Have a seat, get comfy, maybe grab that coffee cup or if you are like me and it's after 5:00 pour yourself a glass of wine and get settled for a super long catching up! And yes, yes I know I really should update my blog more often but sometimes after working on the computer from 8:00 to 5:00 turning on this dang thing is the LAST thing I want to do at night, I know some of you can relate to that!
Alright first thing in the most massive update in the history of blogging (**grin** I really hope you all don't fall asleep by the time I am done!) anyway, Bradley James, sigh... I really did get him through eighteen years under my roof with not one broken bone, honest I did! However since the kid graduated and moved out on his own, he has became a magnet for all things related to expensive doctor visits. The latest, a broken clavicle or collar bone if you prefer to call it that. Right side and of course he is right handed. It's really funny watching him try to shove food in his mouth with his left hand though! So it happened mid March and after the 11:30 pm visit to the ER he had some really pretty x-rays and an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon the next day. Good thing I work there and pulled some strings to get him seen right away. Dr. V assured us that the x-rays actually looked okay and there was no need to do surgery (hah!). So he sends Brad on his merry way with a ton of pain pills and doctors orders to keep it in a sling, and move it as little as possible. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he has NO INSURANCE and this little broken bone is going to keep him off work for the next 2-3 months, sigh... so this is just the first part of Brad's little adventure, I will come back to him in a later.
In the mean time I wanted to share some pics from my scrappy weekend last month with Jenn! First up is the Izaak Walton Inn that we stayed at. Yes it was a gloriously snowy weekend (what else would you expect in Montana silly gooses??)
The rail lines run right in front of the old inn and the Amtrack goes by twice a day. I guess it's not unusual to be sitting in the dining room and all of a sudden have your server excuse themselves to race to the front of the inn to wave at the Amtrack passenger trains when they go by. Hmmm, could you imagine?
This little caboose is one of four that sit on the hill overlooking the inn and the rail lines. You can rent these cabooses and they sleep up to four people with a three night minimum. So cute!!
Here's one of Jenn goofing off in front of this totally cool door we found. She took one of me there too - I really need to have her e-mail it to me :) Plus some of us at dinner the first night when I looked like something the cat drug in after being on the road for five hours!
And these I took on the way home that Sunday. It was a beautiful day, windier than heck though. I thought my poor little windshield wiper blades were going to rattle right off my car from the force of the wind! But what I saw when I stopped to check them was so cool. And I probably wouldn't have paid any attention if I hadn't stopped. You have all seen the AT&T cellular commercials right? More bars any where, any time, with the graduated buildings or graphs in the background. Think beer commercial - "I just want to celebrate" playing as one partner is out selling the beer and the other is back at the plant telling him they need to expand. Well when I saw this - I so thought of those commercials.
Maybe I need to contact AT&T with an idea to film a commercial in Montana on a ranch using these buildings, cows of different sizes, maybe some cowboys in tight Wranglers, and tractors, hmmm. Nah that would be false advertising! Everyone knows we can get cell service up on the high plains or in the mountains of Montana. Trust me there are more square miles in Montana that I don't have cell coverage than where I do have coverage!
Okay next up - and this is a BIGGIE with a capital B!!! I have been frustrated at work for quite a while now so one day when I was REALLY pissed at the people I work with I freshened up my resume and sent it off to a few places. I was a little disappointed when I didn't hear anything back but I just chalked it up to the job market here and thought that these people must have been inundated with a mountain of resumes from more qualified applicants (or maybe I was over-qualified?) Whatever the case I didn't hear back from them and moved on. Things were a little better at work and I was comfortable just letting things ride out. UNTIL I got a call from a gal named Roz as I was grocery shopping one night. I had this nice little phone interview with her and she wanted to meet me. Hmmm, okay I can do this. And then I called her the next day and cancelled (duh, slapping head right now!)
It's a long drawn out reason why I cancelled and it had nothing to do with her or the practice, but everything to do with the fact that their practice doesn't offer group insurance coverage so I would have to switch over to Roy's coverage. No big deal right? Except we are not all that sure that Roy's job is stable and I can't loose group coverage since I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. So I felt stuck. Stuck in a job that is going no where with people I don't even really care form except the chosen few that are close to me. The kicker was the e-mail I got shortly after I turned down the interview, our insurance was going up - AGAIN. A year ago I was only paying $230 a month for insurance for Kris and dental for both of us. Last year it went up to $354 a month and my raise last year barely covered the increase. Now I was looking at a pay freeze that was incurred in January with no info on when it may lift and another increase in my insurance to over $400 a month!! So here I sit looking at the fact that I am now officially taking home less $$ than I was a year ago, sigh.
That Sunday while Roy was reading the paper, he pointed out that Roz had put the ad for the position back in the classifieds. Hmm, maybe hope wasn't lost yet. I called Roy's work the next day to figure out the details about getting switched over to his insurance. It is a better plan and while I was at it I had a little one on one with the HR gal, Margaret (she's such a sweetie!) Anyway I just decided that sometimes you have to make that leap. It would be stupid to have this be the only reason holding me back. So I called Roz up. Poor thing was so flipping excited that I had called her, I could practically envision her jumping up and down on the other side of the phone! We made an appointment for my interview the next day. It went swimmingly!! I was with her for over an hour! And bless her little heart if she didn't even flinch when I put out my salary requirements to her. I was optimistic!! Woohoo!!
