Results tagged “weather” from KatScan

Did any one else Mom or parents call rain or snow boots, galoshes?
I was just thinking about that when I was searching for some slip in
women's rain boots.

It is officially the rainy season here, it started on June 1st, (Sebastian's birthday) and goes through until November 30th.
All I have to wear are sandals, open-toed sandals, not exactly good shoes for rain, so I was doing some window/internet shopping to see if I can find some slip-on rain boots.
I need slip-ons because I cannot bend over to lace up or tie any shoes.
The only other pair of shoes that I own are a pair of fur indoor/outdoor slip-on slippers.
Those are not exactly good for rain either.
I wore my sandals all last year, all through the rainy season, and it really sucked.
Massive puddles everywhere, no matter where I needed to go, puddles everywhere and no semi-dry spots to walk on, so my feet got absolutely soaked in the nasty, muddy, and sometimes garbage and debris strewn puddles.
I do not want to go through any puddles this year, so if you find a pair of women's size 10 slip-on rain boots, (galoshes) let me know OK?
Thanks!

One of the cats marked their territory on my small electric heater, the only thing that keeps the house warm during the winter when it gets really super cold here.
Yes, I'm super furious, but luckily it wasn't really expensive, it was only about $35, so at least I am not out a ton of money.
I noticed that whichever cat did it, did it after I came home from a friend's house that has dogs, and I had been with the friend and her dogs for hours, I had pet the dogs, played with them let them lick me, so yeah, one of my cats was all hell no, and made sure that if the dogs who licked me ever came in the house, that they would know that this was a house for cats, not dogs.

But now this means that I have no heater for the future winters if it gets super cold.
I saw an infomercial for a handmade wood and  electric fireplace, and I was like wow, I like that.
It provides heat and looks good, I like it.
But if I did something like that, if I was going to spend money on an electric fireplace, I would want a really good looking one that is also more functional than just a heater.
I found this one that would perfectly match my coffee and end tables that are a gorgeous dark cherry finish.
I've had them for about 8-9 years now, and they are still in totally awesome shape.
The coffee table is 5 feet long, it has a drawer and a hidden storage compartment.
If you have never seen the table before, you would never know that it's there, heck, I have forgotten that it's there a few times.
 The tables are all solid dark cherry like I said, and they have wrought iron legs, and a wrought iron shelf underneath each one, they are really beautiful tables.
Anyway, this electric fireplace that I found would look really good with my table set, and it has storage for a tv on top, my vcr and dvd player, and even more shelves for all of our dvds and vcr tapes.
The storage areas and the "fireplace" are all behind glass doors too, this would look so good in here with my tables and couches.



















It's a little more money than I will have in a very long time, but maybe an income tax return some one of these years could help pay for a really good looking and functional new addition to my furniture.

I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, (among all of the other things that are wrong with me)  but RA is an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the joints.
An autoimmune disease is defined as a disease that can not distinguish healthy bodily tissues from harmful foreign substances.
Rheumatoid Arthritis is an inflammatory disease that is capable of producing systemic problems (when the disease affects organs of the body).
Your immune system, a little science/medical info for you, is your body's way of protecting itself, of fighting off illnesses and other things which are foreign to your body, so that you can get back to being healthy.
Your immune system is supposed to help you, not hurt you.
With RA, the immune system is attacking healthy tissues and joints throughout the entire body.
When your immune system is already fighting and battling off the healthy tissues that your body thinks are foreign enemies, there's not much left over to take care of any real things that get into your body and make you sick. 

My joints ache all of the time, they get worse when the weather changes, rain or cold, and then it's just a daily battle to try and keep the pain away long enough to do all of the things that you need to do.
I take vitamins and supplements every single day to try and help my immune system fight off everything that it needs to fight off, so that I can try to be somewhat healthy and not in miserable illness all of the time.
I take a cal/mag/zinc supplement, a multivitamin, and an antioxidant every single day, but I wonder if taking a much stronger vitamin, like prenatal vitamins, would be even more beneficial to someone like me.
Prenatal vitamins have like all of the best stuff in them, they have the best of everything in them, and more of it.
I'm not pregnant nor do I want to ever have another baby, and even though it's been a long time since I was pregnant, I do recall that I felt the healthiest when I was pregnant and taking prenatal vitamins every day.
My hair was awesome, my skin was looking great, not a single blemish, my nails were long and strong, and I just felt terrific, so maybe taking a prenatal now would help me.

