Turn Around

Today is better! Woot! I was surprised at how it turned around as yesterday was kind of yuck-o. I thought for sure I was in for another week of just asthma, but so far so good.

Now back to exercise!

Maybe tonight yet, or maybe tomorrow. It's not been determined. I'm feeling delightfully lazy at the moment so we'll see...

Books are selling well. I have no idea if this is a new normal for me or if it will all go *poof* next month, but this month shows the glimmer of a full time income. From writing.

Never thought I would say that.

However, my latest projects, while being fun and stimulating, have not exactly been cooperating. I have no idea when I'll next have something ready to publish. I try to publish every month as that's key to selling books....having new content on a regular basis. 

Anyway, the toddler graduated from OT. So she's done with all of it...OT and PT and Early Intervention. At least for the moment, we may find ourselves returning in the future.

I am happy, but it's bittersweet as she's at the low end of skill mastery compared to her peers. She's going to have to fight for it if she wants to use her body in ways the rest of us take for granted. Medicine may be done with her, but we have to parent what remains and we don't know what we are doing.

Take the bike ride we took today. She's still weak enough on the left that she favors the right to the point where she's leaned so heavily on her strong side, the training wheel has bent sideways. We bent it back, but now the wheel is peeling and she rides at an angle that threatens to topple her over.

As she rides, she cries because her "legs hurt." This is part of her diagnosis. She can't get the bike started and requires lots of assists. Also part of her diagnosis.

I try to empathize, encourage and use tough love. I never know if I'm saying or doing the right thing, and, judging from my inability to motivate her or stop the tears, I feel I'm doing it all wrong.

Some days the bike rides are fine. Others they are a bawling mess--either she's crying or I'm fighting tears when I see how far she still has to go and I don't know if she'll ever get there.

So the moral of the story is....closing the gap on a skill deficit is not the same thing as mastery.

Still Kicking

It's been a little over a week since my last post.

To mimic my daughter, What? (You have to say it in a freakishly high falsetto to get the full effect.)

The toddler lost another tooth! She's made $4 so far from the tooth fairy. I checked her other teeth and nothing else seems to be loose at the moment. I hope we're done for now. I'm not ready for her to be a big kid...even if she is taller than every second grader we've met to date.

I don't really remember what I've been doing the last week or so. Bought new tennis shoes which promptly gave me a blister the size of a quarter. In the process of shopping for the shoes, I apparently exceeded flip-flops' ability to cushion feet and did something to my right calf muscles. Something deep that did not respond to massage, stretching or light exercise. This has all precluded exercise for the most part...the blister especially is being quite a pest and not healing well. I use a lot of band-aids.

As far as energy...I'm in and out. I'm still miles better than I was, but it's not rainbows and unicorns every day either. I wish!

The hubby bought tickets to take me out on a dancing cruise. I was so excited. The day of the cruise arrived and I felt horrible. I had a terrible headache and stomach pain with serious fatigue. Whenever I sat down, I had my head in my hands. I probably looked like I was about to have motion sickness. We did dance a little bit and I enjoyed that, but it was a bust overall.

I tried to rise above it. I took a bunch of Advil. Even had a pop--the full sugar version--hoping the caffeine and carbs would perk me up, but nothing helped.

Writing has been keeping me busy and is the primary reason for my absence of late. In the last six weeks I wrote the equivalent of a short novel in terms of word count and have been working to publish everything. Writing has been so consuming that I've had to force myself to take days off. Except I'm terrible about taking time off. I try though.

Sales have been good. On one retailer they are dying but on another, they are experiencing exponential growth. I may see real money this month. Maybe. If nothing goes wrong (which happens a lot in this business).

I suspect no one here cares, but I think my next step may be to write something for an e-press. I think I want to tap into their mailing lists and marketing as a way to expand 'brand awareness' for my pseudonym. We'll see.

The other goal is two more cook books. It feels like everyone is asking for my almond flour recipes. So if I compile the recipes for those who want it, might as well publish them all. And I'm kind of obsessed with 'dump and go' crockpot recipes. Between writing and parenting, I love it when I can dump a bunch of stuff into the crockpot in five minutes or less. Crockpots are the easy button of motherhood.

Oh and I may be starting a non-fiction project with someone else, who has the necessary professional credentials. I might be going to a conference this fall to gather data for the project and am looking forward to it (if it comes to pass). This is kind of cool because for a loooooong time I was afraid to make any plans since I never knew if I was going to be okay or not.

Shh! Don't Jinx It

I don't want to say anything about my health because it's in flux and I don't know where it's going to land so might as well wait and see before I devote hundreds of words to it, yes?

So here's some random nonsense for you...

