Do I Really Have to Come Up with a Title?

Nothing much happenin' on the homefront. Got tons of pages scrapped yesterday because my friend took Colin over to her house for a playdate after camp for three hours! Wow - that was a pleasant surprise!

She moved into our neighborhood which is great - her daughter is a sweetheart and seems to be a really good influence on Colin. They played house, she was Mommy, he was Daddy, they had a doll baby. Oh how cute! A huge change for my smash 'em up, ball-throwing, cars and trucks playing little guy...

Today was his first day of soccer practice. Carl took him and said it was a trip; half the kids were screaming because they wanted to play on the playground. Colin is a really good dribbler. I'm so proud of him! He's made such progress. A few months ago we were worried he had dyspraxia and he couldn't even catch a ball!

Well, now I'll switch gears over to the scrappin' world. Sometimes it really cracks me up. At times I feel like it's high school all over again. Some people just hang out with the popular people and drop names all the time. I just have to laugh and shake my head. Why is it that women are sooooooooooo catty? That's why RAKS is so awesome - everyone is so sweet!

Well, on that boldly outspoken note (not that anyone reads this anyway)... here are some recent pages:



For Robin's Challenge at RAKS honoring Shelly Chua


For BellaGypsy's CT


For the Digi-Dare


For Tracy Blankenship's CT

Sneezes and contests and layouts, oh my!

OK, Alex just turned 20 months old, and he sleeps through the night pretty regularly, but over the past 2 weeks, he has woken up quite a few times. He has about 8 teeth coming in at once, and has been waking up congested, but last night the kid woke up twice because he had to SNEEZE! Seriously - ever since he was teeny tiny he has always hated to sneeze and would fuss and cry whenever he had to let one rip. We saw the pedi yesterday because he woke up early in the morning screaming and sounded "almost" croup-y. His airway was constricted, but he wasn't quite barking. Since it was Friday, I wanted to play it safe so I called them and the NP gave me steroids to give him. I gave him one dose and he seemed much better today. Gave him some Benadryl tonight, too. I HOPE that will take care of any sneezing issues!

I put in an entry over at Jen Wilson's Meaning.ful Contest. Am I nuts? Oh well, it never hurts to try! I like her stuff and it was fun to play with it and I might get a nice little posting prize for my trouble. Here is the LO and some others I've been working on:



For Robin Cabana's CT, using her "You Rock Kit"


For Tracy Blankenship's CT, using her "Bug Hunter's Kit"


Using Shabby Princess's and Sara Carling's collabrative Dinner Party Freebie

Feeling much better... At least physically!

Well, the weird neuritis stuff got under control within a few days. By Wednesday, Carl was back at work, and I was back in the driver's seat (literally I felt OK to drive again lol!). Had one little episode of dizziness/weird eye sensations when I was showering on Wednesday morning but otherwise I've been feeling pretty good, just a tad tired.

Lately I've been feeling like an absolutely awful mother, though. Alex is usually a complete Mama's boy but since Carl has been caring for him while I was sick, he has wanted NOTHING to do with me. The kid would literally cry when he would see me. Carl told me he probably just wanted me to take a shower - ha ha, very funny - try showering when your world is sideways and your chest wall feels like it's got a third degree burn. Ugh! Anyway, Alex got over that pretty quickly. I still feel the Mommy Guilts because Colin has been completely obsessed with the computer. He loves Noggin.com and Hot Wheels.com. I try to limit the time he's online, but I almost feel like I don't WANT to. Is that horrible or what? I LIKE when he is on the computer, because then he's out of my hair! The kid gets plenty of exercise, and we play Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land at least 10 times a day. He gets read to at least 1/2 hour out of every day. He doesn't like arts and crafts (never has). I wish I could blame the increased computer time on me feeling bad, but he was spending lots of time on the 'puter even before I was sick. I would take him outside to play if it wasn't 110 degrees out. It literally is 11o degrees out. My migraines will automatically get triggered at anything above 95. So any outdoor activity is out. I'm just awful. That's the bottom line.

The other big news around here is that I just found my *first* love on friendster and I found out that he's GAY. Well, now I know why it didn't work out LMBO! Seriously. The guy was like my best friend and then my soul mate, and then...well, I won't give out the sordid details, but he screwed me over and things were never the same after that. He went to the USNA, and did his seven year stint in the Navy. I guess "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" really works. When I found out, I was SHOCKED. I had no idea. But at least I know now that it really wasn't me that had the problem....oh no it was DEFINITELY him! So, what do you think, should I email him? I've already added him to my "friends" list. Hmmmm, what to do what to do?

Life with neuritis

Here's a LO I was able to finish - I am pleased with how it turned out - especially considering my dizziness while I was doing it!

I wish I had a more upbeat post to share, but alas, I do not...

The shingles pain is 95% gone, but more problems arose over the weekend. On Saturday night, I woke up feeling strange, out of sorts, kind of dizzy. My eyes would dart around. I felt anxious, but it wasn't an anxiety attack. So I stopped taking all my meds, afraid that it was a drug interaction or side effects. Sunday I did nothing all day, hoping that the feeling would just go away. But it didn't... I went to bed, thinking it would definitely be gone by today. But it wasn't... So I called my doctor. Carl had to drive me to the office and we had both kids in tow. It is so hard to describe my symptoms, and of course I broke down in tears when I was talking to the nurse because I am so scared about all of this...

Dr. Carlson is quite annoyed at pharmacists because he feels that they are overreacting about drug interactions and are giving the patients too much information, which make the patients paranoid. I admit that I did think this was a drug interaction, or serotonin storm, but I have valid reasons for that, which I don't want to get into right now... Then he examined me and we figured out that the eye darting, dizziness, strange feelings, hallucination-like feelings all occur when I look to the right or turn my head to the right... Because of that, he came to the conclusion that it is all related to the shingles. The virus is attacking a nerve and that is causing me to have all these neurological symptoms. How scary is that? So I have to start the Valtrex again and he gave me Antivert to help with the dizziness. Plus he told me that I can do absolutely nothing for the next few days.

That means Carl has to stay home and watch the kids while I'm stuck in bed. I'll try to scrap but we'll see if my funky eye movements will allow me to...

Happy Monday!

Hello, world!

Well, I finally got a blog... Thanks to Amy Knepper's awesome tutorial on RAKScraps, I was able to customize it a little bit. Let me just tell you, I detest HTML. Yuck!

I am surprised I was able to get this done because of the shingles. Ahhhh, yes, the shingles... And the drugs that I'm on because of the shingles. Who knew that a 31 year old would get shingles for no apparent reason? Well, at least the pain meds seem to have taken the edge off a bit, but they also make me loopy!

Carl has been awesome through all this. I don't have a rash, so it must be hard for him to understand that my skin hurts when there's nothing visible on my skin yet. I don't even know if a rash will materialize since I got on the antivirals so early on...

He took the boys to AutoZone this morning to put a battery in the Odyssey, then took Colin to get the Odyssey washed while I put Alex down for his nap. Pathetically enough, it's been almost a YEAR since the van has been fully washed both inside and out. Now, that is gross! Then he brought home lunch from Sonic (chicken wrap and strawberry slush for me - YUM!) and took Colin to the gym to go swimming. And then we all played lots of rounds of Chutes and Ladders. That's about all I could handle for the day...

Well, I'm off to go add the blogs I stalk to my blogroll. G'night y'all!