After a Few Disaterous Distractions, Time for Daydreams Is Delayed: Part III

My son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren arrived from far away Minnesota about a week before graduation. We had a lot of...

Distractions

Monday: Pony rides with the grandchildren of TWO of my best friends from high school. It was GREAT to see both of them and for our little ones to begin a third generation of friendship. Our first-born "kids" all have birthdays within 5 days of each other in late October...but in 1979, 1980 and 1981. They all played together as kids, and now their kids got to get together. It was so fun. Pony Pizza Party was awesome!

Tuesday: I had to go to a class for diabetics, so not much fun that day :-(

Wednesday: Zoo...tons of fun with my daughter-in-law and the kids.

Thursday: Mini-golfing, then baccalaureate

Friday: Graduation.Since my husband works as an administrator at the school district, he was able to hand our daughter her diploma. It was an amazing moment. And, I didn't cry. Really. I don't know how that happened, but I didn't cry at all.

Saturday: Busy, busy, busy! Last minute shopping and preparations for the party on Sunday. The kids helped too. It was a lot of fun, a lot of chaos, and a lot of love.

Sunday: Graduation PARTY! We had a nice pavilion (with electrical outlets!) at a nearby park, by a lake. The weather was perfect! We had enough food. We had enough cold beverages. A good number of people showed up. As far as I can tell, everyone had a good time. I know I did. Then came clean up time...and...

Disaster Two

Everyone else had taken just about all of the party food and supplies to the cars to take home while I stayed at the pavilion with my four year-old grandson. When he went with his parents, I looked at what was left, two coolers full of ice and soft drinks and the extra crock pot, which was nearly full of meatballs.

I was told to just go back to the cars, but felt guilty about letting everyone else do all the work, so when I was alone, I picked up the crock pot and started on my way.

Tripped.

Fell.

HARD!

My knee hit the concrete hard...yes, the arthritic one that began this whole series of posts

My opposite elbow hit even harder.

I also hit my head and side of my face.

Next thing I hear is my son saying, "MOM, is that blood?"

I was sprawled out on the concrete in a puddle of sauce...and, yes, some of it was blood. I guess I wasn't alone after all.

Later, he said that he actually saw me go down..."like a felled tree" and ... apparently ... I "bounced" <sigh>

My left knee swelled up instantly. So did the left side of my face. My right elbow bled freely and was also swollen and both forearms were scraped and swollen. The arms would both develop bruises of their own.

My five year-old granddaughter said, "Grandma, next time, just drop the crack pot and save yourself!" To be honest, I really hope there is never a next time. But, if there is...I'll drop it.

The next day we had planned to go to Kennywood. I hated to ruin the fun, so we went. I hobbled about fairly well, considering. We talked about renting one of those electric scooters, but I managed much better than I thought I would.

Tuesday: We finally had a day of rest and relaxation.

Wednesday: They went back home.

Thursday: We had to go to college registration, an all day event.

The next Monday, I started my new job. Knee was still swollen and all the colors of the rainbow. Elbow still wouldn't stop bleeding (but not a lot) every single time I bent it. Face, luckily, was looking fine the day after the fall. The new job involves a lot of standing and walking. Thankfully, it also has some sitting time.

Today is two weeks since the fall. Knee is still swollen and achy. Elbow still wants to bleed, but only a little bit a few times a day. It is still swollen and very sore...and missing a chunk right at the tip. Things are improving. Slowly.

I am supposedly writing. I guess I am. I'm not writing what I'm supposed to be writing, though. I have four days to complete a friendly challenge. I accepted the challenge before things were so chaotic with a houseful of people, a new job, and injuries.

 I had some daydreams. I had some disasters. I had some distractions.

After a Few Disaterous Distractions, Time for Daydreams Is Delayed: Part II

Distractions


My distance vision began to get better, and my near vision continued to get worse.

I kept myself busy getting ready for my daughter's high school graduation, getting the house ready for my son and his family to come to visit for the festivities, and for the big graduation party.

I realized that my time at the college would soon come to an end. My daughter's college plans did not include my workplace or any of the other institutions in the exchange groups. She has a full scholarship on her own merit at a school that seems to be a perfect fit for her and her interests.

This meant that, other than my love for the job, there was no valid reason for me to go back to pouring so much money into the gas tank and spending two - three hours each day driving to and from work. I decided to polish up my resume and work on some other skills that might help me land a job. However, I planned to enjoy the summer doing family things and start up my search in the fall after we got her settled in college.

One day, in the middle of May, I was looking for a book at a nearby library to help me with my future job search. On a whim, I asked them if they ever took resumes for hiring sometime in the future. They took my resume (I had a bunch of them with me that day in a folder I was using for notes) and I left.

