Getting My Sh*t Together; or, Stopyerbitchin'

For two times in three weeks, I had to do preliminary paperwork at the hospital for surgery. It was the typical meeting with the doctors/nurses/anesthesiologists for filing out and verifying forms, having blood work drawn, etc. and then meeting with the hospital administrator to go over insurance details.

Part of that paperwork included filling out a living will and advance directives. If you haven't done this before, it's quite jolting.

Also, if you've dealt with a family member who is elderly or who is going through a terminal illness, you know that it's necessary.

Because I'm not that old and I don't have a terminal illness, I haven't really sat down and thought these things through. I have a will, but I don't really sit around much and think about my mortality. That is, until I am getting ready for major surgery.

The chances of dying in the real world are much greater than dying in surgery, but for whatever reason, I didn't panic and think that I haven't gotten everything in order until they were literally wheeling me into the OR.

Now that I'm at home and recovering, I'm trying to organize everything needed in case of an emergency. I have a leg up in some ways,  I guess, because we moved recently which required a lot of gathering of what I call Important Stuff.

When you go through a major move, it's common sense to throw all of your Important Stuff together and make sure it doesn't get dispersed to 15 different boxes you may never unpack. Important Stuff includes things like passports (and we have 2 each), marriage and birth certificates, our government orders, insurance papers, wills, and social security cards. If you have kids, you need vaccination records and school records.

In the haste of packing up and moving out of country in two weeks, we didn't get all of the kids' school records. No problem, we'll mail them to you, the office said. Several months later, the registrar called me in and told me that other than our high schooler's grades, they never got any other records. She requested them via fax. Three times. We never got them. We returned to Texas over the summer and one of my first phone calls was to each school's office. Guess what? They were out of the office for two weeks' vacation. Then there's life. You get busy. You neglect the past and move on to the future. So today, two and a half years after moving, I am getting around to personally contacting each school's counselor in the US to get my two sons' records. Whew.

There are things like your voter's registration card and your driver's license. These expire and renewing them overseas is such a joy! I've explained how some people just can't wrap their heads around you living in another country .  The state where you lived when issued orders is your "home of record" until you retire or quit your job. If you live in a state with income tax, you still pay tax back to that state (Texas = no state income tax). My husband joined the military in Texas and although we never lived there his 4 years in the Army, there were occasional issues, especially way back in the days before email and inexpensive international calls. The best (worst) situation was me calling from Colorado to explain to the court in Texas that my husband in S. Korea would not be showing up for jury duty.

So I am today, two and a half years after moving, trying for the third time to get our voter registration cards changed.You'd think with the thousands of men and women serving the military from Texas, this would be an easy process, but we aren't military, so it's a little more complicated. Sometimes there isn't a box to check online that says, "I live overseas, I don't own property in Texas, I am not in the military, but I do have orders and I am a legal resident of Texas." I am ashamed to admit that I haven't voted since being here---doing anything online is a hassle, and a 50 cent a minute phone call to a government agency explaining our weird residency issue is exhausting (and expensive). Today I think I have it sorted out. Which brings me to my license. . .

My license expires and I have to have 2 sets of papers stating that I'm a Texas resident. I don't have anything officially saying I'm from Texas except my orders. My voter registration card is expired (thus the process above) and I don't have any bills or property in Texas, so again I'm trying to get something that used to be simple sorted out.

And: a kid going to college in the US while living overseas, while he is a resident of Texas but doesn't have an actual residence, is something I don't even want to think about right now. Some states make this process easy. Texas isn't one of them. Shocking, I know.

Also: we went through the same ordeal with school records as with our dental and medical records, which we still don't have. I'm not giving up. I'm just not dealing with it right now.

These are the things you don't think about until you move overseas.

Which leads to this: getting my license and voter registration card sorted out over leave has me thinking about other things, as well. There is a great web site called Get Your Shit Together. The author has a reason for being so blunt with her website title. As a young wife and mother, she lost her husband in a bicycle accident. It was sudden, it was shocking, and they didn't have his effects in order.

And who of us truly does? Moving suddenly out of the country (and having to have important papers to get last minute orders and passports) forced us to put most of our Important Stuff in one centralized location. However, we need to go one step further and have everything updated and notify family members of some of our decisions.

If anyone else wants to join me in Getting Your Shit Together 2015, let me know and we can send each other gentle reminders to get it done. The web site has great (free) checklists and resources, and I'm all about getting it together in 2015.

I'm on the mend and hanging out this week at home, per my doctor. I have felt out of sorts so I'm going in to have more blood work done (oh boy!) to find the cause. It may be the anemia or it just may be what happens when you have a body part surgically removed. Who knows. This is all new to me. Hopefully all these pills I'm taking will do something to improve how I feel. (It has also occurred to me that it may be all the pills having me feel out of sorts. Hmmmm. . . ).

Other than nausea and dizziness, the worst part of recovery has been removing my dressings. I have small, puncture type wounds that they sutured (it's the same as any other laparascopic procedure), so we aren't talking anything major like what my girlfriends have gone through post C-section. I feel ridiculous to admit that standing in the shower, trying to remove the large, clear waterproof bandage over my small sutures FREAKED ME OUT. Granted, I was bloated and sore and it was just a couple of days after the procedure, but seriously. . . that was the worst part so far. (Why couldn't I just rip it off in one fell-swoop like I would with my sons? I'm the mom that says stopyerbitchin'! and rips that bandaid off, but I couldn't do it to myself. Embarrassing).

We've been without fresh fruit or veggies for 2 weeks now, so cross your fingers that the magic ferry or produce flight brings goodies to GTMO. (Maybe I have scurvy in addition to everything else).  I need something to make smoothies to choke down all these pills!