Hello Winter

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the eight day break. Yikes. Managing chronic pain can really take a chunk out of your day.

Since we talked last we've had a big snowy blizzard. The boys were ecstatic!

I'm blogging the intro to my four part series about Day of the Dead HERE. Check it out :-) I know I've mentioned it before but in case you missed it, I blog at Gauche Alchemy on Mondays and Fridays so if you're missing me *grin* you can scamper over there.

What's new... we're paying our mortgage again. Bah humbug! That two month break was awesome and we scrimped, sold and squeezed hard enough that our three years of remaining car payments will disappear mid-month. THAT"S IN TWO WEEKS!!!!! YES, I'M YELLING - WITH JOY!!!! It's insane to comprehend that we paid off twelve thousand dollars in debt in two months. Especially when three months ago we were going from paycheck to paycheck plus wracking up the visa.

*Happy Dance*

Some little tricks:

1. No one needs free access to milk etc. Seriously. We buy a reasonable amount for the week and when it's gone, it's gone. Our grandmother's didn't let their kids stand at the fridge drinking milk every time they're thirsty and neither do I. Nutritionally, a glass or two plus water the rest of the day is just fine.

2. Coffee. I always made a full pot and threw out a half to a third of it at night. Now I make a half pot and about once a week make a second half pot. We are using half as much coffee and I'm drinking just as much. That is close to $20 a month in savings.

3. When you run out of something, if you are also out of money then you just have to go without. How did we not know this before? I think us children of the 80s missed that memo and our debt loads reflect that oversight. I ran out of rice this week after two failed attempts. So we're not having curried lentils on rice or cabbage rolls until payday on Monday. Such is life. Will we die without curried lentils for five days? Probably not.

4. When you run out of money, stay home. Obvious right? Not hardly. When you leave the house there are so many temptations - Starbucks, groceries, card stock. Even a drive burns gas. Gas costs money. At the end of the month, go for a walk, play a board game, watch one of the dozen DVDs you own.

5. The library is an amazing resource. I go online and reserve all movies, books etc. I want and then every Saturday morning we go and make an event of hanging out at the library. Because we go every Saturday morning we never have to worry about late fees or making special trips to drop off overdue books. We also have a shelf dedicated to library books/movies so they don't end up all over the house. Once the book is read, we move it to the tote for easy returns.

Cardvaarks Sketch #5

Hello all. Here's the card for Sketch 5:

Open:


Closed:

Stamps used: Man's Ruin

I feel rotten. Hopefully tomorrow will be brighter. Doc said to expect 3-5 miserable days.

Thanks For The Prayers

Yesterday was my big appointment with the anesthesiologist for the selective root nerve block. Out of respect for the squeamish, I'll spare you details of the five inch needle shoved into my spine for 25 minutes. Ugh. It was both worse and not near as bad as I imagined. It hurt a lot when they hit the bone and they needed to reposition it twice. Otherwise it was more weird than painful.

The important bits:

* My doc is an angel. He's this gentle, peaceful, guy who seems to genuinely love people. The OB/GYN who did my hysterectomy back in '99 was the best doc on the planet. When I was going under he held my hand, looked in my eyes and said, "I'll take care of you and won't let anything bad happen." It was the best way to go into surgery ever. The guy yesterday was just like that. Thank you Lord.

* I weathered the procedure well but instead of bobbing over to the post-op room with the other patients, my blood pressure crashed to 71/43 (that's the last one I heard before everything went completely black and my hearing disappeared) and I spent a little extra time on the hospital bed. Then I was on monitors for about an hour as my BP kept recovering and then crashing again. I blacked out several times getting dressed... it was some doozy of a day. Fortunately, salt always helps me so I ate salty foods until my hands swelled and quit passing out. Then I came home and slept hard for about four hours.

* I am having a flare-up from the procedure as they told me to expect. Ouch. But the meds they have me on are strong and very helpful. It's hard to swing homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, budgeting etc. I think If I just try really, really hard I'll do just fine.

Do you ever get it in your head you are doing something and just won't let it go even though it's not important at all? I really wanted to do all seven days of the Cardvaarks sketch challenge. I even got up early yesterday to stamp and color my images before my procedure so I'd just need to assemble the card when I got home. Then I had the whole going in shock thing to sort out and I slept a lot instead. So I got up early again this morning to finish the card before the 7:00 AM deadline and someone in my house had put the images somewhere. They are still MIA. I was so disappointed. But it's not a big deal at all. It's pretty much the opposite of important.

I think in life it is easy to put too much focus on a little thing and let it bog you down. It's especially easy when big things in your life (like health in mine) are beyond your control. But holding on too tightly to silly diversions is a quick way to add stress and none of us need that.

Perhaps I'll blog again later with day five of the sketch challenge. Or maybe instead, after finishing our school day, I'll curl up with a good book.

