* * *
This weekend, there’s a state tax exemption in Alabama. People are losing their SHIT because if they buy anything that can possibly be construed as a school supply, they don’t have to pay state tax on it, which I believe is a savings of 5% (someone correct me if I’m wrong).
I went to Sam’s yesterday after my ultrasound (more on that in a minute), and it was PACKED. People were buying clothes, paper, markers, backpacks, all the usual stuff.
Unfortunately for me, frozen shrimp and bottled water is apparently not considered a school supply.
I noticed on the way home that there were WAY more people on the road than there usually are at 1 in the afternoon. The traffic going from Madison toward Huntsville was backed up for miles. I’m fairly certain people were running willy-nilly from store to store, saving 5% on all their purchases.
People love a bargain.
I thought about going to Kohl’s this weekend and going on a bra try-on marathon, just trying on bra after bra after bra until I found one which fit well and I liked, but the very idea makes me tired.
Maybe next week.
Also, I read in Self magazine that you should be re-fitted for a bra every time you gain or lose five pounds. Ha!
* * *
So I went for my liver ultrasound yesterday morning. I couldn’t eat or drink for six hours – SIX HOURS! – before the test, which means that when I pulled up to the imaging center I was thirsty as hell, since I usually drink at least a liter of water by noon.
I went inside and read for a few minutes (I was about twenty minutes early) and then the sonigramist (?) called me back and asked me a few questions. I opted to just pull my shirt up rather than take it off and put on a gown, because I figured the sooner we got this show on the road, the sooner I could drink some damn water.
During the sonogram, the tech asked me, in several different ways, if I was having any abdominal pain. In fact, she asked so often that I got the distinct impression that she was seeing something that was supposed to be causing me pain.
Which made me feel slightly guilty, as though I were in serious pain and just lying about it. And which also made me wonder if I was actually in pain and just didn’t realize it.
(But after a discussion with my guts, I SWEAR TO GOD I’M NOT IN PAIN. I swear I’m not lying! I’m not!)
At one point the tech pushed down with the sonogram wand (or whatever it’s called) directly on my stomach, and my stomach made an internal noise that sounded like nothing so much as a muted belch. I tried not to laugh, but I’m sure I had a dorky grin on my face.
Anyway, I predict that I’ll hear from the doctor early next week and he’ll say that I need to have my gallbladder out. Because after all these doctor visits this week, you know that SOMETHING’s gonna have to come out. I think it’s an insurance requirement.
* * *
A lot of you mentioned sleep apnea in my comments for yesterday’s entry. Back in the first few years after Fred and I became a couple, we’d be laying in bed talking, both of us wide awake, and there’d be a few minutes of silence. And Fred would breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe… and then not. It wasn’t a matter of him just breathing quietly – he just wasn’t breathing at ALL, and I’d notice it immediately, because it would be so quiet, and after thirty seconds or a minute of the silence, I’d nudge him, hard, and say “BREATHE, already.” And he’d gasp for air.
And he was WIDE AWAKE when this was happening, and just not aware that he wasn’t breathing. I’d try not to say anything to him, and sometimes I’d successfully wait him out, and he’d start gasping for air and breathing again on his own. Sometimes I’d start holding my breath when he started holding his, and it would go on for an impossible amount of time, and I’d have to gasp for air and start breathing again, and he’d keep holding his breath for what seemed like FOREVER before he started breathing again. It freaked me the hell out.
Again, he had NO IDEA he was doing it while it was going on. It wasn’t constant, and it wasn’t even every night, but it was often enough that I can clearly remember laying there and waiting for him to start breathing again.
Now, I can’t believe that I didn’t nag the hell out of him to go see a doctor and have a sleep test done, because if he was doing that while he was awake, I don’t even want to think about what he was doing while he was asleep.
I guess I’m lucky he’s still alive. Like he said in my comments yesterday, the upside to having separate beds in separate rooms is that we’ll never wake up with a dead person next to us!
(And he hasn’t done the holding-his-breath thing since he lost all that weight.)
* * *
These two cats are Whiskers (the calico) and her “baby” (the black and white). They “belong” to people who live a few doors down from my sister, but their owners refuse to let them inside the house. According to the owners, the cats don’t want to go inside, but every time anyone in the vicinity opens a door, the cats come running.
