Not a Day Goes By...

Not a single day goes by in which I don't think about having cancer. You'd think that by now, almost two and a half years after my diagnosis, it would be taking a back seat in my life, but it's not. Just when I think I can get through a day, it rears its ugly head in one form or another. I try not to talk about it with my friends and family all the time, but sometimes I just can't help it. Hopefully if they get tired of hearing about it, they'll just tell me to "get over it!"

Believe me, I've tried to get over it, but it's not that simple.

When I turned the calendar over to December, there it was, staring me in the face. FOUR appointments (2 procedures and 2 doctor visits) coming up this month. All of them were set up by the different doctors' offices and I was sent a notice as to when they were. I spent almost an entire lunch period one day making calls, trying to get these things rescheduled for either after school or during break. Unfortunately, I was able to get 2 out of the 4 rescheduled, but the other 2 have to be during school hours.

The "fun" starts tomorrow. I have a CT scan scheduled for 4:00 pm. It was originally scheduled for today at 1:00 pm. I'm just so excited about this. Because I have a reaction to whatever it is they inject during the procedure, I have to take pills beforehand. I have EIGHT pills to take at 4:00 AM! I have 8 more pills to take at 2:00 pm. Of course I also need to start drinking the yummy contrast in the early afternoon too. Oh yes, and the highlight will be trying to get an IV started on my deep, roaming, tiny (with poor blood return) veins. I wonder how big my bruise will be THIS time.

Oh yeah, I'm really excited about this. And I just hope and pray that nothing shows up.

(I promise...happier posts are coming soon.)

Talk About UNGRATEFUL People

Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that my last few posts have been a little "less than upbeat" and by golly, I'm going to continue on in the same fashion!

Earlier today, when I was listening to some children tell me what they thought a book we're about to start will be about, I went through that thing when your mind picks up on something and then it makes you think of something else, then that thought brings something else to mind, and you think about that, and then....well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, all these thoughts went back to a time when I taught at a different school, probably around the 1994-1995 time range. I wish I could remember exactly when, but sometimes the mind just doesn't want to cooperate, if you know what I mean.

One of the teachers was about to get married. Attending the wedding and/or reception was pretty much a necessity. Since I had to work with this woman, and she was in a position to make at least part of my day difficult, I knew that I better come up with a nice gift and show up, even though it was a summer wedding. Off I went to a local store that had a registry service and checked to see if she had registered there.

YES!! This was going to be easier than I thought! Until I looked at the things she'd registered for. Oh man, everything was so expensive. There had been just a few things that were reasonably priced, but they had already been purchased. At least 90% of the things on her list were high dollar items. I ended up getting her something that she wanted (but I didn't care for at all, but that doesn't even enter into the equation because it was a gift!) , and even had it gift wrapped while I was there. Of course I had spent WAY more than what I had planned on spending.

As it turned out, we had THREE things going on that hot summer Saturday, and the wedding/reception was the middle event. We ended up not making it to the wedding, but attended the reception. That was fine with me, because I wasn't too happy about going anyway, so cutting my time being involved was going to work out great. There were a BUNCH of people at the reception, and many gifts there too. I added mine to the pile, and off we went to enjoy ourselves. Yeah, right.

She and her husband and their families were friends with people that I didn't know, or didn't know well. We didn't sit with other people from the school, because they were all at some tables that had no empty seats, so we were sitting by ourselves until some other people came in that had no where else to sit. After "playing nice" for two hours or so, we'd definitely had ENOUGH, so we decided to leave. Besides, we had another much more casual event to attend, and needed to go home and change clothes. However, before leaving, I made sure to go up and talk to the bride, so there would be NO doubt in her mind that I was there.

About 5 weeks went by, and I was notified that I was being transferred to another school in the district. That was fine with me. Although I really liked the principal at that school, I wasn't too crazy about most of the staff members there. There were a couple that I really liked, and stayed in contact with after I left, but most of them I didn't miss in the least.

