I think I need more shelving

I feel like I'm living under stacks of stuff. Olivia and the kids scatter stuff all over the house all day, so I don't even bother to try to keep her room and the living room from looking like a disaster area. But other areas are starting to bug me.

We suffer from a severe lack of storage here, and as a result, things get piled. Since there's not a "place" for everything, stuff just gets piled wherever there is space, and then there is NO organization. And then there's the daily mail, magazines, ads...stuff that is stupid clutter and just gets piled instead of filed or tossed.

Recently, this whole "new baby" thing became very real in my mind and I started to think about all the organization we NEED to do to make our third bedroom a livable space. And I'm more than a little overwhelmed. I feel the urge to buy large quantities of shelving and little plastic storage boxes.

We ARE thinking of having our screen porch enclosed to create a real room, and this will help, but mostly with getting bulky furniture out of the way. I may also have plans to make the children spend lots of time out there coloring, or whatever. I can shut the door and watch them through the glass. Ahhh...silence. 'Tis golden, my friends. If I can accomplish this, it will be well worth whatever we have to spend to put those walls in. Oh yes, it will.

In the meantime, I'm envisioning shelving everywhere. Mostly up high, away from the kids. I already have second, high shelves planned for the garage and the laundry room. They will be too high to access without a step ladder, but that's OK with me. I just need places to put stuff, ya know? I don't need to actually ACCESS the stuff all that often.

Must go deal with the very tired, non-napping child-of-mine.

This one is about my cycle. You have been warned.

A year ago, when we finished surgeries and such, I started having hormones tested monthly to see if we could get them in the proper balance for (ha!) pregnancy. And, you know, for normalcy. Then I started changing my diet and feeling better and unintentionally losing weight and YAY! Right?

Enter Summer, A.K.A. the season when I got lazy. I started eating bread occasionally. Maybe once a day. You know, when I was busy or out and needed a quick meal (bread on a sandwich or something). And then people started bringing cookies and treats at my very-part-time summer job. And I'd indulge in one. ONE.

The scale...well it continued to show me that my weight loss was unaffected by these new dietary slip-ups. So I got sloppy. Lazy. Ate more grains when I wanted and didn't worry much about it. The scale continues to stay the same.

But my cycles aren't.

Granted, my cycles are screwed up. I have this weird spotting at the end that just NEVER. GOES. AWAY. Except that it used to be 4-5 days long. Now it's more like 8-10.

And where my cycles used to be 28-30 days in average, they are getting shorter. Disturbingly shorter. Last month was 26 days. This month was 21. TWENTY-ONE DAYS. That's three weeks, people. That is too short. Especially factoring in the first week as menstruation and the last week as spotting. I'm bleeding for 2/3 of my cycle?! That is NOT ok with me.

Here's the thing...I don't know terribly much about reading the medical cues in cycles, but from my experience, short cycles mean one of two things: Pre-menopause or endometriosis. I can't imagine being pre-menopause in my mid 30s. And we've proven my body's tendency toward endometriosis, the evil inflammatory condition that seems destined to take my reproductive organs from me. But I spent a lot of time (not to mention money) and endured a lot of pain to fix that problem last year, and I'm not giving them up without a fight.

All this is to say that I think, maybe, the problem is inflammation and my inability to control it without sticking to the diet. So *sigh* I guess that means that I'm going militant on my diet again. Goodbye, homemade cookies. Goodbye, bread. You taste great, but you are not worth all of this.

Blog? What blog?

I've been busy. That seems to be a running theme here.

This past weekend, Joe and I and another couple led another Engaged Encounter weekend here, and it was fabulous. There's this whole new outline, and while it was a pain in the arse to re-write EVERYTHING and re-work the schedule, props, visual aids, etc, it did seem to flow better and relate better to the couples. Plus, a whole weekend away with my sweetie, who really steps up to the challenge and shows his brilliance on these weekends. I am blessed beyond measure.

So. That's finally over. Great weekend, lots of prep work. Good to be finished with that. Time to move on...

My house is a wreck. I may have ignored certain (all) housekeeping duties for the past, oh, four weeks or more. Time to start a list of projects. Having a list not only keeps me focused, but it helps the time move more quickly as we anticipate...

THE CRUISE! Joe and I are taking a cruise - sort of a work thing for him - in October. Olivia is staying home with grandparents. I am a little bit excited about this. We haven't been on a vacation alone for a good long while. It is time. I am looking forward to a week of relaxing, sleeping, eating, sunning, and generally not worrying about small, loud, messy, needy people. Oh yes. I am looking forward to this.

An anniversary, of sorts

On Tuesday, Joe asked me if I remembered where I was a year ago. I answered, "Omaha, surgery" without even needing to think about it. Last year, the Summer bookend holidays of Memorial and Labor Day were both spent in Omaha or en route to that place where I went under the knife in an effort to erradicate the disease that threatened my reproductive organs and caused all kinds of life-altering symptoms. The surgery on August 30th was the biggie...the one that left me with a c-section-like scar and permanent numbness in my midsection. It was the long surgery in which the doctor basically cleaned up my whole reproductive system and did a little reconstruction. Endometriosis, in my case, had tied up my insides in a bad way.

August 30th also marked the beginning of the longest two weeks of my life, waiting out the healing between surgeries in Omaha while my little girl spent her time with grandparents, ten hours away. The first few days after surgery were painful, and the lack of energy after that was frustrating. But what was most difficult was being away from Olivia for such a long time.

Even though it was a hard wait and the second surgery turned out to cause me more recovery problems than the first (though it was supposed to be outpatient), and I wouldn't want to revisit that time or do it over, I am glad we did it. I feel better, all the time. There are things we discovered through this whole process that have led to treatments and diets and lifestyle changes that make me a happier, healthier person. I think this next two weeks, though, I will be most thankful just to be spending this time at home!