Child support hearing items to complete by Monday 7/7/08

* Finish answering the interrogatory questions.
* Sort paypal payments by employer, copy/paste to text file.
* Email the above documents and 2007 1099 forms, to be printed.
* Scan Sebastian's settlement trust papers, and email the jpegs to the Maine DA by 9am Monday, 7/7/08.

Perfect every time.

It is so far, a nice quiet day here.
Mark will be going to my sister's house for the night, Sebastian will be staying with me, and I'll have to figure out what the heck to cook he and I for dinner.

I have the most awesome recipe for sweet n' sour chicken poured over rice, but every time I make it, the boys refuse to eat the rice.
It's because I am probably the only person alive who can screw up instant rice.
I love rice, and I know the boys do like it, they eat it elsewhere, so I know it's the way I personally cook it.
So maybe if I had one of those rice cookers, I wouldn't mess it up so bad.
Lucky for me, Buy.com has one on sale this week as part of their weekly deals.

They have a Fujitronic 10-cup electric rice cooker, for just $26.99
The regular price is $54.99, so that's a huge $28 dollar savings.

It comes in either a flower or turtle pattern, and is a multi-function use pot. It can make perfect rice, porridge, or soup. Has an automatic keep warm function, a non-stick inner pot for easy cleaning, and helps make even terrible rice cookers like me, be able to cook perfect rice every single time.
At the sale price, it is definitely something I can afford to pick up, and then maybe the teens will eat my most awesome sweet n' sour chicken with rice dish.

It's a bit of a challenge.

First, I just want to give a screaming loud shout of thanks to Christine for installing MT version 4.12 for me over on my new blog.
It still doesn't have a name yet, but battles were never won in just a few short hours!

I swear, getting a whole new blog and an upgraded CMS, is like buying tons and tons of discount furniture and trying to cram it all into a tiny little house.
You just had to have it because the price was so dang good, but now it's going to take a few days to fit it all in the house the right way.
Version 4.12 is not like the version of MT this blog uses.
This one is still using 3.35, and I'm completely used to it, it's like a perfect fitting glove.
4.12 does things a whole lot different, and it's going to take me a few days, or a few weeks, to get the hang of just what it is they've done with everything.
For the life of me, I cannot switch up the sidebars.
I messed with it for like 2 hours I think, and got nowhere.
Oh well.
I will have plenty of time tomorrow to learn things.

Sebastian decided to go home with my sister tonight because Matthew has invited him back over to play again tomorrow, and it's just easier for Jo to take him home with her, than it is to try and pick him up really early in the morning again.
He will be home tomorrow night though.

Mark and I went and did the shopping, ate dinner, and watched a bit of tv, and now he's playing his video games again.
It's all good, he earned that play time tonight.
He picked up, carried, and put away all the heavy stuff from shopping, and then he changed out the litter boxes, took out the trash and recycles without me asking him to do any of it, so yeah, play on young man, play on!

Ok, I really need to go catch up on some work and stuff, and then maybe try and learn some more new stuff.
Later days!

Two thumbs up!

Back on the 26th of June, I told you about one of the office girls at my pain doctors office, and how she's just been melting off the weight.
After doc and I finished going over the results of yesterday's MRI, I asked him about the diet aide that she's been taking because I am just so incredibly impressed with how much weight she has lost.
At my appointment Tuesday, Lacey was the one who brought me back, did my vitals etc, and I really got a chance to ask her what she's been using to lose the weight and how it makes her feel.
I'm sure that many of you older women remember the days of ephedra, and the shakiness and that weird feeling you got in your stomach after taking it right?
It worked killer for losing weight, but it made you shaky and paranoid, and by the 8 or 9th hour after taking it, you'd get this feeling in your stomach that was never a good feeling.
It was sort of a hunger feeling, but more of a sick feeling.

Anyway, she's been taking a product called Zylene 1.1, and he sells it right there in the office.
Lacey has lost 59 pounds since February 3rd, and another office girl, Faiay, (pronounced Fy-aa) has only been taking it for the last 3 months, has lost 22 pounds.
I talked to the both of them again today, and they have both said the same things, no shakes, excellent appetite control, and major energy.
They take 2 capsules in the morning, and it last them all day long, and they have no trouble falling asleep at night.

