Altered State of Mind

Um, I'm pretty sure my state of mind has been altered by this sinus infection. Most moments I feel like I'm in a cloud. Things are moving slower around me. I'm moving slower around the things around me. I feel like one of those people who with a wave of their hand says, "Whatever is fine." Studying can only be done one page of about eight problems at a time, otherwise my head spins and I feel dizzy and nauseated, like I want to throw up. I have no idea how I'm going to pull off this test tomorrow only studying eight problems at a time. I keep thinking I'll get my equilibrium back, but so far it's not coming.

Surfacing

After a week I am finally on the road to recovery. My house has taken a big bomb in the meantime. Brando very sweetly unpacked, putting his and the boys stuff away, and mine, well, mine's still sitting. EVERYwhere. Gah. My house has completely blown up in my face while I've been sick and I just don't freaking care. Every bone in my body is exhausted and I can't move it enough to want to super clean the whole house. I did clean my bathroom yesterday top to bottom so I could feel a sense of cleanliness. Right now I want to work on the schoolroom but I just got through another round of studying and my brain is exhausted. My body too. For some reason this bout of sickness has linked my physical and mental strength. I went to class on Thursday, as I have a test next Tuesday and could not miss another class, and my head was swimming so bad and my brain hurt so much I cried for an hour when I got out of class. I called my sister to see if she could take the boys for a few hours, but now she is sick too! Any way, I am surfacing, though. Slowly but surely, and I can't wait to post pics of meeting CECILIA!!!! OH MY GOD I MET CECILIA :) !!!! And CAMELS & CHOCOLATE, too!!! And their boys. And of course (actually that's a pretty big of course as she was studying for the final for her MASTERS) I saw lovable Courtney, and got to meet her boy as well! Once this sinus infection and fluid in my ears puts its ugly face away and my antibiotics have fully kicked in there will be lots to post.

Okay I'm not going to lie

I don't know when this is ever not going to turn into a sick blog. Shawners had a 104 fever this evening before I gave him motrin and I'm so worried. I have him sleeping on an ice pack and I've checked his temperature every 2.4 seconds since and it's steadily gone down, but I know motrin wears off after awhile. I guess it's then that I alternate to tylenol. I don't think my boys have ever had that high of a fever before. He'd been running a low grade temp since I picked him up from school on Thursday but never above 100.9 and his fever broke yesterday morning. We went to a superbowl party and he even got treats (bad Mommy, I should've known better) and then this morning he woke up with a 102.5. I dosed him up (again bad Mommy, I should've known better) and took him on his field trip that he's been looking forward to to ages and he came home about 3pm and crashed with the fever back. Ugh. I'm so worried that his fever is so high after being so low grade and even appearing like it was gone! I may take him to the doctor's again tomorrow after I drop Justinbustin off at school.

Bummed

Part of me feels like I should've just sucked it up and gone, then the other part of me looks at my sleeping six year old who's been asleep all day and was up throwing up at five this morning and feels like I'm a good Mom, even if everyone (including both him and I) is disappointed. Thanks to Brando for making me feel better by saying it's good for us to rest and get better, and even though Justinbustin may not have anything right now he may be able to fight it off chilling at home, but it may get to him if he got on the plane and did all the activities a trip to California and seeing 28 different people in two days requires.

Has anyone else discovered Yahoo answers? There seems to be some genuinely caring people on there. There's some idiots on there too, but this letter from someone who does care makes me feel better, too:

Hi Rose,

       Yes, we have had to cancel or postpone travel plans because of sick children (or us being sick). In fact, my husband is sick, and hasn't worked [editor's note: her hubby's a pilot] these past two days (he had bronchitis). He just called in saying he can't work tomorrow either because his ears are still clogged. It is not recommended for anyone who is sick to travel. Aside from just feeling crummy on the flight, you can do damage to your ears. Of course there are precaution methods to help with ear popping, but when your sick, sometimes those don't help. If you still want to make the trip, then you should have a check-up with the doctor first to make sure he gives the okay. If it were me, personally, I wouldn't risk taking my sick children on a flight.

