HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Well another  year is almost over.  This year, we didn't have to travel far, didn't have to grocery shop, didn't have to cook, and didn't have to entertain.  I LOVE DOING all those things, but to tell you the truth, the best and only way for me to stay on the tightrope by the end of the day TDAY I should always avoid those things!! But, since I like most moms, end up doing the cooking on Tday, we need to find ways to stay balanced. 

The trick is...to learn your limits. 
Go slower.
Clean a week in advance
or
Get a cleaning lady!
Have spouse do the shopping.
Guests....make sure you invite guests who will help.  Like my bro and his wife.  If you invite them, they take over the kitchen when the meal is done and in about ten minutes have it all cleaned up for you! So, people like that are great ones to invite! :)

BUT MOSTLY... 
It's best to use the

KISS

Method of entertaining!

KEEP IT SIMPLE SILLY! 

Thankful!

I posted this on a friend's blog and thought..hmm...I should post it here too! 

I've got a lot to be thankful for this year, including your book and seminar,

The Emotionally Destructive Relationship. 

This morning, I was eating some grapes and I thought;

'Lord, thank you for GRAPES!'

They are a simply wonderful gift from our Father!

Sweet. and/or Sour. Juicy. Cruncy. Handy. Portable.

We can eat em as is or make

Jelly. Jam. Juice. Wine. Chicken Salad.

So, I'll say it again...

Thank you dear Lord for your gift of

GRAPES!

November 23, 2010 12:27 AM



The Princess and the Pea

Have you ever felt like you were the Princess in the old children's story The Princess And The Pea?  Apparently, they put a pea under a huge pile of peas and she had to climb up and lay on the top and if she felt the pea, it meant she truly was a princess.

I MUST BE A PRINCESS!  haha!  I can feel the tiniest creases in my sheets.  I wear my socks inside out as a general rule to keep the seam from hurting my toes!  When I wear long johns, I wear them inside out also!

Just another way to balance the pain and discomfort. 

I wear the tops of socks on my wrists because that was the first place the RSD hit me.  I have found that if I keep an extra layer on my wrists, almost year round, they don't hurt nearly as much or sometimes not at all.  But if I just wear two or even three shirts or sweaters I still have that bone chilling coldness in my wrists. They hurt, sting, ache, feel cold to the bone.  An extra layer just on that most sensitive area helps tremendously!  Try it sometime! I sometimes have to wear my sock tops only on my ankles also because the same thing can happen to them in extreme cold.  Has to have an extra layer right in that area!  Weird, I know.  Aren't we so very strange anyway? 

Fell Off the Rope

Ok, so I fell off my tight rope this week! Hubby and I had gotten so used to living on the rope that we(I) got a bit careless and forgot to keep my balance. This Fall, my week has shaped up to be something like this:
Church
Small Group
Bible Study which requires a minimum of 3.5 hrs of study every other week.
Chiro. 2x a week
Dinner out usually once a week.
Saturdays Hubby is home and we generally do a few things together.
I do some 'busy work' for a friend every few weeks.
I like making meals for sick friends and new moms.
Oh and I foster Bichon Frises. I have one and take in a second one. Mine was practically Rxed by two of my doctors who told hubby that I really could use a dog for a companion.

My stamina and pain relief has been increasing over the past few years. But this new schedule is a bit much for me already. Also, I think the pain in my hip is getting worse. There was one pain I had that the Chiro has almost completely obliterated and a related pain that is very much decreased. Apparently, I was all messed up in that area of my anatomy.

Up until the past couple of years, we knew I could usually do one night out a week. One weekend a month at most we could go away somewhere. We had no social life to speak of and so, it was easy to stay at home. And I didn't go to Bible Study, the Chiro, or do anything for anyone else. We had a nice easy going life carved out for us...boring for most people, but I don't like to be in pain, so I limit my activites. Not only do I not like to be in pain, I am an awful grouch (I don't use the word that really describes what I was like when the pain was unrelieved). Well, not so nice I guess once I realized that one of my meds was not doing it's job the way it should and was actually causing me to have stomach aches and lose weight.
Hence, living on a tight rope! I do too much, I fall off. (have a flair) I do too little and I swell up and get stiff.

I changed one of my meds a year or two ago and the difference is amazing. I'll tell you about that in the next post.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a girl's night out! I have not been invited on a girl's outing in a long long long time! It was supposed to be on Saturday night, last night. I was pretty psyched about going and getting to know these ladies better. I couldn't go. I hadn't been watching my balance this past week, having had dinner out thurs night and then, friends asked if we'd be interested in going out to dinner and then going to a play with them. I was in such incredible pain during the play I couldn't hardly pay attention. Thank the Lord it was a fun engaging show. I didn't sleep that night at all and realized when I woke up that I'd lost my balance and fallen off my rope. I still had to do stuff here at the house and forgot to put my pain pill in my medicine sorter! YEOW!!!! I believe that my pain meds were masking this awful pain in my hip! After going two nights without my pain pill, this dragon of pain was set free!! Once you let pain get out of control, it's very hard to get back under control again without some sort of intervention. Interestingly enough, the RSD hasn't flared that I've noticed. I couldn't go to church this AM either! Bummer!


I've had to suck it up and give up a few things in my schedule to try and get back in balance.

Have you ever been on pain meds and not until they are starting to wear off do you feel the pain of something like an ear infection? My ear drum burst once upon a time because I couldn't feel the pain till it was too late! I'm pretty sure that even tho I was feeling this pain in my hip, it wasn't nearly as bad as it is now! Whatever is causing this pain is either progressing or the meds were masking. Whatever; I've got to get this under control once again. Well...not yet cause this week is Thanksgiving and we are traveling, it will take at least a week to recover and then we go right into getting ready for Christmas! And we'll travel then too!

I can see a very quiet Jan coming up for me! :)

Balance is a vital part of life and I think we all need to balance our lives correctly. We need to seek the Lord for his help in balancing our life.

Proverbs 16:11 Honest scales and balances belong to the LORD; all the weights in the bag are of his making.