Sleepy.

I wasn't prepared for how sleepy giving up my one cup of coffee a day would make me.  I just want to nap.  Instead I'm working, albeit kind of slowly and in between typing jobs, trying to get the teenagers to wake up. That is not an easy task.  The waking the kids up part, I mean.  They really are not morning people.  My oldest, in Mississippi this morning, forgot to set his alarm and slept through his first class.  Oh well.  These things happen, I guess.  I want these younger 2 to wake up soon because we've got piano lessons today and I don't want school going on still at midnight tonight.  I really want to be in bed, asleep by then. 

My new diet.

I'm trying now to follow the anti-interstitial cystitis diet, which, let me tell you, is kind of crazy.  I started out trying to do an elimination diet, where you only eat about 10 different things for a week and then add in things and watch your symptoms and that way you can tell what's triggering the discomfort.  But I just couldn't see myself living for a week on turkey, lettuce, peeled potatoes with nothing on them, rice and yams.  I guess I could and it may come to that, but I decided to go about it from the other direction and look up the top worst offenders and try to eliminate those. 

I found this list that has a bunch of the worst.
Coffee.
Tea.
Fruit juices.
soda.
Tomatoes.
 

Also implicated are
Artifical food colorins
Sugar, vinegar and other foods that promote yeast overgrowth.
Gluten.

I strongly suspect that the reason I've felt so horrible is that I got glutened the other day when I went for mom's day out although the nurse practitioner I saw yesterday said that gluten had nothing to do with it.  

So anyway, this morning, I'm coffee free and tea free.  Those are my biggies but I'm willing to give them up if it will make me feel better.  Surprisingly, I haven't (yet) gotten a headache from going without my caffeine. 

In the rest of life, oldest son called last night and he's doing fine.  The younger 2  are busy with school and my husband and I are off work today. 

Not spam!!!!!

I just realized with a little help from my bloggy buddy Amy that I have had all kinds of good genuine comments from friends going to the blogger spam folder.  I had no idea!  Now today I've had so much fun going back and reading everyone's comments for the last month or so.  Thanks you all for reading and thank you all for commenting and for being my blog friends.  I appreciate having my own little outlet for my thoughts, opinions and ideas.

I am having a problem with blogger in that they say I have used up all my picture space on Picasa and will now have to pay for pictures to be placed on my blog, so I have been using old pictures from the blog, but I'd really like to publish some pictures of the latest crochet and art projects and  things like that, but I can't.  I may have to go to another blog hosting service.  Blah.

This is a recycled photo from last November.

Check out Technology Rocks, Seriously.

They  have put together a collection of on line Christmas educational games.  I even enjoy playing some of these and I'm old!  :-P   Technology Rocks, Seriously.

Tired, but kind of glad.

I'm tired from all the running for the past week and a half or so, glad I did all those things and now I am equally glad that I don't have to do much of anything for the next few days.  Whew.  Then next 4 or 5 days I don't have anything special written on my calendar (yes, I use an old fashioned paper calendar, not a device!).  I do have the usual stuff, choir practice, piano lessons. etc. but that's all.  I have nothing at all today except work and school and I may take a nap this afternoon.  I could use it.  

I'm also going to get started on my Christmas list and possibly even my Christmas shopping.  Okay, I have begun it.   I have already picked up a few things.  Okay, 3.  Three things.  Not too bad.  For me.  It's still November after all.  :-)

It was supposed to snow today, but it didn't. I'd kind of like to be able to use snow as an excuse to HAVE to stay home for a couple of days, you know?  It's harder with a 4 wheel drive truck at my disposal, but I might be able to pull it off. 

Okay, well.

I've kind of recovered a little from my busy week and my lack of sleep on Saturday.   I didn't do much of anything all day long and that helped.   Today, I've got Mom's Day Out with the homeschool group.  We go shopping and eat lunch and have dessert someplace and the dues that we pay to the group pay for it, so it feels like a free day out.  We go to Bath and Body Works and Hobby Lobby and the salvage store and a few other carefully chosen places, with coupons, and generally have a good old time.  I cleaned out my car last night so I could drive.  It gradually accumulates junk if I don't watch it.  Not as bad as when the kids were little, but still, we go and do so much that sometimes we just want to leave the stuff in the car and be done with it.  So that's the plan for today.  The older boy is safely back in Mississippi and starting classes today and the younger 2 are starting back to homeschool today.

My only drawback about today is that I won't get to go to the children's hospital and hold the babies.  :-(  

Summary of our week.

