Tag: Life

Reflections

January 2025 Reflections

Karen

Jan 1

Boys and LeRoy came over last night. We played a few games of Lords of Waterdeep, (one of my all-time favorite board games), and watched Wayne’s World – a classically stupid movie. Slept until 8:00 this morning, fought a sinus headache for a bit this morning, then made myself take the Christmas tree down. I put it up early November so to say I’m sick of looking at it – yeah. Kevin took the outside lights down, too. It’s supposed to turn bitter cold this weekend and into next week, so it’s better just to get it done. I’m still hacking my fool head off, though I have been coughing up junk, (sorry – TMI but keeping it real here). I should get the antibiotics I ordered from the Family Pharmacy tomorrow. I’m still not sure if I’m going to take them as I’m not entirely convinced it’s a bacterial infection, but it’s been over a week now, I’m still pretty stuffed up, coughing and … it’s not going away if it’s bacterial. We’ll see. It IS nice to know that antibiotics are available without having to see a doctor. Just be careful with that – you don’t want to take too many antibiotics.

Jan 2

The antibiotics I ordered came in the mail today. They came in an orange bottle, just like if you had picked up the medication from the pharmacy – which, I suppose, shouldn’t have surprise me, I bought it from a pharmacy, for pete’s sake. I didn’t know what to expect, but it seemed pretty normal. I haven’t taken them – I’m still stuffy, but my snot is still clear (sorry – TMI), which means, I don’t think I have a bacterial infection and if it’s not bacterial, there is no reason for me to take antibiotics. But it’s nice to have them – it gives me peace of mind to know that I have them, just in case. I literally wore a hole in my fitted bed sheet. I ordered some new sheets from Amazon, they are supposed to be hotel quality – we’ll see. (P.S. – I actually really like them). I regret not buying the boys sheets and pillows for Christmas now. They’re guys – there’s no telling what kind of shape their bedding is in and that’s something we all hate to spend money on – most of us, anyway.

Jan 3

We were freaking busy today. Being the first of the year, and all of the insurance changes, we were kept quite busy running new insurance for testing. I have decided that I do not like working the first week of January – maybe I’ll take it off next year. Still haven’t taken the antibiotics …

Jan 4

Mom and I had our standing Saturday date. It was SO GOOD to see her! It had been two weeks due to us being sick – I didn’t want to get her sick because what ever I had, (maybe it was COVID, who knows, don’t care), I certainly didn’t want to pass it on to mom or the boys. We ate at Jimmy Egg, which is a breakfast/lunch place. I had the chicken quesadilla and it was delish! We will definitely be putting that restaurant into our Saturday rotation from now on. Went back to mom’s house, watched Survivor and crafted. Mom made some shortbread cookies with a dollop of blackberry jelly in the center – SO GOOD. My family has become her guinea pigs – she loves to try new recipes and I get to take home the goods afterward. Sometimes I share with the guys … sometimes not. hehe We talked a lot about going on a cruise – she would need to get a passport, first. She acts interested but, I’m not sure if we’re there yet. Close, but not yet. I asked her if she could go anywhere, where would she like to go? She chose Alaska. GOOD CHOICE!

Jan 6

Had a meeting with just me, the supervisors and the manager. She wanted me to show her an issue in our process that everyone insisted we continue to do because it made sense for our process when the Asst. Director of the department kept insisting we didn’t need to do it. It’s so frustrating to work with a management team that make “policies” that actually hurt our process and slow us down. It’s incredibly frustrating to work with a management team that do not truly get what we do and yet they think they know best on how we should do it. I like all of these ladies, don’t get me wrong, and I appreciate the opportunity to explain why we should continue to do this specific process to them, but overall, I feel like I have to fight just to do my job. I think I got through to our manager, maybe – we’ll see. The bottom line? I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing – screw it. I don’t care. It doesn’t make sense to change it. Since a number of flu cases have gone up, the hospital has implemented the mask policy for the nasty “unvaccinated” workers. I’m SO GLAD I’m not at the hospital right now. Such BS.

Jan 8

One of the supervisors used me as a guinea pig today. She wanted to test out a new “dot phrase” in an effort to make our documentation uniform and consistent. I’m all about this – it’s amazing how all over the board we are with our documentation and I’m sure it’s confusing and frustrating for the clinics to try and figure out what they are reading and get the information they need to take care of their patients. A dot phrase is a quick text – something that you can input, for example, type in .document and a pre-determined phrase comes up in the patient’s chart. This quick text is a template that we can fill in with the necessary information about the test that we ran through the patient’s insurance and let the offices know the outcome. I was also asked to be part of a “focus” group to help my co-workers navigate our new electronic medical record (EMR) system that the hospital is gearing up to start using in March of next year. It will be an EPIC change. (Epic is actually the name of our EMR we’re getting ready to switch to). Again – very honored to have been asked to do this – I think my Technical Writing skills will come in handy for this project. I won’t be writing anything, at least, I don’t think I will be, but taking information and regurgitating it into comprehensive information that the worker bees can understand … I’m pretty good at that. So – we’ll see. I have no idea what my involvement will look like, but I’m looking forward to getting involved. Left the house, for the first time in three days, to grab some Qdoba for lunch. It felt good to leave the house. Also – starting to seriously think/plan our vacation plans for 2025.

Jan 9

To my utter surprise, Kevin is not keen to go on a cruise this year. !! I was pretty shocked to hear him say that. I don’t think it’s the cruise, per se, I think it’s more the flying part that he doesn’t want to do. Flying is stressful, there’s no doubt about that. But still … no cruise?? Maybe I can convince mom to say yes to the cruise. She’s soooo close! I think it would be fun to go on a cruise and never leave the ship. Take a route that we’ve already done and I’m not really interested in seeing again, like the Western Carribean cruises – those ports are a little scary, not gonna lie, and instead of spending money on excursions, like we normally do, spend that money on a cabin upgrade, or on a VIP package where we have access to more private places on the boat – not open to the general public. I think that would be so fun! I’m just not sure if Kev would be up for it – when it actually came time and we were sitting in a port, I think he would feel like he was missing out on something by not leaving the ship. I don’t know, I’m not giving up on that idea. We’ll see. For now, we’re talking about maybe flying down to South Padre Island in Texas and staying in a cabin on the beach. It’s pretty expensive, but we’re seriously thinking about it!

Jan 10

We got 5 inches of snow today!

That’s the most we’ve gotten in a long time. If we get snow, it’s usually just a few inches and a lot of times, it’s not even snow we get, but ice. We get a lot of ice in my area of the country. Luckily, we only got the snow. Times like this is SOOOO NICE to work from home. I don’t have to worry/stress about getting out in this mess. It’s pretty, but only because I don’t have to get out in it. I opened my big mouth to my supervisor and offered to help her with other projects. She seemed pretty stressed about other teams needing some serious help and stupid me was like, “Hey! I can help!” So, of course, she took me up on that offer. I wish I could just be one of these employees that everyone forgets about – someone who just sort of lingers in the background, you know the ones – we all work with people like that. But alas – no – I have to open my big mouth. So – I will be helping Therapy fill out some paperwork to help them get caught up. It’s not hard, just fax some forms, but still … it’s okay – we’re really not that busy and I would rather stay busy. I text mom today to ask if she had found her birth certificate so we could get the passport process started. It was sort of a test to see how serious she was about us going on a cruise. To my UTTER surprise – she said she found it and it was in her purse! OMG!!!! We’re going on a cruise!!

