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Today is Sunday. Sunday we do an 8 to 8.5 mile walk (usually to Walmart) and back through the park… past the donut shop (Yeah!!!!) and back home. Today was overcast (actually it tried really hard to rain… even if … Continue reading
Walked to the grocery store today. 
5 miles there and back (even got 87 cent a pint blackberries for the walk home). It was a great walk. I SO miss western PA in October… because I miss fall leaves… but I really love central Texas in April. The bluebonnets are breathtaking… and because of the rain they are even more beautiful than usual.
People here are really great to watch, too. Everyone gets their pictures taken in the flowers. People… dogs… pictures and pictures and pictures of the posies. These are a few of mine.
I signed up for 10000 steps (work is encouraging wellness… visa-ve Yoga… 10000 steps… even giving us a discounted rate on Weight Watchers) and today was a good day… made my 10000 steps. Tomorrow is the Walk to Walmart (for scripts) and that is a nine mile walk…. more flower pictures…
I love spring.
I love colors.
I love days when I don’t feel like I got hit by a truck.
Posted in Fitness, Journalling
It has been an amazingly long and reasonably bad week… but the ending isn’t SO bad (except for the computer part)
Monday was supposed to be work from home day… and my laptop crashed… Hurry up and bath quick, get dressed and haul my butt into work… laptop toast… fixed by Wednesday at the latest. Okay… cool beans… pager duty starts Thursday so that isn’t bad. Figured by the way I felt I was coming down with a UTI and was trying to stay mellow and drink lots of water and lots of green tea and cranberry juice…
Tuesday… didn’t feel quite right in the morning but that isn’t overly unusual…. face it… I wake up every day feeling just a little off. Went to work… actually made some progress… Lunch time I was feeling crappier and decided (rather than LISTEN to my body… duh) to ride the stationary bike at the gym… NOT a great idea… shower… feeling worse and worse… back to work… by 1:30 EVERYTHING hurt. Welcome to an infection with an auto-immune disease. LORD this was awful. It felt like someone had beaten the crap out of me with a baseball bat…. repeatedly… everywhere. Packed up and went to the car (where I slept in the parking garage for about an hour) and drove home… where I went to sleep and slept until the night got full of raised voices and unhappy people… REALLY didn’t feel like diffusing an argument but I’m really really really glad I did. I’m also not glad I did because I could have done without some of what I found out… but… hey… you take the good with the bad. I understand WAY more now than I did before and I think it will end up being a better thing. The nicest thing was… I got my laptop back from the help desk so I had it in case I needed it.
Wednesday… woke up throwing up… great… worked from home (on the back porch) so I didn’t have to get up and RUN to the bathroom every half hour… A trip to the store for easter candy (I’m so glad I have weird kids who still… at 15 and 18… want to find baskets and hunt eggs… and dye eggs…) and back to work. It felt so good working on the back porch and I get so much more done when there are fewer interruptions. I know that isn’t logical (supposed to get more done when they can watch you work) but it is (in my case, at least, true… I get more done because I can put in a concentrated effort and I actually end up working longer AND smarter when I can do it my way… but I’m not a type A or anything… )
Thursday… get the pager… OH BOY!!! eesh…. and Yoga class. Yoga is SO helping me. I absolutely love the lady that runs BeaLoveYoga and I want them to keep allowing us to have class at lunch time. It helps so much… especially when I don’t have to get in the car and haul my butt half way across town (or worse) to attend a class….
Friday was SUPPOSED to be a work from home day… computer crashed again… great… in to work to do my clone (sometimes I love E-Business suite… sometimes not so much). BUT I got the clone done on time and even ahead of schedule and my computer was back by 1. I figured I was set for the weekend of pager duty. DON’T ever assume computers are going to work. Skinny butt went out with his friends and got back late late. Making sure he was okay (THIS kid SO can’t drive safely… even on a good day… he scares me)… finding out that 10 MTX sucks and trying to stop the world from spinning.
Saturday (when I actually started this) was a really good day. Busy but good. Walked to HEB… colored eggs.. put up 2 tents in the back yard (and actually slept in them)… went swimming (even the coldish water was nice after you got in and moving)… Sleeping in the tent was great. Went to sleep listening to trains and traffic down on the big road and an owl somewhere out back. I usually sleep to inane TV programs that are white noise. I was PLANNING on falling asleep to music on the computer… I turned it off and just listened. It was chilly and damp, but Amandyal came out to sleep with me and Peanut came out to sleep with me and it was all good.
And this morning… a cardinal is sitting outside the kitchen window on the fence singing… Amandya is sitting on the floor in the living room with her basket laid out on the floor (surrounded by the wet blankets from the tent) listening to Letters From Home and looking at pictures. Things have started to really matter to her. Waking up to rain dripping off the roof and filling up the tent was nice… Waking up to my stupid work laptop being messed up again wasn’t so great… but I got to play hide the easter basket and hide the eggs again which is really good.
My arm hurts a 12 this morning because of the rain but I expected that…
Now… to bake a ham
Posted in Family, Holiday, Journalling
Okay, well, it sounded like a cool title.
Today is International Purple Day… a day to raise awareness of Epilepsy world wide. It was started in 2008 by a nine year old girl in Nova Scotia. SHE is an inspiration…
Last night, I went to the Round Rock City Council Meeting to accept the Proclamation of Purple Day in Round Rock Texas. It meant a lot to me and I really don’t know why… other than this town actually took the time to respond to my email campaign and to reach out to its citizens…. it mattered.
Before the meeting, the Mayor came and introduced himself to me. I’m impressed by our mayor. He has a good handshake… not the I’M A MAN WINCE BEFORE ME kind of handshake that I have come to fear (heck, I fear a lot of handshakes… but those are the worst on my knuckles)… not the oh… you are a girl… I will be weak and patronizing kind… those are easier on the knuckles but not on the self esteem…. he had a gentle warm and welcoming hand shake.
