Almost Half A Year Gone

All right people, you do realize that we're already close to half way through 2009 don't you? I mean, what happened to the past 5 months? How did we get to the end of May already???

One thing we don't seem to have to worry about around here is getting bored. There's always something going on! Just consider, in the last 5 months. . .

• I didn't exactly remodel my office, but completely rearranged and reorganized it. Having such a good place to work is great!
• Kelley turned 15.
• Jess got through his therapy needed after having both knees replaced. And this is hard for me to believe, but in just about another week, Jess will have had his new bionic knees for 6 months!
• Jess went back to work.
• Lee turned 21.
• We had visitors from Canada!
• Jonathan had a birthday (as did his cousin, Bobbi, born the same year!)
• Jonathan got a job.
• Ellie turned 4 years old.
• We had a visitor from eastern Tennessee (Hi, Phantom Son!)!
• Chrystie had a birthday!
• Ryan graduated from high school!

Of course, it's not all fun stuff. There's also the fact that. . .

• We had to go to the funeral home for a former pastor and friend, who was only about 46 years old.
• Our first llama baby ever on the farm was stillborn.
• Jess had a wreck and totaled our Ford Focus (on the good side, he wasn't hurt!).
• I made my first trip back to the Fibromyalgia/Chronic Fatigue Clinic in over a year (that's not bad, but it's not exactly fun stuff either - I've still got bruises slowly fading from all those needle sticks).

Of course, those are just the highlights, and don't include the day to day stuff everyone does at home, and on the farm, and at work. However you look at it, lots of milestones with birthdays, lots has happened, and five months have sped by!

I hope the next few months go by a little more slowly, but I'm sure not going to hold my breath on that one, ha!

Introducing Our New-To-Us Car

Hopefully this is the final chapter to our car saga. For that matter, I hope it is the last messing about with cars we have to do in a very long time.

They finally got the cruise control installed, so yesterday evening we picked up the car. And here it is, our new-to-us 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt... ta da!

As you can see, it's a silver colored 4-door sedan.

Gee, it's silver from the other side too. . .

And even the back is the same color. What do you know, we have a mono-colored car!

It's a tad different inside though, with a couple different shades of gray. There is also more room in the interior of this car than there was in our old Focus.

And here's the back seat.

There you have it! Jess drove it to Tullahoma last night and likes it fine. Which is good, because we're likely have this car for a long time to come. Hopefully anyway! We'd just as soon it lasted a long time, be without problems, and be all-around easy to own and maintain.

I can dream, can't I?

CARnage

CARnage (noun) - Massive slaughter, as in war; a massacre.

Yep, that's it all right. My nerves have been massacred. For that matter, so have Jess's. And all that CARnage is caused by a CAR. Or right now, the lack of a car. Even more precisely, the hunting of a car.

Now some people enjoy hunting for a car. I am not one of them. Jess is not one of them. But that's just what we did yesterday, browsing the car lots to check out their Memorial Day sales.

We visited four different lots. We saw some possibilities, but nothing really grabbed us that was in the budget we'd set for ourselves.

After we got back home and rested a little, I went online and checked out what was available within a 50 mile radius. Then we went back out AGAIN and looked at a specific car we thought sounded interesting.

The outcome of all this CARnage is yet to be determined. We decided to buy the car and applied for a loan, but in these economic times and with Jess being self-employed, approval of the loan may not be forthcoming. We'll just have to see.

In the meantime, it's definite CARnage with massacred nerves.

My Days Are All Mixed Up

As in, I'm having trouble keeping track of what day of the week it is. We've done some different things and our routine is out of whack.

We left Tuesday night and went to Georgia, and drove back Wednesday afternoon. Then Jess went back to work yesterday. He already knew he had work as a couple of different guys called about jobs while we were in Georgia.

Unfortunately, he's feeling a little under the weather right now with a cold or something. We'd thought about shearing llamas tomorrow, but that's not going to happen.

It's not just that Jess isn't feeling well either. We've got to take the rental car back down to Huntsville and turn it in. Tomorrow is the last day the insurance will pay for it.

