17 Book in 2017

Time for my annual re-cap in books I've read this year! I once again surpassed my original goal of reading 17 books in 2017. I ended up reading 21, so I will press on with the trend and set a goal of 18 books for next year. I also started three other books, but haven't finished them, so those will end up on next year's totals.

Enjoy.

Better Than Before — This one is about habits and learning about yourself and your tendencies, but unlike most self-help books, does not proclaim one singular way to achieve whatever it is you are wanting to accomplish. The author Gretchen Rubin acknowledges, and celebrates, that there are fundamental differences in how people operate and what works for one might not work for another. A great book!

Four Seasons of Marriage — Meh. The first part, describing the seasons, was somewhat interesting. But the last two parts were very repetitive and long-winded.

Pride and Prejudice — I know many of my women friends love this book, and love Mr. Darcy, and love Jane Austen's writing in general, but it's just not my cup of tea. I tried, but didn't like this book.

The Dorito Effect — Also meh. The initial information presented was interesting, especially learning about how food has progressed and changed through recent decades. But the author gets a little too wrapped up in his analogy that practically everything is a victim of "the Dorito effect." I kept waiting and waiting for the author to present a solution or some sort of upward, motivating thinking to solve the problem or get real flavor (not fake flavors) back into our foods, but it never really came. (So basically we're all screwed, ha.)

Scent of the Missing — Loved this book! Very interesting to learn about search and rescue; well-written, a great book for animal lovers.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up — This book is not even that long, but it is way too long. What could have sufficed as a well-written essay was drawn out, repeated over and over, for 4.5 hours (in audiobook.) This book details Marie Kondo's self-made method for picking up your house, but she is so self-righteous. She feels this is the ONE and ONLY way to truly "tidy" your house. There is no other way. Final answer. This was presented as the end all, be all method. I have a problem with that. The book drove me nuts for a few days, trying to adhere to her advice, until I decided to promptly forget it. I've been happier since. Read at your own risk... some people love this book. I am not one of them.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Re-read this book in preparation to read the new, 4th installment in the series. Still holds up, still really enjoyed it.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — Underwhelming. The plot was predictable but I think the format is what really bothered me. I'm even a theater person, I've read many a script, but this one is lacking, written as a script. It's like-able enough, but I definitely did not love it. In a perfect world, I would have much rather Rowling write this on her own, work with the other two to create the script for the stage, and they can coexist as both a full blown novel AND as a play.

The Girl Who Played With Fire — Again, re-read this one. Probably my least favorite, so far, in the series. It's just kind of slow to build up the plot, in comparison with the others.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest — Also re-read this. I had forgotten the most about what goes on in this one, so it was nice to rediscover it.

Not My Father's Son — One of the best 'celebrity memoirs' I've read in recent years. For me, this is because it is actually a story about a particular subject rather than the mish-mash of cheap jokes, gossip stories, and life advice most celebrities compile into a book (which are not my thing.) Though tragic, the story was told beautifully. I think the audiobook was even better since it was read by the author.

We Bought A Zoo — Boring. This is one of the rare cases where the movie is much better than the book. I really like this movie and it's uplifting, positive message. The book is hardly like the movie, and how the movie producers were able to come up with such a fine story from such lackluster source material is to be commended. After 2/3 of the book, I completely lost interest.

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Man-Made World — As someone who is constantly fascinated by physics and chemistry (though did not have an aptitude for those school subjects) I loved this one! Written by a materials scientist, this book is not dumbed down, and therefore won't be for everyone. But for those curious about 'stuff' on an atomic and molecular level, it is very interesting. Full of detail, yet concise and well-written.

The Girl in the Spider's Web — A continuation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books, but with a new author since the original author passed away. Slow to get going, but once it did, it was hard to put down. A worthy continuation.

Pax — My first foray into YA lit in a long time. It's about a boy and his pet fox, Pax. It was good, I guess, but not great. I expected so much more from this book.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — This is the source material for Blade Runner, and what an interesting story this was! The version I read was a graphic novel adaptation of the original book, but it was really good. I enjoyed it so much more than Blade Runner. 

Lord of the Flies — Never had to read this in school, so this was my first time. I thought it was very good too. It's a great commentary on how societies and communities are built, what they're built on, and how they can so easily fall apart. Short read.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir — Meh, nothing special about this one. This was one man's story of his upbringing in a dysfunctional, poor, white family.

The Green Mile — The book was good. It was originally released in pieces as a serial novel. But now that I've read it, I can tell you that the movie is SO well done. Everything is almost to the letter of the book, which is to be highly commended for a movie. There's not much to be gained from reading the book in this case, but it was still a good book.

Color Me Beautiful — Since I love color theory, this one interested me when a friend told me about it years ago. The writer posits that the color of your hair and your skin tone (warm or cool) determines your "color season." You will look This book was published in 1980 and has never been updated, but I actually appreciate that. The rules and theory never change, so it didn't matter if it was stylistically outdated. Not for everyone, but if you're curious why you look great in the color blue, but something just seems 'off' when you wear the color orange, this might be for you.

The Innovators — This book book details the history and collaboration behind some of the most important technological advances in history, starting with Ada Lovelace, punch cards, transistors, and onwards. A fascinating story for nerds like us (Jarrod actually listened to this one on audiobook and enjoyed it.)

Snow

Saturday morning when I woke up to snow, I excitedly exclaimed "SNOW! IT SNOWED!" like a giddy child. I imagine many of us were like that. There is just something about the first snow. And it was the perfect kind, too, where it was on the grass but not on the roads.

To my delighted surprise, I woke up this morning to find it lightly snowing. Jarrod wasn't awake yet, just me. I turned on the tree, put on some Christmas music, turned on my candle warmer, and sat down.

I noticed the squirrel was at my bird feeder. I grabbed my camera. I snapped away as he ate up my sunflower seeds. And he was such a ham, haha—at one point, as if he noticed me, he turned around at one point and didn't face me anymore. Then later, as if he embraced the whole exercise, he hopped to another rail of the deck and practically posed for a perfect side profile shot. It made me laugh out loud.

You know, I don't particularly enjoy the squirrel eating my birdseed. I mean, it's for the birds, not for the squirrels. My biggest gripe about the squirrels is how quickly they eat the bird food; I have had full feeders when I go to bed, and then drained by morning. But aside from sending Josie out on the deck to terrorize the squirrels every once in a while, there's nothing else I'd really do about it. I could never hurt a squirrel, because I realize they have to eat too. And this morning, with him sitting there in the snow, reinforced that.

After he was finished, the birds started flying in for breakfast. As always, it makes me smile that the birds eat breakfast and supper roundabout when we do. A cardinal couple came along, and I was able to snap those real quick. Cardinals are so beautiful in the snow. They were followed by some juncos and finches. And then the squirrel came back, and I was kind of happy to see him again. Merry Christmas little squirrel, congratulations you won me over, enjoy the bird food.

Sinuses and Sugars

Last Friday was a quite a day.

I started bright and early at Mercy South to repeat my oral glucose tolerance test. I haven't really talked about any of this on here, but a couple months ago I did my annual test and it came back borderline. I wasn't quite diabetic, based on those numbers, but was most definitely in a pre-diabetic gray area.

So we wanted to repeat the test, and I chose to do that last Friday. It took way longer than it should have, and I was there for almost 4 hours. I had just enough time to come home, eat something (since I hadn't had anything yet, save for the glucose beverage), and vest, and turn around and leave to go to my other appointment that day.

I had set up an appointment to go to an ENT. I've been having more sinus symptoms in the past months, and lately I felt I was clearing my throat constantly due to drainage. Sinus symptoms are very, very common in CF and I've been lucky to dodge any major issues until now.

The doctor was up in Saint Peters. My CF doctor, when I asked her about seeing an ENT, mentioned I could see one there or there was another doctor who everyone there had loved, but he left and was "in Wentzville." She was a smidge off on the towns, but close enough. I said "Oh, well that's out by me, I could go see him." So I set up my appointment with him.

Immediately during my visit, it was clear I made the right choice to see him, versus seeing any ol' ENT in town. He has dealt with CF patients before and knows the drill.

