Well, I wasn't expecting to skip last week's post, but I have a really good reason. (More about that later.)
When I left off on Friday, August 6th, it was mostly a normal Friday. I don't remember much about the rest of the day except that I made dinner for my friend Rebekah's kids. Rebekah and her husband were in Utah--her oldest daughter got engaged recently so they decided they needed to go out there to meet her fiance and to plan the wedding. (Her daughter and her fiance are both going to BYU, planning to get married in December in Utah, and her daughter won't be coming home between now and then.) So anyway, they left their other two children at home...they are 16 and 20 years old, so they could take care of themselves and feed themselves too but she thought it would be nice for them to have a couple of meals cooked by someone else, just to make sure they got some vegetables! 😅 So she asked me and a couple other friends if we would each take them a meal while she was gone. I made sour cream enchiladas, which Seth loves, so Seth got some of them and I took the rest to Rebekah's kids. They seemed really happy to get enchiladas!
I was gone all day on Saturday the 7th. We had a temple trip for the YW and I got to go with them. We met at the church at 9:30 am, and we didn't get back to the church until around 9:30 pm. It was a long trip because a) it's a long drive to Philadelphia (about 2 1/2 hours each way, in good traffic), b) we stayed extra time at the temple to help another group that came in after us, c) after we finished at the temple we did a scavenger hunt around Philadelphia, and d) it took forever to get our dinner. It was a tiring day, but a wonderful one too. It was SO NICE to be back in the temple...my first opportunity to go there since January 2020. When the temple came into view, I actually almost cried because I was so happy! The girls did baptisms and confirmations and I helped by being a witness. We had a pretty large group of girls go...10, I think, plus we had one of the counselors in our bishopric and a YSA guy from our ward to help with the baptisms and confirmations. Then there was the YW president and me there also. The scavenger hunt was a competition of sorts because the YM had done the same scavenger hunt when they went to the temple back in June. It was fun, but it took a long time to move that somewhat large group of people around and some of the girls got really tired. We went to a place called Reading Terminal Market for dinner...there are lots of restaurants and food stores there. It was dinner time, though, so it was really crowded and busy and it took a really long time for everyone to get their food. Originally we had planned to find more of the places on our scavenger hunt after we finished dinner, but by the time we finshed dinner it was so late that we knew we just needed to head back home. I really enjoyed spending time with all those girls all day, though! It was super nice.
The whole group at Reading Terminal Market
On Sunday the 8th, Frank and I both gave talks in church. I think they went well. I usually write my talks out word for word so I'll know exactly what I want to say (although I never just read them...it just helps me to write them out in detail ahead of time) but this time I just had an outline with bullet points for the different topics I wanted to cover. I wondered if I was going to regret that, but it went fine. I would say I was way less nervous about this talk than I usually am. I got a little nervous, but not very. That was nice for a change! Hopefully that is a trend that will continue. After church, I had a class presidency meeting. I don't remember anything else about Sunday.
On Monday the 9th I got my hair cut. For family night activity we played Mario Kart and I got third place overall. (Yoshi is Seth; I am Peach):
This is a BIG DEAL people!!! It has taken me so long to become even slightly proficient at this game. Yes, I know I am still last out of the real people who were playing (the other 9 are computer generated) but I'm usually somewhere around 9th place (or worse). Notice also that Seth, Frank and I are all within 6 points of each other and the 4th place winner is 15 points behind me. Okay, I just had to share my moment of glory! (It was a moment of glory for Seth too...Frank usually comes in 1st place.)
