Smattering smorgasbord of stuff

1. So, tonight is the 2nd night of the FPU at our church at 7:00. Let me tell you, the whole budget part has been fairly scary. Actually seeing what is going out vs. what we have coming in is not pretty. At least we're not under, but we have nothing to spare either. My friend at work who teaches this asked to see our budget and he made some suggestions as to where to cut back for right now, but still it doesn't give us much extra. He also said that it's fine and dandy for me to have done the budget but that Oscar needs to sit down and do it too so that it actually sinks in to his brain the importance of what we have (or don't have) to work with. Really looking forward to what this course can teach us.

2. Thank GOD for progesterone. I never really stopped bleeding after the miscarriage on May 9 and over the past 10 days it has gotten just astonishingly worse in a big way. Thanks to lab work I found out that by this point I'm severely anemic. The same thing happened after I had Emily – for 7 months, but I was just fine after I had Nate. Basically what it amounts to is that my hormones are all jacked up – progesterone levels are far too low to regulate anything. Unfortunately, when this happens to me the only way to regulate anything hormonally out of whack with my body, barring surgery, is with . . . some kind of hormone, but I absolutely cannot take birth control pills b/c of my high blood pressure – it would send it SOARING to even scarier levels! So my OBGYN called in a prescription of progesterone yesterday and it already is sooooo much better. Like 90% better. In a couple of days I should be (hopefully) a-ok and will have stopped bleeding altogether. I'm looking forward to our tubing trip on the 26th, so this had BETTER be stopped by then. It's supposed to be stopped by this weekend with the elevated dose of progesterone I'm taking. I'm also looking forward to not being so extremely anemic, which is a big cause of my lethargy of late.

3. So, I've only had my computer for about 2 years and the HD crashed on me Sunday night. A very awesome friend looked at it yesterday and said the HD went kaput. The disk wouldn't even spin on it. Replacing the HD is not very much money and he was kind enough to do that after I got it, but in order to retrieve the data on the former HD it's going to mean going to some place here in town and cost roughly $300-500, of which I can't even begin to come up with right now. Seeing as how ALL of Em's pics from her birth through now and ALL of Nate's pics are on there, along with numerous documents I've created/collected over the years, I'm going to have to pay it somehow. I had Em's pics through 2 years ago and quite a few docs on a thumb drive, but I'm not sure if I can find it now - that's what I used to get the info off of the old computers, so if I can't find it, then Em's early childhood is gone without the mondo expensivo retrieval off the HD.

This has really driven home the importance of having a backup storage - which I've researched and the best one I've found with ringing endorsements is Carbonite - unlimited storage for $55 a year. It seems to be the one that a lot of people use and recommend, including quite a few of my friends.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. Mine's been a little stressful, but nothing that a good hot bath, a cold glass of wine and a bit of time in prayer won't cure.