1.Do you ever catch yourself watching one of those drug commercials and as they list the side effects you're going 'yes I have that, yup that too, yeah and that' only you don't take the drug?

I had a moment like that the other day and it cracked me up.

2.Several Olympians have the same diagnosis as my daughter and that makes me happy. Not that they have a diagnosis, but that it didn't stop them. I worry a lot about doors closing for her, maybe I don't need to worry at all.

3. When I was at the hospital visiting my friend, I told her 80 something roommate who was about to be released that she should go see Magic Mike to celebrate. It had been a topic of loud conversation and she asked what it was so....

We tried to explain Magic Mike to her in polite terms and finally I just told her it was 'life affirming.'

So that's me, witnessing about Magic Mike to little old ladies in the hospital. Ha. I'm either exactly who you want visiting you in the hospital or your worst nightmare.

4.I have set an ambitious writing goal for myself in the midst of a hugely busy month. August is crazy over here. One relative left. The next relative arrives next week. I have a week long sales gig thing at a preschool. Plus summer camp. Visits with relatives having babies. And a vacation. Things are so jam-packed I can't keep track of it all and have double-booked myself several times now.

That's a great time to decide to finish a huge project, right? What can I say? When the muse is hot, the muse is hot. You don't say no to the muse. I'm about 60% done with the project and hope to have all the rough drafts done before we go on vacation later this month.

I'm close. The plot is giving me fits though. I'm ready to end the thing and it just keeps going. We'll see what happens.

If I'm scarce here, it's because I'm focusing very intently on meeting my goal. If I'm posting all the time, that means I'm procrastinating mightily. As I'm doing right now.

So no, I'm not dead, but I might be off killing my characters if they don't start cooperating soon.

Defriending

Hi. Sorry for the long silence. I'm doing okay adrenal-wise, but other things have not been so positive.

I experienced a nasty mommy drive by (when mommies are mean to other mommies)over a week ago that has left me questioning whether I will continue with my mother's group.

This would involve lots of Facebook defriending, which I've been agonizing over. To defriend or not defriend, that is the question.

I think I've decided to unjoin the group and defriend various members, but now have to navigate that with some social grace. The social network includes folks who don't know what happened and I have no idea how to extract myself without raising questions and causing a certain amount of drama.

It's hard to explain what happened without dragging you through petty details that no one who is not directly involved cares about. Short hand, I was verbally bitchslapped like a bad dog in front of everyone. My husband witnessed the whole thing and his first question to me when we talked about it later was 'Why do you spend time with these women?'

And I thought, you know what? Why do I bother with them? They've never been a good match for me. I stayed with the group because it was the easy button for keeping the toddler busy.

(Strangely the toddler doesn't like most of the kids, which must be a sign of some kind.)

Being sick didn't help me make any strong social connections either. Part of this is due to being sick. I couldn't do all the mommy bonding events and that left me the odd mom out.

This may not seem like a big deal or maybe it appears over-dramatized, I don't know. What I do know is that it shook me to my core. I became very insecure about who I was and if I was worthy. I was called names and assigned unflattering labels. Spoken to like the lowest of the low.

So I've spent the last week going to my real friends, the people who've known me for decades, asking them what the truth was. Because I was no longer sure. Maybe I secretly was a horrible person and was just too dumb to see it.

But my friends have rejected that and reassured me the things that were said to me were not true. Even if they were, there were ways to address them with kindness and respect, neither of which were utilized the day of the mommy drive-by.

The whole experience has been emotionally wrenching for me. Some of it centered on the toddler's diagnosis, something she just received from the neurologist, which I may or may not delve into in a later post. The last time I shared anything about it, I was publicly ripped apart

Local Adrenal Bitchiness

BP is better today. It was still elevated this morning, but has been dropping.

I've been salting my food. On purpose. Because there seems to be a paradoxical relationship there. Salt stabilizes.

Don't ask me why or how or what.

I'm just muddling through, following my instincts (a distinct salt craving) and checking my BP frequently.

Saw the doctor. Licorice is no more. We had a roundabout conversation where they want me to go to the ER with my body slamming BP and I don't want to because, frankly, I'm pretty sure the ER would not care. I'd rather just fall back on the prescription meds. Then if it's out of control still or I pass out (I swear that day is coming), we could try an ER.

Preferably before any car accidents.

However, this is truly adrenal with a side of licorice. I've had this pattern before. I had that whole cold (which is pretty much done with me, the lead-up was the worst part adrenal-wise) without stress dosing which did not help. At all. There's just a lot of chaos in my system and the adrenals no likey.

Bitchy adrenals are evil devils.

Anyway, had a great day overall today. At least after the doctor's appointment. Another one-stick IV (squeee!).