Tuesday the 10th...oh, Tuesday! This is the day that everything went crazy. Actually most of Tuesday was pretty normal. I did the regular chores and I also took one of the YW to a physical therapy appointment because her mom couldn't take her. I just had to drop her off...her mom was able to pick her up when she was done. That evening for our combined YM / YW activity, we went roller skating at a rink in Hagerstown (about 40 minutes northwest of Frederick; there is no roller skating rink in Frederick). I haven't been roller skating in over a decade, but I used to love it so I thought it would be fun to skate. None of the other adults were skating except our bishop, but when Seth decided he didn't want to skate anymore after only a few minutes of trying (it was his first time ever on roller skates), I decided it would be a shame to let his skates go to waste so I put them on and started to skate. I was a little shaky at first but soon got the hang of it and I had a lot of fun for about 30 minutes. Then I started to turn around (we had to change directions periodically) and my skates went in opposite directions and I fell really hard on my tailbone. I managed to get back up, but I wasn't feeling so great so I made my way to the edge of the rink and used the handrail to help me get around to where I could get off the rink. One of the counselors in the bishopric met me there and asked "Are you okay?"...he had seen me fall. I told him I wasn't sure, and headed to the tables where we had been sitting earlier, eating pizza. On the way there, I started to feel really dizzy and things went kind of black, but I manged to stay upright and conscious and made it safely to the table to sit down. Once I got there, I got really hot and started to sweat all over and felt like I was going to faint, so I put my head between my knees until I started to feel a little better. The bishopric counselor got me some water to drink and then when I told him my head was starting to hurt, he left in search of some Tylenol or aspirin. I got my skates off and just sat there and sipped water for a while. Then some of the leaders in our group came over to say that it was time to go, so I went over to use the restroom and then the bishopric counselor found me and gave me some aspirin he had managed to track down. I had a bad headache by then so I was glad to get that. I had driven a carload of girls up to the skating rink, but I was worried about driving home after nearly passing out. Luckily, one of the other YW leaders rode up with another leader so I asked her if she would be willing to drive my car home. (And told her why, because no one else had seen me fall and most of our group was unaware that I wasn't feeling well.) She was happy to drive, thankfully! We went to an ice cream place first before driving home...I didn't get my own ice cream because I was worried I might not keep it down but Seth didn't eat all of his ice cream so I ended up finishing his and I felt okay. Luckily, I really didn't feel too bad on the drive home and I was able to drive Seth and I home from the church (a very short distance). By the time we got home, though, my tailbone was hurting quite a bit and I had a monster headache. When I told Frank what had happened, he wanted to take me to the ER right away but it was nearly bedtime and I didn't like the idea of spending half the night at the ER, so I convinced him that it would be okay to wait and call the doctor in the morning. As it turned out, I didn't sleep very well but at least Frank did!
A few skating photos (taken before I fell):
I wasn't feeling so great in the morning (Wednesday the 11th). Frank made me breakfast and I went downstairs to eat it; meanwhile, he called our doctor. After waiting on hold for several minutes while the receptionist talked to a nurse, we were told by the nurse that I needed to go to the ER because they would probably need to do xrays and such. So I had to go to the ER after all. (I was hoping to avoid that!) By this time, I was starting to feel quite sick to my stomach so I kept lying down even though Frank was anxious to get me to the ER. He put my shoes on and we left...I rode in the back seat, lying down. When we arrived at the hospital and I sat up, I vomited...thankfully I was prepared for that so I didn't make a huge mess. Frank went and got a wheelchair and wheeled me into the ER. My head was killing me and I felt pretty rotten at that point! He got me checked in and luckily I got called into the triage area right away. The nurse there checked me over and got the whole story (I found it was a little hard for me to describe what had happened even though I did remember it clearly, which was weird) and then took me back to a room while Frank parked the car. (He had left the car at the ER entrance.) I got sick again right when we got to my room. The nurse said that even though I had gone all night before coming in, they were required to put a neck brace on me (because I was complaining of neck pain too) until they could get some test results. She said they were going to do a CT scan of my head and neck. As soon as Frank arrived from parking the car, they took me back to get the CT scan. I didn't even bother to open my eyes...I felt a lot better just lying on my back with my eyes closed. After I got the CT scan, they took me back to my room and we waited a long time to get the results. I just rested. At one point, we called the nurse because all my fingers suddenly got cold and numb, but she decided it was probably because the neck brace was digging into the back of my head a bit. She put the back of my bed up a bit and that seemed to help. Every nurse or doctor who talked to me on that visit asked me to tell them what happened again (it was always kind of hard to do that) and they kept asking me to tell them my name and birthdate, to make sure I could do it. Finally the doctor came in and said that my CT scan looked okay but that I had a concussion. They didn't look at my tailbone at all because he said even if it was broken, it would heal on it's own and they couldn't really do anything to help with that. (You may be wondering how I got a concussion when I didn't hit my head! Who knew, but you can actually get a concussion if you hit your tailbone really hard. The doctor said it's like getting in a car accident...it's a whiplash-type injury. When I fell, I did feel a big jar go all the way up my spine to my head, so it makes sense. The other counselor in YW told me that when she told her husband that I had a concussion, he said "Her brain is in the wrong place!" I thought that was so funny!!) This is the first concussion I've ever had (and hopefully the last) but as many of you probably know, the treatment for a concussion is both physical and mental rest. They told me not to do anything that required focus or concentration and to avoid screens...avoid texting or anything on my computer, no watching television and no reading!! I wasn't happy about the no reading part. What am I supposed to do while I am resting if I can't read? By the time we got home from the hospital, though, all I wanted to do was sleep! I took a couple of naps that day. They sent me home with a muscle relaxant and some anti-nausea medication.
