Category: Thoughts

A case of the megrims

George Cruikshank's "The Headache" depicting the torments inflicted by the demons of colic, depression, jealousy, and indigestion.
George Cruikshank's "The Headache" depicting the torments inflicted by the demons of colic, depression, jealousy, and indigestion.
To have a case of the megrims was to have a headache. Often from the descriptions in diaries, these may have been migraine attacks or at the very least serious tension headaches. Darkened rooms, an absence of sound, relief brought on by a cool, damp cloth on one’s forehead or the back of one’s neck — these symptoms are all too familiar by today’s standards and even in my own house lately.

I wish I was writing about this in only a Regency Era research mode. However, for the past month, our son has been knocked down by a string of recurring headaches. Using a 0-5 scale, where 0 is none, and 4 is nauseous and 5 is throwing up, we’re talking he’s had a 4 or 5 level headache on 19 days of the last 30. This also happened last spring as well, so we suspect there might be some seasonal allergy involved making him more susceptible beyond just what is brought on by bright sunlight, loud noise and skipping meals. The boy’s head will hurt to the point where he’ll be sick from the pain and he gets horrible dark circles under his eyes.

It was interesting to see the change in the weather (from always clear and sunny SoCal to overcast and raining on Sunday) also brought a change to how he felt. On Friday evening, it was like someone flipped a switch in his personality. I hadn’t realized just how suppressed his usual sunny disposition had been for the past three weeks. He was suddenly smiling and silly and himself again. Unfortunately, as the weather system passed, so did the brief respite as the switch flipped back and he’s become a zombie again.

He has a CAT scan scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. We’re just hoping for an explanation of why he’s affected this way and a way to minimize the restrictions this places on his activities, like going to school.

Stop this crazy ride…

merry go roundThis week has been insane. It seems like everything that could have gone wrong, has and if it hasn’t yet, it’s waiting to do so until just the right moment.

Dealing with crazy vendor issues with the rental property we own. Trying to get an estimate for some work done there totally ruined my day yesterday. I was going to take off and go to the grocery store around noon since I usually go on Sunday and hadn’t made it there yet (I finally got there around 6pm tonight, actually). But I ended up having to wait for one of the estimators to call me back, only he didn’t. Then I had to run errands and pick up my new prescription sunglasses and it took 45 minutes to convince them I couldn’t see out of my left eye with my new progressive bifocals and for them to figure out that lens was in crooked. MUCH better now.

It was also DD’s 12th birthday. EEEEEEK! One year left. *gulp* So I spent a crazy amount of time running around to pick up some last minute presents for her. We have to return one. Borders was out of the Extended Edition of HSM3. 😛 The grocery store wasn’t, if only I’d gone there on Monday! And for her birthday we always go out for Chinese food. Usually PF Chang’s but just as often a smaller local place that’s really good. We were smart and made reservations last night. We JUST made it in time too.

Today was supposed to be more low-key, and in many ways it was, which was nice. I spent the morning working on changes to Chapter One of the project I’m working on with my mentor. I didn’t get as far as I wanted to though. I kept having to deal with more phone calls about the rental property. The pool guy called to tell me the tenants were moving out — property manager reassured us only 2 of the 4 were, don’t panic. Phew. That mortgage is barely covered by the rent.

So, I was planning on picking up groceries again today, only my friend Romance Diva friends, Dana Belfry, who called at 11 am to ask what I was doing for lunch. She sounded disappointed when I said I’d just popped leftover Chinese into the microwave. Turns out she was down in my neck of the woods (or in SoCal does that translate into “my wing of the mall?” Anyway…) So we went out for lunch at Claim Jumper (I drooled over the bread pudding for you, Mother!) and she brought me a big box of books she’d picked up for free and didn’t want. Out of 13, I’ll probably read over half of them. Someday. My TBR pile is too big as it is.

So what did I pick up in the grocery store? Yep. Another paperback. LOL

So, I’m sitting here, the kids have gone to bed and I’m going to now try to focus on getting more of Chapter One revised. I don’t think I’ll finish, but I need to get further along than I am. Must. Go. Write.

