crazy weather

The weather is just nuts today. No wonder I had such a bad headache earlier today, and was so grouchy.

We have been having strong storms and rain off and on and off and on all day and night today. The tornado sirens went off three times this afternoon!

Dan and I did take the dog out for a long walk this afternoon in between storms. And I did run to the grocery store. And I am taking advantage of no lightning to take a quick shower and get online for a few minutes.

Steven has another soccer game tomorrow afternoon. I hope things will have calmed down by then...

doing better

Steven and I are both starting to do a lot better now. Neither of us has had to use our albuterol rescue inhalers for at least a couple of days now. It has been raining nearly every day, and that might be helping with the ragweed pollen.

Steven had a late night soccer game last night under the lights in the park in the middle of town. He played much better than he has been lately, back to his usual aggressive play making, game breaking self. No inhaler puffing, no hunching over and holding his chest as he runs, rather he did his usual job of taking over the defensive zone and making sure that no one on the offense could pass him. It was good to see him feeling so much better! Man, it was chilly, though. The bugs did not even come out.

My former friend is hanging around a lot these days. I find it to be disturbing, as I cannot trust him after the way he lied to me for nearly a year, when I was trying to work things out with him. What could he possibly want? Why is he trying to talk with me after so many months? It makes no sense. I was so ashamed of being snotty to him recently when he was snotty to me, that the best thing I can think of for dealing with this is to just avoid him and ignore him as best as I can, and that way he cannot hurt me anymore, and I will not be tempted to be mean back to him when he is mean to me. If he wants something from me, he will just have to find a way to be open and honest and just ask for it. Preferably without involving any mutual friends.

feeling a bit better

Steven and I are both starting to feel a bit better. Dan said Steven nearly made it through the elite training session at UM yesterday without having to use his inhaler. While still not well, I was feeling better enough to start doing a bit of housework and laundry today.

Work was frustrating. A doctor called down asking about dosing of a drug called mesna for an overdose of cyclosporine. We looked in every drug reference we had, and googled for a couple of hours. There was simply no information on that. The doctor eventually called back and he had meant to say the drug overdose was cyclophophamide! We wasted at least three hours looking for something that doesn't exist because the doctor couldn't keep his drug names straight. And the first drug (cyclosporine) is an immunosuppresant agent and the second (cyclophosphamide) is for chemotherapy. I am really glad I am not that doctor's patient! Ah well. Life in an inpatient hospital pharmacy.

ups and downs of life over the past few days

After I went to the doctor and started on the new meds, I started to feel a bit better. Steven started feeling a lot better.

But then a few odd things happened...

On Thursday one of the midnight people called in, and the computers were taken down for routine maintenance. So I volunteered to stay after my shift ended, for what was supposed to be a couple of hours...well, the computers did not come back up, so I did not end up getting home until nearly 5AM.

Which made my health backslide...

On Friday, the only thing that got me out of bed was to pee, spend time with Steven, and Bill calling to say he was coming home for the weekend, and he would be home in about four hours! The latter actually got me up and even got me dressed. I went to the grocery store and got more food!

It was wonderful beyond words, having Bill here for the weekend!

Saturday I stayed home and spent time with both of my sons, which is the best thing in all the world.

In the evening Dan and I went to the big jazz concert. I did not want to leave the house, but we already had the tickets, and it turned out to be wonderful. So I am glad we went, but it was raining and misting, and I got wet and cold every time we went outside...

So on Sunday, I was running a fever all day long.

I am glad Bill went back to college before I had to leave for work, or I do not think I could have stood going in.

But I did make it through the shift last night.

Today Steven and I are busy with home school. It is a literature/history day and he is chugging right along with The Iliad and we are nearly done with our study of the American Civil War. We are halfway through April, 1865 - The Month That Saved America and we finished watching the film Gettysburg, which is supposed to be extremely accurate this morning.

But as we sat there in the family room, I kept coughing and wheezing, and Steven finally told me "Mom, you are not better at all!" And he is right. I think I will have to call the doctor's office again tomorrow.

A Birthday Party for John Coltrane

Saturday (Sept. 23, 2006) would have been John Coltrane's 80th birthday, had he not so tragically died so young (age 40) of cancer.

In celebration of his life, there was a wonderful concert of his and his wife's music in Ann Arbor.

In concert at Hill Auditorium on the University of Michigan campus:
Alice Coltrane (organ, piano, synthasizer)
Ravi Coltrane (sax)
Charlie Haden (bass)
Roy Haynes, the legendary jazz drummer

The quartet played music from Alice Coltrane's recent CD, Translinear Light. They also played many songs composed by John.

