I Agree 100%

My thoughts exactly! Open wide America...

Just Plain Ol' Annoying!

I seem to be struggling a lot lately with other folks’ shortcomings… or with other folks’ bad habits is more like it. Maybe they are not their bad habits but more like my pet peeves- who knows. But, what I do know is that it seems to be happening more and more each day… with co-workers or acquaintances or friends or even family. And I admit that most of them are probably small, unimportant things, but sometimes a lot of little things tend to add up to much bigger headaches for me. Or maybe I am just way too easily agitated and need to “lighten up” as my Husband tells me quite often…again, who knows. Here are a few examples of such behaviors:
- If I call you, it annoys me for you to talk and/or yell at your pet in mid-conversation. (Or your children/spouse/etc.)
- Please don’t wear “low-rise” jeans to work and continuously flash me the back of your boxers all throughout the day- and I am not talking because they are hanging off you because your jeans are too big. They are just too short in the back because of your gut in the front- another reason you should not be wearing them!
- If you call me to talk, don’t rush me off the phone while I am in mid-sentence.
- If you fill your coffee cup and there is less than 1 cup of coffee in the pot, make another pot.
- If you get coffee out of the company coffee pot, make darn sure you put the pot completely back onto the heated burner!
- When I send you and others an email, do not Reply All if you are replying to me.
- Do not touch/use my laptop ever. Period.
- If you go # 2 in the company restroom, spray the air freshener for crying out loud!
- Fill the paper tray on the printer if it runs out in the middle of your print task!!!
- Listen and remember when I tell you important dates, meetings, issues, etc. Please don’t make me have to repeat myself every single time we talk after that.
- If you are going to be late to work and/or not show up, Call me and let me know- don’t make me wonder for hours on end!
- If you choose to wear T-shirts and sandals to work in the winter because you “are from up north where the “real” cold weather is”, do not crank up the thermostat to accommodate you- the rest of us are boiling!
- Just because you are a college graduate does not make you better than our field men… lose the attitude! And turn stop texting your buddies while on the clock!
- If you open up drawers, cabinets, doors, etc., close them back when finished.
- Put the toilet paper roll on the toilet paper holder- don’t just sit it on top.
- To be continued…

Preparing for V-Day

Since my trip this past Tuesday, I have ran all over town this week looking for Grandmother supplies. I did manage to find the generic store brand of the adult supplement shakes- got six 6-packs of those in 3 different flavors. And I lucked up and found the restraint vest too- my grand idea of going to the drug store across from Kennestone Hospital in Marietta turned out to be just that- Grand! I Fed-Exed the vest yesterday to my Grandmother's Caregiver and plan on taking the shakes (along with Valentines treats) down there to her tomorrow. Yep, Hubby and I are making a weekend trip back home to visit my Grandmother, run some errands, unload some ammo and visit some friends. Happy Valentines to us!

A Day In The Slow Lane

I spent all day yesterday with my Grandmother. After I arrived, I spent my first 20-30 minutes waiting on her to use the bathroom. Every time she finished going, they would dress her back up and bring her into the room with me and then a few minutes later she would say she has to go again. This happened three times in a row! I told her that she better get it all out because there would be no bathroom in my car. Finally, she quit talking about having to go and we walked her out to the car. We spent a couple of hours just riding around my hometown... I ran some errands and she stayed in the car. I took her to visit her house. I helped her out of the car and helped her walk up and down the driveway a few times while she admired the yard and house. We visited our land and admired the horses at the neighboring farm. I got her back to her home just in time for lunch. We then left with the Caregiver to go to her doctors appointment in Lagrange. We made it to the doc's office and let's just say this was one eventful visit. First of all, the doc spotted us parading down the hallway on our way in to see him and he starting saying that we should really have a wheelchair on hand at all times- at home and away (this is based on his just watching us help her along I guess). And after walking thru all the events that have happened to her since our last visit- starting w/ the fall she had on Thanksgiving night, he pretty much stated that she is progressing downward. He is recommending two units of Ensure a day due to her weight loss (she is down to 85 lbs). He wants her to be sleeping in a "posey" (a restraint vest) at night to keep her from unconsiously climbing out of the bed in the middle of the night. After hearing about the details, he agreed with my theory that her "episode" on Saturday was more than likely another brain seizure- he wants to up her dosage of her seizure meds if she another significant one. If she continues to stay angry and combative on a daily basis, then we should be given the prescribed "calmative" med every day. The list goes on and on... and yet, he never came right out and just simply said "she is going downhill".... of course not! That would be WAY too easy! And with every question the Caregiver asked, my Grandmother would get angrier. By the time we left, she was fit to be tied! She did manage to lighten by the time we got to walmart... this trip to wally-world was quite different than any before- she did not recognize the store and she did not ramble on about needing "things" and "stuff"... she did not ask for ANY thing! We were in and out with no hold-ups... very strange... and her walking speed is drastically slower than the usual too. I am amazed at how hard it is to walk as slow as she does... makes my legs more than trying to run fast! We made it back to her home and I left her to head home by 5pm... and she was still happy-sounding when I talked to her this afternoon. Lord, I feel much better!