I did have to make a flight when my son was sick once. We had gone to Paris and he caught bronchitis. We took him to the hospital, got him medicine, and decided to fly back to our home in Tunisia so that he could get the care he needed. It was the hardest 2.5 hour flight I have ever had! There were moments when he was moaning, throwing up, crying, or lethargic. Thankfully because everyone knows my husband since he is based out of the airport we landed at, we were able to de-board first, and cut through customs and security. The first thing I did when we landed was to call the doctor (it was 12midnight). From the time he had been diagnosed in Paris to the time the doctor saw him when we landed in Tunisia (half a day?) he went from having bronchitis to having pneumonia. It was terrible. 

~Jamie

So. Freakin' Sick.

All of us, except for Justinbustin now. Ugh. My face feels like a cotton ball dipped in hot liquid. No thanks to you guys scaring me off the colloidal... haha, well I'm gargling it less now any way and not swallowing. Wow, I can manage to make a post sound dirty quick. Ew. Back to sickness. No wait, please, please go away sickness!! You are obviously messing with my mind!! Not to mention my emotional health in that I am wanting to lay down and cry for hours because we won't be able to go on our trip this weekend (to my Dad's annual client appreciation dinner in Cali). @#$&*! At least we're going in March for spring break for an extended period. I think we'll quarantine ourselves for a week before then.

Sick, Sick, Sick

There always seem to be a post with this title at least once a year... maybe more, who knows. Brando has had a fever ranging from 101-104 the past two days. Yesterday I started up with a cough and then was feeling miserable by the evening. I'm feeling better today, probably only because I'm gargling colloidal silver every hour and laying in bed all day in between facilitating the boys' schoolwork. Normally we're finished by 3pm, no matter what. It's 6:30pm and Justinbustin's still working. At least we got a late start, when my body finally stopped aching enough to get up. Pray for us that it doesn't affect our trip this weekend and that the boys stay WELL!

Depression Recipes

Well I can tell when my depression started this year by my reviews on Allrecipes. My usage of allrecipes is akin to a religion and I review everything religiously (mostly for my benefit so I can find the darn recipe later and remember how I made it). I've read before that when you're depressed you stop enjoying what you normally do. I always thought that was bull because sometimes I would feel SO depressed but still enjoy everything I normally do! Then this summer I completely lost the joy of cooking. Hated it, frankly. And decorating. And being a mom. Well some of that is starting to come back now that our financial situation is starting to right itself (okay, fine, we're righting it). I'm starting to enjoy cooking again (still working on the other stuff) and just entered my first allrecipe review since January. The longest I'd gone between reviews before that was 3 months at most, and only because I was probably too busy or enjoying my favorite magazine Bon Appetit. Which means I was depressed for at least six months before realizing it and two or three months after. Thank goodness I am on the road to recovery now. Once I realized it was actually a sickness and not ME, I realized there was things that could be done to come out of it - or go see a doctor if I needed to. Fortunately my sister is incredibly encouraging and supportive and between her and her mother-in-law supporting me and me telling Brando that I really need his support right now, I am healing. Doesn't mean I'm all better each day, but most days I am better.

Lazy Saturday

We're all MUCH better. Still on the recovery though so we had an inside day - with the door to the verandah open to let some of the fresh air in. The boys and I went to Hollywood video last night and they each got to pick out two movies and an XBox 360 game. We came home with Cars and Sonic for the Xbox and some random movies for the kids. Today they watched Crocodile Hunter Collison Course and played Xbox all day after a yummy brunch of fried potatoes, cheesy scrambled eggs, fried eggs, bacon, and orange juice.

This afternoon all four of us piled on Brando's and my king size bed with wheat thins and a veggie tray and watching Facing the Giants. The film is done by brothers and the cast is volunteers from Sherwood Baptist Church in Georgia. They hired five professional film makers and filled the rest of the crew with volunteers. They wanted to make a movie without all the profanity, sex, and influences that you get in most movies nowadays. GREAT movie, it made me cry and laugh after getting over the initial feeling that the actors weren't experienced but were doing a great job at it I loved it. It did make me cringe when they started to preach, though every time it ended up being applicable to life and not just the Bible says this so do it, but it still made me cringe at the beginning of each of those scenes. There's a scene where a bunch of kids are confessing their sins to God in groups on the football field, some of them were crying. It made my insides turn in the way that it turns when I think about when I attended those kinds of things when I was younger. I looked over and Brando had tears streaming down his face and I realized it was because of the way things were forced down my throat that I felt that way, not necessarily because the movie was actually trying to be that. In the end it still left me with an ukky judgemental, holier than thou, why can't everybody be perfect like me feeling, but once I get over that and let it go it's an awesome movie. I loved that the four of us were sitting there lined up sitting against our headboard snacking and watching a movie.