There was a video presentation on how his influence is still so strongly felt in today's world.

The Coltrane family has established a foundation which gives out scholarships to students studying jazz musicanship throughout the country. So two UM students who are currently receiving the scholarships came out to play a classic Coltrane song with the quartet. They looked rather intimidated - and who wouldn't to play Coltrane with members of his family on stage with thousands of people watching and listening? But as soon as the music started, the kids were just fine.

Roy Haynes, the legendary jazz drummer is still a drum god in his eighties. He kicked ass, and got standing ovations for his solos.

And as a wonderful last treat, the quartet played the opening movement of A Love Supreme as the encore.

A wonderful evening, and a fantastic birthday party for one of America's greatest composers and musicians!

asthma sucks!!!

Finally made it into the doctor this morning (they had no appointments yesterday). As I knew, it is ragweed allergies getting my asthma going, and making me very run down and sick. When I went in, they had me blow into the tube to see how much air I can get out of my lungs. It was 200. They gave me an albuterol nebulizer treatment, and tested my air blowing abilities again, and it was up to 450! So they changed my medicines around - instead of taking claritin I will now be taking allegra and a fluticasone nasal inhaler, as well as a prescription only super-mucus-drying agent. That breathing treatment helped me feel so much better - like a gift from God, I am telling you!

Steven is also sick, though not as sick as I am (thank God, thank God, thank God), but he will still go in to the doctor's office tomorrow morning. I told him he would have no home schooling tomorrow, so he can just rest all day. If he were this sick I would keep him home from school, so I will keep the school out of the home, for just the one day. Poor kid can't lie down to sleep, because when he lies down all of the goo from his sinuses runs down his throat and chokes him (some thing I can relate to completely ). So he is getting very tired and run down these days. He has to use his rescue inhaler every time he plays soccer or wrestles, and that is just not good.

 

Darned ragweed. Darned bad genes that have given us this curse of asthma. Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

sent home from work

Tried to go into work today and got sent home after a couple of hours. I am still running a fever, and my coworkers were worried I might infect some of the patients, so home I went. I took a long nap, and woke up to get a bite to eat, use the potty, and get a drink - I am about to go to bed again.

I rested all day on Friday (in fact, I never even got dressed) and I had started feeling better. On Saturday I went grocery shopping, and that was enough to get me reeling. I was awake most of the night with a fever; today I am still sick.

Tomorrow I will be calling the doctor! This has gone on long enough, and in case I have started having an infection (like the yellow goo I have been coughing up for the last two days indicates I might be) perhaps I can get a prescription for antibiotics.

Ugh. Just ugh!

much needed quiet day at home

Still not feeling too well, but continuing to hang in there. Took a lot of naps today. Spent a quiet day at home with Steven. We did literature, history, and astronomy today. He read and answered questions in the morning, and in the afternoon we watched a couple of hours worth of documentaries, which I was glad to have on hand since I have no voice right now!

We watched the last episode of Ken Burn's The Civil War documentary miniseries. We have both enjoyed that series so much! I will be keeping my eye out for a reasonably priced used copy! I have also added his documentary miniseries Baseball and Jazz to my Netflix queue, though I might not get that far on my list for years!

The second one we watched was a one hour episode of Nova about Sir Issac Newton. That was also enjoyable.

I was glad to get a lot of rest today, as well as drinking lots of hot chocolate and hot tea. I do feel better. Steven seems to be feeling a bit better today, too! He does not like tea, but he enjoyed the hot chocolate as much as I did.

A couple of exciting days at work. The night with all of the flooding, one of my friends had a frightening experience. He was leaving work and taking that road which I saw closed the other night. But it wasn't closed when he drove on it. He could tell that there was water on the road, but didn't realize how much until he was in it- and it was door high on his car. When a car came through in the other direction he said the wake was as high as the roof! And someone in the department next to ours began to be sucked into a huge sterilization machine! A couple of the cleaning guys heard her screams and kicked in the door and rescued her! So a couple of tragedies (people could have drowned on that road, and thank God the cops closed it off) and a bad injury or accidental death by scalding were averted.

Tomorrow will be another greatly needed day off for both myself and Steven. I hope to get a lot of rest again!

I do not know how I could have gotten through this week without Dan. He was a dream husband - he helped with the homeschooling, the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry. Everytime and anytime I asked him for help, he was there. It was beautiful - I am starting to cry just thinking about how kind he was to me this week!

sick

Steven and I are both sick from our ragweed allergies. He has now had to use his albuterol rescue inhaler three of the last four days. My throat is raw as can be, and I have been running a fever for two days (I do not know why, but whenever my allergies get bad, I run a low grade fever ). Last night I only made it through half of my shift. Tonight I made it all the way through. I am feeling a bit better today - my nose is nice  and runny, so my sinuses are not blocked and there is not all of that drainage going down my throat to get my asthma going.

