This week marks the last week of practicum. I'm barely present in it as I am also concentrating all my time and energy on the renovating of our new house and packing up our apartment. I am thankful that it is the last week as I looking forward to some time off...especially to deal with moving and all the questions around the care of my MIL. Yet it has been sad to say goodbye to a few clients and say see you in a couple of months to those who are following me to private practice. Lots of hugs and thank you's. It is very sad and very nice.
The theme of this week is, "Holy crap, we are moving in two weeks and have soo much to do to make our new home livable for us and pack up all our crap!" We are optimistic at this point. As we speak, I am overhearing all the sawing and commotion of having laminate installed in the kitchen and in the game room. The carpet guys should be hear shortly to install carpet in the family room. Next week, we'll have a handyman... Mr. Handyman... take out windows in the rooms the back up to the addition and replace with drywall. Mr. Handyman will also construct a wall to enclose our AC unit. I think Mr. Handyman is doing some other stuff around the house but I can't recall what my Mr. Handyman and THE Mr. Handyman have worked out. Oh, ugly brown paneling is being taken down and the walls underneath (hopefully we have walls undernearth!) will be prepped for painting. Our AC man and friend Paul will be finishing the AC work this week. We love Paul. The husband and RVW are moving the big stuff on Saturday and then the next weekend will follow our boxes, etc. The painter extraordinare, aka me, will be painting walls under paneling a Swiss Coffee, which is fancy for a little off white. She'll also attempt to paint the kitchen and the bathroom.
Throw in a trip to Ohio, seeing Wicked from front and center seats and finding a freaking job and also important decision around the care of my MIL (and the showering of money from heaven to help us out in that!) and we'll be good. Honestly, it is a lot and we get a little overwhelmed when we have the large looming question, hole, abyss called "our freaking government won't help us take care of my MIL at home" but we'll figure it out. We have to. Someday I'll take some pictures and you'll see them here.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
How to avoid the heat, my style
Saturday morning: See a client in the first floor of the building which is air conditioned and avoid second floor whose air conditioner has been broken for the last three days.
Saturday midday: Chill in a 88 degree pool on a floatie.
Saturday afternoon: Repeat.
Saturday evening: After visiting with MIL, repeat above. Go back to Pasadena to sleep on couch underneath wall unit.
Sunday morning: Breakfast in air conditioned restaurant. Movie hop all afternoon. Return to pool after third movie because you just can't do a #4 with husband and RVW.
I can totally do this 100 plus weather with my pool, my movie theatre and a wall unit. Bring it.
Saturday midday: Chill in a 88 degree pool on a floatie.
Saturday afternoon: Repeat.
Saturday evening: After visiting with MIL, repeat above. Go back to Pasadena to sleep on couch underneath wall unit.
Sunday morning: Breakfast in air conditioned restaurant. Movie hop all afternoon. Return to pool after third movie because you just can't do a #4 with husband and RVW.
I can totally do this 100 plus weather with my pool, my movie theatre and a wall unit. Bring it.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Only in my house...
Only in my house do I pack up Elvis, Jack Sparrow and Indiana Jones actions figures and then jump five feet when I accidentally turn on the light saber while putting it back on the shelf. Apparently Box City and U-Haul don't have boxes specifically designed for light sabers so it has to be hand carried to our new home. Honey, don't worry, I wrapped the big Jack Sparrow in tissue paper...not newspaper but nice tissue paper. You're welcome.
Only in my house...
Only in my house...
Radio Silence
So, yes, I have been quite silent on the blog for the last week. I've been rather busy. Here's a recap:
So, after a week from hell (aka last week), my mom and sister came into town on Friday for my graduation. We had a leisurely afternoon followed by a race of activity for the rest of the weekend. Graduation was long and boring (minus the part where I walked so gallantly across the stage) but it is done. I am so glad it is done. Father's Day was spent down at my Poppa's apartment where we partook in pizza and general silliness.
My mom and sister left on Monday afternoon and continued on with my week of practicum and starting to prepare for project #31249...moving! I went to Box City and got, what do you know boxes, to start to pack it up. I indulged myself on Thurday morning to massage and facial at Burke Williams. Pure bliss. Thanks to my old job and the rather large gift certificate I got for leaving (I gotta leave jobs more often!), I got out of there paying $60.
Better week. Very glad.
My mom and sister left on Monday afternoon and continued on with my week of practicum and starting to prepare for project #31249...moving! I went to Box City and got, what do you know boxes, to start to pack it up. I indulged myself on Thurday morning to massage and facial at Burke Williams. Pure bliss. Thanks to my old job and the rather large gift certificate I got for leaving (I gotta leave jobs more often!), I got out of there paying $60.