From last Friday at midnight when my son arrived home until this Saturday at 4:00 a.m.when he got on the plane to go back, so a little tiny bit over a week, we had church, choir practice, a harvest party, my regular 4 hour shift volunteering at the children's hospital, 3 visits with grandma, about 4 shopping trips (because son needed a new wardrobe and kept buying the wrong sizes because, as he says, he's used to everything being baggy), 4H* with dinner with the homeschool crowd and two Thanksgiving celebrations.  On top of that, my husband and I had to work our regular schedules, we had to get groceries, do all that cooking and I had to go to the doctor for a recheck one of those days.  It was not my imagination that it was a crazy, busy week, was it?

Whew.  It was a good one though.  :-)

Now, on to the Christmas season ....

*Also, I had to plan and do the 4H craft lesson because no one else had time.

He's going back.

My son is flying out to Mississippi this morning to resume his second trimester.  He is going to get to come back home at Christmas, thank goodness.  This week seemed really short and really busy.  Next time he's home, I hope we just get some free don't-have-to-go-anyplace time, but it will be Christmas and New Years, so that may just be a dream. 

It's Thanksgiving again ...

A few years back, my family and I would celebrate Thanksgiving twice on Thanksgiving day.  One meal was supposed to be at noon and the other was supposed to be at 5 o'clock.  However, my mother-in-law's meal was always on the table late and my mom's meal was always on the table early.  So one year, we were trying to show enthusiasm for a big turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes spread a mere 2 1/2 hours after we had just finished one, we decided we'd had enough and asked that my mom, who had fewer people to accommodate, would please have her dinner on either Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  She agreed and that's been the tradition ever since.  So this year, since my son has to go back to Mississippi tomorrow (we couldn't get a plane ticket for Sunday :-( )  and my husband and I both have to work today, we're having a Thanksgiving dinner this evening.  

Last night, my oldest son and I ventured to Wal-mart, just before the madness started, to return some of his pants.  He's lost 100 pounds and can't get used to his new size.  On Tuesday, we went and got him 4 shirts and 3 pairs of pants and then after he got home, he decided that all the shirts were really too big and went and got different shirts and then last night, he had decided that 2 of the pants were really too baggy also, so we went and exchanged those for smaller sizes as well.    Everyone was lining up for the bargains and we escaped.  :-)   It's not my style right now.  I'm not ruling it out for the future, because I might enjoy the adventure.  Last night I was aware this was really my son's last evening at home until Christmas, since we're going to Mom's tonight and so I wanted to go home and enjoy it.  We kicked off our holiday movie viewing with Home Alone.  We'll have to watch it again, because my husband had to go to bed, but we'll manage.  :-) 

Today, my youngest has planned to put up the Christmas tree and he has made an MP3 music list for the occasion.  I'm actually in the Christmas spirit this year, ya'll, not my usual mood, which is kind of like this guy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have a wonderful day.  Remember to pause and be thankful. 

Fast Forward.

That's what it feels like.  We've been busy.  Yesterday, I worked all day here and then went to the children's hospital for my therapy time.  I get to hold the babies and they get to be held and comforted.  It's a win-win.  Afterwards, I had a great Rockband session with my 2 oldest kids.  Then today I had work and 4H and eating out with the homeschool group and then we went shopping with the oldest who has discovered fashion at college  :-P and now we are getting ready to go see grandma for a little while.  After that, I've got more medical transcription to do, a couple more hours worth.  So it's going to be a long day, but so far, it's been a pretty good day. 

Another busy one.

We've got another busy one planned today.  We had a great time at the Harvest Party last night with the homeschool group.  Some years back, we decided to do soup and sandwiches for our Harvest Party meal and we eat wonderful soups and then play games, which is always very nice and relaxing.  The kids in our homeschool group are almost all teens now and they played pool and basketball and something that involved a lot of running and yelling.  I don't know what that was.  The adults played a sedate game of trivial pursuit.  What a way to make yourselves feel not-to-smart, really.   I wish there were more general knowledge questions.  Anyway, today we're going to church and then to grandmas.  She got to see the boy briefly yesterday but not very long because work yesterday took a lot longer for me than I wanted it to and I wanted to go over there with him.  Anyway, off to enjoy today. ...

Now that he's home.

