Monday, November 29, 2004

Snow and other subjects

It snowed today. Was not snowing when we got up, but it was by the time we left the house. I guess it has been dusting off & on most of the day. There is not much on the ground, though, so driving should not be bad, though I am still probably leaving a bit early and not going to the store on the way home just so that we will be home before dark.

B is still up in Oregon working on the house. It appears that that no-good, weasly insurance company will pay. We just don't know how much yet. The last I heard from B is that the insurance company (bastards! ...sorry, can't help myself) want to only make the check out to a licensed contractor. This is crap since we have already had to shell out money to dry out the house (there is still the restoration company that wants 5K for their 3 (!) dayswork) plus B & his dad have retiled the entryway, upstairs bathroom and the utility room. Plus we had to pay to fix the pipe and repair the furnace.

Bastards!!!

Sorry...

The surgery on B's dad apparently went well and he is already up and walking around. He should be going home in another week or so. B is, naturally enough, very concerned and we will undoubtedly be going to Austin over Christmas (B's folks had planned a trip to England over the holidays...this will obviously be delayed).

Thanksgiving was very uneventful for me. Just me & E sharing a couple of chicken breasts. Nothing says Thanksgiving like chicken breasts!!

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Quadruple bypass

B's dad had quadruple bypass surgery yesterday. I am told he is doing much better now, but B is totally freaked out.

This will naturally change our Christmas plans. B's folks will probably not be going to England for Christmas and B, naturally, wants to spend the holidays with his parents. This is very understandable and that is what we will be doing.

Please say a prayer, light a candle, chant a few lines, or think good thoughts about him (B's dad, that is).

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

...don't get me started...

Don't get me started on insurance companies. We have been trying to collect on a claim now since January and we are yet to see a dime. I love it that they at first immediately assume that we are trying to pull some kind of insurance scam on them. We have to prove that we did not deliberately let hundreds of gallons of water flood into our beautiful home so that the ceiling fell down in my kitchen; that all the carpets are soaked and ruined; that my beautiful, cherry floors are now just so much kindling; that my pretty cherry cabinets fell apart when we pulled open the drawers; that there is EXACTLY *ONE* ROOM in my house that was not totally ruined. Forget about what was ruined in the basement. Forget about my piano which is now trash as well.

My beautiful house.

We have started making fixes with our own money. B & his dad just finished retiling the entryway, upstairs bathroom, and utility room. B has ordered a granite slab to replace the ruined laminate countertop. We have drywallers in fixing the kitchen ceiling and all of the ruined drywall. This is on top of what we had to spend (out of pocket, of course) on drying the house out and renting dumpsters to toss out all of the ruined carpeting and everything that was too waterlogged to save.

My beautiful house.

I hate insurance companies. They love you as long as you make your payments on time, but as soon as you file a claim, then you are the bad guy. First, you get immediately cancelled; they don't return phone calls; you are treated like you are a criminal.

I won't mention the company's name, but it begins with an 'A'. So much for being in good hands. I want to put my foot through the TV everytime I see one of their commercials.

But if I did that, I would have to make an insurance claim.

Don't wanna go there...

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

...for your consideration...

This is my second attempt at writing a blog. The first lasted all of 1 (one) day/post. I am reading
some blogs now, maybe I will keep at it this time.

Call me Ishmael (oops...that's plagerism); call me Sheila. I am married to B and we have a marvelous son E. We have just recently moved to New Mexico, but we still have a home in OR. That is where B is right now. Why is he in OR and I am in NM? Well, I'll leave that for another post (this is called foreshadowing for all of the English majors reading this).

What I am musing about right now is whether we should have a second child. It took us quite a while to acquire our first (almost 10 years), so this is not a trivial thought. We did not use the 'traditional' method (SEX??? You can get pg through SEX??). No. We used the 'needles/pills/capsules placed in places where capsules should not go/thousands of dollars given to doctors to pay off their Mercedes' method.

We still have 10 embies on ice from the same batch that got us E (also a totsicle) so we have about four tries to get a sib. My biggest obstacle is my health. Though the pg was so easy (a bonafide miracle, I say) and the delivery went off without a hitch, I am somewhat concerned about my post-labor record. You see, I have chronic high blood pressure (take meds for it and did all thru pg) and after I delivered E, my bp went up. Not high to MY standards, but the Dr. (not one who had seen me very much as I was in a different state at the time...another long story) thought it was high. I really think it went up because the night L&D nurse turned down my epidural (bad nurse!! bad nurse!!) and I threw up my meds (hadn't taken them in 24 hours). The stuff the Dr. put in my arm had little effect on my bp, but as soon as I went back on my regular meds, it came down great.

Maybe since I am in a semi-stable (work) situation, I should just go to a doctor and ask, huh?

...for your consideration...