Long story short, we did a CT of my sinuses and turns out they're mostly blocked up. There is likely some infection going on, but not in the traditional sense of what people mean when they have a sinus infection. He told me that just like the CF lungs can't naturally clear out mucus, the same with the sinuses. I never thought about it, but that makes perfect sense. Anyways, we're trying to improve things in the meantime with rinses and an antibiotic, but most likely I will need sinus surgery. He said they typically try to tie in a sinus surgery after a hospitalization, since that's when you're feeling the best and, ideally, should be the most cleared out. Again, so glad I went to see him because not everyone would know about all that.

So it's a bummer, but probably a long time coming. I've read comments from other CFers who are 20 and have had like 13 sinus surgeries already. So with that kind of perspective, I've really lucked out. That being said, now that this is an issue for me, it probably won't be my only sinus surgery, and the doctor mentioned that too. He actually commented how lucky and rare it was for me to make it to 30 years old without needing sinus surgery.

So that's the sinus story. Not super fun.

The sugar story... is also not a great story.

I finally got my results Wednesday; my doctor and I had been playing phone tag. And they came back a little worse than last time. Last time, they were 103 and 201. This time, they were 111 and 209. For those who don't know, the first number is your "fasting" number, the second is taken two hours later after drinking the glucose. 100 or under is normal, 100-125 is considered pre-diabetic for the fasting number. On the 2-hour level, over 200 is considered diabetic. 140 or under is normal, that's where you want to be. And between 140 and 200 is pre-diabetic, which is where I've been. As you can see, for my test two months ago I really was right on the cusp, plus I was still trying to feel better and illness or infection can elevate the results. But since this second test was worse, it's safe to say that I am, indeed, diabetic. Not great news.

CF-related diabetes is its own beast. It's not like Type 1, it's not like Type 2, it's weird. I can't change what I eat because then I would lose weight, and since I already struggle with that, I need to keep eating just like I am. Cutting carbs is absolutely not advised. That being said, there may be a way to control it with diet in pairing carbs with proteins and fats, because those can counteract blood sugar spikes. So bring on the steak and bacon, haha.

Just like I sought out a specific ENT because of his experience with CF, I will be seeing an endocrinologist in Columbia because he has experience with CFRD.

So yeah... a lot of information for me to process. I'm really trying not to get too ahead of myself with the diabetes stuff, because I have no idea what the doctor will tell me. I don't know if I'll need insulin; I have to wait and see what he recommends. But it's hard. This is just more shit I have to worry about and fit into my day, which already feels jam packed. In trying to convince myself this isn't as bad as it seems, I'm trying to tell myself that we caught this early. Yes, I am past the diabetic threshold... but just barely. It's not like my sugars came back at 250 or something. Furthermore, I knew that the older I got, the higher my chances were that this would come up. 50% of adults with CF have CFRD. In addition to that, about 3-4 years ago we thought I had CFRD but turned out I didn't just yet, but it's not surprising things continued to trend this way.

Josie's checkup

As some of you may have already seen on Facebook, Josie had some issues yesterday.

I took her for her annual checkup and vaccines. I also talked with the doctor about her itchy ears, and he gave her a gel medicine in her ears to take care of any infection present. He said I could wipe off any excess that worked it's way out of her ears.

Once we were home her ears looked kinda gross, to be honest. She had shook her head enough, I guess, that a lot of the gel was coming out. I wiped them down, then went in my vest room to check something on my iPad. She followed me in there and proceeded to roll around on the floor, rubbing her head and ears on the carpet. I half expected her to do this, because any time we put medicine or anything in her ears, she hates it, and tries to rub her ears on the carpet. I tried to stop her. She got smart and went under the bed where I couldn't reach her, haha. But I could tell she was still bothered by it, because she was rolling around under the bed and licking the carpet compulsively. But it wasn't just her ears, it looked like she was just trying to rub the side of her face, in general, on the carpet.

I coaxed her out and noticed her ears were RED, I mean really, really red. They were also really hot. As I started to look her over more, and still trying to wipe off the goo and prevent her from rolling around and getting away from me, I saw the area around her eyes was puffy and turning red. A couple of her paws were swelling up and pink too. Okay, something is not right here, this seems like an allergic reaction.

I called the vet, and they said to bring her back. I sat and waited while they checked her out. After some time, one of the vet tech's came out saying that she was definitely reacting to something, but they'd never seen a reaction like that to the ear gel. They had to call the doctor, because he was out on a farm call. He was surprised by the news, and wanted to look her over once he was back. That wouldn't be for at least another 20 minutes, so they said I could leave her there and come back to pick her up. They were giving her some Benedryl by injection, wiping out all of the ear gel, and they were putting cold packs on her ears because they were on fire.

I ran some errands, and by then it was silly to come home for ten minutes, so I went back a little early. The doctor talked with me, and said he thought she was having a reaction to one of the vaccines. I assumed it was the ear gel, since that was the only part of her visit yesterday that was different, but he explained for her to have such a systemic reaction, involving her entire body, instead of just locally in the ears, it was likely the vaccine. I mentioned she's never reacted like this before, just been a tad lethargic the following day. After hearing that, he was even more inclined to believe it was the vaccine. Even though I think lethargy after, like, a rabies vaccine is pretty common, I guess it's still kind of a reaction in it's own way. (All that being said, a tiny part of me still wonders if it was the gel because the entire episode seemed to start with her ears. Who knows.)

He said she was running a pretty good fever, her face was still swollen, and her heart rate was up, so he was going to give her something like "doggie Tylenol" to help with that. He wanted us to watch her closely last night, make sure there were no breathing problems and that her fever came down.

When they brought her out to me, she was a bit mellow. I'm sure that was partly the Benedryl; I know how I feel on Benedryl, and getting an injection is even stronger than taking the pill. But her face was still puffy around her nose and mouth. That part had not yet happen when I dropped her off, so that must have presented itself after I handed her off. Poor Josie.

Since posting about this on social media, I've had 4 other dog owners share similar stories of their dogs having an out-of-the-blue reaction to their annual vaccines. In some cases, they said it continued, and in others they said it was only the one year and every time since then has been fine. I'll see what they say next year as to what they want to do for her.

Muzzle still a little puffy and swollen

Unfortunately it's impossible to determine which vaccine caused the issue. She got her usual three yesterday. Maybe we'll try them one at a time next year, at least that would be my suggestion.

She's doing better this morning. I think her fever went away around 8:00 last night. I never took her temp, but I could easily feel she was hotter than normal for a while. I encouraged her to drink water and rest a lot, because she could barely keep her head up and her eyes open anyways. This morning she was a bit groggy still, but I think in the past hour she's started to act more normal. She's laying in the sunshine right now :).

We're very thankful this was a one day thing and she's been doing better. Here's hoping it doesn't happen again or, if it does, we can pinpoint the cause.

Yay tree!

The old tree.

We finally bought a new Christmas tree this year. Our previous tree was a hand-me-down from my parents. It served us well, but was a very big and FULL tree; larger than we would like. But, beggars can't be choosers, so we used it ever since we got married. But the thing weighed about 80 pounds. With Jarrod's back being more sensitive to strain ever since his car accident, it's not good for him to carry this thing upstairs.

He brought it up, set it up and plugged it in. All that to find out about 1/3 of the lights were out. And it wasn't all in one spot, like one strand, it was all over the tree. That was it; we're getting a new tree.

The new tree!

We had very specific criteria for what we wanted, and it turned out finding a tree was harder than I thought. On Cyber Monday I bought the tree. 

We got it on Wednesday! Fast shipping. I started fluffing it up, something that I actually enjoy for some weird reason. I've always been the tree fluffer, even when I was younger. 

Time to decorate! I had been using the same ribbon on my tree for 3 years, was it time for a new look? Not to mention, the ribbon I had would not "fit" right on the new tree, since it was much narrower. I decided to combine some old gold mesh I weaved in between the ribbon, bought some new silver ribbon, and added some poinsettias to the look (and thus had the "Silver and Gold" song from Rudolph stuck in my head for days.) I had to make a new bow for the top and added the flower to tie it all together.