I've always dreamed of working in a library. I can't imagine anything better than being paid to be surrounded by books and dealing with people who want to read. Well, that's not true, I can think of quite a few things that would be better...like being a top-ten best-selling author raking in TONS of money, that would be better. (ah... I see that Daydreaming decided to show up.) Proof of this would be my failed attempt at grad school for my Library Science degree. That failed because the timing was WAY off. We had just moved, I was driving 3 hours a day and trying to unpack and organize in the bits an pieces of time I had at home...my attempt lasted only a few weeks.

Anyway...I was busy getting ready for son and his family's arrival and all the fun things I'd hoped to do with the grandchildren. I also decided that the best "end date" for my employment would be June 15th, since that was exactly eleven and a half years since I began on January 15, 2001. So, I planned to call in my "two weeks notice" on June 1st.

I was quite surprised to get a call on Wednesday, May 30th offering me an interview for a job at the library. I interviewed on the 31st, and got the offer for the job on June 1st, within hours of giving my notice.I began the new job June 18th.

I truly believe that I had to be completely ready to let go of my much-loved job in order to get a job that I feel I will love. I had several other interviews in the past three years for jobs closer to home. All of those jobs were ones that I thought that I could do and do well, but not one of them felt like a dream job.

The only down side of this new job is the timing. Ideally, it would have come to me in fall...but, I'm sure there is a reason it came when it did. I have to give up plans we had to travel this summer, but maybe we can still get some short weekend trips in before college time comes around.

NEXT: more distractions and disaster shows up...again...

After a Few Disaterous Distractions, Time for Daydreams Is Delayed: Part I

Life decided to hit me with quite a few disasters in the past few months, which left me distracted and a bit too worried to enjoy daydreaming.

Disaster One

As you may or may not know, for the past three years I've had a 120+ round trip commute for work. Why would anyone do that? I had several valid reasons.

I worked at a college. It was a good job. We used the health insurance for my daughter and for myself. There was also the possibility of tuition for her when she was ready to go to college, whether there or at another school in the "Tuition Exchange" groups. I really liked my job, and the people I worked with. Also, times are hard and jobs are hard to find, so when you've held a job for so many years, you don't just quit, especially without something else waiting for you.

I would still be making that commute, for most of those reasons if I hadn't been blindsided, rather literally, by some serious health problems.

I'd been suffering with some knee pain for several weeks. I thought it was a sprain or some such thing and that it would get better on its own. I also hadn't met my high deductible and was hoping it would just go away. It didn't. What did change, however, was our health insurance. My husband had recently started a different job with better health care, so we switched over. The very day we made the change, the pain in my knee was so unbearable that I went to the emergency walk-in clinic. It wasn't sprained. It was "just" arthritis that was flaring up. They gave me one of those 5-day pack of prednisone to help the inflammation and swelling, told me to wrap it, and I was good to go. It worked. By Friday, the last day of the medication, the pain was just a mild nuisance, easily ignored for the most part. However, also on that Friday, I began to have a severe feeling of pressure in my head. It got worse as the weekend progressed. It was Easter weekend, and on Monday, I felt fine.

It was a wonderful day. My younger daughter and I went north to shop for her prom dress. We also got to visit my other daughter, my mother, and my father and his wife too.

Tuesday, I went to work, and by the time I got there, I could barely see. I left after only a few hours and made it home. It was a very scary drive. Everything was blurry, but I knew that I HAD to make it home. The next day I went to the eye doctor. He said it was from the prednisone and my diabetes.

"Diabetes? I don't have that."

"Yes, yes you do. Get to your doctor today or to the E.R."

I got an appointment for the next day with a new doctor, because I really didn't have one here. As of a year and a half before all my lab tests were fine. Somehow that dreaded "D" thing had snuck in. The doctor sent me for tests, which showed that I am, indeed, diabetic. The prednisone had caused a major optic shift because it spikes glucose levels, especially in diabetics. My fasting blood glucose numbers were scary high, in the upper 300s and lower-mid 400s. (They should be at or below 100.)

I could not see to drive, so I had to go on medical leave from work. I was able to start to sort through some things that had been waiting since we moved here in 2009. I finally got a filing system going and was making great progress...until...

my near vision decided to go away, too. I refused to give up. I bought 3 pairs of "cheater" reading glasses from the dollar store, the strongest they had, the weakest, and one in between.I was able to get by with that for the computer and for the things I absolutely had to read. Sometimes I had to use a magnifying glass in addition to the glasses, but I got by. Unfortunately, that kind of vision was not going to let me catch up on all the books I have piling up waiting for me to read.

For the next few weeks I never knew how, or if, I would be able to see until I woke up and saw...or didn't. It gave me time to think. I realized that rather than go back to my job after (if) my vision settled enough to fix with glasses, it was time to let it go. I didn't like the idea, because I'd been in that job for about eleven and a half years.

NEXT: some daydreams, another disaster, and more distractions...