Category: health
Hope everyone is having a happy day!
We’re all sick here, except the baby, who we can’t actually tell if he’s sick or not as he can’t speak up and say “I’ve got a headache and a sore throat” like the other kids can. It took us a few hours when we got up to actually remember it was mother’s day. Once we did, the one’s whose throats weren’t so bad ate some breakfast and the rest of us just watched. Then I opened my presents: 1) a couple painted flowerpots (one from ben, one from david) 2) a pretty wine-themed apron (yes, I requested an apron–my old one was 11 years old and not pretty) 3) a Nikkon Coolpix 10 megapixel camera (actually my birthday and mother’s day gift combined). Woot!
After that I called my mom and Nick tried to call his. My mom is doing the Parade of Homes this weekend and my sister is visiting her right now as I type. Nick’s mom wasn’t home when he called, but she had a really full day planned, so we’ll try again this evening.
Then we rested a bit more and cleaned house a bit while the kids “rested.” (I send them to their rooms for 45 minutes, it’s up to them whether or not they sleep.) Nick has an apple pie in the oven right now. It smells soooo good.
We’re having my favorite Nick dinner tonight (chicken with brown butter apple sage sauce and roasted red potatoes) and then I’m going to force him to watch the second installment of Cranford on Masterpiece Classic and afterwards we’ll watch some more Doctor Who. Whee!
It’s been a really good day despite us all feeling poorly.
Last week & the weekend went by far too quickly. To sum up (this may take a while):
Wednesday: Three playdates in one day=crazy lady Lisa. We had one at the park with a mom’s group + a friend with two kids. Then in the afternoon we had our first-ever bring-a-kid-home-with-us-from-school playdate for David. After dinner we had a playdate for Nick, sort of. My friend B’s husband is a gamer and Nick went over to try it out, while the kids and I hung out with B & her kids. It was a very long evening and things did not go quite as planned, but we did get to see a fabulous lightning storm on the way home, so that was at least something.
Thursday: I dropped the two older boys at school and ran five errands (with the baby & all the in-and-out nonsense with the carseat) and then collapsed in a heap. I had a 101 fever and could not stop coughing. It was bad.
Friday: Still sick. Thought I might have to skip the bookstore/wedding extravaganza weekend. Took the boys to Putt-Putt in the afternoon after I started feeling better. They loved Putt-Putt. Oh my. (The Wii Sports package made my children so much more interested in sports, oh yes.) At some point Nick realizes that he left no money in the account after bill-paying for me to take anything with me on the trip. I was not amused.
Saturday: Not sick anymore. Birthday money in hand, I left for DFW & bookstores & wedding. Whirlwind crazy day with many bookstores & food at the Great Outdoors & Macaroni Grill & seeing two of my favorite people (Steph and Mikie). Eventually got to the wedding of Gooch & Christi, after hotel map/google insanity and not-nearly-enough-time-to-get-ready (so if my hair was weird, now you know why). The wedding was awesome, with Star Wars music & wookie sounds at the end and “We’ll talk about that later” in the vows. The reception was even better. There were pages for everyone to “be creative” with for the guest book. Many people did not bother doing both sides, but mine was filled up front and back (one side with “old style paper blogging” of naughty quotes and the other nicely done for the scrapbook page. There was an enormous amount of enthusiastically bad dancing. Nothing was set on fire, but a lot was toasted over those little candles. Saw lots and lots of people I haven’t seen in ages, which was fabulous, and a Girls Day Out was mentioned for the future, which I am looking forward to. We headed out around 10:45 because we were exhausticated, but apparently things didn’t go on much longer than that. (my meager amount of photos at flickr)
Sunday: Got up far too late and started the day at another bookstore. Went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch, which I’d never been to, but had heavenly cheesecake (Nick will learn to make the one I had; it was Lemon Raspberry). Then I had to leave for home. Came home, we each played one game on Wii Play (which was David’s present from Aunt Steph), then turned around and left for Bible study. Discovered our IRS refund in the mailbox (which would have made the weekend less worry-making. oh well, that’s what credit cards are for.). Had pizza for dinner, watched the very first episode of the Care Bears tv show, and went to bed.
Today: Woke up late, in a panic, but not too late. Took big kid to school, went to the bank, the gas station, the grocery store, and took a walk, all before 9am. Then we cleanedcleanedcleaned and ate lunch. Then I put the baby in his crib and told Ben not to bother me because it was “quiet time” and wow, I haven’t heard a peep for an hour now. It’s so cool! (He’s asleep, btw.)
