I signed up for NaBloPoMo monthly again. I’ve been bad about blogging lately, so I wanted to challenge myself to get back to it.

This month’s theme is “Hot.” Not sure if I’ll be keeping with the theme, but it’s one I can certainly relate to. It’s actually not terrible here today. Or maybe it’s just that I’m mostly immobile. For the past several months, we’ve been dealing with a situation in our kitchen that was getting progressively worse: slow drains.

It was on the agenda for the weekend, but The Boyfriend decided he wanted to have his Saturday free for golf and “Smoke on the Water,” one of Toledo’s two annual rib cook-offs (and the only one we’re going to this year since the one that used to be for charity is now strictly for profit). So, he determined that the drains were going to get done last night.

First he popped off the trap. Holy cow, it was disgusting. I took it outside and sprayed it out with the “power wash” setting on our garden hose. But that didn’t solve the problem, so I had to get into the pipe beyond the trap with a snake. The Boyfriend tried, but he doesn’t have the touch. There’s a certain trick to it, letting out the right amount of snake and just being patient enough to work through it.

I pulled out a whole bunch more disgusting gunk and then had him put it all back together while I poured baking soda and vinegar into the drains, followed by boiling water. I did this twice and while I’m not sure it’s completely taken care of the problem, the drains are flowing and the double sinks are no longer backing up into each other. More baking soda and vinegar is on my shopping list, because I’ve read that this is a good monthly prevention.

Unfortunately, the position I put myself into last night while snaking has left me pretty much unable to move today. Somewhere in this house, I have some muscle relaxers. If only I could get up to look for them…

But hey, that means if it really is hotter than I think it is, the lack of mobility will help keep me cool, right? Gotta find the silver lining. Other than, you know, having the drains cleaned out.

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You may have noticed I haven’t been around much lately. No? Well, there is that possibility as well.

It’s not that Zola is keeping me hopping (though she DOES have her moments) or that I’m so crazy busy with work or even that my mom is consuming all of my free time. If you’d seen us yesterday, in completely separate rooms for the majority of the day, you’d know that one isn’t true right off the bat.

The truth is, I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for a follow-up visit and to get the results of my blood tests. My cholesterol was good and my glucose was excellent, but it turns out I have hypothyroidism. Huh. Who knew?

He rattled off a list of symptoms which I quickly discounted and then I went home and researched it some more and started wondering. Several of the things on the list could conceivably be blamed on the normal aging process. Perhaps all this time it’s been my thyroid instead?

He put me on medication and I have to say that I’m feeling better. More energetic. Less irritable and definitely less apt to wallow in self-pity. I’ve actually been getting things done around my house. Yesterday morning, I went out in the horrible heat and humidity and thinned out my day lilies, digging out the rest of the grassy area next to my garage, where I want the day lilies to fill in and digging up and replanting a half dozen of the plants. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and just haven’t had the motivation. And yet, there I was, in action - and on a day where lifting even a finger resulted in near dehydration.

And there have been numerous other things that I have attempted. Saturday morning found me cleaning the living room and dining room. Both are now presentable for company, which is good because I’ll have some of that on Wednesday when Kat brings Miss Laurel over to meet my mom and the diva kitty. I’m sorry, make that The Diva Kitty.

So, apparently, I’m feeling better when I didn’t even realize I wasn’t feeling great. Again, who knew?

In other news, Zola goes back to the vet today. Please cross your fingers that she’s not pregnant. Because there are ominous signs that she is….

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My mom is coming up from SC tomorrow, to visit various friends and relatives for a month. She’ll be with me initially, but I’m not sure how long she’ll actually be here.

In preparation for her visit, I’ve been slowly trying to put my house back together again for the first time since JL came home from camp last fall. In the process, I’ve damn near had an asthma attack with all the cat hair and dust I’ve managed to kick up. Mom is no more of a housekeeping genius than I am, so I’m not terribly worried about her reaction when she gets here. This is, quite frankly, more for me than for her.