Frank didn't take any photos of me at the ER (I'm not complaining about that!!) but here is a photo of my hospital bracelet, just for "fun":
The rest of Wednesday, August 11th through Saturday August 14th: I rested, and got pretty bored. The first couple of days I took naps and listened to a podcast and listened to music. Also Amy called me and talked to me for a long time on Thursday evening which was really nice and kept me entertained. I took a shower on Thursday morning, but just doing that made me feel sick to my stomach...crazy! I had a YW presidency meeting Thursday afternoon over Zoom. Originally it was supposed to be Wednesday afternoon, but luckily the secretary had it wrong on her calendar so they decided to move it...I say luckily, because I had forgotten all about it and woke up about 30 minutes into the meeting time, so I would have missed most of it. Anyway, I did attend the Thursday meeting, but with my camera off, lying down in bed, and I didn't look at the screen, just listened. And honestly, I can't remember much about it now! On Friday Frank signed me up for the Desert Bookshelf so that I could listen to audio books (they told me listening to books was okay). That helped a lot...at least I had something to do. I pretty much stayed in bed Wednesday through Saturday. Frank took really good care of me...he did all the cooking and made sure I got fed. He was able to work from home all those days so he was there if I needed him. Poor Frank! He did all the absolutely necessary household chores like grocery shopping and laundry, besides all the cooking, and on top of that was really busy with his full time job and his business. I know it was really stressful and exhausting for him, but he didn't complain. He was supposed to work on Saturday night, during the day on Sunday, and on Monday night but they told him he could postpone those jobs so that he wouldn't have to leave me. I really appreciated that! On Saturday I was originally supposed to help with a stake youth conference activity, but I had to let them know that I couldn't do it. (The doctor specifically told me "no, you can't do that.") Seth was signed up to go but a few hours before it began he had one of his strange headache / throwing up episodes, so he couldn't go. (But as usual, he was fine the rest of the day. Thankfully!!) Mom called me on Saturday too which was nice.
By Sunday the 15th, I was definitely ready to get out of the house. I still felt slightly dizzy / fuzzy, but my head wasn't hurting anymore. My tailbone actually didn't hurt very much those first 4 or 5 days. (It's been a lot worse this week.) Anyway, I went to church--but just to Sacrament meeting. Frank brought me home after that. (I did attend a class presidency meeting right before church also.) I still spent most of that day resting. Frank and Seth stayed after church for a meeting for all the Seminary students and their parents. (Seminary starts next Monday, the 23rd) Seth got an invitation to that meeting earlier in the week; it was wrapped around a 7-Up can; kind of cute:
We had signed up to take dinner to the Elders, so after Frank & Seth got home from church, Frank took dinner to them. (It was easy...we put roast beef and vegetables in the crock pot.) Sunday was Scott's birthday too...we had sent him some cards and some money earlier in the week for that. So hard to believe he is 27!! We do not feel old enough to have a child that old.
This week I have been working my way back into normal activity levels. I took things pretty slow on Monday and tried to pace myself on Tuesday also, although that was difficult because I had more to do. Wednesday and Thursday were just plain busy! Tanner & Darlee arrived last night, and I had a lot to do to prepare for that, plus I was trying to get caught up on all the things I didn't do last week. I still have done very minimal reading and I have not watched television at all, but I have done some texting and obviously I am on my computer right now. (But I haven't used my computer all that much this week either.) Frank has worked from home a lot this week so he has still been around to help me most of the time if I need it. We have been helping with our neighbor's cats this week again, so we've been over there at least once (sometimes twice) a day.
On Monday Frank and Seth did most of the normal chores like vacuuming and laundry. Frank went with me to the store to get groceries so I wouldn't have to do that alone. I felt a little dizzy, but other than that I was okay. It was a big help having him there. While I was taking a nap in the afternoon, these flowers arrived from Frank's work:
I thought that was super nice and very thoughtful!
That evening was back to school night at the high school, so we took Seth over there so he could meet his teachers and figure out where all his classrooms are. It was very crowded and it felt very warm & humid (we found out later the air conditioning wasn't working) so that wasn't too fun, but he did get to meet all of his teachers and find all of his classrooms, which was helpful. When we finished and went to the front doors to leave, we discovered that there was a torrential rainstorm happening. We waited several minutes but it didn't look like it was going to slow down anytime soon so Frank decided to make a run for it and go get the car. He got soaked, of course. When he got to the front of the school, Seth ran to the car and got an umbrella and ran back to the school to give that to me. So I didn't get soaked, but getting into the car and getting the umbrella down was tricky. I got a little bit wet then, but the real problem was that I was trying to get into the car quickly and I sat down too fast and too hard, which really hurt my tailbone (and it's been hurting a lot more ever since).
