Lesson Learned

  These past few weeks have turned out to be quite busy for us. I've still been loving my new job and have been trying to make sure I'm doing everything right and get to know all my new coworkers. I have thus gained one nickname, Casper, of which I'm sure all my friends and coworkers alike will love. I have also been very thankful that though I now work five days a week (gasp, I know, I know, I have been spoiled these last two years by working a "full" week of three days), I was able to take off to Mississippi where my mom was having surgery. My mom is quite the rockstar and is doing very well in her recovery. When I returned on Monday, many of my coworkers asked me how my mom was doing and I had really only just met them a month earlier!

 

  I now am trying to lay low as I contracted strep over the worst possible weekend to contract anything. Yes, poor Patrick was celebrating his birthday on Friday and his wonderful parents were in town for the weekend and we had so much planned, yet I got sick. I came home after work on Friday and slept for about 3-4 hours with a fever of 99.4. I realized that was why I had been freezing all day long even though I was scrubbed in at work. (I'm sure all the doctors were puzzled why I was trying to stay up under the lights when you usually hate to be under them!) I was able to join Pat and his parents for dinner at Bones (yum), but wasn't really able to enjoy much of it. The rest of the weekend, I froze everyone out as I battled with fevers up to 102.7. Yeah, probably should have gone to the clinic at that point, but I'm a stubborn nurse. Anyways, I went to the doc yesterday and got some medication to hopefully perk up my lousy self, but y'all even my gums hurt! My dad said, "Well, you did wait a little long there so of course you're going to hurt." Awesome. Pat gets to make me soup tonight and I know he is just super excited.

  Wrigley is doing agility, but he isn't the star student in the class. There's another corgi in the class and she is six months old and she is running all over the jumps and through the tunnels back and forth and back and forth and Wrigley just looks at me. It's a bit ridiculous. I was looking online yesterday to see how much some at home equipment would be and yeah, I'm not buying a tunnel for 400 bucks. Little man will just have to deal with the tunnel at the class. I am beginning to think that he might be too much of a mama's boy because he gets scared with everything or he is just too smart and wants to see me do everything before he does it. I mean, it's pretty bad when the whole class is cheering for your dog when he runs through the tunnel once or jumps once. UGH! We shall keep trying. I've got to get him to lose weight somehow (the walks were helping before I developed tendonitis) or my vet is going to kill me. Wrigley is almost 40 pounds!! What a piggy!! He dwarfs the female corgi who is in our class and the one who is five years old in the class after ours. It's just ridiculous!

  I'm very thankful (selfishly) that none of my family or friends were hurt in last week's tornadoes that swept across the Southeast. Many of them have been without power and have still been helping others in their towns. It's unbelievable to see footage of the tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and the other surrounding towns. I mean, people found debris from Alabama in Georgia. Please, help if you can! Prayers are welcome for sure!

From: http://toomers-for-tuscaloosa.webs.com/

As of Late

  Sunday afternoon before the park, I dropped Patrick off at the airport to fly to a client in Nova Scotia. Yeah, have fun with that, babe! Wriggles and I were left all alone for two nights, but unfortunately for the both of us, I ended up having some weird flu-like virus for 24 hours. I woke up Monday morning at 4am in a cold sweat just burning up. I should have called out from work then, but delirious as I was, I called to see if they were pushing anyone back (no) and decided I could brave it out if I slept until 5:45. Nope, how wrong I was! When I woke up then, I finally took my temperature and it was a rockin' 99.7 (not terrible, but my temp is usually on the lower end of the spectrum so I felt like I was in a sauna). My lymph nodes were sore and swollen, but no white dots on the back of my throat so no strep. Ugh, my whole body was aching, so I called the hospital and called out--"unexcused" but I'm not going to go in caring for a full patient load like this.
  I had already woken Wrigs up and taken him outside by the time that I decided walking around was not on my agenda, so to his dismay, I closed him off in the kitchen and proceeded to crash until 11am. I made it as far as the couch for the rest of the day until I went to the doctor to make sure I didn't have the flu (no, thank goodness, but it sucks when they don't really have answers for you) and picked up some hot and sour soup from our local Chinese restaurant and laid back down on the couch.
  Thankfully, Tuesday I was feeling back to normal and didn't heed the doctor's advice to not go back to work until after Wednesday, but yesterday was easy and I'm glad I went in. As much as I enjoy not working for the most part, I was going to go crazy if I didn't go into work yesterday for some reason.
  The only bad thing was the timing of me being sick because I hadn't gone to the grocery store so I didn't have as much orange juice as I wanted and Patrick was in freakin' Canada until Tuesday afternoon, therefore, I was all on my own. Even when Patrick came back, he was worthless as he hadn't been able to sleep very much at all and I ordered him to go to bed at 5:45pm before Wrigs' puppy class. He said, "Call me on your way home and I'll put the pizza on," but all I got was his voicemail twice. Needless to say, I went back out in the rain to pick up some fast food for dinner while the hubs slept. He woke up at 9ish when I was going to bed and I can't even remember if he said anything that actually made sense, but probably not. Poor thing was exhausted. Neither he nor I function well without adequate hours of sleep.
  Wrigley passed his Intermediate class at Petsmart and I think we will enroll him in the Advanced class before we start him in agility. I have found a place here that started a beginner's class on February 1, but I am not sure how my schedule will be since I will be starting a new job in March!! Speaking of agility, you have to check out this article my breeder found. I absolutely think it's the most adorable thing ever!!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352874/Louie-pig-thinks-hes-dog-earns-place-CANINE-display-team.html

  Sorry for the rambling post. I am trying to work up the motivation for a couple of soups we have tried over the last couple of weeks. I'll try to post them later!!