Tag: Life

Reflections

March Reflections 2025

Karen

One of these days, I’ll actually catch up to these Reflections’ entries. I really want to finish these because they’re an extension/expansion of the daily journal I write in

Mar 1

Mom wasn’t exactly feeling up to getting together today but I guilted her into it. She needed to talk and purge her feelings about losing my aunt, her sister. I worry about mom being by herself all the time. It’s not healthy to bottle up our feelings – get it out. Burn off that excess emotion with something positive. We ate at our favorite Chicken Salad place, she got some things off her chest, we came back to my house, we watched our two episodes of Survivor (our Saturday thing), then we worked on some felting crafts. I’ve never worked with felt before … it’s fun.

Mar 2

Boys came over for dinner, we had pasta bake. (Basically, spaghetti with penne noodles). We had a good conversation and we encouraged them about their jobs. I wish they could find their niche. I remember that disorienting feeling when I was younger of where do I fit in? What do I do with the rest of my life? Heck, I’m STILL wondering where I fit in, what am I doing with my life? We see the kids so much around the holidays and then virtually never the rest of the year. I’m going to try and make more of an effort to have them over for dinners, maybe a game, at least once a month.

Mar 3

I’m not a huge fan of homemade yogurt. It’s “supposed” to be good for you – give you the probiotics you need for a healthy gut. But either I’m doing it wrong or it’s just not for me but I sort of hate it. It’s so sour! I made the mistake of not refrigerating the probiotics and the went bad. That batch of yogurt stayed with us for days. (::ahem::), so I learned my lesson on that and now I refrigerate them. But still … I’m not a fan. I’ll keep trying because it’s “good” for me …

Mar 4

I’ve been making a point of saying good morning to Blake every week day. He’s getting off work about the time I’m getting up and getting ready for work. I hate that he’s back on overnight shift. He’s a night owl and I think he prefers it, but it’s lonely and isolating. He’s done the overnight shift before and he got a little depressed never seeing people, feeling like he was missing out on family stuff even though we made every effort to schedule things around his schedule so he could come, but still, it’s hard on the body both physically and mentally. Hopefully, this is a temporary gig until he can find something with more normal hours but in the meantime, I’m hoping my good mornings are helping, just a little.

Mar 5

Woke up to about an inch of snow on the ground. It’s windy and cold. How annoying, I was hoping winter was on the way out – I’m ready for some green – too much gray.

Mar 6

The supervisor role posted today. I had a friend send me a snippet of it and encouraged me to apply. I’m tempted. I would rock that role. I have a lot of ideas on how we can make things run more smoothly, more efficiently. But unfortunately, it would never work. The team lead, which is the person who would be my right-hand woman, is also applying. How awkward would it be to work with her if I got the job? I’m now her boss? I don’t think so. The biggest reason I won’t go for it? The head honcho is a bitch. I can’t stand her. She’s one of those bosses who thinks every idea she has is the ONLY idea and even when her idea is proven to not work? She refuses to even LISTEN to alternative ideas. I can’t work under someone that unwilling to listen to the worker bees. I would be fired within one week of that crap. So no. I will not be applying. Besides – who wants to be stuck on meetings ALL DAY LONG. Because that’s what supervisors do. I like my work. I’m good at it. I’ll stay where I’m at, thank you very much.

Mar 7

Lost my shit at work today. It was implied that I wasn’t doing my job by not cleaning up other people’s crap, even though I have plenty of my own crap to deal with, and patients were being rescheduled. Um, no. Patients are being rescheduled because the head honcho won’t allow us to try something different. What’s the definition of insanity? Or yeah, keep doing what is not working and expect different results. She’s such an idiot. On top of that, I had to leave early to pick mom up to go to my aunt’s funeral. Talk about an emotional switch. This was my first time going to a funeral where someone was cremated. It was so strange to stand around the wall where her ashes would be put into. She will be in the same wall space as her husband, who passed some years back. It was especially sad when they screwed the plate back on. Just the sound of the electric screwdriver in dead silence. Surreal.

Mar 8

Got together with mom today. She really needed some company. I wish I could keep her company during the week, too. Listened while she got some things off her chest. Ate at Panda Express for lunch, not my favorite, but mom likes it. Treated ourselves to a miniature Bundt cake. We love those things. We like to treat ourselves with something sweet while we watch Survivor. We ran to JoAnns to pick up some zippers mom needs for the cute crochet cross-over bags she’s making us for us to carry around on our cruise in August. CAN’T WAIT.

Mar 9

Someone jerk ran into my father-in-law with a cart at Walmart. The lady didn’t even apologize, just glared at him like it was HIS fault. What is wrong with people nowadays?! He didn’t fall, but it was hard enough to make his leg bleed. Kevin talked to management. He was furious. He wanted to press charges. Don’t think that can, or will, happen. It’s possible the woman didn’t even realize she bumped into him, we’re trying to look at all angles here, but he cried out in pain so even if she hadn’t realized she did it, would she not hear him? People are assholes.

