Life always seems the craziest when you’re actively trying not to be busy at all.
Last summer was rough for us because we had so many people staying with us throughout June, July and August and we vowed that we wouldn’t repeat that this year. We made plans to not make plans at all.
The problem with that is we either end up doing absolutely nothing at all, thus turning into literal sloths who serve no other purpose than to make the ass prints in our couch bigger. Or things end up appearing so unexpectedly that before we know it, we’ve blown through seven or ten days and can’t tell you the last time we got to enjoy our sloth states.
You’d think as much time as I spend being a sloth, I’d be able to think up good things to write. Instead, you’ll get a series of snippets.
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This past Monday, I wake up at quarter til seven to the dog going batshit crazy in the office, which is where his perch is located that lets him watch over the neighborhood. And this was his ‘Get the hell of my property!’ batshit crazy bark not the little ‘The neighbor kids are walking across the street’ chatter. I shoot out of bed and squint through the blinds to see two cop cars pulled up to our driveway and Steve standing behind his truck gesturing towards our backyard. So of course, I panic a bit because early morning and cops being at my house doesn’t bode well. I throw something semi-decent on and walk outside to find Steve and a cop standing on the side of the house looking towards the park that backs up to our yard while the other cop is trying to navigate his way across the tiny creek. And in that park is a car.
That’s a silly place to park a car!
I asked what was going on and Steve said he was leaving for work and noticed the car in the park so he called the cops because that’s not exactly a thorughfare. The cop then explained that two vehicles had been stolen from the neighborhood the night before and that the people they thought did it actually lived close enough to the park that they weren’t surprised to find the vehicle there. Said they had been to the woman’s house enough for domestic disturbances and that she was always doped up on crazy pills and stuff. Steve then headed off to work and they spent the next hour or so making calls and trying to get into the vehicle before they finally towed it out of there.
Needless to say, I spent the week worrying a bit because the last thing you need is to find a stolen vehicle pretty much in your backyard. Guess it’s time to get the security system installed.
At least I got to close the day out with Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show. I love him! I truly do.
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Work kicked my ass this past week on so many levels. So many levels that I’m not going to discuss in public because that would not be kosher. I can disagree with my job but I need it and am thankful to have it at this period in time. I just don’t like change and am not good with it. I much prefer for things to continue exactly the way they are because with change comes stress and with stress comes with an unhappy me and an unhappy me is not fun at all.
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My toes, on the other hand, are healing. They’re still swollen and still painful but they feel surprisingly better than they did before the doctor aspirated the nail. On Friday, I went back to work but had to wear the slip-on shoes I’d bought when I had my blood clot because when I tried to put on normal shoes, the foot protested by sending searing pain up my foot and into my leg. I was able to remove the band-aid Friday night only to find that the hole was still oozing a bit but even that was over by Saturday morning.
Now they’re just black and blue and yellow and green and I can even move them. The swelling has gone down and the oozing has stopped. I just have to remember to take it easy because they won’t hurt for some time and then I’ll walk on them wrong or catch my foot as I’m walking, as I did last night, and it’ll hurt like crazy again. I thought I was able to stop the pain meds because I was feeling better, but I’m feeling better because of the meds. If I’m off them completely the foot kills and it’s the worst if I’m standing still. It’s easiest when I have the meds in me and my foot is elevated with nothing on it, because even the weight of the blanket hurts.
This was Saturday’s progress! It ain’t pretty.
When I went into work Friday, I slipped my sock off and showed my boss who looked right at me and was like, “You know, you could’ve just asked for the day off!” then smiled.
Apparently, when I do it, I do it big.
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I finally finished the closet reorganization that was the cause to the whole toe debacle. Steve had been after me for months (ok, years) to go through our closet and my clothes because well, he’s a man and to him anything more than five shirts and two pairs of pants is too many clothes.
But it was time. I still had clothes in there from college. Skinny girl clothes that I just wasn’t ready to part with because you know, I might fit into them again (we all know how much of a truth that really is). I mean, there are a few favorites that you could hang onto for that reason but they either need to really be your favorite or they need to be classics with style that outlasts trends. An entire closet does not count towards that rule.
Plus, I was having a really hard time finding a place to put things when I did laundry. And I was wearing the same thing over and over again. It just needed to be done.
I thought it was going to take a week. Had it not been for my injury, I would have finished it in an afternoon. That being said, it took a total of one day.
