Leg Cramposaurus

This is a continuing saga from the Golden birthday post of yesterday.

The night of the party, I assumed I would sleep well after cooking 27 million street tacos, three large pans of creamy chicken enchiladas and cutting 75 pieces of chocolate cake. But no. Realization hit… more like burned… that this agony may be more than a muscle cramp in my thigh. There was no possible sleeping position that didn’t produce pain. For three nights I sat in my green birthday chair in my room praying to fall into unconsciousness.

One of those three nights, I had forgotten my earplugs and once again I assumed I would be able to sleep without them because that was a less pain-filled decision then walking across the room to get the earplugs. Wrong again. I love earplugs. The end.

Still, on Monday, DAY #4, I assumed the pain would eventually go away. Nada. On Tuesday morning, firmly poised in my green birthday chair after a fitful night of cat naps, I phoned the doctor’s office for an immediate appointment.

My son delivered me to the physician’s office at 9:00 a.m. As you may have anticipated, I was not looking my best with possibly 15 hours of sleep in four days. In my experience, the worse you look going to the doctor, the better your chances are of getting action and results. The nurse practitioner acted like this was so ordinary… a thigh cramp… no big deal… “It’s your sciatic nerve. We will give you pain meds and also steroids to reduce the swelling.” Again, I assumed I would be down and out for a few more day.

Two minimal hours later, I was singing the praises of modern medicine and was relatively pain free for the first time in five days. I love meds. The end.

The end of my expressions of love. Not the end of the story.

Two days later, at the family Thanksgiving dinner table, someone suggested that we go around the table and spew forth our thankfulness. I started. I yelled, “I am thankful for drugs!” And it was true from the depths of my being. My soul sang of unquenchable passion for pain medication. My new love.

I assumed I was home free in the pain area. Then the inevitable struck… the other result of taking pain medication…. my belly and bowels full of three days of food not wanting to leave me without a painful, tear-filled fight. I cursed the meds I had previously been in love with just shy of two days ago. I cursed modern medicine. How come they can’t invent non-constipating pain pills??? What’s so hard about that? No pun intended. I cursed the non-plush toilet paper. I cursed the cold, hard toilet seat.

My son-in-law is in med school currently and was visiting for Thanksgiving, so quite naturally I inquired why pain medicine also causes bowel issues. My youngest son chimed in, “Are you asking for a friend?” Mr. Med School explained the corresponding effects and I replied, “I’ll let her know.”

Like the clouds parting after a storm, glee hit my soul when I remembered stool softeners. (I apologize if you are eating, or were eating while reading.) (I probably should have put a gross-out, middle-aged warning on this post.) (Sorry!) To my sheer delight I found a jar of expired stool softeners in the medicine cabinet. Glory be! I believe I heard angels singing as I tossed back three of those little red and white glistening darlings.

You guessed it. The next morning I was singing the praises of modern medicine again. Call me fickle, or delusional, or temperamental, or easily swayed, but this is my story and I’m sticking to it. True love. Pain free true love.

I assume I am not the only one on Earth to have gone through these conflicting emotions with modern medicine. My sincerest hope is that this post will allow a pain-free existence to someone else on the planet currently cursing modern medicine, and rough toilet paper and chilly toilet seats.

 

THE Bun Recipe…. you’re welcome!

This recipe was given to me about 20 years ago by my across-the-back-alley neighbor in Spruce Grove, Alberta… Coral.  She’s a rock star! I make them every Thanksgiving and most Christmases and some Easters. They are dangerously delicious. Ask my son Keeve who ate at least ten before Thanksgiving dinner! True story!

Coral and Linda’s Buns (They used to just be called Coral’s buns……)

4 c. flour
2 T. fast rising yeast
1 t. salt
Mix together dry ingredients.
In a separate bowl: 1/3 c. oil
½ c. sugar
2 eggs
3 c. very warm water.
Beat wet ingredients and add to dry ingredients.
By hand, mix in 3-4 more cups of flour.
Let rise 15 min.
Punch down.
Let rise 15 min.
Punch down
Let rise 20 min.
Shape into buns the size of a golf ball.
Let rise 30-60 min.
Bake at 350* for 12-15 minutes.
Makes 48 3” buns.