I knew that the bride and groom were going on a long honeymoon, so I didn't think too much about not getting a thank you note in that first month after the wedding. Then I was transferred, then school started, then things started to get crazy as usual. In October I had lunch with one of the teachers that I was close to from that school. I asked if she'd gotten a thank you note from the "bride" teacher and she said that she did. I told her that I didn't.

In December we had lunch again and she asked me if I'd ever gotten a thank you note. I told her I hadn't.

HOW UNGRATEFUL CAN YOU BE??????

I bought a gift that was more expensive than I wanted it to be.

Then I felt forced to go to a wedding reception that I didn't want to go to. (Which included wearing HOSE and a DRESS and HEELS and doing the HAIR thing, the MAKEUP thing, and the JEWELRY thing.)

Then she REFUSED to acknowledge the freaking gift that I bought for her.

She probably didn't even realize that she was not only making herself look bad, but also made her parents look bad. Surely she was raised better than that. HOW RUDE.

Did she decide that since she wouldn't need to see me again, she didn't need to waste her time, and postage on sending me a thank you note??

I don't know, but I still think it was LOUSY of her to do.

Am I really that old fashioned, thinking that wedding gifts (along with other major events) should be acknowledged with a thank you note????

Just how long does it take to write out a simple note???

What's the deal with the lack of manners these days?

Email Issues

Since I had no school on Friday, I decided it was time to wrap up the holiday shopping and try to figure out what was wrong with my email account with my ISP. We have Time Warner as our ISP, and our email is roadrunner.com.

I had been having trouble getting into our account because our password wouldn't work. We had it set so that the password wasn't needed, but it kept coming up. I put it in, but nothing worked. I called Time Warner. Gotta love this big corporations that are SO customer friendly.

"Your wait will be between 54 minutes and an hour and 20 minutes."

And if you think I'm going to sit here on "hold" all that time, you've got another thing coming!

Then they said that I could give a call back number and they would call me when I was next in line, so I did, and....IT WORKED!

How's that for a shock!?!?

Well they were able to give me a new password, then I had to go back in and change it to my original password, so that Ted wouldn't forget it. Okay, that was great....worked out just fine.

I continued to shop online, and checked my email periodically, but never received any. Hmmm, how weird is that? First of all, not to get any email, and secondly, not to even get an email "receipt" from the orders I was placing.

And I hadn't received a single email for over 48 hours...interesting.

So I called Time Warner. Again. And left a call back number. Again. And they called me back. Again.

The first woman really did try to help me. She even had some guy come over to try. She said that there wasn't any new email there. I told her that there should be. She decided that this was beyond their realm of expertise and was going to transfer my call to "Tier 2" whatever that meant.

I was connected with a pretty email knowledgeable guy who was finally able to help me. This is what he told me to do:

(Didn't think you were going to get an email lesson today, did you? hahaha)

He had me go in through webmail on roadrunner.com's website.

Then he had me click on "Settings" and then click on "Preferences."

He asked me what was in the box next to "From Name" and I told him...it was some goofy name that I didn't know of.

He had me delete that name and leave it blank.

Then he had me click "ok" and then click on "Signature" and wow, did I have a shock!

In the box for "Signature" was some long name/address thing that started off with "Toyota" and ended with "U.K."

He had me delete all that.

Then I had to click "ok" and then click on "Forwarding" and there was another shock!

There was an email address in there that said something about investing. Apparently ALL the email I was SUPPOSED to be getting was being forwarded to that email address!

This is when I got really concerned because I'd been ordering all this stuff and using credit cards and I wasn't sure if the credit card numbers would show up on the receipts that would have been emailed to me.

The T.W. guy told me to check my credit card accounts online and I've been doing that since this happened, but nothing out of the ordinary has shown up. Yet.

The guy said that our email account had been hacked into! I was LIVID! I started asking questions then. Apparently this happens pretty often. He told me to continue to watch the email account and check on it in the "Settings" occasionally.