I LOVE the way it turned out! I am so glad I chose to go with a new look for the new tree. I still have all my s'more ornaments on there! Never gonna give those up because they're so darn adorable. They still make them too, which makes me happy. Also, previously we always set up the tree in the front room because it was too wide for our living room. By default we did the same with the new tree, until Sunday when I pointed out we could swap the recliner and the tree and be able to enjoy the tree in the living room. I'm so glad we did!

S'mores everywhere!

Past the saga

I had a checkup yesterday. And it went well!

My PFT was practically back to baseline, it's numerically just a smidge lower than it was after I got out of the hospital back in September.

Augh, we are so glad and thankful. I know many were praying hard, and I thank you for that.

The PFT is not the entire picture, mind you. I have had times where I feel fine and my PFT is bad and times where I feel awful but my PFT is decent. The good news is I am feeling better, along with having a better lung test yesterday. But, I still want to keep pushing. And I'll always be like that, hoping for better, even if it might not actually happen.

The bad news, in a way, is we don't really have a good explanation for all this. I mean, it appears the probable key factor that started to turn all this around was switching up my steroid inhaler, as I wrote about on here. That did help, but it still took a couple more weeks for me to really start to feel it. I cautiously told Jarrod last week that I had two days where I didn't notice feeling short of breath as much. I took that as a good sign, but I didn't want to get too ahead of myself. After all, when this entire 'saga' started, it was a huge shock. Sometimes I wonder if I am so hyper-tuned-in to myself and how I feel daily that I miss the bigger picture. Granted, this is why I keep my health journal, but still.

These past two months have been tough. At times, it's tough to keep hoping for better results. At times, it's hard not to feel trapped and helpless about the situation. At times, it's downright frustrating. I finally feel like we can put this behind us, in a way, and move on. Back to normal.

Jarrod made a great dinner last night, my mom brought me flowers, and I had a chocolate milk stout, one of my favorite beers! It was a good day.

Etsy

For years, I've thought about opening an Etsy shop. I've been through a slew of ideas for it—some of them good, some of them silly—but I never actually did anything about it.

Back in September, I decided to finally stop putting it off. My plan was to sell my crochet stuff and some printables (which are quotes and such that I design and people can print at home; they're an easy thing that takes little effort on my part.) I set a goal of having it open by the end of October, so I would be ready for the holiday rush.

Well, that deadline came and went.

On the first Saturday of deer season, 11/11, I worked on it almost all day. It was tiring. I had to redo so many things and by about 4pm I was ready to quit, call the whole thing off. It's hard to explain, but the more I did, the more little things I found I needed to do or decide on.

For example: shipping. You have to list the shipping size and weight of your item. Okay, I guess I need to go to the post office and figure that out. Another example: everyone who sells these printables things has an image of them displayed in a frame to show an example of how it could look. I went all over the house taking photos of empty frames so I could do that too. But as I looked at all of the photos in other Etsy shops, mine looked awful in comparison. Their's were clearly some sort of stock photo, which I then briefly looked into, but I didn't want to pay for a photo for this Etsy shop that I may or may not even make any money on.

I decided I had one good photo of my own, so I used it over and over. I got some listings created, but they were all so random, there was no theme or rhyme or reason to them. I really started losing confidence in the whole thing.

My store is going to be called Laughing Dog Co., and in that vein, I started thinking I should probably sell mostly dog-related items. I love dogs—duh!—and instead of offering random crochet items, how about focus on dog sweaters. I also have ideas for dog-related printables.

Yesterday I was really having a hard time deciding what to do about the whole thing, though. I still had a desire to open my shop for the holiday shopping season, but that felt completely unattainable at this point. I would love to press GO and open my shop... the problem is, I don't have hardly any items to sell right now and I am worried that would not give a good first impression. I have been crocheting as much as possible without driving myself mad, but I only have two dog sweaters.

I haven't even had a chance to work on the printables I mentioned, so basically I'd be opening a shop with a few random quotes to print and two dog sweaters? That doesn't sound like something I'd even want to show off to people. I set high standards for myself (typical of only children) and while I've gotten better about that, I would not be okay with having a barely-stocked Etsy shop as a representation of what I'm capable of.

My crocheting is a hobby and for now I intend to keep it that way. I don't want to worry about taking orders, which would then make this more like a business and no longer a fun hobby. That was not my intent going into this. That being said, I would like to sell some things. I don't want to keep making things, list the items (which cost 20¢ per listing) and never sell anything. That's where my hesitation and my desire to have my ducks all in a row before opening comes into play. There are tons and tons of Etsy shops out there who have tried and failed for myriad reasons. The people who are most successful with this are the ones who:

1. have a plan and a bit of a niche/theme for their shop;
2. are good at SEO on Etsy;
3. have social media components to their shops (I went ahead and claimed social media URLs in case I'd ever want to use them); and
4. make their shop look legit with good branding and good photos of their items. 

After all this, I finally feel like I have a good plan and a good vision; it's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I feel a lot better about everything going forward. I'll still sell doilies or snowflakes too, even though they don't really fit a dog theme, but whatever. I am going to keep working on it, and I WILL open my shop, hopefully by the end of the year. And that excites me! I have put a lot of time in to my shop, but for now it's still not enough and I need to keep working. Once it's ready, I'll let you all know! 

The injured cardinal

I shared this on Facebook, but yesterday I saw a cardinal sitting just a foot from the house on the deck. He wasn't moving, so I grabbed my Nikon and started taking photos.

I think he flew into the glass door, because there were some feathers stuck on the glass. They were still there this morning, even; must have been a hard hit.

He just sat there, sort of dozing off at times, for over 10 minutes while I took photos of him. I think he was kind of out of it and needed the time to recoup before flying off. I inched closer and closer to the glass door and he never moved a muscle. He could not have cared less that I was there.

I started to get a little worried I might have a dead bird on my hands again. On Wednesday, I found a dead junco in the front yard. No idea what happened to it, it was still very intact and clean. I was worried—until I noticed the feathers on the door—the cardinal might be sick or dying too. I think he hit on the right side of his head, too, because a few feathers around his eyes were smashed and ruffled.

Josie came over at one point to investigate, too. I shared the photo of her staring at him on her Instagram account and realized something that should have been obvious: not everyone knows what a cardinal is.

I know I've mentioned her Instagram account before, and since we/she has friends all over the world, I had multiple comments saying they'd never seen a bird like that.

Cardinals are so common here, I never really gave much thought that cardinals weren't like a 'northern hemisphere' kind of bird or something, I figured you might find them in parts of Europe too. But turns out they only live in parts of the US and Mexico. 

They really are beautiful birds, when the sunlight shines on those red feathers it is such a beautiful color. And when I think about it, our area is home to a lot of colorful, beautiful birds. How lucky we are!

Small update

I checked in with my doctor on Monday.

I let her know basically what I had written on here: I wasn't worse, but wasn't sure how much better I was either and I had encouraging signs with my wheezing stopping and having better exercise tolerance.

The game plan is to keep up what I'm doing; keep pushing myself—within reason, obviously—on the treadmill, and I will see them at the end of the month. We'll repeat the usual PFT and see where that is.

So please keep praying. I know I'm not giving up and you shouldn't either! My hope is to get back to baseline, where I was. If I can, I feel like things can get back to normal, we don't have to worry about transplant talks just yet, and things will calm down for now.

Friday Fast 5

Today's is EXTRA random and semi-pointless, but nevertheless, here's what's been plunking around in my brain:

1. This fall weather has been great! Although it was a bit on the cold side last weekend.
2. Monday, I noticed a bunch of juncos—aka snow birds—hopping around on the deck! It's a good sign when the juncos have arrived from Canada. In other bird news, the squirrels continue to be a nuisance no matter how many times I send Josie out on the deck to scare them off. Those buggers just never learn... Anyways, it made me laugh the other day because there was a line of birds on the deck waiting for the squirrel to be done pigging out. They kinda hop around and turn their heads, looking at the squirrel like "Hey, you done yet? This is OUR food ya know!"
3. There is a new majong club at the library here. For half a second I thought that'd be fun—I play majong on my iPad, learning how to play in real life could be cool. Then I looked at our Missourian photo gallery from their first meeting, and it was literally a bunch of people sitting around, instructions out, trying to figure out how the hell you play majong. Maybe they figured it out eventually, but it didn't look encouraging.
4. I just did a small load of Josie laundry. I washed all of her sweaters in preparation for the cooler season. They kinda smelled, all piled up together. I probably should have washed all of them at the end of the season earlier in the year, but oh well.
5. We are getting a new paper shredder, and I could not be more excited. We had a tiny one that bit the dust a few weeks ago. It just stopped, mid-shred. I couldn't get it to back up or advance, nothing, so there is a mostly-eaten Walgreens paper just stuck in the thing. It was never a great shredder anyways and was so annoying because it constantly quit, saying the bin was full when it wasn't. I hated that thing. I have probably 3 boxes worth of stuff that have piled up over the years and I am so ready to get rid of it!

