New Year

2010 is basically over. The first part was pretty good but fall and winter kind of sucked. I'm glad to be rid of them.

This week I pretty much crashed. I still did all the things I needed to do- like go to work and hang out with family, but I was so exhausted. I wasn't very productive at work and I felt bad about it but I didn't have the wherewithall to do anything about it. Next week should be better.

DH's brother and his wife were here all week. We hung out with them practically every night. They live in North Carolina so we really miss them. They went home today.

Today I slept until 11-something. It was awesome and I feel much better. I need to make molasses crinkles, german chocolate cake, and potato soup. Dave and Froggi are coming over for dinner. Tomorrow I need to make cornbread and then the cornbread and the molasses crinkles and DH and I are going to visit my mom's side of the family. I don't know if anything is happening on Sunday.

Next week I visit the rheumatologist. I'm hoping to get a second opinion on the Hashimoto's along with his thoughts on the other possible autoimmune stuff. Perhaps he'll have some insight into why I'm so easily worn out.

This morning I made looseleaf tea with my new Perfectea Maker from Teavana. It brews the loose tea in the device, then strains it into your cup and you have no tea leaves in your cup! It is really awesome. Now I am eating hazelnuts. I have searched all season for them and just now found them. Yum!

I have seed catalogs to peruse and Christmas money to spend. What a chore! Lol!

I am baking. I am making peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin muffins, and a peanut butter pie. And I'm getting paid for them. I think I've decided I'm just not going to bake at Christmastime unless someone requests something. This is the time of year when all the little bakers come out of the woodwork and there are bags of puppy chow and chocolate covered pretzels as far as the eye can see. I am more than happy to sit back and enjoy their creations. And it's probably best if I don't learn how to make Oreo truffles. Those things are like crack.

Like most years, I am ready for Christmas to be over already. I didn't even bother to decorate. We didn't do very many presents. I'm just blah about it. Maybe its because I've had health issues this fall. I just want to hunker down and wait for spring.

The house is full of animals. The hissing has really diminished today and that is nice. Spike and Ripley and Kayla are staying under the bed for the most part. Millie(dog) just paces around and Ash is a chinchilla. He sleeps all day.

I need two ovens.

Work is still insane. We have 4 enormous mailers that have to drop by Friday. We have the first one ready to go, the second is done with the machine part of the inserting and is getting the rest inserted by hand, and then the third just started on the machine today. The second and third mailers have to be sealed after they are all stuffed and I was doing that at the end of the day. We brought down the metering machine because is is the fastest sealer we have. I got a rhythm going and I got about 50 trays sealed in an hour and a half. The metering machine hardly stopped the whole time. I got compliments from both bosses that were there and I even got an exploding fist bump from the President. Exploding fist bumps and "good job"s are about the highest praise you can get from him so I'm pleased.

Oh, and the 4th mailer? Yeah, we get to put stickers and address labels on magazines and sort them all wierd. That will hopefully start tomorrow. Then we have to finish up a really pain-in-the-butt book that we've been working on for like a week now. We've had help from the other stores working on that book so I'm not even sure what is going on with it. Oh, and we had 115 big posters that had to be done yesterday but it took like 4 days to print them all out. Other than that its just normal bindery stuff. In fact, other than all that, we're pretty slow right now!

Ok, I gotta go find a peanut butter pie recipe.

Bones and Lillibutt have been playing! He charmed his way into her evil little heart. We've had him out for the last couple of days and everything has been fine. Anytime Tuvok does something Bones doesn't like he lets him know and Tuvok backs off. Bones does about 3 things right now: play, sleep, and purr. He is incredibly cute. I need to give him a bath. Not sure how that's going to go over but he's got crusties from the infection and he stinks from being in the shelter.








Today I wrapped presents at the in-laws and then we went to the mall and Sam's and WalMart. We are POOPED! I hate the mall. I hate it even more at Christmastime. But we found a good parking spot and then we discovered our favorite winery has a booth there for the holidays. So DH got a Rose of Chambourcin and I got blackberry. Then we got 3 wrinkle free dress shirts from Jos A Bank for $90. So, for a holiday mall visit, it was pretty good!

