Remember October? That's when I WANTED to put up my Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, stupid social norms and common sense meant that I needed to wait another month, which meant the mania and subsequent energy has since worn off. Sunday we "decorated" the tree (I handed ornaments to the kids who loaded the bottom quarter's outside branches until Justin could redistribute them more evenly). It went as smoothly as can be expected until my OCD took over, we ran out of hooks, and I kicked Justin and the kids downstairs and finished it myself.
Liam has been sleeping a lot lately and having a couple of bad nights. I thought it might be the lack of morning light to wake him up. But when I was trying to get him ready for school, he threw up all the the bathroom floor. Yay.
The past week I:
Survived Justin's absence for the week
Spent 1 1/2 hours in the car on Friday trying to get down to Ikea
Bought curtain rods and rings at Ikea
Spent another hour in traffic getting from the airport parking lot to arrivals to pick up Justin (seriously, Seatac???)
Scrubbed down bathrooms
Laundry
Installed curtain hooks and rings and hung up the curtains. You know what is more complicated than it has any right to be? Curtain hooks and rings. I have to redo 3 out of 4 of the drapery panels, but I'm trying to work up the will to live.
Baked like crazy.
Having found out I have an auto-immune disorder and the possibility that wheat is secretly trying to kill me, means that I am, of course, craving all baked goodies. Until I am told by a rheumatologist I have to give up gluten, I'm going to keep right eating it. SUCK IT BODY. Sunday, I made banana chip muffins; Monday, I made cream scones; and tonight I made blackberry honey-wheat cream scones. If I had bread flour, I would have made pumpkin milk loaf. Yay for evolutionary carb cravings.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Homicide, homicide, we may see murder yet
Today I had a doctor's appointment and since Justin is in Utah, I had to take Liam with me. I dragged myself out of bed this morning and got Alana up and noticed that her diaper had leaked. So I had to give her a quick bath and shove her bedding into the washer before the school bus came. And then when I tried to get Liam up, he refused to move, mostly because his bed was warm, but also the curtains make his room much darker now and he's been confused in the morning because the sun used to wake him up. So I rushed two kids into clothes and through breakfast, left Liam sulking on the stairs while I waited for Alana's bus. The bus was, of course, 10 minutes late, which means I threw Liam into the car and sped into the city. Fortunately with Liam in the car meant that I could take the HOV lanes which turn into the express lanes, unfortunately, this means that I was taking a different route to the doctor's than I had gone before. I was following the GPS which lead me through Capital Hill, an area of Seattle I'm not actually sure I've been to before and I was panicked because driving in Seattle always give me panic attacks. Plus there was construction. Of course there was construction because of some weird habit in Washington in which they don't start road work until rain is due to set it. Grrrrr. The best part was when I had to turn right and I stopped for two idiot girls who walked as slowly as possible and the light turned yellow and red in the time it took them to get off the @##$% crosswalk. And then a guy crossing the road the other direction gave me a really dirty look as he walked around my car. Sorry random idiot, next time I'll TOTALLY run over some pedestrians just so you don't have to walk around my not-moving car. I was also a little freaked out because this was the neighbourhood that my cousin's girlfriend had been hit on her bike by a car the previous week.
I got to the doctor's with plenty of time however and they're actually very good about getting me in as soon as possible. The receptionist even sweetly gave Liam some colouring pages and markers. When I tried to wean off the prednisone a couple of weeks ago, the granuloma that was nearly gone grew back almost to the original size and felt like it might be bringing a friend along as I started to have a pain in a new part of my breast. I called the LPN who had me up my dosage to the previous week's for a couple of weeks to see if there was any change. The new pain stopped, but the original granuloma doesn't seem to have shrunk this time around. I actually missed a dose on Saturday morning and by the time the evening had rolled around, I had that new pain again and it took a couple of days for it to go away. The LPN has now doubled my dose, not quite as much as the original dosage, but more than I've been taking for 3 weeks now, and wants me to try that for two weeks. If the granuloma hasn't shrunk by then, she's weaning me off completely and referring me to a rheumatologist where I will be put on the methotraxate. Yay. She did point out that since the granuloma didn't seem to be causing me that much pain, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to live with a lump in my breast (true, I guess) and chances are it would go away eventually. Apparently there's an expert in Scotland who studies granuloma mastitis and his patients don't take anything for it. They just let it burn itself out (usually takes a year) which results in pain, lesions, and the puss draining fistulas that I mentioned before. Umm, pass the prednisone, please.
