sick.

Thanksgiving was wonderful – the next day (yesterday) I woke up sick. My husband has definitely got a cold, but somehow when he gave it to me it seems more like a flu – aching muscles and all that. Also for some reason, I get lots of canker sores when I’m sick. Weird *and* unappreciated.

Can’t wait for this to pass – get back to dealing only with migraines.

**updated to add** — the recipes! I said I’d tell you how they turned out! This one (the pumpkin butter) was great – all around delicious. The sweet potatoes were GREAT, a big hit. The caramel apple pie was too sweet to me. Spencer thought so too. Next time I would use about half as much caramel on top. All in all, a good showing!

Giving Thanks.

Today I am baking in preparation for Thanksgiving tomorrow! I love to bake, and don’t often have an excuse to do it. Today it’s Pioneer Woman’s Apple Caramel Pie - it *looks* delicious, I’ll be sure to report back about the actual taste soon! I’m also trying her pumpkin butter, we’ll see how it goes over. Additionally, I’m cooking dinner — one of the favorites around here, Martha’s Mac & Cheese (with ham).

And then I was surfing my blogs, reading what’s new. And it turns out that Deb at Weathering Migraine Storms gave me the Lemonade Award!

The Lemonade Award is given to blogs demonstrating an attitude of gratitude. I’m surprised to find myself receiving this, to be honest. I find that I’m not grateful enough for all that I have — and that I complain far too much. If nothing else, it will help me to remember gratitude in my daily life.

1. Wind Lost

2. Inner Dorothy

And now for the obligatory ‘what I’m thankful for’ section of this entry. It really is a good exercise for me.

• My husband – his kindness and willingness to help me as I’m waylaid by migraines.
• My family – the family I grew up with, and the family Spencer grew up with. Both have been incredibly supportive and loving through the difficulties that these migraines have created.
• Being able to afford good health care. This is dumb luck, and really I think it matters a lot more than it should.
• Music – that is can wake up my soul and help it to breathe again, even after I stay away so long. Nothing could take the place that music has in my life – I can’t wait to get back to practicing and playing and teaching someday.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

food for thought…

Today I went (with my husband) to a boutique. My friend had some crafts being shown in the boutique, and I wanted to go and support her.

I met a woman there who also had frequent and delibitating migraines. We talked for a while, but I didn’t learn as much as I’d have liked to about her migraine history. In any case, she currently goes every 6-8 weeks for Botox treatments. And as she said, ‘You couldn’t have found a happier customer.’

So that was useful, because I have quite a few headache/migraine friends online, but most of them are either in the same boat I am, or have found some kind of ’solution’ and are working to maintain far fewer migraines. But I don’t know anyone who has had a lot of relief from Botox.

She has — it was great to hear about it, and give it some more thought. Of course Botox has been on my list of things to try. It manages to find its way to the bottom of the list because it costs so much and insurance doesn’t cover it. But she pays less than I thought it cost, and has had SUCH postive results.

Maybe it’s time to move Botox up the list?

Kreativ Blogging Award

I was so pleased to be given the Kreativ Blogger Award, given to me by one of *my* favorite blogs, How to Cope with Pain. HtCwP is written by a psychiatrist who works primarily with chronic pain patients. You can see how this blog would have a lot of great insights and ideas for me, living with chronic pain!

Each winner is supposed to name 6 things they are happy about.  This is a good exercise for me. I let myself get me down too often! I need to be looking at the positive. 

1.  Green smoothies! I am way big into green smothies right now – usually including spinach, a bit of water, and frozen bananas AND one of the following: frozen peaches, blueberries, or strawberries. They are green (hence the name), and look a bit gross, BUT they are delicious and taste sweet like fruit, you can’t taste the spinach. AND I am getting a serving of leafy greens. That makes me happy.

2. The Office. I just watched the episode yesterday (again) where we find out Michael is wearing a woman’s suit. Ah, so hilarious.

3. Dinner with friends – I went out last night for dinner with some friends. It was great to be able to relax and talk.

(this is getting difficult. I’m pathetic)

4. Switching over my closet to winter clothes! All those long sleeved shirts I haven’t seen in months – they’re like old friends.

