It has been a LONG time since I've visited this page. So much has happened in the past year and a half.
We had a surprise Happy Birthday, Congratulations (on retiring) and We'll Miss You! party for Carol Morgenstern last night. Tami F and her daughter Heaven were instrumental in putting it all together. We planned this over a month ago and picked 10/17 as the best date for everyone. It gave us time to organize, it was the week before her kids come up to take all her furnishings back home to Livermore and was between her actual birthday (10/12) and her retirement date (10/30). Sounds good, right?
Since the inception of the "party" and the actual happening a lot of monkey wrenches kept popping up.
I had small cancer scare (uterine lining cells are becoming abnormal-technically endometrial hyperplasia atypia which is actually pre-cancerous) resulting in various tests and procedures with the end result being a hysterectomy which will take place on November 2.
I also had a sleep study done because I am ALWAYS tired in the morning and have been for years. Told most of my life that I'm lazy ... turns out I have sleep apnea and have probably had it for 50+ years. I actually had 2 studies done because I could NOT fall asleep for the first one. Had to have a "sleep aide" (read drugs) for the second one. Slept fine! But required two nights at the hospital for the study, appointment for getting the CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine and trying to learn to live with 10 pounds of air pressure being shoved up my nose while sleeping~! Still working on that one.
At work our little group of 3 comprising the Telephony team were in an office by ourselves, but there are new positions being created for Service Point so they need our office for a director and we had to move across to the other side of the building out in the open .. no more privacy. My co-workers, being guys, moved their equipment and were all good. Leaving behind all the phone cords on the floor and the extraneous stuff we'd collected over the past year. Typical men. Don't know who they thought was going to clean up all of that! ME -- besides moving all of my junk, and I do collect a bit of junk. :)
Not only was there moving involved at work, but Commercial is changing the format of their operation and their changes require telephony changes which made our team sort of at the forefront. They are "going live" on Monday which meant many extra hours of work for the preparation, working last Friday until 9:30 and having to work Saturday morning, the day of Carol's party!
During ALL of this, I'm also packing up my bedroom and bathroom because movers are coming on the 24th to take all my furniture to Tigard. I'm renting a room from a wonderful lady I met at work. She lives in Gresham with her new husband, but still owns a home in Tigard where she stays a couple nights a week to shorten her commute. She's happy to have me there so someone will be there when she isn't and I'm happy to have a place to live that I can still afford. Unfortunately this requires a lot of time to pack up and move the boxes down 2 flights of stairs. I've been taking most of the boxes over to the new house on the weekend. That was before I'd decided to hire a moving company. They said it will take only 2 hours to move my furniture so I may throw in the boxes too. It will be worth the extra $$.
So in the midst of all this stress, we're having Carol's surprise party. Tami and Heaven did most of the work, and Tami asked me to pick up the cake from Costco. We were going to do it together, but she was unable to get away and Heaven was sick, sick, sick. She had the pickup scheduled for Saturday but I had to work Saturday from 9-1 and I was supposed to go to a baby shower at 2, then Carol's party at 6. I changed the pick-up to Friday after 4:00 .. turns out I had to work Friday until 9:30 pm! I took a break at 4:00 and got the cake and Tami was going to send Heaven to pick it up from me. Nope. Heaven was still sick. Tami was still unable to get away (taking care of a sick friend) and it was now past 6:30 pm and no one who would be going to the party was still in the office. *sigh*
Talk about stress.
I put the cake in my trunk (didn't want Carol to see it by mistake!) and on Saturday after I got off work, I ran the cake over to the hotel (Heaven works at a local hotel and was able to get one of the conference rooms for our party) but was now very late for the baby shower and I hadn't get purchased a gift. I was unravelling and decided I'd have to be a no-show for the shower. I still needed to pack some boxes for crying out loud! I was also supposed to fix some bbq shredded beef for the party but I didn't get it into the crock pot on time (we had it for dinner tonight though!)
My sister assures me once I start getting oxygen in my lungs and body every night via my CPAP I'll be able to think and plan ahead like a normal person. I was seriously getting an average of 2 to 3 hours sleep every night. And not all at the same time. Sleep apnea causes one to cease breathing while asleep and the brain wakes you up just enough to kick start your breathing. Then you'll have another apnea episode, wake up, breathe, go back to sleep, stop breathing, wake up...etc. For the past umpteen years I've been a fairly high functioning chronically tired (as in sleep-deprived) person. It explains so much. So while I'm not crazy about being hooked up to the machine and having to wear an unsightly mask every night, I'm looking forward to the moment when I get a full night's sleep!
All of this was to tell you that the party was a great success!! In spite of all the silly monkey wrenches. Carol was completely surprised. Told her I was dropping some clothes off for Heaven because they were having a clothing drive at her workplace. When we walked in the door to the room most of the lights were off and the minute she walked in they hollered SURPRISE. She cried. It was great. A lot of fun.

Today Carol and I took a drive to the Oregon coast town of Astoria. Walked around a bit, did a little shopping and back home. It was a restful way to spend the day...so now back to work. I have boxes to pack!! Where the heck did all these books come from . . . . .