Sketch-fest Day Three

Here's today's Cardvaarks sketch:


And here is my card featuring a Retro Cowgirl:


Anyone notice the lack of product on my cards the last few days? I'm laid up right now so I've been coloring away with my Copics but haven't asked the kiddos to fetch me much more than my bag of scraps. Then I just need to move around for sewing and picture taking. Not having access to all my stash has really helped me keep things simple and has been a fun experiment.

Caardvarks Sketchfest #2

I liked the Caardvarks Sketch so much I made two cards. The movie card was all images off a single sheet of patterned paper (K and Co) and the Hawaiian card used the new Hawaiian Girl stamps from Bombshell Stamps and the paper and canvas tag was from my July TSR kit.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Yesterday was talk like a pirate day but I ran out of time before I could finish my pirate card. Fortunately I was able to steal a few minutes this afternoon. This is for Kathi's Pirate Challenge at Bombshell Stamps and for Cardvaarks Sketchfest Sunday Sketch


Stamps Used: A Pirate's Life
Paper: Fiskars and C'oredinations.

Sorry the color is a little off. It's a lot cuter in real life.

Thanks Shawnna for the awesome, piratey ribbon. I love it.

Healthy (Ha!), Wealthy and Wise

Thought it was about time to do another update. So... I'd love to cry in my beer but I signed a contract with the pain folks that excludes beer for the foreseeable future. I'd cry into a bowl of pudding but I'm vegan. I guess I need to put on my happy face and keep going.

Had my pain clinic appointment and was terrified as I was under the impression that I'd be getting my spinal injection. Nope I got two hours of talking instead. And a whole new treatment plan.

Turns out my back is trashed - to put in mildly. MRIs are wonderful things. If I ever need to take a friendly witness into court I'm bringing an MRI machine. No kidding. Tell someone you have pain and they give you that, 20 pounds overweight housewife... bored? Needs attention? look. Show them a seriously icky MRI and you're as legit as Snoop Dogg's claim of being OG.

According to my doc I must have had a very full childhood replete with sledding accidents, falls from horses, bike wrecks, car wrecks, tubing mishaps. To that I said, " Heck, Ya!" And he replied, " And now you're paying for it." I guess it doesn't take a CSI expert to piece together a misspent youth :-)

The skinny - L5S1: desiccated disc (hard and flat, not wet and puffy), retrolisthesis (posterior facing herniated disc), broad based posterior disc bulge, left paracentral annular tear, degenerative disc disease, compression on the left S1 root

All that explains the type of pain and numbness I'm feeling so we are postponing any fiddling with the tailbone and SI joint for the next six months and are focusing on the new list of issues. Apparently my degenerative bone disease is the least of my problems. Ditto for the broken, unattached, goofy tailbone.

I am getting a root nerve block on Wednesday and am officially being prescribed buckets of narcotics. I've been taking - for the most part - Advil and the occasional Vicodan and the doc says that is why my world is getting pretty small. He thinks taking an appropriate mix of pain meds and being able to hike, volunteer, attend church etc. is a lot better than stoically not being able to leave the house but being "drug-free" I have mixed feelings about this.

I'm also in a registry and have agreed to all sorts of crazy things which are part of a "pain program" for example, they can call me at anytime and I have 24 hours to come to the clinic and have my pills counted. If it's 15 days since refill I better have half left. Also, (and I thought this was only in the Stepford Wives movie) to "better help their patients" all the toilets in the clinic are rigged with a drug testing apparatus so whenever you pee you are providing a sample. Weird. I don't know how people abuse prescriptions - this process has been very intense. Did you know whenever I get a refill it takes 24 hours because they run a police search on all state pharmacies to make sure I haven't filled any other prescriptions? Crazy!

So that's healthy in a nutshell. I'm a little freaked out, but I'm managing. I have a lot of years left (36 isn't very old) and my back needs to carry me through them. I hate to ponder how it's going to be when I'm 70.

Wealthy: We're about 50 days into our budget and it's going smashingly. I ran a little over in groceries so I borrowed from hair care and clothes - all "legal" moves in our plan. We've become a magnet for money. I wonder if we always were and just never knew it. There is a pretty constant flow of rebates, overcharges, sales, refunds etc. and they are adding up big time. We hope to have our car paid off by mid-October and then we'll get to work on the Visa bill. We are still living on 38% of our income which is super-awesome. Next month we'll have to pay our mortgage again which should bring down our debt payment a bit. Still, our drafted budget for next month shows us paying 40% to debts and living on the other 60% which is still impressive (to me at least) and is a far cry from the 110% we were living on three months ago.

Wise: Nope. Not wise at all. Although, with my new position at Gauche Alchemy I have been writing a lot more consistently and I love to be using my skills again. So it's not a total wash.

I bet all my crafting readers are bored stiff right now. Sorry, but you guys are the target for most of my post and this one is for my near and dear. Just so it's not a total waste *grin* Here are some Halloween tags I've been working on featuring my beloved Retro Cowgirls set from Bombshell Stamps:



And this is a LO I did for SassyGirlScraps last week:



And last but not least, Welcome Willows, thanks for popping by :-)