I knew that the ‘changing of the guard’ for my chapstick would be quite mundane and anticlimactic, which it was! If you remember, I was going from ‘bag’ to ‘bag’:
I finished the Vanilla Bean on Sunday, just after I went to church on TV. So I had a Vanilla Bean-Pomegranate mix on Sunday night. I finished the bag of Pomegranate chapstick today so now I am just on pomegranate until the weather changes and then move over to Cucumber Mint.
But that is also NOT the ONLY excitement in my day today! This is only the second time this has happened for me but it will be happening now for the rest of my life. That second knee surgery was a doozy for sure!!!:
After my two knee surgeries and having MS for over 20 years, I will be taking one of these every night for the rest of my life. Ibuprofen 800 just takes the edge off! So, this is all an anti-climactic ho-hum of chronic illness I guess…
My brother, Dave, texted this picture to me and my Mom on February 28:
I was extremely quiet when I looked at this picture. I watched Baby Boom the next day. I just watched it again today. This picture of my Mom and me and my aunt Rita really got to me! I remember hugging my aunt Rita when she was wearing that lavender sweater and that’s my favorite outfit that I am wearing! I’m trying to remember the sweetness of her perfume!
I don’t remember where we were at not even sure how my brother got that picture but either way, I really like seeing it! I cried! I have been crying! You see, my aunt Rita died four days after I turned eight. She was 42. I remember adults telling my Mom that she was so young when I was eight and I couldn’t understand that! She was not young! She was over 40 years old!
Well, that will be me a week from today. Having had MS for so long makes me feel old. But I really can’t believe that my aunt was this young when we lost her?!!!!
This song was in a Hallmark movie that I did not watch today. But I remembered that I liked this song. Danica McKellar is no longer on Hallmark Channel. But I didn’t watch the movie anyway here’s the song:
I woke up today on a mission and I completed it with one exception. Today, I planned my entire 2024 chronic illness care plan!!! I made three of the remaining four appointment for this year.
So, my year is planned with one exception, and that exception is my virtual neurology appointment! I have been seeing the neurologist once a year for the past 23 years. I was supposed to go every six months, but as a single mother, I couldn’t pay for Specialists more than once a year!
I seem to have made due. I told my speech pathologist that I seem to be collecting doctors! I told her that after I made my first appointment with an endocrinologist. She told me that it’s a more useful collection than collecting stamps. She told me that all they do is draw blood. Well, I’m okay with that then.
So, my year is planned. I have some doctors who I see every year. And others who I see every two years. I like that this scheduling makes sense to me! It makes sense to me and I know now that I can only do one appointment a month. There are some exceptions that can’t be helped, but that is usually a difficult day! I have a couple of those days coming up on both March 20 and March 22!
Because my year is planned, that means that my van rental schedule is also planned! All of this on March 4 I didn’t get that you scheduled until April of last year for 2023. So it seems that I’m getting better at this? Maybe it’s just because my world is so small and all I think about are my doctors appointments and renting vans. I’m not mad about that. At least I can do it?!
I was completely affected by Toby Keith’s death! My Mom and I listened to Toby Keith often right after my Dad‘s death. Here are just a few of our faves:
I heard this one back in high school when I would watch CMT (Country Music Television) in the summers and then it changed over to GAC (Great American Country):
My Mom and I listened to this one a lot just after my Dad died:
I’ve only dipped my toe into country music! I listened to it in high school probably junior and senior year and I worked at Lonestar this summer after high school.
I have owned three country albums in my life! I have two Dixie Chicks albums, who are just The Chicks now, and Carrie Underwood’s first album. if I really think about it, I think I had a Shania Twain single when I was a sophomore? And I bought the Chris Gaines album (who is really Garth Brooks) used from Dearborn Music.
So, I think I am putting both feet in right now, because I constantly listen to my Country playlist on Apple Music on shuffle so I get a good mix! But I think that the universe is working with me because that new Beyoncé song?!
I’ve downloaded it on Apple Music and I have seen five different shorts of people dancing to it. One of them were two Irish, tap dancers!!! I also have received an email about country music stations not playing that song, but I really dig it! If I could dance, I would do it! I will put this here so you guys can enjoy!:
I’m also going to put the clean version here because my Mom doesn’t like the swearing:
So, I will finish my Vanilla Bean, chapstick, and go right into my Pomegranate chapstick. I am going from bag to bag But it all works out because I’m not leaving the house until March 20!
