My thyroid is asleep..

Well...maybe not asleep but at least sluggish. I finally went and got my lab work done ( after waiting a year with the lab slips in my drawer) and I got the results when I went to the dr appt last week. Everything that I was scared of coming back wrong was all just fine. Liver, kidney, heart tests were all fine. My thyroid test came back showing that I have hypothyroidism. I have a family history of it and I have noticed more and more symptoms of it. I have had more dry patches on my skin, my hair has been dry, I have been so tired and worn out etc. So, I was prescribed 100mcg of levothyroxin. I started it 5 days ago. It takes a bit of planning to take it because it has to be taken in the morning, on an empty stomach, with a full glass of water. I can not eat anything for at least 30 minutes after taking it and I cant take any antacids, calcium or iron supplements for 4 hours. The first day I took it I felt a warm feeling starting about 30 minutes after taking it. It was not unpleasant but just a bit odd. I did also feel a bit dizzy and felt like my heart was beating fast but I think that was just my anxiety that was high due to my fear of taking a new pill. I did not notice much the 2nd or 3rd day. The 4th day ( yesterday) I felt tired in the morning ( like usual) but after lunch time I felt really good. I even asked Ray if he and the boys wanted to go out with me. I had to go get another lab test done and then had to go to the bank and then I decided to stop at goodwill. YEP..I went to goodwill and I did fine. It was really hot inside the store so that was a bit of a downer but other then that I did fine. If the kids had not been with us I would have probably looked around more because they were putting out all kinds of stuff and there was lots of stuff to look through. I spent about 20 dollars. I got 2 different fabrics, both knit fabics very cute prints from Antex brand. There was about 6 yards total and I paid 3 dollars for all of it. I got 2 books from Luanne Rice, a cami top with built in bra to wear with my lounge pants, the boys picked out a few stuffed animals and I got a really cute stuffed catterpillar toy to give to the dogs to play with.
I have to go back to the dr next week. Some of my test results came back with results that could mean I have lupus. My sed rate and C reactive protien were high. My lyme disease test came back with a false positive ( I do not have lyme disease but it is common for people with lupus to have lyme disease test come back screwy) I have had symptoms of lupus on and off for a few years but most of the symptoms for lupus are also symptoms of fibromyalgia so it is hard to tell exactly what is going on. I will find out the results to my second ANA blood test as well as a few other blood tests when I go to the dr next week.

crappy smoothie

I took a nap for a few hours and woke up feeling a bit less anxious. Still not good but better. I found a television marathon on today of a who I had never heard of before. It is called strip search and it is back from 2005. Basically the guy who formed the mens stripping group called the thunder down under had decided to make up a group similar to them but that included men from the U.S. He went around the country and came up with 15 guys and then the entire 6 or 7 hour marathon of episodes was him getting the group down to 7 members. It was mindless tv but wow were the guys sexy. I have not watched all of it yet but have the last few episodes on dvr to watch later after big brother is over.
So, on to the crappy smoothie. I have not eaten since friday. After I came home from Joanns I started feeling sick to my stomach so did not eat anything that night. Yesterday morning I was still feeling sick but had a few crackers and 1/2 a sprite. Later on in the evening I had 2 push pops and some coke. Today I had some toast earlier and that is about it. When my anxiety is bad I can not eat. I get sick to my stomach and also panic that I will choke. So, Ray decided to get the boys pizza from costco. The pizza did not sound good to me but I got excited over him picking me up a berry parfait from there. Layers of vanilla frozen yogurt with mixed berries in between. He ordered the pizzas on the phone and was told it was a 45 minute wait. The entire time all I could think about was my yummy berry parfait coming. He left about 30 minutes later and 25 minutes more and he was home. WITH OUT MY FREAKING BERRY PARFAIT.....he made a mistake and got my some iced berry smoothie that tastes like crap and is so sweet it gave me the heaves. Can he go back and get me what I wanted???? NOOOO because costco closed 5 minutes after he got home. He told me he knew it was the wrong thing after they handed it to him. WHY OH WHY did he not then order the right thing? I know he probably did not realize how much I wanted this freaking parfait. My stomach is hungry but nothing sounds good except for that. I know it sounds pathetic but I was almost in tears. He has offered now to go to dairy queen to get me something else but it is not the same. I do not want to sound ungrateful because really I am not and normally would not have even said anything. I would just have thanked him for it and quietly tossed it out when he was not looking. I know he did the best he could and I am glad that he tries to take such good care of me. I know in the scheme of things this really is a very little petty thing but darn it I wanted a berry parfait.
He is leaving now to go to Dairy Queen. I can tell he is irritated with me over this. I do not even know what they have at dairy queen so I told him just to get me something with vanilla soft serve ice cream and with strawberries on it. NO NUTS or anything else. I am crossing my fingers that it will be something yummy.

