Hospital Visit

...not for me, for my mom, but nothing serious. She had a scheduled surgery (hysterectomy) yesterday, so today we went by to visit. Considering she had major abdominal surgery yesterday, she was actually up and about, which I found surprising. Tomorrow, she is being discharged from the hospital, so Meg and I are going to pick her up, and help around the house until my dad gets home. The rest of the summer should be interesting, because we will most likely be spending a lot of time over my parents helping my mom out. Not that I mind at all, I like to be helpful, and my parents house is fun (usually lots of snacks, especially if my dad is doing the shopping, and they have digital cable, as opposed to our "limited basic" $10/month cable).

The hospital experience was a little eye opening. Combine that with the fact that I've been watching episodes of Scrubs on DVD lately, and I am pretty much going to do everything I can to stay out of a hospital. My mom had several very inattentive nurses, and was in a tiny, cramped room attached the to ER. It just seems like a very scary thing to have your life in the hands of people who are just as prone to making mistakes as you are. We all make mistakes, we are human. I make mistakes all of the time in my job (like musical chairs--THAT was a disaster). But if a nurse were to enter the wrong dosage on a pain killer pump, or if the surgeon was just a little off, it could be fatal. We pretty much just have to trust that they know what they are doing, and will do something unhuman, like not make a mistake. So like I said, I am going to avoid hospitals for a while.

The last few days have been pretty productive. I've made a small dent in my list. I was reading blog posts from last summer, and couldn't believe that I had already finished the pool deck by this time last year. Now, I did go on a very relaxing vacation, but there is no way I would have been able to finish a project like that by now this year. I am slightly bummed, because part of the fun of last summer was that I had two, big projects to do: the deck, and painting the nursery. There is no big project this year. There are lots of smaller projects I am dying to do with the house, but I just don't have the money for them. Our money situation is good, but we have a habit of not sticking to our budget. I've made a pledge that we are going to stick to it, which pretty much means only essential spending on our house. So, basically, I've got a lot of time, and not much to do with it (house-work wise). I'll keep myself busy with little, free or inexpensive projects (like weeding the garden, tagging photos, prepping for next school year), and spend the rest of the time with Maddie and Meggie. I have a hard time relaxing, can't you tell?

Here's what I have accomplished so far this week:

• mowed & trimmed the front lawn
• sprayed roundup on all of the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalks and driveway,
• continued tagging photos (I'm back to December of 2005, only 2.5 years to go)
• moved the shelves from the office to the family room
• created the ultimate in home-cleaning checklists.

And here is my to-do list for the rest of the week:

• Get rid of all spiders and webs throughout the property, and spray around with that Ortho Home Defense stuff
• Mow & trim back yard
• Weed gardens
• Fix attic fan
• Vacuum pool

That oughta keep me busy!

Shore Pictures

Ocean City Vacation 2007

Finally got all of the pictures uploaded and online. I am realizing the drawback of having the slow DSL connection, in that uploads take FOREVER. Between these pictures, and four videos on YouTube, it took several hours.

When I posted this album, I played with Google's new map feature, where you can place photos on a map based on where they were taken. Pretty cool!

Oh, videos on YouTube! Four new ones of Maddie. I won't post them here because they take up a lot of screen space, but you can check them out at The Maddie Show.

Today was the first day that really felt like a summer day. My big project of the day was getting my sister's old computer set up as our file server. It was a good project for a day like today, since it didn't involve going outside in the heat at all. We also finished our bi-weekly cleaning checklist, and got many pictures and several videos uploaded.

We also stopped in at CHOP today to have Maddie weighed. She gained another pound, which is great news. She has been eating better lately, but still hasn't consistently reached the 25oz/day mark the Dr. is looking for. Since she has gained some weight, they will probably need to adjust her medication. The Dr. was on vacation, so we should know what to do in a few days, but overall good news.

