Yesterday Jim, Jeremy, and Jesse went to the men and boys camp out sponsored by our church at a lake about an hour’s drive away. They have these every other year or so. They even took Suzie-the-dog, though she’s not male. 🙂 She loves any type of outing with her people, though. I’m not sure why Jim enjoys camping so much — seems like an awful lot of work in preparation to me!! But his family camped out a lot when he was younger, , or at least spent a lot more time outdoors. Jeremy says about once or twice a year is enough to get it out of his system. 🙂

And me, well, I was gleefully anticipating a whole almost 24 hours of quietness and solitude. Oh, I dearly love my family, and after just a few hours I am ready for them to come back. But I’ve always craved a certain amount of quietness and solitude to keep my sanity. And a little bit of absence does make us appreciate each other more, I think.

So last night I splurged and got a take-out meal from a restaurant (with the rest of it tucked away for lunch!) I had planned to spend some time reading others’ blog entries and then write a letter or two or even work on an article I’ve been thinking about. But I got caught in the YouTube vortex and spent way too much time there! I had seen a couple of links on other blogs and message boards to a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent who wowed the judges and the audience with his rendition of “Nessun Dorma,” Paul Potts. I would venture to guess that that’s a crowd not usually inclined to listen to opera (on the American version, at least, not much of anything anywhere near classical gets through). Of course — that is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and if you think of the human voice as an instrument, you can admire the power, the emotion, and the beauty whether or not you know what it is about or what the words are. And Paul, a mobile phone salesman, aced it! Beautiful voice! So, I was looking around last night for Andrea Bocelli singing the same song, then his singing of “Time to Say Good-Bye” with Sarah Brightman. Then the “related videos” links led me to “The Phantom of the Opera” by Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas (I hadn’t known he could sing!), to a couple by Michael Ball (Marius in the 10th anniversary video of Les Miserables — just loved him there), even to Hugh Laurie. Then I looked up the lyrics to “Nessun Dorma” and “Time to Say Good-Bye,” then went back and found Paul Potts singing the latter and the the video of him winning Britain’s Got Talent as well as the little girl who was one of his competitors. So — it was enjoyable though not the way I had planned to spend so much time.

Then I listened to the second message in a series on the Deity of Christ (if you click there, scroll down for the links to these messages) that I mentioned earlier, dealing with questions like what the Bible means when it speaks of Him being only begotten or the first begotten since He is eternal. I did the same thing as before with a Word document open to take notes and the BibleGateway program open to look at and then copy and paste the Scriptures in. I am almost wishing I had a laptop to take to church, that’s such a great way to take notes. My husband and oldest son do that with their PDAs at church.

After spending probably a great deal too much time on the computer, I went to bed. So this night alone was pretty enjoyable and relatively calm. But the funny story I mentioned in this post’s title happened the very first time the guys went on a men and boys camp out a few years ago. I was also at that time joyfully anticipating some extended time with the house all to myself when I suddenly realized that it would be the first time I was completely  alone overnight at home since before I’d had children. Being alone in the late evening and overnight gave me pause. But I once again got dinner out, then checked out some chick flicks from the library (Little Women starring Winona Ryder was one — just loved it!) and did some ironing while watching. I was doing all this upstairs in my bedroom when I heard the sounds indicating something was caught in the window. I took a flashlight and looked, and there was an enormous beetle stuck between the window frame and the screen. It was making a lot of noise, but I didn’t want to open the window to try and get it free and take a chance on it getting out into the room. So I just left it there, and eventually it quieted down. A few hours later when I was getting ready for bed — it started up again flapping around! I took the flashlight and looked again — and it was no longer stuck where it had been! I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. I thought — of all the nights and all the windows in this house, it has to go flapping around in this one on this night when I’m by myself! I couldn’t do anything else with it — once again I didn’t want to open the window even to spray bug spray and take a chance on it getting into the room. So I went on to bed with all the flapping going on in the window. Once again it quieted down after a while. But all through the night, whenever a strand of hair fell across my face I flailed around slapping it away thinking it was the beetle. 🙄 It wasn’t funny then, but when I think now how that must’ve looked, it would have been pretty amusing to see, I think. The next morning I couldn’t hear or see a sign of it anywhere, so it either got out or died somewhere!

Finally, the contest I mentioned is from 5 Minutes For Mom in honor of Independence Day. Like they did for Mother’s Day, they will be giving away several prizes on July 4. You’ll need to enter for each prize you are interested in individually. All the instructions can be found here.

Have a great rest of the weekend! I’m off to do laundry and dusting. The guys got back a little while ago, so I’ll wait for them to take showers and unpack their stuff. I am told the lake was pretty muddy and the things they had on that were white will probably never be white again….

This is the first time in months, ever since I first started participating in Works for Me Wednesday, that I haven’t shared a tip. I have a couple in the back of my mind but need to just let them incubate for a while.