It's just a thought, something I thought about tonight while I sit here feeling miserable once again. 

I saw a blogging friend of mine had posted about looking at some Orlando Florida hotels for a vacation, to get away from the cold and snow where they live, but I got some bad news for them.
Florida is at a 26 year record low for temps, the coldest it's been in 26 years, and we here in Sarasota are in the low 30s every night, and Orlando is in the 20s every night.
I'm not kidding, take a look at the Orlando Sentinel weather section.

They are in the 20s and 30s every night, and will be for the remainder of this cold spell, and probably will be in the 30s every night for the rest of the winter.
Now that may be warmer than some place in the mid-west, but it's absolutely way too cold for Florida.
Brrr.

I'm starting to get really annoyed with the cold weather we're having.
These are the warnings in effect for our area.
Freeze warnings, freeze watches, wind chill advisories.
This is Florida!
It is simply not supposed to be this cold here.

















The lowest that it's going to be this week at night is 32.
The highest temp at night is going to be 43.
One of the things that I loved about living here during the winter is that it never really got too cold.
It has been, and will be, so cold this winter that it hurts me to even get up and walk to the bathroom and try to sit down on the toilet just to go pee.
I had to use our portable heater last night, all night, because it was far too cold in here.
I slept on the couch so I could be in the same room as the heater, and I had 2 blankets on me to try and stay warm so that I would be able to wake up at 6am to wake Sebastian up for school without being in too much pain.
It didn't really help me much at all.
I woke up in horrible pain and have been in pain all day long even though it "warmed up" to 52 degrees.

I am hoping that maybe next week it gets warmer.
I need my usual winter weather to come back.
Winter is usually about 70 during the day and in the high 50s to 60s at night, that's perfect.
I usually love the winter weather, I mean, who wouldn't love to have the temps at a perfect mid-70 all day long and a perfectly slightly cool 55-65 at night?
That's usually what our winters are like, they are never like this.

Global warming my ass.

Shahiro, the stunted growth kitty who is now 4 years old as of November, is still the same size as a 12 week old kitten, she's tiny.
And because she's so tiny, she's always freezing cold when winter comes around.
The last few days at night, it's been a bit cooler, not cold cold, but cooler than it normally is around here.
If anyone lays down on the couch with a blanket, she's right there and curling up into a ball on your stomach or between your legs, or right on your chest, so that she can sleep in a warm place.
I should get a heated blanket for myself for this winter, and then when she comes to lay down with me, no matter where she lays, she'll be nice and warm.

I'm sitting here right now with the front door open allowing the cool night air to come in.
It's not really cool, like up north Maine cool, but it's very nice outside right now.
It's currently 69degrees, that's awesome, I LOVE it!
By next Monday and Tuesday, the nightly temps will be down to 59/58 degrees.
I can't wait!

I really can't wait for December through the end of February.
That's when the daily temps are going to be mid-60's, and the nightly temps in the low 40's.
I love that kind of weather, it's perfect for me, but the teens get cold at night.
They have lived here since they were little kids, so their bodies are totally adjusted to the weather and they get cold in the winter.
I already dug out the portable electric heater and cleaned it all off, dusted it, dusted the coils and the fan blades, and wiped it all down so it will be ready for use on those nights when the teens say they are cold.
The only thing I have left to do to it is to wash out the furnace filters under the tap in the bathtub. It has the same kind of small thin filter that my AC unit does, it's just a small, well 2 small thin filters that you just rinse out, flap dry, and put it back in.
I usually set it up in the dining room and aim it towards the center of the house, towards their bedrooms, and I close my bedroom door so the heat bounces back and just heats up the back part of the house where their rooms are.
I don't sleep in my bed much, I rarely sleep, but if I do sleep in my room in the winter, I sleep with the door closed anyway.
My room stays cold if I keep the door closed, I don't like sleeping with all of the heat that the heater blows, way too warm for me.

