Manda's Mundane Memoirs

Been a long, winding road

2009-09-12T10:53:00.003-05:00

Ok,
It has been since June 17 that I updated last, a while I know. Lots has happened since I updated Last. I will start with what I talked about last. Robin had her baby. It was a baby girl named Wanetta Marie Johnston. She weighed 7 lbs 2 oz. Since her tiny little life emerged July 10, 2009, they have since discovered she has Cystic Fibrosis. Turns out that Robin and Travis are both carriers of the disease and baby Wanetta has it. They are doing the genetic mapping tests now to find out the severity of it.

On to what has, at times taken my sanity. My mother became ill with some wounds in her groin area around the last part of june. She went into the hospital down in florida on July 3, 2009. She quickly slipped into a coma and went into multiple organ failure because of internal infection. She became septic and quite a few of her organs shut down. We also learned at this time that she was a diabetic and was not taking care of it and had not told anyone. Her blood sugar upon admittance was 951. How she was still concious that day i will never understand.

Anyway, they had to do several several surgical removals called debridments of the dead tissue around the sores. Eventually the size of the hole was 12 inches by 13 inches by 5 inches deep and it wasnt slowing down. At this point they said she has atleast 2 more surgeries to get it all and that is not a guarantee. She had been on life support for a month now. They said that what could happen is the infection could travel up her spinal cord and get into her brain and she would be brain dead.

She was in excruciating pain. She could not communicate but they could tell she was hurting. Jim (her husband) went in one day and even though she was in a coma, she was crying. That was enough for him and they decided that after the major surgery that made that big hole, that if that wasnt it, they were going to remove her from life support.

It was the morning of august 1, 2009 at about 11 am central time when they removed her from life support and made her comfortable. We all thought it would be rather quick and sudden that she would pass but it wasnt. She held on for near 16 hours before she slipped silently into sleep and passed. That was the morning of August 2, 2009. She was 46 years old.

Never in my whole entire life did I think that I would loose my mother at this age. I know that everyone has to die, but did it have to be her and at this point in her life? I loved her with all my heart and I kick myself daily for not calling her a hundred times a day and telling her that. I feel now as if I missed so many opportunities to spend time with her and love her like i should of and I didnt. I am here to tell you now that you should never ever take any loved ones for granted because you never know when they will be gone. They may live what seems like forever and then maybe not. 46 is a young age to pass and it is not fair but remember to love all of your loved ones more than you think you should because there will come a day when you cant do that!

I LOVE YOU MOM!

Ok, so it has been almost a year since i updated

2009-06-17T15:48:00.006-05:00

I know it has been a long time but I had moved in at my grandmas house to help take care of her. She has had several small strokes and other health issues that sometimes renders her unable to care for herself. Well recently the situation has changed to where I was able to move back to my dads house and live here again. So I can now blog more often.

SO on to better things. The big news that is still coming, i had blogged about a while ago, my friend Robin and her fiance' Travis are expecting a little girl. They found out in the middle of march that she is having a baby girl. She is due July 12, 2009. She is to be named Wanetta Marie after Robins aunt. It is an Irish name. All has gone relatively well with the pregnancy thus far besides the normal swollen feet and sore back. Robin has had some issues with her hips spreading and making her sore. She has done well until the other day, she had to be admitted to the hospital for observation. She had begun having contractions and her blood pressure was pretty high. She went in to Stormont-Vail Hospital and they told her they thought she was having contractions, which were a minute long and 3 minutes apart, because she was dehydrated. They decided to admit her, though they didnt say it, because they were concerned about pre-eclampsia. She was there overnight and part of the next day while they made her drink until she could pee constatnly and they sampled her urine every time. They monitered her contractions until they stopped and waited for her blood pressure to go down. When all came back ok after her 24 hours, they let her go home. She only has a little while left and is getting anxious already. I am so proud of her. Her and Travis will make wonderful parents and I cant wait to see that beautiful little girl! Best of luck to both of you. I love all of you!

