This is not my usual kind of blog but I knew this was a time to let my friends know I need their help!!!!  I will be getting up at 3 a.m. tonight to take my father to Indiana to the hospital to have his spinal surgery at 9 a.m. tomorrow (Monday, Nov. 12th).  As you probably remember he was to have this surgery earlier but he got as far as the operating room and had heart problems so it had to be rescheduled. He has gone through the heart tests and hopefully he is strong enough to withstand whatever needs to be done.

Please keep him in your prayers tomorrow not only that he will come through the surgery with flying colors but that he will recover quickly and without too much pain.
Amy is staying back to take care of Callie and "business" but I will be staying in close touch with her as I don't know how long I will need to stay.

Thank you all for all of your past thoughts and prayers when he was to have the surgery before....just remember us again please!!!!!  We love you all.......

Being the good mother that I am...LOL...I felt it my maternal duty to try to offer some advice to my daughter for the crappy day she has had today (Tuesday, Sept. 18th).  That advice being......remember sweetie...."TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST BUT TOUGH PEOPLE ALWAYS DO"!!!! Now I am sure she is a little sick of me telling her this for about the umpteenth time in the last couple of years but hey what do you say to someone who like her mother sometimes feels she is "Job" out of the Bible and just waiting for the locusts to take up residence, who thinks Murphy's Law should have been named "The Williams-Oxford Theory" or who feels like "Pigpen" out of the Charlie Brown cartoons that always has a black cloud over the top of him...hopefully OURS is JUST a black cloud of despair and not like Pigpen's cloud made out of dirt and dust because he doesn't like to bathe...LOL  Actually if you know Amy very well, you know she is a "priss pot" and enjoys her bath and showers, her "Bath and Body Works" and don't forget keeping that lipstick and powder on.  This is the same gal that a few minutes after childbirth would not let us take pictures of her and Callie until she ran (or shall I say hobbled and held herself...LOL) to the hospital bathroom to spray cologne, touch up the ends of the hair with an already plugged in curling iron and dab the powder puff and lipstick on....LOL 

Well, the day started fair I guess for her. She took Callie to school after a search for the car keys (nothing really new there....) and was thrilled (or shall I just say "happy") to be able to come home and do laundry all day. You wonder why she would be "happy" about that???  Well, she has not had a working washer and dryer in her rent house since she moved in in April and has had to come to my house with all of her laundry since then but the landlord finally called and said he would be there yesterday to hook it up (the hook-ups were in the basement now but with her "bum" knee she had trouble making the steps...). He spent the afternoon yesterday getting it put in and left about 6 p.m.  and she couldn't wait to wash everything she could get her hands on so they would all be folded while they were warm and hung before the many wrinkles set in while transporting in my car from my house. (If you have seen wrinkles on Amy or Callie since April, then this is the reason why...LOL)

When she returned from taking Callie to school, she put her first load in and settled down to the computer to work on "SI Yellow Ribbon" files. In a few minutes she hears a loud noise and as she runs to the kitchen area, water is spraying everywhere!!!!!  She pulls out the washer and tries her best to stop it but the kitchen is already getting flooded and the spray is hitting all over the kitchen. The valve is tightened so tight from the wrench he used, she calls the landlord to ask where she can shut the water off. He told her where in the basement and of course the battery is almost dead in the flashlight....many of you know how terrified Amy is of dark basements (except for storms when she LOVES them!!!) but she is so freaked she runs down the stairs only to have the light not work in the basement so with her dim flashlight she gets the valve turned off. BUT the kitchen....what a mess and she uses every towel, washrag and dishtowel she has to try to soak up what has covered the floor.  Her cell phone rings in the other room and when she gets there it goes dead after forgetting to charge it last night and in her return to try to mop up the floor she slips and falls on the kitchen floor and out of all the body parts she could have hit she came down on her bad knee (you know the one she is supposed to have already "replaced" ..the one the surgeon said ONE blow to it could totally shatter it where she would not be able to use it until after the surgery......)  She settles down to the chair to try to rest and get back to "work"......The dog needs to go out so she limps to the door with the leash and when she bends down to put it on, up comes his paw with a slap across her face thus a nice cut (guess she wasn't FAST enough for him to do his "job" cause as he gets to the front door, some of his "job" is already poking out....LOL  Talk about some fast moving as he literally pulls her down the steps and she looks down and sees she still has her nightgown on and several buttons in strategic places have unbuttoned in the fall and scramble to get the dog out... (Amy has shown the neighbors now the meaning of a "front' moon....LOL)  She has already shown Route 13 a complete "back" moon recently in a fall when she lost her pants but hey that is a whole another blog...LMAO!!!!

