Up, up, and away.

I've been awake all night, just wasting time really, I didn't feel like sleeping, but I made the teens get some sleep.
Well, Mark slept and Sebastian tried to stay awake but finally passed out from being so tired.
We have just a few more things to take care of before we leave, little things, but they still need to be done.
I finished all of the dishes, cleaned out the litter boxes, and set the timers for the lights and tv too.
I have the tv and lights set on timers so the cats will sorta feel ok.
If the tv is on, at least they will have sounds, people talking, voices, music, stuff, so maybe they won't be horribly lonely.
I know they will be lonely anyway, but between the tv sounds and Mindy and her daughter Katie coming over everyday to feed and pet them, they will be a little bit better.
I hope.
I am worried about them, especially Kali and Carmine, but I know that Mindy will take great care of them.

Ok, I gotta go get dressed and zip up the suitcases, and finish the last minute stuff.
Later days!

Comments (if any):

Aspirin, shaving, hair dye, and packing.

Every morning I wake up and take all of my medications.
I take my pain medicines, my muscle relaxer, my joint supplements, my cal/mag/zinc, my blood pressure medicine, and for the last week and a half, since going to both the ER and my doctor, an aspirin a day for blood clots.
Aspirin thins your blood out so that you don't get as many blood clots, and it also helps to break up some of the larger already formed blood clots.

Today I decided to do some things to make myself look and feel a little better before we leave tomorrow for our trip.
I colored my hair for the first time in a year, plucked my eyebrows, and shaved my legs.
I don't shave my legs all that often, like maybe once a week.
I just don't see the need to do it often as I have no one to be looking at my legs, or rubbing my legs, so I let it grow and then shave it once a week or so.
Yeah, maybe people consider that kinda gross, but meh, shaving my legs is a total pain in the butt and I usually use Veet, but I didn't feel like doing that today.
I now wish that I had used the Veet though, and from now on I will.

When shaving your legs and taking an aspirin a day, if you cut yourself, you bleed and bleed and bleed.
Holy crap do you bleed.
I didn't even realize that I had cut the skin near my ankle bone, I lose feeling in my lower legs and feet from time to time, so I didn't feel the cut.
I didn't notice that I had cut myself until I looked down into the tub and saw that the water was tinged with red.
I looked all over both of my legs for the cut, and that's when I saw it right on the ankle bone, and it was just gushing.
I finished up my shower and got out making sure to stay standing on a towel so I didn't bleed on the floor, but I still didn't know how bad the bleeding was going to be.
I dried off my legs really good, cleaned and dried my ankle, and by the time I got done opening the first aid kit, opening the box of band-aids, and opening a band-aid, there was blood just gushing out of the cut, my foot was covered in blood, it had soaked through the towel and was starting to stain the terrazzo floor.
I cleaned off the cut again and put the band-aid on.
I got dressed and looked down, it had bled through the band-aid and was running down my foot again.
I took that band-aid off and put on a new one, it bled through that one in a matter of minutes too, so I got out a gauze pad, folded it up, and taped it to my ankle.
10 minutes later, it had soaked through that too.
I changed that one out, and it bled through the new one in about 20 minutes, so the bleeding was slowing down, but it was still bleeding too much.
I put on another new gauze pad and tape, and this time it finally stopped bleeding enough after a good 2 and half hours that I could put a regular band-aid back on it.
It was really scary that way it just kept bleeding, the boys were joking about how I was going to bleed to death from shaving, but I didn't think it was all that funny considering how much it was bleeding, it really scared me.

After I finally got to stop bleeding, I went and finished packing my stuff up, well most of it.
There's some things that I can't put in my suitcase and carry-on until we are actually ready to leave in the morning, but it's mostly packed right now.
The boys are all packed up too, I think there's just a few more pieces of clothing for each of us in the dryer to pack up after it stops.
We're heading over to Mindy's house for dinner tonight, then coming home, trying to get some sleep, and then leaving here around 4:45am to head to TIA (Tampa International Airport) to fly Jet Blue to Maine.
Everyone is so excited for our trip, we're excited to be going, and family and friends are excited to see us.
It's going to be a very good trip.

Comments (if any):

Allergies, cats, and a sorely needed vacation.

