flippity floppity

So, the month of October has nearly slipped away. I wish the weather would cool off and stay that way for crying out loud. We had a nice little cold spell this weekend (even a frost advisory!) but it's right back into the mid to upper 70s now. And that would be all well and good if it would drop down into the 50s or something at night but it's not getting much lower than 65°. [sigh] Why I ever moved to the south, I'll never know. (Oh, yeah. This was supposed to be a temporary situation. Funny how falling in love and getting married can change EVERYTHING.)

After the Metallica concert I went into one of my post-excitement slumps. Things like that happen to me all the time. It'll most likely happen again after Halloween but maybe I'll get lucky. Who knows. I am looking forward to our Halloween party. Even though this year I won't be able to have Jell-O shots or alcohol of any kind because I'm on a double course of antibiotics. As it turns out I wound up having a recurrance of pelvic pain with my most recent AF. Cultures showed Group B Strep but I can't see how that could cause such bad pain. I'm wondering if something else is going on. Needless to say, if it occurs again with my next AF I'll be stopping my birth control pills and asking for a different one. The pain started when I started the pill. Which is really strange to say the least but whatever. It's not the first time my body has acted out of the norm.

I was so preoccupied with the Metallica concert and we spent a small chunk of money on it that we're not doing elaborate costumes this year. The Monkey is going to dress up as a rock star and I'm going to be his groupie. Heh. I'm considering making us look zombie-fied in some way to make it more Halloween-ish. We shall see.

There is really nothing exciting in my life to speak of. My niece is turning two next month. TWO! My nephews will be 15 and 7. Soon after I'll be turning 29. Almost 30 and still no babies. [sigh] It's a good thing I know plenty of ladies that are in their 40s and having babies. We have to elect new benefits this month. VZW is changing things and will no longer be offering Cigna. I think this could be a good thing. The fertility coverage is different. The new coverage offers treatment of the underlying condition causing the infertility (meaning the PCOS, thyroid disorder, endo, and everything else) but it also covers fertility services (specifically IUI) at 50%. Which is way better than 0% obviously! It's a nice addition and will hopefully come in very handy. Someday. But someday is still pretty far away so I'm going to force myself not to think about it. At all. Ever. [sigh]

Friday I took The Monkey to have his eyes checked after he got a migraine that lasted for about four days. (Well, the migraine pain lasted about a day and a half; the residual pain continued for another two and a half days after.) The Monkey never gets headaches. Well, almost never. But, when he does, they are exclusively migraine in nature. And they are always preceded by an aura (blurry vision) and we can usually use that to get pain meds in him before the pain becomes too much to deal with. We did okay this time, but he had some trouble with bright lights and wound up wearing a hat and dark sunglasses at work. (He's doing everything in his power to keep an impeccable attendance record. It comes down to job security and raises and blah blah blah...) Being the concerned (and intuitive) wife that I am, I scheduled him an appointment with a local optometrist. It was quite the ordeal and the one that got us in was the last one on our list of in network providers. One of the nice things about our medical coverage with VZW is that we have vision coverage. And, as it turns out, said coverage is actually pretty spectacular. After The Monkey's exam (which took over an hour) the optometrist said that he is far sighted. Not horribly so but since he's getting older his eye muscles are wanting to over-compensate for his vision impairment less and less. And the subsequent muscle strain of staring at a computer screen for eight to ten hours a day at work and then coming home and playing World of Warcraft for another three or four is taking its toll. Simply put: his muscles don't care to keep up with his demands anymore. So, glasses it is. They dilated his pupils (of course) so afterwards not only did he look like he'd dropped acid (or taken a couple of hits of Ecstasy) he also had horribly blurred vision for the next few hours. He bickered and complained when we tried to get him to pick out frames. We ("we" being the nurse and me) picked out a few pair and had him model. The first pair turned out to be our favorite. And, luckily, also the cheapest. The frames were $139.99. Then we went over lense options. VSP would've paid 100% of the lens cost if we'd gone with plastic. But plastic is notoriously heavy and scratches easily. So we paid the extra $25 for the polycarbonate. Our plan paid $115 for the frames and then an additional 20% off the remaining cost. So we paid something ridiculously silly for an otherwise pricey pair of frames; $18 if I remember right. Then the $25 for the lenses; $25 for our optometrist office visit copay; $20 for our medical copay (since she looked at the vessels in his eyes to be sure that the problem wasn't something brain related). Total cost: $89. Uh... I paid $200ish for my glasses two years ago! And that's not including the multiple visits to my opthamalogist. (I have other eye 'issues' that require me to see an opthamalogist instead of an optometrist.) So I'm glad that is resolved. We're hoping the glasses get here quickly but the lady did say 10 - 14 business days. UGH. (I also paid a little extra for convenience. I ordered and paid for and walked out with my new glasses within a couple of hours.)

My life is just full of excitment. It's high time that I schedule an appointment with a new psychiatrist. And a new therapist. I should also schedule an appointment with a specialist about my elbow. I'm still dealing with quite a bit of pain in my right elbow. It's been a good five months since this started. It was getting better until about two weeks ago when it started to get bad again. I refuse to just "deal" with the pain anymore.