Jan 11

I braved the elements, got out, picked up mom and me some nuggets and chili from Wendys and went to her house today. The roads actually weren’t that bad. The main roads are clear, just the side roads were a challenge. But the Jeep got around really well, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. (Did I tell ya’ll that we leased a Jeep??

Brand new, 2024 all blue Jeep. We leased her back in October for 3 1/2 years. Who knows if we’ll keep her after the lease is up – we’ve never done this before – call it a mid-life crisis splurge – OMG – I love driving her!! Yes – it’s a her. Use the correct pronouns, please. **SMIRK**). Mom was happy to see me. We watched our Survivor episodes and chit chatted about our cruise the rest of the time. Mom is going to make an appointment to apply for her passport at the post office. We did a lot of researching on my laptop together. She wants to go to Alaska, so now we’re looking at cruises to Alaska. Kevin and I took a cruise to Alaska about five-ish (?) years ago so I know what to expect. That ended up being one of our favorite cruises together. It’s funny, because when I first suggested Alaska to Kevin he wasn’t all the gung-ho about it but once we went, it ended up being one of his top three cruises. I jumped down a rabbit hole …. and bought a Traveler’s notebook. I’ve always wanted one. I just wish I had started this years ago … I could have had so many notebooks filled out with all our vacations and trips! Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.

Jan 22

What am I going to do when I retire? Kev asked me that today and honestly, I don’t have an answer. I like to work, I like the push to get something done, I like the mental stimulation. I like having a purpose and a goal. I love the feeling of accomplishment and the feeling of a job well done. I know me, I’m lazy. If I don’t have a goal, some deadline, something to work toward, I will spend countless hours in front of my computer watching gamers game, or jump down YouTube videos. (I have to mark “not interested” on YouTube shorts – otherwise, I spend HOURS just needless scrolling … ). Technically, I can retire in a little over two years. It would be nice to have my time back, but we would have to think of some options for health insurance since Kev is currently on my health insurance. Kev can get on Medicare in a few years, but I still have a ways to go for that. For now, I will likely continue to work, though, it will be nice to have the option of retiring at any time after 62. I don’t know – it’s something I need to seriously think about.

Jan 24

Crazy busy day today. Richelle was already off, April signed off after a few hours of starting because of a migraine, which left me and Cheri W until Cherie C and Lori clocked on at 12:30. And Fridays have not been quiet here lately. We were able to keep our heads above water, but it was a lot. We currently work 72 hours out, management is talking about adding more days on to our “window,” which means possibly working four or five days out. I’m all for it, we certainly have enough people. I’m ready to be busier.

Jan 25

One of mom’s friends text her to ask if we might want a “vintage” chest of drawers to either use or put in Kevin’s booths. I contacted Kev and he said he would take it so mom’s friend and her husband dropped it off at the house. Kevin still has three booths in the flea market. He toggles between wanting to keep them, downsize or get rid of them entirely, it IS a lot of work for him to go out several times a week to not only replenish his “inventory” but to make trips to his booths to rotate stock, add to his stock, etc. But believe it or not, he not only makes his rent every month, but he makes a tidy profit on top of that. He does pretty good business. Probably because he and LeRoy find some unique pieces and I think he has a reputation for selling interesting stuff. Mom and I have a “treat” after lunch every week. Usually, the person hosting makes muffins or cookies but this week we went to Hurt’s Donuts – we bought two donuts and it cost $6.00! What?! Uh – they were good, but not $6.00 good. Yeah, we won’t be doing that again. Wow.

Jan 26

Weather is looking decent for our trip to the Pinner’s Conference this weekend. It’s always a gamble to plan a road trip at the end of January – especially in the Midwest. Our weather is so unpredictable. I looked at my Hotels.com account and had a butt pucker moment – oh stop – you know what I’m talking about, those moments when your heart drops to your feet, because I didn’t see the hotel reservation on my account. I KNOW I booked it back in August or September. I called the hotel to confirm our reservation and they told me we were good to go – they had us booked. I then remembered that I had booked the hotel through Kev’s account and when I signed on to his account, yep, there it was. Whew!! Mom is really looking forward to this trip, if something had happened to our hotel then I would have to find another, more expensive alternative because there was no way we weren’t going to go.

Jan 27

Our department is downsizing, we have too many people and not enough work. I KNEW this was going to happen and I tried to tell management we didn’t need any more people, but of course, they didn’t listen. They are moving some people around to other groups and I think a few of them are quitting. I need to make myself indispensable so I have more control over my own “options.”

Jan 30

We’re heading to Pinner’s! I’ll write another post about that soon(ish).

Life

Christmas Postponed … For the Second Time

Karen

And it was all my fault – both times.

The year was 2010 – and it was a tough year for our family. Kevin had his motorcycle accident, (the ER doctor said his pelvis was a “bag ‘O glass”), in April 2020 and by Christmas time, I couldn’t pass gas or have a bowel movement. (TMI, but we’re friends here, right?)

I remember being SO UNCOMFORTABLE when we went to Brandon’s Christmas concert at school, (he played the saxophone in band/Jazz), and I thought I was going to explode. I looked six months pregnant. I felt like a walking whale.

I couldn’t stand it anymore and went to the ER. They gave me a bunch of laxatives, kept me for a bit, nothing happened, they sent me home.

Let me repeat that, they pumped me full of laxatives and nothing happened. Now, my gut is full of liquid crap with no way to exit … after about a day of feeling like I was going to implode, I went back to the ER. They did a colonoscopy and prepped me for emergency surgery.

I had a blockage.

I mean – DUH. I tried to tell them that the last time I was in, but whatever, I was about to be fixed. The doc said, “No problem. The scar will only be about six inches long – you can still wear that bikini.”

DUDE – you clearly haven’t met me. This body hasn’t ever seen a bikini and never will, but I appreciated the positive attitude.

This all happened right smack dab during Christmas. I had my surgery shortly before Christmas and was in the hospital Christmas Eve/Christmas day. And my incision? Was gigantic. It went from the bottom of my belly button to nearly my lady bits.

I’m no math wizard, but my incision was CLEARLY longer than six inches. And I was stapled, so that was unbearably uncomfortable. But I pooped …. boy howdy, did I poop – eight times in the hospital, to be exact. And it was GLORIOUS. lol

It wasn’t until my post-op appointment w/ the general surgeon that flayed me open did I learn why my incision was much bigger than anticipated. I had not one, but TWO twists in my intestines and they ended up removing nearly three feet of intestine.

So. That was fun.

But being in the hospital during Christmas was awful, and sad. And I don’t wish that experience on anyone. (Don’t recommend having your intestines removed, either).

The boys were in high school when his happened. So, they were disappointed but it wasn’t like they missed a visit from Santa. I got home on the 27th and we had a late Christmas at that time.

Fast forward to now.

