very tired

I'm very very tired.

I wonder if I am beginning to clear on the 1200 mg of guaifenesine (600 twice a day). It started with just the weariness. I didn't do much of anything this past weekend. Felt okay for Thanksgiving, but just felt very tired the rest of the weekend. Sunday I slept till 8:00, had breakfast, went back to bed till 11:30, took a shower, put clean pjs back on and spent most of the day in bed sleeping or watching tv. I had/have very little energy.

Tha brain fog is creeping back in along with slight aching. I feel exhausted after taking a shower.

This is one of the first times that these symptoms have been welcome. If it is from the guaifenesine that means that I am "reversing" and beginning to clear the excess phosphates out of my body. That should also mean a good cycle will follow this bad one.

So, although the house still needs a lot of my attention, I am trying to focus on what is good going on with my body.

Another good thing is that my weight is still slowly going down!

I've kept up with laundry.

I've kept my new nice room dusted and swept.

Things are okay!

I'll keep pressing forward.

Didn't crash but moving slow...

Often after a big weekend like last weekend I'll crash the week after with a big fibro-flare. I kept waiting for it to happen but there was not crash this week. I have been a bit slow and feeling twinges of tolerable pain, however I am very thankful that I haven't crashed.

My week was typically crazy with lots of running around and school to do, so the living room has remained in shambles since the bedroom redo. Today is my day to regain order. My problem with regaining order isn't a physical one at this point, its mental. I am one of those personalities that gets easily overwhelmed by a big job. I think that is the negative aspect to seeing the big picture and having a "vision" of where you are going. I see ALL that has to be done and the thought of it all drowns me.

I am sitting here on the couch procrastinating even as I write this. I don't know if it happens in your house, but here, when there is a little mess it seems to invite more mess. My kids just dump their things on the floor and couches. Truth be told I am probably guilty of some dumping myself. Except for my 8 year old, the rest of the family is out today so I'm on my own. :::sigh:::

I'm going to take a deep breath, put on some music and begin by getting the kids' possessions out of the room. Going to gather them and "dump" them in their respective bedrooms and let them deal with them there. Once that is done, maybe I can start sorting through what is down here from last week's project.

Today is definitely a day where I need to presevere and press onward and forward!

A Clean Sweep, While He Was Out

The Decision

I love the decorating shows on TLC. Since I don’t really have a close neighbor that I could trade spaces with I’ve often thought it would be neat to get on Clean Sweep or While You Were Out. Unfortunately, Clean Sweep only takes homes in California so that would leave WYWO. I have a girlfriend that I have been meeting with since this past summer every other week as a weight loss accountability partner. We get together and weigh-in each time we meet and measure once a month. Then we usually sit together for awhile encouraging one another and sharing ups and downs of life.

One week I mentioned to my friend, Debbie, that my home needed some help and I wished I could be on While You Were Out and surprise Joe with a new bedroom or family room. These rooms and the kitchen are the only rooms left in the house that have not been decorated and changed since moving in some 15 years ago. Debbie is a firm believer that the master bedroom should be a sanctuary for a married couple, so she said to me that if I could get rid of Joe for a weekend she would come and help me redo my room as a surprise for him.

It happens that Joe usually gets together for a weekend every year with an old friend who comes up this direction for his business. However, this year I was under the wrong impression that he was only going overnight so my redo wasn’t going to happen this year.

Imagine my surprise the Wednesday before he is to meet David when I learn that he is going to be gone the whole weekend. My mind started churning. Was I up to it health-wise? Would Debbie be available? Our room was a cluttered mess; could I get it cleaned up Thursday night to be ready for Debbie on Friday night? It so happens that another friend had offered the previous week to come and help me with a project some time that week but I hadn’t taken her up on it.

Time to send out emails! I wrote to Debbie to see if she was available for the weekend. I wrote to my other friend, Dottie, to see if she could come over Thursday night and help with some major decluttering.

Day 1 – Get Ready!

Thursday morning I had to take my 14 year old daughter to an umbrella school class and had promised to take my youngest with me to go to Target and have lunch while the older daughter was in class. I wouldn’t know until after I got back from our outing if my friends could help me or not, but I needed to find a new comforter that morning in case they were available.

