Let's see - the goings on of the last week....

hmmmmmm.....

I spent the majority of the weekend in a drug induced haze [all prescribed pain killers, for those who might have an eyebrow raised at that comment], which made for some super interesting time spent studying.  I don't know how productive it was, but boy - it was pain free! I would highly recommend it...

Last Thursday was my sweet brother Sam's 18th birthday - so we had the 'family party' on Saturday evening.  As per usual in our family - when we are all together [8 children under the age of 5, 4 teens and preteens, and 10 adults] and crammed into my parents smallish house, it is loud and fun and generally chaotic in a good way.  We are fun people to be around, and for the most part really enjoy each others company - Saturday being no exception.

The highlight of the evening was after everyone had eaten dinner [mom does killer Mexican fare for the masses], and we had corralled the little ones again...we pulled out the birthday cake - shut out all of the lights - were keeping all of the little fingers out of the cake while lighting the candles, and then started in on singing a rousing rendition of 'Happy Birthday' to Sam.

We made it halfway through the song before someone broke in and said 'Hey - wait a second - where IS Sam?'    The birthday boy was NOT EVEN IN THE ROOM.  Boy, did we feel silly.    Life as a middle child in a large family...sigh...poor kid.

Turns out though - he was just being onery - he saw that everyone was being distracted right about the time that the lights went out, and saw his opportunity to sneak out - he was actually waiting to see how long it took us to realize he wasn't there.  Jerk.  I felt a little better about all of us overlooking his absence when I found that out. 

Monday and Tuesday I was still not feeling completely up to snuff, so I went ahead and skipped classes for both days.  I did e-mail all of my professors and let them know why I wasn't in class.  It just about killed me - if you have known me for longer than two minutes, you know how much I like to be right and to perform well...class is no exception.  I have never been a class skipper because I am so paranoid about missing vital information that will somehow affect my grades.  UGH.  It couldn't be helped however - and I actually think that it is going to be okay...I have some friends in class who copied their notes for me - super nice.

Tuesday night was the night that has been in the works for quite some time.  Well, to be precise, the actual date has been pushed back several times, but Tuesday night was THE night.  That's right folks - I am now an official resident of the Mucci household.  I have been packed and kind of going back and forth between my home on the IL side and my home on the MO side... but the logistics of getting all of my stuff across the river has just not been coming together.

So Tuesday my family pulled together and my Dad, Mom, brothers Ben, Abe and Sam, and my sister Hannah and her sweet husband John all got together and had me packed up, moved over and unloaded at the Muccis in a matter of three and a half hours.  I was pretty much not able to do anything, so they took care of it all - and I cannot even begin to tell you how grateful I am for them.  I really do get that for all that I complain about  my family, most people would give a limb or vital organ to experience...they are consistently there to help and to do whatever they can to love on me and I cannot say thank you enough.  They blow me away sometimes. 

One last funny story and I promise I will quit blathering.  During the move, my family were being super good about not giving me crap over the amount of stuff that I have accumulated - the exception being the amount of clothing that I own.  Now granted, I have a lot of clothes.  I admit it.  In my defense however - up until I switched my job a couple of months ago, I needed two wardrobes - one for work [all of the business stuff], and the other for everything else.  Each taken on their own isn't quite as much, but together it is a lot.

So we get everything [furniture, boxes, etc] unloaded and begin bringing in all of the hanging clothes that I had transported in my car. [dang it all for not getting pictures of this whole fiasco night!]  In my room here I have a fairly large closet - more than enough space for all of the hanging clothes that we were bringing in....at least space wise...

Everything was going quite nicely until the last load was brought down and put on the nice shelf/hanging bar running the length of the closet - and a loud CRASHING noise was heard throughout the house.  Yeah - my clothes?  Totally ripped the shelf/hanging system RIGHT OUT OF THE WALL.  I am never going to live this down....alright, alright, okay, okay - maybe I should try to get rid of some things...

At any rate - we have come up with a solution to fix the closet - in the meantime, my clothes are EVERYWHERE.  Thank God my friend Wendy is so stinking laid back about this whole thing - cause it stresses me out to have my things all over everywhere.  I am all about being spread out in my own space, but when I am in others space and am cluttering up their lives as well?  UGH.  Saturday all will be fixed and in its proper place.  I will breathe better when everything is unpacked and I am all the way settled in. 

I will post pictures when I am finished. 

This is supposed to be a relatively quick and simple procedure - they knock me out, do the intubation/catheter, slice me open, take out the metal [think of a battery powered screwdriver backing a screw out of a wall - easy, right?  Right.], sew me back up - wham, bam, thank you ma'am - all done in an hour.  With my surgery time set for 10:30am, I was relatively certain that I would be home resting as comfortably as possible by....ohhhhhh - 1ish?  Certainly 2 at the latest.