We had our family Christmas party on the 22nd. My family came over to our house – it was our boys, my mom, my brother and his family, and my sister’s sons. Mom brought over her signature “goodies”, (i.e. cookies, fudge, peanut butter cups, snowballs, etc- all homemade, by the way)., and Kevin and I made tacos, with all the trimmings, and little smokies. Mom brought over macaroni and potato salad. It was quite the spread (and I stressed about not having enough food … we had juuuust enough food).

After we ate, we played our (now) traditional Saran Wrap Ball game. Mom wraps up a bunch of small gifts, money and this time, she put numbers in the mix, up into a giant Saran Wrap ball. One person unwraps the ball, (you can’t tear it!), while another person rolls a pair of dice and tries to roll a double. Once a double has been rolled, the person unwrapping the ball must stop and hand it off to the next person while also handing off the dice to the next person to roll another double. It sounds easy, and it is, but the game actually lasts much longer than you think. When a prize falls out of the ball, the person unwrapping the ball can keep the prize.

The numbers are for picking a gift after the game is over. Everyone brought a “gag” gift with them to the party and after the ball had been completely unwrapped, we went down the line, starting at one, and people picked a gift of their choice. Other players had the option of stealing gifts along the way.

It was a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I filmed the game while Kevin looked on.

But during the game, Kevin said he started to feel sick. I had no idea this was happening and I felt fine but when Monday rolled around, Kevin was down. He had a 101.9 fever and he was pretty much comatose. I made sure he was drinking fluids, giving him Tylenol and putting a wet cloth on his forehead to cool him down, but I felt fine, save for a dry cough.

Christmas Eve rolled around and yep … I’m feeling sick. I had chills and a fever but my fever never got as high as Kevin’s. We had to contact mom and the boys and let them know not to come over. We didn’t want to take the chance of infecting them, especially since we were running fevers. Kevin still had a slight fever on Christmas Eve, but not as bad as Monday.

By Christmas day, I was down. It had settled in my lungs and sinuses and I was coughing up a storm. Still a dry cough, but more consistent. We contacted the boys and had to tell them we needed to postpone Christmas.

What a terrible, sinking feeling that is to have to cancel something that people are looking forward to. I not only felt physically terrible, I just felt terrible, period, for being the reason it had to happen.

By Friday, my sinuses were a solid block of concrete – I couldn’t even blow a puff of air out of either nostril. I don’t know what happened, or what triggered such a reaction, but it was terrible. And of course, it happened while I was on the phone with my supervisor because yes, I still worked during this time. I didn’t feel bad enough to be bed bound and I work from home so … why not?

Neither one of us went to the doctor, and we’re still recovering though to be honest, neither of us are at 100% yet, (I’m still coughing up crap and sinuses are still pretty stuffy), but we were pretty sure we had the flu. Maybe it was COVID? Who knows. It doesn’t really matter at this point, I’m just GRATEFUL that no one else seemed to have gotten sick after the party and I’m especially grateful that my elderly mother didn’t catch anything. Getting sick, in general, is terrible and a challenge, but when you’re an elderly person, it can be really bad and this virus? Was pretty bad.

So, Christmas 2024 was a bust. It was a huge let down but what can you do? Viruses are out there and though you can make healthy life choices and cut down the number of times you get sick, you can’t avoid getting sick entirely. All you can do is get through it and try not to pass it on to another person.

How was your Christmas?

Work Stuff

Still Working Remotely

Karen

Did I tell you I was working remotely?

It’s been so long, I don’t remember.

This is how it happened, if you want to catch up.

How’s it going?

Glad you asked.

In a nutshell? I like it. I can see why so many federal workers don’t want to go back into the office. It’s a sweet gig.

Of course, I haven’t left my house for three days, I’ve become a hermit, (which I’m okay with, to be honest), and my biggest decision of the day is which color of sweats I want to wear for the day, but I’m loving it!

So, what do I do? I know you’re thinking it …

I still work for the hospital. I know, I sort of can’t believe it, either. Ever since the whole COVID thing I’m amazed that I’m still in healthcare at all.

Though I’m still in healthcare, I’m no longer in a clinic setting. Do I miss it? I miss aspects of it. I miss the people I worked with, I miss the mental gymnastics required to juggle my doctor’s requirements while also taking care of the patients. It was mentally stimulating to me. What I don’t miss are the patients. Sure, there were some that were awesome, genuinely needed help and it was so satisfying to help them, but the majority of patients were looking for a quick fix, something, anything, to make them feel better and an excuse to continue making poor lifestyle choices. They wanted to feel better without taking accountability for their decisions and/or the way they lived their lives. And they were rude about it.

THAT was frustrating.

I’m still working with patients but not directly. I’m sort of the go-to between patients and clinic staff. For example: the physician orders a test, like an MRI, a CT, an Ultrasound, etc., then the scheduled test drops into our queue. We’re all responsible for taking care of certain alphas and right now, mine are M-R. So, any patient cases that come in with the last name beginning with M-R, I take care of.

Next, I get some information about the patient, the type of test being ordered and notes from the provider as to why he/she is ordering it. Then, I sign into the insurance portal, answer some clinicals questions and fingers crossed, insurance approves it. Sometimes it goes to pending, meaning insurance is wanting to review clinicals and other times, they deny it. When that happens, I have to contact the providers and let them know that the test was denied and they have the option of reaching out to the insurance company to discuss, (i.e. fight), the determination and try and get it approved with information only a provider can give. (I.E. more detailed information, that would have been handy to have in their notes but you can’t tell providers that, unfortunately). And contacting the providers is never fun. They are usually cranky, take it out on their clinicals staff, who are also cranky so …. I’m the bad guy by proxy. Even though it’s the insurance’s fault for denying it.

And that’s it. That’s what I do in a nutshell. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it?

But I love it. I love the research, I love the challenge of finding just the right combination of diagnoses and symptoms to satisfy the insurance’s algorithm and that coveted approval status.

And I’m quite good at it. I can dig, read between the lines and get those suckers approved. Not always, but a big part of the time. My secret? I used to work in the clinic setting so I KNOW the clinical side of this equation. When it comes to the ins/outs of insurance plans/policies – nah – totally stupid.

But I get through it and I’ve learned a lot this past year.

I volunteered to become a peer mentor, which is a fancy way to say “trainer.” I really enjoy training. I like showing people the logical progression of learning a job and how it fits into the “big picture.” I feel like too many people get trained with blinders on, they only learn this small portion of the bigger process and that leads to people only doing a half-ass job and/or not fully understanding their job, period. I’d like to be a peer mentor for the whole group, but our group is split and we have different supervisors and I don’t know if the other supervisor would want me to come over and train some of their peeps, but I’m willing!

In the meantime, the UAT (urgent action team), which is my group, is expanding to six people and I’m training our two newest people. Urgent action team, by the way, is exactly what is sounds like, we handle stat/urgent cases, add-on cases, and any cases where insurance hasn’t been done or the patients show up with new insurance.

That happens a lot. Pst, if you get new insurance, can you let your doctor’s office know ASAP? Thanks.

I trained one girl the whole month of November, and now I’m training the other girl this entire month. Eight hours, every day. Talking non-stop. Unless I don’t have a voice, then I’m typing everything out. Which is a challenge, to say the least.

