In 2010, it was a nice year, until the end when I lost my beloved grandfather. I don’t know if I can properly convey how much I love my Grampa and how horrible it is without him in my life now. Many people have told me how lucky I am to have had him as part of my life for so long. Many people’s grandparents died before they had a chance to get to know them.

I know I’m lucky. He once drove all night with my beloved Aunt to rescue my daughter and me from an evil ex-husband and his wicked family. He used to drive a little train for the kiddies at the local zoo and loved it. He loved nothing more than bragging on his family to anyone who’d listen. When he hugged you you could feel it down to your bones – those are the best kinds of hugs. If you wore glasses he’d smudge them all up hugging you. I loved teasing him about that.

He always had a million things in his front shirt pocket. Combs, pens, glasses case. When I was younger, I used to love taking one of his combs and fiddle with his ‘bohunk swirl’ he always had in his hair. He always called us grandkids and great-grandkids his ‘Sweet-horts’ and he always let us know how proud he was of anything we did. He’d listen to you blather on and never made you feel like he was just waiting for his turn to talk, or talked over you or made you feel like you were boring him. He was always reading a book – something picked up in the grocery checkout line or from Goodwill. He just loved to be reading.

The night he died… well, I’m not going to write about that. It was awful and I’m not sure I want that night to be my most vivid memory of him. I am glad that Shannon and I were with him, but I am angry at myself as well. I wish he could have pulled through like he always did and was able to celebrate Christmas with us. I love you Grampa and I miss you so much.

But though the year did not end well, the rest of it was all right. We got to spend time up in Montana with my dad and his lovely wife. It was gorgeous up there in October – we got lucky with the weather. I got to know Great Falls a bit better and show some cool pictures. AND I got to experience Wi-fi at 30,000 feet. Thanks Delta!

My sister and her hubby came to Nebraska, courtesy of my Gran and so we spent time with them at the first Nebraska State Fair in Grand Island. That was great until I was overcome by some weird virus that made me so incredibly dizzy that I made quite a spectacle of myself at work. I was rescued, once again, by my Grampa who drove me to the ER and sat with me in the room for hours and helped me get home after. I spent a week feeling like I was constantly room-spinny drunk and it was one of the most awful feelings in the world.

Things at work have been fine. The classic battles of new media vs. old media rage on. I’ve had some days when I lost some of my love for my work, but that’s probably normal.

My daughter is flourishing and becoming more and more independent and strong. I couldn’t ask for more, even if sometimes it hurts a little to let her grow up. She’s a redhead now and she looks awesome This year she suffered through her first breakup and it was pretty rough on her, but I’m amazed at how she handles herself. I’ve got a keeper, that’s for sure She’ll finish her sophomore year at college this Spring and she’s talking about grad school which makes me insanely happy. In April, we’ll be off to see the Cirque du Soleil. Her first time, my third. I can’t wait!

What’s left… love life? I am still with Ernie. Just over two years now which is hard to believe, but very cool. It’s really nice, being loved. Warm and fuzzy-like

There was a lot more to 2010 (I’m a blonde now, for one thing), and a lot that was very much like 2009. Many days are pretty much ‘Get up, go to work, come home, watch telly or futz around the Internet, go to bed.’ I have developed a real interest in cooking thanks to the Food Network. I got sucked into several shows and now find myself collecting pots and pans and mixers and processors. I’ve learned how to make a nice risotto and hell, I’ve even fried chicken You can keep up with my cooking machinations at Mmmm Good.

Even though this blog is neglected a bit, it doesn’t mean I’m not busy elsewhere on the Tubes. There’s my pro blog, my posterous, I like taking pix with Instagram, and of course, I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

So… resolutions for 2011? No. All I ever hope for every year is happiness and that no one I love dies. Didn’t quite make it through 2010 unfortunately on that second one and I’m afraid I’ll be a bit maudlin about losing Grampa for a while yet. But I hope 2011 is a good year for everyone I know and love, and for anyone who stumbles onto this neglected little blog.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, instead of morning sickness, I often felt faint. I may have passed out once or twice, I can’t remember. Before that, the only other time I passed out was at the doc’s office after a reaction to some meds. But before that, I experienced the one and only time I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight. Damn that cheap wine. We’re talking spinning rooms, lolling head, body made of rubber, incapable of sitting up in our booth at Golden West. I kept slipping on down to the floor.

I remember that night quite vividly because it was brought back to me last week when I began feeling dizzy for a few seconds every so often as I got ready for work.

