The Past Five Days

I’m going with the Comic Sans MS Font Style for this one, because I’m trying to keep my spirits up.  There are many things I’m thankful for, that I’ve been blessed with, and I experienced most or all of them over this past weekend.

 

I’m blessed with good doctors.  The gastro guy I saw Wednesday afternoon decided I’ve probably got a non-functioning gallbladder due to the symptoms I’m still having even on the Prevacid and the radical change in diet I’ve made.  Still with the sick in the morning, still with the runs (five months, non-stop now), still sometimes surprise upchucking out of nowhere for a day or two straight on and then back to normal, and I’m rarely hungry.  The only thing that doesn’t make me a classic gall bladder surgery candidate is the lack of severe pain.  So, tomorrow I get to go have a Hida Scan with CCK for a few hours.  Then I’ll find out if I have my gall bladder out, again.  Ah well, I had a few minutes of crying after I got out of the doc’s office, I hate surgery, I know it’ll be a nightmare adjusting to another diet plan without a gall bladder if it has to come out, keeping La off me while I heal will be pure hell…BUT  I’m thankful, too.  I’d be so grateful to have this gastro-mess over with finally, only one pill a day to take to keep me able to keep food down.  It’d be wonderful to have answers to the WHY am I still sick?! question. 

 

Thursday was wonderful, of course.  We spent it at Mom and Dad’s, my brothers were there with their wives and my nephews.  Big dinner, everything looked, smelled, tasted wonderfully.  Becca even made her first pumpkin pie.  Jess was able to come eat with us, that’s a big change, she usually has to work the noon shift but didn’t have to go in til 3, so we ate early and had the entire family.  Laura even ate some turkey, and let me tell you, that is one big deal for the kid who lives on strawberry Pop*Tarts, wheat bread crusts and chocolate milk!  Her one weak spot is fish though, so we called the meat turkeyfish, she tried it and loved it.  Yee-haw!!!  We had our long, lingering, lazy lunch feast at Mom’s, visited, played and laughed ourselves to exhaustion and travelled home where I just made a simple baked ham dinner and we lazed around all night watching The Incredibles and talking about where to put the Christmas tree.

 

Oh yeah…the one blight on my day, besides losing my wonderful lunch (of course I did).  When we moved in June, Mike and the boys were in charge of the basement, actually, they commandeered it-telling the womenfolk they knew what needed to be moved, what needed to go to the dump, etc and we could just stay out of the way while they did all that heavy lifting.  I should have known better.  We had managed over the years to collect 3 Christmas trees; one Jess had given us the first year we didn’t go with a live tree because Becca’s allergies were so bad, one Mike had bought because Jess’ tree was a bit small for what we wanted, and our PRIZE tree, the one we’d inherited from Mom when she decided to downsize from her huge tree to a smaller.  Now, Mom had her tree for years, and it is gorgeous.  We were thrilled to get it, because the equivalent retails now for a couple hundred bucks, and it isn’t even pre-lit.

 

Guess what those damn males did.  Just guess.  Yep.  In their hurry to get packed up and moved over to the new place, they grabbed ALL the trees and took them to the dump.  While the girls and I, who know the difference in an heirloom tree and one from K^Mart  were upstairs packing away clothes, wrapping up dishes and dragging tables and chairs to the wagon to be carried to the New House, Mike was throwing away all our trees.  My Mother’s Tree.  Oh, and all the lights, too.  They were neatly packed in with the tree in the box.  Katie and I figured it out when she decided to go looking for the tree Thursday morning because these children have it in their heads we should put the tree up on Black Friday.  As Amy Winehouse sings, "No, no, no."

 

I can’t decide whether I’m eager for Mom to find out Mike threw away her tree so he’ll finally get the punishment he so richly deserves, or don’t want her to ever find out because it’ll upset her so much.  I’m enjoying how worried he is what she’s going to do when she comes over in mid-December for Laura’s birthday.

 

So, on Black Friday I had to add a new Christmas Tree and lights to my long list of Things To Get.  Oh goody.  Because buying for six daughters, a man, parents, brothers, sis in laws,nephews and assorted others isn’t enough, is it?  It WAS fun getting out shopping with just Becca and Bratzilla, even with we did go all over creation and too much money was spent.  Poor Becca was so tired.  Bless her heart.

 

Saturday we had Emmy’s boyfriend Jeremy over most of the day.  We played Phase 10, Emmy whipped him good on T, Hawk and his Skateboarding game and they made out in my kitchen when we finally let them have fifteen minutes alone.  He ate my chili and only whimpered once.  It was a fun Saturday.

 

Sunday, eh…more Walhell, but grocery shopping this time.  Whimper.  Do you want to know how hard it is to get any Christmas shopping done when there is at least one kid with you everywhere you go?

 

Today, I wait for tomorrow.  I’m thinking of how nice it will be if the test result is bad, and it is my gall bladder and the problem is solved.  I’m thinking of how nice it will be if it isn’t my gall bladder and I can at least not have to go through another surgery and recovery, learning to eat everything boiled.  Ick.  Either way, I’m determined I’m going to find the blessing in this, dangit.  Tis the season, after all, right?