Fall Update

Let's see where this leads me. I haven't posted in a while and I am feeling guilty. For me, creating an entry is difficult and time consuming. I feel bad if I don't have something interesting to say or the time to dedicate to a fun and witty post. I need to get over that or I will never post! Obviously. So this post is dedicated to updating. School started 3 weeks ago and this is my very first work day off. We are all busier than ever.

Senior year for Bubba has brought a few changes. She has decided to quit gymnastics. After nearly 14 years, she is done. She is tired, hurting and just wants to have a fun non stressful senior year. I don't blame her in the least. She knows college gymnastics is a long shot and why continue for another year when it's not that much fun anymore? I am of course sad and am still adjusting. I've given up my meet duties, turned over all my files, laptop, printer and knowledge to another booster parent. I wish them well but I will honestly miss it. I actually enjoy running the meets and all the stress it involves. I think I've been having an identity crisis since Bubba told me she was done. As a parent so much of your identity comes from what your children are or do. I am no longer a gym mom. I am no longer a meet coordinator but I am now a dive mom. Bubba needs to be busy. She doesn't know any other way of life after all these years dedicated to a very time consuming sport. So for now it's diving which fills hours but not nearly as much as gymnastics and not nearly as hard on her body. Her classes at school are easy and she is enjoying football games and hanging with friends. She is also doing choir with her sister at Tacoma Youth Chorus.

Essica is super busy. She started work at McDonalds over the summer and after complaining to her boss about not getting any hours she is now working up to 4 days a week. Most weekends and then after school a couple of days. Tuesdays are Tacoma Youth Chorus and starting this week, Thursdays are for Special Olympics Bowling. She will be helping out with that for the next 6 weeks or so. Saturday mornings are for bowling league and several weekends are for bowling tournaments. I never get to sleep in anymore, waaaahh! Until she gets her licence, we take turns driving her but I usually get the short straw more than others. When she'll have time to fit in driver's ed, I don't know.

Nodnarb is also working a lot. He is not currently going to school so he has lots of time to work. He switched to a brand new Safeway so he has the most seniority. He often works the morning shift of 6 am. HA! He has to get up at 4:30 am! I have to laugh about that. He is so not a morning person but is coming to appreciate the early shift. He says he has more time in his day to do other stuff. Welcome to adulthood.

Ricky is doing very well so far this school year. He has been able to get all his school work done and I rarely have to threaten him. Last night he was actually working on it without being told to. I know! Insane. He even wrote an 8 paragraph paper about himself with no help and let me read it. It was the best paper I've ever seen him write. His spelling was atrocious but it was well thought out and clever. I really couldn't think of a single criticism other than the spelling and punctuation which I didn't even mention. (He did inform me ahead of time that this was a rough draft and they would be peer editing the next day so I bit my tongue.) Last week Ricky took a hunting and gun class. It was a very intensive 4 day class with Saturday being all day. While I am glad his dad made sure he was getting educated on how to handle the guns he routinely uses for hunting and target practice, I am not a gun fan at all. This is difficult for me but I know it's something he really wants to do. If given the choice between my son becoming a hunter/marksman or a sullen rebellious teenager I guess I'll take the former. Ricky is also taking guitar lessons and is doing very well. I can actually hear a real song or two in his playing. :)

My mother in law is not doing very well. She has lung cancer and at this point is bed ridden and not eating. Mr Rainy has been making trips down to Vancouver where she lives with his sister to visit as often as possible. We expect a call any day now. Having been through this with my father 18 years ago, I can tell you there is nothing harder than just waiting. His heart is breaking and I can't do anything to stop it. His dad passed away when he was just a teen so he is no stranger to death but it's his mommy this time. We are as prepared as we can be but the waiting is awful.

I had been working long term in a 4th grade class. That came to an end yesterday so I'm just chillin'. I'll be back to another job tomorrow I'm sure. That's the wonderful thing about subbing. I'm looking forward to a ladies retreat in October. I have a group of friends from the early days of Bubba's gymnastics career that still get together. We rent a house and do nothing but drink, eat and play games all weekend. It's absolutely wonderful.

Music from Tacoma Youth Chorus

I've never tried this before so I'm hoping this works. I told you before about Essica's Europe trip with her choir. This is the music from their Bon Voyage Concert on June 22, 2008, held at Christ Episcopal Church in Tacoma. These are most of the songs they sang while in Europe. I hope you enjoy.

Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com



PS. I was delivered of a bouncy baby kidney stone on Monday. Unfortunately I could not deliver on my own but all things considered it turned out pretty well. Three weeks of labor was quite enough, thank you! I hope I never have to go through this again and I hope none of you do either.

A Typical Night in the ER

So last night the girls and I were bowling about 9:30 when I got the most excruciating pain in my back. I've never felt anything like it before. By the time I got home I realize it's not just my back. The pain felt like a knife stabbing me right under the lowest rib on my right side. I thought I was dying. I can't take that kind of pain with out throwing up. At first I suspected it was my appendix but thought the pain to be a little high for that. Kidney Stones was my next guess. Bubba took me to the ER at midnight. Mr. Rainy had to take a taxi from work to his car at the park and ride as the buses had just stopped running for the night.

