I haven't posted for a week or so, being so busy with Christmas preparations. Our first holiday-related company may arrive today, on their way west to Vancouver. Christmas eve will be spent in Chicago (that's our big meal and gathering). Probably on Christmas day itself we will work on slightly overdue Christmas greeting cards.
Finished The Christmas Lamp by Lori Copeland.
I think this is another example of "books I like because I am completely exhausted and they are easy and sweet." And also, in this case, seasonally appropriate. :)
Roni lives and works in Nativity, Missouri. The little town isn't doing so well (not many tourists; businesses are closing) and someone's just arrived to help cut expenditures, a guy named Jake.
It's a sweet story and it ends happily. :) It's a little less than realistic, but it's Christmas, so who cares, right? :)
Finished The Sweet By and By by Sara Evans with Rachel Hauck for Thomas Nelson.
Jade is about to get married but there's a sticking point--she has to decide whether to invite her mother to the wedding. She's been estranged from her mother (Beryl) for years, and she isn't sure whether it's worth the drama to have her there. Beryl used to be a hippie and spent much of her three kids' childhoods on the road with one musician boyfriend (or husband) or another.
You should know that this is Christian fiction, although that wasn't too noticeable until the end. So if that would bug you, this probably isn't a book you'd enjoy. (Although you'd probably like it until the end.)
I liked the pacing of the book a great deal. The details of Jade and Beryl's relationship was revealed in a timely fashion and there was a decent twist that kept changing everything.
I read the book yesterday, after I was exhausted from being at work for 30 hours. Would I have liked it this much if it weren't essentially the literary equivalent of comfort food? I'm not sure. But I read this book at the perfect time, and I really enjoyed it.
It's probably also good that I read it right before Christmas, since the book's main themes are about love and forgiveness.
So... I will try this post again since I had to walk away in frustration yesterday.
Things are going great! I feel wonderful, this weird ass diet is working! No more headaches, yeah life is good. I am back to editing pics. Even got around to doing a fantasy piece again.
Edited some pics from the trip down south that made me realize that something was wrong with my belongings and not me!
So yeah this is not as good of a post as I had written up last night. Heck if anything it is minimalistic. But it's a start.
So I am off for a walk!
Namaste
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ~Bilbo Baggins
There are times that I really hate Voxes posting. Well.. I had a huge post but clicked on a pic that I was putting on the post by accident and of course it took me to the pic and lost my whole post... so blah.
See you later people.
We leave soon to go to Sydney for the night then fly away in the morning.
Fun will be had, cocktails will be had, massages will also be had. And by the look of my glowing white legs I'd say a dose of sunburn may be had.
And I'm thinking by the look of my crazy hair I might come back with dreadlocks. Because I'm not taking a hair straightener and I'm not even going to dry it with the dryer. It can just go wild for the next week or so. Will pack plenty of hair elastics.
So I wish all my friends and neighbours here on vox a very merry christmas. I'l think of you lot over there in the snow and sleet while I'm lying on my sun lounge soaking up some rays. And to all my aussie neighbours I hope the weather gods treat you well and you don't get a real scorcher for christmas day.
I think this is the first christmas, or even December, of my life that I haven't eaten ham. Can't say I'm missing it either.
Catch you on the flip side guys.
I originally posted this story on Sparkpeople, but I have friends here that I wanted to share this with, you have all been on the rollercoaster ride with my health over the past few years, the ups and the downs. I have just not felt like blogging for awhile now. With the ups and downs with my health I just have not felt like doing much of anything for months now.
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Over the past 5 years I have laid the blame of my weight anywhere I could. From my husbands diabetes (uncontrolled so he tends to go low alot, meaning he eats often, which means I would munch with him alot of times) , to Lyme disease, to depression.
I started at 126 lbs in December of '04.
It seems a life time ago.
Within a few months I had gone from a size 8-10 to a size 16, I never
imagined walking down the isle in July of '05 in an extremely tight
size 16 dress. (it was not tight in May when I bought it!) I can hardly
look at my wedding pics because I can't see past the bulges,
remembering how I had to squeeze into one of those body molding
underwears that pulls all your fat in and hides it.
By Christmas of '05 I was pushing a size 20.
I started having all sorts of weird pains, heart wise and musculature around October of '05. My energy level was low, I was still walking daily. I just wasn't' building up any endurance... or losing weight.
In June '07 I was struck by a case of bells palsy with a side of shingles that had attacked the same side of my face as the palsy. My health was deteriorating faster than I could explain to the doctor.
We initially were trying to diagnose me as having lymes disease. Everything going wrong with me pointed in that direction. But the tests kept coming back negative. My heart was starting to really give me the worst trouble after the bells palsy. I was bed ridden most days. The pains through my body had me bed ridden the other days. Finally my doc just didn't know what to do anymore and suggested I try a holistic approach with another doctor.
She was giving up on me.
I almost gave up... on everything.
I finally made an appt back with her and she put me on anti depressants after I had a break down in her office. Needless to say they did nothing for me and the husband and I started making plans to move out of overcast rainy New England to sunny Arizona thinking that my problem was S.A.D. aka seasonal affective disorder. Massachusetts had been in a 4 year bout of constant daily overcast, cold rainy days.
After the move I felt great for a few weeks. I had a lot of days down recuperating. My energy had bottomed out over the years to the point where just getting out of bed winded me. I started eating healthy again, cut alot of junk food out of my diet and started to get sick. Real sick, I started having anxiety attacks often and felt as if I was worse then before the move. I would end up back in bed eating comfort foods trying to build my strength back up. I gained back every pound that I had lost.
