Christmas Gifts

Okay - here's hoping my loyal readers - all four or five of you - had great Christmases.

Christmas at the Callahan household was a wrapping paper storm of present opening. It was fun, but tiring. On Friday, the elder Bakers visited us for the day for our Christmas, and that was nice, but tiring. So needless to say, Brent and I have spent the last two days resting up - getting ready to put away Christmas and get ready for what will hopefully be a great New Year's Eve.

This year in our contest to get each other the best gift, my sister won. I received a Mood bag. Now, if you aren't a Project Runway fan (and why wouldn't you be?), then you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Brief explanation: the contestants on Project Runway have a new challenge each week, and they usually go to Mood, a fabric store in NYC, to buy their materials, and they always come in with these bags that say Mood on the side. One day while Daddy was in the hospital in Greenville back in March, Mary stopped over at my house to watch an episode we had on DVR (and I say we, because Brent watches it too - gotta love him), and I said, "I'm going to go to New York just to go to Mood to buy a yard of fabric and get one of those bags."

So you know what? Mary had Neil get the information off of the Internet (oh what a wonderful tool), and she called Mood, and after what I am sure was an entertaining conversation for the clerk in NYC, Mary had ordered two yards of fabric and a bag for me for Christmas.

My plan now is to use it as my school bag, just to see if anyone recognizes it. I FREAKING LOVE IT - lol - so Mary won this year.

But among all the nice gifts, I have one I want to mention - in honor of one of my loyal readers - Cathy - and her husband David.

The joke is that I am the Queen Bee of Chocowinity Middle School - at least according to some of the teachers - so for Christmas, David decided that I needed these -

Many thanks to everyone for their presents and warm wishes - and many wishes for a Happy New Year!

Leslie's and Mark's Daughter

Well, folks, she's here. Caroline Felton Bradbury was born on December 16. Apparently they waited until the last minute to leave the house, so Carrie was born on the side of the road in an ambulance - in the words of her father, Mark

Here’s the short story: Leslie had contractions on Tuesday (12/16) morning, as we got into the car to drive to the hospital I called 911 just to be safe, Will stayed at home with a babysitter, we got 3 miles from home when we met up with the volunteer fire fighter, he had us stop to check Leslie’s condition, within 10 minutes about 6 more fire fighters arrived as did the ambulance, within 5 more minutes the baby was born – with the car pulled off on the side of the road and Leslie reclined in the passenger seat, that’s why you see her exiting the ambulance at the hospital with Carrie in her arms! Oh, and between the fire fighters and ambulance crew, no one had ever delivered a baby before…

Both Leslie and Carrie (8 lbs, 2 oz; 20 inches) made it through the ordeal just fine and we are all at home now. Quite a day, quite a story.

Mark

And here is the Christmas card/birth announcement that came the next week - impressive timing for parents with two small children!

Congrat's!

Dollar Tree Strikes Again

Many thanks to the people of Indonesia for all their help in my on-going search for reasons we should stop shopping at Dollar Tree.

Technology Conference

Went to Greensboro for two and a half days for a technology conference last week. Learned some pretty cool stuff and got some free stuff, too. But really kept coming up against a couple of things I thought you guys might have opinions on.

First of all, they keep saying we need to engage these students. That they are using technology all the time, and they need to use more. That students are multi-tasking so much that they are doing like 26 hours of stuff in one day - seriously.

My problem with all of this is that students may very well be multi-tasking and doing all of this stuff, but is this allowing them to sit still for an extended period of time? I ask this, because to read a book - or even to listen to a book - you really need to be able to be still - and not distracted. I fear that these multitasking students are being trained to be entertained and drawn to shorter and shorter bits of information.

From TV shows with small bursts of entertainment divided by small bursts of commercials to music videos. It's amazing to me that they can sit down and watch a full length movie anymore. But then again - they are totally immersed in it if they go to the theater, so maybe movies still have a chance - lol

Anywho - the other thing about the conference was the abundance of laptops and the abundance of folks who thought it was not maddening to hear typing during a presentation. People who type during a presentation kill me. I can't even begin to imagine being the presenter.

What do you guys think?

One year anniversary

Well, Thursday marked the one year anniversary for the FIRST f-ing back surgery. The one that either didn't work or was totally f-ed up by the folks that put me on the gurney right after surgery. The one that had me in pain until the SECOND surgery in January.

But I'm doing good now. Although about three days ago the pain started picking up again. I think and hope it's just been aggravated by something - probably too much touch football - lol - but anywho -

Seems like forever ago. The whole wasted winter actually. Things happen at school, and I just say, "I don't remember. I wasn't here." Really weird.

But thank God the second surgery "took." Here's hoping for another year pain free.

