Mid-month report

OK, I've made it through the busy part of April and survived. It should be a downhill slide from here, but there are more events just around the corner, so I shouldn't get too cozy about relaxing.

The weekend in Portland with my coworkers was very enjoyable. The conference was interesting - great speakers and we came home with some good, useful ideas.

Yesterday was our Southern Oregon Sometimes Miracles Hide luncheon for moms of kids with disabilities. 64 people from my church volunteered to help, either cooking, serving the lunch, or helping in the carnival section. I had agreed to be the "Carnival Coordinator" which sounds more impressive than it was. I didn't actually plan anything - but I was the "check in" person who directed carnival helpers to the right spot and assigned duties. I was kind of nervous about assigning duties since I really didn't know the people I was assigning. I didn't know their personalities - so didn't know who would do well where. But it turned out well. (I actually had TONS of help from another couple in my church who were "leading games" but ended up roving with me for problem solving) I had put some kids working together who didn't know each other at the beginning of the day. As the carnival went on, I saw them working together really well, coordinating breaks for each other and having fun. Denis got to be a buddy for the first time and enjoyed having more to do.

So, next up is Easter, then our church's next respite day in early May.

It's Spring

It's April and as usual, it seems, life is very busy this month. I seem to recall writing very similar posts in years past... what is it about April? So far:

• I finally recorded a presentation that I've been planning for about two months to be viewed by physicians, pharmacists and nurses in my hospital. This is a REALLY big deal, because in it, I am presenting a "how to" type of instruction on Diabetes care in the hospital setting. (I actually recorded that in March, but it was this past week...)
• had our annual Diabetes healthfair yesterday - it was a new format this year, so we were all an extra bit on our toes. I messed up part of our facilities order, so there were a stressful 15 minutes, but it turned out well.
• I helped coordinate our church disability ministry getting T-shirts - ordering the right sizes and then handing them out today.

Still to come:

• church disability ministry planning meeting tomorrow
• meeting with a physician group Tuesday to explain and promote my Diabetes presentation - hoping they will want to view it for CME credits
• planning meeting at work Wednesday - have to make a pasta salad for the potluck lunch
• our group travels to Portland Thursday for a conference - FUN!
• the following week is the Southern Oregon Joni and Friends luncheon called Sometimes Miracles Hide - Denis and I are volunteering

Busy April, fun April. And it really is spring here now - we have daffodils up, the sun is shining. I even took Phoebe out for a little walk - she she is one happy kitty right now.

Getting ready!

August is going to be a busy month around here - or maybe not around here. That's why it's going to be busy...

The first week of the month, I'm flying to San Antonio for not quite a week to attend the annual conference for the American Association of Diabetes Educators. I'm going with one of my coworkers. She and I work opposite days of the week, so we rarely actually get to see each other. Our lives are intertwined, though, as my mom provides day care for her adult daughter who has Down Syndrome. Our two families spent Thanksgiving together last year. Joy just got married and we attended her wedding on the beach. Lots of new stuff in her life and I'm really looking forward to spending the time with her.

The third week of the month, Denis and I both have the privilege of serving as the medical team for the all new Oregon Joni and Friends Family Retreat! As you know, I was able to go to the California camp last year, which turned out to be a fly by the seat of my pants sort of experience. This year, Denis and I are getting to organize the entire medical plan for the Oregon camp, determine what supplies we want to have, etc. I'm so excited to get to share the experience with Denis, not only because his skill set is so much better suited for the job, but also for him to see first hand what a blessing this ministry is to the families that attend. It's hard to believe that it's just three weeks away! Things are falling into place, but there's still some planning left to do.

a new post

Well, I just caught up with reading my friends blogs. It's been quite a while since I've been following them. It seems some action is picking up again as people are writing a bit more steadily again. Shall I join the ranks?

I'll give it a shot.

If you are my friend on Facebook, you probably know that we put down one of our cats yesterday. I've had Phoebe and Monica for about 10 years, which is hard to believe. Bringing Joey into the house two years ago just about did in Phoebe, but she made a miraculous recovery. And now it's Monica who got ill and we had to say goodbye. She got sick very quickly, but I've already written all about that elsewhere.

I just mention it here to say that I've been just kind of blah and dull today. Not much motivation to do much. It seems a bit silly to be depressed over losing a cat, but so be it. I know that I'll feel better soon.

We were supposed to go get our Christmas trees today, but it was quite icey and slick on the roads this morning, so we decided to put it off. Hopefully we will be able to go tomorrow, because Mom is really looking forward to it.

Ho Hum... that's about it for now. It was really fun to read you all's posts. It's nice to see more action on the blogs again.

Ugh!

