Thankful for 52 years

 I had a birthday this month and I am now 52 years old!

Rose and I are wearing our matching turtle shirts from St. Croix. She was THRILLED to pose with me, obviously!

I really like being in my 50's. I have no doubt that if I live long enough, I will be far wiser at 80 than I am right now, but I know I am far, far wiser than I was at 25.  So that is good!

I am also incredibly grateful for my comparatively good health.  One does not carry 9 children to term, and have six of them by C-section, and have a full incision hysterectomy in one's late 40's, without some damage to the body. I know, because my OB has told me, that I have a lot of scar tissue in my abdomen. My neck and back fuss at me regularly because I spent decades with poor posture thanks to carrying babies both within the womb and on my right hip. However, a chiropractor helps and my aches and pains are minor.

My Type 2 diabetes is under control, and 17 years after being diagnosed, I don't have any obvious side effects. 

All this is to say that I am quite healthy, and I am grateful!

Kevin's mom left Ohio two months ago to help an extended family member who fell ill with COVID.  He almost died on the ventilator but by the grace of God, he survived and is back home. He is slowly regaining his strength.

I am reading a book by a pastor/radiologist (yes, he was both at the same time) who in his late 30's abruptly developed a serious, rare disease which means he has spent the last couple of decades feeling rotten much of the time.

I have another friend who was in a series of car accidents in his late teens, which caused irreparable damage to his back. He has had a series of surgeries to try to repair the damage.  While things have improved, he spent years on pain meds and eventually started taking too many, and is now an opioid addict.  Today he is in a detox facility trying to break free from his addiction.

Wow.  

So yes, my neck aches, and my back aches at times.  I have to eat increasingly carefully as I grow old.  But, at age 52, I can walk and climb stairs and hug my kids and do my various jobs.  I am grateful.

New Book Launching

 

Today is launch day for my new book, entitled Brighton Rescue.  It is, as all my books are, a Pride and Prejudice variation.

I always find the last phase of a book the hardest, as it involves editing, which is boring.  :-)

Kevin does all the work actually getting it set up for publication so yeah for Kevin!!

It is great being done with this book.  It is great to have it launched.  I am happy!

Bad Week for Anxiety

 This was truthfully a really rough week for me anxiety wise.  Part of it was self inflicted. Most of it was self inflicted?  I was finishing edits on the book, which is my least favorite part of the process.  I was still working away on some household projects (like cleaning the porch).  And then we were also doing school this week.  Oh, and I had 3 appointments outside of home Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday!

Tuesday's was a lot of fun; Lydia and I went out to lunch. That was great!

Wednesday I took Joseph in for his well check appointment.  He is 17, 6 ft, and weighs, I am serious about this, weighs 106 lbs.

So yeah.  The doc checked him out carefully and he is totally healthy, just very skinny.  Isaac was the same way but has put on some weight this year. So now Isaac is 6 ft. almost 3 inches tall, 137 lbs.  Which is still very thin!

Thursday I took two kids to the orthodontist.

Did I talk about the edits?  Ergh.  Entering edits into the computer requires a lot of concentration and I was getting interrupted so often.

Oh, and Kevin's job has been super busy lately.  He works from home and I have to keep the kids quiet sometimes which is not too hard since they aren't babies and toddlers anymore, but still.  He has been rather stressed too.

Anyway, my anxiety was through the roof this week.  For me, again, to reiterate from a few blog posts ago, it is not that I am worried about something bad happening. It is more that I look around and everything out of place catches my eye, and my brain is flitting through all that needs to be done.  It is no fun.

A few weeks ago I was really anxious and upped my Lexapro dosage and felt better.  Then this last week I dropped it down to normal levels and got worse again. So I think I need to move up to 15 mg from 10 mg of Lexapro.

It is very uncomfortable and it makes me an agitated wife and mother, which Kevin and the kids don't need.

 I still get lots done when I am not so anxious. I am able to see something that needs to be finished and think, Ok, yes, I need to do that, but I will get to that later.  It doesn't make me feel overwhelmed.

I am very thankful for the meds because they do help me. 

This Week in Pictures

 

We bought collection folders for quarters and have had fun looking through our stash of quarters and putting the different state park and state coins in the right places.

Back three acres is mostly wild and really nice.

Rose with magnets on door.

There is a story here!  I decided to spray off the porch with a sprayer on a hose.  Kevin says no, use the pressure washer.  So what was going to be just a little clean up turned into a long, exhausting, but productive process.  I did some, Kevin did more.  The Welcome in the dirt shows what the porch looked like before Kevin toiled away with the pressure washer.