Another topic.... Doggies!!! I am now back with all 3, Bitty, Reese and Buddie... And boy did i miss them. Here is some updated pictures of the crew:

Here are all 3 of the hounds waiting on a bite of Lisha's breakfast! Moochs'!

And here is Bitty being true to her bitchey self, but what she is actually saying is "why do you fucking humans insist on dogs taking baths!"

Outside doing her business one afternoon. Looks like she is out "walking miss daisy"

HEY, LOOK AT ME!!! Lol, got a little close to the camera!

Here is Bubba and his prize winning gut! He worked on that one with some old dough nuts out of the trash this very morning!

And here the bum is sleeping with his baby. This is what he does best!

NO MOM NOOOOO!!! I WILL NEVER ROLL IN SQUIRREL SHIT AGAIN I SWEAR!!! Bad part is, we were only wanting him to take a drink and cool off!

Here is my hooligan. He was so asleep lish was able to pry his mouth open and he didnt wake, he just left it like that!

Here is Reese doing what he does the cutest... we call him spy dog. He doesnt move his head sometimes, he uses his eyes very well. It is adorable!

And here is the circle wagger outside waiting for his 2-1-12-12 as we are now forced to call it. He has now learned to spell ball and know what it is and knows the word as well as b-word. We cant say or spell any of those or he gets excited and wont leave you alone.... BTW 2-1-12-12 is the order in which B-A-L-L is in the alphabet!
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Well thats it with the dogs for now. Other than that I cant say much other than we do have a small garden planted. We will have cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and watermellons this fall sometime if all goes well. Oh and i do have a twitter now, it is twitter.com/aflower13. Come check it out!

I love you all and happy gardening to those who know what im talking about
love,
amanda

Been busy...again!!!

2008-07-28T22:38:00.002-05:00

I know that i havent been the most avid poster but hey, I try!!! So anyways, I wanted to give you guys a update on whats been going on. First off, I want to start with congratulations....

I want to congratulate my uncle Pete and aunt Renee. You can see her blog on my links to the right. Their son, my cousin Josh and his girlfriend Shannon have gotten engaged. I know that his parents are so proud and that Shannon makes Josh so happy. Congratulations to the both of you!

I want to congratulate my Mother, Ellen. You can see her blog on my links to the right as well. She has finally completed her surgeries for her kidneys. She is now done getting the stones removed. At least for a long while. I am glad to see her finally get through that because it was hard for her. She keeps the little mile stones though. Like today (possible tmi ahead) she called me and told me about the scab falling off of her incision. Its the little things that count and make her day. Remember Mom I am always here to listen or whatever you need. Congrats on getting through the tough things! (and everything else)

I want to congratulate my friend Robin and her boyfriend Travis. They recently got engaged and announced her pregnancy. She is so excited to be a mother and have Travis in her life for forever. She told my sister and I that we will be her bridesmaides. I am so excited for them and only wish them the best! Congratulations to the THREE of you!!!

I know it is a rather small accomplishment but, my brother won a race for his RC cars last weekend. He was rather excited about it and I am happy for him. Congrats Chris and keep on racin' on!!!

OK...I think that is it for the congratulations. Now for more updates. Some of you may be wondering how baby Jaeden is since he was such a big part of my posts previously. Well he is now 4 weeks and 3 days old. I havent seen him recently but I cant believe how fast it goes. He will be dating before we all know it.

Next, I have been filling my time recently taking care of my grandmother. She is doing ok. She has her good days and bad days but I guess thats what family is for. While I have been down there I have been doing a little sewing on her sewing machine. The other day I made a plastic grocery sack holder. It is made from 1 dish towel and some fabric and stitched to look like a little dress. As soon as I get the batteries to the camera charged I will take pictures of it and post it here. I am very very proud of it. I think I did a great job for basically a first timer.

SO...other than that I believe thats all that has been going on with me recently. Hope all is well with you all!

Amanda

I know I am posting alot but

2008-07-19T23:48:00.004-05:00

I wanted to create a post that talked a little bit about what my brother has been doing and about my slight love of the lake shawnee rose garden and photography. So here goes...