He was extremely helpful, and that was a shock in and of itself.

Since Friday evening, I've checked it 9 times, and it was hacked into again 3 or 4 times. As of right now, it's been almost 24 hours since they've done anymore "hacking" so we may be onto something.

I feel like we've been violated and it makes me really mad. Now I have to check not only my email account, but I have to keep tabs on my credit card accounts too.

Those freaking idiots.

I really want to say something else about them, but I vowed that I would try to keep this blog void of really nasty language, and so far I have.

But I'm ticked off about this.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I've Had it

All this Christmas crap is for the birds. All I really want to do is enjoy the season and that hasn't happened for years.

It's already a well-known fact that I don't like to shop. I love to look at decorations. I have a bunch of Christmas trees here, all in their boxes or bags in the basement, except one. The music is absolutely wonderful. Many of the television shows and movies are fantastic. But there is a severe lack of TIME to do all that I want to do during the holiday season.

I made a decision yesterday and I'm going to stick by it, at least for this year. It will make my life so much simpler.

The ONLY decorations that will be put up in our house this year will be our tree. And it's been up for a week. At least this one has. Our other tree, that we only used for a couple of years, looked like CRAP, so last Saturday I bought a new one. The old one is back in the box and the new one is up. However, there are no decorations on it, except the lights that came with it. Oh yeah, and an ornament that I purchased when I was out doing some shopping the day after Thanksgiving. I have four really cute "kitchen" Santas, but they're not going up this year. I have a darling "kitchen" themed little tree, but it's not going up this year either. I have a beautiful white tree that is not going up. I have a tall, skinny tree that's not going up. I have more trees and tons of decorations, but NOTHING else is going up...except for the ornaments on the tree that's already standing...and who knows when that will happen??

Have I mentioned yet that I really don't like the hoopla surrounding Christmas??

Fortunately we're hosting NO holiday get-togethers...at least none that I know of at this time. That alleviates a lot of the pressure.

I would like to do some baking, but haven't gotten to it yet. It was supposed to be yesterday, but that just didn't quite happen. It won't happen today either, because I have laundry to do. Having Friday off really was a big help...I was able to more or less wrap up the shopping. I still have a few things to take care of, but they can't be done until closer to the actual day.

I would love to take time out to go see our local production of the Nutcracker. I've never done that and I've always wanted to. They're doing it several times, so I should be able to fit one of those show times into my schedule, but I'm sure I won't get to it.

Enough complaining on my part...I'm off to the laundry room to get started on that lovely weekly task.

Music

Ted and Alex are both "into" guitars, as I've said before. When you think about it, all the music that we hear comes from THIRTEEN simple notes. Isn't that amazing??

Since I'm a visual person, it's much easier to think about a keyboard. If you start at "C" and play each note to "B" you've played thirteen notes, including all the sharps and flats.

All the music that you have on your ipod, or on a CD, or on an old album, or on a cassette, or even on an 8-track tape, consists of only thirteen different notes.

WOW.

Of course, the octave can be different. As can the rhythm, and the tempo. But everything from the latest rap stuff to the most classical piece, has that one thing in common...the same notes.

I suppose that's why there will never be a shortage of music writers.

Just felt the need to get in touch with my philosophical side today.

Another Snow Day, Sigh

Okay, ONE snow day in early December is almost acceptable. However, a SECOND snow day in early December sends out a red flag. We only get FIVE per year that are forgiven and we don't want to use them too early. We almost always have to use at least one in March, and of course there's the January/February unpredictability.

I really shouldn't complain. I know that our new superintendent really only has our best interest at heart. He wants not only us, but all of our district's children to be safe. Since our district covers a fairly rural area, that also enters the mix. Additionally many of our high school students drive to school, and we all know that 16, 17, and 18 year olds just aren't as experienced with driving in the snow as the adults.

Since I totally wasted Wednesday's snow day and did pretty much nothing, I really need to take advantage of today. My head is full of plans for the day and I intend to follow through on all of them. Maybe. Unless a better offer comes along. Going back to sleep is always an option too. Oh man, this is going to be a tough day.