Doc and I talked about it, I asked him if it was safe for me, he said yes, but he did some tests on me to just have a record of this, and to make sure I was healthy enough to start a weight loss plan.
He weighed me, took my blood pressure, and we already had the results of the blood work they did just a week ago, and so he went over everything and he said it looks good for me to start these if I wanted to.
When I had just seen him on Tuesday and asked about taking a diet aide, he said to hold off on it for now because of the neck issue, but today he said I was ok to go because if I am going to need the surgery, they will probably tell me I have to lose weight first anyway, just like they did 2 years ago with my back surgery.
I asked about any possible interactions with my current pain medications, and he said these will not interact badly at all with my pain meds, and if I have to have the surgery, losing weight is a good thing, and the surgery will probably be months off anyway.

So I bought a bottle of the Zylene and I am going to start them tomorrow.
He told me the bottle says it's safe to take up to a max of 4 per day, but he recommends absolutely no more than 3 per day, but to start off only taking one with breakfast for the first few days, to drink a lot of water, and then if I start feeling like I need a second pill, to take it either mid-day or early afternoon.
He said to never take them past 3pm or else I may have trouble falling asleep at night.
I already have that problem.
I had major insomnia last night, I didn't fall asleep until 6am, and then I got up with Sebastian at 7:30am, and then just stayed awake. I wasn't tired anymore anyway.
I'm very excited to start and try these out, I have medical permission and full medical supervision, so I feel good about doing this.

Annnnnd!
I bought my hosting this morning and set up the name servers this afternoon.
So as soon as I get a blogging CMS installed, katjcooper.com will be the new home of all of my medical posts, and whatever other personal "just me" stuff can go.
This blog is my life as a single mom, my parenting issues, that's what it once was anyway, and when all my medical stuff started, it just sort of took over.
I'm very happy that the two will be separated, they need to be.
Later days!

Notice anything missing?

That is the titanium bar tongue ring I wear.
It's missing the other ball at the end.
Guess where it is?

See, I had to have that MRI today, and they make you take off all of your jewelry, so it requires me taking out all my piercings as well.
When I got home I put them all back in, and I must not have tightened it enough, and during dinner, it must have come even looser.

I decided to have a little snack a few minutes ago, and I took the first bite and felt this scraping feeling against the roof of my mouth.
I immediately panicked and thought I chipped a tooth and it had scraped the roof of my mouth, so I ran to the bathroom to take a look.
No chipped teeth, so I stuck out my tongue and that's when I saw it.
My tongue piercing was missing the top ball.

Now, it didn't fall out on the floor or into what I was eating, I definitely would have noticed it falling out of my mouth, so the only obvious place that tiny titanium ball went is down the old pipes.
Yup, I swallowed it.

I came out of the bathroom and told the teens, and they both got this look of horror on their faces.
Ha!
I've had this tongue ring since 1999, so 9 years, and in these past 9 years, I have never had an issue with it.
I've never accidentally bitten on it while eating, and I certainly have never swallowed one of the balls.
There's a first time for everything they say!

I do have others so I just replaced it, not really a big deal, but I thought it was quite funny.

Stacey Westfall freestyle horse riding.

I first saw this video on my sister's blog, and it moved me to tears then, and it still does every single time I watch it.
It's Stacey Westfall, and her championship ride at the 2006 American Quarter Horse finals, with her horse Roxy, aka, Whizards baby Doll.

No bridle. No saddle. No reins. No traditional equestrian clothing.
Just her and her horse.
What makes this video so awe inspiring, is that Roxy does everything with just voice commands and subtle hand gestures from Stacey.
Stacey dedicated her run to her father who passed away just 24 days before, and you would have to be a very cold-hearted person to not shed a tear while watching this.
As soon as the announcer chokes up while announcing her, I choke up, and then it's nothing but tears for the entire video.
It is really beautiful and moving.

We're all busy tomorrow!

I was getting ready to head out right after dinner to do a little grocery shopping and to stop at Walgreen's for a few things, and to see if they had any lipovox so I could check out the ingredients after one the girls on the local forums posted about taking it and it's helping her lose weight, and just as I grabbed my purse, it started down-pouring.
It figures.
I'll just have to try again tomorrow after I get home from the doctors.

Sebastian will be gone all day tomorrow, he's going to work with my sister so he can spend the day with his friend Matthew again.
Matthew is the brother of the boy Greg, that my sister takes care of.
Sebastian and Matthew get along so well, they both like the same video games, the Sims, and Cary (Matthew and Greg's mom) takes them to the mall and let's them go to the movies and stuff.
The two boys always have such a good time together, so I never say no when Matthew asks if he can go over.
It's up to Cary and my sister, but they hardly ever say no.
I'm just glad that Sebastian has a really good friend he can go do things with this summer.
Things in the neighborhood haven't been so good over the last few weeks.
I can't remember if I posted about that yet or not, but I'll check my archives and if not, I'll post about that later.

