Eric is Sick Again

This is night 3 that I am in Eric's room.  The first night was Friday, Eric was sick I managed to get 4 hours of sleep. Not enough by anyone's standards, but still doable. This was followed by a full day and a retirement party on Saturday. I was certainly not ready for another almost all nighter. 

Eric's plans were a lot different than mine. I got to sleep at 6 am on Sunday morning.  I cancelled all outside activities.  I also managed to keep up with most of the sick kid laundry.  It is now the wee hours of Monday morning. I am hopeful that I will be able to get some sleep soon. 

Even if Eric is still home on Monday I will need to get out and get a little shopping done. We are down to 1 bottle of pedialyte and out of children's tylenol. The fruit drawer looks a little on the empty side too.  

Guess what. Eric has fallen asleep. So I will end the blog here so I can get 6.5 hours of sleep.  At least that is close to normal. 

The Purse

How do you know that you have come upon a purse of a knitter?  There are a few major clues.  First it is usually easier to find a pair of knitting needles then the head phone buds of the MP3 player that resides in the purse. 

The second clue would be the small knitting project in progress. If that project is almost done you will also find the next project or skein of yarn for the latest 1 skein wonder. 

Then there is the small zippered pouch that has at least the following items in it. A small pair of scissors, a few extra stitch markers, darning needles, at least 1 crochet hook and a tape measure. Depending on the current work in progress you might also find cable holders, small bobbins for bits of yarn, dental floss for lace knitting and stitch holders.  

Then we can't forget about the nail file so we don't snag our work. Lotion and nail creams to keep our hands soft so we don't snag things like silk.  

I often wonder if our male counter parts keep their knitting in small backpacks. Do you have a knitters purse?

Wheelchairs, Yarn Crawls and Dog Pillows

Well I did over do it on Monday. Tuesday I paid the piper. Absolutely nothing got done on Tuesday. I had to try to recoup some energy for Wednesdays Yarn Crawl. Nancy, Carolyn and I started out early about 8 am for the Phoenix leg of the crawl. We had a great time, but it was a lot of driving for me, I did not get back home until 10 pm. Next time I am going to bring a friend to do some of the driving. We went to a lot of yarn stores, some were fabulous and I would go to them again if I had reason to be in Phoenix. Others not so much, some look like they had seen better days and were in desperate need of a little sprucing up. There was one were the staff was down right rude and condescending, they seemed all about needlepoint, but had yarn in the store for some unknown reason. There were a few mix ups on the times when stores were open. Did you know that in downtown Carefree Arizona the streets roll up by 4 pm with the exception of a few places to eat and the grocery store? I would also like to thank the Gilbert Honda Dealer for taking care of a check tire light for me and suggesting the most wonderful locally owned place for dinner. I will do a review later this week.

Today we picked up Eric's new wheelchair with the custom molded back. Most everyone including Eric loved it. It weighs half the amount as the last chair and it is easier to move. We did get it in wheelchair green (that's an Eric colorway, we could not get anyone one else to name this shade of green with the same name). You will notice that the laterals are gone. The seat back was molded to fit Eric. We just have to remind him to lean back until he gets used to the laterals being gone. We have only had 1 aide complain so far about the new chair and the lack of lateral supports. Oh well you can't please everyone. I would like everyone to notice how clean this new wheelchair is because this is the very last time you will see this chair so clean. My conclusion is that even though it took 18 months to get through the process we landed up with a great chair for Eric in the end.

I also started to make some more dog pillows for the aides with dogs at Eric's day program. I think I will need a volunteer stuffer. Eric has also graciously agreed to hand them out 1 or 2 at a time until we either run out of stuffing or aides with dogs.

Rocking It Today

Despite have a little arthritis pain in my knee last night and today I rocked my to do list. I did spend a little time in the craft room and a few things got done in there too.  I also got the kitchen floor mopped.  To relax after dinner I finished knitting one more scarf. Frogged a wash cloth re cast on and knit at least 2 inches.  

My plans for Tuesday are a bit more modest. A little knitting, sewing and shopping.  If my knee feels better a little spinning on the Ashford other wise it will be the Louet.   

Just in case you missed my to do list for today here is a picture of it.  John did the a/c filter.  Eric's wheelchair hopefully will be ready Thursday.  

