Surviving

It's been a rough couple of days here. Work has been busy for Chris. Finances are tight as the animals needed a ton of items replenished this week. I saved about 50$ with coupons though which helped. My immune system is up to no good. I've been noticing small things the past week or so layering on top of my recent extreme fatigue. Missing when I go to grab things, frequent stumbling, mixing up words, dropping things. While it's sparse and barely noticeable to anyone else, it all stands out like an emergency siren to me. Symptoms of my MS are generally rarer anymore unless there's a trigger like heat, and they've been increasing in frequency and severity all of the sudden. Last night when we went to the store I developed a bad tremor in my left hand while pushing the cart, and I stumbled about six times. Then I later developed spasticity in my right hip and it has yet to give me relief. I'm struggling with stairs, and limping when I walk. I'm hoping with some rest it will all calm down, but it's starting to look like it's adding up to a relapse. If it continues to get worse in severity I'll need to go see my neurologist and get on a solumedrol drip before I lose my ability to walk all together. As much as I hate solumedrol, I enjoy walking. I'm trying really hard to be optimistic that it's just a passing exacerbation from stress or whatever, but as the frequency and severity builds I'm soon going to have to be a realist.

Secret Santa

As many of you know, I spent a few years volunteering undercover to help with pedophile stings. It was really rewarding work. I miss it. I met some amazing people and travelled to some cool places along the way. I kept in touch with many of the people I worked with, and some of them are some of the best friends I have. Sadly they all live ridiculously far away. Most years we do a Secret Santa of some sort. I always participate because I have a serious Christmas problem.

My gift arrived from Rita today, and it was huge! The paper was so adorable. Once I realized just how many presents were inside I decided I had to go sit down to open it, and took it into the other room, haha. She had a really nice pet bed inside the box which I took out first, took the tags off and taped the washing instructions to the cardboard tag and put it with my manuals. I'm OCD like that. I have a bad memory, but I have a system of where to put things, and where to find instructions for things! Haha. It works pretty good most of the time. Daisy immediately investigated it when I put it down. Tux was busy playing in the box as I unwrapped things.

 

Acceptance

Chris and I stayed up until about 4am. I kicked his butt at Exploding Kittens. The bottle of Moscato I picked out was really good. Silly us, we didn't have a corkscrew! Luckily my grandparents did. Shows how often we drink. We stayed cuddled up in bed until around lunchtime, and then got up and ran out to the store for a few supplies.

I made pollo guisado today! We decided that would be our New Year tradition. It got pretty good. Chris demolished his plate of food. I didn't really make any resolutions per say this year. New Year's resolutions can be a great way/starting point for major life changes, but at this point I don't have anything drastic I need to work on every day of the year except being happy, and trying to serve the happiness of my life, home, and relationships as best as I can. I mean sure, I could resolve to lose weight or something cliche like that, but I think that's best done in lifestyle changes, and I'm fighting an uphill battle with steroids on that one. So, I guess at the end of all this blabbering, I just resolve to do the best I can at living as long and well as I can.

To Drown a Fish...

Got my Christmas presents from Chris in the mail yesterday. So far i've only opened Exploding Kittens, but it looks really fun. I can't wait to play it with Chris later.

Speaking of animals and Christmas, I never did mention what we got the critters.

Funds were tight, so we couldn't get the animals much. We got Daisy a big bag of peanut butter dog treats. She loves her some peanut butter. They almost look like Nutter Butters. Her cookie jar was getting low. Now it's full to the top again.

We got Tux one of those fishing pole type cat toys. He could chase whatever's on the end of that string all day. He gets so tired out eventually because he tries so hard. Eventually I just let it lay on the floor and he'll entertain himself with it. This one has a fish on the end, and for some reason he keeps putting it in their water dish. At first I thought he did it on accident, and I took it out and let it dry, but he keeps doing it. It's kind of gross. I'm not sure if he's trying to drown it or what.

One of the things I got Chris for Christmas is a fidget tactile toy. It's great for stress, anxiety, and quitting smoking. I really like it too, it's hard not to steal from him. I generally have a hairband around my wrist to fidget with, but this is far superior. I've been looking at them on Amazon and already have planned to get a few more. They're really cool and work really well. The one I got him is something like this if you're interested.

The first night we had it he was playing with it most of the night, and then left it in his pants' pocket. Daisy of course fished it out and used it as a chew toy. It's a simlar texture as some of her toys. She broke about three links on it, but luckily it snaps apart so it wasn't too hard to fix. Chris was heart broken at first because he thought it was ruined already. They're really affordable, and there's lots of variations of tactile, stress, and fidget toys available online. They work wonders for anxiety, seriously. Check them out.

Kitty Convict

Daisy and Tux are great at stealing my seat.

And Chris' seat. 

Any seat really. 

They run the house.

