November Rewind

Wow!  It's December first already. . .where does the time go?  Honestly, I am happy to see December since November was a mess at the end.  I can now say, that historically, November is not a good month for me. Bad things usually happen to me, especially the week before Thanksgiving. I guess it started in 2003.  I don't know what it is. In 2003 I had a patient code, in 2004 a patient died and I got cellulitis, 2005 was good year (Jacob was born), 2006 & 2007 were crisis free, 2008 I get TMJ.

The insanity started in the days leading up to Jacob's birthday.  Thursday the 12th, Tim woke me up to tell me his car wouldn't start and he had to take my car to work.  Nice, Jacob missed school and his flu shot appointment.  I spent a good 30 minutes the night before calming his fears about the mist he would have squirted in his nose the next day.  That was now for nothing.  Then I realized the cupcake liners I need to make the cupcakes to bring to school the next day were in the trunk of my car which was now 45 minutes away.  That night, Tim spent 2 hours fixing the problem (gotta love a guy who can fix a car!) while I was inside baking and icing cupcakes.  Of course Tim got home late so it was 11pm before I was done with my project.  The things we do for our kids :)

Friday, Tim called and told me he would be late because the same car that died the day before now blew a tire on his way home.  Nice!  Gotta love Friday the 13th.

We celebrated Jacob's 4th birthday on the 14th.  We decided not to have a kid birthday this year for several reasons.  1. the few kid parties we have been invited to turn out to be mostly family and 1 or 2 kids from Jacob's class.  Well, we have no family here and I couldn't see going through all the crazy preparations for 2 kids and seeing him disappointed.  Reason 2.  I just wanted us to have a nice family day.  3.  We would be seeing my parents in a couple of weeks and having a small party with them (something we've never been able to do) We let Jacob pick out what he wanted to do.  He picked the zoo and dinner out.  So that's what we did.   We went to the Birmingham zoo for the day.  It was nice and sunny.  It's a small zoo but just the right size to get through in a few hours before completely loosing interest.  We came home, opened presents and then headed out for an early dinner then it was home again for cake.  Perfect!  I highly recommend going simple.

The week leading up to this, our desktop computer was acting weird.  By Sunday I was about to throw the thing out the window.  It was just a year old in August.  Not knowing what else to do with it, I brought the tower in to Best Buy.  The Geek Squad determined it had a virus and possibly a corrupt OS.  $200 later the computer got shipped off to be fixed.  We still don't have it back. We are going on 2 weeks now.  Luckily we have a laptop to get us by.  It's amazing (and sad) how much we rely on computers these days for almost everything.

On the 18th I had to catch a flight with my co-workers to a training conference in Baton Rouge.  Earlier that week, Tim wound up with a last minute conflict in his schedule which left us not knowing what to do about Jacob and child care while I was gone.  After many phone calls on Tim's end, Jacob got to miss school and go to Atlanta with Tim so he could take his PT test.  This is when it would be nice to live near family.  I was near tears at this point b/c what else could possibly go wrong?

Well, on my way to the airport I stop at the ATM.  I am driving the car that had issues the week before.  In case I didn't say, it's our old 1998 Nissan Sentra we had in Italy, my very first car I ever owned.  I put the window down, all the way down, not realizing that the switch was now broken.  The window will not go back up, it's cold, looks like it is about to rain and I have to drive 20 minutes on the interstate (70mph) with said window down.  I called Tim frantic and he told me it will go up if the radio and lights are off.  I'm thinking this poor car just needs duct tape and plastic on the windows and we will be good to go. HA!  My worry was that my car would get stolen sitting in long-term parking at the airport.  About 5 minutes from the airport the window finally went up.  Note to self, do NOT put window down again.

While at the airport, I meet my co-works and we find out our flight is bumped and we will not make our connecting flight in Atlanta.  We were able to get on a different carrier 2 hours later and all made it safely.  Side note, what a great experience this was!  I am really excited about this job/research project!

Amazingly last week, nothing happened.  We went to North Carolina and spent Thanksgiving with my parents and had a birthday party with them for Jacob.  We also spent some time walking our property down the road from my parents.  If you recall, we have 4 acres of land, 5 houses away from them.  With the leaves off the trees we could really do some deep walking in the woods that we haven't been able to do.  We found fresh deer tracks and droppings.  We had no idea deer were that near. We were also able to get an idea of the depth of the river that flows in the back.  It was so peaceful to be in the woods and listen to the water flow by.  We have decided that during our time in AL, we need to seriously start looking at house plans and get an idea of what we want to build.  It's so exciting!  Since we've had a couple of houses now, we know what we want and don't want in a house and we look forward building something to our specifications.  Tim has 10 years to retire but the plan is for me and Jacob to be there before that.  Besides looking at house plans we have to find a builder, gets plans approved, etc. and we figure about 9-12 months to build, so it's going to take some time.  Luckily we don't have to rush.

Sunday we drove back to find out that Tim has a week of training and he had to leave Monday.  It's always something.  This weekend we will be putting up the Christmas tree and decorations.  We are so excited to decorate the new house!  And just in case you were wondering, yes, we plan to replace the Sentra in January :)