Catching my breath and catching up

Wow, what a week and a half this has been. Last Monday I was sick. Mostly, I was dizzy and had a headache. Youngest Son was home from school, so I just stayed home and hung out with him. Well, he slept until 2:30 PM, so I guess I stayed home alone really, until he woke up, at which time I bribed him into staying overnight again and going back to school the next morning (he didn't have class until 2:30 PM) by promising to make whatever he wanted for dinner. I'm not above bribery when it comes to my kids. He accepted the bribe, parking himself on the sofa while I ran to get food (Papa Murphy's pizza) and new tags for the license plates on his car and two others that expired in October. When I returned, we spent the rest of the afternoon watching a PBS documentary on Marie Antoinette. He has a research paper on her due today for his French Civ class. It was a really well done documentary, and I learned a lot about her and the French Revolution that I didn't know. Well, maybe I knew it at one time, but I had forgotten most of it.

Tuesday, I went to work for a meeting, still not 100%. At about 10 AM I got a call from YS asking if I knew where his car keys were. Doh! How about in my coat pocket in my office? I had driven his car when I went to get the tags since he was parked behind my car, and had forgotten I had his keys. That meant I had to dash home so that he could get back to school. I helped him pack his car, kissed him goodbye, and we both headed back into town, with him going on to school from there. I only stayed at work until 5 instead of my usual 6:30, not feeling quite well yet.

Wednesday I got up, got totally ready for work, only to be assaulted by a terrible headache as I was heading out the door. A wave of nausea swept over me, forcing me lie down and close my eyes. I downed 4 ibuprofen, the only thing that ever takes these headaches away, but they only made my stomach hurt worse. Naturally, I called in sick. I went to bed and slept almost all day. Whenever I opened my eyes, my head would pound, I'd get dizzy, and nausea would overwhelm me. I took 4 more ibuprofen a few hours later, but the headache persisted. I guess it was a migraine brought on by my wildly fluctuating menopausal hormones. I got up in the late afternoon and logged on to my work email, answered a few from the staff, worked to resolve a weird circulation glitch, making a couple of phone calls to work in the process, and making myself sick again. I simply could not look at the computer screen, watch TV, or read without getting dizzy and nauseated. I went back to bed and stayed there for the rest of the night. The sound of the television when The Spouse came home was almost unbearable. I have never had a headache like that before.

Thursday, I got up, headache free, and went to work. Several coworkers commented on how tired I looked. I felt better, but I did feel weak and lethargic that morning. The Friends of the Library were having their monthly meeting at noon, during which a local author was doing a presentation on her new book about yurts. She needed the LCD projector set up, which required my assistance. This woman, Becky Kemery, has spent almost every day for the past year or so in the library working on this book. She had hundreds of photos on CDs that she was continually copying and writing to different CDs as part of the book writing process. It seemed that, on a fairly regular basis, she ran into some difficulty or other during the copying process, which required my intervention to resolve. Sometimes the problems were easy to resolve, and resulted in a learning experience for her as she improved her technology skills. Other times, it was simply equipment acting up, which provided me with not much more than frustration. In time, she became more and more adept at moving her photos around, and my intervention became less and less necessary. Finally, the book was completed and sent off to the publisher, with the end result now available on Amazon.com. Yurts: Living in the Round, by Becky Kemery, is a beautiful book about a unique living structure that is not all that uncommon in this area. To my utter surprise, Becky thanks me specifically in her acknowledgements, as well as two former coworkers (both have gone on to new adventures), for our help in getting her book out. At the presentation, she read the acknowledgements that thanked us and the library in general, then presented a signed copy of her book to our director. It was really great.

At the same Friends of the Library luncheon, I saw the president of the Idaho Writer's League, a group of local writers who meet regularly at the library, who sponsor a number of writing workshops for adults and youth alike. At this summer's county fair, they had a booth and sponsored a contest. In this contest, one drew a topic from a hat, and then proceeded to write on that topic for just five minutes. With a pen. In longhand. I entered. My topic was "picnic". I started writing furiously. Now, I almost never write with anything other than a keyboard, so almost immediately my hand began to cramp. I hurriedly conjured up a story, but as the minutes ticked by (I could not see the timer, so really had no idea how much time was elapsing), my story grew, and I worried about how I would end it. I was warned that I had a minute to conclude my tale. I was far from a conclusion. In fact, I had just gotten to the meat of the story. As quickly as I could, I wrapped it up, throwing in a bit of a cliffhanger as the final scene closed. My hand ached from the exertion. I had forgotten how hard it is to write in longhand. I shook my head in dismay, handed my entry to the person manning the booth, and went back to the library's booth at which I was stationed. It was a pretty pathetic attempt at story writing. The entries were subjected to the scrutiny of the members of the Writer's League some time in September and October.

