Guinness

Guinness World Records that is. Yep. I'm going down in the history of Guinness. In a little over two weeks I will be attending the Sock Summit in Portland. One of the events scheduled to take place is breaking the world record for the most people knitting in one place at the same time for 15 minutes. The previous record was about 276 people. There will be quadruple that amount at the Sock Summit. So cool!

In other news, BB told me this morning he did not want to go to school. I think it had to do with him being shushed during naptime yesterday. He is very prideful and it takes him awhile to recover from being criticized in any way. Hmmm...wonder where he gets that?

Post school exhaustion

BB had a great first day at school.  Although he did come home exhausted. He spaced out on the couch for awhile when he got home. Hey, kind of like what I do when I get home from work. He was excited to go back today, so I'll call that a good sign.

Peanut Pug had his neurology appointment yesterday. His exam was normal, so we're just going to treat this freak seizure thing conservatively. Mostly because we don't have a few extra thousand lying around for an MRI. But he is acting happy and about 90% of the pug we once knew, so all is well.

Have a trial starting next week and I am going to have to majorly buckle down the rest of this week.

A gamer in the making

What is it like to be a paralegal

The picture above is what you will see a lot of if you become a paralegal. This is only one of five aisles of files in only one of the rooms in our office space which spans two floors. Many people talk about the paperless office and I just don't think it is possible in the legal field. At least not in personal injury cases.

You need a few things to deal with all this paper. First you need the will not to run screaming from the office. Next you need high level organizational skills and a file clerk that knows their alphabet so that you don't lose anything.

Sometimes I like to stand here in the stacks. It is quiet like a library and its dark. It smells like paper and plastic binders and I can pretend I'm at the bookstore.

Lately my work load has been obscene. There is this fine line between having enough to do so that it propels you forward and then having so much to do that it stops you in your tracks and makes you want to hide in the stacks.

Good news is that my team finally got an email today from my attorney thanking us for all our hard work and acknowledging that our workloads have been "unhealthy" as of late. I don't really see how it will change anything, but maybe it will make me feel better.

Not quite seeing the light, but trying to be lighthearted

I think the Gods Must Be Crazy. Did you see that movie? Don't feel bad if you didn't, it was released in 1980. But it pretty much sums up my reaction to the last few weeks. No, a coke bottle didn't fall from the sky, but I sure have had a lot of shit rain down on me and I sure wish I could drop it all at the end of the Earth and have it disappear.

We have Peanut scheduled for an appointment with a neurologist on Monday. Mike and I have been total wrecks watching our little pug baby go downhill. He turns nine next month. I thought I had another few years before I had to deal with geriatric dog issues.

BB starts school on Monday. Not sure how he will take this. It will be the first time he has ever been left with a bunch of people he does not know. I am hoping his curious nature will take over and it won't be too big of a deal. Probably won't be good if I start crying though right?

But before Peanut went and became epileptic on us last week, my mind had finally drifted back to one of my heart's desires. Writing.

I was reading The Writer, a magazine I subscribe to, and there was an article by a YA Author named Mandy Hubbard about getting published. Her biography indicated she was from Enumclaw which is in Washington. One thing I noticed was missing from her biography was her educational and publication background. When I read these articles I mostly see that they are written by authors with a laundry list of articles written, and oh, yeah, they all have MFAs. I checked her website and there was nothing on there either. So I took I chance and emailed her.

She was very responsive and confirmed that she was able to publish her debut novel without an MFA and without having ever published anything else before. She has also graciously agreed to meet with me to talk about it more and I will hopefully be taking her up on that offer next month. That will also give me time to read her debut novel, Prada and Prejudice.

Nanowrimo is starting to knock on the back porch of my brain. Reminding me that I have three months to come up with another concept for a novel if I hope to finish this year. I keep telling Nanowrimo to come back after Sock Summit in August and then we can talk.

You know you are stressed when you start talking to random constructs of your own mind.

