some of the goings on

So just a quick medical update…

The specialist I saw thinks that I am grinding or biting down on my teeth hard at night, agrevating my TMJ… if you’ve never heard of TMJ it is basically a joint disorder in the jaw and when it acts up can cause severe facial pain… in me it simulated an extended migraine…. crazy right…

to learn more on TMJ you can go to webmd here

In the mean time I finally up loaded the massive amount of pictures from my blackberry and thought I would post some of my “in the moment” shots…

before all of the randomness though… I am slowly turning Steve into an Italian…. he had his first taste of bruschetta… was it homemade… no… i cheated and used this…

yum… love me some trader joe’s

and cut up a french loaf… topped it off with mozzerella cheese and bam…. easy peasy….

on the infamous cookie sheets...

steve had… are you ready for this…. 10 pieces…. yeah no lie… he was on a roll…

and then the last shopping trip forced me to rearrange the cabinet to make room for all of this…. per steve’s request for dinner at least 3-4 nights a week….

its like a grocery store shelf...

we finally have caved and go to sam’s club for sauce for when i don’t have time to make my own… that was just the brand on sale that week fyi…. we actually prefer the flax and whole wheat pasta from the aforementioned trader joe’s but we were OUT of pasta and desperate…. that will only last us 3 weeks…. sad i know… told you i was turning him into an italian….

so some memories via the blackberry…

samson thinks the vet can't see him if he's in the sink...

he looks like he has a lazy eye in this picture too… one time the vet really didn’t see him and he got the water turned on while he was in there… pretty classic…

minnie watching the cars go by

the blizzard of 2010!!!! i was snowed in for 3 days

samson has issues.... seriously... who gets in the cabinet like that

emmy - i take way too many pics of my pets

you can't seeeeeeeeeeee me

sitting on the dock of the bay............ more like the lake.... 🙂

can you see the mating dragonflies???

bad dog

minnie has an obsession with my finance text book… as you can see she chewed off the cover… i now have one of those sticky book covers holding it together… that is one text book i won’t be selling back at the end of the sememster… minnie… you owe me 100$

OMG he's domestic

he knows how to put the lines in the carpet… i don’t… so he’s the vacuumer…. he’s going to be soooooo mad if he finds out i outted him…. hehehehehe… pic is blurry because he was yelling at me for taking it in the first place…. mwuuuuhahaha

hope this gave you a little insight into me… it certainly cheered me up a bit…

tonight steve and i are cutting an access panel into the crawl space under the roof…. its been sealed up for 30 years (who seals that up by the way??? seriously……?)… and we’re a little worried what we’ll find… living in PA there might be a nest of stink bugs…. eeeeek… might be some wildlife that worked its way into the house… maybe i’ll be lucky and find treasure… whoooo knows… lol… wish me luck!

the BOSS

yeah…. that’s right… i’m going to see……

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

source

The Boss is playing with Joe Grushecky at The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh November 4 and 5 and of course Steve was allll over that.  And I am a closet Bruce fan…. Ever since I was a kid and “Born in the USA” was on an episode of Reading Rainbow… I know weird association but still…

The venue only holds around 2000-2500 people and I am psyched to get to see Bruce Springsteen even if he only comes out for a few songs… I mean seriously, who can beat that?  Tickets were a bit hefty because they were sold out before they even went on sale but I’ll fork over some mulah for seats even in the balcony because its not like being in the nosebleed of an arena…

Anyways, that was my exciting news for the day…

Tomorrow I see an ear nose and throat specialist because my sinuses are still no better and now I’m getting a lump feeling in my throat again and I get my knee drained on Friday and I want all of this dealt with and figured out now… sick and tired of being sick and tired….

BRUCE…..

no i’m not dead

though my brain may be…. i apologize for being gone for so long… yet again… i kept saying i’ll post tomorrow… or i’ll post tonight… or as soon as i get into work i’ll throw something up… and then hell came and took me away and didn’t let me come back…

i’m still not really back… but i’m fighting for a hot minute…

things have been busy like always but about a week and a half ago i started to feel a bit rough again… real tired, sore throat in the morning when i woke up etc… and then i knocked myself out on the basement doorway and that just started my downward spiral…

day after my head butting incident with the doorway i got my first flu shot ever because damn it if i was not going to spend an entire winter with a lung infection like last year… wellllll maybe that wasn’t such a smart idea on my part because i have been a basket case since then…

now being very scientific about it i don’t know what has got me out of whack and it is probably a cumulation of things but i am def def def not doing well…

the day after my flu shot i woke up with a bloody nose, which has not really stopped since… now i mean we’re not talking running all over the place bloody nose but if you sneeze its a little yucky u know… and then the migraine came to town… oh hello migraine… i have not missed you… i thought we had broken up? no? news to me?

