Menu Plan Wednesday!

This week has been going by so quickly!  

Monday Bryan's dad and Angie were still in town from this weekend, so I got to spend most of the day hanging out with them!  I don't really remember what we did for dinner...probably grabbed something to eat because I sure didn't cook!  Tuesday my right wrist was flared pretty badly, but I still ended up doing my Sonic run and Sit&Stitch night at Park Avenue Yarns.

Today I got lunch with Lisa at a local tea shop.  The food was really good and the raspberry tea was delicious!  We then walked around the little antique and boutique shops nearby before we headed our separate ways.  It was quite an enjoyable start to the afternoon!  And I was able to buy a couple more things to send to my friend along with her other surprise!

Now, I'm just relaxing here at the house, thinking about doing laundry and watching a new anime.  There's no news on the baby front yet, which I'm trying not to get too down about.  I know stressing about it and worrying about it are counterproductive...I'm just starting to get impatient lol.  Other than that, I have a full house right now--Tiberius and Abby are here for the week again!

And that's all there is to say about all that.  Here's the menu plan for the rest of the week.

Breakfast:  some combination of egg, toast, fruit and/or yogurt with cottage cheese with milk

Lunch:  turkey and cheese sandwich or PBJ for me, leftovers or buying for Bryan

Dinner:

WEDNESDAY:  Gan Gan's Meatloaf maybe.

THURSDAY:  Coconut Shrimp

FRIDAY:  Pita Pizzas

SATURDAY:  We might be going out to eat with some friends.

SUNDAY: Basil and Pesto Stuffed Chicken

What I'm Loving This Week!

I had this post all ready to go for What I Love Wednesdays but then I got distracted and ran off to one of my favorite places in the world--Park Avenue Yarns!  So, instead of focusing on Wednesday, here's a list of what I am LOVING this week!

1) I am LOVING my basil plant that I rescued from the Kroger's outdoor herb rack.  It's pretty and green and has been wonderful when I've made my Feta and Pesto Chicken.

2) I am LOVING the fact that I'm finally blocking my dad's Father's Day gift AND Allie the Great's present as well!  I am a very lazy blocker lol but I'm loving that I'm getting these projects officially completed!

3) Speaking of knitting projects, I am LOVING the progress I'm making on my "Summer Flies" shawl!  It is very pretty, and I only have another three sections to complete!

4) I am LOVING my two new pattern books that I bought at the yarn shop on Tuesday!  So many of our friends are announcing pregnancies, so I plan on using the nursery pattern book for gifts and the block book is providing practice in cable knitting and inspiration for a charity blanket.

5) Speaking of, I am LOVING the KAS-Care knit-a-square project.  Those of us at Park Avenue Yarns are knitting squares until late August, when we will come together and send all of our blocks to KAS-Care.  The resulting blankets will be given to the millions of AIDS orphans and abandoned children in South Africa.  This week I bought four skeins of yarn and am going to try to knit a square a day from now until late August.

6) I am LOVING my Kindle!  Especially since three of my authors came out with new books this month!

7) I am LOVING my hubby!  He's such a hard worker, especially this time of year, and yet he makes time to go on walks with me and spend time with me.  I sure do love him!

Sleeping with The Koyote and Menu Planning Monday!

Whew!  Last week was a super-busy week!  After my Menu Planning post last Tuesday, I expected my week to slow down and actually planned on posting at least one more time before now.  How wrong I was!  Tuesday night was Sit&Stitch and then Wednesday was a day of cleaning.  My focus was our master bathroom.  It took my two hours, but I'm proud to say out bathroom is now as clean as it was when we bought the house!  Very shiny!

And of course, after that type of effort, I was totally flared on Thursday.  So, it's official--gone are the days where I can stage a mass cleaning in one day's time.  I'm going to have to remember to remember that lol.  I think it will work best if I plan cleaning projects out over a few days.  For example, I could break the bathroom into a counters-mirror-toilet day and then a bathtub-shower-floors day.  Live and learn!

So, Thursday I took it easy and only did the laundry and straightening up that I needed to accomplish before Bryan and I headed out of town.  We packed up Thursday night and headed out nice and early to meet up with Ethan and Julie!  Bouncer and Alicia are fantastic and watched the pups for us while we were gone.  I love our friends!