A few updates

Well, let's see . . .

Leslie is due on the 21st of December. I haven't talked to her recently. She and Mark are running a hectic schedule between half day daycare and teaching. She's actually looking forward to having spring semester off with the baby. And remember it's a girl.

September is working hard all the time and keeping up with - what is it now? - 13 nieces and nephews. They sold the small store she was running, so now she's in the bigger one at Woodcroft.

Todd is still in St. Louis. How many years to go? He's coming home for Thanksgiving. Gets to work in an extra ECU game that way.

Rob is coming up for Thanksgiving - or at least part of the weekend - which is cool. Apparently there's a new restaurant in Charleston with a good brunch and a cute chef - at least he's cute in the pics on the website - mmm just one more GREAT reason to take a trip south.

Sally is getting ready to come off of a week's rest after working at the library for a million months straight with no real holiday. She's coming up for Thanksgiving as well, as that is also her mom's birthday. She likes her job and is enjoying living alone, but could probably use a roomie, so if any of you are contemplating moving south - lol or east - or north - lol lol

Keith is living in Charleston and working at Ladsen elementary - he and - God knows I forget how to spell it - Ik are having a Christmas party on December 13th. I don't think Brent and I will be able to go down - not that close to Christmas. But eventually we will get down there - oh and Keith's coming up for a couple of days at Thanksgiving as well.

Christie and Charles and their brood are doing the same. Morgan is in 7th grade this year - JESUS are we all really that old.

If I left anyone off, I apologize - and just ask - anonymously works - lol

Anonymous comments

LOL

I guess there are a few things I need to take care of . . .

Okay, Mary's friend was murdered by her boyfriend. They leave behind five children between them now with no responsible parent.

WITN will NEVER move to GVegas because it will probably cost too much. They have owned that property for a million years - ever since the theater closed - but who knows - miracles do happen. They have never claimed Chocowinity, let alone Washington as their first home. IF you want to get local news, you watch WNCT out of GVille.

Brent went to a lawyer back in like January when we realized that the Worker's Comp company was going to try to make him go back to work doing what he had done - but he can't - he can't do the physical work, and the meds make him loopy, so he can't do what he was doing, and the company he worked for is not going to fire him, so we need to figure out the next step. He has been meeting every two weeks with a job counselor, and right now we are getting ready for mediation with the WC company because for the last two years they have NOT been paying him what they are supposed to using the state's calculator. AT least that is what the lawyer has said. So Brent just recently filled out a bunch of paperwork, and then he sent it back to the attorney. So now we wait - won't hear anything back until January.

Uncle Von's visit went well. Jason was down for a long weekend, and I got to hang out with him. He wants to know what the deal is with the property - why his father doesn't just go ahead and sell it to my father - and I wonder the same thing. I was hoping that Jason would talk to his dad, but I don't think anything ever came of it.

Granny's house and the property Well, Dad keeps it up. I go down every once in a while and get stuff - got some utensils for the library the last time - spoons for serving dip and such. If I could go down there with some trash bags and know that Daddy wouldn't lose it, I would. I don't' know what he wants to do. It's just a pain. But we have it, and he's cleaned up a path through the woods, which just makes me want to get a four wheeler and ride around down there.

And oh yeah - Kristen shot JR.

TGIF

Thank God. I was beginning to wonder if I were going to make it to the end. It's been a crazy week, especially as I didn't work Monday or Tuesday. And next week, I get half a day off on Thursday and all day Friday for school related things, so they don't even count.

Other than that, things here are good. Mom had her bladder stretched today. OUCH! This is supposed to help with the pain she has been having now for almost a year. She came through the procedure just fine, BUT (you knew there was a but coming - come on) she hasn't PEED yet. Not since before 8:30. She may have to go back into the hospital if nothing ever comes out. And then it will be a FLOOD!

Daddy's doing well. Mary's tired some, but is making it through. Horrible thing happened to a friend of hers. http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/34180814.html

Things like this happen all the time, but never to people you know.

Brent is doing well. He's lost some weight and is piddling around the house. No news on his lawyer's work.

Guess that's it. I was thinking I would do a post some time this weekend giving everyone info on what everyone else is doing. Let me know what you think - and if you have something you DO or do NOT want included-

Later Peeps

My Dentist is so Going to Love Me

Okay, I finally got stuff straight to take some pics of the stuff I have been scavenging from Granny's.

My parents have always said that my Granny kept so many things around her because she never had a lot in the early parts of her life. They scraped by after she got married - and that was right out of high school, so I guess she started hoarding things she could get.

For instance, right after she went into the nursing home, Brent and I went down to Acre with Daddy, and we cleaned out canned goods. I am not joking - over fifty cans of canned veggies - some with expired dates of course. Yeah - who knew that canned food went bad?