I woke Sebastian up at 6am for school, and then went back to sleep.
When I woke up again at 8am, I had been hit by another allergy attack.
My left eye was completely swollen shut, and my lips were swollen to a size like a combination of Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie.
Huge.
Enormous.
Like those wax lips we had when we were kids, but 3 times bigger.
My lips were so swollen and painful, I thought if they got any bigger that they were going to explode.
I've already taken 4 doses of Benadryl and it's just now starting to go down.
A little.
It looks really, really bad.
This happened on the 12th too, I took a picture of it that time, but I am so not taking a picture of it this time.
No way, not this time, I look absolutely horrible.

Other than allergy attacks which are preventing me from getting some stuff done, the teens and I are just getting things ready to leave for our trip to Maine.
I've been needing a vacation for so long now, it's been almost 5 years since we last went home to Maine, since we had a vacation, and I've been saying for a long time now that I need to get away, just go home to my family and friends, I need a break away from here, so I'm very excited to be going.
We've almost gotten all of our clothes and things ready, stuff we need to take, and making sure that everything is ok here at the house for Mindy to take care of the cats and stuff.
I went to the store on Saturday and bought 8 bags of cat litter and 4 bags of cat food.
I dumped 2 bags of the food in the bucket with some that was already in there, and stuck the other 2 bags in the fridge so that it won't get chewed at and opened by the cats if I were to place it under the cabinet where I keep the bucket of cat food.

Mindy is going to come over everyday and feed them, clean their litter boxes, and collect our mail for us.
Her daughter Katie is going to help because the cats are going to be so lonely with no one to pet them and talk to them, so while Mindy is cleaning the litter boxes and feeding them and grabbing the mail, Katie is going to pet and talk to the kitties to let them know that they are still loved, that they are ok, and that we'll be home eventually.
Poor Kali is going to lick the fur off of her belly anyway, but maybe having someone come here everyday and lay down on the couch with her and pet her, will make her a little less anxious and she won't lick so much of her fur off.

Right now the teens are at Publix grabbing some dinner and snacks for all of us, there's no way that I was going to go anywhere looking like this.
I look like I got beat up because my left eye and lips are so swollen, I don't want anyone to ask me what happened, and I don't want to have to explain that I'm allergic to something yet I don't know what it is.
I really have no idea what is causing this.
It's not the laundry stuff, I got rid of that quite awhile ago.
I don't eat peaches or strawberries, I know I'm allergic to those.
And it's definitely not pollen as I'm not having any other symptoms of a pollen allergy.

Anyway, I have some dishes to do to make sure that the house is mostly clean when we leave.
I told Mindy that she didn't need to clean my house, but she said she was going to clean the house anyway, that she thought we'd like to come home to a clean house.
It's true, it's always nice coming home to a clean house, but she doesn't have to do it is what I'm saying, I didn't ask her to, and even if I say no, she said she was going to do it anyway.
So I'm going to do all of the dishes and as much general cleaning as I can so that there isn't too much for her to do.

Ok, off to get some more stuff done and hoping that the swelling goes down soon, I look terrible and it's really kind of painful too.
Later days.

Comments (if any):

Checking off the to-do and take-with lists.

This morning I had the teens get the big blue suitcase out of the closet for them to pack their clothes in, they'll use that one for just them and their stuff, and I'll use the smaller roller suitcase for my clothes and stuff.
On my list of things to take with me and carry in my backpack as my carry-on are:
Cell phones and chargers
mp3 player and USB charge cord
camera and USB charge cord
mini-netbook and power cord
batteries for the camera
e-cigs and USB charger (will tell you all about this later today!)
medicines in purse
hair brush and makeup bag
flip-flops and slipper shoes
and anything else I haven't thought of yet.

I wish I had taken the time and forethought to get a Micro SD card like this one that Buy.com has on sale this week, for my camera.
They have a Kingston 8GB Micro SDHC Card with Adapters and USB Reader on sale for just $19.83 with free shipping, down from $40.00, so over $20 in savings.

I only have a 1GB card in there right now, and because we're going to be gone for so long, and I'm sure that I'll take a lot of pictures, I'm going to end up having to dump some of them on the mini0netbook for storage until I get back home, and then do like a USB transfer to get them all to my pc.
If I had gotten an 8GB card, i wouldn't have to do any of that, they could all just stay right on the camera until we get back.
Oh well, maybe if we get to go on another trip sometime, I'll have already bought a bigger memory card for the camera.

