The Key to My Contentment

I don’t want to brag, but my nephew is just over seven weeks old, and my sister just sent me some photos of him on  his tummy, and, I swear to you, the boy looks ready to scoot around, if not crawl.  Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m telling you, that’s the look on  his face.

I had a very productive day yesterday in which I completely cleaned my kitchen, including scrubbing down cabinets and baseboards, bleaching my counters, cleaning out my coffee pot, reorganizing tupperware, finding all of the missing kitchen towels and potholders and putting  them in their correct places, unloading and reloading my dishwasher twice, and watering all of the plants in my window garden.  I am pumped and ready to take on another day.

I also started and completed quite a bit of laundry, including putting away a mess of clothes that were clean and heaped up on my folding table.  My goal today is to get all of the laundry done, and to be able to see the floor.  My big motivation is that I keep finding quarters everywhere and it just may add up to enough to go buy a bunch of Lifesavers.  Wild cherry, preferably.

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that we take for granted, or the people in our life we take for granted.  DSB has ceased the invalid routine, and so I am rewarding him in many ways.  Mostly, by bribing him with fresh-brewed sweet tea and making excellent meals.  They do say a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and I think there’s a bit of truth in that.  If I can keep him happy, it’s a happier household.  Similarly, if I can keep myself busy and happy, then I’m less apt to be bitchy and unhelpful to the process.

The time changed on Sunday, as you all may know.  Or at least those living in the USA, other than Arizona, who does not participate.  Do other countries around the world do DST?  I must know, could Google it, but it would be so much more fun to hear about it in the comments section, along with how you adapt.

I was very concerned that DST was going to make me be late to everything, as I had overslept Sunday morning by a long shot.  I think it turns out that I was just overly tired, because I have been up since 5:30am (which is early for me) and feel completely refreshed.

Something new and wonderful is happening in my life.  DSB has decided that he wants to try and sleep in the same bed again.  Woot woot!  This may sound strange, but, with the exception of his first couple of weeks here, I have slept in bed and he has slept on the couch or the recliner, citing pain and waking me up incessantly.

Since that time, my sleep routine has stabilized quite a bit and he thought we could give it another go.  It has been absolutely wonderful to fall asleep with my elbow and hand resting on  his side (whereas, I generally propped myself up with Rascal, our dog), and I have been getting great sleep.  He has not, but he wants to keep trying.  He says the reason he is not sleeping has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with the chronic pain he deals with.

Even on the couch or the recliner, he has a lot of pain, so we were hoping it would be eased a bit by being in bed.  No such luck, but as I said, we’re going to keep trying.  Ideally, we could get one of those adjustable beds, but they are ridiculously expensive, so I guess we’ll just have to win the lottery first.  What is it they say?  You have to play to win?  Right, right.

To make the day simpler, and allow me to hopefully get out and get the car washed amongst all the laundry madness, I just put a nice pork roast in with a bunch of sauerkraut into the slow cooker.  We’ll have it over either baked potatoes or mashed potatoes and it will be delicious.  And easy!  So easy!

Maybe I’m a simple person, but getting things done and making a good meal and treating other people well makes me happy.  Simple or not, I will continue on, and, in keeping with my homework, will find a stranger today that I can give a random kindness to.  These things all add up.

Oh, Bother!

I am less than thrilled with the brains behind my insurance company at this point.  I called them to see about getting into Weight Watchers and, contrary to the literature on their website, they only provide the enrollment fee and four weeks of the program.  For those of you who are not familiar, WW is more of a long-term program.  I thought they could at least pay six months or a year.  Talk about disappointment!  So, for almost $40 a month, I could do WW longer-term and have my first month free.  It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but I just can’t afford it right now.  I can barely afford to put gas in the car and buy a decent amount of groceries.  Frustrating, but I WILL persevere.  Because that’s what we do in our family, we persevere.

For more disappointment in the medical/health arena, DSB saw his primary care physician on Friday.  What a joke!  He dismissed DSB’s problems with anxiety totally, told him that sertraline (Zoloft) does not cause stomach upset or have sexual side effects, and was getting ready to just wrap up the exam without doing anything and then I started to get into it with him.  It ended up that, wow, after actually examining DSB, it is possible that his gallbladder is going bad.  He is scheduled to get some sort of imaging scan done in the next few weeks and we will go from there.  As for the anxiety and the side effects from sertraline, the doctor took him off that and put him on BuSpar.  Hopefully that will help.  Time can only tell!

In even more depressing health/medical news, my follow-up appoinment on my foot is Monday and I get to go get an x-ray and then advice from my PCP, who just so happens to be the same idiot that works with DSB.  I have consulted my physical therapist sister and my Internet-research-queen mother, and will likely be asking to be referred to an orthopaedic specialist, unless it has miraculously healed.  Stay tuned for more updates on that one, because I’m sure I’ll be pissed after the appointment Monday.

The Ritalin continues to treat me well.  My moods have been stable, my energy high, and my focus clear.  I am so annoyed with myself for going off of it, but am very pleased that I was able to make a quick turn-around.  This is not always the case when taking oneself off a medication…I know from experience!

After three days of QoB spearheading the mission, my house is all nice and clean!  I helped where I could, but mostly did a lot of supporting.  I’m still pretty gimp and have zero stamina from all of the time I have had to spend sitting around.  I did fold and hang and generally put away all clean laundry and am still working on the huge pile that awaits to be washed.  I can do laundry for the most part sitting down, so I’m glad I’m not totally helpless with that one.  

Now, I have a lot of laundry, and a lot of reading of blogs I follow to do.  I made it up to be current with my Grey’s Anatomy, so any suggestions of a new show to watch are appreciated!