My hair does this thing, usually when it’s humid out or I’ve been working out or something.
Can you see it?
Here, I'll point at it.
It curls! In tight little ringlets! And you only see two here, but trust me, on a “good” day, my whole head is full of those things.
It makes me laugh. 
I’m doing much better today than I was yesterday. I went to my chiropractor appointment after work and bemoaned the pain in my leg to my doctor there and she told me to go home and have Justin massage my leg. Which he’d already offered to do.
So I went home and asked Justin to rub my leg. And he did and it was wonderful. It hurt, but it felt better. And then he covered me in blankets and let me sleep until about 9:30, when he offered me food left over from our anniversary dinner (baby back ribs, mashed potatoes, and cheese biscuits). I ate delicious food, poked at my computer a few minutes (gotta log my food so I can get my massage), and curled back up for sleep again.
When Justin came to bed, I asked him to massage my leg again, and he’s a wonderful man because he rubbed my leg again. And then I was out for the night.
When my alarm rang this morning at 6:00, I wouldn’t have minded sleeping for a few more hours, but I have multiple projects on the table right now, so I had to get moving. And when I got out of bed and stood on my leg, it didn’t hurt at all. AT ALL! It’s completely better. I have some bruising, but that’s probably related to all the scratches on my legs from the yard work over the weekend.
I’m hearing again and again that what I should do the next time I get a cramp is to stand on the leg or pull my toes up toward my knees. Both options sound terrible, but apparently they’re wonderful once the pain stops, and that the pain will stop more quickly and result in less residual pain. So I guess if it happens again, I’ll either have Justin push on my toes or I’ll have to figure out how to get myself out of bed so I can stand up. But I’m telling you right now I hope it never happens again. Ever.
To that end, I’m trying to figure out why it happened at all. There are so many options, but the primary reasons apparently are dehydration or a lack of potassium, magnesium, or calcium. I thought I had calcium supplements in my multivitamin but turns out that I don’t. So I have to either increase my dairy intake or start with a supplement. And I might just do the supplement anyway because this girl doesn’t want osteoporosis. And I have to figure out what all has potassium in it other than bananas. And keep on drinking my 64 oz plus of water.
Anyway, since my leg is feeling so much better and since I got a lot of sleep last night and I’m much more rested, I’m having a much better day than yesterday. I’m actually getting work accomplished and catching up on projects, and with any luck, I won’t have to work on Friday afternoon again. It depends on how this document goes this afternoon, though. I was supposed to finish it today, not start it . . . .
But we’re keeping positive! And I’m going to go step outside for a little while and see what the weather is like. It’s supposed to be lovely. The only thing that could make today better would be if I could take the afternoon off and go finish my yard work.
I’m having a difficult day today, physically. Yesterday afternoon, I smashed the side of my foot into a large, metal, immovable object. Oddly, I didn’t feel how much it hurt until I got home after Zumba and took off my socks. I spent a good amount of time with an ice pack on my foot to take the pain out.
While setting up the table for our dinner last night (while Justin ran to the restaurant to pick it up), I scratched the back of my hand on some unidentifiable sharp object, leaving a two-inch long mark on the back of my hand. I also stepped on the metal mechanism for the folding stairs that lead into the attic and scratched the side of my un-bruised foot.
And all of that would be fine. They match the scratches that cover the lower part of my legs from yard work we did over the weekend. (Pictures of the yard work coming soon-ish.) Scratches and bruises are familiar; I get those all the time.
What caught me by surprise was the 3 AM leg cramp. This is my second leg cramp in less than a week, and my second ever that I can remember in my adult life. I don’t get leg cramps. Justin gets them every now and then, though, and they looked really painful.
THEY ARE.
The first one I got was early Wednesday morning. I’ve been trying to remember which leg it was in. While I wrote down that I got one, I didn’t think to write down which leg it was in. Last night, I thought my first cramp was in my left leg, but now I’m more and more convinced it was in my right leg.
