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Off My Mind: Christmas, Careful Economics, and Crashing Appointments

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I haven’t been able to do much writing lately, and I think it’s because my mind is clogged with so much other crap, I can’t get into writing mode. I’ve tried making a To Do list of all of the writing things, but that just bogs me down more. Clearly I need to get some things off my mind.

My day job is starting to get kind of intense. I worked five days in a row, and two of those days were like being in the Twilight Zone. My normally nice coworkers kept snapping at me and giving me snarky answers to questions. I think it’s the holidays — Black Friday is around the corner and we have no idea what the sales are or what the associate schedule is going to be — but still. I’m relieved that I have today and tomorrow off.

I still really like my job, though. I never thought I’d actually like working in retail, but I don’t mind working there at all.

I’m probably going to be working a second job during the Christmas season. I may or may not be completely out of my mind. Only time will tell. My old boss from my very first job asked me if I would come back during the holidays. I’m broke, so I’ll pretty much do anything — “anything” including working at the mall during December. I am fully prepared to be a babbling heap by the New Year.

Thinking about Christmas shopping kind of makes me want to throw up. I wrote a whole article about budgeting for the holidays — it’s coming, get ready! — and while I’m actively doing all of the steps I’ve outlined in said article, I’m still nervous. Clearly I am a trustworthy source.

In all seriousness, I’ve given myself a budget of $25 per person, and I hate it. I want to give everyone on my list the world, but I can’t even afford everyone on my list. It comes down to this: I have twelve people I’d like to shop for, but can only afford eight of them. How do you choose?!

I tried to get Mike to agree to not get each other gifts, but he said he’s getting me something anyway… which, in all honesty, just makes me feel like I have to get him something. I know he just means that he’s excited — he loves Christmas shopping — but he just doesn’t realize how stressed I am about the whole thing.

I know it shouldn’t matter, because either way, I’m going to spend the holidays with the people I love, and that’s very precious to me. I wish Christmas was more like Thanksgiving (which is next week, and my belly is very, very excited); there’s no pressure to get things for people. You just have to bring yourself (and some food). Eating is very zen like that.

Of course, thinking about Christmas shopping just reminds me that I’m very broke. How I can justify buying things for people when my car is currently unable to go on the highway is beyond me. I should be putting that money toward the car, and car insurance, and my student loan repayment. I wish I could figure out some other sort of gifts so that I could put the majority of the money I’m saving for Christmas toward the car instead. But thinking about that might just collapse my already fragile nerves.

I am, however, saving for a few things. My savings account is currently the home of Operation Apartment. I am saving at least $10 a week, which is nothing at the time, but it adds up. Or at least, it does as long as I don’t touch it.

I’m also saving for a new computer. Specifically, a Mac. More specifically, a 15-inch MacBook Pro. Of course, I so don’t have $1,799 (or $2,199). I’ve calculated that, if I save $30 a week and save all of my pennies (quite literally), I can afford one in about a year. I’ve been drooling over the idea of getting a Mac for quite some time. I’m admittedly kind of attached to the PC I have because I’m sentimentally weird like that, but it’s way out of date — I can’t even play The Sims 3 on it, and that’s a fucking crime — and acts like a geriatric brontosaurus. I refused to even start looking at computers until this one actually needed to be replaced, though; I’m just not the kind of girl that needs the latest and greatest. My basic needs in a computer are: internet, word processor, and Sims (and pretty much in that order). I’m not a tech junkie or WoW gamer (Sims are way cooler than WoW, anyway). Quite frankly, I’m sick of Microsoft and Windows. I want to get as far away from anything Microsoft as soon as I can. I have very limited experience with a Mac, but if getting away from Microsoft means shelling out about $2,000 and learning a whole new computer interface, then so be it. (Besides, it’s really not that different. I worked at a web design shop a few years ago that used nothing but Macs, so I spent my days bouncing back and forth between a PC and Mac. If I hadn’t started my day on a PC at Job 1, switched to a Mac at Job 2, then went back to a PC for Job 3, I would have gotten the hang of it much faster.)

