I played hookey...

And went down the island and fished all day! What a wonderful way to spend a Friday!! I actually didn't do a true hookey day because I was allowed to take off by my supervisor - but it always feels good to have off and being doing something so totally unrelaed to work that you feel sorry for your co-workers stuck in their cubicles! Well, I at least thought about them for a bit!

I'm paying for it a little bit. My legs are a bit spastic and tight right now but nothing a hard day in the cubicle at work couldn't also have done to me. Right now, I'm kicked back on the couch listening to a wonderful Texas thunderstorms. What's so great about our state's thunderstorms? First off - everything is bigger in Texas... and that includes our rolling rounds of thunder during one of these storms. Now, I will give kudos to Oklahoma/West Arkansas thunder because the way that rolls through the plains and in the lower Ozarks is pretty wonderful, too... But, dang it's a beauty! I do feel a bit sorry for my puppy dog - she does not like any type of rain and thunderstorms really set her off. She's currently under the power of puppy prozak.

It was wonderful at the canals today. I slathered on my spf 50 2 times so I actually have a little bit of cinnamon coloring to me and no burn. Well, you know how you always seem to forget one spot? I only forgot the tops of my hands once when going fishing - talk about painful!!! Geez - I had worthless bear claws for about 3 days after that. And, don't forget your earlobes... it's not that this area hurts, but it does make you look all leperous when you have skin peeling off them. I took off my shoes and socks about half way through today to stick my feet in the water while catching some small croakers. So, the tops of my feet are a little pink. Not too bad, but I'll have to make sure and keep some cream on them so I don't have leperous feet either....

We are under a flood warning again right now. Between the rain last weekend not completely soaking in due to the volume of it - I guess they figure it could create a hazard. Oh well.

I do have to share a very hilarious portion of today. It's still early for the canals to have any keepers that could be filet'd and cooked right now. But, it's still fun to catch the baby croakers and sand troudt and be able to release them and promise to come back bigger! I've just learned how to fish in salt-water and "bottom feed" with a weight on my line. I grew up chasing catfish and troudt in fresh waters and it's a bit different. So, I have to share my BIG catch of the day...



Yes, that little thing next to my foot is an actual fish. It's a baby croaker. I hooked him through his little belly.... And, no, there is nothing wrong with my foot. I don't know why it looks a little retarded. I do need a pedicure but my foot looks like it did back when I did break a small little bone just below my toe that went to the market. But, anyways - This was one of my products of work today. We set him free and we'll have to see if he comes back with his big brothers and sisters later!!

Awesome Texas spring day!>...

We have to enjoy them while they last - before the humidity goes above 60% until Christmas!!

After the monsoon that engulfed us this past Saturday, the weather has been phenomenal since then!! My jeep's top has been down and I'm loving life!! It's not even hot enough yet to require me having my cooling vest on yet for any outdoor activities.

We've been taking the pups for a long walk in the afternoons after work. It's been nice - not too long but good enough to get the heart rate up and the pups some good exercise. It's supposed to be like this most of this week and into the next. We're thinking about playing hookey from work this Friday and head down to the island.

Relax in the sun and cast the fishing line!! It might be a little windy on the coast but anything's better than being at work on a Friday!! HAAHHAHHAAHAHAH

Okay - I had to yell at the tv for a few minutes!! My freakin' Astros had the bases loaded with 0, zip, nada, zero outs and only scored 1 freakn' run with a walk. Seriously? We left 13 on base the other night - and it wasn't even a double header~!!! Sorry - I get a little fiesty with baseball. At least this isn't an audio blog and y'all don't have listen to me whine about it... :]

Made my annual neuro appointment today for next week. Got to get the refill on the shots - I hate being a good little patient! Probably need to mention to the doc that I've had 2 more of those anxiety attacks after my copaxone shot. None of them has lasted more than 10-15 minutes, but it still sucks a rotten lemon! This last one happened this past Friday night...

Mine reaction starts with an extreme heat wave to the face and I immediately break out in a sweat... So bad it pores down my cheeks! Then, I CAN'T BREATHE! I start gasping and thrashing and choking. Luckily the other half has been there each time to talk me into an attempt to get me to relax. At least I haven't passed out since that first one. The chest hurts so hard - and it goes into my arms and neck. I remember the nurse telling me it usually happened around the 2nd or 3rd year of the shots but I don't remember them saying it would happen all that often.

I'm not going to change meds. I'm doing good on Copaxone. I've gotten used to the shot.. and I have noticed that the smaller guage of the needle has made a difference the whelps and redness after the shots. That's good! So, I'm noticing a bit of anxiety as I think about having to do my shot. I do it right before I go to sleep. You wouldn't think that would be good to send me off to sleep but it does actually work... Hence the sudden shift in this post.. I started wrapping it up thinking about needing to do my shot...

