Oh, So Very Tired

Last night, we had a serious lightning storm that woke Dusty and I up in the middle of the night. Dusty swears that our lawn got struck. I'll take a picture and post it in the morning, and you can decide.

Anyway, not much sleep last night, and today was my longest day of classes so far. Basically, 8 AM to 5 PM full of classes, with one hour off between noon and 1. In fact, there is only one class that I am taking that did not meet today (and every Monday for the rest of the semester.)

Because I had nothing scheduled for that hour of the day, I decided to take an Institute class this semester. No, I just walked into the building one day and everyone was so nice, and it just felt good, so I decided to take a class (the first one I will have ever completed, incidentally.) Today was the first class, and the instructor went through trying to learn everyone's names. He asked each person their name and a few questions about themselves. When I told him my name, he decided that he could remember it because in Hebrew means 'weary' and I have 7 children!

Now, whenever he says my name, he says it with almost a little sigh, and a sad half-shake of his head, like, "Poor, Leah. She's so tired!"

Cooking Marathon

I have made it a goal to stay down in Pocatello on the days that I am in school until about 4 or 5 PM. I am there on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Talia's daycare doesn't have half days, so no matter when I pick her up, it costs the same amount of money. I decided that I was a lot more likely to get my studies done in a quiet place without the option of other things to do than I would at home with all of its pressing housework, computers, movies, and children.

This decision means two things. First of all, I needed a quiet place to study in Pocatello where I felt comfortable. Second of all, on those nights of the week, I won't be getting home until fairly late, leaving little or no time to cook dinner. To solve the first problem, I found a specific table on the third floor of the library, in a back corner, that faces a wall. To solve the second problem, I decided to try and make ahead and freeze several meals so that we could just defrost them the night before and pop them in the oven. However, I only knew of a couple of meals that would freeze well.

Lo and behold, when I was a little bit bored with studying one day, I let my mind and eyes wander and discovered that I was sitting right in a row full of cook books! Could anything be more detrimental to the supposed no distractions theory? Reasoning that I did still have to feed my family, I allowed myself a few minutes to peruse the shelves and I found this book:

Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month

Now, in this book, the author basically teaches you how to cook 30 meals in one day (one very long, hard, hot day.) I'm not really interested in doing that--I don't see any need to have every night's meal frozen. However, it also has "mini-sessions". Each chapter is a set of recipes based around a central ingredient (beef, chicken, turkey, or vegetarian.) It has a shopping list for all 5 meals. So, I decided yesterday morning to try out one of the beef mini-sessions. I chose this one because we have access to a lot of free beef, though my in-laws, and because all of the recipes looked pretty good.

So, I spent the morning shopping. I have been going to the Farmer's Market every Saturday morning for our produce this summer. Traditionally, I have done the grocery shopping on Mondays, but that's no longer an option, so I am having to do it on Saturdays. Also, I have been going to Sam's Club for certain bulk items about once a month. Lucky me, all three of these trips coincided on the same Saturday. The same Saturday, moreover, that Dusty had a fencing tournament, so I had to take the girl's with me. It was a long morning.

By early evening, I was beginning to panic with all of the things I needed to get done, so Dusty jumped in and began cooking. After I got the girls to bed, I joined him and we were up cooking until 11:30. By the end, we had managed to create 8 meals. We were thoroughly sick of cooking (especially chopping onions) but we had done it! We also tasted one of the soups and YUM! it was good!

Guess What I'm NOT Doing Right Now?

That's right, studying. Which means, I am back in school. Yea. Two days down, 16 weeks (less two days) to go. So far, it's going alright. I have had one class of each of my classes except for Anatomy and Physiology lab, which apparently got new corpses! Woo-Hoo! Except that the dental hygiene students got to use them first, the stinkers (the hygiene students or the corpses? Good question.) I started reading my Statistics textbook today and it is shockingly funny.

"Chapter 1 Stats Starts Here1

1 This chapter might have been called "Introduction," but nobody reads the introduction, and we wanted you to read this. We feel safe admitting this here, in the footnote, because nobody reads footnotes either."

Maybe this class will not be so bad? This is one that I was really dreading.

Ah, well. Off to work!

Which Came First? The Egg!

Yesterday I heard the chickens freaking out in the middle of the day, so I sent Dusty out to see if anything was wrong. He came back with a small brown egg. That's right, our chickens have laid their first egg! I am so proud of myself. I hatched those chickens from eggs, fed them, cleaned their pen, watered them, and now, the rewards (other than eating our obnoxoius big rooster a couple of weeks ago heh heh heh.) I had the egg from yesterday and one from this morning for breakfast. Yum!

Car Trouble

Almost a year ago, I noticed that the driver's side front tire on my car was going flat, so I took it in to the repair shop. I thought it would be no big thing--a nail or something like that. It turned out that the wheel itself was cracked, but they tried re-sealing it and hoped that that would work. For a couple of months, it did. In fact, it worked for so long that I completely forgot about the problem until the next time I took it in for a low tire that I thought was no big deal. Well, they kept re-sealing it and it had to be done more and more often, so it became pretty apparent that this was not working.

I took my car in for a tune-up last month at the dealer's and they thought that a different solution might work. They tried welding it. Didn't work. So, we finally gave in and bought new rims for all four tires (they don't make that kind anymore and we couldn't find one at the dump, so we had to replace all four.) Fortunately, and we were able to shop around and it only ended up costing about $350.

