Where Did All the Time Go?

Wow, tomorrow is the beginning of August already. Where in the world did this summer go? I have a feeling what remains is really going to fly by. I checked my calendar yesterday and there is one week of August already that is completely filled in. It's not even fun stuff that it is full of, darn it. It's doctor's appointments, school registration, work stuff, etc.

I think I will take a week that has nothing scheduled and make a fun one out of it. How does "Mon-meet girls for margaritas, Tues-spa for massage, Wed-lunch with best friend, Thurs-coffee with mom and Fri-date night with hubby" sound? Yeah. I thought so. Sounds good to me too.

Finding out today

Today is my doctor's visit to finally find out what is going on with my back. I leave in one hour and will fill everybody in when I return on what Dr. Wilson tells me. I hope it is decent news and not something along the lines of "well, we did all these tests and we really need to do this test now because the first tests didn't tell us what we need to know". I've been that route already. I want answers this time!


Update: Well, I am in shock. So much so that I almost forgot to post this update. I went to see the dr. as I said earlier and didn't get good news. It's nothing life threatening or anything, just frustrating. I do indeed have a herniated disc at either L-4 or L-5, I can't remember which he said. Normally, for this they would go in and do a discectomy, but since I'm lucky to have two rods in my back this won't be happening for me. Actually, NOTHING will be happening for me. Why? Because the herniated disc is underneath the lower rod in my back and there is a ton of bone that has fused that rod to my spine that they'd have to drill through and remove along with a lot of scar tissue. Dr. Wilson said that he wouldn't even want to try to go in and fix the disc because more then likely as soon as he took bone or scar tissue away from my spinal column there would be fluid leakage...a lot of fluid. Not good. He also said that he'd have to reposition the rod and that could cause nerve damage or possibly paralysis. He also told me that the lower rod is no longer attached to my spine, but that has nothing to do with the pain i'm having and really won't cause me any problems because it is encased in the bone so at least that was one kind of good thing to come out of this visit. He did say that 90% of people with herniated discs have them heal on their own within a year. I hope I'm one of those 90%. I do feel better then I did over Memorial Day and the numbness isn't as bad as it was back in April so that's good. Maybe that is a good sign? I hope so. Since the disc is already herniated, he didn't recommend physical therapy. He did say that they could try to go in and give me a steroid shot, if I wanted, but after he told me HOW they would do that I refused to have it done. Nope, I'll live with it. Unless it gets much, much, much worse, I will just live with it.

Attack of the Frogs

When I was a little girl, I was a true tom boy. I played in the dirt, jumped ramps on my bike, played hoops and just did things that it wasn't common to see a little girl do. I also liked to explore the woods by our house and would almost always come home with a toad or two that I'd found in the creek.

Fast forward to my teen years and adulthood: I really outgrew the tom boy stage. Probably about the time I discovered that boys weren't as icky as I'd thought they were. I started wearing makeup, fixing my hair, stopped playing in the dirt, jumping my bike or shooting hoops and I definitely quit collecting toads, bugs, etc. Actually, I started acting the part of the girl who was afraid of them! Not my true self at all...or so I thought.

A couple of nights ago, my husband and I were in the pool, just enjoying a nice relaxing evening, when all of a sudden I see a tree frog peek out from underneath the pool ledge. I immediately got OUT of the pool. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind frogs. I just don't want to be as close to them as I used to be. The tree frog decided to serenade us with a song, but the weird thing was that when he started singing another frog peeked out from the ledge, then another frog, then another frog. I'd never seen anything like it.

Next day, my daughter and I decide to hop in the pool again. I knew the frogs might still be there, but the heat won out and I got in anyway. My daughter is just like I was when I was younger. She'll pick up a frog, praying mantis, bugs of any sort, no problem. She decided to check under the ledge and see if the frogs were just up under there hiding, staying out of the sunshine. Sure enough she found one and decided to catch it with the net we use to clean the leaves out of the pool. I told her not to, but she didn't listen, saying the frog would just jump into the net and she'd toss him out into the tree row. Let me just say that my daughter was not my favorite person that day. She cornered that frog and he jumped, but not into the net. No, he jumped into the pool! I immediately grabbed the legs of my swim shorts because you know the first thought I had was that the stupid frog would swim up into them and go exploring! Thankfully he didn't, but I must have made a pretty funny sight because my daughter busted out laughing. She was laughing so hard that she couldn't concentrate on finding the darn frog, which only made me more paranoid. After what seemed like hours, she finally calmed down and did find the frog, caught him and tossed him into the tree row. She said she'd look for others, but I forbid her from doing that. Needless to say, I had a hard time relaxing in the pool that day.

Yesterday, we decided to swim again, but this time my daughter got in first and took all the froggies out so I didn't have to deal with them. Like I said, I don't mind them, but I do NOT want to swim with them at all.

Doing My Part to be a Little Greener

I've been trying lately to do my part and be a bit greener for the environment. I'm sure a lot of you are doing the same. I've not done anything big, like get an electric car or something, but have been doing small things like switching my light bulbs to CFL's (compact flourescent), reusing paper that has only been printed on one side as scrap paper, just stuff like that.

Well, we also drink a lot of bottled water, which I KNOW is a big waste of materials, so I've been looking into buying some reusable drink containers to use instead. I have heard a lot about Klean Kanteens lately. They are stainless steel water bottles.

Stainless steel has fewer known health risks then aluminum containers and these are 100% recyclable and machine washable! They come in several different sizes and are really durable, which is fantastic for me because I'm constantly dropping things. lol

I've checked their website and think this will be my next step in going a little bit greener. How are you trying to go green? Leave some comments and let me know.