damn damn

Having a freaking rough time today. It started yesterday and I just kind of tried to ignore it.
There is no ignoring it today, I am feeling anxious and on the verge of a panic attack. I am so irritated and frustrated. I start feeling better and start thinking about things I want to plan for the future and I start looking forward to stuff I can do with my kids and then BAM....freaking set back.
I have gone for awhile with needing no xanax and now today I am back needing it. I feel let down and scared. Of course Ray has to work tomorrow and Kim will not be home so it will just be the boys and me. That worries me. I have done so well dealing with them and not being anxious to be home with them alone for at least the past 6 months and now this starts. I wish Ray had tomorrow off, that would make my mind more at ease. He has to work the next 2 days so I just need to get through 2 days...Of course it would be awesome and wonderful if I had any sort of family that could help me out. I am hoping this is just a minor set back and that by this evening I will be better.
I just took some xanax and am going to go lay down and maybe this will pass soon.

I think I can, I think I can...(Can I?)

ok, I am going to get out of the house for a bit ( gasp!!)
I have not been out anywhere besides the dr for quite a long time. I have wanted to go to Joanns fabric store for a few years at least. I have only been one time and that was 4 1/2 years ago.
I see people on the sewing forums I go to post such cute stuff they have bought at Joanns. I know I can buy it online and have somebody pick it up for me and mail it to me. That is how I have been buying all my sewing notions, fabric, patterns etc for the past few years. I have been in so much pain this past week so I have not done much sewing or crocheting or much of anything actually. I think the humidity of the monsoon season is just making my pain worse. I usually keep myself from getting bored by sewing and crafting but this past week I have spent reading and watching tv. Today I was laying on the couch and started thinking that my pain was feeling better today and that I wish that I could get out. I decided that there was no reason why I should not get out and I am going to force myself to get out of the house. Ray is home so he is going to drive. If we only get a few miles from the house before I panic then we will just turn around and come home. I am just going to keep telling myself ***I think I can, I think I can*** lol..until I get there. Once I am there it will be ok as long as it is not too crowded. If it is crowded then I will just have Ray run in and buy the natural cream colored flannel that I am in desperate need of to finish sewing some elf dolls from the pipsqueek pattern.
I am telling myself that I do not have to stay long, we can come back home as soon as I want to. I do not have to go anywhere again for awhile. I think that is part of what panics me...I start thinking that if I go out once or twice then my husband and kids etc will think I am cured and then a few days later when I am having a rough time again then they will all be disappointed. So far each time I have forced myself to go out I end up coming home and sort of freak out about what could have happened and then I look back over everything I said and did while I was out and worry that I did or said the wrong thing. Then after a bit I decide that it just was not worth all the stress and trouble and panic that it took to go out.
So, for now I am not worrying about what tomorrow or the next day will bring. I am just focusing on going and buying some wonderfully cute fabric....I figure I better stock up now in case it is another 4 1/2 years before I get to Joanns again...
wish me luck