The new girl is with management the first day, getting her equipment, etc., then, she’s with me full-time after that first day. That first week, we go over the programs we use, the insurance portals we use, what we do, WHY we do it, etc.

The second week, the new girl shadows me while I work cases and we talk through the processes, the challenges, etc.

The third week, the new girl works cases with me shadowing. These weeks are usually pretty long as I’m not really doing anything but watching, guiding, advising.

The fourth week, it really depends on the trainee. Is she ready to work cases on her own with me available for questions? If not, we repeat week three until she is comfortable-ish.

I also get a bit more money when I train. Which is another reason I enjoy training. 🙂

I do enjoy working remotely and I can’t ever seeing myself going back into the office, though, if we have to, I’m okay with that, too. It is a challenge to work remotely at times. Especially when you have a group of about 80 women. Women are drama personified anyway, and then you add in text/written communication, which can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, etc., and it can be challenging. I sort of like that challenge, though. I’m a written word geek, I graduated from college with a Technical Writing degree and I’m very good communicating via the written word. I know how to word things without putting the other person on the defensive. I know how to word things professionally but get my point across.

In short, it’s my jam.

But not everyone is proficient in this form of communication and it can be challenging at times.

The precertification department is divided into three groups – and those three groups all have a supervisor and a team lead. The groups are: radiology (including my team, UAT), Cardio, GI, Ortho, Pain Management, Surgery, VA, Med/IV, Oncology, Sleep/Pulm, Therapies.

When the team lead position for my group became available, I was asked, (very strongly), to apply for it. I didn’t. At the time, I was still pretty new and didn’t really know much about the precertification department as a whole and quite frankly, I didn’t want the additional headaches and problems that come with being in a leadership role.

However –

I did sort of promise that if the position became available again, I would apply for it. I’m really hoping the current team lead doesn’t go anywhere because I like what I’m doing now and don’t want to go any further. I’m only about four years away from retiring … do I really want to end my working career dealing with a bunch of overgrown little girls who love drama?

No thanks.

But we’ll see. I did promise and who knows what the environment will look like six months from now. If you can count on anything in business, it’s change.

In the meantime, the hospital is getting ready to switch over to a different EMR (electronic medical record) program and the head boss reached out to me to ask me if I would be interested in participating in the pilot program and being one of a few that will be trained in the program so I can help other people learn the program. This is very close to my Technical writing degree and I’m all about it. I’m really looking forward to starting that process. It means on-campus meetings, and probably endless Teams meetings, but I’m ready. I’m going to make a cheat booklet of how to’s and I’m going to ROCK this challenge. It’s all supposed to start early next year so … I have that to look forward to.

It’s really nice to work from home. Especially on bad weather days. But … sometimes, not very often, I do miss actually getting dressed and going into the office. Actually seeing people face-to-face. Again, not very often, but it does happen. I don’t leave my house the entire week and sometimes that can feel a bit claustrophobic. I do shower and put on makeup every day, I don’t feel “put together” unless I do that, but I’m lounging around in sweats/comfy clothes the majority of the time. The only time I really fix my hair and put a nice-ish shirt on is when we have meetings where we have to turn our cameras on.

Since I sit all day, I do walk on the treadmill for an hour right after I get up in the morning. Then I take my shower, put my face on and I’m ready to face the day. Sitting all day/night is not good for you and I definitely feel better when I walk on the treadmill. Get that blood circulating. I’ve toyed with the idea of buying a standing desk, and I still might at some point, but for now, I do sit all day. I will take short breaks and walk around the house sometimes just to stretch my legs.

I realize I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to work from home. It’s a luxury, for sure. There are cons, but there are more pros and I’m really enjoying it. Kevin and I are still trying to figure out how to make Starlink work. We would still like to take longer camping trips and have the opportunity to being able to work on the road but our first experience was very poor and now I’m a bit discouraged.

In a nutshell: we went camping at the Diamond Mines in Arkansas and though the campground was beautiful, it was very forest-y and though we could get a signal, and it was a strong signal, we couldn’t KEEP the signal and it was nearly impossible to work with an unreliable signal. We were hard-wired in, we can’t use WiFi because the camper is a converted cargo trailer and in essence, a metal box, so that never works very well. We’re going to try Starlink at home, again, and see what happens. The first time we tried it we had trouble maintaining a signal, not as bad as when we went camping, (the signal would come on for a minute, then be off for two minutes – it was crazy), but it still wasn’t consistent. I’m going to reach out to our IT people to see if maybe there is a conflict with the company VPN.

All of this to say, we’re not giving up on the dream of traveling and working from the road, but we have some obstacles.

Okay. Back to work. Thanks for reading!

At the Moment

Merry Christmas … Again?!

Karen

The world is spinning too fast, I’d like to get off, please.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but seriously folks – IT’S TIME FOR CHRISTMAS AGAIN?!

Are you ready? I’m not, though I do have some gift ideas. The only people I really buy gifts for anymore is my mom and our boys. Which is silly, because the boys are 32 and 29, but you know how it is when you’re a parent – your kids will always be little in your mind.

We put the Christmas tree up right around my birthday, which is early November. I know, we’re THOSE people. But I don’t care. I feel like we get the tree up, don’t get a chance to enjoy it because we’re so busy with work and other obligations, Christmas happens and it’s time to take it down. Nope. We’re putting it up early November and keeping it up until New Year’s. We get six weeks to enjoy it.

Plus, it’s a lot of work and I hate doing work with little pay out.

What is up with Christmas lights? We’ve had two strands burn out on us so far this year. Kevin just pus another strand on, the tree is decorated and it’s too much of a pain to take everything off, change out lights, then put everything back on again. So. When it’s time to dismantle the tree, we’ll be peeling off about two extra sets of dead lights.

Fun.

But I suppose that’s like everything else – nothing is made like it used to be. We used to get four, or more, years out of a strand of Christmas lights, now we’re lucky if we get four, or more, weeks out of a strand of lights.

We’re planning a few Christmas parties. We’re supposed to go to Kevin’s family’s party on the 15th, then we’re having my family’s party on the 22nd. We’re having Kevin’s party at his parents’ clubhouse. It’s the clubhouse that everyone in the neighborhood uses. It’s a really nice space that comfortably houses everyone. It comes with a kitchen, too, so it’s really handy. We’re planning on having my family’s party at our house on the 22nd. I think mom would have liked to have the party at her house but our house is bigger.

Hopefully, I have my voice back by then. These past two weeks have been ROUGH for me. I left work/home to drive up to Wal-Mart because I needed a few things and as I was walking into the store, I got THAT feeling. You know, THAT feeling when you start to feel sick? I can’t even describe THAT feeling … just an overall pressure/heaviness that weighs down your entire body. And it came on HARD. I had been feeling a little run down before that and had loaded up on Vitamin C, Zinc and Zicam but apparently it wasn’t enough to stop the freight train that slammed into my entire body. I quickly got what I needed from Wal-Mart and came back home. I felt ok-ish for the rest of the day but by Tuesday, my throat was really sore and I had a dry cough.

Swell.

Wednesday, my sinuses started to thicken up and my voice was raspy, but still, I thought I would feel better by Thanksgiving.

Nope.

