Sick News!

Hey everyone, I have sick news! Carley isn't sick today! :D

Okay, now I don't want to make this into too big of a deal too soon, but we MAY be over the hump of sickness!!!

You seriously have no idea just how big of a deal this is for us to be at a point like this even for only one day because Carley hasn't had a single day of not being sick since like back in August when she first got pregnant. We tried all sorts of different options including Diclectin / Gravol, sleeping in all day, getting up at the crack of dawn, eating, not eating, and so much more! The result? Nothing worked. Only sick sick sick was found each and every day and it was weighing down upon her beginning to cause depression and anxiety.

The past couple days though... has been a miracle. See, Carley recently took herself into the hospital because she didn't know what else to do. She was feeling so sick and depressed that she felt she needed their help and was admitted into the mental health ward for assistance. The service there was absolutely fantastic, they listened to her and sought out a medication which would be safe for pregnancy which would help out with her depression and anxiety. She wasn't sure about taking any kind of medication but having trouble sleeping during the night drove her to try the suggested medication as it was supposed to help with sleeping at night as well.

This choice led Carley to waking up the following morning in the hospital with less than 8 hours of sleep, but feeling well-rested, mentally better.... and NOT SICK! Crazy, right? Now we won't know FOR SURE if this is a miracle solution until more time passes, but I'm pretty sure if this is still working after a month from now, we're probably in the clear. I know so far she's super happy even to have just a couple days of peace from puking and let me tell you I've seen such an improvement over only two days of happiness that I'm so hopeful for her to continue to feel amazing because I've missed seeing such a big smile on her face.

What have your experiences been like with pregnancy? Good? Bad? Share with me your stories and solutions of pregnancy and parenthood!

~ Kyle Welykholowa

What A Trooper

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My Wife Is An Absolute Trooper!

For anyone who doesn't know, my wife is the most absolute trooper ever!

You may ask... "Why is your wife so awesome? What makes her so tough and amazing?" Well first of all, she's pregnant; that's enough right there that she has to go through that process and make it out the other side! Let me tell you it was pretty bad with the first one on the way how sick my dearly beloved Carley was feeling each and every day... pretty much like morning sickness on crack! This one will be our second child together and oh my goodness, I didn't possibly think it could ever get worse!

It's a special thing when your wife isn't able to get around and do as much as she wants to... not because it's hard to move around when pregnant, but because she's just so sick that she can't get out of bed without puking almost every morning. Medications don't make the sickness go away; they only serve to make her tired and keep her locked in bed like a caged animal instead of spending good time with her family as she would prefer to do. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that each and every day, but I would gladly share the burden with her if I could even up to the point of taking the full sickness upon myself if for nothing else than to give her a much needed break.

Now of course we can't be sure of the final result, but perhaps the reason for the increased sickness is due to this child being larger than the last? Our first daughter was quite small... I believe 4th percentile if I remember correctly? And... based on the ultrasound results from recently, this one MIGHT.... be around the 94th percentile mark. Of course there's still a few months to go before we find out the end result, so maybe that size will level out to be closer to her older sister, but I do still think that an increased size may be the cause.

So here I am trying to help out by doing dishes, laundry, transport the child to daycare, and make enough money to get by... only hoping that I'm able to do a fraction of what needs to be done to make it all the way. I can't imagine where I'd be without such a tough woman in my life right beside me each and every day.... that I wake up in bed.

Wish us luck with our upcoming second child. I've heard it gets more difficult when more come along and I haven't yet figured out whether I'm excited or scared for what's in store for us.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

UPDATE

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Being Sick SUCKS

Holy man, let me tell you guys, being sick SUCKS. It's hard to get a good night's sleep, difficult to get up in the morning with your perfectly wide-awake child, and the worst part is keeping yourself up and motivated to do things you know need to be done. Even washing the dishes feels nearly impossible when sick.

And it's all thanks to this little thing here:

I have never been sick so much in my life since Isabelle started going to daycare and now she happily brings home every bit of germs and sickness that she can and spews it everywhere either by coughing all over things, or in my face, or by putting her mouth all over the stuff that we touch all the time. On the bright side... I SHOULD (in theory) become a healthier person with her strengthening my immune system. On the other hand, I still have this cough that I haven't been able to get rid of since... I don't really remember anymore, it's been more months than I can think of. I just can't seem to stop coughing ALL THE TIME. Now there's probably something to do with "Kyle needs to drink more healthy liquid water with no sugar in it..." Or.... Uhh..... No, that's probably something to do with it. IT'S A WORK IN PROGRESS!

If that wasn't bad enough, in all the kerfuffle my wife got sick as well. Now, Carley getting sick is something that happens from time to time and I'm quite used to taking care of her including the additional requests when she's not feeling well, but something about this sickness was a little bit different than usual. I just couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew something wasn't quite right... is it true that she's really just that cranky and annoyed with everyone only because she's sick?

