A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

It’s been over three months since my last post. Wow. Just… wow.

Nothing major has happened to keep me from posting. Just the usual ups and downs. I’ve actually been getting along pretty well for the past few weeks. Better than usual for me, at least. I’ve still been tired more often than not, and I’ve got some other health crap going on that I need to get checked out. But I’ve been doing a decent job of not letting it get me down.

Pumpkin also has some health junk going on. She’s been getting dizzy a lot, so I took her to the pediatrician. She checked her out pretty thoroughly and did some blood work. Turns out she has low vitamin D and elevated TSH. The TSH is an indicator of underactive thyroid, so she put her on medication for that and made her an appointment with a specialist. We were scheduled to see her yesterday, but it snowed just badly enough to keep us from making the 2-hour trip. So we rescheduled for next week. I’m anxious to get her down there, because I’m ready to find out just what exactly is going on and whether or not it will explain the dizziness.

A little good news: I’ve got the finances under control for the time being. With Hubby and I both being sick a lot over the holidays, we got in a pretty major bind. But we got our tax refund, and that helped us get caught up on everything. It would have been nice to splurge on a new dining room set or a SimplyVanities.com bedroom vanity, but I’d much rather have the peace of mind that comes with knowing we’re not going to lose everything we have. We’ve still got more debt than I want to think about, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to dig our way out before we’re old and gray.

So there’s what’s been going on in my life in a nutshell. I almost forgot how therapeutic blogging was! It definitely won’t be three months until my next post.

For a couple of weeks, I was doing a much better job than usual of staying motivated. I thought maybe things were finally looking up. But as usual, my hopes have been dashed to shreds.

I started having stomach problems a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but it didn’t resolve itself. I took some medication that I’d taken before, and it didn’t help. Then I tried something stronger, and it helped somewhat. But when I don’t take the medicine, I go back to square one.

It has really worn me down this week. I’m beginning to wonder if the stomach issue is a sign of a bigger problem, because I’ve had some other strange symptoms. And I’ve been very tired – I wake up each morning feeling like I’ve been beaten with an industrial rubber hose all night instead of sleeping.

All this has led to a major decrease in productivity. I had high hopes for this week even though I didn’t have any looming deadlines, but as it turned out I’ve gotten very little done. As much as I hate to, I guess I’ll be making a trip to the doctor next week.

I’ve never really been much of a coffee person until recently. But when I decided to make myself start getting up earlier and going to bed earlier, it sort of became a necessity. I don’t drink it every day, because if I do it makes certain health problems flare up. But I do drink a couple of cups on mornings when I need to resist the urge to go back to bed after Pumpkin leaves for school.

But I’m beginning to realize that coffee doesn’t like me any more than I like it. It hurts my stomach if I don’t eat something before I drink it, and today it’s given me a terrible case of the runs. It’s kind of like I took half a bottle of the diet pills that rush stuff through your system before it can turn into fat. (Sorry if that’s too much information!)

Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need an alternative to coffee. I’ve tried 5-hour energy, and it does absolutely nothing for me. I can’t drink energy drinks because they are loaded with caffeine as well, plus I’d probably break out from the artificial colors and flavorings. And I’m not supposed to drink soda at all because of the artificial stuff in it.

So what’s a girl to do to get a boost in the morning? Hook herself up to a set of jumper cables? I’m going to have to figure something out.

For the past week or so, I’ve been struggling with really low energy levels. I spent most of Saturday in bed because I just didn’t have the energy to even sit in front of the computer (or even the TV for that matter). Part of that was my fault, because I forgot to take one of my medications the day before and was dealing with withdrawal. I’m usually fine once I take one and give it a few hours to build back up in my system, but even that didn’t help much.

Yesterday was much the same. I was able to make an effort, but it took me all day and half the night to get the bare minimum of work I needed to do done. And I can’t blame that on missing a dose.

I think I’ve got a sinus infection, so that could have a lot to do with it. But I’m not really feeling that bad except for being tired, and sinus infections don’t usually drag me down so badly. Maybe I need some good vitamins, or a round of thermotox to degunk my system.

I’ll have to get to the doctor sometime this week if at all possible so I can get my sinuses checked out, and I’ll ask him about it then. Maybe he can prescribe something, or at least tell me something over the counter that will help. I’ve gotta do something, because it’s pretty bad when you can barely muster the energy to sit in front of the computer and type.

Hubby, Pumpkin and I had planned our trip to Big Lots for today. But we were afraid those plans would have to change after she woke up sick yesterday morning. But I took her to the doctor, who said she had strep and gave her antibiotics. When I woke her up this morning, she said she felt well enough to go to school.