and for the past 10 days i have not been able to beat the migraine… TEN DAYS people… this is ridiculous… the only upside… i’m sleeping because i’m so worn down from the pain battle i’m in all day… its definitely sinus related and when i got to student health they put me on antibiotics and steroids and decongestants and said in 2 days i should start feeling better…

well the feeling better means a slide down the pain scale from 9 to 7… which i mean i’ll take it… but i would prefer a 3 or a 2 you know…

and in the midst of it all…. midterm week… 3 midterms… 2 papers… homework assignment… and next week 2 more midterms… so needless to say i’m sure the stress is not helping the matter…

i see the “headache god” as people have been calling him in 3 weeks… he’s a headache specialist here in Pittsburgh and its a 4-6 month wait to get in to see him if you are a new patient… insane right??? but i hear its worth it… and if he can’t fix you, no one can…. so please please please headache god… fix me…

so in the midst of the pain and stress and tears and head thumping off walls i have had a little bit of fun… (steroids make you über hungry so i went on a baking spree)… made some of these chocolate chip cookies stuffed with oreo truffle from picky-palate (though i wonder if the 3 cups of flour was a misprint in the recipe because mine def didn’t turn out like that… still ok though because anything with oreo is worth making and eating… all of it…

they were low fat i swear

process them into dust!

i'm not very organized with prep

split the recipe in half because mr. steve doesn't like my secret ingredient

BEST SECRET INGREDIENT... must be in everything... steve is weird

yum yum yum... gimme sum

my great-grandmothers baking sheets... been to hell and back but bake like a DREAM

they lasted 3 days.... i ate steves half too... damn roids...

 

And then i discovered the beauty of the peanut butter, nutella, banana combination… and proceeded to making it every way i could for breakfast…. my one pack of whole grain waffles ended up being breakfast, lunch and dinner one day… and then when those were gone… i moved to pancakes on saturday… just as yummy…

all ya need + waffles which i have to make in the oven since i have no toaster HA

YES!!!!!

 

the only way i kept steve off my plate… the peanut butter… its like an instant repellant… he only does PB&J sandwiches… otherwise he steers clear… such a messed up eater that one is… otherwise he would have been all over the nutella and banana combo… usually we fight over who’s turn it is to buy banana’s letting the last one sit there for a day or two because whoever eats the last one has to go buy the new bunch… yet i’m always the sucker and can’t hold out… such a softy i am…

and then this cutie pie finally made it to the groomers for an officially bath!

all clean!

i’ve been bathing her at home but as tired and worn down as i am didn’t feel like fighting with a great dane in the tub… so she got a cute bandana… its cinco de mayo but still halloweeny enough that it looked über adorable and she rocked it for 2 days before having enough of it…

and yesterday we did our first Bark Busters training session with Avram the Pittsburgh rep… it went great… she took a little while to catch on but when Steve got home he could already tell the difference… hopefully we can keep it up and she’ll be on her way to finally being a well trained dog…

Bark Busters isn’t food motivated training… much more “dog whisperer” type and they use noise distraction with for Minnie is like instant reaction and last night if she even though i was getting ready to use the training tool (noise maker thingy) she calmed down and laid down… amazing! and worth the money i think…  😉

soooooo there’s my super long update… i’m off to class and then my first midterm – biostat of all things… and hoping that i can make it til this evening before my 5 level migraine hits the 7 or 8 level…

any chronic migraine sufferers out there? how to do you battle on days where none of the meds work?