When I went for a walk to 7-eleven last night, it's now Saturday morning, so Friday night, I saw that one of my neighbors up the street from me was throwing out all kinds of stuff.
I think they bought the house, so this is all probably stuff left in the house from the last owners.
They bought the house as is, I do remember the for sale sign, the house was really cheap because of all of the problems it has.
The sign said it was just $89,900, and it also said in big red letters, "AS IS".
It has been through like 3 owners in the last 4 years, there's something really wrong with it to go through that many owners in so few years.
I do know that a few years ago, one of the big trees in the backyard fell on or through the roof, so maybe that's the reason or one of the reasons, the house sold for so cheap and why it's been through so many owners.

Anyway, I couldn't help but notice all of the stuff being thrown out because there was so much of it.
Boxes and boxes of magazines and books, a couple of cabinets for what looked like the bathroom, a weight lifting bench that was seriously beat up, some weights to go on it, a box of old sneakers, a big broken wall mirror, and one of those roller weight thingies, it has a handle on each side, a weight in the middle, it looks like one of those industrial hand wheels thingies except that it has a handle on each side, not just one side, and you are supposed to get on the floor, face down, grab the handles and roll back and forth, like doing a push up with it, but rolls.
I guess you use that when doing push-ups because it makes it easier to do push-ups with it, you just roll back with it underneath you to move your body up, roll it forward to go back down.
I've used one of them before, it does make push-ups easier.

I wanted to take it home with me, it was in good shape, not all beat up like the weight bench is, and I wanted to grab some of the small hand weights that I saw in a box too, but Mark was with me and he's not supposed to carry anything heavier than 10lbs, and so tomorrow if the stuff is still there, I'll have Sebastian take a walk with me and grab it and the hand weights too.
Both Mark and I can use the weights and stuff to help strengthen our cores up.
He's not supposed to lift more than 10lbs, but he can use some of the smaller hand weights and that roller weight to do push-ups, and he can start doing some exercises to strengthen his core muscles.
He's going to need to get his abs in shape for his surgery when they decide to do it, so we might as well take those weights that other people are throwing away and put them to good use getting our bodies in shape.
I need to do core exercises myself, and so sitting in a chair with some small hand weights, tightening, flexing, and releasing my stomach muscles with each rep can help tighten up my ab muscles.
I can't do traditional ab exercises anymore, haven't been able to do a real sit-up or crunch in years now, but doing some small but simple ab flexing muscles can tighten them up, I've done it before, but adding some weights in my hands and raising them up and down, doing curls with them as I flex my ab muscles, can help tighten them up even faster because of the added weight.
I can teach Mark how to do this, how to get his abs in shape without trying to do sit-ups or crunches which hurt the lower lumbar area really bad, hell, just bending over to pick something up off of the floor hurts the lower back, so he will be happy to see that he can exercise his abs without the pain that is usually involved.
And this reminds me, I need to teach him how to do an ab workout while lying in bed.
I did this for months after my first surgery because they said that I needed to tighten my core up so my muscles would be able to support all of the new hardware, but I couldn't do regular workouts, so I would lie in bed on my back, suck in my stomach as tight as I could while inhaling, and then on the exhale, push my stomach muscles all of the way out, as far as they would go, it would make me look like I was 9 months pregnant, (hahah) and then inhale and suck in my abs again.
I would do as many reps of those as I could until it started to really hurt my back muscles or feel like it was starting to tearmy muscles or tear at the stitches, and when I'd get back up after putting my back brace on, I could really feel the difference.
After about 6 months of doing that, I could tell by looking in the mirror that it was working very well.
No I didn't end up with a set of rockin' 6-pack abs, but my stomach was definitely flatter and leaner looking.
It felt really good too, it physically felt good, I could really feel that both my stomach and back muscles were tighter and stronger, and it also helped to relieve some of the pain in my lower back.
I really need to teach him that exercise, it may help relieve some of the lumbar pain that he has.
I wish I had remembered this sooner, it could have helped him be out of some of the pain that he's in.
Well, better late than never right?
I can teach him this exercise now, and he can start getting his abs in shape and tighten up his back muscles so he can be ready for surgery and be out of some of the pain that he suffers from.
I should start doing it again too, I'm starting to get flabby looking in my gut again, and it does help with the lower back pain.

