Faith Renewed

You may recall that Wil was robbed a few weeks ago outside his office. You may also recall my rant about you this city is rotten and full of disgusting people. What I didn't tell you about is how creepy it was knowing that there was some miscreant running about with not only my husband's entire identity in his hand, but also our address and, most creepy of all, family photos. It makes me shudder to think of some creep studying the lines of my son's face, maybe taking a little pride in how he's taken advantage of that smiling schmuch in the picture who's got his arm around his wife's shoulders.

Totally sick. And yet, oddly, I have very few qualms about sharing pictures here on my blog. Probably mainly because I know my audience, and I monitor my statcounter religiously. I know who's looking, and more importantly, who isn't.


Fast forward to this evening. We all arrived home at about the same time, and as I fed the critters and prepared to cook dinner (meaning sat down and read my email), J and Wil walked to the mailbox, returning with a suspiciously unmarked package. Just a simple largish, white envelope with the post office stamp as the return address. It had hubby's full name written in a sloppy and yet girlish script above the address, and inside was the unmistakable bulk of a wallet.

How sweet of someone to come upon the wallet, perhaps lying in an alleyway or along the side of the road, and take the time to stop at the post office to return it. Even sweeter was the fact that the family picture was there, right where it should be, and tucked neatly into the bill section of the wallet was every canceled credit card, insurance card, even the doctor's appointment reminder card.

There really are good souls out there, and it makes me feel somewhat guilty for ever losing my faith in humanity.

Going to Hell in a Hurry

I actually had a cute little post planned for tonight. One that included heart-melting pictures of little puppies with huge amounts of determination. Instead, you get to hear me rant about how this town, and this world in general, is going to crap.

Hubby was just robbed. 6:30pm, and along the side of a rather busy road. And of course, no one saw a thing.

A little background... hubby delivers medical equipment. He drives a big white van with the name of a major medical provider on the side of it. His office is located in a horrible area of town, less than a block from the river, less than a block from the homeless shelter, and directly behind a pay by the hour sort of motel of ill repute. He's frequently been approached by less than savory individuals requesting a handout, or some food, or the bolder ones ask for drugs. You see, it makes sense, since he's driving a van full of medical stuff, that he might also be carrying a little more... say hydrocodone. And for the record, he doesn't. About the most potent thing he has on board is oxygen. But anyway...

He's on call this week, which means that he's the last driver back to the shop, and when he gets there, everyone else is gone. Now, he has to stop in to replenish his van for the night in case he's called, and to unload any equipment that he may have picked up. I've never liked the idea of him being there after hours, by himself, in the dark, but what can you do?

So far he's been lucky, as have all the other drivers, but tonight the call of nature took over logic, and he left the van unlocked long enough to run into the shop and take care of business. Dumb move, but hey, what are the odds?

They cleaned him out-- wallet, radio, whatever else was in the van, GPS.

Now, believe me, I'm not sweating the little stuff. The only thing I give a damn about is that my husband is alive and ok. The rest of the stuff-- just a minor inconvenience.

I'm not one of those people who's oblivious to reality, but I do tend to be quite trusting, and I do like to give people, and the world in general, the benefit of the doubt. I think I'm over that now.

t

Happy Birthday, Honey

Today is Wil's birthday, and J and I have busied ourselves in the kitchen making him a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake as a surprise. I absolutely loathe cheesecake (yes, I do know I'm weird), so I'm sure he'll realize just how special he is. :)

We've also got a big pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove for dinner. I wanted to make something fancy and gourmet to celebrate the occasion, but he's on call tonight, and there's no telling what time he'll get home. No sense trying to make something that needs timing.

I really wanted to be able to get him something nice as a gift this year, but financially, it's just not a possibility. For the past couple of years he's bemoaned the fact that we don't have a very complete tool set. Sure, we've got a hammer, some screwdrivers, even a pretty decent set of ratchets, but anything requiring more power than my hand can deliver requires a call to my sister, or a trip to the parents.

Now, it's not a big secret that I'm the handyman of the family. I do most of the repair work around here. Although, to his credit, he's gotten better at doing some things. For instance, a month or so ago, he broke his key off in the front door and had to replace the deadbolt, and even managed to do so without me here to stand over his shoulder.

So, he's feeling all manly now and wants tools. Since I know that I'll either get the wrong one, or spend too much, I made him go to Home Depot with me last night to pick out the set he wants. He'll have to wait until payday, but he'll be getting this:


Actually, the set we're getting him comes with a flashlight, too. We've decided that this is probably the best deal. Ryobi makes a decent product, and since they make a whole line of tools that use the same battery, it'll make adding on to the set in the future easier. I'll be quite excited to see just how handy hubby becomes.

Either way, it's what he wants, and I only wish I could get it today and surprise him. Oh well, poor planning leads to poor results, I guess. At least he's getting the cheesecake. :)

Happy 4th

Hope everyone is having a great 4th of July.

A brief rundown of our day for you:

I woke up early this morning, and being the good girl that I am, I made my coffee and set to work on some school work. I won't lie though; the idea of having 2 hours to knit on my mystery stole was incredibly hard to resist. Still, I'm already WAY behind on the school work, and I couldn't live with myself if I spent such valuable quite time on anything other than the dictation.

About an hour into it, J came padding down the hall sleepily and curled up in my lap for a little bit of cuddle time. He's got this new thing where he likes to have his picture taken. Of course, he couldn't have entered this phase while at Disney, or any other time where I might have liked to have taken a decent photo. Regardless, how can you resist?

This one turned out so cute, I might have to use it for everything.