Coming in out of the rain...

I know I've been a bit bitchy about how much my yard's been begging for rain. And, how the last couple of fronts to come through here have missed us down south here. However, I'm now glad we got the rain but holy shnikeys - did we ever get rain!!

This one is right in front of our house. You can just see the sidewalk that's right behind the fire hydrant. It came up about another 2 feet from when this pic was taken. We got 6" in an hour - including 3 inches in 12 minutes!! We were flooded in. Our neighbor had to park his car at the end of the block and walk to his house.



Notice our cul-de-sac is GONE!!! The rain got about to the top of the tires on that minivan. It was scary for a bit. The power went out a couple of times for brief periods so we ended up just keeping it off. We turned it back on a little while later - just in time to hear the tornado warnings for our area. At least that part of the front went through very quickly.

Spoke with fam a little further south and they had yard furniture flying around the yard. Now, the sun is out and at least we got enough water to last us a bit. I think we caught up with where we were supposed to be for the year.

I just wish there was a 3rd day to the weekend!!! Not going to do much of anything today. Did a lot yesterday. Got all the pics hung back on the wall and now the house is completely back to normal. It felt weird having empty walls. I knew one couple that moved houses and the hung pics are usually the last things up. Well, their cat went bonkers and the vet told them it was probably because of nothing on the walls. Weird, huh??

Got my hand back (obviously!) and it was just sore the next day. Apparently I was chasing some squirrels this morning, but not much going on right now. I did have another experience after my copaxone shot on Friday night. Chest seizes up and I start sweating and getting all red and can't breathe. This one only lasted about 5 minutes but it still scares the crap outta me. I don't like it. Don't know of anything I'm doing different on one night vs another to bring it on. Oh well. It's time to go see the neuro anyways... the scrip is about to run out so I gotta go do the monkey dance to get the refill on the never-ending shots.

Have you noticed?...

The new mobile blogging feature??? Hmmmmm......

Want to gripe about the was this crappy disease has affected me today. Unfortunately it has caused a loss of use of my left hand for most of today. Sorta hard to type.

So, this saves you from hearing about my gripes (today). hahahahahahahahahaha

Seriously - my hand? It started in my thumb....pulled it in and hasn't let go. It will. Sux til then.

Thanks for letting me gripe though - it is blog reader appreciation day!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy shnikeys... I can TYPE!...

A lot. Sorry! I just re-read yesterday's post. I noticed my shoulders felt better today after getting that load off though!! HAHAHAHAHHAHHHA

So, I'm a big country music fan. I love music!! And, although I did not like this particular artist upon her arrival on the scene but now I'm a big fan of Leann Rimes. I like the way her voice has matured and she seems to find good songs and helps write some of the songs. So, I found this page through some of my world wide web stops along the way...

http://www.leannrimesworld.com/wicc/

This is a site called "What I Cannot Change" - it allows people to post with or without their names. It allows people to put out there things they deal with that they cannot change. I read threw some of them and there's some drug/alcohol abuse, physical disability, mental disability, dealing with others with issues, etc... I'm sure there's some posts about MS in there.

How could there not be? If I could change it - I would. Who wouldn't? There's no way in hell that anyone, if they COULD change it, would not get rid of their MS. We can't, though. There is no cure. There's only treatments. Course, (warning - stepping up on a soap-box!) I personally believe that the conspiracy theorists have this one right - drug companies aren't going to let the scientists publish the cure they find because there's no $$$$ in that!

Okay, stepping off my soap-box!

Are there changes we can make to make dealing with this crappy-ass disease better? Yup. Let's see, I've resigned myself I will just have to go the rest of my life as one of the whitest-white girls now that I will no longer be going out in the sun long enough to get any visible color change - on top of the SPF1000 I have to wear! I will choose to look like the biggest dork in the world when I wear my cooling vest in public! I will only be able to make fun of all my drunk friends in a hot tub since I'll be the only one NOT in it! My love-handles are going to have to be accepted for now - my body no longer allows my running shoes to be used to their full potential! My mountain bike will have to resign itself to its retirement from me and will have to move onto another faithful pedlar!!

Sigh, these are just a few of the things I would like to change. So, here's how I have changed. I like being a pasty-white girl --- earth tones are good for me!! They now make sunscreen with a hint of color!! The cooling vest is a good conversation piece -- either about MS or whatever! Isn't laughing at our drunk friends the best kind of fun?!??!?! I still get to buy some pretty cool running shoes in my fave colors - you can even customize at Nike.com!! I think trikes or recumbent bikes are waaaaaaaaaay cool - lots more places to stick all sorts of neat stickers!!