Never mind that we do NOT have the money yet for our totaled car. Once they make an offer, the rental car disappears. That doesn't seem to be quite right to me. Especially when we thought we had 30 days to use the rental. Oh well, at least we still have the truck to drive.

As for me, I have some glorious colored bruises appearing on my arms from all the needling.


Just call me princess, because I'm decorated with the royal color purple. And by the way, did you know it's hard to hold a camera in one hand and take a picture of your inner forearm? Just so ya know.

I'm trying to get into the routine of taking the supplements I need to take, and other changes I need to make.

But my days are just all mixed up and I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of things.

10 Needlesticks Later...

It's been a very long day. Yesterday evening we went down to Georgia (sounds like the title of a song). I had an appointment at the Fibromyalgia/Chronic Fatigue Clinic this morning. I need to get a grip on this problem. I have several issues right now that aren't going to get better without some help and I especially need more energy. I've got things I need to be doing!

Anyway, I woke up early, in plenty of time to get to the clinic. We started off in enough time... but a sign lead us astray and we were a little late getting there. Most medical offices that wouldn't matter. With this one it does. They keep to their time slots and the doctor only sees you during your allotted time, period. If you're late, too bad. You just lost some of your time with the doctor.

The bad part is that you pay for time you didn't actually get to use talking with the doctor, However, since it's been a year or so since I was last there, it didn't matter so much as far as formulating my treatment plan. That may sound counter intuitive, but what I'm doing is close to starting over. I know the basics, so that helps, but they needed new lab work to know what to do next.

I knew that, so I didn't take my thyroid medicine or eat breakfast, so they could get the fasting labwork. Lots and lots of blood for lots and lots of tests. Something like 20 tubes of blood.

Getting the blood out of me and into the tubes was a problem. That's the 10 needlesticks later part. I look like an ad for a drug user, but no drugs people. Just lots of bruises from veins that kept 'blowing out'. My left arm is the worst with 6 punctures and bruises. They'd get a couple of tubes worth of blood and then the flow would stop. Stick another place and try again. Then try two or three places for an IV... sigh...

I told them if they didn't quit sticking me, when I took a drink I'd leak all over like a cartoon.

At any rate, the blood was finally drawn and all the vials they needed filled up, I got my IV meds, and tonight I'm one very tired Tish.

And Jess did all the driving!

The Search Begins

We've looked online at some different makes and models of cars. We're comparing gas mileage and all that sort of stuff. There are so many choices out there.

I positively HATE looking for new cars. It might be fun if you could go look at cars and choose whatever you want, and not have to worry about the price or car payments.

Anyway, the insurance has told us what they'll give us for our old car. It's already gone; hauled off to the salvage yard.

Jess asked yesterday about taking the new tires off the car. I mean, they were put on the car Tuesday. The car was wrecked Friday. $450 worth of tires used 3 days.

Well, it's a no-no to take anything off the car. However, the insurance people said to fax the receipts for the tires to them. That sounded good. I was all excited thinking they'd reimburse us for the tires. Ha! Today they told Jess he'll get $81 for the tires.

What a joke! Why did they bother asking for all the paperwork for a measly $81??? All you can say is it's better than nothing.

So we've browsed in a couple of car lots and are starting the search. Jess is leaving tomorrow for Florida, and we've got to go to Atlanta next Tuesday night, so probably won't do much more looking until after we get back home Wednesday.

Fortunately, he has a rental car, so we've got a little leeway. But we'll have to get serious about looking after these 2 trips coming up are over.

A car, a car, we need a car!

TOTAL

And the word of the day is.... TOTAL.

We sheared sheep today. There are only 4 now, but it was TOTAL frustration. We're not exactly the best shearers in the world and bending over to do the job is a killer on your back.

We didn't do the llamas. We were all pretty done in by the time we finished the sheep. In fact, my body is a TOTAL wreck. After we finished with the sheep about 1p.m., I came inside and crashed. I managed a shower and lunch and then I laid on the couch the rest of the afternoon.

Jess went up to the body shop to take them the new rims for the car. Well, as it turns out, the car won't be needing the rims. The guy there told Jess the insurance says they're going to TOTAL the car.