Here in an hour or so we are going to get 3 more cats, another dog, and a chinchilla. Dave and Froggi are going skiing over Christmas and we are babysitting. The feeding will be quite an ordeal I'm thinking. Nobody ever wants to eat their own food. I don't know if I have enough rooms! LOL!

New Baby

Staying home Friday was very nice. I felt much better by the end of the day.

Saturday morning DH decided it was finally time for him to get a cat of his very own. So we took Froggi to the Animal Shelter. (Froggi is the vet/bff) We spent probably 2 hours in the different cat rooms. Froggi and I had to work really hard to pick cats that matched with DH and not ones we liked. All the calicos and torties and little girl tabbies were crawling up my legs but the big laid back males liked DH the best. He finally decided on a 9 week old orange tabby and we stood in line for like an hour to adopt him. The kitten spent half the time hanging out on DH's shoulder and half the time dozing in his arms.

We set up the upstairs bathroom for the kitten. I installed a cat door with power tools and the kitten didn't even flinch. I thought maybe he was deaf but he isn't. He's just that cool. He's cool with just about everything. We've been playing with him downstairs in the evenings and he is great with Tuvok. He's smaller than Tuvok's head but he's not intimidated and Tuvok is so gentle with him.

Froggi brought over some antibiotics to treat the infection from his neuter. She says in a few days he'll be strong enough that we can leave him out while we're not there. He should be more playful and less sleepy when he feels better but his personality shouldn't change. He's a really great cat. Froggi sees hundreds of cats all the time and she says he's one in a million. :-)

DH finally decided to name him Bones. All our pets have names from the Star Trek universe. This kitten is very observant and cool and Bones fits him pretty well.

Ok. I'm going to bed.

Brainsssss......

My body is making a valient effort in the fight against Zombie Flu. But I am exhausted. My muscles ache. I keep *almost* having severe mucous problems. My fever comes and goes. So today I decided to stay home. I had to get up to take DH in to work so I'm having some Earl Grey tea with Lavender before I go back to bed.

We did Christmas for under $400! That's 9 immediate family gifts and one entire extended family plus some random friend gifts.

I had a friend tell me that you can make new colors of Irises by planting two tubers right next to each other and the tubers grow together and make a new flower color. Is that true?

Ugh. Good night.

Zombie Flu

DH gave me his flu. I give myself a 25% chance of going to work tomorrow. So far I don't feel that bad but I've been getting steadily worse throughout the day. I took DayQuil and I'm steeping some Airborne. Also, I think I really hurt my thumb. Froggi said she can ultrasound it this weekend if it isn't better and I have an appointment with my doctor on the 20th anyway so I can get an x-ray if needed. The brace makes a big difference but it still hurts and I want to know why.

My brain has stopped. Stupid Zombie Flu.

New guy started yesterday. He did mailing lists for a year at another company. He said they pretty much stuck him in a cubicle with a computer and that was it. We really needed someone to help with the mailing lists. So he's supposedly half mailing, half bindery. The last two days he's been following me around learning bindery stuff. He's got a great attitude and wants to learn how it all works. He's got quite a ways to go; I had to teach him how to tape up a box. But I think he'll do well once he gets the hang of things. This afternoon he asked me about how the whole process of printing works. So I took him through typesetting and the plates and the presses and all of it. He didn't know how any of it happened. It makes me sad that some printing companies don't care if their employees know what they're doing or why they're doing it that way. When I train people I try to give them examples of why I do things the way I do. If they want to go about it differently and still achieve a quality result that's great. Maybe I can learn from them. And when I teach about ways to prevent mistakes I look for jobs in the shop to illustrate my point. Yesterday I was able to use a job we had in bindery to show him why it's so important to look all the way through the work order and not stop at the first page. If I stopped reading the work order at the first page I'd have missed half the stuff we were supposed to do to it.

