Fun Times at Chez Sluggy

We are busy, busy, busy lately here at Chez Sluggy.

Last week we had our initial Sleep Apnea consult at the Sleep Disorders Clinic.
Geez, I can't even be orderly when I sleep.....

Then the daughter picked up her beau at the airport in Philly.  Say hello to Justin......

The barbecue and ribs I smoked, along with some COC roasted on the grill, hit the spot on Friday night.
Saturday we met daughter and her beau for a late lunch/early dinner.  They don't have "Friendly's" down in Louisiana so they wanted to go there.
They get to pick the venue and Hubs and I get to pick-UP the check. Hmmmmm.

Daughter got this monstrocity called a Grilled Cheese Hamburger.

It's 2 grilled cheese sandwiches for the "bun" of a hamburger.....2 grilled cheese with a hamburger in the middle of the pile.

It's no longer on the menu so you have to ask for it special and it's got a hefty price tag attached.

But daughter says it's, "Freakin' awesome!"


Coming home I didn't like the looks of this cloud.....

It was angry and starting to swirl.
Luckily it did NOT spiral into something nasty and chase us home.

Sunday morning, daughter and her beau loaded up her new car to head out on a 1,300 miles trip to Louisiana.

 

I don't know how they got everything they did packed into that little car.  There's a rather large tv in the trunk, all her clothes and a massive shoe collection.  Yeah, daughter is one of "those women". lol

 She had wanted to take her recumbent exercise bike in that car, which was NOT happening.  Now I get to use it...yay!

Bon Voyage favorite daughter!

*They made it to LA safe and sound. 8-)

The rest of Mother's Day was uneventful and low key.  Oldest son called me that evening and we hardly saw Youngest son since he works in a restaurant and it was Mother's Day.
'Nuff said....lol

Monday I got to go have blood drawn and got the added treat of peeing into a cup. 8-))

Tuesday evening I got to spend the night in the hospital at the Sleep Disorders Center.  I had a sleepover where they wired me up and watched me sleep.  Now how much fun does that sound like.....watching me sleep?  About as exciting as watching paint dry I think.

The Sleep Doc says I have Pickwickian Syndrome(named after the little Dickensian fat boy, John, in The Pickwick Papers, who can't seem to catch his breath).
It's one of the myriad of problems they say I have that is causing me to have heart problems.  Treatment consists of weight loss and using a Positive Air Pressure machine or a BiPAP at night while sleeping.
Oh goody!  Now I get to look like a Snuffleupagus and sound like Darth Vader.

 

Not very sexy at bedtime....

Wednesday I got to go hang out at the Heart Hospital.
I got to sit on a bed in a lovely shmatah and they gave me this cool jewelry.....

The not so cool part was they also got to poke me with needles.  I got two, count 'em two, IV lines!
And the second line took 2 tries to get right.
But wait....there's more!
When they took me in for the catheterization the second line came out when the nurse was futzing with it, so I got a lovely new line put into my artery.
Isn't my bandaid HUGE?!  It matches my huge nostrils.......

They did a right heart catheterization to measure the pressures in my heart.  Just one of the many diagnostic tests I've been subjected to lately.
It involves running a tube into the right chamber of the heart and measure pressures there and into the lungs.
Cross your fingers I pass this test.
It was a SONOFABITCH with no anesthetic.
And since they had to go into my neck artery the trip was shorter but my 40 min. in and out the door procedure took 6 HOURS!  2 to prep, 2 to perform and 3 laying in recovery to make sure I didn't bleed out or something.
Yikes!
It's a good thing Hubs took the whole day off to take me.

The good thing it's a good excuse to be lazy and do NOTHING around the house for 5 days, per doctor's orders.
Go Me!

So we are slowly going down a list of ailments and ticking them off as we find out we are NOT afflicted with them.
I go see the cardiologist next week to see what the next step is.

Today I colored my hair so I don't look like my son's grandmother at his college graduation on Saturday.
Then I had a hot young thang deliver oxygen cylinders to me.  I undressed him with my eyes while he carried those large torpedoes into the house.

And now I am waiting on my brother to arrive from Virginia so I can feed him and he can ride with us to the ceremony.
The weekend promises to be jam packed with activity too.

What are you up to lately?

Sluggy


 

So Glad It's Over.....But Still Lots to Do!

Forgive me if I haven't been around to read your blogs/leave comments or respond to comments you may have left on my blog.
It's all I could do this week to just keep cranking out some new blog posts.

Nope, this has NOT been one of my favorite weeks!
Nothing bad going on here but just a really long "Things To Do" list for me....and it's not over with yet.

I was chosen to take part in a focus group back in January.  I've done one other one before this.  That one was an online chat format thing and it lasted for 2-3 hours.  Then I was done and they sent me a little check.
Well this one is a tad more involved.  It is a 5 week commitment with a 1 week break in the midst of it, so I am in this thing for 6 weeks total!  I have tasks to complete each week but I never know when a task will be thrown my way and even better, I have a limited amount of time to complete these tasks.  And they aren't easy peasy, just fill in this questionnaire type tasks either.  I am having to actually use my brain and do some w-o-r-k....ACK!!lol

We are at the end of our 3rd week and we've already lost 1 member.  If you drop out and don't finish this thing you get ZERO $.  At this point death alone will keep me from completing this assignment!

