Something Positive For a Change

My Dad flew to New England State last Thursday and met his youngest granddaughter for the first time! I stayed until Sunday, and he was able to spend quality time with each of the girls and myself. He took the family out to dinner to celebrate Hubby's birthday, then he accompanied Hannah and I at our weekly youth group meeting on Friday. To end the visit, he and I went out for drinks and to chat about things that we really haven't discussed in almost 20 years. We cleared the air, me explaining that I don't hold anything against him and that I've forgiven him, but I also need him to be there as a father 365 days a year, not just every few months of so when he calls or sends an e-mail. It was a really, really good visit, and I'm hopeful that it will mark a change in our relationship moving forward. He's offered to pay for us to fly down to Arkansas and stay at his house for a short vacation, so we're working on the details of that for the end of the summer. The girls fell in love with him, of course. It probably didn't hurt that he spoiled them rotten the whole time he was here. It made my heart happy to see them have such a good time with him.

We also got good tax news! The good news is that we don't owe anything, but rather we'll be getting a refund--woohoo!! This doesn't mean any spending will be happening. It simply means that we'll finally have our safety net back in place after getting wiped out by the cost of replacing the transmission on one of our vehicles in December and electrical repairs made to the house just after we moved in. A refund means I can breathe a little sigh of relief.

And, we've confirmed our plans to spend a week in Ocean City, N.J. for the 4th of July week! It's something great to look forward to, and the kids always have a great time. Hubby's dad is taking the week off work, so we'll get to see him, and since we're staying at my in-laws' shore house, we won't break the bank for this trip. I love Ocean City, so I'm absolutely thrilled that we get to go back this summer!

Still Here...in the USA!

Ack...I'm behind in posting all the details of our trip back to the US and the Great Sicknesses of 2010, so here goes.

As it turned out, I ended up in the ER in Doha before we left because the pain in my neck was so severe. The regular doctor wouldn't see me because he knew I needed a specialist, so he referred me to the orthopedic doctor. The orthopedic doctor did a new x-ray and decided I should see a neurosurgeon. He also suggested I'd be a good candidate for neck surgery, but not the disk fusion kind...Honestly, I was in too much pain to understand/remember what the details of the surgery he was explaining. I got very little relief because apparently they don't care to follow the treatment that has always worked for me in previous episodes (steroid treatment combined with pain meds).

As if this wasn't enough (happening just days before our trip), the morning we boarded the plane Eliza said she wasn't feeling well. Hmm. She looked fine, she'd eaten breakfast, so we didn't think much about. Before the first 4 hours of the flight were over, Eliza was getting feverish and Amelia started having green goo oozing out of her eyes. Evidently she wasn't over her sinus infection. Luckily, I'd packed the antibiotic eyedrops--just in case--and we started giving them to her in-flight. Eliza proceeded to get worse, saying that she felt like she was going to puke. I could feel her fever getting higher and higher, despite the Tylenol. She basically slept on and off the whole 14 hour flight. I had no idea how sick she was...

Once we got to DC, we landed, got our luggage, got our rental minivan, went to my uncle's house, ate a quick dinner, then headed to the urgent care clinic, where Eliza was diagnose with strep throat (super positive reading) and an ear infection! She looked awful as of Friday evening. Antibiotics, however, are clearly miracle drugs because she was 10 times better the next morning.

Saturday morning we headed for Ocean City, NJ. The drive took longer than expected, but we made it just in time for dinner. Hubby's mom was grilling out, so he and the kids ate, played with cousins, and visited while I made the trip to the grocery store to stock our beach house. Speaking of the beach house---perfect :) Small, but typical for most of the property at the shore. Just enough space for us to eat, sleep, bathe, etc. The rest of our time would be spent at the beach or the boardwalk. Despite some minor lingering pain in my neck, I couldn't pass up the first morning's opportunity to take a jog in the beautiful sunshine. Mild temperatures and perfectly-landscaped yards made it all seem like something out of a TV show. Really and truly, I fell in love with the place. I basically spent the next 6 days thinking about how in the world we could ever afford to own property there. Everyone had a great time shopping, eating, visiting with family, and soaking up the sun, sand, and the waves. When Thursday came, I didn't want to leave!

We headed to Home State on Friday, only to find out that our short-term corporate house wasn't going to be ready for another 5 days. A long story, but we stayed with my parents until it was ready for us to settle in, and here we are. We've been here since last Wednesday, and everything's going well. I was able to get Eliza into a great swimming lesson program that includes arts & crafts time, story time, and a snack. Hubby and I are taking turns using the public library as our makeshift office, and there's a great park and aquatic center very close to our house! We joined a local YMCA, where they also offer childcare, so we've been able to get some much-needed exercise in, while the girls have some play time outside of the house-- a win-win situation indeed :)

The only inconvenience right now is that I still have a few minor corrections to make on my dissertation manuscript. Initially I had a TON of corrections to make, for I am evidently the Sloppiest Dissertation Writer in the History of the World (SDWinHOW). True story. I'm now down to three corrections: 1) revise my abstract, 2) change the long quotes from plays, 3) and get page numbers for plays from the collected editions I used. Don't ask me why I didn't have this last one finished before I left Qatar....clearly I was out of my damn mind because the 7 volume collection of Aphra Behn's plays that are edited by Janet Todd??? Yeah, they're not really available at your local public library or local bookstore. I'm going to make a run to the nearest R1 library, where they have at least 2 of the volumes. If I need the others, then I'll have to see if I can get ILL privileges somehow.

