Life's been good to me so far

Saturday Grant and I drove down to Key West. We stopped for mushroom brie soup, ham and cheese croissant and iced coffee on the way, and we saw many mostly naked people while there - mostly in costumes and body paint, and drank free rum after getting to a rooftop bar via my Aunt's free wristbands. I had a bunch of party goers yell after she had the announcer say, "Happy Birthday to Tina Marie!" (which she will apparently always call me) and I walked around on an old bridge in the moonlight alone with Grant, looking at stars and our changing shadows.

Sunday I slept in, I had sex, I took my big kids out for a LUSH shopping/macaron getting/tea shop date, I was sung to by my sweet family.

I'm 34!

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Today O_O

Today I took Ananda to the orthondontist (one of her impacted teeth is finally showing!!!) and myself to both an ultrasound, where I learned my IUD may have embedded itself in my c/s scar and need to be surgically removed (but I have to wait to know), and to my primary care doc with Grant where we were finally able to get training and prescriptions for him to give me the B-12 shots I have to have. Jake and Elise had to come to all of these appointments and brought books and were generally pretty tolerant. Somewhere in between there, I made a big pot of pumpkin oatmeal for Jake, Elise, G and I; helped Jake finalize the Halloween costume he wants; and I took an hour and a half long beast of a french test.

Then I fielded a call from Aaron's spanish teacher as I dropped off prescriptions, picked up my school kids, had a big sit down about a class Annie's slacking in, talked to my gynecologist about my pending test results, left FIU's psych advising a message about a registration problem, and started on my research methods work. 45 minute test and hour+ on an assignment later, I ran to eat the delicious dinner Grant cooked and talk with Isaac for a bit.

Good. Grief.

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Since Saturday, I've been having an awful lot of long, hard, heavy, emotional, irritating, comforting, potentially helpful fb messages back and forth with my sister. About misunderstandings we've had, habits and patterns we've outgrown, ways to meet each other where we're at now, and more. Just novellas upon novellas worth of word counts, often with tears. BAH-LAAAAH....

There does seem to be some progress, though, and at least we both care enough to make the effort.

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I just took a break from writing this to read Elise 3 chapters of Junie B. Jones (and the Stupid Smelly School Bus), cuddle her a bit, and explain what we have coming up this week. She's so great. Reading to my kids can be EXACTLY the recharge *I* need, sometimes.

Still pretty damn tired :p

To everyone who replied to the national debt post: Thank you :) I really appreciate your input, and it actually helped a lot.

Grant and I spent his off-days cleaning the heck out of this house, from vaccuming under furniture we don't normally move to getting the chicks out of my office and into the yard in a temporary coop. There was also closet cleanup, and bar clearing (it was piled so high, just ridiculous...) and bathtub scrubbing, and so on.

I also crocheted like a maniac, for this new blanket idea I had, and will hopefully have pics to post of that soon.

My Nana had surgery on an aneurism she's had for a few years now. An abdominal one. It went really well, and they were able to clean a lot of plaque out of the artery as a bonus while they were in there, which is supposed to help her circulation once she's up and around again. She lives in Lakeland. My mother and uncle went to be with her in the hospital. I'm sure a "Nana" seems really, really old to most people for an adult to have, but really, she's only 59. I was very relieved it all went well, as I'm not AT ALL ready to deal with anything happening to her... This by the way is the one we go spend Christmas Eve with every year, and who I was so upset moved away a few years back.