Hey, just remember, YOU too could have chosen to be a teacher!

Snow Day Musings

Last night, as we had just gotten into bed, this conversation took place:

Me: I need to make sure that I have my call list available, JUST IN CASE.

Ted: Why? Is it supposed to snow?

Me: You're kidding, right?

Ted: What do you mean, I'm kidding? Is it supposed to snow or not?

Me: Didn't we have the 6:00 news on earlier this evening? And did they NOT talk about the snow that's coming??

Ted: I don't know. I wasn't paying any attention.

Me: YES, DEAR, IT IS SUPPOSED TO SNOW TONIGHT.

Ted: Well, I have a little problem then.

Me (starting to wonder what the problem could possibly be): And what's that?

Ted: I haven't put the snow blade on the lawn mower yet.

Me: Then I guess you'll be pulling an all-nighter, won't you?

Ted: Real funny.

Me: How long will it take to do that?

Ted: Maybe around 3 hours or so. (Of course last year it took a couple weekends because that was the first time he'd done it. I sort of thought that it might only take a half hour or so, but I don't do anything with the mower, so I really wouldn't know.)

Me: Well if you get started right away you may be back in bed by 2 a.m.

Ted: Good night.

Now how in the world he had NO CLUE that snow was on its way is beyond me. Not only did he and I discuss it, but Joey and Alex and I discussed it too, and right in front of Ted.

So at 5:24 a.m. I was in the recliner, sleeping when the phone rang to deliver the news of NO SCHOOL today and Ted jumped up out of bed to look outside. That was all he needed. At that time there was just a little bit of snow, and you could still see the grass, but the little tiny flakes were coming down pretty fast. He was, of course, whimpering around about schools calling off when they really don't need to. You know, that sort of jealous chit chat that someone who is married to a teacher feels obligated to do whenever there's a snow day, hahaha!

I was trying to make the morning smooth, so I went ahead and got up and came out to the den to turn on the TV and check on other local school districts. Once I found out that Alex didn't have school either, I told him about that and was glad he could turn off his alarm. Around 6:50 a.m. I went back into the bedroom and settled into the recliner with my blankets heard Ted leave for work.

As all of these ambitious thoughts ran through my head, I quickly dozed off, and slept until after 10! In fact, Ted came home to change his pants because his had gotten all wet at the job he was at, and before he could even say a word, I said, "Yes, I'm still lying here in the chair, not dressed yet, and I just woke up." He quickly changed and left.

Shortly after that, Alex decided that he wanted a big breakfast and offered to make breakfast for me too. I turned on the TV, and by this time it was almost 11, and time for "The View," one of my favorite daytime shows. A little while later, Alex came in with a plate of scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, and toast! He brought in a napkin and a fork too! I already had a bottle of water, so I was set. What a kid!

After the wonderful breakfast that he fixed, we just sort of laid around and talked and I didn't get dressed until after 1:00. Then we went to the local meat market, and then to Wal*Mart. I really don't like Wal*Mart at all, so Alex went in for me, bless his heart. We just got home and basically, all is right with the world.

However...since I'm off today, I sort of feel obligated to cook tonight, sigh. I was thinking about making chili, but I don't have any green peppers and I'm not going back out, so we might end up having pork chops.

Yep, gotta love those snow days.

Christmas Countdown, Bah Humbug

Christmas shopping - about 80% complete (have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE online shopping???)

Christmas cards - purchased and still in the boxes; I have the stamps though!

Christmas tree - up, but not decorated

Christmas decorations - still in boxes in the basement

Christmas wrapping - are you really supposed to WRAP gifts??? Hey, at least I have wrapping paper in the house. That's a start...isn't it?

Christmas cookie baking - I have a list of the cookies that they all want me to bake, but haven't checked on the status of the ingredients yet

And people wonder why I don't like Christmas.

Sigh.