A Nice Surprise....Again.

It's always an "Oh Yeah!" feeling when I am messing around on Friday and I think it's Saturday. After all this time, I still have trouble remembering I am off. So, when I do realize it, it's a really nice surprise.

Things at work seem to be getting a bit better. My medications seem to be working, and things are settling back down.

There has been ice in the northern part of the state, but we were just very cold for a couple of days. Today is a beautiful sunny day and tomorrow is supposed to be the same. I hope to get outside for at least a little while and enjoy the warmer temps, before the chill of early February settles back in.

Last Friday I was in the mood to garden. Unfortunately, Mother Nature and Home Depot were not. No plants to purchase, no sunshine. I noticed at Walmart today, that the garden supplies are slowly revealing themselves in the parking lot. Mulch, rocks, fertilizer...

Nothing earth shattering to post, but I'm relieved that my life is beginning to get back into a reasonable regularity. Sometimes the rut is comforting.

Purging

Do you hold onto things simply because you've had them forever? Or because you feel a responsibility? Or because you think, "I'll get back to that next week." Or "next month, or next year or when I find the time!?" Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

I wanted a personal website so I could do all kinds of cool things with it. Add family history, post some of my creations, photos of the family, etc. I made it as far as figuring out how to manipulate and edit, and displaying very simple, non informative family lineages. Wow. How UN-exciting. Gone. I cancelled it.

I've been a genealogical person for some years now. Still am, and I still get all excited when someone I don't know contacts me out of the blue about one of my ancestors. But, have I done any work on it the last year? No. I have managed two websites that house genealogical information for several years. At one time it was a great passion and my kids even tell of a time when they fell by the wayside and the computer was my whole world. (I'm really sorry about that you two.) Have I made any real changes, or devoted any time other than a quick add-on request someone emailed me? No. So, good-bye to those two websites.

I noticed I was holding on to some indoor house plants that really aren't that attractive. Simply because I've had them a long time or I obtained them from the funeral of a loved one. OUT the door with you, you ugly things. One is on the back porch, looking rather comical as it droops from the cold.

I have all these ideas in my head, and when I think I have time to actually follow through with any of them, I just make excuses. I'm too tired, I don't feel like that today, it will take too much trouble to get out the equipment I need... any excuse. I get angry and disappointed with myself because I just won't do anything. I have gifts. God blessed me with them and I am so wrapped up in day to day stress and life that I can't seem to find a way to break out and use them. It's almost a burden they are mine, because I feel so guilty not using them for something. Anything. These are gifts I do NOT want to purge, or risk losing. I want to find a peace in my life, a place where I can retreat from the pressures of life and work, and just create. Does anyone understand what I'm talking about? But, I just can't seem to get past the restraint I feel by having to work. I keep thinking if I didn't have to go to work every day, I could.... there's just not enough time for me to be able to enjoy creating because I have to work.... And when I'm not at work, I have to work at home doing well, house work stuff.... MORE EXCUSES. I don't know how to fix this. Not working is not an option.

The past few weeks, God has been trying to tell me something. I'm not sure what it is though. I'm probably not listening carefully enough. I'm not being still enough to hear the Still Small Voice. Sometimes life is not what we'd like it to be. And God is with us if we will just keep remembering that.

In any case, I've purged a few things that weighed on my mind frequently. I hope I can purge some inner weight too. I weigh too much.

Short Post

I think.

I am not comfortable venting about personal issues on a blog. I have no problems with others who do, it's just not for me. I have not posted much lately, simply because I can't think of much that is positive to blog about. The job is causing a lot of stress. I'm not myself lately.

I was reminded by a loving God the other day that He gave me the birds as a gift. It is a daily gift to be able to look out my back door and see so many of them at my feeders. Sparrows, finches, snowbirds, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, thrushes. I'm in the market for a good pair of binoculars to see them up close. I tried taking a photo with my digital cam through the window, but the little rascal flitted away before I got the shot.

On days like this, I remind myself of gifts like these. Or at least I try to. :)

Clean Pipes

I took the nuclear stress test this morning. Aced that sucker! No blockage AT ALL. For someone my age, who has not always eaten healthy foods, that's awesome. Or at least I think so. Cardiologist feels that all my symptoms can be attributed to my thyroid. My TSH has been elevated, and we tweaked my meds to compensate, but obviously it hasn't been long enough to help much yet. But, knowing I have a healthy heart, makes me want to keep it that way. And for some reason, I think I'll be more determined to work toward that because it's healthy, than if it wasn't. I know it doesn't make sense, but maybe it's because I think it's easier to maintain than to try to repair?

I don't know how to lessen the stress at work, which exacerbates the problem. (Is that proper English LeLe?) I hope the help our Doctor is sending twice a week will be enough that I don't feel I have to work 12 hours a day to keep up. Computers are a wonderful thing, but they can complicate life sometimes.

I know some of you have been praying for me, and I appreciate it more than you know. Keep me in your prayers if you will.

A Little Early Valentine

Ah Hem!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

I wish each of you a Happy Valentines Day
We will have alot to say
Keep your chin up high
No one will say goodbye

Keep that great Big Smile
Together we can walk a mile
Have the best day ever
We all will be very clever

Time comes and Time goes
There will be a great Big Rose
We all can ride on the Big Hayride
Then we may have to slide

I'm glad we are friends
In hopes it will never end
I wish the best for everyone
Therefore we all must have it done.