At the October FOL meeting, I had inquired as to who had won. I was told a decision had not yet been made and that it would take some time. At this FOL meeting, when I again inquired, the president told me that it was an employee of the library. He said that the winner's entry was so far above the others in quality that the decision was unanimous. He went on to say that the youth winner wrote their entry entirely in rhyme, and that it too was far above the competition in skill and content. Clearly, I had not won. He than asked me what my topic was. I could not, for the life of me, remember. He asked if it was "picnic", to which I replied "oh, yeah! That was it!" He asked if I remembered my story. Again, the answer was no. Heck, it was 5 minutes almost three months ago. I can barely recall what I ate for dinner last night. He said the winning entry had something about a hurricane in it. That was mine! I had won! I was astonished. He said that the winners would be announced at Saturday's meeting of the Writer's League, and read to all in attendance. I would be contacted at some point in the future for a photo op and to receive my award, whatever it is. Apparently, I get some sort of prize. I don't know if my winning the competition speaks well of my writing skills (I tend to doubt it), or poorly of the competition (more likely), but hey, it's fun to win contests, whatever they are (well, maybe not belching contests or best female mustache contests). So, Thursday turned out to be a pretty great day, despite its less than stellar beginning.

By Friday, I was my old self. I spent the day in a frenzy of activity, installing new computers and working with my volunteer assistant (the young man who went to high school with Youngest Son and is a computer geek) until 7:30 that night installing a new switch, an uninterruptable power supply for all the switches, and reorganizing the mad tangle of patch cords that connect all the computers in the building to the switches and servers. As it turned out, even at 7:30 PM we had much left to do, but we both needed to get home. The weekend brought tons of yard work, and a bit of holiday fun.

Saturday AM the local Hallmark store had a VIP sale. Daughter had a special invite to the early entry event and asked if I wanted to go with her. At 8:30 AM, we joined dozens of other VIPs, so denoted by Hallmark by virtue of their past year's purchases, for a sneak peek at a wild array of holiday gifts, ornaments, and specials.

Every year I buy each family member an ornament. Each person has a theme that I try to stick to from year to year. For example, Daughter-in-Law gets a Snoopy ornament each year because she has worked for Met Life for years, and of course, Snoopy and Woodstock are sort of their mascot. Unfortunately, because of the hectic schedule I tend to keep, I find myself often doing my ornament shopping during the last few days before Christmas. As you might imagine, there are not a lot of options at that late date. On the positive side, fewer options makes decision-making a lot easier. But here I was, almost two months before Christmas, shopping for ornaments. Never before have I been able to select from the entire collection of Hallmark ornaments offered for the year, let alone the additional "non-Hallmark" ornaments this store stocks, which in itself is a huge collection. Where I usually have one Snoopy ornament from which to choose, I had four. FOUR! Winnie the Pooh? Half a dozen! This was going to be rough, really, really rough.

In addition to the overwhelming selection of ornaments, the store was crammed with a variety of special holiday offerings. I am not one to buy those animated, sound-making Christmas displays that assault our senses almost every Christmas, but this year there was one I could not resist. It is a snowman and some penguins that move about in time to music. I just knew the grandkids would go nuts over this, so I had to have it. Toss in a George Strait CD for my mom, a dozen completely hilariously inappropriate and un-PC Shoebox Greetings Christmas cards for coworkers, family and friends, (example - "how can you tell a reindeer from an elk or a regular deer? Reindeer's a little chewier." That's for my dad, the hunter.), and with all the specials and discounts, and almost two hours later the cash register rang up a grand total of $300! Ouch! I'd better be on the VIP list next year! I did get about $50 in free ornaments and cards for spending "at least $35", so what the heck, right? It was tons of fun, though.

The yardwork (picking up leaves and mowing) took the rest of the day, until it began raining. Sunday was more yardwork to pick up the leaves the rain had knocked down and mulch all the flower beds with the leaves. Then it rained again. There are as many leaves on the lawn today as we picked up Sunday, and the tree is still not bare. And it's still raining. The guy next door is building an ark. I've noticed some unusual animals hanging around his yard. Should I be concerned? Now it's time to get ready for work and our staff meeting, then off to Spokane for my one month post-Lasik check up, Daughter and Gap-toothed Grandson in tow (she has a checkup too). Then back to work around 4 PM for a couple of hours. It is going to be a busy day.