Thursday, December 29, 2011

Why stupidity should be a crime.

I've been following the case of Aliahna Lemmon pretty closely since the news broke she was missing. Even after the man watching her admitted to murdering the poor girl, seemed like a pretty straight forward case. For whatever reason, the man watching three girls decided to murder one of them.

That is, until you actually start reading more in depth about the case, and you find out exactly how stupid the mother of this poor girl was.

Here is the article I read that really goes in depth of what happened.

At first, it doesn't sound like Tarah Souders did anything wrong at all. She moved herself and her three daughters in with her father to take care of him during his final days. I think that's something most of us would do and would want to be with our parent(s) in their final days and there's nothing wrong with that.

However, there is something wrong with it in this case. The trailer park her father lived in was home to 15 registered sex offenders, including her own father who was convicted of molesting a child in 2006. There were two men in particular whom had been helping her father out that she expressed concern about before moving, one of which was Michael Plumadore, the man that ended up murdering her daughter. He wasn't a convicted sex offender, but obviously something didn't sit right with her for her to be concerned about him.

This whole thing could have been prevented had the mother thought this through more carefully.

1) Moving those children to that trailer park would be like sitting a can of gas and a book of matches in a room full of pyromaniacs and telling you expect them not to touch it. The chances of those girls leaving that trailer park unscathed were slim to none. While none of them may have been murdered at the hands of someone else, they would have had permanent psychological, if not physical, damage.

2) She knew how many sex offenders were living in that trailer park. Rather than move there, she could have moved her father home with them. It probably would have been cheaper, plus would have kept her daughters out of harms way.

3) She didn't know Michael Plumadore at all, yet still sent her daughters to LIVE WITH HIM for a week while she had the flu. WTF??? As a single mother, I've had to take care of my son with a bad case of the flu before. Sure, it isn't the easiest thing in the world, but it can be done. I certainly wouldn't trust Robbie with someone I hardly knew just to make my life easier. The safety of my son is far more important to me than getting some sleep.

Of course, you're going to have people say she had a slip of judgement because she was grieved, but that is NO EXCUSE. Your children come FIRST above everything and anyone else, including your parents. Why she would even WANT her kids around her father after his own conviction as a child molester is beyond me.

The only thing that could have made this story even stupider is if she had moved for a boyfriend and he was a convicted sex offender. With the way the rest of this story has turned out, I'm surprised it wasn't.

It is such a shame this poor little girl had to die because her mother didn't think things through more. It's amazing the two surviving girls are even still alive. RIP little Aliahna.

I still want a hula hoop.

Christmas was a big hit this year. We did ours at home on Tuesday since Christmas Day was so busy. I don't think Robbie cared either way. The expression on his face when he finally realized there were more presents under the tree was absolutely priceless.

Robbie: "Mama! Mama! More presents! What happened?!?"
Me: "Santa came last night after you went to sleep."
Robbie: "Santa?!? He came?!?"
Me: "He sure did!"

He then turned and slowly walked back into the den, like he was in a dreamlike state, with this expression of absolute wonderment on his face.

The big overall was the Skylander starter set. Robbie has had his eye on it for awhile now after seeing the adverts on TV and playing wit the demo in stores. Ben got him the Trigger Happy figure for Christmas and Robbie wanted to play it then. He was a bit disappointed finding out he didn't have the game. He got a couple of triple packs of figures from Santa that he opened before getting to the starter set and had the same reaction. The starter set was the last present he opened. When he ripped the paper off and saw what it was, the roof about came off the house. I don't think I've ever seen this kid so happy over a particular present before.

"Mama! I got it, I GOT IT! YAY!!!"

He's been playing with it pretty much non stop since then. When we put on a movie, he'll usually bring all of the figures to the couch and just play with those. He really likes how you can play it on the game and play with the figures when you're not playing the game.

All in all, it was a great day. Santa brought presents for everyone, so I guess that means we were all good. My take was Tremors, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Cowboys & Aliens, all on Blu-Ray. I can't believe I finally own a copy of Nightmare. It's my favorite movie ever, so you'd have thought I'd have owned it by now, but nope. I don't know why I never got around to buying it, I just never did. I can't wait to watch it with Robbie. He knows who Jack Skellington is from my bedding set and other random things I have with him on it, so I think Robbie will enjoy the movie.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Post Op Fun

The surgery last Thursday went well. It didn't take them long to discover the source of my pain once they were in there. My gallbladder was about the size of a softball, roughly three times larger than what it shouldn't been. They were still able to get it out with the laproscope, but it stretched the incision they took it out through. That incision has hurt and bruised a bit more than the others, which they warned me would happen.

