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Category Archives: Health & Well-Being

Spouse Confessions: I am weary.

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Every since we moved here, I’ve said this move really felt off. I wondered why everything just felt…harder. Like I can’t get organized and nothing feels easy or settled. And it’s because I’m tired. Of lots of things, big and little. This article hits it dead on.

From MilitarySpouse.com: Spouse Confessions: I am weary.

It kind of feels like a gradual thing … each deployment, each TDY, each PCS move, each homecoming … all chipped away at me. Wore my skin thin. Made me more tired by the minute. And now, I just feel weary … all of the time.

Not every single thing in the article is exact for my life, but enough of it is. It sucks that anyone has to feel like this, but it’s good to know I’m not alone and it’s normal.

Three things on my mind today.

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1️⃣ I almost hate to admit it, but if I’m being 100% honest, I usually feel better about myself with straight hair. Yes, I like the wavy SOMETIMES but if I could snap my fingers and have straight hair forever, I totally would. TOTALLY. I just wish it didn’t take me 40 minutes and give me sore arms (I even have a lightweight dryer).

2️⃣ One of my new year’s resolutions was to get better at applying makeup. I suck at following YouTube videos so I really just keep winging it and hope I end up with something good. 😂 (Anyone else completely unsuccessful following YouTube videos? It can’t be just me. Maybe my face is broken. 😂) The weird thing is that in the bathroom and up close? It always seems kinda janky. But in pics? It doesn’t seem half bad. Like today.

3️⃣ I wasn’t going to go anywhere today but now that I have THIS hair and THIS face, I feel like I kinda have to. (Is anyone else like this? I can’t waste all this effort on the animals.)

Time for flu shots!

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Of course Owen was sooo worried about getting a shot—he just can’t seem to remember from year to year that it’s no big deal. Granted he doesn’t get himself as worked up as he used to, but I think he still worries too much for what it is. (It’s always over quickly and he has the “Oh, that’s it?” look.)

Anyway, we took a selfie while we were waiting for our 15 minutes.

The third time was the charm.

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Today was take 3 on Tom’s colonoscopy. The previous two times failed because he wasn’t appropriately cleaned out. After the second time we talked to the doctor about a different cleanout method because OBVIOUSLY the disgusting drink they had prescribed wasn’t working. And we suggested what we knew worked and the old cranky doc said no. We did what we wanted anyway and—SURPRISE!!—it was a success!

It took much less time than I anticipated so I only got to sit in the caregiver suite (yes, in the comfy heated massage chair again) for about an hour.

I’m down 13 in one week!

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Just in case you weren’t sold on Naturally Slim or didn’t think it was magic… Listen up.

Remember from my earlier post that I gained a whopping THIRTEEN pounds while on the cruise (I ate and drank ALL THE THINGS and then ate and drank some more and then had some more for good measure).

Well, in my first week back on NS, I lost all 13 (13.8 to be exact)!! 😳🤩🤗 Now I know a big chunk of that was water weight (my ankles look and feel normal now!) but holy shit, y’all—even I didn’t expect that big of a loss (but I’ll take it)!

The best part is that now I am super geeked about NS again, which is good because I’ve gained *cough grumble* an embarrassing chunk over the past two years…and it’s high time it came off.

I am SO ready to get back down to my goal weight…

Love on a military kid. It’s worth it. I promise.

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Every three years I get extreme mom guilt ripping my kids away from their good friends and wondering if and when they will meet new friends.

From Kayln Silva on Facebook:

I was talking to a civilian friend this morning and we were agreeing how hard it is to say goodbye to military families, and she jokingly says, yeah I always tell my kids don’t get too close because you know what will happen!! They just move away!!!

And with that my heart just sank, I know she was kidding and I know what she means, because she doesn’t understand, but I beg you please please don’t ever view military kids like this.

Please don’t distance yourself from them because it’s just a matter of time before they’re gone….again.

If we walk around this life viewing every relationship like that how would we get close to anyone? I understand this life is unique, and most military families jump into each new adventure with both feet, but for the rest of the world watching us, know that it’s hard.

Really hard. It breaks my heart every time we have to say good bye to yet another friend, someone they’ve connected with and someone they‘ve cared about.

