Saturday Smorgasbord

THANKS
Thanks for all of your kind and understanding comments and emails regarding my hus’s back injury and my complaints of my feeling selfish. His MRI came back negative for a herniated disc but showed some deformities in 2 discs. He is feeling much better and only has some minor back and leg pain now.

NOT JUST JELLY BEANS
As I have written before, I have had a hard time losing my T pregnancy weight. He is 4 and a half years old now, so I am not sure if I can still blame the weight on him. Well, I am trying Weight Watchers again now. I am doing it on my own because there are no meetings I can consistently attend near here. When I lost my E pregnancy weight almost 10 years ago, I attended WW meetings weekly and the weight came off easily. The meetings do really help, receiving even the tiniest praise in the form of a round of applause or a gold sticker goes along way in motivating a person to continue on the diet. That is why I am going to try and write about my newest attempt in getting to a healthy weight. And I hope you all will help me with your always lovely and encouraging comments. I know some of you are also doing WW or other things to lose weight and I love to read about how it’s going for you. I will be honest and own up if I have a setback, after all I am human.(And one of those humans who loves anything made by Hostess)
For a visual, so be it, a silly visual, I am going to use jelly jars filled with jelly beans to help track my progress. Each bean represents a pound. On the left are the pounds I need to lose to reach my goal, on the right are the pounds I have lost. I started last Tuesday and have lost 4 pounds. After I am down to my goal weight, I will treat you all to a recent photo of me, I have only posted old pictures here and rarely at that.



A FUNNY LOOK AT RAISING A TODDLER
I think I have mentioned here before that one of my best friends from High School Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, a comedian and writer, published a book on parenting, and now she has written two books on parenting. She calls them “anti-advice” books and they contain extremely funny, down to earth , realistic views on parenting. Her first book Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay and Other Things I Learned as a New Mom is the perfect read for new moms or any mom for that matter. (you’ll also find me in her acknowledgements, yes I am bragging). Her second book Naptime is the New Happy Hour and Other Ways Toddlers Turn Your Life Upside Down just came out this week. I started reading it last night and already I am half way through it. I had many laugh out loud moments last evening! Stef is also the author of the blog Baby On Bored. You can find these books for a discounted price on Amazon. I ordered mine from Target which goes through Amazon. I am still waiting for my promised free autographed copy. I also added them to my Shelfari shelf on my side bar.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Worried

You may or may not have noticed, that I haven't been around visiting all of you this week. I have wanted to,being the blogging addict I am, but due to some things happening in my life right now, I wasn't able to.
I always think that if I am depressed I will write more. For many writer's and artists, being in the depths of a severe depression seems to motivate them to create. For me, it is usually the opposite. When I am happy and have nothing important going on in my personal life, my mind tends to wander and obsess about what I am going to write about next. If I am depressed or anxious I usually just obsess about the reason for it. That is, after an extensive period of denial.
What is worrying me lately is my husband. He is the type of guy who never complains about any type of illness. He hasn't missed work in years, even times when I begged him to stay home, knowing he was spreading his nasty germs around, he would suffer through and go. Well, a few weeks ago he hurt his back. He is not sure when or how he did it. Maybe at work, maybe sledding with the kids. The back pain was so bad that he had to be taken to the doctor ASAP. I tried to get him to go to the emergency room but, well, he's stubborn. He went to the on-call doc who ended up being an asshole. He didn't even take an X-ray and prescribed Ibuprofen and a muscle relaxer. So, I had to call said asshole MD from the pharmacy and get a different medicine and had to explain to asshole that my hus is not a drug seeker, and has not been to a doctor in years, and had already tried Ibuprofen at home. My hus was on the floor in tears, was how bad it was. The asshole gave us a different prescription. However, I only wish I was in the exam room with hus at the time because I would have demanded an X-Ray. Hus, being not familiar with how things work in medicine, actually trusted this doctor to treat him correctly and prescribe something that would help. How naive.
Hus stayed out of work for 3 days and then went to see a chiropractor. He took an X-ray and told hus he had a herniated or slipped disc. Hus being the layman in the medical field can't remember which! UGH! So he went to the chiropractor a few more times but wasn't getting much better. He was able to go to work but not able to lie down to sleep. I sent him back to a DIFFERENT doctor who ended up doing a thorough exam of my hus and was worried because of the muscle weakness and numbness hus is having in his leg. He set up an MRI for hus, which he had on Tuesday, and we haven't heard the results yet.
At first I was only worried about helping hus get through his pain. Then I was worried because I was doing all the shoveling of snow and multiple other household chores hus usually does. Then of course I was worried about the money. We have money in savings for emergency, which I guess makes us lucky, but nobody actually wants to use that money for an emergency.
Then the selfish worries came to surface. I would think"I can't possibly do all the shoveling forever, and what about mowing? And oh, no, I don't want to have to work MORE! And the most selfish thought of all ...When can I have my couch back? It's my couch, when everyone else goes to bed, that is my time, I watch what I want on TV or DVD, I curl up with a good book all by myself on that couch, what will I do?"
Worse of all is that hus and I were feeling somewhat distant. I know from working with ill people all the time, that they are very self centered. If someone is in pain, they can only think of that, and it is completely normal. I try to be supportive and give hus the TLC he needs, but at times it doesn't seem like enough.
That is why I haven't spent as much time blogging lately. Too much on my mind. Today has been a good day, hus and I seem to be back to status quo. His pain is getting better and I am getting back to blogging and being selfish.
I will hopefully be visiting regularly again soon.

