You probably think I fell of the planet.  Some days I wish I could.  I'm learning how to stand up for myself, how to stop a meltdown when my emotions start overwhelming me.  I'm learning how to convince myself that I'm not bad and the ones who are lying about me are the bad people.

DH keeps saying I should just quit and find another job.  If I do that, they win.  I'm not going to let them win.  If I leave, there's no one to dispute all the lies and rumors. 

Things are eventful on the home front.  Three weeks ago I got the flu.  Well, I'm pretty sure it was the flu.  It was too nasty for a cold and people who got a flu shot didn't get sick.  Came down with it on a Thursday, and that weekend we went to Kansas City to visit DH's grandparents and go to the Chiefs game.  I was miserable but we aren't going to have that kind of opportunity again.  DH really wanted to go to the game.  I had never been to a pro football game.  It was pretty neat.  Would have been neater if the Chiefs had won... 

I went to work on Monday for two reasons: 1. the last time I called in sick, someone told every single coworker and boss he could find that I was faking it. and 2. the last time I called in not-sick (asked permission!) I got yelled at and fined a vacation day.  So now I have a new rule applied to only me.  If I'm not sick, I have to take a vacation day.  So yes, I took a vacation day to go to my doctor appts.

But anyway.  I went in just long enough to show everyone that I really was very sick and I left about 10:00.  So there.  Lie about that one, I dare you.

I didn't really feel better Tuesday morning but I had the same plan; show everyone I was sick and go home.  Well, I started to feel better and made it the whole day.  The sinus and chest congestion was still bad but I was no longer 'sick' sick.  By that time DH got sick.  He stayed home from Tuesday on.  I admit I was pretty jealous.  On Friday I came home and he asked me to get up and get something for him (even though his flu was better) and I kind of unleashed on him.  Told him I only got 3/4 of one day off and I went on a trip while I was sick, plus my mucus wasn't going away and I still felt like crap and I was exhausted and I wasn't taking care of him any more until I got some sleep.  And then I immediately apologized of course!

He was having stomach pain, he thought from eating too much pizza at lunch.  I gave him some alka-seltzer and went to bed.  He woke me up at 1:00am to go to the ER.  Nothing was helping and the pain was up to an 8 out of 10.  He kept apologizing because of my outburst earlier and I had to keep convincing him that I had no idea he was in this much pain when I said that. 

So we sat in the ER until about 4, went back, the doc poked on him a minute and decided on a CAT scan.  During the scan I took a 20 minute nap, bringing my total to 3:20.  But it really helped.  Doc said they were sending the results to Australia to be read since it was daytime there.  Less mistakes from grogginess.  We had a 45 minute wait ahead of us, except this time DH got some IV pain meds.  By 45 minutes, they meant 5 minutes.  We barely got settled and he came back and said DH had appendicitis!  I thought he was joking; DH actually laughed at him!  He was like, no, seriously.  You're having surgery today.

...So DH got admitted and sent up to a room while I went home and fed the pets and me, and packed a bag.  I texted Mom and she was like We're on our way!!!!  and I was like No! Wait!  That's not what I meant!  I was just letting you know.  You don't need to come!  Apparently they can't take no for an answer.  They showed up like an hour later.  I did get about 45 minutes more sleep before they got there though so that was nice.  The nurse brought me a cot and DH didn't even ask for one!  I was curled up in the window seat when he came in.  And of course in my sick/exhausted state I said, Is that for me?!?  Lol!  Duh.  That cot was pretty much my bed and chair and table for the whole weekend.  I scooted it up right next to the bed so I could touch DH's arm when I layed down.

So anyway, the surgeon came to visit and said it looked and smelled and talked exactly like appendicitis so once he got an emergency hand surgery out of the way, DH was up next.  They took him at 11:00 and we went down to the surgery waiting room and watched OSU beat up on Texas Tech.  FIL showed up too.  I worked on Tuvok's wool sweater, but then realized I did it wrong so now I have to rip it all out.  Still haven't done that.  Have to work up to it. :-)

As soon as DH was sewed up, there was a code blue so the surgeon had to take care of that but then he came and said everything went fine.  So we went back up to the room.  FIL and my parents left and I think they were still in the parking lot when I fell asleep.  I woke up in time for dinner and went home to feed the pets and let the dog out.  My aunt was in town chaperoning some teenagers for the anime convention.  I met them at the sushi place and then later my aunt visited us in the hospital.  She told us some medical horror stories that I hadn't heard yet.  I was too young when they happened so I never heard about them.  My youngest aunt almost died even more than I was aware of!