Overall, the recovery hasn't been too bad. I'm hurting, stiff and sore as expected. But no pain in my back anymore and the only pain I feel under my ribs is the internal soreness from where my gallbladder was. I'm hesitant to say this is easier than what I was dealing with. While it certainly seems so, it could be psychological since I know this won't last. Plus the painkillers make it a hell of a lot easier pain wise.

The worse part has been the nausea. I'm on Loritab 7.5 and side effect goes back and forth from a slight nauseous feeling to being sick as a dog. Take it from me, being that sick after abdominal surgery really sucks. It just makes you hurt more, which makes you take more painkillers, which just makes you sicker.

I've decided after surgery, you are always in one of three states. In pain, comfortable and sleepy, or sick as hell. The gray areas between those states are just the transition period from one to the other. You can jump back and forth between in pain and sick as hell quicker than you can go from in pain to comfortable and sleepy. And you can go from comfortable and sleepy to either in pain or sick as hell really quick.

The fun of pain killers. But it's better than the alternative.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Santa Claus is coming to town.

One of these years, I am not going to wait until the last minute to get Robbie's Santa picture done. I think this is the closest to the wire I've come yet. While the parking lot of Penn Square Mall was packed, very few people seemed to be inside. I think it is busier on a Saturday in the middle of summer. I suspect people were in the theater. But I do have to admit, as soon as I saw the parking lot, I was thankful it was my dad that took us. With his handicap permit, it's so much easier finding parking. Horrid of me, I know, but dad got a kick out of it.

There was no line at Santa, surprisingly, so it didn't take long to get that over with. Robbie did well this year, unlike two years ago when I got the quintessential screaming baby photo that every parent must get at least once. BUT. We could NOT get him to smile. Not even once. He just sort sat there, whispering things to Santa whenever Santa would ask him a question, then got a goofy shy smile on his face. We got a sort of smirk once, but the rest of the photo wasn't that good, so I went with overall best out of nine photos.

Then we jumped over to a photo booth for our Christmas Photo Booth fun pictures. I started that tradition his first Christmas. He doesn't do much better when it comes to looking at the camera and not the screen. At least he doesn't do the bewildered, "Mom, what the hell are we doing in here???" face anymore. You can really see in the first photo of the series where his missing tooth is on the bottom front.

My only other business at the mall was to stop into Hot Topic for eye liner. I have yet to find a better black glitter eyeliner than the one they carry. So, I walked in with the intention of buying eyeliner and walked out not only with eyeliner, but almost $100 worth of stuff. It's been awhile since that's happened, mostly cause everything they carried for awhile now except for the make-up sucked. I can't tell you the last time I actually bought clothes in there. It's been YEARS. I ended up finding the perfect dress for my graduation. A strapless leopard print number that's not quite knee length and has a bit of a flair at the bottom. I'm ridiculously excited over excited over this dress. It's so ME. I also ended up buying Jack Skellington pajama pants, a Jack Skellington beanie, eye liner, eye shadow and a package of Nightmare Before Christmas hipster undies. I have a bit of a thing for Nightmare Before Christmas.

We ran over to Target after the mall, finally found Cars 2 on Blu-Ray for Robbie and bought it for him for Christmas, got him some new clothes from the Shawn White line that were on sale and some groceries. It's been a pretty busy day.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before surgery. It feels very bitter sweet. While I am ready for the pain and various types of discomfort to be over, there will be some people I will miss. I know I will be going nuts before my recovery time is done from not working for so long. But you've got to take the good with the bad, I suppose. Once it is time for me to go back to work, at least I'll never have to worry about being struck with pain at random times up there ever again.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Recap of the week.

The last week has been severely hectic. It's finally starting to calm down a bit so maybe I can get a day or so of rest before my surgery.

The appointment with the surgeon last Monday went well. He looked over the results from the stomach scope and we set the date for surgery to get my gallbladder removed. December 22nd is the big day. I was glad they didn't want to do it that week, even though Ben chided me for not pushing for an earlier date. But this way I had time to get all my Christmas stuff done.

After the appointment, Ben dropped me off at home to get my stuff together for the trip to McAlester and picked me back up about an hour later. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at McDonald's, gassed up the car and hit the road. It took just over two hours to get there and I handled the trip well. I didn't start to really hurt until the last hour, but making a couple stops to get out and walk around helped out a lot with that. As we were driving through McAlester towards Hartshorne, however, I started getting sick to my stomach. A longer stop was required for that one, but the feeling passed and we headed for his grandpa's house. Which resulted in us getting lost and his cousin having to come retrieve us. Meeting the rest of his family went well, then we went to the wake/viewing. Ben handled it a lot better than I thought he would. For me, wakes are always so much harder than funerals because that is when you see your loved one for the first time after their passing, thus I was really worried how he would take it. I'm very proud of him, I know it wasn't easy.

