Sorry to leave you hanging...

Juice's doctor's appointment went well, but was very long. She was scheduled for a 3:30 appointment, and ended up not getting in until almost 5. She didn't get home until close to 7.

She is most definitely pregnant, and is due in late July.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Can't catch a break

An update from the other side of our lives.

Chica and The Mann. I'll tell you, if two people ever deserved a vacation, it's those two. They just can't seem to catch a break. Just when you think, "what else could possibly go wrong?" something does.

First it was the chemo. Chica was allergic to the medicine. Allergic to something that was supposed to help her get better. Then it was the "port" that they used to administer said medicine. The first one had a defect, then she got an infection, and went almost a month trying to convince every doctor that she talked to that she was really in pain.

While this was going on, their refrigerator died, forcing them to spend hundreds of dollars that they didn't have on a new one.

After someone finally believed Chica about her pain, it was almost too late. She was admitted to the hospital again, and given large doses of antibiotics to help with the infection, and it has helped to the point that she can move her arm again.

In the middle of all of this, her school district switched insurance carriers, and her oncologist was not in the new network. Thankfully, the new insurance company decided to do the right thing and pay for her existing oncologist as in network.

Now, instead of having to get chemo once a month, she's having to go once a week because the antibiotics they're giving her for the infection interfere with the chemo.

And if all of that weren't enough, The Mann ended up in the hospital this past weekend for a blood condition that he's had since he was in college.

I think if I were in their shoes I would be going stark raving mad. It's amazing that they are still as sane and loving as they are.

Last weekend, we got a call from Chica asking us, begging us, to come over to the house. They had both reached a point where they needed some space, but The Mann, being the dutiful husband, did not want to leave his wife alone. He also was getting overly annoyed with her. She wanted me to take him out of the house for a bit. We ended up going over that evening, and what started off as stress relief for two of the most stressed people we know turned into an impromptu party. While we were there, Chica's cousin and his family stopped by, then her brother, and finally some friends from work.

Chica's house has always been the place for gatherings, and even though it wasn't planned, it was so good to see everyone there, supporting them. Chica smiled more that night than I've seen her smile in a long time.

We'll see what Monday brings...

Do not skip to the end of this post...the answers are not there.

Here's the thing. I'm excited about the possibility of Juice being pregnant, but I'm still also very cautious.

She's talking like it's a sure thing, but we learned the hard way two months ago, that things happen. Things beyond our control.

Currently, she's somewhere between 4-7 days late. For me, that's not enough. She seems to think that when she was pregnant with Peanut it was around this same time that she took the test. I thought we had waited longer, but evidently, she was right. She tested at 5 days.

Juice has been talking all day about how her body feels, and how she's remembering that this was what it was like with Peanut, and how it feels different than two months ago. I'm not arguing with her...I'm just not getting my hopes up.

I really was a lot more disappointed than I let on back in August. I was just holding my shit together for my wife's sake. But it scarred me. It has put that doubt forever in my heart. If she is indeed pregnant (and we'll find out for certain on Monday, as Juice scheduled a doctor's appointment) then I really will be excited. I just want to make sure and make it through the first few weeks before I get really excited.

I managed to get her to hold off on the test for today, but we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Here we go again...

Juice just went to the store to buy a pregnancy test. I'll let you know how this turns out.

Not to be outdone...

If you've ever checked out Dave's blog, you may have noticed that he's been doing a bit of landscaping and such over the past couple of weeks.

You may also recall that over the summer, I tore down our deck because it was about to fall apart on its own.

This past week, I finally got around to putting something back up where our old deck stood.

You see, we actually paid a landscape designer to come up with a plan for us, then contacted a contractor to get us a quote. We got the quote, alright, to the tune of $20,000. There's just no way we would ever recoup that money if we sold the house, so we tried to get a meeting with the contractor to see what work we could do ourselves to help bring down the cost. It's been over 2 months and I have not heard back from the contractor. I guess they're doing enough business that they don't need ours.

So anyway, I decided to start putting up a deck in a similar design to the patio that was designed for us. Patio = expensive. Deck = not so expensive.




So far, so good. When my parents come down for the winter, my Dad and I will complete the project, but at least we have something outside the back door now besides dirt.

Short week

Peanut got all drippy again this weekend. What is it with this girl and being outside? I'm beginning to think that she may have more allergy problems than I have, and that's saying something.

We went to the dog park on Saturday morning, and it was cool-ish, but she was dressed for the weather. Saturday afternoon, she started sounded congested and by Sunday, it was full-blown drippy, complete with green boogers.

I was hoping that it was just drippy and not fever, but when she woke up this morning, she was running a slight fever.

I had an early appointment today, and rather than try to call one of my colleagues to try to cover for me, I thought it would be easier to take her to work with me, then take off at noon.