I posted about this week/ends issues with all of the rain we've been having, and stuff around the house not getting done like I wanted to, but man, the rain is really starting to piss me off now.
I'm in so much freaking pain right now.
The rods are freezing cold, I'm stiff as a board, and to top it off, I am blocked up like no tomorrow.
I am so blocked up I feel like I'm carrying quadruplets.
My stomach is all distended, it hurts, I just want it to stop.
I took the last of my stool softeners until I can get to the grocery store tomorrow.
I spent the whole day trying to fix the leak in the bathroom sink pipes, and now I'm too tired to do anything else.
I'm so blocked up, I can't even eat anything.
It sucks.

I'm so sick and tired of complaining.
I'm like a broken record and I'm sick of listening to myself complain, I can only imagine how other people feel about it.
I am so sick of being in pain, sick of being sick, sick of having to take pain pills to deal with the pain, sick of running out of pain pills because of the crappy rainy weather and having to double up just to be able to move, and then having to wait 3-4 days for my refills to be ready, being out of pain meds makes my body go through withdrawals which is absolutely horrible to deal with, you have no idea what a nightmare that is.

It has rained almost every single day for the last 7 days.
Every day for almost 2-3 hours per day.
The humidity goes up, the rain comes down, and the titanium rods get frozen solid, they get stiff and do not allow me to move.
I lay on the couch underneath my blanket trying to warm them up with my heating pad, I try to move, I try to get up and do all of the things that I need to do as a mother.
Cook dinner for my sons, do their laundry, go grocery shopping, but I can't, I can't do any of it.**
I can barely walk to the freaking bathroom without crying, never mind stand and cook dinner.
I hate the rainy season, I hate it so so much.
It hurts me, it makes me hurt, it makes my body stiff as a board, an unbreakable board, and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

I hate all of the pain pills, I hate it all.
I hate what I have to take, I hate how much I have to take, and I hate that after this next surgery, there will be even more of it to take, probably even higher doses, maybe even stronger ones, and that really, really bothers me.
I lay in my bed at night and cry about it sometimes, actually, a lot.

I hate what all of these pain medicines have done to my body and my mind.
I hate how my body requires them, needs them, and that at exactly after 6 hours, if I don't take another 1, my body starts screaming at me to take it.
My back starts to spasm, my stomach starts cramping up to let me know that it needs it or else there will be hell to pay in the form of diarrhea or vomit.
I go through withdrawals almost immediately if I do not take my pain medicines every 6 hours as I have been doing for the last 10+ years.
My body is so used to having them every 6 hours that my mind is trained to know exactly when I should have them.
I am fully addicted to my pain medicines.
I am totally ashamed to admit this, but I am at a loss of what to do right now because I'm having another fucking surgery.
When I 1st started seeing my pain manager after my 1st spine fusion surgery, I told him that I wanted to get off all of the pain pills, and that is what we were working on.
We had successfully gotten me off of almost all of them when we got the news that my neck vertebrae were basically killing me, and I had to have emergency surgery in 30 days or I was going to die in August 2008, and then I had the surgery on September 9th 2008.

But I was taking 320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 40 of those.
I had been taking 180, 30mg Oxycontin (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.
I had been taking 180, 250mg Soma (muscle relaxer) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.

I had the 1st spine fusion in February 2006, and spent the 1st year doing physical therapy and adjusting to life, and then that whole 2nd year and right up until I got the news about my neck, I spent it trying to get off all of the drugs.
I was working on it, I was slowly weaning off the drugs, it was working and it was going so well.
I wasn't having any painful withdrawal symptoms because my body was still getting the drugs it wanted, it was just getting them much more spaced out, many, many hours spaced out, we were doing it the right way, and we were so close to finally being off all of them, I was almost free of the drugs.