Along with the group taking up my time, I'm under the gun to get the taxes finished so I can file the FAFSAs.  I was hung up until earlier this week with all that paperwork, but #1 son's college finally sent out his 1098 form(showing what we paid them for tuition).  Now I have all the supporting documentation...rah!
At this point in time, I have the federal done tentatively, the state, the local as well as the 2 teens state returns.  Hubs needs to do their local returns Saturday, I need to do their federal returns(those will take a nanosecond)and then we both need to sit down and go over all the returns to check for errors.
After those are finalized, we can fill out the FAFSAs on Sunday.  Yes, that is our wild and crazy partying weekend plan.....filling out FAFSAs.
After it's done we may hit the bottle of Southern Comfort, if I don't open it sooner. ;-)

Add in a 2 hour session being drilled at the Dentist on Wednesday, followed by a 3 hour session working on taxes and it's no wonder I am just not feeling peppy this week.

Top the week off with a sick teen, chopping an iceberg the size that took down the Titanic(this one is in front of the door to my storage unit)so I could get the spare bags of dog food for our mutts, and then chauffeuring around the BIL most of today so he could run his errands.
I did finally get all that food to the food bank...that was the bright spot in my day.

A nice big haul, thanks in large part to the fine folks at Rite-Aid! 8-))

Well it's almost 5pm and I've got to throw something together for dinner.    Daughter's boyfriend was over on Monday evening so I cooked a large platter of pork chops with a plum glaze, stroganoff noodles and yellow beans and red bell pepper sauted in olive oil.  The only people who actually ate the meal were Hubs and I.  I could have killed daughter, BF and #2 son!!  So I have pulled my best Joan Crawford this week to show them it's not nice to fool with mother......I've offered up that leftover pork chop meal every night or some variation of the pork chops in new dishes(pork fried rice with stir-fry veggies, pork alfredo with peas, etc.)  Neither of the teens have taken me up on my dinner ideas and they have just fended for themselves from what's in the pantry or freezer.....grumbling and protesting all the while mind you.  This is great!  I don't have to cook(since I haven't felt like it this week that's a good thing!)and I don't feel guilty for not cooking for them because they are saying don't cook!lol

Another good thing is I have NOT gone to the grocery store this week(except for that stuff I bought on the gift card at Shop-Rite, so I haven't spend any cash).  Hopefully I can hold out until Sunday and stay out of the grocery store and accomplish my No Spending on Groceries Week for February.
Heck, maybe we can go TWO WEEKS without grocery shopping!  That would be awesome.

So I've got my weekend all planned out and if things go well, I'll have all the paperwork done until May when we'll have more school stuff to do....but nothing as bad as FAFSAs and all that mess.
My time will be freed up a bit and I can go back to my first love....Rite-Aid! ;-)

So what is everyone else doing this weekend?  I haven't even begun to think about Valentine's Day either.  We generally don't "do" valentine's day here.  We don't go out or anything since the restaurants are a ZOO then!
Do y'all have any special plans for the 14th?

Sluggy

TGIF!.....1 more day

Yes, one more day of relatives and counting........and 1 more day until the weekend too. ;-)
This week has been K-double R-AZY!!
House guests, a cook-out, getting the pool open for the season, college smartass son home still(but not wanting to be here-if you know what I mean!), school field trip, hosting dinners for relatives, #1 son having a girlfriend over every-single-day for 3 weeks, doctor's appointments, trying to make arrangements for camp, a teeny bit of eBay stuff, extra cooking, some organizing out in the garage, gardening and of course, a teeny bit of blogging and finding time to sit on my big fatass in front of the computer.
There was also the National Honor Society ceremony at the high school.  Here's our brilliant daughter.....

And here with her aunt and uncle....

And as always, they spelled her last name wrong.
UGH.
You would think that having been in this school district since 2nd grade they could at least get that right?!?

 Here's some pics of the garden beds from the weekend before last, when we finally were able to plant stuff.  These hopefully will have lovely heads of cauliflower some day.....

And here are a couple tomato plants and Italian pepper plants....

Under my Magnolia Tree we put the other pepper plants.....these are suppose to  be yellow when ripe I think.

This past Saturday we bought some more seedlings and have put those in, as well as sown some seeds.  #1 son helped me sew the pole beans and the lettuce mix this week amidst much grumbling and gnashing of teeth....I did the gnashing while he handled the grumbling.
We still have a few patched to sew this weekend.  Some of the seed was old so I'll wait a week and if nothing germinates, I'll lay down some fresh seed.

This weekend we need all hands outside to do yardwork.....lots of weeding/weed wacking around stuff, a flowerbed needs massive help, a dead tree needs chopping down and we need to attempt to care about the lawn and at least make motions like we are fertilizing and sewing grass seed, etc. on it.

My eBay listings/photos/sorting junk/making up Sallie's donations has been put on hold this week, as I have not been free to tear up the living areas and fill them with half filled boxes and piles of stuff.  This will resume after the weekend.

Daughter needs underwear(oh, I hope she doesn't read this!lol)and swimsuits for camp.  She has lost weight and she really needs a whole new wardrobe as everything is falling off of her...literally, falling off.  We'll do a mother/daughter consult this weekend and come up with a plan that doesn't bust the bank or the budget.

I have not been in a store at all since last Saturday and have enjoyed the break.  I think my streak will end today though as we need some groceries and there are a few 'deals' I want...mostly on dairy items....cheese at GiantPA, a diary Catalina at Weis that includes ice cream!!!, and milk at the local Shurfine affiliated market.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and gets some good weather so they can spend some time outside!

Sluggy