But anyway, that night I slept so hard that I never knew the vitals people showed up every two hours, never knew there was a night nurse, never knew DH had a reaction to the oxycodone, nothing.  By the time I came to, the day nurse was back and DH was on percoset.  One more trip for the pets, another nap, and we got discharged around 3:00 Sunday.  I got DH set up in his recliner with all the ammenities, and I think I went to sleep again.

On Monday I was told that I wasn't expected to be there.  Whatever!  After all the crap they've put me through?!?  I wasn't sick and I didn't want to take another vacation day!  I stayed until I had to go to the Endocrinologist after lunch.  Then DH made me an appt with my GP because my sinuses were still nasty.  Not bleeding anymore, but still not better.  She gave me some antibiotics.  Also, I've gained a lot of weight.  Ugh. 

But anyway, DH got a second week off work and I started feeling better by about Wednesday.  I did nothing each evening except sit on the couch and go to bed early.

So now we're 3 weeks behind in the housework, I don't know how long since a grocery trip, and the MIL is freaking out because I didn't plant her tulips yet.

Yeah, I kinda want to fall off the planet. :-)

Also, Christmas is coming... 

Canada

Here's a post I wrote on the way home from Canada but never published:

We had beautiful weather in Canada. It was a little warm but not awful. I spent a lot of time wading in the lake to cool off. I took lots of video and I'm working on editing it into a production for people to see. I still need to add pictures and maybe try to put some text into it if I can. We caught fish for dinner two days. It is difficult to find fish this time of year. Walleye is so yummy!

I packed enough entertainment for a week of rain but we had a week of sunshine. Consequently I didn't work on my afghan at all. But I did make a catnip stuffed mouse and a stuffed dog bone, I made a sweater for Cyrus the yorkie, I identified lots of the trees around camp, and I hiked around a lot. It was a good week.

FIL taught me about camp maintenance and boat motors and I took video. I'm pretty confident we can do the whole trip on our own next year, provided we have enough money. There are lots of ways to save, but gas is still a killer. It is 2500 miles round trip, not including gas for the boats and generator. It looks like we'll end up taking our car which gets 25mpg but that's still a pretty penny. We can take the train to camp instead of the float plane and that'll be $200 instead of $1200. We can camp or stay with friends on the way up and back instead of hotels. Hotels won't take Tuvok anyway. 80lb limit on pets. So yeah, we're excited about next year.

We're on the way home today. I'm making Tuvok a wool jacket for winter. He barely has any fur underneath and he gets cold if he has to stay outside for very long (and he's not playing). I found fisherman's wool from lion brand yarn on clearance for half price and I found a pattern on ravelry.com for larger dogs. I'm modifying it a little but I think it'll work nicely. I hope he isn't afraid of it. He's such a weenie.

I miss my dog...

Also, Caribou Coffee is a wonderful place. They should replace all the Starbuckses.

I attached a picture of where our camp is. We drive to Sioux Lookout in the bottom left and fly about 20 minutes to the purple dot. Middle of nowhere Canada is the best place in the world!

On the road

I just learned that you need to save the blog draft in Blogger+ before doing anything else. I'm spoiled with the new-fangled computers autosaveing.

Anyway. We're on our way to Canada with the in-laws. We just passed Des Moines. There's water falling out of the sky. I seem to have some vague, distant memory of that happening in Oklahoma. Maybe someday it'll happen there again.

So far I've made Cyrus the yorkie a sweater. He was acting cold last night so this morning I made one from some of the random yarn I brought along. It looks pretty good. I went to ravelry.com and got a bunch of patterns to play with. They're saved on the iPad. This iPad thing is pretty cool.

I have a video app so I can record how to do stuff in Canada like fix boat motors and hook up the propane fridge. I hope that next year we can go on our own. Also, it'll be nice to show people what it's like in camp. When we go by ourselves we can take Tuvok with us. They think he's too big. Oh well. He's having fun with his friend Jersey this week.

The fall flowers are blooming in Iowa. There are lots of coreopsis and rudbeckia still from the summer but the sunflowers and goldenrods are making quite a show on the side of the highway. The cattails are fluffy too. Every so often there's a stand of tall purple asters. Makes me want to stop and pick a bouquet. Back home the only fall flowers are snow-on-the-mountain. It's too dry for the others this year so far. Maybe if it rains they'll show up.

I've always wondered why the dominant flower color changes as the seasons progress. In the spring there are pinks and blues and purples and they give way to more yellows and oranges in the summer and fall. Do the pollinators change? Obviously you can find just about every color in every season, but the yellow is so dominant in fall and practically nonexistent in spring. Hmm.

We'll be in Cloquet, Minnesota by the time I get to post this so I'll just add to it if I feel like talking during the day.