Here’s the before:
Before: The Closet
That is a walk in closet big enough for two people to walk in. If you shut the door, you could fit three, maybe four people. In other words, that’s a lot of clothes. All the ones hanging pretty much consist of my clothes with the exception of a small sliver to the far left that is Steve’s and that starts approximately where the solid burgundy shirt is. The basket on the floor is overflow laundry that has yet to be put away. And the entire left side on the top shelf is my clothes. The back wall on the shelf is Steve’s. That’s not including our two dressers that we have.
Here’s the after:
After: The Closet
It still looks a little crowded but that’s purely because I ran out of hangers, otherwise, the shirts on the top left shelf would have been hung as well. Also, Steve didn’t humor and go through his clothes. But unlike before, everything is organized. The entire left side is now mine and is organized into categories: work shirts and blouses, crossovers (i.e. plain cotton shirts that I can wear to work or out with friends), nice casual shirts (most of them are printed so I can’t wear them to work), polos & button downs and long sleeves. Sweatshirts and sweaters have been moved into our guest bedrooms closet which has been deemed the winter closet. Steve now has the entire back wall with space for his nice shirts and his work shirts. The tucker on the floor contains overflow clothes that he needs to go through but since it has a lid, it serves a dual purpose: as a shelf. Which was an awesome find because I was going to purchase shelves but with this, I can just pile his work pants onto it and they are accessible without me having to worry about putting them into drawers or throwing them on the top shelf (they’re heavy Dickies pants so they were too much for the shelf). The clear boxes and the smaller tucker contain my shoes, the brown bedding is overflow winter bedding for our bed and there’s finally room to tuck the hamper back in the corner. And what you can’t see is that on the top to the left are three of the fabric grocery bags you can buy almost anywhere now. One contains bathings suits, extra bras and my heavy fuzzy winter socks, the other two contain hats and accessories (handbags and belts) respectively. And my drawers, at least, are organized for pants and others things that can’t be hung.
Everything now has it’s place and that’s one more thing that I can mark off my list.
It’s makes my internalized OCD very, very happy!
(I’d like to say the pain of the toe injury was worth it, but it really wasn’t. I mean, I’m crazy, but not that crazy!)
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The only other things worth noting is that we had a very nice dinner with some great friends last night at TGI Friday’s, of all places (they have never been high up on my list of restaurants) and then went to see The Hangover, which was absolutely fabulous and as phenomenally funny as the trailer leads you to believe.
And also, this guy:
SO.FREAKIN’.HOT!
Seriously, I’ve had celebrity crushes before but he is easily one of the best. Right now, it’s him and Gerard Butler, haunting my dreams. Love, love, love! Funny as well as smokin’ hot … my kind of man!
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That’s about it though – the most exciting parts of my week crunched into totally unrelated recaps. I’m hoping for a better week this time around but only time will tell. Here’s one final image from this week.
Hangin’ Around …
One of the things about living in the South … there’s always strange visitors right outside your front door!
The past few weeks I’ve made small efforts offline to give myself a boost of inspiration for blogging. I’ve bought a book of questions and a Pocket Muse. I even took inspiration from her and bought a book of blog ideas (I bought the Kindle version for my iPod touch which is awesome because it’s one less book I have to store and it saved me three bucks!)
I just haven’t put them into fruition yet. But soon!
May was had it ups and downs. We were either really busy on the weekends or did absolutely nothing and I was too tired to do anything productive because I’ve been so busy at work. We had a graduation, a trip to Myrtle Beach, movie trips, roller derby, dinners, and other various social events. I’ve been putting in really long weeks at work because of the fact that I’m a bit overloaded at the moment.
I even forgot to do my Monthly Love for May! (Stay tuned for it this weekend)
So very soon I will be putting some of these ideas into practice. I think I’ve got things squared away a bit to where I can do some real writing. This week was supposed to be the week but this week ended up being the week from hell.
Due to some unforseen circumstances at work, I had Wednesday off and thought I would end up having Thursday and Friday off as well. I was already in a shitty mood because of those unforseen circumstances and the days I had been at work had been crappy. But Wednesday, I figured I needed to do something to be productive and to keep my mind off of shit I was worrying about.
So I decided to tackle my closet, which was in desperate need of cleaning. Plus, I had recently read a post on This Young House about how John and Sherry organized their clothing and got even more inspired. I had clothes that had to be gone through – piles and piles of stuff that didn’t fit me or got thrown into piles because I had no where else to put them. Tons of Steve’s stuff, shoes, bedding that was stored, etc. And it just all needed to be cleaned out.