We went to Target first but I didn’t find anything I liked there. Then we went to Kohl’s and they were having a really good sale on bedding. I looked and looked and just about when I was about to give up I found the comforter set! It was a muted green and blue patchwork comforter and the set came with two pillow shams and a dust ruffle. Perfect! I didn’t want any pink! We had lived with pink with red roses wall paper for fifteen years and who knows how long it had hung on those walls before we bought the house! I wanted something pretty but not frilly and it fit the bill. I picked up some blue flannel sheets that were also on sale and headed for the check-out.

That afternoon it was confirmed that Debbie and Dottie could help me! Everything was falling into place. Operation “Love Sanctuary” was a go!

I took the comforter to Debbie’s to be hide for the night, taking out one of the sham to help me find a paint color. From her house I headed to Home Depot to get paint chips. I thought I found a good match but need affirmation from another pair of eyes. I did pick up some shelves for candles that evening.

Joe wasn’t the least suspicious that Dottie was coming over at the last minute on Thursday night to help me clean up our bedroom. He was a little embarrassed, but not suspicious. By ten o’clock we had it under control with a few things for me to finish up. The room was ready for its make-over.

A Room in Need of Help:

Day 2 – Let’s Go!

On Friday, late afternoon, after getting input from my girlfriends at co-op, I went to Target and Home Depot and to get paint and maybe two new pillows for the shams. I was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to take my 14 year old daughter with me because she kept finding more things to decorate the room. I was going to wash and reuse the white sheer curtains that we already owned, however my daughter felt we needed to at least look at curtains. Of course I found something that would look just lovely in our room. And then she pulled me over to look at rugs and of course I found something that would be perfect.

That evening, with much help from my daughters and Debbie's daughter (and my daughter’s best friend), Debbie and I emptied the room except for the dressers and bed, stripped the wallpaper off the wall. I think that wallpaper had been on the walls since the house was built! After pulling off the top layer of wallpaper, we then had to go back and scrape off the rest. Then Debbie and I had to go back and wipe/scrub down the walls to take off the remaining paste/glue. THAT was the hard part! Ibuprofen was my friend when I went to bed that evening! We finished around midnight, both of us sore and tired, but feeling good about what we had accomplished.

I was so excited about our project that I just had to tell someone, so before going to bed I emailed Joe’s family members and told them all about Joe’s surprise.

Stripping wallpaper

Day 3 – Paint Day

Saturday was paint day. Debbie’s husband, Jim came over with her that morning. As he told Joe later when Joe called to thank them for their help, he came to do “guy stuff”. First he took down hardware for us and moved the mattresses out of the room. Then, as Debbie spackled the holes in the wall, Jim began pulling up carpet with me helping. As I expected from our experience with other rooms in the house, beautiful hardwood floors were waiting to be revealed. It was time to lay down the tarps and start painting! I had bought three shades of green that had been on a paint card together. There was a medium green, “Rejuvenate”, then a very light green, “Celery Ice” and lastly, for the ceiling, a white with very light tint of green, “Frostworks”. I had taken the suggestion of one of my friends from co-op, Susan, and decided to put Rejuvenate on the wall that the bed would be up against and the trim work. Celery Ice would cover the other three walls.

Let me tell you something about Behr paint… at least in my case, the paint chips were almost exactly the same color as what ended up on my walls. In the past I have always figured the paint would be a few shades darker than my sample and have gotten what I wanted when it was done. This was not the case with Behr; the sample was true to what was drying on my walls. At first I was a bit worried. The Celery Ice seemed too light. The Rejuvenate seemed like it would have been perfect for the light color with something darker for the accent wall. But as it all began to come together I began to like it. When it was all done I loved it. It turned out perfect.

The weather reports had been calling for rain on Saturday, but the Lord blessed us with beautiful fall weather perfect for painting. With the air relatively dry and windows opened the paint dried fairly quickly and we didn’t’ have to wait too long between coats. We were finished, except for touch-ups on the Celery Ice, by 11:00 on Saturday evening. Of course, I had to get on my mail and update Joe’s family and then realized I hadn’t told MY family what I was doing so I had to write them too!

