Ramble On

I've been working on this huge knitting project (for me) okay it's not that big (as in size) but I'm excited about it anyway! I'm sending out my sample tomorrow as soon as I get up the courage to do so, and doing a final edit on my pattern tonight. I'm going to be listing it for sale on rav and hopefully another source soon.

The blanket, in my opinion, is adorable. Hopefully others will think so too!


ETA: as of 07/05/11 the pattern is available for sale!

I don't think I've had my hair cut in like...a year, or two, I honestly don't remember. I made some stupid deal with myself that I wouldn't get my hair cut until I had published something and gotten paid for it.  Can I just say, that ain't gonna happen before my hair is down to my butt and being a Crohn's patient, that could get messy.

My youngest daughter has started saying "Mommy, Mommy, let down your hair!", which is cute, but also ugh.

I'm not sure what to do with it though, I usually cut my own hair (yes even the back). It's thin, so it's not hard to do but there is just so much of it right now. I like having it long enough to put up into a pony tail but this is a big excessive. I'm going to be in a wedding in March but that's forever away and I'll have time to grow it out again by then if I need to. 

Being a girl is hard, men don't have to make these types of decisions.  Can I mention of fracking (yes fracking! nerds unite!) grateful I am at this moment that this is my biggest issue in my life right now?

left overs for dinner, pity me :-)

I've found that eating in the summer is so much easier. The photo is what I had for dinner last night. Grilled portobello mushrooms, zucchini, and a crab. The veg was marinated in olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and garlic. The crab was rubbed with SCD legal  spices (surprisingly enough I picked it up in the club pack section of Wegmans, all the ingredients were legal!) including thyme, cinnamon (yes!), red and black pepper, sea salt, and cumin. These were actually left overs from Saturday night when we had a big lobster boil. I was able to eat everything on the table except for the bread and the potatoes, however, who wants to fill up on that stuff when there is lobster, shrimp, clams, crabs, and grilled veg? 

I cooked all the raw sea food, just steamed it until it was done and we boiled the lobsters. My husband grilled the veg and these crabs (they needed reheated) I ate until I couldn't eat any more. A couple of hours later we had strawberries that I had sliced earlier and put in the fridge with about a cup of honey poured over top. I ate mine with yogurt, everyone else had their atop vanilla ice cream. Topping the fresh strawberries with honey made the best tasting strawberries I've had in a long time. I found before, in my previous life (before SCD) that slicing strawberries and then pouring a bunch of sugar on them didn't really work since it always ended up gritty and just not sweet enough the honey method is so much better and no one complained.

yummy legal fruit!

I love using fruit as a dessert especially chilled melons, SCD legal and a crowd pleaser at any event or meal. You just can't go wrong with it, my 2 year old even eats it, which is amazing, she's a little picky.


Did I leave this family event feeling hungry and left out? No. Of course we made too much food and have leftovers that need to be eaten (by like tonight) and I got really sweaty standing over boiling/steaming water in the kitchen but it was totally worth it to enjoy the evening with my family enjoying a meal we could all eat.

Over the weekend my husband took our kids to visit his family. I stayed home to paint the dining room and the kitchen. It was in dire need and I don't mind painting. It was so quiet here with out kids and I had a lot of time to myself while I was rolling "pale sunshine" on to he pepto pink walls (who paints their dining room pink? whatever!). 

The drama has been thick recently. My Aunt had a house fire (she's fine, damage is limited to one area,  the firemen got it quickly) which scares the crap out of me. Fire is one of my worst fears and especially since hers was electrical, well that just freaked me out more. My mom doesn't think my Grandma is going to last to the winter, which also scares me. She's 93 years old, she's had a good long life but I've never lost a Grandparent before. I know I'm lucky, to be nearly 30 and never suffered a loss like that but now here I am staring it in the face and I'm not sure what to do.

It was nice to focus on painting. I don't know if it's my medication or what but I've been able to focus lately, before my mind was going a mile a minute and I could really do one thing at a time. Now it's like a check list up there, I can focus, I can complete one task in it's entirety and move on to the next one. It's incredible! I feel silly for saying that I'm excited that I can actually do the dishes without getting distracted by the fact that the floor needs swept and end up only doing each task half way and ending up with more of a mess then I started with. Maybe that's confusing and it was/is just me, but I'm glad that's changed.

I guess I never realized that I never got a break, there was always something I was freaking out about or anticipating in my own head. It was never quiet. Over the weekend I took two long hot bubble baths, it was sort of like I was getting away with something because I usually never get the chance to do that. It was wonderful to actually relax with out rehashing all my mistakes or be making a mental list of all the other crap I had to do.  I never knew what I was missing out on here. I'm so much calmer, the noise and the random pain I was having in my gut nightly has stopped. My GI told me that she thought these symptoms were being caused by stress, I really didn't think I was under all that much stress at the time because that is what I was use to and accepted as "normal"!  She was right, and thank God she told me!

It's amazing what someone can convince themselves of to the point of illness and breaking. I don't want to be broken anymore, I just want a normal, boring life. That's it. I want to be comfortable in my own skin, have enough money to take care of my family and make a home to raise my children in. I'd also like to have some chickens but if that can't happen I'll be okay with that ;-)

Just a warning: this is a Crohn's heavy entry, I'm talking about poop, and gas here! 