I thought it would pass so I soldiered on, drove to work – except I had to pull over once when a dizzy spell hit. The reason I didn’t turn around and just go home is because of all the fecking days for this to happen, it was the day I needed to help man my newspaper’s booth at the new State Fair and get a live chat going. I had shit to do and I really thought it was a passing thing. Until I arrived at work.

I made it to my desk, feeling a bit hot and the dizziness was starting to become a steady thing. I sat down hard at my desk and leaned to the left, unable to get my bearings. Things began spinning and I began getting scared. I couldn’t think straight. Should I tell a coworker who was chatting nearby? Did I need to go to the ER? How could I get there? But I needed to get to the Fair. More spinning. Tears. Decide to call Grampa and ask for help. He had to get dressed and get down to me, and by that time my boss had come over to say hello and noticed I was not doing well.

From then on it was a blur of being helped to the bathroom because I was pretty sure I was going to throw up and absolutely did not want to puke at my desk in front of everyone. But I couldn’t walk without help. So now, I’m mortified and probably freaking people out but I made it to the bathroom, locked the stupid door out of habit and tried what I used to do when I felt faint when pregnant, which was run ice cold water over my wrists. No good though, and the puking began.

So now I’m making horrendous noises – and I can’t stress this enough: I HATE THROWING UP. It scares me when I have no control over my own body. And I am seriously regretting eating oatmeal for breakfast. I will probably never eat it again.

I hear people outside asking if I need help and I can’t remember if I answered. I just remember someone saying they needed the key because I must not have been able to make it to the door to unlock it.

Somehow the door was opened and my wonderful coworkers helped me to my grampa’s car. Pretty sure I was apologizing left and right. Probably crying. I was so embarrassed to cause such a scene, and added to that was I was miserable at the Fair.

Before I carry on, I just want to thank Sarah, Deb, George, Jack and anyone else who was there very much for your help. I also appreciated the well-wishes and offers of help this past week. It really meant a lot to me.

My grampa seemed to take the loooooong way to the hospital but eventually we made it and I ended up on my side on a bed, hooked to an IV as valium and something called zophran was dripped into me along with saline. God the spinning, it wouldn’t stop. I froze as the second bag of saline dripped and discovered the amazingness of the Heated Blanket. Threw up again after sneaking a sip of water. My mouth was so damn dry.

And after all that drama, the doctor pretty much said there wasn’t much that could be done other than ride it out. I got a prescription for Antivert which is given to people suffering from Vertigo – something I’ve never been afflicted with – and then he sent me home.

I slept. And slept. and then when I was tired of sleeping, I slept some more. I looked at my prescription: “May cause drowsiness.” Well fuck.

It is now a week later, and I am *still* having dizzy moments if I turn my head too fast, and I haven’t left my apartment but once when I decided to try walking down to the mailbox yesterday. I don’t need to hold the walls anymore when I walk around, unless I turn my head too fast and then I have a little oops moment where I might tumble over. But I haven’t felt nauseated since last Monday and I’m eating okay. Tonight I cooked a proper dinner and did all right until the end when I got a bit overwhelmed with dizziness and had to sit quickly.

But I can work on the computer now without feeling icky, which is pretty much my job, so after Labor Day tomorrow, I will go back to work. I can sit at my desk and stare at my screen and I should be fine.

I stopped taking the meds yesterday though. 1. So very tired of being asleep and 2. I felt like they just treated the symptoms and not the cause, so I am seeing how I do without them. So far, I feel about the same, just less sleepy.

I am so very tired of the dizziness though. I can’t stress that enough either. I don’t like this feeling. I didn’t like it that night I got so drunk I couldn’t see straight and I don’t like it now. It’s frightening.

Last night as I was falling asleep at 2am (have I mentioned how out-of-whack my schedule is?) I thought I could try some kind of visualization stuff. I I closed my eyes, held still and I pictured my inner ear. I have no idea what it looks like for real, but in my mind it’s all rather dayglo-y and an evil glowing blue blob has attached itself to my ear canal and it’s laughing an evil laugh as it tricks my brain into thinking it’s at sea. So I pictured millions of my white blood cells attacking the crap out of it. It was an epic battle but I think I fell asleep too soon so I’ve no idea how it turned out. I’m still dizzy though so I’m guessing the white blood cells are regrouping and preparing a frontal attack tonight.

Why am I blogging about this, especially when I haven’t blogged here in forever? I want to sort of document it in case it happens again. I don’t know what caused it, or why it came on so suddenly (the doctor told me this often happens to people out of the blue which is just weird to me.) I don’t know if I have some kind of infection I can’t feel inside my ear, or if this is the onset of a chronic problem (better not be!) or if this will clear up as mysteriously as it started and never happen again. I do keep hoping I’ll wake up and my stupid ear will have popped or something and I’ll be fine. No luck so far.