Love is in the air

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s time once again for hearts, chocolates, diamonds (no dear, that’s not a hint) and of course free reads from the Romance Divas, who have just wrapped up their third annual e-book challenge where the members are encouraged to write a story and put it up for free.

THE DIVAS E-BOOK CHALLENGE 2009 has some great stories by some fantastic people. Do yourself a favor and run click, don’t walk miss a chance to check out these stories. Stay in the Valentine’s mood! Enjoy a bit more romance!

BTW: if you missed the previous years’ editions: 2007 and 2008.

The TeePee Cake

Blue & Gold Dinner teepee cakeI figured since I talked about it so much, I better share it.

The cake was baked as part of my son’s annual Blue & Gold dinner for Cub Scouts. Each year a different theme is chosen for the cake decorations. We’ve done sports & games (a 3-d chess piece), space (a 3-d Vader’s Tie Fighter & Death Star), animal kingdom (a 3-d Mayan pyramid with animals & trees stuck on it), and patriotism (the Washington monument with fireworks, 2-d thanks!) in the past.

So this being our last year, I said, “OK, we can try 3-d again.” And I convinced him that we wanted to do a teepee. I don’t know if I’ll work with fondant again, but it was definitely a learning experience.

The cake base is a tube cake and a 8″ layer with a layer of 3 texas-sized cupcakes and a single one on top of that. Then I took a couple bamboo skewers to use as the poles and cut a hole in the fondant. The first attempt resulted in much torn fondant. The second with a hole in the center and a slit out to the edge still wanted to tear as gravity pulled it against the skewers. Hence, the second apron at the top reinforced by the three holes cut into the center.

I would have liked a bit more decoration on the teepee itself, but Dh usually does the fine artistic details on top of my structural base, but he had a horrible headache yesterday and we ended up leaving it more “functional than decorative”. The firepit is made from white M&Ms and the fire itself is pretzel sticks, Cherry & Orange Wildfire Fruit roll-ups and a few red M&Ms for coals. The log beside it is a tootsie roll. The grass is just green decorator sugar and the scuffed dirt is chocolate cake mix.

The cake was part of the live auction last night and I ended up spending $40 to get it back. 🙂  I’d told the kids they could bid up to $25 each on cakes and DD decided she wasn’t bidding this year. It’s all for a good cause and I was happy to finally have a cake in the live auction instead of just on the side for the silent auction. A very sweet ending to the night.

Poof!

Ideas are only as good as you remember them.
Ideas are only good as long as you remember them.

Ya know, I should have left myself some notes the other day when I said I had ideas about what to write on. I can’t remember a one now.

The week has flown by, but it feels like it was filled with one thing after another. I think I’ve managed to stay on top of my goals for the week despite things going wonky, but also I think I was a bit ambitious and might back off a little for next week. I managed to get some writing related work done, but not as much as I wanted.

I’m trying to wrap up my term as Committee Chair for my son’s Cub Scout pack in the next month and it feels like the universe is conspiring to keep me in this role. No one wants to step up. The meeting, where I was going to hand off a lot of stuff, tomorrow night has to be moved or rescheduled as the usual host has other obligations that night. My head hurts just thinking about it. I just want my “free” time to be mine again.

After two days of fog so thick we couldn’t see past our back fence at night, the Santa Anas are back. These hot, dry winds off the desert to the east were so strong DH had to take down all the “dangly stuff” on the patio so we could sleep last night. We have several windspinners and chimes out there on big S-shaped hooks. The wind was blowing so hard all you could hear was constant chiming and clanging from the hooks bouncing on the patio cover. They were still blowing hard enough today that DH didn’t want to climb up on the ladder to take the lights down. At least there was a lull for a bit and that can be crossed off the to-do list and the neighbors can’t complain now.

And yes, three earthquakes the other day and we missed all of them. Didn’t notice the one at 7:50pm and slept through the two in the middle of the night. I think I prefer these little anti-climatic ones, thank you.

