Missed While Moving

I am moving. Yesterday we took two vehicle-loads of boxes to the new house. While we were there, we met our two-doors-down neighbor. Today I unpacked seven boxes, inspected the new fence, and read two mail order catalogs in the new house. All this busyness has me missing the blog. I write all the time in my head, but it's not being transmitted.



These interesting events transpired in the no-writing interval:

1. The dog ate my pizza. We have very little food prep equipment left at the old house, so we've been ordering out. Today I left 70% of a wonderful barbecue chicken pizza on the couch in the box. I was hurrying to meet the fence guy at the new house. He wanted his money. When I returned home after three hours, the poor old crippled dog who hasn't been on the couch in four months had jumped way high and devoured the pizza. She'd better not throw up tonight.



2. I restarted my point-counting for Weight Watchers. Because it works and I needed to. Already lost some lbs.



3. I took two Rituxan treatments. At the second one, a couple was referred to hospice for end of life care for one of them. The patient asked questions and tried to sound light-hearted. The partner stood silent.



4. I visited the barber. He gave me a great haircut, then killed it with some awful sticky gel that turned my do to plastic. It was okay once I came home and washed it. No more hair gel! Who likes that stuff?!



5. Packing has continued in fits and starts for weeks. Recent concentration has been on essentials - kitchen equipment, dry goods, bathroom necessities, clothing. I've left a minimum to get me through the next week 'til the movers come.



6. Better than packing, sorting and discarding has continued. Many carloads of gently worn goods have made their way to charity. The trash volume has quadrupled. Faced with a 1325 square foot dwelling, your definition of "necessity" changes quickly.



7. There is a science experiment in my garage. Weeks ago I purchased 40 lb of kitty litter. My daughter and a friend pried the lids off every old paint can in the place and put in kitty litter to absorb and dry out the old paint. When they are dry and hard, I throw them away. Fourteen down, at least ten to go. My daughter recognized most of the paint. She pointed out that some was left from when we painted her bedroom yellow and purple - that's right, alternating walls. Because that's the kind of mom I am.

8. I've come across many reminders of my first host son, Kris. Dead of suicide at age 17, he was a bright light and happy voice in our lives for several years. We moved after his death. The house no longer felt right without his frequent visits and insistence on sleeping in the family room where the sun rose shining through all the glass. Moving again, now five years later, I am reminded of the emptiness and grief I felt that year. I found a photo of Kris in a stack of papers, and while I debated about my readiness to frame it and view it daily, the tears came without warning. Five years is so short and so long.

9. I purchased the carbon fiber plate to put in my shoe, and I'm walking on it daily. It reduces the pain in the one tiny area of arthritis in my right foot. Ridiculous for such a small area of osteoarthritis to produce so much pain. Meanwhile, the left knee is begging for steroid injections and the left shoulder is making terrible scraping if I move it right (or wrong).

10. At least three times a day something happens that makes me want to grab my computer and begin writing. I've gotta start making notes.

Welcome to EssieWB on Blogger

What a new day! This is me, writing in my blog and giving it a new address so that GoogleAds can fill the margins with little money-making notes. Had to do it, folks. The times, they are a-changin', and not for the better or the worse but for the poorer. (No, poorer and worse are not synonyms.)
I tried my damndest to bring the contents of the old blog, at http://essiewb.wordpress.com, to this new site in its entirety, but neither of the sites has decided to bend their tools to that kind of cooperation. So...I've put notices on both sites and I'll start here by noting the old stats, and then we'll begin new.
I began to write this blog in December 2007, at a time when my then 15 years of systemic lupus was weighing me down with physical limitations and diminishing hope. As an optimistic person, I was grabbing all my resources to stay afloat, including resurrecting my lifelong love of writing to help educate others about this life and give me a way to express my feelings about my journey.
350 posts later, after 30,303 visits from readers (mostly a half-dozen great friends), I am still writing. I don't want to stop. Correction: I cannot stop. Writing becomes me. Writing soothes me. Writing is part of my healing. When I am not writing here, I am composing in my head, reminding myself to bring particular thoughts and experiences to this forum and open them up for perusal and comment.
A lot has changed since December 2007, and you can find it all by reading the first 350 posts of this blog. Okay, okay, just kidding. A brief summary: My health is much improved, due to the initiation of a new medication that is just beginning to be used for lupus. Barack Obama ran for president (and WON), bringing me back to politics and citizenship in a way that I never dreamed. My Etsy store, at http://turtlefat.com, has grown to two stores, the newer one holding my children's creations at http://turtletots.etsy.com. My daughter turned 21. I cut my hair and grew it out and cut it again. My posts have followed all of these happenings, in no particular order. Thank goodness they are searchable, so that the free knitting patterns and medical information isn't lost in musings about hair length and parenting.

The past week has been excruciatingly busy. I've tended to details about our new house, my daughter's semester at the local university, my health, my dog's health...and today I am tired. Matter of fact, I'm so tired that I just didn't get going this morning in time to make my rheumatology appointment. I'll call them after while and let them know I'm not dead.

One of the "funner" occurrences of the week was a visit to my sister's house for lunch. It was a spur-of-the-moment plan, me texting her at 7 a.m. to see if she wanted to get together. We went to the new house to meet with the builder about last-minute details (shelves for my yarn, darling!), then she cooked. I took my Alli like a good girl, then enjoyed wings and potato salad and strawberries. I fixed her stereo on the way out.

Oh my gosh, don't think I've even mentioned Alli. A few weeks ago I concluded that my eating away from home is a real deviation from what it should be, and I slowly began to take Alli with those much-more-fatty meals. It is speeding my weight loss a bit, a nice thing to see with my creeping metabolism. Alli makes a good deterent for me to eat too much high-fat food, because I'm not interested in having any side effects. (Read the label.)

As much as I'm enjoying chatting you up, I've got blueberry muffins to bake, bills to pay, one more college phone call to make, and a dog that needs a therapeutic bath.

Peace.