Well, since Granny's death in July, I've been gradually bringing things home from Granny's - a little bit each trip. There's a necklace, and then a vase, and then a set of vases - like I'll ever use them all, but who knows, right?

Well, back to the hoarding part. God bless her heart, but that little woman had a bunch of stuff, odd things, stockpiled for, I guess, the future.

Below is a picture of toothbrushes I have brought from her house to mine. Will Brent and I use all of these? No, probably not. We have already used a couple - one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen - as nail brushes and vegetable brushes - and we gave some to my in-laws, because they like really hard toothbrushes - and that's what these are. And just for the record, this is probably only half of what was there - so many being dispersed in different directions. (In fact, I gave two to Mary today to be put in these shoe boxes Riley's Cub Scout troop is making for the poor.)

There are probably fifty combs in one drawer, and other things like that. It's heart breaking and scary, and it really makes me look around my house as I stock pile things and wonder if I really need it all.

So here are a few pictures of other things I have brought to my house from Granny's. Things you will find on display at times in my dining room.

no excuses

I promise - it's coming - updates this weekend -

:-P

Remember when . . .

This is for all you bitches that took me out, three years ago tonight, and let me drink way tooooooooo many grape crushes.

And a GREAT thank you for September, who got up EVERY time I had to run to the bathroom to puke. It was a LONG night for us both.

Three years tomorrow folks!

Incoming

Uncle Von, Laura, and my cousin Jason will be in this weekend. Von and Laura are going to be staying for a couple of weeks, with plans to go out to Granny's and clean it out. What out means in the last part of that last sentence I am not sure. Should be interesting.

CMS Indian Football

God, I love football season. And I mean the time of the year when as the sun gets down, it gets a little cooler, and the lights on the stadium just make everything look great.

We played Bath last night at home, and beat them, which is WONDERFUL! Actually beat them by 8 points, which is even better. The first half was sorta chaotic - got a couple of calls against us for not have the right number of players on the field, but Chris (the head coach) got that all straight after halftime.

But the weather was great - even had a cool breeze right there at the end - and it was just nice to finally be there. Not that I don't love my summers, but there's just something about fall nights and football.

Hunter Turned Twelve

Not a big deal by most standards, but if all of you will take a second and think back.

Mary - she had a baby - TWELVE years ago.

Jesus God when did WE get this old.

Anywho, we gave him Brent's old electric guitar. Brent fixed a couple of things on it and restrung it. Oh and bought a used amp. So now he can really ROCK the house. LOLOLOL

Always give children noise makers - so they can aggravate the hell out of their parents when they get home.

All in all it was a quiet party. The Bennetts hosted, as Mary was still sorta out of it from her surgery. It was a beautiful day, and we got to sit out on the deck and enjoy the quiet of the country.

Happy Birthday, Hunter.

Oh, and for those of you that know her, Vicki - Reed's youngest sister - is pregnant and due in March.

My Sister and her Surgery

Mary came through her gastric by-pass surgery well, but is taking a little longer to recover in the hospital. They kept her an extra day, but she should be out tomorrow, going home.

She has conceded that she will not be able to host a party for my nephew Hunter's birthday on Saturday, so we will all be going to his grandparents house (the Bennett's) right across the street from Mary's, which will work out well for everyone, I think.

I am very proud of my sister for doing what she has done and hope it all goes well.

Keep your fingers crossed.

And this is why we are falling fast . . .

Granted - I bought it at Dollar Tree, but come on folks, even the Chinese need to know that the Union Jack isn't American. Geez . . .

SAS Tour Summer 2009

Just in case you're interested, recent news puts Stephanie's family moving to Cary in the summer of '09.

Watch out RTP!

Fran Survives

Sorry it's taken so long to update.

Fran survived surgery - they actually had taken her in before I got there - the schedule got moved up, so I didn't have to stay at the hospital as long as I had thought.

She went absolutely bat shit crazy in the hospital. The drugs they had her on totally made her lose her mind.

She called me Friday night and said she wanted me to come pick her up to take her home. When I got to the hospital, Daddy said she had been like that all afternoon. She wanted the tubes taken out and she wanted to go home. They couldn't keep her there. She told me that if I wasn't going to take her home, I could "carry my ass on." LOL it really was sorta funny, but also worrisome, because at that point, Mary and I both were worried that she may have suffered some kind of stroke. But Brent reassured us both that it was the medicine and it was.

She was discharged Monday morning, and the had a medical transport bring her home - because there was no way Daddy would have been able to get her in the house. Even with help. And she's been home doing well ever since.