Hubby came home an hour early with a birthday present for me. It's a gorgeous lamp with a glass lampshade. I love bright, shiny objects (yes, you could give me empty soup cans and I would be all 'oooo shiny') and was just thinking we needed a nicer lamp in the dining room, so a billion bonus points for the hubby. It caught his eye at a garage sale, and is major score given that the lamp is signed by the artist.

Then we went to a farmer's market and sourced grass fed meat and cheese (although did not buy any as mucho expensivo aiii). After that we ended up a great local restaurant with a little bowling machine to entertain the toddler. We sipped blueberry sage iced tea, sampled appetizers and...well... the toddler screamed her head off and was generally unpleasant.

And then she peed her pants.

Eh, so it wasn't perfect, but the hubby and I had a great time.

Still took a nap today, but my energy, otherwise, was good.

Oddities and Delicacies

So, yep, the toddler has a growth inside her ear. Not sure how they are going to remove it, but the ped wasn't going to touch it. "Umm yeah, that's a growth alright. Huh, it's attached. Oh, sorry honey, did that hurt?" So we move on to ENT. I'm rather wary of the whole thing.

Of note, it's in the left ear and was quite swollen the day we first saw it (it has since shrunk). Makes ya wonder if that's the root cause of the recent band-aid addiction? She hasn't always had it as she's had regular check-ups, so it's new-ish, but I can dream that its removal will cure all that ails her, right?

Also, we still are on alien watch. You just never know when those things are going to hatch out of someone's head.

As for food. I made almond-flax blueberry pancakes. Absolutely delicious and they take 5 minutes to make. I was sorry I didn't make any for myself. The toddler ate them. This time. She's famous for eating anything once so I'm not holding my breath. But I liked them and at least I can (and will) make them for myself.

Monday was day three of no steroids. I don't want to jinx anything as I don't think I'm quite home free, but it's going better than expected. I'm starting to feel like things will actually get better as opposed to having nightmares every night that I'm dying and can't get up (for realz, nightmares, adds a whole new layer of suck to being sick).

Today is my next alternative medicine IV and my follow-up with the Integrative MD. This will be the first time I've seen them whilst also being in possession of all my mental faculties. Pray they find a vein. The hour long roto-rooter sessions are getting old.

And what else? Writing is finally falling into a groove. For a while there, every time I sat down to write, I felt like a stroke victim. The words would not come, I was just blank and empty. Probably still recovering. I had to walk away from one story for a while and focus on something that finally got me going again. I hope to finish the almost-final draft this week.

Sales sucked in May. June is looking better, but never count your book sales before they're made.

Here's to a better week than all of last month and to finally maybe turning the damn corner.

Progeny

Sunday was a pretty good day with some minor hiccups. Went to church, promptly fatigued and came home where I rested for a few hours. We didn't even make the service.

We did make it to the swimming pool. I tried to be very careful about not doing too much, as that's a trigger, but dug myself into a little hole anyway. I rested on the blanket for about an hour while the hubby and toddler swam and that seemed to do the trick.

Then before bed, limb heaviness and that slow stumbling fatigue gait came for a visit.

I hope today will be better.

Because I need to have my wits about me.

We need to get the toddler to the doctor today.

There is a growth in her ear. I think it may just be a skin tag, but it also looks like it's extending back into the ear canal. It's attached. Anchored in there, hunched down tight.

We found it by chance as, apparently, it wasn't/isn't bothering her.

But it's bothering us. Quite a bit and it needs to be looked at. Preferably before the aliens hatch in her brain.

Of course, if it is a skin tag...then she's got my messed up metabolism. Which I kind of figured. I also think she's wheat sensitive as it bloats her up pretty well. I'd like to feed her paleo food, but she ain't having it.

For having a mom whose main food group is lettuce these days and who wonders when she'll be able to afford grass-fed beef (if ever), the toddler sure is a carb junkie. You would think we keep Doritos and Milk Duds in stock here, which...I would have to die first.

You name it, I've tried it. She did eat some blueberry 'ice cream' with added spinach--pictured on the left-- you would totally eat that, right?

However, since our blender is 20 years old, it didn't puree everything (despite the half hour I gave it to gnaw on things) and she found an intact spinach leaf in her bowl. After which, she wouldn't touch it even if you gave her a ten foot pole made out of candy.

Any way. Parenting. It's not for the faint of heart. Or those who don't own a Vitamix.

If there's any breaking news of alien invasion...it came from my kid's ear. Prepare yourself.

TGIF

A few quick pictures.

First up. This is what 'graduation from physical therapy' looks like. Lots of band-aids. Mostly to protect wounds from additional falls. All on the left, although she's got bruises on the right. She's consistent in telling me it's her hip giving out.