As it turns out we were hit with the unexpected inconvenience of Carley's doctor being away during the time when she needed to go in to renew her prescription for Concerta. If you don't know what Concerta is, it's a slow-release medication for ADHD which really helps her focus and not hate everybody. So because the doctor was away, we couldn't get her prescription renewed which meant she had to do without her medication for a week. Something we didn't expect which never occurred to use as a possibility is that she went through some withdrawal. As it turns out, taking Concerta daily doesn't make you think much about it other than notice how much it helps with day-to-day life, but quitting it cold-turkey actually causes a withdrawal period which would be similar (though likely not as bad) as quitting something like heroin so suddenly. Insane, right?

So needless to say, dear little Isabelle was happy as a clam the past week or so, Carley got sick and went through withdrawal which made her tired and want to stay in bed but also get out of the house because she couldn't stand anybody (while also needing to go out for a walk due to excessive energy levels), and I just held on to sanity while being sick and having to cater to the demands of two ladies who were so very in need... oh, and of course the dogs still needed to go out and in and out and in and out and in and out and in all day long again. No rest for the weary as they say.

Anywhos, now that I'm pretty sure I'm over the majority of being so very sick, and now that I've finished watching the Netflix show "Strong," I'm feeling much like I should start getting back into producing blog posts and new content to keep you all entertained. I have so much in my brain brain BRAIN, that I want to get out there and share with you all!

Keep an eye out for more stuff coming up very soon! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

I Lost My Job With HGS

So for those of you who aren't aware, I lost my job. Crazy, right? I know!

I've had a lot of time to reflect on things with all of this unexpected spare time I now have which as led me to come to some realizations about working from home: Though it is convenient to be able to work from home and not require a second car, the scheduling is quite difficult to deal with. When I first started working for HGS (or Rogers as per my position), the scheduling was fine. I was able to schedule myself for 12-hour days earning myself much overtime and giving myself more time to spend with Carley and Isabelle because I'd have three whole days off! Every once in a while things would change a bit with how much hours were offered, but for the most part it was pretty consistent; then things changed.

It was around December when things went sour for a bit with myself and Carley. Between December, January, and February I used up all of my sick days by being depressed and not wanting to go to work. You'd be surprised how much an event like that could make a person not want to work even when working is as easy as walking downstairs and sitting at a computer where you never meet a person face-to-face. Luckily I was able to get through that and there was still plenty of hours to work at the right times that I pulled through. Being able to schedule yourself for 12-hour days at that point is quite nice for dealing with a situation like that where you need as many days off as possible.

After that event everything was good again and continued on quite well up until Carley got her job. Now I was (and still am) quite proud that she managed to find a job working at a care home and found what it is that she wants to do with herself moving forward into the future career-wise. The hard part with that is transitioning into having two full-time working parties in a relationship; this wouldn't be so bad if there were no child involved, but we do have a lovely little girl to take care of as well. So our little Isabelle needed to be enrolled in full-time daycare and we had to coordinate ourselves to having Carley working evenings (right up until 11:00 PM) and getting Isabelle to daycare as early as possible the next day (6:45 AM) so that I could then work during the time she'd be at daycare and then be done in time to pick her up. Now that would be perfect if not for two problems...

1) I'd have to schedule myself to start at 6:30 AM to be "done" by 3:00 PM. Now when I say DONE, what I mean is, I'd be done *IF* I didn't get a phone call that would last beyond that time. Of course if you get a phone call, you can't just hang up on a person and that call could potentially go overtime by an hour or more if it was a customer with a lot of questions or possibly an angry customer who wanted escalate to a manager. Hence, I had to be "done" by 3:00 PM to ensure I would have enough time to go get Isabelle before daycare is closed.

2) The part where I had to schedule myself for 6:30 AM. Carley is sleeping because of how late she was working and then able to get to bed after finally getting home late at night, and daycare doesn't open until 6:45 AM. Now we did manage to transition into being able to deal with this with Carley able to get up to take Isabelle then come back and go back to sleep (naturally there would be a bit of an adjustment period when not being used to working shifts like this).

There was a bit of another problem as well which sort of started to come up, but we didn't quite get around to that before I was let go. Carley was hired to work evenings at her care home, but wasn't being given consistent days to work, her schedule came out late, and she was starting to get a couple random day shifts; not too much of a problem... except where I'm working 7 days a week early in the morning to fit in all my required hours and there's no daycare on weekends. See the problem with that? Not able to just leave Isabelle locked in her room for a few hours while she's awake, huh?

So they let me go because I missed enough days and was late enough times that they felt it necessary to do... followed by immediately posting jobs to hire more employees. Now... I understand what happened and that it's obviously not great to be late so often and miss so much work, but the combination of knowing that I put out good scores in my work each month (amazing scores even), but then they're fire me due to absence and then immediately want to hire more people... hurts a little. I'm alright with it, and I've certainly learned my lesson from it; we need to work together to make sure everything is covered between us and care for our child.

