sunday morning ketchup

Ok... it's really a Sunday morning CATCH up... but I thought the other way was cute.
Since we last left this story...

Thursday night was my sleep study. I dreaded it. I can't even tell you how much I dreaded it. I even postponed it once. It involved staying up past my bedtime, driving the 45 minutes to the sleep study lab, finding a place I'd never been - and finding it in the dark - and I don't see well at night, even with my glasses. My Garmin is warped when it comes to that area, we've been through this before... for some reason Garmin wants me to go left off the exit but I know that the medical offices and the hospital are to the right. So once I make that right... I just keep hearing the "make the next legal u-turn" repeated, which makes me a nervous wreck. I ended up in a parking lot calling the sleep lab in a panic because I couldn't find it...

Anyways... besides trying to find the place in the dark... I know I don't sleep well away from home, I don't sleep well without a tv on, I need time to wind down before I can get to sleep and the whole commute to the sleep lab was so stressful that I was definitely not ready for bed. The sleep lab technician was bossy... she gave me so many instructions that I was even more stressed. She wanted me to sleep on my back... which, I can't even lay on my back without excruciating pain... she let me know what a huge pain it would be for me to get up during the night to go to the bathroom (which I do at least twice a night)... it was not restful. Every time I tried to respond to her questions in a hushed tone she couldn't hear me... and when I spoke up she hushed me.

So... of course... I didn't sleep well. They need six hours of sleep which I couldn't do (reminded me of those times when you have to give a urine sample and then you can't go)... she came into the room shortly before 4am and said, "I can tell that your brain has been awake for fifteen minutes... why didn't you buzz for me?" BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO GO BACK TO SLEEP... duh! Anyways... I knew then that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep... so she said I could go if I signed a paper saying that I voluntarily ended the study  early. I mean.. if it's a sleep study and I can't sleep, why should I lay in some strange bed waiting for the clock to hit 6am? That's stupid. And there was another person there whose "appointment" was earlier than mine so she would have to process him out first... which took about 30 minutes to unhook all the wires.

SOOOooo... I left there before 5am... drove home in the dark... trying to keep a keen eye for deer in the road... and was nearly catatonic all day Friday... but I worked the whole day. I was sound asleep before 7pm Friday night and I slept until 6am Saturday.

When I got up Saturday I headed out to go grocery shopping. It was so beautiful with the early morning mist and the fall colors. We're not at peak color yet but there are plenty of trees that have started to turn. I was glad to be out and about before things got crowded or the tourist traffic picked up. I had a good grocery run...felt like I budgeted well and still got the things we needed to get through the week. It's sort of a conundrum because it's a huge inconvenience to go to the store during the work week but if I try to anticipate all the things we're going to need during the week, we end up having too much stuff and some of it spoils and gets wasted. I tried to plan meals that would have leftovers for my lunch - because it's too expensive to eat out for lunch every day and I really like my car picnics now that the weather is pleasant.

Austin and I spent the day organizing his room (mostly him), watching football (all me) and just hanging out at our nest. He got motivated to get organized ... and I'm relieved. I thought he would always be a disgusting hoarder... and there is no way to nag/cajole/plead/punish that out of someone. For him to say, "I'm tired of living in this mess"... that's HUGE progress. I am having a lot of joint pain, especially in my hands, but when he asked if I would fold his clothes for him so they could go neatly into the allotted spot, I was more than happy to help. We've decided that the best way to keep his room clean is to keep his clothes somewhere other than his room... he has such a tendency to get the clean and dirty clothes mixed up and to dump out neatly folded clothes on the floor when he's searching for something. We decided to keep his clean clothes under his bathroom sink - there's a good bit of space - and to keep his dirty clothes in a hamper in his bathroom. His bathroom adjoins mine - he has a half bath and I have the full bath - so he can shower, go into his bathroom to get dressed and since the shower is in my bathroom, his bathroom doesn't get steamy and damp like mine does.

I made beef tips and gravy in the crockpot for our dinner. I "invented" my own recipe for the beef tips when I found the thin little steaks on sale at the grocery store yesterday. I mixed about a cup of red wine with a big  can of cream of mushroom soup, a packet of beefy onion dried soup mix and a cup of water. I cooked the steaks all day on low... made brown rice in the rice cooker... and it made a huge amount. We have enough leftovers for about two more meals for the two of us. And Austin loved it... which makes it even better. Today I'm doing dried beans in the crockpot with a little piece of ham I bought for super cheap. That will make a couple of meals worth of leftovers too. I found these individual cheese slices with specialty cheeses - hickory swiss and extra sharp cheddar (Austin's favorites - well, he likes smoked gouda and extra sharp cheddar) so we can have grilled cheese and soup a couple of times. He loves tomato soup (I detest it) and it was on sale as well. Good eats ahead for this week.

I watched the movie "No Strings Attached" with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. It was not as good as I thought it would be. It was one of the few movies that I was tempted to see at the theatre... and I'm glad I waited to see it for free. It was just... blah.

Other than that... it's been a quiet past few days... today I am finishing folding and putting away MY laundry, helping Austin finish organizing his room... and trying to get the inflammation in my joints calmed down. My hands ached so bad over night that I saw every hour on the clock (or the tv) so I may have a nap at some point... but I'm definitely going to concentrate on getting ready for the week ahead...

Hope you have a great Sunday! Love and hugs!