What's Happening?

Hello blog readers! Sorry I've been MIA so much this Summer! Apparently all my creative juices are going into the cross stitch project I've been working on for almost three weeks. I've finished putting all the colored x's in and am now working on the outlining which is SUPER complicated. It's been good to have something to work on where I see progress every day since my life feels totally unproductive right now.

News from the nest: Austin has been mostly staying with his girlfriend. I miss him but don't miss him. He takes a lot of emotional energy from me and I always feel guilty when he doesn't do what has been asked of him. He eats a lot. He messes up dishes. I mean, it's simpler in many ways when he's not here. Of course, he also does a lot of things around the house like taking out the trash and keeping the yard up. When he's not here it's eerily quiet down here in the Whine Cellar but honestly... I love having time to myself without interruption. I love my kids and love to spend time with them BUT I also know that it's healthier for them to be hanging out with people their own age rather than spending all their time here with the old folks. And when I'm in pain I really just want to be left alone.

Over the past 4-5 days I've been in a bad fibro flare. What that means (at least in my case) is that my arms and legs feel like they're made of lead. Every step is painful. I'm exhausted but not in a way that sleep can fix. Sleeping is painful because if I stay in one place too long everything hurts. On Monday I drove my parents to the dentist and made a quick mini-trip to the grocery store and waited at the pharmacy for some prescriptions and by the time I got home I was in so much pain and so exhausted that I felt sick to my stomach and had to lay down for about an hour before it passed. It's not a matter of "pushing through". This is the stuff that stops you in your tracks and all you can do is weather the storm. I got a text from my cousin last night who was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She's all like, "do you sometimes feel like...?" and I'm all "gurl... you have NO idea!" Because unless you've been there, you can't even imagine the pain/exhaustion.

Pop ended up with an abscessed tooth that started Sunday. It took until Monday afternoon before we could get him in to see a dentist around here. Everybody was double booked. He was in so much pain and swollen and just miserable. He and mom stayed up all night Sunday night so they were exhausted. I was on the third (or fourth? I lost track) day of this current fibro flare so I was mostly worthless but Mom has gotten where she is not comfortable driving so I had to get him to the dentist and he really needed some soft things to eat so a grocery trip was unavoidable. I try to not go too many days without getting out of the house because it gets depressing so it was good for me to get out but I was unprepared for how absolutely wiped out I would be from it.

Today my mom has a doctors appointment. They started going to a new doctor back in May and he didn't bother to tell them that he was closing his practice at the end of June. So Mom has all these issues with passing out and her blood pressure randomly going way up or dropping suddenly and a lot of other health issues that really require frequent monitoring and all of a sudden she's without a doctor again. She started calling around the very few doctors up here who are covered by her insurance and nobody had an appointment until August or later. I always feel like medical care is out of reach for me because of not having insurance or money to pay but honestly, even with insurance and money to pay a doctor it's still hard to find a doctor (or dentist) up here. I don't know if it's because this is a small town or if it's a shortage of doctors in general but it was really frustrating on Monday trying to find a dentist who could see my dad immediately AND find a doctor who could see my mom this week. So she goes to the doctor this afternoon and my dad goes back again today for the dentist to do the work he couldn't do on Monday.

My biggest time suck right now is Big Brother. I read all the online recaps of the live feeds and every night I record Big Brother After Dark which is a two to three hour peek into what the houseguests are doing that they show every night. This is the first time I've ever had DVR and been able to actually watch ALL of BBAD. In the past I've tried to stay up and watch it but it's just on too late for me to see all of it. It's an interesting diversion for me. My favorites are Frankie and Donny, if you're watching.

We've had a couple of episodes of really hard rain over the past few days and water leaked into the Whine Cellar. Again. It wasn't as bad in the living room as last year so it seems like the planting and diversion of water has helped some but the bathroom had a ton of water and I've never seen that happen. Austin had water in his room as well. I guess it's one of those battles we'll always face and it's a small price to pay for living somewhere so beautiful.

I guess that's about all I have to share right now. I'm not feeling witty or articulate lately and I'm sorry to leave you guys without much interesting to read. It is what it is, I'm afraid. Happy July, y'all! Love and hugs!