I inadvertently put myself into what I'm calling a mini-flare on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I'm still feeling the effects right now. It's odd, because as of right now my bowel movements are formed, and I only had two bouts of loose stool. The real issue I'm having is joint pain, mostly in my wrists, which is the area that has been the most effected by my disease.

My husband had taken my kids camping, we live in a state park so the camping area is just a short four mile drive from our house. It has been cold lately so he didn't want our 2-year-old staying over night in the tent. I don't camp (I'm allergic to about seven types of tree pollen being in the woods is misery even with medication), so I shuttled her back and forth between the house and the campsite. I showed up Saturday night for a campfire and brought along a 2lb bag of baby carrots, between my dad and I we ate all of them.

Now here's the thing: I've always had issues with carrots. I can eat a few of them with no problems, raw or cooked, but more than a few (and I'm talking more than like 5) I get gas and painful cramping. I don't know how many I ate on Saturday night but by 1 AM Sunday morning I woke up with the most horrible pain I have ever felt in my life. I've given birth three times, twice without any sort of medication, this pain was worse than that. I instinctively felt my stomach to see if there was any swelling, on my right side there was a hard lump. I could feel and see my intestines through my skin, I could literally put my fingers around it. I was so scared. Of course the only person in the house that could come to my rescue was my 2-year-old daughter so I didn't make a noise. After googling bowl obstructions on my ipod and seeing if I could still fart (I could!), eventually I found a position that wasn't too uncomfortable and willed myself back to sleep, the pain had lessened but I was feeling pretty nauseous at this point. Several times through out the night I woke up again, in pain, the mass had moved and it seemed like every time it was trying to "go around a corner" I would have this pain. Finally around 6AM I had a bowel movement, which was completely orange and pretty loose. After that I was able to go back to bed for a couple of hours until the baby got up.

On Sunday I was nauseous pretty much the entire day and my stomach was sore, like I had been doing crunches all night. I had another lose bm that afternoon, again, carrots. I also noticed the my wrists started to hurt around that time. I realized then that I must be having some sort of flare, my crohn's was angry that I got cocky and ate too many damn carrots. I ate very little solid food on Sunday I stuck to smoothies, bananas, water, and tea. By Monday I forced myself to attempt to eat all my calories since I came in about 500 short on Sunday (I just could not bring myself to eat). Monday was okay, I had no bms that day and no gut pain, gas though and wrist pain.  Today, my wrists are still feeling a bit sore but other than that everything is normal, 2 bms today and all formed.

I guess I got too comfortable with the diet and what I could and could not eat. Even though carrots are "safe" they aren't so safe for me personally. This disease is so humbling, you just never know what's going to happen.

As of now I'm completely off of carrots, the thought of them makes me feel sick.

I just absolutely do not believe that it's June! May seemed fast, and slow at the same time. I'm glad that school is going to be out for the summer next week, at the same time I'm nervous to try to entertain these kids all summer. Right now I have ten minutes, to type this entry, before I need to start dinner. The baby is asleep (finally) I've been trying to get her to take a nap for the past two hours, sort of frustrating. I have nine days to finish my knitting sample, and for a few of those days my husband is taking my kids camping which means I'll have our 2-year-old all to myself (which means nothing will get done).

It being June also means that next month is the anniversary of my hospitalization and subsequent diagnosis with Crohn's. I really do feel much better than I have in years, but I'm also nervous. I'm honestly terrified of going somewhere with out a bathroom. I'm afraid to just go somewhere, anywhere, on a whim without planning it all out. We haven't been out to eat, and I haven't stayed overnight anywhere that didn't have a dedicated kitchen for nearly a year now. I realize that I can't keep living like this but I'm not sure how to get over it.

Getting on the antidepressants and anxiety meds was the first step but I'm still wary of changing my routine. This is working, for now, and I'm afraid to change it because I don't want to get sick. It all comes down to that. I don't want to be sick, who wants to be sick?! It's always in the back of my mind, every cramp, every noise, every time I pass gas (yeah who wants to talk about that?!) I'm afraid that my Crohn's is going to flare, even though it hasn't. I feel like the further away I get from my last flare I become more terrified of the one that's coming. I haven't heard of anyone that gets out of this with only having one flare and one hospitalization. I'm terrified of going off of the SCD and adding things back in. The closer it gets to my big one year mark the more nervous I get.

I know I don't have to go off my diet at all, I'm in charge of what I put in my mouth, but I'm feeling a lot of pressure to do so.  A lot of things I've read have suggested that most people who have been on the diet successfully for some time have been able to go out to eat and have one meal completely off diet very occasionally (about once a month).  My kids really want to go to Pizza Hut on Tuesdays when they have the all you can eat buffet. When I think about going there I end up analyzing every ingredient in something I might eat. If I have a slice of pizza that's not just one thing that's not currently on my diet, it's several! Milk, lactose, sugar, gluten, several grains, probably soy. I could go and just not eat, or have a salad with out dressing (or cheese since the shredded bagged stuff is covered in cornstarch to keep it from sticking together), but I won't really enjoy it because I'm so paranoid about cross contamination and the fact that it's Pizza Hut, there's flour flying through the air there!

Besides if I'm going to go have a meal completely off diet, I'd rather eat my grandma's perogies or her fried fish at least I know for sure what goes into those things even if they are completely not something I should eat right now.