Ramblings

Dan was sick the first half of last week, and I was sick the second half. The whole week was a blur of coughing, sneezing, and sleeping. 

Some other happenings in the past two weeks ...

I almost stepped on this guy one night as we walked the neighborhood. My foot was coming down when I saw it at the last moment. I yelled and somehow hopped out of the way. They are soooo creepy!

If you want to make Leah happy, mail a box and surprise her with pasta in fun shapes. That's all it takes.

Colby and I visited a museum with Paige, followed by a turtle pond, followed by other interesting places on campus.

We have a friend who turned her garage into the cutest sourdough bakery. A part broke on her new oven, and Dan and Colby were excited to fix it and see inside the oven. 

Look at her darling KitchenAid nightlight!

Paige drove to California with a friend for a few days. 

I went to a ladies night out with friends to watch Devil Wears Prada 2 and eat ice cream after and visit for a long time. 

Dan, Colby, and I spent many hours shopping for cars in 100 degree weather until it finally felt like too much and we had to go home and recover. Car shopping is necessary but it's the worst.

Two more months until Carson's home!

A friend has always wanted a tattoo and may still get one. She wants a wave, and she told me the very personal and sad meaning behind it. The next day was her birthday, and I scrambled to find a wave gift to hold her over until she gets inked, ha! I searched all kinds of gift ideas, and then I chose this little glass wave paperweight. I love it! 

Rosacea is flaring and making my cheeks burn and itch and hurt. I use three topical medicines each day, but it still flares sometimes despite my efforts.

I did a gastric emptying test. I only ate egg whites and toast, and ten minutes later my stomach was enormous and stayed that way until the next morning. I sat uncomfortably in the waiting room and they scanned me every hour. At the three-hour mark, the technician told me to walk the hospital halls and see if that might help my enormous painful stomach. I walked for forty minutes. It didn't change the size of my stomach. 

My next gastro appointment is this week, and based on all the tests over 18 months that are now complete, there's a different direction we're going to take and another medicine to try. I won't know for several months if it will work. 

One thing that helps is finding great new recipes to keep my food options interesting. This dairy-free, gluten-free, low FODMAP banana bread is so delicious and soft, I keep making it and we all keep eating it up fast. A lot of gluten-free foods are dry and crumbly and gross and sad. This is not like that at all, and so the recipe should be shared around. 

Low FODMAP Banana Bread

1/3 c. melted coconut oil

1/2 c. pure maple syrup

2 eggs

3 medium bananas, mashed

1/4 c. non-dairy milk (I've used both oat and almond)

1 tsp vanilla 

1 c. gluten free flour (I've been using King Arthur 1:1 gluten-free flour)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325. Grease one bread loaf pan. In medium bowl, whisk oil, syrup, and eggs. Add mashed bananas, milk, and vanilla. Whisk again. Add dry ingredients and stir. Fold in the walnuts. Bake for one hour.

Relieved and Grateful

I'll never be ready to lose my dad, but I'm so relieved and grateful it's not today. Chest pains woke him at 3:30 am. My parents acted quickly. My mom drove him to the nearest hospital where staff started working on him immediately, but when doctors recognized he was getting worse, he was transferred by ambulance (lights and sirens on) to a better hospital for heart attacks. By 5:30 he was in surgery. An artery was 100% blocked and now he has a stent. Because he acted quickly after symptoms, they caught his heart attack early enough that everything went well. His humor is back - he's making jokes again in his recovery room. I'm so grateful for the medical teams and all the best circumstances and outcomes that happened. We still have him.

Wrecked

1. Most importantly: the car did its job and protected Colby. He's shaken and mad but okay.

2. Not his fault. His light was green, but the woman insisted her arrow was also green. Police have now been able to review footage from a camera at that intersection, and Colby had the green light.

3. His eardrum isn't ruptured as he feared, but the airbag noise caused him to lose hearing at a certain decibel in his left ear. Noises are muffled. He saw an ENT doctor who performed a hearing test and gave him steroids to take for a week. Colby may or may not regain full hearing with time.