And purple tie! It made me smile.
This morning I got an email from the news paper wanting to do an interview (okay… it is a weekly paper with a limited distribution, but it IS a newspaper… and it will help get the word out). I know there will be a photographer and the reporter. Okay, the reporter is female, which means the hand shake will be less intense. Not sure about the photographer.
I pride myself on my handshake. I refuse to wince. I refuse to have a wimpy handshake. I know that I base a lot on the way someone shakes hands and I figure other people do too.
SO today, I am bowing to the patron saint of naproxen sodium. I don’t hurt badly enough to take the anti inflamitories (even though my knuckles probably could use the help… something is up with some extra stiffness and extra achey-ness… ). I think the little blue pills (not the tiny blue pills… the ones in the stomach yukky isle… those are for other purposes…. grin) but the little bright blue pills that make the hand shakes magically not so bad.
This is important.
This matters.
As much as RA matters to me because it is personal and it is mine and I’m trying to live with it and embrace what I can do and what I can affect… Epilepsy matters more because she is my kid and it matters.
Happy Purple Day.
Go Grapes!
Posted in epilepsy, Journalling, pain, rheumatoid arthritis
Yesterday I went on adventure. Okay… it was a LITTLE adventure, but it was fun and it was something I had wanted to do for quite a while. I went to the library. Not the one I usually go to… … Continue reading
I love work from home Fridays… especially this time of year. It isn’t too hot to actually sit outside and it is warm enough for sun tea and birdies singing. I am wearing one glove because for some stupid reason my … Continue reading
Okay… something is definitely wonky on wordpress for me (thank you, Scotty for giving me the heads up…)… so I will try again…and again (I only had to publish this one three times…
Okay… so it is a Mary Sunshine kind of day yesterday. It may not last, but I’m enjoying it while it does.
Went to Rheumy today. I spent the majority of the day taking stock of myself and of how I am feeling both physically and emotionally. I have known that I’ve been feeling some better. After the last doctor appointment I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be too optimistic, but hey… I am terminally optimistic and a disgusting morning person so… it is hard to get away from. I know the bump on my knuckle is smaller and I can almost make a fist even first thing in the morning without aleve. And I know I haven’t taken prednisone in almost a month. I walked 9 miles Sunday (I really enjoy our weekly walk in the park) and I even made 3 miles at lunch yesterday at the gym (the hot shower felt fantastic!).
Doctor confirmed that I’m not sniffing something good… not even sharpie… When I started this ‘adventure’ I was up to 26 joints affected. Today (even in the rainy weather) I was only achey a 2 and she only found 7 joints still swollen. My right hand, of course, will be my problem child. IF YOU ROLLER BLADE WEAR WRIST GUARDS!!!
She said that my body is running right now on the 6 MTX level… while I’m taking 8 a week… so I should keep getting better and better (especially when I will be starting on 10 pills Friday). And I don’t have to go back until May.
She did start me on an anti-inflamatory med for days (like while Squirrel was in the hospital and stress was a 14 on a scale of 1 to 10) and aleve doesn’t really take the edge off and suggested zantac 150 to keep from the anti-inflamatory eating holes in my stomach. But I don’t think I will really need them much. Will carry them just in case, but will think very hard before I take them.
I got an ‘atta-girl’ for taking Yoga class and she said that, even after the class, keep it up.
AND she told me that I need to push for blood work for Squirrel because Keppra tends to mess with blood counts.
I was thinking a lot about why I have all of this going on… and I was thinking a lot about how there is a purpose for everything and there is very little “chance” in life… and I realized that I can honestly say to Squirrel (not just a mommy saying it but really meaning it) that pills can be truly crappy but your body does adapt to the new meds and the side effects get smaller and smaller and you will eventually realize that the feeling better is just there and not always the crappy feeling.
Am I mary sunshine? Probably.
Posted in Journalling, motivation, rheumatoid arthritis
It was a wonderful Sunday. I love Sunday walks and today was almost 10 miles. The park is beautiful with the spring flowers. Only one bluebonnet yet that we ran across, but lots of other wild flowers starting to sneak out.
Today felt really good. I think the MTX is actually working. My knuckle bump is just about totally gone, I can make a fist with only a couple Aleve. There is still some stiff, but not nearly as much. Now I look back on the last year and wonder how I could have really been so stupid.
What a way to start the ‘spring’ weather.
I splurged on 2 DSi “games”… one Let’s Yoga (new) one Let’s Pilate’s (used and only $8). After the 10 mile walk, I copped out on a simple 5 min yoga session, but I also did my 15 min stretching at the tail end of the walk.
I also “celebrated” with donuts (I love Sundays). a dozen mixed… six cream filled. Heavenly. And the coffee is really good today. Tomorrow the clean tea jar will make its happy sun tea on the back porch as I work from home before and after Lab time.
Life doesn’t seem quite so down today.
DS got 2 used games for his PS3 so he is in Spring Break heaven. DD went for a walk (all by herself, I am SO proud of myself for not freaking out for the whole 3 hours she was at the park).
Pizza for dinner, and it is almost bed time… at least wind down time… time to listen to the birds sing in the back yard through the open back door.
Posted in Fitness, Journalling
Wow… there is something to be said for not starting to feel better… If you stay hurting and feeling like crap for the most part… you don’t notice so much when you have a day when you feel way worse. … Continue reading
I keep putting alcohol and peroxide on my infected toe nail. I can’t for the life of me figure out what is going on with it… but there it is… infected… sore… annoying. I’m just glad life keeps track of … Continue reading
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