Better week. Very glad.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
no pity please
WARNING: This post may be a bit raw. Read at your discretion. Sorry, Mom and Carrie. I used bad words.
Today by far was one of the worst days of my life. I've had more of them than I can count in the past in the past three months. Today might have taken the cake. The only good part about today is that no one died.
My mother-in-law (MIL) is fine and is ready to go back to the skilled nursing fuckility (snf). (Yes, I meant to write it that way.) It was a bladder infection and they could have dealt with it at the snf. Somehow my MIL had a radical change in her mental status and that is what brought the snf to send her to the hospital. She had a fucking stroke people! Read your damn research about stroke patients and bladder infections. Or just read about stroke patients. Mood swings. Personality change. You have mood swings and a personality change too if you had a bad bladder infection. I know cause I had one plus a f-ing large kidney stone. My mood swung and my personality changed and I haven't had a stroke. Bladder infections send stroke patients off a little bit more than us non-damaged brain people. Read. My confirmation was a visit by the doctor at the hospital that was like "Um, yah, there is no reason for her to be here." Seriously. Thanks for the $600 trip to the hospital, snf. Love ya.
So, my MIL is ready to go back to her beloved snf only to be told by the nurse at the hospital that there are no beds available to her. They gave away her fucking bed to another patient. Nice. My husband (who is without a working cell phone and a car) calls me in a panic. People, I will try to explain away all the reasons why you aren't doing your job the way it should be done but even nice me has a limit. The limit has been reached. After several, and I mean several calls to the snf, I get the following answers:
1. Yah, if you are on Medi-Cal they hold the bed for 7 days or if you are not, then we give the family the option to pay privately to hold the bed until the patient returns. Great policy. Wonderful. So, do you like notify us of that policy or is it in the fine print of the 50 page sign your life away document that we signed when we got to this place? I don't know. A courtesy call would have been nice and maybe professional and maybe common sense. I don't know. I'm probably wrong. The response I got from the three people that I made my feelings known in a very polite way but assertive was, "Yah, sorry about that." Fuck you. I ask to speak to the head honcho.
2. Then I get a call from one said Head Honcho. HH says, "Yah, just wanted explain to you what happened. You see we are having construction on the first floor. You've probably seen it. Well, we had to clear a room for the construction...blah, blah, blah...this family will never get out of this room...blah, blah, blah...I had to make a decision and when your MIL bed opened up... blah, blah, blah...Will you forgive me? We can still be friends." Lady, you may be a woman of the cloth but I really don't need your emotional manipulation and I've never met you so no, we don't get to be friends. Forgiveness and hard feelings. I'll work on it. "I probably should have called you." Yep, probably. Never mind that we have no idea where her stuff is and all the effort we put into make it a little bit of home for her. Never mind the relationship we shared with the next store neighbor and their family. Really, if you just told us or let us come and get her stuff, it would have been all okay. Oh and I'm sorry you don't get much money from Kaiser. Thanks for sharing the little tidbit with me. I really am since I was responsible for negotiating that contract with you and them. I'm so sorry that my MIL took Kaiser insurance to be the administrator for her Medicare. She should have known. I'm not your friend and I'm not your therapist. If you'd like to see me to bitch your complaints about your job, the patients and their family, and the woe that it is to have a contract with Kaiser, my regular fee is $90 but for you we'll start negotiations at $175. After all, I've had to put my self through graduate school and you know it was expensive and they just don't give out money like they used to. Feeling manipulated and like really you don't give a shit about my life because you just want good service? I doubt it.
So, just a window into my day. My husband is stranded at the hospital coming unglued while I try to finish out my practicum and freaking graduate before I lose my mind. I finally get to pick him up at 9pm. We bond over how freaking pissed off I am. He likes it when I am pissed. Then we fight over how to make our feelings known at the snf while not getting kicked out or my MIL mistreated as result of making waves. He wants to go and make waves. I want to speak assertively about my concerns and then hurry my ass up in getting the house done, a home health care aid hired and all the hospital equipment we need for her so we can get be ready to bring her home. Then I'll make waves on my way out. It not even about the content of our fights other than this whole situation has been so hard on us individually and as couple that I think our 6 month anniversary will come and go on Sunday and just that it came and went will be a huge accomplishment. We can remember back to that brief 3 weeks when we experienced marital bliss. Crap, I can't even remember that now.
So, I need no pity. I don't want any "Let me know what I can do." or "I'm sorry." I write this entry because it's my blog and because I needed somewhere tonight to blow off a little steam. Thank you.
Today by far was one of the worst days of my life. I've had more of them than I can count in the past in the past three months. Today might have taken the cake. The only good part about today is that no one died.