Another Day, Another Episode

I have been so busy lately between work, boot camp, karate, living with a traveling husband, etc. I have not been to visit my Grandmother in person in several weeks and I feel so darn guilty about it! I do not know why I carry this guilt so much… I mean I DO live an hour and half away… and the other members of our family only live 5-10 minutes away and they only go to see her once a week or every two or so. Our last trip down there did not offer a large enough window of time to go actually visit her since we spent all day moving her furniture and stuff out of her apartment and into her house. And we had to recruit a friend’s help since my brother was out of town on a hunting trip. Well, I keep telling her that I will down to visit her soon… but, she asks me EVERY…single… day… and it is driving me insane! Again, I feel so bad about it but, my work is keeping me super busy and with all of my other commitments, I just have not had a weekday or weekend day to go. And this weekend was nothing different- with Hubby’s birthday this coming week, we were doing birthday things both days with his family members. So when her Caregiver called to tell me that something was wrong with my Grandmother yesterday, I panicked. She had already called the On-Call Hospice Nurse. She explained to me what had transpired… I called my Mom and she agreed to go up there. I talked to the Nurse after she completed her evaluation of my Grandmother. She tried to tell me that her opinion is that my Grandmother had some sort of spell after a huge BM… huh? After listening to her list of symptoms and stuff and after already hearing the original list from the Caregiver, I put together my own theory. My Grandmother has had another slight brain seizure. I mean this seizure is nothing like the two huge seizures she had experienced last March, but all the characteristics are the same. Her temporary loss of memory of the entire day before is another trait also. Of course, the Nurse did not agree with me. And I chose not to agree with her. She wound up falling asleep almost immediately after the spell (same as before) and did not really wake up until early this morning. I talked with her this morning and she seemed like her normal self. However, considering yesterday’s events, I have decided to take a personal day on Tuesday and head on down to spend the day with her. She already has a doctor appointment that day that I really need to go anyway… so why not make a day of it? She will love it and hopefully my guilt will disappear…

Corporate Bank Update

So I wound up taking my lunch hour that Thursday to visit the corporate bank branch location closest to my office in hopes of taking care of business. I took all my important documents with me in order to close my Grandmother’s account during that visit. After a long 20-25 minute wait in the sitting area, I am explaining my wishes to a female banker to close the account as my Grandmother’s legal guardian/power of attorney. After the longest 30 minutes of my life spent explaining my case and defending my Power of Attorney to their Legal Dept. (who was on the phone since obviously not one employee at that bank had the power to make any banking decisions on their own). One thing I did discover was that this account is actually a CD and not a savings or investment account. And yet, they still insisted that because there was no “activity” in the CD in the past 14 years, they declared it “abandoned”. I always thought that CD’s were left alone to mature and make money and that the only time a CD had “activity” was when the mature date rolled around and you either closed it or left it. These whack jobs at this bank kept trying to convince me that a CD should have money deposited or withdrawn from it to keep it an active account. Not the last time I checked! I finally escaped that hell after telling him to forget it and that I would take care of it elsewhere. What a waste of my lunchtime! So now I am planning my next step closing the CD… more later!