You'll Be a Song I'll Sing

I've been working on a really long post but I had to share...

I saw the gastroenterologist and he said as far as he's concerned, I'm in remission.  Now, I'm not going to go all crazy changing up what I eat but I think I may try strawberries or salads soon.  :)

My 20-year high school reunion was fun.  Husband and I were there until just before the room rental was shut off.

I'm paying for it today though.  Nerves and lack of medicine (I forgot to bring it with me last night) have made me a very sleepy girl today in an attempt to recover from the excitement.

Our 15th anniversary was Thursday.  I spent it at home while hubby worked until really late.

We drove to Cleveland yesterday to celebrate.  We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I had no idea The Thinker was there.  In fact, there are two versions of it but we only saw the smaller one.

The real reason to go to Cleveland, though, was to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants: Lola.  Hubby had Beef Cheek Pierogi (with wild mushrooms and horseradish creme fraiche), Smoked Berkshire Pork Chop (with chiles, cheesy polenta, bbq onions) and Strawberry "Baked Alaska" which consisted of strawberry-litchi sorbet and rhubarb-strawberry salad.  I went with the Crispy Pig Ear (with frisee, mushrooms, mustard and poached egg), Scallops (with asparagus, pork confit, preserved meyer lemon, tarragon) and the 6 A.M. Special (french toast, maple-bacon ice cream, and carmelized apple).  Hubby was trying to take picture of me enjoying my dessert but I thought he was trying to get an "after" picture and I was trying to stay out of the way.  He thought I was giving him the stink eye.  I tried the Almondtini which tasted like a macaroon in a glass.

All this before 9:30pm and no urgent bathroom trips this time.  It was heavenly.

This year I'm doing a walk for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.  They are raising money to do more research into these diseases.  As you can imagine, research into these chronic diseases is dear to my heart (and my bowels appreciate it too *snicker*).

If you'd like to sponsor me in my walk on Sunday, you can donate online at:
http://online.ccfa.org/site/TR/Walk/Chapter-CentralOhio?px=1501313&pg=personal&fr_id=1215&et=blnF-4h543uGdnRlbq7g0g..&s_tafId=1647
(You may need to copy and paste that long URL into your browser.)

I'm having a mini-bake sale at work on Wednesday to raise money for walk sponsors.  It's this Sunday evening at the Columbus Crew Stadium which is close to my house but I've never been there for a soccer game or concert.

No progress on the NaNoWriMo front today.  Total word count is still 17,000 words.

Today I had my annual physical and I had the lovely opportunity to cram the work of three people into one day proving that once again I could do my job without two other people.  Of course it was difficult and at times stressful, but it got done.  My eating and pill schedule is out of wack because of the day and thus my body is paying for it.  I spent a lot of time in front of the tv and the space heater tonight. 

I have several half-finished posts for my web site (including regular features like Story of the Month and book reviews) but I can't seem to put together a coherent sentence.  Must be NaNoWriMo time.  :)

I almost hit 250 on my word count yesterday.  Today I had several writing sessions and made it to 3,000.  I'm really proud of myself for making the push to get almost two days worth of writing done in one.  This year I've decided to try to stick to my 11:30pm bed time (obviously didn't make it tonight) as much as I can.  I don't want to get sick this month and getting the minimum amount of sleep each day would be a good thing for me.

With the recent trips my calendar feels a little out of control trying to catch up on everything (honestly I've started some LJ entries about the trips) around the house and get finances in order before the annual big squeeze (September and October are usually lean months due to trip expenses). The plus side is that my Crohn's isn't acting up from the stress (mostly placed on me by me).

I think I just want to go to bed.

make me wonder if I torture myself.  I went to Comfest for lunch and had fries, ribs, orange slushie and Jeni's ice cream.  Like clockwork, about an hour and a half later... and the stuff is still purging from my system.  I think it was too much sugar (which is why I'm having a Coke now - go figure).

It's been nearly a week since my last update but I have not fallen off the face of the earth.

Last Saturday I did this. Sunday we celebrated Mother's Day by going to church and having lunch with my in-laws. Later that night my parents came over since my dad was to have surgery at a nearby hospital on Monday morning. My in-laws came over to see my parents and all six of us had dinner at Northstar.