Say Anything


Don’t worry, I’m not going to wax nostalgic about an 80s movie here. But the title was fitting for how I’ve been thinking about this blog lately…

It doesn’t matter what I say in this post, it’s more a matter of a need to “say anything” at all. I just need to post something, and then do it again in a couple of days. Build and sustain momentum, but the longer I leave it, the harder that gets. Thanks to those of you who commented or have pestered me about why I haven’t been posting. I’ve been feeling the same way about my journal entries lately too. The first couple days I started writing stuff down for 20 minutes were painful. Not as painful as the 10 minutes I spent walking on Monday, but mentally painful. My brain didn’t want to focus or work the way I needed it to, but with practice, it gets easier each day. I just remind myself it doesn’t matter what I type, I just have to type something.

In the movie, Lloyd Dobler asks Constance, “Why can’t you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?” I wish I knew. November and December seem to be rough months for me. Not just this year, but to the point I wonder if there’s something about the shortening days that wears me down so much. I know it’s not just holiday stress, but it’s very hard for me to just wake up and decide to be in a good mood. Maybe I should have been born as an animal that hibernates — a bear or a squirrel.

In order to get back into routines that work for me instead of against me, I’m participating in the Accountability Corner with Bria and some other Divas on a separate blog. We’ve set up goals for the coming year and are cheering each other on and holding each other accountable. Like routines, the goals have to work for you too. I think I have better goals than last year’s, but I’m still worried about how measurable and specific they are and if they’ll get me moving in the direction I want.

I also joined GoodReads last year, and I managed to track about 75 books I read last year with it. I’m already tagging books I read this year as well. The next step is to get comments on them written down so I can go back and remember what I liked or disliked about certain books. Of course, getting our entire library up there would be a cool thing, too.

Now that I’ve started this, I’m getting ideas for things to write about, but I think I’ll save them for Saturday.

Wishing everyone the best in 2009!

Mid-Nov WTH?

What's WRONG with this Picture
What is WRONG with this picture?

This is the weather forecast I was greeted with for the week when I sat down this morning. Sixty-four to eighty-seven? I foresee another round of colds and nonsense in the near future. *sigh*

It’s bad enough I haven’t really seen seasons in action for the past dozen years or so, but do we have to try to cram the temperature changes into one week like this? I’d rather settle for the leaves changing pretty colors instead, yanno?

Historical Romance Workshop

Visit the forums at Romance Divas for our Historical Romance Workshop with Mary Jo Putney, Gaelen Foley, Joanna Bourne and Alissa Johnson! I’m hoping I can find the time to drop by and participate this week.

Joanna Bourne’s Technical Topics on her blog are always a treat, so this interactive event should be extra special.

Just For Andi…

Math is Evil!!!!
Math is Evil!!!!

 

When is one-third, not one-third?

Say you have a math homework problem and you’re eleven years old and you HATE fractions with a burning passion.

You ask your mom across the room, “What does ONE DIVIDED BY THREE equal?” You get extremely upset with her when she offhandedly (and quite innocently) replies ONE-THIRD. You scream at her, “IT CAN’T BE A FRACTION!” and you get even more upset when she then answers with “0.3333333 ad nauseum.”

You just can’t win here (no matter which side of the room you’re sitting on). Now, extend this argument out about 15 minutes and add in an annoying little brother who can’t keep his nose in his own math book to save the world. Can you see what’s coming?

Yes, you finally take your notebook over to your mom because she’s too stupid to do math in her head and she needs to SEE it or some such nonsense to make heads or tails of it. So you patiently (did you hear the sarcasm there?) show her the problem: X/2 + 2/3 = 5/6.

She steals your pencil and rummages up a piece of scrap paper and starts scribbling down lines and lines of numbers. You yell at her to stop when she makes the slightest variation from the way the teacher did the example in class. “You can’t DO THAT! WE HAVE TO USE THIS SHORTCUT!” Then she goes on to keep solving for X and comes up with X = 1/3. Which we all know by now, cannot be the answer.

STUPID WOMAN! IT CAN’T BE A FRACTION! None of the OTHER answers have been fractions and you HATE working with fractions.

Don’t let her try to explain how she did it either. If you must, resort to holding your hands over your ears and screaming, “I HATE FRACTIONS” over and over until she gives up. You must also resist her trickery when she starts asking “What do you call ONE DIVIDED BY TWO? ONE DIVIDED BY FOUR?” Remember, she cannot be allowed to win here, you cannot admit that ONE DIVIDED BY THREE EVER equals ONE-THIRD.