Well, she gets the dog in, gets settled back in and she decides to check her balance of her checking account.  Whoops, I forgot to tell her about a time I used her debit card and seems I overdrew her and the charges were ridiculous that was tacked on especially hitting a weekend.  Sadly enough I did not have the money to give her to make it all up and I felt like a heel but she said not to worry as she would try to make up the money selling on ebay. I thought about selling my kidney to help her out since she has had it so rough all the way around with Jamal not paying her child support but then I remembered I had only ONE working kidney since my accident and I thought I might need it in my old age anda no one would want a "leaky" one anyway....LOL

She gets MORE bad news or is it GOOD news!!!!  Jamal has not called or had any contact with Callie for over a week even though she has begged and pleaded to talk to him on his voice mail over and over and Amy had also done the same along with text messaging him to pay for the magazine he ordered from Callie from school as it was due and to at least "talk" to her for a minute if nothing else.  She finds out WHAT state he is in and some very juicy and tasy info which I cannot indulge but as the "ex-mother-in-law (you know they are supposed to be mean and vindictive anyway....LOL_) I say " a tooth for a tooth and a "BALL FOR A BALL"....sorry no pun intended or maybe it was....at least some of you know what i mean..LOL  Let's all keep our fingers crossed that this little lead pans out and a little more child support other than TWO checks made by his dad at the court house since January comes out of it!!!!!  : )

Well, besides finding out that Jamal is telling people he is writing bad checks so that they should come after Amy instead of him since she is also on the checks (he stole "joint' checks and was using them from when they were married...),  seeing HER personal phone number around town on bad checks written in the corner and seeing in print from the court house he got out of his five felony charges with just fines and probation, the day went pretty well past then I guess.

She actually got a "SI Yellow Ribbon" newsletter done and sent out to thousands on her mailing list, she answered tons of "yellow ribbon" emails, she met a woman from out of town at the headquarters who gave her the most beautiful "yellow ribbon-flag" throw that was handmade to hang in our headquarters, she got the Brownie note done to send out to all the kids tomorrow, the dog got his nails cut and his ears cleaned without biting the shop owner and Callie did not get a warning for talking at school and had made all A's, it was not such an awful day after all.  I am here and we are having a good time visiting and laughing....(we can find humor in MOST things....LOL) and my husband brought us a marked down whole chicken from Kroger to eat for supper so we didn't have to cook....awwwww LIFE IS GOOD!!!!!     

This blog will probably date me badly but for you "young-uns' who don't know who Sophia Loren is, in my day she was a movie star.....Italian, dark eyes, dark hair, very sexy with a figure most women would kill for.....Well, on to my story about this....

It was my very first visit to the plastic surgeon after the fire and I was dreading it so bad. I had lost most of the "looks" of my face besides the hair and eyebrows and to me I looked like a red, swollen hunk of hamburger meat in the mirror. When I first saw him, he looked like a movie star....so young and very nice looking and I felt so awful the way I looked even though I knew it didn't matter to him and it was just a job.

He did everything he could to make me comfortable with him knowing I am sure that "I' knew I was in for a lot of pain from him from all the many, many injections of collagen I would be taking in my lips, cheeks, eyes area, etc. He tried to joke but one of the first things he asked me was what was my "expectations for what he could do for me?"...."what did I want to look like in the long run"?

I laughed and told him I just wanted to look like Sophia Loren so just go ahead and do what he needed to do with all those needles...LOL  He got a very determined look on his face at that time.....started looking me slowly up from the tip of my toes all the way to the top of my head before he replied.... "I might be able to do something with your face but not so sure about the body".....you see, I have always been what you called a little "plus-sized" and I had to burst into laughter at the thought he could even work a "miracle" to give me the curvy body she had....Needless to say, we became big buddies that day and I was able to withstand all of the pain he dealt me as he injected injection after injection of collagen week after week into my face to mold it....

You see I was "hip" back them before all of the collagen facelifts and plastic surgery frenzy. You might say I am the "grandma" of all collagen as my face is made up of it and someday I might just crumble like a statue.....LOL  Oh well, he didn't make me look like Sophia Loren but he did a heck of a job from turning me into hamburger meat into the looks of a real person.....I may not be beautiful but hey at least i now HAVE a face!!!!!.....LOL

After my accident (you can read all about it in my first blog entry), I had lost almost all of my hair from the fire, the trauma of all that had happened and the venom of the spider which I was highly allergic to.  I decided after months of being bedfast, I would purchase a nice wig to go out in.....