Been in a rough patch

I haven't talked about this on here yet, but I haven't been doing so great.

It started over a month ago, I guess. I started to have more shortness of breath and I was getting breathless just doing normal tasks around the house.  I kind of did a 'wait and see' with it, because a few days after it started I had my hospital follow-up appointment anyways.

At my appointment, my PFT was not good. My lung functions are right back to where they were before the hospital, which is not encouraging. I called Jarrod over lunch that day, crying, because it's just so frustrating. You do everything you're supposed to do, but sometimes it's just not enough. It's just so hard...

We tried a short stint of steroids, and those seemed to help, but not for the long term. I had another follow-up last week and my PFTs were the same. So any progress I may have had while I was on the steroids was short-lived.

We decided to do another stint of prednisone and switch the steroid inhaler I'm on to see if that could help. After a week or so on the new one, I think I'm a little better, but I'm not sure if it's helping enough. I was starting to wheeze quite often, which is not normal for me, and that has pretty much ceased. So that's good. But yesterday was a bit of a weird day; it started out rough, and I wasn't breathing too well, then I cleared out some gunk and felt better, and was able to manage 3.0 mph on the treadmill last night! I don't even know the last time I was able to do that, comfortably. So that's encouraging, maybe I really am starting to make some headway.

The plan is for me to call and check in with my doctors next Monday. I hope I can continue to improve my exercise tolerance through the weekend and that, in turn, will help improve everything else.

You know, this whole "rough patch" has been difficult on me and Jarrod. I feel like our lives are sort of on hold. We're trying things to see if I can improve, and if I can then that's great and we can get back to normal, and if I can't... well... that's not great news. My lung function is around 25%, which is extremely low. It may not sound like a lot, but trust me there is a huge difference in how I felt at 30% versus 25%. If it stays that way, that also means we need to start talking about transplant again because I'm just that much closer to needing one. I mostly keep those thoughts at bay and am not worrying about them until I need to, but it's a truth that needs to be aired. If we can't turn this train around and this is just where I'm at now, it will have a broad effect on many aspects of our lives.

But for now, I'm hopeful. We haven't exhausted every option available. If we have to, I might need another hospital stay. It would suck to have to go in again so soon, but it's happened before. Most recently, when I was out of the hospital, I was nearly back to baseline. So I have a hard time believing that in 4 weeks after, something happened that was so drastic to cause me to lose 5 percentage points and make it so I'll never gain that back. Maybe my steroid inhaler, which I've been on for 4+ years now, stopped having much effect on me anymore. Maybe just switching that up is all it will take, who knows.

Hamilton

I am excited to say: I scored us some tickets to see Hamilton!

Single tickets went on sale this morning at 9am. I almost forgot about it, but I checked in around 9:30. 

For those unaware, Hamilton has been the hottest show on Broadway since last year. Everyone says it is a really great show, and the music is great. It's finally going on tour, and tickets sell quick. The Fox (of which I am on their email list) excitedly announced—what feels like a year ago—they were one of the US cities chosen for the tour. 

This morning was just nuts. I heard there was a line at the box office with well over 400 people that went on for blocks. Trying to buy them online was a chore in and of itself too. 

I was immediately placed in a "virtual waiting room" due to the high demand. It said DO NOT refresh your browser, it would automatically refresh as I moved up. I had no idea where I was at in the queue, I could have been #30 or #800 for all I know. Eventually, I was shown the calendar with the performance times to choose from. The Saturday shows were already sold out (mind you, this was less than an hour after tickets started.) Oh boy...

I picked a show, and picked the cheapest seats available, and then got an error screen of sorts saying "Unable to reserve your seats at this time. Please try again." blah blah blah. I tried, and tried, and tried, with that message coming up every time. The system was just that bogged down. It said to try calling Metrotix too, which I gave a shot, and got a busy signal. No surprise there. While I tried, 3 more shows sold out.

Finally, over an hour and a half later, after trying different dates and different sections, after receiving that message I don't know how many times, I got a screen with two seats on them. I had no idea where they were, but I didn't care at that point. At first, I honestly didn't even know what date I ended up with because I had tried so many different combinations. I clicked to Proceed. Then the countdown began, the god-awful "you must complete your entire order in 8:00 minutes flat or you lose your seats" countdown. I had my wallet next to me, prepared for this. Except, turned out, the password I thought was correct was not working. Aaahh! So, still while the 8:00 minutes is counting down, I had to do a Forgot Password thing. Log into my email I used for this. Get the new password. Sign in. Type in my credit card number. And press send, lest I end up back in the perpetual "unable to reserve your seats at this time" mess. I feel stressed out just remembering it! 

But I did it! Whew. It's weird because it feels like an accomplishment, haha. I bought the tickets, and we are going, and I'm stoked! I told my friend I bet they would be sold out by the afternoon, and I was right on that one. By 2:00 pm, they were gone. 

5 hours to sell out 23 performances. Wow.

Proud dog mom/nerd

I am quite the proud dog mom!

Last Friday... I groomed Josie. And I am so stinkin' proud of myself.

I don't know if I've ever really talked about Josie and her grooming needs on here before. In efforts to make a blog post out of this, I'll share, but I'll try not to bore you to death.

So when we got our little cairn terrier, I was oblivious to the special grooming needs of a cairn. I did a lot of research and learned she is supposed to be "hand stripped" which is a term for pulling (aka, stripping) out dead coat. It sounds weird and painful, but it's not. The old hair will come right out with a gentle tug. With the proper tools, the old dead hair comes out while any new, good hair stays in place.

Now, I should make a note here: most cairns are not groomed this way. Unless they are show dogs most cairns get taken to the groomer to be trimmed or clipped just like any other small dog. For 97% of people, this is fine (and certainly MUCH easier), but there is a consequence to doing it this way. The hair follicle grows differently than ours and over time, trimming it off—instead of pulling it out and allowing a new one to grow in—will soften and damage the coat. Cairns are supposed to have a harsh, weatherproof coat, and cutting the hair almost surely gets rid of that texture and rain-resistant benefit.

I've searched far and wide, and there are virtually no groomers around here who will hand strip a dog. It is extremely labor intensive, and I determined that if I wanted her to have a natural, proper, hand stripped coat, I would have to do it myself. I actually enjoy it too. It's kind of calming and a bit like creating a sculpture. If my allergies and lungs could tolerate it, I might have switched careers to groom dogs, but that's just not a good idea.

I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent thinking about and agonizing over what to do about Josie's coat. I want to keep it rough and how it's "supposed" to be because I do like that look. It looks more natural, there's better color variety, and I like the harsh feel of it. Plus, it's much better for her skin to get rid of the dead hair.

Over the years, I've taken her to two different groomers in town. I became frustrated with the first one, then tried a second one. I started to groom Josie a little more myself, then would take her to my second groomer for her to tidy her up. She did a good job, but I started to worry way too much of Josie's coat was getting clipped.

Back in May, at the cairn terrier event at Purina Farms, I met one of Josie's Instagram friends from California. She was the sweetest lady and gave me a crash course in grooming Josie the right way. It was amazing, getting a hands on lesson, and I started to think I might actually be able to do this!

Since May, I've worked on Josie here and there, small areas at a time. I finally bought a grooming table, which was pretty much the final 'tool' I needed to fully commit to this.

Last Friday was the day! After about five or so smalls sessions, about 30-45 minutes each, on and off the table, we finally finished! And I think she looks really good! It's not perfect, but I'm still learning.

