Happy 2021!
Holy Crap. What happened to 2020? What happened to January that it's over halfway over??
It was like a whirlwind of a dumpster fire!
Christmas Eve
We ate snacky finger foods, enjoyed some adult beverages and exchanged gifts. Thankfully we started with the youngest opening their gift first, since Spawn had drawn my Mom's name and decided to mess with her! Mom loves the dollar store (don't ask - I don't know why!!) so she got a dollar tree gift card, put it in a fancy gift card box. Put that inside another box, and then another box. Then a gift bag and another box. then a bunch of grocery bags and then one last box! Each box was wrapped in different paper and stuffed with different things - we had a good laugh about the whole thing. So yeah - glad Mom was last!
Spawn & BabyBoy!
None of the Timmy's around us had ornaments this year, but the Spouse was able to find one probably on ebay and bought it for me - hooray!
Oooooooo! Stuff he was finally allowed to get into!
We woke up Christmas Day to about 4 inches of snow, so the Spouse spent most of the afternoon clearing the driveway, which meant he didn't get packed for his trip to Arkansas. So he left on the 27th.
FYI - if you're motivated, you can make it (driving) from Metro Detroit to Hot Springs in about 14 hours.
I thought I'd get to sleep in that weekend the Spouse left, but apparently this squirrel felt the need to tell me the bird feeder was empty! This was right above my head and woke me up out of a nice nap!
So I offered to babysit so Spawn could go out on New Year's Eve. Since I couldn't tell if I was hearing fireworks or gunshots, I opted not to put BabyBoy in his crib in the front corner of the house. So I made a nice little nest in bed with me and Rusty snuggled in, too.
January 2 was BabyBoy's 1st birthday!
He clearly enjoyed his cake.
It's been a long time since I sat down and did some arts & crafts! I wanted to do something and then remembered that I'd gotten these 6 plain wooden nutcrackers from a secret Santa a couple years ago - so I got them out and painted them as zombies!
Last week, we got a message from "Sgt Sarah" who is now in charge of the search & rescue team, asking who was available to go to Alpena County in northern Michigan to assist in a search for a person who had been missing since New Year's Day.
I was going to leave Chuck in my car, but the lady I rode with saw him and asked if he was coming!
We met Friday night and several of us carpooled, since it was a 3 hour drive from the sheriff's department. The motel we stayed at had several other teams there, too.
This was a multi-agency search. The stats said 10 K9s (and handlers), 13 horses (and riders), 40 ground pounders and 8 people doing operations.
Multiple local sheriff & FDs were there, the DNR and people from 9 different SAR teams.
Because a dog trained to search out human remains should look like a werewolf!
We called this our party bus - taking us out to the 12 acre sector we were assigned to search.
That's me waving.
It was tough searching, since there was 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, sitting on top of pockets of long grass. So honestly, we could have easily walked right over a person and think it was just a log.
I don't know what kind of adventures the other ground teams had, but 2 of us in my unit found water. One girl tripped and landed in a large puddle. I went down on my knees and while they stayed dry - water soaked into my boots. Luckily we were almost done with our sector so we just toughed it out until we got back to staging to change.
We were expecting to stay out until 8pm searching, but at 3:30, the Alpena County Sheriff called it off. We didn't find the person, but the local teams will continue searching areas of interest. There's a 99.9998% chance it won't be good news when they do find him, but it'll help the family with closure.
Anyhooo.
Random cuteness....
He's still not walking, but can stand up from the floor and wave a toy around, so it'll be any day. And his 6th tooth is ready to pop thru, if it hasn't already! Thanks to the 'Rona, he's a couple weeks behind on his checkups, so we'll find out how tall he is in 2 weeks.
I almost died laughing at work when I saw this on some paperwork!
AKA "Mr." Asshole!
So I recently had a mild health scare. I've been having regular "spells" since July where my heart will start pounding erratically and I'm out of breath just walking from one room to another. They average about every 2 weeks and last a couple hours. I've been keeping track of what I ate the day before and other little oddities. I had a bad one right before Christmas where I got light headed and almost blacked out! The Spouse has a little portable blood pressure machine, so he took it for me a couple times over a several hours and it was fluctuating wildly. Then I woke up during the night on January 4 having one, so I decided to call my doctor when the office opened. Of course when I went in, 2 days later...everything was fine! They did an ekg and drew blood. Nothing. So he referred me to a cardiologist for a stress test and an echocardiogram. And wouldn't you know... the day I was scheduled to go in for my testing I had a spell??
Kinda perfect, actually - since they got to see what was happening. The little tech girl had hooked me up to the ekg, getting ready to do my stress test when she looked at the machine and said "hmm. I don't think we're going to do this test today - I'm going to step out and grab a nurse!" The nurse came in and asked a bunch of questions and said she was going to talk to the cardiologist on call and if he couldn't see me that same day, they would send me to the ER! My heart was going 160 bpm while at rest. Luckily, he had a cancellation and I was able to see him right away. And that nurse never left my side until he came in the room!
So yeah. I have AFib or "atrial fibrillation", Basically the upper chambers of my heart beat different than the lower chambers, causing palpitations (yup, I could feel them), shortness of breath (yup) and fatigue (yup - but I thought that was just from not sleeping well on our lumpy old mattress) so the cardiologist started me on a baby aspirin regimen and beta blockers - which are supposed to slow the heart beat and reduce blood pressure, easing the workload on my heart.
So I'm feeling some kind of way about this. I've never been a dainty, helpless little flower, and because I'm not small or delicate in any way - I have always felt like I had to be strong and capable and sort of unfeminine. Which is funny, since I know big girls who are very feminine! When I went in for my hysterectomy a few years ago - I had no issues with my parts being removed (in fact I was happy about that!), but I kept thinking the Spouse is sitting there while I'm recovering and thinking I'm a weakling and a burden. And now he's a 1000 miles away and he doesn't have to deal with me for a couple more weeks.
So there are a lot of mixed emotions churning around inside right now. I'm glad I found out what was going on and am taking steps to help. But the fact that there's no heart disease in my family....? and the fact that this won't go away? I'm only 47 and will be on meds the rest of my life??
I'm sure I'll come to terms with this eventually. I've told Sis 1 since I saw her this past weekend, but haven't told anyone else in the family yet. I'm not sure how to bring it up!
I forget what FaceBook page I saw this on, but I think I need to order some!
Especially now.