I heard from her again two days later, could I come back in for another interview? Of course I could! The next interview went just as great and less than 24 hours later she was calling me with an offer that I couldn't turn down!! Now I was the one hopping up and down!!!! I gave my notice on Monday when I went back to work and I have no regrets. It feels so good to have made this choice. I know it's the right one, and I know that I am going to be a much happier person and the bonus part - they were willing to exceed my salary request!! I have over 12 years experience in the medical billing field and I finally feel that I am going to be compensated for my experience and expertise - what a good feeling!! So my last day at work is this Friday and come Monday the 20th I will be starting the next chapter of my life :)
Alright onto the next BIG piece of news!! You have all seen pictures of my wonderful sweet and sassy kitty, Miss Gabby or Gabriella as Roy likes to call her.
Poor thing though, she really didn't take the move to the condo back in January very well. She was downright miserable about the move, I guess we really upset her applecart. One morning at 5:30 when I just couldn't take her yowling anymore (yes she yowls, not meows) I threw her out the door knowing that Roy would let her back in when he got up in a few hours. Roy gave me the news that night that he never saw her the rest of that day and unfortunately the animal control truck was seen in the complex. Great, she must have meowed at the wrong door and they called animal control was all I could think of. I knocked on all the doors and asked them all the same thing - have you seen this annoying little kitty in this nice picture I have here? No one had. I checked with animal control, nope they didn't pick her up, hmmm where on earth was she? I knew that she knew the way home. She had already been out at the new place several times and it definately wasn't her style to go too far, she was always close to home at the other house. And then Roy said he heard her one night, but it sounded like she was in another condo. Alright who stole my kitty and wouldn't tell me???
And so we went on just figuring that someone else in the complex had her and they were loving on her. Okay I can live with that. Now fast forward to almost 10 weeks, yep 10 weeks. Brad stepped out into the garage and flipped the light on one Saturday night and there she was in the garage! She ran from Brad and soon we were all outside calling for her. No sign of here anywhere. I asked Brad several times, are you SURE it was really her? He was positive. Roy set up an old fashioned trap in the garage (picture a laundry basket held up by a stick with a can of cat food under it - are you laughing yet??) and we waited. Nothing that night, or the next, or the next, sigh.... okay, Brad was hopped up on pain pills from his broken clavicle, he must have imagined it right??
That Tuesday night Roy and I decided to head to the grocery store, something we never do in the evenings (we are such homebodies) and when I pulled into the complex and hit the garage door opener the dog came flying out and it was chaos! The dog was trying to get into the car, was trying to pull into the garage and hollering at Kris to grab the dog when Roy looked over and said "there's Gabby!!!!" Sure enough there she was all hunkered down by the neighbors garage door. I flew out of the car and the second I picked her up I was in tears. This was not the same kitty that I had so angrily booted out the door ten weeks prior, this was a shell of her. She was so light that I thought I might break her if I held her too tight. She was crying and her fur was loaded with cockle burrs and she smelled like grease and oil, kinda like a car engine.
We immediately got her some food and I bawled my eyes out as I watched her wobbly little head bob up and down as she tried to eat. I was heartbroken and very scared that she had returned to us on death's door. She was nothing but a bag of bones. She could barely walk, she looked more like a drunken sailor when she tried to take a few steps. After calling the vet and getting instructions on how to care for this starved little creature I sat the rest of the night with her on the heating pad in my lap. Poor thing, where in the world had she been for the last 10 weeks??
When I took her to the vet two days later, she weighed in at 4.1 pounds!!! The vet wanted to do some blood work as he was concerned about several issues she could have going on, so I agreed. The next day I got the call that confirmed an enlarged liver with her liver enzymes off the chart, and she was anemic. Despite these conditions, and her incredible weight loss the vet assured me that she should suffer NO lasting ill affects from her 10 weeks away from us!! I am happy to say that she has now been home for two weeks and has gained a pound and a half!! She doesn't like her meds, but at least she tolerates us when we have to give them to her. Can you believe it?? She was missing for 10 weeks and survived. We are still in awe when we think about how she made it and what she must have gone through.
Okay enough typing, lets see a few pages!! Not my best work, I really need to get inspired to do better!
The journaling jotters on the next page are from my good friend Jenn :) Thanks hon!
The mega post continues!! Fast forward a few weeks from Brad's original injury to April Fools day when Brad returned to see Dr. V again. And you guessed it, now the x-rays showed that there was no way this broken clavicle was going to heal properly on it's own. Hmmm, I suppose falling again and putting his right hand out to catch himself didn't have anything to do with that break getting worse?? Anyway surgery was scheduled for the next day, which was Sara's birthday of all days! So we headed out for dinner that night instead of the next and made arrangements for Grandma to come stay and help take care of him the next week when we would all be at work. Surgery went great and now my eldest son has a titanium plate with 8 lovely little screws holding it all together. Now he just needs to figure out how he is going to pay for it all.
We are catching up here a little bit now!! Saturday the 4th of April. Kris' 17th birthday and Junior-Senior Prom. Of course who would he go with but Kenzie :)
I know Kris has a really dorky down turned smirk in this next picture, but that's what I like about it. We see this face so often, especially when we are goofing off and I have never captured it before!
After the last one they were done - no more they both said!! I kinda had to agree with them, it was really cold and all Kenzie had was the shawl. So off to dinner at The Bay and then to prom and the after party.
Wow, enough catching up tonight. If I stay up much longer, my hubby will be home from work as he is now back to swing shift :) As much as I miss him at night, I really feel I get more done when he is not here (gosh I don't want to hurt his feelings though!)
So I am going to sign off for tonight but I will be back soon with some awesome pictures of my going away party from work :)
