Country Cinderella's blog

Goodbye old home (VOX), Hello new home (here?).

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Okay I think I am over the shock of the VOX demise, and have found ways to cope with all the changes.

 

I created a blog on multiple different blog posting sites:

 

Countrycinderella.typepad.com

Countrycinderella.wordpress.com

Countrycinderella.user.livecloud.com  

 

(just to name a few)

 

I copy and pasted as many of my fellow Voxer’s new addresses, into a notepad text, as I could find to help me keep from loosing track of them.

 

I signed up for Google Reader so that I could keep track of all my Vox friends no matter which blog platform they decided to use.

 

I created filters in my email box to deal with all the new notification email that the new platform causes when I try to keep track of comments I make and are made after the one I make.

 

I look to the support pages on the different blog sites to help me learn all the features to help me decide which one I like the best. I read all the posts other create as they learn about the features.

 

There is still a some grieving over the loss, but I am finding that I can cope and can go on.

 

I look forward to seeing all my friends’ new homes and hopefully we will be able to overcome this upheaval without too many of us getting lost or disappearing in the ether of the internet.

Okay I am testing posterous's multi-blog posting capability

I do not know if this will work but I am going to give it a try. Posterous has a multiple blog posting option so I am giving it a try.

The move

I know I have not been around very much this past year, but I do not want to completely loose touch with everyone. I have noticed that so many of my neighbors are moving to wordpress so I have decided to do the same so that I might be able to keep in touch when I do check in.

my wordpress blog is:

http://countrycinderella.wordpress.com/

I will try to figure out wordpress so that I can quickly add as many neighbors as possible to my list of blogs to follow.

Thanks to all of you for making my time at vox enjoyable.

Looking for some advice/info

Looking for some advice/info. I am thinking about creating a memory page for my Dad on the internet that will play the video I am creating for the memorial. I want a place that people can go and watch the video and then post comment of memories of Dad. Can anyone tell me where I can find a free place to do that, that does not make the visitor create an account to comment (I really like Vox but I do not want everyone to have to create an account just to comment). I do not mind if they have to sign in just that they do not have to create an account.

I am looking at wordpress, because I see they have something that allows you to turn a gallery of photos into a slide show (so even though that is different than uploading my video I would still be willing to use that) I just do not know if you have to create an account to comment on WP like you do on Vox

Maybe I am just getting in over my head.

I have found that the video creating does not seem all that hard to do but I do not know about uploading it to the internet and creating a web page, especially not a free page and especially not a free page that allows easy commenting, so if anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

Need help creating a photo/slideshow video for Dad's memorial

I could really use some help. I am working on making a video of a photo/slide show for Dad's memorial.

I have the photo scanning worked out for now and I have lots of photos picked out for using so that part is not a problem and I think I figured out how to turn them into a slideshow video. ( I am using Window Movie Maker because it comes on the computer, so it is free, and it seems easy enough but if someone knows of something better that is free to download I am willing to try it).

I figured out how to add music but I have not figured out how to make the video constantly play over and over, is that something that the player will have to do or is that something you can create in the file itself?

I currently have one song that my sister has kind of picked out, it is Carrie Underwood's "Temporary home". My sister likes this song because of the ending. This is a nice long song (a little over 4 min) and I suppose that is pretty long, but if it is going to be playing in the background I do not know if I only want to have one song playing over and over so I am looking for ideas of a second and possibly third song to play with the photos. I want to stick with country music because it was what Dad listened to the most, but I am also open to suggestions of other songs if it turns out to sound right.

Any help would be great. Thanks

Dad passed, I am working on sorting photos for a memorial

My Dad passed at 12:10am on Friday the 2nd. He is going to be cremated and we will have a memorial service later when we get the ashes back and when we can arrange everything.

We want to have one of those video/slideshows that constantly loops with pictures of Dad all thru his life, but I am having in issues with getting the photos scanned.

I know I can scan with my all-in-one printer/scanner and I am doing that for some of the photos but my unit is a bit old and I have been trying to look up new ones on the internet to see if there is a more efficient one that is not too expensive that we can afford to get. If anyone has any info about that I would appreciate the help looking.

I would also like to scan some old negative and slides too and I have been trying to figure out the best way to do that. should I just use an all in one that is good enough to do negative and slides or should I try using one of those stand alone units that scans just negative and slides and if I do get one of those what is a reasonable one as far as cost and quality combined. I know if I go with one of those really cheap ones I am going to get really cheap quality but there has to be a middle of the road somewhere.

Dad is not my Daddy anymore

I went to visit my Dad today, and it is heart wrenching because my Dad is worse. Dad is not my Daddy anymore.

I know he is still my Dad and I know my Daddy is still inside but he can not communicate that inside person to the outside world anymore.

I do not know what is worse, the knowing that he will be gone soon or the fact that he has to be like this for anymore days. I am grateful that he does not have to go thru this for several month or even years but I also do not want him to be gone so fast. On the flip side I almost wish he had passed earlier in the illness, because at least then he was still more like the Daddy I knew instead of lost inside a body that does not work properly. I know he would not want to be this way.

My heart hurts over this.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, they say that is what Dad has.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, they say that is what Dad has.

    You may be wondering what that is, well in a way so am I. It is the most recent diagnosis for what is wrong with my Dad. It is a neurological disorder. It is degenerative. It is fatal. It is fast.

    Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease ,,,,

I started writing a post about what my Dad supposedly has, but I just do not feel like writing anymore. Suffice it to say that Dad is not expected to live more than a few months more, possibly as little as 2 more months. To top it off his mind is going as he gets worse so he is not really all that aware of just how bad things are. He at least still knows who we are, but that will change as his condition worsens.

Okay I think I will write a little more now.

    Creutzfeldt_Jakob Disease (CJD) is a very rare degenerative neurological disease. CJD is so rare that there are only about 300 cases a year in the whole USA, or 1 in a million world wide. There is 4 different types of CJD, but the most prominent one happens for no specific reason. I will share a few links for anyone that is interested in reading more about CJD.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cjd/cjd.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease/DS00531
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/

    Unfortunately the life expectancy of the type of CJD that my Dad is diagnosed with is no more than a year from the onset of symptoms and many people live no more than 4-5 months. What makes it even worse is that CJD is usually not medically detectable until an autopsy is done. Until then the only way they can diagnosis it is thru elimination. They test for all other kinds of illnesses that would cause the symptoms that a patient is going thru, when they eliminate those then they go by the progression of the symptoms to help them diagnose it. Also if similar hard to diagnose illnesses have treatments they will try them to see if it will help. This is what they did with Dad when they originally thought that he had para-neoplastic syndrome and potassium channelopathy but when the treatment did not help they new they had to keep looking.

    People with CJD continue to decline until death. The disease is caused by malformation of protein prions in the brain, although it is not known what triggers the malformation in the predominant version of CJD. Eventually the transformed protein prions in the brain end up causing the tissue to look sponge like under a microscope.

This has been a very difficult process, made even more difficult by the fact that Dad used to be in good health and active with work and bowling (his favorite hobby) all the way up until Thanksgiving last year. I hope that nobody I know every has to go thru all of this with any of their relatives.

Having a rough time and really feeling it tonight

I have not posted much of anything in a long time not of my own anyway, I have made a few scattered comments on other people's posts but nothing of my own lately.

I just have not felt much like chatting about things, and yet now I feel so down that I feel the NEED to chat.

I have been unemployed for over a year now and there still are no jobs in my trade. I call down to my union hall to check the job hotline and hear they same recording every time. 'there are no commercial jobs, there are no residential jobs, there are no communication jobs'  It is very discouraging. I go online to job listing and apply to multiple jobs and get no replies or if I do get a reply it is a turn down. Because I have been unemployed for over a year I am technically no longer eligible for unemployment, but because I was already on an extension of benefits I was allowed to finish it out, but those benefits end in 2 weeks and I do not know if there are any more extensions available to me. The bills are getting further and further behind and I do not know how much longer I can stretch things out.

We already have pretty much made the decision that if I am not working again by time our one cat runs out of insulin, we are going to have to put him down because we just can not afford the added expense. It sounds so cold and it does make me feel like I am being heartless, but we are also factoring in that he is not happy being stuck twice a day, plus he is on a high dosage of insulin and he also is on high blood pressure medicine and he is elderly.

I am scared.

Then there is my Dad,,,,,, He is very ill with something so rare they are only really guessing at what they think it is. In just a few short months he went from being a hard working night stocker to being unable to walk, unable to communicate well, unable to use his hands very well, constantly fatigued and so much more. They have checked him for strokes, they have checked for cancer, they have checked him for organ failures, they have checked him for chemical imbalances, they have checked for damaged spinal cord. They did not really find anything specific at least not anything that is an actual cause just things that are symptoms. They have tried a particular treatment and we have to wait to see if it works, but there is not exact time line on how long we have to wait before we can expect results. And even if the treatments do work it may only be so much as to stop him from getting even worse even faster, he could still remain pretty ill permanently.

The stress of all the problems with Dad and the problems we have had with the doctors and facilities thru out this is taking a toll on my Mom and I worry about her health too.

I am scared.

I try to keep working thru this, letting myself feel down sometimes while still trying to keep positive, but tonight I am really feeling bad, and really scared about my future, my Dad's future, my Mom's future,,,,

Okay I think I am just going to go cry myself to sleep and hopefully try to figure out a way to work thru this again tomorrow. I just pray that something starts getting better soon.

I got it back

My car that is. I was able to pick it up today, 3 weeks after having it wrecked and towed away. I do still have to stop back by to get a relay replaced. The mechanic said that the relay on the air conditioner was making some kinds of hesitating clicks so he ordered one to replace it. He said there is no way to be certain one way or the other if it was damaged by the accident but since it was not broken before he is going to err on the side of accident damage, so that the replacement will be covered by the insurance.

When I got in the car to drive away I noticed that the brake pedal seemed bent, so I went back in and asked about it. The mechanic came out and checked it out and said that I must have really been pressing down hard on the pedal during the accident. He was able to straighten it back out with just a few adjustments.

I have a terrible habit of carrying a lot of extra junk around in my car and now I have a lot of straightening up to do. The accident shook everything up and knocked it out of the nice neat piles I had it in. To top it off I had my work tools in my trunk and the tool boxes were not very securely closed so now I have tools scattered all over the trunk. I am probably going to have to spend a couple hours or more getting everything sorted out and put away. Oh well at least it will help me to clear some of the junk that I did not even remember was in there.

Now I have my car back, I just have to hope that I get a job to go with it.