Dog Epilepsy

We don't yet know why, but Peanut Pug has some type of epilepsy which causes Grand Mal seizures every five hours. It all started Friday night.

My husband was up late watching TV. I was already fast asleep in bed. At 11:30pm Peanut woke from a dead sleep and started seizing. He foamed at the mouth, his eyes rolled into his head, and all his limbs shoke violently. My husband rushed him to the animal ER. He was fine by the time they got there. There was nothing that could be done.

At 4:30am I awoke to sounds of Peanut's body being thrown against the inside of his kennel as he had another seizure. My husband rushed to catch me up on all that had occurred. We waited for the vet office to open and was told no vet was in until 10am.

At 9:30am he had another seizure. This one was worse and Peanut lost all bowel control. At 10am he was at the vet's who took a full blood panel but was reluctant to start him on any meds unless he had another seizure.

At 2:30pm he had another seizure and he was back at the vets who put him on phenobarbital. He hasn't had a seizure since. The side effects of the medication make him lethargic, unsteady on his feet, and obsessively drink water to the point of throwing it up. But no seizures.

The blood work came back inconclusive. They can't tell what is causing the seizures and we would have to go for further testing with a dog neurologist in order to find out.

Now two of my babies are on meds twice a day.

The Stress

I have been highly irresponsible in not updating you all on little BB. I blame it on The Stress. But to cut to the quick, BB is doing fine. The specialist called him normal and sent us on our way with two months of medication that should make things even more normal. Boy thingies are very confusing. I'll just put that out there.

But The Stress. It causes funny things, The Stress does. Causes me to break out like a teenager, become so fatigued that I put myself to bed at 8 p.m. right after my son is tucked away most nights and still wake up tired, causes my pipes to back up (was that TMI?), causes me to involuntarily make faces that reflect my inner turmoil while I am on the bus which then makes people look at me funny. Yes, The Stress.

It has been caused by this recent medical drama with BB, the fact that we had (just three days before) signed him up for pricey private school, and that my boss is so stressed with work that he keeps shoveling it onto me. I have no one to shovel my work to, so that leaves me with a lot to do. And the fact that during the summer the Washington State Department of Transportation causes tons of traffic grief by starting all these road construction projects that tack on an extra hour to my daily commute to and from work. Pack onto that the laundry list of tasks that has to be done every summer around the house: painting the front deck, staining the back deck, pressure washing the roof, weed/feed the lawn, etc., etc.

And here is the kicker...it's all normal stuff I am grousing on and on about. I know this. I know that most every family with children and two parents that work have to deal with these same things. And I guess that I am complaining here because I am also too busy to have many girlfriends to sit and chat with about these things. None of us have any time for each other. That and most of my friends live in Seattle proper and I live in the burbs. Therefore, after work I have to head straight for the buses and go home instead of meeting up with them for Happy Hour. Straight sucks!

My hubby and I are trying to plan something for our 10-year wedding anniversary in September. Problem is, we have to do this on Labor Day weekend because we can't take BB out of school right after he has started it and there is no one to take him to school but us. That and we actually can't afford to go anywhere and do anything on Labor Day weekend because everything costs twice as much. That and we HATE HATE HATE Labor Day weekend crowds and traffic and blech! But its our ten year wedding anniversary and we want to do something special.

Ugh. Sorry. Maybe now that I have purged that from my system we can go onto better things tomorrow. We are going to Remlinger Farms tomorrow for my husband's company picnic. That should be fun. Woolly sheep, gobbly turkeys and a beer garden.

I'll report back.

On hold

I've been on hold for four days now. On Thursday my son was diagnosed with phimosis. His pediatrician said it was severe enough, in his opinion, to require surgical correction. He then gave us the phone number for a pediatric urologist. Unfortunately this was late in the day Thursday. We were his last appointment. And the office of the specialist, and every other place I called, was closed on Friday for the holiday weekend.

I have never loathed a three day weekend before. I have now.

I am on the bus right now headed to work because their office still does not open until 9am. Might as well pretend I have the focus to do work for a few hours.