I went from coming home on a stretcher, to a wheelchair, to a walker, four-legged cane, regular cane and eventually nothing thank God but this incident happened on one of my first trips out by myself driving while I was still using a walker to get around.

Before the accident, I was very, very active as a "professional volunteer" (my husband always said I was "allergic' to a "paid" job...LOL). I was a room mother at school, PTO President, sponsor of the school newspaper, chairman of our town's three day festival, on the chamber of commerce, 4-H leader, jr. women's club, etc. I was used to taking fliers or posters around before I got sick advertising events. After all these months I was itching to do something productive and decided I was going to drive myself, taking Amy with me, who was starting fifth grade and take some fliers to area businesses to advertise an event coming up. I wanted NO help against the advice of my family, friends and doctors....LOL

I put on my wig, got my walker and fliers, drove the car with Amy by my side and parked on busy Route 13 in Harrisburg. I got out on the busy street very, very slowly and set my walker up fumbling around with my keys, the fliers, etc. About that time, three huge semis whooshed by ninety to nothing, lifting my wig right off my head and taking it in one of the wheels of the trucks as they headed for the intersection and a red light....

Well, I had paid a LOT for that nice wig and I was NOT about to lose it besides having a bald head in downtown Harrisburg and I told Amy to run while the trucks were stopped and get it...she was laughing too hard so I lit out with my walker, hobbling and screaming at the top of my lungs making it to the intersection before the light changed...I grabbed the wig from the wheel of the truck, stuck the dirty, filthy thing back on my head and started back towards the car. At that time, the tv station was there on Route 13 and some of their men were testing their cameras for the evening news outside....I looked and them and yelled...."if you taped that and have ANY intention of using it on the evening news, DON'T....I can sue you just like I can the hospital that made me this way!!!"  LOL  Needless to say, this has became a favorite story of many who have heard it and I learned a valuable lesson.....wigs do not ALWAYS stay on by themselves...you might need to use some adhesive tape or something!!!!  LOL 

This is my very first blog on my new myspace page. Amy K. is very anxious to hear my funny stories so this first one is dedicated to her.....

Sometimes you just HAVE to find the good in the bad, the positive in the negative or the laughter in the pain....if you don't you will go crazy or dry up to be a fat, miserable old lady...instead I have found the humor in most situations and I have instead grown up to be a fat, Jolly old lady...LOL Well this is my first story to go along with something that happened to me over seventeen years ago......

I was bitten by a poisonous brown recluse spider...mind you I didn't know at the time. I had brought home a huge bag of kitty litter from Sam's warehouse carrying it into the house and thought that I had just pulled a muscle in the top of my leg when the pain shot through quickly. Long story short, I got very, very ill by the next day and an ambulance was called...I had symptoms of the flu, couldn't breathe and they thought my severe leg pain was still a pulled muscle so they put a heating pad on it and put me to bed. I lapsed into a coma and by the next day when my blood pressure dropped to 60/40 lifeflight was called and I was transported to an Evansville hospital where they immediately thought I was having gall bladder trouble and took me into surgery and took out my gall bladder and appendix in a later deemed unnecessary surgery. Still they had not discovered the huge hole in my leg that was rotting away from the bite of the spider but when my father asked but what was wrong with my leg, upon checking, they were horrified. They sent the tissure off to Vanderbuilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee who determined it was the bite of the brown recluse and sent the anti-venom. By this time, I was not only on total life support but the venom from putting the heating pad on the bite instead of coldness, caused my fingernails to all fall out and the whites of my eyes to turn orange. I was in very critical condition but I was allergic to the anti-venom which caused me to get worse. By this time, I had been bitten on a Tues. and this was a Friday the first part of March. I lay like this until almost the end of the month when they decided it very necessary to put a trach in my neck so I was supposed to have a simple fifteen minute surgery.  However, they failed to take me off the bed crate mattress and they poured acetone all over my face to remove bandage residue and failed to put the bottle of acetone up but left it on the stand next to my bed. When the doctor plugged up the cautherizing machine to seal my neck, a spark hit the bottle of acetone and the dripping bed of acetone and three foot flames came up from the bed and several nurses got burned but I got severe second and third degree burns on my neck and face...I lost most of my hair, my eyebrows and the tubing going in from my mouth to my lungs caught on fire also.
Everyone in the waiting room of the hospital was told it was just a fire drill when the three fire trucks drove up and they sealed the whole operating room area for fear it would all explode but three hours later, after my parents bugged and bugged the staff they called them into an office with all the execs of the hospital and told them three had been an accident....the doctor came strolling in and said..."don't worry about the fire, she was dying anyway from the spider bite". Needless to say, I am still HERE but the doctor is still not THERE!!!!  LOL

I was to be lifeflighted AGAIN by helicopter to a burn unit in Indianapolis but while loading me on the stretcher they dropped me on the way to the helicopter and split out the huge incision from the bottom of my neck down all the way because the staples had not been reinforced and they knocked several many teeth out from the tubing getting tangled. I had a 5 percent chance my family was told of making it alive to the next hospital as I had second and third degree burns over the top third of my body, I was bleeding profusely from the mouth and all down the surgery area on my stomach from the previous surgery, my lungs had collapsed and my kidneys had collapsed...Boy, was I in bad shape!!!!!!  Thank God I was still in a coma.... 