After the movie I looked through our french doors leading out to the verandah and realized how dirty they were and took window cleaner and a paper towel to them. When the towels came out black I couldn't stop and ended up cleaning ALL my windows, the insides at least and a few of the outside while Brando and the boys played Star Wars on the Xbox. My neighbors were headed out to the mall and L lured me in with a yummy cookie she made with melted Snickers in the middle before they left. Now we're sitting down to watch Agent Cody Banks and eat turkey, bacon and supposed-to-be-avocado-but-they-weren't-ripe sandwiches on wheat rolls.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll be back to normal and we'll get to enjoy this beautiful 72F to 80F degree weather we've been having!

It's the Flu

It's been going around. We showed up at the doctors yesterday and there were no less than ten kids with the same glassy eyed flushed face and hacking cough that Justinbustin had. It's intriguing how being at the doctors can actually make you feel better. It's hope. Hope that you won't be feeling this miserable forever. That or being out of the house and off the couch. Maybe both. Any who she gave him a flu test and a strep test and it was flu. Flu that can have fever that lasts 5-7 days!! She gave us a prescription for an anti-viral and said it's no magic pill but it'll lessen the time and if we take it'll help us from getting it. We went by my health food store afterwards and asked the owner what's good for the flu. He said lots of colloidal silver. Oops. The one thing I hadn't been giving him. So we stocked up and now we're ALL on it as an alternative to the anti-viral medication. I still have the prescriptions and will fill them if necessary but for now I'd rather not kill EVERYthing in our sytems and just work on the bad stuff.

It was strange driving into small town Marble Falls. Time moves so slowly out there. It felt like we drove 20 miles and it had been 4 minutes. We finally got there and this is SO shallow but even the cute people didn't have style. I am SO glad to be out of there. There was a little bit of nostalgia when we stopped by the health food store and had smoothies but even then it wasn't enough to be sad we weren't there in our house, but enough to be glad for the time we had there.

Such a Bad Mommy

We're taking Justinbustin out to our old doctors in Marble Falls today because Mommy hasn't found a new one in Austin. Good news is I'll ask her if she knows of a good one in Austin. I just get so sick of coming across bad doctors that I don't want to make the effort to find a good one. On top of that I found my ideal doctor in Santa Cruz and I'm pretty sure no one will compare to her. Such is life. Her philosophy was western medicine is just a small part of the pie concerning health - chinese medicine, herbal remedies, all are part of the pie. I like the theory so much I may adopt it myself. Too bad I don't have the M.D. and the brainy family of child psychologists, etc., to go along with it. So if you are looking for the best doctor in Santa Cruz, Aptos, Capitola, Soquel, Scotts Valley, or Watsonville Karen Harrington is it. I'd even drive over the hill for her. I think I found her by liking the name. Ha. That should tell me Who's in control.

Hopefully I'll find a good doctor here soon. In the meantime we are pouring the Pedialyte popsicles down, the jello, the echinecea, and the olive leaf (just started that for J today - I've been taking it the last few days but it's nasty stuff so I was trying to spare him), and visiting the MF doctor.

Annie Chun's Miso Soup is very, very good. The noodles are soooo yummy. Throw some chicken in it and it might pass for that sizzling chicken rice soup. Almost. I can't wait to try the other flavors.

As for me I've been gargling colloidal silver - how nasty does that sound - every hour for the last two days, along with the olive leaf and feel TONS better today. Not so stuffy either. Yay! Nothing worse than a sick Mommy when her baby is sick too. Please pray for him!

Sick, Sick, Sick

This morning greeted me with a nasty sore throat. Reminds me of strep. I'm fighting it with colloidal silver and olive leaf as well when Brando brings that home. Justinbustin's on the couch with a 101 fever and his face is all bright red. My head feels like a giant cotton ball. Brando's bringing home Pedialyte popsicles, and olive leaf and I'm cleaning toilets in preparation for the puke. Nobody wants to puke in a nasty toilet. Least of all me!