Finally something clicked, a few weeks ago the husband and I left the house for a few days. I felt great! A bit wore out, but all in all really good. The day after we got back home I was sick again, and that is when it clicked. I realized something in the house was making me sick. Going back over the years the one constant that followed us through our moves was our furniture.
In the late winter/early spring of '05 our basement flooded from snow run off. We didn't know it right away since we never used it and it was just storage. I started smelling something odd, mildewy and moldy. We went down and found that the basement had molded from the flood. Huge blooms of black mold covered the whole downstairs, walls, boxes, old clothing. Everything was covered in black mold. We promptly cleaned it all out, tore down the dry wall and cleaned up best we could.
Around fall of '05 we noticed black mold starting to show up through the house. I bought some spray that supposedly would kill it. Not once in all this time though did I ever bother to read up on it.
When we moved in June '07 a week after I was diagnosed with the bells palsy, we moved all our belongings to our new house. All our furniture, which would have had black mold spores on them. We found out that winter that our new house's basement flooded, every time there was a melt off, or heavy rains. So yet more black mold sprouted.
All of this dawned on me a few weeks ago as I sat here wondering what in Gods name is wrong with me. So I finally, after 5 years have got around to researching if black mold can harm you.
It does!
Every thing that I have complained to my doctor about over the past 5 years is a symptom of toxic black mold syndrome.
Every time that I felt better was my body killing the spores in my body. The resulting couple days of down time afterwards was the poisons that the dying bacteria were releasing into my body to repopulate themselves. It is actually a very wild reaction that happens when mass amounts of bacteria die off in the body called The Herxheimer Reaction they release up to 79 different toxic products when they die! They get in the bloodstream and travel to all parts of the body where they can cause all sorts of havok.
It's going to be a long road to recovery from what I have read. But with just a few days down now and knowing this time, that this feeling sick now is a good thing and sticking with the healthy eating.. well I think I can do it this time.
My outlook is positive finally! FINALLY!
I have a goal and I can actually see it. It is not the goal of a number
on a scale, it is the goal of getting the old energetic me back. The me
that wasn't sick every single day.
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*This all began 2 weeks ago, I cut gluten out of my diet and the change in my life was immediate. I began with my black mold treatment today. So I am praying that good things happen with that!*
*The real meaning behind this post is, research what is wrong with you.
Don't ever let yourself believe that your doctor has a crystal ball and
can diagnose you. Some things in your life they cannot know about. What
doctor would have just randomly asked "Hey do you have black mold in
your house?" In real life that just doesn't happen. We have to take
care of ourselfs and research and then go to our doctor with what we
have found. But most of all, be alert to what is going on around you
and with your health, your doctor can only diagnose by what you tell
them.*
Finished The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This is a prequel to my favorite book ever, The Shadow of the Wind.
This is very different from Shadow of the Wind but it's still great.
Here's the synopsis from the back of the book--I don't want to spoil anything, because this is really good.
"In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city's underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at an unsolved mystery.
Like a slow poison, the history of the place and an impossible love bring David close to despair. But then he receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike any other - a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realzies that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.
Set in the turbulent 1920s, The Angel's Game takes us back to the gothic universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop, in a masterful tale about the magic of books and the darkest corners of the human soul."
Today the lady at the bank flummoxed me.
But I was doing something else at the same time so I didn't realise she'd flummoxed me until I got home.
I said to her
if I lose my credit card in Thailand is there a number I can ring?
and she said
yes, it's on the back of the card
But now I see that thats not really going to work.
Nevermind, because my day 2 plan involved researching phone numbers for mastercard, all the places I can use a mastercard in Thailand, and where to ring if I lose it, phone numbers for local police, tourist police, the australian embassy and hospitals. I have sent copies of all our passports and insurance details to Emjay and filled in my travel journal with her phone number and my brothers details.
Honestly, I should have been a wedding planner. No stone is left unturned.
I have just finished cleaning out the fridge and tomorrow I will give the house a quick hoo ha. Because even though I am a terrible housekeeper, there is nothing worse than coming home after a nice holiday, to a dirty house. I have set up a light on a timer to come on each night so Betty isn't scared and I'm considering setting up the airconditioner to come on for a few hours each day for her so she won't be too hot. I haven't decided yet if this is really needed. Daz thinks it is but he is a city boy. I grew up on a farm where dogs lived on chains and had a log to sleep in.
I have bought our little baggies to put all my dangerous liquids and explosive lipsticks in, I have returned my library books, asked the neighbour to put out our rubbish and I am now about to take off my toenail polish, snip my nails down a bit and coat them with a cheery holiday colour. Which I wish was green but I couldn't find a nice one.
And thats about it for today I think.
If I've forgotten anything, feel free to let me know.
I know this is not a big surprise for this week's Quest! This quest runs for 2 weeks so you have time to get some photos during this busy season.
Photos can be recent or old...you are free to use any photo enhancements, color or b & w or sepia tones. Make a collage, a Christmas card, a poster or just a single photo. Post how you took the photo and what enhancements you used.
If you haven't ever posted before just jump in and have some fun. No worries we are all learning here and enjoy seeing everyones photos.
Get creative and show the Photo Quest Group what Christmas means to you. Is it about the ornaments, the tree, the cookies, friends, children, parties (this is for Yan), pets, nature, church...what makes a Christmas special for you.
Since this quest runs through Christmas...I want to take time to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas!
Maureen
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