Just a little fyi about the picture. Owen voted in school yesterday - for Obama for president, pizza as his favorite food and when asked his favorite color he wrote all. He also drew this picture, which is now in the front window. The purple person in front of the white house is Owen, Obama is holding the flag in one hand and a net in the other because he's trying to get McCain in his net (McCain being the tiny man in the bottom corner). Oh I wish he'd made this earlier so I could have turned it into a t-shirt!

balance

My mom was out from Friday to this morning and my gluten free diet fell by the wayside while she was here (like big time - 5 slices of pizza on friday and a huge chocolate chip paradise pie from chilis last night). But today I'm back to my gluten free ways. I didn't see much difference but I was only gluten free for four days so maybe that's why. My Grandmother is on hospice now, the reason why my Mom came out. She's declined considerably since she went to the hospital three weeks ago and I was fighting with the nurses at Sunrise about putting her on hospice last week. My mom is the power of attorney so she had to go by what I was saying and the contradictory stuff the head nurse was saying but when she came out she could understand why I felt she needed to be put on hospice. I cannot tell you how incensed I get at some of the absolute bullshit that goes on with geriatric care. Grandma's doctor was saying it was too abrupt to put her on hospice so suddenly but the woman hasn't even seen my Grandmother in over a month so she has no real idea of how bad she looks, she's lost a ton of weight and she was bird sized to begin with. I won't go into all the details but suffice it to say the way the elderly are treated in this country, especially those with dementia issues, is absolutely deplorable. It makes me apoplectic and determined to go through nursing school so I can change the system for the better, in my own little way I hope to make a difference. So I'll be posting less regularly because I'm trying to visit my Grandma as much as I can, even if she sleeps when I'm there I like to think just being there and holding her arm or patting her leg makes her feel calmer. And I'm insanely devoted to my gym time in order to physically expel all this frustrating energy I deal with day to day. Health care and gym membership should be a right not a privilege in my book.
Just as an aside you know how you'll see all sorts of political signs like 'catholics for obama' or 'italian americans for mccain' I was daydreaming about completely elitist obama support signs like 'mensas for obama' or 'arugula lovers for obama' or 'scrabble lovers for obama' stuff like this just makes me laugh which I need to do or I'll start bawling. Ooh, I saw Rachel Getting Married over the weekend and highly recommend it; an amazing film, Anne Hathaway is extraordinary and it's a great tearjerker - at least for me it was.

day two

I'm finishing up my second wheat free day and fear I might turn into a squirrel by the end of this experiment - I'm eating so many darn nuts! I'm addicted to cashews and almonds are my 'healthy' nut choice. I never thought I would come to a point where I would feel this way but cutting out the wheat, sugar and caffeine isn't about losing weight. Given the years (far too many years) I've beaten myself up about my body, this is pretty miraculous. No I'm doing this experiment - 3 weeks without wheat, then sugar and finally caffeine, to see if it will change my energy, health level for the better. If some of the thickness from my thighs migrated up to my boobs I'd be pleased as punch but I don't think that's going to happen and given all the time I spend at the gym I actually feel good about my body. It's far from perfect but I'm pleased at all that it can accomplish and I love being strong. I'm not bodybuilder strong but I'm much stronger than I was before I started going to the gym. Gym membership is one thing I'm always going to make a point of including in my life because I think it's one of the best ways to take care of myself - plus I love to people watch there and catch up on bad TV and gossip rags in between reading A&P and Pharmacology. Happy Tuesday everyone!

state of the union

And by union I mean my solipsistic state of being, trying to make sense of the random jumble of crap filtering through my mind lately...

1. Ongoing internal debate over how much to do to fix up this house. I want to redo both bathrooms and the kitchen and redo the ceilings and floors, oh and I'd like to redo the cracking plaster walls and - this is the madness of owning a house, at least to me, I see every darn imperfection and want to fix it like yesterday. I'm also obsessed with taking down our wonky garage myself, with my own bare (well glove covered) hands and redoing our postage stamp backyard for major city/space appeal.

2. Is the Daily Mirror a reputable london paper? something tells me it might be the equivalent of Star. I want to know the veracity of this article on McCain's first wife.

3. Is it completely bitchy of me to find typos funny? They never cease to make me laugh, especially hand-painted ones where they're selling fruit and melon is misspelled or the ampersand is backwards. And two emails I got from friends, to this day they make me laugh to think about them. One was announcing a birth where they inadvertently wrote 'we could be happier' and another where someone meant to write about a debilitating illness but put depilitating instead, like a Nair induced illness of alopecia. So it's probably bitchy of me to find these things so funny right? Unless you're a comrade in the geek humor of typos. I even cracked myself up captioning a picture of Oona behead instead of bedhead, fortunately I caught it before posting it online.