The pain was really bad for about 2 hours and then while in the waiting room, it went away. It came back when I went back to an exam room. The nurse put a line in and drew blood and I had to get sick again as the pain was through the roof. Luckily it got better again and didn't come back for the rest of the night. I waited in that room for about 4 hours without seeing a doctor.

There was a guy behind curtain number 1 when I was led to curtain number 2. He had stomach pains that have been happening on and off since 1980! We heard his whole life story. How he's been tested for everything over the years. How he weighed 210 when he got married 30 years ago and now he weighs 255. It was weird to not be able to see him through the curtain but hear everything him and the doctor talked about. That had to be the chattiest ER doctor ever. I learned all about where his parents immigrated from and how he's seeing a nutritionist himself to help him eat better. On and on! It was strange. About this time Mr Rainy found us. Curtain number 1 guy left a little later and I had to get up and use the rest room. I tried to walk out and find one but nobody was around to ask. I sent Mr Rainy to find one for me. Meanwhile they bring in new person by way of ambulance. It didn't sound good right from the start. It was obvious as the room filled up with people and they were slinging medical jargon only heard on TV shows. Listening to their talk and the beeping and mechanical breathing sounds, it was clear they were trying to save her life. Then the nurse comes in and leads me to the restroom. As we pass the bed next door she says, don't look. Um, ok no problem there. When I came back they had the curtain pulled all the way around her so I couldn't see but there must of been 8 people bumping around behind that curtain.

Then they said it. Pulmonary Embolism. I didn't know exactly what that was but knew it had to do with her heart and it was bad. During this time, Mario and I are communicating with our eyes as there's no way we wanted to talk and disturb the show. It was surreal. Like you know what's going on but you just can't believe it. It all seemed fake like they were on TV but worse. The nurses and doctors were talking like normal, chatting actually and even joking. In no way at all did they act like it wasn't just normal everyday stuff. No raised voices, no panic tones, no fear, very unlike similar scenes played out on TV. If you really had no clue you'd think they were just doing a routine exam. Then you hear a loud digital female voice say, Check the patient. It was weird and random. It did it twice before they shut it off. The nurse said she was born in 1985. Mario and I both looked up at that. 85? We said with our eyes. Our son was born in 88. He's only 20. This girl was only 23 years old. I glanced at Katie to see if she was paying attention. I couldn't tell if she understood all that was going on. My problems seemed like nothing compared to what was going on behind curtain number 1. When they called her death the three of us just looked at each other. You could hear the mom in the background crying hysterically. I have no idea what brought this girl to the ER. I'll never know what she looked like or who she was but we witnessed the most intimate event in a persons life. I will never forget. Her name was Nicole and she was 23 yrs old.

My nurse shows up a little later to apologize for leaving us alone so long. I'm next on the doctor's list. I try to talk Bubba into going home but she wants to stay. We chat about this and that, listen to the announcements come over the PA system every once in a while. She laughs about the name Dr. Waffle. Dr. Waffle finally shows up at my curtain. He is not the chatty doctor our earlier stomach guy had. With a fun name like waffle you'd expect someone a bit more cheerful. He was a no nonsense kind of guy. He said I need a CT Scan and they need to get a better urine sample. It's either kidney stone or an ovary problem. Within a few minutes some cute young guy comes to my curtain and I panic thinking he's going to be collecting my urine sample! When he tells me he's taking me to my CT Scan, I started breathing again. That was easy and not too embarrassing. Thankfully I get my nurse for the other thing. Whew!

I end up getting transferred out of my room to a different room. The nurse felt bad that we were still in the same room with a corpse. I don't know why they didn't move her out instead of us. My new room was quiet and dark. In curtain 2 was an older teen with a broken arm that I had seen in the waiting room. Not sure what his story was. His arm was already casted when he came in and he wasn't in any obvious pain. I only know that a cute young doctor made a very tired looking nurse come back and redo his cast/bandage about three times. She looked frustrated and barely hanging on. I don't blame her. By this time it was about 5 am and while I'd been lying down for a few hours I hadn't really looked at the insides of my eyelids since 9 am the day before. Finally my serious, not chatty doctor came in. To help with the mood he could of told me that I will be giving birth to a 5 mm kidney stone. He also could of said take it to my regular doctor after it's born and he'll tell me what kind it is. Oh joy! Give me something to look forward to. Should I name it after Dr Waffle? But nothing he said sounded even remotely comical. The facts remain the same though and if I'm lucky this too shall pass without the help of the pain meds I was prescribed.

After sleeping half the day away, I'm still waiting for labor to kick in. I can't get over the events of the night. I'm in awe of what doctors and nurses do everyday. How they can take extreme situations and handle them like nothing. I am very thankful there are people (even Dr Waffle) out there like that. I couldn't do it.