Marmot Carrion Anyone? Marmot tar tar perhaps?

This is not my beautiful house or my not so beautiful dead marmot. And that is not my beautiful husband, but I think I'm crushing just a bit on those eyes, and that right forearm...

Ms Moon has informed me that we do not have marmots in North FL, and as usual, she is correct; however, I'm going to use the word marmot anyway. Ever since I heard it in The Big Lebowski, I've been waiting patiently for a chance to use it. (I love The Dude... he abides.) So for the purposes of this blog, anything furry and dead will heretofore be referred to as a marmot.

It's been an interesting month around here. We have been battling asthma, the elements, our house, each other, and yes, even dead marmot. We are tired and trying hard to stay grateful. It's just hard to say thank you when you keep getting shit storm after shit storm! "Ah, thank you, can we have some more please?" That's just plain wrong.

Harley had been coughing sporadically since early August when school started. His GP's listened to his lungs numerous times and declared them "clear". We asked if he should see an allergist. "No, you don't want to go down that road." Hmmm.... I'm thinking. This has been going on for 2 years. As soon as he gets any sniffle, it turns into MONTHS of coughing. I think maybe I DO want him to see an allergist! Ok, so they send us home without so much as cough syrup but we seemed to manage to get the coughing under some sort of control despite that fact. Or so we thought. Then just as it seemed to be going away, he got the worst jag to date. Poor guy. This time, I was totally PISSED, and it's now late September. The doctor Harley sees is part of a GROUP of Docs who work in the same place. On this Sept. visit we got the NEW doctor of the group (All the old ones try to avoid us. He must have got the short straw) and he promptly diagnosed Harley with cough variant asthma. The meds he prescribed are helping immensely. Although, we did have 2 more visits to urgent care (ER) over the weekend following this visit due to an ear infection and a severe jag lasting more than 8hours. (Mr. new doc neglected to give us anything fast acting for jags. (And yes, I did ask.) BUT....... without EVEN asking, Dr. Mike at UC prescribed another round of Prednisone AND cough syrup with CODEINE! Thank you Doctor Mike, Jesus, Buddha and Ronald McDonald! FINALLY! For the first time in months we will get through a friggin night without steam, coughing, puking, frustration, and sadness. One of the saddest parts to all of this, is that our son is becoming cynical. When I tell him we are going to see the doctor, he says, "Why are we going there, they can't fix me". OUCH. We will be getting a brand new doctor and a brand new doctor's office. There is more to this story, but we'll end here. Harley is doing great in comparison to what he was, and his chest is getting a well deserved rest, as are we all.

Next we get to the mold problem in our house. We have been battling that since we moved in. It wasn't apparent before buying the house and it's something that the building inspector just didn't catch... again I say, hmmmmmm.... in any event, we have been making sweeps of the house every so often, but had not done one for a few months. I found mold in in all sorts of places. I cleaned fire places, unpacked boxes and got rid of a lot stuff. Now I have all manner of "stuff" from the boxes (that did not get tossed) in various piles around the dining room because I do cannot yet integrate it... This battle will be ongoing.

Then there is the water jug that leaked ever so slowly in the kitchen cabinet. This is our hurricane supply water. (We try to be responsible~ hmph!) Anyway, a damn 2 gallon jug of spring water sprung a leak and soaked up the particle board so badly in our cabinet, hub had to rip the whole bottom part of the cabinet out and replace it... in doing so, he found a dead marmot way back behind the cabinet in a sort of crawl space area in between the cabinet and a wall or something. He tried to poke at if for some reason, and realized that "Oh my, it's so far gone, it's falling apart!" YIKES! So now what? Well, I suggested calling someone to come get it. Hub insisted that there was no way to do it without tearing up that entire end of the kitchen... so he walled it up. (Have we learned nothing from Mr. Poe?) Walled up bodies always get the last laugh, and this one is no different. The day after the sealing off of said marmot, our whole kitchen smelled like decomposing marmot! So to top it all off, in addition to choking back waves of nausea, I now have that DAMN song in my head! You know the one, "OOOOh that smell, can't you smell that smell"?) Who needs this?

I won't go into ALL the wackiness caused by 2 ADHD adults doing the FALL back thing... but let's just say that appointments were missed and mayhem ensued. And today, the husband absconded with the wife's cell phone. The wife missed a phone consult with a client, because, well, she did NOT have her phone! Truth be told, I also sort of forgot, BUT.. said client did try to reach me via my cell, but hub did not answer... So I have some groveling to do....And those Coaching classes I'm taking. Yes, the time for Skyping got messed up there too.

Well, I think that about covers it. Here's to a mellow November.