Comments (if any):

Trying to get ready to go.

There's so much to do and take care of before we can go on Wednesday, and I'm stressing out big time.
I am going through my clothes trying to find warm enough clothes to bring with me, and so I was going through my pants and instead of finding my jeans, (I can't find my damn jeans!) all I found were an old pair of jogging pants that look like tuxedo pants, they have like these satin white stripes going down the sides.
I don't want to have to wear those while there.
I want my jeans.
Things are just slowly falling apart too.
My ride to the airport on Wednesday morning bailed on us, their car now has to be used by their son, so yeah, no ride to the airport unless I come up with money to pay for car service.
Yeah, no pants, no ride.
Way wicked stressed the hell out.

Comments (if any):

Lift, tighten, and dance.

I stay up so late that I think that I have seen infomercials for just about any kind of product that you can possibly think of.
The latest one that I watched was last night, it was for the kymaro body shaper.
I thought I had seen it before, and I was kind of right.
Back in January, both the LA Times and The Huffington Post, had reported that one of Lady Gaga's costumes was in fact just a Kymaro Body Shaper.
The story was not true of course, but you do have to admit that her costume does look like it.

A rep for Lady Gaga says that it's definitely not true, and that the skeleton part of the costume was designed by Gary Card.
I have no idea if the body shaper actually works or not, I just found it interesting and kind of funny that people thought she used one of them as a costume.

Comments (if any):

Late to the Glee party.

Tonight the teens and I watched Zombieland, and we thought it was absolutely hysterical.
We love zombie movies anyway, one of our fave funny zombie flicks is Shaun of the Dead, and Zombieland is like the American version of that in my opinion.
The 32 rules for how to survive a zombie invasion were so funny, they were things that fans of zombie flicks have talked for as long as there have been zombie flicks, things you need to do just in case there ever really is a zombie invasion.

Rule #1:
Cardio.
If you're out of shape and can't outrun a zombie, you're going to get eaten.
Rule #2:
Beware of bathrooms.
Zombies tend to attack when you're most vulnerable, and really, "dropping the kids off at the pool", is probably the most vulnerable any of us ever are.
Rule #19:
Blend in.
Zombies don't eat other zombies, so try to blend in with a little cornstarch on your face, some berry jam dribbling out of your mouth, you'll fit right in.

Bill Murray had a cameo in the movie as himself, one of the last survivors in Hollywood, he made himself blend in using the makeup techniques mentioned above, and was able to go play a few rounds of golf because zombies don't eat zombies.
Tallahassee, played by Woody Harrelson, talks Murray into playing a trick on Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg, as he's sitting watching some of the classic Bill Murray movies in Murray's own home theater seating, but Columbus mistakes Murray's makeup for being a real zombie, and takes out Murray zombie.
Ooops!
But there's so many fabulous and wicked funny scenes in Zombieland, there's all of the awesome 'Kill of the week' scenes, it's just a great movie and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

After it went off, the teens went off to play, and I had some stuff to look up online, so I just left it on Fox 13, the channel it was on before I popped the movie in, and I listened and watched parts of American Idol.
Some of them were actually pretty good, and some of the girls really just sucked.
If you just can't hit the notes in "Smile", it doesn't matter how much you love the song, loving the song isn't going to help you sing it awesome, so just don't even try, pick something that you can actually sing considering that tonight's round was to pick the top 12.
End of the line for you, sucks for you, oh well.

Then I just left it on that channel again and watched Glee.
Everyone is always raving about Glee, and I think I watched the first 2 episodes or so, and then found other things to watch on Tuesday nights, but now I can totally see why people love the show and why I should have probably watched the third and fourth episodes before I gave up on it.
I really like the kid in the wheelchair's version of Dancing With Myself, it's just a very cool version.
I'll probably watch it again sometime if I can't find other stuff to watch.

Comments (if any):

Debating if I need it or not.

There are a couple of things that didn't come with my new cell phone, a Kyocera X-tc, that I'm debating on whether or not I really need or want, and would need to pick up at some point.
One of them is a micro SDHC card for storage, as the phone only as 70mb of storage space available, and so if I wanted to store more pictures or music, I would need to get one.
The other is a must have if I want to be able to play music on my phone, listen to it through my earbuds, is a micro USB data cable like this one in the picture below.

