Here it is, almost the middle of January and with exception of 3 days of frigid weather, for the most part winter hasn't made much of an appearance. It was in the 50s on Saturday (when I should have taken the outside Christmas decorations down) and 37 on Sunday with a pretty decent breeze. Needless to say, I froze my ass off, but other than putting the last of the boxes in the attic, everything is done. The past 3 days have brought temperatures in the mid 40s and very little wind. Now that I/we have to leave early in the morning for my father's heart surgery tomorrow, we're under a winter weather advisory. In this area, the storm is supposed to start as ice, snow, and rain and possibly end the same way by mid-morning. Then the temperatures are supposed to plummet. I can tell just by the overall joint aches that it is a pretty good size low pressure system on its way without having to watch the weather. Like my family (well, some of us anyway) and I haven't been tested enough, now I might have to drive to the hospital in snowy, icy conditions. Fun!
I've been trying to keep as busy as possible to keep my mind off all the chaos that went from manageable to just plain out of control. I made arrangements to have our trash picked up, vacuumed, cleaned, downloaded a few of the CDs I found while cleaning out one of the rooms, started preparing for Spring Semester (at least what preparations I could do right now), moved around a bit of wood, and made sure all of the stacks of wood are covered up so that when I have to use the wood stove, I'm not spending hours fighting with damp wood. I also prepared my bag for tomorrow. I have some reviewing to finish up from a class last semester since I had to take an incomplete and a book to read if I get through the work.
I decided that after I picked my mother up and before I went to my surgeon for another follow-up and the official clearance to return to school that returning the hamster's cage upstairs in her little corner was a good idea. I have no idea how it happened, but I managed to knock the gate I was stepping over over and had probably the slowest motion fall ever without the use of a camera trick. On top of her small and very bent cage (thanks to the dog knocking her not only off her 5' stand, but bouncing it off a table and sent it crashing to the floor), I had a half full coffee cup on the cage. I didn't want to shatter the cup on the slate floor, but more importantly, I didn't want her cage to go crashing to the floor again. She's a dwarf hamster and I'm pretty sure there's only so much she can go through before she has a heart attack. The good news is, neither the cup nor the cage smashed to the floor, but I managed to pull more muscles than I thought possible in a single incident and took a bath in cold coffee. But my knee didn't give out, which is a good sign. When I woke up yesterday morning, however, moving was not much of an option. I was supposed to go to traffic court to clear up a small stupid matter, but as the day went on, it became pretty clear that unless I was carried into the courthouse, it wasn't going to happen. After explaining the problem to the clerk, she told me to show up or have a warrant out, unless my surgeon could perform a miracle and send them notification that I was in no shape to be driving. God bless that man, he did, with a half hour to spare. So I was finally able to take something stronger than advil along with a muscle relaxer and went back to my place in the recliner with my heating pads. Today was a bit easier, but I admit I'm still pretty sore. At least I can move without wanting to cry. lol
The only thing I did accomplish yesterday was a wasted trip to campus to pick up the last textbook I needed. I fully realize that a very small percentage of the students at my school are commuters, but with less than a week to go before classes begin again (my online class starting on Sunday), the professor still hasn't decided on a textbook. My other two texts weren't even on the shelves ready to sell yet. I found them cheaper on another website and had them expedited shipped to me last week and they showed up today. I heard from another student that the texts STILL aren't stocked in the bookstore. I'm just glad I saved quite a bit of money on the texts I did get. My counseling text is a tiny, thin, workbook looking text (which was almost $100, but I found online for less than half) and my adolescent psych text wasn't much bigger, but I cringe at the thought of this semester. It's a softcover text that explains basic theories of adolescent psychology (pretty standard), but the rest of the course is the online part of the text--flash cards, puzzles, games....something you would expect in an elementary school, not a college-level class. So this should be interesting. But here goes nothing! I'll laugh like hell if we get a snowstorm the first day of class and they're canceled.
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