We picked her up and asked if she was still feeling okay, and she said she did, so we headed for Big Lots. On the way there, I noticed that she had a pretty bad cough, but still said she felt fine, so I figured it was just the phlegm in her throat loosening up that was causing it. We forged ahead.

We got there and looked around, and we didn’t find a dresser at a price that was acceptable to Hubby. I did, however, find a set of dishes and some nonstick cookie pans. Pumpkin spent her money on a remote control car for herself, and a whatnot for me. She went behind my back and bought that, the little stinker.

After we got home, she started coughing more and started running a fever again. I had a feeling that she wasn’t feeling as good as she said. She just wanted to go spend her money. I dug through the medicine cabinet, through all of my and Hubby’s prescriptions, the allergy medications, and some expired fat burner supplements and finally found her some cough syrup.

The medicine helped with the cough, and Hubby gave her a Tylenol for the fever she was starting to run. And she’s been asleep on the couch since then. I hate to see her like this. I’ll bet she had a rough day at school, but she stayed just because she knew we wouldn’t go shopping if she had to come home. She’s way too much like her mama.

The past week has been so full of ups and downs, I feel like I’ve been riding a roller coaster. I’ve even had the nausea to prove it.

It all started Sunday night, when Pumpkin got up vomiting. She was out of school for two days with a horrid stomach bug. I had planned to get lots of work and work hunting done, but that didn’t happen since I was waiting on her hand and foot and barely getting out of her sight. Taking care of her is the most important thing to me, no question. But I really needed to try and make some money, because Hubby was supposed to be losing his only source of income.

In the meantime, I got an offer to buy the domain name of my other blog. I named a price, based on the average of what several of those website value estimators said, and heard nothing back for a few days. I assumed that the prospective buyer wasn’t interested in paying much for it and mourned the loss of that extra income.

The night before Pumpkin went back to school, I found out that I had the virus that she had just gotten over. That morning, Hubby woke up with it, too. We were completely useless that day, and yet again I got no work done. Most people would have just grabbed their laptop backpacks and camped out in bed or on the couch, and gotten at least a thing or two done. But no laptop here, therefore no can work if I can’t drag myself to my computer desk.

I heard back from the prospective buyer, and was offered a much lower price for the domain name. After a lot of thinking and weighing the pros and cons of selling, I decided that I would take a lower price, but not quite that low. So I made a counteroffer that I thought we could both agree to. And it worked. The buyer’s agent set up the transaction, payment was sent to them, and I followed the instructions to initiate the transfer.

Then I found out that it would be twenty days until I would receive my money. The domain registrar has it, but they don’t send it until twenty days after the agreement is made. So there went my plans to get the mortgage and some other bills up to date.

The next day, Hubby got a piece of mail. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it looks like his money will now be coming in for a few months longer. That will be helpful. But had I known that, I don’t know if I would have taken the price I did for my domain.

Somewhere along the way, I got an email from one of my contacts informing me that he had received a virus email sent from my email address. I had suspected that something was wrong with my computer for a while, because it was running slower and doing a couple of other strange things. But my usual virus and malware scans had turned up nothing. I spent an entire day working through the steps outlined at Major Geeks in an attempt to eradicate it. It seems to have paid off, because I have seen no further signs of possible infection. But there was yet another day when I got no paying work or job hunting done.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t had a bit of luck finding any projects or ongoing gigs. I picked out some articles from Demand Studios to do, but writing them is slow going since I haven’t written for them in so long. And a lot of their titles turn out to be impossible to write after some research, so that’s pretty hit or miss. Maybe when the proceeds from my domain sale come in I’ll feel comfortable enough to work on some of my own projects. Until then, I’ll keep looking for work from others.

So that’s my roller-coaster week in a nutshell. I really hope next week is much less eventful. Or at least eventful only in good ways.

Today I watched an episode of MTV’s I Used to Be Fat for the first time. I’ve watched those weight loss shows before, but never really liked most of them because there was too much drama for my tastes. But this one follows one young person on a quest to lose a certain number of pounds in a certain amount of time. It delves into the issues that are keeping her from losing weight and addresses them. On the particular episode I watched, the girl fought against her personal trainer tooth and nail at first, but she ended up losing all the weight by the end.

I’d love to be able to say “I used to be fat.” I’ve tried to think of ways to lose it myself, but I’m coming up empty. I know there’s an excuse or two in there somewhere, but current circumstances really don’t make losing weight easy for me. I often have to cook foods that aren’t as healthy as they should be just to get my two picky eaters to eat, and I feel like buying fresh fruits and veggies for myself would end up wasting what little money we have, since they would go bad before they were all eaten. And then there’s the fact that my work doesn’t let me get up and move around very much. Lack of energy had been a big issue as well, but I’m hopeful that my energy is coming back with my motivation and maybe won’t be such a problem.