Ok, I'm awake at 2 AM and feeling increasingly bad that I haven't written anything on my blog in months! Now seems like a good time to write something, whatever, anything...

I've been up at this hour several times in the last week - mostly it was with fever and chills last week. Tonight it's with congestion and wheezing in my chest. It's not dangerous, just annoying. I can hear the noise in my ears and it keeps me awake. Asthma is so weird, at least for me. I have started a course of Prednisone and I'm taking my Albuterol inhaler, but I don't really notice that they help much. I'm always left wondering if I would get better just as quickly if I just ignored it and let it run its course. But I won't, because I'm generally an obedient patient...

I haven't written about the chickens lately. They are just about full grown - 5 months old or so. Denis is keeping track, but I lose count on the passing weeks. No eggs yet. This is about the time that they are supposed to start. We've added a light inside the coop to increase their "daylight hours". Some books say they need 14 hours of daylight to be in production mode. Since our girls have never been in production mode, we're giving the light a try to make sure they start on time. I need to take some new pictures - the girls are very pretty now, with all their colored feathers in place.

While I was sick, Denis and I had to cancel our plans for a weekend trip up to the Willamette Valley (just South of Portland) to meet up with friends who were driving down from Seattle to meet us there. This is a friend from my old church's singles group. His wedding was one month prior to ours and we've not had much chance to hang out together over the last 5 1/2 years. We had been planning the trip for two months and then I had to go and get the flu 2 days before we were to leave. One of the reasons that I was in denial about having the flu initially.

Our next trip is going to be a quick one - flying into Denver and driving a rental car to attend a niece's wedding in Nebraska. We'll stay two nights in NE, then back to Denver to fly back home. One nice little detail is that we both have friends in Denver who we'll get to visit, though briefly. I made our hotel and car rental reservations yesterday. I was able to buy our tickets with frequent flyer miles! Yay Alaska Airlines!

Well, that's enough for now. Hope that gives a bit of an update.

Been so busy!

Hello my friends! I know that I have been very negligent in keeping up my blog of late. I guess it's been over a month now since I last posted. Here's a bit of an update on what's been keeping me so busy these last weeks.

Chicken update: the baby chicks are now a little over 3 weeks old. Our original plan to have a broody hen mother them didn't work out. The hen pictured below didn't take them, so we did a quick hen trade the first night that we brought the babies home. The second hen took them initially, but then didn't know what to do. She had never raised a brood of chicks before. So we've been taking care of them ourselves. It's been fun, but a bit time consuming. Our weather has been getting pretty hot during the day, but cold at night. There were a few nights that we were worried that it would get too cold out in the coop. But they have all survived so far. They are going outside now and really enjoying eating the grasses and weeds in their little enclosed space.

Work: I've had a bit of a perfect storm of responsibilities at work in the last two weeks. I have a chart review project that I've been trying to work on for the last month. But my manager wants me to prioritize it now and get it done. I worked extra days the last two weeks, covering for a coworker's vacation and then going in on my days off to start three new insulin pumps. Starting a new insulin pump always means receiving multiple pages. So I've been getting paged almost daily by three different people for the last week. All making Tracy a bit scattered.

What's next: Now, I finally have a somewhat normal week coming up and we have to get prepared for our big road trip. We'll leave one week from today and we're taking my car which is a MESS. I'd like to get it into the shop for a look-over. Got to clean the house so it's ready for our house-sitter, cat company-keeper, chicken wrangler extraordinaire. We thought that the chicks would add a bit much extra work for just my mom. Between the two of them, things should go smoothly.

I'll be very ready for the vacation. :o)

A nice busy weekend.

This past weekend was really busy in a good way. Friday and Saturday, I attended our Oregon Diabetes Educator association's annual conference, which is an opportunity to get a lot of continuing education credits that I will need to renew my certification in a few years. The topics this year were quite good and I enjoyed the company of my coworkers who also attended. Some of the subjects this year were:

• Continuous Glucose Monitoring - what it is and how to use the info (This is the latest tool that we have for managing diabetes, it's not used widely yet, but we believe that it will change how we treat the disease in the coming years.)
• Why your patients hate to test their blood glucose and what you can do about it. (This was presented by a psychologist who specializes in Diabetes issues.)
• Diabetes and Exercise. (presented by a very fun physical therapist)
• Inpatient Glycemic control (This is very applicable to my job, especially the special projects that I work on)
• Current trends and controversies in nutrition
• Type 2 diabetes in children (a growing problem in the US!)

I learned a lot and came home inspired to make some changes in my own eating habits.

