Thump thump...thump thump.....

So I've been a bit paranoid since Thursday morning.
I woke up with quite a pain, right in the middle of my chest. I've never had anything like that before. I knew it wasn't breathing-related, because I used to have mild asthma, and it wasn't like that. It kept me awake for over an hour.

Later that night, I was nauseous. And for days I'd been breaking out in clammy, cold sweats, especially at night.

Nervous, I began googling with a list of my symptoms. And guess what came back? About 18,000 sites about heart attack signs in women. I thought for sure if I wasn't already having one that I was surely going to after seeing that information. Since google isn't always right, I called my doctor. He asked me a bunch of questions and then said that yes, I very well might be having heart issues. He told me to take an aspirin. If it helped, he suggested I should probably come see him if the pain came back. The aspirin helped.

So now I'm all paranoid. My family has a history of heart disease. I'm only 34 and I take relatively good care of myself. I try to eat right (except for the occasional piece of chocolate that calls my name) and I exercise. But maybe that's not enough.

I haven't had the pain since Friday, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I will likely schedule an appointment and get the once-over by my doctor to see if he can find anything wrong. But until then, I fully intend to panic.

All of this is enough to make my chest hurt. :(

I'm coming out.....

Not that kind of out. :)

And actually, it's not me who's coming out. It's Connor. He's coming right out of his shell.

One of his biggest issues with his PDD-NOS is his lack of appropriate social behavior with other kids. He loves to be around other kids, but he seems to have no idea how to actually interact with them.

Today, we had a playdate with my friend and her little girl, who is about 5 months younger than Connor. We've had playdates before, but he's never been much interested in her. Not today. He was holding her hand, talking to her, and at the end of the playdate, he actually asked her "Rachel, you want to have lunch?" It was sooooooooo cute I almost cried. He even hugged and kissed her goodbye.

For the first time in a long time, I felt totally encouraged by his progress today.

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A blast from the past

So I was sitting here, waiting to do a phone interview for work, and my phone rang. It scared me so bad, I almost fell off my chair. But that's not the interesting part, although it was pretty funny to see me jump a mile high over the ringing phone. At least my cat was amused, anyway.

I always check caller ID before I answer. We get some really weird calls for the people who used to have this phone number. So now, if I don't know the number, I don't answer. Well, I didn't recognize the number. But something told me to answer it. So I did.

It was an old friend that I haven't seen in over 5 years. In fact, I think the last time I saw her was at my wedding. We've been friends since the 4th grade, but once I got married and moved away, I admit, we drifted apart. Some of that was my fault, but some of it was hers, too.

While it was great to hear from her, I felt a bit awkward at first. My friend was always a little abrasive when it came to asking personal questions. Within the first 5 minutes of our call, she had asked if my child was "normal," if my marriage was on the rocks or if it was OK and if I was happy with my freelancing job. When I answered all of those things in the positive sense, she seemed disappointed. Then she flat out asked me if I was unhappy in any way, like she needed me to be miserable or something. It just seemed....odd. Yes, I have some challenging situations going on right now. But I wouldn't say I'm miserable and depressed. It was like my friend was hoping I was miserable and depressed. It was very weird. But then I remembered that that was just who she was, always prying and always asking for information that most people would recognize was not within the normal comfort zone of conversation. I accepted it a long time ago. But I had definitely forgotten what it was like to be grilled about my happiness. Hopefully the next time she calls, we can focus more on the positive than the negative.

Yes, I'm a sucker.....

See this really cute looking cat? Well, it's mine. Sort of.

About 3 weeks ago, my kitty, Gabe, woke me up at 3 a.m., yowling like a crazy cat. I'd never heard him do that before. So I went downstairs to see what was up and also to shut him up before he woke up Connor. He was glued to the patio door, carrying on like I'd never seen him carry on before. So I looked outside. There, crouched in the corner, was a small black cat with the greenest eyes I'd ever seen. They were so bright and green it was actually kind of creepy. So I pulled Gabe away from the patio door and went back to bed.

The next morning. the poor thing was still huddled on my porch, looking really confused. And hungry. At one point, it tried to lick the old grease off my grill. So, being the animal lover that I am, I decided to take it out some food. Yeah, I know, mistake number 1. But it's just who I am, to love animals like that. When I was a little girl, I used to regularly have several cats and dogs in our yard. Some of them were ours, some of them were the neighbors and some of them, I had no idea where they came from. But they flocked to me because I gave them food, love and attention. It used to drive my mom crazy.

But I knew I had made the right decision with our new kitty once I got outside and got close to it. It was awful. I could count every last one of its ribs. It clearly hadn't eaten anything in a long time. It wouldn't let me get very close, so I put out some food and water and went back inside. It ate every last morsel.

I have seen the kitty now every day, sometimes twice a day. I always give it food and water and I can now sit pretty close to it while it eats. I hope to gain its trust enough that I can maybe scoop it up and take it to the vet to make sure it is OK. I suspect it's a female, because if it were a male, my cat would be all territorial. As it stands now, he's just very happy to see our new kitty every day. And I'm sure this won't be a shock to anyone who knows me, but Gabe used to be a stray himself. We rescued him when we lived in Zelienople. We found him eating birdseed and huddling under cars to stay warm. Poor thing. He wasn't much more than a kitten then. Now, he's a fat, 14-pound happy cat. :)

We've started calling the new kitty Shadow, which I guess is good whether it's a boy or girl. Even if it never lets me get close enough to verify its gender, or even pet it, I'll continue to feed the poor thing. After all, God made all creatures, big and small, and I'm sure He sent this one for me to take care of and love.

Consider yourself warned......

I got an email about the latest scam to get your private information the other day. Now, I must get tons of chain emails a day, talking about this kind of stuff, but this one seemed familiar, so I called the FBI myself to ask about it. They did confirm it is a real scam, so I wanted to warn everyone, because jury duty is one of those things that scares us all since the penalties for shirking it are steep. Here's the message:

The FBI has put out this warning about a serious phone scam that steals people's identity. The caller tries to get you to think that you have skipped out on jury duty and there is an arrest warrant for you. They then ask for personal information in order to "clear" your arrest warrant. Go here to read more:

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

All these scams are getting scary. The other day, I had someone call pretending to be from Nielson Media Group. Anyone who knows about this group knows that they never call to ask you to participate. They send out mailers about it, asking you to sign them and return them if you want to participate. I thought it was weird this woman was calling, but I knew it was weird when she started asking for personal information that had nothing to do with my television viewing.

Just be careful everyone. Scammers think of some new way every day to rip us off.....

You don't know what you've got......

.....until you haven't had access to it for a few days.

That's the case with my husband's car. He was involved in a minor accident 3 weeks ago. Some kid tried to actually pass him on the right while he was stopped at a 3-way stop sign on one of our back roads here. The kid clearly was not paying attention and driving erratically, but that's a rant for another time. The result is he side-swiped my husband, denting the back door panel on the right side, leaving a huge scrape down that entire side and for a finale....he knocked off the passenger side mirror. The damage is costing $1700+ to fix. Thankfully, the guy's insurance company got him to agree to pay. For awhile, he was fighting us on that, which also is a rant for another time.

Anyway, the Saturn has been in the shop since Monday. They told us it'd take three days to fix. Well, here we are on day four, and the car still isn't done. I chauffeured my husband to work Monday and Tuesday, which was a royal pain in the bum. Yesterday and today, he is riding with a nice guy from our church (thanks Rick!) who happens to work just a stone's throw from where my husband's current contract job is located.

All of this has been a challenge for us. We never realized how much we took having two cars for granted until one of them wasn't available.

Hurry back, Saturn! We miss you!