While my laptop is pretty outdated, though, I don’t really need a new one… yet. (But not being able to play TS3 or The Sims Medieval is kind of making me want to cry.) I do, however, need a new phone. My BlackBerry, bless its little chip, is pretty wonky, and even more outdated than my laptop at this point, even though the laptop is physically older. How’s that for the technology we have these days?! I abhor the BlackBerry’s track ball. My biggest gripe about this phone from day one is the track ball constantly getting stuck, or the screen moving up instead of down even though I am scrolling down, dammit. A little less than a year ago, I updated my BB’s OS so that I could have the new Twitter app at the time, but now the damn thing’s OS is out of date again. It’s a pain in the ass to do, though, and I’d rather not tempt fate (I was a little nervous about accidentally destroying my phone the first time around). Contrary to popular belief, I am not an IT. (Web designer =/= IT. I cannot stress this to my family enough. Sigh.)

Even worse, though, the thing keeps freezing all the time. I’m waiting for the day it just stops working completely. Realistically, it still makes phone calls, so it’s still serving its purpose — like I said, I’m more practical than techie, even though I really like shiny things — but I’d really like to come a little bit out of the dark ages and get a touch screen. My grandmother — Noni — has a touch screen, and I don’t. (She rocks at it, too.) The question is, though, which one? My mom told me she’d get me a new phone for Christmas. When my sister and dad got the HTC Evo several months ago, I started drooling over it. I figured I’d just get that. But now Sprint has the iPhone, and the iPhone 4 — not 4S, mind you; I don’t need my phone talking to me, thank you very much — is actually the same price as the Evo. How do you choose?!

I have a friend who has had and loved both, and even she doesn’t always give me the same answer. The iPhone’s battery lasts longer, she says, but the HTC survives more drops (unless you get the expensive plexiglass hard case for the iPhone). She also told me the HTC’s apps are cheaper (as in, usually free), but after some research I discovered the iPhone can be synced to your Mac, so all pictures you take or changes to documents you make on your iPhone instantly go to your Mac via iCloud. Since I know I’m getting a Mac at some point, this is a huge thing; I could put Pages (word processor) on my iPhone and Mac, and write away from my computer if I need to… and it would be on my computer instantly. Right now, if I’m away from my computer and get an idea for a story or book I’m writing, I pull out my BlackBerry, open up WordPress, and start writing. Then I send it as a draft and it goes to my WP site, and then I log in to my website, open up the draft, and copy and paste it into a Word document. If I take a picture on my BB, I have to connect it to my PC via USB, upload the photos to my computer, and then upload them to my website or whatever. iCloud cuts out those middle steps, and like I said, it’s a huge deal to me.

So I guess I’m leaning toward an iPhone. My mom told me to let her know whenever I decide. Hahaha, I guess there is a techie in me.

I should be coming into some extra money soon, so fortunately we may be getting our apartment and I may be getting my Mac even sooner. I don’t know if I wrote about my 401(k) woes here — and if I did, I can’t find the post — but I finally got it all straightened out. To make a long story short, the third party company that managed the retirement plans at the newspaper I worked at a couple of years ago took it upon themselves to move my 401(k) into one of their IRA accounts, instead of into an IRA account at my bank like I requested. I still don’t know entirely how it happened, but when they moved it into their IRA, they never sent me any access information, so I got locked out of it somehow. I couldn’t contact them, either, for similar reasons — you have to have a PIN to even get through their 800 number to talk to someone — so I ended up going through my bank yet again, the retirement plan company sent me some paperwork in the mail and I filled it out and faxed it, and I should be getting a check from them soon. That check is going toward the Operation Apartment fund.

Come January, I should be coming into more money, because I put a lot of extra money into taxes withheld while I worked at my full-time job as a Tee Shirt Terrorist. At the time, I made enough money to do so without even missing it, and figured it would be like a savings account I’d get to use on whatever I wanted down the road. Well, “down the road” is here, and I’m putting that money toward my Mac.

I’m writing a graphic novel with Mike, Robbie, and Sean. This isn’t actually stressful, but it is on my mind (I’m super excited about it). A couple weeks ago, Mike and I were sitting around the house talking about how talented of artists Robbie and Sean are, and I said, “You’re getting really good, too, though.” He kind of just shrugged that off, and somehow the conversation led to me announcing that the four of us should make a graphic novel and get it published. “I mean, the three of you all draw, and I write, and it just seems like a crime to not take advantage of that and at least try to get something out there.” The original idea was for me to write, Mike to do the cover, and Robbie and Sean to do the inside art, but since then, Mike has been talking about cowriting it. I came up with some characters and then the story today, and am writing a short story that Mike and I will convert into a script later.