5. Less than a week till Thanksgiving! I’m so looking forward to cooking and seeing most of my family.

6. And I am also really happy about Christmas shopping! I really enjoy shopping, and looking for that perfect give for the people I love.

I also get to name six other blogs to pass the award on to.  This is difficult, because there are so many good blogs I enjoy reading.

1. Sue at Navel Gazing at its Finest
2. Kathryn at Daring Young Mom
3. Kate at Walking Kateastrophe
4. Muum at Muum’s Musings
5. Kelly at Diary of the Nello
6. Terri at Wind Lost

I hope you’ll check these ladies out – they’re some of my favorite reads!  Thanks again to How to Cope with Pain for this award!

moving on!

hello friends – on saturday, my husband and I filled up our car with gasoline. and the beautiful thing is this:

what it means is this: we paid LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS a gallon. i can’t even remember the last time that happened. LESS than $30 to fill up our tank. joyous.

and in other news, I wanted to show you my tomato plant. instead of pitching it when the weather turned cold, I brought it inside. It continues to give us little orange cherry tomatoes.

here in this picture, you can kind of tell that it’s taking over the corner of the room. it’s about 4 ft. tall.

and here’s a closeup of some little tomatoes becoming ripe. i am actually really enjoying my tomato plant, because the tomatoes still taste like summer.

and that is what’s new in my corner of the world. cheap gas and tomatoes. 

apparently everyone loves bacon.

here’s a late footwear friday for you all. these are my fake crocs.

i like to think they’re cuter than regular crocs (or, heaven forbid, high heel crocs). but let’s be honest with ourselves, here. they’re still rubber shoes.

i kind of like the mary jane action.

i mainly like to wear them with socks; thin, black argyle socks. what say ye? are all crocs evil? fake crocs?

of bacon and the love of bacon

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.

–Helen Keller

We moved in July — and it’s pretty funny that I’m just now posting this picture. But my Muum took this on our moving day, as we were leaving our ‘old’ place for the last time. Such good memories in that place — luckily, we’re making many more here, as well.

A couple of days ago, we were cooking up some bacon. It was going to be breakfast for dinner – pancakes and bacon! I looked up instructions online for cooking it in the oven. I’ve cooked bacon in the oven before, and it is GREAT!

So in any case, I looked up the instructions and somewhere, some site on the internet said 400 degrees for 45 minutes. This is a complete lie! Do not ever attempt to cook bacon for 45 minutes at 400 degrees. You will have only burnt bacon, horrible burnt smell, and much bacon-y disappointment.

I’ve been craving bacon ever since. And the burnt smell has just barely dissapated.

So, like the optimist I am, I bought more bacon. Largely for the craving, of course. But I started the cooking again and I played it way safe. In other words, I did *not* burn the bacon; we had BLTs and it was fabulous.

What wasn’t fabulous, and was somewhat confusing, was that the fire alarm went off. What? It didn’t go off during the entire ordeal of the burnt bacon. So odd. Also, terrifying.

But the BLTs made up for it entirely. A fantastically satisfying dinner.

p.s. – I recommend 20 minutes at 375.

I’ve been tagged!

hello friends – i’ve been tagged! for a meme i actually haven’t done before! great, right?

so here is the meme:

post your 4th picture from your 4th file. say a little about it. then tag 4 other people.

here is my picture:

this is a picture of spencer and i with one of spencer’s good friends  (whose name i won’t mention to respect her privacy). this picture also has the benefit of highlighting my farmer’s tan. yay!

i tag:

Mom on the Edge

The Muum

Richard & Gretchen

and Julie! I actually don’t know if julie reads here. we’ll find out!

another anniversary

This one is a horse of a different color.

Today marks the anniversary of my Headache. Four years ago, my Headache began to be everyday. It had been getting worse and worse since the summer of 2004. The migraines were getting longer and longer and the space in between was getting shorter and shorter. I was blessed to not have a headache on my wedding day.

I thought I’d be more down about it than I am – I haven’t really been dwelling on it, and really, today is just another day.