Mark is going with his Big George tomorrow at 11am, so when I get back and he gets back, I'll take him to the store with me.
I have to have someone go with me because I can't lift the bags of cat litter and cat food, etc.
And then we'll just cab it back and he can carry all the heavy stuff in, and help me put it away.
Mark isn't a fan of grocery shopping, but he has no choice tomorrow.
Heh.

I wanted to also tell you all to go check out my sister's blog.
It's called Jo's Mojo, and even though she doesn't post often, she does post some pretty cool stuff.
She's getting better at blogging each time she posts. (she'll get the blogging bug, everyone does )
You just have to go see what her and my niece Susan are doing!
It's a little project for a plant nursery so she can make a few bucks when the neighborhood she lives in has this HUGE community yard sale, and as a way to do fun and crafty things with the girls.
Go check it out, she took some awesome pictures of their progress step by step.
Most of the pictures are clickable for bigger so you can really see the stuff.
Check out the mean faced tree!
My niece Susan just loves to do stuff like that, she loves to be helpful, and she is just too darn cute in some of those pictures!

Moving on up and to a new blog.

I went and had another MRI today, it was on just my scapula and the area around it.
The new open and seated MRI machines are awesome, but these rods do not like hard and flat surfaces at all.
They had me seated, and then they tipped the whole chair up and then back, so I was completely flat on my back with my knees up in the air, and my feet dangling.
As soon as it tipped back, I was like uh, this is not good.
The tech asked me what was wrong and so I told her that the rods are being pressed down into the hard back and it's hurting really badly, but I'll try it.
A test they told me was only going to be 15 minutes, was really an hour to an hour and a half long.
I lasted in that position for about 20 minutes, and then I was pressing that buzzer like mad.
The rods and my left iliac screw were seriously freaking out.
It was beyond painful.
I made her get me out of it immediately, it was that painful.
So, then we had to try it a different way.
I was now sitting normally, but she strapped this thing around me so my arms couldn't move at all, and it ended up cutting off the circulation in my arms from my elbows down.
By the time the test was over, my hands were all pins and needles.
And there is something seriously wrong with their air conditioning compressor, because that room felt like it was 120 degrees.
The tech was sweating, I was sweating, and she just kept saying sorry, I don't know what's wrong.
Kinda sucked.
Let's hope I'm done with any more tests for awhile ok?

Oh, and I will be starting a new blog soon.
I want to get all these medical and health posts off of here.
I need to look into doing that today.
Later days!

Ack! I'm running a little late!

Oops! I got caught up reading emails and forums, and then I looked at the clock.
Ack!
I need to get in the shower and get going!
I'll post when I get home.
Later days!

The teens and I had a talk.

My first surgery was extremely hard on the boys.
Sebastian didn't handle it well at all, Mark did ok, but if we ever talk about that time, they both get a little shaky and start tearing up.

I had to talk to them about the possibility of a neck surgery, it won't be anything like my spine fusion at all, it's a one day thing, and out of the hospital in 2-3 days, shorter recovery time, much much shorter recovery time.
They got very upset, I knew they would, but it was something that we had to talk about, they need to be prepared in case it happens.

I told them about all the help that we would have this time, Mindy said she would definitely help take care of them, my sister as well, it would be much easier this time.
They told me all of the fears they have about it, the what ifs, and I can totally understand that because I have those what if thoughts myself.
They told me that I have to tell them everything, every visit with a doctor must be explained to them when I come home, no details are to be left out.
They said knowing every detail helps them deal with it much better.
I hope so.

After our talk, they were ok, they said that they will be ok as long as they have people to lean on, people to talk to and just listen if they need to talk.
I assured them that they would have all of us around to help, we'd be here for them and it would all be ok.
They are scared and I so totally understand that, I'm scared myself.
I really don't want another surgery but if that's what I have to do, then that's what I have to do.
We will keep talking about it, they insist on knowing everything, so I'm hopeful that they will be able to handle this a bit better than the last time.

It's so hard.
I'm all they have, they are all I have, and things like this are very scary for all of us.
I know I'm rambling right now, I'm flooded with all kinds of emotions and thoughts and have been since my appointment today.
It's just not what I wanted to hear and I'm hoping upon hope that Doc R is wrong.
I want Doc M to say nope, it's not that bad, we don't have to do anything drastic, and the waiting until the 15th is just going to be so hard.
I will try not to talk about it much, I know people get sick of it all, I am sick of it all, so I will try like crazy to not talk about it, but when I get overwhelmed with emotions like right now, I'm probably going to bust out rambly posts like this one.

