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Saturday, January 27, 2007

Valentine's Gift

As a Valentine's gift for Jay, my cousin, her husband and myself planned a surprise trip to Gatlinburg, TN this weekend. I am writing from the cabin right now. Sitting in front of the fireplace while Jay watches ESPN and highlights about his Colts. Janella and her husband are enjoying the nice hot tub as we speak. There are two master king suites with a jacuzzi in each room. It seems like a pretty nice cabin.

Below are some pics of the cabin. We hope to have some fun down here tomorrow. The scrapbook outlet and the Christian bookstore are on the schedule tomorrow. Jay and Jon are of course worried about where we are planning on eating. The Applewood Applebarn for breakfast and we are still deciding on our supper plans.

Getting ready to leave from Independence, KY

Jay is ready to head for Gatlinburg, TN.

The king suite and jacuzzi downstairs.

The fireplace in the upstairs living room.

The main living room of the cabin. There is WiFi in the living room so that is definitely a plus for bloggers like Janella and myself. GRIN

Monday, January 22, 2007

Sew Wonderful


Thanks to my mother and father, I received a nice Kenmore sewing machine for Christmas. I love to quilt (thanks mom! thanks senora finch!) I remember my mom quilting and then Senora Finch gave a class on quilting and what a blast that was. I have a twin size quilt completely done except for the binding around the outer edge. It's been done a couple years now but I didn't have my own machine so I couldn't do it. Now I will be able to finish it soon.
Right now I am working on a small crib quilt. I had all the blocks done on Saturday and finished putting them all together yesterday afternoon (snow!) and tonight. I basted everything together and started quilting a couple blocks tonight. I love to quilt. I like that even more than putting the blocks together I think.
I can't wait to do another large quilt. I am trying to come up with some cool colors to do it in. I was thinking a black and white with music notes for a friend in the Cayman Islands, but that might be a little beyond my scope. I would probably go color blind from all the black and white.

Friday, January 19, 2007

MWS

As I sat alone on this chilly Friday evening, I began to wonder about my current status as a married woman. How is it that once a person becomes married it seems relationships with single friends seem to falter? I totally understand the whole "they are newly weds" and the "I can't really relate to them anymore since they are married" type of statements.
But friends are still friends, right? I was thinking that one of my friends got married a couple years ago and I do remember leaving her alone for some time after she was married but it wasn't too much time, and we were over at each others houses talking, joking. She even came over and went swimming with me.
So I guess I am suffering from MWS (married woman syndrome). That's not to say that I didn't notice how things changed even when we were engaged, but I guess it just stands out more now that I am married. This is by no means a bash on my friends and I hope you don't take it that way. I think you newer married ladies would agree with me, but perhaps not?
I think I also feel in limbo because Jason and I have no real friends around here that are married. The only other couple we have been out with is my cousin and her husband but with them living in Indy it is hard to find time to do things together. Of course, there is always the usual schedule conflict with anyone we might want to hang out with. At this point, I think we are just kinda hanging out with each other. This isn't a bad thing by any means and I treasure our time together after so many months of long distance dating. But you can only stare at someone so long before you go cross eyed! Just kidding.
The funny thing is, I am loner. I love being alone, reading, writing, quilting or just thinking. (I know...weird!) Outside of family, in the last three and a half months we have received two invitations from other couples. The first one something came up and we couldn't go. The other was a New Year's eve party with another newly married couple, their parents and some friends which we were able to attend. Again, I am not complaining or slighting my friends, it is just different.
Speaking of different, how weird was it to stay a night at my parents house (or his for that matter) after we were married! LOL That was a pretty weird feeling. Good ole Dad said he would make sure the couch was ready for me and that the spare bedroom was ready for Jason, just like the good ole dating days. That was good for a laugh, but Jay wasn't having any of it.
Sigh...a new chapter in life - a rather interesting and romantic one to be sure.
And if you look really close, you can see Jay in the reflection of my sunglasses. How professional! GRIN!

