99 Problems

This whole week has been pretty crazy.  We have been trying to clean up the yard and part of that meant moving a large dog kennel from the middle of the back yard to the fence line along with a lot of mowing, weeding, planting, and trimming.  At some point during that ordeal I pinched a nerve in my neck.  By the end of the night, I could barely move my head.  On top of that I had started to develop a headache and a low grade fever.  That was Saturday evening. 

On Sunday, I woke up in full-blown misery.  My neck still felt terrible.  My headache was awful.  My legs hurt.  My arms hurt.  My lower back hurt and I still had a low grade fever.  I took two extra strength Tylenol and went about trying to get my spring cleaning done.  The Tylenol helped but after a few hours I felt lousy again; achy, tired, queasy, just generally blah.  I figured out I was dealing more with a virus or bacterial infection than just simple muscle strains and took two more Tylenol and took a nap.  When  I got up, I found my husband asleep at the computer and my boys elbow deep in flour that they had taken from my canister and dumped on the floor.  Grr.

I swept that up. Then got the kids to bed and watched a bit of The Voice on TiVo.  I decided to get a little work done on the computer so I sat there for about 30 minutes.  I thought nothing of the occasional dog sneezes I heard coming from the living room area and continued on with my work.  When I finished, this is what greeted me:

She had rooted through the flour in the trash. Managed to spread it all over the floor once again.  Had it all over her nose, in her mouth, even on her back.  She looked as happy as a fly on poop.  I could've killed her.  Instead I wiped her nose and back off with a baby wipe and let her outside to pee. I took two more Tylenol, cleaned up the mess, put her to bed and then went to bed myself.  Ah, Sunday.

The next morning I woke up fully expecting to feel better and I did...for about an hour.  Then my stiff neck came back, my low grade fever came back, my muscle aches came back and I started to develop a rash on the backs of my hands. Two more Tylenol.  It decided to stop being as effective as it was before so my low grade fever stuck around along with the stiff neck, although the other body aches lessened in severity.  I tried to finish my spring cleaning but with the fatigue and general aches and pains I mostly just sat around feeling gross.  That was Monday. 

On Tuesday I woke up feeling as sick as ever, this time the backs of my knees hurt, my chest hurt, my entire back hurt, my ribs hurt and my arms were weak.  The low grade fever was still hanging around.  The rash had developed on my feet as well as my hands, mostly around the ankles.  I was tired of being sick so I made a doctors appointment, got the kids off to Grandma's and went back to bed.  The intake nurse decided to swab my throat for strep even though I really hadn't had a sore throat, barely had a cough, and my fever had always been less than 101 degrees. The doctor said she was pretty sure that my problem was viral but my strep test came back positive.  She thinks I might be a carrier but gave me a script for antibiotics anyways.  If I wasn't feeling better in a few days, I was to take the antibiotics.  If I was then I didn't need them.  Her main instruction: No More Cleaning.  Rest.  Rest. Rest. Rest.   Fine. 

I went home and took a loooong nap.  Then got up to take Middle to his t-ball game at 6pm.  Felt a bit better.   When I got home I found the dogs had gotten sick all over the floor.  Great.  Cleaned that up, got the kids dinner, and settled into my big, comfy chair.  By bedtime I was starting to feel the aches come back, although not as bad, and the fever started to come back.  Two more Tylenol and off to bed. 

By this morning my neck was no longer stiff, my headache was gone, and so were the rest of my muscle aches.  The pain in the back of my knees was still there though and now I had pain in almost all my other major joints: hip, elbow, wrist, ankles.  My rash had also gotten just a bit worse, much more red, a little itchy.  No more Tylenol, just in case it was causing the rash.  I went back to bed.   When I got up my right knee was swollen, my fever was basically gone (so far), both of the backs of my knees still hurt but my other joints weren't in quite as much pain.  Getting better.  But wait...why is there a stinging feeling in the top of my foot?  It felt sort of like stinging nettles.  It itched.  I figured it was the rash.  Until it started to swell.  That's when I found him.  This guy:

The pictures aren't so good but this dude is a yellow sac spider.  Probably C. inclusum.  I found him in my bed, right were my foot had been, dead as a doornail.  The little turd bit me.   These are spiders commonly found in homes and just last night I had seen him/her whichever, dangling just above my head in the hallway.  I gave him an evil glare, my hubbs laughed hysterically, but I left the spider alone.  Dang.  Then this morning I saw him crawling along the hallway floor.  Youngest told me that it was important to "be nice to spiders".  Indoctrination from his father, no doubt.  So I left the spider alone.   And this is how he repays me.  Although, perhaps the giant foot attempting to crush him made him a little anxious, which could be why he bit me.