After I took that pic, she removed the band aids (not my preference as she falls enough I like their protection for healing scrapes and wounds) and then messed up her big toe. This is my attempt to stanch the rather profuse bleeding.


Then I made almond-flax 'toast'. Texture is just like bread, flavor is not. It's not bad different, just not bread. It will grow on me--hell, this is nothing compared to greens powder.




I made an egg mcmuffin with my almond-flax toast. It was yummy. Not my best pic, but I was very hungry.

Getting There

I'm down to 2.5 mg. It just seemed like I needed to taper a bit faster. My body shifted gears to feeling like I had too much steroid rather quickly.

I never know if I'm right until it's done, but I'm about 95% accurate when I change the dose.

Of course, tapering makes me tired, but not tapering was not working either.

I've been sleeping a lot.

Dreaming of exercise.

Sometimes I try to work. I have several stories I'd like to finish, but my brain is still not quite synapsing normally due to the fatigue. It takes a super human effort for me to write even 500 words that are worthy of publication.

I think this time next week, I should feel like I'm past the worst of it. But I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, I'm sucking down my first Coke Zero in a month to see if it'll help crank me up. So far, it's not working.

The toddler had a lovely play date with a bunch of other kids. Perfect behavior. It was nice to see because I think every parent worries that one bad interaction means big problems. I know she's a good kid. I know we get a lot of the big things right as parents, but there has been such conflict with the neighborhood kids. But I don't think their parents are as attentive as they could be to their kids' social skills.

I don't like our neighborhood anymore. The housing market crash has changed the demographics quite a bit. Ideally we would move to another school district. One where parents pay more attention to their kids than their cigarettes. But I'm not sure that will happen.

You know, smoking has been such an issue--I think we're the only non-smoking parents on our street--that I want to find an asthma commune. I'm tired of having to awkwardly bow out of social gatherings because I can't handle the smoke.

Also, I am starting to think there really is a correlation between smoking and parenting. I have not found it to be a positive one.

I'm sure there are great parents out there who smoke, but I'm not living next to any of them.

10mg Dance Party

Tried 5mg on Wed and it wasn't enough. It hit me better than it did on Monday, but I was still somewhat sleepy with lots of limb heaviness. Took a while for the second 5mg to hit my system, but, once it did, all was right with my physiology.

Almost. Still a teeny bit of limb weakness, but nothing that could stop me.

I lived the dream.

I vacuumed!

I dusted!

I argued with the steam cleaner and gave up!

I sat and just gloried in the feeling of well-being as opposed to that of death warmed over. OMG. I felt fabulous. Like I had woken from the dead.

Then I put on some music and did the bare minimum of squats and push-ups, something I've managed to do, by some miracle, every 2 to 3 days while sick. I am pleased because this was one of my goals--not to give up on fitness even when I'm sick. It wasn't easy, but I did it and I suspect the only reason I managed it at all was because of the IV nutrition therapy.

Of course Wed was easy due to 10mg. With steroids, my life is possible. I hate that it's true, but it is. I don't know how to get past this, how to help my body move forward. It seems impossible.

I also saw my shin bones on Wed for the first time in...months? The shin bone sighting (the Yeti of my body!) made realize I kind of have edema at some level all the time now. I have mentioned it before to my pulmo because they ask, but they don't seem to see it, which means, of course, that I'm a lying liar who lies, right? So it's been dismissed. However it's progressing and I need to advocate more strongly.

As far as I know, my heart is okay. I had an EKG at the ER and it wasn't exciting for anyone. Well, except for me as I'm rather fascinated by the texture of the adhesive on the patches. I also peel rubber glue off magazine offers. Now you've met your TMI quota for the day. You're welcome.

Wed was also the toddler's award ceremony and party for Tae Kwon Do. Thanks to steroids, I was able to make a cake. Gluten free, high protein, packed with fiber and very low sugar. It's delicious despite being so healthy. Slowly, but surely my baking talents are transferring over to a whole new approach to food. ('Course I can't eat it, what,with chocolate triggering massive heartburn and all. Sigh.)

Click this pic to enlarge and then tell me you don't want a piece. I dare you. The kids were scraping the crumbs off the plate and I got requests for the recipe. High fiber, high protein low sugar cake y'all, it's really that good.

Sunday Pictures

Warning: Images of completely unphotogenic feet ahead. Prepare yourself.

First, the irises from what passes for a garden in our front yard. We've been putting the stalks that fall over into a vase. So gorgeous! I feel like doing a Van Gogh painting of them or something.


The toddler had her first Tae Kwon Do exam yesterday. SHE BROKE A BOARD! For the first time OMG! I am so proud of her.

Here she is warming up.