The hospital called a little before 7am and told me that the surgery scheduled before me had been canceled, and asked if there was any way that I could come early?  Now - my thought process was 'Sure - the sooner the better' - but there was still the matter of a shower to be had [because GROSS - who wants to have people looking at your naked body at all - much less a stinky, hairier version?  Shudder.], so I told them that I needed to hop in the shower and that I would be there in 45 minutes. 

After all [paranoid girl that I am about forgetting things], last night I had already done the prerequisite removal of finger and toenail polish, removal of all jewelry - including the cartilage earring and the belly ring that I forgot to remove last time, and had my clothes for the day laid out and ready to go, all my paperwork in my pocketbook already...certainly I could get there that quickly...[The good thing about surgery being that there is no makeup or hair to think of, so that literally cuts your getting ready time to nothing.]

Side note here - kk, you would have been proud - I was getting dressed this morning and thought to myself - what is the point really of bothering with undergarments of any kind today?  I am certainly not going to be using them for a good portion of my time out and about...so I totally went completely commando to the hospital   Kinda freeing really - HA!

Well - it was raining super hard this morning, and the drive that should have taken fifteen minutes ended up being closer to an hour what with the rain and the St Louis rush hour traffic...and wouldn't you know it, even though I still made it early, apparently in the meantime an emergency trauma had come in that my dr was needed for...which meant that I waited in various waiting rooms for FOUR hours - moving from the big waiting room to an hour in the private waiting room, to and hour and a half in the pre-op room.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?  I mean, I am patient and all - but when it was NOON and the anesthesiologist was just coming in to see me?  That is a long time to wait, my friends!  ugh.  I felt so bad for my sweet dad, who had once again been the one to be the driver and main caretaker yesterday...

So I was already a bit on edge at this point when the anesthesiologist guy comes up and introduces himself to me [incidentally, he had fantastic bedside manner and a very nice handshake], and begins to outline exactly how and what he is going to do to knock me out and keep me that way until after the surgery is over.  After explaining the intubation stuff, he asks me to tilt my head back, open my mouth and say 'ahhhh' - presumably to get a look at how difficult or easy that task was going to be.

The guy is leaning over my head, looking down my throat and says 'Everything looks great!' and I swear to you - A. PIECE. OF. WHATEVER. HE. HAD. FOR. LUNCH. FLEW. OUT. OF. HIS. MOUTH. AND. LANDED. ON. MY. TONGUE. causing an instantaneous gag reflex in me.   I am throwing up a bit in my mouth thinking about it right now actually.  I was thinking 'OMG.  Did that really just happen?  Surely not - surely I am imagining things'...but the taste of something with a hint of onion [when I hadn't eaten in a really long time] was unmistakeable.

SICK!  GROSS!  EWWWWWWWW!

Needless to say - I didn't hear another word he, or anyone else said to me for a bit, I was concentrating so hard on not throwing up.

Everything  for the next couple of hours was kind of anticlimactic after that - they knocked me out, did the surgery, things went well - woke me up, made sure I was feeling good on the painkillers that they gave me [YAY FOR NOT THROWING UP AND BEING SICK BECAUSE OF PAIN MEDS!!!]...and were ready to send me home.

However, the fun/stress of the day was not yet over.  Right before I left the hospital, I was waiting for the woman from the pharmacy to bring my prescription for the painkillers to take home, when she comes back with the news that they were having trouble running my insurance through and when she called them, they told her that I had been TERMINATED?  WTF?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME TELLING ME THIS RIGHT AS I AM GETTING OUT OF SURGERY?

Yeah.  I was SUPER not happy about that one....so the entire car ride home [in rush hour traffic again - love that btw] was spent on my cell trying to figure out just what in the heck was going on...turns out there was a bit of a mistake, and we got it fixed, but geez people - do you realize what you just did to my heart rate?  I am supposed to be resting for crying out loud! 

Finally after driving home in rush hour traffic, I was safely ensconced in my own bed around 5pm this afternoon....where I remain to this point.

And that is my day in a nutshell.  Thanks to all of you who thought of me and prayed for me today -  it meant so much more than I can ever say....

If I remember correctly, [feel free to correct me Syd] Logan and Reese were happily playing with the hose in the backyard, and [I think] made the mud pit kind of unintentionally...Mom gave the okay to go ahead and get dirty - and then Syd was persuaded to join in the fun.  Aundrea and I were sitting in the backyard just watching the mud slinging action - I remember looking at her and asking 'Do you think it would be okay for me to go and play with them?' [c'mon - how often do you as an adult get the chance to play in the mud?  Admit it - you're jealous...].  She just laughed and said something to the effect of 'I think they would be delighted'...