Either way, the first one wasn’t too terrible. I mean, it hurt. It woke me up and I said “Ow.” and I put my foot up in the air to try to stretch it out so it would stop hurting. And then it hurt for several hours. It wasn’t pleasant. But it wasn’t so bad that I woke up Justin and once the muscle relaxed, I went back to sleep.
Last night, I woke up shouting in pain. My right leg calf muscle was spasming and I couldn’t get it to straighten out. Justin woke up when I shouted and asked what was wrong and how he could help. I asked him to go get me some ice, and he ran downstairs to get some, and then came back upstairs, gently lifted my leg onto his lap and massaged it. That helped, but the muscle kept cramping. It would relax for a while, and then tighten up, I would cry out in pain, Justin would massage the muscles in my leg, and it would relax again.
I don’t know how long it went on, but it felt like forever. I think I can handle a lot of pain, but I lay there crying as my muscle clenched up. When it finally finished, I was terrified to move my leg because of the fear that moving the muscles would make it start all over again. Justin helped me get situated and put the ice pack under my leg and we both went back to sleep.
Needless to say, my leg still hurts this morning. I couldn’t get it to extend all the way when I got up. It warms up after a while and I’m able to almost walk normally on it, but if I sit still for any length of time, or have to keep my foot flexed to drive my car, it tightens up again and I have to work it loose. I’ve got a heat pack on it and I’ll be reheating that again and again today to help ease the pain there. I’ve got my leg propped up on my trash can so the leg can relax. I’ll be taking off my shoe here in a little bit so the bruise on my foot isn’t so aggravated.
I feel like I’m just falling apart here!
While driving into town yesterday afternoon, Justin mentioned that I hadn’t written anything here for a while. I told him that I just didn’t feel like I had much to say lately. Things are going pretty well and it’s been nice and quiet around the house and I’ve been enjoying the well-going nice and quiet.
I have been up to things though. I’ve been working on switching things around for spring. Saturday afternoon I reorganized the porch closet so I could get to the gardening tools and the grill. I reorganized the dining room closet to move the scarves and mittens into storage and the picnic supplies and bicycle helmets up front. I reorganized the hamper drawer at the bottom of the steps, packing away the ice scraper and getting the sun screen, bug spray, and umbrellas up and accessible. And while I was at it, I reorganized under the kitchen sink because it was just a mess and I wanted to be able to grab Windex without crawling all the way to the back of the cabinet.
Yesterday I organized 3 months of receipts, checking them against the categories they were marked as in my budgeting and finding out how many I’m still missing (about 5, for the whole 3 months). It’s a long task, but rewarding in the end, when I’ve got envelope after envelope of receipts all organized and in rows. It makes it really easy, come tax time. I’ve got everything marked down in my finance program on my computer, so I can search for whatever I need, and then I can go to the envelope for that month and look for the physical receipt and read that. If I need a receipt, I can find it in under 5 minutes. It’s a system that requires constant maintenance, but one that can really pay off in the end.
I finished my book for March, but I’m not sure yet what I’d like to read for April. I’ve got to go look through my bookshelf and see what I haven’t read yet, see if anything sparks any interest. The last book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as some of his others. Maybe I should do a book review for each book I read? It would be good for my LibraryThing account. And my GoodReads account, too. And if I decide to get rid of the book, it’d be good for my BookMooch account, too.
I have a lot of online book-related accounts . . . .
I lost 2 more pounds last week, bringing my current total weight loss to 16 pounds. I’m very excited about that.
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIII for the last couple weeks, off and on. It’s a BEAUTIFUL game and I’m having a really wonderful time playing it. It is, so far, the only game we have for our PS3, but that’s because we bought it to play BluRay discs on, and not for playing video games. But let me tell you, this game is AMAZINGLY beautiful. I could sit there just looking at the pretty pictures for hours and be perfectly content. But there’s also game play and that makes it even better!
I worked a full day again on Friday because they switched up the schedule on me and now I’m behind on a couple of projects. It’s frustrating. I keep hoping that I’ll finally catch up to everything, and then they go and move things on me. I’m getting really frustrated with working more than 40 hours a week.
My allergies are starting to pick up. It’s about the same time as last year, so I’m not terribly surprised. My eyes itch. I sneeze a lot. I’m tired. I think the grass is out to get me.
