Carrie, Karbie and Katy - Keep up the good fight.  I'm wupped too and heading to bed.

JB - I didn't get the sheets changed until today.

Good afternoon, y'all.  It's 75ºF here, and sunny, but supposedly we will have rain Friday morning.  According to my aching hands and hips, why, yes, we certainly will!!!

Caren, that's interesting about the disturbance on the sun.  Will the debris be falling everywhere, or just in certain areas?  Do you know if there will be huge chunks, dangerous stuff, or just little stuff, almost unnoticeable?

Yesterday was pretty good at work, thanks for asking. Today is a day off, the first of my four.  YAY!!!

Karbie, I think I remember when you had the salivary gland problems.  Seems to me we had just "met" then.  And I agree with you, that's most likely when the bacteria entered your bloodstream.  I'm glad that the Keflex and the Camphophenique did the trick.  We will definitely hope that that's the last time you have any problems with it, bless your heart.

Lap, 'tis ok about not changing the sheets, my Crone friend.  Those sheets will be right there, waiting ever so quietly and patiently, until you get ready to change them.  Honest.  They really will.   I hope you've gotten over being whupped, and have had some good sleep, rest, and relaxation.

Katy, I'm delighted that the new meds are working, and that you actually felt like doing some cleaning before going to work.  That's something I've never done before.  Cleaning is either after work or on my days off...and lately, more often than not, cleaning just doesn't get done.   Last week I felt good for the first time in almost a month, I guess, and did some chores, so maybe I will feel up to doing some this week, too.  If not, just like Lap's sheets, the chores will be there when i get ready, right?

So.  All three days were busy this week at work, and election day almost dogged us all out.  Not one of us had given it a thought, so it caught the three of us offguard and not even ready to handle it, altho of course we did, and as usual, we did a pretty good job. But by Wednesday evening, I was pretty much feeling whupped and bruised, and totally ready for my four days off...what I call my Real Life.

Today I had an appointment with the Pain Management Clinic, and it was a little different than normal.  For one thing, they didn't take my usual $25, but told me to wait until my next visit, when they would know what my insurance paid.  It seems that I don't actually have a regular co-pay any more, which may work out nicely for me.  Yesterday I got the bill from the OB/GYN first visit, and it's only $20.95, which is $4.05 less than I would've thought.  I can live with that.   Seems to me that a pap smear would be cheaper than the biopsy, so I'm thinking that probably the next bill will be even smaller.

Ok, another difference was that they had me fill out a "wellness survey," which I've never done before.  After I filled it out, it seems that I marked at least one question that they didn't like, so then I had to take a test on an iPad...first time I'd ever used one.  The question I answered yes to was depression, so I guess they were making sure I'm not suicidal.  I assure you, I am not.

Went from there to K-Mart to refill my pain meds, and scored:  Found a sketch book justlike the one I had been using for my daily Zentangle, and had used up about a week ago.  Funny thing is, the last time I looked at K-Mart for a sketch book, I hadn't been able to find one.  So, I'm pretty pleased about that.  I've been using the brown paper one that Joycie sent me, and I really love the way the tangles look on the brown...and working in color on the brown is amazing...but sometimes I like having plain white paper to work on, too.

And, the book of the day is Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."  I haven't even finished the first act yet, and believe it or not, I'm pretty solidly hooked on it.  At the bottom of each page is a sort of glossary explaining some of the terms he used, some of which I already knew, others of which I could figure out from the text usage, and the rest, well, I was clueless.  So it's not a fast-reading book, but it's really pretty good and I'm enjoying.  And I'm finding out how he had that 55,000 word vocabulary whilst we only use about 3,000 words:  He used words that are out of usage now, most of which are the ones that I was clueless about.  And no, right offhand I can't think of any of them and no, I don't want to get up and go get the book, lol.

