Not Complaining / Olympic Memories

 I will not complain today. I will simply inform you of things that have occurred and allow you to form your own opinion.

There was cat vomit to clean up first thing this morning. Stubby is in a stage of biting off all of his fur (again). I don't know if it is stress or what his deal is. He's always been a weird cat. He gets so much fur in his belly that he eventually throws up. The vomiting is pretty much a daily occurrence here lately. Yesterday while I was comfortably dog-sitting (i.e. dog beside me, laptop on my lap, pillows arranged for minimal pain/maximum comfort - therefore not moving) Stubby went at it again with the gnawing off his fur. He makes the most disgusting slurping sound when he does it, too. So I threw a roll of scotch tape at him... just near enough to distract him from eating his fur. It seemed to work. And then this morning he throws up... scotch tape. Scotch tape in the vomit.

It's time for refills on most of my meds. It's not a difficult project but it's just ... punching a lot of numbers in my phone and making sure when they read it back it's the right one... making sure I'm only asking for refills for the things that are ready to be refilled, that I have refills on, making sure I'm not duplicating...  you get the idea. I lined my prescription bottles up on my side table in my bedroom and started punching in the numbers... halfway through Little Kitty jumped up on the table and pill bottles went everywhere... in the open drawer, on the floor, etc, etc. I frantically tried to regain my composure before I missed a prompt on the automatic call and got two bottles lined back up ready to read and... THAT BRAT took his little white paw and knocked them off AGAIN! I probably will end up with no pain meds and three times the amount of blood pressure meds than I need. Or maybe... I DO need to increase my blood pressure meds! These cats!

This is my second Summer Olympics as a less-abled person. Last time I was working some, I think. I'm looking forward to watching lots and lots of a random and diverse sporting events over the next two weeks. I've already got my tv / dvr set to record or switch to that channel when there's an event happening that I'd like to see and of course, I'm double checking on the Olympic website as well as the tv guide channel on our satellite to make sure I don't miss anything #reasontolive. There are already some competitions going on. I just finished watching Iraq play Denmark in men's soccer. They battled to a 0-0 tie. Oh, actually, that was just the first half. Beats being tethered to the 24 hour news cycle. Actually, I probably need to have a few people commit to alert me if there's a major news event because I am avoiding the news THAT hard. I just needed a break from all the hate and negativity.

It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years already since Atlanta hosted the Olympics. Austin was 2, Cody was 5- about to turn 6, and Ryan was 9 - turning 10 that fall. I was working for Life of Georgia but I think by that point it was ING. I was in the Stop Loss (or reinsurance) department. Basically reinsurance is when an insurance company insures people to a certain dollar amount and then they pay another insurance company to take on the risk over that amount. This was in health claims so by the time people got to bills that were high enough to come to us, they were pretty sick people with lots of bills. Imagine it as having like a $500,000 deductible. Part of my job was to enter all the medical bills into a spread sheet so that we could calculate if the "deductible" had been met and how much we owed after the first insurance company maxed out. It was interesting but often sad because these were very sick people we were dealing with.... premature babies, gunshot wounds, bad car accidents and cancer patients... just to name a few. But because I had to do a lot of data entry to the spreadsheets, I could carry files home and basically work from home entering the info on the spreadsheet and then saving it to a FLOPPY DISK to take back to the office. That's what I did during part of the Olympics to avoid having to drive through town. I took a couple of days off also. We didn't attend any Olympic events because we were too poor and we had little kids. My kids' dad was working for a company that had responsibility for the fire alarm systems for several of the Olympic venues so he was on call the whole time. I thought I might regret not going to any events but in hindsight, I really don't.

One night during the Olympics our friend Scott called at 2am. It was weird but actually not that weird for him to call late at night as he was in a high-drama relationship and we were sort of the people he leaned on for emotional support. At that point in life I was dealing with an Austin who didn't sleep and I would stay up a lot of nights doing my data entry so that I could relax and hang out with the kids during the day. So Scott calls and says, "where's Robert?"  He was asleep, right beside me. It was then that Scott told me about the bombing that happened in the Olympic Park. Scott didn't want me to panic if Robert was out on a call - knowing that he could be in the thick of the action - and remember, back then we didn't have cellphones... he had a pager but not a "mobile phone" or "car phone" as we called them then. As it turned out, that night he was home safe and sound and sleeping while I ... obviously ... was not. I always thought it was really sweet of Scott to be concerned about us. That's my most vivid memory of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

I do have another vivid memory about those Olympics but it happened many years previous. In 1990, right after Cody was born, his dad was in a car wreck. He wasn't hurt bad but he was hurt badly enough that he was unable to work for several weeks.  I was still on maternity leave from having Cody so we had the rare occasion of both being off work at the same time. We decided to go spend a few days with our friends Doug and Mary who live in Alabama. It was probably our best vacation... Mary's cooking... sitting out on the porch in the evening while Doug played his guitar... cuddling my brand new baby and watching my "big boy" (not quite four) enjoy running around in the fresh country air. While we were there it was announced that Atlanta had won the right to host the Olympics in 1996. So the Atlanta Olympics are framed in context of those two memories.

Mom's results from the CT scan last week showed some spots where she had cancer removed earlier this year. She's be going back in for more tests as soon as they can get her scheduled. Not sure if that has anything to do with the wildly fluctuating blood pressure but the doctor did say yesterday they might have to increase her insulin to help stabilize the blood pressure. I am not sure the connection between blood sugar and blood pressure but truly, your pancreas is responsible for a lot of your body's functions... and she doesn't have much pancreas left. If you would just keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Mom goes back to her Primary Care doctor tomorrow so I've got a little more Oscar sitting in my future but he's been behaving so even if it's a bit uncomfortable, at least it's not stressful.

Sarabeth's Kindergarten Graduation which was like, five minutes ago, right? 

TOMORROW my nieces go back to school! Yes, we do it early here. They've been out since before Memorial Day and have had an action packed Summer. They have only been here ONE time since school got out so I am definitely ready for them to be back here after school. I recorded two new musicals to introduce them to - well, new to them - Hairspray and Oklahoma. They are both such big musical theater fans and I love expanding their knowledge of different shows. Anyways... they're going to both be in middle school this year, grades 6 and 8. So hard to imagine that when I started blogging Jamie was a newborn and Sarabeth was two. How is life passing by so swiftly?

Speaking of life passing by quickly... the game between Iraq and Denmark is over and ended in a tie. The next game is between Brazil and South Africa. Should be intense, right? With Brazil being the home team and I think South Africa is a big soccer playing country... maybe? I just know that the stadium for the Iraq vs. Denmark game was really empty. There were more people on the sidelines than in the stand. Just saw a shot of the stands and they are now FULL! Should be exciting!

I ate my fig this morning and it was fabulous. The photo at the top of this blog was my actual fig that grew on my bush outside my door! No others approaching ripe yet although there are a good many growing. It gives me something to do now that the blackberries are no longer in season. Oh well, that's enough to chew on for today. Pun not intended. It just happens like that sometimes. The Gants are just naturally punny people. Har har! Love and hugs and thanks for stopping by!