I was hoping that Buy.com would have one on sale, but all they have is the one that I linked up there, but I don't want that one because it comes with a house charger that I already have as it came with the phone, and a car charger which I don't need because I don't have a car.

I'm really debating on getting those items.
Like, do I really need my phone to be able to double as an mp3 player?
I have an mp3 player, so I don't really need my phone to be one.
While having a ton of pics on my phone is nice because then I can show them to everyone, it's not like I really need the micro card for storage because I can upload all of my pics to the Virgin Mobile 'My Pix' account page, and they also automatically get uploaded to my Facebook page too.
I guess it just depends on how much stuff I want to carry with me when going on long distance trips like our trip to Maine.
Do I want to carry my phone and charger, and my mp3 player and it's USB charger, or do I just want to carry my phone and charger?
It's too late for this trip to get the micros USB data cable, but I'll have to think about it for my next long distance trip.

Comments (if any):

I'm going even if I have to call a cab.

I am definitely going to the ER today, Saturday, even if I have to call a cab to get there and back.
I was going to go on Friday, but everyone was working and I feel like a huge pain in the ass asking for people to help me again and again, and it looked as though it was going away.
I swear it looked a thousand times better by Friday afternoon around 3pm.
I absolutely have to get looked at, I know this now, I thought it would go away, I thought it was going away, but as I sit here right now, at 2:32am, the severe pain, hot to the touch, and swelling up like balloons, is back.
It really had started to go away, the swelling was mostly gone, the pain was gone, the redness was gone, I thought it was finally going away and I could avoid the doctor or hospital, but it now looks like I may actually have what the pain doc was worried about, DVT, Deep Vein Thrombosis, aka, blood clot in the leg.

DVT is as described;
A clot blocks blood circulation through these veins, which carries blood from the lower body back to the heart. The blockage can cause pain, swelling, or warmth in the affected leg.
The exact symptoms I have been experiencing, and even though I have a blood clot filter (vena cava filter) it can't stop all clots, or the filter itself is clogged up which is the cause of the DVT.
I have been reading up on both DVT and pulmonary embolisms, and I am not liking what I'm reading, so I need to go to the ER today.
I'm scared, I don't want any more health problems, I have enough of them already.
I'm sick of being sick, I'm sick of having hives from allergies, I'm sick of being in pain, and now this?!
I possibly, more than likely really do have DVT, the symptoms all match up, things that the doctor said, things friends have said, things my sister Jo said to me on Friday, all of it points to DVT without any of them actually saying it.

With all of the things I have wrong with me now, I wonder if I would be denied for social security disability like I was when I first applied.
They denied me twice, it took almost 5 years of fighting and lawyers to get it, and I know a couple of people who are going through it right now, they are on their second denial/second appeal, and could probably use a good lawyer like I had who has major experience fighting the denials.
I swear the SSA loves to deny everyone who applies at least twice.
I think they like to test people, to see if you file the appeals to prove that you're serious.
If you give up after being denied the first or second time, then maybe you're not really disabled or something.
It's a theory.

Anyway, I am going to call a friend in the morning, see if she can just drop me off and I'll call a cab to come back home when they release me, if they release me.
Oh man, what if they keep me because it's a severe clot and they gotta open up my right upper thigh/groin area, to clean out my vena cava filter?!
I swear, I can't take much more of this stuff, it's all just really too freaking much man.

Comments (if any):

Update on Sebastian's arm.

I took Sebastian to the doctor on Monday to have his arm checked out because of the pain he's been dealing with for almost 2 weeks now.
The doc is his primary care doc, a pediatrician, and not the pediatrician that Sebastian was seeing at the time that his arm was broken.
So basically, he didn't quite know what to do, so he gave him a referral to the orthopedic doc right next door, Sarasota Orthopedics.
I am trying to get him an appointment scheduled, but it's not going very well.
They keep giving me dates and times that I simply cannot get him there.
Times like 7:45am.
Um, I do not have any way or any one to give us a ride at that hour or the day.
Dates and times like RIGHT NOW.
The scheduler asked me if I could get there in the next 20 minutes.
Um, no.
How many times have I repeatedly told her in just this 1 phone call, I do NOT have a car, and I am not allowed to drive, and everyone I know who could give us a ride, is at work right now.

