I have finally accepted that at the end of every winter my garage will forever look like varying degrees of this:
No, we are not growing “medicine” but there is definitely some major magic going on inside that creepy looking thing! Danny rigged this puppy up and I must say it’s doing it’s job!
This is what you see when you peek inside!
I can taste my homemade Spaghetti sauce already! Happy almost spring everyone!
When last we met (don’t remind me how long it’s been), we were gardening up a storm. And when I say we I mean Danny and the kids with an occasional appearance from me! My job starts after things are out of the ground. This year will be my fifth year of serious canning and I have definitely caught the bug! I love it. I love everything about it…well maybe not the cleanup, but who likes that? I am beyond excited because this year Dan the man has planned an amazing garden (read: 1/6 of an acre plot) and I cannot wait to get canning! Our garage is currently filled a ton of starts and they have already started to sprout – yay!
The kids are doing well, crazy and funny as ever. Parker is in the 2nd grade and Kaden is in 1st. Our plans took a sudden turn in sept. right before the public school year started (and I mean literally the week before). Because we had so much success and were loving homeschooling, the plan was to continue with all of the kids. In May of last year Danny and I took a cruise to Alaska for our 10th wedding anniversary (woot!) and while we were gone I started having these random back pain attacks – waking up from a dead sleep in horrible pain – not fun. Long story short, things continued to get worse pain wise and before I knew it I was waking up unable to move in the mornings. It got to where I couldn’t hardly move at all no matter what time of day, all of my joints just ached. After a bazillion Dr. appointments a ton of blood work and a CT, I was diagnosed with a form of arthritis called ankylosing spondylitis (yeah…say that three times fast). Basically it is an arthritis that affects the spine and rib spine connections (and apparently all other joints) and it STINKS!
When looking it up online later here is what I found:
I’m sorry, but even I was cracking up laughing!
Apparently it can eventually cause the spine to completely fuse into one solid piece of bone ie: bamboo spine. I was having a ton of pain in my sternum and chest so I have to admit it was actually nice to learn what was causing it – inflammation in the joints that connect the ribs to the sternum and spine.
Needless to say, it took a long time to work through everything and I didn’t want the kids to be stuck in the house(or on my bed) waiting for me to be able to move, so we enrolled them in school. Now 10 months later, I am having a lot more good days than before and with the help of 2 crazy expensive medications, hoping to continue the trend! I give myself weekly Enbrel injections (not as bad as it sounds) and last month my Dr. added Celebrex to the mix (made a HUGE difference). Things aren’t perfect (like they ever were) and I am still in pain a lot of the time but it’s so much better than it was and I am noticing as the weather gets better- so does the pain. Rain = not my body’s friend. And yes, I still live in the pacific NW…hmmmm.
So there is a short update (a first of a few I’m sure) for any who thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. I’m still here. Alive and kicking -with an improved but considerable amount of pain
