I have nothing of value to add.

Kyle’s got a runny nose and is waking up at night screaming his head off.  Poor baby.  Poor spoiled baby.  This kid wants for nothing.  Except my dice.  Those he wants but he can’t have.  Oh and electrical cords he wants those too.  And Peabody’s fur.

Poor Peabody cat.  Unlike Marble he’s not learned to run and hide from Kyle yet, instead he just tries to stare him down.  The result was that PB left a scratch on Kyle’s cheek.  All I saw was a streak of gray fur and Kyle happily grinning with a fist full of cat.  I try my best to make Kyle leave the cat alone but, you know, he could help a bit by not always needing to be in my lap with Kyle.  That’s the sad thing about PB, cause and effect is lost on him.

So far the only thing Kyle has found from the Christmas decor is that he tries to eat my Baby Jesus, I never in my life though I’d have to say ‘Kyle don’t eat Baby Jesus!’, yet I have.  And while he’s chewing  our Lord and Savior he knocks Joseph and Mary over.  I know the Lord has a sense of humor, just look at a platypus, so I really hope he sees the humor in this.

After 4 days off of work I’m really not looking forward to going back, though I’ll be in one of the clinics Monday and Tuesday so it won’t be as bad.  My anxiety levels are off the charts though.  I have a med check next Friday so I’ll let the doc know this round of meds isn’t helping much.

This Friday is the Sherwin party!  PAAAARTY!  Old friends, Jay and Priscilla up from AZ, good food and family.  It’s going to be fun.  Kyle’s going to the Naujock’s house though we’re still in the debate for an over nighter or not.  Either way I’ll have to pick him up on Saturday and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to do a repeat performance of needing my shoes removed at the end of the night like I’ve needed in years past.  We’ll probably pick him up.

Then on Sunday all the second cousins are going to meet at Aunt Val’s.  With the twins up for a visit it’s a perfect opportunity.  What will be even more fun is that they are all around the same age.  So there will be loads of pictures and grandma’s to dote.

Oh yeah, the computer guy told Brenda just what I’d told her about her malfunctioning computer.  The hard drive is borked.  I just looked at her and very calmly said that I’d told her that information for free.  And the next bit of free information I was going to give was get a back up of everything you need because it’s not a matter of if now it’s a when.  But that’s what you get for getting the $299 blue light special.

Of course the accountant keeps swearing they told her that these computers could handle what we needed them to do.  Of course they can and they did but they aren’t really that well bulit, that’s the reason they were cheap.  You’d do better to spend a tad more for a machine that will hold up even though, as the women loves to point out, computers are out of date quickly.  Yeah but that doesn’t mean they won’t run.  My machine is 5 years old, yeah it’s that old, but it’s still humming along.  BTW that’s on my wish list for the upcoming year.  Getting a new machine built for me.  /drool.

Kyle is Santa

His first Thanksgiving meal

He

Hi ho Hi ho into the holiday’s we go!

Oh my holy hell, Blizzard has done some amazing things with Lich King.  At the end of one of the many quest chains I earned an achievement and my computer screen went black.  My first though, given the age and the temperamental nature of this computer, was that I’d finally killed it.  But no, it was a cut screen that showed the advancement of the story line in game.  Once that finished the zones around me changed.  NPC’s who hadn’t been there were now there, a field was now a burned out wreak.  Oh and I got to raid the Horde’s Undercity to help them.  Of course this just started a war when their King turned on us but hell, it was a great ride.

Now I can see quest chains and events, even areas, diffrently than someone who’s not finished the chains.  It.  Was.  Awesome.

Let my co-workers in on a little of my geekyness today when my boss’s computer gave her the black screen with a beeping sound to back it up.  I told her that it was toast.  She doesn’t believe me but I told her that when it’s not getting the blue screen o’ death and I can’t even get it to boot to a point I can get into safe mode it’s very, very bad.  Of course she whined that it was a brand new computer.  My only response to this complaint was to tell her that’s what you get when you buy the $399 Circuit City Special.

My boss, though, has said she’s very happy with the job I’m doing.  So that’s good for me.  I’ve been fairly successful with appeals.  Even won a few that I only appealed to say I did because as far as I knew we were up a creek on them.  Thankfully the appeals people at one insurance company are about as intellectual as their CSR’s.