I woke up Thanksgiving day and felt like a dog had dug me up and treated me like a beloved chew toy. Yum. We were supposed to have Kevin’s parents, my mom, the boys and Leroy over for Thanksgiving dinner. Kevin had cooked the turkey the day before, but he went ahead and cooked the entire meal, by himself, the day of (God bless him), and he ended up taking food to his folks and having lunch with them while the boys took my mom some food and had lunch with her. It was just me and my germs at home.

Still though, I had a dry cough, I could barely speak, but I didn’t feel that bad, overall. I wasn’t in any shape to be around people, but I wasn’t feeling that bad.

The week after Thanksgiving, my cough turned phlegmy, heavy and loud. I was glad, actually, that meant whatever crap I had caught was finally started to break up. My body had figured out the key to this sickness lock and I had turned a corner. Monday, I could talk but it sounded like I had a cold, Tuesday, it was a little weaker, but I started training the new girl that day and I talked ALL DAY so by the time Wednesday rolled around, I could barely speak above a whisper. I had to train her via text, which was fun … not. (Reminder – I work from home and my company uses Microsoft Teams to communicate with one another). I trained via text pretty much the rest of the week.

It’s a good thing I’m a fast typist. The new girl was being nice, she said she didn’t mind it because it slowed us down, and she was right about that! But still, I felt guilty. I’ve NEVER had laryngitis this bad in my entire life. I felt fine otherwise, I just couldn’t talk.

Friday, mom picked me up and we drove up to the Middle School to set up her Christmas craft booth. It was only a one-day event but we went up the night before to set it up. I was fine until about halfway through the set up and then a wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to go outside, around the corner of the building and throw up. I felt better for about 15 minutes and then, it started to hit me again. Mom said I looked pretty bad so she could tell I wasn’t feeling well, so we left. Mom has a harder time seeing at night, so I drove my dad’s truck back to my house. As soon as we got to my house, I said bye and rushed into the house, straight to our bathroom and threw up two more times.

Dude. I don’t know. Again, I’m NEVER sick so by this time, I’m getting pretty annoyed with myself. I don’t know if I ate something bad? Or if it was because I hadn’t eaten anything before going up to the school and I’ve been pretty sedentary because I’ve been sick and it was the sudden physical activity, or maybe it was because I sucked on a cough drop on an empty stomach, maybe it was a combination of all these things, but after emptying my stomach, I felt loads better and I feel good today.

I have A voice, it’s not MY voice. It still sounds like I have a stuffy nose but at least I can talk, people can understand me and my throat is no longer sore. I had heard, from other people at work, that a sickness has been going around and it was affecting people’s voice boxes … who knows. All I know is I’m glad I’m back to semi-normal and life has resumed once again.

The craft show on Saturday went well. I woke up Saturday, took a shower, got ready and started feeling nauseous again. AAARGH. I ate a piece of dried toast, took a Tylenol, laid down for about 30 minutes and felt like a new woman. Kevin dropped me off at the school shortly after the show started and I was able to sit with mom all day with no problem. Still couldn’t talk very loudly, but I could talk. There weren’t as many people there as we had hoped. It started out busy in the morning but by about 1:00 PM, traffic as practically nil. It was a beautiful day and a lot of people were out, but not a lot of people were at the school shopping for crafts. Overall, mom did well. She sold quite a few things, I sold some of my dorky diamond painting ornaments, my cute diamond paining cow picture and I ended up buying a super cute snowman from mom’s craft neighbor and friend.

I’m just glad I felt better and was able to sit with her. The show ended at 4:00 and we were packed up and driving away from the school by 4:20!! That has to be a record. Granted, I did move her truck up closer to the school about an hour before closing time and we lucked out and got a spot right outside the doors when it was time to leave but we timed it perfectly and kicked butt getting out of there.

Now, to get through the rest of the holidays.

I just wanted to post a little something-something to let ya’ll know I’m still here. I’m feeling the urge to write again but don’t worry, I’m sure it will go away like it usually does. Ha! I’m hoping to write a little more, if not consistently, in 2025, but you know me …

K – time to shift focus and get ready to clock on for work. Since I’ve been training I’ve been working 10:30 AM – 7:00 PM and I sort of hate it. Not the training part but the hours. This right-smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-day shift is for the birds. Not a fan. Boo!

Christmas is right around the corner … are you ready?!

Reflections

February 2024 Reflections

Karen

(My Reflections posts are more stream-of-consciousness kind of posts so I apologize up front if some of what you read doesn’t make sense. But this is me we’re talking about here so … are you really surprised? Also, I’m behind – again, anyone surprised?)

February 1:

So. In addition to being part of the UAT (Urgent Action Team), I will be continuing to help the VA department import their documents into patient’s chart, (not hard, in fact, it’s sort of mind numbing but it is time consuming), I will be part of another team – getting authorizations for patients who come to the hospital by ambulance and are being admitted to the hospital. They say the requests that come in for this particular group are intermittent and sporadic – some days it may be one, some days it may be six, but the point is, it’s another project I’ll be working on. And to be honest? I love it! Ha! Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, hold on, let me clarify that statement, I’ll love it when I know what I’m doing. Right now? It terrifies me. However, that project won’t start until February 8th to give us some time to get semi-used to fully taking UAT over. I can do this … I can do this … I can do this …

February 2:

Gah! SOOOO hard to focus today! I only worked till noon. I don’t know if I was having a stroke, or what, but I could not focus on anything this morning. I know it’s because I was super distracted because I was going to pick mom up after work and we were driving to Overland Park, Kansas, but still. When I have days like this I can’t help but wonder – am I losing my mind? Is this early dementia? I need to stop thinking like that, I don’t want to manifest that to become true. After clocking off, I gathered my suitcase, loaded up the car and drove over to pick mom up. The weather was perfect – sunny and almost 70!! In February!! We were really blessed with great weather. After making sure mom’s house would still be standing when got back, (oven is off, etc), we got on the road. I love road trips. But I won’t bore you with recounting the story here, I’ve written about the entire weekend here.

February 5:

Today was hell incarnate. So. I sometimes check my email on Sunday nights just to clear it out so that I don’t clock on Monday with a handful of emails clogging my focus. When I signed on last night, I noticed that it was time to change my password – the hospital requires that you change it every six months. But it’s always a pain to change it because it takes a minute for the other programs to catch up and it causes some glitches. So, again, to avoid a messy Monday, I went ahead and changed my password. And I couldn’t get back into my programs. “Oh well”, I thought, “it will work itself out on Monday”. I signed on this morning at 7:30 and my programs still weren’t coming up, so I clocked on and called the Help Desk thinking, “Oh well, they’ll have this up and running by 8:00 AM.” It wasn’t until 3:00 today that something was decided, IT couldn’t figure it out. In the meantime, I’m literally sitting around all day waiting with bated breath for someone from IT to deem it necessary to reach out to me, (to be fair, they did a great job, it was just as frustrating for them as it was for me), and TODAY was the first day the UAT was up and running, SOLO. I felt so bad for my coworkers!!! They not only had to struggle to figure out a brand new process but now they had to cover my alphas, too. (I’ve been assigned the D-H’s). IT couldn’t figure it out so I told them I was going to go into the office, (which is conveniently located right across the street from the hospital which is also conveniently close to our house – not everyone is as lucky), to see if I could sign on and maybe, hopefully, get SOMETHING done. Because at this point IT didn’t know if it was my account, or my computer. I unplug my computer, because IT was going to meet me to pick it up and work on it and I go into the office. Which is always super awkward because we’re rarely there and people look at you like, “Who the heck are you?” Which … fair. I sit down, sign on and I’m able to access my programs! Okay, so it’s definitely my computer. I contact my IT guy and he advised me to plug my computer into the hospitals resources. I carefully figure out how to do that, (because I’m often technologically challenged) and the MoFo freaking works!!! So, apparently, IT said that once in a while, (and OF COURSE it happens with me), when a person works remotely the VPN disconnects from the hospital’s servers and you have to take your computer up the hospital to plug into their system directly for it to reconnect. That is what happened to me. So, Monday was completely wasted but at least I have my computer back and I can continue to work from home as opposed to having to go into the office until IT could fix my computer. There’s always a bright side!