not sleeping

Sooooo i’m not sleeping…. at all… its not like insomnia… because i can lay down… and start to fall asleep… but i wake up about every half hour, mind racing, thoughts all jumbled about health care this and demand for quantity that and solve for this and myocardial infarction that… its rediculous…

it started about a week and a half ago waking up every couple hrs, i figured it was because the weather was changing or because my stress level was upping a bit but now it is out of hand… i have just completely fallen apart… last night steve thought i was in the midst of a full on panic attack at 11pm because i was breathing so heavy…. thing was, i didn’t even realize it…

two mornings ago i when steve’s alarm went off i woke up sitting up right in the bed… like i was already sitting up and the alarm just made me snap out of whatever delirium i was in… like seriously this cannot be healthy for me…

my suspicion is that getting home at 8 pm, eating late, doing homework until 10pm and then going straight to bed in an effort to get 8 hrs of sleep (HA) is giving me no time to let my brain slow down and just relax…. but the problem is… when else do i do my homework… some i can get done on the weekends, but some doesn’t get assigned til a tuesday and is due on a thursday… and worse yet… i THINK i’m doing my best time management by spacing out my work based on due dates and yet i’m still scrambling on some things last minute…

so here i am running on maybe 1-2 hrs of real sleep over the past 3 or 4 nights and its killing me… i calling it quits before my night class which the prof puts his lecture online and i can listen to over the weekend… and at 3pm i’m heading out of the office picking up some real food and doing my finance hw before it gets dark out… and maybe just maybe i’ll get a few more hrs of sleep tonight…

otherwise i’ll be seeing a doctor at the health center on monday… because this isn’t a life… i don’t know how ppl can do it…

what a long week

I feel like a bit of a let down not being able to get on here and post, even on the weekends…  I just feel completely whipped…  between classes, work, meeting with my mentor, networking and just trying to get my house settled before winter (I need a new roof, anyone want to come put one on for me)… I feel like there is noooo time to catch my breathe….

eating healthy is on a back burner right now however I know it could be a LOT worse… Pizza is a given one night a week though because getting home at 8pm i can’t afford to take 40 minutes to cook dinner and eat at 9… so i order on the way home, pick it up at 8 and shove a few pieces in my mouth… healthy no… but at least i’m eating something… ugh… one day i’ll look back on that and want to smack myself…

i finally got my appointment to get my knee aspirated… october 22nd… only took 7 phone calls and a total of 4 weeks to get it sorted out when apparently no one knew what they were talking about the first time i called and i could have had it at least scheduled when i attempted to make the appointment last month but whatever its on the calendar… i’ll get the cyst drained out and get a steroid shot in and then be back on my feet and back to the gym…

the cold weather actually made my knee CREAK this morning as I walked down the stairs at the parking garage… part of me laughed part of me cried… i’m 25 and my body is acting like a 50 year old… i need to go on biggest loser next year….

so I continue to be shocked by the number of people who knew of my dad and have no idea that he died… its like they think he just up and went poof one day… which i mean people are busy with their own lives… but if a man goes from running a hospital one day to just being gone the next i would think you would wonder…

It leaves me thinking if this is why my dreams about my dad have been so STRANGE lately… never before this summer have I had dreams that in the present time my dad was alive and well… it was always in the past like he never got sick or he was still battling it… all of my dreams as of late have been that he faked his death so that he could run away with my step mom and now almost 8 years later he is looking to reconnect with his family and acting as if nothing ever happened…

in every dream he calls me from one of his old numbers… asks me to come over and help him out with something like we just talked yesterday… and then doesn’t really explain anything… he looks healthy if nothing else and can’t seem to understand why i’m mad at him… just says well i’m here now doesn’t that mean something…

the dreams have been so reoccuring, about 1-2 times a month… and so vivid… like i can hear his voice, like i can feel his touch… and every time by the end of the dream he is starting to realize how much pain i’ve been in since he got since and eventually died and then of course i wake up…

and i know this is going to sound so rediculous… but the more i run into people that don’t know he’s died and talk like he’s still alive and the more i have those dreams the more i think maybe there really is just a tiny little chance that he didn’t really die and my phone is going to ring and its going to be him and he going to say… ha joke’s on you… there never was a casket, never saw his ashes… there’s never been that defining closure for me…

its like some cruel trick my mind is playing on me… its some strange hope that is sick and twisted and yet when i am in that dream and i am talking to my dad and i feel like he’s right there and he’s listening to me and for once i’m the only thing in the world to him again, it is just peaceful…

the last time i had one of those dreams and i started to wake up i apparently started yelling daddy over and over again… and i grabbed steve and called him dad before i woke up and realized that i was dreaming and in bed and that nothing was real… maybe it means i’m finally letting the rawness of the grief out… maybe it means i’m just twisting it up more… i dunno…