On Monday morning Sammy went berserk when my mom woke up early. Unbeknownst to us, she'd fallen out of the guest bed, scraped her hand, banged up her knee and nearly broke her nose. She said it was the most comfortable bed she'd slept in for years. I was so exhausted from so little sleep I called in to work and slept most of the morning. In the afternoon I did go to the hospital to see my Dad. Monday night my brother and his wife came over to have Chinese food with us and Mom. It was their first visit to our house. Monday night Mom slept on the couch. Dad's surgery went well and he was released on Tuesday. My brother and his wife took my parents home that afternoon.

Wednesday night I was planning on seeing Amy Bloom speak but I was just so tired from having company, I took my laptop to the Grandview library and wrote. Spent the rest of the evening at home.

Last night was busy and a late evening. I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, but someone backed up into my husband's car in the parking garage and tore up part of the grill and headlight. We picked up the car in the morning. The body shop did the repairs, fixed a sideview mirror (we said we'd pay separate for it) and cleaned up some paint scrapes on the side and on the bumper. It looked better than before the accident and it cost less than the estimate. After work I went to the Terry Moore talk at the Wexner Center. About 100 people attended. I had him sign the first issue of Echo. One of the girls/women gave him her Katchoo license plate which had expired two years ago. He was so excited! He's one of the most gracious signers I've ever met. Terry spoke to everyone and signed whatever they wanted. Strangers in Paradise was a comic I connected with because the women were drawn realistically. Francine would go up and down in weight and Terry showed it with some extra fat around the face which is more subtle and realistic than showing her as a size 2 (which Francine could never be) in one issue and then a size 22 in another.

Afterwards we had dinner at one of the best restaurants in town. By best I mean where the chef cares about the food and uses fresh ingredients. I was worried about being in jeans but Jeff was in jeans and so was Terry. There were eight of us total and Vijaya joined us later. It was the last night of the Columbus Symphony (supposedly forever though they're advertising two more shows this month) and Yo-Yo Ma was the guest performer. The restaurant closes at 10pm but we were there until nearly midnight. I ate too much and dessert sent me over the edge into colon spasms which ended up okay but really had me worried there in the restaurant. (I don't think it was the sweetness of the maple syrup creme brulee - I think it was from eating very little during the day and then a lot in three hours.)

Two of the guys at work today were talking about marriage (one is in a wedding this weekend and attending a wedding next weekend). And the one who was saying negative looks over at me and said, "Not you, Amber. Nothing like that applies to you." He went on to say, "You and your husband are really happy together and it shows." We have misunderstandings and miscommunications just like other couples but we know we're in it for the long haul and it's too much of a fun ride to try and get off early.

Due to all this family time I've gotten behind in my goal of writing a short story a day during the month of May. I'm at 6 completed stories, 1 is 3/4s completed and another barely started. Wish me luck! We have company coming from out of town tomorrow. :)

You know how little kids just get so excited sometimes that they use up all of their energy on excitement and fizzle out when it gets to the good part?  That was me tonight.

All day I was thinking about tonight and feeling all nervous and excited.  I ate too much ice cream at work and that with my nerves just had me all worked up.  Picked up hubby from rental car place, went home to get gussied up and then we drove to his work. 

A new show opened tonight and walking through the galleries was fun.  We looked at about half of the Jeff Smith show and I just couldn't see any more of it - I was about to cry from the wonderfulness of it all.  Good memories, little girl me and watching some of the drawing/writing process was all a little too much to handle.  

Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner were there as was Terry Moore and Charles Vess.  The man I thought was Terry was not and I had no clue what Charles Vess looked like.  I didn't talk to Jeff or his wife.  On the way out hubby asked if I wanted to talk to Jeff and I just had no clue what to say.  It was much easier when I met him a few months ago to listen to him talk about his trip to Spain than to try and make actual conversation.  But isn't it always that way?

Nicely paired, yet very different, with the Jeff Smith show is the Mary Heilmann show.  The colors are bright and cheerful.  

We spent about 2 hours at the VIP party and let me tell you, I'm one tired girl.

I was last in my aunt's house for a Pampered Chef party on Thursday.  Went there straight away after work, helped make a strawberry trifle dessert (which I couldn't eat) and the other team of people made a cheeseburger salad.  I was able to dig through some of the salad but it was kind of a pain.  The librarian at her job was just diagnosed with Crohn's.  Surprisingly, because I didn't have much to eat and had been worried about getting there on time, I didn't have a flare-up from drinking sangria.