I'm just so darn proud I can do it! There are still some areas I trim with a scissors, because battling with her to tug out her hairs just isn't worth it. Most of it comes out easily, but some of it does not. Some areas, like her belly, are very very sensitive and simply don't need to be stripped, they can be trimmed up.

I've been smiling at her every time I see her, knowing this is the product of my hard work. She looks very cute, and she also looks like she lost a few pounds with so much of her hair gone haha.

Here's the before and after:

Done with meds

I've reached the end of my latest hospital stay/doing home meds. I had a PFT today and it was the same as last week. Which... is a tad disappointing, that another week's worth of medicines didn't really move the needle. However, I do feel better this week, as far as getting around easier. So at least there's that.

I'm not quite back to where I'd like to be, and in looking at my numbers, I see the last time I reached over 0.90 was a year ago. For all of this year, my baseline has been comfortably parked at 0.88. I realize, that's only 0.02 less, but that's still a big deal to me. Every little bit counts, and I'm gonna keep trying for over 0.9 as long as I can.

But, I know that keeping up with my exercise will give me the best shot I have of reaching those kinds of numbers, and even if they're unattainable, my quality of life will remain greatly improved because of it.

The problem with exercise is that the progress is so gradual it's barely noticeable, you know? Ugh, it sucks. I think, by nature, we like to see results in the things that we do. And I think this explains why it's just so damn hard to stick to an exercise routine or even get started in the first place. I've realized it's also a challenge for me since I go through this virtual reset every six months when I have to drop everything and go in the hospital, or even when I end up sick it becomes hard to exercise; it's hard to form true, lasting habits when that happens.

We also aren't very good at remembering things, like the day to day stuff. Hardly anyone, with probably the exception of some individuals on the spectrum, could tell you what they had for dinner two weeks ago. Likewise, it's hard to always remember where we started, versus how far we've come when it comes to things like exercise or whatever life improvement you might be pursuing. It's hard to see the benefit of working out for ten minutes more, versus calling it quits a little early and skimping here and there. But in order to gain ground, one must stay diligent.

Eclipse Day Has Arrived!

Wow, that was incredible!

It's 2:20 as I write this right now, and the eclipse is still happening. It's almost over (23 minutes left), but the moon is still passing over the sun.

At 11:48 this morning is when it got started. I went outside, and sure enough, you could see a tiny blip over the sun where the moon was!

As we neared totality, the temperature dropped a few degrees as they said it would, and it was noticeably more comfortable outside. Today was hot and humid, but it was amazing that the clouds stayed away for the most part. Initially the forecast wasn't looking good, there was a good chance it would be cloudy. But pretty much the whole time it was clear, and though there were clouds in the sky, they weren't blocking the view.

So initially, as stated in a previous blog, I wasn't planning to take a photo during totality. Or any photos, really, since I would need a special filter the rest of the time. That all changed on Friday...

On Friday, my supervisor sent out an email to myself and other photogs in the company saying if we hadn't gotten filter material from him, he still had some. I didn't realize he had any! I ran by work and picked some up, in case I changed my mind.

I cut it out and got it in place yesterday, set my camera up to the specific settings I wanted it at, and was ready to test it out. I wasn't sure if I'd get any images or not, but as the moon was moving over the sun I figured I'd give it a try.

So this morning, I got it set up on a tripod, out on the deck, and started testing things out. Amazingly, it worked! Not only was I getting images to show up, they were actually GOOD. You can even see some sun spots.

As the morning progressed, and my photos were turning out far better than I expected, Jarrod pointed out that maybe I should rethink things. Ahead of totality, we could remove the filter, prep my camera, and get it all in place so once it happened, all I needed to do was press a button. So that's what we did, and it was nice having Jarrod here to help me with it, otherwise it surely would have taken longer.

In the final 5 minutes of the partial, it was noticeably dark, in the middle of the day! I had Pink Floyd playing in the background (because I'm a nerd haha) and as the final song on Dark Side of the Moon, "Eclipse," played, we were watching and watching as the moon seemed to speed up to cover the sun. Then the glasses went black, and when I took them off, it was incredible.

Almost there!

The sky was a beautiful dark blue, like at dusk. I was trying to take it all in, looking at the horizon to see the colors of the sunrise, and also keeping my eyes to the sky. I snapped my pictures, checked the viewfinder to see they were in the frame and all was good, and stared in awe. I almost cried, my eyes were tearing up I was so moved. The feeling this provokes in indescribable, and it's different for everyone. And there are some that aren't really impressed, too.

It still went by quick. I wish I could have stared at it longer, but time is fleeting, right? If nothing else, witnessing this proves just that: 2 minutes and 28 seconds flies by way faster than you think. As I tried to revel in the last moments, it became clear the moon was moving away, the diamond ring was about to appear, and it was time to put our glasses back on, and to recover the camera.

I took a few more photos as the moon continued on, but soon decided to take my camera down. I was excited to download my photos to my computer. Though they looked good on the viewfinder, sometimes it's another story once you look at them in larger scale.

But they all turned out amazing!

I am so glad I did get those photos. Taking a photo is a very technical thing. There is planning and there are so many settings you can change and tweek to get the perfect photos, essentially: it takes hard work to get it all right. It's hard to explain that to the average person when you just say "Hey I got this photo!" but that's part of the excitement and, I don't know, accomplishment behind it. These images were taken by ME, not someone else, and that is very special to me.

Today is something I will never forget. I might even try to travel for the next one in 2024, to experience it again. It will pass through southern Missouri, and that's a fairly short drive compared to most. The Missourian got a photo of some people here from France, from Spain, and my doctor had a couple staying with her from Holland to see this. I was skeptical about the crowds they kept claiming would come, but I guess it's true. And I guess you could count me in that club too, if we do travel to Cape in 7 years.

What an amazing day!

My photo!

Rosie the Roomba

For anyone who's ever thought about buying one, I thought I'd share my experiences.

I finally broke down and bought a Roomba over a month ago. I'd been contemplating it for over two years. Vacuuming the house is something that is physically really hard for me to do. So it falls on Jarrod, but it was easy to forget about. We were lucky if we vacuumed the house every two weeks.

Enter Rosie the Roomba, fondly named after the Jetsons' robot maid. She has been cleaning my house ever since, and it's been great. I am really, really glad we finally got a Roomba.

But, it's not exactly a no effort thing, not quite "set it and forget it." Unless you buy a higher end model that has "whole home/multi-room cleaning", you still have to make a point to move the Roomba and charger room to room. The reason is that the Roomba only has so much battery life, and it is 'supposed to' return to its dock when it knows it's finished cleaning. If you were to just set it loose on your whole home, it would surely die of a dead battery in some random spot. Unless you live in a studio apartment that is like 800 sq. ft., most all homes are too big for the Roomba to attempt to cover in one go (again, unless you get a more expensive model.)

We bought a middle-of-the-road model that we felt would suit our needs, and I got a great deal from an Amazon seller. One of the options I wanted was the "tangle-free rollers." The rollers aren't made of normal bristles, but instead these rubbery teeth that whisk up dirt and hair. For those with a pet, this is practically a must-have.

Josie meets Rosie :)

To use it properly like I just described, I made myself a schedule for which room to move it to, and what day. Our Roomba came with a "virtual wall" that creates an invisible line the Roomba will not cross, which is essential for splitting up our kitchen from the rest of the living area.

It cleans well on all surfaces; tile, wood, carpet, it does great. What I really love about it is that it gets under the hard-to-reach areas, like under your bed or under your sofa. It also happens to fit perfectly under our bedroom furniture (the dresser, the night stands, all of it) and I love walking in the bedroom to find it cruising along from underneath our bed to underneath my dresser.

But there are some cons. You definitely have to pick up your space before you use it. If there are shoes or toys laying on the floor, it will either run them over or shove them around. I left a pair of shoes in the laundry room once and it sucked up the laces; luckily I pulled them right out, but still. There are also horror stories of Roombas smearing dog poo around because it cleaned while the owner was at work. There is a schedule function on it, which I have yet to use since I work from home, but that option is there. Say you want it to clean while you're at work, again, you have to make sure you're room is all picked up before you leave the house.