If you have the opportunity to know a military child, please take a moment to realize that the constant state of transitions and unknowns is tough. We smile and laugh and make the most of every day we are together because the reality is, it very well could be. You never know when orders drop, or news comes that someone is moving away.

If you know a military child, take the time to hug them, understand them, invest in them.

Whether they are here for a few months or 4 years, to know that someone genuinely cares about them means so much to their little hearts 💕

An impressive amount of weight gain.

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I have to say I am very impressed with myself as to just how much weight I gained during our cruise vacation. I knew it was my last hurrah before starting Naturally Slim again HARD CORE, so I went ALL OUT, eating and drinking all the things…and then eating and drinking some more.

We had the unlimited premium beverage package….so there was lots and lots and lots of alcohol. And first breakfasts and second lunches and snacks and extra starters or entrees. By the end of the week I didn’t even want to think about alcohol (which is good, but I’m not sure how long it will last!) and I was actually TIRED of eating.

So today I’ve had two huge glasses of H2OJ and one piece of 4″x4″ thin crust pizza… I have pretty much been at L2 all day…BURNING FAT BABY!!

Oh yeah, how much did I gain? THIRTEEN POUNDS. Yes, 13.

Double swimmers ear and an ear infection.

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Both kids started complaining of sore ears and headaches Tuesday afternoon so it was off to the doc today. I had a feeling they had swimmers ear since that’s what happened to Owen the last time we had the waterslide…and the doc confirmed it. Plus Owen also had a mild middle ear infection. And Katie has generic first-week-back-to-school crud from the Petri dish that is a school with 1200 kids.

TRUTH BOMB TIME

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I’ve been struggling with my weight loss reboot. I’ll lose 5-10 then gain it back. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Lather, rinse, repeat.) I partially blame margaritas because DAMN they’re just so good. And I blame my own attitude: I’ve still lost 110# overall and holy crap that’s awesome…right? But I feel blah lots of the time…and fat (some of my clothes are way tighter than they should be). I created a Facebook group (for friends in the same boat) to help with accountability but even that hasn’t helped as much as I’d hoped. I am annoyed at myself for slacking on the NS principles and letting my weight balloon up 30# because I KNOW BETTER and NS couldn’t be easier. I feel guilty I have just seemingly lost any willpower I’ve had. I know I can do this…I just need to DO IT. So I keep trying. All I can ever do is keep trying.

What is life like without kids around?

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If I had to pick ONE word (other than amazing), it’s quiet. And it’s wonderful. Most days I don’t even put any music on. It’s so nice to not hear fighting or asking for snacks every 20 minutes or having to be a referee or negotiator or repeating myself 13 times to get anything done.

I tell people that I haven’t missed the kids at all…and I’m not joking. I love them with ever fiber of my being, but I don’t miss having to be on duty 24/7. (Tom misses them but he only gets to see them a few hours between when he gets home and they go to bed. I get them ALL DAY. And therein lies the difference.)

How else is life different?

  • We can cook whatever we want for a meal at the drop of a hat. We don’t need to discuss anything or think if either kid will like it or what they might get as an alternative (or make an alternative). Consequently meals are super easy and relaxing as there’s no whining or complaining about what there is to eat.
  • We can watch a full non-PG movie before bedtime! We can start it right after dinner and be done by 9! We can never attempt this with the kids there because they always meander back into the room. I think we watched three this week.
  • We can binge watch a TV series. This week it’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
  • We can go anywhere together at the drop of a hat. No wondering where the kids are and trying to get them home or asking other parents if the kids can hang out while we run an errand…or negotiating which of us is going and which is staying or listening to them whine about having to go with us.
  • And we can have sex at a reasonable hour (LOL).

And I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff.

I just know the kids are having a great time and we haven’t been alone alone like this since before Owen was born. And it was much needed.

And it’s going to happen next summer, too. 🙂

Guess who’s getting braces?

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Yep. His current (and last) dentist both recommended an orthodontic referral. We finally went.

The bad news? He has a crossbite that really needs to be fixed. Most likely due to his thumb-sucking. Sigh. And insurance only covers $1750 for a lifetime. And it costs twice that.

