It takes a village...

I started thinking about why am I still just as tired, if not more so than I was at the hospital. I am sure that many factors apply. I am still not sleeping in my own bed, although my mattress on the floor is much more comfortable than the fold out couch with a bar in it from the hospital. And we have not yet made it through the night with out some interruption, although it is getting better each night. And there is something to be said for all the stress finally catching up to me.

But then I started thinking about all the people who were taking care of Jared in the hospital. Here is a list of all I could think of:

At least 1, and often 3 or 4 doctors watching test results and ordering medications.
2 nurses each day, 12 hours each, the first three days he had two nurses each shift
echo gram technician
chest x-ray technician
CT scan technician
MRI technician
Respiratory specialist, making sure his breathing was going as it should
A housekeeper, who would sanitize everything
One person to take the dirty laundry away
A person washing all the dirty laundry
A person delivering the clean laundry
A person delivering the food to the hospital so it could be cooked
A cook, preparing all his meals
A person delivering those meals to his bedside, and taking his order for the next meal
A nutritionist keeping track of what he ate and how much weight he lost
2 child life specialists who made sure he was entertained as possible, with movies and games
2 physical therapists, who came each day and made him exercise, even when he didn't want to.
A pharmacist who would have his medicine delivered to his room, each day.
A person who would take his vitals, every fours hours, once he was off the machines.
3 people in surgery pre and post opp, for his five surgeries.
1 ER doctor, that helped with the appendix surgery
1 Orthopedic Surgeon
1 Infectious Disease Doctor
Lab technicians to run blood reports
A Mechanic, to scare the daylights out of you at two in the morning when your bed is broken.
An accounting office to pay the bills, so you can enjoy the luxury of A/C, electrical lights, and running water.

Perhaps the fact that I have taken over for all of these people might explain my fatigue. Although I am not performing any surgeries, most of those other duties listed up there are now up to me to get them done. A bit daunting, when you think of it like that. Thank heavens for the meals that have been brought in, they have been priceless.

No wonder the insurance companies are so anxious to get people out of the hospital. They are paying all these people a very large amount of money, compared to me who is getting, let's see....NOTHING. That would be less wouldn't it.

The nurses in the hospital kept telling me that I was so good at helping them, they would ask did I have some sort of medical training. I would say, "No, just as a mother" Which let's face it is extensive experience, and basically nursing is just mothering, with a little bit more technical knowledge.

So here's hoping I am up to the challenge of imitating a village. I think I have the village idiot job down pat.

Volunteer breakfast

Last week was a breakfast that the elementary school puts on for the parents who help through out the year. You know that is why I spend three hours every week, so I can get a muffin at the end of the year. They did give us a cute little hand out that was a hand cookie cutter because we are "helping hands". Get it.
Here is Diana modeling the sugar cookies they made for us. Somehow there was some mix up with the delivery of the muffins and fruit and so when we first got there all there was to eat was the cookies. But that is OK, like I said I don't help for the food. I feel a sense of real accomplishment just with how many copies I have made this year. And yes, I am glad it is over. I don't think fourth grade will be anything like this year. In fact, they are going to try something new in fourth grade. They are going to have one class of all boys, one class of all girls, and two co-ed classes. I have signed Diana up for the all girl class. I think it could be a great thing to be away from the boys that have a hard time sitting still. We will see how it goes. Our school has not tried it before, but they visited a school that is doing it and having good results.

Case Lot Loony-ness

Ok, apparently according to the spell checker, loonyness is not a word. Well it is to me, and so I am using it. I guess the spell checker has never met me, I am the poster child for loonyness, but that topic is probably best saved for another post. :) So in an attempt to assuage my feelings of guilt and inadequacy in the department of food storage, I took myself to the case lot sale at Smith's today. After I filled one cart with just cases, I got another cart and proceeded to fill it to overloading, with other types of food that do not come in a case. The poor checker was a very small, Asian girl. I pushed my second cart up, which was filled to over flowing, and she started to check. Then I retrieved my first cart of case stuff. It felt like it weighed 200 pounds. I am sure it was more than this wispy girl. Then she said "Wow, is that yours also?" This was more polite that the "You gotta be kidding me" that she must have really been thinking. After both of my carts were bagged, they asked me "Would I like help out". I usually always say no to this, but this time I was glad for help, and of course I took the lighter cart. Then came the daunting task of fitting it all in my car. Amazingly I did manage to fit it all in. Now the even more impossible task of finding places to stash it all over my house. Yikes. Sad news for me though, they were out of the 20 pound bags of rice that I always stalk up on at this time of year. Now, I need to drive around to other Smith stores on a quest for rice. Wish me luck.

