I've Been Sick

On Thursday afternoon I started feeling a little crummy. Crummy quickly progressed to dizzy, shaky, achy and worse. Unfortunately much of it happened while I was trying to do errands. I somehow managed to get my two younger kids and I through a quick shopping trip around 9pm, after finishing everything I had to do and taking some ibuprofen. I was getting the FLU! Whenever I am sick Jason rarely covers my share of the work. He will hardly take care of the kids and will absolutely not take care of the chores- dishes, cleaning. SOMETIMES he will make dinner when I feel like I am dying. Most of the time he doesn't take my illnesses seriously. He acts like I am faking it or something. It really really angers me.
But Jason came home from school on Thursday...and he was getting sick too!! Same thing- same symptoms only a few hours behind me. When Jason is sick not only does the world revolve around him (which it does on a regular basis) but it's like he is the only person left in the world. The only people who matter when he is sick are the ones who want to take care of him.
So much for help. Jason slept all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday.
From a chair, under a blanket, I watched my house go to ruin. I allowed my daughter free reign of the kitchen and she took it with pleasure and even happily supplied her brother with whatever she was having. I did manage to make some frozen pizza on Saturday during a pain outage, thanks to loads of ibuprofen. I don't keep horrible things at home and any leftover Halloween candy we have is completely out of their reach so they weren't eating too bad. Just lots of sandwiches. I felt awful about not being able to do much but I could barely function even while under the influence of painkillers. Messes were made and not cleaned up. I'm NEVER going to catch up with what went wrong- it's just too much and I know Jason will never step in to help out.
Monday came and I wasn't feeling better. Jason seemed to be because the night before he stayed up until some ungodly hour of the morning. So of course while I was dying and watching ANOTHER child, he was enjoying a wonderful beauty sleep at 1pm. So here is sick sick Alex trying to take care of Zachary, Amara, Jonas AND our friend(long story about Zachary being there) while perfectly fine Jason is resting his eyes. I was hating him. I complained on and off about the lack of help (knowing it would do nothing but not being able to shut up about it all) and he said the dumbest thing ever: "I don't know why you're still sick. I'm better" This from the jerk who SLEPT ALL WEEKEND. I didn't get to sleep. I had to take care of the children during all waking hours because someone else wouldn't wake up to help a little.
Tuesday I was STILL sick and was showing some signs of getting better but not much. The night before I told him that I had a meeting with the school at 10am and could only take Zachary, that he needed to get the kids ready while I was gone because I had to leave immediately when I got home to take them to preschool. I told him how important it was that he was up and that I could NOT take the other kids. At 9:15 I tried waking him up and he just turned his alarm off and went right back to sleep. So I spent 10 minutes trying to get him up and had to deal with him telling me to shut up and go away. Then he really made me mad and said that no matter what I did he was just going to go back to sleep after I left. So I completely flipped out (still sick as hell) and started giving Amara and Jonas a bath so that I could go straight from there to preschool. While I am giving them their bath I burst into tears because of the stress of the meeting I was about to be late for, how he was treating me. Finally I had them completely ready but didn't have time to get them breakfast and he actually got up. So I left with Zachary and we were only 3 minutes late. Our meeting was done in time for me to pick the kids up and get them to preschool on time so everything went well. My throat had been hurting bad during this whole sickness but I had been ignoring it because of everything else being worse. While I was out I decided to actually look at my throat so when I was sitting in the car getting ready to drop the girls off I checked it out and it really surprised me. My throat was as red as blood (still is). No spots or anything but it was really swollen.
The weekend was really nice but Tuesday afternoon it was starting to get a little cold- cold enough to need the heat. So I tried to turn it on and it wouldn't work! I thought it was just being stubborn but the evening came around and it still wasn't working. So I went from starting to get better to going back to my original state. I was so cold and couldn't find a way to get warm. Our bedroom has different heat so we didn't have to worry about sleeping but I didn't want to make everyone spend the evening in there. Plus the kids weren't minding it at all- just me. So the blanket went back around me while I trudged through the house and tried to do something. I made a crappy dinner of saltines and Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and added some carrots to it. Then I made some hot chocolate to cheer everyone up and keep me warm. But those were the longest 5 hours of my life.
Finally when it was time for bed I had all of the kids sleep with me since it was the only warm room in the house. Zachary's bedroom was the coldest. I put a space heater in the bathroom so that it would be tolerable in the morning. I took my ibuprofen so I could sleep and off to bed we went.
Today I am finally well enough to catch up a little here on Gather and check some e-mail. Not much else will get done on the computer today. I missed Gather!! I have been living in a fog of painkillers and pain and tons of water the last few days and I am glad to be back. I don't think I have ever been this sick before. The flu, the sore throat (worst sore throat ever, for sure- worse than strep), the absolute need for water like I've never needed water before and then this morning I woke up with pain in my right breast and there is a lump there. I am pretty sure it is mastitis or at least a clogged milk duct and I really hope it is nothing worse. I've had mastitis once before and it felt just like this. But talk about pouring, ya know.
One good thing is that today out of nowhere our heat came back on. Of course it happened while it was 70 degrees out but it is supposed to get cold again tonight so I am glad it works again.

