What a crappy weekend this has been. I’ll tell you all the bad that happened and then end with the good . . so maybe I’ll redeem myself since my goal is always post happy stuff on my blog. We all have problems in our lives and no one needs to come to my blog to hear about sad, discouraging stuff, right?

OK . . Friday night .. I love Friday nights because I can stay up late and I can sleep later on Saturday morning than I can during the week. So, I’m down at the longarm, quilting away. Hmmm, my tummy kinda hurts. But I can finish this quilt. Finished and my goal was to get all the blocks sewn together for the second quilt like this one.

Got that finished, tummy is really hurting, run upstairs (don’t dare use Chad’s bathroom downstairs) and decide I’m really going to be sick. I’ll do anything to keep from throwing up so I went to bed. It was probably 11 p.m. so the night wasn’t a total loss. Woke up about 8 and Vince wanted to go to Joplin. I’d spent more time in the bathroom than in the bed . . but he didn’t notice. I really didn’t feel like going to Joplin and decided I’d better go back to bed because I was feeling sick again. Woke up at 11:00. Surely couldn’t be feeling bad from lack of sleep now. I’d just slept almost 3 more hours. Got dressed, went to Joplin. It was about 220 degrees in the shade and just getting in and out of the truck to go to Target, Office Depot, Big Lots, Hobby Lobby (I needed nothing and neither did he!) , and then getting back into a hot truck . . it was just miserable. I know . . I’m being a wimp. There are people who live without air conditioning and have vehicles without air conditioning but I am not one of them and I am used to my a/c. I got a $320 electric bill yesterday to prove it and now I’m typing with the lights off and the thermostat set 2 degrees warmer. Grrrr!

Anyway, Vince suggests we have dinner at Outback. Ahhh, I’m starting to be happy that I’ve come to Joplin. I haven’t had a bite to eat yet and I love Outback. We ate, everything was fine. We were stuffed and life was good so we head home. I ate what I always eat at Outback, I didn’t touch anything strange.

Came home and made bread and about 11:00, we all had a slice of hot bread with butter – something I’ve had a zillion times but at 3 a.m., I woke up with my hands itching me to death. It’s happened before and I know there’s not much I can do about it except head to the ER and get a couple of shots — benadryl and steroid. I rummaged through the medicine box, knowing I haven’t seen my Epi-pen since we moved and knowing the the doctor is going to ask me if this has ever happened before. Yes it has. It happened first when I was about 14, and then not again for many, many years. This was the third time it’s happened in the last 5 years. His next question was going to be .. Have you ever been prescribed an Epi-pen? Yes I have. Did you use it? No! I am totally irresponsible and haven’t found it since we moved seven months ago. I didn’t need the Epi-pen in that I had no swelling of my breathing passages but I was having the type reaction where this could happen and the Epi-pen is pretty necessary to have.

Couldn’t find the Epi-Pen anywhere. In the two minutes I spent looking for it, I found anti-itch cream which I rubbed all over my hands. Didn’t help. Found Caladryl lotion, rubbed all over my feet. Didn’t help. By now, I’m pretty much covered in whelps.

Vince’s truck was behind my CRV so I had to decide if I was going to drive his truck to the ER, move the truck and take my CRV that I’m more comfortable driving. I only had to go 4 blocks to the hospital, or wake Vince to take me. I decided if I was suffering, he might as well at least know what was going on so he wouldn’t expect a full breakfast and a full lunch and a full dinner today, right.

I suppose we’re all funny when we are awakened unexpectedly in the middle of the night and as bad as I was itching, I couldn’t help but laugh. I tried to be calm and wake him up. I said “Vince, can you get up, we need to go to the hospital. . . ” Before I could say more, he was up like a flash, running around with no sense of direction, didn’t have a clue what to do. I said . . get some decent clothes on and let’s go. I’m not dying but I’m itching. You woke me up because you’re itching??

When we got to the ER and he finally saw me in the light (scary sight on a good day when I’ve been sleeping and the hair isn’t combed and no makeup), he couldn’t believe it. I had hives – whelps all over me. I have never itched so severely. My hands and feet were so swollen that it was starting to bleed around some of my fingernails. My hands looked like those latex gloves that you blow up and make into a balloon.

The Nevada ER was great. I was the only patient there at 3 a.m. The doctor was nice, the nurses were nice and I’m very glad they were there. I’ve slept most of today. I now have plenty of Benadryl to take by mouth, I’ll get the prescription for the new Epi-pen filled tomorrow and hopefully go the rest of my life without this happening again.

To report on good things:

• Vicky and Yvonne have reported that they have received their book. I still don’t have mine!
• Vince had mercy on me this morning and fixed breakfast – toast, bacon and eggs.
• Vince and Chad both had mercy on me this afternoon and went to the movie theater and left me home alone.
• In the grand scheme of things, having a bug on Friday night and then the allergic reaction last night may have messed up my weekend but it didn’t mess up my life. There are lots of people with serious illness and it sometimes takes something like this for me to realize how lucky and blessed I am with good health, lots of energy and everything I need to be happy and productive.

Maybe I can sew for a couple of hours this evening — on something that doesn’t have to have any real straight stitching or deep thinking . . my head is a bit woozy still.