February 6:

Today kicked my butt. Since I had computer issues yesterday today was my first full day of the new process and being solo and … wow. It really pushed my multi-tasking abilities to the limit. I ended up doing a lot of cases and that, at least, went pretty smoothly. However, as with any new process, we had a lot of work management wasn’t anticipating, so now everyone is scrambling to absorb this unexpected surprise and trying to compensate. I have to give management credit, though, they have been mega involved this entire process and we have a lot of support, that certainly helps.

February 7:

Worked 10 hours today. Got A LOT done but I’m brain dead. That is all.

February 8:

Had a butt-pucker moment today. (You know what I’m talking about – we all have butt-pucker moments, don’t lie). I’m figuring out that mornings are going to naturally be our busiest times. Which makes sense because the clinics are open, the doctors are cranking patients out and sending them for stat tests. It’s mid-morning and I’m like this cat meme:

When my supervisor messages me and asks if I can work on the ambulance transfer request that just came by email. CRAP! I forgot we were going to start taking that project over starting today. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was in the middle of things things, (for real, not exaggerating here), I had a meeting in 45 minutes and they wanted me to work on a process that I haven’t even had time to read the documentation for. Suuuuure. So, I flatly told my supervisor that I would have to tackle it after my meeting. (Sorry about the gif above – I wish it would shut off, it’s distracting, but it perfectly depicts my day). After my meeting, management, me and one of my UAT co-workers all worked through the process together and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. But just add that fat, juicy morsel to my already overflowing plate of tasty job duties. *sigh*

February 9:

Just when I thought it COULDN’T possibly be busier … WRONG. I don’t know what happened today but I’m quite convinced that every single person in the city with the last name between D-H saw their doctor today because my inbox EXPLODED. Again, furiously working away, like that annoying cat gif above and by the time I clocked off at 5:30, (supposed to clock off at 4:30), my brain was M.U.S.H. I ended up working five hours overtime this week. I’m exhausted.

February 10:

Finally got my hair colored today. My hair dresser, actually, I’ve only been to her once but I think she’s the sweetest and we really hit it off, moved to another salon to be more independent, (good for her!), so I awkwardly walked into the place and acted like I owned, “Hello!”. That’s my go to – fake confidence, no one will know that you’re actually trembling inside. It was a great experience, she didn’t charge me as much, but I gave her a generous tip anyway, and I hope she sticks around. Good stylists are hard to find! I went over to mom’s afterward, my sister was in town, and we chit-chatted, worked on some crafts and went out to lunch and dinner. It was a fun day!

February 11:

Chores. Sundays are boring for me. I save all my housekeeping chores for Sundays because I just can’t be bothered during the week. Kevin got another part for the treadmill, this makes his fifth try, and though he’s closer to getting fixing it, (it’s not sucking power and causing the lights to flicker anymore), it’s still not working. He’s not giving up on fixing it, (Kevin is a BULL DOG when it comes to this kind of stuff), but he’s finally agreed to buying a new treadmill. So. We’ll start seriously looking, (I have my eye on one on Amazon), and make the leap. I’m ready. I NEED to walk again. I do WAAAY too much sitting.

February 12:

It snowed today! Big, fat, wet flakes. It was beautiful, really. And it was one of those days that I was really glad that I was working from home. It was nice to look out the window and not have to stress about getting out in it. But we were fortunate, it all melted off by the afternoon – my favorite kind of snow. Management is helping with our UAT flags. They are trying to figure out why we’re getting so many requests. And they are figuring out that there are some that are being sent to the pool that shouldn’t be. In essence, our pool is becoming a dumping ground for the crap that no one else wants to take care of. NOPE. Not happening and I will continue to point this crap out and bitch, in a professional way, until it stops. Not happening. Met mom and my sister for dinner after work at Fazoli’s. We ate, chatted, and laughed for two hours, it was nice. My sister goes back home tomorrow. Boo.

February 14:

Happy Valentine’s Day! Yeah, I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t care, per se, but my thinking is, every day should be Valentine’s day. You should show the ones you love how much you love them every day, not just a designated day of obligation. Anyway. My impressions of my co-workers: you can read that post here.

February 15:

And of COURSE, I was Voluntold to train one of the new UAT girls. We have two girls that are currently being trained for the job, one of them is doing great, the other one is not doing that great. Guess which one management stuck me with. *sigh* Why, WHY?!? But being the team player that I am, I said I would be glad to help and today was our first day. She’s very nice and she seemed to know what I was talking about. She was also an MA in her previous life so she is familiar with clinicals and insurances, etc. But she’s not familiar with our system. No worries, I can work with that. But I confess, this is taking more patience that I’m capable of having right now, so I’m struggling. But we got through the day.

February 16:

Kevin put the treadmill together! I felt bad for him, it weighs 200 pounds and he really struggled bringing into the house. I couldn’t help because I was still working so he did it all by himself. He was going to call LeRoy but as he says, “I can’t rely on LeRoy all the time.” So, he dragged the thing in from the garage, all the way to our bedroom, put it together and by the time I clocked off, it was ready for me to sync up and unlock. I had to sign up for an iFit account, which … meh, we’ll see, I get the first 30 days free, then we’ll see if it’s worth paying for. But after making an account and syncing up my phone, it unlocked. I can’t wait to use it! I’ve done nothing but sit for the past month and I’m ready to get back to it. We’re going to keep the old treadmill, Kevin thinks he can fix it and with enough time, he probably can. It’s become a challenge for him now. I wish I had his problem-solving patience and skills. The reason I was still working when Kevin was bringing the treadmill in was because everyone else left early so I was LITERALLY the last person on the clock and guess what? Crap came in that had to be worked. I went into overdrive and I got crap done, ya’ll! That was the fastest I’ve worked at this job so far and it was exhilarating but I wouldn’t want to do it very often. Also, I was annoyed that management didn’t think to have more than one person AFTER 3:00 PM!