My brother Chris is rather involved in RC (remote control) car racing. He goes every sunday to a track in kansas city and races points races against other racers in the area. He has several cars and has even gotten into making his own bodies and bodies for other racers. He goes to my uncles shop and uses his vinyl cutter to letter the cars and make them look "purdy". He is the best racer in my opinion but hey I am biased. Here is a pic of one of his cars. Rather old but hey...

Here is a car of Chirs'. I dont know
how long ago this was or what class or
whatever it was but this is the one pic I could
find of a car that I knew was actually his.

And here is my big burly brother having
a cute tender moment with Buddie. Buddie
was deathly afraid of Chris' quad because
of the noise it made when he started it...
So Chris was trying to get him to not be scared!

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NOW ON TO THE MORE GIRLY STUFF!!!

My sister, Buddie and I went out one day to the Rose Gardens at Lake Shawnee to get some R & R and kind of kick back and enjoy the sites. Well we decided to take some pictures of ourselfs and the scenery. Some of them turned out pretty nice. So I am going to post some of them here.

Thats what I am posting so far. I hope you liked them because we are pretty satisfied with them. It is absolutely gorgeous there and we will be doing more sometime in the future!

been busy lately

2008-07-19T23:16:00.004-05:00

I have been rather busy lately, my sister and I have been taking care of my grandmother and getting her back and forth to her doctors appointments and physical/occupational therapy appointments. She came home from the hospital almost 2 weeks ago. So that has been rather time consuming. We have also been having problems with our cell phone service. We decided to switch companies. So we got our phones shut off yesterday because the new phones were supposed to be here the day before. So I called them to ask where the phones were since there was not even a tracking number on the internet for them yet. They NOW...JUST NOW told us that the phones are on back order and that we are just supposed to wait for them. So that made me rather mad. But on to other things.

I have been interviewing for a job at a company called Kids Stuff Marketing Inc. It is a company that manufactures and distributes kids meal toys, kids meal bags and boxes, cups, straws, place mats, point of purchase displays and other sorts of things like that. They are not really with any of the bigger companies like McDonalds. They do smaller ones like the restaurant here called The Pad, Spangles and maybe places like Bo Bo's diner. I am rather hopeful for this job. I have had my second interview and am waiting to hear back about a third interview or rather or not they will hire me. I would be making mostly outbound calls with a few inbound calls to people who are interested in the products or people that already use them so i can try to get them to extend their use of kids stuff products. It is a small family oriented place that only has 3 or 4 customer service reps right now, including the manager. I would make pretty good money there but it is quite a bit of a drive because it is basically in Pauline. Since gas is 4 dollars a gallon that is going to suck if I get it but it wont be too bad because I will have a job good enough to pay for the gas. So good luck to me I suppose. I am REALLY WANTING THIS JOB!!!

On to...The dogs...yeah the ones at the other post in my blog that look so cute, got on the kitchen table (well reese did) and got into the instant mashed potatoes that were on there, knocked over a glass of pop and got into the soft peppermint bucket. WE WERE FURIOUS. So we had to come home to clean that up...Nice of them huh?

Here are some more pictures of them for your enjoyment...

This is Little Bitt (Bitty) and Reese laying
in Lisha's lap sleeping together. This is rare
that Reese is that quite and still and that
Bitty lets any of the dogs touch her!

Here is Reese again on a different day
between my legs. He always gets like that.
He has such long legs that he has to fold them
up like that and he looks like a dork!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to present
Sir Peanut Butter of Jellyville...LOL
thats his full name I guess but we call him
Buddie or Bubba/Bubba Gump (because of his
obvious underbite). He was all dressed for his
hot date with some girl...lol...he wont tell!!!

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And I know she might kill me but I am putting up this picture of her because it is a really good one of her and Buddie. For those of you who don't know me, this is my sister Alicia (lish(a)). Buddie is her dog. They were sitting together and she woke him up from his nap and we took this picture. I thought it was a really good one. Hope you all like it too.

Mother-Son love!!! :-)

More time with Jaeden!

