I’m still alive, although today I feel as if I’m on the verge of knowing what it’s like not to be. I had my cholesterol levels tested at a clinic yesterday after church. It was very very high. Enough to really scare me. I know you want to know, so here are the numbers: overall cholesterols was 314. HDL (good) level was only 30. LDL (bad) was way up at 244. My triglycerides are at 200. Very very bad.

I have a lot of people in my family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, my dad, who have had or do have heart problems and stroke issues. I’ve made an appointment to see my primary care physician and will be going in on Monday of next week to talk about how serious this is or isn’t. The nurse practitioner that drew my blood and tested it said that if it wasn’t for the fact that I have really good blood pressure (115/87 which is right on track for me) and that most of my family history is not early aged heart problems, I have the potential to have a heart attack by 40. Boy, that’ll stop you in your tracks.

Have you had your cholesterol tested? There are usually several places around that do free screenings throughout the year. I was lucky enough to get a postcard in the mail. It came just as I was thinking about having it done. And being free, it’s really what got me in.

Get tested! I’ll keep you all updated on what I find out from the doctor next week. In the meantime, I’m doing what I should have been doing for a long time which is gettings some exercise, reading about living healthier, planning and eating healthier meals and learning to deal with stress. It’s only been one day, but the idea of it all has sobered me enough that I’m determined to lower my cholesterol, drop a few pounds and hopefully feel better.

You all probably thought I’d dropped off the planet, didn’t you? Hooray for those of you are glad I didn’t. Sorry to disappoint for those of you who wish I had. Seriously, the past two weeks have been quite challenging, stressful and downright energy-zapping. The sales rep I work for has been on vacation for two weeks and I’ve been handling all his clients by myself when he normally has me to assist him. And of course, just as Murphy would predict, all of the strange and “this won’t happen until I get back” clients came out of the woodwork, on top of a HUGE project that spanned the entire two weeks and just about had us all in tears at one point. Thankfully our manager/owner stepped in when he realized that project was just too much for me (I think the tears and crying clued him in). Needless to say, there hasn’t been any mental energy left to blog these past couple of weeks and I’m so far behind on reading blogs that I have no idea what anyone is up to. Hopefully I can get back to that starting tomorrow. So as a way to say thanks for not forgetting me, I’m stealing this meme that Brad stole from Brit-Gal Sarah.

• Sport: Football
• Game: Tri-Bond
• Color: Cabbage Rose Pink
• Movie: The Sound of Music
  
• Broadway/West End Musical I have seen: Wicked
• Song: Can’t decide, but I know it’s bound to be by Bon Jovi
• American city I have visited: Virginia Beach, VA
• Foreign city I have visited: Cozumel, Mexico (I haven’t ventured out much)
• Book: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• Children’s Book: Nancy Drew Series or Little House on the Prairie Series
  
• Classic television show: Little House on the Prairie
  
• Recent TV Show: Boston Legal
• Actor: Denzel Washington
• Actress: Susan Sarandon
• Food: Chocolate
• Dessert: My homemade New York Cheesecake
• Chain Restaurant: Cheeseburger in Paradise
• Local Restaurant: Red Rock Canyon Grill
• Car: Silver Mercedes or Lexus Sport Convertible
• Condiment: Hidden Valley Ranch Buttermilk Ranch Dressing
• Kitchen Appliance: Oven
• Home Appliance: HDTV
• Food Network show: Barefoot Contessa
• Male Songwriter: Bon Jovi
• Female Songwriter: Not sure
• Holiday: Thanksgiving
• Disney character: The crab from Little Mermaid
• Flower: Rose
• Alcoholic drink: Hurricane Bob from Cheeseburger in Paradise
• Non-Alcoholic drink: Vanilla Coke from Sonic
• Animated movie: Finding Nemo
• Television network miniseries: John Adams
  
• Season: Fall
• Male vocalist: Jon Bon Jovi
• Female vocalist: Pink
• Day of the week: Saturday
• Household Chore: Laundry, except for ironing
• Ice Cream: Chocolate Almond
• Candy: Minstrels from England
• Quotation: Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding. -Yehuda Amichai

I had intended, and even attempted, to post something on Thursday, and then on Friday but things kept interrupting me and it never got done.

