Yes, Believe It or Not, Still Alive and Kicking!!!

Rumors of my death are highly exaggerated...

Nope. Not dead (thank God!).

Newly employed, as of October 1, working for my former boss from three jobs ago. I have a new title - Operations Manager. I do lots of things - manage the office, create PowerPoints and spreadsheets, answer the phones, order supplies, work with vendors, work with customers. I guess I do a little of everything, and I'm hoping to make myself indispensable so I won't ever get laid off again.

Of course, when I win enough in the lottery not to have to work again, then they can lay me off.

So what's new in my life?

Hmmm...

* I have a beautiful new baby great niece who was born on 10/8. She weighed 6 lbs, 11 oz, and was 20-1/4" long. She's just beautiful and will hereby be referred to as "my beautiful great niece G." She's not mine so I won't post pictures of her but suffice it to say that you've never seen as beautiful a baby girl as her, except her cousin, my other beautiful great niece E.

* My mom had some surgery late last week, and we had a minor scare today - she had a stent put in her femoral artery and once she came home she noticed her ankles were swelling. We were a bit worried about the possibility of a clot but after a doctor's visit and an ultrasound/bilateral venous Doppler, the verdict is:  NO CLOTS.  Just a lot of fluid in her tissues from the IV fluids they were giving her in the hospital.  YAY!  Mom's okay!

* Hubby's radiation treatments are over. He's gone to two follow up appointments, one at the urologist's office and one at the cancer center. Neither were conclusive because neither did blood work - apparently you don't do that for at least a couple/few months after the radiation is done.  In fact, although they're doing some bloodwork in November, we should really wait until next May's test results to shout "We're cancer-free!" from the rooftops.

It's not as bad as it sounds. They all assured us that he'd be fine, that we'd be happy with the lower PSA numbers, but apparently doing the bloodwork too soon won't give us the real picture. His body is still busy fighting the radiation.

I've seen a vast improvement in some of the symptoms - he's not falling asleep at 8pm, as soon as his head hits the pillow, like he was doing after a week or two of treatments.  He's much more alert when he's driving, although I admit to watching him like a hawk to be sure his eyes don't droop, he doesn't look sleepy, and if I ask him to explain the internal combustion engine or baseball one more time to keep him talking, I think he's going to start slapping me around! (Not really, but he'll probably get really annoyed with me!)

* This new job of mine is good. I've discovered they really have no problem with me making changes or updates to their systems, filing, ordering - really, I can do almost anything I want if I think it's going to be better, more efficient, etc. I am a bit of a mouse when it comes to doing without asking first, but they keep on telling me to just take the initiative, do what I want, change what I want, just let them know what I'm doing so they can find it, file it, get it, send it, etc. It's nice to just make a decision and implement it, even something so small as changing how we label something in our Dropbox files because it makes more sense my way...

* The economy is NOT doing as well as people would like to think. For instance, gas prices/heating oil prices are low, so they're not doing an annual Social Security increase. Yea, but what about everything else that is INcreasing, like taxes, food, transportation, etc. Not only did I lose my job this past January 31, my sister lost hers a month or two ago. My other sister is temporarily on leave (without pay) because there isn't any work in her company. My best friend just lost her job. Her daughter was laid off at the beginning of the summer.  If everything is so great, why are people losing their jobs?  (This is not open for political discourse either, this is just a personal rant!)

* It's about 80 degrees today, sunny and beautiful.  Of course this weekend we're due for two cold fronts that will apparently drop our temperature to sub-freezing levels. I guess while I've been cursing the fact that I put my summer clothes away these past two days, I should be glad I have my winter sweaters and work pants out and ready for fall. Or winter. Or whatever decides to rear its ugly head.

* I'm trying to make some changes in my time management, specifically in my free time. I want to read more, catch up on Downton Abbey (I'm only up to S2E3), make time to be more creative, and really start on the Marie Kondo method of tidying up my life. If you don't know what I'm referring to, just click here:  Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing. The idea of reducing my clothing to just what I really like, what really brings me joy...  I might be down to only one or two pairs of black pants, not the 10 or 15 I now have!!! (Just for one example...)

Well, it's 5pm and I'm going to leave now - took 10 minutes to write this post...  I'm going to try to stay up on this here blog'o'mine since I'm going to be spending serious time in front of my computer for the foreseeable future... So hopefully I'll be back soon, much sooner than 3.5 months...