And here are my feet. They are much more slender in person. I'm trying to document the edema, but the camera adds so much fat that it's hard to capture photographic evidence. I probably need to change the angle so the image isn't so distorted, because, truly, my feet look totally different in real life.


And no, I still can't breathe. Going to bed now that I've posted this. Grandparents have the toddler today.

Sunday Pictures

The toddler had her dance recital.


She did great despite being very nervous.


Here's a picture of the orange-mint water. (Like you care, I know, but I'm really excited about it still.)



And a picture of Kombucha. It's an interesting drink. Like a fruit beer. (I don't like beer, which is why I don't drink, but this was okay. It made me think I could eventually graduate to beer someday.)




As for how I feel? Eh. You know the answer. Like poop. 5mg wasn't enough. I need more. Not sure if I'll be brave enough to take 10mg today or not, but I probably need it.

I've lost about 5lbs from not eating either due to lack of appetite/heart burn. It's not new weight loss, just a swing down on the waffle range. New weight loss will be next.

For extra fun, on Saturday some passing cigarette smoke exposure triggered an acute asthmatic reaction.

Then I got to the point where, if I sat too long, I started to fall asleep. I'm just really tired and I can't seem to wake up.

Monday This and That

I won't have an 'office' until June, when our one house guest moves out. The other house guest will probably be here forever due to the cancer diagnosis of someone else.

For now, I'm crammed at the end of the dining room table. Yes, I eat dinner with my computer. There's no place else to go.

The pediatrician called me today and wants us to check in with a neurologist. I'm puzzled by that since the toddler 'graduates' from Early Intervention this week, she's done with PT (for the moment) and that leaves us with only OT.

Granted, the neurologist we saw initially was a tool. I just don't know what they will 'see' now. The ped thinks the OT and PT notes will be helpful.

I thought there wasn't a diagnosis? That we didn't need neuro? I am confused.

I said we would do another neuro consult, but only with someone the ped knows and trusts because--crazy fools that we are--we would like to have a tool free medical experience.

As for me. Tired but holding steady. So long as nothing goes wrong I won't need steroids. Ha. That's funny. In a sad way.

Reading Predictions and the Inaccuracies Thereof

The toddler has 'read' her first complete book. By 'read' I mean she knows some of the words and recalls the others from memory, but that's how it starts.

I am thrilled.

Go reading!

The book was Go, Dogs, Go and I had thought it might be The One.

Do you remember the very first book you ever read?

I don't recall the title, but mine was about an unhappy King and he ends up on a fire truck in the end. I was inconsolable when my mom ditched all my 'baby' books when I was at school one day.

My first word was K-Mart at the age of four. I remember looking at the sign and, suddenly, all the letters made sense. I don't think my parents even knew when I started to read. (It quickly became obvious, though once I started burying myself alive in books. Being home with the flu in kindergarten gave me the luxury to go through books like candy.)

The toddler, on the other hand, I thought she would start last year when she was three. She knew all her letters and phonics before she was two. She had some words down by three and everything was in place, except she doesn't thirst for it like I did. It's not her raison d'etre and it's been very hard for me to let her mosey along at her own pace. I know, if she wanted to she could, but she's 'meh' on reading.

I can't fathom it myself, but she can't stop genetics and she comes from a strong line of fairly early readers.

Anyway, Friday sucked. What else can I say? I ate at all the right intervals and still got really low blood sugar-y anyway. What was that about? I've had to lay down every day this week and rest until I can withstand being upright again.

I did want to add that on Wednesday, the day that was my worst, I was short of breath as well. One of the big symptoms that tipped me into adrenal crisis panic and I didn't mention it. Well, consider it mentioned now.

I have no idea what's going to happen next. Do you? Up swing? Down swing? Flying pigs?

Which Came First?

I think things are so rough right now because the pill pack ended and my body is not happy about the hormonal change. It hasn't hit me so hard in quite a while and I'm not sure what's driving it now.

So last night, I had an 'acid attack' also known as GERD gone wild. Or maybe it was the adrenal bit driving the GERD bit. I don't know, but doesn't it seem like every few weeks I'm dealing with nausea and stomach pain? There's a pattern there, just not sure how to interpret it.

Of course, being ill all night means today is not so great. I can't eat. I'm tired. Not feeling hot at all.

At least I didn't throw up, which seemed like a victory at the time. This morning, it feels quite hollow.

Someone asked about Marfan re: the toddler. You know, Abraham Lincoln had Marfan's. He was also quite depressed. This article from The Atlantic is amazing to read.

My great uncle had Marfan's, but he married into the family, so it's not in the bloodline. All this to say I know a teeny bit about Marfan's and she doesn't have the physical markers for it.

