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!