He's funny; it was about 3:30 or so and he had already had a sugar crash from not being used to the work. I don't think he'd ever crashed like that but he started feeling weird and dizzy so I gave him some cashews and had him sit down for a few minutes. Anyway, one of the pressmen comes up and asks for a favor: 10,000 sheets of paper for a job he has to run that just came out. No biggie for me but for the new guy it's like, 'whaaaaa?'. So I go and get the lift and get the skid of paper and it's almost a full skid still so it weighs probably... oh, 3000 pounds or so. I pull it out and start pushing it over to the cutter and he stops and goes, "You're a beast!!!" I had to stop and laugh because I feel so weak being around all the guys all the time. Sometimes my body weight just isn't enough to do my job efficiently.

I am still feeling a ton better. I've been working a lot- like gogogogogo hard work but I still feel good when I get home. I've baked for two nights in a row. I'm not going to bake tonight. I feel good enough to but I don't want to get all the boys spoiled. ;-) I think instead I might try to figure out Christmas gifts for my Dad's side. I'm thinking mason jars with my personal cornbread mix in them and maybe jars with mixed beans so they can make beans and cornbread for New Years or something like that. I could make cute tags with instructions. And that wouldn't take up too much time or money. Yup. That's what I'm going to do.

See ya later!

I ended up working for about 4 hours on Saturday. They're hiring a new person soon to help take the load off. That'll be nice. But until then I'm kind of enjoying the overtime. DH has a nasty cold. If I get it I'll need the built up time at work. I don't get sick leave. But also, I like being completely immersed in whatever I'm doing. All the extra time at work actually makes me feel more comfortable. I don't like flitting between different things. And at work I feel appreciated. Not only do they pay me for what I do, but they give me compliments and thanks. That makes me feel good and I want to do an even better job.

Tonight I made banana muffins for DH and I tried a new recipe for maple sugar cookies. They taste good. On some of them I dusted cinnamon, some got colored sugars, and some are plain. I think frosting would overpower the subtle maple flavor.

I was supposed to plant the rest of my bulbs this weekend but it was really cold. They'll wait. Today I slept a bunch and watched a bunch of tv. Since DH was sleeping all day I didn't even feel guilty about it. Ok maybe I felt a little guilty. There's lots of stuff that needs to be done. I did run the dishwasher so I wasn't completely useless. :-)

Ok, time to go take a shower and go to bed. I need to try to get to work early.

Today I left home at 6:15 and got back home at 7:45. I was at work from 6:30 to 7:30. I ate lunch for 39 minutes. That is a 12 1/2 hour day. And here's the kicker- I'm ok! My leg hurts a little. Last night I got a brace for my left thumb that's been hurting since I planted stuff last weekend. Today I wore both thumb braces most of the time. And it really helped. My thumbs barely hurt. Normally I would be crying from the pain after an afternoon working on the cutter. Oh, and my back is super tight but that's pretty much expected.

Also last night I burst a blood vessel in my eyeball so now I have a red blotch in my cornea. Between that and the two wrist braces I felt like some sort of zombie robot.

So the Amtrak is really neat. The seats are comfortable and the view is nice. The Texas Eagle even has a lounge car with huge windows and seats that face the windows. On the way down we had a delay because a freight train broke down and they had to get another freight train to push it out of the way. I wouldn't recommend it if you need to be somewhere on time!

While in Texas we went to Ikea! OMG!!!! It was awesome! And the prices are so low! I got lots of inspiration there.

That's all for tonight. I'm going to bed early.

Results

All my bloodwork was within normal ranges except for something indicating Sjogrens (SHOW-grens) disease. It is another autoimmune thing that attacks the salivary and mucous glands causing dryness. The doc doesn't think I have it but she's sending me to a rheumatologist so they can investigate further. My TSH and T3 were on the edge of normal. That actually means that they're not normal but I'm not a candidate for meds at this time.

But the vitamin D has made a huge difference. Even when I'm worn out from work I still feel better. DH can hear it in my voice he says.

I have more to say but I'm determined to be in bed by 9:00 since I haven't been sleeping well and work is super slammed and we have to get up really early in the morning and I just really like sleep. So there. :-)