Sunday morning Ben woke up with a headache, fever, and a cough. I woke up with a headache, fever, stomach ache, and achy all over. It was such a fun day. Ben rolled around the floor moaning while I writhed around in the chair moaning. Greg ran around and took everything out of all the closets and drawers. David watched TV all day. Nick and my dad cut down tree limbs high above their heads with my dad’s new tool. My mom followed Greg around and picked up after him. This morning I felt better, but Ben was still sick. Then 15 minutes before school ended, the school nurse called and said that David had a fever and an ear infection. Woo hoo!
(Greg is still fine. So is Nick. Oh, and we have a fence now! YAY!)
…was a bit less exciting, although it did involve making banana pudding from scratch (sugar, corn starch, egg yolks, cooking on the stove, etc), actually making it to the recycling center (toss! crash! toss! crash! toss! crash!), and me eventually leaving the house to go paint pottery with my friends mom’s group (cause mine was meeting the next night when I couldn’t make it).
Today was also a Study in Weird. Got up, shaved biggest kids head so he no longer looks like Zach or Cody (from the Disney channel), found another dollar so he could buy books at school, made three kid lunches, drove kid to school, checked voicemail and discovered some “new” 2 week old messages the system just left me, also checked regular mail (just arrived) and found letters dated February 22nd, drove other children to school, talked mdo into taking Greg even though it wasn’t his day (don’t tell the other moms, but they love greg best), went to my doctor’s office, get a call stating that ben is sick with a fever and headache, finally get in to see the doctor only to find out his computer system is down and he has no idea who I am or why I’m there, briefly consider lying to the doctor, recap my entire medical history in less than three minutes, leave without medicine of any kind (but with a promise that when my symptoms return—which they will— I can call for meds instead of making an appointment), pick up sick kid and baby, feed people, make husband change poopy baby (”He might be getting sick, too.”), hold cranky baby and attempt to fold laundry at same time for several hours while soothing middle child who is whimpering at the other end of the couch, pick up oldest kid who has note that we owe school 12 cents, attempt to feed children snacks, clean up large puddle of poop from new rug, change three wet-poopy diapers in a 9 minute period, clean up more wet-poop from elsewhere in house and on self and on child, convince middle child that he will not die of a headache because mommy hasn’t yet, convince husband that leaving work early to take oldest child to school program, get oldest child ready for the Waltz Across Texas program at his school, change more wet-poopy diapers, run yet another load of laundry (what? I didn’t mention the two earlier ones I ran and put away? *sigh*), empty/reload dishwasher, put away hand washed dishes (and wash more), snuggle baby who won’t stay out of dishwasher, call friend who wanted to go to Aggiecon to pretty much cancel trip, muse over the fact that despite Aggiecon’s changing dates year-to-year my children are always sick with a stomach virus on Aggiecon weekend (5 years running), talk children into eating dinner despite sickness, eat dinner with spouse while having real conversation while children do God-knows-what elsewhere, feed baby bottle while big kids get read to in another room (we watch Dr. Who), and then, of course, watch Scrubs with spouse until he leaves for bed, then read battles about bread on the internet until I realize I meant to post something, which leads us to here. Longest paragraph ever. Yay.
(at least I’m tired now)
I had a fabulous weekend (well, mostly Saturday). We drove down to CS Friday afternoon & got there in time to have Freebirds for dinner.
Saturday morning I got up, showered, and got to spend the whole day with Steph. We had an enormous breakfast burrito, saw a cute blue fish bowl, and harassed a hostess. After that I shopped Steph’s shelves & returned a large box of books to her (I found several more when I got home that had been wandered out of the box by small children).
Then we hit two bookstores and a new chocolate store (how was yours? mine was icky, but Nick says the mango was all right). I got slightly less than a ton of books and even managed to easily talk down my cashier $6 on an audiobook of Eric Idle reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which my kids looooved but I was a bit unimpressed by).
After all the book-y goodness, we checked in with the boyfolk & then hit the theatre to see 27 Dresses. We got there and encountered twenty thousand small girls all squealing about Hannah Montana (and I continue to realize that God did a good thing by not giving me girls. I cannot tolerate squealing.) 27 Dresses was cute, yet predictable, which was a relief, as Steph and I do not have a good track record with movies.
Went back to check on boys, then dragged out our husbands for dinner at Fitz’s & milkshakes at the Chicken. YUM! There were many children at the bar, which led to much quoting of Sweet Home Alabama: “You’ve got a BABY! In a BAR!”
Afterwards, Nick and I went to Specs and wandered delightedly through the aisles. I got some Winter Bourbon Cask Ale, which was not as good as it sounded (I’d failed to note the fine print that read “and Vanilla Bean.” Ah well. Someone can have it at the shindig.*
Today I went to church with my parents & kids. There were a bunch of Muslims there, as they were having an inter-faith dialogue later in the afternoon. The Muslims brought Noah’s Pudding, which has garbanzo beans & navy beans in it and yet, still, tastes good. After church, Steph dropped by with our Christmas presents (I got a cupcake holder; it’s adorable. Now I need to make cupcakes!). We also got a nifty train shaped cake mold. The kids took one look at it and said “Can we do that? With all the candy? Right now?!” Umm, no. We had no ingredients. Nor food, really, for that matter.