There are a lot of tall kids out here, it's the Eastern European genetic stock. They grow them big behind the former Iron Curtain and they come to the US and get bigger. How big is big? When I visited the husband's homeland, I was delighted to find shoe stores display the size 10 model, not the size 5 as we do in the US. (I wear a size 9-10.)

Having traveled to his hometown by way of Paris--where I was a gargantuan American towering over everyone and didn't even bother to try and shop for clothing there--it was like finding my people. The tall and the wide with fantastic Italian leather shoes in MY SIZE FOR ONCE.

Back in the states, the toddler has peers who are taller than her (they are always of Eastern European descent). I also work in the elementary school on occasion and wow, we have tall kids here. Gaggles of them. I think we should make our own growth charts to use because surely there's more than an average amount of kids off the charts for height.

Don't get me wrong, the toddler continues to be taller than most and there aren't a ton of kids her age who match her height, but she's not totally alone either. The motor stuff is just her though, I don't know of any peers having the same issue, but it's not Marfan's either.

I was clumsy, but not until later in childhood. I also had terrible penmanship, but never anything that crossed the line into needing therapy. I wouldn't have called myself coordinated until my 20s (although I had good ability in martial arts in my preteen years, I just couldn't walk without tripping and breaking a bone). Sometimes I think she just got a quadruple dose of all my faults.

Had a Great Day Despite It All

Yesterday was a great day, but I got adrenal for some reason. Back pain, fatigue with weakness.

It was a busy day. I forgot to eat lunch, we were so 'go, go, go'. In the morning I did a bunch of housework, took the toddler to preschool where they had a fantastic animal show. My girl was picked to sit on the tortoise--that picture will totally make the Christmas card this year!

(Not pictured: Hot pink cowgirl hat and pink sunglasses that she considers 'styling'.)

From school we went straight into the playdate from hell. Two lonely onlys with strong alpha tendencies and one middle child who followed the strongest lead. Lots of conflict and hurt feelings. Hours and hours of toddler OMG drama. Love the mom, love her kid, just not with my kid. Could not wait for them to go.

Hubby came home, dinner started, more kids came over. One of my mom friends arrived with her girl to try and tutor me in Photoshop. (I'm hopeless.) Despite the sitters cancelling on me, the girls played together well.

We have two long term house guests, one of whom is my relative and we are jawing on and on about the batshit insanity from their parents and mine. Plus, they are in college so I feel like I have to be more motherly. Not to mention their parents are the epicenter of one of the latest rounds of crazy in my family so I'm trying to offer my support.

Throw in a few snarly technical issues with the hubby's homework for school that would not resolve until I swore like a sailor and starting making death threats to technology in general, and that was my day.

Basically, no down time. Right before dinner a wave of fatigue and weakness hit me really hard--the weakness signals adrenal origin in my experience. I had to go sit down for a few minutes and just breathe.

Oh and it's been super hot all week, which probably doesn't help. I feel like I have a fever from all the heat my body has soaked up.

So, anyway, over did it, I guess and I am paying for it.

On the upside, I am maintaining my weight within a three pound wobble range. I bloat now and gain weight if I eat the wrong things, so I bounce around on the scale. Pretty decent considering the lack of exercise and the amount of carbs that creep into my diet. Coming off the adrenal 'eat whatever you want, if you can stomach it' metabolism is a big adjustment and I'm so relieved to be doing halfway okay.

Another positive, Amazon removed the filter from my book. My appeal managed to reach one of the few employees there with a brain and they agreed, my book doesn't need to be banned. Whether it will ever recover sales or rank or anything, I don't know. I am not too hopeful.

I've been very active over the last few months fighting the censorship efforts of corporations to try and control what content consumers access. It's really scary to realize large corporate interests define reality however they want online with no disclosure to the public--think the Lorax movie and the town walls hiding the wasteland, keeping artificial opulence front and center. See what we want you to see, not what you're looking for. Buy what we want you to buy, not what you need.

As a consumer, I thought I could trust Amazon's search function, that it would pull from the entire site, but it doesn't. They cherry pick, sometimes based on your past shopping history, but sometimes based on a whim or darker intent. It's like if I were to go to Walmart and they hid half their inventory from me, refusing to let me see it, let alone buy it. Worse, I wouldn't even know they've hidden anything, so I couldn't even complain and influence their corporate policy. There's no 'we've filtered some results, click here to see them' notice. This is standard operating procedure online. Consumers do not have free access or freedom of choice about what they see and buy.

I did a teeny tiny bit of work for Google, for about a nanosecond, and their approach to search is very different. Their goal is to serve the user above all else. They only filter spam, irrelevant results and malware. Google would consider hiding relevant results from users a supreme failure in their mission and it would not be tolerated.

