Eat, sleep, breathe, work
I won’t bore all of you, and myself, by sharing all of the nitty-gritty details about how my job is swallowing my life. I’m sure you can infer what you need to know from the total lack of posting and by me telling you that I’ve worked 50 hours the past two weeks, and at one stretch worked 12 days in a row. I’m slogging through, trying to get enough sleep and eat my fruits and veggies.
Family life:
Mom has been having really bad nightmares the past few months, the kind where you wake up screaming in the middle of the night. She saw her neurologist on Friday and apparently the medication she takes for strength can build up over time and cause hallucinations. That’s…fun. They’ve cut her off cold turkey for two weeks, so my poor Mom is even wobblier than usual. The weird thing is that they didn’t give her anything to help her with strength while she’s not on the trouble med. Clearly I’m not in the medical profession, but this s going to be tough for her.
My Uncle George has had health problems for the past few years. He’s a very tall man with diabetes, and in the past year, or so, he’s had troubles with fluid building around his heart. Unfortunately those heart problems have led to kidney problems, which now have him on dialysis. And even worse now he’s had an infection in his feet. Last week the doctors had to amputate the toes on one of his feet. This is my favorite uncle, and he’s also my godfather. It’s hard to think of my gentle giant of an uncle being brought low like this.
In much happier news, my Dad’s birthday was the 27th, and since Mom and Dad are going to be out in California soon, we thought it would be a good idea to have a get together for him while folks were still within driving distance. So, we had a party for him on Saturday. My parents’ best friends, D & L and A & J were able to drive into town from eastern Iowa and Kansas City, respectively. Jeff and his dad came, as well, and it was a lovely time. We made burgers, baked beans, asian coleslaw, and picked up some potato salad and Italian tomato salad from a local deli. We also had a giant cake that, thank goodness, didn’t belong on Cake Wrecks. It was great to see my dad having such a fabulous evening.
Friends:
I’m sad to say I’ve hardly seen anyone lately. I haven’t seen the girls since Chicago, and had to miss our trip to the State Fair since I had to go into work instead. Bah!
But I did get to see Heidi, Dan, and Anna on the 22nd to celebrate Heidi’s birthday. We had a great time and ended up staying up till 3:30 in the morning talking. Whoops! The following day I was reminded that I’m definitely not 22 any longer.
There’s lots of activities coming up, though, that give me hope I’ll be able to see more of my favorite folks. There are birthday parties galore in September!
Music:
I’m thoroughly enchanted by Imogen Heap’s new album, Ellipse. Just like her last album, Speak For Yourself, it gets better each time I listen. I love that on first listen it’s soft and dreamy and musical but won’t put you into a coma. And I love, even more, that on later listens you start hearing the humor and wit in some songs and laid bare confessional emotion in other lyrics. My favorite songs, so far, are First Train Home, Earth, Swoon, 2-1, Aha!, Canvas, and Half Life. Well done, Imogen, well done.
TV:
The only TV I make an active effort to carve out time for right now is True Blood. And, I confess, like the other girls, I’m developing a character crush on Eric Northman. In the first season he just seemed sort of dark, moody, and broody. But in this season, le sigh. I think it’s the shorter hair. Why yes, yes, I am shallow at times. And I don’t care.
And really, that’s about it. Not much of interest in the last two weeks, I’ve been too busy to be interesting. I’ve begun to form a theory that being this busy at work is some sort of punishment for all of the times I told my parents I was bored when I was little. That must be it. ;)