Yeah, this is how it was going so I told her that I would call her back.
I had to get off of the phone, she was totally frustrating me.

Comments (if any):

Almost killed by an elderly driver today. Seriously.

I had my regularly monthly appointment with my pain doc today, it went well, and then I talked to him about my swollen feet issue that I've had for the last 5 days.

On Saturday night around 6pm or so, I noticed that on my left calf, there was this weird red patch, it was hot and painful to the touch.
By later that night, around 9pm, the red and painful patch had grown, started to swell, and moved down into my left foot, and my foot had also swollen up.
I went to bed and when I woke up Sunday morning, my right foot was swollen as well, and my right calf was also swollen, red, and hot to the touch just like my left.
By Monday morning, both feet, calves, and all of the way up to my knees, were swollen, red, hot, and extremely painful to the touch, just trying to walk to the bathroom was agonizing.
My ankles and feet were the worst, they just kept getting bigger and bigger, but they were not soft, the skin was rock hard when I touched it, which I tried to avoid doing because the slightest touch sent waves of pain through my feet and legs.
My toes were huge, they looked like if they got any more swollen, that they would just explode, and the toe ring I wear on my right foot, had to be taken off on Tuesday night because it was starting to cut off circulation.
I took this picture of my feet right before that, and in it, you can see how swollen up my feet, ankles, and toes were, and you can see the red areas too.
Click the pic for biggie size.

So I showed the doc my feet, he touched them which hurt so bad I thought that I was going to cry, and just walking from my house to the car, the car to the elevator at the doc office building, basically, everywhere I have walked has made it hurt so much that I have had to use my cane which I haven't used since my last surgery.
My doc told me that I absolutely needed to go see my primary care doc tomorrow, or go to the ER if I can't get in to see her, or he's going to call and send an ambulance to take me and have me admitted to the hospital.
The reason is that he believes that it may be a blood clot problem, and even though I have a Vena Cava filter, a blood clot filter, the filter may not be stopping all of the blood clots.
He said that the Vena Cava stops large blood clots, and breaks them up, but if a small blood clot passes through, it will get to my heart and lungs and possibly cause a pulmonary embolism.
He said that I absolutely need to get to either my primary care doc or the ER, tomorrow, and if I don't go tomorrow, he will call an ambulance and have me admitted even if I don't want to, he can order it and there will be nothing I can do, the hospital will not release me until he says so, so I will be seeing my primary care doc tomorrow, no problem, I do not want to be forced to stay in the hospital against my will.

Now this is when I was almost killed by an elderly driver.

After I left his office, I went to the pharmacy that I always go to, it's just a couple of blocks away from his office, they are really quick, and there's other stores in the plaza so that I can go get a soda to wash down my meds after I get them.
I made a very crude drawing of the pharmacy and stuff so that you can sorta see the layout and what happened a bit better.
But what happened was that I was almost in one of those videos where a car goes crashing through the front windows of a store.

This is my very badly drawn picture of the pharmacy, and I had dropped off my script at the drop off window and was sitting in 1 of the 8 chairs that are lined up against the windows.
The windows are very large, they go almost floor to ceiling, and my friend Nic had just left to go back out the the truck to have a smoke and call back her friend who had called while we were in the doc's office.

Just 10 seconds after she walked out, a young man about age 20 or so, who was sitting next to me, grabbed his girlfriend and threw her toward the pick up window, then grabbed my left arm shirt sleeve and yelled at me, "GET UP AND MOVE!! NOW!!!"
I got up as quickly as I could and ran toward the drop off and pick up windows where the young couple had moved to, I turned around just in time to see 1 car coming at us sorta sideways, and it was being pushed by a silver SUV that was being driven by an elderly man who we found out after the cops came, was age 87.
He had tried to park in a space in the parking lot directly across from our windows, and instead of hitting the break, he hit the gas.
His SUV went up over the median and cement curb, and hit a car that was illegally parked along the side of the road, but if that car hadn't been illegally parked there, the old man's SUV would have definitely come straight through those windows, no doubt about it, he was going very, very fast.