The Ladies’ Luncheon is this week. :0 Things are coming along, but there’s lots of little stuff to do, loose ends to take care of. I’m finding summer is not the best month to do this — so many people are out of town. I just keep having to give the whole thing to the Lord — attendance, details, etc. I tend to have this underlying nervous feeling when things like this come up, even if everything is going well — would appreciate your prayers for a calm heart (and mind and body…) Yes, I am meditating on Phil. 4:6-8 often.

Thank you for your well wishes with my cold last week. Though I was initially dismayed to be sick with so much to do, really last week was a better time to be sick than the week before or this week. And though I had intended to get a lot done with Jesse away at camp, I was able to really rest with the quietness and knowing he was being taken care of and not being neglected in another room. And I was able to get a few things crossed off my list even with that. The “brain fog” started to lift about Friday and the energy level started returning — that helped a lot! This cold seems to come with a lingering cough — Jim and Jesse are still coughing. I’ve had a little bit of a cough but I’m still having to blow my nose a bunch even though overall I feel a lot better.

One odd thing happened though — one day when I was blowing my nose, I all of a sudden felt extremely dizzy — had to grab the door frame because otherwise I was going to fall. It only lasted a few seconds, but then my right ear felt like it was blocked, like it does when I fly, even though I could still hear out of it (odd, since the left sinus has been the worst). That feeling went away after a while, but sometimes when I blow my nose, there are squeaky sounds in my right ear.

The visit with the new doctor went well. It took two hours just to get back to the exam room, though. I hope that’s not normal. She seems maybe just a little bit flighty — forgot to give me the prescription she wrote out but thought she had given to me when I asked about it, then she found it, then, when I got home I saw it was for the wrong dosage. I still have to call back and get that corrected. But I liked her overall and felt that I could communicate with her. That’s probably the biggest criteria I have for a doctor — that we communicate well and that they are willing to listen and discuss things with me. In the past I have had a well-known, much recommended Christian doctor have his hand I the doorknob the whole time he talked with me, like he really needed to go. I knew he had a waiting room full of people, but I had been waiting a long time and was paying good money for that 10 minutes of his time! He also tended to resent it if I asked questions. I like to be an informed patient. I don’t really go to a doctor just to get a prescription (my dad was that kind of patient — “I don’t want to hear all about it, just fix it.”) I like to understand what is going on and I don’t like to take medicine.

When this new doctor started with, “Tell me your story” and then asked questions along the way, I felt we would indeed have good lines of communication.

Everything was ok with all the blood work (cholesterol is only 168!) except for one odd thing I had never heard of before. The lab tests listed my “EO” (whatever that is) as 15.9H %, and normal is 0.9-2.9. She said in 30 years of practice she had never seen it that high in anyone and said it indicated either I was very allergic to something or had a parasite picked up from animals. She asked a lot about the cold, but it was definitely a cold and not allergies. I’m not having any symptoms of either of those problems, so she wasn’t sure what to make of it. I’m supposed to go back in a month. The lab test results page says this suggests “eosinophilia” — this was the only word I had trouble understanding with her accent but I am sure it was because I had never heard of it before. I looked it up online — and you have to be careful about that because they always have to give the worst case scenario and can scare you to death — but I still don’t know what to make of it. We do have a dog, but she’s mostly outside. She comes in at night and stays in one room. I don’t feed her or really do much with her besides occasionally petting her and washing her blanket that she uses indoors. I have seasonal allergies in the spring and am allergic to a couple of medicines, but haven’t been exposed to those. So I don’t know what to make of it, but I am not going to worry about it. We’ll see if it is the same when I go back next month. She also said I have a bit of a heart murmur — I had never been told that, either.

Well, this was just going to be a short note, but I have rambled on. Better go get some things done! Hope you have a great day.

Jim has had some kind of upper respiratory thing going on for a week or more now, and even though we’ve tried to avoid contact that would spread it– I started having a sore throat and sniffles Sunday night. Now I’m in the foggy-headed, alternately runny and stopped-up nose stage. Jim has had an awful hacking cough, which I don’t have yet and hope I don’t get.

If I had to get a summer cold, though, this is the best week for it. Last week was busy with a lot of deadlines plus getting two kids ready for camp, one for the whole summer; next week is the ladies’ luncheon. So, though I still have a checklist to work through, this week is a little lighter.

One thing I discovered after several months after TM — any kind of cold or infection wiped me out, and I had no choice — I had to go rest. But I discovered that that actually helped to short-circuit a cold and to make it not last as long. I don’t know why we think it is so noble to push ourselves til it has lasted for weeks and gotten worse before we go to bed and get more rest. Sometimes it can’t be helped, I know — there is just too much to do. But though colds don’t quite do me in that much these days, I still try to get more rest if possible. A nap is definitely on the agenda for today.