But I’m armed for battle tonight. Look out evil blue glowing blob, I’m going to kick your ass.

I’m not sure if I’ll rectify that, but ukmelia.com holds sentimental value to me so it will remain as long as I’m alive. For the endless parade of Buffy and Angel fans who are pretty much the only non-family types to come here (thanks to the magic of Google) I hope my top ten lists of the best episodes of those series is entertaining. For family and friends who might wander through here, you can keep up with me, if you want, via the sidebar on the front page of this blog. All my lifestreamy, social media activities feed into there.

So basically, I’m here, but I’m not *here here*.

What’s happened since I got to hear my awesome daughter sing? Probably the biggest thing is I wrote a book. Yup! Years and years of wishful novel-writing and I finally stopped talking about it and did it, with the help of NaNoWriMo. Turns out third time was the charm! I tried in 2004, and then again in 2005. Both really weak-ass attempts. Then several years of whinging about how I want to be a writer but not actually doing much about it, until I found Ficlets. Bippity-boppity-boo, 2009 I won NaNoWriMo and I’m going to self-publish this sucker as soon as I edit it a few times

Got a couple of freelance gigs I’m excited about. One for an annual festival the city holds and the other for a tile company. The extra money certainly comes in handy in this, the year of two paycuts.

The kidlet is doing well at college. She enjoys it I think. I still miss her terribly when she’s away but I’m getting used to it. She lucked out and had a roomie who moved out soon after the term began and they never found her another one, so she’s had a room to herself which she enjoys. I’d like her to have the roommate experience though. Everyone I know is after her to have the “College Experience” which I assume means going to parties and doing silly college things. She doesn’t really go out much that I know of, but I know she’s got several friends there, so in my book, if she’s happy doing her thing, then that’s cool.

Let’s see, this is taking on the feel of one of those funky ‘Here’s what my family’s done this year’ letters I actually like those. My Aunt Jo writes the best ones (Hi Jo!) because she makes them fun and funky

Right now I’m in the midst of some Christmas shopping so I’d better keep perusing the web, hehe I should shop local, I know. I will, I promise. But the big wide interwebz has so much cool stuff!

That’s all for now! Will try to do better about blogging again now that the book is done (I have always wanted to say that!)

But apparently the key was having her boyfriend ask her to sing for him. He had been asking her to sing for him too and she was playing the shy card with him as well, I think. But when she ran out of present ideas for his birthday, she decided she’d relent and record herself singing one of her favourite tunes: Russian Lullaby.

She downloaded Audacity and taught herself how to use it to create three versions of herself singing the same lines and layering them so it sounded like she was singing in a round. It came out fantastic and not only am I proud of her for doing it but as a geeky editor, I’m proud of her for creating and editing the whole thing herself.

I don’t have a really good way to record it and share it so I jerry-rigged some mics and earphones together on my craptop to make this AudioBoo. yes, she gave me permission to post it. I think she’s pretty proud of it too

I know what you’ll say. “C’mon Steph, she’s all grown up now and probably just busy with her college life stuff. Cut her some slack.” Believe me, I want to. I try to encourage her in that direction after hearing she’s finding her downtime from classes to be a bit boring. I asked if there are any club she could join or activities she could either take part in or go and watch. I know she would like a part-time job and maybe she’s out hunting one up.

But not a day has gone by since she left that there aren’t at least 2 or 3 text messages throughout the day. maybe an email or two (to say gnight usually) and once a week a phone call. I don’t think that’s too much, do you? Am I tugging too hard on the strings? I try to let her contact me when she needs me and no matter how many times I want to text and just say hello or see how she’s doing, I stop myself and think that I need to let her be.

But as I’m writing this, I haven’t heard a peep out of her since her last facebook post last night. No email, she’s not answering my two texts and at first I reckoned she was just busy but as time passes the horrible things going through my mind are getting worse and now I just want to know how you other parents out there deal with this? How did parents deal with this before Facebook and Twitter and cell phones? Am I just TOO dependent on all this tech?

I expect a certain amount of ‘well if you weren’t a facebook-stalking mom, you wouldn’t be worried right now.’ And maybe that’s true. But while I don’t consider myself that extreme when it comes to keeping tabs on her (we have both talked about the level of connectivity we have online and what she’s comfy with and so far it’s not been an issue. I really do try to giver her her space.) I DO worry that the level of connection I do have with her is leading me to worry unnecessarily when goes out of touch for a while.

I’m sure she’s just fine.