2008-07-06T18:33:00.003-05:00

My sister and I got to spend more time with Jaeden yesterday the 5th of July. He is so cute and I cant wait until he gets a personality of his own! He is so precious. We took Diana the little mirror thing for her car that had a toy attached to it for Jaeden. We also took her the Star that we had named after him. That was pretty cool. So he got his first at home bath yesterday and he was pretty angry about the whole situation but he got over it and he smelled all pretty when he was done. After it was over and he was dressed again, he was so awake and had his eyes open for quite a long time. We took a few pictures and here are a few of them:

Here he is with his eyes open. This is the first
time i really saw them and they are a
beautiful color of dark blue...
gorgeous!!!

Here he is right before the bath. He is in his
little pooh bear bathtub. He didnt yet know
what was in store for him! Poor guy.
Notice the bruise on his forehead...

And here I am holding him after the bath.
He was so so so tired but he was fighting
it so bad because i think he realized how
much there was to look at around him :-)

So this was the few hours with the little cutie. I will update you when i know more. As you know children are ever changing and I will update as much as possible!!! Thanks for reading!

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th!!!

2008-07-05T11:58:00.007-05:00

I know I had a great time this 4th and I am hoping you all did as well! I spent the holiday at my aunt and uncles in Meriden. We got my grandma out of the hospital for a little while so that she could come up and see some of the fireworks. We all had grilled hot dogs, chips, dip, beans, potato and pasta salad and brownies. My brother invited his RC car buddy Lenny, his wife Marilyn and thier son Kyler. They all had a blast. My grandma left about 7 or 7:30. We all sat in the driveway watching the kids shoot off the little things. The smoke bombs, little roosters, snakes, snappers, those parachute guys, and the big hit was the race car rocket thing. All of the kids loved that. Once it got darker they started more on the sparklers and smaller fountain displays. Then after that All of the big kid fireworks got to go off. We had a whole bunch of mortar shells that they were setting off this year. I dont know how many we had but there were 14 tubes burried in the hill and there were still 6 more at my house! So I have taken some pictures of some of the large stuff and a couple of my cousin alyssa. I didnt have a real camera so all of these are off of my phone. The ones at the bottom are from the lake shawnee fireworks display. I did not go but I thought i would include them because it is such a hit here in town.

This is my cousin Alyssa and her Dad, my uncle
Frank. She is getting about her hundredth
round of sparkler lit.

Here she is playing with the 101st sparkler!

These are some of the large ones we did!

This one is really pretty. The 2 larger
flashes to the right were 2 of the mortar
shells going off at the same time i snapped
the picture.

These were really pretty. They were sort
of a purple color.

I think this was sort of durring our whole
"show finale". My Dad and his brothers
were pretty proud!

This one turned out kind of cool because
it is one of the few that I actually got
centered in the camera.

And this is absolutely my favorite one. I love
how well it turned out and how clean and
crisp the image is. Those are the purple ones
that I was talking about earlier.

LOL, kind of a little one big one bang!

This is one of the more colorful ones and
was a part of the end or Finale.

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All of the following fireworks images were
from the Lake Shawnee show that I did not
go to, but because I love images like this, I
had to post it.

I hope you liked all of the photos. Those are all I have. I hope that you had a wonderful night as well and a happy independence day to you all!

Updates for everyone...

2008-06-29T18:33:00.003-05:00

This has been a busy week. My sister and I have definately been on our toes. To start the week off, our mom had surgery as I posted below. She is now out of the hospital, home and doing fine. They think she will only have to have one more "look" to see if they got all the stones out of the "pockets" in her kidney. Other than that she is doing well. We went wednesday night and did a belly cast for our friend Diana. You can see the pictures of that at my sisters blog on the right. Its Alicia's blog. That was a total blast. During that whole night she began to have back pains which turned into labor. She went to the hospital thursday night where we joined her. She labored at the hospital for about 7 hours before she and her husband Mike were blessed with a beautiful baby boy named Jaeden James. He came in weighing 7lbs 2.2oz and 20 inches long. She did beautifully and they both created a beautiful little boy and I cant wait to spoil him. So we were there at the hospital and didnt come home until 8 am friday morning. We crashed until about 4pm when we got loaded up and went to see them again. We took him his little happy birthday bear thing and chatted with the proud mommy and daddy. It was wonderful. So we came home about 10 that night and cooked dinner for our dad and brother. We crawled to bed around midnight or 1 in the morning. Everything now is better and more evened out. Jaeden Diana and Mike got to come home this morning and now all is well. I cant wait to see him again. He is so precious and so perfect.