I also got to give good news to a clinic, almost $1100.00 in claims coming in for a provider, who was at fault for not getting paid in the first place.  Just a note, if you aren’t credentialed for an insurance then don’t see those patients ok?

One last note on this topic, to my clinics.  I love you ladies but there was a reason we took away your over rides to our lock out codes.  It’s because for some reason even if someone owed us thousands of dollars you would just over ride the lock out and keep scheduling them.  Please do not get pissy with me if I inform you that without payment I’m not removing the code.  If you go to Target and try and leave with $3500.00 worth of their products that’s theft.  It’s no different when people don’t pay our bills.  We work out payment plans, hell we’ll even take $10.00 a month so there is no excuse for people not to work something out.

Thanksgiving is Thursday and it’s Kyle’s first.  I had him at just the right time because now he can partake in some of the treats of the holiday with us.  This is the only year we’ll split the holiday day with both families.  Many years ago we decided to alternate Thanksgiving and Easter because trying to work things out to spend time with both sides was a pain.  So far it’s worked well.

This year Kyle was 3 weeks old for Easter and it was my parents year.  We spend a good deal of time with them but we did go by Jason’s mom’s for a bit too.  It was his first and we wanted to make sure we all shared it.  For Thanksgiving it’s Jay’s mom’s year so the majority of the day will be spend with her and the rest of Jason’s family but we’ll be making time to go to my uncle and aunt’s home to visit for a bit.  Christmas Eve has always been spend with Jason’s mom and Christmas Day with my mom and dad.

Honestly that was hard for me to get used too.  Being with my mom’s family on Christmas Eve was such a huge part of my childhood.  A good deal of my Christmas memories are wrapped up in running down those basement stairs and smelling the basement smell, hearing the murmur of the adults and seeing the haze of cigarette smoke.  Of course, there is also the infamous Christmas Eve my grandmother got drunk and nearly caused a riot but that’s a story for a different day.

We used to try and make it over to my mom’s family on Christmas Eve but after a while it got to be too much.  As we were coming in people were leaving, it was tiring and we were short changing his mom.  So that too stopped.  This year we had talked about splitting some of the time but in the end it’ll only make Kyle cranky and make Christmas Day miserable with an over tired and over stimulated baby.  So we’ll pack him some jammies and after dinner he’ll open his gifts and it’s into his room at Grammies until daddy and I head home.

Christmas Day is always at my mom and dad’s and last year they’d moved two doors down.  I’d told my mom that some of my fondest memories of Christmas Day’s past were when Carly and I were older and we’d all sleep in.  Dad would get up and start some coffee then make a great big breakfast and then we’d slowly open our gifts all afternoon.  It was lazy, it was close and it was a wonderful time.  Mom told dad that and he called to tell us to come over in our jammies Christmas morning and he’d make breakfast.  So we did.  Me in my stars and moon jammies Karen had gotten for me and I’d just opened on Christmas Eve, they matched Kyle’s nursery theme, and Jason in a tee and jammie pants.  At 7 months pregnant I trundled through the cold in slippers while Jason held my hand to go get a little bit of those cherished memories back.

It was our last Christmas as a “we”.  The last one we could decide to nap in or be lazy once we got home.  The last one we’d exchange our small gifts in the morning quietly.  There was something sweet and sad about that.  We’d longed for a baby and each year at Christmas I’d be a little sad I wasn’t being woken up to the squeals of “Santa CAME!”.  To not have someone to tell the story of Jesus too, talk to about Santa and his elves.  But at the same time I enjoyed the quiet of the we.  The easy going, casual, relaxed feeling of it. Once we got home from celebrating we’d take our time to savor the things our loved ones picked for us.  Talked about the funny things that were said, about how this gift was missing a piece or how this one small stocking stuffer was the neatest thing we’d gotten.

This year will be a lot different as we get home and put a sleepy baby into his bed.  Among the shirts, video games and books this year will be brightly colored plastic, tiny shoes and socks and things that light up and make noise.  It’s going to be a very, very nice Christmas.

And life marches on in little steps.

