POTS?

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.

This may actually describe the 'heart' problems that I've had for years.   I had an appointment w/ the cardiologist today and while she was clear that this MAY NOT be what it is, she gave me some literature describing it and the symptoms of it.  I'll be damned if it doesn't just about describe me to a "T".  I have to go back for more testing in July and LUCKY ME I get to wear a heart monitor for 21 days...yeehaw...but it would be nice to actually get some answers.  I've been dealing w/ this for YEARS...since Cole, my fourteen year old son, was 2 months old.  I can't tell you how awful it feels to be 37 years old and feel like you could die from heart problems that no one can figure out.  According to all the tests and docs I've seen in the last fourteen years there is nothing wrong w/ my heart....well according to the literature...that's correct, however it does affect the heart.  I feel like I've been efficiently swept under the rug for years, and no one gives a shit what's ACTUALLY wrong w/ me, just that I'm not gonna die on their watch.  It may be that I don't actually have POTS, but at least for once I feel that this particular cardiologist actually has an interest in finding out what IS going on.  Thank God for that.  On the edge of answers?

Rested?

Sometimes(well....ok..MOST the time) my husband is a pain in the rearend.  This last week would be no different.  A little background first.  He gets 3 weeks of vacation a year.   AMAZING! you say?  Yea, it would be if he actually got paid for it.   See he works on 100% commission.  SO, if he takes a vacation day, he simply doesn't get paid, yeah I know right?!  SUCKS!  So why on earth wouldn't his company give more vacation days each year?  What do they care they're not paying anyone for not working.  Let me be clear, he sells TV advertising...so in essence he's always making money, however it sure doesn't feel like it sometimes.

Anyway, his year is based on his start date w/ the company, which is in June.  So he has to use his vacation anytime from June to June...whatever the date was.  This year, he had one week left and was out of time, so he took his vacation last week to use it up.  Now IF it were me...and I had vacation time coming that I didn't get paid for...I figure WHO CARES if I lose it, it's not going to matter one way or the other.  We are always scraping by so why on earth would you take a week that you don't get paid for, when we are already behind?  I was a teensy bit LIVID at the prospect anyway.  Obviously that didn't stop him, so I figure at least it saves me day care for the week.  He had no actual going away from home plans so I figured...he'll at least get something done.   WRONG!

I don't even know what he did do all day besides pick up the kids.  He made...no I take that back..he cleaned the chicken for one nights meal, and popped frozen burritos in the oven for another...helped fold a couple loads of laundry after I washed/dried and brought them upstairs in a basket and started to fold them myself.  Washed a load of clothes on the wrong temp setting and dried clothes that shouldn't be dried.  Brooke was sick Thurs.and Fri. but not so sick that he needed to baby her, she had a fever and turns out an ear infection but it wasn't horrible, w/ pain meds she was pretty good  Bitched about the boys not mowing the lawn, while he was sitting home doing nothing, and they had school.  Not that I don't think they should mow, but if he's sitting around doing nothing while we are all at school/work...then why the hell can't he do it?  They left for their dad's on Weds. night so they weren't even home after that.  He painted the backboard for the Bball hoop.  Picked up the camping stuff from our friend's house. MAYBE just a very few other things that I'm not recalling, but it wasn't much.  He did manage to find time to go to a few garage sales of course.

Saturday we had open houses to go to, but I had to work til 2 so I was thinking at least when I got home they'd be ready to go.  Nope.  When I got home he was sleeping in the lazy boy and the kids were watching TV.

Now I waited all week, not doing my usual cleaning schedule, just picked up a few things here and there, hoping he'd do SOMETHING.  Nope.  So yesterday, Sunday, after working all week AND Saturday, I cleaned the house, picked up the dog poop, mowed the yard, did the laundry and got groceries.  The back yard had to be mowed twice because it was so long.  Oh wait...he did fold the blankets in the living room and vacuum I better not leave that out, but only AFTER I started cleaning.  WTH?!  His excuse when we argued about it was..."excuse me for wanting to take time from my job so I can get rested and do my job better when I go back to work!"  Seriously??!!  I've never met a more rested person in my life, he can sleep anywhere at the drop of a hat.  If he sits still for more than 5 minutes he's snoring.  I'd like to know when I get a rest...probably when I'm dead.  On the edge of spousal abuse...