So, what's new with everyone else? And thank you if you made it through this whole thing!

I'm certain my head will explode at any minute!

We had a good Christmas despite not having much money to spend. Ok...we had NO money to spend. But I did spend some anyway because kids don't understand that. Jason and I got a few nice things too, including an awesome quesadilla maker that is the best thing ever! I tried it out last night and fell in love. It was like at first sight but love at first bite. It makes some darn good quesadillas. I can put just about whatever I want in it as long as I put it in a 10 inch tortilla. That was MY favorite Christmas present!
We also got some grocery gift cards which really helped out on my last shopping trip. I haven't been to the store in a couple of weeks so I really filled my cart. This was the first time in months that Jason kept the baby (Jo is really sick so I insisted he had to stay home). I just had to take one of the others so I took my daughter and dropped her off at the grocery store's tree house (best idea ever). I got to the register and my bill totalled $310 before my card savings. After card savings, the bill totalled $199. Over $100 in savings isn't bad. I had 3 or 4 coupons too which helped make it that low. I used our two $20 gift cards so I only had to pay $159. Cart overflowing, I made it home and crashed on the couch, announcing loudly that I was NOT bringing anything in. I am really sick too. Jason got the hint and brought everything in and even put it away. I helped a little with that. Then I am hungry so I go and raid our newly stocked kitchen only to find that there is NOTHING. Yeah, there is plenty but I didn't get anything I could just grab and eat. Too bad sandwiches don't make themselves. I am not feeling well enough to cook AND eat. Just eat.

I browsed the bills and this is where the exploding head comes in. Car and house payments are due right now: $1000. Gas bill is almost $800. Electric is almost $400. They are both due immediately. Plus the water bill, phone bill, sewer/trash bill and a few others I know my head is avoiding. I practically peed my pants reading our latest gas bill because I know we couldn't have possibly used as much as they are saying we are. Our gas dryer is broken and we don't overuse our heat. Yet the bill shows that we used TWICE as much gas as we did last December. Last December we had a freakin gas dryer. This December we don't, and nothing else has changed. So how on Earth has it doubled? We do qualify for LIHEAP which helps with your gas or electric bill over the winter months if you can't afford it. Unfortunately unemployment still doesn't send paystubs and Jason STILL hasn't called them (he tried one day for 15 minutes but gave up after the busy signal started to drive him nuts) to get a copy of what he is being paid. Every time you try to call unemployment the line is BUSY. Always busy. My mom was trying to get her paystubs from them and spent 5 hours calling them nonstop. FIVE HOURS! She said she just kept hitting re-dial over and over again. And they don't let you request or access info like that online. They should, considering you can't call them. I just want to cry. Can't get the LIHEAP without proof of income but can't get proof of income because the unemployment office is too busy. I wonder if I can tell them that and just send them a copy of our initial statement of what he will make...? Probably not. It's what he makes every week but that would just be too easy for everyone.

I am absolutely not making enough cash online to pay all these outstanding bills.

Unemployment- at least we have something, but I want more

Jason lost his job on October 13, 2008. Forget plans to have a vasectomy- that costs about as much money as we will be making a month or maybe more. Shoot, we might as well forget Christmas. Anyway, he got approved for unemployment so while he is off and looking for non-existant jobs he is also SUPPOSED to be going back to school. I already got all excited over that but I forgot who I was focusing on and realized this weekend that I should NEVER EVER look forward to something when it comes to him. He does what he wants, when he wants and it doesn't matter that he has 3 kids and a girlfriend that have to work around HIS schedule. I'm starting to think that Everquest will forever be more important than anything else and that he will not be going back to school (more about that Everquest crap later).

Before he lost his job we had about $3,000 in the bank from tax returns. Now that we will be getting way less than $400 (closer to $300) a week, we are quickly losing that saved money and we will start having serious money troubles soon. We just got a van back in June which costs $400 a month. Our mortgage is around $600 a month. That plus insurance is what we will be making a month with his new paycheck.
So the same day he got fired I took on a job babysitting full time. But I only getting $50 a week from that. But $200 extra a month is something. That will pay the electric bill and the house phone.
Preschool I paid in full at the beginning of the year so that is something I won't have to worry about anymore.

I do some things online to make money but none of them make me enough. I am not one of those people that rocks at getting referrals and it seems with so many places that if you want to make money you need other people helping out. I have a lot of referrals on one of my sites and there I earn about $5 a month doing nothing. Though it would be pretty awesome if every site I was a member of was earning me $5 a month. I might be making a good bit of money then! I suck at writing, otherwise I would go for places like Associated Content to make a few bucks a week.

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