Author: Jen Rios

MyGirlL: The Things You Do for Love

Okay, I first need to preface this post by saying that I have WONDERFUL neighbors, and I am reminded of this every single winter I have lived here! My neighbor around the corner (we share a fence) will bring his snowblower around the corner and snow blow my walkway and if he does not do that, my next-door neighbor will come over and shovel the walkway for me! Sean will come over before or after work to shovel as well.

So, since my Mom does not need to shovel, she has done some thing for Leia now that it is so cold outside and she doesn’t take her for walks because it’s too cold and it can be icy if someone doesn’t shovel and salt and Leia’s paws is NOT good. So this is what my Mom did after she saw Leah’s attempt at playing in the yard. Her little body couldn’t Was too little to get through the snow. My Mom decided to make a track for her around the perimeter of my yard. Leia likes to do her business on the Fenceline. So she dug a trench in the entire perimeter of my yard. In the morning, she goes out and will pick up any of her business that she leaves there.

My Mom took a video to show me what the trench looks like and I think it’s adorable! The things you do for love! And my Mom loves her! We all do! I will post that video on Twitter as well as Facebook. There are actually two videos. The first video was too long so I was able to post the second one that shows Leia Liking it. My Mom says that sometimes Leia will run around in circles really fast for a while.

Recalibrate

Yesterday morning just after I took my vitamins, I had to pause a moment to take a breath because my body was KILLING me! I took a number of slow breaths and and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes to keep me from tearing up. It took a little while for me to relax and my palms did get a little bit wet. With the snow coming yesterday, I had to re-calibrate and realize that with all the precipitation, I was just going to feel pretty badly. I did feel pretty badly yesterday, ALL. DAY. LONG!!!

This morning it was even more rough with all the accumulation of the snow! I didn’t cry though, and I think the recalibration I did yesterday helped a little bit for me to handle how I was going to feel and how I am going to feel until all the snow goes away. I had to listen to this song and even though it doesn’t apply, it means something to me because feeling like this with all the precipitation outside is hard. And, “No one said that it would be this hard” but it is:


Discounted Valentine’s Day Candy

I have written before about the Hallmark channel being my guilty pleasure. I have seen most movies on this channel! This past weekend, there was a Rom-Com a-Thon weekend for Valentine’s Day. I watched it on Saturday and Sunday but did not see my two FAVORITE movies!

Saturday, I watched this movie:

I saw a movie I really liked but not my favorite and I saw half of this one:

But I was able to finish watching it on Valentine’s Day. The Rom-Com-athon continued on Monday (today). I am not a big fan of watching holiday movies after the holiday but I’ve decided to give it a chance because it snowed today and I wasn’t feeling well. As it turns out, just like discounted Valentine’s Day candy:

It was GREAT!!! I saw BOTH of my two faves!!!!:

This one was directly after it:


I was so happy to see both of these movies so I’m glad I kind of broke one of my “Rules!”

Golden Birthday

For my entire 38 years, I always thought that a golden birthday was the day you were born. I looked it up today and I saw this:

I was excited to share a song that has been in my head for a while and I was 12 when this song came out. That would be my golden birthday and “12 year old Jenny” did not understand so much of the movie, Reality Bites, and I think that might warrant a rewatch soon. It’s lucky that I have NOTHING at all to do right now! Bit this song was my favorite of the movie back then:

Ice-Skating OR T Minus 30!

This video showed up in my YouTube feed early this morning. I HAD to watch it AND share it on Facebook. I have always LOVED watching Ice-skating on television! I have never been ice-skating and now that my movement is so limited if not nonexistent, I fear that I never will!

I was actually invited to go ice-skating the Saturday after I tore my ACL and a basketball game. My friend invited me and I met him when we were both in fifth grade. I told him that I do not know I know you scan and he played hockey growing up so he told me that he would teach me on the following Saturday.

I think it was the Tuesday before that that I tore my ACL while playing in a basketball game. The doctor told me NOT to go ice-skating! I did not go ice-skating then or ever because I had my first knee surgery. Not long after that, I was diagnosed with MS and now ice-skating is just NOT in the cards!

I still LOVE to watch it on TV because I will not be able to watch an in person because it would be too cold in there for me! I thought about my invitation to go ice-skating in high school that I never got to take part in because today is his birthday! I have known them since I was in fifth grade! I think it’s funny how some birthday so I will NEVER forget! His is one of them!

I think I remember this because when he told me That his birthday was February 12, I learned that was EXACTLY one month before mine! That’s right! My birthday is in T minus 30 days!!! I will not be 17 so it does NOT warrant a song like it did for Sean but it will be the last birthday I have in my 30s! I will be 39 on March 12!!! I don’t mind getting older but I am the ONLY one of my siblings still in my 30s for one more year and one month at least!