On Tuesday I cleaned the bathrooms...which was painful, so I took a break after that for a while. Later on, I planned the meals for the following week. I decided to adjust what I've been doing and try to get all the groceries for each week on Monday. That simplifies the process a lot so hopefully that will work (mostly worried about produce going bad; we'll see how it goes). Even though we went to the store on Monday, I had to go back on Tuesday afternoon to get some school supplies for Seth, since I didn't have any idea what he was going to need until we went to the open house. I decided to get the rest of the groceries for this week so that I wouldn't have to go back later in the week. Seth came with me to help. I still felt slightly dizzy, and by the time we got home my neck was hurting too but I was able to rest after dinner. Seth's school supplies only cost around $15, but we also had to get him a nice graphing calculator for his Algebra class (I'm sure he'll use it all through high school and probably beyond) and for his digital photography class he needed an SD card and a thumb drive which weren't all that cheap either. Thankfully, we do not need to buy him a digital camera...Frank has a nice one he can use and since he doesn't have to take it to school (he can use it at home and take the SD card and the thumb drive to school with his photos on them to use in class), that will work. We found out that he has to have a laptop or chromebook every day...the school provides chromebooks for a $60 yearly fee, but we decided to let him continue to use the laptop he used all last year. The laptop is a lot heavier than a chromebook, though, so we may end up buying him a chromebook. We figured we'd prefer to buy him one that he can keep since they cost about $240...by the time we pay a $60 yearly fee every year for 4 years, we will have paid the cost of a chromebook, but he wouldn't get to keep it. We'll see how it goes with the laptop, though.
We decided that since Seth will be walking home from school most of the time, that it is time to get him a phone. Frank had an older iPhone that he got from someone who was replacing theirs, so we decided it would be easiest to just add a line to our existing plan and let him use that phone. (We still want to block internet access on the phone though...just need to figure out how to do that.) We did look into some other options with really cheap phones (that wouldn't have internet access) but it would have ended up costing more for the plan. On Tuesday evening, Frank called our cell service provider to get Seth's phone added to our account. That turned out to be quite a mess for some reason...I will spare you the details, but he was on the phone for an hour and a half and had to talk to two different people before they finally managed to successfully get it all set up. Seems ridiculous to me!! Seth enjoyed texting a little bit with his brothers that evening, but we are not letting him use his phone most of the time. He takes it to school, but when he gets home he gives it to me and has to ask permission to use it.
School started on Wednesday. We've been working on going to bed earlier and getting up earlier for the last several weeks, so Seth has done pretty well getting up so far. (His last school had a 9:00 am start time. The high school has a 7:30 am start time!) We'll see how he does next week when Seminary starts, because he will have to get up 45 minutes earlier...around 5:15 am. Anyway, so far Seth seems to be doing well and adjusting to all the changes. There are several students from his 8th grade class at his high school so he has seen a few familiar faces, which is nice.
Ready for his first day of high school!
I didn't have a lot of regular chores to do on Wednesday, but needed to put gas in my car and go to a couple of stores to get things that I couldn't find at Walmart. I also took out the trash, visited my friend Wanda for a while (I intended to visit her last week but then couldn't because of my concussion) and cleaned the stove and a few other things in the kitchen. (Everything got really dirty while I was not functioning!) Between those things and cooking and taking Seth to school and back (it was raining at both drop off and pick up times) and checking on the neighbor's cats, I kept busy all day. Frank was gone to work most of the day so I was alone in the house for the first time in a long time (although I was in and out most of the day) and that was kind of weird. When Seth got home from school, I had to fill out a few forms for the school for him to take back the next day. (Of course! Gotta love the first day of school "homework" for the parents.)
That evening we had a combined YM / YW activity. (Our ward's activity night moves every year when school starts so our night is Wednesday now instead of Tuesday). My class was in charge. We had crepes (thankfully the YW president and her daughter made those...I just had to bring some chocolate chips and nutella to put on top...other girls brought bananas, strawberries, syrup, and whipped cream) and we watched a slide show the bishop had put together with photos from both the YM and YW scavenger hunts, so we could determine who "won". There was a lot of debating going on about which photo was better and whether or not certain creative interpretations could be counted or not. It was all in good fun, though! The YM did find more of the locations / items than the YW did, but a lot of our photos were better...in the end, we decided that the YM won, but only by 1 or 2 points. After that, we did a mini scavenger hunt around the church...the YW president had hid index cards with photos of all the locations / items that were on our Philadelphia list. We gave the kids 5 minutes to find as many as they could. The YW found 24 cards and the YM found 10, so the YW won that portion. So everyone felt good, knowing that they won one of the hunts.
