Not much has changed, yet everything has changed. Does that make sense? I left Montana 15 months ago; it seems like yesterday. It seems like forever ago. I will always miss Montana, but I don't regret coming back to my family out here.
Here is a basic rundown of the haps:
- Looking for work
- Feeding seven (7) animals every day, twice a day. Five kitties (Ethel, Barnes, Teddy, Muffin, and Gus-Gus), and two dogs (Luka and Bruiser). Yes, we have a cat named after a mouse. We don't think he gets the irony.
- Looking for work
- Looking for work
- Did mention walking Bruiser (Luka takes care of herself) and scooping five (5) kitty litter boxes everyday? Well, consider it mentioned.
- Still looking for work.
- Visiting Mom.
- Mom has surgery to repair a second hernia in her abdomen in November.
- I babysat my 4-year-old great-niece for 10 days last December. I went from living like a hermit for 10 years to babysitting a precocious, yet precious, and did I mention very active 4-year-old. It was exhausting. It was awesome.
- STILL looking for work
- Had a kidney stone in June. So far it was the easiest one I've had, but it still left me with a $1500 emergency room bill. And that was after the $500 discount they gave me for not having any medical insurance. Woot!
- Did have a temp job for a couple of weeks doing data entry from 4pm to 3am down in Portland. It paid pretty well but I just could not deal with the hours and the working conditions. Plus, I had to stay at Mom's from Tuesday after work until Saturday Noon; then I could run home here to the house for Saturday evening til Monday Noon when I had to drive back down to start again. It was literally killing me, and the family staged an intervention to get me to quit. I was grateful, but back to being broke. Sigh...
- Back to looking for work
- Mom had surgery in August to remove all the mesh in her abdomen that was put in from her two hernia surgeries. She never really recovered from the one in November; her incision just would not heal and it kept abscessing. She was extremely uncomfortable and had zero quality of life. She recovered quickly from this surgery and is doing just great now. She is completely back to her old self again.
- Still looking for BLOODY WORK.
- In September, the reason why I moved back here raised it's head. My brother-in-law, Les, was on the road in the middle of TX when he became ill. He has been having a lot of trouble with his urinary system over the last year - lots of bladder infections, etc. We convinced him to go to the ER out there at the nearest hospital. To make the long story short, they found he has bladder cancer. He was in the right place at the right time, as the hospital he wound up at actually is the leading expert on bladder cancer in that area. They went in and debulked the tumor and my sister drove out and brought him home. He has since had two more surgeries up at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, and tomorrow goes back in to have his bladder and prostate removed. His prognosis is really good considering he has a very aggressive type of cancer; he will have to pee into a bag for the rest of his life, but the important thing is that he will have a rest of his life. He has not been working since he got ill in September, and we are doing the best we can getting by on Sis's part-time (yet well paying) job and Mom's VISA card.
- The animal count went UP one in October when we adopted a handi-pawed (awwww) Doxie named Monty. He was unceremoniously dumped at a vet in Idaho when his owners allowed him to severely injure his back. When they discovered the extent of his injuries, they discovered they didn't want him back. Sis found him online and he now has a very happy home here with us. I started a new blog about him, and you can read about him here.
- Last month I found a great staffing service out in Longview, WA and signed up with them. I got a job two weeks ago with Longview Fibre and have an 85 mile round trip commute that uses a full quarter tank of gas every day. But I like the people I work with and hope to get hired on there as a LF employee. Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE! I am gone from 6:30am to 6:30pm and right now I. Am. Tired. All. The. Time. But, I will get used to it, and I have to climb a flight of stairs at least four times a day, so I am hoping to have smaller hips at some point as well.
Well, that is pretty much the last 15 months in a nutshell. I promise to get better about the blogging, but it might be a little spotty right now. I will also, at some point, get around to updating the stuff on the side of my blog (rubbish about the books I am reading and the movies I've seen, etc.). Thanks to my followers that haven't given up on me!
TTFN.
PS - I am thinking of renaming the blog since I no longer live on the prairie nor live in a duplex. Any ideas? Or should I just leave it the same?