In medical news, a research study involving 738 Crohn's patients in several countries shows Omega-3 fatty acids doesn't appear to help the disease any. I suppose that should relieve my guilt about not eating fish once a week, right?

I'm not expecting a cure in my lifetime but it would be nice for Crohnies who have severe cases to find a surefire method of relief.

With the new house came new pots and pans. We'd had the same set since we'd gotten married in 1994. (Yes, I've been married for a while.) On the advice of the Restaurant Widow I bought a Kirkland set from Costco. They are stainless steel and I think the core is copper and aluminum. Cooking has been quite an adventure here with the switch in cookware and method. I've grown up using electric and the stove/oven in this house uses gas.

As you can imagine I end up with a lot of burnt food. The Bon Ami has been doing a good job at keeping the pots and pans newish looking but every now and then is a stubborn mark that I need to really work at.

I made a variation of the Dragonbreath Chili recommended by themosh. I forget what kind of chili I used but I poured boiling water of it to make the pepper juice and didn't use the chili garlic sauce. Hubby was stirring it now and then so I thought he had it under control. During the last 20 minutes or so no one touched it. The chili powder never got added. At that point it was decision time "The bottom stuff is burned so do we eat that or do we throw it all away?" Since it was New Year's Eve and close to 11pm or so we ate what we could. Even with the added smokiness it was really tasty.

Another night I made Herb-marinated Grilled Chicken Paillards with Pan Sauce (which is a fancy way of saying chicken breasts with a sauce) along with the roasted potatoes from the same Gourmet Next Door episode. I used two chicken breasts instead of four and used only Yukon golds for the side dish. The chives had been purchased the day before but I'd foolishly left them in the cupboard instead of in the fridge so there weren't many nice green pieces. I didn't put enough oil into the pan so the breasts were a little bit burnt. I didn't use the white wine with the sauce (I don't remember seeing it on the episode) and I'd made a similar pan sauce before so I kind of eyeballed all of the ingredients to make it. I used a nonstick spatula that's supposed to withstand 500 degrees to get all the crispy chicken bits off the bottom of the pan. It's slightly bent now so I'm thinking the pan or the sauce was superhot. Overall, it was tasty. The biggest burn victim was not the chickens. Or even the spatula. It was the wooden cutting board I had used to chop the herbs. One burner had the teapot on it and the other two were kind of taken up with the pizza stone so I set the pan on the cutting board. It was a cutting board given to me as a birthday gift from my brother and sister-in-law. (One year they got me a little basket with crackers, cheese, wine and the board.) I threw away the glass one from the old apartment. You know how they have four little plastic knobby things to keep it off the countertop? One had melted off and I just haven't found any I liked.

And of course there is the night I got the call about Sammy and let the Skyline boil over.

We had a Christmas potluck at work and I brought my famous chocolate chip cookies. The first batch... well... was extremely pale and barely cooked. This was the first time I'd made anything in the oven. There is a thermometer stuck to the side and I need a flashlight to read it. The rest of the cookies after that were good. It takes forever for the oven to heat up so anytime I know I'll be using it I turn it on and give it at least 20 minutes to heat up.

Getting a new stove/oven is one of the things we'd like to do in the kitchen sooner rather than later. It seems a decent gas stove can be had for a few hundred dollars. Our stove is self-lighting but sometimes likes to stick and the burners don't come on right away.

With the house came a microwave oven installed above the stove. One of my standbys when I'm having a Crohn's flare-up is a baked potato. The old microwave had a baked potato setting that was awesome. So far I've not been able to make a decent one with the new microwave. It has a baked potato setting but comes out not fully cooked. Maybe it's meant for a regular potato from one of those bags and not a baking potato that I picked out for an especially yummy treat.

Hubby once told me that Sammy would like it best if one of us was home all the time. I think he was right. I called in sick yesterday (sinuses and general aches) and today (sinuses better but still have general aches). Both days Sammy has hardly left my side. He's also been a bit more vocal than usual. I have no idea what he's saying but he likes it when I talk back to him. Both days I've had the sleep signal of a flare-up but all's been well.

While writing at work yesterday I kept adding my word count to the 27th and yet I kept thinking it was Thursday. I got it all straightened out this morning. Last night I was falling asleep before 10pm which is almost as bad as my pre-diagnosed Crohn's days. I think I only woke up once but otherwise I slept entirely through the night.

Total Word Count is 17,837. Hopefully tonight after watching a really good movie I can write and do laundry. I'm almost at a really good scene that I've had in my head since September.

