What's new:
I found out several months ago that I have arthritis. At 30 years old. Had a problem with a joint in my hand for a couple of wees, without having injured it, went to doc, blood tests showed indicators of an auto-immune disorder. Was terrified I had lupus or rheumatoid arthritis because my rheumatoid factor was elevated. Those tests were negative. Rheumatologist factored in the "rash" I have on my scalp, which was previously diagnosed as seborrheic dermatitis, looked at it and proclaimed it to be psoriasis, and therefore diagnosed me with psoriatic arthritis. Apparently, a few lucky people with psoriasis can develop arthritis caused from the immune system going into overdrive to attack the psoriasis, but it instead affects your joints. Yay. Also in medical news, have severely fucked up my back again. Back in physical therapy for the 2nd time, last time was like 7-8 years ago. Have an appointment next week with regular doc, might have to be referred to a pain management clinic because I am still in pain on a daily basis, ongoing since October.
Kids are great, well, generally speaking. G has to be on an asthma inhaler for the winter, every time we take her off of it, her croupy cough comes back, so we're just gonna keep on it til the cold weather is gone and see how it goes. J has pneumonia, but is doing very well, just a mild case.
GI Joe gets promoted in a few months, that's always a good thing, coz it means a pay raise :P! But no, I'm very proud of him, he has done very well in his career. Oh, and we recently celebrated our 11th anniversary! Which also means that we have now been together for nearly 13 years! Man, does that make ya feel old :P It's been a long, and sometimes bumpy, road but boy is it ever worth it. I love that man like a fat kid loves cake :P
We paid off the evil Home Depot card with tax refund this year, now we are looking to buy a new bedroom set. Like, a grown up, real wood, expensive bedroom set lol. We were thinking of going with King, but the set we absolutely fell in love with is MASSIVE, it's this black-washed platform bed, the platform frame is like oversized. I think the headboard and footboard are a good 6-8 inches thick, and the side rails make it about a foot wider than any of the other bed we looked at. I think the dresser is like a foot and a half longer than the one we have now, and sticks out an extra foot as well. With everything being so big, we aren't sure everything will fit properly in our room. I don't think that with the entry door to the bedroom, the closet door, the bathroom door, and the windows that we will have enough solid wall space for everything. But it's absolutely gorgeous. So we might go ahead and stick with the Queen so that we can get that set. We will see.

I'm just not good at blogging. I get on a good little roll, and then I just stop. I just don't always have the gumption to sit and type out my feelings or daily activities or what not. However, I recently started up a food blog, where I post recipes. Much easier for me to copy and paste one of my recipes from my computer or to type one up from one of my books or what-not. Of course, being the lazy ass that I am, I don't post regularly there either. But whatever. Here it is, check it out: http://prozacpoetcooks.blogspot.com/

When cooties attack

This, my friends, is what happens when Mommy gets sick:




And this is what happens when Mommy is STILL sick but decides this mess sure as hell isn't going to clean itself:

Now children, run and hug your Mommies and kiss their feet and thank them dearly for keeping your filthy kitchens clean. Even when they have to stop what they are doing every 2 minutes to wipe the feverous (and if that isn't a real word, it is now) sweat from their forehead and the snot from thier nose.

Dinner tonight was sooo good. I decided last week that when we have taco night, that I should add a drained can of black beans to the meat mixture to help stretch the meal and make 2 out of it, and also to add some fiber and make it even healthier (already slightly healthier by use of ground turkey breast instead of ground beef). We are also having fish tacos in a couple of days, so I decided to make up a batch of salsa to go with tacos tonight and with the fish tacos (I'll also be making a cucumber salsa for the fish tacos, but GI Joe won't eat that so MORE FOR ME muahahaha...). Anyways, everyone really really liked the tacos, and they even loved the salsa. It was a bit of a strange recipe, it's in one of my weight watchers cookbooks, it actually goes with tuna steaks. I've made it once in the past, but I was the only one that ate it, as GI Joe was deployed at the time. I wasn't sure if he would like it because it has cilantro in it, and he generally turns up his nose to cilantro. And I figured G might like it, but didn't think J would coz well it has vegetables OMGZ. But he did, even asked for more, and didn't even complain about the beans in the tacos, actually said he liked them. So shocked. The recipe goes something like this:
2 cups roma/plum tomatoes (about 6), diced small
2 tbsp finely chopped jalapenos
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro (I used probably about 4 coz I LOVE cilantro but shh, don't tell the hubby!)
1/4 cup lime juice (about 2 limes worth)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar (this is what makes it slightly strange, but really, it's absolutely delicious)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Mix all together well, let it sit about 30 minutes.