Progress Report #1

There you have it…. eight months of hard work paying off!  I’m down 65 pounds since April 2011.  It took me a LONG time to come to terms with my before picture, but I have.  I’m ready to share with the world.  I still have 35 pounds to go, but I’m not heading back to the neglected state of health on the left, thankyouverymuch.

I got a facebook message from my jr. high choir director from church (talk about a blast from the past!) who told me that she is a health coach and asked me to spread the word for her.  I said no.  I only spread the word for programs/products/people that I’ve tried and had great success with.  She asked if I wanted to try her program.  Just look at that BEFORE picture!  Does it look like I want to lose weight? (Well, I do look happy, but that’s beside the point.)  Yes!  I’ll try another weight loss program…. why not?  I’ve tried ALL the other ones.

My journey began with aching knees, a sore back and general lethargy due to carrying around 100 pounds that I didn’t need.  (I can’t even lift 100 lbs!)  I began eating five of the meals from the company each day and one meal I prepared (or ate out.)  This is the easiest plan I’ve ever seen.  And the meals are a variety of types of food, all nutritionally equal, so I could eat five of their brownies a day if I wanted to.  Some days I wanted to. But I don’t think I ever ate five brownies in one day.  But I was allowed to and that made me happy.

As with any self discipline issue, it was HARD!  And I didn’t want to follow the program when everyone around me was eating movie popcorn.  I WANTED pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving.  But I realized that eating what I wanted got me into the horrific shape I was in.  (That shape would be a round ball.)  I changed the input to change the outlook.

I’m still on this journey of feeling empowered with the knowledge I’ve gained.  I can go to a potluck and not freak out and fall off the wagon.  I don’t feel deprived, I feel empowered.  It’s a great feeling.  So great that I decided to be a health coach myself and guide others to optimal health and a feeling of empowerment!  Now if I had only taught jr. high choir, I could send them all a message on facebook!  Paying it forward!

One Year Ago TODAY!

One year ago today we were sitting on several airplanes on our way from Phoenix to Texas, Panama and Cali, Colombia!  What an exciting time that was!  A day to remember FOREVER!  Remarkably, I looked semi-relaxed in the pictures.  It was the peace of God which passes ALL understanding, that’s what it was!  Had to be because I was lacking too much sleep to be peaceful on my own.  (Actually in this first picture, I was looking slightly shifty… anticipating the pat down at security!)

I remember sitting on the floor in the airport in Panama late in the evening, talking to the only other blonde girl in the entire airport besides Larisa.  She asked us where we were staying, as we were arriving close to midnight…. because it’s not like you can drive around and find a Travelodge that leaves the light on for you in Cali!  Funny thing was, we didn’t know where we were staying.  She was a bit taken aback by our news…. a family of five traveling to Colombia without firm plans in place.. arriving in the dark of the night.  If she only knew how much that went against every morsel of my little controlled and planned out life!!!  But we had some good connections who were taking care of us!

We had some baggage challenges in the Panama airport due to the language barrier in South America which had already embraced us with full force.  We weren’t sure if our luggage would be in Colombia that night but we prayed hard and it showed up right on schedule.

As we finally laid our tired heads on the lumpy pillows on the REALLY low bed in the hotel, I remember thinking… will I ever be able get to sleep?  In the morning our girl would be in our arms! Thankfully, I slept like a baby…. the baby who wakes up every hour or so and sucks her thumb to go back to sleep!

Adopting a little Colombian has changed our lives forever.  Adoption revealed the true hearts of my children who have lovingly welcomed Nora as if she has been in our family all along.  It also unearthed a few rough spots in my life as I was the one who had the hardest time adjusting.  The Lord and I have been working on those sore spots together. 