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Ok, we're in Cloquet. They have wild yellow snapdragons here. The goldenrods and asters are really gorgeous. I wonder if those things will be growing at camp too.

It's only 6:20. We could make it several hundred miles further but oh well. That's one of the reasons we want to go on our own next time. We can drive the 26 hours the way we want instead of in such short spurts. At least the hotel has wi-fi.

It is cool here. I was helping FIL re-ice the coolers and I almost needed a long sleeved shirt. Even with my new thyroid pills making me hot and being in desperate need of a shower which, oddly, makes me hot too. The hotel has a shower (yay).

DH is listening to the first OSU game against Louisiana. We're winning by a lot, which is expected. Tomorrow we hit the road at 6:30 and should make it to Sioux Lookout a little after lunch. Then its a 15 minute float plane ride to the camp.

Happy smiley faces will ensue.

Here's a picture of the rain in Iowa.

What we leave behind

One of the Hoya dudes brought up an interesting point. In the event of our death, our plant collections need to go to good homes. And then I realized that our wills or black books or whatever need to contain the login and password information to our online communities so our cyber-friends can be notified. I haven't really thought of that since I got Lilly. She goes to Dave and Froggi. But Bones and Tuvok and Garak? Of course DH can take care of the animals on his own but I know he can't keep up with the plants. And if we both go together... It is a subject that requires more pondering.

Pictures

Ok, I'm trying to catch up on pictures.  This is random stuff.  The next time I catch up I'll do one from the trip to Grand Lake.  There are lots of those pictures.

All my houseplants enjoying the rain

The Datura in mid-summer

Yes, Bones is still cute

Totally rockin' cookie cake...dude

Foam Board Light Box (beta test 2)

Lilly posing in the light box 

I have not fallen off the face of the planet.  Though some days I wish I could.

It has been hot.  Over 100 degrees almost every day.  The heat makes my shingles hurt.  Also, I'm tired.  The new thyroid pills make me hot too but they are at too low a dose to make me not tired.  So mostly I'm hot, tired, and uncomfortable.  Work continues to be difficult.  I am preparing to apply elsewhere but if work finds out they'll fire me before I am ready to leave.

A couple of weeks ago DH had a conference in Tulsa at the Hard Rock Hotel.  His boss kept suggesting that I needed to come for the banquet on Thursday night.  So I did.  Turns out, the Association of Oklahoma Narcotics Enforcers named him Prosecutor of the Year!  That was cool.

What wasn't cool was that the car started acting up during the trip.  Auto Zone ran the code and said it was an electrical problem in the transmission.  We took it to the shop on Tuesday and they serviced the transmission and put a conditioner in it to give us some more time, but said we'd need a new transmission at some point in the near future.  Tuesday night we went to Fowler Honda and bought a 2009 CR-V.  Reliable transportation is extremely important to me.  So anyway, they needed to keep it one more day to do the certification so we went back to get it on Wednesday night. 

Since we bought the 2001 CR-V in 2004, I've had 3 things I wanted in our new car: good cupholders, passenger side armrest, and lots of windshield wiper speeds.  This car has all three of those so I'm happy with it.  It has lots more too, like a sunroof, but that stuff isn't as important.  But the more I drive the car the more I like it.  Today we bought a bunch of stuff for it like a steering wheel cover and a 12v vacuum cleaner and ArmorAll wipes.  We already need to use the vacuum because we got 5 bags of mulch.  :-)

I decided that I could mulch the part of the backyard that was muddy with some old mulch we had on the side of the house.  That worked pretty well even though I spread a really thin layer.  But then it rained and half the mulch is gone.  I guess it got buried or something.  So I got more.  Hopefully it will stand up to the rain better this time.

I've been doing lots of Hoya things.  The cuttings from Iris Marie in Australia rooted so I potted them up.  And then Joni at SRQ was having a sale so I got 6 plants from her.  Then I made a light box to take pictures of them.  Turns out the cats like the light box too.  I'll upload pictures soon I hope.  But for now, know I'm still alive. :-)

Rrrrrgh...

I wrote this on Monday or Tuesday and was planning to add to it but that didn't happen. So here ya go.

So last weekend we went to Grand Lake to visit Froggi's parents. We had a lot of fun and I brought back lots of cuttings and seedlings. Also I noticed a rash on my ribcage when I got back home. I thought maybe I got into something so I didn't really worry about it. After a few days it started to itch a little but when I would touch it, I'd get significant pain that lasted several seconds longer than it should've. I popped one of the blisters and it looked like a spine or prickle was inside it. So then my theory was I got into a cactus or one of those stupid pigweeds in the backyard. Well a couple days after that, this morning, my rib started to hurt to the left of the rash. That sealed it. So I went to the doctor and I have shingles.