4. He had just left our house to go play soccer Tuesday night. When he texted Dan, "Start driving, I've been hit," Dan left immediately and was able to get to him quickly. We're grateful he wasn't far across the city.

5. The car is totaled. He makes his last payment next month, and then it was going to be fully paid off. It was a used car but he's only owned it for two years. He's negotiating with insurance to get a fair enough amount to replace his car, and then he'll need to go car shopping. He liked his car and will probably get the same year and make.

6. This wreck he didn't cause is a huge inconvenience. The many phone calls with insurance, driving to the junkyard, driving across the city to an ENT -- they've cut into his work days.

7. We bought a newer Jetta a few months ago but we still have the old 2008 one, so there's an extra car he can drive as he sorts everything out. We've been meaning to get rid of it but haven't yet. It's not pretty - it's covered in Minnesota rust, and it can be unpredictable, but most days it still works enough.

8. There are big accidents all the time, all over this city. I hate it, but it was a matter of time before it happened to one of us. Colby bought a dash camera yesterday in case this happens again.

9. He went to the junkyard yesterday where his car was towed to get the rest of his belongings and say goodbye to his car.

10. Now that we know his eardrum isn't ruptured, and things are working out in his favor because he's not at fault, we feel a little calmer.

11. This weekend we're car shopping too, as our 2011 Chevrolet Traverse turns 15 years old this month. I passed 200,000 miles which feels like a milestone, especially for a Chevrolet. I'm proud of it. However, the car has some quirks, and last year it stranded me a few times until Dan figured out which part to replace. Last month the headlights stopped working for good. Now I have to hurry home when it starts getting dark, before I need to turn on headlights that don't work. Someday the car will finally stop working for good, and I don't know when that day will be but it feels close.

If Only

If only my stomach would stay this calm all day long, then I could feel somewhat normal again and put this chapter of my life behind me. But I have to eat, and then the daily cycle begins again, and tonight (or sooner) my stomach will hate me. I have one last test next week. *Update: I made it to 4:30 before it hit. Ouch ouch ouch. :(

Bouquets

Three wards were recently created with new names and boundaries, and everyone was released from their callings. It's taken a few weeks to reorganize our ward. Dan is now in the EQ presidency, and I'm back in the same calling doing activities for 7-to-11-year-old girls. I do love this age - the girls think everything is fun, they love to come and participate, and they don't have teenage attitude yet. 

For this week's activity, I bought a bunch of flowers from Trader Joe's, and the girls got creative and made bouquets for their moms. I didn't know if it would be chaotic or if the girls would cut stems way too short and then not be able to use them (I warned them first), but we had no issues. I spread all the flowers on one table, and they went around and around it, mixing and matching until they were happy with their choices. Then they spent time carefully cutting and arranging. The bouquets turned out so well! I like that they're all unique. 

Today

Woke up this way. I'm going to try my best to walk (waddle?) the neighborhood this morning for a long time until I feel a little better. Then I'll figure out which big clothes to wear, because Dan has the day off work and I'm taking him to a museum. Right now he's out biking through the desert.

The saguaros are blooming!

We decided to become college baseball fans. We went to another game because BYU came to play. The weather was lovely and the sunset was gorgeous. We're trying to fill the strange void left behind because we can't watch our own kids compete in sports anymore.

That's All

My stomach can drastically and quickly change, but however this day ends, I was really happy to feel great this morning as I walked the neighborhood. I want to acknowledge and be grateful for the good moments.

The Good and the Bad

Quirky mural in a Mexican restaurant. The rest of the face stretches to the ceiling. These lips were enormous and right at our eye level. 

We all went to a college baseball game (we won!). This past weekend, only Dan and Colby went to another game (migraine for me, booooo).

