Day 3 of 2011

Mixed day today.   I woke up feeling normal which these days is a rarity.  This weekend I had made a list of things I needed to do with the intention of tackling it over the course of the week.  I made my usual breakfast of soft boiled egg and toast and started my day off by burning my expensive GF bread.  Oh pooh.  I gave the worse of the two pieces to the birds that have been hanging out in my Forsythia bush.  I then got disgusted with how filthy the kitchen was.  Some days my two guys just don't clean it well.  They seem to think doing the half the dishes and pushing everything into a pile on the far counter counts as a clean kitchen.  (God I hope hubby doesn't read this entry.  Love you hunny!  You do a wonderful job cleaning!)  There was days old pancake mix stuck to the counter, spaghetti sauce stuck to the stove and god knows what all over the sink.  So I used some of my spoons (spoons=energy) to clean the kitchen.  Typically I save spoons for other things like cooking or working on my LTD case.  I did the remaining dishes.  Scrubbed the counters.  Cleaned the stove top.  Had the kid sweep the floor.  The kitchen actually looked decent by the time the kid and I were done.

Then I went off to the office to see what email had come while I was sleeping the morning away.  Big news; my stuff is ready to pick up from work.  They must have needed the office space and wanted my stuff out of there.  Not a big surprise.  What was a surprise was the list of library books that they didn't find.  I only had a pile of six at the house and they were missing almost 20.  Now I know for a fact most of them never ever came home and I told them so.  However there were a few that might still be in my possession.  So here I am using more spoons rooting through book shelves and book piles trying to find library books from work.  I did find one that had gotten mixed in with my stuff but that only got my book count up to 7 out of 20.  Sorry, I'm done looking.  The only one on the list that might have gotten buried at my house is a now very out of date programing book.  Mac doesn't even have that operating system anymore.  Not worth using up any more of my precious energy for.  After a few email volleys we settled on me going in on Thursday to pick up my box o stuff.  Not sure how I feel about this.  I don't think I like it very much.  While I was having issues when I left it really was the best job I ever had.  I LOVED the work.  I had trouble with the politics and the people but that comes from me being such an introvert.  I was using work to learn how to deal with people better.

While going back and forth with work I looked into getting a lawyer for my LTD case.  I called the MA bar association that has a lawyer referral service.  I called the lawyer that they gave me and you could have knocked me over with a feather when she called me back within the hour.  I now have an appointment set up for Friday afternoon to go over my case.  I'm very excited about this.  Her rates are reasonable.  It is just a pain to get to her office.  If you need a lawyer calling the bar association is great.  You get a discount off the first consultation and you usually get a great lawyer as well.  Hubby has had really good luck.

Hubby came home in the middle of this phone call and sat down next to me to kill zombies.

I proceeded to write a letter to the LTD insurance company to request a copy of my policy.  Can you believe I was never given one?  I asked the ladies in HR at work and they didn't have a copy either.  Someone negotiated this contract.  Someone has to have a copy of it.  Note to self: in future ALWAYS get the policy that you purchase in writing!!  Duh, I should know this.

I also wrote an email to my acupuncturist requesting my clinical notes for the last year and possibly a letter if he feels like that would be a better summary.  Several of my care givers are going to provide me with letters either in addition to or in place of their clinical notes for use in my appeal.

While I'm doing all of this, checks showed up in the mail for the flowers for my uncle's funeral in England.  Crap, I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to order those this past weekend (love my short term memory lately).  I called my favorite local florist and she is so nice she gave me the phone numbers of the shops in Worthing so I could call them myself to save myself a few bucks in delivery charges.  Well it turns out that they have online stores (another duh) so I found a nice arrangement and purchased it online using my credit card.  I know approximately what the currency exchange is so I stayed in budget and got some gorgeous flowers to boot.  Because I got them online I also could send a picture to my sister and mom who pitched in for them.  Love the internet!! 

I'm really bummed about my uncle passing away though.  He died rather young from Alzheimer's.  He was married to my dad's sister.  I didn't know him very well but we had a good visit when we were over there four years ago so I have nice memories of him.  I'm glad my son got to meet him.

By this point hubby was doing weird grumpy things.  He made a strange comment about him needing to take care of dinner.  Like that was wicked complicated: turn oven on, put frozen pie in oven, set timer.  I was so fogged by this point I kept getting distracted from what I was doing; kept mangling days and appointment information; and couldn't talk and type at the same time.  I kicked both hubby and kid out of the office so I could finish emails.  I kept making strange noises when I got frustrated from loosing track of what I was doing.

I also worked on my paperwork for the lawyer meeting on Friday.  I fished my old briefcase out of the closet and had to clean all the pencil shavings out of it.  Where the hell did those come from???  I use mechanical pencils.  How weird.  I put all my medical files and insurance documents in there to get ready for Friday.  I figured out that I need to do some typing before the meeting and organize my personal notes a bit better.  More work.  I already have a small mountain of papers for the lawyer.   I can't believe I need even more.

I looked at my list and I had done everything on it!  Everything!  Wow!  I had such a productive day!  A clean kitchen, flowers sent to England, picking my stuff up from work and I now have a lawyer.  But hubby was acting weird.  We got into a strange not-argument.   It wasn't a good discussion but it wasn't a full blown argument either.  It had a strange flavor to it.  Sort of weirdly irritating like a friend giving you Indian sunburn.  I asked him about a ride to a doctor appointment and he started a rant about how he needed to work and couldn't take me to all these appointments and he had been driving me all summer to all these appointments and he needed to work instead and he couldn't just drop everything to drive me into Boston.  Of course I'm pretty addled by this point so I can't stand up for myself and I know it is pointless engaging anyway since he is busy ranting.  I just have to wait it out so I just sat there staring at him all googly eyed.

Dinner was very quiet.  He didn't want to talk.  I asked him later when I was crashed in front of the TV is he was mad at me and he said no.  When I tucked him into bed for the night it turns out that I had gotten the doctor dates mixed up and he was so busy ranting that he didn't hear me when I corrected the information and he can take me into Boston next Tuesday after all.

So it was a mixed day.  I got tons of important stuff done.  Good things happened.  Bad things happened and today was one of my husband's strange days.  Oh yeah, I got to take a shower so I'm all clean and smell wonderful with the new soap I bought the other day during one of my outings.  Grin!
All in all not a bad day at all.  Also, my weight has stabilized.  Woohoo!!!  I was scared that by the time I could exercise again I would be 300+ pounds.  I've only gained about 20lbs according to the scale but I know that doesn't take into account the loss of muscle mass that has occurred.  I'm just glad the weight gain has stopped.  This makes me very happy!