But I know I’m doing some things right. For example, I have no need for help on how to suppress appetite. I have almost no appetite these days, presumably because of the medications I’m on for bipolar. I take a craving for a little chocolate every now and then, but I rarely get really hungry, and when I’m not hungry, I almost never eat. It has served me well, because I’ve lost somewhere around 20 pounds without even trying according to the scales at the doctor’s office.

I know I need to adjust my diet and get some exercise to keep losing, and I plan on working on that. I can’t afford a personal trainer, or even a membership program like Jenny Craig, but if I can start losing weight, I think that will be motivation enough to keep me going. I’m going to try my best to get started. I hope I can come back in a month or two and say I’ve lost lots more weight.

I didn’t get around to wishing everyone a Merry Christmas before the fact, so I’ll just say that I hope you had a good one. As for me, mine was alright. Nothing to write home about, but no disasters like the basement flood we had last Christmas, so that was a good thing.

I did have a bit of a meltdown on Christmas Eve. I have no idea why. For the first time in years, I was actually ready for Christmas. I didn’t have much capital to work with, but I managed to come up with gifts for everyone on my list. All the presents were wrapped and under the tree well in advance, with the exception of two that still haven’t been delivered (and won’t be until I can safely travel down the mountain). Yet I woke up extremely irritable on Christmas Eve morning, and things deteriorated throughout the day and into the night. I think Hubby was ready to check me into one of those inpatient rehab centers like the one where Demi Lovato is for “physical and emotional issues.”

My anxiety meds weren’t helping much, but I managed to keep from totally flipping out by keeping to myself and constantly reminding myself that Pumpkin deserved a nice, drama-free Christmas. The medication did help me get to sleep, which was a good thing. And when I woke up Christmas morning, I was feeling much better.

Anyway, Pumpkin did have a good day. She called it the Best Christmas Ever, and while I think she might have been saying that to make us happy, she did get most of the gifts on her list (since we had a little help). And we got enough snow for her to do some sleigh riding, which she always loves. Just seeing her happy and having fun made my Christmas a good one.

I have to go to the doctor later this week, and I’ll talk to him about the mood issues. He’ll probably up the dosage on my mood stabilizer, and I’m okay with that if it works. Things have improved tremendously since I’ve been on it, but a little more stability would be a very good thing.

I’m up late tonight. That hasn’t really been the norm lately, because I got into the habit of trying to fight my natural night owl tendencies and go to bed early with Hubby. But during my bouts of insomnia, that did nothing but make for a hellish night and a rough next day. So I’ve decided that I’m going to start going to bed when I’m good and ready unless I have a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Another thing that’s not quite the norm: I’m not up playing games or reading about the best diet pills for women. I’m actually getting some work done. How about that? The words have started flowing much more freely, and I hope they continue to do so. Now if I can just keep myself focused, maybe, just maybe, I can start making a decent amount of money again. That would be very, very nice.

It’s almost 2:00 AM, so I’ll probably head to bed before long. I’ll get a couple hours of sleep, get up and get Pumpkin off to school, and then go back to bed until around 11:00. That schedule might sound strange to some, but it’s more or less in line with how my body and mind operate these days. Even if I go to bed early and am able to sleep, I usually get so sleepy after Pumpkin gets on the bus that I end up going back to sleep until about the same time. So it looks like the best thing I can do, for both my sanity and my productivity, is quit fighting the way I’m wired and just go with it.

I posted a few weeks ago about how strange my sleep habits were becoming. I’d sleep well for a few nights, then I would have persistent insomnia for a while, and so on and so forth. The good news is, I haven’t had the need for natural sleep aids for a while now. The bad news is, pretty much all I feel like doing is sleeping.

It’s not because I’m staying up late working like I once did all the time. I’ve been going to bed around the time I put Pumpkin to bed, or sometimes an hour or two later. I get up and get her ready for school, and sometimes I try to stay up. But I end up getting so sleepy that I have two choices: either stay up in a daze and get nothing done, or go back to bed and get some more sleep. It’s gotten to the point where most of the time I don’t bother fighting it, and go straight back to bed as soon as the bus gets here.

That wouldn’t be so bad if I could just sleep for an hour or two and get back up. But I usually end up sleeping until 11:30 or 12:00, and that makes it hard to get anything done during the day. Most of the time I don’t feel particularly rested when I get back up, either. It really sucks.

I guess I’ll talk to the doctor about it when I go back. That won’t be until next month, but I’m just going to have to tough it out until then. I may have to start drinking coffee in the mornings until I see him, even though I’m not supposed to have much caffeine.