After the wake, we went to Western Sizzlin' with his mom, sister, nieces and nephew. All was well until I had some broccoli cheese soup. The pain kicked in after just a few spoonfuls and was sick as a dog not long after we got back to the room. I was still hurting the next day and took painkillers before the church dinner after the funeral, but it didn't help much. The drive home was hell as a result and took three and a half hours. I got sick again once we hit Midwest City, about thirty minutes from my house. We stopped for about fifteen minutes then we went the rest of the way to my house. I started feeling better at home and got my stuff put away, which roused Robbie from his nap. He fawned over me being home then showed me the tooth he lost the night before.

That's right, my baby lost his first tooth. It happened Monday night. According to my mom, Robbie was a bit freaked about the whole thing. He acted like he thought he was going to be in trouble for it. He even hid it under a pillow on the couch. She explained to him everyone loses their teeth at that age and big boy teeth grow in to replace them. That seemed to calm him down. He was still pretty hesitant about it on Tuesday when he showed it to me, but has sense gotten used to it. The Tooth Fairy still hasn't come it, that concept seemed a bit weird to him, so I'm letting him get used to it.

Since last Tuesday, I've been getting everything ready for Christmas so I won't have to worry about it after surgery on Thursday. As of tonight, everything is done. Tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut, we're taking Robbie to get his picture with Santa and then I need to make my bed up at some point. I haven't gotten around to that quite yet. Robbie likes running across the memory foam and seeing his footprints, so I have been letting him have fun with that.

I'm starting to get nervous about surgery, but I'm still excited at this whole thing finally being over.I'll be off work for at least two weeks. Dr Carey likes to keep his patients on a 10 pound weight restriction for two weeks to a month. The lifting requirement for my job is a minimum of 25 pounds. I'll see him at my post op visit on January 3rd, where they said he will evaluate my progress and my ability to return to work, but the FMLA paperwork he filled out for them says I'll be off until January 22nd. So we'll see. Either way, it's a bit of a vacation. Although, I'll bet you 10 to 1 I'll be going nuts by the end of it.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Long December

The last couple of days haven't been too bad pain wise. I went back to work on Friday and worked 11 to 7 with only one major episode of pain. Sitting down and eating lunch seemed to help a lot and, by the end of the day, it was no worse than it has been the last couple of months. I worked 1:30 to 10:15 last night and didn't have any major episodes at all. The pain got worse at times, but not like it has been this week.

My body picked a really good time to give me a reprieve from all this. Ben's grandma passed away Friday night, so it has allowed me to be able to give him more attention than I think I would have been able to do otherwise. After work on Friday, my parents watched Robbie so I could go be with Ben for awhile.

Tomorrow is my second appointment with the surgeon at 9am, which will hopefully yield in a surgery date. Then we are driving down to McAlester and staying until sometime Tuesday to be with his family and for the funeral. I'm not sure how well I'll handle the car ride. It's two hours and fifteen minutes according to the GPS on my phone. The 45 minute drive to Chicksha two weeks ago to take Robbie to the Festival of Lights left me in a bad state. But at least I'm forewarned now and can take painkillers beforehand.

Today I've been feeling pretty good and so have been a productive little house elf. I got some laundry done for Tuesday, washed my new sheets -king size Jersey knit in black, woot!-, stripped my bed and got the old egg crate mattress pad off. I've been meaning to get that old pad off for months. I even bought a new memory foam mattress topper for when I finally did. I've just never gotten around to it. It was finally the concept of having to come home from surgery and sleep on that old thing that finally kicked me into action. It's uncomfortable as it is, I can't even imagine how uncomfortable it would be after having a major organ taken out. But now it's done and the egg crate has found its final resting place in the trash. The memory foam mattress topper is now on the bed and fluffing itself out as we type.

Speaking of memory foam mattress toppers, those things are a BITCH to unroll. I figured it'd be hard getting it out of the box. That was the easy part. You just dump it out. Cutting the shrink wrap was a bit tricky since you don't want to cut the memory foam. But them you get to unroll it out of the plastic, onto the bed, unfold parts while pushing and pulling on others. At one point, I had to do a really tricky maneuver of pulling and holding one piece and pushing the weight of my body against the rest of it to get it to budge. Not fun. It left me laying on the damn thing, very out of breath and amazed at how it now looks like I have a large strip of bread dough on my bed.