(And shameless plug, but I’ve started a new website with my honey called Doodurls. What the hell is that? We thought it would be fun to collect the little things people doodle when they’re bored. We started it about a month ago, and in that time, so many people have sent us their doodles – and beautiful art – that we got noticed. We’ve been featured on TheNextWeb, Neatorama, College Humor, Entertainment Weekly, and we made it into the London Metro. Cool eh? It keeps us pretty busy.)

What I never seem to be able to do is find time to write here. So my quest is to find a way to incorporate all my various “lifestream” (I hate that term) stuff into this spot. Why is that important? It’s not. It’s just something I want to do. I’ll still post too, when I can. I have much to say about learning to live alone and watching my little girl make her first steps in the world. But until then, I want to corral as much as I can in one place.

In the mean time, might I suggest you check out the aforementioned awesome girl’s blog? Yesterday she gave blood for the first time ever, and she blogged the experience

Because I’m me, here’s some pix and video from today

Outside her dorm:

A tour of her room:

Trying to make her loft bed:

The fun happening at the weekend

That’s just it though, I’ve never found a focus for this blog. It’s just been my catchall for my life. And that’s fine But it does tend to get a little dusty around here from time to time. And then I come along feeling guilty and use it for a while, until I get distracted by other shiny things. Such is the lot in life for this blog. For those friends and family who faithfully still check to see if I’ve had anything new to add (I do still look at my stats, and I see you Aunty Jo You rock) I will try to do a better job. But I can also be found here, here, and here.

Sooooo let’s see… DC was a rocking good time. I hope my tweets, pix and vids from the trip came through ok. I had fun “liveblogging” the trip, so to speak. And it was wonderful to hang out with my sister and brother-in-law. DC is a great town. Also? ‘West Wing’ is much cooler to watch when you know what all the buildings are.

Since we’ve been back we’ve been busy getting the kid ready for college and looking after the grandparents who, after their month-long incarceration in the hospital, aren’t getting around so well. So we’ve been taking care of their shopping and laundry, chores around the house and that sort of thing.

The kid is getting very excited for college to start. Move-in day is August 20th. Mental breakdown day for me will be on the long drive home by myself later that night. I think it will be fine and I am very excited for her to start this new part of her life. I do wish people would stop asking me how I’m going to ‘handle it.’ I know they mean well, but frankly I don’t know how I’ll handle it and I won’t know until she’s all moved into her dorm. Right now, I try not to think about it too much. I want her to move to the next phase of her life without worrying too much about how I’m going to handle it. I’m pretty tough. I’ll be fine. It’s the kid that should be the focus

It’s pretty cute actually. She’s combing through the dorm checklists and planning what to pack, what she can get from target after she moves in, what her roommate will bring vs. what she’ll be bringing, how to decorate… she bout a whiteboard and wrote out her entire list of things to pack and her class schedule on it It’s adorable.

She also has until the 15th to clean the hell out of her horribly messy room. I have plans for it hehehe. Just kidding. Other than sticking her twin mattress back in there and a chair for the nice desk, I wasn’t going to do much apart from leave the door open for a change so the cat will have a new room to rule (the kidlet *never* lets Spooky in there for fear of never finding her again.)

So this will be a big month for her. I’m so proud of her and I hope college is going to be everything it should be for her.

What’s going on elsewhere? Let’s see, on top of sending her to college I just got told about the 2nd round of paycuts at work. This year I’ve taken a 9 1/2 percent paycut and I’m making just barely more than I did when I started at the paper five years ago this month. Nothing like working hard to get ahead and staying loyal to a company only to feel like you’re swimming against the stream.

My beloved laptop that I’ve had for just over a year just died this weekend. I’ve never had to take a computer to a repair shop before. Ever. Until now and I’m afraid of the repair cost. I wish I was more knowledgeable about the inner workings of laptops and PCs. Thank goodness for my iPod Touch because I simply don’t think I could function without being able to ‘check my stuff’ as I usually put it Mostly I check Twitter and Facebook and end up playing solitaire most of the time, hehe. but my laptop is also my DVD player and I watch movies and stuff on it, so without that I’m at a bit of a loss. I’ve no idea what’s on telly anymore because I rarely have it on.

And I don’t mean that to sound pretentious and snobby. I used to watch tons of TV. I just somehow got away from doing that. It wasn’t a conscious decision or anything, it just sort of happened. If there’s something I want to watch, I DVR it or catch it online. Truth be told, I’d rather wait and watch TV shows and stuff when they’re out on DVD anyway.

Yeah okay, I’m rambling about nothing, which means time to wind this up. I will, as usual, try to keep this blog updated in a more timely fashion, but no promises

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