More like other people?

Duane is off the hill again this weekend, doing a fun day with his SAR pals.  It is not an official SAR event.  Next weekend we'll go to OC on Sunday to celebrate his (step) grandma's 91st birthday.  The following weekend he has a 3 day SAR event/training.  He meant to go to this one last year, and had been very much looking forward to it, but he got the weekend wrong.  Last year he had just joined SAR.  Not knowing many folks, no one called him to say, "Where are you?"  This year if he had the weekend wrong, tho we are sure he doesn't, someone would call to say, "Where the #@$ are you?" 


I know this is mostly Duane being busy, but it does feel like we are a bit more like "normal people."  


I was pretty exhausted when we got ready to go down on Tuesday, however.  Monday i took N's youngest, Joshua, for an hour.  We just went to the park and he played.  I don't feel it was stressful.  Still, just being up tends to wear me out.  N is coming today.  The house is quite a mess, and i'm looking forward to having it look better without wearing me out too much.  


Yesterday i spent a lot of time reading about Laura Hillenbrand and Sophia Wilson.  Both of these young women have ME/CFS/CFIDS.  Or had, in Sophia's case.  She died of complications in 2005.  Both have/had extreme cases of the disease.  I do not have such extremity.  I've only had one day when i really could not get out of bed.  Reading about them helps me a lot with gratitude, but it can be a bit sobering as these cases both detail that often ME/CFS/CFIDS folks don't get better, or if they do it is with much work.  Many folks with this are upset the gov't doesn't do more to address it.  The Awful Disease Washington Forgot.  And of course, many of us have spent years having doctors tell us that we've made it up, we're "just depressed," that it is a psychological illness.  Often, we are depressed.  But that usually arrives long after we've been told for years and years and years that we don't really have any physical illness, we are simply "looking for attention." Twenty-five Random Facts about CFIDS. 

I got the results from my tests last week, tho i don't see the doc again until Tuesday.  I'm a bit discouraged over what i can or can't eat.  Some of the items, i'm like, "Okay!  I don't have to force myself to eat that 'healthy' food anymore!"  (Cauliflower, lettuce, peppers.)  But others i'm thinking, "So what will i eat for protein?"  (Pinto and navy beans, lentils, eggs, tomatoes.)  

We were at Sam's Club on Thursday PM.  (Needed new tires for the Honda.)  We don't shop there much and i'm not a big fan of Walmart.  But we had time to kill and were perusing the store.  Except it is much too big for me to cover.  They have motorized carts there.  So i used one of those.  I have to say, i feel very embarrassed and visible using the cart.  I LOOK fine.  But at the end of the time i felt a sense of freedom, too, because i hadn't expended my energy just walking around and killing time.  (We didn't buy anything but the tires.)  I was already fairly exhausted before we got there, and i wouldn't have had anything left had i tried to do anything at the store.  As it was, i didn't do any of the driving on the way home.    


With N coming to clean today, i'm hoping to have the energy to organize the crafts i've got planned, and actually do some work.  I need to get a bunch of the baby bibs made.  Here are pics of the ones i made before.  They are fingertip towels (not hand towels, which are too big), with a hole cut for the head, and ribbing or knit (i had trouble finding good ribbing this time) to create a neck hole where you simply pop the bib over the baby's head.  Fingertip towels can be expensive.  Several of the ones i have currently were not cheap.  But usually i can buy them inexpensively at Kmart after the holidays.  It seems they tend to get in a lot of them for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  After the holidays i can often buy them for 50 cents or a dollar.  I cut the hole where the decoration (often a Christmas tree or Santa Claus) was placed, and then decorate the bib with lace and ribbon or an iron on patch.  


I'm more than 80% finished on my niece's yellow baby blanket.  I'm going to send the blanket and bibs and possibly some other items to her soon.  Her baby is due in early November.  The other blanket (in the middle of this post) is done.  I want to send some bibs, too.  This blanket is for the daughter of a friend of mine.  She isn't due until the end of October, but she has preeclampsia, and my friends noted on FB last night that she was being induced.  So these things won't arrive until after the baby comes.  Both of these are expecting girls.  I need to do some boy bibs, too, for some other friends who had boys earlier.  


Need to get up and started!  If i have good pics later i'll post them. 

381