And then I had the cervical spine fusion surgery, and they put me back on:
320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone, 180, 40mg Oxycontin, and only 30 of the 250mg Soma per month.
I don't like the Somas, they knock me out for hours and hours, and when I wake up, I'm completely confused.
I don't know what day it is, where I am, where my kids are, anything, completely and utterly confused.
They don't have the nickname "soma coma" for nothing.

On June 29th, I'm having another cervical spine fusion surgery, this one will go all the way up to my occiptal bone in my skull, a metal plate will be attached to my skull permanently, I'll have new rods and screws, I'll be in a halo brace for anywhere from 3-6 months, there's a possibility that my throat swells shut during surgery and I'll need a trach tube in order to be able to breathe, a possibility that I won't be able to eat and swallow food so I may need a feeding tube.
There is no telling what kind of drugs they are going to put me on for the amount of pain that I will be in.
I'm going to have 4 screws in my skull for 3-6 months and a contraption on my head and shoulders for that long, it's going to be annoying and painful, I'm sure the drugs will be strong and flowing, and my body will love them.
And then it will be hell to get off of them.

My body is addicted to the pain medicine that I take and I am ashamed of that.
I am also very afraid of it, I am afraid of what they are going to give me next and for how long, and afraid of what it's going to be like to get off of it all when the time comes.
Withdrawals are very, very painful, your whole body hurts and aches, your skin crawls and itches, spasms, you hallucinate, every single inch of your body and mind is in absolute hell while coming off of the drugs and I admit to being terrified of what is going to happen and it's not even time for it yet, but it's because I know that with this next surgery the drugs they are going to give me are going to be even stronger than what I am taking right now and because I know how bad my body craves what I take right now.

I hate this.
I hate it all.

I have had a really bad couple of days here, still hurting pretty bad too.
It's been raining off and on since Thursday, so my joints, my bones, and the titanium, have just been in pure agony.
In yesterday's mail, I got a letter from Cindy, my surgeon's nurse, and in it were all of the surgery dates.
My surgery pre-op testing will be on June 10th at 9:30am, and my surgery will be on June 29th, and I have to be at the hospital at 6:30am.
It's all scheduled, so it's on whether I'm mentally ready for it or not.

The bathroom undermount sink has been driving me crazy!
It's been leaking, and clogging up all weekend, I have got to get that fixed soon.
It started clogging up last night, and when I went to plunge it, I felt some water hitting my feet.
I know that I didn't splash any out of the sink, so I opened the doors and saw that there's a link in the pipes.
Great, just great.
What was a simple project to replace just the faucet, is now going to have to be handled by the landlord, and the whole thing is going to have to be fixed.

Cross posted from my other blog because it relates to my surgery and personal feelings.

Mark and I went shopping this afternoon because Sebastian wasn't feeling well, and I've noticed something about who goes shopping with me and how much I spend.
If Sebastian goes, I stay on target, to my list, and don't overspend.
If Mark goes with me, I end up buying things not on my list, and spend more than I had planned too.
So guess how I did today?
If you guessed that I spent more, you'd be correct.

My total bill before coupons was $231.94
Total is coupons and in store special savings - $49.15
Total after coupons and savings applied = $182.79

I try to use as many coupons as I can, and take advantage of as many in store special savings as I can, because I only get $349.00 per month in food stamps, and with 2 growing young men in the house, that food money goes very quickly.
I try to avoid buying junk food items when I can, and I try to cook as many meals as I can without buying easy microwave foods because they cost more.
Sometimes. Publix always has a lot of easy foods on sale for super cheap, and I usually always have coupons to match those items, so sometimes I do end up buying easy foods. But anyway, whenever Mark goes with me he distracts me, he stands in front of me while I'm trying to look at and compare the costs of items on the shelves.
He's always talking to me about something totally unrelated to shopping while I'm trying to shop.
I ended up buying about 15 items not on my list today.
Ugh.
But, they were on sale, so I can't complain too much about it. It would have been nicer had I had matching coupons for those items, but oh well.
What did I buy that wasn't on my list? Chips, dip, beef jerky, some Oreo cookie things, Fun Stix I think they are called, more soda, another pound of lunch meat, some bread from the bakery, canned soup, about 5-6cans, and some canned spaghettios.