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Wacko Weekend


You would have thought my parents were considering starting a small business - a florist shop. There were so many flowers in there it could have been the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati!! Well, maybe not quite but good grief. Then, of course, there were several dozen cards lying everywhere in the living room and lining the picture window sill. Wow, I think my mom feels loved.
It was a quick weekend, but fun nonetheless. I left work on Friday at 3:45, drove up to Miamisburg (or some place like that) and waited in the parkling lot of a Cingular store. Jay works for a company called Shred-it and that was his last stop of the day. I was picking him up there and heading for mom and dad's house.
While sitting in the car for about an hour waiting for Jay to arrive, I had time to ponder many things. I am not a person who likes to have the radio blaring while I am driving...that is, unless, it is a very sunny day, about 80 degrees - at that point, the windows go down, and the country music comes blaring out of my windows! GRIN!
While pondering the various happenings of the day, I was stunned to watch an old lady, who could barely see over the steering wheel mind you, drive up and park. However, either she was blind or completely disregarding certain parking rules, because she drove up and parked OVER the line between two parking spaces, blatantly taking up both of them. She was actually parked crooked over that dividing line which made it even more apparent that she should be driving. As she attempted to stand up out of her car, she took a couple tries before she actually was standing up. She slowly stumbled up to the Cingular store, slightly hunched over. Lord help us!
In the meantime, Jay's huge Shred-it truck pulls up and parks behind her blocking her in until they can grab the shredding material from the store and push it in their truck. Jay finished his job and jumped in the passenger seat of our trusty Grand Prix, Jake. The Shred-it truck pulls away and here is this little old lady determined to get out of her two parking spaces before another truck blocks her in. She slowly, ever so slowly, pulls out of her spot, the nearest vehicle a good 30 feet away but nonetheless she creeps out of her spot. A few seconds later, she applies the brake and puts it into drive...or at least I thought she did. However, when she took her foot off the brake, she was still going backwards. It took a couple seconds to realize this and again she braked, spent a couple seconds and began backing up again. She fiddled with the gears again, flashed her lights a person trying to go around her since she was in the middle of the road in the parkling lot, and began backing up even more.
All this time, I am wondering what in tarnation is she doing behind a wheel!! This time she is mad. She throws up her hands and then starts fiddling with the gear shift again. It appears she can't figure out how to get into drive. Cars were swerving around her and I thought she was getting scared. Jay was about to hop out of the car and go help her, when she actually started going forward, at about 1/2 mile an hour. At which point, I pull out behind her to see what happens next. The parking lot is jammed on this Friday night and she slowly makes her way through the traffic.
What I want to know is how in the world does she still have her driver's license?? Beside the obvious difficulty in knowing how to put the car into drive, I could barely see her above the wheel. Anybody else see a problem here? Thirdly, what in the world was she doing in a cell phone store? Do you really think she could operate a cell phone if she can't drive? YIKES! This thought of course led to another thought, surely she wouldn't try to drive her car AND talk on her cell phone??? AGGGGHHH!

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Homecoming

Well, my mom is home now and resting, comfortably I hope. It looks like she will be off work for some time to come. Part of her lung hasn't re-inflated and probably never will so she will have to get used to that.
Last night, Jay and I joined a group of friends at the Don Pablos on the river in Newport and celebrated a friend's birthday. Rather interesting group.
The sad part was a couple tables over were two people, one a man and the other an "it." It really amazes me how people present themselves anymore. There were several of us trying to figure out if "it" was a male or female. As I was trying to figure it out, a thought hit me - No matter how sinful we think someone is, God loves him/her! Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that especially when the person is so much different than myself. Makes you wonder what kind of family life that person had. God help us to love others as You love them.
Please continue to pray for my Momma. She is doing better but has a long road to walk. She is going to kill me when she finds out I put this on here. Oops!