This evening I was cooking dinner when Liam ran upstairs from the playroom telling me that Alana had hurt herself. Panicked, I ran downstairs to find that Alana was fine, but had been standing on a rubbermaid container on top of a table to try to get something off the shelf. But by running in, I tripped over all the toys they'd been spreading for the past week, stepped on yet more toys and wrenched my back. My kids nearly killed me because they had too many toys. I made Liam help me clean up the toys after Alana went to bed, and despite the fact it took an hour, he actually did a pretty good job. I also sorted out quick a few toys to donate and managed to (gasp) throw some away. The playroom is now spotless and I'm sitting here nursing a back spasm.
Today:
Went to the doctor's
Picked up books for the library
Cleaned up all the leaves from the back and side yard
Cleaned the kitchen (twice!)
Successfully did not commit homicide today
I got to the doctor's with plenty of time however and they're actually very good about getting me in as soon as possible. The receptionist even sweetly gave Liam some colouring pages and markers. When I tried to wean off the prednisone a couple of weeks ago, the granuloma that was nearly gone grew back almost to the original size and felt like it might be bringing a friend along as I started to have a pain in a new part of my breast. I called the LPN who had me up my dosage to the previous week's for a couple of weeks to see if there was any change. The new pain stopped, but the original granuloma doesn't seem to have shrunk this time around. I actually missed a dose on Saturday morning and by the time the evening had rolled around, I had that new pain again and it took a couple of days for it to go away. The LPN has now doubled my dose, not quite as much as the original dosage, but more than I've been taking for 3 weeks now, and wants me to try that for two weeks. If the granuloma hasn't shrunk by then, she's weaning me off completely and referring me to a rheumatologist where I will be put on the methotraxate. Yay. She did point out that since the granuloma didn't seem to be causing me that much pain, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to live with a lump in my breast (true, I guess) and chances are it would go away eventually. Apparently there's an expert in Scotland who studies granuloma mastitis and his patients don't take anything for it. They just let it burn itself out (usually takes a year) which results in pain, lesions, and the puss draining fistulas that I mentioned before. Umm, pass the prednisone, please.
This evening I was cooking dinner when Liam ran upstairs from the playroom telling me that Alana had hurt herself. Panicked, I ran downstairs to find that Alana was fine, but had been standing on a rubbermaid container on top of a table to try to get something off the shelf. But by running in, I tripped over all the toys they'd been spreading for the past week, stepped on yet more toys and wrenched my back. My kids nearly killed me because they had too many toys. I made Liam help me clean up the toys after Alana went to bed, and despite the fact it took an hour, he actually did a pretty good job. I also sorted out quick a few toys to donate and managed to (gasp) throw some away. The playroom is now spotless and I'm sitting here nursing a back spasm.
Today:
Went to the doctor's
Picked up books for the library
Cleaned up all the leaves from the back and side yard
Cleaned the kitchen (twice!)
Successfully did not commit homicide today
Monday, November 26, 2012
Honeydew for Thanksgiving
Last week Justin took the week off at which point I handed him a honey-do list that rivaled some military operations. We spent the week taking care of all the "small" projects that had been bothering me.
Last week Justin:
De-greased and re-greased the garage doors (did you know that you're supposed to grease your doors every year? PSA-go grease your doors!)
Replaced some of the rollers on the door (my door now no longer announces to the neighbourhood when I leave and arrive
Installed new garage door openers (and saved us $700!) which means that my garage door will close all the way instead of having a 2 inch gap at the bottom letting in mice, creepy crawlies and freezing cold air.
Cleaned out the garage bay so he can park in the garage too, yay!
Put up 8 sets of drapery, living room, dining room and the kids's room. Hopefully their rooms will no longer be 15 degrees colder than the rest of the house.
Helped me move the living furniture to put the rug pad down, re-roll out the carpet and move the furniture back. Hopefully, the rug will stay in place now and stop trying to trip people up.
Last week, I:
Roasted a turkey (I love turkey for leftovers)
Made duchesse potatoes, mashed potatoes, dressing, rolls, gravy, pumpkin pie, and a raspberry tart
With the above leftovers made 3 turkey lasagnas, turkey stock and then turkey noodle soup, and shepherd's pie, most of which I froze.