Had a great swim yesterday - even added some ab exercises at the end. It burned a little bit but in that good way. Been walking with the pups after work a couple of times this week. They love it and it's good for all of us. My 10 year-old lab has got some arthritis in her left hip. She's on meds and so it was sore the other day after the walk and she's gotta take it easy, but she knows I feel her pain!!

Problems with Unique Builders, Complaints with Unique Builders, Crappy Work with Unique Builders,

So, if you type something enough it will pop-up on a Google search engine, right? That's my hope with my title of this post. Sometimes, you need to vent about some things that are not MS related, right? I'm lucky I didn't go into an exacerbation with all the stress the damn contractors caused me!!!

They started on our house on March 9th.... they finished the promised 7-10 day job on April 9th... I'm not the best person in the world at math but that made it more than 7-10 days, right?? I shall start with the fact that they tried not to fix all the woodwork in the doors that they were supposed to fix. Minor, right? They did better after I pointed it out but still not great... I'll probably be patching it here in a few months.

The paint - the colors are great! WE did a good job on that. However, the quality of their paint job was horrible. There were gaps between the trim and walls (how does that freakin' happen?), spots where they obviously did not get the 2nd coat and was waaaaaaaaaay more visible, and then just spots they somehow just missed completely. They also did not take off all the wall-paper in the bathrooms and kitchens and we had to pull it off and point it out to be textured and painted.... You might be wondering how that happened, as well... I don't have a good explanation for it, so your thoughts/imagination can fill in the gaps just like ours did...

Don't even get me started on the trim... I basically had to re-do all the trim in the master bath and around all the windows in the kitchen. I also had to re-do all the caulking in the bathrooms - they were supposed to do that as well but they obviously did it prior to painting - I'm sure that would not be horrible but add that on top of the already crappy painting job and it becomes bad! And, it turns out - you have to tell them that ALL nails have to be taken out of the walls. But, they did take out the ones they wanted to. When pointed out to the owner - he said that he was not told to take out the nails. When I asked him why other nails around the house were taken out - well, lets just say he did not have an answer for that an appropriately stayed quiet.

Then, the nails they did take out - some they bothered to spackle before re-painting, some they did not, and then some - they tried to push in the wall (only 1 - but still, really??). Again, no good answer from the owner. There was paint all over my new floors in the bathrooms - they did a decent job cleaning it up. They actually "finished" (a term I use looser than Pamela Anderson is) in 7 working days (including a Saturday night that they did not leave until 830pm!) they said to do a walk-thru. I laughed. Literally. Laughed some more and sat down and wrote a 5 page word document outlining all that was wrong with the site.

So, I was told that the touch-ups would take no more than 1 day, 1 1/2 days tops. 4 freakin' days later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still wasn't done. I kicked them out of my house. At that point, I'm going to do it. Did I mention that they tried to paint my kitchen pantry shelves in the wall color, despite me telling them that if it was trim color to begin with - it stayed the new trim color. They tried to do the same damn thing in my master bathroom linen closet and the hall closet. When asked about that - I was told that they must have over-looked the original color. Again, how? The old oil based paint looked totally different and FELT different than the wall based color. Again, no decent (notice my reduction of expectations here!) answer given.

I kicked their asses out of my house. My partner and I then spent all that weekend getting our house finished in the paint department. My list of what we had to do covered ALL FREAKIN' ROOMs. I had to do the paint on the walls around all the windows in every room. Some required all the way around and some just required around the window sills. Still, really? The master bedroom seams between the ceiling and walls needed paint almost all the way around the entire room. There was a bit of wall between the 2nd and 3rd bedroom doorways. Somehow, this area got almost entiredly overlooked - There was some color so that had to at least see it and put the brush to touch it but that was obviously it.

Want the coo-de-ta? (I know that's probably nowhere near what the actual spelling is, but it was fun to say out loud and try to sound out - Hookied on Fonicks worked for me!!!) Since the entire house was getting painted, my partner and I figured we'd get new registers for the a/c vents and all new hardware to put around all the light/plug/data line fixtures. Guess what we found when we took the old ones off? Almost 1/2 of the plates HAD NEVER FREAKIN' BEEN TAKEN OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously?? I know that's something you DON'T have to explicitly tell the painter to do. Matter of fact, I was EXPLICIT in my directions to the owner when I got the bid and when I agreed to use him, that all hardware was to be removed from all walls. (Oh yeah, they did not take any of the hardware off in the bathrooms and kitchen and guess what that meant - wall paper still there). I had caught the big portions (one portion was roughly 8x10 size in master bath) luckily. So, when we took off the phone line cover in the kitchen - wall paper. Data line in the office - old paint completely behind it. Cable line in the 2nd bedroom - not only was it not taken off but the old one was COVERED in the paint. Not to mention the 3 wall plugs that are now painted the same color as the wall - the actual piece that the cord plugs into that has to be reset into the wires to fix (luckily the honey works well with electricity!). One of the new a/c registers in the 2nd bathroom was also covered in paint - I pointed that out and they cleaned it.