I miss the days of chat challenges. I used to be on this discussion group (still am, but I never visit the website anymore) where occasionally, a couple of us would get on AIM and set timers for 15 minutes, then go off and see what we could get accomplished in the meantime. When we came back, we’d tell each other what we managed to get done. Some people scoffed at the idea, wondering aloud how I knew the other person was actually doing anything. Clearly, they didn’t grasp the concept. The only purpose the other person had was to provide the “Atta girl” feedback that was sometimes needed to keep going. The main focus was keeping myself accountable. And sure, I could have provided a fake list of things I’d done. But talk about a waste of time! I can certainly think of better things to say while IM’ing than, “I did a load of laundry, swept the kitchen floor and unloaded the dishwasher.”

I have two minutes left of my 15 minute break before I move on to the next group of tasks. It’s not a chat challenge, but it’s the best I can do for now.

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Friday night, I came home and promptly started working on this week’s Photoshop assignment. A half hour later, I was cleaning my kitchen in frustration. I just could not figure out how to complete a particular step in the assignment, no matter how many times I tried to start over. But man, my kitchen looked great!

Saturday morning, I tried again. It still didn’t work. I finally posted a message on the class discussion board pleading for help. The Boyfriend had plans to go to a Tigers game; a game he wanted me to attend with him, but there was no way. He left and I gave the assignment a few more futile attempts before starting to watch the Cubs game.

They won. Which is more than I can say for the Tigers.

Somewhere in there, my dad returned a call to me. The bathroom faucet has, in the past couple weeks, dramatically decreased in water pressure. Without my dad to tell me, I would have just replaced the whole faucet (which needs to be done, eventually) instead of pulling out the aerator and cleaning it out. Voila! Instant water pressure!

Nothing says empowerment like solving a plumbing issue for free.

I checked the discussion board and some lovely person named Teresa had responded. She’d had the same problem and she detailed what she did. It worked like a charm! Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked for a couple of the others who have posted since then, and our professor has yet to weigh in with any advice.

Today, I decided I wasn’t doing any homework, even though I have two major projects due on the 15th. The Boyfriend’s car died on him last night in Maumee. Unfortunately for him, it was on a street with “No parking this side of street” signs. Guess which side he was on? I called Maumee Police to let them know we’d get it out of there in the morning by noon today. Even though I have Triple A, we were hoping we wouldn’t have to have it towed. It started right up, though, which was good because halfway there we realized that neither of us had our cell phones. We are BRILLIANT!

So, today during my no homework day, what did I do? Changed up my blogroll and added a contact form. You know, for the LEGIONS of people who have been wanting to get in touch with me on this site but are too afraid to leave me a comment.

And then I went back into the bathroom to measure the bathtub for a shower surround. And pulled the funky fake tile looking wallboard away from the plaster to see what was underneath, because I want to yank it all down and just paint.

But you know that’s not how it works, right? It’s never that easy. I’m not going to tell you what I found, because truthfully at the moment I’m not quite sure. All I can tell you is that it’s going to require a lot more work than I was hoping. And this is why people should not make cheap ass repairs to their house, because someday… someone is going to want to change it up, and the cheap bastards make it that much more expensive in both time and money to fix it.

I just really hope that somehow this comes back to bite those previous owners in their asses…

** ETA - I’m more than a little annoyed at the professor in this Photoshop class. She was apparently able to log into our course to upload the assignments for next week, and was able to send us all an email to remind us that our projects are due a week from tomorrow, but unable to post to the discussion board regarding any of the issues that students have been experiencing. Nice feedback.

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Last night, after a not-so-great night at work (I’m not even going there), I came home and went right to bed. And crashed. Until noon today.

That’s why I didn’t notice until I got up to make coffee that my sons had cleaned the entire kitchen yesterday. They even swept the floor.  And washed the cats’ food dishes.

It looks fantastic!

I guess I’ll keep them a little longer. Because, you never know, they might do the living room next!