It cleans in a non-sensical pattern, not in straight lines like we would. I do think it misses spots occasionally, even though technically it's not supposed to, but I am not overly concerned because it will get to it next week. And if this does happen, it's primarily in our large living room, not in the bedrooms. For our hardwood, I still dust mop every couple weeks to pick up whatever it may have missed. Futhermore, since it is a round object, it doesn't always get into tight corners. So the dust mop takes care of that. There are times it gets fixated on an area and keeps coming back there 4-5 times, which I don't understand but whatever.

It pushes my floor lamp around, which is sort of comical to watch, but a tad annoying. The base isn't heavy enough to keep it in place. It bangs into things sometimes, too. Sometimes it is really good at sensing it is approaching an object and it slows down and gently taps it, and then other times it just runs right into it. It does better with solid things like walls and such, but not so much with skinny table legs.

Josie was wary of it when we first got it, but she never barked at it or was really scared, so that's good. I think the most annoying thing for Josie is once she finally finds a comfy spot to lay down, she has to get up again because suddenly the Roomba is headed her way, haha.

Overall though, I'm very glad to have it. Our floors are probably the cleanest they've been—consistently—in a long time. The dust bin, though much smaller than a full sized vacuum, always has a good amount of dust and dog hair in it, so it cleans really well. There are no more colossal dust bunnies or piles of dog hair under our bed, which is great. It's a very clever machine, and I've watched it work itself out of tight spots before.

To sum it all up, I'm very happy with it, though it does have a couple drawbacks that mainly revolve around it running into furniture and having to put your room back together when it's done. But the ease of use and convenience outweigh those, for me.

If you're thinking of getting one, my best advice is to do some research. Not all Roombas are created equal, something I didn't realize before. There are 5 current models offered, though you will still find plenty of older ones no longer in production on Amazon. There is a budget model, but based on my research, it sounded like the cheaper models constantly banged into everything, where the higher models do better sensing the room and slowing down as they approach something. There are almost always some super duper Black Friday offers on Roombas, but many times it's on cheaper models or, on Amazon, out-of-production or open-box stuff. If you just want a Roomba but don't care about the options, Black Friday is your best bet. If you do want to be more picky, like myself, do your research and watch Amazon prices, and especially the "other sellers."

If I haven't exhausted the topic and you have any more questions, just ask! :)

Scheduled checkup

I had a checkup in Columbia today. I went into it thinking all would be fine, but not so much...

My PFTs are really down. They are almost exactly at the pre-hospital levels they were in January, before I went in that time.

The weird—and sort of scary—part about this is that I don't feel all that terrible. If you would have asked me yesterday how I thought this would go, I would have said "I think I'm doing alright. I'm not at baseline, sure, but I'm not totally coughing my head off all the time either. I really don't feel all that bad." When my doctor walked in today, she expected me to look in some sort of distress, having a hard time breathing, or at the very least figured I would be coughing a bunch. None of that is happening. Even though it would have surely alerted me to the fact that I am not doing so well, in a way, it's a good thing I'm not coughing my butt off right now and feeling so run down I can barely function.

So I wonder, to myself, if my slide has been so gradual that I haven't even noticed? This is a scary thought, because I am very in tune with my body. My doctors know that about me, too. Or am I possibly kidding myself a little, thinking I'm not all that short of breath, when in fact I am? Also not really a comforting thought, but maybe a bit more plausible. Because honestly, while I was running errands tonight, I was observing just how short of breath I am walking around in a store. Maybe it's more than I was taking notice, or maybe I'm simply making more out of it now that I know, by all accounts, I should be feeling more short of breath. Who knows.

But, alas, this does mean I will be needing a hospital stay fairly soon. Maybe next week, I'm not sure. Columbia is going to be absolutely nuts this weekend with move-in weekend and people flooding in to see the eclipse. I don't really want to deal with that, plus I want to watch the eclipse from the comfort of my own home.

Our game plan right now is we are waiting to decide our game plan, haha. On Friday we'll get the results from my sputum culture, which will guide us as to which medicines we should use. I don't know that a course of oral meds at home will do me much good at this point. Not to mention, every med we use is another opportunity for one of my bugs to grow resistant to it.

It's like Jarrod reminded me: a "tune-up" is exactly that, it's maintenance. It's not intended to always be a fix for a problem. It's been almost six months since my last tune-up and oil change, lol, and that's pretty much my norm these days: going in every six months. So I guess I'm due.

Should I take a picture?

On a radio show I listen to, the guy was ranting about a tall person in front of him at a concert taking a video of a song. He was so aggravated, because it was blocking his view. He was almost yelling "You will NEVER watch that video! Never! Put your phone down!" And I got to thinking... he is so right.

Like almost everyone, I've videoed part of a song at a concert, or a moment I'd like to remember. In the moment, it seems important and like something I don't want to forget. But in reality, yeah, I maybe watch it later that night once we're home, but that's it. I've never gone back—months, years later—and spent my precious time watching old concert videos. Now that he's pointed this out, I might not take a video at a concert ever again. 

Thanks to the ubiquity of smart phones, I think we all (not just young people) have a problem these days with trying to capture everything, whether it's photos or videos, instead of just living in the moment and taking it all in. I don't do this all that often, but I'm still guilty of it. And most times, you miss something because you're fumbling with your phone or trying to watch the concert on your phone screen, you are oblivious what's actually happening in front of you. I know that's happened to me more than a few times, and I'm guessing it happens to almost everyone. 

It's an interesting problem. Long gone are the days of expensive cameras (not to mention, the cost of film) that practically forced the person to think carefully about how they used it. You didn't just take a picture of every single thing in your day, you took pictures of the important things. Now the opposite is true, we take pictures of everything. Is the deluge of photos we'll never look at again a good thing? Is it better to remember it all, than to just remember the important parts? 

With all of this in mind, I've been pondering something: should I even bother to take a photo of the eclipse? The eclipse is less than two weeks away, and I'm really excited. I did some research about taking photos of an eclipse, because it's a tricky thing to do. If I did it, I would be using my good camera, not my phone. However, just like we have to protect our eyes during an eclipse (before and after totality) you also have to protect a camera; there are solar filters you need to use. Pointing a camera directly at the sun can cause major damage to the image sensor, and I would guess the same could be true for my iPhone's camera. Which means, the only time I might get to take a photo is during totality, when it's safe to look at the eclipse with the naked eye, and that will only last for 2 minutes 29 seconds. That's not a very long time. And it's something I will never, ever see again. And the photo probably wouldn't even turn out that good. My camera is a good camera, don't get me wrong, but it's still not a professional setup.

Initially, I figured I would take a photo of the eclipse, but now I don't think I'm going to. I might take a picture of myself, Jarrod, and Josie, in the darkness, but trying to get a good shot of the eclipse itself would take a lot of trial and error, in such a short window of time. I would rather just sit back and enjoy the moment as it is.

Friday's Fair Fast 5

Fast Five: Fair edition!

1. Jarrod and I are not going to the fair this year. Anymore, if we don't care to see one of the main stage bands, we don't go. 
2. Plus, it's gotten more difficult for me to go to the fair. Being in the heat can really bother my breathing, so if it's ridiculously hot, it makes it hard. And there is the dust and dirt, and the second-hand smoke that sometimes you just can't get away from. I almost always have a really rough next couple days if we do go.
3. Every year during fair season, I wonder to myself how pig scrambles are still a thing. I get it, it can be funny. But it's hard to ignore the shrieks and squeals of terror from the piglets. It is so obvious the animals are stressed out to the max with all these kids running around. I'm not a member of PETA or anything, but the event strikes me as kind of cruel.
4. This year the fair has a moving 9/11 memorial thing as an exhibit. Four years ago, when we went to the Vietnam Moving Wall, a memorial replica that travels around the country, it was very somber, as I think all memorials are meant to be. The Moving Wall was set up at the fairgrounds, but it was the only thing out there at the time. It seems weird to me that you would visit this 9/11 memorial—at the fair. The exhibit is going to be set up by the north gate where you'll be surrounded by constant noise from the shuttle buses, all the loud events at the motocross arena, and crowd noise. I know this exhibit travels to fairs all the time, and it sounds interesting but, in my humble opinion, does not seem best suited for a fair setting (something I'd argue is the creators fault, not necessarily our fair board for bringing it here.) 
5. In a way, I guess enjoying walking through that exhibit could just come down to how easily you can tune out background noise. I can't, and it gets really, really annoying sometimes. I can't stand what I've termed "conflicting sounds," like when the radio and the TV are on at the same time and the sounds overlap. My brain tries to hear and process both. I am completely unable to tune one out. Some people, I've found, have no problem with this, and can focus on one set of sounds or not even notice the other one. It's for this reason, also, I've noticed that some people are less annoyed by ticking sounds or beeps or repetitive noises. There have been many times in my life where I point out an annoying noise, and someone is like "Huh? I didn't even notice that." while I'm going nuts like "OMG make it stop! How do you not hear that?!" It's fascinating, really, the huge difference between people.
   
