Becoming an Aunt, new noises, getting ready for Yule and Christmas

Narcisa and I are getting used to new noises in our new home, specifically the washer and dryer. It's becoming apparent that I need to put in a work order for the washer. It squeaks and rattles something awful when it hits any kind of spin cycle. 

To go with the laundry sounds, the maintenance men have been stomping and banging around upstairs for the last couple of days. Either the people above us were evicted or they abandoned their apartment because maintenance were throwing beds and chairs over the balcony and moving furniture out the other day. Yesterday I don't know what they were doing in the kitchen but they dropped something heavy and big, right above my head when I was cooking. It scared the crap out of me and out of my friend Birdy, who was visiting. 

On the subject of cooking, I screwed up my bierocks dough yesterday. I was trying to make two meals at once and didn't catch all the directions. Typically I make the dough out of Bisquick and just add a little sugar but I wanted to see if I could find something "authentic" per se. Rather, I wanted my Grandmother's recipe but she can't find it and is heading for Texas. Needless to say, my dough didn't rise. The filling is done and tastes good, might need an extra onion though. 

The other meal I made was a chicken stir fry with lots of veggies. I told Amanda last night that I'm not really worrying about any kind of weight loss at the moment, I'm getting though the holidays and then we need to take advantage of the little gym and indoor swimming pool here at our apartment complex. She suggested that we take the bus into downtown Spokane and walk around the park. There are plenty of benches for when I need to sit for a moment. I just have to be really careful with that because I tend to push myself and a lot of times overdo it, which is kind of counter productive. 

My previous next door neighbor Felicia deemed Amanda and I designated Aunts to children (which is awesome because I totally love those kids). So, we were invited to her eldest boy's Christmas concert. He was such a goofball and so adorable.

He's the one on the left in overalls and a red shirt. He did the actions to the songs they sang and kind of stood apart from his class mates. 

Things in the apartment are coming together more and more every day. I get a week off from school work so I will have more time to do things around the house. I might just take a day to sleep. I have been so exhausted lately. We put Christmas lights up in the kitchen last night. The blue ones over the cabinets are staying all year round because I love the blue glow. Amanda is going to saw up some wood we collected last week end and I am going to see if she will help me put up some decorations outside this weekend... when we have a moment. We are doing our Yule celebration with the IEPG this weekend. Friday, I will probably be cooking treats all day. Amanda will be making hers on Saturday morning. We've sort of become really busy people, it's nice in a way but I think things will calm down when we get everything unpacked and put away. 

Well, it's off to homework land for me.

Waiting for approval and I think my doctor might be one of those doctors...

We have been busy this last week. Very busy. 

Amanda's mom pretty much moved us out of our bedroom herself. I didn't put up a fight because I felt like crap and had lots of other things I had to do. Like homework. I was also experiencing some rather unpleasant side affects from a new medication my doctor prescribed me but I will get back to that in a few.

First. We have been looking at apartments and got our applications into Valley 206- the apartment we've been dreaming about moving into. Well, Amanda got her approval letter and now I am waiting on mine. I hate waiting for approval. It doesn't make me happy and makes me really uncomfortable and second guess everything. Not that I should have to second guess anything. I should be just fine. 

Second. I am going to try and do Nation Novel Writer's Month again. We're not totally living with Amanda's parents at the moment and I managed to get finish up this term's homework a little early. So I have some time to actually write and the quiet, relaxed atmosphere in which to do it. Of course I am getting a 9 day late start but I am sure I can play catch up just fine. At least I hope. 

Okay on to my doctor. She put me on a new anti depressant. This isn't the first time she's done this. The first time the medication she put me on made me manic. This time, the side affects are so painful and upsetting that I can't handle them. I only two one pill and had two nights and day of colossal headaches- I mean so terrible that I just laid there and seriously considered making Amanda take me to the ER. It takes a lot of pain for me to get to that point. On top of that, the medicine made me want to vomit, made me jittery as hell, and oh yeah did I mention that it make me talk too fast? When I told my Mom about it and then told her that some possible side affect I could get were limb jumping and glaucoma, she told me to get off the meds asap! So I called my doctor and told her that the medicine was making me sick, listed my symptoms. She told me to keep taking it for three more days. Uh, no! I don't think so. I know it is a new medication but I am not a guinea pig. 

So, tomorrow, I am going to call my doctor again and ask to be put back on what I was on and maybe tweak the dose. At least that medication is affordable and I know how it reacts with me.

Amanda and I finally had a date night. We went to Ross and looked around the store and then we went to dinner. It was really nice. We haven't been ale to really been able to spend one on one time together in awhile. 

