Recoveries and Excessive Sweating

We are having a great time with my mother in law visiting.

We are dragging her around Florida and showing her everything we can within a week.  

I can't believe it is already Friday; she will be leaving on Sunday.

She recently had a knee replaced and is recovering from surgery. I feel sort of bad.  She is not a complainer ~ I worry that we are wearing her down.   She'll probably need to go home to recover after we are finished with her.  

She watched Maggie the other day as I went to the doctor (it is SOOOO helpful to have one more person around here).  I had X-rays done on my back, hip and chest last week and I needed to go over them.  I was also scheduled for a in-office breathing test.    

The chest x-rays were for the cough I have been messing around with for months and months.  I was convinced I had cancer because, well, my mother introduced that thought into my mind and I ran with it.

Instead, it was a rather ordinary little bout of asthma...something brought on possibly by  Florida allergies.  I have never had allergies before.  

I picked up the inhaler last night at Publix pharmacy.  

I looked on the front of the prescription bag and apparently my insurance "saved me $189.03."  That's out of freaking control.   

 I had a bad attitude about the asthma diagnosis all along, like, "This is stupid.  I don't have asthma.  I just need some more of that wonderful cough medicine that makes me clean my house until it shines!"  

I took three puffs from the inhaler, however, and within ten minutes I didn't feel like I was choking anymore.  It was sort of amazing.  I could breathe.   I turned to my mother-in-law.  "I can breathe," I exclaimed, like a complete geek.   

She just smiled politely.  She has been smiling politiely a lot this week.  

It has just happened that she has visited during a week that I have PMS and has seen me at my absolute worst.  I know she feels a lot of pity for her poor son probably regrets his choice in marrying a raging bitch.  

As I have gotten older,  the PMS has gotten worse, I swear.  I feel like my skin is crawling and I just want to scratch  someone's face off.  That person is usually Chris.   

Every month, I am usually confused about my increasingly crazy  behavior until I get the email notfication from http://monthlyinfo.com/

It is such a sweet little email, too.  It says something like,  "This is a friendly reminder that your period is due in two days."  And I am, like,  "Oooooh....THAT is why I want to stab someone."  

Chris asked if I could add him to that email list, too, so he could stay away from me.  Just to be safe.  

Anywho, I digress.

I also discussed my x-rays, which could be classified up there with one of the most unhelpful conversations I have had in quite a while.  

I have degenerations in the lower back (lumbar region, upper sacrum).  I thought so.   I have some arthritis in my hip.  Yeah, duh.  Oh,  ...I also have quite a bit of degeneration in my thoracic region.  Yes, I KNEW that, too.  I slept on the FLOOR for nine months while Chris was in Iraq because my back was so jacked up.  I went to physical therapy  finally so I could sleep in a real bed.

Let me tell you something:  When you have slept on the floor for 9 months and you finally crawl into a "real" bed for your first night's sleep between soft sheets, a down comforter and soft pillows?  It is the most luxurious, most fabulous feeling ever.  It felt like a cloud.

So, the doctor suggested physical therapy.   I think I'll try chiropractic, first, because I think that scheduling recurring, long-term PT appointments at the moment seems like a nightmare.    And I'll just take a lot of ibuprofen. 

I was also told that yoga helps a lot...so I'll do that too.  At home.  I've seen those yoga chicks coming out of the gym.  And I'm soooo not one of them.  

I am signing up for the Disney Princess 1/2 marathon with a group in February.  It's actually on my birthday, so I think it might be fun.  

I am going to opt out of the Ragnar race in January because I think that might be too much for me and my jacked up body, due to the nature of the whole thing.

So, today we are dragging my mother in law to the Bulow Sugar Mill Ruins and possibly the Washington Oaks Gardens State Parks.

She is a Minnesotan and is not acclimated to the oppressive air of Florida.   We are taking her to everything outdoors and watching her wilt daily.   We are ultra-sensitive that way.  She hasn't put her foot down and said "no" yet, so we  just keep going.

It's all really beautiful and are "can't miss"things to do when one is in the area.  Or at least we think so.

Hopefully I'll have some super-beautiful pics to post later.

  

Fascinating Stuff.

My mother in law is coming into town tonight.

I love her to pieces and I can't wait. I wish she would live with us, but I think she would miss her husband.

My problem is that when people come to visit me I go bananas and clean for days and days.

I've been cleaning my ass off and am currently burned out. I am checked out and practically drooling on my recliner in front of the television and I still have the downstairs sinks and bathtub/showers to do.

I was doing really well for a while with maintaining a clean house. I would clean sinks and toilets weekly, even when they didn't need to be cleaned. Then I stopped; it seemed like a really silly thing to do. Really.

Yesterday, as I picked up the ten zillion Legos in the upstairs playroom, I tried to tell myself that I would miss the spawn they went away to college. At least, that is what everybody tells me.

It took me twenty minutes to pick up all those Legos, though, and I cursed each and every Lego by the end.

It was a huge BIN that someone had dumped out. For some reason ~ on that day ~ it infuriated me. It was a big speed bump in my cleaning groove.

I had been cleaning bathtubs, toilets, sinks, picking up books, toys, stuffed animals, then bah-BOOOM! It all came to a halt when I turned the corner and saw that bin completely emptied of its contents on the playroom floor.

The Legos were the tiny little hands, heads, bits and pieces. I had to drop to my knees and pick them up individually. I put in an appropriate amount of time, then vacuumed up the rest.

I semi-cleaned our bathroom, too, so when my husband suggested that we go to the beach today I sort of felt like clawing his eyes out.

"What's wrong," he asked.

It was hard to put in to words because I felt SO psychotic. Women take things like cleaning terribly personally. I could feel my brain boil and my eyeball twitch.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. Twitch. "I've been cleaning for three days, and now you are going to bring SAND into my clean house?"

While Chris took the boys to the beach, Maggie and I went through the McDonald's drive through. I ordered a 1/3# Angus Burger, large size fries and finished off Maggie's leftovers.

I cleaned the toilets, then moved on to the outdoors and watered my sad looking flowers and plants. I swept the sidewalk and driveway.

I finished up as a crack of thunder and a flash of lightening ruined the fabulous day of golf and/or the day at the beach for many folks on this Labor Day weekend. Within five minutes it was pouring, and continued to pour buckets for the next hour.

I am still stalled out with the cleaning. The floors need to vacuumed, the master bedroom bathtub/shower need to be cleaned (my mother-in-law probably won't be spending too much time in there, though...), the guest bed needs to be finished up.

She won't arrive until about midnight and I haven't decided whether or not if I will wait up. Midnight is atrociously late for those with two year olds who won't sleep in. My 36-year-old body can't handle the strain of those late nights like it used to. And with all of these four mile runs I have been doing, and all of this cleaning?

And add in all of the flipping out I have been doing at the kids, too? Whew. My body has been through some awfully crazy wild strains lately. I think a normal bedtime is in order.

After I finish cleaning, that is.