Anatomy Class Antics

Imagine my shock, yes even terror, when I opened my computer and this picture had been changed to be the background on my home page. EEK! Yes, thanks, Trent for the little kick start to my blood pressure this morning! If you can't tell it is time to "dissect a cat", in Trent's anatomy class. This is something he told me would be happening, but now I can see it in color and all its glory. I have to say that I never had to dissect a cat when I was in school. I only remember frogs and worms in seventh grade. Trent told me that they took pictures. Of course I told him I needed those pictures for my blog. You got to take interesting and unusual stuff where ever you can find it, right? I apologize to anyone with a weak stomach. Nice pictures Trent. And now a slide show so you can see the whole process from start to finish. I could not find any appropriate music to go with my slide show. Anyone have any suggestions? And why hasn't anyone written a song about cat dissection? Maybe Adam Sandler did and I just don't know of it. Questions to ponder. The slide show seemed so boring without music, so I just used some good old Beethoven. Amazing how classical music seems to make something disgusting not quite so awful. What do you think? And I think I may have nightmares about this poor kitty tonight in my sleep.

Where there's a will, there's a way!

Last week, Jared's lacrosse coach told him about a store closing sale going on at Sports Authority. This in turn led to him stalking me around the house until I took him to see what was on sale. The item he really wanted was a net to practice lacrosse. They had one which was meant for base ball, but would work for lacrosse as well. This net was originally $149, but it was on sale for just $30. The fact that we had come shopping, in my small car instead of the van did not deter us from making our bargain purchase. Jared informed me that I should be better prepared like Dad, and have rope in my car. Point well taken. We did attempt to get it to fit inside the car, but there was no way that was going to happen. So instead we just put it on top and each of us rolled down the window and held onto it all the way home. A few times it seemed like it might slip, but somehow we managed to get it home and intact. Now Jared can become an expert player in no time!

Yay, I'm back to only one job!

Yes, I am very happy to report that after 3 weeks of working way to many hours, I am back to being "JUST" a mom. Last week I worked 55 hours and in the two weeks before that I worked 74. And believe me, my house shows my lack of attention. It was an interesting experience and over all I did survive better than I thought I would, thanks to the help of my dear husband. Now if I can just catch up. I feel like the month of January just disappered due to the fact that I was sick for the first week and working for the last 3.
Some of the time at work it would be slow with no customers. The other employees would ask me what I did when I was not working there. I would reply that I am a MOM when I am not working for Global Views. This would bring some interesting reactions and I could tell that not everyone values this profession as much as the Lord and his prophets do. I have spent some time pondering this.
Yesterday I gave a lesson to the laurels about preparing for marriage. It worries me that so much of what they have learned about being a wife and mother does not make it seem glamerous enough to be at the top of their list of things to be when they grow up. And I wondered about my own attitude. Will my own children learn by watching me, what an important job this is? Or will my often frustrations be all that they remember? Something to work on, I suppose. And so I came away from this job with a renewed dedication to my chosen profession of mother and wife.

Working Girl

So one of the reasons that I am not posting very much this month is that it is time for my twice a year temporary job. I work very occasionally for a company called Global Views. They have a showroom here in Vegas, but they live in Dallas. Twice a year there are big trade shows, where people who own stores come and buy things at wholesale that they then sell in their stores. Global Views sales home accessories like vases, lamps, and small furniture.My job is to help in the set up for the show and then to work during the show helping to write orders for customers. Sometimes the showroom changes more than other times. This time there is a ton of new products and so we have spent a lot of time taking old samples out of the showroom and having a sample sale. Then there were 34 pallets of new product that was delivered last Thursday. This has been a monumental job to get it all unpacked. Luckily Jared got out of school early on Friday, due to finals. He worked with me Friday, Saturday, and Monday. I had my next door neighbor come and help as well. By yesterday afternoon it was all unpacked. Here are some pictures of what a pallet of merchandise looks like. This was a lot of stuff. It filled a 53 ft trailer and a 12 ft trailer. Happily I did not have to move it all up to my fourth floor. The dock workers did that. I just had to open all the boxes and take off the wrapping. So I will be working for the rest of the week, helping to get the showroom ready for the show next week. I really don't know if I will have any energy to post anything so don't be disappointed if there is nothing new until after the show. I usually am so tired after being on my feet doing manual labor all day, that I can barely walk from my car to my bed. I will get a nice paycheck by the end of it all and hopefully that will make it all worth it.

