Lost: the hours of the day when I used to sew
Last seen in late December without kidney stones or snow days. If found, please return ASAP for a reward of chocolate chip cookies.
(Seriously how did I find time to sew?)
PMS plus snow day plus out of town husband does not mix well. I think I will hide in my sewing room most of the day.
One of those Light Bulb Moments
(Of which I don't have very many so let me ramble a bit.)
I think I mentioned a few months ago that I had to reprogram our programmable thermostat. The previous owners were from Florida and had the wonkiest temperature settings ever. At one point it was set to heat to 80 degrees! I thought I was going through "the change" until Kyle decided shorts and t-shirts were appropriate again and I realized it wasn't just me.
And you know how it's so hard to get the kids out of bed in the morning because it's too cold. *whine* ? Everyone always turns the thermostat down at night to save energy and Greg likes to sleep at chilly temps too. It's great savings in the winter but then the reverse is he wants the air conditioning running colder than usual in the summer. I pretend the expense/savings all even out over the whole year.
While fiddling with the thermostat a few months ago, I realized I can change the temperature up to 4 times during the day. Cool at night and warmer in the day were only 2. Then my light bulb moment! Our night time temperature is 66. Brrr... It's hard enough getting out of bed in the morning (want.more.sleep.) but to leave a warm bed to freeze while getting dressed? I'm working with 5 stubborn kids every morning, I need the deck stacked in my favor as much as possible.
So at 6am, the thermostat is set to warm up to 74 degrees. I wake the kids up at
I feel like a freaking genius that I solved the "it's too cold to get out of bed" problem! Now only 5 hundred and 2 other annoyances in the day to solve...
And now things are better (well not the cold and economy, they still suck). I knocked out several things on my to do list over the last couple of days which always helps. And reset the
Here's to a good weekend, hope you have one too.
Quote of the Day: "Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied." -Douglas Adams
2009 sucks. This has got to have been one of the worst months of my life.
- Kidney stones, enough said. (They aren't causing trouble at the moment but I still have a lot of follow up stuff to do)
. - Replacing cavity fillings. Which is as awful as having them put in the first time. And also, I'm not a big fan of dental work. (Our dentist is very nice but I just hate anything to do with teeth.)
- We switched internet/tv/phone providers yesterday. The new DVR seems nice but the internet connection is as spotty as hell. I'm currently hard wired in because I could.not.deal. If Greg is having issues with his computers today, I'm calling and bitching. (And me making a phone call on my own free will says a lot about how crappy the service has been.)
- Along the same line, my laptop battery does not want to charge. If I stay plugged in, it remains at 10% but won't go up. I suppose I should use my 10% to back up files and everything but instead I'm on the internet (not wireless! grr) complaining.
- The economy is awful. Which is so much fun on a single income in sales family. Would you like to buy some hospital software please?
- Zach missed his middle school tour Tuesday night. I completely spaced and the event was never put on the calendar. Serious mommy guilt over this because all his friends went and it's supposed to be a really fun time. (Parents aren't included and snack is provided, what more could a 11 year old boy ask for?)
- I'm not doing so well with nurturing personal relationships at the moment. One of my neighbors is really awesome and I want to hang out with her more but I just can't get myself to make the phone call or email. And I'd like to get to know a friend of a friend better and have I said anything to her? No. I suck.
- My Etsy store isn't back up yet. And if it's not up, I'm not making any money. I also haven't put all my tax paperwork together, I'm late sending in Indiana sales tax, I spent $180 on a shopping cart software for my website in August and I haven't set it up yet, and I left some customers hanging when I took the store down a few weeks ago. My office is a wreck because I keep tossing things in it (Girl Scout stuff, items that need returned to stores, random school papers) and I feel rather overwhelmed with the thought of getting started again.
- We spent $500 on pizza and eating out the last four weeks (thanks American Express for the nifty graphs). We usually spend $75 a month. Granted I know it was because I was sick and in the hospital for a few days and Greg doesn't cook but the budget is not happy.
- I haven't exercised since before New Years. I feel like a slug.
- Also, it is cold and there's snow outside. I hate the cold and snow. Things would be a lot better if it was 70 degrees.
I've never wanted a reset button as badly as I do now.
I'm in a grumpy mood today. Nothing else, just felt like sharing. I guess you can move along now.