Oh, and did I mention that Ibuprofen was my friend that evening too?

Day 4– Counting the Hours before He Gets Home!

Of course we were going to have a late start on Sunday. My friends had a function to go to after church so we couldn’t get started until about 3:00 PM. That was okay though, I had a few errands to run. We needed another quart of Celery Ice for the touch-ups. I also needed to get a new bed frame. Jim was going to fix our bed for us, but the hardware needed to fix it was missing. I wanted the bed off the floor so it was decided I would find and buy a new bed frame and Jim would put it together for me. I went to three different mattress stores before finding a bed frame that had wide wheels and wouldn’t’ damage our wood floors. The one I finally bought can be expanded to a queen or king bed, which is nice if we are ever able to get a queen bed.

I got home about 2:45 and my friends came over about 3:15. Jim did a wonderful job of doing touch-ups that came near the darker green color. This is also when he did the most “guy stuff” work… putting my television back on the wall, hanging my shelves, putting together the bed frame, putting the light fixture back into the wall and attaching outlet covers. Debbie and I scraped the windows, and began slowly dressing the room. While I had been out earlier I had also found some shelves that I could use as a night stand that could hold my C-Pap machine so the cord could go out the back.

As we dressed the room I began to get excited about Joe seeing the room. It was so pretty, but not frilly feminine. We were finishing up when Joe called to tell me he was about a half hour from home! Perfect timing! Debbie and Jim gave me a hug and headed home and I ran to church to pick the kids up from Awana, leaving my oldest at home with instructions to keep Daddy out of the bedroom if he got home before I did.

He’s Home!

The kids and I got home before Joe. The twins had time to take the carpet rolls and padding we had thrown out the window down to the corner for trash pick up the next day. I was able to put a few more things back in the room change so he wouldn’t see the paint on me.

When he got home I met him at the car to help him carry in his things. The kids were all in the bedroom waiting and my oldest daughter had our friend’s video camera ready to capture the moment. He had some trash from his car so he went right to the trash pile to throw it out, saw the carpet rolls and trash, but it didn't register to him what they were! He didn't give them a second thought! (sometimes his being a tad unobservant comes in handy.)

When we got to the back door (our driveway comes up the side of the house) I told him when we got into the kitchen he needed to drop his bags, close his eyes and come with me. He said, "Oh no, you didn't do something that I should have had some input in, did you? I'm not going to be upset, am I?" This makes me a little nervous, but I just say, "I don't know. I think you'll be happy." (Turns out he was thinking I had done something I had been talking about but he didn’t want to do and that was us switching bedrooms with the girls to give them more room.)

When I opened the door, the lights were off and candles were lit on the shelves. He walked in and immediately felt the carpet was gone. "I know what you did!" I told him to open his eyes. He opens his eyes and just starts saying, "Oh my word!" and looking around in shock. "How did you do this?" "I had no idea!" Then he looks at me and says, "This is just like that show you watch!" The kids and I were laughing. "While You Were Out!" I say. He loved it. He said he would have never picked those colors, never picked a color for the trim, but said it looked so good so it was probably good he wasn't in on the choices. He said he doesn't have the vision like I have. Well, I got some help with my "vision" but I guess I could see it when it was suggested.

Then at one point I spoke to my oldest, "You are supposed to ask him why he thinks I did this for him." so she asks him, “Why do you think Mommy did this for you?” Without missing a beat Joe starts singing, "Love shack, baby, it’s a love shack..." (from B52s) The teens immediately start groaning, "No, stop!" Too funny! I just hugged him and said, close enough... we've been calling this ‘Operation Love Sanctuary’."

The New Room!

