This is a very personal post…and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t read past this sentence. It’s a summary of all of the shit that has been happening in my life this year….lots of good moments, but mostly sad…
I havent had the chance to keep my blog updated. It is now September and up to now, it has been a really fucked up year! There have also been alot of GOOD things and we’ve done things just to keep ourselves from ‘losing our shit’. This may be a long post and I WILL add pictures and probably their own posts at a later date (and I will link from here).
Kayla had seizures and ended up in the ER, turns out she vaping and her body doesn’t like it. Not sure if she will stop vaping long-term, but here’s hoping!
I finished the Master Bath…recaulked the shower, put in new flooring, pedastal sink, new medicine cabinet and new light strip and replaced switch and GFCI.
After almost 2 years of talking to someone several times a day, an online gaming friend disappeared. I knew that she was struggling with something and I felt like I didn’t ask enough questions on her mental status with these things. I didn’t help enough…For a couple months, I saw her ‘log in’ to facebook, but that eventually faded out. I asked her daughter to reach out in June and she said, I will let her know right now…so I know that she was alive then! Her daughter is 12, so I do NOT ever want to put her in the middle by asking too many questions, so I quietly sit and hope for the best!
Jen told me if I didnt go to NC to visit Becky during my vacation, that she was driving me there herself…I needed to get out of the downward spiral that I was in. I drove down, it was a beautiful drive, only took about 6 1/2 – 7 hours. Becky and I got matching tattoos, had a nice steak dinner at a place called 3 Bulls Tavern with Becky and her hubz (Wayne), enjoyed a day riding around on the golf cart, meeting some of their friends and just chilling and then we all had dinner at a place called The Olive Tree (on a golf coure)! YES, I needed this vacation! And when I got home, we had a nice few days with our friend that lives in Florida. (she is planning on moving up to MD for the ‘hurricane season’)
Jen had a serious case of Food Poisoning and it lasted almost a week…it was a couple days before she could even hold down the CR7 (herbalife’s version of pedialyte)
We had an issue with the heater, this was a battery needing replacing in the thermostat, it was cold in here for at least a day before we even knew the heater wasnt running..
My little sister, Shelly died in March, she had fought a lifetime heroin addiction. I have a very hard time talking about this…she was 10 years younger than me, so when she was born, I was her caregiver/babysitter…for more than 5 years, I was the one constant for her. (We were very close most of her life!) Then her dad and my mom split up and she went to live with him…and I went to live with my father…This is when our lives were completely flipped upsidedown, but that is another story for another day…
We already had plans to go to Julia and Dave’s for Easter…it was going to be a small gathering, but after Shelly’s funeral, everyone decided to get together at Julia’s. It had it’s sad moments, but we were making the best of it and we were all grateful to be together.
A week later we lost Dizzy to a freak accident. Raz and Rogue both had a short tumble down the steps in the last couple months (they popped right back up and were probably sore for a few days), so we put up baby gates at the top and the bottom of the stairs…This one morning, I was carrying Raz and blocking Rogue and Dizzy from going too fast, Dizzy decided that she needed to be downstairs and fast, she was moving faster than I ever saw her but she was ok, until she got to the last 2 or 3 steps. Her front legs hit the step too hard and she fell…I gave her a minute to shake it off like the other 2 had done, she was breathing, she didnt look scared, she just couldnt move…something happened in her shoulders that caused the paralysis and it was more than likely permanent. So we made a very hard decision…
After this happened, just about everyone we talked to was suffering some kind of loss…my other sister lost her young dog to kidney failure (it may have been the same day we lost Diz), Chewy sent flowers to the Morton address, the new owners were at her dad’s funeral and came home to the chewy flowers…and it just kept coming and wouldn’t stop…
We were invited to go to dinner at Mike and Rick’s, we started talking about the current political climate and things we could do to ‘feel safe’, so we started talking about taking a gun safety course…and of course, I was all there! Maybe even renew my ‘permit to carry’. So the 4 of us signed up, learned alot, had some fun, we are all ready to buy guns and go shooting…(I need more guns 🙂 )
We went to Lake Tobias Safari on Memorial Day Monday because we tried changing up our ‘annual BBQ’ because we have had so many people tell us that they were away for the long weekend and that we needed to change the date…so we changed it this year to the first Saturday in June.
Kallie graduated from middle school…cant wait to see her thrive in High School!
Addison graduated from High School, her party was at the 2SP Brewery.
Kallie and Kylee had a dance recital, it’s amazing how well organized and fun this was!
And we went to West Chester to see the Budweiser ClydesDales, this is the second year that we went to the local parades! I used to go to Devon Horseshow every year on my birthday to see these wonderful horses, but watching the crews pull the horses off the trucks and dress them up is much more exciting that the parades themselves. We were only a few feet away from them…and as massive as they look from the stands at Devon, these guys are HUGE…and beautiful! I hope we get to do this every year!