So we had a great weekend to top off a so-so to rotten week. Greg was gone from Monday afternoon through last night and it was just hard on me on top of the kidney stone thing (Friday's x-ray showed them gone though, yay!). Plus the kids had Friday off from school due to the extreme cold and like I mentioned Thursday, they didn't want to be indoors with snow outside. I finally let them out and they lasted about 5 minutes in the below zero temps. And then I spent half an hour cleaning up coats, scarves, hats, gloves, and tracked in snow. Ah, the joys of motherhood.
Back to my good weekend. Steph convinced my sorry self to meet her at the movies with the kids. Who knew laughing for an hour and a half could brighten your mood? (Also I can be a bit dense at times.) We saw "Bedtime Stories" with Adam Sandler and it's funny. It's a bit like "Night at the Museum", good for the whole family. And then Steph and her kids came to my house for tacos and then we went to their house for popcorn and another movie. This is totally why I moved to Indiana.
Sunday we cleaned in preparation for the twin's Girl Scout meeting here (dude, I need to quit agreeing to these things!). I realized that due to my kidney stone stuff, I hadn't vacuumed upstairs since before New Years. Yuck! The meeting went well and Greg arrived home shortly after. And we baked chocolate chip cookies. Any day is made better with chocolate chip cookies.
Today the kids are off school again (Happy Martin Luther King Day, Observed!) and I'm trying to catch up on laundry. I'm almost ready to put my Etsy store back up so I hope I can get back into the swing of things with that. This week's going to be a busy one though. Due to a scheduling snafu, I have 3 different places I'm suppose to be Wednesday morning (dentist, school library, home for new cable/tv/phone install). Oops. But I have my health back, the kids are doing well, Greg's home (for the moment), and the house is clean. Life is good. Plus I hid a couple of chocolate chip cookies for myself later. hehe
I've found something worse than cold and snow. Extreme cold (we're talking -10F, -23C) and 6 inches of freshly fallen snow (yesterday) that the kids want to play in (2 hour delay from school this morning). I cannot get it through their thick skulls that it is WAY TOO COLD to play in the snow right now. Gah, I need to move to the rain forest already.
In other news, I'm recovering okay. I figure anything that requires two surgeries and morphine means I should take it easy for awhile. I took down the Etsy shop (if you hadn't noticed in the side bar) and have been doing the bare minimum around here (feed and clean kids, keep the house standing). I've knit two pairs of socks and watched a ton of TV. I'm all caught up on the Cities of Underworld, The Real House Wives of Orange County, Food Network, Modern Marvels, What Not to Wear, all the fashion from the Golden Globes (my favorites: Eva Longoria and Anne Hathaway), Who's Wedding is it Anyways?, and E! news (Brit Brit is buying a new house, woot). I think I may have lost a few dozen IQ points over the last couple of weeks...
Quote of the Day: "When an illness knocks you on your ass, you should stay down and relax for a while before trying to get back up." -Candea Core-Starke
Okay since I never do anything quite according to plan today's surgery went a little differently than I mentioned in my last post. Mostly because they ended up doing half it on Friday.
Around noon on Thursday, my kidney started to hurt again (since it's my right kidney, I feel the pain in my lower right back, below my ribcage). Great, I figured I was pyschosymatic-ing the pain because I knew the stones were still there. I took some ibuprofen and tried to go on with the day.
Around 5pm (after hosting a Girl Scout Daisy meeting, I'm insane) the nauseous kicked in. I can deal with the pain (mostly) and I can deal with being sick to my stomach (after months of morning sickness times 4 pregnancies, I know the tricks) but the two together just do me in in a heart beat. So after a bunch of phone calls, the urology office told me to go to the ER and they'd admit me overnight to be placed on the surgery schedule for Friday. Plus they promised pain and anti-nauseous meds, woot. Greg was home from MI at that point and my sister Sarah popped over to watch the kids. So off I went, puking all the way.
Lalala, overnight at the hospital, 4pm surgery to remove 6mm kidney stone stuck by my bladder, and then the anesthesia did another number on me. I was suppose to go home Friday night but just felt like crap after the surgery with more puking. So I stayed through Saturday morning. Steph picked my sorry butt up at the hospital and brought me home, thank you dearie!
