It’s been hard to have something to write about because I’m literally working, watching YouTube, and sleeping.
[+] Kiddo had an ADHD appointment last week. He is now 5’3″ and has doubled his weight since his g-tube surgery 4 years ago. Unfortunately, he is really constipated, so life is full of suppositories and Miralax.
[+] Next week is finals week, and I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s been a bit of an intense summer, and I’m kind of burned out. Interpersonal Communication is a tiring class to tutor, and I’ve got three sections of it on my tutoring roster. None of the instructors teach it the same way either. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m having to answer every question with the words “I don’t know. Email your instructor.”
[+] I randomly came upon this YouTube channel, and it looks like one that might be something for me to watch when I can’t sleep.
[+] We had the Veteran’s Club doing their Memorial Day barbecue on campus on Thursday, and those serving had never seen so many people on campus before. I had to explain that this was the first Memorial Day one in 3 years, and many of us had REALLY missed it the last two years. I mean, there was a Veteran’s Day one in 2019, but the Memorial Day one usually happens in the sunshine and it’s a lot more fun because people hang out and eat in the plaza. It was like we got a piece of “normal” back yesterday.
[+] I will have a massive dump of pictures from this week tomorrow, but here are a few important ones.
What I would like to do eventually is have this kind of thing posted weekly.
[+] A week after I posted my last update, I slipped on ice and ended up with scrapes, bruises, and a sprained wrist. It was absolutely irritating because I was having to do things effectively one-handed for a week and a half.
[+] I was hoping to have the socks done for my parish’s OPOP releasing friend (who is being released in two days), but the cuff ended up being too small on sock #2. I brought stuff with me to work on at the college today, but the hook in my bag broke. Argh.
[+] It’s finals week, so everything is quiet at work today. We are supposed to be transitioning to having close to a full slate of classes on campus, but we’ll see how that goes. We’re also trying to have offices open 5 days a week, so it will be interesting to see how the staff manage that.
[+] My latest music find has been The Longest Johns. There are many that I like, but I’ll share the three that are currently making me happy.
Daniel Shot #1. I realized around Christmas that I had completely forgotten to get Daniel his flu shot. I figured that I’d call and get him an ADHD appointment after Christmas and do it then… except that his pediatrician had no openings until around January 20th. So… I called in and was able to get a nurse appointment for yesterday. I was dreading it because we usually need extra help, and last time they put us in the baby room with a rocking chair. (Have you tried giving a shot to a kid in a rocking chair fighting back? The nurse got lucky and stuck him one of the time he rocked by.) Thankfully, we were in a regular exam room this time, so I was able to fold the top part of myself on him and hold his arm still.
Daniel Shot #2. They just lowered the age for COVID boosters to 12, so I had to make an appointment for Daniel to get his. The problem: almost nobody was scheduling for them, so I had to do some looking. Next obstacle: finding a time that worked with my work schedule. It ended up being this afternoon at my local Haggen, and we managed to do it with Daniel on my lap and me bear-hugging him.
Fatigue. After Daniel got his COVID booster and we got our grocery shopping done (because we had the 15-minute wait before leaving to make sure Daniel didn’t have any adverse symptoms and it was something to do during the wait), we got home and put groceries away. I then had to process the 70 lbs of Daniel supplies that had arrived in the past two days… which involves getting it UPSTAIRS to the guest room and Daniel’s closet. Next, I had to haul all the cardboard back downstairs and down to the area by the recyclers where we store it until the biweekly trash day when they take recycling. After I was done, came in, washed my hands, and headed back UPSTAIRS, I somehow had to muster up the energy to shower. I’ve since made/ate dinner, washed my prep and dinner dishes, and headed upstairs, and I’m in a dark room waiting for Daniel to go to sleep so I can feed him and then go to sleep myself. I’ve forgotten how exhausting it is to have to restrain my kid for shots, especially now that he is as tall as I am and my legs are almost too short to wrap around his!
An interesting Tuesday. I got almost no sleep on Monday night, so I thought Tuesday was going to be… interesting. I walked into the drop-in room to find the tables rearranged and my friend Kim (who is the closest friend I have in Washington) doing something Calculus-looking on the board for a bunch of young male students. (They turned out to be engineering students.) There are times when you sit down, shut up, and listen, and this was one of those occasions, especially as Kim explained that she had done all the table Tetris things during the first hour of her shift. I was pretty speechless anyway, so I just busied myself with putting the sign-up sheet for my church’s Lenten devotional book writers together as well as polishing the ask letter.
Last weekend. There were no Quick Takes last weekend due to my parents celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday. I posted a few of the pictures from their wedding album on Facebook, and a few people couldn’t believe that they weren’t pictures of me, especially as my hair is currently as long as Mom’s was when she got married. I had to send over a few pictures from MY wedding to prove that it wasn’t me in my parents’ wedding pictures!