After a couple of hours lost to Ethan's stubborn battery, the boys finally rode off and Julie and I started our road trip up to Koyote Ranch!  It's a beautiful ranch a little south of Kerrville.  Somehow, Julie and I beat the boys to the ranch and got checked in and unloaded.  Our cabin was BEAUTIFUL! 

I wish I'd taken more pictures!  Bryan and I took the loft bed--I love lofts--and Ethan and Julie were on the ground floor.  We even had AC and our own bathroom!   It was great!  On top of all that, the cabin also had an amazing back porch!  We all spent quite a bit of time on the porch, especially in the mornings and evenings.

We hung out at the pool with all the SOT family and Ethan, Julie and Bryan went and rode the roads known as the Three Sisters on Saturday.  Since I can't ride for an extended period of time, I went for a walk with Kim and hung out at the pool and on our cabin's awesome porch.  The views were beautiful and it was altogether an enjoyable trip.

The only bummer was that I was hoping to get to spend some one-on-one time with the hubby while we were there, and that didn't really happen.  That's ok though, because we're hoping to take another mini-vacation some time in August or September, just the two of us!  That means I have some researching of places to go to do!  I love researching traveling!

Anyway, yesterday morning we packed up and headed out.  Julie and I had a good ride, except that she had to keep fixing the air conditioning in the truck lol.  It got a bit hot.  We finally made it home and took it easy until bedtime.  Today, I'm unpacking and doing laundry and generally getting ready for the rest of the week.  I finished watching a new anime on NetFlix: Ouran High School Host Club!  It's really cute and I actually went to HPB.com and found good deals on the first 10 volumes of the manga!  That's right, I've actually cracked open the door that I long ago shut on my manga addiction lol  Oh well--at least I can always sell them back at a Half-Price Books store if I want to. 

Other than that, my clothes order from Old Navy came in today!  The jeans are perfect, and two of the pairs of shorts fit fine, but the other two pairs--even though they are the same style, size and product DON'T fit!  I don't understand it.  Oh well--at least I can return them at the store at Baybrook!  Not to mention, that will give me a good excuse to run to the Barnes and Nobles and Starbucks across the street!

This week should be pretty low-key.  I'm planning on going to water aerobics Tuesday and Thursday, and Sit&Stitch tomorrow night.  Other than that, we'll see how the week goes!  And on that note, here's the menu plan this week!

Breakfast:  some combination of egg, toast, fruit and/or yogurt with cottage cheese with milk

Lunch:  turkey and cheese sandwich or PBJ for me, leftovers or buying for Bryan

Dinner:

MONDAY:  Bryan's working a bit extra late today, so we're going to grab something out-to-eat whenever he makes it home.

TUESDAY: Sit and Stitch!  Traditional Sonic night!  After all, it's not MY fault we're eating out tonight, which makes tomorrow two nights out in a row lol.

WEDNESDAY:  Pecan-Crusted Chicken

THURSDAY:  Coconut Shrimp

FRIDAY:  Pita Pizzas

SATURDAY:  I'm thinking Taco Night!

SUNDAY:  Beef and Ricotta HALF lasagna!  I'm going to try to figure out how to make half a lasagna from the Weight Watcher's recipe I have.  Once we have a kid big enough to eat lasagna, the full-sized one will be great...but right now, we end up eating lasagna for a week!  So, half-size is what we need!

Menu Planning Tuesday!

I know, I know.  It's a day late.  AGAIN.  Oh well.

Yesterday was a good day--I slept in quite a bit to make up for the lack of sleep Saturday night.

Yesterday afternoon I went over to Alicia's house and got my hair done!  I'll post pictures later--today is a lazy day lol.  Then last night Bryan and I watched Robin Hood on Netflix.  It was a wonderful continuation of the weekend's relaxation!

Anyway, here's the menu plan for this week!

Breakfast:  some combination of egg, toast, fruit and/or yogurt with cottage cheese with milk

Lunch:  turkey and cheese sandwich for me, leftovers or buying for Bryan

Dinner:

MONDAY:  Gan Gan's Meatloaf

TUESDAY: Sit and Stitch! I think this is gradually turning into a Sonic night for me...and I'm completely fine with that!  It's turning into a tradition lol.

WEDNESDAY:  Feta and Pesto Stuffed Chicken

THURSDAY:  Pita Pizzas

FRIDAY:  Not sure yet!  Bryan's possibly taking Friday off, so we'll see what we end up doing!