And like I said, the actual recipe is for tuna steaks and salsa, you grill some tuna steaks and top it with this salsa. I also made smoothies for a snack for us earlier. Just threw some stuff together, and again, kiddos loved it. For that, I used a bag of frozen strawberries (2 cups I believe), 2 small bananas, about 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups lowfat vanilla yogurt, about 1/2 cup milk, and about 1 to 1 and 1/2 cups very vanilla silk soy milk. So yummy. I want peach ones now. I have a bag of frozen peaches too, so maybe I'll try that one night, mmmmm peach and vanilla creamy goodness.
In other news, I'm without BC pills for a week. I start a fresh pack on Friday nights. So last night, well at about 1 a.m. as we were about to go to bed, I went to the linen closet where I also store all our meds and stuff like that. No BC pill packs anywhere. Shit. See, I get my refills in sets of 3, so I usually assume I have some in the closet. Not this time, and I was dumb and hadn;t checked until the very moment I needed them. So of course I proceed to freak out, because A.) the main reason I take them is because I bleed uncontrollably without them, for weeks and weeks at a time, and B.) well, I just had my period and had been a week without sexy time, and I wanted sexy time damn it! I figured I'd call the clinic on base today when I got up and see if they could call me in a prescription to walgreens or something, or see if i could take my prescription label to walgreens and get it filled somehow. Well after a few back and forth phone calls with the after hours clinic line, and waiting for the on call doc to call the nurse back, he said he wouldn't call it in and he felt I should just wait til next week to pick up my pills. As in, you fucked up so you deal with your mistake coz I'm not taking 5 minutes out of my day to help you out of your sticky situation. Asshole. After the nurse explained to him that I needed them so I wouldn't bleed all the time, and that it would be Thursday before I could get my refills. Oh, and that....I called the refill line, and put in my refill order, and was informed by the asshole automated voice man that my prescription would be ready Thursday. When it should damn well be ready on Tuesday, Monday is a holiday and Tuesday is the next business day. So I guess I'll call the pharmacy Monday morning and see if they can go ahead and get them for me on Tuesday. I mean, how freakin hard could it be, you go to the shelf and pull off 3 packs of pills. You don't even have to count shit out and put them in a bottle, they're already pre-measured in their own handy dandy little packs! I'm already feeling crampy, and I hope it's only in my head and that I don't start bleeding before I get these pills. If I do, then that means like a month or more til I get it all sorted out and my body gets back on track. Ugh.

bad blogger, no doughnut for you!

I should use this thing more, huh? Hubs is asleep (er, trying to at least...oops...) next to me, so trying to type quietly. Made even less easy by the 2 band-aids I have holding that flap of skin down on my thumb. There was a minor incident with a bread knife yesterday, nothing that required stitches (or at least if it did well, too late now, ha!), and hey at least I didn't get blood on the bread. Not good eats right there. So with the new year, I have vowed to myself that I will get my big behind in better shape. I do not do new year's resolutions. Truth be told, I think they're pretty lame. But it was a good excuse for me to do this, so there it is. And I'm off to an ok start. First week of the year, I sat around and gave the evil eye to the elliptical machine every time I passed by. Second week, I actually used it 3 times that week. And this week, well, I did 30 minutes today, and it felt good. And since that first week of exercising, I'm down 4 pounds. Along with this, there will be a significant decrease in our red meat consumption (to maybe once a week....a little more than that right now as I have stuff in the freezer that I'm trying to get rid of), significantly increasing our fish consumption (to at least twice a week), and also having at least 1-2 meatless meals per week. I am also going to blog more. Yes, I have said it before, but I really am gonna try to blog more. It feels good to sit and type BS to no one in particular. Maybe some new folks will swing my way and I'll make some more new friends out of it, to add to the whole 2 I've made on this blog (I'm also an LJ'er, so if you have one of those, let me know...not that I post too much over there either, lately it's been just menu plans, but I try damn it lol). With that, I'm off to print more coupons, coz that's how I roll lately. I'm on a crazy coupon mission, and I am determined that my local stores will soon know me and see me coming and think, omg it's crazy coupon lady! I'm nowhere near as good as some of these badass chicks I have come across that can get like $250 worth of groceries for like, 50 cents, but I am learning. I think my best so far has been a savings of about $67, that was using coupons combined with some fabulous B1G1 deals at my trusty neighborhood Publix. Man I love Publix.