Entertainment Weekly's top 100 movies of the last 25 years.

I saw this over at Five Dollar Shake a few days or so ago, and kept meaning to do it.
Well, I'm going to do it now.

Entertainment Weekly came up with a list of the top 100 movies of the last 25 years. Bold the movies that you've watched and put asterisks next to the ones you liked.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)**
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)**
3. Titanic (1997)**
4. Blue Velvet (1986)**
5. Toy Story (1995)**
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)**
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)**
9. Die Hard (1988)**
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)**
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)**
12. The Matrix (1999)**
13. GoodFellas (1990)**
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)**
16. Boogie Nights (1997)**
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)**
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)**
20. The Lion King (1994)**

The other 80 are below the cut.

Well that zipper tat I am planning can now go all the way up.

I went and saw my pain doc today, and I hope he is wrong, I'll know for sure when I see my surgeon on the 15th, but he thinks this is the cause of all of my pain.

Click for bigger.

This is a slice cross scan of my neck.
My vertebrae from C2 -C4, are fused together and compressing on my spinal cord.
That's not a good thing.
He thinks it will require surgery to fix, and Doc M will be the one who decides all that.
The compression is actually called stenosis, and what it is is seriously crushing my spinal cord.
I know it's kind of hard to see, but my spinal cord is being squished pretty bad.
Doc R thinks this explains why I have so much pain in my neck, shoulder, and pretty much my whole left side.

I really don't want to have another surgery, but if it comes to that, I'll have no choice.
The stenosis is at such a level that ignoring this could mean some really bad things, and I'm not even going to get into all of that.
I can't let my mind go there.
I've been dealing with this since I got home today at 1pm, and I did my crying and screaming, and now I've moved on to the let's deal with this part.
I have to go in for an MRI of my left scapula tomorrow, back to Doc R's on Thursday, and then to my surgeon Doc M on the 15th.

So that's my update for now, I need to go make dinner for the teens, and then find something else to do.
I'm not going to dwell on this bad news, Doc R could be wrong, so I'm not going to think about it until I really have to.

Eww, something is dead.

I just went outside to put some mail in the box to go out, and noticed that the city had come by finally, and mowed the ditches.
As soon as I got to the mailbox, I smelled it.
Something is dead in the ditch but I can't see it because of all of the grass clippings in it now.
It's foul though, rank, something is surely most dead, and as the sun heats up the ground today, it's only going to get more foul smelling.
Ugh.
I am not going to go digging through there though to try and bag up whatever is dead under there.
No way.
I know if I wait long enough, the city will come back around and scoop out the ditches to make sure the rain doesn't flood out during the rainy season, but in the mean time, it's going to smell really bad out there.

And why is it that when I'm waiting on a payment that is usually in at 9am on the first of every month, is not in now?
It figures.
It's because I need it that it's not there.

Rabbit rabbit July 1 2008.

I don't know why I do that some months, maybe I'm hopeful that the first words of the first day of the month, will somehow make me have a great financial month.
Even though I don't believe in superstitions like that.
Heh.

Anyway, I should be asleep right now, I have a follow-up doc appointment in the morning, and here I am, wide awake again.
I didn't sleep at all during the day today, I just laid on the couch attempting to get some rest and not upset my stomach any further.
I haven't eaten a single thing all day.
I'm afraid if I do, it will come back up.
Or come shooting out.
TMI I know, but I hate being sick like that, I have food phobias because of past stomach bugs.
Sebastian does think it was the subs, specifically the Parmesan cheese that were put on all of them.
He said his stomach was a little upset today, not like mine, but he kept burping and tasting the cheese.

I'm really hoping that everything that is supposed to come through for me tomorrow, does.
I have a lot of stuff to take care of, and so yeah, I need those payments to come through first thing in the morning.

I guess I should go and try to sleep, I have a lot to do tomorrow and the rest of the week.
Later days.

Not quite the way to start your day.

I'm really not sure what caused it, but something I ate yesterday did a one-two punch on my stomach.
It (my stomach) was a bit upset last night before I fell asleep, but man, when I woke up this morning, I was sure that every ounce of food I've eaten in the last week was making an explosive get away from my body.
If it was the subs from Publix, it hasn't affected the boys, at least I don't think.
They are fine from what I can tell.
So anyway, I'm wicked way tired from spending the entire first half of my day running in and out of the bathroom expelling the contents of my bowels and intestines, so if I'm not around much today, it's because I'm trying to rest and not upset my stomach any further.
Later days.