The good news is that it won’t take long to fix. He’ll have to wear an expander for 3-4 months and then braces (just on the front four teeth) for about a year. Of course he could need more as more teeth fall out and come in, but right now she thinks this will be good.

He’s not thrilled but he’s not fighting it. We’re telling him he’ll have a robot mouth. 🙂

PLEASE be that one person for someone.

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“One person can instantly make you feel unalone, uninvisible … like you belong.”

This is the one thing I hope for with every. single. move. Sometimes it happens more quickly than others. Sometimes it never happens at all. But when it does, life is SOOOO much better. PLEASE be that one person for someone.

Am I invisible? One mom’s pain-relieving response to being excluded

My vertigo is back. Do. Not. Want.

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It’s actually BPPV—or Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. It’s nothing major (the episodes are only happening in bed when I tuen over and they only last a few seconds), but it is annoying.

Each part of the name describes a key part of the inner-ear disorder:

Benign means it’s not very serious. Your life is not in danger.
Paroxysmal means that it hits suddenly and lasts a short time.
Positional means you trigger the vertigo with certain postures or movements.

Hopefully it just stops on its own like it did the last time.

Maggie scared the hell out of us tonight. Again.

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It’s hard to get back to sleep after you’ve been awoken at 3:30am by your dog screaming (seriously, that’s the best way to describe it…and it’s seriously awful) because she’d gotten her mouth/snoot/teeth hooked between the bars of her crate and her paw was bleeding from scratching at it.

If Tom wouldn’t have been here I’m not sure what I would have done. We didn’t even have tools big enough to cut the wires—he had to bend them with brute force until they broke.

We wondered what on Earth was going on…until we realized it was raining again. She must be REALLY messed up from that lightning strike.

(Much after the fact we both said we really wish we would’ve gotten a picture of it because it was truly unbelievable. Honestly, I had thought about getting a picture but I had left my phone upstairs because we hadn’t expected to find anything insane…and we were too wrapped up in extracting her safely to worry about it.)

So we bandaged her paw and Tom stayed up (since it was almost his normal waking time) and I was up—trying to calm down—until about 6am when I finally crashed.

This is the solution Tom had come up with by the time I rolled out of bed at 9:30.

It’s not perfect but we really don’t want to let her free roam if we can help it as she tends to move around quite a lot at night and wakes us up.

She doesn’t seem too worse for the wear. Thankfully.

Charlie’s down four teeth.

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So one afternoon I noticed that the whole right side of Charlie’s face was swollen. A quick Google basically said you need to get to the vet immediately so I got an appointment for the next morning. Turns out it was something wrong with one of her teeth and we needed to schedule surgery. Estimated cost? $600-900. Just let that sink in.

The soonest opening they had was two weeks out so they gave her shots for pain and swelling. Thankfully they worked well and the swelling went down and she seemed to be getting back to normal.

Fast-forward two weeks. A tooth extraction is routine but I was still nervous. And it sucks because she seems perfectly fine now. No swelling. Eating great. Back to normal. So part of me thinks why spend $1000 on something that seems to not be a problem. But we know the problem is still there…

So…once they got in there and saw what was going on they really needed to remove some other teeth, too. She ended up having FOUR teeth removed…plus she needed extra tests and X-rays due to a heart murmur and surprise (new) kidney issues.

So $1500 later (let that one sink in, too) I have a happy kitty who doesn’t seem to be in any pain and is really loving and cuddly. (She’s always been cuddly but today has been even more so—I don’t even want to go to bed because I’m loving the cuddle so much..and also, if I’m being honest, I still have a fear that something is going to go wrong and she’s not going to make it and I’ll have missed out on this great cuddle time.)

I also got to see her drunk on pain meds. It was cute.

But this face!

Now I get to figure out how the hell to pay for this.

OMG! Poor Maggie!!

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I went to bed quite late after staying up to work (normal for me lately) so I was in bed and heard some weird screeching noise downstairs and thought it was a cat or something and ignored it. Then it happened again, louder. I couldn’t place what the noise was—it was really very strange and nothing I’d heard before—so I went to investigate. I thought maybe the raccoon was in the window and both cats were squawking. I turned on the living room light and HOLY F’ING SHITBALLS!!