And these are just a glimpse of the things that I’m ready to talk about. There are other things, like improvements to our bedroom and the yard and my photo collection, that I’m not ready to talk about yet because I want to have everything finished before I talk about it. But we’re making good progress on those things and I hope to have more news on those soon.
Until then, I just have this one last thing for today:
Two years ago today, I stood on shaking knees and pinched toes with sweat dripping down the middle of my back, between friends and family on one side and a gazebo on the other, with candles that kept being blown out by the wind, across from the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, who promised to support and protect me, and who slid a ring as far as it could go onto my stress-swollen finger. We danced our first dance to music I can’t remember, and his grandfather cut in before the end of the song. We celebrated and smiled and danced and ate and had a wonderful time with our most precious friends and family. And then we cleaned up and went home before the rain started.
Since then, we’ve gone through sicknesses and job troubles, celebrations and parties, days when communication failed and days when we worked together in prefect synchronization, days when there wasn’t enough money and days when there was more money than we expected, days when the world in my head didn’t make sense, but he stuck beside me anyway, days when we didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, but we pulled and pushed each other up and stood on our feet and helped each other make it through the day.
People keep making comments about us being newlyweds and honeymooning and that the glow will eventually fade, but we believe that the honeymoon is the rest of the marriage and that we’re the ones actually doing it right. He brings me flowers when he goes to the grocery store. I wake him up in the morning with cuddles and kisses. We call each other at noon and again when we leave work, and sometimes more than that just to hear each other talk.
I love you, Justin Barnett, and I am so happy to be your wife! Let’s keep it going for another 80 years or so!
So I called AAA and they came out and changed the tire on my car for me. Our AAA plan was a Christmas gift, so it didn’t cost us anything to have them do it and I felt more comfortable having someone more qualified than me putting a tire on my car. The guys who changed it out suggested that I might need to buy a new tire and told me where I should go to get that done. So I got into my car with the sad little doughnut tire and drove to Tire Kingdom. There a lovely woman took my tire and my keys and said she’d have the guys look at it and see if it could be repaired.
I went and sat on the porch of a nearby empty building and read my book. It’s a great building, completely open inside without even a finished floor or electrical or finished interior walls. It makes my head go all kinds of crazy about what I would do with such a building. Answer: I would turn it into four different businesses. The first would be a studio for yoga and Zumba classes and whatever else I could get in there–massage, weights, whatever. Because, Mom, you’ve inspired me, and when I get down to weight, I want to be certified to teach fitness classes, specifically yoga and Zumba. So the front of the building, that looks over a small pond with a fountain and a great patio, would be a fitness studio. Next would be a bookstore. At the end would be a small cafe with smoothies and healthy sandwiches and stuff like that. And the other one I can’t talk about, but it would hold a small set of offices, too.
In the lot across the street from this building, I’d set up a play set for kids to play on and map out how far around it is so parents could let their kids play on the jungle gym while they walk or run laps.
I had a lot of fun thinking about what I could do with this building. Trust me, what I’ve mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg. I have a lot of thoughts about this.
Anyway, after getting splashed with pond water from the fountain for a while, I went and sat in the lawn and read my book some more until finally going to find out what the story was with my car. It turns out that they were able to simply patch the tire, meaning it was only a $23 fix instead of a $100 replacement. For the record: Nails are stupid things to leave lying on the road.
So it all turned out well. I still have to figure out what to do about the paint on my car, but I’m hopeful. I just have to do some research and legwork.
In other news, completely unrelated, I’ve started up my LiveJournal account again where I used to write about my diet progress, frustrations, and successes. It’s over here if you’re interested in reading it. Because this site here isn’t really the place to write about everything I want to write about when it comes to my diet. Feel free to pop in over there if you’d like to know how that’s going. You should be able to leave comments without having a LiveJournal account, but it’s going to give you one of those funky word things to verify that you’re not a computer.
And, of course, if you don’t care about my weight-loss, you can just stick around here and I’ll continue to babble about whatever it is I babble about over here.
But right now I think I should go to bed.