We're trying to fatten him up.  We've already introduced him to gluten free cinnamon roll pancakes.   He said that he couldn't wait to come home and eat real food, not cafeteria food.  We've got a busy, busy, busy 9 days while he's home.  We've got 2 Thanksgiving celebrations, a harvest party, 4H and some other things that I can't remember right now and we also need to take him shopping and possibly buy him a car and if not, get him a plane ticket back and also just enjoy visiting with him.  Meanwhile, his Dad and I both have to work this week.  In both of our professions, Thanksgiving is not the best time to get time off. 

The Eagle Has Landed.

He's home!  Woohoo!  He's lost another 20 pounds since we saw him last, mostly eating fish and steamed veggies in the school cafeteria, because he's afraid he'll get exposed to gluten with most of the other foods.  But hey, fish and steamed veggies is pretty good for you.  We're going to have to buy him some new pants though.  He's lost a total of 100 pounds since maybe this time last year and he's doing some kind of crazy intense workout with a friend at college.  He said "I won't be able to do my workout here"  I told him he could "work" here.  We need some post holes dug for his brothers treehouse/clubhouse.  That will get those biceps warmed up.  :-)  Anyway, he's home and we are going to spend as much time as possible enjoying his company.  The siblings have no enforced bedtime while he's home and no school while he's home.  We have 9 days and then he has to go back.  He said that the flying wasn't too bad although the first plane, which was a small prop plane was a tad scary, the big plane from Atlanta was nice.  When he was 7 or so and didn't want to  cross bridges because of his fear of heights, I could not have imagined this day.  I went to sleep last night to the sound of all three of them laughing. 

Joy. 

Some fun printables.

These look like fun for a lot of different ages.  It looks like the kids will have to use their imagination to fill these in.   :-)  Here's a sample of one of the history pages.

Isn't that kind of cool?  Here's the link. 
 

Today!

My son will be home tonight.  We have to go to the airport to pick up up.  (field trip?!) .  Hopefully he has really, truly overcome his fear of flying and will be fine.  Besides my underlying stress about him finding his way to the airport on time, and my generalized fear of my son flying  and then my fear of him getting lost in the Atlanta airport, my biggest worry is that he'll just balk and not get on the plane and decide not to come home at all.  :-P

Good stuff.

My son is going to get to come home for Thanksgiving.  That's exciting.  I can't wait to see him.  August 24 has been a long time, although we've kept in touch on Facebook and stuff, it's not the same and it really hasn't been enough.  We need to get the video chats regularly scheduled and possibly we might need to go someplace with faster internet.  This is definitely something we need to make sure and do.  The kids have always been extraordinarily close and I don't want that to end or have their relationships strained by distance.  If oldest gets a car which he is thinking about doing, then he should be able to come home more often.  I really hope so.  

He also got his grade reports and he got a 3.3 grade point average.  I'm very happy with that.  He needed to keep at least 2.0 to keep his scholarship and 3.0 to keep his good student discount on the car insurance.  So yay. 

This is very good because really we have been some pretty relaxed homeschoolers and he was kind of a difficult student for a while, but he's grown up now and doing well.  :-)

Latest crochet projects by the girl plus a bonus.

This is a Keva block marble run that my youngest son made.

Snake scarf.

Penguin.

Walrus.

Cat hat.

Alligator.

Yesterday was a good,

long, a little bit tiring day.  I did my transcription work and then went off to my volunteer job, holding babies at the neonatal intensive care unit at the children's hospital.  It was a little crazy last night.  Usually, I keep pretty busy with periods of nothing to do interspersed, but this time, I got there and there was a little guy fussing and then the little girl next to him would cry.  I'd get him to sleep, then her, then him, then her for 4 hours straight with neither of them sleeping more than about 15 minutes.  It turns out that both of them are fighting drug addictions.  It's so sad, but the babies are so sweet and I am glad to help them.  I would like to go more often.  I'm actually a little tempted to go back to school and get some kind of nursing assistant training so that I could work there.  I have been doing the same job for 18 years now.  It might be time for a change.  This empty nest thing has kind of got me running scared and thinking about reinventing/restructuring my life.  I've got 3 1/2 years until my youngest child is an adult!  I've been a homeschooling mom/medical transcriptionist for a long time.  It's hard to imagine that we're almost done homeschooling.  (!).  I, of course, am in favor of adopting a couple more kids and starting all over, but my husband does not seem to want to.  :-(

Meanwhile, my mind is on how to get my son home from Mississippi and how to get all the Thanksgiving festivities scheduled in and can you believe that it is really time to start Christmas shopping ... and lots of other things.  Right now though, I really should get to work on my medical transcription lines for today.  Blah. 

