Archive for December, 2008

It’s A Miracle!

December 11, 2008 at 5:29 am · Filed under 500th post, blogging

Tonight I am writing my 500th “Life is RANTastic” post. This, my friends, is nothing short of a miracle because (as you may have guessed from any of the 499 previous posts I’ve written), I can be somewhat fickle with my interests. This is the reason I could never ever get a tattoo.

One day I am a belly dancer named Jesenia and the next a poker champion winning small fortunes by bluffing poker fish named OneBall. At one time I thought I wanted to be an A-List blogger who hobnobbed with the likes of Paris Hilton and then Technorati taught me an awful lesson and I learned to be content with my D list ranking. It’s quality, not quantity, people.

Since I started this blog, I’ve become an aquarium expert who made the mistake of putting a fun fair goldfish into her established tank and killed a whole lotta fish and now runs empty fish tanks as conversation pieces. I’ve lost a dog. I’ve gained a cat. I’ve cheered my kids on their successes and wept along with their failures. I’ve written and scrapped two different books and I’ve discovered I could be an excellent woodworker if only I had more patience.

Through tragedies and triumphs, panic, pain and pride and from snarky to sciatica, I have spilled my soul to anyone who was willing to come here and read about it and in doing so, have made the friendships of a lot of bloggy buddies that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. You all know who you are. I hope you do anyway. You should because I’m sure I told ya!!!!

Anyway, I have to get going because in the morning I am having surgery on my back and I can’t eat or drink anything after midnight. If I stay up, I know I will :)

Thank you all for sharing not only my 500 posts with me, but my life as well. I may be The Rock Chick, but my readers are the ones who really rock.

Love you all!

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Jailhouse Rock

December 10, 2008 at 5:53 am · Filed under Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, governor, politics

Sometimes I miss the good old days. You know those long lost days, when corrupt politicians weren’t wiretapped and overheard trying to sell open Senate seats, they were intelligent enough to meet in parks and have secret meetings hiding themselves behind opened newspapers and whispering the details of their nefarious plots.

Can you believe this scandal with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich?

I think everyone knew something was coming because for several years he’s been rumored to be the infamous “Public Official A” in a federal investigation into corruption in the State of Illinois and this alias was confirmed earlier this year. (Before you ask, I have no idea as to the identities of B-Z.)

But trying to sell Obama’s open Senate seat? Attempting to shake down the CEO of Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital for campaign contributions in exchange for $8 million in healthcare funding? Calling the President Elect a “bleep” because he won’t appoint Blagojevich’s corrupt ass to the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services? Complaining that he only makes $172,000 a year? Poor baby. Why idiot would anyone choose public service if lots of money were their main objective?

As a citizen of Illinois, I would like to give Gov. Blagojevich something. I’d be more than happy to provide this dumbass, greedy bleeping jerk with free high security government housing for say, oh, 20-30 years. In the form of a cell.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald commented that this conduct would make “lincoln turn over in his grave.” I think this behavior would even make Nixon turn over in his, too.

The audacity, I tell ya. Don’t drop the soap, Blago. “Jailhouse Rock” has more than one meaning, you know.

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Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen

December 8, 2008 at 6:15 pm · Filed under Sweet Sixteen, birthday

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Ice, Ice, Baby

December 7, 2008 at 6:40 am · Filed under Dodge Durango, accident, roll over

It’s late Saturday night/Sunday morning and I can’t sleep. In my last post, I described how I thought 2008 was the worst year ever and how I couldn’t wait for it to be 2009. I need to turn over a fresh page on the calendar year to break this cycle of Murphy’s law my family is experiencing. This year has been too much and with only three weeks left, an end doesn’t seem to be in sight.

Early this morning, I got a phone call. It’s not a phone call any mother ever wants to hear. It was from a paramedic and my daughter had been involved in a serious roll over accident on her way snowboarding early this morning. It appeared that she hadn’t done anything wrong, she just hit black ice and lost complete control of our Dodge Durango. When she hit the guardrail, the momentum of the crash was enough to flip them over it somehow and the vehicle not only flipped forward over the guardrail, it rolled over twice down an embankment and landed in a creek.

Black Ice, in case you don’t know, is frozen ice with many air bubble strapped inside, making it transparent. It takes on the color of the material that it’s on and you can’t see it.

My baby hit Ice, Ice, Baby and lost control of the car. Miraculously, she and her three passengers were okay. They all walked away from this accident. The worst injury was a couple of stitches in the front seat passenger’s forehead.

It was a long drive to the hospital. She was over 100 miles away and it seemed to take forever to get there and as I drove I couldn’t stop thinking about what I could have possibly done to have all of these things happen to my family in such a short period of time. As I drove, it dawned on me that sometimes bad things happen to good people and someone was certainly watching out for my daughter and her friends today.

I need to start looking at the glass as half full instead of half empty.

Tonight I am thanking God for miracles and for the safety of my daughter and her friends. My car, though, (yes, the one I just bought) didn’t survive, but I think it’s sheer massiveness helped save my baby and for that I’m extremely grateful.