I wonder what sites like Amazon are so afraid of?

With regards to the toddler, since there was a question...She doesn't have a diagnosis other than muscle weakness. She has a trick hip that goes out on her for no good reason, she also toes in when she walks, which increases the odds of tripping, and then just overall weakness.

Plus she's like fifteen feet tall, okay maybe not that much, but definitely head and shoulders above her peers. When they line up at preschool, I always chuckle because she pops up like a weed. One in a pink cowgirl hat.

At OT they do tummy time because those muscles apparently didn't fully develop the first time around. It's all just kind of bewildering and we are doing the best we can to give her the full use of her body.

A Really Long Update--Grab a Cup of Coffee

Hi. I'm alive. You?

Sick is not the reason for my long silence. I'm sure at least one person was worried and I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging.

Here's what happened...The writing started to do really really really well. As in averaging four star reviews, ranking in the top 100 on Amazon and providing real income and then...Amazon filtered my book out of their search results. Did you know they do that? And don't tell anyone? Not even the author? I found out only because I obsessively watched the meteoric rise of my book and noticed its subsequent disappearance.

They have a bit of history of banning books with filtering. A few years ago, one single employee (so Amazon says) filtered all the GLBT books and hid them from consumers. That filtering has been corrected, or so they say, there's no actual way for consumers to tell if search results are pulled from the entire database or not because Amazon doesn't tell anyone anything.

However, apparently my book is dangerous or too salacious or something and it was filtered. Amazon won't tell me why, of course.

Hello overnight loss of income. Hello despair. Hello trying to appeal my case with Amazon only to find they are staffed with people who make poop eating monkeys look like geniuses.

So anyway, that has been all consuming. I can take a book that doesn't sell--I have some of those. They sell maybe 5 copies a month, no biggie. However, I am not so gracious when a book, poised to break out in a big way, is destroyed on a corporate whim and then said corporation can't even communicate with me about the situation intelligently. It's like winning the lottery and your worst frenemy sets the ticket on fire 'just because'.

Can you believe I have a contractual relationship with a company like that?

As for the cold I had, it was very light. The whole thing was weird, it was like being half sick, half well for a week. I did two days of 5mg and that was all I needed.

I started exercising again this week, although I don't know why I bother. When was the last time I exercised for more than two weeks in a row? 1990 probably and that was back when they didn't have any fancy asthma inhalers.

At this point I half think I should give up on exercise. I don't have the health for consistency and are there any benefits from intermittent work outs? Or just risk of injury?

I won't give up though, just because I like to be active when I feel well, but I'm pretty demoralized. The adrenals don't help. They still tank a bit too with exercise. I generally recover in an hour or two, but man am I tired until my system kicks in, it makes it hard to gird myself mentally to do battle with both my constant de-conditioned state and the lag in the HPA axis. Every time I get somewhere, my health pulls the elliptical out from under me. I fantasize about a year of doing squats on a regular schedule.

I also dream of a boring life without broken ribs, adrenal problems, book banning etc... I really wish my biggest problem was boredom. Wouldn't that be relaxing?

The slowest moving stomach flu on earth is still working it's way through preschool. There are only 10 kids in the toddler's class, which says something about how slow moving this bug is. We are on week six of someone puking at preschool, the latest victim was hit today during art.

The toddler was discharged from physical therapy. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, we've decreased the falling by about 80%. On the other, she's so clumsy, her core is weak, she's just not as strong as she should be. Like I told the OT today, she hurt herself twice this morning before breakfast out of sheer clumsiness. (OT will likely continue until she starts kindergarten.)

Crazy Spacey

Literally 15 minutes before we would hit the ER deadline the ped gave us, the toddler finally stopped vomiting long enough to hold down some pedialyte.

She's still not eating much or drinking as much as I would like, but at least my house is no longer being hosed in vomit and, for that, I am grateful.

As it turns out, vomiting toddlers are about as accurate as drunken frat boys when it comes to aim.

So now my house smells like Lysol and, surprisingly, I couldn't tell you which is worse; the acrid carcinogenic scent of Lysol or the sour stench of stomach flu. Both have me pulling my shirt over my mouth.

And not to make this sound like an Oscar acceptance speech or anything, but I am also so grateful the laundry has stopped. Six loads yesterday and then we had to wash things again because they still smelled. The toddler ran out of clothes and we dressed her like a little hobo clown in ill-fitting, mismatched scraps of things from the bottom of her dresser.

Also, if you're wondering why I'm going on and on about this, it's because we're traumatized over here. From seeing our girl so sick and just the tsunami of bodily fluids that attacked us from behind. The hubby and I have been fist-bumping and saying 'we survived the stomach flu of 2012'. At this rate, we'll be making up commemorative T-shirts.