On the 10th of November I received an email Paul’s wife, Kat, that her friend and someone I’ve grown fond of in the last few years was in the hospital.  At full term they’d lost her baby girls heart beat.  On the 11th Isla Rose was born, her cord wrapped around her neck and body.

A loss like that is profound.  It was before I became a mother and it’s even more heart wrenching now that I see that smiling face each morning and those sleepy eyes each evening.  I didn’t think the heart ache I felt for Isla’s mother was something I could ever really top.  Then I read Jen’s blog and learned that her twins, had too, left us.

These are the moments I want to scream and cry to God about his infinite unfairness, how someone who’s supposed to be all loving and all kindness could allow these two dear, sweet women to feel this life only to have it wrenched away.  To take such an innocent, untested and unheld life.  When I see the face of a small child who wants to be loved and held my heart hurts for them.  But a child who never felt that nearly breaks me.

It dawns on me as I write this that when our Georgianne, my cousins daughter, passed at just over 2 years of age the pain and anger wasn’t as deep.  Is that because Georgie, even for only such a short time, felt love, warmth and comfort?  The doctors said such feeling for her was not possible, that she had only the most base life functions.  To eat, sleep, breath, and have her heart beat.  But there would be moments that her little eyes would see something, really see it and you knew that she knew.

Perhaps that is what hurts most of all.  These babies were robbed of that.

Yeah it’s been a while.

And I can’t say it’s because I’ve been busy, just stressed.  A lot has down down in the last two weeks.  Some good, some bad.  Kyle though, is always the good.

Between you and me Lich King came out and I’m spending most free time there.  Sure it’s less free time now but I’m still rolling around and kicking butt.  It’s nice to see some old friends again and it’s nice to be interested in the game again.  Sure once I hit 80 I’ll be back to grinding out rep over and over but for now there’s some fun.  The new quest lines are very neat, well thought out, well executed and interesting.   And they’ve even added some new dimensions to the quests like swooping in on a bird and rescuing people, driving a tank and shooting giant guns.

Plus the new scenery is just breath taking.  While Outlands was sort of other worldly and some what fantasy like, the new zones are wintry complete with trees that are heavy with snow.  The one new instance I ran today was both beautiful and fun.  Kyle likes to watch me fly on the birds from zone to zone and summon my dreadsteed.  The dreadsteed I’m not sure on but the bird thing must be fun to watch as the colors fly by and change.

Work is work.  Not much to report there except it’s sort of like being back in high school where you wonder what the cool kids say as you leave the room.  They are talking about making us wear scrub tops, nicer shirt like ones, and black dress pants and black dress shoes.  Personally I think we’ll look stupid but all hell broke lose when the ladies I work with directly decided it was “stupid” and that they had spent $75 on dress pants and by God they were going to wear them.

Jay and I have gotten into watching The Big Bang Theory.  It’s like watching my friends from the outside complete with the socially awkward one who can’t talk to girls.  Cute, funny and well thought out show.

Other than that I’m chilling until the husband and baby get home from grammies.  Then it’s into the tub for him!

A little voter

On Tuesday Kyle went with me and hung out in his sling while I voted.  He seemed to enjoy the whole thing and watched me as I got my ballot, as I voted and explained to him what we were doing.  Though I did have to tell him not to eat my ballot at one point.  But other than that one incident we survived his first election well.  Dinner with grandma and grandpa after didn’t hurt either as he stole all grandma’s cheese and more than half her sweet potato.  He knows a mark when he sees one.

As for me?  I can’t say that I’m thrilled about the outcome of the Presidential Election.  I am excited to see a huge step forward for our nation in uniting behind a man who’s half black and half white.  I can honestly say I’m proud of my country for seeing past the color of someones skin when choosing our nation’s leader.  Our President Elect has a rough start ahead of him with our nations economy, two wars and a budget that’s completely blown.  I pray that he finds his balance and we support him.

Meanwhile, I’ve been WoWless for 2 weeks.  Between being dead tired at 9 each night and my father being in the hospital I’ve been away from the computer, and nerdly pursuits, for a while.  Funny how real life can get in the way no?  After I’m done updating here I’ll have to finish picking up the house then get Kyle ready to visit his grammie and head back to the hospital with my mom.  BTW, hospital cafeteria food sucks.