My Target order arrived a couple days ago and it looks like it’s just in time! This happened yesterday:
I say that it’s just in time because I won’t leave my house again until March 20 for my next haircut. Once I finish this tube of chapstick, I will fish out my pomegranate bag-o-chapstick that is in the box. I keep the remote in in my front room. Cucumber mint also arrived from my Target order so I will just be using pomegranate until I begin my spring/summer chapstick.
But seeing that it is so freezing cold right now (I’m so glad I missed that bullet!!) and I’m glad I am home until March 20 and hopefully it’ll be a little warmer then.
I keep the space heater by me to stay warm now… my Mom really doesn’t understand that my temperature gauge is broken. I am always cold except in the summer when I melt because I’ve overheated! #MSsucks!!!
So, when I got diagnosed with osteoporosis, (it was a Friday). The following Monday, I did two things. I can’t remember which one I did first but I think I called endocrinology first because I knew that it would be a while for me to get an appointment. I called on February 5 and my appointment is Not until May 16.
And then called my Naturopath’s office and was able to get an appointment to be seen on February 21 where Dr. Clark gave me wafers to take. I take four a day for now and I will go back on March 20 to see if anything further needs to happen. I originally said that they tasted like, “Sawdusty bottlecaps” but I have recently changed my mind and think they taste like teething biscuits that my nephew used to have when I was 13.
Today, we had to vote. I have been voting absentee for the past couple years but today, I had to go into my precinct to vote. That would take place before we got our teeth cleaned.
Before we left to go to my precinct to vote, we decided that we were going to get pizza today. Pizza and lasagna are the only things that I can still eat. Both options are quite, “carb-y” but I think in this weather, that seems to work out better for me. I am at a point where I get weighed every six months, and I need to keep weight on me now so the prospect of eating these things is not problematic for me at this point:
I had to wake up early today because it was a “2-fer” with voting and the teeth-cleaning. I am currently sitting in my house, and I had just finished my two pieces of pizza and then beginning to feel “The Crash” begin. We both voted and we both got our teeth cleaned. So February was success in terms of what I needed to get done next month is haircut and primary care physician appointment. Both of those days are a single day rental.
My Mom put this movie on when we were putting on my compression socks, and I absolutely knew it from the very beginning at the sound of the snare drums!
These two trailers do NOT start with the snare drums like they do in the movie. My Mom wasn’t a fan, but I LOVED it!!!
I still know all of the words and my Mom asked me how many times I have watched this movie, and I thought about it for a moment that I have at least watched this movie 90 times that was when I was 13, I would watch it three times a day while I was home sick with the chickenpox! My Dad was also home and sick being that he just got out of the hospital!
My Mom and I laughed at the fact that my Dad hated that I watched it so much and the fact that he tried to hide the movie in his papers!!!
I came to a realization last night just after I finished flossing my teeth. It startled me annd ultimately made me cry! Let me ‘splain ya:
I came to the realization that I needed to write about this when I saw this on Facebook right after I woke up:
I did that yesterday and here’s what happened: I have been flossing my teeth to this song for a while now:
So, last night, as I was flossing my teeth, I felt the need to tell my Mom why I have been listening to this song so much. This song is my JAM! This song is me test driving a car (WITH MY FEET?!) that I would ultimately buy. This car ended up being a lease that was changed over to a purchase because I needed to affix a chair tapper to the roof of the car to house my wheelchair I drove.
This car was going to be equipped with hand controls that ultimately I ended up totaling a couple years later, because apparently, cars DON’T float! I did not realize this as I was driving to work in the rain and pitch blackness before the sun comes up that Dix was not properly irrigated!
This song clearly reminds me of that test drive because back then, I was so much more able than I am now! I love that empowerment song, because, “Everything [I] got, best believe [I] bought it!” I was explaining that to my Mom who is in the kitchen.
But then, mid-expectation, my voice cracked as I put my hands Inside my sweatshirt and put the heels of my palms against my eyes. My shoulders shook a lot more than I thought they would but I just let them shake. because the realization I have now is that in my second apartment, I was supposedly “Miss Independent” but my voice cracked just before I told my Mom, “Now I am homebound, and have a caregiver?!”
This definitely is a tough pill to swallow, because I never thought it would get like this in 1 million years! But this is where we are. It’s really quite sad if I think about it for too long…