A few sewing projects

Here is a cute dress I made using a pattern called *miss molly* it is a cute curved bodice dress with ties at the shoulders. This is the first one I made and had a bit of trouble gathering the fabric. Gathering has got to be the hardest thing for me ever. I know it really is not a hard thing to do but I just never get the gathering evenly. I had not hemmed this yet as I was hoping to figure out somebody to give it to and then hem it to the correct length. It was a fun pattern to sew and I have a few more cut out and ready to sew up. I used Michael Miller fabric for this dress. The pictures did not turn out very good. I think I will take new ones and then get them posted. The dress is much cuter then the pics show




Here are a few of my recent sewing projects.
This is a cute little knit fabric baby shirt and hat. I used the new conceptions baby essential pattern for it and it was a very easy pattern to use. The pattern also includes a pattern for pants, booties and shorts. This will be something I plan to make for any baby gift I need to give.

quick update

I know I have not posted anything recently. There has been quite a few things going on and I just have not had the energy to make a post.
I will write more details in the next few posts.
The short short story is..my dad ended up in the hospital with heart problems. He ended up having a procedure called cardiac ablation. That went fine but he is just dealing with so many problems and is so weak that they sent him to a nursing home. He has been there for about 3 weeks and has had some major setbacks.
I was sick for a few days and started having some signs of a bladder infection..I finally went to urgent care when I noticed blood in my urine. Yep, bad bladder infection.
I went the other day for lab work...12 vials of blood..eek.
I have gotten a good amount of sewing done and have taken photos and will get those on my blog in the next or so.
Kim decided she wanted to get a boob job done. I did not think she would actually go through with it but she did. She had it done a few days ago and is recovering now. She is really sore. It is not what I wanted her to do and if it was up to me she would not have gotten it done BUT she is 20 years old and it is her decision and I will be there to support her no matter what she chooses to do ( well as long as it is legal lol)
Ok, that is the short of it lol...
I am going to challenge myself to a few things this month and will post about that in a bit.

So frustrated

GRRRR
Ok...this makes no sense to me. Be aware that I am still irritable and cranky from the increased wellbutrin and I think I am maybe a grouchy person to begin with lol.
We had the same car insurance company for 20 years. Well, my husband had them for years before we got married and then when we got married he added me to his and we even used them as our homeowners insurance when we bought our first home. The rates kept rising though and even though Ray or I have ever had a ticket or an accident it just kept going up. We decided to shop around for insurance. We found a few that were pretty close in rates and then another one that was a bit more then the other estimates but the insurance agent was very friendly and helpful so we decided to go with that one.
We have had this new insurance for over 2 years now. Ray nor I have had any tickets, any accidents, any claims, no new vehicles or anything. I drive very very little...like maybe 300 miles in a year..We got a letter in the mail a month or 2 ago that said they were going to start doing credit checks and adjusting rates based on that. Well, we assumed ( yes I know what they say about the word assume) that it meant they would look over our payment history etc. I mean why else would they need to do a credit check?
After over 2 years of paying our payment on time every single month, never bouncing a check, never a day late, never a claim, they thank us and reward us by charging us an extra 500 dollars a year because our credit record was bad...Yes it may have been bad, we had some trouble a few years ago when I was not able to work anymore and before I started getting my disability check. BUT, it never affected us making payments to the insurance company. Our credit now is in the same state it was over 2 years ago when they first started covering us. NOTHING has changed to make us a higher risk except for the fact that they ran a credit check. How does the fact that we were late on a SEARS credit card affect our ability to drive?
I see no correlation between our credit and our insurance rates. And even if they did want to raise the amount because of bad credit, 500 dollars a year seems very excessive. I mean we could get in a wreck, cost the insurance 1,000's of dollars and our rates would not have gone up 500 dollars a year.
I do not think this is fair. We are being punished when we have not done anything that would warrant the need to charge us more.
I am sooo irritated and upset. 500 dollars a year may not sound like much but for us it seems to be quite a bit. We budget, we buy food on sale, we do not use much gasoline, I leave the cooler set on 80-82 degrees even though I would LOVE to run it at 75 and then BAM out of the blue for no reason we are charged an extra 500 dollars a year.
I called the local insurance agent, of course he is NOT in. I talked to the poor assistant for over 20 minutes trying to understand how they could justify doing this. I guess they do not need to.They just do it and we either have to pay it or not have insurance. She did give me another number to call but right now I am too upset to deal with somebody else and I am sure it will not get me anywhere.
I know life is not fair ever but this just seems wrong. To me it would be like trying to apply for a credit card at SEARS and having them check my driving history. How does one relate to another??? Maybe the insurance company should run a check on my library card as well and charge me more since I was late returning a book...that would make almost as much sense to me.