Monday, January 01, 2007

A God Thing

As you may or may not know, the last several days have been terrifying for my family. I can barely believe all this stuff has happened myself. Let me explain.

After working my regular 8 hour job at the jail on December 27, I went home like any other night. I was tired and Jay didn't arrive home until later in the evening. We went to bed around 9 p.m. At 10:45 my cell phone began ringing. The caller ID read "Dani." My sister knows that we get up early so I assumed she wasn't calling just to chat. I answered it and she her tone of voice immediately made me sit up in bed.

"Dad just called the squad and they are taking Mom to the hospital." Let me give a little background. She had surgery a couple weeks ago and during the surgery the surgeons discovered she had a hernia. Since they were already inside, they repaired the hernia. Some eight days later, December 27, she followed up with her surgeon. She complained of shortness of breath and some back and shoulder pain. She asked him if perhaps she could have a collapsed lung. He assured her she wouldn't be up walking around if she had a collapsed lung. He advised her it was probably pain from the healing hernia repair.
She went on home, went to Walmart and out to eat with Dad. They were back home and just getting ready to go to bed, when she felt like she was going to pass out. We live in the country and if there is an emergency we normally pile into a vehicle and head to the hospital as it is quicker than calling 911 and waiting for ambulance to arrive out at our country home. Mom insisted Dad call 911 immediately, a shock to him since we have never called an ambulance to our home in 14 years we have lived there. Dad called them and in the mean time, Ally tried to get mom to focus and stay awake but she was fading fast. The ambulance made a wrong turn but they finally arrived.

Dani and I decided we had better get moving towards Greenville. Jay, my brother and I met up with Dani at a gas station about 10 minutes from our house. We made the 90 mile trip in an hour and fifteen minutes. At one point we stopped along the way because my dad called and said they were going to Careflight her so we thought about heading to the hospital where she would be flown into but in the end we made the drive to Wayne Hospital.

To make a long story shorter, they got her to the hospital. She had no pulse and they couldn't get a blood pressure either. The ER doctor who knew mom well didn't recognize her when she arrived in the squad, grey and disheveled. She advised Dad that she didn't think my mom was going to make it. They were able to get her to X-ray and determined that she did have a collapsed lung. They immediately inserted a chest tube which released the pressure and blood quickly flowed out the tube.
After some scary moments they did get her stabilized. They advised us they were transporting her to a hospital in Dayton. But then later told us they had to change the hospital. She was now going to the Dayton Heart Hospital. They believed she had a blood clot between her lung and a rib. We piled into three different vehicles and beat the ambulance carrying my mom and dad to the Dayton Heart Hospital. At that point, my mom's brother had made it up from northern Kentucky and was waiting in the lobby when we arrived.
To date, she has had major surgery wherein they found an abnormal artery. This artery appears in less than 1.5% of the population and she was only the third case the surgeon had ever seen. It was an extra artery than ran from the aorta to the lung. This arter was nicked during the hernia repair and had been oozing blood into the chest cavity since her surgery 8 days prior. She has lot over 3 liters of blood to date.
She still resides in the ICU at Dayton Heart. We were hoping she would arrive home tomorrow but today was not a good day and she looked very white so it may still be some time before we welcome her home. Please pray for her!

Below are several pictures of us waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to tell us something. Many friends and family have come and visited and several waited with us while she was in surgery. At one point I had been at the hospital for over 30 hours and had been awake for over 35 hours almost straight except for a couple naps which didn't seem like much in comparison to how long I had been awake.

I called this a post a God Thing because God definitely had his hand on my mom during this past week. She could have been transported to a regular hospital but instead she was sent to a heart hospital even though her blood clot appeared to be related to her lungs not her heart.

December 28 was my birthday and though it was riddled with anxiety and fear, Jay still managed to make it special for me. He reserved a Nascar room at a hotel. It was kinda fun since I had never been there. Below are some pictures.

My uncle and cousin from Kentucky. Sitting around during her surgery.

The Nascar room at Wildwood Inn