I started Wednesday afternoon around 1pm and within in a few hours, I was done with my clothes. I had mounds of stuff that I need donate or sell and was able to get through my drawers too. Now, all of my pants are in my dresser, seperated into jeans, work pants, summer capris/shorts and khakis. There’s also drawers for tank tops, pajama/lounge shirts, and pajama pants/shorts. The smaller drawers have underwear, dress socks and athletic socks. In my closet, I was able to hang up mostly all of my shirts and seperate them into work-dressy shirts, plain cotton shirts that I can wear with khakis to work, polos, casual print shirts/blouses and just regular cotton tshirts.
Then I had a bright idea that almost killed me.
I had overloaded the hanging rack in our closet to where it was kind of coming out of the wall. So after fixing that, I figured I’d move all of my sweaters and sweatshirts into the unused guest bedroom cloest and make a “winter” closet. We don’t have much of a winter here so when it does get cold enough to need that stuff, it won’t bother me much to go into another room to get it (plus, the room is literally across the hall from the master bedroom).
The problem was that closet still had some other stuff stored in it, like decorations and overflow linens. And they were kind of stored haphazardly. But it was late and I was trying to wrap things up so I just started hanging the overflow in there and figured I’d go through and organize that closet later. Well, as I was hanging a batch of things, the stuff in the closet got a big dislodged and these slate tile wall decorations that I had wrapped in paper and just sat on the top of a pile of things slid off the pile and fell from about waist level onto the three major toes of my right foot. And they fell edge side down, not flat side.
Needless to say, it hurt pretty bad. I immediately yelled and screamed and then started crying because it hurt so bad. Steve came running back as I was hobbling to the bathroom because my first instinct was to run it under cold water. By the time I sat on the edge of the tub, I was almost hyperventilating, the pain was that great. Truthfully, it was more the shock and the adrenaline rush that was making me react the way I did.
Anyway, for any of you followng on Twitter, you saw this pic of it. Steve immediately put ice on it and we checked to see if I could move my toes and everything seemed ok. I was still panicking and it still hurt so very badly but I could walk and I could move my toes and truthfully, I didn’t want to spend $100 for an emergency room visit for them to tell me it was just bruised.
We kept it iced and elevated and I figured I’d suck it up. Steve’s a mechanic and has hit his fingers the same way before, where the blood wells up under the nail. He’s even drilled a hole in the nail before to relieve the pressure and that’s what he recommended we do. Normally, I would of probably let him do it but being that I’m still on the blood thinners, I was concerned about the DIY method at home that would probably induce quite a bit of bleeding.
Well, let’s just say that last night was one of the longest nights ever. No matter which way I laid with my foot elevated, it hurt so much that the pain was making my leg spasm. My big toe throbbed and was hard and it felt like my heartbeat was in my toe.
I couldn’t sleep because it hurt so bad and the spasms were disruptive. I seriously contemplated waking Steve up at 4am to take me to the emergency room. But I still couldn’t be ok with paying that much copay and waiting in the ER forever especially when I could go into Urgent Care at 8am with a $20 copay and be in a place where they knew my history with the blood clots and blood thinners.
At some point, around 5am, my body finally gave up fighting the pain and I dozed off. Of course, an hour later, my alarm went off. I still hurt so bad that I just asked Steve if he could drive me to Urgent Care since I didn’t think I could drive myself and because I was pretty sure they were gonna give me pain meds.
We arrived at Urgent Care two minutes before it opened and no lie, there was a line of old people waiting outside. At first I’m thinking, ‘Damn, are they all sick?’ but I forgot that there’s a diagnostics lab in the same office and they all apparently were early birds who wanted to get their shit out of the way.
I said hello to my nurses (I’m enough of a regular there because of the DVT that they know me by sight) and we got down to business. Even the doctor was basically like ‘Holy crap!’ when he saw it. X-rays were taken and thankfully, nothing was broken though he said I was pretty lucky that I didn’t cut my toe off. And then they took this little tool with a heated tip that basically poke a hole through the big toenail to aspirate all of the blood that had collected under. I didn’t watch but Steve said it squirted up and out so fast that it got all over the bed. And it stung a bit during and for a little bit after but I tell you what, it ultimately made it feel so much better because it relieved all of the pressure.
They gave me two Lortabs for the pain which also helped greatly as well. And then Steve signed the discharge papers and they wheeled me out of there in a wheelchair with care instructions for a subungual hematoma, a prescription for Darvoset, a note to get out of work and a sticker! The sticker made it all better (the pain meds totally helped too).
Steve and I then proceeded to stop by the Bilo to fill the prescription and decided while were there to pick up some supplies (we needed milk). I was pretty doped up and was limping around anyway, so I just hopped on one of those little ride along mechanical things and drove around the store tossing food in the basket. I tell you, I couldn’t be that loopy everyday but at that moment riding that cart thing in Bilo in basically my slippers and all doped up, I was having a pretty good time.