Anyway, once I get these corrections made, then I'll feel like I have some breathing room, and I can move on to revising the article and researching the piece for the collection I'm submitting to in September. I also need to somehow make the latter fit into one of the ASECS panels for 2011.

Yeah, I'm kinda hoping that at some point we'll get more than one 6-day vacation in a year.

Epic Family Road Trip

Right after my father's visit last week, hubby, Hurricane H, Baby E, and I loaded into the car for the trip to my home state. During this time, Baby E had a relapse and was prescribed yet another antibiotic for a sinus/ear infection that had possibly moved into her eyes?? She started getting green matter in the corner of her eyes, and the doctor suggested that antibiotics don't always circulate evenly in the body, and her eyes might not be getting adequate treatment from the current antibiotic. He prescribed her some eyedrops, and luckily my dad (my stepdad, but I call him my dad) is a pharmacist, so we got the srip filled super fast on Monday. She started feeling better pretty quickly, which was great, because on Tuesday we hit the road again.

Along with my mom, we headed up to Missouri for my cousin's graduation. The trip was fairly uneventful, and the baby was the best traveller of all!! It was a whirlwind of a visit, and keeping up with all the baby gear, medicine, and accoutrements was a freaking chore of itself! We headed back to home state on Thursday, just in time for my husband to come down with a stomach bug --- I know, I know, it just keeps getting better, huh? While he spent almost the entire day in bed yesterday, I took care of the baby, got H ready to go to her dad's for the weekend (her natural father lives in home state), washed bottles, did laundry, etc. and tried my best to keep my distance from hubby and his germs! I banished him to another bedroom for sleeping and wouldn't let him come near the baby.... Too bad my mom didn't follow the same protocol :( She's in bed now. Has been all day. She caught the bug.

Now, H is at her dad's, hubby is better and watching some stupid History Channel special on dogfighting-warfare, and the baby is napping. I'm already ready to be back home in College Town, working my usual schedule and getting back in touch with friends. But I'm stuck here for now, so I think I'll treat myself to the rare treat of reading some Glamour magazine :)

New Things

So, lots of updates today..I didn't realize I'd been such a blog-slacker these days. Needless to say, I survived last weekend with both girls while hubby was at a conference. And to top it all off, Baby E got her first 2 teeth while he was gone!! Yup, 2 at the same time...lots of slobbery fussiness to go around, but when they broke the skin, all was well with the world again..Well, almost..

The same weekend hubby was gone, our home pc died. I mean really Died. Like won't even turn on. My mom found out about this, and as hubby's b-day was April 27th, she offered to give us a joint b-day present (even though mine's not until July): a NEW COMPUTER!! Seriously!! A brand new Dell, with all the works! I don't know where *this* mother came from, because she's never done anything like this before, but it TOTALLY kicks the ass of the $50 b-day check and card my mother-in-law sent my husband!

And count them - not one but two - family vacations planned! At the end of May we're taking a road trip back to home state (6 hours). Then, catching a ride with my mom the following day to head to Missouri (7 hours) for my cousin's graduation. Let's see, the cast of this road trip includes: Me, hubby, 8-yr old H, 6-month old Baby E, and my Mom! My uncle has said this will be an EPIC adventure. Luckily, my mom drives an oversized mini-vanish kind of thing, a Terraza, complete w/DVD player and plenty of room for us to stretch, etc. The 2nd vacation is for the first week of July. We'll be back in home state again for a week, and while we're there, hubby and I are taking H on a river float trip! I'm soooo excited about this! I haven't been since I was 21...and believe me, I was a very different person at 21! They've since banned alcohol on the river, so I'm hoping it will be a much more family friendly atmosphere. And, since I'm no longer the rough-it-in-a-tent-in-the-middle-of-July kind of girl, we'll be renting a small cabin that has air conditioning so that we can survive the nights. My mom is going to watch the baby for the 2 nights/3 days we'll be gone, and it will take place on the 4th of July holiday, so lots of fireworks, fishing, cookouts, etc. will be taking place, and hubby and I will get some much needed "fun" time together.

We're getting a head start on the "fun" time though. Since he and H were gone again this weekend for the last of the Princess Guide daddy-daughter camp-outs, I've demanded some alone time with him! We've arranged for a babysitter for this Saturday night, and we're going out for Cinco de Mayo drinks, appetizers, and a movie! I'm especially looking forward to it because it will initiate my new pill cycle..."What's that" you ask?? Welll......

I recently found out that the birth control pill I've been taking since Baby E was about 6 weeks old was responsible for my loss of libido, hair loss, and mild depression!! Oodles of fun I tell ya! Yes, I kept wondering when I'd feel "that way" again. I kept chalking up my non-interest to being tired, being stressed, or any number of other things. I never thought that my BC could be to blame. And when I asked my hair stylist about the hair loss, she just said that if hair was falling out, that meant new hair was growing in..I was puzzled by this, especially since the clumps of hair that came out while I was washing & conditioning my hair were fairly significant. But, I had no other ideas for the cause, so I just let it go. And the depression. Yeah, once again, I just chalked it up to all the other things going on in my life: diss work, busy time of child's school year, tiredness, stressful funding failures, etc.

Nope. It was the damn Yasmin! I did some research and found out that it contains the highest amounts of anti-androgens of any bc pill on the market!! AKA: it kills the testosterone that gives you a sex drive! The research also revealed other reports of hair loss, depression, etc. (some women reported suicidal thoughts even!) Needless to say, I was just glad to have an answer, and I immediately called my dr. to get the pill switched --whew.

New computer. New pill. New child care for baby. New summer schedule for H coming up soon. And I'm hoping for some new alone time with hubby.