Brad’s parents came this morning and picked up the girls for a trip to their house for a week. Nearly every summer the girls spend a week with Grandma and Grandpa before school starts. It gives Grandma and Grandpa a chance to spend some uninterrupted time with the girls and it gives the girls a chance to do something other than be at home (until this year it used to be at the office) all day long. Gideon, our Lhasa Apso gets to spend the week at Grandma’s too. He loves Brad’s parents Bichons, particularly their boy dog Obie (Okie Beau is his real name, which is abbreviated to O.B. which translates to Obie, so no he’s not named after Star Wars). So anyway, Brad and I have a week alone, except for the two pugs. You’d think this would be incredibly romantic and all, but after a few days, we usually miss the girls and can’t wait for them to come home. We enjoy our time alone together and usually go on a date or two, and even though we really love each other, we just somehow don’t feel complete without our girls here at home.

Yesterday Brad sent me a link to a really excellent article about how having more mess around you can mean less stress in your life. Wow, did it hit home. So often I struggle with feeling the “shoulds”. You know - I should get rid of all this clutter, I should have a perfectly clean house, I should have it all together, I should be the Martha Stewart of Edmond, Oklahoma. Somehow reading this article puts things in perspective for me. When I do tolerate the clutter and just ignore things a bit more, I do tend to be happier. That perfectionist monster gets put back in its cage and the stress seems to lessen. Hmmm, I think that’s the key, isn’t it? Enjoy the present, change what I can, learn to prioritize what is REALLY important and ignore the rest of the stuff that really won’t make the world end.

Speaking of things putting life in perspective. Did anyone else see the tv show called ManMade this morning on National Geographic? They had an episode about Living Small in a Big City, which featured houses and apartments in Tokyo. Wow, there was one apartment that is 200 sq. ft. and is one room, where they even have to share a toilet in the building and have to use a local sento (bath house) to bathe. The Asians are amazing innovators when it comes to space!

My friend Aisling’s daughter spent some time in Taiwan a couple of years ago. She posted some wonderful things about that time and some great photos that her daughter took. Take a look at The Quiet Country House, Aisling’s blog, and go through the archives if you’d like to see more about her daughter’s trip.

One thing I’ve always admired about the Japanese is how they take a small space and make it so efficient by using incredibly creative innovation. I mean take the Bento Box for example. Who would have thought you could fit so much food into such a small little package? If you’d like to learn more about Bento Boxes, check out one of my favorite food sites, Lunch In A Box.

I hope you all are doing well. Tomorrow I plan to skip church and stay home to hang out with Brad. I will probably wake up at my own leisure, fix frozen waffles for breakfast, mow the grass and then spend the day catching up on magazines and blogs.

My mind has been adrift lately, seemingly tossed by many waves and not knowing where the shore is. Work is going well, but next week the sales rep. I work for goes on vacation for 2 weeks and I’ll be honest, I’m scared to death of handling all of his clients by myself. The truth is, there will be others here who can help me tremendously, but inside my head it feels like I’m all alone. A silly myth that has caused my fears to get out of hand. Why do I still get myself so easily stressed even before I know the situation I truly face? 

This morning on the way to work I was listening to a favorite album by David Lanz. He’s a wonderful composer pianist that we all love to listen to. I’ve learned to play a couple of his songs and so has Ashley. We even have autographed books of his music. And this morning as I listened I realized how much I miss playing the piano. Momentarily, I thought, perhaps I can go back to piano lessons. I’d love that. BUT - I know it’s not practical time-wise. Because of my work schedule, I’m only home an hour that Brad isn’t home (some days not even that long) and the piano is in the living room where the television is, so practicing will be a real challenge. Not to mention the fact that I have felt overwhelmed even with what I’m doing now, so why would I even think to add another stress factor? My saner self said, you can start by going back to actually touching the piano once in awhile, then if you are faithful in a little (practicing) you can think further about going back to lessons. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll try to get my house in order (Ha! Who am I kidding?), get on a routine that will help keep me sane and try to fit in playing for fun on the piano once in awhile.

I just recently checked out a book from the library about handmade journals that was absolutely fabulous if you are a journal keeper. It’s called Making Journals By Hand and is written by Jason Thompson who is a bookbinder and artist by trade. The ideas in the book are incredible. I’ve let my paper journaling go by the wayside, for the most part, since I’ve been blogging. But I think it might be time to pick one back up and start writing, and drawing and finding my creative self.

I hope you all are doing well. I’ve been reading snippets of blogs here and there as I have been able to. Thanks for being my faithful readers!

In my last post, I mentioned a 3 Doors Down video called Kryptonite. Here it is for your entertainment:

Last year after my aunt passed away, my brother and I rescued box after box of old photos from her house. We’ve had a fun time looking through them and a couple of weeks ago he gave me a few of myself he came across in his portion of the stash of photos. This one is my favorites of the pile. It was taken at my grandma’s house, and the door behind me is my aunt’s bedroom. The sticker behind my head says “Church: The Sunday Night Place.” I must have been around 7 or 8.

