Wow. How do I possibly catch up on all that has happened since I last posted. ON MARCH 8TH!!
I will do my best. Go get something to drink because I have a feeling this will be wordy. I'm only going to discuss the big things that have happened. Trust me. It's been a big thing type of couple of months.
On March 13th at 3:00 a.m. I was really, really thirsty. I didn't want to turn on the bright light and get really, really awake when I walked downstairs to get some water. So I walked down the stairs with my cell phone to light the way. I made it to the landing just fine. As I started to step down on the very last step, my cat came flying past me and broke my concentration just enough that I fell. I broke my wrist. I sprained my middle back. I got whiplash to the point that for two days I was unable to hold my head up and then I fell asleep with a heating pad on it and blistered my neck. I now have two of the most spectacularly stupid broken arm stories to tell at parties: "Well, you see - one February I tripped over my flip flop in a crack in the sidewalk after a pedicure, flew headfirst into the front door of the Five Guys Burgers I was walking past, broke my humerus in 4 places, went by bumpy ambulance to the hospital and spent a total of almost 9 months in body braces, casts, slings, and physical therapy. Then 5 months later my cat made me fall down a step and break the same arm but in a different place, sprain my back and get whiplash." I went to my cute neighbor girl's birthday party/annual crawfish boil at the end of March and people who had been there last year said, "Um, weren't you in a cast at this party last year?" YES! YES, I WAS annoying observant people with good memories.....
So I was in a cast for a month. Then I was in a splint for a month and now I have to wear the splint for the next month only when I lift something or if it's bothering me. (I didn't blog because after typing with mostly one hand all day at work, I was not up for typing an entire blog post. Plus I'm not good at blogging regularly.) I now go to the chiropractor 2 or 3 times per week. And I now go to physical therapy 2 times per week. I feel like I'm 120 years old and everything is falling apart. I'm going to the same physical therapist I went to last year. Yes, she laughed at me a little bit for being back so soon. Then she analyzed and evaluated my wrist and hand and told me we have a lot more work to do than I expected she was going to tell me I needed. She compared my broken side with the non-broken one and just as an example, with my right hand I could squeeze 78 lbs of pressure. My left? 28 pounds. And she measured angles of how far I could bend both hands. One of them was 50 degrees on my right hand and only 15 degrees on the left. Oh boy.
Two days after I broke my wrist, my office was moved to our post-remodel floor. So someone had to pack my entire desk up for me and he loved me so bad it hurt. Not as much as my wrist, back and neck hurt though. But I could feel the love oozing from his pores because he had to pack up my stuff.
Then he had to unpack it all at my new desk. And I could see cute little puffy hearts floating in the air above his head because his love for me was so great.
I finally got my car all fixed. I know you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats to hear about that. $1,400. I don't even want to talk about it because that dollar amount makes me want to sob, so you're off the hook hearing all the boring car stuff.
Then I hosted the Atlanta Pie Peeps at my house in April (some of you probably already saw the photos on June's blog) and I got to see Tee, Sadie, Fay and we met the lovely, sweet, awesome PJ and I honestly felt like I had known her for all my life. One of my friends came and joined us and she loved everyone. And thankfully my geriatric cat with chronic tummy issues didn't do anything embarassing during the party. Poor Tee was suffering from horrible allergies and she stole one of my spoons y'all. You should not invite Thief Tee to your house. She just helps herself to your silverware. Ha! It accidentally got stuck in her dish she brought and she boxed it up nicely and delivered it back to my front porch in a matter of a couple of days which she totally didn't have to do. But Tee is a sweet lady.
Five days after the Pie party, I inherited a couple of kids.
Y'all, this is SUCH a crazy and involved and long story and it's not my place to explain it all here on my blog, but Hot Brazilian thought he would be back here by now and two of his kids moved here but he's still stuck in the jungle so they have been staying at my house for almost a month. And they don't know the extent of just how close and involved Hot Brazilian and I are so they think we are just friends. And Fay is now not a fan of HB so I told her we need to go out to dinner so I can tell her the whole story so she won't dislike him because it really isn't his fault. He is one of the most awesome people on the planet and I know this all sounds so insane. Because it IS insane. And I'm, um, you know, um....adjusting to some major changes in my life. Fay! Call me! Seriously, I want to have dinner just so we can hang out together, but I also don't want you to think poorly of HB.
I'm teaching them all about American culture. I'm helping them look at schools, find jobs, taking them to job interviews, helping them buy a car (no, I'm not paying, just teaching them how to buy one here), how to get a drivers license, car registration, car insurance, looking for apartments, how to clean when you don't live in a concrete building and can't just throw water all over the walls and floor and watch it go down a drain (they had never vacuumed and didn't even know what a mop was. HA!), and basically everything else they need to know to establish a life here in the U.S. And do y'all know what? I AM EXHAUSTED. Between that, working full-time, physical therapy, chiropractor visits, the five commissioned paintings I am supposed to be doing, and not being able to run around my house with no bra on, I am worn slap out.
And my mom and an aunt came and stayed with us for a few days too. So naturally that's when one of my water heaters broke. A guy came out while it was pouring rain to fix it so that's how I also found out my crawl space has been flooding during heavy rainstorms. So then I suddenly found myself hiring him to put some flashing on my deck, re-route some gutters, and before I knew it, told him to go ahead and completely refinish my deck while he was at it. He got my water heater re-lit. My mom took a shower and then it broke again. So then I hired him to replace some parts on the water heater.
And then my one-year-old stupid expensive stove broke.
I came home Monday night, walked in the front door and it was sparking, clicking, beeping, numbers were flashing, etc. And the girl child I suddenly inherited was cooking on it like it was okay. Argh! I screamed at her to turn it off, called Jenn-Air, got flustered with the sweet southern accented lady who told me to pull off the decorative plate under the oven, crawl on my hands and knees (I was still in my maxi dress that I have accidentally stepped on resulting in me having flashed a security guard at work while wearing it and I was crawling around on the floor in it, sweating profusely, with this annoying non-stop beeping going on and with an 18-year-old boy in the room watching me) and try to read the smallest writing in the world on a label way back halfway under the stove where it was dark, then she asked me if I could look at my registration card (who the hell knows where that is?), find my receipt to get some information off of it, try to flip the breaker off, leave it off for 30 seconds and turn it back on and then argued with me when I told her it was still beeping and the screen on the stove didn't say what she said it should, so I got snippy with her, held the phone down to the stove so she could hear the stupidly annoying BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP I had been listening to for 30 minutes by that time, and I hated everyone and everything. She finally said, flip the breaker off and we'll get a service rep out there. THANK YOU ANNOYING SOUTHERN ACCENT LADY!
Yesterday the stove worked perfectly.
But I kept the service call scheduled for this morning. He said a couple of parts need to be replaced but naturally they have to be ordered and I have to have another service call in a couple of weeks but the good news is my stove is apparently not going to blow my house up.
He left and then as I was driving to work a guy called and said he would be at my house shortly to fix my stove. And I said, "oh, the parts are available today?" And he said, "Huh?" We eventually figured out they scheduled two different people to come fix my stove. I must have been snippier than I thought and that poor lady on the phone wanted to be absolutely sure I got my stove looked at!
That should catch you up on the bigger things that have been happening in my life.
How are all of you? I do still plan to do Music Monday again. Maybe this next week!