My husband received a thank you card from our neighborhood pastor last week thanking him for helping with our neighborhood leadership… AND for changing Nora’s life by stepping up and being her DAD!  Brought tears to my eyes.  She didn’t have a Daddy until one year ago!  She couldn’t have asked a better Daddy for herself!  She asked me once if I knew that Daddy cried.  I said I did, but how did she know???  She told me, “He loves me so much that sometimes he gets tears in his eyes when he tells me.”  Perfect!

It’s been a year of BLESSING!

Pumpkin Pie Pudding

Anyone remember when the pumpkin shortage was announced back in the Fall of 2010??  Well, I, for one, was not going to be short on pumpkin come Thanksgiving time.  I stocked up when I found the cans of orange goodness in a local store.  Then we got our adoption referral and left for Colombia the day before Thanksgiving.  You guessed it, I didn’t cook anything with pumpkin last Fall.  When Christmas rolled around, we had been home from Colombia with our new daughter for three days…. and cooking anything was not on my list.  I was in survival mode.

Fast-forward three-and-a-half months to this week, and envision me standing in front of my pantry staring at cans and cans of pumpkin.  It was raining, even hailing, outside… yes, we still live in Phoenix!  Pumpkin cooking time had arrived and I was ready to fully embrace it.  I searched through the cupboards and took inventory.  Next, I went to www.supercook.com and typed in the ingredients from my pantry.  They ALWAYS can come up with a recipe for you no matter how strange your items are!  Amazing!  Well, I didn’t have any cooking oil, so that severely limited my pumpkin choices, but one did catch my eye…. Pumpkin Pie Pudding.  Sounded divine.  I was salivating thinking that in an hour or so, I could be savoring a yummy pumpkin dessert.

Not so.  As it turns out, the recipe I found was yummy, and easy, and quick to prepare…. but it was a slow-cooker recipe.  SEVEN to EIGHT long hours in the crock pot were required before I could partake of non-shortage pumpkin goodness.  I prepared it anyway… and 10:00 at last night. 

When my husband’s alarm went off this morning at 5:00, I asked him if he could turn off the crock pot.  He replied in the affirmative…. but failed miserably to act on his promise once he arrived downstairs.  When I strolled into the kitchen at 8:15…. yes, it was too late to resuscitate the supposed-to-be-orange-now-dark-brown dessert.  Pumpkin Pie Pudding had morphed into Dark Pumpkin Brick from the HOT place.  Sadly, I got a spoon from the utensil drawer to investigate the darkness inside the pot.  To my surprise, it actually was yummy pumpkin pie pudding, encased in a thick skin.  I scraped off the top layer and removed the savory remains to a separate dish.  YEAH! 

All was not lost.  PPP was a wonderful, cold weather treat today!

Plans Gone Awry

In my perfect little world, I was sending out adoption/thank you/Christmas cards this year.  They are all addressed.  Since the decline of our referral in October, I’ve realized that they will not be sent until 2011.  Another year when I don’t have the heart to send out Christmas cards.  One of our family members is missing!  How can I send incomplete family pictures?  I cannot.  And that is the end of that.  I might do an email update for curious minds and those whom we only correspond with at the time of Jesus’ birthday celebration.  Then again, I’m sure many would be thrilled to get a Christmas card that is a few months late…. that is complete.

This morning, while whipping up Grandma’s Swedish pancakes, I put in the first Christmas CDs of the season.  Not a child came downstairs that did not comment on the yule tide tunes…. and we had two extra childs too.  :o)  BUT, then Third Day’s song came on…. Merry Christmas.  The lyrics came dribbling out of the stereo of another Christmas when your child is not home.  Good grief.  This is not GOOD grief…. this is SAD grief!  Talk about killing me softly with his song!

