Day: January 30, 2009

Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted at Conversion Diary.

Let’s get started …

God is amazing, isn’t he?

I’ve been having digestive problems on and off (mostly on) for about two years now. I won’t go into details – that would classify as too much information, but suffice it to say, it’s been bad enough that it’s disrupted my day-to-day life. And I’ve stubbornly refused to go the doctor because I KNOW it’s my diet – I just know it is. I’ve always read/heard that your body changes as you get older and considering I’m a hair’s breadth away from being pre-menopausal, I had sort of mentally braced myself for whatever my body threw at me.

I just hadn’t expected the ball to curve quite this much.

I’ve altered my diet drastically in the past year alone. I now know that I can no longer tolerate beans (goodbye peanut butter *SNIFF SNIFF*), broccoli, bananas (though I’ve always sort of had a problem with those anyway), apples, ice cream (it took me a long time to accept that one because I just couldn’t let go of ice cream!!), bran, and whole wheat products (I ate two whole wheat tortilla shells last week and about died for three days afterwards). Of course, it’s taken me months to narrow this list down but now that I know and I’ve been avoiding these foods, my body is rewarding me by acting more normally.

This past week has been terrible, horrible, actually. I’ve been in tremendous pain – bloating, very painful gas. I’ve felt like a walking balloon all week (this is how I figured out that eating whole wheat tortillas AND an apple in the same day is a huge no-no for me). So, I started researching …

And praying. Not necessarily in that order. *grin*

I bought Charcocaps and the husband suggested I drink some hot tea. Which I did. And now, two days later? Everything seems to be coming out normal for a change. *ahem*

My husband told me last night that he prayed for me. And suggesting tea just sort of “came” to him. I firmly believe God spoke to him and He healed me. I feel 100% better and I’m better educated, and prepared, to keep myself out of that awful gas bubble in the future.

The kids are finally back to school. Talk about a strange week – only going to school Monday and Friday.

They weren’t happy. But I can’t say that I blame them. That’s the biggest reason I sort of hated vacation/snow days when I was in school/working because it’s so hard to get back into the swing of things afterward.

We didn’t do much. The kids did not get out in the snow, they stayed in the entire time and goofed off; I was a little disappointed. I had visions of snowmen and hot chocolate dancing through my head these past three days but I just need to accept the fact that these boys are no longer little and are in fact, becoming young men and that sort of thing just doesn’t seem to appeal to them anymore.

*sigh*

Aside from the day the husband came home at lunchtime and took us out to eat, I didn’t get out, either. I was sort of glad they had school today just so I had an excuse to leave the house. I know people who don’t stay home all the time must think I’m nuts for thinking this and though it IS nice to stay home, it’s honestly not all it’s cracked up to be. I miss adult interaction and just breathing fresh air, or heck, just putting my shoes on for a change!

Since we have snow on the ground and I can see every little critter that walks through our yard, I was quite fascinated by one set of tracks. This one set, in particular, really puzzled and amused me. They looked like deer tracks and at one point, it looked like the deer turned in a complete circle, as if it were lost and trying to decide which direction to take. It’s really bizarre. The hoof prints are close together and sort of smudged which to me means it wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere. But what do I know, it’s not like I track for a living or anything. *chuckle*

I also noticed human footprints. And they were cutting a diagonal path across our front yard. We live on a corner lot, so it looks like this person, instead of staying on the street (we don’t have sidewalks) and walking around our yard, simply cut across our yard to save what, a few extra seconds?

This annoyed me and I thought it was quite rude. I would never walk into someone’s yard, ever. How presumptuous. Now if the person would like to ask me if they could cut across my yard, I would have no problem giving them permission, but the fact that they just did it anyway without any respect for our property/boundary/personal space annoys me. And it’s not like cutting across our yard would have been easier anyway – the snow on the streets was packed and easier to walk on as opposed to our yard where your feet sink with every step.

Would having someone walk through your yard annoy you? Or am I just being too sensitive here?

My nephew tweeted the link to this video and I really must share it with you:

That has got to be one of the coolest (and refreshingly clean and fun) music videos I’ve seen in quite some time. And I really dig the song, too. It’s called “Her Morning Elegance” by Oren Lavie. You find his MySpace page here.

It looks like we have all of our passport paperwork in order. I talked to our post office yesterday and they don’t require appointments anymore, we just have to be there before 4:00. Which is a stretch to make during a normal school day because I’m really not free to go anywhere until after I drop a boy I carpool off and the post office is all the way across town -we’d never make it. So, we plan on making a trip up there on Tuesday, after the kids get out of school two hours early for some sort of teacher workday thing (which is silly to me because they had three whole days to get caught up because of snow days – they were required to report to work – and I would have assumed they would cancel the early day but it looks like it’s still on and really, I’m not a teacher so I don’t really know what’s going on with that anyway).

I’ll be glad when this is over simply so we can start the ball rolling. It’s supposed take 8+ weeks to get them back and I really don’t want to stress about not getting our passports back before we take off for our cruise in June.

I’m feeling terribly guilty. I really MUST get my professional website back up and running. I also need to make more of an effort to drum up some business. I have had a few bites and need to follow through with those but I’m like the world’s worst self-employed person – I have no discipline to speak of, none. Pair that with the fact that I’m terribly shy and uncomfortable about tooting my own horn and doing what I do (website designer who specializes in schools) is quite painful and hopeless.

WHEN, and notice I said when, I get that back up and running, I’ll grit my teeth and toot my horn so loudly that you’ll have to cover your ears. *grin*

I’m on a Twitter high. I accidentally stumbled across a few articles about how to build your Twitter traffic and that got my wheels turning. Though I’m tickled pink about the 128 people who are currently following me on Twitter now, and would LOVE to have more, I’m not really doing this to increase traffic, per se, but rather, because I just have so much fun with Twitter. It’s really challenging for me to keep what I have to say to 140 characters because if you’ve been around my blog for any length of time you know, I just don’t know when to shut up. 😀

I made a private, Twitter-followers-only, page. You can find it here, but you’ll need a password in order to access it. And I will give my Twitter followers that password later on today, so stay tuned.

If you’re not currently following me on Twitter and would like to, you can find me over here or click on the cute bird button below:

On Twitter!

This private page will also be where I post special giveaways, just for my Twitter followers; these giveaways will not be announced on my blog. The giveaways will only be announced via Twitter; it’s like a private party for Tweets. I also plan on commenting on some of my Twitters because I plan on providing more links to interesting articles/videos, etc. and I don’t really have the space to tell you what I think about said links.

Anyway, join! It’ll be fun. And check your Twitter – I’ll give the password out later today.

So I’m haunting the Instructables site when I stumble across this cute little box.

And when I read the description:

There are all kinds of strange and wonderful boxes showing up across the Internet to promote the new Coraline movie.

I thought, Coraline whadda? Never heard of it. So, I followed the link to the Coraline website, watched the trailer and now I must see it because it looks totally cool and creepy (and probably not suitable for small children). If you don’t feel like clicking over, then watch the below:

Spooky, right?

Upon further investigation, I discovered that this movie is based on Neil Gaiman’s book. I’m thinking this book, and the DVD of this movie, would be a perfect giveaway prize in October *insert scary, creepy laugh here*.

Anyway, I’m intrigued. And if you’re digging the box above, you can find how to make one of these boxes, for your very own, here.

Have fun!