The illegally parked car was pushed sideways up onto the sidewalk bending the passenger side wheel almost down flat, and it was pushed up against this huge rubber trash can that squished completely up against the pharmacy glass windows.
The windows cracked, all of the chairs where we had just been sitting, were pushed about 3 feet into the pharmacy lobby, 1 of them was pushed up against the legs of the young man who yelled at me to move, his girlfriend was screaming and trying to squeeze herself up against the wall and pick up window as much as she could.
I was standing there up against the wall in complete shock, I don't know if I screamed, spoke, or if I even made any sound at all, but I do know that when I saw those cars coming at us, I saw the smiling faces of my sons flash before my eyes.

Lucky for us, both cars stopped before coming through the windows.
We are so damn lucky that they stopped, there was absolutely no where for us to go, no door to run through, no counters to jump up on, and the drop off and pick up windows are very small, only big enough to pass through the prescription bags, payments, hands, and the rest of the area of those drop off/pick up windows are covered in thick Plexiglas so that no one can try to jump over the counters and steal medicine.
We were trapped basically, if those cars had come through, we would have been totally trapped with nowhere to go, nowhere to move to, and we absolutely would have been and probably killed by one or both of those cars.
My picture makes the lobby look kind of big, but it's not at all, there's probably a total of 8 feet from the row of chairs to the drop off and pick up windows, that's it, the lobby isn't even big enough to fit 1 car to park it, never mind 2 cars coming fast into it.

After the cars stopped moving, the old man got out of his SUV and looked at the other car and said, "Everybody looks ok", and he got back in his car and tried to drive off.
3 or 4 people started yelling for people to dial 911 and for him to not leave, 1 guy reached through the old man's window and yanked the keys out, he was just going to leave!!
The pharmacy clerk called 911, said there was an accident, a bad one, we needed and ambulance too, and fire and rescue was there within minutes, less than 7 minutes, they were very fast.
The passenger in the car that had been hit and pushed, in the front passenger seat, was trapped inside the car, the dashboard and steering wheel was squished into him.
The driver of that car was using the ATM next door, she saw the whole thing.
She watched as her car was 100% totaled and her 2 passengers, her own elderly father in the front seat, and her son in the back seat, were both injured.
Her son was wearing his seat belt, but the car had been hit so violently from the left side, that he was whipped side to side and his head hit the window on the right passenger side, and his head was bleeding.
Her elderly father was trapped as I said, and he was bleeding from his head also, and he was yelling out in pain about his left leg and he said that his ribs hurt too.
Fire and rescue got the son out first and then worked on the elderly father while the woman was frantically going back and forth between her son and her father, face as white as a sheet, crying, screaming, and the old man who caused all of this, was out of his car and looking at the damage he caused to her car, he picked up part of the radiator grill off of the sidewalk and placed it on what was left of the hood.
There was glass and pieces of the car all over the sidewalk.

Nic came running, from where the truck was parked, she saw the accident but couldn't see if the car had gone through the pharmacy windows or not because of a cement pillar, she didn't know if the car came through and I was hurt or not.
She had to tell the police that she had a friend inside the store, she needed to get in and make sure that I was ok, I heard her yell at the cop who was trying to stop her, "MY friend is in there! She is a disabled single mother! I need to make sure she's ok! Her sons! OMG her sons! You HAVE to let me in there!! NOW!!"
I'm not big on people touching me, I very rarely hug anyone except my own kids and very close relatives like my parents, my sisters, my best friend Shell, etc, but when Nic came in and threw her arms around me, I was never so happy to have someone to hug as when she did that moment.
I was so scared, I was shaking, I felt nauseous, my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, and I started to cry a little bit.
The young couple were hugging each other, the girl was crying very loudly, the pharmacist was also very upset and she just kept asking us if we were all ok, it was like a broken record, she just kept repeating it over and over, "Are you all ok? Are you all ok?"
We were, thankfully both cars had stopped coming, if they had come in, we would probably not even be able to answer her, heck, she might not have even been able to ask that question.

It was a very terrible, absolutely horrifying, experience.
I have never been in a car accident, I have never come close to being hurt or dying from an accident like that.
I have had my heart stop twice during my last surgery, so I have been close to death before, but I have never been that close to almost being seriously hurt or killed in a car accident.
The medics and police did everything they needed to do out there, the pharmacist hurried and filled the scripts of the young couple and myself so that we could get out of there.

