A favorite Christmas item

I love love love getting Christmas cards, especially the photos ones from my friends who have children. I get to display them all in this amazing, quilted, denim stocking made by my oh-so-artsy-fartsy friend. I am forever envious of her talents on a sewing machine. She takes old blue jeans, which she procures from family, friends, Goodwill, etc., and creates the most wonderful works of art with them. You may think that the tree would be the best part of the decor at my house, but it's this stocking which tends to capture my gaze for many moments. I like to shuffle the cards around to create a different look from time to time and declare each day a new favorite card, and attempt to create prominate spots for each in turn. In other words, it's just one more outlet for my eternal piddling (as if I needed another). Thank you Artsy-Fartsy-Friend! I love you looooonnnng time!

Kid-free Saturday mornings are a Hoot!

My Mother-in-law had the girls friday night, giving Chris and I a kid-free Saturday morning. What do we do with a morning like this? Why, we stalk the owl, of course. We could have never done this with our old camera, the batteries wouldn't have lasted long enough to focus. Mr.B. fried up some fresh sausage (one of the advantages to running a business in a small rural town, along with the occasional pie) and I made a pan of biscuits and we enjoyed our breakfast and our wizened old pal out back as he searched for his own breakfast. Or maybe she searched for her breakfast. Who really knows; I'm no ornithologist. I'm open for answers to this question as well as suggestions for names for Mr. or Mrs. Owl. Right now, I call it Hoot or sometimes just My Owl. Isn't she gorgeous? Doesn't she have attitude? Doesn't she just scream, "I will eat you if you dare walk past my barn"?

Things that keep me going... you know the little things!

It doesn't take much to amuse me. A couple of years ago we began billing for medicaid and the county nurse who helped kick off the effort would send us therapists a bit of chocolate for doing our part. Of course, I felt this practice ought to continue as billing medicaid was a valuable, revenue-generating effort on behalf of the rehab crew. But my appeals to the medicaid secretary were fruitless, despite numerous pleas and threats of boycott which she saw through as obviously empty. But at the end of the year, after having made the county probably thousands of dollars through billed services I was rewarded with the above piece of wood, warranting at least a slight chuckle from yours truly.

This year, the fall leaves were especially beautiful and I was more than happy, with my traveling assignment, to get a chance to view them from school to school. I took this photo while eating lunch in my car outside of a middle school and listening to Neal Boortz. Life, and lunch, was especially good that day.

Oh, how'd that get there? Even Wahoo-girl got into this activity. Taken outside of the portajohns I had worked dillegently to locate.

And finally, for today's post, I give you, the view from my desk chair. It's limited due to confidentiality as I have students' photos pinned up on the right side but what you CAN see are my toys which keep me company and photos of my sweet family, including that Weem, God Rest his Sweet Soul :)

Another 12.5mg

Last night, I decided to continue to titrate my Topamax up another 12.5. Not exactly as directly by my physician but my physician, but I get the feeling that this is not a 'one-size-fits-all' drug. For those of you keeping up, I'm up to 37.5mg and feeling in tip-top shape. Side effects are at a minimum. I haven't felt like a zombie since those first few days of introducing this medication to my body. Best of all, no headaches, even with this raging headcold which typically would set off a spiraling migraine due to swollen sinuses. Yay! I can't help but wonder if I could stay at 37.5mg, with the minimum side effects, and have all the results I need. Only time will tell, but for now, I'm happy with the course I'm on and hope that it continues. The next two weeks will be the crucial tell-all as I will go through all the hormone levels involved in the worst part of my migraine cycle. I do hope I don't have to come back and eat my words, they will be bitter.

Shiny lights

Except for the parts where I have to replace lights, the decorating came off nicely today. I'm glad to have had a day dedicated to Christmas prep. Here are some photos.

Here is one of Holly's marvelous owl ornaments! (please refer to earlier post entitled "owl be seeing you in all the old familiar places" for important link) I'm so blessed to have one for each of my family members adorning our tree! This one is Ese's; it has Rock Star eyes!


"Whooooo are you?"



This is Bodacious.

We didn't have a stocking for Lilybelle yet, so Ese decided to make one from paper and tape it to the mantle. My mantle is missing the lighted garland because, I'm still waiting for the dude to return from Dollar General with a new string of lights.

A confession: I never liked Christmas. It used to be a source of stress and sadness for me, as it is for so many people. I have my own personal reasons for this, however irrational you may want to view it. But since I've had children and my focus is on the most important aspects of the holiday, I have begun to actually enjoy the entire season. I find myself bursting with more energy than I can remember then ever before for the purpose of decorating and generally spreading good cheer. No, I still don't get it all done, but guess what! I don't let that mess stress me out anymore! This holiday just isn't about people pleasing, it's about people loving and loving God and God loving us! Wow! Ese loves what I'm writing and is cheering me on from over my shoulder. So my tree is FULL of Ese and El made ornaments and the ornaments that Mr.B and I have bought together over the years and a conglomerate of stuff loved ones have given us over the years. It's wrapped at the based with a true piece of denim 'art' created by a girlfriend and there's a war going on between the Hokie and Tarheel ornaments. I'm sure this is close to what the Maggi had in mind... right?

I'm having a really hard time thinking of a creative title tonight...

Half the difficulty of writing a blog entry is coming up with a decent title. Right now I just can't pull two neurons together well enough to do so. Up until this very moment, I was going to say that I was not Dopamaxing too badly today since titrating up to 25mg. I mean I've had one heck of a day, despite the dull headache I've been carrying around. I've been talking to other professionals coherently on the phone, dishing out some darn good therapy for kids, digging myself out of the medicaid paperwork-pile and decorating the mantle at the EJ office for Christmas. I've been on my game! I made a great meal for my family and even remembered to do the advent candle with them. And now here I am, totally unable to type an entire sentence without backspacing over a dozen times and struggling to put my thoughts down on MacBook. My kids are in the same room as me, playing school, and that's a little distracting but still, I can tell that the little white pill I took just an hour ago is beginning to slooooowww ddoooowwwwwnnnn brainnnn funnnncccction. Thank goodness, I'll be hitting ye ol' sack pretty soon. The side effects I've experienced mostly today are the weird sensations in my hands, scalp and tongue. My tongue has felt like it was on fire all day, not painful really, just hot and tingly. I spent another 60cents on yet another flat Coke- confound it! I'm starting to laugh at myself really, because being on weird brain drugs really exposes a raw self. It's a self that is truly laughable.

I know that HIPPA is important, confidentiality and all that. But there are days when I wish I blog about how wonderful my students are and some of their successes. I will take this opportunity right now to say that I have some kids who are doing some great work and making incredible progress against some serious odds. I will close by saying that although, somedays I struggle because I don't always feel the best, my students make it easier to say, "I really enjoy my work" and mean it.

My tongue is on fire

That is all for now.

(following an increase to 25mg last night)