dogs and cats and kids oh my!!

Ok...my post yesterday saying that the wellbutrin increase made me a bit more irritable..well I lied lol..I am very irritable a bit agitated and feel like my OCD is taking over my brain. I am trying to just sit and relax but each time I sit down I see something that has to be done RIGHT now. My house is a sty and I just can not get it clean. The more I clean the faster the kids, cats and dogs destroy it. I think they all are at their worst today because they can sense that it is pushing me over the edge. I think they scheme and plan on ways to just drive me even nuttier then I already am. The house is dusty, the bathrooms are awful, the kitchen is a wreck. The walls need wiped down, the bathrooms need scrubbed and the toilets need to be cleaned with a pumice stone and some CLR. The laundry room is filthy. I have clutter everywhere. I have piles of stuff I need to get rid of. Then I see stuff that I need to hire a handyman to do. The bathroom floor in the guest bathroom is awful and needs new tile put down, and there are other small repairs that need to be done as well. I need to hire a cleaning person. I had one for a bit but it did not work out the way I wanted it to so I had planned to have somebody else do it but never got around to hiring somebody else.
I am trying to make a list of what needs done but I keep adding to it and by the time I am done making the list I will be too worn out to do anything.
I still need to get to the lab to get all my blood work done but I am afraid of waiting for the results. I need to get my neck xray done so I can schedule for a MRI or whatever other test the dr wants to do because as time goes on I am having more and more numbness in my fingers. I think it is a pinched nerve. Of course it could be something much worse but I am refusing to google my symptoms otherwise I will diagnose myself with a billion different awful diseases.
There is not one area of my house that is nice and clean. I try to keep the room that I spend most of the time in clean but recently the kids have taken over part of the room and have brought clutter with them. My coffee table is at least semi clean..the remote controls are all lined up and facing the right way lol and all the pillows on the couch are facing the right way so I guess that is a start.
7 more hours till my husband comes home...poor guy will be coming home to a manic list of chores that need to be done lol. He has the weekend off and by monday he will be begging to go back to work..
If the boys would not make any messes for about a week I could probably get caught up on the housework..what are the chances of that? I think Sterling averages about 52 seconds between each disaster he makes and he is probably thinking right now of what else he can do to make a mess....

On the medicine adjustment train again...