I need to set up some appointments with a few doctors. I missed my Mirena followup again when the power was out; the office didn’t have power on the date of the appointment, and it never got rescheduled. I also never followed up with my PA-C after seeing my rheumatologist a few months ago. (Oops.) I guess I’m just sick of the whole doctor thing. I have an appointment with my rheumatologist next week, I think, but I’m not sure if it’ll work out because the schedule for next week at work isn’t up yet for some reason, and they’ve also put up a notice saying that no one can request any time off until after the holidays. (This is normal, though, from what I remember from my previous retail days.) I may have to reschedule it for January or later; I kind of want to schedule an appointment at Yale first. I also need to see a different gastroenterologist. My GI issues are not improving, and I don’t feel that my current gastroenterologist is attentive enough.

I’m really sick of playing the doctor game. I don’t want to go all the way to New Haven every time I need to see a rheumatologist, but Yale is world renowned for its medical practitioners. They have an entire rheumatology building there. If they can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, I don’t know who can.

We are moving our things out of storage during the last weekend of this month. Our dressers are definitely coming up here, and most of the stuff is going into the cellar so that we can go through it little by little. I have to move the dining room around so that I can fit the dressers in here, but I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do it. The roof/ceiling hasn’t leaked since that rain storm before Irene, but I don’t want to put anything important under that general area because it would kind of be like asking for the roof to collapse. Still, the only way I can think of to make that room work involves putting my bed right under where the leak is. I really want to move that room around, though, because Noni said I can use her desk that’s in there as a work station. I am seriously sick of working from the couch, even though it’s kind of comfy.

Still, I’m really excited about getting my dresser back.

I did something I thought I could never do this past Saturday. I really want to write about it, but it’s hard. I tried writing a poem about it, but so far all I have is a bunch of fragments that could be a poem. Still, I’m really proud of myself. I feel a lot better, and I’m not regretting my decision… which was one of my fears.

I need to create a writing schedule, but the thought of doing it kind of overwhelms me. I’ve even created half-assed schedules, and those overwhelmed me enough. It boils down to being afraid of actually doing it — “it” meaning making a living off of writing — or failing; whether I become successful or fail, I’ll still no longer have the goal of becoming a professional writer. It’s been my goal for so long that I am not sure how to be apart from it now that I’m actively pursuing it.

♦

I really do feel a lot better now that this is all off my mind. I even have a mini To Do list now:

  • write short story for graphic novel (goal: 5,000 words)
  • create article schedule
  • submit “Outlaw Love Story”

What do you wish you could get off your mind?

This Time Baby, I’ll Be Bulletproof

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I don’t normally have nightmares; usually, when I do remember my dreams, they’re just really vivid and very strange. It’s been a really long time since the last time I had a nightmare… before this morning. To make things worse, I had two back to back, so when I woke up, I felt completely disoriented.

In the first dream, Mike and I were walking down a sidewalk together when someone shot me in the back of the head. Mike got hurt really bad trying to save me, and we both ended up spending a long time in the hospital. In real life, I probably wouldn’t have survived the shot; the bullet hit me right on my scalp line on the back of my head. Mike and I had side by side hospital beds, and he was all cut and scraped. Amazingly, we both got out of the hospital at the same time. We weren’t living together, for some reason, so we each went to our own houses.

When I got home, I was on bed rest or something like that, but was eating pizza and meatball grinders with my family — or at least, I thought I was. All of a sudden, they were telling me I had to go pick up some pizza for everyone. I tried to tell them I couldn’t go because I was supposed to be resting, but they were acting like I was just making it up. “Fine!” I said. “I’ll go!” I left the house, slammed the door, and then stuck my head back in. “But you should know I didn’t even get to eat my pizza!”

I left and tried to call Mike, but he wouldn’t answer the phone so I went to his house. He wasn’t there, and everyone else there completely ignored me. I went to my friend Sandy’s, and she started to tell me that everyone was concerned that I might have a permanent head injury, because of the crazy way I was acting.