February 17:

Mom came over to our house today. We ate at Schlotzskys for lunch, came back, finished Season 4 of Survivor, (the person I wanted to win, didn’t win), had some coffee, snacked on the strawberry cheesecake she brought over, along with the Snickerdoodle cookies I made, crafter and listened to the audio book “The Shack” Which isn’t bad, but has taken a weird turn. I worked on my diamond painting until I got tired of that and then switched to cross-sticthing an angel Christmas ornament, and poor mom worked on undoing a mistake she made on a plastic canvas project. I love my Saturdays with mom. Afterward, Kevin and I went out to eat at Whole Hog Cafe, (BBQ, yum!) and watched “Awakenings.” Which made me cry. I hate crying.

February 18:

Worked five hours today. Yes, it’s Sunday. Management has approved overtime and I’m taking advantage of it. I worked on importing VA documents and sending those documents to offices so our Vets can get appointments. Our VA department is always behind and I feel bad for the Vets who need to be seen. Also made two banana loafs today.

February 19:

Frustrating day at work. One of my co-workers seemed mad – or maybe not. It’s really hard to gauge people’s moods or deciphering tones because we communicate exclusively by writing. I don’t have the advantage of decoding facial expressions or listening to the way people say something to know exactly what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. Had to coach one of my co-workers today – I just don’t think she’s UAT material but that decision is above my pay grade.

February 20:

Head down and focus kind of day. I ignored Teams pretty much the whole day and that really helped. I ended up covering 8 alphas today. I loved it, but it was a lot. Did some more admits – really not digging these admits. It’s primarily because no one knows what’s going on or what to do and I HATE not knowing what I’m doing or understanding WHY I’m doing something. Talked to Brandon today – it was his last day of the job he hated. He starts his new job next week and he’s looking forward to the change. I hope this new job works out for him. He’s had lousy luck with jobs.

February 21:

Management is going to give the new girl the admit/transfers. Thank goodness. Pretty sick of the daily meetings. I appreciate management being right there and available to talk about issues and work on solutions but these daily meetings … too much.

February 22:

I’ve lost track of how much overtime I’ve gotten this week. It’s been crazy trying to keep track of the crap that is being dumped on us. Now that Ciox is gone and we’ve taken over full time, it’s really been an adjustment for everyone. We’re realizing that a bunch of stuff was dumped on UAT when Ciox was here – I guess they just did it – but that’s going to stop. UAT is not a dumping ground. If the test isn’t scheduled and it’s marked stat/urgent, how do we know it’s really stat/urgent? To be fair, how do we know it’s NOT? Starting to get burned out and something is going to have to give. Can’t keep this pace up indefinitely.

February 23:

I’ve been running the work flow through my head, trying to come up with a workable solution. I wrote down a possible flow and presented it to management. Who knows if they go along with it but it helped to just write it out and get it straight in my head. UHC’s website was down today and everyone FREAKED OUT. We have a lot of patients that have UHC insurance so it was a real struggle to work those. We had a department-wide meeting today, basically, to tell everyone to chill out and consolidate your UHC cases so that when you call, you have several to check as opposed to being on hold for 30 minutes waiting to check one. It all seems so common sense to me but I guess people truly don’t have common sense anymore. It’s exhausting and I’m exhausted.

February 24:

Weekly get together with mom. Watched Survivor, worked on some cross-stitch Christmas ornaments, talked to sis on Google Meet. We’re coming up on Dad’s one-year anniversary of his death. I can tell it’s starting to take a toll on mom.

February 25:

Booked another camping trip today. It’s in the boothill – we’ve never really been down there before. It’s in the middle of nowhere but it has sewer, is a state part and I’ve seen some good reviews on it. Can’t wait to go camping again!

February 26:

Quiet today. Would have been great but management voluntold me, (I seem to be voluntold for a lot of things lately) to speak to some woman about the UAT processes. I think she’s trying to meld our processes with the hospital’s processes. She was very nice and I enjoyed talking to her but … we’ll see if anything really comes from it. I have mixed feelings on management “asking” me to do these types of things. On one hand, it’s flattering to be asked and that they have confidence in me but on the other hand, I really wish I was one of these personalities where I could just sort of fade into the background. Alas – I am not that person.

February 28:

The pace is starting to slow down a bit. We’re not being sent some stuff like we were before so I think everyone is getting the hint – don’t send us your crap. Management doesn’t seem to be as focused on UAT as they were in the beginning. I think they are shifting their focus to other departments and I’m okay with that!

At the Moment

Sleep Aid

Karen

My sleep stats have sucked lately.

Is anyone surprised by this? I mean, not only the stress of COVID and being segregated into categories, the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, (i.e. people who are killing others), which is stupid and dangerous and we NEED TO STOP DOING THAT. We’re all humans, respect individual decisions – what others do is none of your business, but the fact that I’m not sure if I will have a job from day-to-day – yeah, that’s stressful. (I talk more about that in my podcasts and you’ll read more in my monthly reflections wrap-up post coming the end of July).

I’ve been listening to soothing music when I go to sleep but the problem with that is, it either continues to play all night long, or, the loud ads wake me up.

So I started listening to podcasts. But the subject matter is so interesting that it only serves to keep me awake, not put me to sleep.

But then I found “Get Sleepy.” (I sound like a damn infomercial. And this is not sponsored, by the way).

Get Sleepy is a twice weekly story-telling podcast with the goal of helping you get a great night’s rest. In reviews, listeners have described the podcast as “Life changing”.

Behind the podcast is a small creative team of writers, voice-over artists, and meditation experts. Together, with the guidance of leading sleep experts, our goal is to create the best podcast to help you fall asleep.

I have really enjoyed this podcast. It starts out with breathing exercises and then starts a calm, boring story that is meant to put you to sleep. Nothing exciting, nothing that will startle you awake. And you can set a timer for it to shut off after 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever. It has really been great and I highly recommend you try it.

I know I haven’t been around much lately, you can hear what is going on in my podcasts, but I’ve been highly distracted and worried about my next work move. I miss writing but I just haven’t had the mental space to tackle my creative side lately.

I hope you’re doing well. Don’t let the news media scare you and stress you out. Again, I talk about all of this stuff in my podcasts as I feel it’s important to know what’s going on but also to stay objective and realistic about what you’re hearing.

I’m pretty active on Twitter if you want to follow me there. Otherwise, my podcast is really the best place to catch up on my thoughts and life.

Take care of yourself and talk to you soon!

Life

Labor Day Wrap-up

Karen

I apologize if this entry is boring, but considering I blog to journal my life, and this is what we did over Labor Day weekend … well, it’s a bit tedious. I remember my grandmother used to write in a diary and she would document her days, the weather, what she had to eat, what she wore, the conversations she had and though that sounds boring on the surface, it wasn’t. In fact, it was strangely … comforting to read about her mundane life.

I miss you grandma.

I’m writing this from Cooper Creek Campground in Branson, Missouri. We arrived at the park Friday night at 5:30. We had to rush to get going after the boys got out of school and as a result, we forgot quite a few things.

But we’ve adapted.

The campground is packed – there isn’t an empty site to be found. The weather has been perfect – sunny and mid-80’s. The air coming off the lake is cool and refreshing.

And judging by the weather reports, we took this camping trip just in time – Hurricane Gustav (?) is heading toward the Gulf of Mexico and though that weather won’t affect us for a few days, it will indeed affect us – we have rain in the forecast for most of next week.