Yep, once again the time has come to adjust meds. Luckily it does not include the need to wean off one ssri and start up another. Actually now that I think about it, it has been almost a year that I have been on zoloft. Of course it took me quite awhile though to get from 50mg of my starting dose to my 200mg dose now. Before zoloft I had been on lexapro for a year and weaning from that to the zoloft was not as awful as I had thought it would be but was also not what I would call fun.
I am a bit nervous about the zoloft one day just deciding to stop working like my other meds have. Hopefully this will work longer then the list of other ones I have tried.
About 6 days ago my dose of wellbutrin was raised. Not just a bit but by a fair amount. From 150mg to 300mg. Of course that makes me anxious thinking about because the last time I raised the wellbutrin above 300mg it seemed my panic attacks kicked in again. So far I have been ok on the higher dose. I bit more anxious, a bit more irritable and a bit sick to my stomach but nothing too terrible. I am noticing a bit more motivation and a bit more energy. I hope it continues because I am tired of being anxious AND depressed.
I started thinking about all the meds I have tried in the past 3 years or so...paxil cr ( 3 different doses) cymbalta, prozac, buspar, lexapro(20mg and then at an above recommended dose of 30mg) lyrica ( not just for anxiety but it is been said to help) then of course various doses of xanax. Then of course there are meds I have taken for my pain that have changed from one med to the other, one dose and then another. Right now I seem to be on the best combo of meds all the way around. I am not pleased with side effects but the alternative is even worse. Of course I am still hoping for a magic pill to come along to fix everything and have no side effects...but since that is not likely to happen I will just keep doing what I am doing now and keep trying to find the meds that work the best for me.

Beans

I wanted to post some pictures about my little prince of a dog...Mr Beans...aka the drama queen lol...He is 11 months old. He will be 1 year old on the 21st of June. He is a chihuahua. I never ever thought I would love a chihuahua. I have only ever been around ones that were mean and nervous and so I just thought that is how they all are. Kim moved out for awhile and while she was living elsewhere she decided to get a dog. 300 dollars later she had beans. I kept telling her it was a big mistake, that he would not be a good pet etc. Well, she brought him by and yep, he was cute but NOPE I did not care for him. A few weeks later she decided to move back in and brought her dog with her. I was not happy at all to have another dog here. I was completely happy with my poodle Sassy. Well...after about 3 days beans worked his way into my heart. Kim was never home and beans spent 24 hours a day with me. He napped on me, slept in bed with me etc. He was just so tiny. He was about 3 months old when Kim moved back in with him. Kim slowly stopped paying any attention to him and I fell totally in love with him.
He is the sweetest little guy. He knows how to make me laugh. He is funny and smart and oooooh so cute. He is quite the drama queen though. If I go to clean his ears or cut his nails or anything he cries like he is being beaten....
He loves to play with sassy and for only being 8 pounds or so he sure shows her who is boss. He is very very loyal to me and a few months ago Kim told me I could just have him because Beans does not like her anymore. He is neutered now but before he was neutered he marked me as his territory. I was standing in the kitchen ant the counter and I felt something on my leg and I looked down and he was peeing on me. He turned and looked at my husband and gave him a smg look like YEP....SHE IS MINE lol.
Beans is very protective of me and makes it known that he thinks he owns me. He is not fond of my husband at all...I guess the feeling is mutual...my husband is not very fond of beans. I actually think my husband is jealous of beans. Beans is very very spoiled. I make him the best foods, he has so many toys that he has a full toy box of them. He has pillows and beds and blankets. His favorite pillow is a pink princess fluffy pillow lol...yes he is a queen.
Beans is definitely NOT a family dog. He is a one person kind of guy. And I am his person. He is not fond of kids most of the time but does love to snuggle up to Sterling at times.
Beans is learning how to *give 5*, he can *dance* for his treats, he will play ball and bring it back to me. He loves to burrow under my blankets like a little rat and sleep under them. When I nap on the couch he has his own little nest next to me that he snuggles in and he puts his paws on my hands..soooo cute.
He will eat anything and he LOVES to eat. Oranges, watermelon, well, actually any fruit or veggie he will eat. Chicken, steak, ground beef....he will eat it. I also laugh at his favorite toy, out of all the fun toys he has, his favorite toy is a plastic egg from easter. He bats it around and will play with it for a long time. When Easter was over I made sure to buy an extra pack of plastic eggs for him just in case these got lost or broken and we could not find anymore at the store when it was not Easter.
He makes me happy, I make him happy....we are just plain good for each other. I guess it goes to show that sometimes the best things that come along did not start out that way. I never thought I would have fallen in love with this little guy but now I can not imagine life without him. He has brought me much happiness.