Oh, I'm trying to quit smoking again. I'm on day two and so far so good. 

Other than that, I have a whole week of writing, waiting, research for some classes I am going to teach for the IEPG, and just general relaxing.  I am still a bit scatter brained to really write much else. 

Chaos, panic, and I'm starting to catch up, really...

Hi, no, I'm not dead. 

I never really got a lot done for my Mom. I tried. Mostly, I think me just being there helped and she and I had a lot of fun watching TV shows and movies. I even took her to see The Martian. Which, by the way, I really liked.

I think I mentioned that my Dad's ankles are badly bruised from just walking at his job. He said that he thinks he basically walks about 15 miles every day that he works around that store. He works at one of the big Wal-Mart's. So, he was in a lot of pain. But, he showed me EVE online and I got to see his ships and listen to him talk about the game. I think he might want me to play it, but I can't afford it and at the moment, it's far too involved and complex for me to ever get any writing or homework done. I think he misses our old Guild Wars gaming sessions as much as I do. 

I spent some time with my cousin Shi-Chan. I really missed her and she's lost a lot of weight and has kind of grown a back bone. I said to her one day, "I left and you became all bad ass, I love it!" She just laughed. 

I spent some time with my Grandparents. Grandpa's Alzheimer's disease is getting worse, but we all knew it would. Grandma might kill him for all the cussing, farting, and burping. I even told him so and he laughed. But I got to hear some stories about his life that I have never heard before and while I didn't get to talk to Grandma too too much, I did get hugs and her cooking. They have an albino squirrel who comes to visit their bird feeders and I got to see it. I love it!

Eventually, I had to come home. Which I did. The day I came home, I learned from my next door neighbor that I was moving to Spokane and into a friend's basement. You can imagine my shock and surprise. One, I didn't hear about it from Amanda and two, even though I really like these friends, I had just gotten home. On top of that Amanda's Mom informed me that we're going to pack up Amanda's and my bedroom, put most of our stuff in the garage, and move our bed out into the dining room. WOW! I started to panic! I had homework to do, I hadn't even unpacked. 

So, two days later while I was trying to process all of this and we were at the UU Church getting ready for our Samhain celebration/potluck/ritual, and I got a phone call from my Mom to tell me that not only was my Dad in the hospital but might lose he leg, I had a tiny break down/ panic attack. I mean full on sweating, couldn't breathe, couldn't calm down. I somehow managed to grab my purse and book it to the bathroom where Amanda found me, and once she got me calmed down a little, we went outside. That day was really hard and I didn't even worry about socializing I just did what I needed and talked to as few people as possible, carrying on like nothing was wrong. 

So, why was Dad in the hospital? Because while I was visiting, he trip or did something to scrape his leg on the wheel barrel while hauling wood from his truck to Grandma's back yard and somewhere along the way, despite doctoring his wound, he picked up staph infection and the flesh turned necrotic. Right now, it still looks bad and he hasn't been given the "you are going to be okay you can go back to work" vote from the doctors, but he is home and out of the hospital. He goes to a specialized wound care clinic every couple of days.

But, the very next day from the "your Dad is in the hospital" call, I talked to my Grandma and she told me she was in the grocery store and turned around just so and heard a crack and had terrible pain in her side. She thought she broke a rib. Give that this woman is in her late 80s, has scoliosis and osteoporosis on time of that, I certainly didn't doubt it. Thankfully, when she went to the doctor her xrays came back negative for a broken bone, but she did pull something and maybe her back popped at the same time. 

Now even worse, Amanda's poor Dad has managed to get himself into a bind. He is diabetic and he has very thin skin, especially on his legs and somehow he scraped them up and has the same issue as my Dad but not nearly as bad. 

And on top of all of this mess I've been trying to catch up with a few things, decide what to pack, what I would need, look for apartments with Amanda on her days off, and do homework. Needless to say, I have been exhausted. I have had a couple of panic attacks. I have been really worried. 

The good news. We are going to be going back and forth between our friend's house and our house, just because we can't bring Narcisa with us to our friend's house. One of our friends is very allergic to cats and Narcisa needs lots of love and cuddles. So we are kind of doing a week here and week at home. That kind of gives me a little more time to get things sorted and packed, spend time with the neighbors, Narcisa, and do homework. 

Also, We have found a couple of apartments that look promising, we just need to find one that has an opening. We saw a beautiful apartment complex out in Mead, that's a town North of Spokane that Spokane kind of bleeds into. Anyway, it was built by the Germans and Scandinavians for the 1974 World's Fair. It's beautiful and they are updating and remodeling the insides. There are so many trees! But it's kind of far and I don't know how many of our friends will really come and see us if we live that far north. We are going to keep looking and see if some of the places we have already looked have opening's available in the next month or so. 

