I'm Alive!

Whew! The last few weeks have been insane. I say that a lot, don't it? But its always true. Of course, looking back, all those other times I said that were nothing compared to the past 2 weeks for me. Most of my business has been work-related, and thankfully I've been able to come home in the evenings and basically just relax. Which I have desperately needed, let me tell you!

In short, my company has been experiencing a lot of major changes lately. My office has broken away from our parent company and with that has come a ton of work for me. I love being busy at work, so its been okay, but there have been a few times that I've wanted to pull my hair out! On top of all the changes and new stuff to deal with, I had to train 2 employees for our parent company. Of course, everything was happening all at the same time, so it was pretty stressful. Which is why I haven't even thought about my blog. I do plan to go back and finish blogging about our OBX trip, cause I definitely want to remember that! And we've taken more trips since then, so more memories to log. ( :

Here's a brief rundown of what's been going on since I last posted (3 weeks ago!):

I think I blogged about my eye issues recently. If not, basically I've been suffering from extreme dry eye for several months now. A prescription for Restasis is pending, has been pending for weeks now (my insurance doesn't like to cover expensive drugs like Restasis, bleh). Anyway, I had another appointment the week after our OBX trip. My eye dr put plugs in my tear ducts, and it has made a huge difference. For a few days, I didn't see much improvement and I was pretty disappointed. But finally, I can wear my contacts almost normally. I still can't wear them every day, and I still normally take them out early in the evening, but its such an improvement. If my RX for Restasis ever gets approved, I'm sure I'll be able to wear contacts like any normal person.

The weekend after our OBX trip I didn't do a thing. At least not that I remember. I remember on Sunday we were supposed to take C to a birthday party, but neither of us felt like going so we just lazed around the house. It was lovely. Thankfully, we hadn't even mentioned the party to C, so she didn't know what she was missing! Terrible parents, huh? ( ;

July 1 was supposed to be a quiet day for me at work, but I got a call early that said 2 people were on the way for me to train, and they were 15 minutes away! Yikes. (For the record, it wasn't my boss that called me. He found out after I did that these girls were coming.) Unfortunately, I didn't teach them much since they were unexpected. Plus, the 3 of us went to lunch and then they had to leave around 2. Oh well. The next 2 days, I had one girl here. Thankfully, she was really smart and nice, and having her here wasn't much of a burden. I had a ton of work-related problems to deal with, though. The first and second weeks of July were horrible in terms of work problems. I spent hours every day on the phone with support people. Fun, fun. I think I've got almost everything sorted out now. Whew.

On July 3, my best friend had some important surgery. So on top of dealing with all the work-related mess, I was worried about her all day until I heard she was okay. Well, sort of. She had some major reactions to the surgery and the drugs. It was pretty scary for a while there. But she pulled through and is now almost back to normal. ( :

Also on that day, my boss told me not to worry about coming in on Friday (we were already closed for the 4th). I think he felt sorry for me since I was so stressed out and working so hard. So I had a 4 day weekend!!

The 4th was spent in a frenzy. We had a ton to do to prepare for our annual July 4th cookout. I made sure to enjoy the day, though. After I got some initial cleaning done that morning, me, C, and my mama played in the pool for a while. Then, while I got C to sleep (on her crib mattress on the floor again), Mama cleaned my bathrooms for me. DH was a huge help around the house that day, too. Between the 3 of us, we got that nice nice and clean. So that the family could demolish it that night, haha.

Our yard has been pretty soaked lately. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights here. That's not really an exaggeration. I've never seen so much rain at once. Literally, every day for a long time now it has rained. Our garden has drowned. Our animals are swimming. Its been bad, though not nearly as bad as some people have had it. Anyway, because the yard was so soaked, we set up all the tables in the driveway. Of course, people still managed to get dirty and track all that into my house. I was amazed at how much dirt we swept up that night. But everyone had a great time. We had over 30 people show up for the cookout this year. And it was nice cause we didn't have to rush off for fireworks at 9. (This year, our town held fireworks on July 6th for some reason.) Which also meant we had guests in the house until like 10pm. But C got to play with her cousin (who is 3), and they had a blast together. I love having both our families together like that.

The next day was Friday, and DH decided to head down to the river for the day. His aunt and uncle have a place near the Pamlico River, and they have a boat. Its where we went back in January, when I got the pictures of the eagles. Its about a 2 hour drive from home, so not bad at all. When we got there, we rode the boat to Washington, where we got out and walked around town for a while. That was nice, even though it was about a thousand degrees. C absolutely loved riding the boat, as long as her uncle didn't drive too fast! When we rode back to the dock, we let C play in the water for a while. The Pamlico River is really brown and muddy from all the rain eastern NC has had lately, so it was pretty gross, but that didn't stop C from having fun! We didn't have her bathing suit with us (we knew on the boat we wouldn't be stopping to swim or anything), so we just let her play in the water in her clothes. She loved that. We stayed until after supper and got home that night around 10pm.

