Garden

I don't think I've mentioned our garden this year.

Cucumbers have been great.  Beans Ok but not terrific.  And the tomatoes, oh, the tomatoes!

Kevin has been toiling away and we have 41 quarts of tomatoes!

Stay tuned for our sweet potato crop.  (Which Kevin thinks won't be wonderful.)

Thankful We Started School in August...

  I am not feeling too terrific today.  In addition to a sore bum, I have aching arms and legs and I'm tired. So I almost certainly have a virus. What fun.

However, one of the many joys of starting school early (in early August) is that I feel at peace about taking a week mostly off from school.  Naomi is full time at Clark State so of course she is working away. Lydia has her college class.  Most of the kids are doing math. But other than that, we're taking time for me to recover and the other sickies as well.

I don't think I mentioned that I had a minor bump in the new van the DAY after we got it.  Combination of distraction from a loud child and confusion about the way the car worked. Kevin has spent hours and hours learning how to fix it, and he mostly succeeded. It looks almost as good as new.  We have some paint on order to cover up a few scratches and then it really will be as good as new.

I am grateful, not for the first time, for a talented husband.

Right now, Hurricane Irma is sweeping through the Caribbean, heading toward Florida. It is scary.  It seems strange sometimes to be in a safe place when I know people in our country are dealing with floods and wildfires and hurricanes.  And in other parts of the world, very hard things are happening with natural disasters and wars and political craziness.

So in spite of not feeling well and being frustrated by not feeling well, I am grateful for what we have, and am praying for those suffering far more seriously than I am.

A Hard Fall

  So I took quite the fall yesterday.

Rose likes to watch Sunny Bunnies and Monica Toy on Youtube. Don't ask. It's for little kids. But it keeps her quiet and less inclined to climb on the fans in the ceiling, so indulge her.

She was wiggling, as usual, and I was adjusting my arm around her, and I lifted her toward me, and I sat down on the computer chair...

Except I didn't.  Said chair, which has new castors, had drifted deliberately away from the computer desk and I instead fell hard on my keister.

And then Rosie, to finish the deed, fell hard on me and drove me further into the floor.

Major major ouch.  I was like, crying, literally, it hurt so much.

I have this vague memory of Rose either saying something encouraging or annoying, but I don't know which. I was in too much pain to respond.

Lydia asked if she should Kevin (who wasn't up yet) but I wasn't that far gone.

So, bruised tailbone. I was afraid it was broken but I'm nearly sure, now, that it is merely a bruised and/or swollen tailbone.

Kevin drove me off to CVS and we got a blow up pillow for me to sit on.

I rested a lot yesterday and today I feel somewhat better.

And I am realizing again the true blessing of older kids. It has been a hard day as I have a sore posterior and Sarah and Daniel and Lydia are not feeling well.  But Naomi and Isaac and Joseph and Miriam and Angela are doing a lot to keep the house in reasonable shape.

It's a BRAND NEW MINIVAN

  Last week, I told Kevin that I wanted a new car.

  Yesterday, we picked one up from the dealership.

  Of course (I hope it is 'of course') there is more to the story than a demanding  and spendthrift wife!

  Seriously, we've been thinking about replacing our old minivan for at least a year.  It has served us well, SO well, but it is over 17 years old.

  We've been looking around and thinking and praying about the proper replacement. After much cogitation, we settled on the new Chrysler Pacifica.

 Now we're enthusiastic about used cars.  You can usually get a good deal on a car that is a year or two old.

 BUT the Pacifica is new as of 2017.  There are a few out there on the market that are used, but they aren't substantially cheaper than a new one.

  We love the blind spot monitoring, the additional safety features. Kevin is excited about the ability to fold the middle seats into the FLOOR. So much easier on his back than hauling out the seats as needed.

 It has 8 seats.

  We can't quite pay for it outright so we took out a  loan which we plan to pay off soon.

 So Kevin had been in contact with a dealer for a couple of weeks and we made the decision a few days ago. Yesterday, we went over there and picked it up and I drove it home.  It's a sweet ride.

My Dad's Surgery

  Sunday afternoon, my dad had an emergency appendectomy.  It came out of the blue, really. Saturday night at 8 p.m. he suddenly felt sick, like really really sick. He was miserable all night.  My mother firmly took him to the ER on Sunday, and within a few hours he had been diagnosed, prepped, operated on, and was in his room.

