Finally Friday

It's been a long week.

I'm going to the vice-principal's wake right after school, since I think if I don't get there early, I'll never be able to park, and will be waiting on a line outside to get in. It'll be a big one. I always feel that I don't really know the rules of going to a wake, although I've been to many over the years, but I asked a couple of people and they said to go, so I'm going.

I think I've figured out where all my headaches are coming from: my jaw. I know I have TMJ (short for temperomandibular joint, I just looked it up), which is essentially trouble with your jaw joint, which can cause pain, headaches, etc., and I haven't worn the nightguard the dentist gave me in so long that it doesn't fit anymore. So I'll go to CVS or someplace after school and pick up one that I can fit myself and that will cost 20 something dollars instead of 300 something. Give it a week or two and see if it makes a difference. I feel pretty good, in general, but the headache thing is getting old.

My plans for the weekend include maybe a trip to Target, of course, and a vist from R at some point. Depending on how everyone's timing works out, she'd like to drop in on the Sibs and introduce her to the Gentleman Friend. Which would be awfully nice. She has yet to have the opportunity to introduce him to the ILs, who are, after all, her grandparents, and I kinda think they should have met him before she says "Oh, and we'll be living together in a couple of months." Grandparents can be funny people sometimes. My mother's reaction to such an announcement would have been "Wonderful! I'm so happy for you!" and my father would have said "Why? I don't understand. Explain it to me." Heh heh. I think the MIL will put on a brave and happy face and then start to cry as soon as R leaves the house, but that's just a guess.

It's very quiet in the library at the moment, but we had two classes in here this morning who had been bumped out of their classroom for some reason, and who had a guest speaker to talk about franchising. (He's a parent of students, and owns several Burger Kings.) He was a very good speaker, and interesting. But it was kind of all-consuming of the space in here.

New Judy is putting up a nice display of books in the display case, something I used to do religiously but haven't done much in recent years. And that's why they need to get new blood every now and then.

Supposedly, Amazon is going to make all their Kindle ebooks available to other devices soon, which would be swell for me. I do hope they go with one of the formats I use, or that I can easily get a reader for their format for the iPhone. It would be like hitting the jackpot.



FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1981
READING: ---- by ----

Shpilkes

I've got the shpilkes today, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I've achieved some nice goals today:

1. It's a snowy day and everyone is home, which makes me happy,
2. I got up around 7:30 with a headache but took Tylenol and went back to sleep until 9:30,
3. I haven't left the house all day or even gotten dressed, and
4. I had a nice long workout on the Wii Fit

The headache was not gone by 11:30, which means I got to take some excedrin, which K says for me is like meth, so since then I've done three loads of laundry and worked out for nearly 45 minutes. By the time I was done, the headache was gone, and now I'm left with the need to do something -- but not leave the house, which would require getting dressed, or at the very least, putting on shoes -- and only two real tasks before me: putting away laundry, or putting away the ornaments. I am just not interested in either of those, but I think I won't be able to avoid them for much longer. I'm considering asking the girls to help me with the ornaments tomorrow for my birthday present. But I'll still be on my own for the laundry.

It started snowing around ten, maybe? K had stayed with friends overnight, but I wasn't worried or crazy or anything because it wasn't snowing hard and I knew the driving wasn't that bad. It's still not snowing hard, but steadily all day, and she got home before the roads were even covered. I know that R is out and about today, but with the boyfriend, so, not alone, so I'm not concerned there. So, no crazies today, although recent bouts of the minor crazies have led to an increase in happy pills, starting today. Which, now that I think of it, may also have something to do with the shpilkes. (But I really think it's the caffeine in the excedrin.) I almost feel like spending some more time on the Wii, but overdoing it would not be wise.

Okay, I give up, I'm going to put away the laundry. Ornaments tomorrow, I hope. Or hey, maybe tonight, if I can't sleep. That would be different.



WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1960
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Still Here

Well, it's been a relatively good day for starting out with a nauseous headache at 5.40 am.

After I woke up and did the bathroom thing, I found myself standing in the kitchen for several minutes trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. That was my clue that I was not going to make it to school today. I called in sick and went back to bed, not even thinking first to take something for the headache that was eating my face, which I did when I woke up an hour later. And then I went back to sleep for another hour. Such was my morning. I did get up and have a cup of coffee in there somewhere, and put on clothes at some point.

By this time I was feeling human, if not well, and I went to the ATM and came home. Around 11, I decided to venture to the supermarket, which I managed despite playing the I'm hot! I'm cold! game the whole time. It was a beautiful day today, if it happened to be early June. Which it is not. So you never know what to wear these days.

But I did have some good fun today. First, I got most of my Disney packing done. I have a short list of what's left, but I've got most of it, as well as the stuff I need to mail down there a week before. And I love doing that, so that was good.

And there's a Project Runway marathon today, which I have on as background, since I'm not so much watching. It was a nice backdrop for a nap in the early afternoon.

I had a pedicure scheduled for this afternoon with my sister, which I went to even though I never put make-up on today and my hair is a wreck, but nobody cares there (except me, apparently.) The nice surprise was that Wonderful Niece was there as well, so we sat in the pedicure chairs side by side, all three of us, and that was delightful.