By "Aunt Bob"

I"m sure LeLe and Chelle got the same poem gift, but LeLe will have to come by the house to collect her hand written prize. I wonder if she sends Cousin W her heartfelt poems? ;)


This has been one of the hardest months I can remember. And it's just now at the half way point. I continue to have blood pressure and stress issues. Decided there was no time for the ANSAR diagnostic test I had scheduled for this afternoon, but I will have stress test on Friday and then will reschedule the ANSAR. Nurse practitioner has added yet another medication to my growing collection of pills and increased the bp med. I've been praying that God will heal some of my issues and find meds that will treat the others. He has been good to send His Holy Spirit to calm me when I would normally be sobbing with frustration. It will get better. I have to believe that. I think management is trying to help where they can. At least we have the knowledge that they aren't saying "Deal with it!" Tomorrow is my Friday, so that will help my attitude quite a bit. Yahoo!

Oh, and by the way, new LPN is the bomb! Love her. Miss my friend, but love the new girl.

A Little Set Back

As I mentioned in my last short post, I had a meltdown at work on Monday the 5th. An unusual amount of stress and not feeling quite myself caused me to have this little episode, but my co-workers and supervisors at the main office were all very helpful and understanding, and Tuesday went very well. I thought it was all over. Wrong. Wednesday, the 7th, the morning was even more stressful, and I felt physically worse. Co-worker helped me monitor my blood pressure and it was steadily inching up. By lunchtime I was feeling pretty poorly, and couldn't figure out why my left arm felt so weird. I kept wondering what I had lifted that was so heavy that my arm felt overtired. When I got back from lunch, Co-worker took my blood pressure again and it was alarming. We called SR to come get me and take me to the Heart Hospital in LR, because that is where Nurse Practitioner wanted me to go and I refused to go via ambulance. By the time SR arrived, I could barely walk I was so out of it.

The Heart Hospital staff was very kind and attentive and I didn't have to wait at all. To make a long story a little shorter, even though I wasn't given a diagnosis in so many words, I've come to learn that yes, my blood pressure was up, and my thyroid levels were way too high, but no, I didn't have a heart attack. (I really didn't think I was having one to be honest.) I'm now on a higher dose of thyroid med, a blood pressure med, and am at home resting. I've been ordered to stay home until Tuesday. Longer if I still don't feel well enough to work.

I am having a bit of trouble not fretting about all the work I will have to catch up on when I return. The sweet co-worker who helped me resigned, and a new nurse was hired while I have been out. I've never met her, so I am a little apprehensive about Tuesday. I'm trying not to worry about it, but when you don't feel like doing much of anything but laying around, the mind is hard to turn off.

I'll keep you all posted.

Stones

I wonder why I had to experience a stone after posting about the diamond? I won't go into it, mainly because my blood pressure begins to rise just thinking about it, but yesterday, the first day of the 2009 workweek, the first day of a new electronic medical records system we are implementing, I had a meltdown.

Today was better, but I wouldn't call it a diamond. Still, it was better.

Here's hoping the stone rolls faster to the diamond.

Diamonds

Ever heard the song, "Some Days are Diamonds, Some Days are Stones"?? That is what I thought of at the end of the day on January 1, 2009. Being fuddy duddy old folks, we went to bed at the normal time for us on New Year's Eve and got up refreshed (well, as refreshed as you can be when neither one of you can sleep through the night without strong medicinal help.)

Brother and nephew were here visiting from Chicago, so SR and I planned to go to Rison and see them. We started out in Walmart, just taking our time, shopping for things we've been needing or wanting and just never took the time to find them. We are usually in a big hurry to get out of there and never really just browse. We bought some great birdseed and other sundry items. Sidebar: I've been trying to attract chickadees to my back yard, and found they love sunflower seeds. Success!!! There are at least 6 chickadees feeding in my backyard now. Along with several Cardinals, Sparrows and a few Finches.

We headed for Rison, via several backroads, with a large pot of homemade beef vegetable soup, . Some I've not traveled before, some I have. We traveled down a road I remember from when we were dating. Back then, somewhere around the Lee's Ferry Road, we found a little white frame house across from a small field that apparently no one lived in. We both fell in love with the place, but were not ready to purchase anything. (We were only dating, as I said.) We found the place again, some 30 odd years later. Someone added to the house and built a large garage and barn and it was a really lovely place now. But, it is way out in the "boonies" and the nearest grocery store is a distant dream. ;)

We drove down the Lee's Ferry Road, but were unable to get all the way to the river, due to the recent rain's flooding of the road. SR wanted to see a place he had worked while employed by International Paper Company, planting trees. We did manage to get quite a bit of mud on the Tucson. Gonna have to wash it soon as may be.

Made it to Mom's and got neck hugs from Brother and Nephew. Ate burgers and soup, dip and chips with the rest of the clan while we laughed and talked. We made plans to all go to LR to eat on Saturday and some planned to go ice/roller skating. (Not this one, ohh no.)

So, when we returned home, tired but happy, I decided that January 1, 2009 was indeed a Diamond Day.

Happy New Year.