Jess hasn't talked to the insurance people yet, but it looks like our next chore is going to be looking for a new vehicle. Not exactly in our plans, and rather a TOTAL bummer that all of a sudden we've got to be worrying about getting a new car.

And there's new tires on the wrecked car, barely used - what a TOTAL waste.

Although Jess was surprised there was that much damage, I wasn't quite so much. I've been a little concerned all along what damage they might find when they looked underneath the car, especially after Jess told me about his bumpy ride over the curb and into the ditch. It doesn't take long for damages to add up far enough to TOTAL a car - a quarter panel, a bumper, air conditioner - I don't remember what all, but it was enough to make up over 2/3rds the value of the car.

TOTAL chaos around here, as usual.

Honey, I Wrecked The Car

This hasn't been one of our better weeks. We lost a llama baby we waited a year for, and now today... well, here's the story.

This afternoon about 4:30pm the phone rang. We have Caller ID, so I could see the number was Jess's cell phone. But when I answered, I just heard a lot of noise, but nothing from Jess. The line went dead and I hung up.

The phone rang again. Same deal. Okay, this time I called HIM to ask what was going on. That's when I heard...

"Honey, I wrecked the car."

There are just some phone calls you don't want to get. Kind of like another call I got, along the lines of, "Hi Mom, I wrecked the car and I was hanging upside down and the car was on fire." (Not to name names, but the guilty party's initials are R.A.B.)

Now granted, if the people concerned are making the calls, then you at least have the comfort of knowing that they probably are not seriously hurt.

Thankfully, that was the case here also. Jess wasn't hurt, just flustered and upset. Which was why the phone calls weren't going through - he'd forgot his blue tooth was in his pocket, and the phone was still connected to it.

Anyway, here's my Reader's Digest Condensed version of the story - if you want the long version, call Jess.

It seems he was coming off I-565 onto the Parkway and was going to change lanes. He saw one dumptruck in his rearview mirror. Only trouble was, there was another big dumptruck he didn't see (blind spot in mirror sort of deal) and he turned right into it.

The truck spun the car around and dumped it in a ditch. Fortunately, they were only going 10-15 miles an hour, or as the driver of the dumptruck told Jess, "I'd probably have turned your car upside down and ran over it."

Nice thought.

Jess doesn't think there is major damage, but you can't really tell what's went on under the car. He knows one of the new tires is flat (yes, just last week we had to get four new tires... sigh...). There's a dent in the left rear quarter panel behind the door.

Jess informs me that "it was kind of bumpy ride going up over the curb and down into the ditch." I'll just bet it was!

The car has been towed to a wrecker service yard, and will later be taken to a shop in Fayetteville for repair as the insurance people instructed. Jess should get a rental car, but we'll have to go down to Huntsville to pick it up.

I asked Jess if he had anything to add to my facts here, and he said "No, except it's just a real bummer."

Yeah, he was so excited after getting new tires and how smooth the car was riding now. So much for that, ha!

Well, it's may sound trite or corny, but the fact is the car can be fixed, no one was hurt, and bottom line is that's what matters.

Oh, and the silver lining to this particular cloud is since he wrecked right close to Red Lobster, we had dinner there before coming home. At least that part was nice!

I Need A Wife

I'm sure you've heard the joke -

When our second child was on the way, my wife and I attended a pre-birth class aimed at couples who had already had at least one child.

The instructor raised the issue of breaking the news to the older child. It went like this:

"Some parents," she said, "tell the older child, 'We love you so much we decided to bring another child into this family.' But think about that. Ladies, what if your husband came home one day and said, 'Honey, I love you so much I decided to bring home another wife.'"

One of the women spoke up immediately. "Does she cook???"

Of course, you know no woman really wants another wife in the house. It's just the idea of having someone to do all the stuff most wives do... cleaning house, cooking meals, doing the laundry... that's the big three. If I had a "wife" to do that, wow, that'd be cool.

Someone else to make sure the house doesn't constantly look like a tornado went through, someone else to figure out what to cook and get it done, someone else to deal with throwing clothes in the washing machine, pulling the wet ones up out of there and chunking them in the dryer, folding or ironing clothes, someone to...

Yeah, I need a wife.