February 10, 2011 4:32 p.m.
Alas, today is a sick day at our house.  No lessons, just library books, videos, and naps.  Both children have the flu and are spiking fevers.  When one is up, the other is down, and vice versa.  As of this writing, Sweet Girl has hit 104 and Chips is at around 100.  Then in a couple of hours, it could be the other way around.  I hate to see them this way; they are so infrequently sick like this.  And they are supposed to play violin for a talent show tomorrow night that they have been anticipating for a long time.  I do hope they recover quickly.

We spent the weekend traveling to “Pepsicola” to visit Self-Reliant Man’s parents.  They seemed to be doing as well as can be expected.  Without going into too much detail about them, his mother is in an assisted-living facility.  His father isn’t.  Anyway, here are some photos of the children with them this weekend.

November 16, 2010 9:51 p.m.
Another thing took place this week. 
I had to get a root canal today.  Last Thursday, I was innocently eating a bagel with jelly and half of my tooth came off.  It cracked down the middle so that the front was intact but the back side of it came off.  There was a big hole in the back of my tooth, and it felt like a razor edge on my tongue.  I called our dental office, and they said they could take a look at it that afternoon.  I was so thankful that something like this could happen and I could be in a dentist chair the same day working on a resolution.
That afternoon, after an evaluation, it was decided that the tooth needed a root canal and a crown.  They didn’t fill it in, instead opting to leave it open in case of an abscess.  Fortunately for me, I have a dental retainer, so I wore that 24/7 all weekend to protect my tongue. 
This morning I went in for the root canal, complete with two children all set up with Calvert books to do some independent work, and library books for when their academics were over.  I was of the impression that this appointment would last between 1-1/2 and 2 hours. 
In the past, my previous dentist would have sent me to an endodontic specialist in a larger city nearby.  You know the type: does a dozen root canals every day, comes to work at 10, goes home at 3, takes off half of Friday, and still makes tons of money.  But he was good at what he did.  With him, a root canal took between 20 and 30 minutes and you were out the door starting your car.  No kidding.  Well, two years ago (before this blog) was my last root canal, with that specialist, and I unfortunately experienced a flare-up afterwards.  Beginning two days after the procedure, my tooth started to ache and the pain built in intensity until I wanted to just slam my head into the wall to give myself something else to think about.  I am talking five full days of intense pain that barely budged when mixed with pain killers.  That kind of pain.  I certainly hope not to repeat that experience.
Well, this new dentist who worked on me today (he looks like he is 20, but I know he has to be about 30) insisted that he could do the root canal himself and that there was no need to go elsewhere.  My root canals would be in good hands with him.  He did beautiful root canals, just look at these X-rays, yada yada, so he said.
This morning I sat in the dental chair for over 3 hours.  He said that my canals (there were two) had “shrunk away” before his very eyes – disappeared – and he couldn’t find them again.  Kept poking around with an “endo explore” trying to find them.  Kept spraying “EDTA”, whatever that is, probably  an antiseptic.  Eventually found them both and finished the job.  Reported two-thirds of the way through the procedure that my tooth was among his top three most difficult root canal teeth ever.  Wow, was I ever proud!  Wrote me a strong painkiller prescription and told me to expect some soreness for a few days. 
So here I am, hoping and praying with all my might that I don’t get another flare-up, and feeling that if ever there were an occasion to have one, this would be it.  Please pray for me, bloggy friends.  Lesson learned: insist on going to the endodontic specialist next time.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, though, the children were total angels.  For three hours (and I had told them it would be two hours tops) they sat in their own private waiting room, did their lesson work, read their library books, quietly pretended they were camping on the floor, got toys from the toy drawer and played with them, and enjoyed cookie snacks provided for them by my hygienist.  All the while, everybody commented on how well-behaved they were for such a long wait time.  I was pleased with this, and very proud of them, and I told them so, and I took them to Mickey-D’s for lunch (because they consider that a reward). 
But I will not relax this week for a couple of days until I know that I am out of the woods with this root canal.  Don’t forget those prayers, friends.  And thanks!

 June 1, 2010 5:07 p.m.

The title of this post might seem mysterious until I tell you that on Wednesday of last week, I began to wear an orthodontic retainer, after not having visited an orthodontist in 29 years.  Now those of you who remember what it is to experience orthodontics need no further explanation.  But for the rest of you..

It all sounds so simple, you see.  You are handed an innocuous looking clear plastic devices that presumably is custom made to fit.  You are told to simply "wear the retainer 24/7 for two weeks, only removing it to eat.  Then after two weeks, you may wear it only at night.  Any questions?"

"Oh no, of course not," I think to myself; after all, how difficult can that be?  But as I smile a reply, I can't help noticing that this plastic device seems to not quite fit as comfortably as I expected it to (hoped it would).  So, I usher my children out the door and we head home.

Except that a few hours later, I realize that I have become short-tempered and grouchy and my sinful nature is becoming more evident than usual.  And as hour after hour wears on, I realize that this darn contraption is exerting forces on my teeth that I would prefer not to have to deal with.  And when dinner time comes and I remove it, I feel my teeth instantly move back into their normal places and say "ahhhh..."