Mar 10

Was in a bad mood. I felt bad for dumping my frustrations on my team lead but it was something we’ve all danced around for months and needed to be said. Who knows if there are changes or if it affects my job, but I just can’t hold in my frustration any more. I muted everyone on Teams, put my head down and worked my butt off today. It was nice to not anyone bugging me, staying away from the drama. The pre-registration department dumped a lot of cases on us. I’m wondering if this is the new norm?

Mar 11

Another beautiful day! Got up to 80 degrees today – I’m so ready for Spring. Told my boss that I’m happy to clean up other people’s crap – after my own work is done and if they want to pay me overtime. Not sure she was very happy with that “compromise” but – bite me. Don’t care. I looked up my Social Security account today to get an idea of how much I’ll be paid when I retire – more than I thought, but not nearly enough. It’s criminal how much you pay into the “system” and how little you get back. I can take early retirement at 62 … TWO years away!! The big questions is: WILL I?

Mar 12

The chicks are really growing!! They’ve reached the “teenage” years. They have lost their cuteness and they’re losing their baby feathers to make room for their permanent feathers and they’re looking spotty and ratty. Our oldest Chicken is really gentle with the younger chickens – the second oldest chicken picks on them. Most likely because she was picked one when she was young. Kevin is rearranging their hen house. He also build a triangle-looking cage to put on his lawn mower trailer so he can bring them over to our house so they can eat our bugs. We have soooo many bugs.

Mar 14

The winds were wicked today. Wind always makes me so nervous. Straight winds is what took out one of our trees in our backyard several years ago. Kevin called me, which always freaks me out because he NEVER calls – no one EVER calls me except when there’s an emergency. One of the trees at the rental house blew over and was leaning into another tree. He called someone and they came right out to cut off some limbs. They’ll be back tomorrow to cut down the rest of the tree. There goes another $1700!! GAH – trees are pretty but so expensive to maintain. I got to “duck” my first Jeep today while we were grocery shopping. Was fun, and a little terrifying, tucking a rubber duck into someone’s door handle.

Mar 15

Went to mom’s. We talked about our cruise and we’re planning on going luggage shopping. I can’t help but picture us struggling with luggage as we walk through the airports. I know mom’s luggage is super old and our luggage is pretty worn down, too. The wheels on our luggage aren’t very good and I just don’t want to have to worry about crappy luggage as we travel. Kevin and I talked about taking some road trips in the Jeep before we turn it in in April 2028. We thought it would be fun to drive down to New Orleans again and catch a cruise. So … we booked another cruise in November! It will be our birthday cruise! We booked it on Norwegian – we really like how they have their food/restaurants set up. Instead of one big dining room and a buffet, they have smaller, themed restaurants set up throughout the ship so everyone is spread out. So excited! Two cruises in one year??

Mar 17

My gosh the winds are terrible this year! We always get a lot of wind in March but I feel like this March is especially windy. Mom and I ran into a fancy yarn shop over the weekend and I encouraged her to check it out this week. I’m hoping she can make some friends! Mom is obsessed with yarn.

Mar 19

Think I’m eating too many bananas. My heart is doing crazy stuff, skipping, beating hard, my hands have started to go numb. I Googled it – I think I’m getting too much potassium. Eating a banana every day. Time to cut back. Some of it is stress, too. Need to re-center and not care about my job quite so much.

Mar 20

We all had a shock today. One of our supervisors, one of the women who created this department, just left. She was planning on retiring soon anyway but after a meeting with the head honcho woman and being dismissed, again, she had had it. Tensions have been building for a while. This supervisor was the only woman who had the guts to stand up to this head honcho bully. It’s really frustrating to work under a woman who refuses to listen to what you have to say, or entertain the thought that perhaps some of the decisions she’s making are DEAD wrong for the group. This head honcho wants yes women … I am not a yes woman. I have thoughts, opinions and suggestions and I’m always willing to work with whatever ideas that are presented, but to not even acknowledge that A. there is a problem and B. we need to fix it?? Yeah – I will NOT be applying to part of this management team. It’s amazing how many people have left because of this moron. Get a clue, lady.

Mar 21

Another person quit today. The department is dropping like flies. Too bad someone above honcho lady isn’t noticing and more importantly, wondering, why is everyone leaving??

Mar 24

My supervisor and team lead shadowed me today. It’s so awkward when you “train” management. Also, why do we train management? Shouldn’t they already know what we do? Hence the problem with management, right? Not just our management, but management in general. Ordered a new Bissell vacuum for the hardwoods today – the Dirt Devil finally bit the dust.

Mar 25

Blue Cross Blue Shield’s portal was still down today so I had to cancel the the “training” session today. Not much to do if one of our major insurance portals is down. Getting lazy on the treadmill walking before work thing. I would just rather sleep an extra hour. But I sit so much throughout the day, that’s not good.

