Eight Lives Left

I have had a bit of a grumpy week and I’m not sure why. There’s not anything in particular for me to be grumpy about, which makes me wonder if it’s hormones or something like that. I do still have my ovaries which means I still have a cycle, but I have no idea when that cycle is. I never did suffer from much PMS and now that we don’t have periods it’s impossible to figure out what my body is doing when. Or why. All I know is I’m grumpy and out of sorts and I can’t pin it on anything (or anyone).

Grump, grump, grump. Maybe I need a vacation!

Dude. I think it got him right in the face!

I’ve finally updated the Books and Movies for 2008. My descent into the True Crime genre is sadly evident.

I checked my cafeteria plan for medical expenses and discovered to my horror that I’ve got over 1k left in the account. That has never happened to me before. Usually by this time of year I’ve run through the $1500 I set aside for medical stuff. I guess we’ve been healthier than usual this year! (Well, and also we aren’t going to the therapist anymore and we only see our psychiatrist every three or four months.)

Consequently, I have been frantically finding ways to spend that money, because if it’s not gone by the end of the year then the gov’t gets the leftovers. I made an eye appointment for Saturday which is something I’d been meaning to do anyway because I think our prescription is a little off. I imagine I can spend a good three to four hundred dollars on new glasses and prescription sunglasses.

I also scheduled an appointment with our new dentist. We fired the old one for being a moneygrubbing dickwad and haven’t seen the new one yet. I hope the new one isn’t a pain in the ass.

Then I made an appointment for our psychiatrist because we do need meds, and it’s another way to use up $100 or so.

Last but not least, I dug up the paperwork for the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center and started to fill out the questionnaire. This requires an appointment with my cardiologist to get the paperwork about my non-functioning autonomic nervous system and a series of blood pressure recordings in various positions. I might have to see my neurologist as well, although I’m not entirely sure about that yet.

Once it’s all filled out I’ll send it on to Vanderbilt and we’ll see if I either 1) qualify for one of their research studies, or 2) they want to see me just as a patient to figure out what’s going on with me. Or, I suppose, 3) don’t want to see me at all, is also possible. We’ll find out. My choices were Iowa, Ohio or Tennessee. I continue to find it incredibly odd that none of the universities on the East Coast have any sort of autonomic disorder clinics.

I wonder if my cafeteria plan will let me use the money for plane tickets to Nashville. Probably not.

I just bought my ticket for going to Boston in September. The plan is to fly to Boston to see Lea, and then Lea and I will drive down to Connecticut, pick up Delane et al, and then go see Birch and Chorus. I think it will be a marvelous long weekend and I’m really looking forward to it.

The other trip is down to Louisiana in October, meh. It’s only a weekend as well, though, and my sister and the kids will be there, so there will be lots of distractions for the parental units.

These will be the last trips of the year since it’s the parental units’ turn to come up for Christmas. I’m really pretty much out of vacation already except for four days, so I’ll just have to be very very good. I get four weeks of vacation at 10 years. I finish my 8th year in December. One more year to go!

In other news, my oven got fixed yesterday which means we can start cooking again. Now I just have to get the toilets looked at and I’ll be done. I should email the property manager. I have a couple different things to ask her about.

The condo is still perfect. The kitties are doing well. Everything is copacetic in Idaho. It seems that codexed.com (the Diary-X replacement) is finally up and running, although by no means fully functional. It’s possible to get a journal there, but things like comments and password protection still haven’t been implemented. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t know if the Diary-X community can ever be brought back. Everyone’s scattered and it took them over three years to get the replacement site up. So it goes.