Tuesday, November 27, 2012

good and bad at the mountain top

Looks like it’s been a week since anything was added out here to the blog.  If I had been a Neanderthal woman living thousands of years ago (or ever how long people in various monkey-like forms have walked this planet), my cave walls probably wouldn’t have any drawings on them. Maybe that is the real source of my communication deficiencies – I just haven’t evolved yet. I have plenty of company though…many people are still like animals in one way or another. 



Things have been very hectic this past week. My survey is closing tonight!!!! I have enough data so now I leap into the next phase of my study. That is VERY good news. A friend (also working on her dissertation) said her chairwoman told her that once the data is collected, you have peaked the dissertation mountain. It should all be downhill from here on out. Dear God – please make that true!! Then again, she is doing a qualitative study and mine is quantitative. These are completely different methods, so what she said might only apply to qualitative studies. I’d ask my chairman but he doesn’t want to hear from me unless it’s something important (at least that is the impression he gives).



Other good news is that the four-day holiday weekend provided spare time to clean my house. It’s cleaner right now than it’s been since July 2008 when I started back to school. It’s W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L when the house is not wrecked, and so much nicer to be home when there isn’t a mess needing attention everywhere I look. With the music room (aka the living room) clean, I’ve been playing piano every evening. I mostly avoided the room for years because everything in it reminded me that work needed to be done.  Here are photos since it may never look like this again in my lifetime.

 
 


Bad news: my alcoholic brother is bad off again. I’ll drive over and try to visit him this weekend. Even a simple 30-minute visit is very complicated. It’s hard to find him awake and sober.  Also, Someone’s daughter got in trouble this past weekend for speeding and drinking, and will be spending some time in jail (maybe rehab too…but jail is mandatory). Someone is very upset about it, but jail might get her attention. Then again, jail time had no impact on my brother other than to keep him out of trouble for a few months at a time.

Other bad news is that on Saturday, poor Gracie had a severe allergic reaction. We weren’t sure what was wrong (she was not herself) and by late Saturday night, I started to suspect she was poisoned or allergic to something. Her head and neck swelled, we could see hives under her fur (really weird looking), she was wheezing, coughing, and shivering. At 2:00 AM Sunday morning, I thought she might not make it through the night so we drove her to the nearest emergency vet clinic and they gave her shots of Benedryl and steroid that improved her remarkably.  Sunday night, she started nasty gastro issues, so I took her to our vet Monday morning. They kept her for the day and gave her an IV and more steroids. She is much better today, but still scratching. The vet said she counted 15 bee stings before she stopped counting them - she has many more than that.  Someone is going to look for the bee’s nest this afternoon. I hope he finds it before Gracie gets into it again.



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