Crazy In Love

Today has been the most unproductive day I can recall from my recent past.  The culprit: TMJ.

I’ve had issues with mild TMJ for the last couple of years but really haven’t had many real issues with it since last June.  Luckily I don’t have the disfiguring type of TMJ (or, never have) but I will occasionally go through periods of time when my jaw will clench when I’m not paying attention to it (most often while I’m sleeping) causing my whole face, jaw, forehead, and teeth, to be in terrible pain.  For a couple of weeks now I’ve been noticing that I wake up and my head hurts and my teeth will hurt from being clenched all night long and it’s been getting progressively worse.  This morning I woke up and was dizzy from the tension in my face.  This sucks.  I took some tylenol and have had an ice pack on my face, on and off, this morning.  It is feeling a little better but I can still feel the tension in my joint wanting to snap back in to clench mode.  No fun.

I already have a doctor appt. set up for tomorrow so I will ask if there are any tricks I should give a whirl, but I’m not optimistic.  Usually my TMJ comes in association with some stressor that I’m dealing with so if I can just figure out what that is (clenching is worst at night so it’s probably something I’m thinking about in my sleep) or just figure out how to get everything to relax, I will probably feel better soon.

[end whine]

The food served at the Detention Center I work at comes from the adult jail across the street.  We don’t have a high enough population to justify our own in-house cooking staff so for every meal, a mini-van come over from the jail with stacks of whatever concoction the inmates there are eating.  Generally, it’s not that bad looking and what I’ve tasted isn’t all that bad either (granted, I will only try it if it looks safe) — compare to bad lunchroom food.  The gross meals are the ones that look like 5 days worth of left-overs mixed together and slopped onto the tray. Needless to say, the kids’ biggest complaint is the food (and it’s probably the biggest punishment the kids face at the Detention Center too).

Well… today… shortly before the kids were getting ready to go back to their rooms for dinner… the two Public Defenders that represent the juveniles in our county/our kids showed up with about a dozen boxes of pizza from Papa John’s, Hostess cupcakes for dessert, and plenty of pop and chips for everyone.  The kids were SO EXCITED!  We took them in to the dining room and let the kids all eat together and they were even more excited when they found out they could have as much pizza as they could eat, until the supply ran dry.  They had a great time chatting with the attorneys on casual ground and enjoyed the atmosphere of the impromptu pizza party.  It was a great way to end a nice day at work.

Thanks to our great Public Defenders and their giant hearts for literally making the kids’ day!

Noah and I have had a lovely Saturday… and it ain’t over yet.

We slept in until after 9am, a treat Sam rarely allows, and baked up some yummy cinnamon buns while we watched MSNBC and CNN Headline News — glad our trees are firmly rooted in the ground and NOT crashed into our cars and house as we saw in other parts of IL from the horrendous storms last night that had us tucked away in the basement with the pets for about an hour, waiting out a tornado warning.  After breakfast we headed out with the intention of going to the Taste of Champaign festical downtown but decided to go shoe shopping instead.  Noah was looking for new Sanuks and I was contemplating new flip flops.  After concluding that the mall was a bust and the specialty shoe store had never heard of Sanuks, we headed to what should have been the obvious first choice to look for beach bum shoes: the Champaign Surplus store.  They have everything from Nalgene bottles and Crocs to water purifiers and used military gear.  We found what we were looking for but after I picked out a new pair of Teva flip-flops, Noah decided to forgo the Sanuks for now and jump on the flip-flop bandwagon too.  Now were twins:

His:

Hers:

After our shoe shopping victory, we headed home so I could grab my Nalgene and rehydrate.  (Man! Is it ever hot out today.  It’s only about 86 but feels like 96.. and I don’t do well with anything over 80.)  We went back out to make a return at Home Depot and pick up some more supplies for Noah and his project of removing the adhesive and tiles from on top of the beautiful hardwood floors is our spare bedroom.  One last stop for lunch  at Ruby Tuesday’s to fill up on the salad bar and peach tea, and now we’re home.

We cleaned up the house together and now we’re upstairs lounging in our bedroom tooling around online and watching TV (Sex & the City… he didn’t get up here in time to claim control of the remote :o).

