Ramble On

Happy Halloween!

The thrid batch of cupcakes are in the oven to take to school tomorrow I'm sitting in the kitchen and I am hungry. Not a good thing in my condition. There is nothing I can just snack on that doesn't have to be prepared. Thank goodness Baby Girl and I made applesauce the other day.

How do you make applesauce? I had never made it before until I started this diet and at first, I boiled apples in honey and water then mashed them with my stick blender. After doing that a few times I started just making it in the oven, it requries less attention that way and since it's been really cold here, heats the house up a bit. So here's how I do it now.



First, I force my 2-year-old to peel all the apples. Not really but she does help. Hubby bought me this apple peeler/slicer/corer after hearing my whine about how much of a pain it was to peel/slice/core by hand. I end up having to do this about once a week so it was total worth the 16 bucks it cost. So after they are peeled I pile them into a pan and bake them at 350 for an hour. No liquid, no honey.


After I pull them out of the oven I hit them with my stick blender. Done. I usually just eat it plain, chilled, or heated. Sometimes I add honey and cinnamon, sometimes I don't.

After these cupcakes are finally done I'm going to bake a butternut squash and make a custard hopefully before Project Runway comes on, however it's already 8:20, the squash bakes for an hour, then another hour for the custard if I'm super fast about putting it together. I'll just stop when I'm tired.

For some reason at 7PM I decided it would be a good idea to bake some sugar cookies, something I intend to do every holiday but we just never get around to. I hate making cut-out cookies in general, it's messy, it takes a long time, and after all the baking is done there is the massive sprinkle clean up at the end. Not. Fun.

The project started with just Middle Girlie and I, but Baby Girl can't stand to be left out of anything so she came out to the kitchen as well and promptly made herself in charge of the sprinkles. Middle Girlie wanted to roll out the dough and started to do so but it was hot in the kitchen and the dough was starting to get sticky so I told her I had to do it. Then she wanted to use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes but then they were sticking so I did that as well. Then she wanted to put the sprinkles on, but her baby sister threw a fit whenever she touched the sprinkle container. I made her (Baby Girl) share with her big sister, but she was not happy. The cookie making went fast, I cheated and bought a store mix and it only made a couple of cookies since these things were so darn huge. They liked the cookies, they ate the cookies (yes right before bed...)

I'm sitting here now thinking back on it crying. I should have just let her roll out the dough, who cares it if stuck to everything. These are the things that she's going to remember when she grows up and I don't want her to have bad memories of spending time with me. Maybe that's selfish ? I have no idea. Holidays, for me, are very stressful they just always have been. I do not want to pass that on to my children so in a way I have to be selfish because I have to stop the behavior in myself. I have no idea how to do that, and it scares the crap out of me.

Another thing that really struck me today was when we had stopped at the grocery store tonight after her ballet class she said she had to go to the bathroom. I asked if she really needed to go (the store's bathroom is not very nice...) she said yes and I said okay let's go! This is what my daughter said to me: "Oh..I thought you were going to be mad at me." She thought I was going to be mad at her for telling me she had to go to the bathroom! What sort of image am I presenting to her? I thought I was pretty even tempered it comes to dealing with my children but maybe I'm not. I'm the first to admit that I get upset about things pretty easily and tend to overreact to things but I thought I wasn't like that with the kids. Maybe I am? How do I find out? How do I fix it? It's not something I have prayed about before, but now I'm going to start.

Just now, as I was writing this all out, I felt a cold sweat come over me as I realized that maybe she thinks that I don't like her. I know that feeling. I know how it feels to not feel good enough and to feel judged all the time. I know how it feels to be craving attention and love and to just not get it. I know how it feels to be crying alone in the dark at 2:30 AM thinking back over the day and everything that could have been different. I don't want her to feel like this. I have to do something about it.

Now please explain to me why at 12:30AM I am still awake? I need to go to bed.  

I don't think I posted about this before but about a month ago I requested some lab work and lazied around until last Thrusday to actually go get it done. The doctor, it turns out, had ordered 6 tests when I had only requested two. It was a lot of vials!

Anyway I got my results today thanks to digital medical records and everything looks fine except that my clotting rate is slightly too slow. Seriously missed "normal" by .02 which is an indication that my vitamin K is low, which I expected due to the fact that my legs were covered in very large scary looking bruises. So there's that. I go to my primary doctor next week, I'm not sure if he's going to do anything about that right now or just recheck me in a couple of months. I also get to visit the GI next week as well, I'm going to swallow my pride and ask for more samples of my medication if she intends me to stay on it. $118 a month is a lot for meds I may have to be on for the rest of my life!

