First Week Back

Ok so I never can remember where I left off when I go longer than 7 days. But we started back to school this past week. I've been NON STOP busy at work. I didn't do ANYTHING before Christmas as far as preparing for the week we came back. And then every time we have a holiday EVERYONE's computer is messed up as soon as we get back. My evenings have been busy also with various different things. But overall it's been a good week for us.

TYLER - I guess the greatest thing that happened this week was Tyler finally received a diagnosis and began some treatment. He has been SO HAPPY and relieved. The sleep doctor and the neurologist conferred and decided that even though they did not find one of the things they were looking for in the sleep study, they found all the others and with the spells that he is having along with the sleep study results they diagnosed him as having "narcolepsy with cataplexy". The neurologist started him on the lowest dosage of medication possible, and said we will work upwards from there. If this doesn't cure it all, we go up in dosage. If that doesn't do it all, we'll have to add another medicine too. He's only on his 3rd day with it today. The very first day he was so happy. We texted all day long while he was at school, and he said it was amazing how alive and awake he felt, and that he wanted to do things and cared about things again. He even wrote down his homework assignments. And he stayed awake the entire day except for one minute during Algebra he said, but it was only one minute during an extremely boring time lol. He has not stopped having the spells completely, but he says that he's not having near as many as before. On day 2, he did just as well, but he did get sleepy in the afternoon once he got home. So we will probably try that larger dose next week sometime and see what happens. But for now he's just doing the small dose. His report card was terrible. But he told me that he believes he can do this now that he has medicine. Has assured me that all his school problems came from being ill, and that now he is going to do better and he has a plan for doing so. I told him to prove it to me. But I really am putting a lot of hope into it.

Last weekend I had a friend suggest a book to me that she has been reading that she says has "changed her life". So I went out and bought "The Secret". I've heard of it and seen it on Oprah or something. But decided I'd open my mind and take it in and see what it was about. It's pretty simple and makes sense, it's a whole lot of tricking your mind into being positive all the time. It's a good book I believe.
Somehow last weekend our minds wandered back to the subject of needing more space in the house and we talked about taking in the garage as a room again. So Monday I went to the bank and began the process of getting the home equity loan to finally make a step towards solving the problem instead of just thinking and whining about it lol. And that was all I needed to get a fire lit under me because now this remodeling is ALL I can think of. Rusty cleaned out the garage today so that Mike's dad could come measure and help us plan for materials. We have SO MUCH JUNK it's unbelievable. I don't know where we'll ever put it without our garage. Once he moved it all out in the front yard, we looked like Sanford & Son.



While they were messing with that I decided to clean my stove top and such. While scrubbing the stove top I decided I'd been dealing with this old, out of style, stained, inefficient stove top for far too long now. The "good eye" on it that I use the most heats hotter on one side than the other. So I'm constantly spinning my frying pans around so that the food gets cooked evenly in both sides of the pan. And I decided I want a new one NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, I talked Rusty into going ahead to Home Depot and getting just a stove top and vent-a-hood thing. But, unfortunately, the stove top had to be ordered and I wont have it for 7-10 days! It is one of those flat top stove top things. But we did get the vent-a-hood and I'm trying to sweet talk Rusty into going ahead and putting that in tonight. Anyway, here are pics of my old stove as I was cleaning it today. And my new vent-a-hood that will hopefully be installed tonight.

So. I have spent a lot of time this week just TESTING the motto on the shirt that I bought myself. We're biting off a LOT, that's for sure lol.

Animals are a big topic around our house over the last week. I don't think I mentioned it last time, but Smokey has taken to wandering around and finding regular visiting places. It could be something he's been doing the entire time and we just didn't know it. Right before Christmas I bought him a name tag with our number and address on it and stuff. Well, the week after Christmas I had to go pick him up WAY down the road in Marion Park. I don't know how many miles that is, I'm not good at estimating miles. But it's quite a LONG way from here for a dog I would think. Tanner and I went to pick him up though, from some teenage kid with green hair lol. 3 days later we got a call again. This time from down the highway in the other direction, but not nearly as far. He had traveled through the woods at the end of our dead end street to some houses that are on the other side. A little girl around Tanner and Brooke's age called me and we went and got him again. Since that day, he has returned to her house TWICE, including just a few minutes ago as I'm writing this blog. She said she saw him chasing a deer and he then came back to her house. So. Rusty wants me to take the name tag off of him lol. So he'll just do whatever he does and come back when he feels like it and we won't have to bother with going and getting him.

Our new cats are doing terrific as far as fitting in with us. Eva shows up about twice a day and I have no CLUE where she is the rest of the time. Jack is in the middle of EVERYTHING and he loves everybody. He's the sweetest little thing. But I have a bad feeling about them. They had an upper respiratory infection when we got them. The vet gave them a round of antibiotics and told me that if they weren't better in a week that we would have to wait yet another week before giving them shots. Well, they weren't better so I called and told them we were going to wait another week. He gave us another round of antibiotics and told me that if they weren't better after yet another week that we would need to have them tested for cat leukemia and cat AIDS. And in 2 days that week will be over and they're just not better. They are a little better maybe. Jack now has a voice when he meows and doesn't seem to sneeze as often. But they still have the eye infections and sneezing, etc. So I just know we're going to find out they have some incurable, fatal disease. And that's going to be VERY difficult on Tanner because he's become totally attached to Jack. Here is Jack admiring Rusty's guitar playing, and then Jack and Eva in the chair being buddies.

The war over Tanner's hair has raged on. Don't know if I mentioned it last time or not. But Tanner decided he wanted to let his hair grow out and I was going to make him get a haircut because it was in his eyes. Rusty stepped in to defend Tanner's right to self-expression and stated that Tanner would not get a haircut unless Tanner himself said he wanted one. That was around the first week of December. So I've been trying to talk Tanner into getting a haircut. He would have none of it. I had pretty much given up and was trying to learn to like his hair and trying to picture what it's going to look like long, etc. And finally one day this past week he came to me and said "Mom, my hair actually touched my EYEBALL today and I couldn't stand it so I want a haircut." So I told him we will get one next week! lol. Here is a picture of how long Tanner's hair has to be before he himself will get tired of it:

We got together with Keith this week and talked about putting together some songs to play for fun and just for the heck of it for now. I'm looking forward to it. But it won't be the 80's stuff, thank God. I kinda got burnt out on most of that lol. And no one will be wearing wigs. And everyone is going to practice and learn their stuff lol. So, all that should be fun. We're going to do some southern rock classics for the most part. And from there we'll just do a "potluck" type of thing lol. It will be nice to learn some new stuff and play again.

I'm going to have to spend a large portion of January working on the @#$#%$ yearbook that I got volunteered to do. I used to do it every year but I passed it on to a fellow unsuspecting co-worker about 4 or 5 years ago. Well, she had her fill last year and my boss gave it back to me. I intend to do it this year and maybe next year but then I will make my move to pass it on to some new teacher that comes in or something and thinks doing the yearbook will be fun! lol.