Yesterday was even busier than Wednesday. Right after Seth went to school (Frank took him), I met the other counselor in the YW presidency so we could go scope out a trail at a park that we are planning to use for next week's YW activity. The other counselor's class is in charge of the activity but she asked me to come with her because she has to be out of town next week, so needed someone who was going to be at the activity to be familiar with the trail. (She has to go out of town unexpectedly because one of her grandsons has to have surgery for a brain tumor. He's only 10 years old!) It was a really nice trail and I enjoyed being outside and talking with my friend. I wasn't sure how I would do since it involved some uphill climbing, but it was never very strenuous so I did okay. The view at the top of the hill was really nice too!:
It was really humid, though, so we got pretty sticky. The outdoors have felt like a sauna this week!!
After I got back from the hike, I vacuumed, swept, did laundry, cleared a few things out of the spare bedroom (to get ready for Tanner & Darlee), and swept & mopped the kitchen floor. (It hadn't been swept and mopped for over 2 weeks because I usually do that on Saturdays. I hadn't done it for the previous 2 Saturdays because I was gone on the temple trip all day the first Saturday and the second Saturday I was recovering from my concussion. So you can imagine it was really dirty and needed to be cleaned!) I had a few other little chores to do also. I am really glad I got groceries on Tuesday so I didn't have to do that too! Seth was able to walk home from school because it wasn't raining, but he did get delayed a bit because there was some kind of police activity near his school right at dismissal time, so they went on lockdown for a few minutes. It didn't last long, though, and he got home safely. I had to fill out an online school form that afternoon which was quite extensive and took forever. Seth mowed the lawn...it was the first opportunity he had to do it this week since it has been raining most of the time. I made two separate dinners that night because I made a casserole for Seth that he likes. After dinner, Seth came with me to drop off a bag of clothes at a friend's house (she has a son that fits into clothes Seth grows out of) and then to Goodwill to drop off another bag of Frank's clothes that we wanted to donate. Then I spent most of the rest of the evening getting a headstart on updating the budget (I wasn't able to do it at all last week so I knew it would be a big job), taking a short break to go check on the neighbor's cats. Tanner & Darlee were supposed to arrive around 9:00, but the second leg of their flight (from Nashville to Baltimore) got delayed so they didn't land until 10:30. Frank went to pick them up at the airport; while he did that I got started on this blog post. They didn't get home until close to midnight, so we all went to bed pretty quickly (Seth was already asleep long before that) but it was nice to see them!
It rained a lot again during the night and it was still raining when we got up this morning. I got Seth to school and stopped by our neighbor's house to let the cats in...I figured they probably would want to go in since it was raining, and I was right. After I got back, Tanner & Darlee got up and we enjoyed visiting a little with them while they ate breakfast. After they ate and showered, they left to go spend the day at the National Zoo. (Thankfully it has stopped raining, although it's pretty likely we will see more rain before the day is over.) Frank is working from home and when I finish this post, I just need to finish updating the budget. Then maybe I will rest for a while! The last couple of days have been exhausting!
I mentioned that my tailbone has been hurting more since Monday. Strangely, it doesn't usually hurt to sit down (softer surfaces are generally more uncomfortable than firmer ones though). Walking isn't bad either but it hurts a little to go down stairs and quite a bit to go up stairs. The worst thing, though, is bending over. You never realize how often you need to bend over to pick things up off the floor until it really hurts to do that!! I am figuring out all kinds of tricks...like grabbing onto something nearby to help me lower myself to the floor...to help ease the pain a bit. I have also noticed that I'm a lot more sore when I am more active, so the last couple of days have been difficult. I know it could be a lot worse, though, so I am grateful it's not! My head is feeling a lot better for the most part. I haven't been dizzy the last couple of days. I've noticed a few other aches and pains...random sore spots in different parts of my body...especially my left wrist / hand. I don't know why it hurts...I'm pretty sure the only thing I hit when I fell was my tailbone...but maybe I put that hand down too. It's not really painful, but sometimes hurts when I move it a certain way.
I have not been able to exercise at all since I fell. Maybe I will be able to try that next week; we'll see how I'm doing. While I was lying down over the weekend, I listened to an audio book called The Washington Hypothesis and I started listening to another audio book by the same author called The Lincoln Hypothesis. They are both good and really fascinating! I have continued to listen to the Lincoln book this week as I've been doing other things, but I'm not done with it yet.
I believe that finally brings you up to date on all our happenings for the last 2 weeks. It's definitely been busy and memorable!