Not my laundry!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

So yesterday my husband was looking for his black shorts.  I told him they were still dirty as I didn't have enough dark clothes to do a whole load when I got to them.  That was a few days ago, so I was pretty sure there were enough dark clothes now.  So I told him to just find some more dark clothes and wash them, because he has the day off and I have to work.  I thought to myself as I walked out the door to go to work, "hmm...probably should have told him NOT my laundry!"  See I have this basket of dark clothes in the basement that includes my work dress pants, that whole basket is cold water only, and half of it can't be dried in the dryer. I got busy at work and never remembered to call and and tell him not to wash those.  We had to meet up to watch my youngest sons baseball game last night because it's on the side of town where I work.  I didn't end up going home,  he just brought the kids and we met there to watch it.  I noticed he was wearing the black shorts that he was looking for and wondered...  When I finally got home after the game, I saw ONE of my pairs of work pants drying over the chair.  I go check the dryer and sure enough the rest of my clothes are in there....GRRRR!!  It's my own damn fault I guess but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.   If anything shrunk I'm gonna be even more pissed.  WHY didn't I tell him NOT to do those?!  On the edge of ruined clothes...

Why do I watch movies when I should be sleeping?

Cover of The Joneses

UGH!  I'm SOOO tired!  I should have gone to bed BUT I didn't.   I was flipping through the channels and came upon a movie just starting called, "The Joneses"  LORDY it wasn't even a good movie!   It was just good enough to watch if you're flipping through channels and there's nothing else on.  I just got sucked in and stayed awake and watched it.  THEN another movie came on, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" it was even WORSE than the first...but I watched half of that before I finally went to bed at 1:00am to get up at 6:30am.  WHY do I do this to myself, now I'm sitting here trying to keep my eyes open, I need toothpicks like Tom and Jerry used to use.  *YAWN*  on the edge of a nap...

Most AWESOME canoe trip ever!

The only up side of our camping disaster was the canoe trip.  I guess I never did count how many canoes there were, but I think it was about 7.  We headed out on the trip to canoe for a couple hours on the river that comes out of Hiland Lake.  It was SO much fun, the river is fairly slow in the first leg, and a little winding, then you get to the dam in back of Dam Site Bar in Hell, MI.  You have to ford your canoes around the dam and at the other side in the current is quite a bit faster.  That was FUN! It's a bit challenging to keep your canoe upright right at the beginning but it was a good time. We went through woods, and got a little lost at one point because of the flooding, we out and around some fallen trees and ended up way off the river and had to paddle back through the jungle of crap we just went through, but that was my favorite part!   Below the dam the river wasn't as wide, and it was really cool, straight through the middle of nowhere.  We came to another small hidden lake w/ no houses on it, we saw 9 turtles sunning themselves on a log, and several swans.  One swan was taking off and flew within 3 ft of our heads, that was AMAZING!  We also came to a bridge that we had to ford the canoes around because the water was so high.  After the bridge the river did a bunch of curvy switchbacks which was also really fun.  Best trip EVER! Well except for the part where Brooke and John Ryan were screaming and wiggling because of spiders that ended up in the canoe after our trip through the woods. We ended up back at the campground and everyone was tired but had a good time....LOVED it!  Would definitely go back to Hell to canoe, but I would never camp there.  Beautiful scenery, nice and quiet, just a great trip.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera :(  Hopefully someone else will post some pics.

Camping experience from Hell, in Hell

Or Hell Creek Ranch to be exact, which is located in Hell, MI.

Will not EVER camp there again. Partly it was the weather, but partly the campground, do NOT go there if you value your sleep. We got there yesterday after working all day, coming home and pack everything, and leaving. We had friends going and were going as a whole group. They got there before us and graciously set up our tents. It was misting all night, finally I gave up and went to bed about 9:30 as I was whipped. The people next to us(not our friends, other campers) were bikers...fine. They were fairly quiet, until their friends showed up on LOUD ass motorcycles at 12:30! 12:30! Who the hell lets people in a campground at 12:30...then they proceeded to be exceedingly LOUD and every other word was fuck, or other colorful language, we had our four kids w/ us, two of which are under 10. These people knew this because we'd talked to them several times before I went to bed and helped them out w/ a few things they'd forgotten. So they are drinking, swearing, laughing, being obnoxious...and I'm thinking that SOMEONE will come around and do something about it. No, I yelled at one point, "trying to sleep here!!!" but I doubt they even heard me. About 1:30 they started up the loud ass bikes and left, THEN the people who were being loud and obnoxious down the hill had to go to the bathroom, and on their way by our neighbors stopped them to talk....they THEY started talking and being loud...oh dear God I didn't think it would ever end. FINALLY about 2 am they went to bed.