Mar 26

Brandon, our baby, turned 30 yesterday! He’s not taking it very well. I remember turning 30, then 50, then 60 … yeah – those milestone birthdays are hard. He’s still working on his digital art. He knows a lot of people in the industry but it’s a tough industry to get into. He’s self-taught – really proud of him for taking the initiative and having the discipline to teach himself. Not to mention, he has saved THOUSANDS of dollars by not going to college. College is pretty much a scam nowadays. All they want to do is teach our kids how to be woke and a lot of useless nonsense. Nothing that will prepare them to be kind, empathetic, productive humans in society. In the meantime, Bran is still working at the bank. He’s not crazy about being on the phone and dealing with customers but also, it’s really good to have that experience – not only for work but life in general. I think everyone should be required to work with the public at some point in their lives – I think the world would be a better place, to be honest. We took him to Fuji’s – a Japanese they-cook-your-food-in-front-of-you place. The food was good, but they rushed us out, didn’t really give us a chance to enjoy our food, or the company, we were done in under an hour, and then it was $150 on top of that. Yeah, we won’t do that again. We came back to our house afterward and had our traditional Great American Cookie cake. Which is also stupid expensive. I remember the days it was $25, which I thought was nuts, now it’s double that! But we can’t stop buying them – we’ve been buying them for decades and it’s a tradition. Birthdays are expensive. lol

Mar 27

Management is going to keep track of our productivity. This has made a lot of people mad, and I’m annoyed, but also, I get it. We’re remote. It’s like they can walk by our desk to see if we’re working or not. And let’s face it, some people probably DO take advantage of the fact that they work from home and aren’t supervised as much as people who work in the office. I’m not worried – I definitely carry my weight, and then some, (a lot), but it’s still a little nerve wracking they are “watching” us. They also want to know how long cases take, which, fair, but also, hard to gauge as some cases are more complicated than others. Not to mention, some providers do a terrible job of documenting what is happening so it takes more time to dig for documentation to build a case and present to the insurance company so they can make their decision. I’m pretty fast at the process, but I think in large part because I have Medical Assistant experience. I know the “lingo” and understand the provider’s though process and the steps it takes to reach the patient’s goal. If someone doesn’t have that experience, it would be way harder and definitely more time consuming to put the puzzle pieces together.

Mar 28

Lost another person, this time on my team. We can NOT keep people on the Urgent Action Team. And to be honest, I get it. This flow, time frame, this amount of multi-tasking is not for everyone. It doesn’t help that management expects us to be the clean-up crew for another group of people, either. I’m hoping all of these people leaving will open the head honcho’s eyes and we can finally start making some positive changes. We’ll see. I’m not holding my breath. Now this means I will be expected to work harder and faster until we can hire another person. And guess who management will expect to train this new person? Exactly.

Mar 29

Got together with mom for our weekly Saturday thing. We went to the mall today. I haven’t been to the mall in ages. It always sort of depresses me. It’s so … empty. Both in customers and retail stores. We went to JCPenneys to look at luggage for our cruise in August. Mom bought a five-piece set for $100! I’m so relieved. I was worried about her struggling with her luggage on our trip. Trips are already so stressful without having to worry about if your luggage breaking down. We bought cookie dough at a shop in the mall for our treat. Then watched Survivor and set up a Google Meet to talk to my sister. It was a good day! Went by fast!

Mar 30

One of our my teammates called in sick today – I have a feeling this will become a patter with her. She seems to have a lot of physical ailments. That left three of us today. I covered 15 alpha letters so I was pretty busy. It’s Patient Access week, which means management will kiss our butts, tell us what a great job we’re doing but no, we’re not going to change anything so that your jobs actually become easier. Par for the course, I suppose. I have zero interest in participating. I’m pissed, tired and overworked. Bite me.

Thanks for reading.

At the Moment, Life

Knee Deep

Karen

I’m a spoiled princess.

I know this. It’s no secret. Kevin spoils me rotten.

I rely on him to be my fix-it man, and my yard guy.

Confession: I have never mowed our grass. Any grass, really. Could I do it if I needed to? Sure. Would I struggle and look like an idiot, (how do you turn this thing on?) Yep. Most definitely.

But I haven’t had to because I have a wonderful husband who takes care of it, and who does a really good job taking care of it.

Call me a 50’s housewife – it’s fine. You won’t hurt my feelings.

(Unlike some people – I don’t run around with my feelings on my sleeve).

My mom was the same way. She never had to take care of things outside the home because she had my dad to do it. And he enjoyed it. He loved being outdoors fiddling around with … man stuff.

I don’t pretend to understand man stuff.

But since he passed away, (the 3rd year anniversary of my dad’s death has just come/gone – can’t believe he’s only been gone for three years and yet at the same time, it feels like he’s been gone longer), mom has had to try and figure stuff out. Sure – she has us to help her, and Kevin has done a FANTASTIC job of helping her, but, Kevin also has our house, our rental house, his chickens, his elderly parents … he has a lot on his plate. He’s one man – he can only do so much.

Mom has been learning to do the outside stuff on her own. I’m so PROUD of her for rolling up her sleeves and figuring out how to use the lawn mowers, the weed eater, etc. It hasn’t been easy but she’s stubborn and persistent and she’s been figuring it out.