Seriously? I'm still shocked that I'm not in the hospital getting IV solumedrol. And, I have NOT even gotten to the shocker yet!!!!!!!! Ready for it? Seriously, I know you're asking yourself why you did not get that 3rd glass of wine or the 4th beer before starting this blog?

We woke up that 1st Sunday after they had gotten to the kitchen to start peeling wallpaper and texturing. Well, I should say that when my other half woke up - I sleep in on the weekends. Anyways, there was water all over the kitchen floor. Mind you, this is on top of all the brown paper they had laid on the floor. My honey figures out that moving the fridge, they had stripped the copper water connection to our fridge. Not too hard to fix for her - a trip to Home Depot and we've got the tools and supplies. Guess what we found when we pulled up the brown paper on the floor? OVER 20 FUCKIN (I'm over freakin at this point) TEARS INTO THE KITCHEN LINOLIUM. Seriously. I counted. There were 28 in front of our kitchen. Really? The fridge has wheels on it. To move it. Easily. Not fast. Slow. Carefully.

Because of that, I go and check the one other area where appliances had to be moved - the washer/dryer. Guess what I found? Only 1 tear, but it was a doozy (almost 2 inches on one side). Guess what? The workers had tried to cover up the tears in front of the fridge. They had literally tried to glue some of them back down. Wanna know how I know? Because when I got down on my stomach to look at a couple of the visible tears (really, were we not going to notice? Or, they were going to try and make it not noticable until they were gone and therefore no liability?) I found the other ones. I went through the roof. Now, I'm your normal American mutt - English, Irish, Polish (and blonde - I really never had a chance) German, Cherokee, and Czech - but once I hit boiling I cannot hold back the red in me! I had the project manager and the project boss over at my house that Sunday evening and they actually did the right thing then - immediately advising they would replace it and asked if a patch job would be okay. Of course it would - I've seen those guys that do floors and I've seen some patch jobs I would never guess. I gave them the chance.

Again, DISAPPOINTED LIKE HELL! They really thought the patch job that wasn't laid flat, did not follow the seams, and didn't glue down one corner would be acceptable. Then, they really thought the patch job in the laundry room would be good. I wish I still had the pics - it was even more comical. Again, the owner comes out to my house again and says the right thing and says he will replace the entire floor. The moral of the story is if you live in the Houston metro area - DO NOT USE UNIQUE BUILDERS for any of your home projects. I advised them that not only did all my friends and neighbors know about my horrible experience, all my co-workers also know, AND I did something even worse... I put it on Facebook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, of course here. I think I need to add a few more crappy words to the title - first thing I'm going to do after I publish this post is try a Google search. So, if the title changes a few times in the next couple of days. You know why.

WOW - I think this is my longest post yet!!!!!!! Would it be weird to say I'm actually more excited it was about something other than MS - that means I've been doing good!

Oh, what happened with the kitchen floor you ask? They ended up giving us cost on ceramic tile in there and we accepted their offer. They did that okay - there were a few too many popped bubbles in the grout for my tastes but again, I kicked them out of my house! AND THEY'RE NEVER FUCKING COMING BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ugh...

I hate when my legs get pissy with me. A couple of major cramps and charlie horses and here comes walking-funny!! I made it half a day at work yesterday - then came home and got doped up. Woke up this morning with more cramps and charlie horses that had decided my quads and calves were not enough and it needed my hips to join the party.

Yeah - walking more funny this morning and slow. I hate my legs when they don't like me. The dogs like me being home. It's been a while since they've gotten pissy with me. I'd done my selective memory thing with it and had forgotten how much it hurts.

I didn't even feel like getting the looks today at work and stayed home. With heating pad. And drugs.... even though they make me all dopey and ucky. Sheesh. I'm a little whiney because of it as well... bad combo. I think I'll just go back to reading my book and watching daytime tv.

At least the puppies make me laugh... here's a couple more videos of smile! The little one thinking he's a great dane! And, the eldest daughter going after an easter turtle!!