Nick watched the SuperBowl while the kids watched Care Bears (or as Ben would say “Care-a Bear-as” and I dug through old journals trying to recreate the health record that the neurologist apparently lost (that I don’t have a copy of either). Nick’s team won the SuperBowl (I actually watched for the last 10 minutes of game clock time) and House afterwards was really good, too.
All in all, fabulous weekend.
*More about that in a post to follow
I went in today to have another nerve conduction study done. There’s nothing wrong with them right now. There never is when they do the tests. I have no symptoms during them. If there could be some way to run in while I’m having symptoms and have the test done right that moment? That would be awesome…and maybe even helpful. But no.
So what’s wrong with the Lisa, you might ask? Numbness to the point of not knowing if I’m holding something or pressing the gas pedal in the car. Twitching random body parts when I don’t mean to be twitching them. Feeling as though I have spider webs or bugs or hair floating across my arms and legs when there’s nothing there.
What did the doctor say? “You’re just weird, Lisa.” To which I replied, “Thanks, but could you tell me something I don’t already know?” I guess she thought I was annoyed (I wasn’t; I was amused), so she explained that doctor’s usually think their patients are whacko until they figure out what’s causing the problem. I get to have some more blood tests run and wait until she hears back from my other doctors before she can tell me anything else. It might be a Vitamin B-12 deficiency or a thyroid problem (they tested for both of these two years ago; nope). It might be random nerve firings. It might be caffeine (umm…no…caffeine does nothing for me, plus I don’t even drink much of it these days).
I have my follow-up appointment in a month (first available as of two months ago). In the meantime? Watch out on the road.
Hello…hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving. I know I did (and that even takes into account the fact that I’m still sick). 🙂
We went up to see my in-laws, and my family (the Larson’s joined us for Thanksgiving day. The day after, we Holcomb’s all went to the zoo. Tyler has an awesome free zoo. 🙂 Baby giraffes are cool.
Saturday we went to church and I was dizzy enough to need help standing up. That was fun.
That night, Nick and I had a date night. We had dinner at a fairly good Mediterranean restaurant, then saw the Harry Potter movie. Oh, it was lovely. I want to see it again already. (Of course it did make me want to reread the book, so that’s what I’m wasting my time doing today)
Yesterday we were mostly lazy…ok, me and Mandy were lazy. We watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs for most of the day. Other people did useful stuff, I’m sure. I felt like crap, and only left the couch in order to go back to bed in the afternoon.
After I woke up, my little family drove back to Dallas. woo-hoo.
I have a doctor’s appointment again today. Seems I’m going to spend most of my year at the doctor’s office, doesn’t it? *sigh* Oh well. She said come back if I wasn’t well in two weeks. It’s been longer than that. My ears still feel like exploding. Bleh.
Anyway, that’s it.
Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. Please leave any comments there.
Well, I finally woke up enough to get out of bed and stuff and then David went back to sleep. It’s not fair. 😦
Yesterday afternoon I made pancakes for the first time. Nick thought I was insane, but they turned out really good.
I intended to write last night, but I ended up with a migraine and instead spent the evening lying on the couch moaning. I woke up without a migraine, but I feel another one coming on. I need to go back to the doctor and get real drugs for this. Bleh.
I’m thinking about making some scrambled eggs for breakfast…which is weird because I hate scrambled eggs. The whole apt smells like them this morning though, and it’s a nice smell somehow. *shrugs* I can’t help it, I’ve been weird about food this week.
I have a ton of things to do today (most of which I intended to finish yesterday, but the whole MGT and Best Buy thing took way too much time).
-wash, dry, fold, & put away laundry
-bills
-clean up the four piles o’ stuff (mostly paperwork) in the living room
-clean the kitchen
-make more baby food
-return too small baby stuff to Target
-go to post office
Yay. That doesn’t sound like a lot though, does it? Hmm. Feels like a lot. Specially those four piles. I’ve been avoiding them for about a week now.
Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. Please leave any comments there.
Bleh.
Double bleh.
I don’t want to eat spaghetti for dinner, but that’s all there is. I’ve had Italian type food every day this week and I am sick of it. Grr.
Anyway, at least I know I’m getting a spiffy Feast gift from Nick. 🙂 He won’t tell me what it is, but he’s ordered it and it might even make it here before we leave for the feast.
In other news, I really think that I have killed my wrist this time. It hurts…more than any other time before…and only feels happy when ensconced in it’s big ol brace. *sigh*
Lisa Holcomb 