The black and white kitten is Kevin's emotional support animal. He sometimes takes her into his office for meeting.

Rose can be dramatic about folding towels.

Lydia and Opal

The Building of the Great Wall

 

We needed to separate the kittens from the hot tub. They are growing so fast, not just in size but in ability.  

So Kevin went to work with help from Isaac.

Isn't that amazing!  Kevin is SO handy!!

This last pic of the kittens on the chairs is just to show how big and strong they are now.  We got them a little more than a month ago and they were wobbly when they walked, and I had to help them pee. Now they are just all over the place and jumping up things. So we needed a wall.

I Finished (My Part) of my Latest Book!

 Yesterday was a red letter day for me.  I finished final edits on my latest book!

This is the publishing process for my books:

1.  I write the chapters one by one on Microsoft Word.  Kevin edits each chapter and fixes problems. He is a great editor.

2.  We post them on a fanfiction site.  This is a free place for people to read Pride and Prejudice variations.  People comment and sometimes point out errors or questions about the story.

3.  I write fast, and I finish most books within 2 months or so.  When I am done with the book, I print it out on paper.

4.  I go through the entire book using paper and a good old fashioned red pen, except for when my red pens disappear, which has been known to happen; then I use another pen. But I prefer red because it stands out.

5.  I enter in all my changes into the document on Microsoft Word.

6.  We send the document to a friend whom we pay for another edit.

7. When she sends back her edits, Kevin incorporates all of her edits into the document.

8.  He adds important things like table of contents, and formats it, and a whole bunch of complex stuff for Amazon.

9. We publish.

So yesterday, I finished 5., which means I am DONE with my part except for maybe a few questions by our editor friend.

Kevin also does the book covers. He does everything except the original writing. Yeah for Kevin!!!!

So Brighton Rescue will be live on Amazon on October 28th.

Hot Tub

 Kevin loves hot tubs.

I like hot tubs.

Over the years, we've thought about acquiring a hot tub. But truthfully, the thought of dealing with it was stressful, PLUS we had little kids for so many years. I didn't really want a hot tub when we had kids who could not swim.

Also, they are expensive.

So now we have more money because we are old and crusty (kind of.)

Also, all our children swim.  Also, Sam's had a small hot tub that was "only" $2200.  So we ordered one in September.  We were informed that it would take 2 months to get it.

A week or two after the order, we rescued the kittens.  We were unsure what to do with the hot tub because they would need to share a space in the sun room, but we figured we had time to sort it out.

Wednesday we got an early phone call informing us that the hot tub was 15 minutes from our house. No prior warning.

Ha!  So much for plenty of time to think about where to put the hot tub!

We put it in the sun room as planned, and created a barrier with tables.  For now, that is keeping the kittens away from the hot tub.  They are still pretty small.

So far it is a huge hit. It is also, not surprisingly, work because the chemicals need to be balanced properly.

A Week of Organizing and Decluttering. Also, Fleas.

A couple of times a year, I have a sudden, deep, passionate desire to organize and declutter our home.  Commonly, these desires tie into the changing of seasons. So sure enough, a week ago I decided it was time to take a week off of school and do some work on the house.

I never get as much done as I hope, but this week has been very productive.  I worked with the kids to go through ALL their clothing. We donated 6 or 7 full trash bags full of clothes to Goodwill.  It feels good to have all the outgrown stuff out of the house, and everyone's clothes where they should be. Briefly.  It is inevitable that garments start sneaking into the wrong drawers over time.  

I also worked on the downstairs.  We have a storage room and an old bar where there is more storage.

Now, you may look at both of these and say, so what?  Well, I didn't get before pictures and I should have; I assure you both places are far, far better than they were. Also, they are not perfect.  One of my life mantras is "Better is better". I often often often don't have time to do a job completely, but even improvement is great.  The area behind the bar was particularly dreadful to the point that I couldn't walk back there, thanks to the kids throwing a whole bunch of costumes on the floor.  I got that cleaned up.

The kids helped a lot.  It wasn't all me.   I was the mastermind.

Also, our kittens have fleas. This is no great surprise since we rescued them from outdoors so yeah...

They are too little for traditional flea treatments, but apparently it helps a lot to just get a flea comb (which I ordered and received from Amazon), dip the comb in soapy water, and comb them. So today we did that and got a lot of fleas off of them.   The kids and I will keep doing that once or twice a day until they are old enough for a treatment. 

Apparently fleas don't live on people, which is good.  Our house doesn't have carpet and most of our couches are faux leather, also good. So hopefully we don't have an infestation. The kittens live in the sun room, also free of rugs. So we will see. We will keep working on it.