Jaeden James Mendes

Thanks for listening to my busy week!!

Amanda

Moms Surgery Tomorrow

2008-06-23T12:31:00.004-05:00

Hello everyone,

Today I am posting about my mom. Those of you who dont know me well may not know about my moms kidney problems. She has cystine kidney stones in both of her kidneys. She has already had 3 or 4 operations on her right kidney and is now starting with the left kidney. She is now on her way to Tuscon Arizona to have her first surgery on her left kidney tomorrow. There will more than likely be more than one surgery on the left kidney but we are hoping for only one. She posted this this morning:

"Well today (6/23/08) we are off to Tucson. SIGGHHHHHH. I have my surgery on 6/24/08 - I have to be there at 630am. They will insert a guide wire through my back and into my kidney. That is for the urologist which is the surgeon. They can then go down over the guide wire and go directly to my kidney and do their work. I'm hoping and praying that they will be able to get most of the stones out, but, I have to keep in the back of my mind that - that might not happen either. When I awake I will have a catheter coming out of my back - it is like a regular catheter, but it comes out of my back. They will leave this in, so in 2 weeks I'll go back again and do this all over again, until they get all these babies out of there. All through this I will be homebound and have a RN come into my house 2-3 a week and a bath lady also, she'll come 2-3 week also. I can't take a shower or bath, so she assists me getting cleaned up. I can't wash around the area, so she does it. But with the weather being like it is right now, I'm going to have to do something, cuz you HAVE to take a shower everyday cuz it is so hot. We have been averaging 115 degrees everyday for over a week now and there is no break coming either. Being at home all the time is very depressing but with all the support that I have it's ok. You get to missing going out and doing stuff, even if it is a ride in the car. (just try to ride in a car with a tube coming out of your back, believe me, it's hard) Last time, when we were coming home I leaned over and laid my head on the dashboard that is the most comfortable spot I could find. But the weather was way different then. Right now if I would do that I would be BEET red, cuz of the heat. So we'll see what will happen when I get home. So anyway, please think of me on Tuesday as I am very nervous.

Pray for me too please!

I love each and everyone of you.............take care and I'll keep you updated. Hopefully when I get on my feet I'll be able to come on and see what everyone has been up to.

XOXO-------Ellen"

Everyone please keep her in mind tomorrow as she will be very nervous and anxious about the surgery. Mom you know I love you and will be there for you if you need it. Keep your head up and remember we all love you!

Love always,
Your Kansas family
Amanda, Alicia, Chris and Buddie Gump

Going through some of my bookmarks

2008-06-22T21:52:00.002-05:00

Today I didnt quite know what I was going to tell you all I did because I didnt do much. Lisha got up and cooked us fried egg, bacon and cheese sandwiches and we sat around B.Sing with our dad until he left around 4 oclock pm to go to heartland park and watch the races. We left and got some dinner later and now here I am doing nothing again. So I have been dinking around on the internet for a while and decided to go through some of my bookmarks on here. So I am going to share some of the neat ones with you all!!!

Here is a link to the Museum of Modern Art Store. I enjoy strange and unusual furnishings and art. Here is a site that I can look at that on, cant afford it but hey i can dream!!!
http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/StoreCatalogDisplay_-1_10001_10451_

This is a site I like to use to edit my photos digitally so I can keep up with the times on myspace and make things look a little cooler...The 70s are back and so are the psychadelic colors. Enjoy and have fun with it!
http://www.blibs.com/editor/index.php?action=sketch

And last but not least, for the kid in all of us. This is a site where you can find things that you never knew existed or maybe you did and you always wondered where people get things like that. Well now you know.
http://www.perpetualkid.com/

Hope you like what I have shared with you today. Enjoy it all and let me know if you make any purchases, I want to know what you think of the product you get!