   So I ask you: can you block out background sounds? or are you like me? For this reason I've also begun to get very annoyed while shopping at Kohl's, because they have a different type of music playing in many areas (pop music in juniors, rock music in men's, lighter music in women's, etc.) If I'm standing in a spot where the two bleed together (which is common), it drives me bonkers and I have to move soon otherwise I get anxious and upset.

#dogsofinstagram

Storytime!

So, Josie has her own Instagram account, if you didn't know that. She has over 600 followers from all over the world, most of them being cairn terriers like her. I know, it's mega dorky and probably lists me in the crazy-dog-mom column, but it's actually quite fun. It's hard to explain, but after a while, you kind of start to feel a connection with these other dog owners. Some dogs have actually started sending each other postcards in the mail. Back in May, I actually met a woman from California who is a sweet lady and owner of 4 cairn terriers (who follow Josie, and we follow them too.) It all came about because in one of her photos, she mentioned they were prepping for a trip to Purina Farms for a big event. I messaged her saying I lived nearby, and she wanted to meet up! It was great! 

Today, one of Josie's Scottish cairn pals had a photo saying they were raising money for cystic fibrosis.

Record scratch... what!? Really? I had to reload the picture twice to make sure my eyes weren't making things up.

They had a link in the profile for their little charity type thing. I sent them a private message and got a reply from the dog's mom, who has CF. She was pretty excited I had reached out.

But wow. Like, what are the odds? How amazing, that I would 'meet' someone from Scotland with CF via my dog's Instagram account? Crazy.

Friday Fast 5

1. A couple weeks back, I got sunburnt in 5 major spots while we were at the Lake. It sucked.
2. Speaking of that, and my deep regret of not being more diligent of putting on sunscreen, remember "The Sunscreen Song"? If not, here's a link for reminder. That song's been on my brain a lot in light of my sunburn. I liked it back in 1999, but I admit that as I get older, more and more pieces of advice in it ring true. 
3. Allow me to nerd out for a second here... but I play this video game on my iPad called Hay Day. It's a cute farming game. I've been playing it for two years, it's the longest I've ever played a game, and I still love it. The game is currently celebrating its 5th birthday, and the developers are making a big deal and having fun with it. But really, what an accomplishment! When was the last time you heard of anyone playing Trivia Crack? Or Farmville? Phone games typically burst on the scene, have a huge following for a year—if they're lucky—and then get deleted, but it's rare that a game has staying power to last this long. They still update the game and add new content, which definitely helps, and I am always seeing new farms. It's just a great little game and I hope it'll stay around another 5 years.
4. We need better Asian restaurants out here. China King is not cutting it. Jarrod and I love Asian food, and we both constantly wish we had either a Thai or Vietnamese place. Or both, but I won't get too greedy, haha. Overall, though, I think we just need more restaurant choices in general, places that aren't fast food. But if they were Asian restaurants, that would be great. 
5. I saw a young woman at work today who was wearing a light yellow dress, and dark blue underwear. I feel like young women these days never wear slips under their dresses anymore, like no one's even heard of them! I wish I could send out a PSA or something, begging the young ladies of today to please buy a damn slip (or learn to better match the color of your underwear with the color of your garment.) I'm tired of seeing so many outlines or knowing the color of your underwear. It's not proper, and there's a simple solution. Most of all I guess I'm just baffled at how much they seemingly don't care about this. Seriously, do none of you turn around in the mirror, hold your dress against yourself, and check if your underwear are visible through the cloth? Come on!

30 Weekend

It all started on Friday. You already heard about the "Doughnut Debacle" of Friday morning. Jarrod tried to surprise me with breakfast, and I ruined it. Oh man, little did I know the surprises that were in store...

Around 11 a.m. he called me upstairs from my office. He had a card, wrapped gift, and suitcase set out for me. He wanted to give me my gift early, and then told me I needed to pack for the night. We were going to stay somewhere, but that was all he told me. The original plan (for Saturday morning) was I was supposed to go to the mall with my mom. That was made up and not happening. Mom and dad were watching the dog, but we had to come back mid-Saturday because they couldn't watch her all weekend. When I said "Huh, I wonder what they're up to, I wonder why." he replied "I don't know, I think it was something with the Corvette Club."

So I finished work at 1:00, met with a lady at church, called mom, and we headed out around 2:30.

I still didn't know where we were headed, but we ended up at the Moonrise Hotel in the Loop. We've stayed there once before during another staycation, which this kind of was in itself. We were both getting hungry, but I found out we had a dinner reservation at 6:00. Again, I had no idea where.

Staring at the chocolate...

We walked to dinner about three blocks away, which was at... The Melting Pot! We've never been, but it was great. It's definitely an "experience" as they call it. The food was so good, but there was so
much, both of us felt ridiculously full afterwards. We did their four-course thing and started with the cheese, had a salad, then our meats, then chocolate for dessert. Our waitress brought me a rose, as well, which was a nice touch. Jarrod couldn't remember if he added that to his reservation or not, lol! It wasn't on the bill, so I guess it was from them since they knew it was my birthday.

We walked back to our hotel to go to the rooftop bar, which is a really cool spot if you're never been. It was a nice night out too.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the hotel before heading onto other surprises. Ever since we left on Friday I was so excited to see what in the world Jarrod had planned! It was all in his hands, I had no clue what we would be doing.

So we left the hotel to head to the art museum, yay! We walked through most of it, except the new addition since we did that last time. Jarrod kept saying he had to watch our time, so we went to the second floor to check out the American and Native American art. It wasn't that great and I blazed through it. Jarrod kind of lingered a little bit. We finished up a bit early and I felt up to walking back to the truck; he had to park far away, but it was all downhill. We headed to lunch which was at...

Mai Lee in Brentwood, a Vietnamese place we wanted to try. We both got our usual pho and it was delicious! I had commented as we pulled up maybe we should check out Total Wine if we had time. Our lunch only took 30 minutes so we definitely did, and apparently needed to...

Total Wine is impressive, from a wine standpoint. Since we're more beer people, I'd say Friar Tuck's is better for that, but both are good places. It's a shame we don't have something like that closer to here. Anyways, I picked up a bottle of wine recommended by Wanda, and Jarrod got some beers. It took a while to check out, but then we were on our way home.

Driving home, Jarrod said I should go ahead and do my aerobika because he didn't think I'd have much time for my vest before we had to turn around and head back out to... whatever else he had planned. So I did. He also suggested I grab a hat before we left.

We pulled into town, up the road, turned onto our road. And there were a bunch of cars, which I kind of wondered about. But it's not uncommon for our neighbors at the end of the street to have a bunch of people over, so it wasn't too weird. Then I saw our garage door was open... and there were a ton of people in our driveway!

How it looked from my view.

Oh-my-goodness. How amazing it was! There were so many people here, from all over, to surprise me for my birthday! It was so awesome. I got out of the truck, and my dad was the first to greet me with a hug. I couldn't hold it in, I started crying. I was so moved. It was a bit of a whirl, I can't even really remember if I made it back around to Jarrod to give him a hug or say something, but oh man. What an amazing feeling.

How it looked from everyone else's view.

I walked inside to find my grandma Watson had made it down here too, which was awesome. The house was decorated to a T with banners and photos, an awesome little board with all kinds of facts about the year I was born, a lovely cake, food, drinks, the deck had tables and a popup tent over it, and I was told to also go downstairs. I found a big 30 covered in photos, and a jungle of balloons (that's what I'll call it, lol) with pictures of me hanging on them.