I worry about her, though. She’s 79 after all. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for her TO do it. I worry about her getting too hot, or getting injured and I have tried, and will continue to try, to talk her into hiring someone to take care of her lawn but like I said, she’s stubborn. She says as long as JT, (the lawn mower – a nickname my dad used – I think it stands for John’s tractor, but I could be wrong), continues to run, she will continue to ride it.

Now that the weather has been wildly too warm for this time of year …

(Side note: Take a GANDER at our temperature ranges these past few weeks! )

The trees are blooming, the flowers are coming out and yes, the dang grass is growing.

So – she’s been out there on JT. And she mentioned that the last time she was on JT she drove over a few holes in her lawn. At one point, it scared her because she thought the mower might tip over with her on it.

And that, of course, scared me.

She mentioned something about needing some dirt so she can fill in those holes. Mom and dad used to have rabbits. And they would dig holes in the yard whenever they ran around the back yard – hence where the holes came from.

I mentioned that Kevin had some dirt and maybe he would have some time to go over to her house and fill the holes in for her.

When I said something to Kevin, he said he would go over there and fill them in, but that was a few weeks ago. Remember the busy part? But, he kept thinking about it and this past Saturday, when mom came over to our house to hang out with me, he took some dirt over to her house and filled in the holes. Mom mentioned that there was one hole that she thought was pretty deep … and she wasn’t wrong.

That’s Kevin standing in the hole that mom “thought” was pretty deep.

She was right. If she, or someone walking around her backyard, had stepped into that hole, that person would very likely snap his/her ankle. Not to mention, it was the perfect size to snag a riding lawn mower tire and topple my 79-year old mother who is too stubborn to hire someone to take care of her lawn for her.

:;gulp::

Crisis averted. Kevin saved the day. The holes have been filled and that’s one less thing I have to worry about.

Thank goodness mom said something and Kevin went over there and fixed it. When things like this happen, I can’t help but wonder if that was God’s way of tapping us on the shoulder to say, “Um, excuse me. I see a potential problem and I don’t want you folks to get hurt. You might think about taking care of that.”

Thank you for taking care of us, Father.

We definitely need looking after.

Reflections

February Reflections 2025

Karen

One of these days, I’ll actually catch up to these Reflections’ entries. I really want to finish these because they’re an extension/expansion of the daily journal I write in.

Feb 1

Pinner’s Conference! Mom and I made the trip up to Kansas City for the Pinner’s Conference again this year. You can read about last year’s trip here. For those that don’t know, a Pinner’s Conference is:

Pinners is two incredible events in one: a hands-on conference with 100+ creative classes led by top presenters, and a vibrant shopping show with hundreds of unique businesses showcasing the best in DIY, fashion, crafts, cooking, beauty, photography and more.

You don’t need Pinterest to join us, just your creative spirit! So join us and see where shopping and learning come to life.

They host these conferences in various places around the US: Kansas City, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and even St. George … Virgin Islands? (no clue).

If you’re even remotely into crafts, THIS is the conference for you. Not only do you get to shop various crafts booths, you can sit down at a make-and-take-it table and make a craft to take home, (it’s not free), AND they offer craft classes throughout the two-days where you can again, learn how to make a craft and take it home.

It’s a lot of fun. Mom and I had a blast last year so we decided to go again this year.

Mom wrote a lot more detail on your blog post, you can read that here.

There were two crafts that I participated in that I really loved this year:

This wall hanging that says, “Faith Can Move Mountains” … and it really can, if you believe.

Here is what the final project looks like:

And this CUTE home decor piece we worked on … I think this might have been the very last class – saved the best for last, in my opinion …

Here is the final project …

I also bought two more kits to paint and switch out with the cow …

We were pretty pooped after two days of the conference, so we packed up our goodies and hauled it the two blocks back to my car. (We had to park quite a ways away from the conference center). We ate dinner at Wendy’s and crashed. The next morning, we met David and Angie (my brother and his wife) at a place called “The Shack” for breakfast. It was really good food and a fun send off before we drove home.

Can’t wait for next year!

Feb 3

Sooo tired. The weekend trip to KC really did a number on me. Had a hard time keeping my eyes open for work today.

Feb 4

Kevin dropped his phone one too many times and it wouldn’t turn on. He took it to a Verizon shop but they wanted too much to fix it so he bought a refurbished one on Amazon for a lot cheaper. It’s supposed to come tomorrow. It’s amazing how much you miss your phone when you don’t have it!

Feb 5

Lost a chicken today. We have two chickens left – Kevin is talking about getting more but .. it’s so much work for him. And yet, he really enjoys it so .. who knows if we buy more or not. We have a program at work called a rewards program. It’s a program that your peers can use to thank you for being a good team player, going above/beyond, etc. I cashed in some points today for an Amazon gift card and bought a little printer to print some pictures from my phone. Looking forward to using it!

Feb 6

Getting bored with my job. I guess this means I’m getting more comfortable with my job duties. Rumors are floating around about another mgmt position opening up and my supervisor thinks I would be a good fit. I’m seriously thinking about it … but I’m not sure I would want to be in meetings all day. I really do enjoy being a worker bee … just sort of bored with it right now.

