Wednesday Warbles

We got the finan­cial aid check. We had to stand in line (out­side in the cold, stand­ing on con­crete) for about 90 min­utes to get the check, then the clerk could­n’t find it. They sent us to yet anoth­er line, the “you won’t be get­ting any mon­ey” line from what we over­heard from oth­er stu­dents ahead of me. For­tu­nate­ly, the guy there could­n’t fig­ure out why we’d been sent to him. He went back to the first clerk and locat­ed the check—she just could­n’t read, apparently.

Then we went to the school’s bank and our cred­it union and ran some oth­er errands. I was exhaust­ed and in even more pain, but I’d put quite a few things off and sam­bear was sweet­ly will­ing to fer­ry me about. We near­ly for­got about shad­owkatt’s dance class, and end­ed up rush­ing to get her there on time.

The bank where I want to open a new account was closed before we got there, so that will have to wait. I’m won­der­ing about open­ing an account for Katie and hav­ing her allowance trans­ferred there auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I don’t know if they’ll give deb­it cards to minors, though. I want her to start learn­ing how to man­age bank accounts. She’s already extreme­ly good about sav­ing her mon­ey for spe­cif­ic goals.

I used to ago­nize over the fact that Katie’s father left resources for her that we can­not match for Sam’s kids. I still feel some­what guilty at times. Hon­est­ly, though, we can’t match the stan­dard of liv­ing her father pro­vid­ed when he was alive, either. And she’d far rather have her father alive than have any­thing mate­r­i­al. Appar­ent­ly, cer­tain peo­ple can­not under­stand that, and sim­ply envy those finan­cial resources because they’re so damned materialistic.

We’re to go to anoth­er doc­tor tomor­row and have lots of lab tests done. I feel some­what bet­ter from the pain meds in my sys­tem, but I’m still very much out of it. I think my hands, at least, will feel much bet­ter if we can find a paraf­fin bath to replace the one that died a few months ago. The heat just pen­e­trates bet­ter than any­thing else. We looked at one today, but there were only two mod­els to choose from—with a $100 price jump between them! I want a larg­er one so that I can get my wrists in, but that’s a huge mon­e­tary dif­fer­ence. I can’t help but think long­ing­ly of the kind the phys­i­cal ther­a­pist’s office has, that I could get my arm in up past my elbow. I shud­der to even think of how much those must run.

We need to replace our office chairs. Mine has devel­oped an inex­plic­a­ble list to the left. The arm­rest padding on both mine and Sam’s has pret­ty much evap­o­rat­ed (how does that hap­pen?). And Katie’s chair is just Evil. It was okay when she did­n’t spend much time sit­ting in it, but it’s just not up to the time she spends writ­ing using the PC now.

Per­haps I should back up—we’ve been try­ing to iden­ti­fy things that we can change in order to improve var­i­ous health prob­lems. Invest­ments that will mean less pain/fatigue/etc. are well worth their costs IF we can swing them. The bet­ter mat­tress Sam and I have now has been a major help. I want to find a way to get a good mat­tress for Katie, too. We need to invest in aller­gen bar­ri­er bed­ding for both rooms, and I need to set up the air fil­ters. Water fil­ters have def­i­nite­ly made a dif­fer­ence for us in more than just how things taste. And Katie and I are cer­tain­ly feel­ing bet­ter as we con­tin­ue to increase the fresh fruits and veg­gies we eat. Sup­port­ive shoes that are suit­able for cool weath­er are next on the list.

The house pur­chase process is pro­ceed­ing. We might be able to move in anoth­er month! Larg­er house=more enter­tain­ing. That’s a hap­py thing! The sav­ings due to shared expens­es will cer­tain­ly be a bless­ing, as well. We’ll be fur­ther from Katie’s friends and class­es as well as my class­es, though.

I like my car, but it uses too much gas, and with our small­er fam­i­ly size it just seems too large. I’m won­der­ing if the nice hybrids are start­ing to be avail­able in the used car market—I real­ly don’t want to buy a new car, ever. There’s just too much imme­di­ate depreciation.

I’m enjoy­ing the read­ing for my world lit class. Right now we’re read­ing flood and cre­ation myths from var­i­ous cul­tures. I absolute­ly adore the psychology/religion course. Should I ever be rich, I will just take class­es ran­dom­ly for the pure joy of them.

I also real­ly enjoy read­ing Katie’s lessons from Calvert. Yep, I am unabashed­ly nerdy.

I’m hop­ing that my speech class actu­al­ly meets tomor­row (it was can­celed Tues­day). And maybe I’ll actu­al­ly get to GIVE the speech I was ready to do on Tuesday.

I’m still won­der­ing about trans­fer­ring. I need to look and see how much longer I’m like­ly to be in school to see if it’s worth­while, though. I don’t want to be slowed down by trans­fer and major change issues. It’s already going to take longer than I like to fin­ish because of the decreased course load due to dis­abil­i­ty. I’m real­ly hop­ing that as the pain is under bet­ter con­trol I’ll be able to take nor­mal course loads.

I’m mulling over some things Sam said to me today about me appar­ent­ly pro­ject­ing an “unavail­able” or “unat­tain­able” vibe.

This utter ran­dom­ness is brought to you by the inter­fer­ence of Ultra­cet with sleep­ing meds.