I remember thinking, Me?! I’m acting crazy?! and then found myself in this fully furnished, abandoned house. It was pouring outside and all of the windows were wide open. I was in a diving suit and couldn’t get out of it. My mom started yelling at me, asking why I’d even put it on if I couldn’t get it off. I tried to explain to her that all scuba divers need help getting in and out of their gear, but she kept yelling at me anyway. She did help me out of it, though, by cutting the fabric so I could slip it off over my head.

The house turned out to be for sale at $99,000, and my mom was thinking about buying it but decided it was too expensive. I was in the middle of trying to persuade her to buy it anyway, because of the loft design I’d fallen in love with, when the dream changed. I still stood in the same house, but I wasn’t myself anymore. Hell, I wasn’t even a girl. I was some guy in a gang like the one in A Clockwork Orange; we did the same awful things, but wore eighties ripped jeans, tee shirts with words written on them in neon colors, and Halloween masks. We were having some kind of party where we were torturing all of the people we’d invited. My evil, male self chose a victim and then took him upstairs, with my real self screaming in my head that this was very, very wrong.

I shoved the guy down onto a bed and tied him up. “Do you have a condom?” I screamed at him. He whimpered, and said he didn’t have one. I started screaming at him, asking him how he expected me to not get some kind of STD from him. I started looking around the room for something to use. I grabbed a bottle of baby oil. My real self was freaking out, thinking, How can I do this? How can I do something like that?!

I must have realized it was a dream, because all of a sudden I was able to take control. I made my evil self actually me in disguise, and the guy on the bed was Mike and he knew that we had to pretend I was torturing him so that we could escape the crazy gangsters. We made a plan to escape, and then split up. I sneaked throughout the house, trying to slip out undetected by any of the other gang members. I got to a deck on the second floor, and was planning on climbing down by using the roof when the gang leader showed up.

I tried to explain why I wasn’t off torturing someone, and he started talking about something (I can’t remember), when Jason climbed up the roof, brandishing his machete at us. This Jason wore the same clothes we wore, but my dream self pretended to freak out and started running and slipping down the roof — which turned into a metal slide — with the gang leader calling after me. I ran straight into the woods, where I was supposed to meet Mike, and then I woke up.

Seriously, this was the most fucked up dream I have ever had. I don’t even know what to make of it.

An update on Konner: A diagnosis (finally)

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Shortly after I posted my last update on Konner, I got a slew of texts from Sandy with, finally, some answers. It’s been hard for me to do any writing here at all, so I apologize for how late this is.

Konner did have that post-strep glomerulonephritis disease. (I’m not sure if I wrote about it, but that’s what they were thinking when they originally sent him home from Yale.) Basically, it’s a disease that kids get sometimes after having strep throat. It attacks the kidneys, and since our baby only has one kidney, he was in all kinds of trouble. His C3 levels are back to normal, and are actually the highest they’ve been since he was born. Because of the kidney disease he was born with, Sandy couldn’t potty train him completely (even though she did try a few times and he was actually doing okay before he stopped being able to produce urine). However, because of all of these things together, a large amount of ecoli grew in his urine over a period of time, which caused the complications that led Sandy to take him to Yale again (vomiting, diarrhea, swelling in his feet, inability to urinate, etc). After putting him on some ammoxicillin, the amount of ecoli in his urine has gone down.

Konner had six interns working on his case around the clock, and after sixteen hours straight, they put all of the pieces together and figured it out. (This seriously sounds like a crazy episode of HOUSE or Grey’s Anatomy. Unfortunately for Konner and Sandy, it was all very real.)

Konner is now home and, as far as I know, he’s steadily recovering.

We are still doing the Kidney Walk. Please donate if you can. Click here to make a donation to the National Kidney Foundation. Your donation will help me make my fundraising goal for the walk, so every little bit helps! I am trying to raise $200, and so far have raised $10 (which was my donation). All donations go to research, which will help Konner and all of the other people who have kidney diseases.

Thank you so much for your help and your support throughout these last few months! I’ll keep you all posted.