And so, my friends, I reckon that's all I can think of today.  Oh, btw, the Large Rodent came back off vacation Tuesday, and was in a great mood both Tuesday and Wednesday.  Broke my heart, i was looking forward to a really loud and nasty knock-down, dragout argument, lol!!!   Y'all have a good evening, and a good Friday, hear?  God bless.

Caren - I did indeed work on the presidential primary election.  It was very, very slow.  Most of the Republicans here just can't stomach Romney, seeing him has a man who would say anything to be president, in fact that is all he really believes in, him being president, but they don't really care for Santorum much, though they would prefer him over Romney, which is why Santorum won the state.

We were using these new election machines for the first time, which caused some stress on my part, and once again were involved in the whole voter ID - what is a valid ID thing, which also added stress.  I was writing to a friend about the day on Wednesday, and started having a panic attack. *sheesh*  So, my regularily scheduled appointment with the therapist was supposed to be this week.  I called her and asked if we could have it a week early.  Bless the lady, she agreed, and I was able to de-tox.  Turns out that I wasn't so much stressed about Tuesday's election, as I am REALLY stressed thinking about the November election, but I have some ideas to explore on that topic.

JB - I don't think the sheets will wait after today.  I'm feeling real lazy this morning and decided to have breakfast in bed - a tangelo, hard boiled egg and a brownie.  I put the bowl with the eggshells and tangelo skins down beside me, to post some stuff, and one of the dogs pulled out the eggshells to try and eat them.  *sigh*  Oh well, I needed to get out of bed anyway.

I'm going to try and finish the rest of the spring planting, before the rain comes this afternoon.  Then I've decided to sew myself some summer dresses this year, so will be shopping for a pattern (no zippers or button holes) and material later.  I finished the pencil sketch of the queen of cups, so need to get a frame for that, treat the dogs with some oils to repel fleas, and read some more of my "Gnosticism for Dummies."  Pretty much fills my day.

Oh, and swish the toilet.  Haven't done that for two days.

Wow! It's been a week since I posted. I have read and prayed.

Caren, congrats on the 10 lbs you lost. I found them.... good luck with the car.

Carrie, so sorry you were in the hospital. I intended to call you last weekend... you know about good intentions. Hope you are feeling better.

Karbie, so good that you are trying to get up and around more. Hoping your cellulitis is gone. I know that you are enjoying your Kindle.

Lap, high metabolism? Who woulda thunk it? Sorry the election was so stressful. Did you and the therapist set up coping mechanisms to help with the future election worries? I have been interested in genealogy but never committed enough to do the work beyond scratching the surface.

Joyce, I am adhering to not having ice cream, even on Sundays. It's really been ok though the rest of my eating habits have been out of control. Not because of missing the ice cream but needing better coping skills. So you actually put ALL the clean laundry away?! Good for you.

I am glad you were able to go to the pain management clinic and hoping the new meds keep doing their trick. It's also great news about the insurance. You really seem to be feeling better, according to your posts. Big smile for that!

I am ok. I have had a lot going on lately. I had a very active day last Saturday with a support group meeting in the city which I drove to for the 4th time. Then a Ladies Day Out activity at the church, and scrapbooking after that until midnight. I haven't been as active this week, though I did go to knitting group on Tuesday which was really nice since I'd only been once since Danny had surgery. Then I went to another smaller knitting group Wed evening at another coffee shop, and to my small care group at church Thursday PM. I was at the Y only once this past week and have not followed thru on my walking program.

The small care group at church is for healing the emotionally wounded. There are 6 of us including the pastor. I spoke of my abuse. That is not uncommon for me. Then recently I spoke of my behavior, including guilt over having an affair many years ago. My pastor asked me to write a letter to God about it, then to write 1 John 1:9 across it. I did. I printed out a letter I had written to my father in 2008 and I wrote a different verse across it along with a saying I had shared on FB. I took both of the letters to church on Thursday and read most of them aloud. NO, this was NOT a requirement. I shared that when I got thru writing the letter to God it was the first time I had ever been able to call God Father or ABBA. Then we burned the letters in the church itself. It was wonderful. I do feel forgiven. 