The rest of the day was spent mingling with everyone. I tried so hard to spend a little bit of time with every person. I wished I could have sat down and spent like an hour with everyone, but that's just not possible. Slowly, people started heading on their ways, and it was just a group of our friends that remained.

I told Jarrod I wanted the whole backstory to all of this, once everyone left. So once they did, he started diving into that...

Turns out he'd been planning this since February. February! And even so, he said that he knew he wanted to do this for me before my 29th birthday. Wow. That's just... awesome.

For the longest time, he was trying to figure out how to get me out of the house, so everyone would have plenty of time to set up our house, and determined that us staying somewhere Friday would be best and seem least suspicious.

Turns out while we were eating breakfast at the hotel, his mom and dad, my parents, and Julia all got to our house around 9:00 a.m. that morning to start setting up.

He had started asking for addresses from people months ago because, as he told them, "I can't find the address book, and I obviously can't ask Jamie where it is." Ha! Formal invitations were sent out—who knew?—with RSVP to his mom, who was even out of town during a lot of the planning leading up to this.

Then all kinds of minute details came into play...

Like the day before, when I called my mom? He had JUST gotten off the phone with them, like right as I was calling her. He was in the garage and had called them to tell them what the deal was so their stories would match, and they should say that they had a Corvette Club thing and that was why they couldn't watch the dog all weekend. Wow, what are the odds. And just in time.

When we were leaving the art museum, we were ahead of schedule, and he was debating every little way to draw it out more. That's why we went to check out the American art, but then I rushed through it. He tried to look at some pieces longer, not because he was interested, but because he wanted to kill time, haha! And then I said I felt up to walking to the truck, which was perfect because that took more time, lol.

We pretty much NEEDED to go to Total Wine after lunch, because otherwise we would arrived at home way too soon. The invite said for people to be here at 2:30 sharp, with the plan that we would get here at 3:00. Jarrod even doubled back and looked over a aisles more than once to kill more time so we wouldn't be too early.

And there were so many other little things.

It makes sense, now, why he was on his phone more that day. And why it wasn't synced up with his truck, something he almost always does. I had noticed those things, but didn't think much of them.

I think a lot of people were wondering if I was truly surprised, but I was! It was such a great day, and made me feel so special and so very loved by so many people.

(If you haven't seen my video on Facebook, I posted one the other day thanking everyone for coming out and telling a little bit of this story.)

Friday Fast 5

1. A new book store opened in Washington yesterday. I wish them the best, but they have a definite uphill battle to fight, it is just impossible to compete with online sites like Amazon. 
2. Jarrod and I went to the Thirty Seconds to Mars & Muse concert on Tuesday. What an awesome show! Jarrod isn't so much a Muse fan, but I am, but we both like "Mars" so he bought me tickets for Valentine's back in February. Thirty Seconds to Mars was really good, although they were just the opener, so they only played for 45ish minutes. The lead singer, Jared Leto, busted his knee in another show two days prior, so I think he was maybe a little less energetic than normal. That's not to say he mailed it in, he definitely didn't, but I would guess it would have been just a tad better if he could have ran around like normal. Then Muse... oh wow. I've read bits and pieces through the years saying that they are one of the absolute best acts to see live, and I'd agree. They put on an awesome show, and even Jarrod was impressed. I'd totally go see them again in a heartbeat if the chance arises. And we both already want to go see Mars again as a headliner, I know it would be an even better show. Luckily, Mars is releasing a new album this year, and Muse announced they will have a new one in 2018, so I think we will probably have our wishes granted in the near future.
3. This upcoming week is the Race Across America bike race. If you never read the story from two years ago when I met the team Love, Sweat, & Gears, I recommend it. It is one of my favorite blogs I've ever written and is still a story that blows me away. I hope I can get a chance to say hello to them again this year.
4. I saw a video yesterday that was interesting... it was in some foreign country, two people were using pitch forks to stir up dirt on their farm, and there was a pack of terriers. As they worked the soil, rats came out—I didn't even know rats lived in the ground like that, like a mole. The dogs went after them, caught them, shook them in the their jaws and killed them. Every time my Josie shakes her head, with a toy in her mouth, so hard it seems like she'd hurt her neck, that's that instinct right there; that's exactly what those dogs were doing to those rats. It was A, kinda gross, the size of some of these rats was disgusting. B, kinda brutal, even though completely natural. And C, kinda neat to see the dogs doing the jobs they were bred to do. Terriers are ratters, they were bred to hunt vermin and protect farms back in the old days, and somewhere in the world they obviously still serve their very useful purpose.
5. While I'm talking terriers, have I ever told you that Josie is left-pawed? She is!

Doughnut Debacle

I have to tell the following story, because it is just too funny...

I woke up at 5:30am coughing; decided to get up and go do my treatment. Once I was done, I was really awake, and decided going back to bed was pointless. I thought to myself I wonder when Shulte's opens? They open at 6am. It was 6:05am, perfect!

I threw on some clothes and left to go get fresh doughnuts as a nice little treat and surprise (and it happens to be National Doughnut Day, which is a total coincidence.) All the while, Jarrod is still asleep, he has no idea I left. I got back, doughnuts in hand, made covfefe, and sat on the couch to wait for Jarrod to get up and get ready for work.

He finally got up at 6:45, which meant he was running late. He came out to the living room to find me sitting there, on my iPad, and asked "What are you doing?" I told him how I woke up early, blah blah blah. But that I'd been to Shulte's and back, and I had doughnuts! He asked why I didn't come wake him up sooner (since he'd be kinda late for work.) I didn't realize the time.

Then he laid down on the couch—weird, seeing as he was just commenting about being late—I asked what was up. He told me... He actually didn't have to go to work, he took the day off. And he was planning to make me breakfast while I was doing my vest (which takes 30 minutes.) He had no idea I had gotten up early, only noticed I wasn't actually in bed right before he got up at 6:45, hoped I was vesting and he could surprise me. But no.

Oh man... what are the odds. My surprise ruined his surprise.

Friday Fast 5

1. I stopped by H&M the last time I was at the mall. In my younger years, I liked H&M. Maybe it was because my first introduction to the store was during a New York trip in high school. At the time, H&M was a European import store, only found in major cities. Then they expanded to malls, and they are fairly common stores now. Anyways, back in the day I loved that store. It was hip, the clothes were cute and cheap. But now, not so much. Maybe it's because I am willing to spend a little more on my clothes now for better quality, or maybe it's because I'm a pickier shopper, or maybe it's because I'm an adult now. Everything in there is just so cheap, and I can't help but wonder if after like 5 washes it will look like a piece of junk.
2. I stopped in another store I went to in my teen years: Hot Topic. In high school, as I started to create my own weird style, I definitely dived into the punk attire. Plus Hot Topic was my store where I found all of my sarcastic buttons. I don't really resemble their main target customer anymore (that day I was wearing a striped fitted shirt, skinny jeans, and floral Nikes), but I ducked in there to check out the t-shirt walls. I was greeted by a worker wearing blue lipstick. It was kind of nice.
3. This week I took a self-imposed hiatus from my iPad. I just felt like I was on my phone and iPad too much lately. I turned it off on Monday morning. At first, I took note of the times I would have usually reached for my iPad (especially when I did my vest) but fortunately I didn't feel any withdrawal issues not using it. It hasn't been that bad, honestly. 
4. I've cut myself twice in the past two months, which is more than I have in the past ten years. Ugh!
5. Does anyone else find it hard to concentrate when reading a book? My friend and I were talking about this the other night. As kids, we both were able to read for hours (her even more so than me) but now, we're lucky to make it a few pages without losing focus, thinking about all the stuff we need to do soon, or dozing off. I'll probably expand on this in another post of its own, but I'm wondering if others have this problem too?

Favorite short of the day

I found this video and wanted to share. It's a sweet little animated short. I won't preface it too much, other than it brings up some great questions to ponder. What does work/life balance mean? Where do creatives fall in a world that isn't built for them? How do you keep that creative spark alive while still being a responsible adult? How do we unknowingly foster, or squash, creativity in children?

Enjoy! And don't forget to stop and smell the roses, appreciate the art and beauty around you, and thank the artsy weirdos in the world who strive to keep it that way!

(If video does not show up in the email, click on the blog title to see it.)