Speaking of spaghettios, next month begins the hurricane supply shopping.
I need to stock up on the canned foods that can be eaten without heating them up, and stuff like that.
I'm actually worried about hurricane season this year, not because they have predicted any yet, but because I'm having another spine fusion in June, and with the kind of luck that I have, this year will be the year that we get hit with a hurricane here in Sarasota, and I'll be in a bad state recovering from surgery, in the halo brace, possibly the trach tube, and we'll get smacked with a big one.
Sarasota is weird, in the 12 years we've lived here, this area hasn't been hit with a single hurricane, it's like we live in the outer banks twilight zone of storm free zones.
The most we've ever gotten here is a small bit of wind and rain, just enough wind to blow some trash cans around, maybe take out a really old tree, but nothing major.
But like I said, because of the kind of luck that I have, this will be the year that Sarasota gets nailed, and I'll be completely useless to deal with it, I'll have to rely on other people to help us pack up stuff and evacuate.
So far, the tropics look good, there's nothing at all out there, so let's hope it stays that way all through hurricane season which is June 1st to November 30th.

I didn't sleep at all last night, didn't take a "nap" today until about 10:30am or so, woke up around 1:20pm, and then spent the rest of the day trying to stay warm.
So much for global warming eh?
This is Florida and the weather here is so cold it cuts to the bone.
I know it's not like other states where winter means snow and below zero temps, I know what that is like, but winter here is a different kind of cold, it bites you.
When the teens and I went Maine to visit my folks in February, it was negative 5 with a wind chill of negative 10-15 every single day, but it didn't affect me like this is, this is really a different kind of cold.

I've had to run the small electric space heater all day, kept it on low, it kept the living room sorta warm at least.
Tonight, I'll move it into the dining room, make everyone leave their bedroom doors open, and I'll set it to medium and it should help keep the house mostly warm all night.
It's supposed to be another freeze night tonight, so yeah, gotta use the space heater.

It's a shame that diet pills like some of the leftover Lipovox or whatever it is I have sitting here, doesn't help with pain too.
The weather is seriously killing me here.
This is Florida, it's not supposed to be this cold, but it is, and I'm suffering badly.
I can barely move, every muscle is stiff, the rods are frozen, and argh, it's miserable.
I put in a call to my doc, I'm hoping that he calls me back tomorrow and does something to help me because this is just unbearable right now.
None of the pain meds I have are working, I'm tired, sore, and cranky.
Sorry if I've been cranky to any of you, I'm just miserable and can barely do anything at all, and I hate not being able to do things.

It's been cold here the last few days, an even bigger cold front is on the way, and man, do I feel it.
It's times like this that I wish that I had a pop up tv in my room so I could just lay there under my heavy and warm comforter, and watch tv or movies.
I don't even have a tv in my room, never mind a pop up tv, but it would be nice to have one with a dvd player or at least a vcr, so I could just lay there and watch till I fell asleep.
Every joint aches, every muscle is stiff, I just want it to stop but it's not going to until it warms up outside, and it won't be warm-er until maybe the weekend.
It kind of sucks.
I'm just so sick of being stiff and in pain because of the cold weather.
If I still lived back up north in Maine, they would have had to admit me to the hospital by now due to the never ending and excruciating pain that I'm in right now.
Blah.

I went for a little walk just a bit ago, got out into the sunshine and nice weather, gotta get that vitamin D and all ya know.
Anyway, it's a total pain in the ass walking with the neck brace on and my head placed the way it is, my line of sight is downward, not straight ahead, so it's a rather difficult chore to just go for a walk.
And that's when I realized that it also hurts to walk like that.
The pain is right below my shoulders, like the bra strap line, and goes down the whole length of my spine to my tail bone.
I barely made it home without wincing and bending over from it all.
On December 10th, I go see my surgeon and I'll get to tell him about all of the various problems that I've been dealing with since the surgery.
The pain, the head placement issues, the inability to open my mouth and eat anything that isn't a liquid or flattened as thin as paper, that I can't even drink out of a cup, I have to use a straw every single time, the vomit/choking issues, etc etc.