But here's the big news of the day, once in a lifetime news. A letter came in the mail from the bank, which always makes me nervous, but inside it was the statement that our mortgage is paid off! Wow! Now, it's not like I don't still owe tons of money other places, but a paid-off mortgage is a landmark, I think. All I have to do now is remember to pay the property taxes, which we always paid through the mortgage before. Yes, must make a big note.

And that was my sick day at home today. I have to go in tomorrow if I am bleeding from the eyes, and Monday more so, because it's a dreaded in-service day and I am one of the presenters. Ick.

WATCHING PROJECT RUNWAY :: ENTRY #1608

Randomly Catching Up

I am getting the "new" car tomorrow, so it appears. (I like to hedge my bets until things are definite.) Here's the picture from the website ad:



Let me see if I can fit in some of the stuff from the other day, not that any of it is important. Oh, tomorrow is the last day of my vacation, btw. Woop de doo. Monday doesn't count, since everyone has Labor Day off.

I finished listening to the Harry audiobook last night. I like Jim Dale's reading very much. And the book, of course.

Oh, the medical report. It seems that I have avoided the need for surgery, but no final decision yet. I am to continue the current treatment and see him again in a month, and he thinks at that point I'll be fine. So that's good. Not surgery that I was looking forward to.

I have an evil headache, and have had every afternoon this week. I'm just saying.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I run into former students wherever I go. Once I went for a massage, and was lying undressed under the sheet, and the masseuse came in and said "Oh, do you work at XX High School?" Uh, yeah. The assistant at the doctor's office -- that would be the colo-rectal surgeon's office -- asked the same thing. I've said that the day I go to a new gynecologist and the conversation begins with "Didn't you used to work at ... ?" I'm moving to Alaska.

However, this was odd. I got a new exercise video (pause, insert your laughter here) called (keep laughing) Maui Pilates, which as it turns out is actually do-able by a potato like me, but as it started up and the young woman launched into her introduction and gave her name, I thought "Damn! She graduated about 10 years ago!" Anyway, it's not like I have to see her face to face, but it was weird. And she lives in Maui now, apparently. Good deal for her.

Both of my travelers are home, K with a bit of snotty attitude during the final phone call when I was trying to find out when her train was coming in so I could drop everything and pick her up (now who's got the attitude?) on Tuesday, and R when we picked her up at the airport last night. Wonderful trips for both. So that's nice.

What else can I tell you? It looks like I'm moving on to Husband #3, which would be the same human, according to the DNA, that I married 30 years ago, but he's having his second mid-life crisis, for lack of a better word, so he's morphing into someone new, as he did about 20 years ago. Not a mid-life crisis, really, since the numbers don't fit. This time, he seems to be shifting into someone interested in pursuing actual human relationships, which is nice, of course, but which is going to take a lot of adjusting on my part, since by now, I'm used to the work-obsessed, oddly-focused maniac I've had for the last 20 years. This is better, certainly, but you know, just because he's changing by the day, it doesn't mean that I automatically have the psychic connection to what's going on. If he's going to tell me that he's interested in different things -- the new one, if I understand him correctly, is cuddling -- he's really going to have to let me work on it. Not that these are bad changes, but you know, I have to change, too, and it doesn't happen in a minute.

Now that sounds ungrateful. Bottom line: men are just not like normal people. Male or female among you, you can take that however you want to. It's been proven in my experience, that's all I'm saying.

Okay, car tomorrow. Maybe.

WATCHING ELLEN :: ENTRY #1570

Yes, Scarlet

Today is, indeed, another day. Let's see where the day took me.

Hey, here's a suprise. I woke up with my good ear all blocked again. Looks like this year, the lovely spring allergies have decided to attack me in the form of inner ear blockups, and hives. I'm adjusting my allergy meds tonight -- taking a benadryl instead of a zyrtec, that's for the hives -- and I started a three day course of prednisone this morning, although if I wake up this deaf tomorrow, I'm making it a four day course. This deaf thing is wearing very thin.

I didn't have to be at work today until 8.30; usually I get to school at 7.00, so that left me with time to kill. I Walked Away Some Pounds -- really -- and then reported to the Board of Ed. office for my workshop. It was as I anticipated, and yes, I will be facilitating at the all day workshop in October, the one I usually skip. Guess I'll have to skip the May in service next year. I'll be the one talking about using library resources.

I came home for lunch, by which time I had a killer headache, probably sinus, so there's that going on, too. Tell me, where can you live that allergies won't bother you? Not Alaska, I know; Alaska has its share of grass and trees and pollen. Maybe Antarctica, but of course, the ground is disappearing beneath your feet there, so that doesn't say much for property values.

Here's a quirky thing. When I was a kid, what I thought of as "apple" is what most people think of as a "Macintosh apple." I had no idea that there were other kinds, because my parents only bought Macintoshes. (They had a very limited menu, which I've described before somewhere.) Now that I am all grown up, I only eat Golden Delicious apples because I looooooove them. But today after the workshop, I was oddly motivated to go the produce market and buy a whole variety of apples, just a couple of each, to see if I like them. Now I will probably fall in love with Gala apples or something, and eat only them. I'm weird that way. I'll let you know.

