Today was not a good day. I went to bed Sunday evening having a semi-panic attack because I found out (via Facebook no less) that my dad and my sister and the kids had moved out of the hotel that they were "supposed" to be in through the end of the year. Why would something like that cause a panic attack? Simply because the wonderful ladies at Take It From Me selected my submission for their Secret Santa Event to provide packages to families who had suffered some type of traumatic loss this year.
I submitted a letter to them regarding my ancestral family home that burned to the ground on October 10, 2011 – in which we lost everything that my parents had worked so hard for, losing all of the remaining mementos we had of our beloved mother who passed away years ago – and to say that my family and I were devastated is a gross understatement. Losing the home that my brother and parents and I built hurts nearly as much as losing my mother did. So I was so thankful when they selected my father, sister, two nieces and nephew as one of the 14 families that they were awarding packages to this year!
When they informed me that my family had been chosen as one of the winning families, I contacted my dad and sister to make sure that they would be at the hotel they were staying at through the end of the year so that they would receive the packages that would be coming for them. My dad assured me that they would be there through the end of the year as the contractors would not be able to have our home rebuilt before the new year. So I provided the address to the hotel and their room numbers to the fine ladies at Take It From Me and they took care of the rest.
You can imagine the panic that went through me when I found out that they had rented a house for the next two months and had left the hotel on Sunday! ( Update – thankfully the hotel staff has been extremely helpful and have started receiving the packages for my family and are holding them until my sister can get out there to pick them up )
So you know that when I awoke Monday morning (still not knowing if my sister would be receiving the packages I had won for her and my family) I was already on edge. Naturally, the day could not just go smoothly – it was, after all, a Monday. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked down for my little Mollyanna, I instead saw a bulldog face staring back at me! My first thought was that she had eaten something the night before that had irritated her gums because her poor little cheeks were swollen and puffed out making her look like a miniature bulldog! I took her outside to use the facilities and we came back in – she wasn't acting abnormal or as though anything was hurting her – she gleefully munched her breakfast with no problems – yet those puffy cheeks worried me. Her poppa and I both attempted to pry her little mouth open to be able to check her gums – but neither of us could see where there was any cuts or red spots where she may have bruised her gums or teeth. So I kept her close to me and kept an eye on her. Within about an hour or so, her left eyebrow started to swell at an alarming rate and push her left eye closed slightly. I called her poppa in a panic and got on the phone with her vet to see if we could get her in to be seen or perhaps have them tell us what could be wrong.
Apparently my little Mo-Mo had herself an allergic reaction to something she ate or to a bug bite of some sort. The vet instructed us to give her a 25mg Benadryl tablet and if the swelling did not start to recede in a few hours to bring her in and they would give her an examination to determine what the problem was. So we got her to finally swallow a Benadryl tablet with a little stroking and prodding and then we waited. And waited some more. Finally after about two hours the swelling started to go down a bit above her eye. It took longer for her cheeks to finally go back to normal – but after a harrowing 12 to 14 hours – she was back to normal.
Scared the living daylights out of me. I was not going to sit here and have to explain to the boys that their little Mo-Mo was in the hospital for Christmas (or God forbid worse). I couldn't handle that. Thank the heavens she is doing fine and back to her normal, playful, happy little self again!!!
Well naturally with it being Monday – that just couldn't possibly be enough to deal with. Oh no. I'm minding my own business...trolling around the internet and checking out what is going on with some of my favorite bloggers and friends on Facebook – when I see a news feed item about the Cheesecake Factory offering $100 coupons to their fans in which I was tagged – so I go to delete the post and instead of deleting it, it apparently downloads a coupon printer instead and my Facebook feed went NUTS! All of these messages started posting to my news feed and tagging all of my friends in the posts so that they would click on them or attempt to delete them and have the same thing happen to them!
Talk about PISSED THE HELL OFF. I pride myself in being computer-savvy and not falling for scams and being able to spot phishing scams and the like – and while I thought it odd that the Cheesecake Factory would be offering $100 gift certificates to all of their fans – there are companies out there who are legitimate and actually do such things during the holidays or during their anniversary celebrations.
So after a rapid shutdown of the Chrome browser, a complete clean-up of all temporary files and cookies and any other tracking information this thing could have put on my system, a complete virus scan and root directory scan, and then rebooting and going to Facebook and deleting all those horrid news feeds from my page – I was finally back in business...four hours later!
By this time, it was near time for TMT (The Man Thing) to be home from work, dinner to be started, children to round up and get in the house – and no time left to create or read email – nothing that I'd actually had planned to do today.
Tomorrow is always another day, right?
