One Mom’s Lifesong

It’s been 3 days w/ no fevers in the house (knock on wood) and we are finally back into the swing of things. I got to go to church on Sunday and see grown up people. Yeah!

And yes, I’m back at the gym. After my back problems I did not want to miss more workout time so I managed to squeeze in some workouts during the Sick-In at odd times. But this week I’m back at my M,W, F schedule and it felt good. I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself that I am sticking with it and actually WANTING to go to the gym. Self discipline has NEVER been one of my strengths. All my grade school report cards read something like "Julie is so bright but she needs to learn more self-control." Yeah, yeah!

Tomorrow morning starts a new Bible Study. This time I’m leading a group in Beth Moore’s Daniel study. I am so excited about it. That woman is so incredible. God has blessed her with an amazing gift and talent. I’ve heard that the study is life changing and I think that we’re going to have a really great group of women.

It’s also been the motivation I needed to do some serious cleaning. We’re talking "scrub the baseboards" cleaning. My husband thinks I’m nuts when I do something like that but that’s what my Momma taught me Besides there was a years worth of dust collecting on that little baseboard ledge. And I had my little helper Natalie. That girl loves to clean. And my son actually begged me to let him mop the kitchen tonight. I am NOT going to pass that one up. I have yet to go actually inspect his work and I suspect that I may have to remop under the table where the popsicle juices tend to stick but God bless them both for being helpers!

So many of you spent much of last week house bound with no school because of the weather.

I don’t get snow to play in (although it did actually snow in Phoenix on Sunday if you can believe that). I get fevers and vomit.

It started about 1 a.m. on Saturday when Natalie woke up saying her head hurt. When I picked her up she was burning up. After some meds I put her back to bed. She woke up around 9:30 but was so pitiful I put her back to bed where she slept until 1 in the afternoon at which point her fever was 103.3. After a bath to bring the temp down she perked up a bit.

Sunday was more of the same. Then Sunday night Noah threw up. So they were both home on Monday. And then on Tuesday although they were both fever free and feeling much better. Natalie still had a stuffy nose but seemed to be doing better. Yeah!

Today was a busy day. I was dropping Natalie at my parents and then off to pick up Noah from an appt and race him downtown for his class field trip. Or, that was the plan…until Natalie woke up with a fever…AGAIN! Luckily my mother-in-law came to the rescue (thanks Cathy!) so I managed everything.

But no preschool again for Natalie. Despite a couple quick trips to the gym and the grocery store I feel like I’ve been housebound for a month. I don’t know how you snow/ice-bound people did it. Seriously!

Friday night was date night and, as usual, we did dinner and a movie. The great part about it was that we used Christmas gift cards and the only thing we had to pay for was the babysitter.

The not so great part was our movie choice.

I should preface this with a few things. My husband, as most males, loves action movies. I think when we were dating I saw every Steven Segal movie ever made. And truth be told I began to like them (okay, not that last Segal movie, that was BAD) but action movies in general. I get just as excited as he does when a good new action flick is coming out.

But boxing movies do NOT count as action movies. At some point in our 17 year relationship I’ve seen at least Rocky 1 & 2. They were okay…whatever. So the new Rocky Balboa movie was out and I figured he’d want to see it, if for nothing else then for nostalgia. So I decided to take one for the team and go see it with him.

No, we weren’t expecting Oscar-caliber acting. The first clue should have been in the opening shots when it said "Written and directed by Slyvester Stallone". But seriously….SERIOUSLY…I was laughing so hard during some of the more serious monologues. It was SOOO bad. They spent an hour and 30 minutes of the movie talking about his now dead wife (from "woman cancer" – Rocky’s words not mine) and how his life is empty and his son has self-esteem issues because of living in his dad’s shadow. They didn’t get to the whole training/boxing thing until the last 25 minutes of the film. That part was, well, decent.

So, if any of you women were going to take one for the team. Don’t. If your husband’s don’t believe my account, they can go read my husbands.  I wouldn’t even rent this one!