Staying positive is my goal this holiday season.  But, for heaven’s sake, this is the FOURTH Thanksgiving and Christmas without our baby girl.  My only hope is that we get the referral before Christmas and I can hang her Precious Moments First Christmas ornament on the tree because I’ll know her birth year!  Oh please, oh please.

On Saturday in a hearty attempt at garage saling with my husband… I did find another Groovy Girl doll for my little girl.  It’s the little joys that keep me going right now.

It’s October… already?

Pumpkin time… also, sadly, Christmas decoration selling time in the stores!!??!!  It always surprises me EVERY year! We have three more months until Jesus’ birthday.  Enjoy the Fall and Thanksgiving already.

On the adoption news front, I found out on Sept. 30th that we did have a referral in the end of July, but the child did not match our family file.  So we are still sitting at the top of the family pile waiting for our little girl to be available for us to go and love on.  It seems a November travel itinerary is still in the works.  Good news.  Wait wait and wait some more.

On the Mama-needs-a-distraction-from-waiting front, I have been reading a book titled Charting the Unknown: Family, Fear, and One Long Boat Ride by Kim Petersen.  Kim and her hockey-playing husband went to university with me and my hockey-playing husband.  Her prose is picture perfect.  Her colorful descriptions and parallel existence in her head are amusing and informative.  It’s a story worth reading because it deals with fear.  We all deal with fear, but we deal with different tactics.  After the death of their baby girl, Kim started dealing with fear head-on. It’s inspiring to read about someone who has been there, dove in deep, and came out alive.

I have read some of the story aloud to my husband, as we have laughed and laughed at the antics of his old teammate, Mike.  He was a jokester in college and obviously still is.  Some things never change.  We also had several flashbacks to university including the Sunday meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes and yorkshire pudding in the cafeteria.  The yummy memory made us both grin and smell the gravy 20 years later.

College life was sweet in so many naive ways.  If we knew then what we know now…. life would have been different.  But that’s the ol’ 20/20 hindsight deal again.  Kim’s book and her and Mike’s list of dreams from college made us take a fresh look at our dreams and goals.  Have we settled?  Have the dreams died?  No and no.  We will live out one of our pre-marital dreams in November when we go get our daughter in Colombia.

Do you have a dream or wish list from years ago?  Do you know where it is?  Have you reviewed it in a while?  Go find it.  It’s not too late.

Black Friday 2009 (nine nine nine nine)

So it’s 5:24 am on the day after Thanksgiving.  BLACK FRIDAY!  The stores are teaming with avid, somewhat deranged, shoppers…. or so I’ve been told! Stores are giving away $1,000 gift certificates, 2,000 inch big screens for 49 cents, free popcorn, $10 off your $11 purchase, yada, yada, yada.  I’m only up because I was coughing so violently, I didn’t want to wake up and keep up my also sickly husband, who is snoring quite comfortably at the moment.  I’m drinking tea.  THAT is a tell-tale sign that I’m not well.  I only drink tea when I don’t feel up to my usual perky self.

Rick and I did get up at 5:00 am on BLACK FRIDAY three years ago, but it was not to shop and SAVE SAVE SAVE.  He had surgery #3 on his Achilles tendon at 7:00 am downtown.  I remember driving by the packed parking lot in front of Circuit City and wondering who came up with midnight shopping???  It’s crazy.  It’s only the crazy people who shop when they should be sleeping.  It’s the crazy people who come out at night when the moon in full.  Why would a store owner bend to the desires of the crazies?  And promote their uncouth crazy ways?

Now if the scrapbooking stores did the 3:00 am spend ten cents and get $400 worth of scrapping supplies, I’d be camping out in front of the store with my Coleman lantern, personal trimmer and pile of photos, rounding the corners for future pages.  But they don’t.  They’re not crazy.  See, this proves it that scrapbooking women are not crazy. 

OK, the bottom of my teacup is staring up at me.  I’m no longer coughing up a lung.  I can now go back to bed and dream of all the money I’m saving my husband by not participating in BLACK FRIDAY!  If you’re a CRAZY person, please let those of us who stayed in our warm beds know what we missed.