So... now we're here. I have no job right now. Little update on Carley is that she's now working a new job as a housekeeper at a hotel which is a bit less pay and a bit less hours, but it's CONSISTENT hours. You really don't realize how important it is to have such consistent hours as a parent until you start having two working persons, requiring daycare, and having to coordinate with each other to get everything to work properly.

Wish me luck everybody as I figure out what to do with myself and how to get there. There's much job-hunting going on and I'm looking to keep myself busy while keeping the house in order during the time that I have.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Get Ready For The Best Time

Are you ready for the best time? What better time could there be then now to begin anew with all the stories and videos and reviews and everything that I've been working on?

Now, I could have made some posts and some videos over the past few weeks, but I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't think that forcing myself to make a video while sick would be of the best quality that I'm looking for. I didn't think that making myself stay up while tired would make for the best quality thoughts put onto a page. And to top it all off... the Summer Games Done Quick marathon started which played for a week straight. So I effectively took a vacation from my content production and in only a couple days I'll be taking another week for a REAL family vacation.

This is great you see, because I have been sick for like the past month. Well, I was sick for a couple weeks followed by having a lingering cough for a week followed by... Well it's mostly gone but still a little bit there. And I'm sure the whole reason I got sick in the first place was because of the new influx of germs from Isabelle and all her adorable little friends coming and going from daycare all the time.

There was also the major adjustment which I'm still working on right now of Carley starting her new job which was part time at various different hours, but now is a full-time position all the time five nights a week... nights. Now I do love that Carley is so happy working and getting herself out of the house, building connections and relationships, and generally being happier. The hardest part is that we have to learn to exist together within the same household still seeing each other at least a little bit every once in awhile. If you have never worked opposite hours from your significant other, you wouldn't believe how difficult it can be to not see your significant other except for like two days a week. The rest of the time, one of you is tired and the other is not, or one of you stays up later than you should to see the other followed by being exhausted the next day. There really is no great in-between point. But for us, it is what is best for us right now.

So hey, I'm going to upload a few things while I have the time today, go on vacation, then get to work on finally making something of my everything I want to do with this here blog and everything else I do. During the time I'm gone, I will do my best to at least take down some thoughts of what has gone on each and every day which I would then be able to turn into a blog post very quickly after coming back.

I have to say, I love the job that I have and I love being able to share my life and my experiences with all of you fine people out there. Please continue to share with me any ideas you have for Content that you would like to see or hear. I have lots of great ideas but your feedback is the most important to me for what you want to see. You can always comment right on each blog page, comment on any of the links that I share out there, or even email me at Kyle.Welykholowa@gmail.com.

Enjoy yourselves out there, and look forward to more great content coming at you soon! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

I'm So Hot

     Let's face it... I'm just too hot. No no no... don't let your mind go there. I'm not being full of myself in any way; I'm serious. I'm actually just to much of a warm person. I was a little worried that it would be way too loud and cause too much noise and whatnot to have this air conditioner running, but it's actually pretty awesome.

     I don't know how other people can stand living in such heat all the time. Some people are perfectly alright with having heat blowing in their face, while I sit there and feel sick from feeling way too hot and uncomfortable. So I guess that's a nice thing about having my own place at the moment. I get to control the temperature however I want it to be.

     I get the feeling that soon enough I just won't even notice this thing blowing at all. It'll just be regular background noise to me I bet. So thankfully I have a way to survive the extreme heat. I hope everyone else has found a way to survive.

~ Kyle

A Post Mostly About Carley

     I just have to say, I am so proud of my Carley. She's just wonderful. She's been working so hard to make all the money we need to live here and even when she's been feeling awful, she's still going into work to make the money we need. I know it's hard on her and sometimes it seems like we don't have enough time to see one another, but we both know it'll pay off in the end.

     Soon enough I'll be on my first co-op work-term, and we'll be able to save a bit of money. Perhaps we'll be able to get her started in school for Carpentry. She's already applied, so as long as we're able to, we'll get her started as soon as possible.

     Unfortunately today she isn't feeling too well, but I'm doing my best to take care of her and get her in wonderful health. She told me her stomach feels a bit better after the Pepto Bismol, but she still has a headache. I'm sure the bright light as she's trying to sleep doesn't help too much. Once we get the curtains my mother is making for us, she'll probably sleep better. We might have to get her a sleep mask. So whether or not she's going into work tonight, I don't know yet. Hopefully we can get her feeling better by tonight, but if not, that's alright.

     Good news for today is that I've gotten a lot of my CADD homework done... after having accidentally overwritten it with the wrong file version causing me to lose a bunch of my work. I'm taking a bit of a break now after having worked on it all day so far, and I'm nearly done. Just a little bit more work and I'll be at the point where I want to be for next day's class. So now I'll take a fun break and do a bit of streaming for funzies. If you want to check out my stream, you can catch it at www.twitch.tv/DaemonVirus1.

     Have a great day everyone! ^_^

~ Kyle