stamp-a-doodle-doo

Hello? lo lo lo lo lo Anybody there? er er er er er? I didn't think so!

Wow!!! It's been over 3 years since I posted anything here! My life has been so busy! That last post was a week or 2 before I started going back to school fulltime and that became all consuming in my life for the next 2 years!
I went to cosmetology school at a local college for a year...where I graduated suma cum laude I might add! I know, it's just hair right? Ummm not so much! You would be amazed at all the things that someone learns in cosmetology school. Let me just tell you that all the nail disorders people can possibly have would make your head spin!! Anyway, while I was in cosmetology school we went over skincare and I fell in love!!! So, what did I do?? I enrolled to go back to school for esthetics! I started about 2 weeks after I graduated from cosmetology and went for another 9 months part time and I worked part time in a salon! And I graduated again...suma cum laude! toot toot!! lol Then about 2 weeks later our world came crashing down around us.
But let me go back to before I started school so you can get the full picture here. My husband and I were blissfully going about life, me as a stay-at-home mom and he worked fulltime in the dental ceramics field.....fancy talk for he made crowns and bridges in a dental lab! We were doing alright, not rolling in the dough by any means, but we made it....sometimes by the skin of our teeth! We have 5 kids and our youngest kids were 4 and 2 years old at this time. So, 2 kids at home with me all day. Well, I got this idea that I should start looking into going to school, really just to see what it would take to go. I mean I've always wanted to do hair, since I can remember, and what would it hurt to just go get info for future reference right??? So, off I went to the local college that is about 45 minutes from my house and went in to talk with one of the couselors. Then wham bam, I was enrolled in college. Afterwards I thought...Wait, what just happened here??? We didn't qualify for a childcare grant, so I went home and cried. Mostly I cried because the thought of even putting my kids in daycare broke my heart. I had stayed home with all my other kids and felt like I would somehow be letting these 2 down by leaving them and I didn't know how we were going to afford daycare. I talked with my mother-in-law about my dilemma and she and my father-in-law decided they would keep the kids so I could go to school. Fast forward to May 2010. I graduated from esthetics and started working fulltime.
My husband told me a few days after graduation that he had been having trouble sleeping because he couldn't breathe when he was laying down. It progressively got worse and he was sleeping less than 30 minutes a night because he couldn't breathe and he got to the point that he started sleeping in a recliner because he said he felt like he had an elephant sitting on his chest. This went on for about 2 weeks until one day while he was at work he started having chest pains. He called me and told me how he was feeling and I told him he had to go to the ER. He agreed but said he was going to finish his day at work. I met him at the ER that evening and they took him straight back and did an EKG and immediately moved him to the cardiac unit of the ER. They hooked monitors to him and we could watch his heartbeat.....which was super sporadic. He got admitted into the hospital that night and a couple of days later they did a heart cath on him to see if he had a blockage and how his heart was functioning. He had no blockages but his left ventricle was so enlarged that it was barely pumping blood to his body! A normal heart pumps 50-70% of the blood out of it with each contraction. His was pumping out only 15%. The doctor said 10% can't sustain life! I nearly died right there!! He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.....at 37 years old!
A million things ran through my mind. I have 5 kids how can I do this alone?! I've only been working for 2 weeks fulltime and don't have much of a clientele! I don't want to be without my husband who I love more than words can express! My kids need their daddy! I don't want to be alone!
The doctor put him on a ton of medications and he stayed in the hospital for a total of 8 days. They wouldn't release him until he was approved for a lifevest....which was a portable defibrillator that he wore like a vest under his clothes 24/7 that monitored his heart and if at anytime his heart stopped it would automatically shock it! He wore that thing for 3 months and if his heart got a wonky rhythm it would sound an alarm then tell all bystanders to move away so it could shock him. It had a bypass button and he would bypass it but let me tell you the first time that alarm went off was around midnight one night not long after he got out of the hospital and it scared me so bad that I cried and shook for hours and couldn't sleep the rest of the night! I finally had to go to the doctor myself because I was so paranoid and needed something to help me stay calm and something to help me sleep.
He continued with doctors appointments and his heart function improved each time! Although he was ordered to not work....EVER again!  He applied for and was declared medically disabled and has been a stay at home dad ever since!
I worked in the salon until this past summer and we decided it would be best if I opened my own little salon at my house. So we got to work and I have the cutest little salon right on my front porch!! It's actually a little room at the end of the front porch. It's called Chop Shop and I've been open since mid July! I love working from my house but most of all I love all the time  I get to spend with my husband! I can come in the house between clients and spend time with him! I don't know that I would have appreciated that time as much if we hadn't gone through all we did last year!  I'm so grateful I went to school on a whim.....I don't know how much of that was my own idea considering what happened. I'm sure I was being led to do what was best for my family because if I hadn't been working we wouldn't have been able to make it!
If you made it all the way through....wow you are a trooper!! Oh one more thing....I got rid of all my stamps! :::shocking::: I just didn't have time for it anymore with school and everything else. BUT, now that I'm working from home I have more time to craft so I thought that I could transition to more craft related posting. I'm sure at some point I will get back into stamping just not right now. I hope y'all enjoy the things I post.