Which is when we discovered that our air conditioning was broken. It was 85 degrees in our house. WAY too hot!! My brother works on heat and air units for a living, so luckily he was able to come over that night and work on it some. I don't know anything about A/C units, but he couldn't do much Friday night. So we turned up all the fans and slept almost naked. Saturday morning my brother came back and worked some more. He got it working, sort of, but said it would take a long time to cool the house. Well, most of our windows don't open (hello, old house) so we weren't able to get a good breeze going through there. It was miserable. I stayed long enough to get the floors vacuumed and mopped, and did a few loads of laundry, then C and I left for Mama's. We played in Mama's little pool for a while, then took a nap in the wonderful A/C.

DH wanted to head back to the river that night, and since our house was still 85 degrees, he didn't get an argument from me! We packed up and made it there before it was too late. We spent the day Sunday on the boat fishing. Now, I don't have any patience at all for fishing. But this was actually kinda fun to watch. I didn't participate cause I had to hold C and make sure she didn't fall off the boat. But DH and his uncle were net fishing, which I'd never seen before. They had this super long net and would set it up, then his uncle would drive the boat in circles and we'd be really loud. The idea was to scare the fish into the net. It worked pretty well. We caught a good mess of fish this way, mostly spots. Even C wasn't bored with everything.

I, unfortunately, discovered that day that I now have a true allergy to the sun. I applied SPF 50 sunscreen every hour or so all day, and didn't get a sunburn, but after a couple of hours I broke out into a rash on my legs. It was wonderful. I ended up having to cover my legs with a towel. And lucky me kept having a reaction for days after the sun exposure. Like, I'm still a little itchy, and its been over a week. Ugh. Every night last week I had to take Benadryl just to sleep, and some days I had to take it at work, too. Which I hate doing!!

Anyway, we had a fun time at the river. Once again, after we got off the boat, we let C play on the little beach. This time in her bathing suit. ( :  She had a ball. I think we made it home that evening by around 6. Our house was still pretty hot, but we could tell it was getting cooler.

By Monday morning the house was blessedly cool, but DH had decided that we'll be getting a new unit. My brother patched ours up so it'll work for a while, but sometime in the very near future we'll be shelling out a couple grand for this thing. Gotta stay cool, though!

Actually, yesterday afternoon I noticed the house was getting hot again, and DH had to go tinker with out unit again. Hopefully it'll still be cool when I get home from work today.

Now for the sickness. My poor baby has been suffering through another UTI lately. :( She started having a lot of accidents, and after a couple of days I started to wonder if it was her kidneys again. Last Tuesday night, she peed 5 or 6 times in 40 minutes, so I knew something was up. I tried to get her doctor to just test her urine without having to see her, but they insisted. So Wednesday after work, I took her in. Her urine looked clean under the microscope, and I was confused. Of course, I didn't want her to have a UTI, but I knew somethin was wrong. They cultured it "just in case." Well, early Thursday morning I got the call that she did indeed have an infection. It took until after lunch for her antibiotic to be ready, but we did manage to get 2 doses in her that day.

Almost immediately, the antibiotic made her have looser stools (sorry, TMI probably). But that's normal, so I didn't think much of it. Saturday morning, she had a few bouts of explosive diarrhea. Poor baby. She still acted okay, though, and she wasn't peeing as much. So I felt comfortable leaving her with my parents while I went to see my friend that had had the surgery. C ended up staying with them for longer than I intended cause she took a super long nap. Again, that's normal when she's fighting an infection, so I didn't think much of it. She was really whiny and clingy after her nap, but after a while she acted better. Her and I drove to town to pick up a pizza for supper, and she ate 2 pieces, plus some bread bites. Then after her bath that night, she told me she was freezing and started crying. Then I realized she had a fever. :(

She actually slept pretty well that night, considering. But yesterday morning, she woke up with a bad stomachache and immediately went to the potty, where she had diarrhea. That continued all morning. She was pitiful, and it broke my heart. I was thinking the antibiotic was affecting her, so I called the doctor, who insisted on seeing her again. So the 3 of us headed to town, where we learned that she most likely has a stomach virus. On top of her UTI! Poor baby. :( Probably picked it up the other day when I brought her to that germ-ridden place, and her defenses were already weakened. Ugh. Sot he doctor didn't do a thing for her.

After the appointment, she was feeling better, so we picked up some groceries and ate at Outback. She barely ate though, and was really tired. Once we got home, she napped for a little while, but woke up with a tummyache again. After a while she was feeling better again, and seemed like herself. We actually had fun yesterday afternoon. She had a few more bouts of pain/diarrhea last night, but then slept in her crib until 4:45am. Unfortunately, it all started up again this morning. Fever and all. I hate seein my baby sick! By the time I left for work she was feeling better, thankfully. Hopefully she'll be over this soon. And hopefully we won't get it. I've already been feeling nauseous for the past several days...ugh.

So that's my busy busy life for the past 3 weeks!! Whew!