...a knitting machine. I promised my friend last Christmas that I'd knit her and her three kids stocking this year. Well of course I just started them today with NanoWrimo looming in just one week I needed to get started on these. I cast on for this yesterday afternoon, after getting upset cause I couldn't remember how to do it for a good twenty minutes. I finally figured it out (again) I've only knitted this pattern a total of 7 times now. I really wanted to have them done by the end of Nov so she could get them the first week of Dec but I really do not think that's going to happen while I'm trying to pump out 50,000 words in November. It's important to me that I finish Nano, this will be the third year that I'm participating and the two years I've completed it as well, it makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile with my time (and degree!) I love having outside imposed deadlines, it makes me more organized. That doesn't make any sense at all but it's true, while I was in college taking 21 credits a semester and raising a baby I felt really organized and on top of things. I really enjoyed it, although looking back on it now I have no idea when I slept, but at the time, it didn't matter.

I got  a whole lot of stuff left to knit and I just need to realize that it's probably not all going done and I'm not going to stress about it. I know I can get the stockings done before xmas, and my MIL's gift, and my son's blanket, other than that I'm not worried about it, at least not right now.

I blogged about this new knitting book I had to have and ordered for one pattern?

Yeah, that one.

Well I knitted that hat and I've actually worn it a few times, which is sort of sad since the hat is wool is it is still October after all. I'm not ready for it to be cold yet.

Anyway here it is on me, and on my 2-year-old. She loves hats.


Love it!

I'm still awake. I started getting tired around 11 and ignored it. Then I started googling things about bed bugs. I will probably be up the rest of the night now. Ugh. Hopefully I can catch a nap during the day, even if I do manage to fall alseep in the next couple of hours I have to get up at 7 to take all my meds. At least it would be a little sleep which is better than nothing.

I try to not spend a  lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I can not dwell on the fact that I have incurable disease. Incurable, that's a terrible word. When I think of it I always think of death but this disease itself will not kill me. It's just going to make my life terribly inconvenient, and that is an understatement.

I don't even know how I'm supposed to be feeling, I have no idea what "normal" is. It's so hard to figure out a way to eat that's safe for me and will feed my family. I'm tired of making two meals for dinner every night since my diet is so limited right now. I feel like all I'm doing is cooking. It's ridiculous, and I don't even know if it's working, it's only been a few months (feels like longer) and I'm still on (my very expensive) medication. I'm so frustrated, angry, and annoyed with the whole thing.

The only solution is that I have to deal with it. I've spent most of my life avoiding this very situation, which is probably why it took so long to find out what was actually wrong with me, but I can't do that anymore. So I've come to this point, this dead end, I'm doing everything I can in my power to feel okay, to feel better. I realize that it took me a long time to get sick and it's going to take a long time to get better.

I have these feelings of peace though, deep in my chest. I know that the Lord will guide carry me through this and that I'm going to be okay. I hate when people do that, what I just did, sort of lay out all the bad stuff and then sew it up neatly at the end with a "but I know the Lord will save me!" and I do believe that, but I also believe that I can't just sit around and wait for it to happen. I have to be proactive, and I have to trust in my instincts (God given) and do what I feel is right because that's how I feel that the Lord is working and presenting himself in my life.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling really sorry for myself I cry, or I write in my paper journal that I keep beside my bed until my hands hurt. I don't think that feeling sad makes me less faithful when I'm in that place I pray more. I have to believe that this is the journey I'm supposed to be on and I'm grateful for a lot of things in my life. I no longer have the freedoms I once did, I'm going to be restricted for the rest of my life due to this disease, but I can not let it control me entirely. It's something I have to deal with, not something I have to succumb to.

I haven't had internet in TWO WEEKS which totally kills my hopes at being accepted into blogHer. Strike 1 for Verizon DSL service. Seriously two weeks. We are so isolated out here I'm thankful this didn't happen during the winter when I would not have been able to leave the house let alone being completely cut off from the outside world.

I'm recovering from the "outage" by completely a list of online tasks that I complied for myself in the past couple of days. I. am. pathetic.

I've been trying a bunch of new recipes, mostly because I too like to have some sweets once in a while.










I used this recpie. I was really super excited that the dough held up enough for me to use my new crust cutters from W&S. Love.

 And here is a butternut squash pie, which I perfer to the apple. My son loved this pie, and thought it was pumpkin. When I told him it was squash (after he was done eating it of course) he was sort of stunned. Recpie is here.



I'm not really into pie but my husband is.

Next up: some sort of cake.

I have a lot of knitting books. I'm trying not to buy any more for the time being, because I have so much gift-knitting to do. I don't want to distract myself.

Of course I saw this hat pattern and I had to have it.

Besides I haven't knitted myself a hat since...well since last year. So I had to make this, and I just happen to have the wool for it.


So I had to order this book.

I finished it this morning while my girls were sleeping. It's currently blocking. I can't wait to wear it.

September went very slow, and very fast. Actually it seems like time has both slowen down and sped up since July, since my grandfather died.

Tomorrow is his memorial service and we do not know if anyone is going to come. He's got brothers and sisters, and nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. His grandchildren never met him, it goes without saying that his great grand children never met him either. I'm not sure if I really wanted to meet him, but now he's gone and I don't even have the option and that makes me sad.