4. Am I insane to try and go 3 weeks without wheat in my diet? I've started today and let me just tell you wheat, sugar and caffeine are the base of my food pyramid but I keep wondering if I'll feel better eliminating them from my diet so... I've tiptoed in and started with wheat today, the easiest one to me. Will let you know if I feel any miraculous change in energy, intelligence or if my skin starts beaming with health. Letting go of caffeine will be, without a doubt, the hardest one for me to give up. Anyone who's tried elimination diets and has advice/warnings to offer feel free to comment.

5. They have specialized hospitals for children, woman and cancer patients here in Pittsburgh. Why not a specialized hospital for geriatric patients with a significant part devoted to handling patients with the dementia? After my two experiences in the ER with my Grandma I can tell you that there is a desperate need for specialized acute care when dealing with the elderly, especially those with dementia and it is sorely lacking currently. And while we're on it when will this country get real to needing universal healthcare so everyone can be covered and no one has to cut medicine in half to make it last longer or wait until things are really really bad to go see the doctor. This should be a given wherever in the world you live. I don't care if you're gay, illegal, albino, hypochondriacal, megalomaniacal - everyone should be able to get and stay healthy.

another year another pumpkin

We went to our usual pumpkin picking hang out today, although this year it was just us and the kids, no extended family or friends to join in on the fun. Let me tell you the pickings were pretty slim this late in October. I usually go for greenish pumpkins but there were none to be had, just a scant few orange pumpkins lying in the fields waiting to be chosen. It was an incredibly beautiful day though and Owen found a ginormous pumpkin to call his own. At the main entrance was a nursery where Oona got a tiny pie pumpkin and I got a funky looking pumpkin that's pale green and looks like it has leprosy, I'll show you it when I bring out the halloween decor for the living room. Yes, it is a little late, like I should have brought the Halloween stuff out on October 1st but the fall season has passed me by in a blur of anatomy and drugs - my classes it's not like I'm living a Jim Morrison lifestyle but if you read this blog with any regularity I'm sure you're aware of that.

This picture of Owen is so cute except that his head appears to be tilted a little too far to the left. I'm not sure if this is the result of the way I took the photo or if Owen has been flipping through my issue of Voguelooking for ways to pose for the camera. I doubt it though, he'll go for Toby's Game Informer over my fashion magazines. Before we left for the farm I made a mental note to put something in Owen's hair to calm those little cowlick devil horns poking out at the sides as his head, as you can see the mental note was quickly forgotten in a mom related attack of dementia. Don't even get me started on my Grandma, who I stopped by to see this morning. Losing your children and losing your mind would be my two greatest fears in life.

Oona loved the goats in the petting zoo part of the farm. She just sat down next to one particularly calm goat and pet it's back most of the time we were in there. Now there were a couple goats that were very hungry and thirsty and they'd basically mob people trying to get food or drink off of them as soon as they walked through the door. We bought a bottle of milk for the kids to split and one ravenous goat latched onto Owen when he had the bottle and slurped all the milk down in under ten seconds. The goats also really liked Oona's hoodie, two of them kept trying to nibble her hood, maybe they thought she had feed in it.

Here's Toby with the kids. Oona refused to take the lollipop out of her mouth for the picture. We got three pumpkins, the kids went on pony rides, they got to pet farm animals and after thoroughly dousing our hands in hand sanitizer we finished off the day with a paper plate full of funnel cake. Now the kids are quietly tucked in their beds and I'll be going up the street to pick up some Coke and potato chips, I've got the sunday night munchies. Let me know if you think this new banner is better than last week's filler.

filler

Until I get around to taking a better fall picture this banner will have to do for now. Let's see, let's see, since I last posted a lot has been going on. I finished the sideboard/buffet I'd been working on, pictures to come soon. I took out the dropped ceiling in our half bath on the first floor. Yikes! There's previous water damage that makes it look like the tub could fall through the ceiling. I think, hope, pray it looks worse than it actually is. This half bath suffered through a real half-assed renovation, the way the dropped ceiling was put in, the original window chopped down to fit the new dropped ceiling, the seemingly random wall for an awkward hallway area that's essentially useless between the bath, main hall and basement. It's all baffling to me. I want to completely gut it and make it a full bath but my name isn't bob villa so we'll see. Right now the ceiling is covered in industrial garbage bag black plastic so, needless to say, the room isn't looking its best right now.

Hmm, in other news Owen just spent an hour and a half in the bathroom bawling while trying to get poop out which when it finally did come out is about as big as his thigh. And that's after drinking plum juice for days. I should have weighed him before and after the poop. Poor kid, Owen and Oona have such awful poop problems thanks to my side of the family. My grandma is back in the hospital due to lower back pain. I spent close to 8 hours in the ER with her yesterday and was ready for a paycheck once I left. The place was a zoo, there were patients on gurneys in the hallway, not the way I envisioned spending my Sunday. I have to find time to go over there sometime today. Toby's at a parent/teacher conference for Owen. We were all hoping to go but Owen's was stuck in the bathroom until fifteen minutes ago.