Dan and I went on a double date with friends and saw the Back to the Future Broadway musical. I was skeptical at first and thought it shouldn't be a musical, but then the songs were great, the costumes looked straight from the '80s, and the set was absolutely incredible.

Paige worked hard getting ready for a veterans banquet and reunion at one of her museum jobs. 

Leah's been doing rotations in hospitals, schools, and clinics all school year and finishes this week. It's been a long but interesting year as a graduate student. Sometimes she texts, "Can I come home tomorrow?" or sends me things like this:

**Update Thursday morning -- last early morning train ride to rotations, she did it!! Phew!

Just a few more months until we see Carson again! 

Colby's working long hours because nobody else can quite do what he's doing at his job, and they haven't hired anyone else to help him. He does get paid for overtime. He's our more private kid, so I intentionally don't share too much about him here.

For the past year, I've seen lots of people recommending the Emma M. Lion series of books that are similar to Jane Austen's books. I got them for Christmas but hadn't sat down to start reading them yet until this weekend when I finished the first one. The writing and characters are delightful. I'm excited to read the rest.

I love that our backyard faces the sunset and our yard is finally landscaped. Every night the weather cools and we sit outside and watch the sunset. I also love that we can do that here without mosquitoes attacking us. I do not miss mosquitoes.

I was having a hard time, and this is one of the places I go when I just need to wander somewhere pretty for a while. 

There was a birthday lunch for a friend. Eleven of us were able to make it. I took sandwiches for my gluten friends and muffins for my gluten-free friends. The friendliest, best women live here.

My stomach is not calming, and I've been sooooo discouraged and hurting, plus physically and mentally worn out from my stupid health problems. My enzyme test came back normal, so clearly my stomach is still capable of digesting food. My gastric emptying test is in three weeks. I've called everywhere and even driven to ask in person, and I cannot find a lab in our city that does the fructose breath test my doctor ordered.

My stomach hates me every single day, but Sunday was the worst day in a long time, I ate a small low FODMAP meal in the morning, and then my stomach quickly grew and grew and was so so so painful. I was nauseous and dry heaving and started to pass out every time I stood up. I had to skip church and lie completely immobile in bed for most of the day. I slept A LOT. I finally was able to get up and eat crackers at 8:00 pm. My stomach remained huge all day and into the night even though I hardly ate. Sometimes it's like that. But...Monday I finally woke up feeling great and had more energy than I've had in a very long time. I deep cleaned everything in sight and was able to keep my stomach under control for the most part. What a difference it makes when my stomach behaves! I miss the old me who could get a lot done and wear normal clothes and eat delicious food. 

Leah sent me a recipe for gluten-free Brazi bites (Brazilian cheese bread) using tapioca flour. They tasted great and I'll be making more.

I keep eating small, boring, low FODMAP meals and I'm really tired of these same foods.

Tomorrow I'm retesting for SIBO to see where my numbers are now and if I'm still positive. Since October I've taken 5 antibiotics and one month of herbal pills specifically used for SIBO. All the symptoms point to me still having SIBO, but I want to know for sure if we're still fighting the right thing. 

And that means today I can only eat rice, eggs, meat, and potatoes, and drink only water or herbal tea to be ready for the SIBO test. 

Surprises

We had no idea that Carson's SLC mission would give him so many cultural experiences. We thought he would only experience Utah and Wyoming culture and language which would be very different from where he grew up. But he has served in Marshallese and Samoan areas without knowing those languages first. Now he has another opportunity to learn a new language and experience another culture. It's been so interesting and something we didn't expect when he was called to Utah.

In other news, three wards here were dismantled and completely renamed with new boundaries. Our ward was getting enormous, with new families moving in every month. Everyone in all three wards was released at the same time from all callings, and then only new bishoprics were called as well as EQ, RS, and Primary presidents. We're happy with the boundary changes, which were very different than we expected and kept more of us together than we thought, and we'll still keep in touch with friends who are now in other wards. Everyone was asked to answer their phones this week and next week so that callings can be filled quickly. Dan got his calling last night.