Friday, June 22, 2012

Planking or Camping? Nope, it's a hammock

Hammocking, It's the latest thing, really! Maybe we can start a trend of people planking in a hammock. My kids kept spinning over staring at the ground. They are much braver than I am. 

We had a blast that weekend. Then for father's day I took the hubster off for an alone weekend camping. Would you believe after using this hammock for years it came untied while I was napping in it? There is nothing like being awoken by the back of your head smacking the ground. No photos of that trip because I mostly shlepped around with no makeup in between swimming in the lake and kayaking.


Monday, June 11, 2012

Red Carpet?

This looks like a red carpet photo--something I never, ever thought I was possible for me. Sorry folks, it's just a shot outside a tiny church in a tiny southern town, but don't we clean up well?

And my boys? You may never see them in dress shirts again till their weddings. So enjoy while you can. I may be slightly biased but I think they are the best looking 14 yr olds ever.


Next we have my new daughter-in-law and her twin sister and the lovely couple with our niece. My personal favorite photo has to be my hubby holding my sparkly clutch for me. It just makes his outfit.


And finally, my parents. Style has to originate somewhere, you know!

Step-mother of the Groom Dress

Just one of several reasons I have neglected my blog--my step-son's wedding was Saturday. I finally decided the paint fumes were probably the main reason for feeling awful recently. So we took greater care with the ventilation as we finished up last week. Now I'm back to just regular RA fatigue. Yay! I'm so excited. It's a bit of a pain but manageable at this time. 
Yeah, nobody really markets dresses to the step-mother of the groom, but with large number of blended families, maybe somebody should. In this case I got really lucky because my mom wears the same dress size I do and she has lots of awesome clothes. She gave me 3 dresses to try and I had one of mine I was considering. However, as soon as I put this one on I knew it was the one and didn't even try the others!











Here is my hair about as fixed as it ever gets. I have always been curler and curling iron impaired. Add to that having wrist pain and no hand strength and it means I almost never curl my hair. Fortunately, it became curlier in recent years and just needed a little encouragement. I did pin curls in back and used curling iron on the front. Ironically, I spent longer straightening my sons cute curly locks. Why do boys never appreciate their curly hair?



More photos to follow of the lovely occasion and my lovely family.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Update

I'm feeling slightly better today and we both made it to the office. My only co-worker at our tiny office is having health issues too. Coincidence? I think not. Even though we bought "low VOC" paint, I'm still pinning at least some of this on the fumes. She has the same ridiculous fatigue as me. Then, lucky woman, she can add nosebleeds, a swollen place near her jaw, and a sore on the side of her nose similar to a cold sore.

Feeling a little fuzzy and unfocused!


Still, I can't completely say it's the paint at this point. We have really made sure to open doors and have ventilation as we touch up and paint our doors and that seemed to help. But I had not even been to the office on Monday when I got knocked down by horrible fatigue again. Of course we are 40 ish and 50 ish which means we are both old enough to get tired out way faster than when we were younger. So that might have something to do with it.

But our office looks amazing!











Something is definitely up but like me she is resisting going to the doctor. Hopefully she will go this week since she has some additional symptoms above what I have. I will eventually go, but am resisting because fatigue is already such a big, well-known part of RA. Fatigue also goes along with any and everything, too. So how in the world do you pin it on something particular? Add to that the fact that she and I normally do very little physical labor. During the painting process we have daily been squatting, crawling, climbing scaffolding, reaching and generally contorting ourselves into odd positions all day every day for about a month and a half. Standing is very difficult for me and I have been doing lots of that too. And again, add to the painting that on our off time I have been making a new flower bed and she has been cleaning out her mother's stuff.

Let's just say we are totally exhausted!


I wore a really cute outfit today, but did I take a photo? Um, it was a white tee, red sweater vest, khaki shorts. For fun I threw on a pearl necklace for contrast with the casualness--very cute. Bad, bad blogger. Bad!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Stripes and Flowers and Health Struggles

What, you were expecting maybe some pattern mixing? This is not an overwhelmingly exiting outfit, but it works for when I need something casual. I'm having some kind of health struggle right now and don't exactly know what it is. So please bear with me. The fatigue that I had several days in the last few weeks let up over the weekend but returned yesterday. I don't get it. For the camp out I was able to kayak, swim, walk to the bathroom 3 million times, etc. I did start feeling a little yucky when we were breaking camp and packing up, but the weather had turned hot for the first time that weekend and packing up just sucks! Then when I woke up Monday my wrists were aching and I felt dizzy and drained.

At first I blamed the storms moving through although my RA doesn't freak out with the weather like it used to before starting Enbrel. However, even after the rain cleared out, I still felt lousy. I made it to work a while today but still not feeling good. I just had my yearly, er . . . woman check up and 6 month check in with my Rheumatologist. So I hate to go back to the doctor. Temporarily I'm waiting a few more days to see if the fatigue improves.


The reasons I have considered range from exposure to paint fumes while we have been painting my office to RA fatigue, thyroid issues, a virus, etc. My thyroid meds recently had to be increased but surely that wouldn't make me feel this bad. Before I started treatment for hypothroidism, the symptoms were very, very subtle. Nothing like this. Meanwhile, outfit photos and blog posts may continue to be iffy till I feel better.  Sorry!

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Back From Camping

Yeah, my poor blog has been neglected so badly lately that I figured one more weekend wouldn't hurt. The hubster, my kids and I took off for the wilds of Lake Alatoona and camped at Sweetwater Creek Campground. It wasn't exactly wilderness, and with our new camper, it wasn't exactly roughing it. However, we managed to unplug the children from video games for 72 hours. In my book, that's a huge success. We kayaked, swam, and grilled. My step-son and his wife even visited for some fishing and a mean game of Rummy. The funny thing is, even though tomorrow is Monday, I have a staff retreat at Lake Lanier. I'm not sure that I'll be able to return to reality come Tuesday!

I took very few pictures which is really, really not like me, but I was very serious about just kicking back and living the experience. Maybe I'll post some later of my kids rolled over in the hammock. Outfit photos? You've got to be kidding. I just had my first bath in 3 days. Yeah, they had 2 shower houses but we just swam in the lake. So not like me! Hopefully the slower summer schedule will have me blogging better from now on.