Update on Konner: A medical mystery

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UPDATE: Edited for corrections. Sorry for the mistakes, San! xoxo

As shitty as I feel, I can’t help but wonder about a certain three-year-old in my life. Konner has been at Yale for a few days, and is being discharged this afternoon, but the road ahead is even more uncertain than it was before.

Sandy took him to the ER at Yale a few days ago because he wasn’t urinating again, and his feet were too swollen for shoes. (Me and my little guy are having a ball lately. Sigh.) They ran a whole slew of bloodwork related to his kidney, and determined that the problem is not at all kidney-related. They admitted that they’re baffled.

Yesterday, Konner wasn’t even producing urine. They began to wonder if his problems are neurological, if the nerve endings in his bladder are dead. They decided to order a CAT-SCAN, MRI, and spinal tap.

Just a few minutes ago, I got a text from Sandy saying that Konner began urinating again, all on his own, and Yale is discharging him this afternoon. He’ll be going for checkups twice a week. They’re back to square one, it seems; the MRI and CAT-SCAN came back fine, so now they don’t have any “leads” at all.

This little guy is a fighter. He doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable, ever, but you know that his medical issues have got to be uncomfortable. He takes it all in stride, and just continues being who he is: a happy little boy. It’s astonishing, the amount of strength this kid has.

I am glad to see him coming home, but frustrated because we don’t know what’s wrong. I know, to a certain extent, how Sandy feels, because I’m still considered a medical mystery, myself. We have an idea of what the problem is, but don’t know what exactly. And if you don’t know what the problem is, you can’t treat it or solve it.

I know Konner is not my son, so I could never truly know what this is like for Sandy, but I do get it. I hope they get some answers soon.

For a quickie post, this thing has a lot of tags

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Is this week over yet?! I’m glad tomorrow is Wednesday and all, but it needs to be Friday. There is a bottle of alcohol with my name on it. (I haven’t yet decided whether that bottle is whiskey or vodka.)

My goal tonight is to get my ass in bed early, but I really wanted to stop in here and say hi. I feel kind of bad that I’ve been paying more attention to Freaking Bookworm lately. (More on that soon! My dreams are coming true!) If you’ll excuse my laziness, here is an update… in bullets!

  • I had allergy testing done yesterday. It turns out that the crazy, all-over itching probably has more to do with my cat than the Mystery Autoimmune Disease. I am allergic to everything – including my cat — except dogs. It fucking figures that I’m a cat person and am allergic to cats, and am not a dog person but don’t have a problem with them. I actually had no idea that I was allergic to my baby. The proof is in the weal that is still on my arm. The biggest weals are ragweed and birch tree, though.
  • I attempted Jillian Michaels’s 30 Day Shred: Level 1 last night with Sandy, and discovered that it is definitely not for people with joint pain. It’s too fast paced, too intense, and today I am paying the price in all of my muscles and joints. I’m gonna stick to crunches from here on out, and try to go for a walk every day. I’ve been staying away from garbage snacks, though. Apple cinnamon rice cakes are my crack.
  • I’m kind of afraid that I can’t hold a full-time job. My symptoms are affecting me more than I thought they would when I signed my contract. The Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome, fatigue, and pain are kicking my ass. Right now I struggle to get through those eight hours, and by the time I get home I’m exhausted. I’ve been putting whatever energy I have left into Freaking Bookworm, and then collapsing into bed. I can absolutely not afford to go to bed at midnight and get up at six in the morning anymore. Today I came home, slathered myself in Icy Hot, popped a Tramadol, and lay in bed reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for hours.
  • Sandy is organizing a team for a kidney walk in honor of her little guy, Konner. The name is Team Konner. If you can, please donate to Team Konner. If we are Facebook friends, you can contribute to my fundraising goal, but either way, the donations go to the Kidney Foundation for research. I thank you in advance.

That’s really it, for now. I do have news on the other thing, but basically it’s just a surgery date; we don’t know anything new in terms of how bad it is. I’m still waiting until I know for sure that all of my family members are up to date before I go talking about it on the internet. Thank you all for your understanding and support.

I hope you are all well. I tried to play catchup on Twitter today. I miss you all!

PS: Go check out my Freaking Book Club! We just finished Nana volume 1, and are now reading The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It’s free and it’s fun! (At least, I’m having fun!)