We're Going to Catch Ourselves a Leprechaun!

We have a yearly tradition around here. For St. Patrick's Day we make a Leprechaun trap, this year we made two. On the eve of St. Patty's Day we'll leave the traps out and hopefully by the morning we'll have ourselves a Leprechaun or two to play with.
Usually, the Leprechauns are clever enough to escape our traps, however, they do leave us some goodies like chocolate coins and gold dust.

E has it in her head that Leprechauns love shoes. She feels they would never be able to pass up a good shoe sale. At one piece of gold a pair, who could resist?






Perhaps a drunk Leprechaun, one that has already stopped by McT's Irish Pub. What Leprechaun could resist green Guinness on tap?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Mother Nature Needs To Go Back On Her Meds

If Mother Nature were to appear before me in corporeal form, she would be in big trouble. I would kick her butt! Or die trying. After that, I would bring her to my little hospital where I could be her nurse. I would restrain her immediately in a straight jacket and medicate her with high doses of Haldol, anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressant meds. Then the real fun would begin. I could turn down the heat, say to, 9F, then sprinkle a little snow on her. Next, just for ha, ha's I would change the snow to freezing rain. I wouldn't want to freeze her completely and permanently so I would have to turn up the heat and pour some rain on her. And to really freak her out I would simulate lightening and thunder in her room. Then I would turn all the lights off. I mean, really, Mother, WTF was that all about the other day?

By now she would be so out of it, she's probably going to think she is hallucinating. And when it gets so bad she can't take it anymore, she will have an epiphany of some sorts. She will realize how truely awful her behavior this winter has been. She has been acting like a spoiled brat, taking all her frustrations out on us, the little people. She will feel bad about all the times she laughed at the poor meteorologists who have failed to predict her behavior. Her heart will ache with remorse for forcing people, like me, who don't have a choice, to drive in freezing rain and ice storms.

At this point, I can change her meds to maintenance doses and she will promise to take them after we discharge her. And we, the humble slaves to her will, can enjoy a pleasant, warm and sunny spring!

I Hear the Secrets That You Keep....

When You're Talking In Your Sleep

We are not a quiet family at night. I have recently been told that I snore, quite loudly in fact. It used to be my husband that snored, but now I just think he breaths really loud. The kids however are the ones who make the most interesting verbalization's while they sleep.

T, my four year old son, has recently been heard to say...
"Get the rocket launched!"
"ANTS! ANTS! GET THEM OFF ME!"
"I can't get my hands down my pants."

E, my 9 year old daughter, not only talks in her sleep, but walks in her sleep too. The other night she walked out to the living room at midnight, where I was watching Buffy, and said to me " Too bad the Andy Griffith Show isn't on."
A long time ago, when E was about 3, we had the rare occurrence of a small earthquake here in the early morning hours. Hus and I went to check on E who we found still asleep. She said to us "The space ship has landed".

Almost every night the kids can be heard arguing with each other, just like they do when they are awake.

Title of post from the song Talking In Your Sleep by The Romantics.