Hey, y’all. Big welcome to anyone coming over from HolyMama’s! Isn’t she the best. She cracks me up on a regular basis.

If you don’t already know about the ever-important Club 17, then go here.

But I thought I’d post some quick instructions in case you need help getting her button on to your sidebar.

Typepad

1. Save the Club17 image from HolyMama’s site (right click, save image as…).
2. Log in to your typepad account (duh!)
3. Click on Control Panel > Files page. Over on the right will be "Upload New image" Browse for the image on your hard drive and then upload it.
4. After uploading the image, click on the image filename (now in the main list) to view it in your browser. Your browser’s address bar will show the URL for the image, such as http://example.typepad.com/image.jpg. Copy this code.
5. Click the "Typelists" tab
6. If you already have a typelist for things in your sidebar find that list and click "add new item".
7. In the "link title"  paste the URL for the image that you copied.
8. Now  edit it so that it looks like this (adding "<img src="  to the beginning and a "> to the end) <img src="http://example.typepad.com/image.jpg">
9. In the "link URL" box enter the code for HolyMama’s Club 17 post  (http://holymama.typepad.com/holymama/2007/01/the_club_17_and.html)
10. Click "save item"

Tah dah, it should be there now. If you don’t already have a typelist on your site, go here for directions.

Blogger
1. Log in to your account, click on your blog. Click the "Template" tab.
2. Scroll down, almost to the end of your template. I’m going to assume that you want to put the button underneath your archived posts. Look for some text that looks like this:
    <MainOrArchivePage>
  <h2 class="sidebar-title">Archives</h2>
    <ul class="archive-list">
         <BloggerArchives>
        <li><a href="<$BlogArchiveURL$>"><$BlogArchiveName$></a></li>
      </BloggerArchives>
  </ul>
  </MainOrArchivePage>
3. At the end of this text you want to copy and paste this block:
    <a href="http://holymama.typepad.com/holymama/2007/01/the_club_17_and.html">
    <img src="http://desertdiva.typepad.com/club17_2.jpg"></a>
4. This will pull the image from my site. Ideally you want to get your own copy of the image and link to that in case something ever happens to the one on my account. There are a couple of ways to do that. You can upload it to flickr or something like that. (You’re on your own there as I don’t use it). Or you can do the following.
                a. Create a new post
             b. Insert the Club 17 image and publish the post
             c. View your blog, click on the Club 17 image. It will take you to a page w/ just the image.
                Copy and paste that URL.
             d. In the code above replace the URL to my site (inside the quote marks) w/ this URL.

Whew! I hope that helps anyone who needs it.

So I decided that with the new year, and a slightly different routine I was going to do my best to start exercising regularly. I cleared my schedule on M, W, F mornings, enrolled Natalie in a gymnastics class during one of those times and was very motivated. Last week was a great first week. I was enjoying myself, felt good, lots of energy. I even did Pilates at home on one of my days "off".

Then Saturday Natalie was running around the house in circles. I bent over to grab her as she ran past. I got stuck. Like "help, I can’t straighten up" S-T-U-C-K! Yes I did eventually get upright but only with much pain. The rest of the day was spent on shuffling around the house and sitting on a heating pad. Sunday was much of the same but I was feeling better. "I can do it, I can exercise on Monday. I’ll just take it easy."

NOT! Was even worse today. Luckily my chiropractor was in today so we schlepped the kids 45 minutes to see him (I should really find some one on this side of town). I’ll be back there again on Wed. In the meantime I’m trying not to let it get me down and sidetrack my great exercise plans. I’m praying I’ll be back to normal soon!

That’s right, Phoenix was officially COLD last night. It got down into the "teens" in some places. Can you imagine???? I told my kids that if it had rained last night we would have had snow. They looked at me and said "Huh?"  Of course this meant I was running around at 10 pm last night trying to cover my plants. With not enough to go around. Some of them don’t look so good today.

Thought this picture was cool from the azcentral.com web site.

Carlos Chavez/The Arizona Republic