Sticky Surprise

Last night I was cleaning under the couch in my family room. I realized that this does not happen as often as it should. When I pushed the couch back I found a gooey, sticky surprise. Not a good sticky surprise like carmel popcorn or crispex mix, no this was a bad sticky surprise called a melted, hardened Popsicle. Since I highly doubt that the Popsicle walked out of my freezer and went under my couch to melt into a syrupy blob, my guess would be that someone put it there. My money is on Diana. She is always saving food to eat later. I don't know why? Perhaps she'll die. Who knew laminate flooring would turn out to be a lifesaving device. But tonight it did just that. Hurray for being able to mop up the sticky mess.

I'm a Grandma, kind of

So here is a picture of Jared's baby. As you can tell it is not really alive, but it is part of a health class project. Baby "Jason" will be part of our family for the weekend. He came with a stroller and diaper bag. At random times during his stay, he will cry. Jared has a key thing that is attached to his arm, that he will use to stop the crying. As parents I'm am sure there are many times that we wish we could stop our babies from crying with just the turn of a key. This project is suppose to help kids realize how much work and even bother babies can be. It is not mandatory, but Jared wanted to do it for the extra credit, although I don't think he really needed the points. I had to sign a consent form that informed me that the baby could disrupt the sleep of my child and the rest of the family. I am not thrilled to know this, but hopefully it won't be that bad. Jared has to take it with him everywhere. That will include the ward Christmas Party, his soccer games, and I guess church. It could provide some interesting material to write about, so stay tuned for further adventures.

Paul Bunyan's got nothin on me!

So my front yard has been running amuck for a long time now. I have two rosemary bushes that are trying to take over my entire yard. If not impeded, I imagine some day they would have completely barricaded me into my house. This is a job that has needed doing and yet has not made it to the top of the to do list. Instead it has been easier to just drive into my garage and pretend not to notice the extreme overgrowth. So today I finally managed to get motivated to reclaim the sidewalk, if not for my benefit, for others who occasionally do still visit my house. I'm not sure

if the pictures can fully show how much I trimmed away. It filled a garbage can and four black bags. Just so you know I am dangerous with my tree trimmer, and am glad/pleasantly surprised that no blood was spilt in today's yard work. At one time the button stuck on the trimmer and I had to just do the best I could with it until I finally got it unstuck. At this time the thought of losing a toe did cross my mind. But all is well that ends well. Perhaps it is not a great idea to prune bushes wearing shorts and sandals. Also pictured here is the lovely rock mentioned in an earlier post. This is the infamous rock that was painted. It is actually quite cute in that Diana did it all by herself. Also pictured is a dead, decaying bird that is attached to a branch that I cut off a bush. I thought it was an uncommon occurrence to have a dead bird fall at my feet and so I documented it for all of you. You can thank me later for sharing. Now we can all walk on my side walk to my front door without a close encounter of the green kind.

I've got the school copier blues!

Today I innocently walked into the school and signed in to be a parent helper. If it was a TV show, ominous music would have played, foreshadowing trouble looming on the horizon. Perhaps the copiers have become alerted to my Thursday afternoon routine. Probably, they have met at night in secret meetings to conspire against me. If they had arms and hands they would rub their hands together with glee, knowing that I was coming back for them to torment me yet another time. The other problem is that the teachers have lulled me into a false sense of security by giving me a smaller copy load the past two weeks. So I show up unaware that my copier karma is at an all time low. (Any of you now familiar with copier karma, see my first post on this blog)
First of all the teacher gives me a mountainous pile to copy. Then the darn copier proceeds to come up with every error message I have ever seen before and even a new one I have never seen. I wasn't even finished by the time the bell rang. After finding Diana, I tried to finish up but the confounded machine kept jamming. Finally with 2 double sided copies to go, I decided to call it quits. Sometimes that is the best thing to do, just walk away. Sadly I had these 6 piles of copies that I usually put in the teachers room. The teacher had left and locked her door. We don't have school tomorrow and everyone cleared out of there fast after school. So I had to squish these big piles into each of the six third grade teacher's boxes. If I calculated it correctly I used about 2300 pieces of paper. Most of those were double sided copies, so I ran most of those papers through twice. Also at least half of it had to be hole punched. Whew! What a big job. Is it just me, or does my picture portray a copious amount of copies? Next week I have a doctor appointment and I told them that I can not come. But at least I persevered today as long as I did. I feel victorious, if only in my own mind.

