January, 2013, At Our House
Feb. 2nd, 2013 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameGrant was in Maryland every other week of November, and most of December, before taking a Christmas break that involved actual days off (because even when he's "in town", he works long hours, 2 hours away...) At the beginning of January I was dropping him back off at the airport again for 5 days (and another 4 soon after).
It's been a lot of solo parenting, and because my best local friend Kristin moved away in early November, and I won't leave the kids alone at night to go visit Laura like I can do when G's home in bed, I've been feeling pretty isolated a lot of the time.
I even graduated from Miami Dade College in December (going back to university in the fall) - I would kill for some classroom discussions, some afternoons.
Loneliness anecdote: My awesome friend Jess came down with her boyfriend Cale, to see her Dad and also me. We agreed to meet up on Lincoln Rd up in Miami Beach one Friday night. I put on earrings, and makeup and junk, and Grant was here manning the fort, so off I went...only to get stuck in THE WORST traffic of my entire life, literally. I was stuck on causeways and bridges where you can't make a u-turn or get off for hours. Eventually, Jess and Cale had to give up and leave our meeting place, since they had hours of driving to do that night - I just barely managed not to run out of gas.
I have a good sense of humor. I was texting them all the while, about for instance these people who got off a city bus and started walking, and this girl who peed in the emergency lane. At one point, I was like, "Merge, loser!" and the person I'd been talking to had his window down too and actually heard me and replied, and I lol'd in surprise. I watched a drug deal go down under the overpass I was stuck on and marveled that this dude was just standing there in the dark counting stacks of cash like a block from where that guy got his face eaten off a few months ago.
After getting my just-in-time gas I called Shaun, who lives right around there, but he was off at some other thing with some other person. I ended up hanging out with the bartender at Burger and Beer Joint, critiquing the hair band music they were playing (that I unfortunately know all the lyrics to and trivia about). It was actually sort of fun, but THIS IS MY LIFE.
I did manage to meet Jess and Cale for a pretty kickass brunch at a local diner before they headed back to north Florida. But that was THE ONE TIME in January that I hung out with a friend, you know?
Sometimes I just pace around here when everyone's asleep feeling like a caged animal. I actually got on chatroulette one night...and promptly remembered why THAT is a bad idea O_o
Anyway.
I had some pretty intense cramps, one of these isolated sort of days, and grit my teeth through all the homeschooling, chore enforcing, cooking, etc until I could get to this:
Brownies with homemade chocolate sauce and freshly whipped cream, plus blackberries. Yessssss...
I find there are few things that attempting to boil myself alive in hot water won't fix.
Look at this girl - sun burned, COVERED in mosquito bites. This is how I found her, happy as a clam, when I picked her and Aaron up out in the Everglades from Izzy's annual birthday camp out. She told me stories of charades and being doused in midnight rain while I made us breakfast.
Nigella's blackberry and apple kuchen, and coffee with coconut milk and turbinado sugar.
I don't think we were really supposed to whole wheat that. Oh well.
Elise has rediscovered her photobook, and keeps it with her when she's sad and missing Daddy.
Tellin' me all about it, one afternoon.
My napping view, from my bed.
That's two pictures, side by side, lookin' all wonky.
Carrot cupcakes for tea.
The meal Jake laid out for me one afternoon, while I ran around doing errands. It was a surprise.
This is the look I get for peeking in her french doors and snapping pics while she works on a book report at her desk.
Part of Ananda and Elise's room, from outside on the deck.
And mine.
We keep all the doors open (dining room and tv room have french doors, too) lately, it's always lovely - even if it does mean Jake and Isaac invariably end up running circles from inside to outside in rowdy games of tag.
View from my hammock.
Our last night at Santa's, before they closed.
My Beast got a haircut! She demanded it, one afternoon. I love it, and so does she. She ran around ultra hyper exclaiming about it all that first day, and keeps saying hilarious adorable things... "I know I'm still me, but I feel like a different person!" "This outfit looks even better with my haircut!"
Sometimes having the doors open at night leads to weird problems.
That's Annie screaming. We initially thought it was a bird or a bat O_o
It wouldn't get off of him, once he had it. He had to basically shove it off and run, after awhile.
Salad of the gods; I've been combining these two things every day and tearing it up. Mmm....