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I would put up the Christmas tree if I could find the living room….

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If it’s not seizures keeping me awake, it’s The Boyfriend’s snoring. UGH.

I woke up at 8 a.m. which I’m not complaining about, because I have a lot of stuff to do today and I want to get rolling on it. But I realized there are two cars behind mine in the driveway, so unless I want to deal with excessively cranky sleeping people, I’m stuck here until they wake up.

I made coffee. I fed the cats. I went downstairs and threw the last load of my laundry into the dryer. I started doing the dishes, only to hear the orange cat meowing in the basement. Frantically. I went down to investigate and right in front of me, he hops into a basket of dirty laundry belonging to the boys and starts squatting! I picked him up and carried him to the back door and tossed him out. Then I discovered the little bastard peed on my Wicked Good slippers from LL Bean.

So, now I have to add one more stop to my list of errands this morning, to pick up some cat urine neutralizer because the bottle I have seems to have disappeared somewhere. Alex (orange cat) is neurotic and when we first moved in here, he was freaking out over me not letting him outside, so instead of using the litter box I provided, he peed on my brand new couch. The stuff I bought to neutralize it was a miracle; the miracle being that I let the little bastard live to see another day.

Tonight is the session where The Boyfriend and I learn about insulin pumps, so I have to go into work 1.5 hours early so that I can leave for 2.5 hours to attend. But first I have to call Super K to find out if she’s feeling better this week. Because if she’s not at work tonight, I can’t attend the session.

I suppose I should put down my coffee cup and get into the shower so I can get moving, eh?

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So, that “To Do” list I posted? Yeah, just forget about that, ok? I’ve spent the better part of the weekend doing one of two things:

1) Whining and complaining about my head hurting / sinus congestion

2) Making sure that The Boyfriend isn’t having seizures

That second one sounds much more dramatic than it is. It’s just that since Thursday morning, he’s had at least three insulin reactions. None of them have resulted in a seizure, but two of them have at least seemed close. His medication may be helping with that, though. That’s one of the questions I plan to ask when I go with him to his appointment later this week.

The reactions are always in the mornings, though, and his shaking is what wakes me up. Adrenaline rush + sinus trouble = MAJOR HEADACHE when everything calms down. I called off work today, because ibuprofen is barely taking the edge off the pain. I finally got a hold of some Advil Cold & Sinus and I seem to be getting some relief.

*crosses fingers*

But yeah, that “To Do” list was pretty much toast by Friday afternoon. Oh well. There’s always next weekend.

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I woke up early yesterday morning with the sinus headache from hell. I’m sure the fact that I foolishly skipped taking my allergy meds for two days had NOTHING to do with it…

I popped a couple of ibuprofen (and my allergy meds) and went back to bed. At 10 a.m., I got up and popped a couple more. And went back to bed. At noon, I finally (and unwillingly) dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. The headache was *still* there. The ibuprofen had barely taken the edge off of it.

The Boyfriend was having an insulin reaction as I walked back into the bedroom. It wasn’t too bad; he was still able to talk to me, but he was shaking pretty noticeably. He came out of it completely very quickly; a few glucose tablets, a glass of juice and a bowl of cereal and all was well with the world. I can handle those. He visits his endocrinologist next week, though, and I’m going to go with him to find out what (if anything) we can do to help prevent these sudden crashes. He thinks it’s all related (and I suspect he’s right) to working out on a regular basis. It seems like every time he’s started an exercise program, we’ve had issues with sudden lows. But exercise is healthy for him, so we need to find a way to compensate. Besides, I figure if we can get him straightened out, he’ll motivate me more to start working out, too.

By the time all of this had finished taking place, it was time for me to think about heading into work. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I knew that we were going to be short on student help during the day, which meant that things like incoming OhioLink wouldn’t get touched.

I have a few gripes about a couple people in the workplace, but I’m not going to get into it here. Everything ultimately got done. I’m just thankful that nothing came in for reserve in the evening, because that would have been two nights in a row that I would have been leaving stuff for J to do the following day, and her week has been horrible.