These spiders are cytotoxic.  Meaning their venom is intended to kill cells and tissue. The bite commonly results in sharp or stinging pain (check), localized redness (check) and localized swelling (check).  Usually the reaction to the bite of one of these guys is fairly mild, comparable to a bee sting, but occasionally it can result in an ulcerated wound similar to that of a brown recluse, only not nearly as severe.  So far, in my case, the bite has been extremely mild.  After a few hours I had no more swelling, no more pain, and only a slight brownish/reddish discoloration (almost like a light bruise although without the discomfort) around the area where he had sunk his tiny little fangs. 

My boys felt sorry for me though since I am still a little sick and now had a spider bite me on top of everything else so while I made the fatal mistake of dosing in my chair, they decided to make me a snack. 

 The first snack came from Middle and included strawberries covered in about 1/4 of sugar along with some fruit punch with added sugar.   I ate as much as I could before my pancreas started to beg for mercy. 

 The next snack was made by Youngest.   It included a lovely mixture of sugar, white flour, cornmeal and cornstarch with lots and lots of water.  Middle was pretty sure it was poisonous.  The bubbling didn't make it any more appetizing.  I pretended to eat that one in my bedroom, while dumping it down the toilet.  He was very proud. 

By this point I realized there could very well be a monumental disaster in my kitchen so I headed off to investigate.  There I found Youngest's third course for me.  Flour, pepper, some kind of brown liquid, more pepper, lots and lots of pepper, and cornstarch.  Oh my.  And as suspected my kitchen was a mess.  Pepper, flour, sugar all over the floor, counters and chairs which Middle had tried to mop up by sloshing water all over the place.  I couldn't be mad though because their heart was definitely in the right place. 

Hopefully the rest of this week will be far less eventful than it started out.

Artisan Sourdough Bread and Crochet Sandwhiches

Our Random Acts of Kindness experiment has gone really well.  The kids have really enjoyed getting involved, which is great.  Some of our random acts included cheering on the walkers for the Multiple Sclerosis relay, baking treats for shelter animals and our own furry friends, writing get-well-soon letters to the grandfather of one of Oldest's friends, and picking up trash at the nature center while we hiked.   When we started I thought 30 days would be hard to accomplish but now that we are almost to the end of our month long RAK, it seems like it all went pretty quickly.  Hopefully we have developed some "kindness habits" that will stick around for awhile.

I had mentioned in a previous post (although I don't remember which one) that I was knitting and crocheting play food for the kids to use in their toy kitchen.   Well, I finally got around to taking pictures of the sandwiches I made for them.

 

Peanut Butter and Jelly. 

 

 The jelly in the picture came out looking a little blue but in reality it's purple (grape).

Sandwich number 2.

This is the ham, roast beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato and pickle sandwich.

The bread and peanut butter and jelly pattern came from craft frog.  The ham and tomatoes I found on the lion brand website (free membership required).  The roast beef was my own adaptation of the knit ham from lion brand. However, instead of knitting in stockinette, I knitted it in garter stitch.  The lettuce pattern comes from the hook, yarn and needles blog.  The pickles were my own creation.  A simple crochet in the round pattern with single crochet stitches.  It took me a weekend to make and the kids LOVE it.  

I've also been baking more bread.  Making bread and noodles seems to be the majority of my time spent in the kitchen these days.  Recently I tried my hand at artisan sourdough bread.  

I really like the process of making the artisan style loaf, which is totally different than the traditional loaf I usually make.   There were fewer steps with this loaf of bread than the traditional loaves.  No kneading was necessary and it only had to rise once.   I appreciated that fact tremendously.  However, I've learned from this experience that I'm not a big fan of sourdough bread.  I do not like it Sam-I-Am and neither do the kids.  Hubbs thoroughly enjoyed it though.  He ate half the loaf on his own the first day.  He ate the other half the second day.  So for his sake alone, I'll be making it again some time.  For the rest of us, maybe I'll try a rustic white bread next time.  I think the sourdough flavor was just a little too robust for my liking. 

Random Acts of Kindness

A good friend brought up a challenge to me today in which she was planning to participate.  It's a Random Acts of Kindness challenge.  30 days and at least one Random Act of Kindness per day.  The kids and I have emphatically decided to join in with her.  In these days of hurried schedules, tight budgets, Christian-in-name-only attitudes, where we spend more of our day buried in Facebook and on our smartphones than we do actually talking to our kids, it obvious to me that we NEED more kindness.  We need to spend more time engaged with those people around us.  I think love is perhaps the only good thing you can't get too much of. 