Feb 7

Blake is between jobs. I wish he could find his niche in life. He’s just not sure what he wants to do. One thing about Blake though, he’s slow to make decisions but when he makes a decision, it’s WELL researched and thought out. Just hope it finds something soon, he’s living off his savings right now and that makes me nervous. Brandon is still pursuing his digital art passion. I have to admit, the kid is persistent and has been trying to make a go of it for the past nine years. He’s got an impressive portfolio and he’s self-taught, which takes a lot of discipline .. just wish he could find something in the field. It’s a very competitive field though so … all he can is try.

Feb 8

Saturday with mom. We had Chick-Fil-A for lunch while watching Survivor. (I’m really getting hooked on this show!) Fired up the laptop and we talked to my sister while we painted/finished our projects we bought from the Pinners’ conference.

Feb 10

Mom got her passport today!! I’m SO relieved!! She actually got it quicker than I thought she would. Now I don’t have to stress about documentation for our upcoming cruise in August. Got my little printer today – it’s so cute!

Feb 11

Got our yogurt maker, inulin and probiotic stuff today! I’m excited to make some yogurt. I watched Dr. Berg’s video on how to make yogurt and I want to give it a go. This yogurt is supposed to be good for your gut, too, helps replenish the good bacteria.

Feb 12

Snowed about an inch today. Weather like this really makes me thankful that I work from home!

Feb 13

Lost one of our really good UAT people today. She’s a nurse and is moving to the MED/IV group, which makes sense given her nursing background. I’m sort of relieved, we didn’t have enough work for the amount of people we had on the team but also … the people remaining are nice, but not very bright so … more work for me, for sure.

Feb 14

Watching A LOT of videos on what to pack and how to pack for our cruise in August for Alaska!!

Feb 15

Saturday with mom. She came over and we went to Fazoli’s for lunch then Michael’s to see if they had any wooden rings for a project. Treated mom to Starbuck’s, (I used my gift cards, otherwise, I NEVER go there – can’t stand the company, quite frankly), then back to my house to watch Survivor. We were going to get together with my sister, but we ran late and my sister ran late so we canceled it. But, I think mom and I need to get together earlier so that we have time to Zoom call my sister.

Feb 18

Snowed about five inches today. Blake came over and picked up his passport. He’s going back to work at Wal-Mart overnights. He just can’t settle on a job right now and he needs to make some money. He’s going back to overnights, which I’m not crazy about, but it’s something. I keep telling him it’s only temporary, don’t give up on finding something else and if that means he has to take a class, or get a certificate, so be it. Don’t give up.

Feb 19

My supervisor called me and encouraged me to apply for another supervisor position that opened up. I was very flattered but things are so crazy right now with mgmt, I just don’t think I would be a good fit. I was tempted for a hot minute, but ultimately, no. I think I would be miserable.

Feb 21

Super busy day. Now that we’re thawing back out, patients are making it back into the clinics and providers are busy working people in that missed their appointments. Spent a lot of time working RAD’s pendings, which pissed me off, and put me behind, so mgmt got involved and asked (told) them to take their own damn pendings back. (I added the damn part). Wow – so it CAN be done – they CAN work their own crap? Hmm … today only showed me that going to mgmt, for me, would be a huge mistake. I’m too opionated and headstrong … they want a yes woman, I’m NOT a yes woman.

Feb 22

Saturday with mom. Got her out of the house. We went to the mall and walked around. Ate Chick-Fil-A for lunch, shopped at Bath and Body Works, (didn’t buy anything – I don’t pay full price – only when stuff is on sale – they’re way too expensive), watched Survivor, talked to sis and did some more painting. I wish I could do more for mom … she’s by herself way too much and I know it depresses her.

Feb 23

Kevin said Blake text him about a tube TV he’s had his eye on for a while. He saw it on Facebook, (or was it eBay?) but it sold before he could make an offer. When Kevin was out doing his treasure hunting, he said he actually saw two, text Blake the serial numbers and Blake wanted the second one. Kevin said Blake was literally shaking when he took it back to the house, he was so excited. He came back over to our house and picked up some old games we had in storage along with some cords to make it work. It was really nice to see Blake smile. He’s been in a funk lately.

Feb 26

My cousin text mom – mom’s sister is not doing well. She has dementia and has had to go to a nursing home because it wasn’t safe for her to stay home by herself anymore. Mom would take her out every Thursday, just to get her out of the home. She had these weekly get together for years, but it’s become harder and harder for mom to take care of her sister – she’s lost so much of her speech and motor skills .. Dementia sucks. It drains the life out of people so they are only shells when it gets done with them.

Feb 27

My aunt died. Mom text me after work and I called her. She was able to go over to the home and see her but my aunt was in so much pain they had to give her some pretty heavy-duty pain medication so she wasn’t really aware of anything going on around her. Mom was planning on going back later in the day, but my aunt passed away before she could go back. This was mom’s younger sister, by just one year. Death is so strange, people are here, and then suddenly, they’re not. Mom only has one brother left in her entire family. I feel so bad for her. She’s had a rough two years.

