Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Category: stay at home dad (Page 7 of 11)

Stay at home dad stuff, domestic tasks

Migraines and Laundry, Which is Worse? part 2

March 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

As I started yesterday, This is part 2 of my migraine journey and latest stay at home dad info.  And Journey just came on the radio, Any Way You Want It is AWESOME!  part 1 is Here

Admittedly, laundry sucks and it is not my favorite thing but if I don’t do it, there are no clean clothes.  No, the wife can’t do it, she works and now she is pregnant with number 4 so her energy is gone.  I am not complaining about doing laundry I just don’t like to.  But I went to fold the 3 loads I had washed.  About that time I got what I call the “numb bubble” again.

The numb bubble is one of my migraine clues.  It is not the scientific term but it is my term.  It is a strange feeling, complete numbness in a “sphere” roughly the size of a baseball that moves.  It usually starts in my fingers and “travels” through my hand, up my arm, and through my face.  That is the worst part, it is like being on lots of novacaine but it moves.  And it sucks.

If you just think that a migraine is a really bad headache, there is much more to it, usually.  I have read about migraines lately and there are different types but most have some sort of “aura” associated with them.  That is the type I have.

Since I was about 12 I have had migraines but didn’t have them diagnosed until something like 14 years ago when my girlfriend (now wife of 13 years) the nursing student (now Nurse) told me what my “sickness” actually was.  I used to wake up in the middle of the night with the “numb bubble” in full swing and the visual aura happening.  I would think, “Oh great I am sick again.”  I didn’t know all of what was happening but I knew that I would be throwing up a few times with a bad headache to go with it.  And then I would be fine later.  I believe to this day that my parents thought I was faking because I was better later.

I got medication at the hospital thanks to my girlfriend and from there it has helped to alleviate the symptoms before they led to the vomiting stage.  I still have the numb bubble but much less now, mostly just the visual aura that tells me the migraine is coming.  I have tried to explain that visual aura to people and I think I will try to do it in the next post.

Later

Justin

Continue to part 3 Here

Why I stay home, part 2

March 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Hello again.  Guess what? I broke my visitor record yesterday and I like it.  Today I feel like doing the Rocky and Bullwinkle thing.  “When we last left you Frostbite Falls was falling into …”   The real from yesterday, I was talking about how I quit working to go back to school and ended up with a 1 year old in the hospital for Kidney Failure.

Today we will start there.  For 16 weeks I went back an forth between the hospital with my wife and 1 year old, and home with my 7 and 5 year olds.  School had not started for the little one so babysitters were plentiful for a few hours each day.  That kind of contradicted our “We will raise our kids” mantra but it couldn’t be helped.  I was still home with them at night and as much as I could be.

After she got out of the hospital, she didn’t have kidney’s any more.  The disease that she had was a genetic mutation and required removal of both kidney’s before they became cancerous.  Without kidney’s my little one year old needed dialysis daily.  At first I took her 20 miles every day to the University of Utah to get dialysis.  We tried dialysis at home but it didn’t work after 3 months of trying.

As of September 2007 she needed dialysis 4 times per week and it was my job to take her.  My wife had to work to keep the insurance that was paying for all of this.  One month of dialysis treatments was almost $22, 000.  Insurance is good.  There was no way that I could make enough money to pay the mortgage and no way I could get insurance to cover her medical bills.  They ended up at around $900,000 for 2007.

So my job was to take the baby to dialysis and be the stay at home parent for the other kids so my wife could work.  That lasted 2 years to the day and I cannot for the life of me decide why I never got into blogging before.  I had looked into several “make money on the internet with my scam” programs but didn’t find anything useful.  I had heard about blogs, I was writing several times per month on a blog (I didn’t put the two together before.  I had a blog in my thoughts as a bad thing).  That whole time in the hospital and through dialysis to her kidney transplant is all recorded at www.carepages.com with pagename ameliarosematthews.  That should have been a clue to me that I could do something else and blog elsewhere.

Now all of the doctor visits are once a month and not too big of a deal to get to.  I am still home taking care of the house because I still haven’t finished school.  We are trying to decide now what to do in July when baby #4 comes.  I think I will have to work for a while to pay the bills and leave the wife home and maybe I can get back to school.  That is why I have started working so hard here, on this blog.

I can see there is money making potential.  I don’t need much, just to be able to pay the bills and some tuition to an online college.  I still want to stay home.  Who in their right mind wants to go work if they don’t have to?  If it takes 3 months to start being successful as a blogger, then I am 1 month into it.  I have taken loads of expert advice and I think I am doing the things that need to be done.  I love to write and am still writing a couple of books but they are not going to be published any time soon.

I think I have what it takes to break that 3 month “barrier” and be successful.  I don’t have many distractions, no work to get to or a pile of things to do.  I will still be here in April, well past 3 months, and then well past then.  And I plan on making money about that point so that I can still stay home.

I am a stay at home dad.  I am a blogger.  I will be good and successful at both.

Prioritizing and following through.

November 11, 2013 / / 6 Comments

Image Copyright Futuristic FunkaHunk from Flickr

I have been sitting here all morning reading blog posts and crap from around the net.  I am having a hard time focusing on writing.  I need more sleep.   Jefferson Airplane is good tunes to write to.

Today, I have several things that I simply must get done.  I have been running around to various functions, doctors appointments and Transplant Clinics since Saturday.  As a result, my house is falling apart!  You may have read my stay at home dad stuff before, so that is why it is my responsibility to get it back together.  I am home to do it.

And then the Hooters come on.  And We Danced is one of my all time favorite songs.  See that is what today has been.  distraction after distraction.  Music is off.

Back to my point.  I don’t know if I ever made it but, Prioritizing must be important because there are over 2,480,000 entries on google about it.  I am not good at prioritizing but maybe I should be.

I have the proverbial planner that barely gets looked at.  I have a notecard in my pocket right now with all of the great and fabulous things that I need to do today.  I was conservative and not including making dinner, there were 8 things on my list.

I have done 2 things off of this list.  I guess I should have added Bath 3 year old, play dough with 3 year old, potty training sessions and my list would have been longer with more crossed off.

I look at this list and think all of the things on it should be Steven Covey’s number 1 priority.  I however, do not have 12 arms or 2 bodies to accomplish all of these things at once.  So I disregard priorities and  go for sequence.  What sequence can I be most efficient.  I guess dishes come before laundry because they stink.

I should hire a maid but that would mean I need to sell a hell of a lot more articles than I am right now.  So I am going to call this post finished.  For now.  I think I will revisit this topic at a later time.

I am working on the challenge put out on Zemalf’s Microblog to write 2 weeks worth of posts to keep in reserve for days like this.  That means 10 posts and not the three I have been working towards.  I am putting it out here and in writing so I will have some accountability and hopefully, will complete this soon.

I am going to write more tonight.  I hope to at least be 1 day ahead at all times.  If I can write tonight what will post in the morning then I can post at the same time each day and that can’t be bad right?

Join the fun and write lots of extra posts!  If all else fails you can be like James at the Infopreneur and post 2-3 per day until your supply runs out!

Until later, Cheers

Justin

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