So, again with the random thoughts – I’ve been trying, for the last two days, to blog about something meaningful and worthwhile. Heck, I even started this blog off with really deep intentions. I titled it, got three paragraphs in and then decided to scrap it for some other time, if ever at all.

I’m in my funky mood and that often drives me to deep thoughts about things I don’t really want to talk about – at least not yet. So here we are, another list post from the depths of my soul (I typed soup instead of soul…hahaha…that might actually be more fitting!)

• Earlier in the week I blogged about having thrown the kids meds in the trash. I’ve been in a constant state of panic over this, because he ran out of meds this morning and also, because we just can’t afford the expense of buying the meds as an out of pocket expense. I had really hoped that our insurance would pick up the cost – ya know, have a little compassion and understanding and just do something nice for a change – but as I suspected, that’s not going to happen. I did finally pick up the meds this evening, to the tune of almost $900. I just don’t see how people do it without insurance. Heck, I’m not even sure what we’re going to do for our budget this pay period – it’s totally out the window.
• Daisy, the cute little dog who is as sweet as can be, had explosive…um…yeah…all over the crate, all over the living room, all over the laundry room…I’m not sure she has enough cute in her to make up for this. The old man said this might actually be the answer to our budget problem…he wasn’t talking about selling her, he was talking about tacos. I almost threw up.
• Speaking of old men – he’s in bed (and has been since about 5 PM) with some sort of illness that looks and sounds a whole lot like a certain flu we keep hearing about. By the time you read this, I might already be checking in to the Motel 6 down the road. They left the light on for me, Tom Bodett said so.
• I signed up for GoodReads.com tonight – I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.
• The more I put myself “out there” the less I want to be “out there” and I start thinking real serious about deleting my accounts on some sites – namely, Twitter. I’m private there, because I can’t be open and honest unless I am – but because I’m private, it’s not really a useful tool for networking with others – and those on my friends list rarely, if ever, reply to anything I say. I’m not an attention whore or anything – far from it – but being ignored on a regular basis doesn’t do my emotional state well – especially right now.
• I am washing Daisy’s dog bed right now and it’s driving me crazy by making the washer go off balance during the spin cycle. Ugh.
• The more I sit here and type, the more I delete.
• Being in a funk really sucks.

That’s all – I am starting to be all pissy and that’s the last thing I want right now – I need jokes and stuff. I need to smile and be happy. Faking it till I make it starts RIGHT NOW.

We haven’t had a really good “lets all laugh at Brandy” story in some time – so I figure, you’re due. It starts out like this:

Last week, I realized the kiddo was low on his medication and because we have such awesome health care here in America – I had to call into a random voice mail message and leave a message explaining this (it’s standard procedure) with the clinic downtown (He sees a Psychiatrist at Phoenix Children’s, so everything takes so…stinking…long) anyway – they check their voice mail every hour during business hours, but it often takes them 2-3 days just to write the script – then because it’s this huge hospital, it takes two days to leave their campus and get into the postal system.

So, knowing we were low and knowing we’d be waiting well into this week to get the script – I called and told them that we’d be down to pick it up on Friday.

The old man, being the great guy that he is (and also being the semi-unemployed guy that he is) treks down to Phoenix to pick it up.

He even goes the extra mile and gets them filled on his way home.

Such a great, great husband – really.

This is where it gets…crazy.

I don’t remember if I posted about my awesome epiphany which resulted in an all night buildfest for the headboard – but I got all “Susie Homemaker” on Friday and finished lots of stuff – then Saturday, continued the process by doing a good ‘house cleaning’.

This included throwing away trash.

Or, in this case, things that look like trash. Like, for example, a Walgreens bag with $400 worth of prescription medications in it.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – go dig it out!

But, it gets even better. It was trash day…and, I took the bag out to the corner, so it’s long gone.

Yes folks – here I sit, without any medication for the kiddo and now, when the Dr. does agree (if she agrees that is) to rewrite the script – I’m betting my insurance company will refuse to pay for it – cuz, you know, they never do human stuff, like lose their prescription…

So, let my $400 lesson be a lesson to you – NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF A CLEAN HOUSE. Nothing! Don’t do it!