Scrubbed down the kids's bathroom including cobwebs (seriously, the spiders are out of control here)and mold
Took all lights off a prelit tree and restrung it with led lights. It took me over 8 hours and I was feeling less than Christmas cheerful when I was done.
So the story behind the tree is this: The 6 ft Christmas tree that I bought at a clearance sale 6 years ago that I planned on doing Festival of Trees with felt small and pathetic. It wasn't a tree I'd intended to keep anyway. I was also worried that the lights I bought at All-a-Dollar 10 years ago were a fire hazard and probably using a ton of energy, so I'd only leave the tree lit for a couple hours a day. I wanted an led 7.5 ft tree so I started to scour craigslist. After missing out on a couple of the ones I wanted, I finally tracked down a woman in West Seattle who claimed that her tree was a GE led tree. We went out and got it last Friday after our binge at Pike Place Market. When we got home, I realized that it was 1) not a led tree and 2) one of the strands was not working. I later found that the strand wasn't working because 1 bulb was missing, so it was actually okay. And to be fair, it looks like the woman in W. Seattle had just looked on the Home Depot website and tried to find the tree she had bought last year and had mistaken it for an led one (both said they had the "constant-on" feature). Since we hadn't spent that much on the tree, I figured even if we bought the led lights, we'd still come out ahead, spending about half the amount of a new led tree, even on sale.
I found some lights that matched the ones I'd bought last year at Fred Meyer and bought them. I then hung on to them to see if they went on sale for Black Friday. They did for about half the price I'd paid for them, so I sent poor Justin back over to the store to buy them and I returned the previous set later in the day. And then I stripped the lights off the tree and started to string on the led ones. And got about 2/3rds of the way up and ran out of lights. Damn. So back to the store I went to get more lights (should have kept the first batch). Several hours later, I emerged victorious. We now have a 7.5 ft led Christmas tree with over 800 lights for the grand total of less than $150. And since it uses 1/10th of the energy of new lights, and probably even less than that of my previous ghetto lights, I can leave the tree on all evening. Yay. And I also have microcuts over my hand. Ow. The added bonus is now all three of the Christmas trees have the same brand of lights on them. The kids were very excited to decorate their own trees this year and I'm hoping that it keeps them out of the big one.
Today I:
Got up at five to take Justin to the airport so he could go to Utah (and probably get away from my never ending list of chores)
Took the kids to speech therapy.
Grocery store
Last week Justin:
De-greased and re-greased the garage doors (did you know that you're supposed to grease your doors every year? PSA-go grease your doors!)
Replaced some of the rollers on the door (my door now no longer announces to the neighbourhood when I leave and arrive
Installed new garage door openers (and saved us $700!) which means that my garage door will close all the way instead of having a 2 inch gap at the bottom letting in mice, creepy crawlies and freezing cold air.
Cleaned out the garage bay so he can park in the garage too, yay!
Put up 8 sets of drapery, living room, dining room and the kids's room. Hopefully their rooms will no longer be 15 degrees colder than the rest of the house.
Helped me move the living furniture to put the rug pad down, re-roll out the carpet and move the furniture back. Hopefully, the rug will stay in place now and stop trying to trip people up.
Last week, I:
Roasted a turkey (I love turkey for leftovers)
Made duchesse potatoes, mashed potatoes, dressing, rolls, gravy, pumpkin pie, and a raspberry tart
With the above leftovers made 3 turkey lasagnas, turkey stock and then turkey noodle soup, and shepherd's pie, most of which I froze.
Scrubbed down the kids's bathroom including cobwebs (seriously, the spiders are out of control here)and mold
Took all lights off a prelit tree and restrung it with led lights. It took me over 8 hours and I was feeling less than Christmas cheerful when I was done.
So the story behind the tree is this: The 6 ft Christmas tree that I bought at a clearance sale 6 years ago that I planned on doing Festival of Trees with felt small and pathetic. It wasn't a tree I'd intended to keep anyway. I was also worried that the lights I bought at All-a-Dollar 10 years ago were a fire hazard and probably using a ton of energy, so I'd only leave the tree lit for a couple hours a day. I wanted an led 7.5 ft tree so I started to scour craigslist. After missing out on a couple of the ones I wanted, I finally tracked down a woman in West Seattle who claimed that her tree was a GE led tree. We went out and got it last Friday after our binge at Pike Place Market. When we got home, I realized that it was 1) not a led tree and 2) one of the strands was not working. I later found that the strand wasn't working because 1 bulb was missing, so it was actually okay. And to be fair, it looks like the woman in W. Seattle had just looked on the Home Depot website and tried to find the tree she had bought last year and had mistaken it for an led one (both said they had the "constant-on" feature). Since we hadn't spent that much on the tree, I figured even if we bought the led lights, we'd still come out ahead, spending about half the amount of a new led tree, even on sale.