In other news, I've been going through this prolonged wait and see about lab tests that I originally had done in July. My Dr. said it indicated a possible auto-immune problem and referred me to a rheumatologist. At first the rheumatologist was 70% sure I had Sjogren's Syndrome and sent me for more lab work and to see an opthamologist. If you're going to have anything autoimmune (trust me you don't want anything autoimmune) Sjogren's is the most benign thing to have. Basically your body attacks your tear ducts and mucus membranes so you get really dry eyes, dry mouth and it sounds pretty sucky. I do not have Sjogren's(phew) the eye doctor did a test where they put paper strips in your eyes to see how much tears you produced and I teared up fine. SO I went back to the rheumatologist last wednesday and he's completely stumped as to how I could go from having an ANA of 320 with a speckled titer pattern to being fine, the most recent ANA was under 20 which is normal and I guess the titer pattern is homogenous now. When I asked how that could be, instead of attributing it to lab error he attributed it to my being anxious. I swear I never want to tell doctors I have anxiety because then they say that's the basis of all my problems and as far as I know anxiety isn't capable of giving you a sky high (his words) anti-nuclear antibody reading with a specklde pattern titer! Don't get me wrong I'm overjoyed not to have lupus or sjogren's but I don't get all the anxiety talk when I'm not a hypochondriac (about my kids I'm a total hypochondriac and fear the worst when they get sick but myself I just get annoyed when I'm sick), I don't wring my hands or jump to conclusions or think I have every ailment known to man. When I found out about a possible autoimmune problem in July I thought it could be lupus since I'm tired a lot and get a random facial rash from time to time but aside from the fatigue, rash and totally minor joint pain I'm fine. I just find it supremely frustrating to pigeonholed because I'm honest about being anxious. But thank God I'm not this poor woman who suffered for 15 years of being misdiagnosed as an anorexic with bulimia when it turned out she had celiac disease - very long but fascinating excerpt on this book I still have to read.

butt butt

Oona refers to her butt as her butt butt and let me tell you I've been seeing a lot of both kids butts the past week. When I hinted about reaching a whole new level of dr. momhood last night well, it might have been better if I said I've thought, in momentous of overtired humor/weakness that I should at least consider outfitting the bathrooms in my house with toilet seat covers. Over the past few weeks one of Owen's friends got lice, Owen escaped that one, phew. Before that my niece got scabies, which she was sweetly informing everyone and their mother about. Poor thing, I got scabies in college after sleeping on a really nasty couch, that happened to be in the suite I was living in, my sophmore year, that stuff is nasty. Well I knew it was too good to last, that some nastily named affliction would hit my kids and it did. Oona wound up with ringworm on her butt and the back of her thighs, basically where your body comes in contact with a toilet seat. So you can pick up stuff from a public toilet and to think she had to use a port-a-potty twice at the renaissance fair. Ringworm isn't very contagious, but children don't have the strongest immune systems and their skin is more permeable, thank you pharmacology class, so I'm lotioning up her butt and thighs morning and night with jock itch cream. Who knew that jock itch, athlete's foot and ringworm are three names for the same skin infection. Two days after I learned about Oona's ringworm Owen was talking to Toby and I one night before dinner and said there was a spot on the back of his leg where it hurt when he touched it. Toby told him not to touch it and I asked him to drop his pants there in the kitchen so I could see what the problem was. He had a nasty looking boil with a pustule in the center of the red welt right where his leg meets his butt. When I helped him get ready for bed I found three more on his butt and perineal raphe, thank you A&P 2 for that anatomically correct term. I took them both to the doctor the next day and was ready for a Silkwood moment where our family gets hosed down and decontaminated. Of course with my mind I'd already gone down the rabbit hole worrying if Owen had somehow caught VD, how would be beyond me, and then I worried that they'd think I gave it to him. It's sick how ready I am to be deemed the bad mother, marked with a scarlet letter for my maternal failings. Fortunately the doctor picked up on my neurotic nature, must have been the nonstop hand-wringing and put me at ease. He took one look at Owen and said perianal Strep and started writing out scripts for an oral and topical antibiotic. He didn't even bother to test it, said his very red butt and the satellite red marks were textbook. Who knew you could get strep down there. I had a really sore throat at the time and asked if I should get checked for strep and the doctor's like 'I hope you don't have it down there as well.' Which I, once again, spent way too long trying to interpret - is he joking with me? is he saying I better not have it because that would mean I'd be doing unspeakable things with my son? This is why the two times I need to take Oona to the ER for head injuries I was convinced they'd single me out as a mom doing munchausen by proxy. I exhaust myself with the mom guilt flagellations at times. But on the bright side. Owen's strep is clearing up wonderfully. Oona still has one telltale ring mark but hopefully it will fade soon and I'm thinking I should probably add clorox wipes to my diaper bag arsenal since Oona won't sit on the seat when there's a seat protector on it.