Tux's new collar came in the mail today. He's now part of the Kitty Convict project.

It runs on the basic idea that when people see cats outside they just assume they are outside cats, rather than considering that they might belong in someone's home. Instead, you pop an orange collar on your cat signaling that if someone sees them outside they are in fact an escaped convict and should be returned home. I had to take the bell off of Tux's collar or he would have gone on a murder spree. I also ordered an engraved tag for on his collar and it only had three lines of engraving rather than four. So I had to email Amazon about that. It looks pretty handsome on him, but he just refuses to stay still long enough today for a proper picture. 

Today has flown by. I can't believe it's less than four hours until Chris is done at work. It's finally warming up in here, but all that's doing is making me want to take a nap. 

If you want to see the wedding pictures you can check them out on Tania's blog: here!

Dousy!

This blog is going to be a dousy indeed. I've realized I have many pictures to share! It look so long to upload them all. Our internet has been weird lately. We upgraded to a faster speed, yet it seems to be slower than what it was before. I need to check it and talk to Frontier about it.

This blog was going to be written last night, but do you know what happened while I was uploading the photos? Yeah, I fell asleep.

Then, it was going to be written earlier this morning. I got all cozy, opened up the website and fell asleep.

It's a problem. This time I am armed with coffee. Do something now autoimmune fatigue! Actually, please don't. You're probably resilient against caffeine.

Over the course of a week or so I got all of our Christmas decorating finished. It seems I haven't taken pictures of the outside yet. I've learned the key to doing things is moderation, taking breaks, and not trying to conquer the world all in one day. I take on all my daily chores throughout the day, and add some type of project in on top of it usually. I spent about three days on my bathroom project rather than hammering it all out in one day and exhausting myself.

By taking my time and doing it in spurts our Christmas decorating got nice rather than rushed by pain etc.

I spent a lot of time on our windows. Most of them aren't too hard for me, but the lower ones are. It didn't help that while I was crouched down doing the lower ones Tuxington decided to ride me like a pony and refused to get off.

Five Days!

Today was crazy and zipped by so quick.

I got up and worked on chores. Got a bunch of pictures uploaded to our account on the WedPics app. Chris went out with his brother Clyde to see his new house.

Janelle and Clyde came back with Chris afterwards and hung out at our house for awhile and chatted. They're going to take part in the hand fasting ceremony at our wedding so we were explaining that to them and catching up since it's been awhile. Chris also asked Clyde to be one of his groomsmen. He wanted to ask him months ago but they lost contact for awhile. It's a bit last minute to work out, but at least the groomsmen don't need to know anything too complicated for at the wedding.

Thanksgiving!

Someone thinks they're clever and put a chick peas cartoon on our fridge. (Why does fridge have a 'd', but refrigerator does not?) This is a testament to my observation skills (lack thereof). I have no idea how long this has been here, hah! But now I want more chick peas. If you missed my blog on chick peas you can read about them here.

Got my Thanksgiving decorating done, almost!

Deer, Dear!

Ran out to the store with Chris so he could get cigarettes. I'm sitting in the car wiggling my toes around trying to figure out what feels strange. Tux deposited a Q-tip into my shoe. He's learned where the Q-tips are kept and how to get them out. They're one of his favorite things to play with for some ridiculous reason. For some equally ridiculous reason he enjoys putting things in my shoes.

We're on the way home and there's no streetlights on our road. Our car's headlights lack much to be desired. I see the silhouette of a deer ahead and proclaim 'Deer!', which is interpreted as 'Dear!', but thankfully he saw the cause of my proclamation and we were able to slow down in time for it to safely pass. With the quickly cooling weather and the hunters they've really been on the move. A few crossed our path about a week ago as well. Be careful out there driving and be mindful of them!

We're still wide awake, and it's become clear that I've totally screwed up my sleep schedule. Which really isn't going to work out for me today because all of the things I need to do require banker's hours, and they all need to get done.

In other news, Food Network is going to make me fat(ter). Holy cravings batman.

I have no idea what I'm doing about sleep, or anything much for that matter right now. I'll be in my blanket fort pondering food if you need me.

Man's Unborn Twin is the Biological Father of his Son

So I was reading this article: Man Fails Paternity Test Because Unborn Twin Is The Biological Father Of His Son

And while it sounds like a headline you'd read on the front of one of those trashy magazines right next to 'My Pet Cat Controls my Husband's Mind', it's actually real. Mind blown.

You'll have to read the article for yourself to get all the details of it, but the short version is that the guy in question got fertility treatment with his wife done at a clinic. Originally they assumed samples got mixed up when the babies blood type was off based upon that of the parent's.

After lots of testing they discovered the father was a chimera. Two separate DNA's in one person. His semen was 90% his DNA, and 10% the DNA of his twin brother, that is part of him.

Crazy right?

