Still Swirling

The whirlwind is still blowing.

Sometimes I've wondered - do I write more when I'm happy or when I'm sad? I think I definitely have tended to write/journal more during the sad times of my life. Interestingly enough, there have been times when I thought I was happy and wrote a lot, but looking back, those were actually bad times for me. So I think the answer is that I write more during the bad times.

So my lack of posting could actually be seen as a good thing.

To catch you up on where I've been ... the weekend before Halloween I went to Wyoming with my friends Susan and Julie. It was a great trip. All we did was eat, sleep and sit. But the sitting was on the airplane and in the car - we traveled a lot. Managed to get to Yellowstone, a first for me. I'm really glad we went in October and avoided the crowds.

So we had a great trip, but on our return, I got some bad news. My friend Susie (not to be confused with Susan) called to say that her ex-husband and children had been in a car accident. Her ex and son were fine, but her daughter was in intensive care with a head injury. As soon as I landed I went to the hospital. They had her in a medically induced coma and it was shocking to see her.

I actually hadn't seen her in a few years, and she is now 14 years old and a freshman in high school. She's not a little girl any more - she's a young woman. And there she was with all of her hair shaved off and she was swollen from the fluids they were pumping into her and she had all of these tubes ... and she was there for 16 days. Late last week they moved her to a rehabilitation hospital. I don't actually know the exact diagnosis/prognosis. She's in there, she's out of the coma now and she seems to comprehend what Susie says to her, but she can't seem to make her body work anymore.

She's learning how to sit ... how to hold her head ... how to swallow ... how to walk ... how to even reach up and scratch an itch. She has to start all over. Susie has been visiting her every day, and she's just exhausted. I have offered to do whatever she needs me to do - cook, clean, do laundry, run errands, whatever. So far, I haven't been able to do anything but offer.

I don't have children, but Susie's kids are special to me. We were neighbors when they were born (they are twins, a boy and a girl) and the only time I stopped taking my weekly yoga class was when I babysat the twins for Susie when she was taking a class. Susie was so calm and collected when she called me with the news, and I held my composure until she said "I wanted you to know because in a way they are your babies too." That's when I lost it.

And yet, I'm sure I can't even begin to experience the depth of emotions that Susie must be feeling. To have your child, a piece of you, go through this suffering and not be able to do anything about it. It's just a waiting game. This little girl will recover, eventually, but it will take a long time.

So every day I check the web site where Susie journals her daughter's progress, and I think of her, and I pray that she's able to make a full recovery. I'm trying to think positively and count my blessings, but it's going to be hard to be thankful this year when someone I care about is in pain.

Who Knew?

So I just logged on to my online savings account and I realized that I could view my statements. And when I clicked on the link I saw that I could always view my statements and that, in fact, I was supposed to have been receiving statements all along, but the email bounced. So I started going back and viewing and saving the old statements and there it was.

1099-INT.

Attached to the December statement. Which I never got. And therefore never submitted as part of my tax return. So yes, I admit it. I failed to report $35 in interest income. I just updated my email address. It shouldn't happen again.

In other news, I kept getting these PC Tools error messages so I decided to download the most recent program and run the full scan on my computer. That was three hours and 88,000+ files ago. The good news is that the number of infections found? Zero. Of course the computer hadn't been plugged in or turned on for 162 days so ...

Yes, it's time for a new 'puter.

When Bad Things Happen To Good People

I did not have a great weekend.

It was filled with stress and tension and to top it all off, I was rear-ended. Totally blew out my rear window and jammed up the tailgate. Poor Trucklet! I took photos of her in all her misery, but of course somehow neglected to put them on my flash drive.

I. Am. Exhausted. Emotionally and physically.

The only good thing to come of this is:

a) it was the other guy's fault so insurance is picking up the tab, including a rental car for me (I believe) so I can still go visit the family this weekend; and
2) The Man called this morning and he had gotten a call back from a potential employer that wasn't smart enough to hire him the first time around when he interviewed there a few months back.

Please let all the pain and misery and suffering be worth it in the end.

It's Always Something

Thought I'd finally get iTunes up and running. Phil asked me to download a song for him, so I did. Then I realized that I didn't have the iPod to computer cable with me, so I can't upload to the iPod. And I can't download the 4,000+ songs from the iPod to the laptop. And then when I tried to copy the song from the laptop to my flash drive, it says the flash drive is full.

It's always something.