Annual BBQ with the band! Texas Leggs! Slightly smaller gathering because of graduations, weddings and the weather predictions, but like every BBQ we have ever had, there always seem to be a different bunch of people…and it’s usually the people that couldnt make the last BBQ. It did rain…downpoured, for maybe 5 minutes. The band played on 🙂
Becky’s husband, Wayne has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and when I was there in March, I could see that it slowed him down, but he was doing all the right things and going strong…he took a fall in the driveway in May and ended up in rehab, they were talking of releasing him but within a couple days they were talking hospice care at home. The daily updates seemed to be that he was eating, talking, going strong and the thoughts of the Dr’s were that it could be weeks, maybe months. So I was planning on packing up my work PC and working from there…as long as necessary. The plan was to go down a week after the BBQ…Becky’s friend, Dottie was going down there (from the Poconos) and staying until I got there. Monday night (a week before I planned on going down), Becky called me down said he was “transistioning” and I hit the road on Tuesday morning. I got there around 6:30pm and Wayne passed at 9:27pm. At that point, I was planning on staying 2 weeks, I could work from there and I was on-call, so I would have only been able to hit the road on the weekend days.
Jen called on Sunday morning and let me know that Raz was having a hard time…she is almost 15 years old and has been on heart meds for about 5 years now, so I made the decision to head home before the work week started. I only had a few days with Becky, but I was feeling confident that she has a nice support system down there and I would be back in August for the ‘celebration of life’ that was in the planning stages. I did get to meet Becky’s friend Michelle…I am glad that Becky has her!!
Raz…got her to the vet on Monday morning, we really thought we were going to lose her overnight…the vet gave us a new Rx for a diuretic and said she will probably feel better in a couple days…never once did anyone say ‘active heart failure’
Rogue’s bloodtest shows she has HypoThyroidism and will be on thyroid medications for the rest of her life…I wonder if she’ll lose some weight? My little brick (cinder block)
To distract myself one beautiful evening, I went out to cut the grass, but instead…screaming and smoking (but it wasnt me)…I killed the lawnmower, or at least the deck belt. Getting a new ‘zero turn’ lawn mower just moved to the top of my list…
I started ripping up the smoke smelling carpet in the sunroom
Guess who needs a place to store the new lawnmower? (shed and foundation & delivery)
The dishwasher died (stopped washing), the cable snapped on the garage door (couldnt open) and one of my monitors died (looked like a cat’s eye, the right and left sides were black with some light in the middle…
Went back to NC for Wayne’s Celebration of Life on his birthday weekend in August. I asked Jen if she could stay home to keep our dogs in their routine, she reluctantly agreed! Shannyn (Becky’s daughter) and Rick were there from Binghamton, NY, so it was really nice spending some time with them. I left Monday morning to head home and Becky, Rick and Shannyn went to dinner that evening and Shannyn possibly got food poisoning, which meant she couldn’t keep down her anti-seizure medication and ended up having a seizure, that put her on a vent and in the ICU for 4 or 5 days. Luckily she recovered and is back home in NY!
Raz had a bad couple of days in a row, so we took her to the vet, this time they wanted to add another diuretic to the twice a day med list as well as another RX for discomfort. The Dr mentioned Active Heart Failure, so I asked…so she is in active heart failure and he said, once she was put on a diuretic, that meant she was in heart failure…well, who fucking knew that?? We went home, watching her every move, making sure she was still breathing when she fell asleep, waiting for the new meds to kick in. The next morning, she had (for lack of a better word) an explosion between her toes. When I saw it, I thought maybe she stepped in something because there wasn’t a pool of blood or anything. We sent pictures to the vet and their response was ‘we can clean it out and put her on a higher dose of antibiotics’ but it will be painful and maybe never heal. We made one of the hardest decisions ever…hell, we thought we lost her a couple times before heading to the vet. She is MISSED! my little clown!
We went to 2 of the 3 East Fallowfield Concerts in the Park, food trucks and music! Can’t beat a free date night!!
I haven’t had much of a chance to do as many bike rides as I would like. The weather has been perfect most of the summer for riding, except on the weekends that I could possibly ride. Being on-call every 3rd weekend kinda sucks too…it’s like I’m grounded because our customers must think that we are their tech support on the weekends. Also have alot of projects going on…
Everyone is busy with life, but we have been trying to get together with nieces and nephews as much as possible. Julia and Ricky’ families have been meeting us at the “Fainting Goat” for brunch when ever possible, but we never see them enough!
Now that I am done the floor in the sunroom, David (Julia’s fiance’) will be coming in to replace the door and 3 of the windows (and the kitchen casement window)…
My next project will more than likely involve the shed, barn-shed garage and basement organization…stay tuned!