I found some lights that matched the ones I'd bought last year at Fred Meyer and bought them. I then hung on to them to see if they went on sale for Black Friday. They did for about half the price I'd paid for them, so I sent poor Justin back over to the store to buy them and I returned the previous set later in the day. And then I stripped the lights off the tree and started to string on the led ones. And got about 2/3rds of the way up and ran out of lights. Damn. So back to the store I went to get more lights (should have kept the first batch). Several hours later, I emerged victorious. We now have a 7.5 ft led Christmas tree with over 800 lights for the grand total of less than $150. And since it uses 1/10th of the energy of new lights, and probably even less than that of my previous ghetto lights, I can leave the tree on all evening. Yay. And I also have microcuts over my hand. Ow. The added bonus is now all three of the Christmas trees have the same brand of lights on them. The kids were very excited to decorate their own trees this year and I'm hoping that it keeps them out of the big one.
Today I:
Got up at five to take Justin to the airport so he could go to Utah (and probably get away from my never ending list of chores)
Took the kids to speech therapy.
Grocery store
 |
| Alana deciding she was done for the afternoon. She fell asleep in the 1 mile journey to the speech therapist's office where I dumped her in a butterfly chair, thinking she'd wake up. She slept through all of Liam's appointment, then I carried her back to the car, drove home and laid her on the couch where she continued to nap for another hour and a half. |
 |
| Christmas decorations and Christmas trees and drapery! The big tree will remain un-decorated until I can get to Ikea and buy more ornaments-more trees plus larger tree means I ran out of ornaments. Ignore my sewing machine and serger. |
Monday, November 19, 2012
Playing hooky
On Friday, Justin and I pulled the kids out of school, dumped them on my sister-in-law, and went into the city to play. We drove to Pike Place Market, gave myself a slight panic attack trying to park (I hate driving downtown), and did all the fun stuff we always planned on doing but would be hard with the kids. First we stopped by Beecher Cheese to pick up Christmas presents for family, then visited this weird store called Quintessential Gourmet, which is a place that specializes in flavoured olive oils and balsamic vinegars. We bought some for my sister's-in-law birthday and me. We then walked about a half mile down the road and did the Underground Tour of Seattle which was actually pretty interesting. I learned a lot about the history of Seattle, and it was cool to see a little bit of the old buildings's original store fronts. We were the only locals there that didn't have out of town guests, so I guess we're still acting like tourists.
After we finished the tour, we walked back to Pike Place Market, stopped the gum wall (ewwww, by the way) and got lunch at the Michou Deli on the recommendation of my brother. Unfortunately, the didn't have the sandwiches that Justin and I wanted, so we got the crispy chicken sandwiches which were still pretty good. The deli also had approximately four chairs, so we walked down the block to eat. Then we walked back into the market and stopped by a French bakery that was next to Michou called Le Panier. I think I've discovered heaven. We spent waaaaaay too much money getting pain au chocolat, tartelette, and macarons. We bought 8 macarons, and I ate 7 of them by myself. Oops. We also stopped at this amazing spice shop, World Merchants, where I bought a half lb of madras curry. They mix it up and grind it there for you and don't add any fillers and it ends up being cheaper than the store. Win.
We then drove into West Seattle to pick up a Christmas tree that I found on craigslist that ended up being disappointing, but that's a different story. Back to my brother's to pick up the kids and home where we collapsed. It was fun, we spent way too money, and I want to do it again.
Saturday was my niece's birthday party at the Seattle Children's Museum. It was hard to try to convince Liam to go and I gave myself a slight panic attack trying to park (again). But once we got there and Liam got over his crippling shyness around the other kids, the kids had a ball. Alana literally ran from exhibit to exhibit and Liam spent half his time in the art room. So, success even if Liam didn't talk to another kid.
Over the weekend I got nothing done. So it goes.