Feb 28

I had the day off today. I take the occasion Friday off to give myself a long weekend. Well, sort of. When I’m off Fridays or Monday, I typically work Sundays to make up the time and so I don’t have to use PTO, so it’s not really a long weekend, but it’s nice to have off, just the same. I didn’t do much, but I did start another batch of yogurt. I wish I could figure out why it tastes so sour.

Thanks for reading!

Work Stuff

S.O.S.

Karen

HELP!

ALL HANDS ON DECK!

This has been the battle cry at work. On March 1st, the hospital that I work for switched our EMR (Electronic medical records) system. This has thrown everyone off kilter, myself included, and we’re moving at a snail’s pace. In addition to us not knowing where anything is, let alone collect those pieces and put the patient’s puzzle needs together, the work queues we work out of haven’t been working properly. It’s not that the program isn’t working, it’s working great, but that our preferences, parameters, settings all need to be tweaked and it’s slow going.

Another challenge is that we don’t really know what we’re doing, and this includes everyone. Management is in the same boat as us, so any time we have questions, we have to spend precious time looking at tip sheets or help pages, or good old fashion clicking around, to try and figure it out.

Since I’m part of UAT (the urgent action team), and time is of the essence … you can imagine what my life has been like these past two weeks. To be fair, the first week wasn’t that bad but now that we’re closing in on the second week, WOW.

This was predicted. The hospital has been planning for this switch for two plus years now and I have to admit, they’ve done a pretty good job of preparing people. They warned us the first four weeks were going to be tough, and they weren’t wrong.

They put together a Super User group of individuals through the entire hospital. I volunteered to be one of those Super Users. So – for the past year, we’ve had meetings that didn’t really say much or give us much information other than to reiterate time and time again, IT’S GOING TO BE TOUGH. HAVE PATIENCE, SHOW SOME EMPATHY … but I appreciated the effort because at least it was something.

The intention behind Super Users were to be available to help our peers through the process when we GO LIVE. Really, more for emotional support than technical support. Because we didn’t know anything more than our peers. Still don’t. We had early access to our training classes and were given early access to the system’s playground – which was a dummy set up, with dummy patients, that we could click around on and not have to worry about messing anything up, but additional training? No.

And that helped … somewhat. But all of that perceived confidence flew out the window the moment we went live and were actually in real-live patient charts. Things were set up differently, no one knew (or still knows), how to communicate with each other through this new system and patient care is moving at a snail’s pace.

This was expected, but it’s one thing to mentally prepare for it, it’s quite another thing to LIVE IT.

To be fair, I have it WAAAAAAAY easier than my poor clinic/hospital peers. The majority of my work is done through insurance portals. I’m getting information from the patient’s chart, placing it in a nice, neat package with a pretty bow on top to entice the insurance company to decide in my favor, and then once I have my answer from the insurance company, I document the crap out of it in the patient’s chart. So I’m working out of the chart but not really IN the chart.

Now – the clinic/hospital peeps – their whole job is to work IN the chart. They are clicking/documenting machines and I KNOW they’re struggling. You know how it is when you’re learning something new, it’s stressful, frustrating and tedious. And that’s just the program, then you have patients who are hurting, impatient and sometimes downright mean, and that only adds to the stress and the sense of urgency.

So – PLEASE, if you’re seeing your doctor or have to be in the hospital, or around any medical staff in general, PLEASE be patient and kind. You never know what the hospital staff is going through and being a-holes to them will only make it worse for yourself and the long line of people behind you.

(I put that in quotes to get your attention – haha!)

But back to me – because it’s all about me, of course.

To say we’ve been struggling would dilute the actual situation. We’re behind. We’re REALLY behind. Not just my team, (and there are only two of us at the moment so … YEAH – WE’RE BEHIND), but everyone. It’s a learning curve, we’ll get there, just not right now. So – in an attempt to get caught up and get reimbursed from insurance companies for testing that is being done, the hospital has approved all-hands on deck overtime for the next two weeks. In ADDITION to the normal overtime pay, (which thanks to Trump we no longer have to pay taxes on – at least until the next person comes in and reverses that because ORANGE MAN BAD), we get an ADDITIONAL chunk of change ON TOP of that overtime.

Folks … it’s good money. And you can bet your bottom dollar, (see what I did there?), that I will be taking FULL advantage of this opportunity.

To be honest, I already work a lot of overtime. It’s been an unspoken agreement between me and management for a long time – we’re only a two-woman team, after all. We’re working on hiring a third person, but let’s be honest, until I know what I’m doing, how can I possibly train another person what to do?? I work the day shift and my partner works from 12:30 to 9:00 PM. We can only do so much with the (wo)man power we have.

The straw on my camel’s back finally broke the other day and I had a meltdown. My tiny little group has been consistently dumped on these past two years so that I barely see sunlight anymore. We are the “problem-solving” group – anything problematic or anything mgmt doesn’t know what to do with, they dump on us. The biggest, and most egregious thing to be dumped on? Is we are expected to work other people’s pending cases when it falls into our “window.”