“A Little 13 Week Old Baby…”

Sean texted me from work this evening:

I don’t know what kind of car/truck he was driving but he then added this text to the picture:

“A little thirteen week old baby does not know a world w out pink and Nate ruess at #1”

This made me laugh really hard because I was driving to Barwis in the summer with him and he was 11 years old and that is what the DJ said because this song had been #1 for 13 weeks:

I couldn’t believe he remembered that but I remembered it too! I love that he shared that with me!!! 😍😍😍

Grateful

This morning, I opened my eyes and it was daylight outside. Having MS is NOT easy by any means or without pain or discomfort but I wasn’t in the same kind of pain that I was in yesterday morning and for that I am most grateful!

I still have and will have many obstacles to face and I deal with SO much daily but for this day, I’m grateful that I am not in as much pain as I was in in the wee hours of yesterday morning! I came across this meme on Facebook this morning and it completely resonated with me!:

Today, it seems that I am equipped with enough to get through this day! I am most grateful for that!

Perplexed

I have been perplexed about the events of early this morning and I STILL am quite perplexed as I’m trying to move through it. I have had Multiple Sclerosis for just over 20 years and I have dealt with many changes in my abilities over the years. Because of this morning, I am still perplexed and dealing with this latest development.

I first want to say that my current bed is the MOST comfortable bed in the world! I bought this bed when I moved to our second apartment that had two bedrooms 15 years ago. I had an awesome Queen sized four poster bed frame that went with it that over the years that I have since had to get rid of. Even though my bed is now on a simple metal frame, it still is extremely comfortable! Sean agrees and he used to sleep in it right after my latest knee surgery and I slept in my medical recliner. My Mom has also taken naps in it and she loves it! She says that it is, “Heaven.”

I also want to say that when I got fitted for my motorized wheelchair, Dave (the tech who explained how the chair worked to me) told me that it is NOT designed to sleep in but many people do that.

So then, there was this morning. It was still dark outside but my body hurt so badly! It was in my bones. My hips and my shoulders ached and I called out to my Mom for help. I moaned as she came into my room and as she pulled me out of my bed and transferred me into my wheelchair. I reclined my chair and was able to fall back to sleep for another four hours in the living room.

In the over 20 years that I have had MS, I have never experienced pain like this! I have dealt with MANY changes in my abilities over the years and I have taken them in stride as best I can. These changes are unfortunate and sadden me whether I am talking about my inability to drive now, the difficulty I have with my speech at times, the changes in my vision, or my inability to sing anymore. All of these things, though sad, I just have to deal with.

But with the pain I experienced this morning and knowing how comfortable my bed actually is, is perplexing. In fact, it’s downright scary. I am scared that it will happen again. I hope not but I guess I will just have to wait and see tonight.

A Few Takeaways from Yesterday’s Super Bowl…

I have a number of takeaways from yesterday’s Super Bowl. The first takeaway being that I have missed watching football immensely! I turned the TV on with three hours and 37 minutes to go until game time. I ABSOLUTELY love pregame! I turned the TV on during a commercial, (which was one that I love and maybe will write about soon) But when CBS programming started again, Nate Burleson was talking to us! I had to exclaim, “Oh Nate, I love you! I miss you!” I haven’t been able to wake up early enough to watch GMFB as a result of the progression of my disease. I was so happy to see him! He has cornrows now and I really liked his suit jacket! As I watched the pregame, I realized how much I had missed football and I loved seeing the plays even though they were two teams that I’m not very interested in. Football is football! I had already told my Mom that I was going to watch the Super Bowl!

To NOT keep you in suspense, I did NOT win the, “50,000 smackers ” from the Rocket mortgage football squares but I enjoyed watching football again!

it’s second thing that I took away from the game was that I haven’t been that indifferent to who won the game since the Giants and Patriots Super Bowl. During that one, Sean watched the game by himself while I made Kiefer for the first time with my Mom. I bought a cleaver specifically to do that but left her in charge of using it because I did not want to lose my hand and at that time, my hand-eye coordination had already begun to slip. My Mom made the Kefir until the price of young coconuts got too expensive so it was better to buy the kefir already prepared from the B.E.D. website. It’s been a minute since I purchased that because money is an issue for now but I have not ever really watched a football game when I was not cheering and screaming for one particular team!

The last takeaway I have from the Super Bowl is that I am old!!! I was not interested in The Weekend’s performance because I wasn’t very familiar with his music.

Sean came by and sat with Leia as we were double masked and watched the halftime show. He let me know that one of the songs was, “From that dirty book you liked” which made me laugh but he definitely was NO Bruno Mars which was an EPIC halftime show that we watched together.

As for the commercials, they were mediocre but the one I liked the best was the Geico commercial and I cannot get over how OLD the guys from Tag Team are!!! They are old enough to have a white hair, that means that I am old too! If they were in my kitchen, I would be dancing like the parents in the commercial were and Sean would roll his eyes like the teenage girl does.