I'm like many other people out there.  I find that I'm frequently so busy in my day-to-day that I don't spend any time at all actually considering ways in which I could be kind to someone else.  I intend for this challenge to teach me as much as it teaches my kids.  The challenge guidelines are as follows:

1. Decide to accept the challenge and work with your friends, family or solo to accomplish  at least 30 random acts of kindness in 30 days.

2.  Find a way to track and record your acts of kindness.  It could be a chart, x's on a calendar, tally marks in a notebook, whatever works for you.  Personally we are using a big chart, lest we forget, and each person is assigned a different color to use to fill in the blocks above their name. 

3. The "size" of the act doesn't matter.  It just needs to be a deliberate and random act of kindness.  It could be something small like leaving a quarter by the candy machines at the grocery store so a kid can get a free treat or something big like running a marathon to fight cancer.   For example, the first thing I counted for today was merely helping an elderly woman who had dropped her keys in the parking lot at the dentist's office.

4. At the end of your 30 days find a simple way to celebrate.  We intend to have a pizza and movie night. 

That's it.  Pretty simple.  It should be a good learning experience for everyone involved and hopefully it will make us more aware so we carry it on past the 30 day challenge.

Monkey in the Middle Afghan Completed

Youngest's monkey in the middle afghan is finally done.  It worked up really easy, the most complicated part was, obviously, the monkey square.  The stockinette stitched squares were pretty tedious but simple. I worked a double crochet border in complementary, variegated yarn around the blanket after I sewed all the squares together.  I didn't bother to block it since it was staying right here in the family and I know for a fact that my three year old couldn't possibly care less if the blanket has a slight and temporary curl.  He's already carrying it everywhere so I also figure that the curl will probably be worked out of it in a few weeks at most.

He seems happy which, of course, makes me happy. :)

Greens

In the south when someone says "greens" they are usually talking about mustard greens or collard greens.  In the Midwest, when we say "greens" we mean dandelion greens.  Since this was such a warm winter and early spring, we were able to pick this bucket of greens a full three weeks earlier than our first bucket of greens last year.  Pretty good.

Dandelions are healthier than most people think.  They rank as the fourth healthiest green vegetable in terms of overall nutritional value. They apparently help tremendously with liver and kidney function and strongly promote over all gastro-intestinal health.  They lower cholesterol.  They are rich in beta-carotene, fiber, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, the B vitamins, thiamine, riboflavin, and protein.  There are even some reports that suggest dandelion greens can help you lose weight, although I'm pretty sure a diet rich in any kind of vegetable is probably going to help you lose weight...just a thought.

We clean them, dry them enough so they aren't dripping wet, and separate them into gallon zip-lock bags.  Then we store them in the fridge where they keep for 2 weeks or better.  When we cook them, we wilt them, which means we cook them with a few tablespoons of white vinegar (2-4 tbs. depending on how much you want your greens to bite you back), a little flour to thicken everything, some bacon, and some chopped hard boiled eggs and onions.  We let them cook down until they are well wilted and coated and all around deliciously good.  Hubbs prefers them served over mashed potatoes but I like them better as a side dish all on their own.  Guess who usually wins?  ;) 

I still find it hard to believe that most people find this abundantly growing health food, with it's pretty yellow flowers, to be a pest and use all kinds of chemicals to rid their lawn of these guys.  Granted, once they turn to fluff they aren't very tasty for eating anymore and at that point they can be a bit of an annoyance but before you start going all chemical commando on them, try to just eat them.  I know it sounds weird to some, but really, they're tasty and their good for you, and you'll get them out of your yard.  Can't go wrong there. 

I Honestly Hate Titles.

I intended to start the seeds for this years garden this week but I didn't.  I intended to clean the back porch to get it warm weather ready but I didn't.  Instead I've been watching tv, something I don't do very often and I've been reading Killing Lincoln which is a pretty good book and I've been crocheting little trinkets to try and keep my mind off this last winter.

I like the way they've turned out, especially the button wrap bracelet.  It can double as a necklace so it's rocking that whole dual purpose vibe.  I'm going to have to head to the craft store for more thread though, I'm  getting a bored with purple, pink and white.  

Liebster Blog Award

One of my favorite Texans, Hossboss, over at hoof and barrel nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award.  I first found her blog when I was visiting her husband's blog.  I ended up originally visiting her husband's blog because of his name, Yeoldfurt.  I mean, really, with a moniker like that how could I not click? Anyways, I loved his blog, so I figured her blog would be worth checking out as well and I was absolutely right.  From horses to homesteading (and plenty in between), she definitely knows her stuff.  And she's obviously an excellent judge of character ;)

 Part of the process for this award is to find 5 other blogs with 200 or fewer followers and share the love.  Unfortunately, I don't personally follow that many blogs that have 200 or fewer followers...soooooo, I'm going hunting :)  And once I find some I'll post an update!