A physical therapist and nurse came daily last week - it goes to every other day next week, and she's using a walker to get around on. She hasn't been able to get upstairs yet, and it looks as if it will be a while before that happens. But she is doing well after surgery.

What we have to work on now is trying to find out what happened to her to make her fall. Why is she so dizzy all the time. I understand that she is on medication that will affect her blood pressure when she stands up, but she was actually blacking out before the surgery.

Supposedly Mama is going to go to her general practitioner tomorrow to start this next process. Dr. York visited Mama in the hospital and is supposedly already working on this question. Should be interesting to see what does or does not happen next week.

So that's it for Mama - I did manage to use my MP3 player to get some voice recordings of crazy lady in the hospital. Haven't had a chance to see if any of them are, um, interesting, so will let you all know.

Cross your fingers - let's see if we can get through a week with no major catastrophes in my family.

The Continuing Saga of Fran and Gary

Well, folks, I had not meant to write about this (thinking that it would go away and it didn't), but here it is.

Last Sunday, my father called and said, "Lisa, I need your help. Now." and then hung up. So I rushed over and found that Mama had fallen - twice. One time she had completely blacked out and the other time she had just gotten dizzy. So I stayed over there until she started feeling better and talked to Daddy about what the problem could be. Luckily, nothing was broken.

They went to the doctor on Monday, where everything appeared to be okay, but the doctor scheduled a CT scan of Mama's head on Tuesday. (Monday was Daddy's birthday - 67 years old.)

But they never made it to the appointment.

Because on Tuesday around 1:30 or 2:00, Mama fell again. While she was home ALONE. COOKING.

Luckily Daddy got home in time to get the pot off of the stove and call the rescue squad. That's when I got the call at school from Brent - Daddy had called him, I guess, because it was the easiest number to remember. So I called Mary and the whole "spend the night in the emergency room/hospital" story began.

First of all, the ride to the hospital made Mama sick. She can't ride lying down. And the AC on the rescue squad was out, so Mama threw up when she got to the emergency room. Luckily our cousin Tobby was one of the EMT's, so Mama and Daddy felt a little better about that whole situation.

Once she got in the emergency room, they checked everything and sent her to Xray to get her head CT she had been scheduled for, an xray of her chest and an xray of her hip. (And I WILL say at this point that everyone in the emergency room was VERY nice AND helpful.)

Did I forget to mention that she was having pain in her hip?

Well, the xray came back negative for anything in the hip, but she was having too much pain, so the emergency room doc's ordered a CT of her hip as well. And this is the point where I stop to say . . .

Unless I am bleeding profusely or dying, do not stop me off at Beaufort County Hospital.

There is no one at BCH that can read CT scans. They have to send them to Greenville to be read. The next day. Is this such a hard thing to do? What kind of training is involved? Are we, as a nation, suffering from a shortage of CT scan readers? Maybe Brent needs to go to school for that.

Okay, so they put her in a room, around eight o'clock, where she asked for something to eat - I mean she asked Daddy, and he told me to go find out, where - hold on a sec - another departure from the story -

Why can't it be a requirement that ALL nurses be nice. Why do people continue to nurse when they are no longer PEOPLE persons? Go do something else lady . . .

Anyway - Mary and I left around 8. Mama made it through the night. The next day, the magic man CT reader in Greenville called to let somebody know that Mama had cracked her hip. Dr. Miller - who will probably complete the trifecta for SHITTINESS happening at BCH - will be doing surgery this afternoon to put a plate on her hip.

So I am off today. Going to take a shower, go to Dollar Tree to buy my broke-assed Mama some Sudoku books, and then I'm at the hospital for the rest of the day - I guess.

Wish me luck.

Doctors and more doctors

Well, last week was marked with two doctors' appointments.

I had my last (hopefully) doctor's appointment with my back doctor on Tuesday. We are both agreed that the slight discomfort I have sometimes with my leg and hip is going to be with me forever, sadly, but is something we can both live with. I of course live with a nagging thought in the back of my head sometimes that it is a repeat of the condition I suffered from last year, and will once again slowly get worse, but then it gets better, or something else grabs my attention. The pain I lived with over the fall and through the winter last year was terrible, and the situation with having two surgeries in a month's time was even worse, so I think I am allowed a little nagging thought every once in awhile.

My other doctor's appointment was on Thursday with Dr. Kroncke, my gynecologist. I love going to his office, because they always act glad to see me and are so nice. I know that sounds strange, but in a day and age where nurses and PA's and even doctors shuffle you through to get their days done, my gyno's office is really a nice trip. Sadly. They remember things about me, even if they are written in a file, and they act glad to see me. Did I say that part twice? But it's nice. And I really appreciate it.

But the second appointment went fine, just waiting for the notecard that says the tests came back negative. Fingers crossed.