Nowhere to go but up

2008 has not been a year that I'd want to live over again. It's had its bright spots, but overall I'd have to say it sucked. No where to go but up.

And the icing on the cake for the year is I'm ringing in the New Year without heat. I'm not kidding. While I was out of town, a fuse blew, which then caused the transformer on the heater to melt, so they had to turn the heat off to replace the part. Of course, because of the holiday, they couldn't find anyone available to come and do that until Friday. So I'm spending New Year's Eve and Day trying to keep warm with 3 space heaters, blankets, hot tea, long underwear (thank the lord for Patagonia capilene!) and wool socks and slippers. Layers, lots of layers. I will say that it was lucky that one of the other tenants was home and reported the issue before it caused a fire.

My Aunt and Grandmother sent me home from my visit to Michigan with a can of green beans, a can of black eyed peas, and a small ham so I could have my traditional New Year's Day meal. This is a very good thing since I didn't have a chance to get to the store today with all the heat issues. I'm pairing my meal this year with baked sweet potato fries for something different. In addition to the meal fixings, they also sent me home with an insane amount of cookies, chocolates, and other goodies.

I did have a wonderful visit to Michigan for Christmas. My new baby cousin is adorable, even when he spits up on me (which he did more than once) and cries all over my shirt. I spent 7 days completely offline, with little to no cell phone reception, forcing me to disconnect from the world for a bit and just focus on the time with family. It was wonderful. I really wish I lived closer to them.

Anyway, I'm going to curl up on the couch with the pets and a mug of tea and wait for the ball to drop so 2008 will finally be over. I can't wait. I really think there's nowhere to go but up from here (especially with the lack of heat) so things must improve in 2009.

Finally don't forget the New Year's Rules people!! Don't you dare do any laundry!

Small victories

It really is the little victories in life that carry you through. Yesterday I had two small victories, in addition to the big victory of my asthma drug cocktail kicking in so my painful coughing stopped.

Victory #1: I successfully trimmed my cat's nails with no bodily harm to my person and a minimal amount of yowling and squirming. The last time I tried this I only got her two front paws done and had lovely scratches on my arm that are just now fading. The key? The element of surprise. I snagged Capri with a towel, wrapped her up, sat on the edge of the tub trapping her body between my knees, and had one front paw done and was half way through the second before she realized what had hit her. Seriously. All. Four. Paws. Trimmed. Even her dewclaws. A victory indeed.

Victory #2: I finally managed to get my cell phone number switched to a local Philly number. I hadn't changed it from my previous city of residence due to all the identity theft issues. But that's (hopefully) over now, so I'm free to finally separate myself and stop paying taxes to that previous city so I can keep the number. Yes, they really were charging me both a city and state sales tax as well as a business license surcharge, for a total of over $7 a month. Ridiculous!! Once again I had a very pleasant interaction with the customer service at Verizon, making the whole process smooth and easy. Somehow I also feel a bit more "settled" in Philly by having all local numbers.

What small victories will I have today, I wonder.

Bronchial spasms

It's been quite some time since my asthma has affected my life. Often I forget I have it. I know that sounds strange, but I typically have no symptoms unless I'm sick. Last week I started coughing and had a bit of congestion. I gave the workshop with a nice husky voice, and made it through by drinking lots of tea and sucking on cough drops. The cough was still more or less under control. By Friday I was coughing regularly and having a hard time stopping a coughing fit, basically starting to lose control of my breathing. So I put the plan my doctor and I had created when I can't control my coughing into action and started a supportive inhaler (prescription standing by).

I coughed all weekend. And Monday. On Tuesday it was so bad I had coworkers coming up to me and offering me cough drops. These coworkers sit several cubes away, but my coughing was so constant it was worrying them (and probably disturbing their work). Awesome. I even had cough drops. They just weren't helping. Not. At. All. Neither was the supportive inhaler, obviously. What's worse, the coughing was waking me up at night so I couldn't even sleep. I had to use my emergency inhaler a couple of times because the coughing spasm wouldn't stop. I hate my albuterol inhaler...it makes me shake. I basically vibrate for a good hour after using it. At 3am that kind of prevents me from getting back to sleep. Not to mention taking legible notes when you're vibrating is really really hard. And I was coughing so hard it hurt.

So off to the doctor I went on Wednesday afternoon. She confirmed that I was having an asthma-related bronchial spasm. Basically there's no bronchial infection, but my body doesn't realize that so it keeps trying to cough, which irritates my lungs, which perpetuates the whole cycle. The joys of cough-variant asthma. I'm now armed with a medley of medications to stop the coughing, including a stronger supportive inhaler and a short course of steroids.

Let's hope it works so I can get some good sleep. Not to mention I'm tired of tea and cough drops.

Workshop lessons

With all the change going on at work, I've been so flustered, flummoxed, mildly frustrated, and frazzled that I've been distracted. Between the stress and anxiety of wondering what's going to happen and how it's all going to turn out, I've lost sight of why I do what I do. It took teaching the SCCTP Integrating Resources Cataloging workshop for OHIONET this past Thursday to remind me of that important fact. I remembered why I work in libraries:

I love cataloging.

Really. I know for many of you, that means my sanity is questionable. But I really do love it. The often convoluted rules, the idiosyncrasies, even the idiotic aspects, I love all of it. It makes sense in my brain in a very weird way. Teaching other people about how to catalog something reminded me how much I enjoy cataloging.

While I hope the workshop attendees learned something, what I took away I think was equally as valuable. The reminder couldn't have come at a better time. I really needed it.