After we finished the tour, we walked back to Pike Place Market, stopped the gum wall (ewwww, by the way) and got lunch at the Michou Deli on the recommendation of my brother. Unfortunately, the didn't have the sandwiches that Justin and I wanted, so we got the crispy chicken sandwiches which were still pretty good. The deli also had approximately four chairs, so we walked down the block to eat. Then we walked back into the market and stopped by a French bakery that was next to Michou called Le Panier. I think I've discovered heaven. We spent waaaaaay too much money getting pain au chocolat, tartelette, and macarons. We bought 8 macarons, and I ate 7 of them by myself. Oops. We also stopped at this amazing spice shop, World Merchants, where I bought a half lb of madras curry. They mix it up and grind it there for you and don't add any fillers and it ends up being cheaper than the store. Win.
We then drove into West Seattle to pick up a Christmas tree that I found on craigslist that ended up being disappointing, but that's a different story. Back to my brother's to pick up the kids and home where we collapsed. It was fun, we spent way too money, and I want to do it again.
Saturday was my niece's birthday party at the Seattle Children's Museum. It was hard to try to convince Liam to go and I gave myself a slight panic attack trying to park (again). But once we got there and Liam got over his crippling shyness around the other kids, the kids had a ball. Alana literally ran from exhibit to exhibit and Liam spent half his time in the art room. So, success even if Liam didn't talk to another kid.
Over the weekend I got nothing done. So it goes.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
He totally gets me
Driving into the city yesterday:
Me: "I hate the orange on the Space Needle."
Justin: "Why?"
Me: "It's ugly. No one knows thinks of the Space Needle being orange. No one had heard of "Galaxy Gold" anyway."
Justin: Exactly. "Ugly, original, no one had heard of it. It's a biggest hipster in Seattle."
Me: "I hate the orange on the Space Needle."
Justin: "Why?"
Me: "It's ugly. No one knows thinks of the Space Needle being orange. No one had heard of "Galaxy Gold" anyway."
Justin: Exactly. "Ugly, original, no one had heard of it. It's a biggest hipster in Seattle."
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Faking it
The first thing Justin said when he looked out the window was "Apparently we've moved to London." It was very foggy and wet this morning, and more than anything I wanted to just crawl back into bed. But I got Alana ready for school and attempted to eat breakfast to go to my dance class this morning. Unfortunately, I ate some cold cereal and my body decided to revolt at because of the milk, and by the time I stopped feeling like I was going to throw up, it was too late to leave for my class. So as a punishment I paid medical bills (I have never been so grateful for insurance after this whole granuloma thing), registered Justin's car, dropped off snacks at the kids's school, and got the car oil changed. Then I wasted the entire day poking around my house, ignoring the laundry and the tutu I'm supposed to be working on, and filling and emptying my shopping cart on amazon. I've bought a lot of things this week: curtains for the living and kids rooms, garage door openers, and paying medical bills. But this is Christmas shopping, and usually I'm done by now. ARGH.
I also remembered that we needed that stuff called food, so I went to the grocery store. Unfortunately, right in the middle of trying to find a turkey, I had a panic attack and had to call Justin to come help me get out of the store. What is it with grocery stores? I have more panic attacks there than nearly any other place. Church is a close second. And then I got home and remembered three more things I forgot at the store so I have to go back. ARGH.
So right now I'm trying to fake being a normal human being right now. I don't think it's working. ARGH.
I also remembered that we needed that stuff called food, so I went to the grocery store. Unfortunately, right in the middle of trying to find a turkey, I had a panic attack and had to call Justin to come help me get out of the store. What is it with grocery stores? I have more panic attacks there than nearly any other place. Church is a close second. And then I got home and remembered three more things I forgot at the store so I have to go back. ARGH.
So right now I'm trying to fake being a normal human being right now. I don't think it's working. ARGH.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
It's all relative
So yesterday I decided what I needed more than anything was a day that I could stay home. So I did. I ran tons of laundry and ironed my sheets and worked on a baby blanket that I started 6 months ago for a baby that was born two months ago (sorry Brooke!) while watching lots and lots of bad tv.
It was so fun I decided to do the same today. Until I realized that I was almost out of my pills, so when Justin got home, I forced him to go to Costco with us to get string cheese and pills. Yummmm, string cheese and pills.
So my days have been less than productive. I miss the mania. Never thought I would say that.
It was so fun I decided to do the same today. Until I realized that I was almost out of my pills, so when Justin got home, I forced him to go to Costco with us to get string cheese and pills. Yummmm, string cheese and pills.
So my days have been less than productive. I miss the mania. Never thought I would say that.
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