Only to have to put it back in after dessert.  And wear it at night.  And then, homeschool my kids the next day, reading aloud to them and teaching myself to speak correctly again.  That was not one of my magazine photo picture perfect homeschool days, I remember that much.

Well, now here it's been six days since the torture device retainer has been placed, and I have to say that my teeth now know their new places, my bite has been altered as it needed to be, and the retainer apparently has done the trick.

Oh, and apologies for grumpy mommy/ wife have been delivered all around.  Now I remember why I didn't miss this particular part of my teenage years.

Sunday was Baby Girl's Sixth birthday. She was very excited, although we had nothing special planned, but she did get to go to a birthday party for a little three year old boy near us who has the same birthday.

Baby Girl can be amazingly self-effacing for a young child. The entire time she was at the little boy's party, she never mentioned to anybody that it was her birthday, too.

After that, we wanted to know what she wanted to do for birthday dinner. She wanted to go to a local pizzeria; you know, the kind that reminds Mommy of her younger days in New Jersey. That's my girl!

Funny thing was that she selected a white pizza covered with spinach. It was probably Self-Reliant Man's last choice when it comes to pizza, but he accepted it with good cheer (just picked all the green stuff off onto his plate).

One of the highlights of the day was the Bitty Baby doll that she received from her "Mimi". She hasn't stopped playing with it since.

She also received a girl's hardcover Bible, too. She has really been checking that out since Sunday as well, especially all the memory verses that it highlights throughout.

Big girl bedroom furniture is on its way, and I cannot wait until we receive it. Yet, it is bittersweet for me to remove all the baby and toddler furnishings. Sigh...

I still cannot believe she is six. As I was kissing her goodnight at the end of the day, I asked her, since she is now an official "Medium-Sized Girl", can I still call her "Baby Girl"?

Of course, being who she is, she nodded "Yes". Thank goodness. I will never ever stop wanting to call her "Baby Girl".

Yes, there has been a cease fire in my battle with perimenopause. And it has been all about better nutrition.

First of all, many thanks to Paula over at A Large Room for recommending a good book to me: "What to Eat", by Marion Nestle. This book was a whopper, over 500 pages, but I read all of it, and it was very informative. Just when a previous book I read about Perimenopause and nutrition had me thinking I had to go to a different planet to find safe food, this common sense nutritionist showed me I didn't have to. I highly recommend this book! This lady is smart. She is a good analyzer and thinker. She writes in an engaging, and often humorous way about a subject that can be pretty dry. She has done hours of research into the politics of food marketing, and how it should affect our choices on what to purchase and what to eat, and how to choose well at the supermarket.

Second of all, thanks once again to Leanne Ely for helping me get on the good nutrition wagon again. Thanks to her recipe plan, we are once again eating well at dinnertime. And these dinners often mean plenty of healthy leftovers for lunch later in the week.

The result is that I have been doing better in the hormone department. The symptoms and issues I reported back in this post have largely improved. There have been some days with a couple of symptoms, but not nearly to the extent that I complained about during the summer. I know that our diets left a lot to be desired. My DH and I had emerged from our successful weight loss year (he lost 35 pounds last year and I lost 30 pounds) without a decent eating plan for sustaining the weight loss, so we ended up eating too many packaged "calorie--controlled" meals without enough nutrition in them. Hey, Stouffers can be a good thing in a pinch, but too much of this sort of eating will take its toll. Not to mention the high sodium content. So now we are happily home cooking a wide variety of foods, and this is one area where it has been helping me.

Another things is that the book I mentioned above helped me to identify what may be the emerging signs of lactose intolerance in Baby Girl. So, after recently upgrading to organic milk for her benefit, I now find that I need to purchase organic and lactose free milk for her. I have been doing this for a week now, and her tummy aches have gone away. That is, until this morning when she complained about it again. I thought about what she had eaten and remembered that she ate a large portion of a casserole I made last night that contained cream cheese. Whoops! I guess I forgot about the lactose content there.

Yes, this week I did cross yet another milestone in life. Some would say, it is one of those little thresholds.

I got a prescription for Dual Vision Corrective Lenses. That is my preferred name for ... uh ... er.. bi, bifo, (spit it out! ) ... ah .. ummmmmmmm...

I think the correct word is bifocals. Yes, my friends, I am now going to be a bifocals wearer. I eeked out those single vision glasses just as long as I possibly could, but now, at the tender age of 45 -1/4, it's time.

I've decided that it was going to be sooner or later, and might as well get it over with. Sometimes one just has to be a big girl and face the music, bite the bullet, jump in with both feet. Or eyes.

I am taking that prescription and marching off to the nearest optician to get my newfound Dual Vision. Yessirree, I am going. I'm putting that prescription in my purse right now. I'm going .. going .. well, maybe in a few months.

Right now I've got more immediate fish to fry. I got stung by a wasp yesterday, and although it didn't continue to hurt very long yesterday, as of today my left ring finger is very itchy and swollen. So much so, that I can't really bend the finger anymore. It looks like a balloon animal. It looks like the ring finger of a very fat person. Fortunately I had the foresight to take off my rings before it swelled. Boy oh boy -- I took Zyrt*c, and it didn't help. How do I keep from scratching it?