Ray of light?

Holy HELLo has there been a cloud over my head.
 A big, fat dark cloud following me every where I go effecting our lives.

In the past few weeks we had had:

• Cutereba in a kitty. (Google that if your brave. I will warn you it is a member of the botfly family though)
• A/C acting up
• Washing machine flood the garage. (someone tried to help sop up the water...with all the clean towels)
• Off and on toothache for me due to a bad tooth 
• Trip to the ER for hubby's asthma flaring and his rescue inhaler not working.
• Kiwi nipping the neighbor child. Child stuck hand under wooden fence to pet him but Kiwi was agitated by child's grandfather's MALE dog that was standing on the other side of their gate. No one saw the bite but it had to have been him. Neighbor clearly said child stuck hand under fence. He just wanted to make sure everyone was current on shots and they all are.  He said it broke the skin. Child is only about 6 and his parents are recently divorced (father kept the house) Kiwi has snuck under fence in past and gone over there for lovin before so I understand child trying to pet him. :(  I feel horrible about it.

I spoke to an appliance repair dude that comes into my job about the washer. He told me something easy to look for then said if it wasn't that he would come look for $20 and just charge parts. He never called me back today. (in his defense I know he was taking his 9m old to ER after he left my job so I am sure it had to do with that) I decided I would just google and try and see if I could figure out what it was on my own. I took the machine apart (quite empowering to see the guts of machine) and looked for anything obvious. Flooding had happened three days prior though so everything was dry. I was about to give up when a dark line caught my eye. The drain hose from the water pump had a crack in it. I took it off and took the part up to the local appliance store. They didn't have a new part but they were able to sell me a used one for five dollars.  Yup! I fixed the washer for five bucks and a little time and aggravation.

I will end this whaa whaa post with a picture taken tonight of my two stinkers.

Moving on up!

on the scale? Really just staying the same which is all I can ask for at this point. I am not doing horrible but I am not doing great either. Sounds like a personal problem to me though. :P

I am not sure if you remember me mentioning that I was dealing with personal stress back in July. It was regarding my job, and feeling trapped. I finally decided to start applying other places and started watching the want ads in September. I ended up not applying because all the stuff with coworker's son and the fear of the unknown. I did however mention to my area manager my unhappiness with my current position at the beginning of Oct. We started discussing the idea of a position change. I felt good enough about it that I got the new car. Then the VP of Operations quit and my brother's stuff started up. Everything came to a screeching halt while we tried to deal with changes.

The new car did help my attitude towards work a bit I admit. I love having a fanceh new (used) car.

Word came down the line on Friday and I am now officially promoted. :) I will still be in my store 30 hours a week. The other 10 I will be traveling to other stores and auditing their paperwork. I know it sounds boring to some but I am excited to get out of my little box.

Tomorrow is my first day in the new position so I am off to dreamland. Already took a melatonin as I am sure my brain will not shutdown easily tonight.

Surgery pictures (link)

http://myswanlake.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-brothers-surgery-pics-warning.html



I figured this was the safest way to show them. That way you can control what you see. 

Grateful

I keep putting off blogging.

Not because I don't want to.

Because I have so much to blog about and don't have the time to sit and type forever. LOL

Right now though I just want to express my gratefulness. I am so very grateful that my brother is alive and HOME AGAIN!!  :)

 He was released Friday afternoon and hubby picked him up as I was at work till 7pm.(My mom planned to come up again to stay with him again but wanted to wait till Saturday if possible)  I spent the night at his house with him Friday to help him out with anything he needed. I had to be at work Saturday at 9 am but it worked out as my parents got there at 9:30 am. On the way there Friday I stopped and got two sweet teas from McDonalds with no ice. (I know he loves his tea and I was pretty sure he hadn't had any yet) When I asked him if he wanted a McDonald's sweet tea his eyes got big and he was like YES PLEASE!  LOL  He was a happy man just to be able to drink his beloved tea again.

Run down for anyone who is just hitting my blog for the first time in several weeks. (I am so behind on everyone's blogs!) It has now been a month since we have been dealing with all of this.

Older brother admitted to hospital for bowel obstruction. Seven days of treatment using NG tube down nose into belly to try and suck out the blockage and it isn't working. (Nothing by mouth allowed during that time, so no food or drink entered his body in seven days other than IV stuff)  Exploratory surgery to find out what it going on and possibly remove portion of bowel. Found out that it was a ruptured appendix that had started healing over-adhesions were webbing out and effecting his intestines.  Surgeon gave him an appendectomy and cleaned out all of the tissue. Six days later he was released from hospital with an active infection. Nurses realized this was developing and asked DR's for antibiotics but they were not given. Four days later after a follow up appt. with a primary we took him back to the hospital due to infection. Surgeon tried to clean it out twice straight up but it wasn't working. (once in ER and once in his room)  My brother ended up with a second surgery that left him literally sliced wide open. He has to heal from the inside out.

 I do have pictures and permission to share but they are quite graphic so I don't want to just slap them up. I am trying to figure out the best way to post them up as clickable links so that you can choose to look if you want.

I am up several pounds from not taking care of myself and choosing comfort food. Family birthday party today and I hated hearing how good I looked. (I haven't seen this family since May) I hated it because I felt like a fraud. "How many pounds have you lost now? 40 right?" said a cousin. "Umm... well it was 40 but with all of my brother stuff it is more like 35ish now" was my reply. UGH!  

Just wow

I think it is safe to say that one and two (left field) have hit. Maybe even three as well.  I sure hope so because then there will not be one looming in the distance.

(graphic ahead- warning)













Oh so they did surgery this morning. Opened him up and cleaned out all the dead tissue and ick that was in there. I have to say I was not prepared for what I saw when they changed his dressing. OMG! I freaked out when I saw that his belly is sliced wide open! I didn't verbally freak out boy did my fingers do some walking with texting.  Before he had staples with a open wound for drainage. You all know about the other area that was icky.  I do have a picture but it is extremely graphic, not to mention private as well.  I can give you an idea though.  Top is before.  Reddish area is the open wound. Bottom brown staple is the infection area that was oozing.   Second on is the current one. Basically he is still sliced open with string on each side holding him together. The blue are bumper type things so the string doesn't cut the flesh.

Baby momma is back up the 5 hrs but only for the weekend. I am falling asleep sitting here I am so exhausted. Now you have an idea of what in the heck is going on now.