I closed out the day by sleeping on the couch through a pretty wicked thunderstorm wherein the dog curled up terrified into such a tight ball next to me that I think he would of crawled inside of me if he could have. Woke up and ate a bit of lunch than went back to sleep only to wake up when Steve got home. He cooked dinner and checked on my foot and then I got a shower and cleaned the wound a bit because it’s oozing like crazy and now I’m sitting in bed getting ready to actually get a decent night’s sleep so that I can go back to work tomorrow and be a little bit productive.
In all of that brouhaha, I never finished my closet project and since I’m having a bit of a hard time getting around for long periods of time, it’ll probably be awhile before I get that done. But at least it’s almost done instead of only a quarter of the way done. My house is still a wreck though but it’s always like that.
I think if I one wish in life, it would be that my house was always clean without intervention from me. Like, it magically just cleans itself.
But for now, I’m going to try and take it easy and let me foot heal and not push myself into any major projects for the time being.
Because it’s apparently dangerous to be productive.
(Look for the Monthly Love May and possibly some private posts this weekend)
This is short and sweet from the phone as I am still pretty messed up on the Valium they gave, having already fallen asleep in the living room. Right now, I an fighting passing out while it feels like my insides – mainly my ovaries and around my lower back – are going to fold over into theselves. I’m gonna have to take some Tylenol soon and then pass out on the heading pad.
If you haven’t guessed, I got my IUD inserted today. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated but it wasn’t a pincnic either.
Just wanna sleep now. Drugs make me wanna sleep. Check back tomorrow when I’m coherant.
Just like that, another weekend gone!
It’s amazing how every Sunday night Steve and I find ourselves saying that. I don’t know if that’s indicative of whether we are doing something good or just wasting away.
We actually were really, really productive though so I definitely don’t feel like we wasted it. After yesterday’s cleaning and shopping marathon, I woke up with no REAL sense of purpose today. So I spent the first two hours watching trash TV (Rock of Love Bus is so boring now that the uber-skanks are gone!) then I decided that I might as well accomplish something. I hung a bunch of pictures, finished the loads of laundry (note: they still have to be folded, along with the past few weekends of laundry. Does anybody else hate folding as much as I do?) and picked up a few other things.
Then, about four o’clock, I was plagued with another sinus headache. I knew it was because it we ran the heat last night and it was so dry in here when I woke up. So I took one 500mg tablet of Tylenol, which the doctor has told me I can do, and I think that was a mistake. Not long after that, I started feeling nauseous and really dizzy and the pain in my head was excruciating. So I laid down for a bit and that didn’t seem to help. Then I took a hot shower and laid down some more with an ice pack to my head. By the time I got back up at 7, I felt much better but I was still out of it. Fighting a headache like that has always taken a lot out of me. The pain can go away but it takes me hours to feel back to normal.
I hate having this problem because I always feel like “I have a headache” seems like such a lame excuse. But it’s not just a headache – it’s pain in my face, in my temples, underneath my skull that just feels like whole head is going to explode. It’s nausea, it’s dizziness, it’s weakness. Light and noise makes it worse. I can feel when there are pressure and temperature changes in the air. It’s something I’ve lived with all of my life and I’ve learned to sort of live with and control. Even when I’m in the throes of it, I feel self-conscious that people think I’m making a big deal out of nothing or that I’m faking, but it’s merely that I’ve lived with it for so long that I’ve learned to mask it, to push it aside until I’m absolutely at my breaking point and only then do I realize I need to just go home, take a hot shower, pop some Tylenol and sleep in a cool, dark room with an ice pack to my head.
It’s genetic and it’s something that can’t be fixed. I just have to learn to live with it. They’ve taken MRIs and injected my veins with dye while doing so to make sure everything is ok and the all came back normal and fine. I’ve taken Imitrex but haven’t gotten it replenished in years, partly because it’s expensive and I didn’t like the way it makes me feel.
Regardless, after that ordeal, I couldn’t force myself to do much more. Steve made dinner and we watched Lakeview Terrace which was pretty much just eh! Kind of what we expected it to be. (I Love You, Man, which we saw on Friday, was far more enjoyable, albeit a bit awkward to watch because Paul Rudd is so awkwardly adorable in it. Definitely go see that movie though because it was good – not just funny but a great story too.) Then we ate some ice cream, watched the season finale of East Bound and Down and did the last few loads of laundry.
Now I’m in bed watching Chelsea Lately and preparing for another week at work. My house is clean and organized and ready for our visitors on Friday, and I’m ready for the time off.
I can’t believe it’s almost April!