Let me explain. UAT works today, tomorrow and 48-hour cases. That’s just the way it was set up. The purpose behind UAT, or at least, it USED to be the purpose of UAT, is/was to take care of urgent/stat and add-on cases. The hospital has a dedicated team ready to handle these last-minute cases. But somewhere down the road, it was someone’s stupid idea to make it part of our duties to follow up (i.e. clean up), other people’s pending cases that haven’t been determined if they fall into our UAT window. This means, we are being asked to spend hours researching and fixing other people’s work.

So many things wrong with this scenerio – where do I start?

First of all – this takes responsibility away from the original analyst. Why put any effort into your work if you know it will soon become someone else’s problem?

Secondly – there is no motivation to do a good job. Why? It will soon become UAT’s problem. Enjoy.

Thirdly – Did you catch the part where I mentioned we are a TINY group of people? The other group that handles normal cases outside of UAT’s window? There are about 20 of them. Twenty people working cases and TWO UAT women. Do the math.

Fourth – when do we have time to do our normal work if we’re elbows deep in other people’s problems? Exactly.

There are so many more micro-aggressions to this problem I won’t bore you with the details, but that, coupled with us being buried w/ requests that aren’t routing properly in this new software and we’re becoming more and more behind … and I’ve been dealing with this “duty” for the past two years, trying every tactic under the sun but mgmt won’t listen to me … it’s like banging my head on a brick wall – I finally cracked.

My supervisor asked how things were going the other day and I nearly broke down and cried. For the record, I DON’T CRY. And if I do cry, it’s usually because I’m so frustrated that I’m about ready to explode, the frustration starts leaking out of my eyeballs. So, the fact that I was close to tears pissed me off. My supervisor could tell I was close to tears. I just told her I couldn’t talk about at that moment – I was too emotional and needed to compose myself.

We talked later. My supervisor is not the problem – I quite like her, actually. It’s upper management, but isn’t that nearly always the case in most companies? Upper management are typically a bunch of clueless zombies who 1. don’t know what we do, 2. make dumb decisions because see number one, 3. say a lot of nothing, management speak, when you do finally have a conversation and 4. NEVER LISTEN.

Anyway ..

I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent, but that’s what I’m dealing with right now. It’ s a lot. Not as much as the clinics and the hospital staff, but I have my own struggles, too.

I’m close to throwing in the white towel. And I still might if things don’t change. But I also need to be fair and rational about this. There is a lot going on right now, we’ll all stressed out and quite frankly, there is no place for me to go because there is a temporary hiring freeze until we can figure this stuff out. But my supervisor picked up on my frustration and she at least worked it out so that everyone now has to follow up on their own work. No more bashing UAT against the rocks. I’m sure people are not happy about having to finish what they started but seriously …

Wah.

So … all of that say, we’re all going to be working our fingers to the bone for the next few weeks. Hopefully, things start to settle down, iron out, and get better. If not, I guess I’ll be looking to make a lateral move in the precertification department.

Only time will tell.

At the Moment

Life Overview

Karen

Hello stranger.

Still breathing.

And still working from home. You can catch up HERE.

I have been working remotely for two years and three months.

OVER. TWO. YEARS.

I’m sorry … what?? In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve just started this job – I feel like I’m still blindly stumbling in the dark with my arms outstretched trying to figure out this new gig. But in other ways, I was MADE to do this job. I’m good at it. I feel pretty confident doing it but my confidence level swings back and forth like those big pirate ship rides you see at sketchy county fairs.

I’m very fortunate, I realize this. I know a lot of people would LOVE to be able to work from home. My daily uniform is a tank top and gym shorts in the warm months, and sweats and slippers in the cold months and I’m lucky if I brush my hair most days, but I’m WAAAAY less stressed than when I was working in the clinic and I don’t see myself going back to an office for the rest of my working days.

EVER.

I get bored sometimes, not gonna lie. My group, the Urgent Action Team, has gone through a lot of people. And no, it’s not because I’m a bear to work with, (at least, I HOPE that’s not the reason), but our group … we’re designed to be the janitors of the precertification departments. I continue to work today, tomorrow and the next day’s cases and of course, if/when there are any problems our pre-registration group contacts my group, (i.e. me), to figure it out. If it gets too bad, I just direct them back to the person that created the mess.

It’s exhausting and frustrating to always have to clean up someone else’s mess and THAT’S a big reason we can’t keep people on my team. Honestly? I’m thinking I may ask to transfer to another group at some point – I’ve been cleaning up after people now for nearly 2 1/2 years, I’ve put my time in.

But now is not the time. The hospital I work for is switching over to a new EMR (Electronic medical record) and though it’s going to be really cool once the dust settles, it’s going to be pure chaos before that happens. So, asking to be transferred out 1. is bad timing and 2. likely won’t happen even if I ask. The hospital flat out discouraged anyone from taking a vacation during this time period – they need all hands on deck. And that’s fair. I wouldn’t have done that anyway, I’m not a jerk, (most of the time). But once that dust settles? I make no promises.