SATURDAY:  Out to eat!

SUNDAY: Honestly, we'll probably go out to eat again.  Lol.  Lots going on this weekend.

Lazy, Laid Back Weekend

And thank goodness for that!  Last week just kinda sucked lol.  I'm glad for a restart!

Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the yarn shop and actually finished 3 whole sections of my new shawl project!  Here's a picture of what I hope it will look like when I'm done:

The pattern is called Summer Flies and was created by Donna Griffin.

It's a beautiful light weight shawl that I'll probably wear to church (because our sanctuary is COLD) and on really breezy evenings this summer.  And of course I'll wear it when things cool down again.  However, I'm not using the same yarn.  The pink is pretty, but I decided to go with a neutral color--a very pretty dove grey--in a slightly lighter-weight bamboo yarn from Origins.

I think the lighter weight will make it a bit lighter and lacier--which is what I want.  I also bought new bamboo size 8 circular needles, so I'm calling this my Bamboo Summer Shawl!  It's a great pattern and I really got in a zone working on it yesterday!

Last night we went to Bryan's cousin's graduation party and then went out to eat with Ethan and Julie and Tom at a new beer garden!  The food was yummy, the beer fantastic, and the proprietor and his wife are actually from Germany!  Then we went to the 24 hour house of pie!  Yummy cookies and cream pie made my night complete!  Or it should have.  I decided to have a cappuccino with my pie...at 10 PM.  The drink was wonderful...the effects not so much.  Bryan and I got home and in bed by 11 and then I woke up again at 2:30AM.  And couldn't go back to sleep until 7:30AM.

That's right.  I laid in bed AWAKE for 5 HOURS.  I'm NEVER drinking a cappuccino that late again!  On top of that, I woke back up at 9 and couldn't go back to sleep.  I tried (and so we missed church) but it just wasn't working.  So, Bryan and I ran to the grocery store and had a great lunch here at the house to the wonderful entertainment of EuroTrip!  Now, we're watching Beer Fest, and I'm thinking I'm going to follow my hubby's wonderful example and doze throughout the movie.  Later, we'll watch our current NetFlix flick--Megamind!

 This is turning out to be just the kind of weekend I needed!

Silly RA

This is more a vent than anything else.  You have been warned lol.

Let me preface this by saying that I am very happy and thankful to be off all of my meds so that Bryan and I can try to make a baby!  I'm also grateful to be able to stay home on disability so my disease progression slows down and to be doing as well as I am being off all of the drugs.

BUT I am sick and tired of this damn disease!  Specifically, I'm tired of the gradual increase in activity I'm detecting in my disease.  My morning stiffness is gradually increasing.  When I first went off my drugs, my morning stiffness was only about 10-20 minutes.  Now, it's up to at least 45 minutes pretty much every morning.  That is SO FRUSTRATING!!!

On top of that, I'm achy during the day more and I've been flaring more regularly.  Last week I had a flare that lasted TWO WHOLE DAYS!  I haven't had more than one or two of those since I've quit teaching, which is awesome, but then today I wake up and I'm achy and hurting again.  Of course, today I said "Screw it" and went to water aerobics anyway.  I was hoping it would help--and to some extent, it did!  The stiffness got a bit better and my mood got a bit better--but I could still only do the exercises at about half intensity.  On top of all that, the fatigue is getting worse.  Granted, it's been back for a while now, but I'm noticing a steady increase in the amount of fatigue that I feel every day.  

Normally, I do my best to not think about all of that.  After all, staying positive and focusing on all the good things happening is the best way to deal!  But today I'm super-achy and tired and all of it's really caught up with me, which, of course, means I'm sitting around thinking about all the signs of increased disease activity, which leads me to want to be in remission (which has only happened once), which makes me want to hurry up and get pregnant, which makes me kinda bummed that I'm not, which gets me in a less-than-happy mood, which frustrates me because I LIKE being happy!  

HAPPY DAMNIT!

Sigh.  Anyway, it's time to get out of this funk!  To that end, I'm going to watch some more episodes of Shuffle! and then I'll tape off the dining room and prep for painting it.  Other than that I'm going to work on my current knitting project and maybe finish my friend's surprise scarf by the end of the day!