triple chocolate chip cookies with me, napkins, cups, and milk because I knew it would be long. There were about 15 people there beyond Mike, me and the advocate.

I need to sleep on it, as they say. I need to then sit down and explain the finished product to Russell and get his feedback on it. Then I need to rethink it based on that feedback.

For now, I will say tentatively that it went pretty well.


Okay, I still haven't gotten the actual document back. I realized they didn't do the FBA I requested either. Grrf.

Well, my wrist is hurting, so I'm going to bed.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

I haven't hardly been doing anything -- and now, I'm getting a cold. It's coming on so fast that I am surprised. I'm way overdue for being royally ill, since the grodie gorilla chest bronchitis at Christmas. I'm due for my spring cold, so I guess it's here.

Joy.

I'm feeling very eeyore-esque about the whole thing.

And today is Wednesday and I'm Wednesday's child.

A cold just feels like icing on the cake of health disaster that my life's been lately.


At least I'm mostly over my first period since Genny was born, which oddly enough I thought would be perfectly awful, and with a few evening primrose pills and some advil was totally tolerable. The painful boobs I could have done without, but wow, how weird it was to have my own hormones!

Hey, I gotta take my good stuff where I can.




Today, God, please help me discover my health.

Amen.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Okay, on my wrist, I actually bent it so far back with weight that the ligament plicked a tiny spicule of bone off the end of the ulna of my right wrist. I am not in a cast, but a wrist restraint, but unable to do any handwriting that extends beyond feebly signing my name.

Thus, I have two incompletes -- the death knell of my grad assistantship, unfortunately.

Still tired from hypothyroidism, asthma and life in general.

Monday, May 03, 2004

I am typing this one-handed because I cracked a bone in my wrist. Apparently, I'm taking incompletes in both classes.

It is so not my month! Someone pointed out that at least it's not still winter.