I can't imagine getting news like that. Finding out that my twin is literally part of me. It makes me curious about some cases of multiple personality disorder. I wonder if a small portion of them are a result of chimerism?

We don't really know where consciousness is stored, and if a body can hold two separate DNA's what's to say there can't be two separate consciousnesses? I can't imagine how confusing that would be.

Floid, a Maine Coon Chimera

There's tons of cases of conjoined twins, some of them more extreme than others, but in those cases it's obvious there is more than one being present. In a case like this though it's the existence of two separate people in one otherwise seemingly normal body.

Tuxcasso?

I managed some determination to at least get the dishes done last night, and Chris was kind enough to cook dinner. Now of course, it looks like I did no dishes. I got a whole lot of nothing done yesterday. Today seems a bit more promising, but I'm still not back to what I usually do in a day.

Relaxing when I feel like garbage is really hard for me. I feel like I need to tough through it. Show the disease who's boss! All that really does though is make me feel like garbage for even longer.When I just rest though I wind up getting anxious about all the things that aren't getting done that are going to pile up into a monstrous disaster. 

Chris is really great about helping me with things that I need done. When it comes to regular chores though he's the King of 'It can wait till later'. He doesn't understand how the piling recycling, dishes, and laundry lying about cause me anxiety. Things are easier for me to accomplish in small doses. Mountains of shit to do all at once make me sad. So as I watch them turn into mountains it makes me anxious.

But I'm trying to let it go until I feel back to normal. Trying.

Meat Pies

There's a tiny grocery store opened up by a farm in Shoemakersville. Right now it's so small and tiny it hasn't even made it's way into Google search results. So much so that Google literally has no results. Something I'm pretty sure I've never seen in my life.

Besides that oddity, this place by far has the best chocolate milk ever. Albeit a bit expensive.

Beyond the chocolate milk it's packed with lots of farm fresh and homemade baked and canned goods. They're always getting something new.

I don't mind the price because well, it's fresh! Fresh generally means healthier and better tasting. In every case I've tried so far there this has been true.

This place has this ridiculous giant plastic cow outside though. This thing annoys me. I don't know why they just don't get a real cow if they want to attract people. At least you can do something with a real cow.

This thing has annoyed me to the point that annoying me with it has become a running good time. Hence this now framed picture I possess.

This cow recently disappeared from the corner which raised much suspicion. I went in the other day with my grandmother. Turned out they moved the cow inside. My grandmother wasn't paying attention, turned around and noticed the cow, and screamed bloody murder. It was hilarious considering there was more people in the store then I've ever seen.

I got a meat pie there the other day. It's beef. I've never been a huge fan of meat pies, but they have a ton of varieties, even sausage. I found it intriguing.

I haven't used my oven since I've been home from the nursing home. Hell, I barely got a chance to use my oven at all since I bought it. $16 in food stamps doesn't go very far.

Damn accident.

With the whole pain thing I've been having a hell of a time sleeping lately. Last night I finally fell asleep around 6am. I didn't crawl out of bed until a little before 1pm. My grandparents are involved in some ridiculous ancient TV show to the point I was hung up on mid-sentence. So I figured what better day to make my meat pie and watch some movies and be lazy.

Well, when you don't use some things for awhile your fluidity suffers. Such as, I forgot that even though when remodeling my kitchen I fixed the magnet on my one cabinet door; I never did get the chance to remove the baby lock thing I had been using. I went to whip open the cabinet and it almost took my arm off from the elbow down with it. Minor issue.

I get my pie on the tray and ready to put in and realize I forgot to preheat. Damn it. This oven is also very new, and I've used it very few times. I also forgot how to use it. There's a lot of buttons. I figured it out in minimal time though.

So then, the waiting. It's pretty cold in my house so it seemed to take exceptionally long to preheat.

I suck exceptionally badly at standing. Especially when I just wake up. I don't balance properly between hips and wind up making one of them hurt, or a foot fall asleep.

I dabbled around and made coffee and things to try to keep moving to avoid pain, and finally it beeped. By this time Daisy is beside herself.

I forgot that since I've never used my oven since my accident; that means she has never seen an oven in use.

I put in my pie, set the timer and went begrudgingly up the steps to get ready to watch movies all day.

Meanwhile Daisy is running back and forth between me and the oven beside herself.

It lights up! It makes noises! It gets hot! OMG it's a sleeper beast!

Seriously, she was that upset.

She has hence calmed down and is somewhere under my blankets asleep.

Pictures later of the meat pie, and some movie reviews!

Soccer

This is what Daisy and I do at 12am and other random times of the day when we (I) can't sleep. SOCCER! It's a great exercise for me, and she loves it. It gets tiring quick though for my hip. She has this silly habit of carrying her tags around in her mouth though when we play.

This is my very first time uploading a video to Youtube. Now that I have it figured out there shall be more!

I was on a roll so here's two more to enjoy!