I came home from work last night, ecstatic that I’m on a three-day weekend thanks to fall break. (I’ll pay for it next week when I only get one day off, but for now… I rejoice.) I’d planned to stay up and get something, anything… done. Instead, I had, for the second night in a row, a great discussion with JM. Which is even better.

And then I crashed. Until 10 a.m. this morning. I woke up to find Mickey all snuggled up against me. That’s not like her, but the house is chilly with the temperature drop and I’m not willing to turn on my furnace just yet, when blankets and sweaters are plentiful.

At the moment, I’m feeling pretty good and I want to take advantage of it. I have a boatload of homework to do this weekend, and god knows there’s always a ton of housework to be done. Last weekend, I was very unmotivated, probably because I was upset about the impromptu research paper assignment. I forced myself to work by using Flylady’s 15-minute method, and I was quite pleased with the results. This week, there’s a lot more that I’d like to do, so I’m going to use it again.

Since this blog is supposed to be about my disordered life, it’s only right that I would chronicle what I want to get done vs. what I DO get done right here in this space. So, stay tuned….

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Yesterday was glorious in one sense, because I was all alone with no one to bother me. Since the boys have both been back home, that is a rarity. But The Boyfriend was working and the boys were off either at their own jobs or hanging out with friends.

I went grocery shopping and spent close to $150, but I think we’re covered on meals for the next two weeks. I also half cleaned out the refrigerator upstairs and reorganized the pantry (which is basically just a cabinet with two slide-out shelves) to see what we had on hand. I told The Boyfriend, “Do NOT buy any more cans of green beans until we get through the dozen that we already have!”

Turns out I also have a ton of tomato sauce. And kidney beans. Apparently, I think about making chili a lot, but never actually get around to it.

I came home and did some laundry. I had to wash my down comforter because the Mad Yakker cat threw up on it the other day. Yes, theoretically you’re not supposed to wash a down comforter, but guess what? I do. I throw it in the dryer with three tennis balls and dry it on low heat. When it’s all done, I have a very fresh-smelling unlumpy down comforter. So, there’s a household tip for ya.

As I was puttering around the house, picking up things here and there, I started really getting irritated with the boys. JM was told when he moved upstairs that he wasn’t allowed to take food up there because dishes have a tendency to disappear into his room and never resurface. For a while, he seemed to be listening to me. Then I realized he was just picking up frequently because his girlfriend would be stopping over. So, I really didn’t say anything, because at least the stuff was coming back downstairs. Well, he and his girlfriend have split and now I only have two plates.

I refuse to go upstairs to get the stuff.

When I went downstairs to do laundry, I started really getting annoyed because the floor is covered with laundry and it doesn’t seem as though anyone cares. My basement is not a nice place. It’s damp and occasionally leaks when we have lots of rain. And quite frankly, I’m sick of stepping over stuff to get to the washer and dryer. Occasionally, I will wash everything downstairs and fold it, and I’ll even bring it upstairs to have the boys either put it away or determine if it needs to go to Goodwill. Within a few weeks, however, I will find those same items, probably never worn, but in a pile (sometimes still partially folded!) on the floor, getting filthy again from being there. And then, I’m pissed because I’ve wasted my time and money on something that obviously isn’t that important to the boys.

But I think I’ve come up with a solution. Earlier, when I threw my last load into the dryer, I started another load and randomly started picking up laundry off the floor and tossing it in. When it’s done, I will dry it and fold it… as I have so many times before… but this time I’m putting all of it into a large plastic bin that I will keep in my room for now. And we’ll see how long it takes for the boys to start wondering where a particular article of clothing is. Anything that isn’t claimed in a few months is going to Goodwill, sight unseen by them. My laundry room will be cleaner, I won’t be wasting my time washing things that aren’t being worn and the boys will get to live a little longer. I like.

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