Cosmic asked an interesting question: do I sign? The answer is that I do not (although it's a language I always wanted to learn), and it wouldn't help me if I did because no one else in my world signs, either. Signing -- and anybody, please, correct me if I'm wrong -- is the language of people who live in the deaf community, or who live with people who live in the deaf community. I do not, and the deaf community, I'm pretty sure, is not interested in people like me. I lost a substantial part of my hearing as an adult, but not all of it. I hear well enough to function in the hearing world the same way I did before I lost it, and even if I were to become completely deaf at some point, I would still live in the hearing world. I might learn sign at some point as a lark, or to help me along if I ever do lose a substantial part of what's left, but that's unlikely anyway. If I spoke sign, I'd have to have an interpreter with me all the time to sign to me what other people are saying, and I don't need that (and it would be really, really strange.)

The other deaf thing I don't have and don't want is a cochlear implant. For one, it's not suited to me because it's my actual acoustic nerve that's damaged, and that's what a cochlear implant implants to. There is some new thing, similar, called a "brain stem implant", which would work in my case. However, on December 17, 1991, I made an extremely serious vow that no human being was EVER to see my brain stem again while I lived (that's where my tumor was), and baby, I am sticking to that one like velcro. Like glue. Like crazy glue. I'm keeping my damn brain stem to myself from now on, thankyouverymuch.

Tomorrow is K's last day of the summer session, and she is studying like mad for her economics exam, which I think she will pass, because she exceeds expectations academically, but I think she is also genetically incapable of knowing this stuff. The Hubs, who was actually an economics major, has offered to help tonight when he gets back from his meeting. (Her mad math skilz come from me, of course.)

My headache is a bit better, and I'm having some shrimp for dinner. Maybe I'll take a quick run to the supermarket after that, since neither the Hubs nor K will be home for awhile. I didn't see R today, which is an achievement considering she doesn't live here anymore.

Okay.

watching Still Standing :: entry #1480

Third of Three

I'm working on a three day headache. Funny, though, it's not a killer headache, nor does it seem to be sinus-related. Just a headache I can't shake. All I want to do is sleep a lot, and I've been sleeping better, but still not enough.

So, first, Idol. You can't imagine how annoyed K and I are. We watched Lost, and set the DVR for Idol. Which was scheduled to be on from 8.00 to 10.00. So that's what recorded, but of course, it was a live show and went over, so when we watched it after Lost, fast forwarding to the reveal, we had no reveal. Nuthin'. We had to read who wom on the Internet. We were not amused, and I do not feel kindly disposed to watching Idol next year. But we liked the season ender for Lost.

They made some adjustment on the hearing aids today -- I went at lunchtime -- and there is some improvement, although not total. This audiologist -- and apparently, the technician at the hearing aid manufacturer -- are totally committed to getting this to work. That's some comfort, for sure. But all I really want is to put the hearing aids on the morning and take them off at night. That's the idea, that they're part of you and you don't think about them. The last few hours have been a little closer to that, anyway.

R is moving tomorrow. Her boss gave her the day off, which was awfully nice. I'm going as soon as school is over; I don't know yet about K. She's at school today, but has no classes tomorrow. She only has three days of classes left next week and then this summer session is over! That went fast.

The Hubs has caught the cold that I had a few weeks ago and K had last week; I'm expecting him home from work any minute and then I'll see how he is. He said last night he might even stay home from work today, but he didn't. I think he's taken three sick days in the nearly 30 years we've been married. My favorite was when he had a terrible sunburn, sun poisoning, really, on his thighs -- we had been sailing on the Hudson River the day before in a friend's sailboat -- and his skin was so blistered, he couldn't get pants on. So he stayed home. Another time, he had wisdom teeth out and they gave him painkillers and told him not to take them and drive, so he didn't take them and went to work, and was in agony, but he didn't miss a day.

As for me, I see that whole sick-days thing differently. Which you know.

So the SCM was not there today, and will be out tomorrow, because he has a second home in Vermont and it's so far away! It's not worth it to go just for the three day weekend! I've heard people say this for years, you know, they have a house at the shore and the traffic is so terrible, I have to go the day before! Yeah, okay. Dude, you have two houses, you've already got the advantage. Nobody is feeling sorry for you.

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The Hubs is home, and is feeling much better than last night, just a stuffy nose now. Which is good, because I felt terrible asking someone at death's door to carry a TV to the car for me, but I did, and we decided that he'll do it in the morning, since I basically fall asleep here with the TV on, and this'll be better than bringing up the little TV from the basement. I should be coming home from R's tomorrow night with her TV, slightly bigger and with working closed captioning, and she'll have this one, a bit smaller for a smaller room. The only condition is that if the one I'm giving her dies, I buy her a new TV, since the one she's giving me is less than a year old. Which works out, since if I had bought a new one for myself, I would have bought a bigger one than I'd end up buying for her. All clear now?

It's after seven now, so I'd better get my call in to the Sibs.

watching The Simpsons :: entry #1473