What pisses me off and makes me greatful at the exact same time, is that this surgery saved my life, yet it has seriously reduced my quality of life.
My vertebrae were closing in on my spinal cord, crushing it, it was killing me slowly and eventually it would have closed off completely, stopping my breathing and my heart.
I know that they did the best they could in there, I know there were complications during the surgery, I know that I'm lucky to be alive and all of that, but I really hate how my life is right now.
It's a major struggle for me to do almost everything, and I hate it.
I tried to reach on top of my medicine cabinet to get my electric toothbrush, and I couldn't even look up to see it. When I went to put it back, it was a struggle to try and find the base to put it on without being able to see it.
I can't lift my damn head up, I can't see up to do things.
I can't lift anything over 5 pounds, I struggle to cook meals because I can't turn around to do stuff, can't bend over to get a pot or pan, can't get things out of the cupboard because I can't see what I am trying to reach.

I know, I'm lucky to be alive, I'm greatful, but I fucking hate this.
I want my surgeon to pick a date for the revision surgery and let's just do it, let's just get it over with.
I personally think that it's the rods causing me to not be able to raise my head up, I think they are too long, so when I try to raise my head up, the back of my head gets stopped by the rods.
I also think the top screws are bent the wrong way, if you look at the xray, you'll see the top screws bent upward, and the rods themselves are like right freaking there, so I can't raise my head up.
I want him to fix it, to cut the rods down shorter, remove those top screws, they won't be needed anyway if the rods are shorter, or just do whatever the hell he has to do to allow me to raise my damn head up.
I am so unhappy right now, I hate being unhappy, I hate feeling this way, but every single day I find some new thing that I could do that I can no longer do, and it bothers me so so much.
When standing up, I can't even look into the faces of my sons when they go to hug me, I can't see their faces!
I hate it all so much, everything I can't do, I hate that I'm sad all of the time, I hate that I'm so unhappy, and I hate that I can't even look into the faces of my sons.
I need him to decide what he's going to do and when we are going to do it.
If I have that info, I'll make it through however long until we actually do it, but not knowing when or what's going to be done is just making me more and more unhappy as each day passes.

It was so cold in the house last night, and I wasn't feeling well to begin with, but I didn't take a shower like I normally would have to help my body be able to rest.
It would have taken the hot water tank far too long to heat up the water.
I really wish we had a tankless water heater in this duplex.
It wouldn't have taken long to heat the water up, and I really could have used a long hot shower.
My joints were suffering something fierce last night, the pain meds weren't helping me at all either.
I just laid there tossing and turning, my hips, knees, and ankles were swollen and inflamed from the cold, and if I had been able to take a long hot shower, it would have reduced the inflammation so I could sleep.

I can't take any Advil or NSAIDS because they interfere with bone growth, and my fusion needs to be solid, so all I can take are the pain meds.
I even tried to use the heating pad, but it's not big enough to cover each joint at the same time.
So I grabbed the space heater and plugged it in in my room, and tried to heat up my room enough to help my body stop suffering so badly.
It helped a little bit, I managed to get about 10 minutes of sleep every hour, so I'm hoping that tonight I'll be able to sleep better.
I found a bunch of blankets, and they are in the washer now, so I'm just going to layer them on my bed and hope that all of the layers will help keep my body warm and not cause my joints to get inflamed.

I spent the majority of the day laying on the couch covered up in a big huge blanket.
Why?
Because it was chilly here once again, and wow, my whole body hurt bad, the rods were super icy cold, I had no flexibility at all, I was walking around the house all stiff like Frankensteins first steps after coming to life.
Just totally stiff and sore.