Whiskers isn’t really the kitten’s mother – but they’re so attached to each other that everyone calls the kitten Whiskers’ baby. Whiskers is 8 or 9 years old, and my sister is pretty sure she’s been spayed. The kitten is about 6 months old, and hasn’t been spayed. Her name is something like Roxxie or Rozzie.
They are very, very sweet cats.
If anyone in the vicinity of Topsham, Maine (right next to Brunswick) is interested in adopting two sweet cats who deserve owners who WANT to be their owners,
let me know and I’ll pass your information on to my sister. No one in my sister’s apartment complex can afford to take on Whiskers and her baby right now; they’re a bunch of cat lovers, and pretty much all at their limits when it comes to how many cats they can have.
* * *
This morning Fred decided he just wasn’t up for going for a hike (I fell over in a dead faint for a moment when I heard that, believe you me), so he went out and mowed the lawn, and I took advantage of the fact that he was out of the way and that the spud was still sleeping, to vacuum the entire house.
(Yes, I vacuumed RIGHT OUTSIDE the spud’s bedroom door while she was sleeping, or at least trying to. Because it was 10:00, and people, Momma don’t give a shit WHO is sleeping at that time of day; if there’s vacuuming to be done, it’s gonna get done.)
When Fred was done mowing the lawn, he came in and asked how much more vacuuming I had to do. When I asked why, he suggested that we go visit Uncle Charlie’s Flea Market, which is about an hour from Madison. I finished vacuuming, took a shower and got dressed (and perhaps there was a little hanky-panky in there as well, which I will neither CONFIRM NOR DENY; but Fred did say “You better not be giving me some horrid liver disease!” The man KNOWS romantic conversation, doesn’t he?) and we left.
We got to Uncle Charlie’s Flea Market, and I’ve gotta say: It kinda sucked. There wasn’t much there, though we did buy an F. Paul Wilson hardcover book for $1 AND we found a penny, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip. Like Fred said “We spent $10 in gas to buy a book that cost us 99 cents.”
Fred was hungry, so we headed home, keeping an eye out for restaurants on the way. We ended up at a little Mexican restaurant (there are more Mexican restaurants in this area than all the other types of restaurants combined, I think), and the food ended up being really pretty good. I got a quesadilla with shrimp, onions, and cheese, and I liked it a LOT.
We headed toward home, stopping at a produce stand to buy a green pepper (more
3-bean salad is on the horizon; Fred loves that stuff), and then we drove out into the country to see what was for sale, land-wise and house-wise. We’ve been talking about starting to seriously look for a house now so that we have an idea of what’s out there and available before we put our house up for sale.
The value of our house has gone up quite a bit since we refinanced last year, and rumor has it that they’re closing a base in Washington and transferring 10,000 people to this area, so chances are good we’ll end up making a good chunk of money on this house.
Or so we hope.
We’re looking for a house on 5 – 10 acres of land, because we have BIG PLANZ for that land, plans that include a pond, an orchard, and a vegetable garden. We talked about buying land and building a house on it, but apparently not only have the prices of houses gone up, so have the costs of building a house.
Anyway, we drove out into the country to see what was out there (every time we passed a big-ass plot of land covered by growing soybeans or cotton, Fred would point to it and say “We should find out who owns that and see if they’ll sell us 5 acres!”). We stopped at home to use the bathroom, then went back out to drive into the country in another direction to see what was out there.
Basically, we drove all over hell and creation, just looking at the houses and subdivisions we passed. It was a nice way to pass an afternoon, actually.
We’re going to have the realtor over (the one who sold us this house) next week so he can look our house over and tell us what needs to be done to it before we put it up for sale. My prediction: We need to finish painting the trim (FRED), replace the nasty-ass carpet, and check to see if the window where we installed the cat door needs to be replaced.
We shall see…
* * *
The t-shirt I wore today. Every single time I wear something pink, I think of
Catie. I even wore a matching pink ring and pink earrings. Oh, and my Keds were pink, too. I was pink as pink could be!
We had a very strong windstorm yesterday (it actually knocked the
neighbor’s tree the rest of the way over) and Sugarbutt was absolutely fascinated by the leaves blowing around in the front yard. He stood like this for at least fifteen minutes, mesmerized.
* * *
Previously
2005: That Jane, she’s a smart and wily one.
2004: No, there are no current plans for Fredbyn offspring.
2003: I think we’re going to change Miz Poo’s name to Miz Money Pit.
2002: No entry.
2001: Picture entry.
2000: The word of the day is shopping.]]>