Sunday I rested. I knit socks and watched crap TV (you know, stuff like Bravo, TLC, and E!).
Today I decided to still go through with the shock wave treatment on the 8mm stone in my kidney. Technically it hasn't been causing all the problems but I wasn't taking any chances with me "throwing the stone" and going through all of the above again any time soon. And as far as I can tell, the treatment went well. I'm going in for x-rays on Friday to see what's left and I'm back to drinking a zillion gallons of water. There will be some follow ups over the next few months to figure out why I made the kidney stones in the first place and how to prevent future ones. But I really hope I'm coming to the end of my kidney stone saga and can get back to normal.
Well as normal as it gets around here...
Meet my Arch Nemesis*:
Kidney Stones
As if it wasn't enough to ruin my New Years Eve party (well at least for me, it seems most of the guests still had an awesome time), the kidney stones have not made a nice little quick pain-free exit like they should have. I went to the urologist yesterday and an x-ray showed that they hadn't budged. I've only drank a zillion gallons of water since last Thursday. Hmph...
So next Monday I'm going in for surgery. They are going to laser out the stone stuck in my ureter (the tube between the kidney and bladder) and then use lithotripsy (shock waves) on the other stone still in my kidney. And you are welcome for your new knowledge about kidney stone treatment.
This is definitely not how I planned to spend the first few weeks of the new year. I'm really not sure what I had in mind but I know it wasn't this.
Darn you, kidney stones!
*Title thanks to Sarah
So since I should be doing a million other things (planning a Girl Scout Daisy meeting, getting tax papers together, sewing, making phone calls, you know the usual), I'm obsessing over our main level bathroom redo. I'm not calling it a remodel since we're not replacing anything major like the floor or vanity. The big changes are stripping the wallpaper, painting, and installing a shower curtain rod. Who has a shower/tub without a shower curtain (or door) in the first place? See the picture below, it's a piece of fabric attached all the way to the ceiling that only covers half the tub. Madness...
In the replacement department, I'm buying a new mirror, faucet, towel bar, drawer pulls, and light fixture. And I'll probably switch out the brass toilet flushie thing since the new stuff will be brushed nickel. (Like our upstairs bathrooms.) I'd love to switch the brass pieces in the shower too but that seems like more work (and money) than I can put into this at the moment. The goal is to stay under $200 for all of the above. Anyone have a spare Lowes coupon I can have? Pretty please with sugar on top?
Oh oh, I already have the new shower rod, curtain, paint, and linens (see the towels?) so they don't count in the $200. I've actually had all of that since July... Change takes time, man! And the thought of "stripping wallpaper" has kinda slowed me down.
Before:
Look for the after picture before the end of January! (Or February. Or March. Or if experience has taught me anything, the month before we sell the house like 5 years from now...)
Rotten mommy alert:
I am sooo looking forward to tomorrow morning at 7:45 (kids' bus pick up time).
Don't get me wrong, it's been fun and all (except for that whole kidney stone thing) but I miss our schedule. And the kids miss their friends. And I really miss 8am quiet time.
Oh wait, I haven't usually been awake at 8am...
Hmph, I think we've hit a Catch 22.
Is it too early to call a do-over for the new year?
New Year's Eve started out fabulous, we had drinks and food and friends and family and it was awesome! And then around 9:30, my lower back on the right side began to hurt. I went upstairs to lie down and then began puking. And the pain was worse and there was more puking. So not fun... I passed out (fell asleep, whatever) at some point and missed all of the midnight celebration.
Around 4am the pain was still there and I couldn't even keep water down. The lucky thing was we had lots of family and friends staying the night so Greg took me to the local emergency room. A CT scan later and yep, kidney stones again (I've had them once before, a little more than 10 years ago while pregnant with the twins). I kinda thought that's what it was but it seemed like drinking and junk food were the more likely cause of an upset stomach at the time.
I spent Jan 1st sleeping off the vicodin. As far as I know, the stone hasn't passed yet (I have a strainer, blah...) and I have to see a urologist sometime next week. Leave it to Steph to point out, "it can only go up from here." Here's hoping.
(Right, I think I'll keep the blog around for a bit longer. I probably just won't post as often. Still debating on Facebook. Thanks for all your comments!)
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