Then when the teens came home, they did their chores and wanted to play xbox and WoW, but something was wrong with our KVM switch, so I had to get up from my comfy and warm couch and fix it.
Luckily it's a really easy fix or else it wouldn't have been getting done today.

As you probably guessed by now, I didn't get to go see Obama speak today.
Reasons being #1, I was way too sore to go stand out there for a few hours, and #2, my sister couldn't get out of work.
The boy she takes care of was admitted to the hospital again, he's not doing well at all, another infection.
I feel so badly for him and his parents, his whole family.
Greg as been in and out of the hospital since the beginning of August.

What song is that from?
Anyway, I do think it's going to rain either tonight or tomorrow at some point.
The pain has been almost unbearable today, and it usually gets like this when there's a storm on the way.

Speaking of storms, I was laying down under a blanket trying to get my joints all warmed up and watching daytime tv shows.
I was watching the soap All My Children, and they all just nailed with a huge tornado that wiped out like half the town.
Like everybody is dead or dying.
I bet my parents are watching this.
They've been watching this show for years and years.

We don't get "fall" here, we don't really get winter or spring either.
Fall consists of it being hot, but not August summer hot.
Winter is warm, about 70 every day, and spring is warm to hot.
Summer is just hot, hot, hot.
So I don't get to see the seasons changing in person, I don't get to see the beautiful spring flowers bloom, I don't get to see the first snow, or the blizzards that cover the back porch in person anymore, since leaving Maine 11 years ago.

But my mom sends me pictures all of the time of their yard, and from their fenced in and full of plants and trees back yard, I am now getting to see the beauty of the fall colors.



















The greens, yellows, and fire red colored  leaves, taking over the whole property. It starts off slowly, and in a few weeks, this whole yard will just be nothing but the beautiful colors of the fall leaves.




















Thanks mom for sending these to me.
I can pretend that it's really fall here while my ac cranks out the cool air, because it's still 81 degrees here.

Because of the storm and my neighbors moving out, the trash will have to go out on Tuesday night instead of tonight, and I'll have to go find my box cutter so I can go cut up all the cardboard boxes they didn't use to move with because the city won't take them at the size they are right now.
They left a ton of crap behind, you can see it in the first link I posted, and we'll be taking care of it so the landlord doesn't have to come take care of it all.

I just can't believe they won't be coming back to take care of it on their own.
It's really not fair to have dumped it all on my trash cans and just leave all that crap behind.
But they are gone now, and I guess that's a good thing.

What was a category 1 hurricane, has been downgraded into a tropical storm again.
It'll be about 45-50mph winds, some rain, nothing major.
But all the Sarasota schools are closed, there's no garbage pick-up tomorrow, and all county government offices will be closed as well.

The kids first day back to school was today, and now they get a day off already.
I understand the whole better safe than sorry thing, but they canceled school at 2pm today, made the automated phone calls to parents, and they could have, should have, waited until later tonight to make the call on closing school.

Things are fine here, we have plenty of food and water should the power go out, I did all y hurricane shopping on Saturday, and we have plenty of candles, a big flashlight, a 24 our glo-stick for emergencies, plenty of stuff, but I doubt it will get that bad.

Last night around 11pm, I got a sharp stabbing pain in my lower back, my left knee swelled up and started aching really badly.
I told Mark, it's going to rain big time, a massive storm is coming.
My rods are cold, my muscles are tight and achy, my knee is hurting pretty bad.
We're going to get a really big, bad storm either overnight or tomorrow, it's definitely coming.

So I was sitting here catching up on some things on line, when all of a sudden, it felt like someone had turned on a few giant basement dehumidifiers, the humidity in the entire house just vanished, the temps in the house dropped so quickly, the AC started dripping fast, and then the skies opened up with a loud bang.
It's been raining now very hard for the last 40 minutes or so, the thunder is clapping so loudly, the cats are freaking out, there's been a few shots of lightening, and you can just hear the rain gushing down out of the clouds like there's a waterfall right outside my window.

The noon news is on and they said it just moved in really quickly, and it will probably do this all day long.
I may or may not lose power and/or internet.
My DSL tends to get crappy when it rains.