Copied and Pasted facebook stuff:
January 29:
So apparently I've probably got a ganglyonic cyst on my wrist (pending x-ray). Ow. If I can get out of here in time, I got invited JUST NOW via email to the 2:30 meeting of Miami Dade College's literary magazine, as a guest of honor (former student/published author)
Later:
Hmm, I should have known that "special guest invitation" to the college literary magazine meeting was just a way to try to rope me into volunteer writing/editing/etc.... Now to decide whether or not I'm going to do it.
January 30:
So I have to follow up with a specialist. A couple of things about my hand/wrist lumps aren't consistent with ganglyonic cysts (heightened inflammation on blood tests and pain). Based on many things I've felt and researched in the past few months, my father's medical history (I TOTALLY take after him physically), and things said while we were there, I'm pretty sure I have some kind of autoimmune disorder, most likely of the arthritic variety...it would definitely explain the crazy fatigue I've been having and trying everything to combat, for quite awhile now. I've decided to give that poor bastard Google a break from my ceaseless interrogating and just act super zen until I can speak to some experts.
Comment downthread in there:
my weird painful wrists only started about 3-4 years ago, and it's very intermittent - usually triggered by stress on the joints. I've also been waking up REALLY stiff (like sort of hobbling from the bed to the bathroom and then feeling totally normal within a couple of minutes) for the last few months, and just...I don't know. There are a lot of weird things that point in this direction. 6 months ago my feet suddenly hurt terribly and seemed misshapen, with funky lumps, and Grant was massaging them at night a lot, and one day that stopped and went away - I attributed it to my funky hips, as though I was out of alignment and it had effected how I walked badly, but looking back that seems really silly. The whole episode was similar to what's happening with my wrist and hand now. When I wake up in the morning, for the past couple of months, I can't grip half the time...like AT ALL. Like, my iPhone alarm starts going off and I can't grab the damn thing to turn it off O_o All year last year I was semi-alarmed by how tired I often was...I've never taken so many naps, and am no longer an insomniac for the first time in my life. I kept getting confused because I'm not depressed, and I have this link in my mind that people who don't want to get out of bed in the morning are depressed. I'm actually pretty stoked about life over all, I just want to sleep half of it away :p
My father has semi-intense rheumatoid arthritis that started in his 20s. I've kind of been in denial about this, I think, getting my thyroid tested and saying I need to get to the chiropractor more often. I don't know.
It's been a lot of solo parenting, and because my best local friend Kristin moved away in early November, and I won't leave the kids alone at night to go visit Laura like I can do when G's home in bed, I've been feeling pretty isolated a lot of the time.
I even graduated from Miami Dade College in December (going back to university in the fall) - I would kill for some classroom discussions, some afternoons.
Loneliness anecdote: My awesome friend Jess came down with her boyfriend Cale, to see her Dad and also me. We agreed to meet up on Lincoln Rd up in Miami Beach one Friday night. I put on earrings, and makeup and junk, and Grant was here manning the fort, so off I went...only to get stuck in THE WORST traffic of my entire life, literally. I was stuck on causeways and bridges where you can't make a u-turn or get off for hours. Eventually, Jess and Cale had to give up and leave our meeting place, since they had hours of driving to do that night - I just barely managed not to run out of gas.
I have a good sense of humor. I was texting them all the while, about for instance these people who got off a city bus and started walking, and this girl who peed in the emergency lane. At one point, I was like, "Merge, loser!" and the person I'd been talking to had his window down too and actually heard me and replied, and I lol'd in surprise. I watched a drug deal go down under the overpass I was stuck on and marveled that this dude was just standing there in the dark counting stacks of cash like a block from where that guy got his face eaten off a few months ago.
After getting my just-in-time gas I called Shaun, who lives right around there, but he was off at some other thing with some other person. I ended up hanging out with the bartender at Burger and Beer Joint, critiquing the hair band music they were playing (that I unfortunately know all the lyrics to and trivia about). It was actually sort of fun, but THIS IS MY LIFE.
I did manage to meet Jess and Cale for a pretty kickass brunch at a local diner before they headed back to north Florida. But that was THE ONE TIME in January that I hung out with a friend, you know?
Sometimes I just pace around here when everyone's asleep feeling like a caged animal. I actually got on chatroulette one night...and promptly remembered why THAT is a bad idea O_o
Anyway.
