"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

~Mohandas K Gandhi

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Been on hiatus

So...it's been a while. 

Life has been incredibly busy the past couple of months.  I am working full time, my son has occupational therapy Tuesdays after school, I have regular appointments Thursdays after school, and Wednesdays after school, I have been teaching a sign language class.  Busy is good, but people like me need to remember to take care of ourselves, too, and that we get run down far more easily than others do, and when we do, shit happens.

On October 29th, the northeastern US was hit by a freak snowstorm.  We live in northwestern New Jersey, and got almost 16 inches of snow on our deck.  I do not remember the last time we had this much snow before Thanksgiving, much less before Halloween

The problem with snow this early is that, up until that point (and, actually, since then), it had been a warm fall, so the trees still had lots of leaves on them.  The snow clung to leaves, weighing branches down really seriously a lot, resulting in broken branches of epic proportions.  We had a ton all over our yard.  My husband is six feet, three inches tall, and he couldn't even move most of what ended up in our yard; he had to saw them into pieces before they could be moved.  (Some of these pieces of tree were exactly that- we have two trees that simply snapped in half!)

So, what happens when you get the top halves of trees plummeting down on power lines?  yep, massive outages, of epic proportions.  We woke that Monday morning (happy Halloween!) to no power.  We have a well, so no power means no water.  No power also meant no heat.  To make a long story short, I got a room at a local hotel for me and my son, and my husband stayed here all week, in the cold.  Both of us were kind of worried about people seeing entire neighborhoods without power and looting the place, and didn't want to leave the house vacant.  (Before I forget, the Hilton Garden Inn at Rockaway staff was AWESOME to us.  When we checked in on Halloween, pretty much anyone who walked by us kept offering candy to my five-year-old son, who was standing there looking forlorn in his Jango Fett costume.  They smiled at us all week and asked him how he was doing, too.) 

My school was closed for three days that week.  My son's daycare, thankfully, was open, so he had a warm place to hang out all day.  Our power did not come back on until Friday afternoon; thanks to Detroit Electric for being the ones to turn our power back on!

So, that Thursday, when my school re-opened, was I there?  No, I was sick.  It was partially a cold, which I'm sure I could have fought off had I slept in my own bed all week, but it was also partially mental and physical exhaustion.  Truthfully, I grow tired just thinking about that week.  Worst Halloween ever, for starters- you try telling a five-year-old there will be no trick or treating, because your town has cancelled it.  (I can't blame them for that- the town was still under more than a foot of snow, not a whole lot of plowing had been done, and there's the whole downed power lines thing.)  I ended up with a major sinus infection and had to go on an antibiotic.

I got another sinus infection about three weeks ago, and went on something for that, which I finished.  Then, a week ago Saturday, I started to get sick again.  I got through that whole week, Thanksgiving week, on pure will.  I did NOT want to have to call in sick on a two and a half day week, and we were hosting Thanksgiving- a small group this year, but still.  Black Friday, I went to the doctor- yep, bronchtis.  He also sent me for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia.  Awesome.

(I've been shown a lot of my chest x-rays.  I got a brief glimpse of this one on a computer screen.  I do not think I had pneumonia; I think it was, as the doctor said he thought it probably was, just that I was wheezing so badly, it sounded worse than it was.  Besides, I never got a phone call from him, and he would have called me if it was pneumonia.)

So, that was my Turkey Day weekend- felt very run-down, and pretty much rested most of the weekend.  I now have three and a half weeks before Christmas break.  I've already used up for sick days- I sure hope I can get through the next three weeks without having to use another one...and that I am not sick for Christmas!