Weekends have suddenly become much more productive in our household. Last Saturday, we were all over town, at the mall and various places and things all day, and spent Sunday afternoon at the lake fishing. And oh it was a beautiful day! We were going to go again this weekend, however yardwork has taken precedence over that. Friday evening, we headed to The Home Depot, I believe the original purpose was because GI Joe wanted an electric or gas landscape edger and a grill, and who the hell else knows what other manly beasts he had wanted, I don't recall lol. On our way through the outdoor area, we noticed they had pre-potted herbs and vegetables. I have been wanting to grow my own veggies for just about forever, so the kids and I looked at all they had to offer while GI Joe gathered his manly things. After perusing a good 50 varieties of tomatoes, we settled on our first choice, Better Bush, says they are perfect for container gardening. Decided to also go for some small tomatoes, and got just some good ol' grape tomatoes. Next we picked out a cucumber plant. Were going to also get a yellow squash plant, however the boys aren't big fans of it, though the evil mommy makes them eat it sometimes anyhow. Decided to pick out one of the bell pepper plants.. All of the plants except for the cucumbers were in peatpots, so there was no trash, there was a small amount of plastic around it, but it says it is biodegradable! Yay for lovin on the earth and shit. Picked out some rather large terra cotta pots, and some organic potting soil. Headed home, after stopping by Firehoue Subs for some yummy dinner because we ended up spending a good deal of time at home depot and had to feed the poor kids before midnight, you know, the whole gremlin/mogwai deal. Got up today, left the boys here, took G and went down to the little nursery near our house, just for the hell of it, figured I needed some gloves anyhow. They had all herbs and veggies on sale for half price for earth week, so I ended up with a damn squash plant anyhow :P Came home, had some lunch, slathered me and my pale offspring with some sunscreen, and we headed out back to our personal jungle. The kids and I were on garden duty, GI Joe was moving a shitload of concrete garden pavers from our patio way out to our toolshed. Yeah....they've been sitting there for many months where he pulled them up from the rose garden area......uh can we say black widows?? There were several BIG ones, some with egg sacs attached EWWWW. Definitely tons of fun, particularly with the kids. They were ceremoniously murdered via big ass shovel or jetstream water spray. Good riddance. Got my plants all potted up, have them sitting out at the back edge of the patio. One of the tomato plants we bought already had a tiny little gumball sized tomato growing on it, so I'm pretty hopeful that this will all turn out ok. If so, then I'll work on getting a few more things. I can't wait to walk out my back door and grab a ripe, juicy, warm from the sun tomato. And cucumbers....oh, I remember when I was little, my mammy (that would by grandmother) had a garden, and she had cucumbers and I think tomatoes, I don't know what else she had, but I remember those cucumbers were amazing, we'd go and pick some, bring them in, give them a quick rinse and just bite into them. And my other grandma, they had a small garden when I was even younger, and I would pick green onions, and eat them whole, dirt and all. Still can't figure out why the hell no one said hey, let's wash that off first!! But oh well, I'm alive lol. Ok, so back from memory lane- we finished up outside, with the planting and the spiders and the killing and the spraying off the patio, came in, everyone showered, and guess where we went? If you guessed Wal-Mart, then you'd damn well be wrong, coz I fuckin hate wal-mart and just recently stepped foot in one after not having been in one in over a year. However, if you guessed The Home Depot, you'd be correct. Why, you ask, did we go again after just having gone and spent hundreds of dollars yesterday? Why, to spend hundreds more!! Only logical answer. This time, our journey was to acquire a trailer for my Expedition, so husband can haul off junk, like tree branches and big things and stuff and junk. Go, look, acquire. Hook it up to the truck, with help from our friendly home depot associates, and most of the lights don't work. Starts pouring down rain again. So we pull up to the front of the store where they have the big overhang in the loading area. Friendly home depot associates and husband spend a good hour poking and prodding and hooking and unhooking and shit and yelling instructions to me such as "brakes. lights off. lights back on. brakes again. ok, left blinker. now right blinker. kill the lights again. no seriously quick kill the liahahahaaaaahhhhhgghhhhbzzzzzbzzzzz". Haha, very funny, friendly home depot associate. Other guy says this is the 3rd trailer they have had recently that was all fuckered up. So we can either get a refund, or leave it there and wait til next week for their trailer guy to come to town to look at it and try to fix it. Decide on refund. Unhook shit. Park. Husband goes in to get refund. Kids and I are parked in front of store waiting. And waiting. 15 minutes goes by, and mama is getting more unhappy. Mama gets out, locks car, and runs in, asks hubby "WTF dude, WTF??". Husband tells wife there is a little problem because they can't legally refund us for a trailer according to GA law, but they have a way around it and are working on it, and for mama to calm down and go back to the truck. Apparently he saw the smoke coming out of my nose. Seeing as my kids are out there (ok, J is 8 1/2 so it isn't like I left poor litlle G alone, and it was like 15 feet away, and locked! so shoot me), I go back out. But I start her up, and park the bitch,and drag the kids into the store for the scoop. Eventually got it all settled after much backwards ass loopholing and paperwork. Went to tractor place to look at trailers. Oh, and before we went to home depot, we went by one of the pool stores and got a pool booklet. Coz we want a pool. After over 4 years in this house with this big ass backyard, I guess we finally want to do something with it lol. Tomorrow, husband wants to mow the lawn, it's a little rough (read: you may lose small toddlers in it). And I have nothing left to plant :( Maybe I should go buy one of those cantaloupe plants they had at the nursery :P