  We are very thankful for good outcome for him!

  And here is the "God" part.  I will give the Lord the glory for this!

 A week or so BEFORE my father's surgery, our neighbor's 3 children suddenly showed up on our doorstep asking if Lydia could come next door to watch them as their father was sick with, you guessed it, possibly appendicitis.

  Lydia and I went over and sure enough, our neighbor was in pain and misery and was about to drive off for a CAT scan.  I offered to drive him but he said no, he could make it so long as he was sure the kids were Ok.

  And it WAS appendicitis, and he was operated on that day.

  So I mentioned this is an email to my parents, and my mother thought of appendicitis when Dad got so sick so suddenly.

  What are the chances of that?

 And to make things even more bizarre, our neighbor's nephew had come down with appendicitis a couple of weeks before he took ill with it! So our neighbor had possible appendix problems on his mind.

  We live in a world with sickness.  I am so thankful that we have good medical care in our country and that people with appendicitis can be operated on and saved.

And I'm very thankful my daddy is Ok.


P.S.  I just remembered that for Five in a Row this week, we are reading "Madeline", which is about a little girl with appendicitis!  She was in the hospital 10 days  in the book. My dad was released within 24 hours of surgery. How times have changed...

Cats and A1c and Supergirl, oh My!

And the kittens are OUT!  Outdoor cats, I mean. They've been living in our sun room but getting more and more ancy.  Then one of them (who will not be named in a public blog) started peeing in the corners. Ok, we're done. So far they love being outside.  When winter comes, we'll beef up our cute little outdoor cat area. We already have little houses for them but I have plans to make an even nicer 'cave'.   We knew they'd be outdoor cats eventually and the peeing just made the decision for us.

And Lydia is Supergirl!  For Renu, the youth group. They are having a series of 'days' where they dress up like a superhero, or with crazy hair, and so on.  She won first place, not surprisingly.

Our sweet little one is actually mellowing.  She sometimes sits for minutes at a time and 'reads' books and drinks her milky. Though in this case, she had copped some yummy liquid from her grandmother.

Crazy photobomb.

And oh yes, A1c for ME.  I went in this week and my latest A1c was 5.0!!!  That is the best it has been since I was diagnosed. I have to think that my minor weight lifting is helping?  My weight is actually UP, as I said previously, but I have real muscles now.  I'll keep exercising.  My doctor took me off all diabetes meds and I'm now a "diet controlled" diabetic.

Health and Weight in Middle Age

I have always been thin, and in that totally irritating way that probably has annoyed scores of friends.

Because, ya know, we live in a culture which celebrates being thin.  And my whole life I stayed thin without much effort.  

Now I haven't eaten anything I wanted since I managed to become diabetic in the middle of all this thinness, so I've been eating low carb for 14 years.  But yeah, in the midst of a restrictive diet I still ate plenty and stayed thin.  I lost weight easily post partum.  

I've rarely been in good shape as I disliked exercising and have spent much of the last 18 years pregnant or recovering from childbirth.

But I was thin, by gum.

It has been probably 18 months since I started taking Lexapro for anxiety and my weight has been climbing since then.  I'm up almost 15 lbs. now.

I have said, and thought I believed, that the important thing in life is not how much I weigh, but how healthy I am.  But the actual reality of being a bit chunkier has been harder than I realized.

In the last couple of months I have ramped up my exercising. I am actually lifting weights some, and doing other strength and core exercises. I have been able to do 3, count them THREE, push-ups.  Which really is a major accomplishment as I couldn't do a single one 2 months ago.

And yet, the weight keeps inching upwards.

It is really pretty easy to gain weight in this culture, isn't it?  I am wondering if my constant anxiety and adrenaline rushes meant my metabolism was ramped up a lot before Lexapro?

Or maybe I got to be in my late 40's and my metabolism finally slowed down?

I'll keep working at being healthy, but I really am trying to embrace that my weight may be higher and that is fine. It is better than fine.  I'm going to focus on cardiovascular health and strong(er) muscles and eating well and not worry about the weight.

Because it really shouldn't matter. But in this culture, it does and it takes hard work not to worry about it.