Well last week was full of a lot of ups and downs and sharp curves, so I’m hoping for a much smoother ride this week. I went to see my mom last night and she looked the best I’ve seen in 5 days. They started her rehab yesterday morning. She has three hours of therapy every day, a little less on the weekends. She gets an hour each of speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. She gets out of her room and gets to interact with other people, which I think is going to do as much good as the therapy itself. Everything about her looked better. She was moving better, her spirit seemed up and she was actually smiling most of the time instead of staring off in the distance thinking about her situation. So I am really glad she was able to get into this facility even though I know she would rather be home.
Not much on the job front yet. I did get a rejection letter email on Friday….. second one so far.
Dear Mr. Bobo,
Thank you for your interest… blah blah blah…. reviewed your qualifications… blah blah blah blah… future consideration… blah blah blah….
Regards,
Blah Blah
I’m not in a panic yet. I did qualify for unemployment. But we won’t be able to live on that for long. Thankfully we have no debts except our house and we have been saving for something like this. We had a garage sale this weekend and I sold everything that wasn’t bolted down and made and extra $260. So that will get us two weeks of groceries or two tanks of gas :-)
I saw a fun show last night, Wipeout. It was very entertaining seeing people wipeout on big bouncy balls into a pit of mud.
Thur. 19th: I filed unemployment for the first time in my life
Mon. 23rd: I found a lump near my groin and made an appointment to have it checked out
Tue. 24th: My mom had surgery on her neck. She had a procedure called, Anterior Cervical Corpectomy with a 4 level fusion. This procedure was complicated by the fact that my mom is a cardiac patient, only a year out from a massive heart attack. So the surgery had to be preformed while she was still on aspirin to thin her blood…. so increased risk of excessive bleeding during surgery. After 3 1/2 hours of surgery she made it through surgery with minimal bleeding.
Wed. 25th: I have my appointment about the lump. Nothing to it, just a swollen lymph node. While leaving the doctor’s office I was met at the door by my wife who informed me my mom has had a stroke.
I can’t tell you all of the emotions I have gone through these last 10 days. I’m pretty sure at some point I have hit them all. Thankfully mom’s stroke was a mild one. She has lost some use of her right arm and leg. She can move them, but no motor skills. The biggest problem so far is her sight. She can only see out of half of her right eye, and both eyes are extremely blurry she can’t focus on anything. The doctors feel she will regain most of the use of her arm and leg, but aren’t so sure about her sight.
I’ve got a lot more to write about, but for now this will have to do. I’m off to the hospital again.
Don’t waste your money going to see the new M. Night Shyamalan movie: “The Happening”. I am a fan of his movies and was really looking forward to seeing in today. What a total disappointment. I don’t know if I have ever left a movie and everyone was shaking there head. I kept hearing things like; “That was terrible”, “That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back”, “Can we get our money back?”.
It was really bad. It is not even worth a netflix rental.
The man has more knowledge of economics in his pinky, than all of the bureaucrats in Washington combined. I have learned more about the subject from his show than I ever did in school. Of course back then I really didn’t care either.
Today was our annual health insurance meeting at my office. This is the meeting where the sales rep comes and explains why they are raising our rates by 20% again. But they’re really looking our for our best interest and offering us such a wonderful service.
I view insurance as a necessary evil. I might respect them more if they didn’t pretend to be looking out for me. My company is offering a particular secondary insurance that I won’t mention by name but they have a certain feathered animal as their national spokesman. I decided to talk to them about their hospitalization & short-term disability plans, being I always have this possible 2nd back surgery looming.
“Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve already had one surgery and you may actually want to file a claim in the future, so we’re not going to offer you any coverage”
Those weren’t the exact words, but you get the picture. I don’t mean to offend any hard working insurance representatives out there, but I’m just not a big fan of the health insurance industry.
Not so secret now. In an effort to kick this terrible habit, I am going public with it. I was able to resist all temptations for several months… but today I snapped and fell jumped off the wagon. I don’t know what triggered it. Maybe the stress I’m under lately, maybe the heat…. but before I knew what was happening, I found myself rolling the window down and ordering a big ol’ Chick-fil-a vanilla milkshake. I’m so ashamed of myself. I’ve been doing so good. This is not a big deal for most, but for someone trying to drop a few lbs., it’s terrible. But it was soooo good, I want more. I always get the biggest brain freeze, once they put it in my hands, I don’t put it down until its gone. Hopefully it was just a brief setback and I won’t resume my one a week habit.
I got a letter Saturday that said that our stimulus check should arrive sometime this month. I’ve been thinking for a while now about what I want to do with this check. I know what the government wants me to do with it, but is that really in my best interest?
Here are the top five things I’ve come up with so far:
Pay off debt (I don’t have any, but if I did, this is where the whole check would go)
Put it in the bank and help fund our emergency fund (This is the likely candidate, especially with the looming layoff coming)
Invest it (not a bad thing, but I think I need to keep it fairly accesable for now)
Blow it (We could do this. It’s just not in my nature…. anymore. It is tempting to go to the beach or something, since we have paid off all of our debt.)
Give it away ( Why not? This is found money that we weren’t expecting, weren’t planning for, so why not give to someone who needs it more than us?)
I think I am probably going to do a combination of both save it for a rainy day and give it away. Please save the emails as to why you need me to give it to you, I’m sure there is a multitude of folks who need it more than me, and I know of there are tons of good causes I could donate it to, but I already know who’s gonna get it.