Recharging

It was a very quiet weekend around here. We all took the time to recharge. All that got accomplished was a bit of cleaning, laundry, knitting and spinning. I almost forgot, we wondered over to the Apple store to look at the colors for the new 5s. I am still not sure what color I will get, but the gold color is still not shipping and is not the greatest shade of gold around. I may just go with the black and get a very colorful case. Something that won't get lost in my purse. Apple that may be your next goal, a phone that won't get lost in purses.

I have time to do a quick to do list for tomorrow before I call it a night.

My Diet Secrets

As a lot of you know a dear friend, Kay from Texas convinced me to give up anything with aspartame, high fructose corn syrup and any other artificial sweeteners. She sent me a few reports on the subject. I did more research on my own. I started this about 1 1/2 years ago. If you need a better time frame you can check past blogs.

It started out with giving up diet soda. I did drink about 6 cans a day because they were calorie free.  I did have a lot of headaches with that one. I found it took more tea than diet soda to get my caffeine quota for the day. After a few months I also gave up my multi time daily soy chai tea, a very high calorie drink. At about the same time I purged the house and my body of anything with high fructose corn syrup. It took about 3 months for all the junk to leave my system. .

After about 3 months I started getting more energy. I started walking. At first I was lucky to do a walk up and down the street. The more I walked the easier it got, yes it took about 9 or 10 months to get easier. Around this time I dropped my 1st dress size and 5 whole pounds. As I started getting more energy I got rid of the housekeeper. At first I did doubt my sanity on this, but at this point I find housework provides most of the exercise I need. I also try to walk 10,000 steps or more a day. Sometimes it is less and sometimes it is more.

I find a little really deep cleaning a week helps a lot. To me this means pulling out a drawer or a shelf and emptying it completely. Take the linen cabinet for example. After every thing is removed for 1 shelf at a time. I wipe down the shelf. Go through all the linens on that shelf. I divide it into to 4 piles charity, rags, trash, then wash and fold everything that I put back. This might not seem like much exercise but being as out of shape as I was everything and all movement helps. Not to mention that with each project finished I felt better and was less likely to snack at random. I am sure that Teri and John like this too, since they tend to be more organized than I am.  I did start out with 10 minute projects and built up to longer periods of cleaning. After you tear apart and reorganize a whole linen cabinet let me know if you think it is enough exercise to skip the gym. I can now do up to 8 hours of deep cleaning at a time if Eric is having a good period.

About 18 months later I am down 3 dress sizes and 15 pounds. I seem to be building muscle because my body fat went from 50% down to 43% during the same time. I don't have a weight goal in mind. My goal is just to feel much better and have the most energy possible.

I still read all the labels. I think that you will find as I did, that so much of the very processed food that we eat are laden with this stuff. I started making more food from scratch and eating more fruits, vegetables, breads and nuts for snacks. You also need to know that I have not given up chocolate and have a little bit each week. I have not gotten rid of my chocolate shelf in the fridge. I still have a sweet tooth, but am less likely to eat a whole box of cookies in a few days. I am more likely to have some then forget about them and toss them out because they became stale. When I want a soda I go out of my way to find soda that is made with real sugar.

So to recap I eliminated aspartame, high fructose corn syrup and any other artificial sweeteners. I added walking with a goal of 10,000 steps per day. I also added a lot of house cleaning. I know that this is not the fastest way to lose weight but its better than a lot of diets I have tried. This is not so much of a diet but a life style change.

Free Fall

Last night was a very bad night. Eric started out the night with nightmares at 11:30pm. It took over an hour to calm him down. Followed 2 hours later by suctioning. Followed 2 hours later for more suctioning and positioning. By 6 am I was ready for pancakes.

I then tried to recover my day by getting all 5 loads of laundry washed, folded or hung to dry on the line.(don't worry Eric already has 1/2 a laundry basket filled for me.) Along with a little picking up. Some how that was not enough to turn my day around. By 10 am I felt like I was in total free fall and it went down hill from there.

Just the usual stuff like a call from his case manager, that she just got a promotion and her last day with Eric would be Friday. This is like a new one every 6 months. I swear I did not break this one she really did get a promotion. Eric's day program might not have their fall fund raiser that I have been working on for 6 months. I have tons of earrings and hand knit stuff so I might have to do a craft sale on my own. If anyone knows of a local church or non profit that is having a holiday boutique that has space, please let me know. I can do a table fee plus a percentage of the sales as a donation. It just seemed that today hit that rare day when things just hit the wrong way.

The best decision I made today was to take a nap at 4:30pm instead of hitting the kitchen and baking up a storm. It helped, but I am still out of sync. Please be patient with me tomorrow as it might take a day or 2 to get back into sync.