I Warned You...

This will not be a pleasant post to read. I'm pretty sure. Seeing as this blog has sort of become an online diary, I need to vent all the crap that has been happening since 2010 started. NOT a great year so far.

Be forewarned. If you wanted a nice uplifting post, go somewhere else today, you ain't gettin' it here. Sometimes a person needs to VENT. So allow me to vomit up my grievances and bad luck of 2010 SO FAR:

1) Spent 4 days with no heat or power, snowed in, with 10 matches to my name, with a 16 month old who needs constant stimulation. No TV, no Internet, no light after 4:30 PM. Almost lost my sanity.

2) Had several trees fall over in my yard and hit my house, one of which I had to saw down with a flimsy 10 inch hand saw.

3) Charlie got a fever on the ONE day a year I HAD to be at work, causing delayed inspections and much embarrassment for me.

4) Those inspections went horribly. Lots of stress, someone got fired, more work for everyone.

5) I crashed my car and have a $500.00 deductible.

6) Sometime after the car crash and before the hospital, I stepped on Charlie's toy truck with my right foot. This caused an impromptu meeting between the floor and my left knee, while my right foot shot out from under me and headed for the hills. I tore or pulled my thigh muscle and sat on the floor crying... thinking it couldn't get much worse. Little did I know. Then I got disgusted with my self-pity and hobbled on with the rest of my day.

7) Charlie got so sick we had to spend 2 nights in the hospital, with no sleep. See post below, but basically they couldn't find either a crib for her, or a monitor that worked. The monitor sounded a false alarm every 2 minutes that the staff ignored. They told us we couldn't turn off the machine even though it wasn't working, nor could they turn off the alarm so I could get some sleep.

8) While we were in the hospital, a nurse said I could go home and take care of my dogs (I wanted to put them in a kennel so I could focus solely on Charlie). Twenty minutes after I leave, my car starts making a LOUD FLUTTERING NOISE, like a huge metallic do-do birdattempting lift off... Apparently the mechanic did not quite fix my car ALL THE WAY.

9) Twenty-one minutes into my drive home, the nurse calls, exasperated: "I CAN'T sit here for an hour. You'll have to come back." Uhhh... thanks for nothing.

10) The mechanic is closed. The kennel is closed. Besides, I now have no time to do any of that because I have to return asap to the hospital. Can my car make it?? Who knows! Let's find out!

11) I return to the hospital and the bed they had given me and Charlie to sleep in (face to face, me breathing in her coughs) has been taken away. She is caged in a crib with high bars, almost to the ceiling. I guess when the head nurse needs to do work, they can find a crib in minutes, but when mom needs sleep and to not catch Charlie's illness, they cannot find one.

12) 9 AM Day 2 and I'm informed we are being discharged. Any minute now. Yay! 1 PM I'm still waiting.... Oh and by the way, we forgot to tell you but Charlie is on isolation precautions, so that time we let her walk the hallways and go in the playroom? Our mistake. Now she is feeling better and amped up on steroids, you'll have to stay in the room with her and occupy her until we let you go.

13) The nebulizer that Charlie probably doesn't need but was ordered for her anyway? The one that they are charging my insurance company $200.00 for? The NEW price? Is totally skanky, scratched up, stained, and the power switch goes on and off by itself. Insurance fraud? Hmm...

OK, that's not all, but that should do it. I left out some doggie vomit, doggie diarrhea, doggie eating books and nebulizer tubes (this morning, thank you Boo) stories out because I don't want to seem WHIIIIIIIIIINY.

I always end complaints with a statement of gratitude, like "I realize I'm not having an amputation in central park like people in Haiti, so I don't have much to complain about," and that is certainly true. To balance things out a bit:

1) Charlie is alive and without brain damage so thank GOD for that. (The Dr. said if I hadn't brought her in and her oxygen levels remained that low or fell more she could have had brain damage or died.)

2) No one was hurt in the car crash.

3) The fluttering do-do bird was fixed this morning for free.

4) Hospitals exist here and there was not much ice on the road when I had to travel there and back.

5) All the nurses except Head Nurse Ratched were exceptionally sweet.

6) The dogs survived 2 days alone and my neighbor was home and could let them out and feed them. They only ate one book and the rest of the house remains undamaged.

This time next week, we SHOULD be lounging on the beach in the Caribbean. IF our plane doesn't crash. The way this year has been, I think it's iffy.

We'll see.

But boy do I need that week of vacation. I need it REALLY bad. This single parenting thing is HARD HARD, HARD and that is with GOOD LUCK and with GOOD THINGS happening. When there is bad luck and bad things happening, it's close to impossible. Somehow I've made it through, but it often feels like I'm drowning. When the nurse called right after my car broke, on my home to care for the dogs, I really just felt like I was being punished. I tried to think of whether I've done something wrong lately that karma might be getting me back for, but I can't really think of anything THAT bad. I'm not perfect, but I'm not evil or anything. So why does this stuff keep happening? I need to catch a break here, God. Am I looking too much at the negative???? Does that attract this stuff??? Am I so tired that I lose my mindfulness so that I crash cars easier and step on toys while multi-tasking? Certainly my lack of focus had nothing to do with Charlie's hospitalization, or the nebulizer fraud or the car not being fixed properly the first time. WTF? God? Hello?