The only flies in our perfect ointment are:

We’re surrounded by dogs and children. The dogs howl and bark, the children scream and cry. We actually saw one little guy wipe out on his bike when he zoomed past us on the hill, swerved, lost control, sailed over the handlebars and fall face first on the gravel and concrete.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Luckily, the boy was okay and walked away, his lower lip trembling as he tried to absorb his stinging wounds. Why his parents allowed him (this boy couldn’t have been more than six) to ride his bike without safety gear on, in my opinion, is not only foolhardy but a form of child abuse.

All four of us witnessed the little boy fall – the husband and I thanked the Lord that he wasn’t our little boy and our boys walked away learning the importance of protecting themselves in precarious situations.

The bathrooms? Are ½ mile away from our campsite. In fact, we are in the next to last campsite in the park. I made the reservations at the last minute and we were lucky to get a spot at all. I usually request a space near the bathrooms (we use our camper bathroom as a storage closet – though this trip the guys did use it for peeing only. Not me, I’d rather hike the ½ mile to the bathrooms – I’m funny like that) but unfortunately, I forgot this go-around and now we I have had to hike to take a pee and a shower.

But I’m not complaining too loudly, it gives me the opportunity to walk off the excess food that I’ve been eating (there’s just something about camping and pigging out).

The neighbors to our left moved in late last night. In fact, we didn’t even know we HAD neighbors until we woke up this morning. It was really weird because when I woke up, started the coffee maker and opened the shades, it was like looking into a mirror. Our neighbor’s camper? Almost an exact replica as ours. The only difference is that they have a slide out – we do not.

I’m jealous.

They are from Oklahoma. The guy is a big dude – not fat, just big. The woman is thin and attractive and they have one lone boy with them – he’s about GD’s age – and painfully skinny. They have one small, quiet, brown and white Chihuahua that shakes whenever they take it for a walk.

All three people are wearing the same shirt so I’m assuming they are here for some sort of family reunion or some sort of organizational meeting.

The neighbors on our other side are two men. They are both large and overly hairy. I know this because they sit around their campground without shirts on. They are the only ones in the campground that are using a tent. They are driving a brownish-tan Dodge Ram 2500 pulling a very long and well used fishing boat. They left early this morning and are now back (5:00 pm.) and sitting in front of their tent watching various cars and people pass by.

They’re a bit creepy. They don’t talk very much, but they seem comfortable in each other’s presence. I have no idea if they caught any fish but judging by their self-satisfied expressions, I’m assuming they did.

This is the first time we’ve camped here that we haven’t been able to access WiFi. As a result, we’ve had to walk down to the office and use the small platforms they have nailed to the wall and sit on the hard, uncomfortable stools to check our email. The boys have been pretty bored without Internet, but they have adapted by playing around with a laptop the husband saved from a co-worker who was just going to throw it away. The husband simply reformatted it and it works like a charm now. The co-worker didn’t want it back (he had already bought a new laptop), so now the boys have a computer they can goof around with. And they have been the whole camping trip.

Isn’t it amazing what people are willing to throw away? One person’s trash, is another person’s treasure. *smile*

For me? I was disappointed at first whenever I first discovered I couldn’t establish a connection from our camper, but it’s been very nice to be FORCED away from cyber world.

I needed the break. Especially since these past few days have been insanely busy for me and I’ve been on the computer and working nearly 12-hour days.

We treated the boys to Bandana BBQ for dinner Friday night. I felt grungy, sweaty and completely underdressed, but Branson is a tourist town and they are used to seeing grungy, sweaty people.

Saturday, the husband I went to the new bookstore called “Books-A-Million” or BAM for short. In short, it’s a Barnes and Noble type of establishment and it was quite busy.

I was quite pleased to see people milling around. You hear how less and less people are actually reading and it was encouraging to see that at least in my area, that’s not entirely true.

I walked away from the bookstore with “Killer Smile” by Lisa Scottoline and “The PMS Murder” by Laura Levine. I like to try and buy at least one book from an author I’m not familiar with whenever I visit the bookstore.

I need to stop buying books and start reading books – my personal library is taking over the house.

Saturday night, we took the boys go-cart racing and it cost us $30.00. It was the best $30.00 we’ve spent in a long time. The cars were fast and the boys beat the pants off of me and the husband. In fact, I was a whole lap down from them. But judging by their flushed cheeks and excited lap recounts, they had a ball and we made another fun childhood memory.

After go-carts, we went putt-putting. We went to a very popular dinosaur-themed course and the place was wall-to-wall people. In fact, the back nine was so backed up we ended up standing around as opposed to actually playing. But the people were friendly and everyone was in good spirits so we had a good time.

The boys beat the pants off us again. Isn’t it amazing how kids adapt to sports/games? I felt awkward and stupid, but it was fun to be teased by the boys so I got over my feelings of inadequacy. *grin*

After we finished golfing, we went for ice cream. The husband and GD had chocolate malts, MK had a vanilla ice cream cup (he won’t eat any other flavor ice cream), I had a raspberry concrete.

Oh. My. Gosh. That raspberry concrete was TO DIE FOR. Very scrumptious and definitely a new favorite. It’s a good thing we’re so far from the bathrooms, I’ll definitely need to walk that those calories off.

We ended up spending $85. (I need to stop keeping a running total in my head. How can you put a dollar sign on family moments?) But we really had a great family night together and I’m so glad the husband and I decided to do this camping thing. You’ve heard me talk about how much work it is. And how uncomfortable it can be, but by golly, we’ve had the best times in our camper and we’ve walked away with some pretty fun stories in the process. I’m quite confident the boys will tell their kids about their camping trips with grandma and grandpa. *grin*

It’s now 7:57 a.m. Sunday morning. I’m the first one up, the guys are all sleeping in. It’s a cool, crisp morning and I wish I had brought some sweats with me. I just got back from the restrooms and I have goosebumps. The park is quiet, but it’s slowly coming to life. I can hear various birds chirping their morning songs and an occasional bump as people move about their RV’s.

I can smell bacon and coffee in the air – there is NOTHING like smelling bacon cooking at your campground early in the morning. It’s very … real and comforting.

I’m drinking my morning coffee and after I finish writing this, I’ll head to the showers. We really have nothing on tap for today’s activities. We’ll most likely spend a lazy day around the camper, though the husband and I will probably head out to some craft booths later today – I have a craving to buy a Christmas ornament (I have no idea why).

We might walk down to the lake and just sit and watch the people fish off the pier or the boats slowly float past. We don’t have anything planned for this evening, either. We’ll most likely pop some popcorn and watch a movie … or not. That’s the beauty of these little camping getaways – anything goes – our plans are wide open.

We’ll head back home tomorrow morning. We’re only about 45 minutes from home, so we’ll get home and unpack well before lunch. I’ll most likely catch up on laundry and clean the camper out, then I’ll catch up on emails and various other duties. We’ll have a relaxing afternoon at home before the kids go back to school and the husband goes back to work on Tuesday.

And life will resume its hectic, but very satisfying, pace.

_________________________________

Coffee Chat at writefromkaren.com
It’s time for another Coffee Chat session! Need something to blog about? How about telling us a bit more about you? (And there’s prizes!!)