We asked the police if they needed statements from us, they didn't, but they did get our names and phone numbers in case they need to talk to us later, and after I finished giving the cop my info, I yelled very loudly that allowing the elderly to renew their license by mail is so fucking wrong because of shit like this.
There are so many accidents in Sarasota that are caused by the elderly, I've posted about it many times before, about all of the accidents that happen every year during season because of how the elderly drive, or should I say, because of how the elderly CAN'T fucking drive, and it pisses me the hell off that they are allowed to renew their drivers licenses by mail every year, that they don't have to be road tested, it's not right.

The elderly should have to be road tested every year after a certain age, they should have to be road tested every single year after the age of retirement, if they take the road test and fail, their license gets revoked.
If this was made into a law, there would be far less accidents every year because a lot of the elderly would have their licenses revoked, I just know it, I see so many elderly people driving around who clearly shouldn't be.
There are so many of them who should not be driving for so many reasons.
Their vision is horribly bad, their reflexes are bad, the medications that they take, they drink and drive all of the time, but the medical reasons alone would probably cause a good majority of them to have their licenses revoked.
I know that this subject gets brought up every couple of years in the state senate, but it needs to come up every year until they actually do something about it.
The elderly absolutely should have to be road tested every single year past the age of retirement.
I'm sick and tired of watching the news and seeing about another accident, watching them cause or nearly cause accidents while I'm out on the road myself, or like today, almost being killed by 1 of them.

Something has to be done, a couple of people, me included, almost died today because another elderly person hit the gas instead of the brake, again.

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Sebastian is off to the doc today for pain in the broken bone area.

Sebastian has been having some pain in his left arm where it was very badly broken in 2003 by a teenager in our neighborhood, when Sebastian was just 9.
The doctors told me back then that he would be needing surgery when he got older, because he wasn't done growing yet, the bones were going to keep growing, and then when he was done growing in his late teens, he will need surgery to correct the probable rotation issues, and to also shave off the excess bone growth in that area of the arm.
For those of you new to my blog and the story of The Teen™ and Sebastian's broken arm, just click that link up there or here, and read the long entry to get caught up.
That entry is so long because the original post about that day was on my old host and when I was using Word Press, so I had to copy/paste it from all of my saved and exported blog entries.

Anyway, for about the last week or so, Sebastian has been waking up in the morning with pain right at the break site, it's hurting at the break site when he carries his books around school, when he carries his backpack home, and when he sits at the computer for too long because their desk chair is a little bit too low.
Even though I knew that the day would come when his arm would start giving him problems, I always hoped that it just wouldn't.
I always had this small hope in the back of my mind that the orthopedic doctors who treated him in 2003, were wrong, that they couldn't predict the future.
He was just this small, skinny kid who weighed barely 70lbs, always active, running around and playing, and all of that running around playing is what got him the broken arm on the afternoon of January 12th, 2003.
That was the day that The Teen™ picked up my skinny, barely weighing 70lbs kid, and flung him to the concrete driveway like he was a ragdoll, causing a level 4 out of 5 break in his left arm right at the growth plate. (the x-ray of that break is in that entry)

The orthopedic doctor on call for the emergency room that night, told me that he would be needing surgery when he grew up, the orthopedic surgeon at All Childrens Hospital, told me that he would be needing surgery when he got older, it was just a matter of waiting until he grew up to start seeing the problems.

This just sucks, I was so hoping that the doctors were wrong, I wanted them to be wrong, I wanted them to be so damn wrong about this!
We have an appointment at 3pm to get his arm looked at, he'll have to go get x-rays I'm sure, and then we'll learn if he really is going to need surgery like the 2 orthopedic surgeons said 7 years ago.

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Window shopping and dinner out.

I was really hoping to be able to find a desktop gaming pc on sale at Buy.com a little sooner, but it hasn't turned out that way.
Did I mention in the post that we are wanting a gaming pc?
I didn't?
Well yeah, seeing as the teens really only use the computer for playing WoW and other video games, Sebastian does all of his digital design stuff on the mini-netbook, they use the desktop to play WoW and do a few other things, but mostly gaming.

Buy.com does have a couple of refurbished desktops on sale this week, an HP, and a Dell, but they really aren't built for what we are needing, so we're going to do a look in-store later this afternoon and see what we can find, check out prices, and then I'll probably come back to Buy.com and see if they have a good gaming pc in stock to get.