I have more news, but I really think it is better suited for another blog post...       

Fleas and other bugs, how lovely

Since moving back up to Northern Idaho my cat, Yoda, has had some skin problems. We took him to the vet they asked if he had fleas, we said no, and they checked him for them. He was given antibiotics, got better and a couple of months later the problem returned and we took him back to the vet, same treatment.

Well, as it turns out my girlfriend's mother's new cat has the same bumps. So we took her to the vet and lo and behold they found a flea. I was so PISSED! Mostly because my cats have never had fleas and fleas are such a pain in the ass to get rid of. Since my cats have never had them and no problem occurred until we moved up here, we concluded that it was the apartment. It seems that my girlfriend's parents were in such a hurry to move into this apartment that they didn't have the bedrooms shampooed and the previous tenant had a dog and a cat. We suspect that said previous animals had fleas and the fleas were still in the carpet when they moved in. Thus when we moved in and there were fresh kitties around to feed off of, they started to thrive again.


So, tomorrow, we are going to bomb the house, shampoo the carpets, wash all the clothes and bedding, and spray the furniture and places the furniture covers. We've already put a flea treatment on all of the cats tonight. 


Granted we live on the ground level, but we clean, I, especially, clean and disinfect just about everything I can. I am a bit of a germ-a-phobe. However flies still get into the house. Carpenter ants manage to get in, beetles, an occasional spider, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't see an earwig. *shudders* I hate bugs! We even had a centipede in the bathroom! So, with the fleas and all these other bugs thinking my home is their home, I'm not doing so well. I found an animal safe, I guess, 'organic' bug repellent for homes somewhere and will be trying it out very soon. If it actually works, then I will post the information.  

An early morning farewell, a door opens, and some tid bits.

Aside from this piece of art being one of my favorites, I thought it was an appropriate image for how I feel at the moment. If one were to turn the Knight into the apartment my girlfriend and I are vacating, the Lady would be myself saying a soft and sweet farewell. Yet somehow I feel as if I could be the Knight riding off to said apartment to battle the task of moving out. However, for us we will not be returning to the happy and relieved arms of our apartment when all is said and done.

For the last week I have been scrambling and packing with a firm, unrelenting and dreaded deadline in fast approach. My back is still giving me much grief, my knees have decided to join the pain parade, and due to the extreme heat here in the mid-west, this moving experience has not been a pleasant one. In fact, I have been so frustrated and so stressed from lack of boxes, lack of time, or this or that, that I have quite literally tossed any sense of organization out the window and am just packing things as I go along in plastic sacks, trash bags, luggage ect... But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We have very little left to pack and just have a little cleaning to do and come Friday afternoon, we'll turn in our keys and say "So long and thanks for all the fish".

My one class this quarter isn't going as well as I had hoped. I just got an update on my grade for the class and nearly cried. After all the work I put into making sure I had my book work done, I have a big, whopping F for the class and that's due to me not being caught up on the labs (which I am still in the process of doing). On top of that we just had a test with a study guide of over 100 questions and I studied and I looked over the study guide before the test and when I got the damned test it was only 15 questions long. Then my instructor went over the test after everyone had it handed in. I am pretty sure I only got 3 questions right. So, since my back was really giving me trouble and I was depressed, I left school during the second break.

However, despite all the negative, harrowing, and depressing things going on in my life right now, I had my first therapy session yesterday. I decided that I was going to see if I could get a therapist through social services program just so I could talk to someone outside my network of people and see if I couldn't get some other ideas on how to cope with stuff yada yada yada. Anyway, her diagnosis of me was that I have severe depression (I already knew that) and I have some social phobias. The session went well, I really like her, and she had some interesting things to say. I go back in two weeks and she said that she would have some things outlined for me to help me better deal with some of the problems I am dealing with. Leaving her office felt like a door opening to something really good. I really felt better.

Fun tidbits, my Dad helped me get the Dragon mask for this year's Dragon festival in Guild Wars. It;s pretty cool and eventually I'll log on and get a screen shot of it. My Mom and I are going to play with some of the gemstones she's been collecting and make some jewelry together and she's excited to show me some new TV series she's been watching. In a week or two we will have a friend from Idaho coming down to visit us, which will be awesome since we haven't seen her in almost two years! We really want to see her sister too, but they don't have anyone to take care of their animals so she's staying behind and will come later this year.

And lastly, I started watching this anime on Hulu while waiting for my Girlfriend to get off work one night last week. So far so good. I've only seen 4 episodes but it's interesting and when I get some more time I am really looking forward to seeing the rest of it.