Wanna See What I Saw?

Ok, after much time spent on the computer, I think I've finally gotten the majority of our Chicago pictures downloaded, edited and ready to see. It took forever to do because I had three different cameras to get them from. I had pictures that I took with my digital camera, which isn't the best and has no zoom capabilities, my daughter's digital camera, which is awesome and does have zoom, and my cell phone, which has zoom, but very poor picture quality. So, some of these pictures are awesome and others are pretty poor. Forgive me for the bad ones. I wasn't going to download them, but it was actually easier to just select all my photos then it would have been to go in and pick and choose. Anyway, to see my pics just click on my Flickr badge in the side bar. Enjoy!

We're Back

Our Chicago weekend is over and, truthfully, I'm glad. It was nice to get away from home/work, but it was also very nice to return to our normal routine. Vacations, to me, are supposed to be relaxing, but this one was anything but. We were on the go the entire time. Hubby woke up early Sat. and Sun., woke me up, woke the kids up and then we were off. The only time I got to actually relax was on Friday evening when we first got there. My back was bugging me so he took the kids out while I stayed in the hotel by myself for a whole hour. Woo Hoo.

We did see a lot of stuff, but hubby was in such a big hurry to see EVERYTHING that we didn't actually look at anything for very long. Like I said, Friday evening he took the kids out to Navy Pier. They stayed one hour. Not nearly long enough to enjoy themselves or see everything they wanted to see. Saturday morning we went to Shedd's Aquarium, again stayed for about an hour and a half, only making it about a quarter of the way through the entire building. It was easily something that if we'd wanted to do so, we could have made an entire day out of it, but hubby got tired of looking at "fish tanks" and wanted to leave. After there, we went to Sears Tower, went up to the observation deck and looked around. Didn't stay there long either. Stopped to eat lunch at Giordano's Pizza. Let me just say YUM! It was the most delicious pizza I've had in ages. After eating, all I really wanted to do was go back to the hotel, but we'd told the kids that we'd take them to the beach so off we went. We got there and the kids took off, hubby and I spread out our towels on the sand and sat down. I could have easily spent the remainder of the afternoon there, but after a couple of hours hubs was all set to go again. Back to the hotel, cleaned up and went back to Navy Pier to take one of the boat tours they offer. We hopped onto the Seadog, which was a speedboat tour. Fun stuff, but not nearly long enough. I thought that might have been something that would kill the rest of the day, but nope, half an hour and it was over. Back to the hotel and I was finally able to sit down and relax. My back and legs told me about all the running we did too. All night long, I had leg cramps and a throbbing back. Not fun.

We got up about 9:00, Sunday morning and got ready to go. Hubby was just itching to get back home. I guess I was ready too. At least I knew once we got here, he could go about doing his own thing and I could actually relax in the pool.

Well, the pool idea didn't come to pass. When we got home, we unpacked and then I went to check the pool to see what temperature it was. Walked out and the pool was filthy. From all the rain we got Thursday and Friday mroning, the bottom was just covered with dirt. The water was clear though so I guess that was good. I swept it out, but after doing so and checking the chlorine levels found out it was reading zero on chlorine. I added all the chemicals needed and came in, figuring it would be good to go swimming today. No such luck. It is raining this morning and the pool is now green, a sign of not enough chlorine still, so putting more in and will maybe get in later if the rain stops and the chemical levels are ok.

I feel like I need a vacation now to recuperate from our weekend vacation!

Happy 4th of July

As I type this, I'm actually on my way to Chicago. I just wanted to go ahead and wish everyone a wonderful 4th of July. Enjoy the day with friends and family, enjoy the fireworks this evening too.

Getting Ready

Today has been spent getting things ready for our trip to Chicago tomorrow. I did a small clutter busting mission throughout the house this morning since my mom will be coming back Saturday to feed and visit with our kitty. I have started a list of things I want to pack. Haven't actually started packing yet, but as long as I have my list it shouldn't take long. Did a small load of laundry this morning to wash up some outfits that my daughter wanted to wear this weekend. Checked the batteries in my digital camera (they were dead so bought new). I even made a few small snacks (popcorn, pretzels, crackers, etc) to take in the car for the road trip so we didn't have to keep stopping for munchies or drinks. It's only a 5-6 hour drive, but I'm sure someone along the way will say they are hungry or thirsty.

Later this evening, I will also be attempting to color my hair. At the moment, I have several gray strands peeking through and I really don't want them "peeking" out in any pictures that might be taken of myself this weekend. I don't like having my picture taken anyway, let alone with a skunk stripe of gray running down the middle of my head so will get that done tonight.

I am really hoping that my back doesn't decide to flare up on me and bother me this weekend. I'm worried that the long drive up to Chicago will set it off or that the different bed Friday night will make it to where I can barely stand up straight Saturday morning. I already know that I'm not going to be able to do a lot of walking before it starts hurting. I tried doing some yesterday and it didn't take long at all before pain started shooting down my leg. I even tried walking laps in the pool, but only made it three times around before it hurt there too. So that is going to limit some of my sight-seeing fun. My daughter did let me know that Navy Pier rents out wheelchairs, but I really don't want to do that. I'm not disabled, I just have a pinched nerve and I would hate to take a chair that someone else might need worse then I do.

Anywho, I should probably get off here and finish up some more stuff. I'll be sure to fill you all in when we return on how our trip went. As for now, I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July weekend!