I'm done fighting with the sitter about brining her, having her check her temperature all day, then call me to come pick her up. It doesn't make for a productive day, and I'd rather just know that I'm going home early.

So Peanut was a hit at work, and I actually managed to get some work done with her in the office (thank you, You Tube for having PBS clips online!), and we got home around 1. I put her down for a nap, and nothing. Nada. Awake at 5 AM coughing and hacking, and wouldn't take a frickin nap!

Luckily, I'm going out with a friend of mine for Monday Night Football Beer Drinking, so I do get a little bit of a break.

By the way, tomorrow is Veteran's Day, and if you haven't already, please give a huge "Thank You" to those who defend our country and our rights. The election this past week, and all of the talk about it (on both sides) would not have been possible without two things: 1) The vision of the founders of this country and 2) Those who have defended this vision with their lives.

Thank you to all of you who have served.

Mr. Money Bags

I do not feel like being at work today. I haven't felt much like being at work this week. But someone has to keep paying the bills.

Speaking of bills, I actually had some money left over at the end of last month. With gas prices being down, we saved about $200 last month over what we had been paying this summer.

Since the temperature has cooled down in our neck of the woods, our energy bill was about $100 less.

I paid off our bed at the end of September, just before the 0% interest expired, which gives me an extra $300.

I paid off my Best Buy card the month before that, so there's another $100 every month.

All of that adds up to quite a bit of money every month. Of course at the same time I'm saving all of this money, I also started contributing to my retirement account again (while stocks are down, I might add, which should be good for me in the long run) so that's eating a little of the savings, but there's still a nice chunk of change to pay down my enormous credit card debt. In may, I'll pay off a loan, which will net another $300+ every month, so maybe by this time next year, the only debt I'll have left is a car payment (which I only have 15 months left on right now) and a house payment.

It feels good to finally have something left over. Of course, I have to resist temptation all the time too. Every Sunday I look at those Best Buy ads and think how nice it would be to have a 50" flat screen in our living room, but our current HDTV does the job very nicely.

It would be great to redo our kitchen and bathroom, but we're trying to save up to buy land. We'd like to do something with our back yard, but I'm not about to blow 20K to have someone landscape it. We can wait until my parents are here for the winter, and my dad and I will figure something out that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Saving money instead of spending it all. Looks like I really am turning into my parents.

Brought to you by the letter "P"

My wife has a condition that begins with the letter P.

She's either pregnant, or has a raging case of PMS, and at this point it's very difficult to tell the difference.

We got into a fight last night because I looked up from my laptop for 3 seconds during a Victoria's Secret commercial.

And that continued on into this morning, because when I tried to talk to her about it, I brought up the fact that she ogles Patrick Dempsey all the time when he's on TV, while I only looked at this stupid commercial for 3 seconds.

All of which is completely irrational, but that's what you deal with when you have a wife with a jealous streak.

The sugar monster

It's been a frustrating couple of days.

Our sitter took the day off yesterday, which meant that I got to take the day off. I was all ready to sleep in and just let Peanut get up whenever she wanted to. Turns out that she wanted to right at 7 AM.

Now, that gave me a good 90 minutes of extra sleep, but I was really looking forward to something like 2 1/2 hours of extra sleep. And the 90 minutes? Not really good sleep. Since Juice still had to go to work, the alarm went off at 6, then again 7 minutes later. Then I woke up when she got out of the shower, and was in and out of sleep until Peanut woke up.

We spent the day tooling around town, and she almost fell asleep in the car on the way to have lunch with her mother. When we got home, I fought with her for and hour to take her nap, then had to wake her up at 4 so we could go to the store and get provisions for the ghouls and gobblins that would come to our house later in the evening.

And just a quickie about that. We took Peanut trick or treating early - at about 6:45, before it got dark, so I can understand people not being home. But later, say, 7:30-ish, I looked down the street, and there were almost no lights on. In fact, I saw people in my neighborhood pile their whole family into cars (multiple people did this), kids in costumes and all, and drive off leaving their house dark. I think that's crappy. How would they feel if the neighborhood they drove to was mostly dark? Why would you leave your own neighborhood high and dry? I'm starting to get a little disenfranchised with my neighborhood. Nobody was out for National Night Out, and now this?! We didn't even have very many kids come by our house, and it was a Friday night!

Anyway, after all of the trick of treating was done, Peanut was standing outside with me dancing. Then she noticed the stars in the sky and stared dancing and pointing to the stars. Then she says...wait for it..."Dada, I dancing with the stars."

I knew she was full of energy, and she hadn't even had that much candy. Juice gave her a bath, and put her to bed around 8. We sat outside for about an hour after that waiting for more kids to come by, but nada.

We came in the house and started watching TV, only to be interrupted several times by Peanut playing, Peanut crying, Peanut out of bed.

Until 11 PM this went on.

We went to be thinking "at least she'll sleep in."

Guess who was wide awake at 7 AM?