Anyway, they didn’t want a big party (not just due to COVID but because it’s not what they’re into), so my evil twin’s family came up overnight for dinner and a nice breakfast. I had fun chasing my 3 1/2 year old nephew Braden around the house. 🙂
Betty White. I wanted to remind everyone that Monday is the Betty White challenge where people are encouraged to donate to their favorite animal shelter or rescue in her name. If you need a place to donate to, I highly recommend the Wildcat Sanctuary in Minnesota. I sponsor two of their hybrids Love and Riku, and they’re rescuing a serval named Bruno in Massachusetts who just had to have one of his hind legs amputated.
Saint of the Year. I did Jen Fulwiler’s Saint’s Name Generator and got St. Clotilde, who is the patron saint of adopted children, brides, disappointing children, exiles, parenthood, parents of large families, queens and widows.
I first encountered Clotilde in my Medieval Europe class in college, and the history nerd in me is happy that I got her.
Christmas. My brother and his family were up here for Christmas, so that was fun. His son Braden is cute, and they introduced us to the “Into the Spider-Verse” movie.
Mental health. I had a breakdown by myself for 5 hours on Christmas morning. I had somehow missed my meds on Christmas Eve, so that didn’t help, but I somehow hit a grief well of grief for Grandpa. I was trying to finish Mom’s socks, and it was taken a bit longer due to not being able to read the pattern because I was crying so hard. I was trying to get back to sleep when Daniel kicked off around 5, and I had to keep him silent while people slept. I had taken some Ativan, but that was doing nothing for me. It was a brutal night.
Things hit me again a few days later, and it thankfully gave me something to talk about with my therapist. We’re working through it, but there’s a lot to unpack.
New Year’s Eve. I celebrated New Year’s Eve in my jammies putting my new bullet journal together. I went against my own rules at midnight and had an inch of Prosecco, which was underwhelming. (One of the reasons I don’t drink is that I really don’t like wine or beer.) I then went on the Best Buy website and browsed for a new laptop.
Laptop is here!!!! I ordered the laptop yesterday and opted to pay the extra $6 to get it today. Well, I was downstairs last night putting Daniel’s pills in the china cabinet, and the delivery truck was in the driveway. Mom got a picture of me petting it.
[+] The coughing is mostly down, but now I’ve got some kind of stomach crud. Not winning here…
[+] Tim Foust of Home Free has a new video out for a do-wop album he is putting out. It’s worth watching, especially
[+] I haven’t touched my bullet journal since September, so I’m just restarting 2022 with a new one. There’s no way that I can fit six months into what is left of my old one. I found one I liked at Notebook Therapy, and I will probably put it together once I get my Christmas crocheting done.
I haven’t posted since Kelly’s last Quick Takes because I’ve been busy. What have I been doing, pray tell? Well…
[+] I put my church’s Advent devotional book together. It was called “Savior of the Nations, Come” and I asked people in the parish what had been saving them since March 2020. Their answers make up the devotional book. I even made a playlist of songs that had been saving me since March 2020, and I’m sharing it below if you need some tunes.
[+] I’ve been working intermittently. Two problem students got taken off of my tutoring roster, so I was down to just a handful of students and much less than the 19 hours I had on paper. A few of them just needed me to correct papers for them, so that further cut my hours down. I’ve been having sinus and asthma crud, so being able to go back to bed after getting Daniel off to school for a nap is not a bad thing.
[+] I’ve been trying to socialize my spooky paws. Doc finally moved out of the guest room two weekends ago and set up housekeeping under my parents’ king-sized bed. This was fine until it came time for Mr. Sissy Stripes to go to the vet. It took a herculean effort on the part of Mom and me to get him out, and we only ended up getting him into his cage because he fled to the bathroom which is a more confined space. (We figured out that getting in his cage is a sign that he is going to a new shelter, so no wonder he hates it!)
Here’s my striped prince at the vet. Doesn’t he have beautiful stripes? Aren’t his eyes a lovely green color?
At the vet, he eventually stopped fighting us and let me hold him. (The room had a ton of Feliway in it.) His tech and vet wrapped him in that towel (which was sprayed down with Feliway) to take him elsewhere for shots and bloodwork. They returned him with him looking like the happiest cat in the world. He had four women loving on him and telling him how gorgeous he was for 40 minutes, so his little kitty ego got scratched. The good news is that he’s in amazing health, but the bad news is that he tested strongly positive for FIV on the antigen test. Mom is paying for the PCR test, but it’s probably going to be a definite FIV diagnosis. It means that we need to keep eyes on him and make sure he isn’t getting any viruses or infections. Minion will be tested for it the next time he is at the vet, but we’re not super worried because it’s usually spread by saliva and bite wounds. (We’re sad, but FIV isn’t a death sentence.)
When we got home, it was like Doc realized he was home and not in a new shelter. He let us hold and cuddle him… and then disappeared under my parents’ bed. I found him under my bed later that day and did get pets, but I made the mistake of trying to take him out so he could have my window… and I’m in deep trouble for that still.
[+] I’m working on Christmas presents… from last Christmas. I’ve been working on Mom’s socks from last year and I had to restart sock #1 on Friday during therapy. Thankfully, this iteration (#4 or #5) has been going OK.
