Insanity!

I feel like I haven't blogged in ages.  Oh! I guess that's because I haven't.  I've hardly had time to read email let alone the blogs I've been following and it's usually in between phone calls or sorting or packing or selling yet another item that I thought I was keeping.  Even now, it's 11:30 and in a few short hours (made even shorter by my little man's constant night-wakings...seems the stress is getting to him, too) big, burly men will be coming to take away the scattered remains of my stuff.  The most glorious part in the midst of all this chaos is that I don't actually have to pack anything, they're doing that part for me.  I've always wanted someone else to do my packing for me (I've done a lot, a. lot. of moving in my day).  I have so much to say, I wish I'd been able to keep up with writing more of this experience down, I hope I'll remember enough of it in the coming days to record some more of it cause it has been all manner of crazy.  One thing I know for sure: We have too. much. crap.  Oh well, I don't have to pack it this time.  And I'm kind of looking forward to having it arrive in a couple months, it'll be like Christmas in February, with a surprise in every box!  My grammar sucks, it's time to go to bed.  More soon...

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!  I have much more to blog about, but that will come later as right now we are in the height of Christmas cheer and revelry and I'm being anti-social by typing away on my computer in the middle of the living room while everyone else is being cheery.  I might even try to post pictures on here!

I pray everyone out there has a wonderful Christmas season filled with hope and love and peace and personal revelation of a loving and awesome Saviour.

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And the fun continues...

The only conclusion I can draw is that in my time away I have somehow developed an allergy to Canada.  What else would explain the fact that I have not had a well day since I arrived.  Granted I had a cold (or possibly allergies to all the dust being kicked up from moving stuff at home) when I arrived, but it was on it's way out, I was feeling better.  And then came the stomach flu which was also on it's way out when last I blogged.  But then came the Upper Respiratory Infection and Bronchitis quite literally on the heals of everything else.  

I wrote that I had finally felt well enough to have a proper meal on Friday night, that was also the night that this little tickle of a dry cough started.  It continued on Saturday but with little enough severity or frequency for me to think much about it.  We went to our family dinner and almost at once I started to lose my voice.  I needn't have worried about Asher's mood, he did so well, especially considering how many people there were there, but he seemed to know they were all family and charmed everyone to no end.  Even fell asleep next to his cousin, I'll have to post some pictures later.  

By Sunday morning, however, I had almost no voice and a significantly deeper cough.  Fast forward to Thursday now, I still have very little in the way of voice, my cough is now producing great big chunks of green goo, but thankfully Asher doesn't seem to be catching anything from me this time.  Jeff is now in Florida (I'm trying very hard not to be bitter and he's trying very hard not to be lonely in all that warmth) and I'm back at my mom's having driven through another terrible storm to get here.  I have little in the way of coherent thought with which to blog, all I want to do is sleep and Asher is bound and determined to not allow that to happen with any reliability, and I still haven't gotten to see hardly any of my friends.  

The bright spot in all of this is that I got drugs today.  My mom and my aunt (who is a nurse) decided that it would be a bad idea to try and wait this out, what with the coughing up of such colorful gunk, and indeed the doctor agreed.  He pronounced the verdict, I mean diagnosis as Upper Respiratory Infection and Bronchitis and a Cold and gave me antibiotics to cover the former and said I would have to slog through the latter.  I'm pretty sure that's on it's way out though as I have had significantly less snot today and I'm hoping that I'll be feeling better tomorrow so I can finally get to see some friends this weekend before heading back to Chicago on Tuesday.  

What a crazy December this has been.

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Live to you from the Great White North

What an adventure this trip home has been.  We were quite nervous about flying with Asher for the first time.  And we had to do it twice in one day. He was amazing.  Charmed the flight crew and other passengers then promptly fell asleep for the entire first flight.  The second flight was a tight connection but only 5 gates away so we had time to change a diaper, grab a burger and get on the plane.  The second flight was a little longer so he didn't sleep the entire time but it was not a full plane so we had an entire row to ourselves to let him play and jump on the seat a little.  We arrived in style and spent the afternoon with Jeff's best man and his wife and their new dog Togo.  I'll have to post pictures later.  Made it to my Mom's that night in what was to be only our first blizzard.

Grandma was very excited to have her first grandson in her home and we had a wonderful time visiting and seeing friends for the first day and a half.  Then the stomach flu hit.  I pretty much spent the night on the bathroom floor.  Then the next night it was Asher's turn.  Poor little mite. It wasn't until last night that I could finally eat without feeling ill.  Asher recovered a little faster than I did, thankfully.  So I didn't get to see as many friends as Jeff did and our time spent with his family was good but I didn't have the energy that I would have liked.  What a time to get sick.  It sucks that I couldnt enjoy my two days spent in a lazy boy with other people around to help take care of the little man (my Aunt was our life saver).

It was a whirl wind tour with Jeff's family in Alix, Stettler, Three Hills, and the cheapest motel I've ever spent so much money to stay in.  The highlight was being able to see Jeff's Oma again.  She's in a home now and far weaker than when we saw her last.  It was hard on Jeff but I'm so thankful that she got to see Asher and that she recognized Jeff and was so pleased to see him.  The last day with his family, we saw Oma twice, Aunt Mary and Henry, Jeff's parents and Uncle Wilf and Aunt June and then drove to Calgary.  Asher spent most of the day in the car and did really well until the last hour or so.  Such a trooper my little guy.

