Mommin' It Up!

October 28, 2009

Crossing my fingers…

Because I just found out that I’ve made it to the final round of the search for the 2010 Disney World Moms Panel! I am soooo excited. They started with a field of 20,000 applicants, narrowed it down in the second round to about 200, and rumor has it that the final round contains 20-30 people, including me and my fellow Magical Mom, Amanda. They’ll pick 10 of those people to actually be on the panel.

The Moms Panel is such a great resource – anyone planning a trip to Disney can submit a question and have it answered by someone who has been there, done that. You can also search for questions that have already been answered. I used it a lot while I planned for the trip we took in August! The panel is not just moms, either – there are grandparents and dads on the panel as well.

So anyway, I have no idea if I’ll make the final cut or not, but even if I don’t I am so happy to have made it this far. But… I reallllllllllly hope I make it, because really, Disney + social media = Emily’s dream (volunteer) job. Wish me luck!

October 27, 2009

Call Me Amy Winehouse

It’s been a few weeks since I have written about my sleeping issues. I know, how can I deprive my dear readers of such scintillating posts? I know you were just dying to know what’s been going on with me in the middle of the night (eew.)

I got my sleep study results on October 5th, and the main reason I haven’t written anything about it since then, is that the results were discouraging. The sleep test was “negative” which means I apparently don’t have any diagnosable sleeping problems. They didn’t see anything abnormal. All those wires they hooked up to me were for naught.

This was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to be diagnosed with an easily-treatable sleep disorder.

My sleep doctor, for lack of an easy solution to my problems (perhaps he thinks they’re all in my mind?), offered to keep refilling my Ambien CR (which does help.)

“Well, I kind of feel like I can’t live without it, and that makes me uncomfortable,” I said to him. (What I was trying to say, was “I don’t want to be a drug addict.”)

He looked at me and gave me a little shrug. As if to say, “Well, that’s your best option.” or perhaps he meant, “Well, not my problem.” I don’t know WHAT he meant. Maybe he just thinks, there are worse things to be addicted to.

So if you see Emily ambushing me on an episode of A&E’s Intervention, you’ll know why.

But anyhoo, I don’t wanna go to rehab! So about a week ago, I took a friend’s advice, and started taking a Melatonin tablet at night. It’s a naturally-occurring hormone and you can get it at any drugstore. And, it’s much cheaper than Ambien CR. AND, it seems to be helping! I am definitely sleeping much more soundly now. I am still taking the Ambien, but it is my goal within the next couple of weeks to get out the ol’ pill splitter and start weaning myself off of it. We shall see. I think at this point in my life, I gotta do what I gotta do to sleep, but if I can do it without being dependent on a prescription drug, I would sure like to. If not, I’ll just have to accept that at some point.

So, that’s my deal. Although I realize a stint in rehab would make for a much better blog post, I’m going to try and avoid that at all costs!

October 26, 2009

Baby it’s cold inside.

If you are my Facebook friend, you may have noticed ~~that I’ve spent a lot of time lately bitching~~ my status updates about our broken furnace. And if you have, you may want to stop reading this now because I am about to rant about it again.

Our furnace is broken and it is making me mad.

A couple weeks ago when we had the occasion to turn it on, we found that while it started up right away and heated up the house quite nicely, it wouldn’t stay on, and it doesn’t kick back on automatically when it should. Which is really annoying. And cold.

So upon that discovery, I called Furnace Fixer Person #1, and he came over to check things out. He replaced a wire, charged us $85, and went merrily on his way. So I’m all, “Yay, it was just a bad wire, score!” Except that after he left, we still had the same freaking problem. So I called him to come back again, and when he was pretty much baffled by the situation and was all “when I light the pilot light it starts right up!” and I was all “Well yeah but it doesn’t stay on.” I could tell he didn’t have a clue what was going on so when he said “I don’t know, it seems to be working, call me if you have any more problems,” I was quite sure that I wasn’t going to be calling him again.

The problem persisted, of course, and so I called Furnace Fixer Person #2, and he came out right away. And then he left right away, because apparently we have something called a Pulse furnace and pretty much no one knows how to work on them. Grrrreat. Furnace Fixer Person #2 gave me the name of a company to call because they do work on our kind of janky furnace, so I called them up. However Furnace Fixer Person #3 could not make the trip all the way to my house. From downtown Dayton, which is, you know, like 10 miles away. Furnace Fixer Person #3 gave me the name of another company to call, but Furnace Fixer Person #4 also does not work on that kind of furnace. (Our furnace must have H1N1 or leprosy or some other kind of awful communicable disease.) So they said to call Furnace Fixer Person #5, who said “Oh yes, we have a guy who is really good at working on Pulse furnaces. And where is your house again? Yeah, I guess we could go all the way out there.”

So last week Furnace Fixer Person #5 came over to sort out the problem, and by this time I was googling terms like “How much does it cost to replace a furnace?” and such, figuring it was a lost cause. However Furnace Fixer Person #5 had good news – the thermostat was the trouble. He could replace it and we’d only be out $189, which, in comparison to the results of my google search was pocket change. Yay! Crisis averted.

And the angels sang.

Yeah, except too bad for us, because it still didn’t freaking work. It will come on if Andy goes down and turns it off and restarts the pilot light, but it won’t stay on. And I am getting so tired of not knowing what’s going on with it, not knowing what it’s going to take to fix it, and of being cold. Being cold is making me grumpy. And the worst part is that while Kate and Andy and I can burrow under the covers at night, Sammy can’t. We put him in like three sleepers, but the poor thing still doesn’t sleep well because he is cold. We put a space heater in his room temporarily, and it makes it somewhat better, but of course I am convinced it’s going to burst into flames at any given moment, so it’s not really the ideal situation.

So, now I’ve got to call Furnace Fixer Person #5 and have him come out again. I may have to hold him hostage until he figures out what the crap is wrong with it and what needs to be done to fix it. I just really, really hope that at the end of the day, I’m not googling “buying a cheap furnace.”