This TRYING week.... Chaos!

Just the ramblings (whinings) of an expectant mother - only 8 weeks to go!

As I mentioned a few times my mother-in-law, Frances, moved in with us Tuesday a week ago. Well this week on Monday not only did her things arrive, but she told me she had not been taking some of her medication for five days because she was "out". I was frustrated she hadn't told me earlier, but I got on the phone, called around and found her an internal med doctor that works only with elderly patients. (He came highly recommended by one of my doctors.) They were kind and managed to get her scheduled for the very next day. And this was after dealing with the guys moving her stuff down from Virginia, returning our rented U-Haul trailer, dropping off Rob's shirts at the cleaners, and a few other assorted errands -- all in the rain of course. But then, I think the rain was the BEST part of the day. (I SO love rain! *giggles*)

So we come to Tuesday. I managed to get all my running around (office stuff for Rob) done early, got back here to get Mom and we went to the doc's office. She refused to let me go with her into the office, so like an idiot, I agreed to go and let her wait by herself. I SHOULD have known better (and probably would have put up more of a fight if I hadn't needed to get an anniversary gift for Rob for the next day lol). The receptionist was VERY ugly to her, told her that she had been scheduled the day before, and that she wouldn't be able to come back to the office until 10/13. So I rushed back over there, had a LONG fight with her, got the head nurse/administrator involved and guess what.... we got to see the P.A. They were concerned about Mom being out of her pills, until she revealed that she'd "found" her pills but wasn't taking them. *Side note* I could have killed her right about that moment!!!! *end side note* But in the process of examining her, the nice lady P.A. discovered Mom had pneumonia. (Apparently flying is not good for older people... she said almost all of their patients get sick when they fly.) She couldn't decide if she should send Mom home or straight to the hospital, but opted for antibiotics, home and an appointment for 1pm on Wednesday with a chest x-ray scheduled 1 hour prior. Later that evening, Rob came home from California, bawled me out for not knowing better than to leave Mom on her own at her doctor's appointment, bawled Mom out for not taking her pills and we all went to bed.

Wednesday: Rob left on an 8ish flight to Washington, DC. I came home from the airport and tried to lie down for a little while... I hate it when I don't sleep at night.... but ended up having to get up about 1/2 hour later when the guy from Verizon showed up to install the cable. (Yes, we were a family living without cable believe it or not. We don't watch television except what we get on DVD anyway. We're doing this for Mom.) Needless to say, he left 2-1/2 hours later saying he didn't have a CLUE why it wouldn't work but that I needed to call and reschedule with a different tech because he was at wits end. Great. So off we go to the doctor's office. (Mind you, Mom can barely walk anyway, so she uses a walker, a cane and/or a wheelchair to get around. Getting in and out of the truck is a bit time consuming too. Poor thing.) I'll spare y'all (and my poor tortured memory) most of the details, but suffice it to say nothing went right. The x-ray people didn't have their orders to do the work, so after an hour I walked the VERY long walk to the doc's office to force them to send the orders, back to the x-ray office, get Mom, back to the doc's (which we're 50 minutes late to our appointment by then) only to be told (by said NASTY receptionist) that they have other patients and it'll be nearly another 45 minutes before they see us. Did I mention that Tammy and the babies went with us? So yeah, we have three weary toddlers along as well. (Though I warned Tammy about that before we left and she still wanted to get out of the house and come along. lol) After they FINALLY called us back, the nice P.A. did a very thorough job of taking care of Mom, doing an EKG, giving her a breathing treatment, chewed her out (kindly, but firmly) for not having all her meds along like she'd been told the day before, and finally decided that it was ok not to have her in the hospital. They did schedule her for a return visit on Tuesday afternoon though to check up on her. Then we were off. It was just after 4 pm, I still had to make it to the bank to get money for Rob (to take with him to China this morning), pick up his dry cleaning, pick up the gifts at the office that he purchased for clients and friends in China, get his prescriptions, AND get home in time to finish laundry and get his bags packed before his plane arrived back from DC at 7:45pm. Well I screwed that up too. He came in at 6:45. lol We got home at 6:20. Guess what? He took a taxi home from the airport last night! (And needless to say, I was SO tired from pushing a 230 pound woman around in a wheelchair that I was totally exhausted and could barely drag myself out of bed to even give him a hello kiss. I felt terrible about that.... well, I still do actually.)

For the second night in a row, I didn't sleep much at all. I was awake by 2 am and out of bed by 4 something this morning trying to finish up the minor things in Rob's packing and get him going. We left the house at 5:10 am to get him to the airport. (There is definitely an advantage to living 15/20 minutes from DFW - depending on traffic. lol) I came home, everyone was back in bed (Mom), still in bed (Frances, Frankie and Marshie), or gone to school (Desse), so I laid back down. BIG mistake! I knew I had to get the babies ready to have flu shots at 9:30, and was planning on having them up and fed before Tammy got her at 8. Rob called me at 6:34 am to tell me he was on the plane and shutting his phone down (yeah, I like getting one last "I love you" in. I'm schmoopy I'm told. But I still make him call me lol) and asked if I'd been asleep. Nope. But between that phone call and 7:50 when Tammy arrived, I apparently DID fall asleep. We did, somehow, manage to get out of the house (with fed AND dressed toddlers) and to the doc's office on time. I give ALL the credit to Tammy. All three babies did great with their shots. Marshie cried for several minutes. Frances wrinkled up her face, cried for a couple of seconds. Frankie whined for a second, then totally stopped. That was the extent of the shots today. Frankie did get on the scale though. He weighs 23 pounds 2 ounces. YAY!!! He's been eating like CRAZY the last couple of weeks, so I asked them to weigh him today. He and Marshie are 14 months old today. : )

Needless to say, I came home from that - well ok, we went grocery shopping on the way home first - and fell into bed. I slept until 4 pm this afternoon! I NEVER sleep 4 hours during the day. lol I feel really guilty, but after hurting yesterday and being so exhausted I couldn't sleep, I was thankful for the sleep I did get today.

And just in case anyone wonders... this is what our dining room (the very first room you walk into from the front door) looks like - and has since Monday:

View from the front door -


View from the familyroom doorway -

Luckily I have a VERY nice lady (our house cleaning and office cleaning lady) coming to help Mom unpack on Saturday. Not only will I pay her well for all her help, I just might have to kiss her too if she gets some/all of this crap out of my dining room!!!! rotflmao

Rob will be gone to China for two weeks. I already miss him SO much, but that's because he's been gone a lot leading up to this trip. I told him he couldn't go ANYWHERE else once he gets back. lol Well, ok, maybe to DC. I know he has to go to the patent office every couple of weeks.

Tomorrow I have nothing definite scheduled. Tammy and I want to take the kids to the Pumpkin Patch which opened about 6 miles north of us. That's it - that's the extent of my planning. I figure I'll take anything else as it comes.

I'm still thankful today that everyone is relatively well or mending, that my kids are happy and healthy, that my family all loves one another enough to put up with all this chaos, and that I have a wonderful nanny who doesn't mind putting up with an 84 year old Grandma that talks all the time. She's a true lifesaver.

And of course, I'm also praying for Rob to have a safe trip to/from/in China.

I also really appreciate anyone who made it to the end of this post without a) wanting to kill me for all the whining or b) thinking I should be committed.