For fun Thanksgiving freebies

Can you all believe it's almost Thanksgiving?  I can't.  But, Technology Rocks, Seriously, has gathered some seriously cute Thanksgiving games and things from around the web.  We're going to do some of them.   Check it out here:  Technology Rocks, Seriously.

On my head.

For some reason my kids say that they have a song on their heads instead of in their heads.  I really have no idea why they say it that way.  It's part of the kids subculture that exists here in this house.  There's all of us, and then there's the parents subculture and the kids subculture.  They have funny jokes that only they get and expressions, like this one, that only they use.  It's funny.  Anyway, speaking of songs in the head, this morning, I woke up with a song running through my mind that was one I "wrote" or made up at least several years back.  I can't do the tune for you all, but here are the words.

Go to sleep.
Go directly to sleep.
And sleep for at least 8 hours.
Go to sleep.
Go immediately to sleep.
and sleep for at l-e-a-st (hold this word out) 8 hours.

It's beautiful, isn't it?  Poetic.

Another song I made up that has lasted through the years is the one I made up when we were lost in Indianapolis for a long time.

You can't get there from here.
You can't get there from here.
You can get there from anywhere else,
but you can't get there from here.

I tell you, I'm a poet.

:-P

Apparently ...

I didn't do my school-work-nagging all that well yesterday because both kids have a lot of work to do today.  They tend to procrastinate about it and push, say, all the MATH off until the last day.  No idea why.  I would never do anything like that.  Anyway, that leaves us with today, with groceries that need to be gotten, piano lessons, etc. and kids rush, rush, rushing trying to get done so they will have weekend screen time.  It's not pretty.

School work.

I'm doing my part in helping the kids get their school work done, that is, nagging them about it.  It's very helpful, I'm sure.  My daughter would like to figure out a way to do math while crocheting or reading.  I think my youngest son may have already figured that out, at least his version.  He's listening to an audiobook while doing school.  At least I hope he's doing school. (He went to do it, but he gets distracted.)  We are working on exactly how to get oldest son home for college.  He's going to be riding to Memphis with a friend, but when he'll get there we don't know.  We don't want to presume upon his friend's kindness too much by having him take son to the Greyhound bus station at midnight.  We're waiting now for our son to try and nail down a time so we can get bus tickets.  Or we may just go get him.  Around this time of year, flights and bus tickets go up in price, which is kind of annoying especially since gas prices have gone down. 

A couple of freebies.

Teacher Vision is offering some free Thanksgiving lesson plans right now.

Here are some free Thanksgiving printables.

I'm starting to feel ready for the holidays, can you tell?

Trying Tuesday.

I'm trying to ignore the election coverage today which is definitely easier since most of the time we don't have any TV stations that we can receive, so we're out of the TV habit.  The temptation to turn it on and look at the static, is just not very strong.  I hate what politics is doing to everyone, making them all crabby and hateful, at least on the internet, so I'm trying to avoid Facebook too.  Mostly.  I have talked with my oldest son a little bit on there, because that's the quickest way to get an answer from him, besides the phone and we all know I'm not that fond of phones.

My niece's birthday scarf.

I'm trying to get my work done, despite the fact that I feel pretty awful.  I finally went to the doctor yesterday for this latest urinary tract infection and apparently it was pretty bad.  I'm on antibiotics now but I don't feel better yet.

And lastly, the kids are trying to get their school work done in a timely manner today, despite not being really in the mood to do it.  I know what that's like.

The power of play. Cool article.

"Athletes call it The Zone, researchers call it Flow.
Children call it Play. This state is the essence of
real intelligence and creativity."  Michael Mendizza

Be a learning ally. 

Saturday.

We had a pretty unremarkable Saturday.  The kids always celebrate a little that they don't have to do school on Saturday but my husband and I had to work.  Then we went to my niece's 4th birthday party and saw the new baby again. So cute.  It's funny, my in-law's grandkids range in age from almost 21 to 2 months.  It was good to get out and see everyone.  Tomorrow, we've got church and then we are going to a play, maybe, that some homeschool friends are in. They're doing White Christmas.  I've never even seen the movie, so I'd kind of like to go.  There's a fall festival at the local elementary school next week.  We're tempted to take the kids so the teachers can see we didn't ruin them by homeschooling.  :-P

Kind of funny ...