I could go on and on with THIS story but I will go on just to say I was in a coma for about three months, after debreeding the spider bite and letting it go so long making the whole top of my leg the size of a platter all the way to the bone completely gone and paralyzed from the chest down, I came back from THAT hospital on a stetcher and told I would probably never walk again (but my family thought that was better than the first diagnosis when they wanted to amputate the leg and they wouldn't let them) and ended back up in a DIFFERENT Evansville, Ind. hospital for tons of rehabilitation.   My mom and dad and even Amy, who was in fourth grade at the time but her wonderful teacher let her come to be with US, never left my side through it all but my mom, who was diabetic ended up not taking care of HERSELF staying in the hotel across from the hospital in Indianapolis and ended up after that totally bedfast at home with my dad taking care of her in one bedroom and me in the other one. You see they wanted at the hospital to put me in a nursing home to recover but my dad wouldn't have it....so he ended up having me in one bedroom and mom in the other bedroom, taking me to therapy everyday at the hospital in the wheelchair and mom in the afternoon...changing all of my bandages three times a day and changing moms on her feet everyday. Poor dad met himself coming and going cooking and taking care of us and Amy at her age but while I was in the hospital in a coma, my husband had a heart attack and was sent to the same hospital I had been caught on fire and while we BOTH were in, his dad committed suicide in Florida so they let him out for the funeral. He was not able to care for me so that is why my dad stepped up.  Plus Amy learned how, bless her heart, to change bed pans, change bandages and work on me regaining feeling in my hands by holding a fork, using clay and using large rubber bands. What I had taught HER as a child to eat with utensils, learn to talk correctly and help give baths, the roles were reversed. My dad would walk me up and down his hallway with my feet on his shoes like an attached rag dog to help me walk. Long story short here....(you know I can never tell a LITTLE story...LOL)....my husband lost his job and health insurance because of his heart and the stress from all of this, my mom lost both legs, her eyesight, we had to give her daily kidney dialysis at home for about six hours and she later died at the young age of 62, just a few years later, Amy was later diagnosed with lupus which made her very, very sick and well my dad just seemed to "survive" through it all knowing he HAD to to take care of all of us.   You asked what was HUMOROUS through all of us....well anyone that knows our family knows we follow Murphy's law to the tee with "anything that CAN happen, WILL happen so we have had to learn to go with the flow, roll with the punches and smile a little or end up watching for the little white coats to take us to the rubber room when we lost our minds.

First story.....My three worst fears in life was always...being bitten by a poisonous spider, being burned in a fire and having my throat cut. In less of a month, I had all three done to me....I began to feel like Job in the Bible and was just waiting for the locusts to come.....

Well, if nothing else, I found that being in a coma is a good diet!!!!  Probably the best I had ever been on and I had tried them all....  I lost over 80 pounds while I was "out' and found out the also "time flies when you are in a coma"!!!  LOL  Well, I still would not want anyone to try this diet at home though....I think I may just stick to "Weight Watchers" the next time... : )

While I was at mom and dads after the accident recuperating and was still paralyzed, my girlfriend called and said I was all over the grocery store stands in a national tabloid...National Enquirer...Weekly World News, etc. Tellling her to grab one and bring it by, I was feeling a little proud of myself and gloating about probably being the only one in this area that had ever been in a "scandal sheet'...LOL  When she gave it to me...I had made the front headlines...."Woman burst into flames on Operating Room Table"....I turned to the story and I was between the story of a "man who married a head of lettuce" and a "man who cut his head off while shaving"...needless to say....I became "deflated" really quick when I thought no one will believe this all happened now anyway....after all they made it sound like I was just one of this "combustible" people that just laid down and caught on fire...well they had the name right, the town right AND the hospital right so we soon had to change our phone number for the number of cranks and weirdos that called to tell me to stay away from them with my "flames"....Oh boy....!!!!!!  LOL

Well, this is just my first story in this series...stay tuned....

Aren't you sorry you asked for this now Amy K and Accer???  LOL