One more day and this week is officially over! I can't ignore the fact that it has gone by surprisingly fast. Faster than I thought it would. But, of course not fast enough for me. Only 4 more days and a wake up until I can throw myself into Tony's arms. If I could, I would go to the airport tonight and wait there for him until Wednesday. I still haven't been able to sleep at night, which makes time drag even more. So then I go back to relying on the good old benadryl, which causes me to sleep until noon time.. and some days I have even slept until 2pm. By the time I wake up, I either have to get ready for work or I just have no motivation at all from being over tired and I accomplish absolutely nothing. However, this week I feel like I have gotten a lot done, and at the same time, I know I haven't completed even half of the chores on my "to do" list.

My mom has been driving me crazy all week long with wedding details. Tuesday was somewhat of a "let's get pampered" day. She had to go to the hairdresser, but needed me to drive her there because her shoulder was hurting her a great deal. So me being the wonderful, loving daughter than I am, drove her to the salon.. and also tok advantage of the situation. My mom opted for a perm and while she was sitting under the dryer, I asked Ann if she could give me a nice trim job and wax my eyebrows... and I of course had her add it to my mom's bill. I'm sneaky like that.

Wednesday it was back to the real world... another lovely 8 hour shift in the emergency room. It wasn't all that busy. Time dragged as usual and later that night I relied on my best friend to help me sleep. I slept the day away Thursday until my mom woke me up around 1pm yelling at me to get ready so we could go and check out a restaurant to host the wedding reception at. I griped and moaned for a good 5 minutes before rolling out of bed semi-conscious. I threw on the first outfit I found, a t-shirt and jeans (no surprise there.. comfort comes before anything), and we headed to the restaurant. I knew my mom was going to settle for it. And plus it's not like we have a whole heck of a lot of time to decide on a place, and this restaurant actually had an opening for the 17th. Most place you need to book about 1 year in advance. We were quite grateful to be able to find such a nice cozy little place to host the wedding reception at. I never realized how much work planning such an event really was. The lady then hands us a menu telling us we can pick 2 dishes for people to choose from and she also handed me a map of the 2 rooms showing the set up of the tables... we get to make seating arrangements. Great. More stress added to the list. I pretty much left it up to my mom to figure our all of that. And some how I still ended up being frustrated over the whole task.

Last night a couple of my friends had quite the treat for me! They had an extra ticket and asked me to join them for the Godsmack, Rob Zombie, and Shinedown concert. The only one I really wanted to see was Shinedown. Fortunately we made it just in time to see them since they ended up playing first. I thought it was going to be a nice enjoyable night with no crying at all.. until Brent Smith (the singer of shinedown) decided to ask everyone a personal question. He asked all to try and think of a time in life when they we were inspired by someone or something. He got to talking about a show they did a few weeks back in Texas, and that the people they played for were a great inspiration to them. These men and women wanted Shinedown to play a show for them before shipping out to Iraq the next morning. They started playing the song "I Dare You" and made mention that it goes out to all the men and women serving in the military, defending our country. I broke down in tears before they even started playing the song. I was finally able to collect myself near the end of the song.. and just when I thought I was going to be okay.. they next song they played was "Simple Man" and I couldn't help it.. I cried like a baby again because that is Tony's favorite song! I was compelled to call him.. his voice mail picked up and I let him know what song they were playing, that I was thinking of him, and that I love him.
Later on that night it started to get pretty chilly and stupid me, I left my sweat shirt in the car because I didn't think it was going to get that cold. So as I was freezing my butt off.. I looked around me and noticed all the guys who were holding onto their significant other trying to keep them warm and I couldn't stop it... my heart sank right to the floor before I could even try to catch it. I wanted nothing more than to have Tony right there beside me, holding me tightly in his warm and loving arms. I had to remind myself that his absence is only temporary. He will be home for good... eventually. And I'll get to fall asleep in his arms every single night for the rest of my life.

Today was just not a good day for me. My mom really got on my nerves today with the wedding stuff. Our guest list finally hit 65.. and that's when she told me "No MORE!" So tonight I work I started thinking about it. I felt like something just wasn't right. Then it dawned on me.. my parents have invited waaay more of their friends than I have. I think I have a total of 4 of my friends on the guest list. I find it to be incredibly rude and inconsiderate of them to do such a thing considering the fact it's not their day. It is mine and Tony's. Granted, they are paying for the whole thing.. but still. I want my friends to be there and meet Tony and what not before he goes over seas.

Work tonight didn't help my stress level very much. Apparently cleaning a white board is far more important than helping an elderly patient out of her son's pickup truck outside of triage. The triage nurse called back to core of the ER and asked for a specific male staff member to go out and help this lady out of the truck. He couldn't do it. He was cleaning the white board. Because I actually care about the patients that come to our ER, I put down what I was doing and went out to triage. The triage nurse was confused when she saw me. She couldn't quite understand why they had sent me to do it. But I explained to her how they didn't send me.. no one else would go and help, so I figured I would. Come to find out at the end of everything, this lady had a pelvic fracture. So what the hell were we supposed to do? Throw her over our shoulder and work a miracle or something?! We finally got her onto a stretcher and proceeded out back with her when the nurse happened to roll right over my foot with the damn thing. I would have been so aggravated about it if I didn't have 2 surgeries on it already in the past.. and not to mention my freaking wedding is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER! I really would like to try and avoid having any broken bones for this venue! Thanks! And to make my night even more chaotic, our secretary left at 9pm.. so the other ER Tech I was working with had to cover on the desk until 11pm. This left me all by myself for 2 hours. I know what you're thinking.. 2 hours isn't all that long. But you know what?? When you have no one to help you transport patients and 6 nurses all asking you to get vital signs on this person, do an EKG on that person, take that person to the bathroom, clean up the other person, check so and so's blood sugar... and doctor's freaking out because 2 of their patients have yet to go to CT scan, nurses from other departments calling and asking why their admission hasn't been brought up yet... 2 hours is a very VERY long time. Not to mention I drank a large black iced coffee and hadn't taken a piss since before I got to work at 3pm. I was pretty sure my bladder was going to rupture before the end of my shift.

It is now 3:30 in the AM and I'm really not all that tired. But I guess I should try to get some sleep so I have some energy to get my butt to the gym today and finish a bunch of this last minute wedding stuff so that my mother doesn't end up having chest pain or something of the sort!

I love you Tony!!! I always have and I always will!!!!