Yesterday was Noah’s 28th birthday!  We celebrated in true Noah fashion by him napping all afternoon while I cleaned the house… and then we went out for Chicago style deep dish pizza with our good friends Kalista & Josh.  Dinner was so delicious and I could have eaten the whole loaf of garlic bread myself but I was glad that the other three were willing to help me out and save me the tummy ache.  Oh, it was good!  Following dinner we headed back to our house for cake.  Oh, the cake!  I made [begin tooting own horn] a delicious pineapple upside-down cake that had I not been already on the verge of being full, I would have devoured the entire thing leaving only crumbs for our guests and the birthday boy. I took a piece for lunch at work today too.

Noah didn’t ask for much and since he loves books (understatement of the year), that is exactly what he got.

These were on his personal request list:

While this one was of my choosing but he really loved it!  Noah loves Audrey Hepburn (hence, our cat is named “Audrey Hepburn”) and this book is like a big scrapbook of her life; a biography with pockets built in that hold reproduced mementos from her life and career.

I’ve had the same outgoing message on my voicemail for around 7-8 years.  I remember recording it:  I believe I was a freshman (maybe a sophomore) at St. Xavier University, either 2001 or 2002; sitting in my room at my grandparents’ house (where I lived for freshman and sophomore year of college, because their house was only 3 blocks from campus).  I remember having a few things written down on a paper in front of me and I had to re-record the message at least a dozen times to get rid of all of the “um” and paper crinkles.

Throughout the last few years I’ve gotten many comments on the message because until today it bore my maiden name only.  It was sort of the last part of the old me still lingering and I liked that.  In one month I will celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary, so I suppose it was about time I sucked it up and changed my outgoing message.

This morning I listened to that message a couple of times.  Listened to the innocense in that 18/19 year old’s voice.  It was eeire, listening to me from all those years ago.  The me before marriage, before the Army, before graduation, before the losses I’ve faced since then, before a career, before a mortgage, before… before real life.  It was comforting in a way, to still feel a connection to that person while also being so proud of how far I’ve come, of all the accomplishments under my belt, … of the life I have made for myself.

Yes, today I changed my outgoing message.  The words are all the same, with only the addition of my “new” last name changing the script, but the voice is of a slightly different person… and I’m okay with that.

There are many suitable adjectives that begin with “S” that can be used to describe our darling Sammy:  Stinky, Sleepy, Silly, and STUBBORN, to name a few.  Recently we’ve been fighting against his strong will to do/get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it.  Sam is much less defiant around Noah than he is with me, which is awesome when I’m home at night alone trying to sleep but, oh yeah, Sammy wants on the bed.  He will bark, and bark, and bark… for literally hours until he gets his way.

sammy-barking-at-me

I hate to admit it but I eventually give in (after many nights of trying to wait it out).  Because I need sleep.  Because I want to remain sane.  I can throw water on him, smack his muzzle, yell (though he is either deaf or had blocked out our voices so that doesn’t do a lot of good), I have tried locking him out of the room and on a different level of the house and his bark continues to pierce my ears.  We have thought about a muzzle but he is old and does most of his breathing through his mouth… that and he has a heart murmur so that plus decreased oxygen would be a really bad thing.  So… we’ve tried eveything we can reasonably thing of to get him to stop.

Now, when Sam came to live with us 3 1/2 years ago, he came equipped with a citronella anti-bark collar that worked very well and for a long time he was not a barker, unless he was alerting us that he had to go outside or the occasional “I’m hungry, lady.  Feed me!”  The barking incessantly has been a recent, as in the last few months, thing.  I tried the collar again but it just didn’t work anymore.  Changed the batteries… no go.  Refilled the citronella… nothing.  Smacked it on the floor… surprisingly it still didn’t work.  Weird.

The collars are a little pricey and we didn’t want to have to buy a new one so we waited and one amazing day last week, the collar worked.  I changed the battery again and it just started working.  It worked for about 3 days.  Sam is reveling in his defeat of the citronella monster and I again am being woken up at 5:30am because Sam thinks that is an appropriate time for him to be fed.