A part of being so much more involved is having more feelings for others and that has been sort of tough. There are a few folks in church that are friends that are going thru struggles and many of them are fighting cancer. I am praying, I am trying to be supportive. It is a challenge because I feel bad because of the situation they are in. So I have not been coping well with all of that and I have fallen back into old patterns and have been medication with food... and not reaching out...

Just shared it with Danny... big sigh.... not really relief... just that telling him is over...

Got a million things I need to be doing...

take care everyone.

I have indeed been playing with my kindle--I managed to set up my chaarge account with Amazon and promptly bought a lot of things on my wish list. I think that the most expensive was $3.82--it's got 752 crock pot recipes, as well as another book with low-fat crock pot recipes. I hope to be able to share them with my d-i-l, but if I can't I'll buy her the jam-packed one. On one visit she mentioned she'd use her crock pot more if she had any recipes for it, and I handed her the one I bought the first few months of our wedding. The good ones were marked, so she didn't even have to do guess work. Apparently the aromas drive their cat crazy because he can smell the food but can't see any sign of someone cooking.

  Here's a picture--as a gag gift, my son's boss gave them all remote controlled sports cars. At first Moses chased it, ran from it, and eventually got in it after it hadn't done anything for 20 minutes. They were cracking up watching him stalk the car after it was off, getting close enough to sniff it, bat at it, and go off to repeat the process until he finally batted it a bit and climbed in it.

 Apparently cats have the same attraction to the electic transmission of telephones that small children do--the person on the phone becomes incredibly desirable and they desperately crave yur full attention. Moses was threading through his legs and purring loud enough for me to hear.

Got my hair washed and got down to wash the dishes the elves left for me and fixed dinner. All my muscles are in agony today, but after being awake for over 7 hours, I had to get some food. So we had ham sandwiches, AuGratin potatoes, peas, and peaches. all of the dishes were done before I came back upstairs, and I had taken down my bedroom trash, the bathroom trash, and all my empties when I went downstairs. I also did a contortionist act washing my hair in the bathroom sink because my hair is down past where my bra strap would be if I ever got dressed.

If you think about it, our earliest conditioning was to go to sleep if our tummies were full and our pants were dry. Food was a pleasure--except for that jar of creamed spinach. The baby looked at me like I was insane and was really relieved when the next one was strained beets. Then there was "Have a cookie--you'll feel better".

 I know that a lot of my weight problem is from words and emotions I have quite literally eaten. I knew when I was eating in anger, and wasn't proud of myself for it, but it beat the alternative of taking it out on my innocent kid.

I think we find it harder to forgive ourselves than anyone else.I remember my poor son being afraid that God or Jesus wouldn't forgive him, and I told him he could pray to the Virgin Mary, because she was Jesus' mother and had raised a little boy herself. And that God wcould forgive things even more than I did. There is more of a Mary tradition beginning in the Episcopal Church now, but it wasn't part of my growing up Episcopalian. We did the ashes on Ash Wednesday from the palms given out the year before, and I remember sitting at a table in the church basement making palm crosses out of palm fronds to try and keep the kids in choir and the congregation from using palm fronds to hit each other with.

The mistakes we've made have made us the people we are today. No matter how much pain our own actions have cost ourselves and others, we have to forgive ourselves because we can't go back and change a second of the past.One time when we were in a restaurant, there was a man talking  loudly about it being a sin to keep beating ourselves up over things we've already confessed to God and prayed about. He said we were doubing God's ability to forgive and help us to heal. (At the time, my sin would have been wanting to wipe the sanctimonious smirk off his self-ordained face, as well as "Gee, thanks--another thing I'm doing wrong!")

Sometimes we accomplish a lot, and some days we should get triple bonus points just for dragging ourselves out of bed, or getting dressed, or just getting through the day.

Personally, I think that we have some very special people and I'm blessed that you are in my life.