Two Days Later –

Operation Love Sanctuary was a huge success! I LOVE LOVE LOVE our new room. Joe is very happy with our room too. It feels so much bigger. There are things that have NOT and will not be coming back into our room. I want to keep the peaceful spa feeling. There are still some things I would like to do. I want to strip and either refinish or paint Joe’s black dresser. I have enough Rejuvenate to paint it and that would look nice up against the Celery Ice wall, but Joe isn’t a big fan of painting furniture. I also want to replace the hardware on both dressers to unify them a bit better. I need to hang something over Joe’s dresser too. Haven’t decided if it should be pictures of the kids, a Monet print or a wedding picture. Oh, and the runner carpet I bought, though matches perfectly, is going back to the store. We want to get an oval or rectangle rug for the space between the bed, dresser and door.

Thank you for hanging in there and sharing my room make-over journey. It was an exciting weekend with a huge payoff. Now, it’s just a matter of reclaiming my living room and deciding what to do with the things that aren’t going back in the room!

Week 2 on Guaifenesin, a Long Drive and Other Musings

There hasn’t been any difference in how I have felt since my first week on the 300 mg twice a day dosage of Mucinex. Saturday I changed my dose to 600 mg two times a day. Already I think I am beginning to feel something. I have had a tolerable amount of pain in my upper arms and was more tired today than I've been in several weeks. However, yesterday my husband and I were six hours on the road so what I could be feeling is repercussions from the car trip. Time will tell.

Why were we on the road six hours? Our middle daughter went to a Christian camp retreat in Pennsylvania with a friend. The friend's parents took them there on Friday afternoon and we picked them up on Sunday. My husband and I like driving together. We have really good deep uninterrupted conversations when we are driving together long distances. This time we talked mostly about our home. How much longer did we think we would be there? Could we afford to get a place with my parents sometime in the next few years in this area? The housing market sale bubble has burst here like it has in so many other parts of the country. On one hand a new home wouldn't cost as much now, but conversely ours won't sell for as much. Unfortunately, we also have debt that figures into the equation. Joe thinks it would make more financial sense to add on to our home. We talk about raising the roof and adding a level (for a master bed and bath and a school room/library) and extending out the back for a larger kitchen and dining room. We have no idea how much any of this would cost and what would be doable. There is so much to think about and consider. All this came up in the first place because I proposed we turn our family room downstairs into a bedroom for the three girls, we take the room the two older girls are in and turn our bedroom into a smaller family room/den. Our son would finally have his own room. Joe did not like the idea of losing our family room at all, but our 14 year old son and his 8 year old sister need to be separated.

We have been in our small split level about 15-1/2 years now. I have never loved my home. From the beginning I felt the kitchen was too small. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t a door in each of the four walls. It is only 9’7” x 9’7” from wall to wall. Counter space makes the floor area smaller. We have long outgrown this home but have not been able to move. Lately we’ve talked to my parents about getting a place with them. Ideally we could find a house a little bigger than our 1200 square feet with either an in-law suite or enough land to make an addition for them. My parents are in their late 60s and after caring for their parents long distance don’t want to burden either of their children by retiring and moving far away from us. They want to be near and that suits me fine. We get along with my parents well, and my Mom has been such a big help in the home schooling. My Dad has done field trips with us from time to time. It would be nice to have them near and then as they age and need more help they would be close which would make it easier for me to care for them.

The prospect of doing something new to our home or moving is exciting to me. I hope we can do one or the other. I hope we can do what will be best for our family and my parents. Joe’s parents are still in the area and in the neighborhood so it would be nice to stay close to them too and be available to them. There had been talk of them relocating to be close to Joe’s older sister and her husband, but lately his Dad’s health has not been good so that is up in the air now.

It’s funny… The thought of a major overhaul to our home or a big move is a bit overwhelming, but not as overwhelming as it would feel if I didn’t have hope because of this guaifenesin protocol. My hope is that this is a gift from God towards healing. My hope is that this gift will allow me more energy to do what I will need to do. Whether we renovate, move or have to juggle and be content with our house as it is, I hope to have energy to better serve my family and practice hospitality on a more regular basis. My hope is to have a home where my teens’ friends would be welcome to hang out at a moment’s notice. My hope is to have energy to invite neighbors or friends from church to dinner or for parties more often. My hope is to be able to have more extended family gatherings in my home.

It is nice to have hope.