You finally accept that ONE-THIRD might possibly be the answer after another five minutes of additional grousing and sulking, but try to argue your way out of it. Get upset when your mother throws up her hands and says, “Just write whatever down and take the points off if it’s wrong.”

“Fine, whatever…. ” NO!!! The next problem is -3/-2 = ? You refuse to deal with fractions and tell her “It’s not like we really divided 1 by 3 anyway.” So there.

Oh… and you MUST hiss in a most unbecoming fashion when that annoying little brother starts reading over your mom’s shoulder and you realize that you’ve become a blog entry again. Great. First the dress and now this.

Are you SURE you want a WHOLE day in the life post, Andi?

Thursday Thirteen: Grocery Staples

 

13 Staples on My Grocery List

 

Sorry for the boring topic, but I just remembered it was time for the Thursday Thirteen post again. This week has been insane. The kids had school off on Monday and it seems to be the week for all sorts of appointments.

I’ve been to the dentist twice this week, once for me and once for the boy. Have to go back on Friday to take the girl and both kids have eye exams on Friday afternoon. We also had an endocrinologist appointment on Monday. DD’s blood suagar control has slipped into the unacceptable range. So we have to be super vigilant and really enforce some better routines to improve upon those numbers. We took the new car (a shiny black Toyota Camry Hybrid, for those wondering whatever came of the 13 reasons why DH needed a new one) in this morning to drop it off to get the seat/paint protectant done and similar stuff.

This weekend DH is off to London for work and I’m heading to Disneyland with the middle school choir for a workshop and day of play at the park. DS is being shipped off to stay the night at a friend’s house since we won’t get back until late at night and DH’s flight leaves early afternoon.

I did say an insane week, right? Toss in homework, Martial Arts class and Scouts and it’s really mahem. I think I finally cleaned off all the messages on the answering machine that had piled up. I’m going to try to get back to posting regularly besides these weekly posts, maybe by next Monday.

1. Half gallon of milk

If I could get away with quarts, we’d probably do better at using all of it each week.

2. Two cases of Dasani water in half-litre bottles

I don’t like the way most of the others taste and I grew up with a well, so city tap water and the chlorination always tastes nasty to me.

3. Yogurt

Yes, 3 kinds because no one can eat the same kind: Yoplait for DH, Stoneyfield Farms for me, and YoCrunch for the kids

4. Whole Wheat Bread or rolls

This is mostly for making turkey sandwiches or pb&j for lunches

5. Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breasts

We eat a lot of chicken — it’s quick, it’s easy. We also eat a fair amount of pork and beef too, but mostly chicken.

6. HVR Dressing, BBQ Sauce, Newman’s Own Italian Dressing, or Teriyaki Sauce

I use these as marinade for the chicken — DUMP chicken — awesome concept — freeze the chicken breasts in the marinade and then pull out and bake at 350o for about an hour and dinner’s mostly done!

7. Baby Carrots

Isn’t it horrible to realize these aren’t real and just the broken ones that they’ve “shaped” and packaged?

8. Hidden Valley Ranch Singles

These go great with the baby carrots for school lunches and I don’t have to clean out or worry about getting back the container.

9. Plastic silverware

So much easier for school lunches and plastic spoons are better than sporks for pudding and yogurt

10. Fiber One Chewy Granola Bars

Oats & Chocolate is my favorite, but the caramel is good too. I didn’t like the fruity ones so much.

11. Juicy Juice and Kool-AId drink pouches

LOVE the kool-aid jammers 10 and the Minute Maid low-cal stuff. DD can take those for lunch and not feel “different” and they’re cheap for carb count!

12. Variety bag of single serving chips

The problem is keeping DS out of these and having any left for lunches — my mom also sends us a big box of Utz Potato Chips that I grew up with for the start of school. It’s worth the shipping to get them. 95mg of sodium per bag… Awesomeness.

13. Frozen broccoli and green beans

Love the Bird’s Eye Steam Fresh bags.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 Nicholas 2 Kimberly Menozzi 3 Stephanie Adkins
4 Nina Pierce 5 Debbie Mumford 6 Jennifer McKenzie
7 Tempest Knight 8 Paige Tyler 9

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!