Sirens have sounded

2008-06-19T15:15:00.004-05:00

About an hour ago we were sitting in the living room and I was on the laptop doing my blog and lisha was setting in the chair dozing(she has a cold and took sleepy medicine). All of a sudden the tornado sirens went off. Well here in kansas they test them sometimes. That is always on mondays at noon. I looked at the clock and it was 2:17pm and it is thrusday. I told lisha to click to a channel with weather. So she did and then we saw it, a funnel cloud that was descending from the clouds near silver lake. The weather man said it was nothing serious but the local emergency officials wanted to issue a warning because you never know what the weather will do in Kansas. So here is a picture of the weather right now. I am bored as you can tell...

HAPPY WEATHER!

UPDATING YOU...HERE IS A PIC OF THE FUNNEL CLOUD...

Todays post...DOGGIES!!!

2008-06-19T15:07:00.000-05:00

Todays post is all about the doggies in my life. I only have a few pictures of the dogs that I really want to show off because, well honestly bitty is a bitch and reese is so hard to take pictures of it is unreal! I have a lot of buddie because he loves to take pictures and as far as the Arizona family doggies, well there is sandy, noel and sassy. I have some of sandy and noel but none of sassy cuz my mama wont send me none... :) So here they are!!!

Here is Buddie. He is my sister Alicia's dog. He is 2 1/2 years old and is a happy go lucky chihuahua without a care in the world. This is a video of buddie playing with his yellow duckie. It is his favorite one and he absolutely loves to squeak it late at night and wake his mommie and me up.---ok...no video seriously it took way too long!!!

Here is a picture of my dad's dog. Her name is Little Bitt, we call her bitty. She is quite unique...is a nice way to put it. She has her moods and she definately knows what she wants!

Here is my dog Reese. This is the only picture I have on my computer of him until I get my cord for my digital camera (recent move). So this is what you get to see. The only other picture I have of him is him curled up in a ball sleeping. He is a VERY energetic and LIVELY 2 year old dog. He is supposed to be a jack-a-poo. A jack russell miniature poodle mix. We dont think he is. We believe him to be a Miniature pinscher miniature poodle mix...or some of all 3. Who knows but he is unique and I love him.

This is a picrure of Ellie Mae. We had her for a while around christmas of 07. She was a 12 week old peach colored Miniature poodle. We named her Ellie Mae after my mom and because she sort of had the "I am not a prissy girl temper". We had to get rid of her unfortunatly because she and Buddie would not get along. I also have a video of her that i will post later because it takes forever on this site!

This is a picture of Sandy. She is my mom's dog and she lives in Arizona. She is a really old chihuahua and is set in her ways. She is a definate mama's girl and no body better get caught messing with her. She is the princess and she knows it!

Here is Noel. She is a beautiful red headed 2 year old Miniature Pinscher. She is a true sweet heart and a definate daddy's girl. She has her daddy wrapped around her tiny little paw and boy does she ever know it!!!

Last but not least of the Arizona family is Sassy. I dont have any picture of her but I do know she is about 1 year old and is an almost all white chihuahua. She is what my mom calls the fat dog. She loves food and is not afraid to admit it!

I hope you liked everything that I posted about the doggies and I will keep you up to date on any additons to the pet world around me!!!

Where are you visting from???

2008-06-17T11:48:00.001-05:00

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Ok, finally my first blog outside of myspace!!!

2008-06-17T09:07:00.000-05:00

I want to start by welcoming you all to my blog! I am designing this as a place where I can post how my day went, what I did, interesting pictures, projects I'm working on and various other things that I want to show to the world and my family and friends. I am on here now because my mother got into it and I feel as if I am behind on the times and needed a real blog. So here it is. I will post things often so check back with me as I am an ever-changing person. Please feel free to use anything I post on here and any of the designs I post such as backgrounds or images. I am an open book. Hope you like everything and ENJOY!