After some good cuddling, we went and woke up Dada and went to get donuts for breakfast. Yeah, I know, you don't have to tell me how incredibly UNhealthy they are. But they're a special treat, and J really looks forward to them once a month or so. We all got dressed, or at least put on shoes with our jammies, and went to the local Dunkin' Donuts. Now, whoever is in charge of doin' the donuts totally screwed up this morning because by the time we got there at 9:30-ish, there were no donuts to be had. Ok, so they had SOME donuts, but they were the nasty maple, cream filled, rolled in coconut, topped with peanuts type. Not a single glazed or even just plain donut in the shop. And poor J... all he wanted was a "pink one with frinkles" and I couldn't make it happen for him. After giving an earful to the poor girl behind the counter about how a place with the word "Donut" in their title could possibly NOT have any donuts, we bought what we thought might possibly pass J's lips, and we sat and ate.

Now, here's the part where I get to eat the big old slice of humble pie. You see, I'm not so nice when I wake up in the morning. Most folks know not to mess with or interfere with my routine before 10 a.m., and I consider not having donuts at a donut shop meddling, so I was not so pleasant.

After getting J to eat half of his not pink or frinkly donut, I got him settled all into the car and just as we were pulling out, some lady yells "Ms! I think you left your purse inside!"

Sure enough, I had. The kind lady had been good enough to turn the found object in to the girl behind the counter, and I had to humbly, and very much looking like an idiot, go in and thank her (the girl I had just finished reaming about the no donut deal)profusely for saving my big green ugly bag for me. Gotta love mornings like that.

I came home and decided the best way to deal with my misplaced anger/annoyance would be to get out and do the yard. It needed doing in a big way, and I'd much rather do it myself than watch hubby do it while fighting back the urge to point out every blade he's missed.

The poor yard got the full wrath of my grumpiness and I emerged triumphant and with a yard nearly worthy of Southern Living's front page... or at least a little less Adam's Family-ish. I even have the blister on my thumb to prove it.

After a long shower, I was feeling human again, so we decided to go out and try again at having a good day.

Here's J all dressed up in his 4th of July garb.




He's so irresistible!

We somehow ended up at Best Buy. You see, I try to be a good wife, and electronics and cars are like hubby's yarn. Unfortunately, his passions are a little more expensive than mine, and so he never gets to indulge. For the nearly 8 years that we've been together the poor guy has dreamed of and saved for a new tv, only to have that money have to go to some other worthy cause like car repairs, or getting a house out of foreclosure (long story, and this post is long enough), or a month of unexpected bedrest during my pregnancy. He's quietly just stifled his little dream and given it up over and over.

Well, it was finally time for him to get his wish. We'd saved and saved, and tucked away here and there, and before one more thing came and took it away from him again, I finally convinced him to bite the bullet and just buy the damned thing.

Before:


And the glorious after!


This is not the permanent arrangement for those who may be wondering, but it works for now. Eventually we'll either wall-mount it, or we'll take the top off the existing entertainment center and use the base to hold the new beast. To be honest, I like it being up high enough to keep the little fingers away.

So hubby finally has the toy he's been lusting after for all these years. He's a happy man, and that makes me a happy wife.

Of course, the fourth wouldn't be complete without fireworks, which we did go to watch. But the weather was terrible for them, keeping the smoke low to the ground and obscuring the view of the show. Oh well. J was so exhausted he had no interest in them anyway.

Ok, so this monster post is drawing to a close. I am picking up an extra shift at work tomorrow and must wake up at an ungodly hour. But before bed, I think I'm going to go veg on the couch and ooh and aah over the 40" of HD LCD (I'll pretend I understand what all that means) goodness.

Good eggs, coffee, bone tired

You know, I can do a whole lot of whining about this whole hospital experience, but it won't do anyone a lick of good. So instead, let me tell you about how I've tried ever so hard to recognize and be thankful for all the good stuff instead.

Up to this point we've been blessed with some really great staff. The nurses have been friendly, chatty, quick to respond to the point of almost spoilage. It's almost as if there's some universal law that says "enough crap! Give that girl a break!"

Today's been another long one. Wil continues to spike fevers and his white count is still through the roof, but I can tell he's improving just by the decrease in the amount of moaning and groaning going on.

Podiatry came in this morning and did some work on the nasty foot- helped clean up some of the worst of the oozing stuff, scrubbed it and wrapped it. Tomorrow morning they'll surgically remove the nail to help it drain some more. I don't know who's going to find it more uncomfortable, me or Wil. I've got a creepy thing about nails anyway, and he gets the added benefit of drugs.

They told us this morning that they were going to send him down for an MRI to rule out a blood clot, but so far that hasn't happened. I don't know if they're just overbooked in MRI, or if they decided against it. They'll probably come at 2 a.m. to do it, just when he finally gets into a good sleep.

And honestly, no one really knows what's going on, or what caused him to get this bad. Even the doctor said he's never seen anything like this in an otherwise healthy person.

Wil asked this morning if he might be at risk of losing more than just his toenail, and didn't exactly get a straight answer. That's a little unsettling, but we're being optimistic about it for now. As long as the streaking and swelling continues to go down, I'm assuming everything is good.

Meanwhile, not to sound like a whiney, self-centered wife, but I'm exhausted. I'm running on coffee alone and being torn between being here, and the adorable little munchkin that begs to go home and wants me with him. It's a tough place to be in and it breaks my heart. I only cry in the car, though.

Anyway, that's the update for now. I'm sure I'll have a great post about the gore of toenail removal tomorrow. God... I get all cringey just thinking about it!