And now the wonderful (NOT!!!) aroma of skunk is starting to come in through the window. YUCK! You know it is bad if I can smell it with these allergy symptoms!

Anyway, today was weird. Phone calls from Bill, who is freaking out over how hard architecture school is. Since I could not help him via the phone, I told him to run to the honors college and see one of the counselors. I also told him how much I love him, and how proud I am of him. I do not know if that helped him or not.

Soon after I got to work, huge storms came boiling out of nowhere and flooded area roads. There was a thirty car accident on one of the Detroit area freeways. When I got out at midnight, hours after the storms had passed, the police had the road running between the hospital and the freeway closed.

Oh, I am tired and run down and ill. It is time to drink some more hot herbal tea and try to sleep. It is hard to sleep with all of the nose/sinus drainage, though.

rainy day blues

Steven has now had to use his albuterol inhaler two of the last three days. The last time he had to use it was September of last year. He is very mucousy and his asthma and allergies are really bad right now. On Saturday night he was running around playing soccer, hunched over and holding his chest because his lungs hurt. I hated watching that. On the other hand, I have always tried to teach my kids that they should not let health problems limit them, and that they should live life to the fullest. He was doing that.

I wish ragweed would become extinct, though! Is that a plant that serves any  useful purpose at all? Does it feed any animals or offer pollen to any lovely butterflies? It sure makes a lot of people, including my younger son and myself, very sick!!!

So Steven is sick from his allergies and asthma. I am sick from those same ragweed allergies and asthma. I am now on week two of my latest period, and the period before this one was only two weeks before it started. Extreme stress does that to me. The last time this happened was before I had to go to Arkansas to help clean out my deceased father's home. I had a two months plus long period then. Normal excessive stress gives me diarrhea. And that has been happening, too. So I am in very rough shape right now. No wonder I am depressed and blue!

Bill is all upset because he isn't doing as well as he would like in a couple of his classes. While I am glad he trusts me enough to confide in me, this adds to the stress. The kid is gone to college in another state, and he is unhappy, and there is nothing I can do to help him other than send him cheerful emails and phone calls. I miss my son!!!

We have been short staffed the last three nights I have worked. I am getting very tired, and this is adding to the stress, too. Hopefully tomorrow we will actually have full staffing. That will make a good change.

Maybe its because I am just not feeling well, but I have been miserable lately - missing Bill, missing my late father, missing my late friend Nola (who died several years ago this month), and wishing I could pick up the phone and call my former friend and trying just one more time to get him to work things out with me and be friends again. But I know that would not be welcome. It sucks to care about someone so much, and want to much to be their friend and to have them be your friend and then to have them just...not care.

Ah well. When has life ever been fair?

Hopefully the steady rain we have been having tonight will wash away some of the ragweed pollen, and everything and everyone will be better in the morning!

 

stormy Saturday

Last night I was amused at the clothing many people at Orchestra Hall were wearing. In Ann Arbor dressy clothing often means blue jeans without holes and a clean t-shirt. In Detroit things are usually a bit dressier, with a clean dress shirt/blouse, nice dress slacks/skirt, and a nice sweater or jacket. Last night, possibly because it was the opening weekend of the classical music season, many women were wearing floor length evening gowns and many men were in tuxedos. It was very nice, and I was glad I wore my nice pants suit made of black lace.

Since it was opening weekend, they were walking around with trays of free glasses of wine and grape juice, and there were tables set up with free food in the lobby before the concert. That was classy, too.

And Lang Lang was just marvelous!

Today we were watching the University of Michigan football game on television. The game was delayed because of rotten weather. Since the Big House is only something like ten miles away, we looked out of the window. It was cloudy but didn't look too bad...but about fifteen minutes later it started storming like crazy! The storms didn't last very long, but were intense while they went through. It is now rather chilly. Fall is here!

Tonight Steven had his season opener for soccer. He played well, but his asthma was bothering him. This was the first time in nearly a year that he had to use his inhaler. That was certainly worrisome.

a good day

After a rough week, it was time for a good day. And it was a rough week. I have been feeling pretty terrible the last few days. I have been missing Bill, and that seems to have stirred up all sorts of other feelings of loss and grief from the past - things I had hoped were in the past, which turned out to still hurt quite a lot. I have been thinking a lot about my father, I have been thinking a lot about a wonderful friend who committed suicide several years ago. I have been thinking a lot about my former friend. All people whom I dearly love, who are completely lost to me in one way or another. Man, have I ever been a mess. Throw in being sick in Muncie, and my period starting earlier this week, only two weeks after the last one - and I have just been an emotional mess. And then work was rough, too, and we were short staffed a lot this week. Sheesh!!