Well – as usual, I overdid myself this weekend (or I should say, on Friday night/Saturday) and paid for it by spending Sunday in bed.

Fun, right?

No – not fun.

I also can’t hold down food and I made some awesome food this weekend.

I can’t even remember if I blogged about the headboard – see, I started a blog about it then stopped (I just checked, I didn’t blog about the headboard).

So there it is.  We finally finished it. It looks awesome – the picture sucks, it’s an iPhone, what can you do?

That’s all I got today folks – I am tired, but resting nicely right up against the headboard, which is padded and comfortable and awesome and stuff.

Go Team Brandy & The Old Man!

I’ve had a lot going on this week and there have been a few things that I’ve wanted to talk about, but haven’t really had the energy (or time) to pull them together in fashion that would look anything like a post – so I figured, it’s been a while since I did a list-post, let’s do that tonight – so here we go:

• One of the most annoying things in the world is when you buy a food product that is vacuum sealed for freshness and when you try to open the little plastic/metal barrier that stands between you and the goodness contained within, the little .25 centimeter piece of plastic/metal breaks off in your hands, requiring you to resort to using a sharp knife and skillfully carving the barrier off around the edges of the container. This really, really bothers me.
• Another thing, along the same lines (sometimes) but sort of different is the “Yogurt Blowback” you get when opening a container of Yoplait. Now, a friend of mine at work did show me a nifty little trick where you pre-damage the lid, by poking a hole in it slowly, to release the pressure so the yummy yogurt goodness doesn’t blow back on your clean shirt – but that really doesn’t make my annoyance at this packaging faux pas any less irritating.
• I have noticed something really strange in recent months – the portions of food served on your plate when you order a meal is roughly enough to feed a small family of 3 for two meals – yet the packages of products you buy at the store seem to be shrinking. The good news is, my family of three can eat two meals for $12 from On The Border – the bad news is, it now costs me twice as much to go to the store to get the same amount of food – because the packages have gotten smaller (requiring me to buy more) while the prices, in some regards, have gone up.
• I have started drinking more and more hot chocolate – I don’t feel guilty about it any more, since the last time I went to the Dr. he told me I’d lost seven lbs (that’s a total of 24 lbs in the last three weeks – for anyone who is counting)
• My Dr. is a little weirded out that I am losing weight while on steroids.
• Don’t worry though, my face is still poofy.
• I commented to my mom the other day that I am eating less and less meat with my meals – then I promptly ordered ham on my pizza yesterday.
• I made up for it today by going to Pita Jungle and eating vegetarian. I love PJ and I love their jalapeno  and cilantro hummus (Thank you Becky)
• Today is my baby boys 15th birthday. Tomorrow will bring a new chapter in our lives, known as “OMG, in less than a year, kiddo can drive…ack!”
• I got an email today from the school telling me that we needed to attend an informational meeting on the 20th for the kiddos new class he will start in June. What class, you might be asking? Cosmetology. I seriously couldn’t make this up if I tried.
• That reminds me, I need to go ask him if he A) Signed up for that class and B) knows what it is – somehow, I don’t see this as a viable career path for him – but maybe I’m missing something.
• I don’t do a lot of shameless promotion – but I am darn excited about being asked to Guest Blog on the Tavis Smiley Blog on PBS.org – if you want to read my piece of National Adoption Month (or you’re interested in becoming involved in adoption in some way) Check out the blog: National Adoption Month – A Presidential Proclamation.
• I think yesterday marked the official start of “Suckfest ’09″ for me – I can’t decide if it’s good news that it started late, thus will be shorter – or bad news, it started late, thus will go on past the end of February.

That’s really all I have – like I said, together – a blog post – on their own, not so much.

A few of you have inquired about the appointment yesterday – most of you were all up in arms over the fact that I had this pretty stinking important appointment and didn’t give any advance warning, so that the random prayer/chant/whatever tree’s could be mobilized – sorry about that. I had decided I was going to put the whole darn thing in the back of my mind and just not think about it, because it was bringing me down.