Tell those you love how you feel! Do it now!

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Doctor, Doctor

December 4, 2008 at 5:43 am · Filed under herniated disc, open discectomy, sciatica, urinary tract infection

Gimme the news.

I gotta bad case of …sciatica blues

Warning: This post contains whining and possibly too much information. Sometimes you just gotta vent, you know?

I’m officially nominating 2008 as the worst year ever. I swear, since the first day of January, this calendar year has been nothing but dramas and traumas.

The latest incident is the excruciating sciatica pain caused by a herniated disc that I’ve been plagued with for the past 7 weeks. Despite two epidural steroid injections, oral steroids, anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, a medication for nerve pain and Vicodin, no pill seems to cure my ills. I gotta bad case of sciatica blues.

I’ve been seeing a spine specialist and on Monday I had a follow up visit with him. He felt my condition was worsening and wanted me to see a neurosurgeon… pronto. He made a call to one of his colleagues and got me in yesterday.

After reviewing my MRI, poking, prodding and inflicting more pain than I thought possible, the neurosurgeon felt strongly that I should have a procedure called an Open Discectomy. This is a surgery performed to remove part of the damaged disc in my spine which will relieve the compression on the L5 nerve bundle, which is what is causing my pain.
Since I was ready to perform the operation myself, I agreed and surgery is scheduled for next Thursday. I’m looking forward to relief from this pain and from non-stop doctor visits, but I’m scared to death of anesthesia, surgery and hospital stays. It’s making me very nervous.

Of course,that can’t be the end of my story, right? I really thought I was feeling bad enough, but obviously whoever is in charge of these things decided that wasn’t the case. This morning I woke up with a fever, the chills and an absolute beast of a urinary tract infection.

WTF?

You know, it’s bad enough to have to try to get to a doctor visit with sciatica pain, but combine that with a urinary tract infection and you’ll understand why I was practically screaming in the parking lot while attempting to get into the doctor’s office. Besides being physically broken down, I thought I was going to have some kind of mental breakdown as well. By the time I got into the doctor’s office, not only was I screaming out loud, I was crying out loud, too.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

After two doses of antibiotics and some other pill that turned my pee bright orange, the urinary tract infection is feeling a little better, which is good, because I don’t think it’s possible to feel any worse than I did earlier in the day.

I am just wiped and ready to put this year, orange pee and the sciatica blues behind me. Is it 2009 yet?

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Shake, Shake, Shake-uh-Shake It!

December 1, 2008 at 6:02 pm · Filed under BEHIV, Black Friday, Chicago, Christmas Tree, Thanksgiving, World AIDS Day, Worldvision, iPhone, snow

I hope that everyone as a wonderful Thanksgiving. I did! The family came over and we enjoyed the full traditional thanksgiving dinner…mouthwatering turkey dripping in homemade gravy, freshly whipped mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing and sweet potatoes caked in even sweeter melted marshmallows. Add some sides of applesauce, cranberry sauce, cucumber salad and broccoli smothered in cheese and you’ll know why I’ve also been enjoying the leftovers most of the weekend, too. It gets me all aflutter!

Speaking of aflutter, if one can be in love with a thing, I am…my early Christmas present, an iPhone! I have to say, it’s my coolest toy since I got my iMac. There are just tons of apps that make it do all kinds of things and I’ve also discovered Scrabble and Yahtzee games that I can play on my phone. The best part? To roll the dice to shuffle your tiles, all you have to do it shake the phone. That’s right…shake, shake, shake, shake, uh shake it!

Speaking of shaking, Hysteria Lane was blanketed with several inches of snow overnight. UGH. I dislike winter, scraping snow off my car, slipping on ice and shivering in my shoes. I need one of those countdown clocks counting down the days ‘til summer! There’s probably an iPhone app for that!

This weekend was also the countdown until Christmas. Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? I haven’t. I’m not one of those Black Friday shoppers. Forget it. There is nothing in Wal-Mart I am willing to freeze my ass off standing in line for hours and risk getting trampled to death to get. I’d rather wait until the last minute than deal with that mess. But, I did put up the Christmas tree that I got on clearance last year. I like to shake things up a bit, so I didn’t go with the traditional green tree. My tree is copper colored and this picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s so beautiful in person, it gives me chills!

Today is also World AIDS Day and HIV and the AIDS virus need to be shaken out of our lives. As most of you know, my brother passed away from he AIDS virus back in 1994. He likely contracted it before anyone had even heard about it and I wouldn’t wish that hell on anyone. Today 33 million people are living with HIV and AIDS took the lives of 2.1 million people including 330,000 children in 2007 alone. Worldvision has tons of information on AIDS, including ways you can help. In the Chicago area, there is a wonderful organization called BEHIV, whose dedication and assistance helped my family get through one of it’s toughest times. If you are in a position to help out with either of these organizations, please do.

Until next time, keep shakin’ it up everybody!

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