My cousin Christina - this is a cousin on my father's/cuban side - is pregnant, and the first of her siblings to get pregnant, so it's A Big Dealtm. Her baby shower is this weekend and her mother/my aunt is EXTEMELY EXCITED and sent out handmade invitations to everyone. She's also emailed us ultrasound pictures and an entire slideshow of the very detailed nursery stenciling she's done for this granddaughter. Laura and I are going, Grant and Frank were able to orchestrate days off and it'll be a chance to see aunts and cousins I haven't seen in a couple of years. And my Dad, too, albeit separately due to...uh...relational tensions on that side of my family. I haven't went anywhere ALONE with my sister, with no kids, for...however old Brian (her son) is? At least. I guess I've seen her in a hospital room by ourselves, but I hardly think that counts. This is going to be awesome, just she and I in the Prius. We'll actually be in the Prius A LOT - it's in Key West (2.5 hours away) and we are leaving early and getting back late on the same day. It's so bizarre that Christina, Annette and Andrea (the close older cousins we grew up spending time around every year as kids) are all still childless, when they're all at least 5 year older than me, at least 8 years older than Laura. It's funny to go see this woman I grew up seeing as a way older and more mature kid who was ahead of me, having her first baby shower, when I'm leaving my 5 kids at home to go. I'm trying hard to not have too much of an "agenda" in my gift-giving (i.e., not giving her cloth diapers and a guide to why co-sleeping is best but actual things off her registry) :p

I've been having MAJOR allergies for the past couple of weeks...waking up in the middle of the night with watering eyes and sneezing fits, spending the days sniffling with a sinus headache...and nothing helps. We've changed the AC filter out, removed the chicks (even though they were behind a closed door in a pen, with a closed AC vent, and still very small, and not at all effecting the rest of the house), cleaned our bedroom fan, changed our diets. I've gotten desperate in the past few days from ALWAYS feeling run down and miserable, and taken loratadine meltaways, nose sprays, and started up again with a Vicks inhaler. It's just getting worse and worse. I did some research tonight and went to Walgreens after midnight for 24 hour, used-to-be-only-by-prescription-strength Zyrtec that I've been waiting to kick in for about an hour now. It better work, by golly...

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My last couple of days have been totally dominated by Elise being sick. She's the only one, just her. She got a sudden high fever yesterday that stuck around all day long, leaving her either sleeping or borderline lethargic, and puking once, until evening, when she perked up a little and then slipped back into misery. Slept through the night. Nursing almmost constantly, though, and hot "in places". Today was more of the same.

Her only real remaining neuro quirk is that when she has a fever, it's a wack fever, where say like today - the whole right side of her body is burning hot. The left side is room temperature. Her feet freezing, like ice cubes, to where I can feel their coldness through my pants O_o Really strange. I spent awhile on the phone with the ped and felt so, so relieved, after I'd spent too long with google and was half-convinced she had FREAKING MENINGITIS and would be losing all of her progress and abilities anytime.

I think it's just really triggering to me to see her so limp and exhausted and constantly sleeping, and be in contact with doctors. She jerks in her sleep and I think of seizures for the first time in months. Ugh. The idea of putting her through more spinal taps, or spending more nights in hospitals. Ugh ugh.

She was better today than yesterday, with SOME walking around and personality amidst the sicky sickness, so I am strongly hoping she is better tomorrow than today. I can't leave her like this on Saturday to go to Key West :/ I mean they think it sounds like she just has some normal infection like kids get, she was in the church nursery on Sunday and Aaron had some mysterious one-night-only puking thing last week. It's just...different...when it's her.

Either way I am totally going to be screwed that after months of nursing 3-5 times in a 24 hour period, she'll have been nursing around the clock for days due to illness...and then I'll go away for 12 or more hours straight and be engorged and soaking my shirt. Blah. I'm glad I have a ped who can appreciate how important breast milk can be for a sick toddler, and even said how these are the one's she never has to worry about getting dehydrated from fevers because they'll always at least take that.


I was going to make this big food logging post because I'm back to meal planning and grocery budgeting again and so it's on my mind and I like getting ideas and sharing recipes. Like yesterday we had apple cinnamon and raisin steel cut oats for breakfast; long, drained ramen noodles mixed with sauteed garlic, mushrooms and spinach in olive oil, for lunch; and southwestern quesadillas with cilantro from the garden for dinner.

But then today we ate all the carrot cupcakes I made late last night for breakfast, lunch and snacks until I ordered Chinese takeout for dinner because all I could do all day with Grant working was pace with or nurse with miserable sick Elise and play phone tag with the doctor. While all the others watched too many movies and played in the yard. You win some, you lose some.