( Most of What I Wrote )

Things have been looking up in our household the last few days.

The Windows XP I ordered arrived. The install went smoothly and the data transferred to the old hard drive is there. Now I just have to reinstall all of our software (which is in boxes) and figure out how to get the data imported.

The off and on search for the camera battery recharger has proven to be unsucessful. Also, it's been difficult to find one at the stores. The lithium batteries aren't used as much anymore but I found a multi-battery charger at Cord Camera.

Last night's dinner was spicy italian sausage from Giant Eagle. It proved to be an unwise choice. My taste buds enjoyed it but the intestines protested. Thus I do not get a yummy breakfast of pancakes and bacon at Northstar today. Maybe tomorrow. :)

Hubby's aunt and uncle came over yesterday to look at the bathtub fixtures that spin around but have no stop. (Not a good feature if children should ever use the tub which is ironic since an 11-year-old lived here since she was 7.) After spending all day on it (while I was at work even though it was a paid company holiday) it is fixed! And so is the toilet downstairs. And the mirror for the dining room has been hung.

Now I get to look forward to getting crap cleared and put away so I can take nice pictures of the house.

Sammy is learning not to jump so much. Yesterday he wore himself out checking on what everyone is doing. A Corgi has to know where everyone is and what they are doing. Yesterday morning when we went for our walk, I forgot my keys. He and I spent about 40 minutes on the front porch. He was getting cold so I put him on my lap and held his little body to me. I tried a t-shirt on him this week to see how he felt about clothes and he wasn't happy. I still think he's going to need a sweater this winter.

I have no birdseed in the feeder but the birds are superactive today. I've seen two male cardinals, one female cardinal, two blue jays, something I didn't recognize, finches and sparrows. There is a large bush close to an alley by one of my neighbors. Yesterday morning or the evening before I noticed it was like the Laugh In tv set. They were all chirping and then it got quiet. As we passed the bush, a bird would stick it's head out at the top while another one did it at the bottom then stick their heads back in and more would stick their heads back out. Had it been a Whack-A-Mole game it would have been one of the more difficult ones.

I think today I'll need to skip the NaNo Write-Ins... but if I just write 6000 words a day (or something like that) then I can still finish with 50k at the end of the month. :)

Saw the tummy doctor yesterday. Before he came in I got to overhear a conversation with one of the nurses regarding patients who called in about their medications. It was really quite funny. I know he would react the same way if I had asked these questions.

No new tests to take this year. I may not need another colonoscopy or the other tests for about 8 more years unless I get worse. My medicine is the same. His office took some blood to check my CBCs and liver enzymes. I lost 4 pounds since last year. My ob/gyn and he are friends so we were laughing about what my ob/gyn said about him.

I've booked my flight for my October vacation. There is no turning back now! Well, there could be but it's not likely. :) Now I must figure out what my Halloween costume will be this year. The Magic 8 Ball was a big hit last year because it was an interactive costume.

Yesterday I stayed away from the television and barely had the computer on. The guest bed (frame, not mattress) is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. The tv and living room furniture may or may not show up tomorrow morning with their morning deliveries. I'm supposed to hear from the furniture company by 10am. They get the deliveries at 8am and the person in the corporate office wants to make sure the items are there or not there before she calls me.

I called my mother tonight to see how she's doing but got the answering machine.

Thursday is my annual appointment with my gastroenterologist. It may not be the best week to meet with him since I've been a little stressed. Last night I didn't eat dinner until about 9pm and I was starting to get so cranky I was nearly ready to call sick into work.

As it turns out I think I have three sick days and another three or four days of vacation if I take all of the days I have planned. I can use sick time if I'm out a long time on Thursday. At my last job I think it took me about three years to realize I could use sick time for medical appointments. I was using my vacation time for them until I found out!

A new study ups the number of common genes from 2 to about 9. It took 10 years for one study to get to this point. Now get working on fixing it!

Did you hear the one about the Crohn's acting up? Stop me if you've heard it before...

I didn't drink much water today. Bad me.
I let a stupid guy stress me out towards the end of the day. Bad me.
The internal pressure I feel about finishing my NaNo is stressing me out. Bad me.

So the last two hours haven't been the greatest for me. I'm considering taking a half day tomorrow. The temp who has been helping me can take care of the schedules and tapes in the afternoon.

Offical Word Count as of 11/27/06 is 15020. I earned myself a board game!