I had some pretty intense cramps, one of these isolated sort of days, and grit my teeth through all the homeschooling, chore enforcing, cooking, etc until I could get to this:
Brownies with homemade chocolate sauce and freshly whipped cream, plus blackberries. Yessssss...
I find there are few things that attempting to boil myself alive in hot water won't fix.
Look at this girl - sun burned, COVERED in mosquito bites. This is how I found her, happy as a clam, when I picked her and Aaron up out in the Everglades from Izzy's annual birthday camp out. She told me stories of charades and being doused in midnight rain while I made us breakfast.
Nigella's blackberry and apple kuchen, and coffee with coconut milk and turbinado sugar.
I don't think we were really supposed to whole wheat that. Oh well.
Elise has rediscovered her photobook, and keeps it with her when she's sad and missing Daddy.
Tellin' me all about it, one afternoon.
My napping view, from my bed.
That's two pictures, side by side, lookin' all wonky.
Carrot cupcakes for tea.
The meal Jake laid out for me one afternoon, while I ran around doing errands. It was a surprise.
This is the look I get for peeking in her french doors and snapping pics while she works on a book report at her desk.
Part of Ananda and Elise's room, from outside on the deck.
And mine.
We keep all the doors open (dining room and tv room have french doors, too) lately, it's always lovely - even if it does mean Jake and Isaac invariably end up running circles from inside to outside in rowdy games of tag.
View from my hammock.
Our last night at Santa's, before they closed.
My Beast got a haircut! She demanded it, one afternoon. I love it, and so does she. She ran around ultra hyper exclaiming about it all that first day, and keeps saying hilarious adorable things... "I know I'm still me, but I feel like a different person!" "This outfit looks even better with my haircut!"
Sometimes having the doors open at night leads to weird problems.
That's Annie screaming. We initially thought it was a bird or a bat O_o
It wouldn't get off of him, once he had it. He had to basically shove it off and run, after awhile.
Salad of the gods; I've been combining these two things every day and tearing it up. Mmm....
Copied and Pasted facebook stuff:
January 29:
So apparently I've probably got a ganglyonic cyst on my wrist (pending x-ray). Ow. If I can get out of here in time, I got invited JUST NOW via email to the 2:30 meeting of Miami Dade College's literary magazine, as a guest of honor (former student/published author)
Later:
Hmm, I should have known that "special guest invitation" to the college literary magazine meeting was just a way to try to rope me into volunteer writing/editing/etc.... Now to decide whether or not I'm going to do it.
January 30:
So I have to follow up with a specialist. A couple of things about my hand/wrist lumps aren't consistent with ganglyonic cysts (heightened inflammation on blood tests and pain). Based on many things I've felt and researched in the past few months, my father's medical history (I TOTALLY take after him physically), and things said while we were there, I'm pretty sure I have some kind of autoimmune disorder, most likely of the arthritic variety...it would definitely explain the crazy fatigue I've been having and trying everything to combat, for quite awhile now. I've decided to give that poor bastard Google a break from my ceaseless interrogating and just act super zen until I can speak to some experts.
Comment downthread in there:
my weird painful wrists only started about 3-4 years ago, and it's very intermittent - usually triggered by stress on the joints. I've also been waking up REALLY stiff (like sort of hobbling from the bed to the bathroom and then feeling totally normal within a couple of minutes) for the last few months, and just...I don't know. There are a lot of weird things that point in this direction. 6 months ago my feet suddenly hurt terribly and seemed misshapen, with funky lumps, and Grant was massaging them at night a lot, and one day that stopped and went away - I attributed it to my funky hips, as though I was out of alignment and it had effected how I walked badly, but looking back that seems really silly. The whole episode was similar to what's happening with my wrist and hand now. When I wake up in the morning, for the past couple of months, I can't grip half the time...like AT ALL. Like, my iPhone alarm starts going off and I can't grab the damn thing to turn it off O_o All year last year I was semi-alarmed by how tired I often was...I've never taken so many naps, and am no longer an insomniac for the first time in my life. I kept getting confused because I'm not depressed, and I have this link in my mind that people who don't want to get out of bed in the morning are depressed. I'm actually pretty stoked about life over all, I just want to sleep half of it away :p
My father has semi-intense rheumatoid arthritis that started in his 20s. I've kind of been in denial about this, I think, getting my thyroid tested and saying I need to get to the chiropractor more often. I don't know.
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