The not-so-fun part of yesterday was the fact that much of that driving was in the worst winter storm southern Alberta has seen in years.  It was a very harrowing, largely snow-covered backroad to the equally harrowing, largely ice-covered freeway into the complete standstill of traffic in Calgary.  Once we hit Calgary, it should have taken us 30 minutes to get to Dad's, it took 2 hours.  Crazy.  But we finally made it.  It had been so long since I'd been there that we parked in the wrong driveway at first and were about to knock on the wrong front door before I realized.  Leave me alone, you could hardly see the road or the houses and they all look alike in that neighborhood.  

Today we're just chilling, waiting to go to a family dinner out at Grandmother's.  I'm looking forward to Asher meeting her and the rest of the clan. I hope he's in a good mood to meet everyone seeing as he just woke up in a not so good mood.

To Be Continued...

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Who needs to pack when you can play tag

Sure I'm terribly behind in everything and my house looks like a small herd of elephants came  through and randomly spewed clothes and packing materials. Oh, and I leave for Canada in the morning not to return for three weeks, but hey...I can't miss out on a game of tag!

Here are the rules: (I know, I didn't know there were rules either)

1. Link the person who tagged you. - Thank you Sam for providing me with this little distraction
2. Post the rules on your blog.  -  Okay, I think I got that one covered
3. Share seven random or weird facts about yourself.  -  Hmm...which seven to share...see below
4. Tag seven other people and include links to their tags  - SciFi Mama, Christy, RR, Anna, Joanna, Shabby Girl, and Lina
5. Let each of the other people know by commenting on their blogs - Off to comment

• I lived in a mud hut in Africa for a time
• I'm married to one of those guys that in the b-grade sci-fi movies is responsible for opening up black holes that threaten to destroy our universe  (only in real life, they don't actually open black holes)  *Edit - my husband informs me they theoretically could open black holes, just not ones that would threaten to destroy the universe - who knew!*
• I was a guest speaker at a Leadership retreat for my church back when I had a blue mohawk
• I taught Grade One at a Christian school for three years.
• My 8 month old son suddenly decided to start crawling today (while I was writing this actually, I had to stop and take some film of it for his dad)
• I got my first tattoo at 27 and my most recent one this past August (I have three altogether with the next four already planned)
• I've had a reality TV show film me singing on the worship team at my church because I didn't 'look' like someone who would do that (I had a couple facial piercings, an undercut, and blue/purple/black braids in my hair)

Well, that was fun and while it has gone on, Asher has taken a giant leap towards actual crawling and most of my furnitire has gone onto its new home.  Time to put my little man to bed and pack for our trip tomorrow back to Canada.  I think I'm starting to get excited.

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Where am I?

To be honest, I have no idea.  I realize I haven't posted in what seems like forever, and it's not for lack of things to say, it's more for lack of being able to keep a single thought in my head long enough to type a full and complete sentence.  I need to type like Data from the STNG days (that's Star Trek the Next Generation for all you non-sci-fi types).  So why am I typing now you ask?  Because I'm desperately trying not to do anything actually productive.  I had a great post running through my head the other day as a follow up for My Life Costs How Much? and that was, "My life is Worth How Much?".  Last weekend I arrived at our church's Worship Team Christmas Lunch and Workshop and nearly broke down in tears at the sight of everyone.  I explained that it was just a bit of an emotional day because I'd just finished putting my life up for sale on craigslist.  Or at least that's how it felt to see so much of my household goods in an ad like that.  My best friend chided me to have a little perspective...that is until she saw my ad printed up on Sunday...then she started crying.  We haven't really allowed ourselves to think too much about the imminent departure.  The thing that really gets me is that I'm not a particularly sentimental person, especially when it comes to things so why am I completely wrecked at the fact that we're selling our couch and our bedroom dresser and our home theater system (and the list goes on and on and on and on...).  My mom keeps telling me, it's not the things but what they represent, ie. the life that Jeff and I had built here in Chicago and I hear and acknowledge the wisdom in that, but I think part of me is always a little surprised when the rules apply to me.  And I think, too, I'm a bit disappointed that the excitement of this upcoming new adventure feels so overwhelmed by the sadness of selling and donating and packing and leaving.  Just driving home yesterday from the grocery store and seeing our beautiful skyline and parks and people...needless to say, I've spent the last week crying.  But we're trying very hard to get as much sold as we can by tomorrow because Saturday we head off to Canada to see family and by the time I get back, it's 2 days before Christmas and 7 days before the movers come.  We're actually going to be decorating the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve this year...and then taking it down on boxing day (well maybe we'll leave it up a couple days longer).  And no, I absolutely cannot go without a tree for my son's first Christmas.  I know he won't know or care, but I will and the pictures will always cause me great pain.  So that is me, not really sure what day it is, where I am or which end is up and I don't see that changing in the near future.  Please God, let all these myriad of things work out and let the time that I am able to spend with all these people you've blessed my life with be filled with peace and joy and contentment.  And Thank You that we live, not as those without hope, but fully confident that in the end, we will all be together.  

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