There is just nothing like hearing words like “mortality” coupled with “live donor candidate” and “cadaver donor” all at one meeting. Add to that, the very frustrated and by the end of the meeting, downright angry Dr.’s and transplant team that, from what it seems, although I did not ask, have never dealt with someone who is adopted.

I know, strange, right? At least one of the Dr.’s is older…mid-50′s I’d say. Apparently, they do more “treatment” there than surgical intervention – and don’t get me wrong, they have a world class liver transplant program – but what they also have is a pretty, um…interesting…location…which…(I don’t want to piss anyone off, ok? I really don’t) but bottom line, the vast majority of their patients don’t exactly qualify for transplant. Their risk factors and/or diseases aren’t conducive to getting on the list.

They are the absolute best in the western US and I have 110% confidence in them – they’ve just never dealt with adoption.

More notably – of all the people on the team, not a single one of them was aware of just have limiting (and limited) my access is – and most certainly, there are no living donors waiting in the wings to lop off a portion of their liver for their child and/or sister.

This was strange to them – because right off the bat, it wasn’t that I had family members who weren’t good candidates – I had family members who weren’t even considerations. None of my family members, first, would qualify as donors – and aside from that, we have the whole ‘not genetically related’ thing working for us.

As for my birth family? Ha! I mean *cough* uh…well, my birth mother wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information – and it cost her nothing and required almost no work on her part…I doubt she’s going to take off a month of work, hop a plane and fly out to Phoenix and offer me a portion of her liver…that is, if she would even do the required pre-testing to see if she’s even a match.

Don’t worry – I won’t ask – and to be quite frank – I wouldn’t accept if she offered – that’s a debt I don’t need, thankyouverymuch.

So, yeah, welcome to my world, where my concentration is best depicted by the ADHD Dog in the movie UP!.

Back to the topic at hand.

I got to the appointment and was reminded that this was my “Mortality Study” and that I was in the wrong place.

Opps.

So I truck across the street to the hospital and get to the Transplant Coordinators office just a few minutes late. I offer my apologies and explain that I had made the decision to forget what the appointment was about because it was bringing me down – so I had gone over to the clinic.

They understood. I guess I’m not the only one who deals with anxiety/frustration by burying and not dealing with it.

Anyway, they’d talked with the Dr.’s who’d done some testing on a piece of the liver from my biopsy at Mayo. They reviewed the weekly (and sometimes twice or three times a week) blood work results. They talked about the numbers, the drugs, the tests, the results and then laid it all out for me.

I wasn’t in the transplant coordinators office because they had a better view or anything – I was here to talk about why they were taking me off something they call the “passive list” – which is the list that says “Ok, this person needs a transplant, not right at the moment, they aren’t going to die in the next three days – but if the exact match walks (or, rolls) through the doors in a local hospital – we’d like to have the liver please, because while our patient isn’t going to die – we don’t want a potential donor liver to go to waste and we’re willing to do the surgery” type thing (this is how they explained it to me – it’s just all so very confusing) – I had known, after the first appointment, that I was on a list – I just wasn’t aware that I probably shouldn’t have been flying to Kansas at the first of October or shouldn’t try to ‘wait out’ a sickness – if I feel sick.

It was real. That shocked me.

Then, the next step was even more shocking – I am now on the “Ok, we’ll still take the perfect liver, don’t get us wrong – we strive for perfection – but now, even a close match will work. Again, our patient isn’t dying – not in the next three days – but we’ve officially given her 12 months on this liver she’s got – so at some point, in the next 12 months, she will be on the “Ok, she’s gonna die now, we’ll take whatever we can get now” List”

So that’s the news. They’re saying that I’ll be “ok” for the next 12 months – give or take. I won’t drop dead at 12 months, 1 day or anything – but I will start to get sicker and sicker – like I was back in August, when I was unable to hold down food. I’ll start to bleed more and then start to lose my faculties – memory loss/cognition will become more apparent.

This is the suck.

I mean, I knew this was sort of coming – I was trying hard not to think about it to much (and I did a great job today of faking it – I really did, I should get an Oscar or something) – but tonight, I am just weepy and sad and I was last night too.

Now, I just want some mexican food.

Oh and I lost 7 lbs. That’s good, right?