I also see a new doctor today — not for the cold — this has been scheduled for a while. The doctor I had been seeing for 8 years suddenly left his practice last year. I had heard he would be starting a new practice, but it has been months, and so far nothing. A friend at church who is a doctor — and actually a former partner of my doctor — has been keeping my prescriptions refilled, but he can’t do that forever. I didn’t want to go to him, though he’s a fine doctor, because he’s a friend — and that would just feel awkward to me. He recommended a new doctor, a Russian lady. It was funny when I called to make the appointment — I got a voice mail and left my information and said I needed to make an appointment as a new patient with Dr. B– and tried my best to pronounce her name in an recognizable fashion. When the reception called back, she said, “You wanted to make an appointment with Dr. Vickie?” 🙂 I guess her staff doesn’t even try her last name.

They called last Friday to remind me of my appointment and tell me what to bring, and said I was supposed to come in fasting. I told them I couldn’t do that with a 1:30 appointment — I have low blood sugar and can’t go past 9 or 10 without feeling dizzy and shaky. They told me I could come in anytime after 8 a.m. and do lab work and then come back in the afternoon for the appointment. My first thought was, “Like I have all day to run back and forth to your office!” I planned to call back and change it to a morning appointment. But then I decided this really would work better even though it meant two trips — if I had a morning appointment, I’d have to wait til after everything was over to eat. So I went this morning and left behind my bodily fluids. 🙂

I feel a little awkward going when nothing is wrong — I just need monitoring for one medication. I’ll have to admit that going to the doctor is not my favorite pastime in life — sorry to those in the medical profession 🙂 — and going to a new doctor and having to explain about the TM makes me even more nervous (I have been blessed with excellent doctors who were very knowledgeable about it, but I have read horror stories from those on the TM Internet Club who had been told it was all in their heads).

And I don’t know why I went into all that — just rambling in my fogginess, I guess. If you read all the way through, pat yourself on the back for me!

Gotta go get ready for round 2 at the doc’s…………

I haven’t flown in ages — I haven’t even been to an airport in a long time except to pick my husband up from a business trip at the curb. I’ve heard about heightened airport security, though, on the news.

This morning we got up at 4 a.m. to take Jason to an airport an hour away for his flight to CA for the summer. After he went through the security checkpoint, we waited around in the lobby for a while to make sure he didn’t have any trouble (cell phones are so wonderful!!) As we waited, I found the ladies’ room. I saw what I thought to be a uniformed female airport employee waiting outside the stalls. As one occupant left the stall, the airport employee went in. I thought, “Wow, this is really high security if they’re checking behind people in the bathrooms!”

After a few minutes, though, when she didn’t come out, I realized she was just…using the restroom.

🙄

There was a song called “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro in my pre-teen years which included the line, “She was always young at heart, kinda dumb and kinda smart…” I asked my mom, “How can someone be dumb and smart at the same time?” She said, “Well…you’re kind of that way.” 🙂

It’s a busy week!! The ladies’ newsletter needs to be printed tomorrow (I’m almost done), invitations for the ladies’ luncheon need to be completed before Sunday, I need to make tickets…..

Good news is that some ladies’ got together and helped me complete the little decorations for the centerpieces this week. What a relief!

Jason leaves to work at a Christian camp in CA Saturday — he’ll be gone til August. Jesse goes to camp Monday and desperately needed some pants — his legs are the fastest growing part of him and it’s hard to keep him in pats that cover his ankles. He’s 13, and I had to go to the men’s department for some of his things today. His inseam is the same as his brothers’ and dad’s! (He was thrilled.) But he’s skinny, so I had to find the smallest size men’s pants.

But — it ought to be really quiet next week!! And I should be able to get everything else done for the luncheon in good time. But this week with decorations, invitations, nailing things down with the caterer, the newsletter, and getting kids ready for camp kind of snowballed on me. I don’t know if I will do my usual Friday and Saturday postings — just depends on how tomorrow goes. I may post but have to wait to visit people. I am keeping up with Bloglines but not much else.

Oh! I won a book in one of Katrina’s give-aways! I think that is the first thing I’ve won through a blog.

I wanted to share some things I’ve seen here and there that you might enjoy.

Rob at ivman’s blague (the iv stands for “instant vacation”) has some funny computer error messages listed. Be sure and look at the name of the error message across the top as well as the buttons. One of my favorites: “User error. Replace user.”

Everyday is a Holiday and house wren studio has some wonderful eye candy!

On a serious note, there are some demonstrations and protests in Venezuela over Chavez’s non-renewal of a TV station’s license, if I understand it correctly. Police have set tear gas off during peaceful demonstrations and one student has died. Jungle Mom has been posting updates about the situation and I am sure would appreciate your prayers not only for this current situation but for Venezuela in general. Freedoms are eroding there very quickly.

Seems like there was one other thing I was going to share, but I can’t remember what it was now…. guess I’ll save it for another time if it comes back to me. 🙂