Maggie’s head was sideways, squeezed halfway between the metal bars on the door and side of the crate, and she was drooling and wheezing and “screaming.” She probably couldn’t breathe. I’m guessing she tried to push her way out (why?!) and got stuck.

I opened the door and pulled her out and petted her and she seemed okay but just freaked out. She eventually let me hold her on my lap and after awhile I pulled her bed out (blood splatters—not sure if it was from her claws or teeth or what), wiped up the floor, and tried to put her back in. She went but she wasn’t happy. I went back up to bed and before I even got settled she was manically pawing at her crate again.

So I’m sleeping on the couch with her at 2:30am. 😣

I’m glad she’s okay, of course, as this could have ended very differently had I not heard her or gone to check.

But still. This was just the topper on a mostly shitty day.

Naturally Slim, Round 2

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When it’s time to get serious about Naturally Slim again. Plus I already have my walk in for the day. #icandothis #ididitonceicandoitagain #failureisnotanoption #facebookaccountability

Lunch!

20 minutes later

I posted the above on Facebook and within minutes, a friend suggested we support each other by checking in via text message. I knew a bunch of my friends were all wanting to reboot as well, so asked who would be interested and quite a few were so I decided to start a Facebook group where we can all post and commiserate and help each other out. I think by the end of the day we had maybe 25 people and a week later we are around 50!

Momentary panic before school.

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Katie came in for me to brush her hair before school and I saw some fuzz in her hair so I went to pick it out and—NOOOOOOOOOO!!! OH NO OH NO OH NO. NO NO NO NO NO.

I hate ticks. I mean, no one likes them but they really freak me out. Thankfully I haven’t had to deal with them too often.

My mind was instantly racing. I know we have a tick removal device but I couldn’t think where it was right off hand. We only had 20 minutes before we had to leave for the bus. I knew I couldn’t rip it out. Do I text Tom? (Yes.) Take a picture? (Yes.) Google how to remove a tick? (I didn’t, because I thought I remembered how to use a Q-tip to remove it and I had one handy so I did that.) It didn’t take too long, but Katie was kinda panicky because I had been kinda panicky (I typically handle these types of situations well specifically so they don’t panic but I just hate ticks so much that it got the better of me).

So then I was trying to think what the hell do I do to the house? It obviously was inside the house because she took a bath the night before and there was no tick. So it attached itself sometime overnight. Which means it was likely in her room. /shudder

I washed her bedding and all her dirty clothes and checked all the animals (clean) so am hoping it was just a bizarre one-time event.

Now excuse me while I go burn the house down.

His second sleep study.

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So Tom had his first sleep study a few weeks ago. His results?

You have tested positive for sleep apnea with an AHI of 17. The AHI is the average number of times per hour you stopped breathing during your sleep. A 5 or more is clinically significant; a 30 or more is severe. You are in a moderate category, so we would like to get you treated as soon as possible.

So he had to go back again. And he took a picture this time. 🙂

So now we wait for his machine to arrive. 🙂

Did I just make it better or worse?

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When you’re trying to come up with a new color palette for your #SAHMhustle and you think “How hard can it be to pick the color of a #margarita?” and you spend hours on #Pinterest and in graphics apps playing (I mean working!) and none of them are quite right (too neon, too pale, too pastel, doesn’t go with other colors) and then you remember you have a paint color sample ring and you wonder if that just made it worse or better?! #helpme #colorpaletterabbithole #pinteresttimesuck #valspar #lowes #rebranding #suitespring #maybeishouldbedrinkingamargarita #senegence #lipsense #livinglippy

The first time is a charm?

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A military pharmacy can often take up to two hours (yes, seriously) so when I sat down I wasn’t a happy camper.

So imagine my delight when I was called up within five minutes for the first call and then about 10-15 for the second. When I first went up I asked about how long it would be and he said 20 minutes and I kind of looked at him and laughed like YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. And then it happened. When I went back up I said “Wow, I like this hospital. I’m used to at least an hour wait. Is it always like this?” He said “KNOCK ON WOOD, no, it’s usually crazy.” (So maybe it was first-timer’s luck.) But I figure that’s an omen that today is going to be great day. Aside from the fact that I’m getting drugs for a UTI, that is. 😂