Now, I must confess I have no memory of this costume. I think it must have been Halloween, but though I have fond memories of most of my costumes as a child, this one slips my mind. I’m naming this one after the popular 3 Doors Down song (Kryptonite) that has the line “if I go crazy will you still call me superman?” (Love that video, by the way.)

Oh my goodness, has it really been a week since I last posted anything? Time sure gets away from me these days. I do have several posts in mind to write, just haven’t sat down to do them. I’ll try and be a little more faithful in posting. I’ve got a post planned about keeping an eye out for spam text messages and erroneous charges on your cell phone bill. Then I’ve also got a fun “looking back” post planned as well.

We had a nice long weekend for 4th of July. On Friday, we went to Enid to spend the day with Brad’s family, including cutie patootie Miss Rachel Nicole. We had a nice visit and really great food.

On Thursday of last week, Brad had a minor surgical procedure done to remove a cyst from inside his neck. He seems to be healing well, but we are keeping a close watch on his incision to prevent infection.

This weekend also saw the return of Ashley back into our midst. She was at church camp last week and reports that she had “an absolute blast”. She did kayaking, nature hikes, mountain man lessons, ate a carpenter ant which she says tastes like a lemon drop, and almost beat a boy for the skeet shooting championship. We’re glad to have her back.

I don’t know about all of you, but getting up to head back to work was a bit more difficult this morning thanks to that long lazy weekend we just had. But it’s back into the swing of things and after a cup of coffee, I’m feeling back to normal.

Check back in the next day or so for the posts I mentioned earlier. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  

We went and visited our new niece, Rachel, over the weekend. Oh is she a doll. It was a pleasure to hold her, and a pleasure to hand her back and leave her with her mommy and daddy to stay up nights with her. Seriously though, they are just thrilled, as we all are. She seems like a really sweet little lady and a generally good baby so far. 

Ashley goes to church camp tomorrow. She packed yesterday. We are all a bit surprised that she waited that long. Normally she packs at least 4 days before an event, sometimes a week or more before. She’ll be there until Sunday evening. There are only about 7 kids going, all girls except for 1 boy. She’s planning on going horseback riding, canoeing and I think doing archery. I know she’ll have a great time.

Work is going well. We’ve slowed down quite a bit, which is very common in the summer months for the industry I’m. I’m still adjusting and trying to manage my time wisely. Managing my time at home isn’t going so well, but Brad and the girls are chipping in where necessary. 

We all have medical appointments of some kind coming up. Brad is going in for a small surgical procedure this Thursday, Sarah has an eye appointment next week and then us three girls have dental appointments in August. We will all be checked out and healthy by the time school starts hopefully.

We all had that stomach virus (although Brad only had a brief touch of it) that has been going around. Sarah started it, then Ashley got it and finally me. It was rough but thankfully we all made it through without too much trouble. I hope you are all able to avoid it, as it feels just like the flu. Yucky.

My reading list isn’t very long this summer because I don’t seem to be finishing anything. I have been catching up on my magazine stack, which thankfully was whittled down to a very small pile by decluttering. I have three books checked out from the library - one about simplicity and the other two about handmade journals - to get through this week. And the Lord knows how many unfinished and unstarted books I have right there on my own shelves. 

My de-cluttering is going slow, and often I feel like I’m taking one step forward and two steps back, but reorganizing the laundry room last week felt really good. I’ve gotten back into reading FlyLady’s emails, on my iPhone and am planning to do some cleaning this evening, even if it’s minor hotspots. 

Blogreading is slowly, but surely, coming back into my routines. I’m able to read, or at least skim through my favorites a few times a week now, which is nice. I’ve missed finding out what’s going on with all of my bloggy friends. 

That’s just a bit of what’s going on in my world. What’s going on in yours?

Brad’s sister, Nicole, had her first baby yesterday. I know you all love babies! If you’d like to meet Miss Rachel, take a look over at Brad’s blog here and here. But be warned - she’s a cutie patootie!

You know you’re a mom if you’ve ever received text messages on your cell phone at work that go something like this:

Ashley: Can I keep a pet worm?
Me: It’s going to die if you keep it.
Ashley: But Herman is my friend. Can I keep it if I take care of it?
Me: He can live outside and you can visit him whenever you want.
Ashley: Aw, darn.
Ashley: Herman is on his own now.