My mother-in-law (MIL) is fine and is ready to go back to the skilled nursing fuckility (snf). (Yes, I meant to write it that way.) It was a bladder infection and they could have dealt with it at the snf. Somehow my MIL had a radical change in her mental status and that is what brought the snf to send her to the hospital. She had a fucking stroke people! Read your damn research about stroke patients and bladder infections. Or just read about stroke patients. Mood swings. Personality change. You have mood swings and a personality change too if you had a bad bladder infection. I know cause I had one plus a f-ing large kidney stone. My mood swung and my personality changed and I haven't had a stroke. Bladder infections send stroke patients off a little bit more than us non-damaged brain people. Read. My confirmation was a visit by the doctor at the hospital that was like "Um, yah, there is no reason for her to be here." Seriously. Thanks for the $600 trip to the hospital, snf. Love ya.
So, my MIL is ready to go back to her beloved snf only to be told by the nurse at the hospital that there are no beds available to her. They gave away her fucking bed to another patient. Nice. My husband (who is without a working cell phone and a car) calls me in a panic. People, I will try to explain away all the reasons why you aren't doing your job the way it should be done but even nice me has a limit. The limit has been reached. After several, and I mean several calls to the snf, I get the following answers:
1. Yah, if you are on Medi-Cal they hold the bed for 7 days or if you are not, then we give the family the option to pay privately to hold the bed until the patient returns. Great policy. Wonderful. So, do you like notify us of that policy or is it in the fine print of the 50 page sign your life away document that we signed when we got to this place? I don't know. A courtesy call would have been nice and maybe professional and maybe common sense. I don't know. I'm probably wrong. The response I got from the three people that I made my feelings known in a very polite way but assertive was, "Yah, sorry about that." Fuck you. I ask to speak to the head honcho.
2. Then I get a call from one said Head Honcho. HH says, "Yah, just wanted explain to you what happened. You see we are having construction on the first floor. You've probably seen it. Well, we had to clear a room for the construction...blah, blah, blah...this family will never get out of this room...blah, blah, blah...I had to make a decision and when your MIL bed opened up... blah, blah, blah...Will you forgive me? We can still be friends." Lady, you may be a woman of the cloth but I really don't need your emotional manipulation and I've never met you so no, we don't get to be friends. Forgiveness and hard feelings. I'll work on it. "I probably should have called you." Yep, probably. Never mind that we have no idea where her stuff is and all the effort we put into make it a little bit of home for her. Never mind the relationship we shared with the next store neighbor and their family. Really, if you just told us or let us come and get her stuff, it would have been all okay. Oh and I'm sorry you don't get much money from Kaiser. Thanks for sharing the little tidbit with me. I really am since I was responsible for negotiating that contract with you and them. I'm so sorry that my MIL took Kaiser insurance to be the administrator for her Medicare. She should have known. I'm not your friend and I'm not your therapist. If you'd like to see me to bitch your complaints about your job, the patients and their family, and the woe that it is to have a contract with Kaiser, my regular fee is $90 but for you we'll start negotiations at $175. After all, I've had to put my self through graduate school and you know it was expensive and they just don't give out money like they used to. Feeling manipulated and like really you don't give a shit about my life because you just want good service? I doubt it.
So, just a window into my day. My husband is stranded at the hospital coming unglued while I try to finish out my practicum and freaking graduate before I lose my mind. I finally get to pick him up at 9pm. We bond over how freaking pissed off I am. He likes it when I am pissed. Then we fight over how to make our feelings known at the snf while not getting kicked out or my MIL mistreated as result of making waves. He wants to go and make waves. I want to speak assertively about my concerns and then hurry my ass up in getting the house done, a home health care aid hired and all the hospital equipment we need for her so we can get be ready to bring her home. Then I'll make waves on my way out. It not even about the content of our fights other than this whole situation has been so hard on us individually and as couple that I think our 6 month anniversary will come and go on Sunday and just that it came and went will be a huge accomplishment. We can remember back to that brief 3 weeks when we experienced marital bliss. Crap, I can't even remember that now.
So, I need no pity. I don't want any "Let me know what I can do." or "I'm sorry." I write this entry because it's my blog and because I needed somewhere tonight to blow off a little steam. Thank you.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I think I'm getting closer to getting this one done...
"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times..." I'm not really sure that is the exact quote but you get my drift. This describes my day.
Today, I finished all the academic stuff related to graduate school. All papers in. Finals taken. I'm D-O-N-E...done. Sometimes I think of a doctorate. Today it is the farthest thing from my mind. I have paperwork to complete and turn in for my practicum but that is nothing compared to the academics. Paperwork I can handle.
So, that is supposed to feel good and be a huge relief but....