The very next day, we started to drive down to SLC so that Petra could pick up her new braces. Along about Malad, going 75MPH, the engine just stopped. We coasted to the side of the road and Dusty tried to figure out what was wrong. He couldn't, so we called a tow truck from Pocatello, and waited for an hour and a half for it to arrive. I was feeling pretty anxious about my car, and uncomfortable sitting on the side of the road, but I found a pack of cards in my purse and we started playing rummy and that made the time go faster. They got the car loaded up and the four of us rode back to Poci in the "Row Truck". It was pretty exciting for the girls. They had to sit on Dusty's and my laps, as there were only three seats, and we were high above most of the other cars. Dusty's mother and grandmother heroically met us at the repair shop and took us to lunch while we waited for the verdict.

Broken timing belt. Ouch. Fortunately, when it snapped, it didn't damage anything else. But still! It's just annoying to have something you just spent so much money on break again, especially since the two weren't in any way connected, so there was no chance that the one problem caused the other.

Alice Marie drove us back home, and we set out for SLC again in the van. Luckily, we were able to get another braced appt. for Pet the next day (which my Mom took her to [thanks!]) and Dusty and I were still able to take our little trip to Lagoon, which was a total blast.

I Hate my Stomach, But More Importantly, It Hates Me

So, you may or may not know that I have basically always gotten terrible stomach aches every so often. This got worse after having my kids, adding in horrible, persistent, long-term heartburn. Now, (or maybe always, I'm realizing in retrospect) I'm having a lot of trouble with constipation (didn't want to know that? Stop reading. It gets worse) I've gone to Doctors. They've run tests. Allergy tests, thyroid tests, blood tests. Whatever. Needless to say, the best answer I've gotten is "A fairly severe case of irritable bowel syndrome" and all I can do is "experiment to see what helps and what makes it worse. What works for one person makes it much worse for another." So very helpful. I haven't found a single thing that helps yet. Please forgive me if I seem a little snide. It's midnight, and I am very tired, but I can't lie down because the heartburn is so bad.

Is this horrible? Not really. Is there worse out there? Of course. I just get sick of going to Doctors and having them tell me that there is nothing that they can do for me and I will likely suffer from the current ailment for the foreseeable future.

If you will please excuse me, I think I will go and see if I can fall asleep sitting up (something I have trouble doing under the best of circumstances, but you never know!)

The Squeeky Wheel Gets the Oil

Reed was complaining, so I guess I'll try to start blogging again (see the comments on my last post.) I suppose the main reason I stopped blogging was because I joined Facebook, but since most of you who may read this aren't on Facebook, I guess it makes sense to keep this up, too.

Ahem.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of canning. It has become sort of my hobby this summer to take produce from various places (the farmer's market, my parent's raspberries, our garden) and figure out different ways to preserve/prepare them. In general, this has been very rewarding (although I honestly have no idea what we will do with all of this jam--PB&J every day for the next year, kids!) However, I did have a canning related injury (does that make it a real hobby if I get hurt doing it, guys?)

On Saturday night, I was making marmalade. Usually, I just use my pressure cooker as a big pot because I just got it and I havn't figured out how to close the lid yet. Well, finally on Saturday, we discovered we had been turning the lid the wrong way (duh) so when I put the marmalade in to process, I closed it, thinking that then the water wouldn't boil over like it has been doing, and also thinking that if I opened the valve up all the way it might still just be a giant pot. Well, after a few minutes, it started whistling like a tea kettle. This made me very nervous. The pressure cooker is about 50 years old and I had visions of the whole thing exploding and sending shrapnel into me and my family and my (nearly finished!) remodled kitchen. So I asked Dusty what I should do (not smart--asking advice from another person who has no clue whatsoever) and we decided to take the lid off. Also, not smart. Very not smart. By releasing the pressure, the water instantly vaporized and created a mini expolsion. Fortunately (or, unfortunately) I was the only one who got drenched.

I screamed for the kids to get out of the kitchen and ripped off my pants (well, step-kids seeing their step-mom undressing---AWKWARD!!!) Anyway, I ran to the shower and started running cold water onto my knee, which was bright red. As long as I ran water on it, it felt okay, though not cold, which you might expect since only the cold tap was on. So, I thought it would be just fine. I stopped the water and patted my leg dry, put on a short (for me) skirt, and went out to deal with the marmalade. And then, it started. Pain. Severe pain. Needles, burning, ouch. So I ran back to the shower and started drenching it some more, but that was the point that we decided that maybe I should see a doctor. Going to the local emergency room is idiotic unless you are on death's door. They won't see you for hours. Fortunately, it was only 7:30 PM so the local urgent care clinic was open. They were really great. They took me streight back, and gave me some shots--pain killer, and anti-inflammatory. They waited a little while for the pain killer to kick in (it didn't) then put some silvadine (the best burn cream in the universe) on it and gave me another shot.

I came home, and gradually the drugs began to kick in. The pain went away. In my leg, that is. I got a horrible stomach ache, but I fell asleep quickly so it didn't matter too much.

Sunday, I just took Vikadin and stayed in bed.

Today, I feel pretty great. It is 85% better. It still hurts after a lot of activity, but mostly I feel fine, if a bit dumb--we learned about pressure cookers in Chemistry this summer, and looking back I know that it was idiotic to take the lid off. But, as my Mother-in-Law said, "Well, you'll never do that again!"