Wednesday, September 8, 2010

So THAT'S Why He Wrote It...

You know, I'm beginning to understand why Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends."

This month has sucked. And we're only a week into it.

School is going well, but rest is not. Kairi is not wanting to go to bed at a reasonable time which makes waking up really hard for me. It also makes staying awake later in the day incredibly hard and I get very easily frustrated and flustered when I'm tired. (Not to be confused with "flusterated," which is an entire post in and of itself.)

On top of the general state of walking death, I've had to deal with some pretty devastating personal drama. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that it's been incredibly stressful and I'm pretty sure that the damage done by it is irreparable.

And this morning I managed to break my glasses simply by picking them up. I went a good half of my day without glasses, giving myself a headache from eye strain, before I finally came to my senses and bought some super glue. It's a temporary fix but I've got an optometrist appointment tomorrow morning. I'm hoping that they will have my prescription of contacts on hand because although my glasses are currently operational, they are not comfortable as they are sitting a little wonky across my nose on top of the previous wonkiness that came from Kairi twisting on of the ear pieces almost all the way off.

I've had my glasses with the same prescription for almost 10 years. I had decided to get new ones with my grant money from school anyway, but this couldn't have come at a worse time. All of my bills for September are due right now and my grant money isn't coming until later in the month, possibly not until early October. Thankfully, my mother has graciously offered to loan me the money to get my glasses and contact situation under control (she's always saving my ass - you might notice a trend if you read my blog very often).

Oh! And I nearly forgot! On the 1st, I woke at 5 am to Kairi breathing really abnormally. Her breathing was shallow and extremely labored. She was having what the doctors called "retractions" which is where she was breathing so hard that her stomach (the outside, visible areas, that is) was being sucked up under her ribs with each breath.

Having dealt with upper respiratory issues with Gracie when she was young as well as our previous bouts of bronchialitis and pneumonia with Kairi last year I knew that she needed a breathing treatment so I got out of bed and pulled the nebulizer out of the closet - but there was no medicine with it. As it was still very early in the morning (about 6 by this point in time) I knew my only option was to hit up the ER.

Thankfully there was only one or two other people being treated in the ER at the time of our visit so it only took about an hour and a half. They let me give her a breathing treatment there and gave us some prescriptions for not only the medicine for the nebulizer but also some antibiotics and some steroids for any infection that may have been present in her lungs.

I got home at 9 after getting all the prescriptions and got Gracie to school but by the time I got home I myself was sick and I found Jason sick as well. I had baked cod the night before and although I was certain it was done, Jason didn't seem to be. I guess we'll never know, but I stand by my cooking.

So, this - in a nutshell - has been how the month of September has treated me thus far. Granted, it could be a lot worse, but I am really beginning to relate to Billie Joe's words even if I think he's become a little too politically minded and sappy.

For now, I'm heading to bed. And as much as I'd like to just sleep through this month, I've got lots of things to take care of (Jason's birthday is Sunday!) and I doubt if anyone would appreciate my extended snooze.