But today was good. Steven got up early and finished his school work before I even woke up. We went out to buy Bill the umbrella he had requested (which I will mail down to him next week) and went out to lunch at Noodles & Co.

Dan came home and took a quick shower, then took Steven to his first meeting at the University of Michigan elite wrestling training camp. He knew some of the other kids there, so all was cool!

And Bill called - he was so tired he was slurring his words, and said he would be spending most of the weekend in his studio again, but it was still wonderful to hear his voice!!!

When Dan got home, we headed out on a wonderful date. We went to a concert with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who played superbly, and had a wonderful young guest pianist named Lang Lang, who also played superbly. We got to hear Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Bliss!

Then we went out to dinner at Fishbones Restaurant in Detroit. We got vegetarian sushi rolls, and I got a big dinner salad. Dan got a cajun shrimp dish. The food was great!

It was a wonderful evening - I am hoping it will help me turn the corner on this emotional mess I am currently experiencing.

nose back to the old grindstone

The long weekend was wonderful, even if I did get sick for part of it.

We got out of the house later than what we had planned on Friday afternoon. We had forgotten that we have to take the spare tire off of the back of the Jeep to hitch up the camper, and then the camper had a tire low on air. But we did get down to Indiana before full dark. We set up our camp at Summit Lake State Park, then drove back up to Muncie and collected Bill. We took him out for a nice dinner at a Texas style steak place. We then dropped him back off at his dorm.

On Saturday we drove into Muncie and took Bill out for breakfast and then to buy the last of his textbooks and some more art supplies. We then went grocery shopping and brought him back to the camp ground. He and Steven played football (sometimes with other kids as they happened by) for hours, and had a lot of fun. Those two have missed each other.

On Sunday we drove Bill back to Muncie and all ate breakfast. then we dropped Bill off at his dorm. He had been panicked all weekend because he wasn't two weeks ahead in all of his classes. Silly kid! He also had a project he had to work on for his drawing class.

On Monday we took Bill out to a late lunch then came home.

We all miss that kid so much. I cried myself to sleep one of the nights, as it was just so bloody good to see the kid!

Camping was peaceful and pleasant and very good. I wish we had time to go camping more often. The stars are so glorious on the clear nights!

Last night work was very busy and we were scheduled short staffed once again. Tonight was still busy, but we had full staffing, so things were better. I can think a bit, and had time to type this.

I miss my son!

This weekend should be OK. Dan and I get to go hear the Detroit Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven's Seventh Symphony on Friday night. There will be a guest pianist named Lang Lang who will be playing a Rachmaninoff piece. On Saturday I plan to make some home made soup. There was a recipe in tonight's paper for a milk based soup with fresh corn, potatoes, and garlic. It is a sort of corn chowder, and it sounded delicious beyond words! Since it has been a bit chilly outside lately, home made hot soup sounds perfect.

end of the week! Woo Hoo!!!

Steven and I had a blast today with our science experiment. We finally had a lovely day outside today, so we were able to play with warm diet coke and mentos. Warm diet coke works much better than cold. And we made a lot of mess and a lot of pop geysers out in the backyard. We varied the number of mentos and then measured how much pop would be left after the explosion. The only problem we had was at the point of dropping four mentos into the bottles of pop - the explosion was so extreme that it would blow the mentos right back out at us!

We've also been loving every minute of the Ken Burns documentary mini series The Civil War. We are watching it as a supplement to his history readings.

Tomorrow we are heading down to Muncie to try to visit with Bill for the long weekend. We will be camping in a state park on a lake to the south of town. He is having a hard time adjusting to college thus far, and sounds very tired and very grouchy in most of his emails and phone calls. Hopefully getting his new ipod will cheer him up a little bit.

This week at work has been difficult. There has been short staffing, and it seemed like we walked into a new (or worse) mess every day. You spend half of your shift just trying to clean up the mess that got dropped off in your lap the minute you walk in the door, and your own work just gets all backed up, and it has just been stressful and bad. I am very glad that it is over, and that I can have four days off to relax (though if Bill is extremely grouchy it might not be relaxing and I will be trying to get ahead in lesson plans for Steven all weekend). Ah well. Part of life. I lived through this week. And even if the weekend is awful, I will live through that, too.