Tears & Laughter

My life seems to be on the replay cycle right now.  I was reading back to last year’s posts at this time…. I certainly don’t need to write about my events of Thanksgiving week this year… they are EXACTLY the same as last year:  Larisa’s play, Stove Top Stuffing, and three or four hockey games for Austin.  Please see 2008 posts if you’re wanting photo proof of what will transpire in my life this week.

I also listened to Third Day’s song Merry Christmas about the orphan child who is not home for Christmas… and I cried…. again.  (For a good cry go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPBA9-wyZE&feature=related ) I just don’t understand why we have to wait so long.  Or why Zaza has to wait so long for us to come and get her.  Distinctly I remember folding the damp dish towel after drying the Thanksgiving dishes and telling my mom and sister-in-law, Julie, that we were going to adopt.  That was 200SIX!  Three long years later, I never thought Zaza’s buttery yellow room and her curvy purple bed would still be vacant.  I realize that God’s timing is perfect and mine is not.  But it doesn’t bring me joy.

So, when the adoptive parent blues hit hard, I go to Bookman’s, my favorite used book store, and find adoption stories where moms and dads actually get to take home their child in the end of the book.  It makes me believe again.  There are happy endings.  Other mothers waited years and years and eventually hugged and kissed the child of their heart.  So last week I found and read this book:

I had half the book read before bedtime and finished the next morning.  I bonded with the author instantly as I read her prose.  She writes like I do… in incomplete sentences that drive English teachers CRAZY!  She used picture words to describe each and every one of the five senses from bitter tea to soft skin, hazy lighting and a hairy hand.  Her word choice inspired me to run to the computer and write, write, write.  She also had several funny, real-life experiences that Rick and I have actually had… like weighing our heads on the bathroom scale.  Wierd, I know.  But it made me feel less wierd, knowing someone else had done it too.  And her adoption story is very real.  I wanted to kick in some Russian teeth because of how she was treated.  I also longed to hold my little girl when she finally got to hold her little boy.  Needless to say, it was a good read with the happy ending I needed to push me through another month or two… or ten, God forbid.

A Swedish Tribute

Grandma Nikander’s Swedish Pancakes have been one of my favorite delicacies since the late ’60s.  Naively, I assumed it was a secret family recipe brought across the pond by scarf-donning ancestors, handed down and down and down to my Grandma in Eastern Oregon.  It probably was handed down, but I learned later in life that other people call them crepes… and eat them for every meal of the day…. and they aren’t very secret.  I vaguely remember visiting my Grandma in her later years, when she was no longer able to make her Swedish pancakes.  I thought the world had come to an end.  Little did I know that I would be standing over the stove flipping them for another 70 years.

My youngest son requests these drool-producing paper-thin pancakes at least once a week.  They are also a family favorite of the next generation, and to no surprise….. they are mouth-wateringly delicious.  They are a tad on the sweet side, yet airy and light…. I prefer them slathered in melted butter and sprinkled in powdered sugar.  We leave them rolled up…. always.  My boys pour maple syrup on them, but my daughter follows my powdery taste for sugary goodness.

I’ll even share the secret Swedish Pancake recipe!

In a blender mix: 3 eggs (without shells), 2 cups of milk, 2 Tbsp Sugar, dash salt, and 1 cup of flour.  I have used whole wheat flour, but honestly, they taste better with the white not-as-good-for-you-bleached-flour. 

Heat a non-stick frying pan to med-high heat.  I use #6.  Butter the pan before each pancake.  My soup ladle measures out the perfect amount of batter to cover the bottom of the pan.  I have to pick up the pan and swirl it to get a perfect circle.  When the surface of the batter is no longer shiny, flip the pancake.  When lightly browned, roll up and serve…. quick.

A perfect pancake for Thanksgiving morning.  Try it.  You’ll like it.