My daughter usually goes everywhere with me, but yesterday, I needed to mail the package before 5 so I couldn't wait endlessly for her to finish her schoolwork like I usually do; so I left her at home!  This had a surprising impact on both her and her brother who are working very hard to get finished with school today by 2 o'clock, I guess in case I do anything fun without them today?  Apparently they had a big discussion last night about it and decided to make sure they get their school work done, hopefully from now on.  We'll see how long it lasts, I guess.

Also funny, the day before yesterday, I spelled the word hospitalization so badly that the spellcheck wanted to change it to fossilization.  :-)   Imagine your doctor saying he is going to fossilize you.  :-)

What I did on my day off.

I did not do much cleaning. (Is anyone surprised?)  I did make the banana bread and I made scalloped potatoes.  I left my husband to cook the rest of dinner and he did a good job.  He made pork tenderloin and green beans to go with the potatoes.  It was yummy.  Afterwards, I saw on Facebook that yesterday was Men Make Dinner Day so that worked out.

I made no phone calls.  (Again, is anyone surprised?) 

Friend's daughter's baby pics are on Facebook.  I still feel old.


I didn't add to the kids schoolwork.  I read this this morning and it made me feel better.  http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php  Maybe we should just leave them alone ...


I mailed the treat package.  I have had no inspiration regarding getting him home.  He will be done with school for this trimester when he turns in a paper on Tueday.  (On benefits of homeschooling ... I hope I get to read it.!)  Then after Tueday, he has until the following Monday before he starts classes again, then 5 days of classes then Thanksgiving break for about 10 days.  They really didn't plan this schedule for kids who live far away and might want to maximize time off by lumping it together and having ample time to travel home.

Anyway, back to yesterday.  Such excitement.  I tell you.  I went to check on my mom to see how she's doing with her cold symptoms, then went to check on her sister.  Her sister is having a horrible time with rheumatoid arthritis right now and so I went and got groceries for her, picked up my mom's prescriptions at the same time, delivered the groceries, delivered the pill dispenser, came home and watched "The Mentalist" before reading Brotherband Chronicles book 1 with the kids and then going to bed.

A few of the things that are on my 400 track mind.

The sky on one of the spectacularly pretty days last week. 

There's always a lot going on inside my head, way too much to ever put on one blog post.   However, I will give today's random thoughts a go anyway.

I don't want to clean the house.  I should, but I don't want to. (This is an everyday thing.)

I really should go in about this pain I've been dealing with for a year and a half now.  Maybe.  The last time I went to find out about it cost 1800 dollars and didn't really solve anything.  :-(

Halloween was fun last night.  I took my youngest (who is not really all that young anymore!) on a very limited trick or treat excursion that included going to the grandmas and the great aunts houses and a few others.  He got a big old bag of candy, so he was happy.  This is probably the last year for trick or treating.   Sadly. 

One of my friend's from high school's daughter had a baby this morning and I feel especially old today.

I really should cook the banana bread I've been procrastinating about since last week.  The first set of bananas has already rotted and been thrown out, but there is another set of bananas that is just about ready, i.e., kind of mushy.

I need to cut my mom's dog's toenails, but I dread it.   This is symbolic of how many things I have to do, I think, a lot of little bitty tiny things, like snipping chihuahua's toenails ... I could get really philosophical here, but I probably better just get it done and move onto the next thing.  I don't have any experience cutting doggy nails, but I guess I might as well learn. 

Tinker, my mom's chihuahua. 

I need to add some things to the kids homeschool schedules.  Maybe.  They don't have a lot of schoolwork each day, but really, I have read quite a bit about the benefits for brain development of free time, time to think, etc. so maybe they don't?  I don't know.

My oldest son is in Mississippi just finishing his first trimester of college.  He's got finals today.  I need to get his latest treat package mailed to him and we need to figure out how to get him home for Thanksgiving.  I contacted the student activities group on campus today to see if they have a "ride board" for ride sharing.  He found someone that can bring him as far as Memphis, but that's still 6 hours from here, quite a long trip.  If we are going to get bus or plane tickets, we need to get on that before they are all gone.  I'm not good with making travel decisions for some reason, though we do travel quite frequently, we don't fly or use a public bus.

We need to set up a video chat time with oldest son tonight maybe. 

I need to call the spine center for my daughter and my mom's eye doctor to make appointments.  Blah.  I hate talking on the phone.  Why?  I don't know.

I'm very glad we homeschool this morning.  I had a conversation last night that really reinforced  my beliefs that this is a good good path to take.

This is how Raynaud's phenomenon affects my hands.  Two of my fingers got cold and so, shut down the circulation to the ends of my fingers and you can actually see it.   They get numb.  Weird, eh?