(it just occurred to me that I have not posted much about the subject of Maddie and reflux on my blog...check out Meg's Blog for the full story)

So now that summer has officially started, I can start tackling my summer to-do list. The only thing is, when I wake up in the morning, it is hard to figure out exactly what I am going to do. So, I am going to make a list of things that I would like to accomplish each week at the start of the week. BTW-if you read my blog regularly, you will probably find this to be boring--it is more for me, so skip it if you wish.

Tuesday

• VBS Meeting at Jane's (review music before hand)
• Make up the monthly detail cleaning checklist
• Get rid of spiders in garage
• Vacuum Pool

Wednesday

• Move wall shelves in office and install in family room
• Tag more photos

Thursday

• Mow lawn
• Spider spray outside
  
• Lesson in the morning
  

Friday

• Fix attic fan
• Grocery shopping

Saturday

• Weed gardens
• Spray roundup in cracks on weeds

Home From the Shore

Well, here I am, back on the Internet. We discovered that we were able to steal a unsecured Wifi connection from our shore house. My brother and sister both had their laptops, and found it to be useful. I continued on my plan not to use the Internet at all during the week.

Over all, the vacation was very nice. There were a few good and a few bad things to note, but I got a lot of relaxing done, and feel ready to tackle everything I planned for this summer.

I was thinking of doing a day-by-day review of the week, but since most days consisted of the same routine (get up, sit around all morning, eat lunch, go to the beach, come back to the house, get showered, go to the boardwalk, come back to the house, sit around till after midnight, go to bed), it won't be necessary. I'll give you the highlights.

The week started off kinda rocky. We had no problem getting down there and unpacking, but our first trip to the beach last Saturday night did not go well. I had not planned on getting in the water, but my dad and Laura claimed that the water was warm, so I threw on my suit, and the whole family (minus Nick, who hadn't arrived yet) went down to the beach. My dad took a dive in the water, only to resurface a moment later and realize that he had forgotten to take off his glasses. Well, we searched around the water and the beach, and decided that they were pretty much gone. He has terrible vision, and he ended up having to order a new pair from Lens Crafters, which he got the next day.

You might think that I poked a lot of fun at him for this, but later that evening, I discovered MY WEDDING RING WAS MISSING FROM MY FINGER! Now, I NEVER take it off (with the exception of when I make meatballs), and I was 99% sure where it was--the same place my dad's glasses were. See, I have lost some weight since we got married, and lately my ring has been a little loose. Apparently, when I was in the water, it must have slipped off my finger. I was VERY upset about this, mainly because of the sentimental value, but also because I felt like I complete idiot for leaving it on. The good news is, the ring was not that expensive, since we were poor college kids when we bought our rings. So, I need to add ring-shopping to my list of summer tasks.

That night was also a little rough. Maddie decided that she was not going to sleep for some reason. She slept about 3 hours the whole night (and so did I). I was on "baby duty," so Meg went and slept in the spare bedroom while I dealt with Maddie (whose crib was in our room--long story). I eventually gave up on getting her to sleep, and we had a "slumber party." We watched Baby Mozart and played, and then she FINALLY went to sleep, only to wake up again at 6:30, at which point, I turned duty over to Meg, and slept in the spare room until 11:00.

After that, everything was better. I accomplished everything I wanted to over the week, including:

• Time relaxing on the beach
• Swimming in the ocean/riding waves
• Eating Kohr Brothers ice-cream
• Buying salt water taffy
• Generally making a pig of myself
• Started and Finished Reading Half Blood Prince
• Solving several Crypto-quote puzzles.
• Doing absolutely NOTHING!
• Alone time with Meggie.
• Family time with Meggie and Maddie.
• Play time with Maddie (especially on the beach).

I really can't think of anything that I wanted to do but didn't get a chance to do. In fact, by last night, I was ready to go home, not in a bad way, but just missed my house, and Max, and wanted to get started on my productive summer.

I will be putting pictures on my Picasa Web Album sometime tomorrow, so I will definitely post a link.