Kevin is doing well. He’s loving retirement. He’s busier now than when he was working. He has to take care of me, our house, the boys and the rental house, LeRoy, (his special-needs uncle who also lives in the rental house with our boys, yes, the boys are still living there), his elderly parents, our seven chickens and in his “spare” time, he goes treasure hunting to fill his three thrift booths. (He’s getting a reputation for having fun, unique stuff – his monthly paychecks from that are pretty good!). Kevin knows to leave me alone when I’m working and he’s typically working on some project after I get off work so he does that and I bury my nose in my cross-stitch projects so we rarely see each other save for Friday/Saturday nights. (Our dates nights).

Blake is also doing well. He quit Wal-Mart and is now working for a prominent shipping company. He’s working from home from 6:00 PM to midnight, (he still likes his evening shifts), and he seems to enjoy the work. This has built his confidence and it’s heart warming to see him start to figure out where he belongs in life.

Brandon is also doing well. He just quit the bank when he found out that his big brother was making more money than him AND working from home, so he is also getting ready to start working for the same shipping company as Blake and will be working from home, eventually. He has to go in to the office for six weeks for training, but ultimately, he’ll work from home during the day. Blake is my night owl, Brandon is my early bird. He’s pretty excited to start that adventure.

I pray this job works out for the boys. I think a big reason they have these positions is because of Trump’s tariffs thing he’s started so … who knows if it continues when Trump leaves office. I’m quite confident that if a Democrat gets elected to the office, he (or she), will promptly undo everything Trump has done, (on so many levels and regardless of whether it’s been good for the country because ORANGE MAN BAD), so, we’ll see. That’s still three years away … a lot can, and likely will, happen in that time frame.

Not to bring politics into this … YET.

We’re coming up on three years since my dad passed away. Mom is doing better but she struggles daily and I’m sure she will continue to struggle daily. She’s adjusted but it’s a roller coaster ride. We still get together every Saturday to catch up, go out to lunch, watch Survivor, (we’re getting ready to start season 16!), and work on crafts. I look forward to these days with my momma. She’s my best friend and I enjoy our time together.

I mentioned cross-stitch – I’ve really gotten back into cross-stitching. It’s SO RELAXING! I subscribed to “Just Cross Stitch” magazine, it comes out quarterly and mom and I look forward to thumbing through it when it arrives. I’ve been bookmarking my favorites and my goal is to work at least patterns from the magazine. I’ve also jointed Audible because I spend so much time working on crafts now after work that it just makes sense to listen to some books. I’m still an active Kindle Unlimited member, but I rarely actually read anymore so I think I might cancel that and become a member of Audible when my free trial is over.

We recently returned from a two-week cruise! We drove the Jeep down to Galveston Texas to catch the boat there. We were LITERALLY one day ahead of the crazy cold, snowy weather that hit most of the US. If we had delayed our travel time by even a day, we would have struggled to get down there. We took a gamble booking a cruise the last week/first week of January/February but it’s cheaper to take a cruise that time of year, (for obvious reasons), and we decided to go for it. Up until we left, the weather had been pretty mild and we thought, “cool – no problem, we’ve got this.” And then … Mother Nature wagged her finger and said, “not so fast, chicka.” lol

Writing more about the cruise is on my list of things to write about, (don’t hold your breath folks – if you had a dime for every time I’ve said that, right??), but in a nutshell – to sum it up – the jury is still out on whether I like being on a ship for two weeks. Kevin could have sailed longer, he loves it, but … I started to get a little homesick and started to feel a little claustrophobic, which is stupid given we stopped at eight ports during that two week time. We were busy and off the boat quite a bit but still … it’s a lot. Would I do it again? I don’t know … I guess it depends on the trip but … it was a lot.

The Jeep was a dream to drive. No issues whatsoever and we even got pretty decent gas mileage – better than I expected. And driving down there WAS more relaxing than navigating the chaos and stress of flying, so liked that part. But, the down side – it took two days to drive down there and back so … there’s that. Would we drive to a port again? Absolutely.

Kevin surprised me with one of those digital picture frames. His folks have one and they love it. His mom really loves that the family can upload their pictures to their frame through the app so she feels like she’s constantly being updated on how the family is doing. We both took a lot of pictures on our vacation and posted them there so it’s been fun to see them scroll through. We’re going to make folders and start uploading more vacation pictures. We have soooo many pictures. It’s also a goal of mine to make photo books of our cruises, camping trips, holidays, etc. Mom has been busy sorting through all of her pictures and putting them in albums and it’s been quite a project for her. But she doesn’t want to leave a bunch of random pictures in a box for us after she’s gone to scratch our heads over and think, “who is that??” So that has inspired me to get our photos organized and ready to view. We have sooo many cool photos, both print and digital – the challenge is to put there somewhere so we can easily look at them.

These are the highlights of my life right now. Obviously, there is SOOO much more to say – I have so many thoughts and opinions on what is happening with the world right now, it’s overwhelming to think about sorting through all of that – where do I even start??

I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I hope you all are doing well and hopefully we’ll “talk” soon.

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?