Let me tell you something about laundry though, after 28 years I still have yet to find an easy way to fold a fitted sheet, nor do I have a reasonable explanation as to why the washer will turn one pillow case inside out and not the other.

Now that the laundry is done, I'm going to give the mattress topper a couple of days to finish fluffing before making it up. It looks like it's done unfolding and settling, but the directions said wait at least 24 hours. Since I've been sleeping on the couch due to comfort reasons, this won't be a problem. Well...it will on the grounds I really want to sleep in my new-old bed. Ah, paitence. Such a pain in the ass virtue at times.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Another day in paradise.

Today marked my second day in a row calling in because of this crap.Woo.
Can you tell I'm excited about this?
Unlike a lot of people you get who work retail, I'd rather be at work and feeling good than at home feeling like I'm dying. Especially since for the most part I actually enjoy my job.

Especially on the day of my department's Christmas party/gift exchange.Which I forgot about until a couple of hours ago and just now remembered I have yet to buy the gift for the name I drew.
Crap.
Okay, well, I guess I'll run to Home Depot before work and get the gift card Peggy wanted, since I am going to attempt going to work tomorrow.Or, rather, today since it's after midnight.

I am actually feeling better this evening. The pain was pretty bad this morning, was making me nauseous and sick still, but has tapered off since then. I was able to pick Robbie up for the first time since Monday morning, which thrilled him. He was very gentle about climbing up into my arms, even sat on my left hip instead of my right, which is his usual spot. He can be such a sweetheart at times. Other times, I fully understand why some animals eat their young.

Dr Perkins' office called today with the formal results of Monday's stomach scope. Everything still looks good. They are sending them over to Dr Carey's office for my appointment Monday morning. Hopefully then he will get surgery scheduled and all this will soon be over.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Ah seppuku.

When your body decides to commit hari kári, it really goes all out.
I didn't get to sleep today until after 1pm. At that point, I was sitting at 27 hours without sleep, all because of the pain in my back and right side.
Honestly, the pain in my back wouldn't be so bad to deal with on it's own. I'm no stranger to back pain, even with the sharp, stinging pain I feel regularly on top of the constant hurt, it wouldn't be difficult to manage with it.
However, when you add in the pain under the right side of my ribs, then I have issues dealing. It's really no worse in the front than it is the back, it's basically just the same pain just on the other side of my body, it just seems more intense somehow. Or maybe my body just doesn't want to play anymore and my pain tolerance is lowering.
Apart from labor, I'd have never thought this much pain was possible for someone relatively healthy. I've never been in such bad pain it made me sick, been dizzy and short of breath with it, or have become frozen in place, unable to move because of it. Except for when I was in labor with my son.
It's really kind of amazing in a sick, twisted sort of way how one thing in your body can be virtually fine one day and cause you nothing but hell the next. Literally, that's how it went for me. And you really wouldn't think something like your galbladder would cause it.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

A new old first.

It's been a few years since I've kept any sort of regular blog. Facebook doesn't really count in my book since it's just post and go.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, since it makes everything so easy and I'd be lying if I said I don't appreciate convenience. But I miss the creativity that goes into blogging, the taking an everyday thing and making it entertaining for the masses. It makes for a good exercise in writing.
And, after laying on my couch in pain for the last eight hours, playing Angry Birds, I figured now was as good as time as any. The smug faces those pigs get after you fail a level were making me want to scream.
Stupid pigs.

Why was I laying on my couch for eight hours in pain, you ask?
That's a fairly simple answer. My galbladder decided it hates me and is bound to make my existence as miserable as possible for the short time it remains in my body.
Well...simple for anyone reading that sentence, the actual process has been a bit more complicated to live through. I'm pretty sure from now on whenever I hear someone use the metaphor "stabbed in the back" I will think back on the sharp, stabbing pains I feel under my right shoulder blade.. A little bit of a literal thought process, but I'm pretty sure betrayal was never this physically painful.
Unless your name was Caesar.

Hopefully sometime soon that will be over and I'll be on some very good drugs. I'll probably go nuts in the time I'm off work, but you take the bad with the good.

Has anyone else ever noticed health problems you have to take off work for never hit when you actually WANT time off work? That has to be another of Murphy's Laws. Someone should find Murphy and kick him.

I'm pretty sure I'm not making much sense anymore. I'm now kinda giddy that I remember how to do HTML. It's been YEARS. And I can do it from my phone. Wooo! I'll have to redo the layout when I actually feel like sitting at the computer for more than five minutes. Until then, it'll drive me nuts, but so be it.