My mother-in-law (MIL) was back in the hospital today. With blood the consistency and color of tomato paste in her urine, it was back to the ER for what turned out to be a really bad bladder infection. She was admitted late this afternoon and will spend a couple of days on antibiotics and fluids until the infection clears and she's feeling better. My husband will be spending that couple days with her as well. He is there tonight and we'll spend the night in her room. She was not up for being back to that picking hospital. She was in good company because my husband and I are done with that flipping hospital as well. We've been back there now three times since her stroke!
I gave her a bad time today that I just told her last week after she had her G-tube put in that we were done with that place. I came into the ER today with hands on my hip and the question, "So, what happened? Didn't we have a deal?" She shrugged her shoulders, gave me the "I don't know" look and her good arm came up to make the motion, "Well, what are we going to do but sit and take it." She then snickered and gave me the best smile and laugh. I've never seen her smile and laugh as often as I've seen it since she had her stroke.
The person who really came unglued today with this trip back to the hospital is my husband. Naturally he has been worried beyond belief and beside her every step of the way. It felt a step back for us all and a big sucker punch to our little plan of her getting better, us getting the house ready and waiting for the time she would be ready to come home. All that is still in the works and will happen but it was the straw that broke the camels back today for James. My MIL is feeing good on a couple of Vicodin and I'm now at home but he is continuing to burn the candle at both ends. One side for him and one side for his mom. The poor guy is really feeling it and I feel so helpless. It all just sucks.
The bright side. I'm still flipping done with graduate work. My sister and mom are coming to town on Friday. My MIL will get better and is already feeling much better with some meds, fluids and antibiotics. My husband will come through as he always does. It's just going to take time for all of us to come up from the continual tidal wave of life. We'll get there. We all come from tough stock. MIL is Irish. James is Mexican-Irish. I'm English. Stubborn blood runs through and with God's continued grace, we will prevail. No stroke, bladder infection, care giving demands, graduate school demands and all the unknown that is yet to be seen will get us down for long.
Today, I finished all the academic stuff related to graduate school. All papers in. Finals taken. I'm D-O-N-E...done. Sometimes I think of a doctorate. Today it is the farthest thing from my mind. I have paperwork to complete and turn in for my practicum but that is nothing compared to the academics. Paperwork I can handle.
So, that is supposed to feel good and be a huge relief but....
My mother-in-law (MIL) was back in the hospital today. With blood the consistency and color of tomato paste in her urine, it was back to the ER for what turned out to be a really bad bladder infection. She was admitted late this afternoon and will spend a couple of days on antibiotics and fluids until the infection clears and she's feeling better. My husband will be spending that couple days with her as well. He is there tonight and we'll spend the night in her room. She was not up for being back to that picking hospital. She was in good company because my husband and I are done with that flipping hospital as well. We've been back there now three times since her stroke!
I gave her a bad time today that I just told her last week after she had her G-tube put in that we were done with that place. I came into the ER today with hands on my hip and the question, "So, what happened? Didn't we have a deal?" She shrugged her shoulders, gave me the "I don't know" look and her good arm came up to make the motion, "Well, what are we going to do but sit and take it." She then snickered and gave me the best smile and laugh. I've never seen her smile and laugh as often as I've seen it since she had her stroke.
The person who really came unglued today with this trip back to the hospital is my husband. Naturally he has been worried beyond belief and beside her every step of the way. It felt a step back for us all and a big sucker punch to our little plan of her getting better, us getting the house ready and waiting for the time she would be ready to come home. All that is still in the works and will happen but it was the straw that broke the camels back today for James. My MIL is feeing good on a couple of Vicodin and I'm now at home but he is continuing to burn the candle at both ends. One side for him and one side for his mom. The poor guy is really feeling it and I feel so helpless. It all just sucks.
The bright side. I'm still flipping done with graduate work. My sister and mom are coming to town on Friday. My MIL will get better and is already feeling much better with some meds, fluids and antibiotics. My husband will come through as he always does. It's just going to take time for all of us to come up from the continual tidal wave of life. We'll get there. We all come from tough stock. MIL is Irish. James is Mexican-Irish. I'm English. Stubborn blood runs through and with God's continued grace, we will prevail. No stroke, bladder infection, care giving demands, graduate school demands and all the unknown that is yet to be seen will get us down for long.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Sweet!
Yep...
You know the paper I worked so diligently to turn into my professors yesterday.
Got it back today from the professor.
A-
Final tomorrow at 11am and then flipping heck... I'm done!
As my friend Michelle so aptly exclaims, "Wahoozie!"
You know the paper I worked so diligently to turn into my professors yesterday.
Got it back today from the professor.
A-
Final tomorrow at 11am and then flipping heck... I'm done!
As my friend Michelle so aptly exclaims, "Wahoozie!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)