Cannery Candids

So today I had an exciting adventure called going to the cannery. Not even being able to remember the last time I went, I figured it must be time. In the event that we had to live on our food storage, it might be good if we had more than a case of macaroni and cheese. The sad thing about my current food supply, is that I really have no idea what or how much I really have. It is all tucked into various and sundry places and I have not kept a good inventory. So I figured that I couldn't go wrong getting just a little bit of several things. And hey, any day you get to wear a hair net is a good day, don't ya think? My most exciting purchase was a case of apple slices. It was hard not to eat them all, while I was canning. Now if I can just convince Jared and his friends that these apple slices would be a great snack choice. They have entered the "hoard of locust" phase of teenage hood. It seems like all I ever hear from Jared is "I'm hungry" and "What can I eat?" Now I will have something else to suggest instead of "Go make yourself a dang Quesadilla." He and his friends seem to devour what ever there is around here. I also got some oatmeal because I love it in cookies. The other thing I got was a case of wheat. I don't think I have much wheat because Marion is not a big fan of wheat. He had enough of it when he was growing up to last him a lifetime. Which may not be that long since he doesn't eat whole wheat. Any way now I have a case that I can look at and feel good knowing that at least I have it. We had to can 11 bags of powder milk and that was kind of a pain. We do have a lovely, large, new canning facility that was just opened 6 months ago. So after about two and a half hours we had finished the task. We started for home, but the three of us in our car all agreed that we were famished. So of course we had to stop at In-N-Out for a little lunch. This is my friend Teresa showing off the lovely lap pad they give you so you don't spill on your lap. What a great day... hard work, yummy food and time with good friends.

Poolman named Pat

One of the nice things about our house is that it came with a pool. And when I say nice, I mean nice like children are nice when they are sleeping. A pool has many wonderful things like providing the children a way to be outside of the house when it is 120 degrees with out suffering heat stroke. I never cease to be amazed that even if it feels like you are living on the surface of the sun, if you can manage to get wet, you will feel cooler, yes even cold. But as wonderful as pool ownership is, it does come with some inconveniences. One of these would have to be that pools tend to have many hidden costs that tend to drain a budget faster than a kid can drink a Slurpee on a hot day. Things such as electricity to run the pump and water to refill the pool when water is lost to dehydration or children splashing. I don't know who invented the game of lets jump up and down in the pool until we create a tsunami that will send half of the water splashing onto the lawn but apparently it is quite a popular game. Other costs include chlorine, nets, brushes, and pool toys. Apparently water is not fun enough, you need noodles, pool floats, and blow up things to maximize your pool enjoyment. Another cost is a solar pool cover. This is a kind of a catch 22 thing, because it is a bit pricey to buy, but it cuts down on dehydration. So you get to choose if you want to spend your money on water or the pool cover that will also have the benefit of heating your pool. In Las Vegas during the hottest part of the summer, if you leave the cover on , you can heat your pool to the temperature of a Jacuzzi. This proves not to be very refreshing, but is good for night swimming. The sad thing about the cover is that the sun and chlorine tend to be hard on the wear and tear of the cover. This results in the disintegration of the plastic which in turn leads to tiny blue triangles sluffing off the cover any time it is moved. I call these things the blue scourge. Our first cover wore out last spring, and after fighting the blue scourge for a month or two, I finally had to give up the battle and throw the thing away. I don't know if I will ever completely eradicate those tiny blue triangles, but at least they are not in the pool filter anymore. Filters are another way that pools can require financial investments. Here again it is a catch 22 because even though filters are quite expensive, your pool will not remain clean and will instead assume the role of swampy marsh in the back yard if you do not keep the filters in good working condition. Another bad thing about pools is that they require a fair amount of work each week. This involves brushing the sides, vacuuming, and skimming pine needles from the surface. I really don't mind cleaning the pool that much. In fact I get a great sense of satisfaction when it is done and it looks beautifully pristine. The problem comes when one is not home for two months. This is when the fact became very apparent that cleaning the pool is my job, because it didn't happen when I wasn't here. So maybe some day I will be able to afford a pool cleaning service that will come weekly and care for my pool, whether I am here or not. Until then I am stuck with a pool man named Pat.