Tonight I broke down and bought him a new collar, it will be here by the end of the week.  He doesn’t know it but he is lucky that I love him so much because I almost bought him this collar — it senses the vibrations from the bark or whine (Sam is a HUGE whiner) and sends a small shock; bark again within 30 seconds and he gets a stronger shock, and so on — but I decided to give it a go one more time with a new, more humane, citronella spray collar.  I hope this works.

Our first winter in the house we had some leaking in the roof, over the kitchen.  It’s an addition that was first a porch and then fully enclosed so the roof has an approximate pitch of zero.  It not hard to figure out why it would leak but it was a pest none the less.

The first time it leaked was after a huge snowfall followed by warm weather that melted about a foot of snow up there.  We placed a bowl on the floor and I punctured a little hole in the drywall with a pencil so that the water would not pool in the ceiling and ruin all the drywall (note: if the water doesn’t get out and just is left to saturate the drywall, the drywall will eventually get so wet and heavy that it will just fall down = big mess and necessary repairs).  With melting snow on and off throughout the season, the bowl on the floor became our new friend in the kitchen. (I will note that when it leaks, it does not leak a lot.  I put down a large mixing bowl but it never pools more than 3/4 - 1 inch in the bowl for a total of maybe a cup of water.  Strange.

Last spring, my neighbor (who works in the roofing business) suggested that some of the water may be getting in through some of the roof vents. Those were re-sealed but still we had leaking, and now from every time it rained… all through the spring.

Last summer, my dad spent a day up on the flat, addition roof re-taring the entire thing.  Everything was fine until the snow came, no fall storm leaking or anything but, darn that snow and it’s melting.  It only leaked a little initially and then began leaking from a different spot.  Weird. What is still weird is that it will occasionally leak during a storm but not always.  There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it.  It leaked twice this spring so when it began to storm last night I put out two bowls on the floor, just in case, but this morning they were still bone dry.

Our roof sure is fickle.

Yes, my life is full of many challenges and life-altering decisions.  Recently the deboccle has been: to get an iPhone or not to get an iPhone. See?  Big decision.

I’ve only had my Blackberry since February so there is nothing wrong with it but there are applications for the iPhone that I think I would get a lot of mileage out of that they don’t offer for the BB.  If I were to get a new phone, Noah would take my BB so it wouldn’t be a total waste.  ???

I’ll probably get one, it’s just a matter of when.

The house got cleaned, all the laundry folded and put away, and the Stangers go here around 4pm yesterday. The kids have been a lot of fun and we’ve done a lot of stuff, as well as a lot of just hanging out.

Today we went to the Children’s Science Museum then out for custard and home for naps and a little BBQ later on.  Also, Noah has taken his sister out on two long driving lessons, likely logging five-ish hours already.  Word on the street is that she’s doing very well too.

Tomorrow they will only stay for half of the day before heading back home and though I’m not sure what the plans are I’m sure we’ll have a great time.

P.S. My neighbors just got a new puppy, my sister and parents just picked out their puppy (he’s still too young to come home with them)… I’m really starting to want a puppy!  But… seeing that I do have self-control. I think I can manage to resist the urge.

So…. yeah… my house is messy. It was clean just a week ago so I’m unsure what has happened between then and now but I suspect it may have been a tornado, ransackers,… or perhaps we’ve both just been busy and things like tidiness have fallen by the wayside. Whatever the culprit, I fullt intend to remedy this situation today.

My usual schedule for my Fridays off of work are as follows: wake up, balance finances and pay bills, go through two weeks of accumulated mail, clean the house, do laundry, go shopping, and usually date night with Noah (if he is not working). Today is not so unlike most of my Fridays off: I got up, went through the mail, balanced the finances, paid bills, Noah and I had date morning wherein he made breakfast and we hung out for a couple hours before he headed up to get some sleep (he worked last night and works tonight as well), I spent the morning tailoring some curtains and hanging them, did a hack job painting the side door, … and I’m about to hit the shower so I’m clean for my hair appointment today… chores will then resume.

So much to do today… some yard work, much more cleaning inside the house, and if I’m lucky I might just get in a manicure later on… but that is of the lowest priority right now.

Yes, so much to do and I hope I have enough time to get it all done in.

Don’t worry, we’re going to have fun this weekend too; it’s not all about cleaning. Noah’s sister Steph and her family are coming to visit for the long weekend so we’re hoping for great weather and lots of fun!