Still this was better than the flu of '07, that one had us all sick at the same time. Going to the bathroom was like a game of musical chairs, one where the loser had to go outside to throw up and then rinse off the neighbor's lawn.

This is all probably more than you wanted to know. I'm too ptsd to be sorry--when your kids do this to you, you'll understand the internet is really for parents to talk about the stomach flu. In detail. No, really.

I continue to hope this is the bug I had a few weeks ago. I'm not sick yet but am really run down adrenal-wise, which puzzles me. Of course, we were up all night and are probably still working with a sleep deficit. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

The House of Sick and Well

First, thanks for all the comments. Sorry to be so quiet, just crazy to the max over here.

I am doing well. I saw the endo and I've been discharged unless things suddenly slide backwards, which, you know, is actually possible and scares the shit out of me. But I was glad to leave a doctor's office on an optimistic note for once.

The endo agrees that I will need to stress dose for illness and that I may have to play exercise by ear, but the fact that my system now shows some ability to stabilize itself is good. I didn't have that ability even last summer when I stopped steroids and was supposedly 'cured', so this is good progress and took nine months.

Damn, just counted that out. Kind of slow, no?

Anyway, onward and upward. I just hope my endo has learned as much as I have about this adrenal shiznit.

I did get them to laugh. They had tested my thyroid last visit and when they said the results were normal, I snorted and said, "Of course, thyroid would be too normal and easy."

Doesn't seem so funny when I write it out, but I believe that if I can make someone laugh, we'll get along okay.

The toddler is sick and managed to get us all worried last night when she bloomed a huge red... hive? on her cheek. Pink eye came with a nasty cold for her and she's not getting better, just morphing into different kinds of sick.

She stopped eating or caring about food on Saturday which, that never happens. Whether she actually eats anything or not is immaterial, this kid bugs me for food like she's part labrador retriever. Half the time she doesn't even eat it. So I notice when she's not nagging me about lunch two hours early.

I flirted with that cold a lot myself and was quite adrenal on Saturday, but decided not to take steroids unless I got worse. I wheezed a bit. Hacked a bit and now seem fine? So a win for my immune system.

Other than that, I'm good. Toddler is adorable. OMG. She kills us. She is so bossy and funny right now. I keep forgetting to write down all her best lines to preserve them for posterity. We're so senile, we have pillow talk about how cute and funny she is before we go to sleep, but neither of us can remember what she actually said.

Writing has been interesting. I am making money and I continue to work furiously to position myself to make more. However, whenever individuals make any serious money online, corporate interests move in to seize the pie. There's a lot of market consolidation now, which is resulting in fewer avenues of distribution and less opportunity for independent writers.

Big Business realized we could take their space on best seller lists and get our own movie deals (not me, others) and they have made a series of competitive strikes the last few weeks. I think they thought that their eye for quality was so precise that independent authors were surely all dreck and a non issue in terms of competition. To their surprise, they've missed quite a few gems and are getting spanked online.

Having observed this business pattern before, I would say that the golden era of being an independent author is dimming. If you were toying with the idea, don't wait too much longer.

Wii Tired

Mike stopped by and left a comment on the whole Wii Motion Plus thing...

The wii motion plus is now being incorporated into every wii remote. It should have been there from the beginning. An accelerometer just can't give the feedback needed.
I hacked a wii motion plus with a tri wing screwdriver to make some sensors for a self balancing robot. Worked great.

The second he started linking to a thing actually called a 'Nintendo Screwdriver' my brain began to melt.

However, I did want to say, I totally agree that it is incorporated into every Wii remote with one caveat: It's only the Nintendo brand products. If you buy an off brand, trying to save money, guess what? You may need to spend another $20 for the Motion Plus thing-y which is mostly out of stock due to a)Xmas and b)everyone else knows you just buy the brand name remote so demand is kind of low.

Although I think I still saved $10. It only took me three internet searches, thirty minutes of swearing in confusion at the Wii when it wouldn't let our off brand remote play the game without the Motion Plus attachment, and two trips to the store once we got a clue to do so.

Totally your call on whether or not all that was worth it to save $10.

The toddler is not sleeping anymore. So I am a little punch drunk. Exhibit A: I was talking about finding shrunken heads in a linen closet (true story) while working at an elementary school today.

To adults. Not kids. I bet the kids would've loved it though.

Anyway, she's going through a growth and development spurt. She grew a 1/4" this week for a total of 2" in two months and I overheard her working out rudimentary subtraction. Five, take away one is, 1,2,3, FOUR! Four take away one is 1,2 THREE!

So, she's amazing and I feel like shit.