We were supposed to stay Fri to Sun, we packed up and left Saturday afternoon before more rain that was on the way, and I will NEVER go back there again. I did not take horses nor did I check the trails, but the campsites were such a nasty muddy mess, I can't imagine the trails were any better.  If there are separate areas for horse campers I didn't see them. It SEEMED like there were horse campers intermixed w/ all the regular campers. There were a LOT of horses there too, but they were pretty quiet. I wouldn't take my horse there, he would be terrified of the motorcycles, he's kinda fruity like that.

Apparently the place has changed owners quite recently.  As for the owners...the only reason we went there in the first place was because our friends, who had been there a number of times, were talking it up, lots of great things, and yea after 11:00 it's quiet time and they drive around and monitor it..etc. There was NO ONE driving around monitoring it. If there were they ought to be slapped. These weren't the ONLY people being exceptionally loud, I could hear others around the campground they were just farther away and less of a bother. These 'neighbors' were less than 20 ft away. So IMAGINE trying to sleep and having people starting up their Harley 10 ft from your head?

 I don't know if the guy that kept coming by was the owner or just a helper, but he was not the brightest crayon in the box. He had to come back twice and have our group pay more money because he didn't know if we'd paid enough for the weekend. Why bother talking to the owners, they obviously didn't think it was any trouble to let people ride their extremely loud motorcycles in and out of the campground between 12:30 and 1:30 am. 

I'll stick to state or county campgrounds were there are rules about noise and actual people coming around at night to check on things. On the edge of murder...

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my birthday, I'm 37.  So far so good, except I got up too early and now I'm hitting my afternoon slump and I REALLY want a nap, however I'm at work, so I could see that being frowned upon.  Went to Secretary of state yesterday to renew my license and tabs for my car.   Went yesterday morning, got there at 10:38 I was number 39, they were on 19.  Waited til 11:00 then I had to leave because I had some other errands to do before having to be to work at 12:00.  However I did get my tabs renewed at the Kiosk by the door, handy little thing, you can renew 24/7, bout time they figured we could handle that part ourselves.  I figured I'd just stop back after work, and hope they'd be less busy.  HUH! Fat chance!  Stopped by after work, walked in, turned around and walked right back out, it looked like there were 70 people in the waiting area!  Well I had to pick my kids up and there's another SOS office fairly close to there, so I figured I'd try that one, what the heck.  So I get to that one and it looks like there are at least 200 people there waiting!(ok, that might be an over exaggeration..there MAY have been just a few less than 200)  WTH! Is everyone's birthday on May 25/26th?  So I gave up and went home.  Decided I'd go this morning.  This morning I get the kids off to school and head straight to the SOS office.  I'm the first one there.  It's raining and 25 minutes yet til they open...sit in my car and wait.  Finally get out and go up to the door, find that the vestibule is open so I can wait out of the rain at least.  I'm first in line...by the time they unlocked the door there were 30 people behind me.  CRAZY!  At least the cashier was in a good mood.

Go to the barn, clean stalls, uneventful...well...mostly.  Somehow my dumb horse managed to scrape his face on something and has a big gouge out of his skin right on his nasal bones.  Only he can find a way to get hurt in a padded room.  I have NO idea how he did it, I can't find anything in his whole stall sticking out for him to scrape on.  Oh well?  He'll live...long way from his heart.

Go to Walmart, looking for a tie out cable for the dog for camping.  They don't have any, bought cheesecake to bring to work and share w/ my people.

Get to work, I have a card on my desk :D  and a package of Andes mint chocolates! Love these people!

Eat lunch, change into my work clothes and work.. plenty of day left.
Band concert...they call it the spring concert, but I figure it's more like my own personal birthday concert ;D  because...yeah.. I AM that awesome! :D

Editing to add the rest of my day...Now understand I've been married for 9 years, and every year I make it CLEAR what kind of cake I want for my birthday.  I want white CAKE w/ chocolate frosting.  It's all I ask...I don't even care if I get anything for my birthday but I love cake and I want CAKE!  So I get home from work before my husband does, and the kids are bugging me..."where's the cake?"  I don't know cause that's your dad's job on my birthday.  He finally walks in and I'm expecting him to be carrying my CAKE...no...he has a small brown box.  A bakers box.  So  I ask, "what's in the box?"   He says, "cupcakes".   He got six gourmet (gag) cupcakes instead of cake, 1 for each of us.  I'm instantly heartbroken, all I wanted was cake...but what do ya do?  I tried to be gracious and thankful, but he could tell I was disappointed.  Men are so dumb sometimes.