The stripes I believe were Reeses idea - to make me look like the cat in the hat.  It's a striking resemblance, don't you think? 

Good times...even better memories...

***Just a warning before you continue to read - this is a lot of me blathering with details that you are probably NOT going to be interested in, but I am a detail girl so I figured I would throw it all in there and you can decide if you want to read it or not... ***

I am pleased to tell you all that after having completed the first week of school I am feeling pretty good about this decision to go back to school.  I had forgotten how much I actually LIKE school.  This semester is not going to be an exception to that.  I cannot even begin to tell you how grateful I am for this opportunity.  It is amazing to me that a year ago this possibility wasn't even on the radar screen - and now here I am in a totally different place in my life.  Weird.  But good, you know?

Monday I went up to school in the early afternoon to get my parking pass and books for the semester and got a little overwhelmed realizing that this was in fact a reality now - no more talking about it, I was actually doing it.

Going to class that evening for the first time I was really surprised at how nervous I was.  I mean seriously - tons of people do this, many of them with more on their plate than I...I have always been a pretty good student and sooooo not nervous about meeting new people - so the fact that I was that nervous threw me off a bit.  Kind of funny to me now.  I am such a weirdo.  Fortunately I adapt to new situations fairly quickly.

So for those of you who are wondering what classes I am taking this semester...here goes.  I think that I had mentioned before that my degree is actually going to be a sociology degree - they have an employment relations track [like HR] that was going to be the fastest way for me to get through school with a marketable degree.  I am pretty excited that it worked out for me to have a minor as well - so my minor will be psychology.  The cool thing is that pretty much all of my classes will be either Psych or Sociology classes...there are a few required classes in each of those categories, but the majority of them I will get to choose what interests me.  SUPER happy/excited about that - so many cool choices!

Soooo - the classes I chose for this semester....Women, Gender and Society, Cognative Psychology, Sociology Theory and Race and Ethnic Relations...Lots of reading, lots of writing, but all super interesting so that really helps. 

I will hopefully be released from the doctor this week to go back to work - so starting next week I will be adding a work schedule...but I think that I have a good working plan for juggling it all, and while a little nervous about the implementation of said plan, I think it is going to be okay...

hmmmmm - what to say, what to say?

School starts in a week and a half.  Pretty much everything is in order - I still need to go pick up my books and parking permit, and am thinking of a last minute schedule change, but pretty much all of that can be done in a short trip [I hope] next week. 

Pray for me if you think about it - I found out yesterday that one of the loans that I was kind of counting on to help me out is not going to happen - basically school will be covered, but I am going to be working a lot more hours than I was planning on in order to pay my bills.  I know that people do it all the time when they are going to school - in fact, I have done it before - but it is taking some major adjustment, and for the first time in a long time I am actually going to really be careful of how and when I spend money. 

For those of you who know me better than others, you know that I am not super good about telling myself 'no' or 'wait' for anything.  I admit this has never been a strong point, and I am feeling the effects of it now BIG TIME.  It is one of those lessons that I put off learning [knowing better] in the sincere hope that it would not come back and bite me on the bottom side....but unfortunately that would not be the reality or the case this time.

So last night and the first part of today were pretty much spent in a pity party, shifting this afternoon into begrudging and somewhat resigned acceptance, and this evening to a hightened resolve to learn this lesson once and for all and to learn it well.  Its about time I start taking responsibility and learn some self control.  I am not getting any younger after all...better do it now.  This is a new chance.

[Aren't you glad that you are privy to my own little pep talk? ]

But enough of that - how about some of the backlog of pictures that I have been saving up?
I have some fun ones from the 4th of July that are only a month late...

With no further ado...

My sweet sister and her two children have been spending a lot of time at our house this past week - [I will explain more about that later] and thought I would share some of the fun goings on...

Please bear with this proud auntie...

Baby Hadassah had her toenails painted for the first time - mom picked out the color and auntie Havah got to have the privilege of the very first painting...a little difficult because her toes are so sweet and tiny.

The final result...

A moment to cuddle after we were through....awwwww...

After sissy got all dolled up - we decided that Ian needed some attention as well and took him to get his hair cut.  What is it about a haircut on a little boy that makes them look so much older?  Geez. 

Before...

Getting started!

I'm not so sure about this!!!

Ummmmmm....

Holding still...but I am not too happy about it at this point...

The finishing touches.

All finished!  Can you say 'I am the big CHEESE?'

Last, but not least - I am including this piccture because I LOVE it - Ian with my sister Jannah - I am pretty sure that she is his favorite! 

Go ahead - guess.

Really.

No?  You have no idea?

Let me just tell you then.

To break it down a little more? 

2 days, 11.7 hours.

Yikes.