A new installment of "my kid pukes SO much"

So, some of you that have known me online and in real life for awhile, particularly those few unfortunate souls who have had the displeasure of witnessing this phenomenon firsthand, know that my Pork Chop has a sensitive gag reflex (ok, this was posted first to my myspace blog, in which I actually have more than like 2 people read lol so that first part was obviously addressed to them, some of these poor people have heard many tales very similar to the scenario you are about to read about). He will say this himself, to anyone that will listen. In other words, this kid pukes like you wouldn't believe. In the past, it has had the tendency to come and go in spurts, and would happen very often in restaurants....on tables, on the floor in front of strangers tables, from one side of the restaurant all the way to the bathroom - there was a time when we thought we would either be banned from Outback Steakhouse, or made to work there because of the amout of t-shirts they had given us on different ocassions for our poor little puker to wear after he ruined his clothes. Ok, enough reminiscing....on with the story. He has gotten so much better about it, and the frequency has reduced, and it's been a long time since it has happened. Well, he broke his no-puke streak last night. Around midnight, I heard him cough once, and I didn't think anything of it (though in the past, I would have thought "oh shit, here it comes" coz it always started with a cough.....). A few minutes later, he comes out to the living room to inform us that he puked everywhere. And I look more closely at him, and it is everywhere. All over his shirt, face, arms, shorts, legs. I didn't even want to see his room. So GI Joe sent him off to the shower, and we go to survey the damage. I gagged about 2 steps into the room. See, since I was pregnant with G, puke is one thing I just can't deal with anymore. I myself developed quite a sensitive gag reflex when I was pregnant with her, and it was smells that set me off. So, I left the room, and set about finding some means to protect myself from the offending odor. I saw an Old Navy sweatshirt, toddler size, n my dresser, and grabbed it up, folded it just so, and tied that bitch around my face. I have pictures to prove it, but unfortunately my USB cable is in G's room, and she is asleep. He had puked on the wall, all over his comforter and stuffed animals, on the sheets. It was horrible, and it reeked of spoiled milk and chocolate. I recalled a few minutes later that he had hot chocolate before bed. Ew. And before that, we had Mexican food. Double ew. It was awful. It took me 2 loads of laundry to get it all washed. And there were a few stuffed animals that did not make it out of that battle alive. One of which he was very upset about losing, so I searched for it on amazon and already ordered it for the poor kid. Some Ty fish thing. I could go on and on about the horribleness and disgustingness of the whole episode, but hey, I'm sure you've read more than enough :P