They do have some other great stuff on sale though, like a Kingston 4GB microSDHC Card, for just $12 bucks with free shipping, which I could use either in my camera or in my cell phone.
I did buy myself a new cell phone today, I bought a Kyocera X-tc, I bought it for my birthday present to myself on Monday.
It was totally on sale too, just $59 down from $129, so yeah, I got a really great deal on a birthday present for myself.
They also have the hard rubberized cases for the X-tc, I want the purple one, but it's currently not in stock in that color, so I'll add it to my wish list to get later on.
Those are only $6.55 including the shipping, so yeah, I'll add that for a later date purchase.

What?
How old will I be turning?
40.
Yuh.
The big 4-0.
I feel like I'm 80 today, the cold and rain are kicking my butt, but after we get done doing some window shopping for the pc and go out to eat with sis and Susan, I'm going to come home, take a long hot shower, and bundle up under some warm blankets for the rest of the day and night, maybe curl up on the couch with my blankets and use the netbook from there for awhile.

Ok, this soon-to-be 40 year old needs to go get myself ready to go, hair brushed, teeth, clean clothes, ha ha.
Later days!

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I still don't want it.

Internet fame that is.
I started blogging as a way to let my friends and family back home in Maine know how we were doing without having to spend a lot of time on the phone or pay the long distance charges, to get all caught up every week.
Blogging just fit perfectly with my intentions.
I'm totally happy with the level of blogging "success" that I have, I don't want to be any more than what I am.
I don't want or need to be in the best web directories, or go away on sponsored trips and blogging conventions for all kinds of products.
I just don't want it.
Never wanted it.
I've had people, other bloggers, ask me why I don't ever attend the big blogging things every year, the one for female bloggers, the one for paid blogging, the blog world conferences, the bliss and the chicks conferences, and my answer is always the same.
Simply not interested.

I am totally beyond thrilled happy for my blogging friends who have achieved their piece of internet fame, and go to all kinds of different get-togethers all year long for tons of different products and company sponsored trips, like beyond happy for them.
It's just not for me, I am not into that much social interaction with a ton of people doing a ton of different things, all crammed into one very fast weekend that would make my head spin right off my shoulders.

Does it make me less of a blogger because I don't go to or want to go to those things?
I don't know and I don't really care much, to tell ya the truth.
I am really quite content right here in my little corner of cyberspace just blogging like I've been doing since '97.
I don't have to buy a new wardrobe to impress anyone, I don't have to get my hair and nails done, I don't have to have business cards or a press kit to hand out either.
I get to just sit back and relax as best I can, just sit back and watch all of the drama unfold, and there is always drama at at least one of those things every year.
Totally happy right where I am.

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Verizon nickel and dimes it's customers.

I got this bill emailed to me on Friday night, and I started going over every single inch of it like I always do, and I was like, mouth agape at how they nickel and dime their customers.
Just take a look at all of those things, (it pops up for biggie size) just look at it.
.34cents for federal excise tax, negative -.32cents for state tax, $1.86 for local communications services tax, $8.26 for state communications services tax, $6.58 for another local communications services tax, etc etc.
They get as much money as they can out of every single one of their customers.

I do wonder why they even put the negatives on there though.
State tax is negative -.32cents, sales tax is negative -.02cents.
Why even put those on the bill?
It just frustrates me, my OCD kind of goes nuts when I see things like that, it just annoys me to no end.
It's a negative charge, so why put it on the bill of charges that need to be paid?
I would also like to know how they got their late payment charges figured out.
I was late paying the bill last month by like 2 days, so they charged me $7.00 in late payment charges.
Is that like a percentage of the total bill?
Or is that what they charge everyone who pays their bill late, like a standard late fee?

I go over every single bill from them because a few months ago, I found some charges on the bill that were definitely not mine.
It was so obvious that it wasn't mine because the telephone number that the calls were made from, dialed from, are not mine.
It was an 813 area code, which is Tampa.
The calls were dialed from a Tampa number and all of the calls that were made were going to Tampa, so how did they get on my bill?
The customer service rep had nothing to say other than "I don't know how that happened, let me get a supervisor."
The supervisor wasn't even sure how they got on my bill, but she removed them all, 37 charges in total, so yeah, I check my bill with a fine tooth comb before paying it every single month.
I refuse to pay charges that don't belong to me.

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