While I was at the conference on Saturday, Denis helped out at a disability ministry event sponsored by our local chapter of Joni and Friends. I think I heard that over 30 people from our own church volunteered at this event, which is so exciting and encouraging. It was a great opportunity for people to get some experience with this type of ministry. On Sunday, a few special guests from JAF came to our church to speak and it was great to get to speak with them afterwards to keep "picking their brains" about how to keep things growing at our church. They were asking Denis and I if we would like to go to the July family camp as the medical personnel. Please pray for us for this. We would really like to do it, but will have just used up three weeks of vacation pay for our June trip cross-country. It would be a significant financial cost to us when you consider the lost pay.

After church Sunday, we bought our last supplies for the chicks - food and water containers, chick feed and wood chips. Denis has been working on the enclosure, so I'll post pictures of the finished coop when he's all done. And of course, chick pictures will have to be posted!

Mission Accomplished

I didn't get a lot accomplished today, but what I did get done was significant. I finished up my Christmas shopping. I had heard some terrible stories about the traffic around town, so I wasn't looking forward to getting out in it. But this afternoon I finally bit the bullet and navigated the streets. I think that I just happened to plan the right route so that I didn't get stuck in the really bad areas. For one thing, I didn't go to the mall. A friend of mine called me just the other day from the mall parking lot where she had been stuck for 45 minutes trying to get out! Ugh!

I also sent out my Christmas letters via email. I had to find people's emails one by one on Facebook because they don't have a feature for finding them easily. Annoying! You have to go to each friend's profile and click on the info page to find the email address. Oh well, it's done now. :o) I still need to send out by snail mail the letters to friends and relatives who are not regular internet people.

And can I just say that I'm really digging that first song in my playlist? (Arise by Shane and Shane). I found it by browsing some other playlists - I'd never listened to Shane and Shane before. I haven't really figured out all the lyrics to the song, but I really like the sound of it.

Pretty soon I will be able to answer that question, "Are you ready for Christmas?" with a firm "yes!"

New Post

I can't believe that it has been over a month since I last wrote something... I guess I've been suffering from the same blog inspiration drought that a lot of my friends have been. Maybe it's contagious!

Well, it's time for it to end, so here I am typing something... I have had several ideas about things to write over the last month and a half. Hmmm... Let's see now.

Okay, here's one: Bad news - I got another traffic ticket. It happened the day before we left for Australia.
Good news - I can take the online traffic school again to have it removed from my record.
Bad news - I still had to pay a heft fine.
Good news - at least I'm supporting our city's budget in these rough economic times.
Bad news - I felt more annoyed than guilty when I was pulled over this time. It was a rolling stop at a four way stop. No school zone this time, no one's life in danger. I honestly think that he was giving a rookie cop some practice at writing up the ticket since it took him about 10 minutes to write it up.
Good news - I have till Jan 12th to do the online school. I'd better get going on it...

Digging myself out

I'm slowly digging myself out of the hole that I've been buried in since we got back from Sydney. I knew before we left for vacation that I'd be coming home to a very busy week. October is a month when several different BIG projects for work and my life are coming together.
1. the ADA walk, one week after we returned. I was on the planning committee so there were lots of emails and tasks to muddle through in that last week. It was this past Saturday, so that's behind me now.
2. an extensive education project for the OB department of my hospital. My boss and I are doing multiple talks and meetings this month. Some of it I had prepared before hand and some I left until I returned to plan. This is about half-way done now, so I'm feeling more in control
3. I'm taking my Diabetes Educator's certification exam on the 25th of this month and I haven't actually started to study for it yet... I have two weeks, so now's the time to start.

So with all this on my plate - the unpacking and household chores have taken a back seat for the last week and a half. I worked extra hours and came home and just didn't do anything productive.

This week, I've got the walk behind me. I'm just working my normal week. I don't feel as overwhelmed. And so I'm slowly digging out of the hole. I balanced our checkbook on Sat. afternoon. Started laundry and cleaned the kitchen yesterday. Today I've gotten some errands run already. I need to buy us some real food so we can stop subsisting on cereal and potatoes. :o)

The list is still long, but I'm feeling more hopeful about getting to the bottom.

What have I been doing for the last month?

Well, over a month now. For goodness sake, I can't believe it's been so long. Here's a bit of an update on what's been happening:
1. We spent our one week vacation in Portland. It was fun and relaxing. We stayed at our second McMennamin's hotel, the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. It did not have private bathrooms and we were very surprised to find that the shared baths were all single full baths. We were expecting dorm style shower rooms. We also went on a dinner cruise with our friend AMG, heard a free concert in Pioneer Courthouse Square - The Dimes, a Portland band was really good.
2. Two days after we came home from Portland, I developed a respiratory infection that I may have caught from AMG's husband... :o( I had a fever of 102 and took antibiotics for 10 days. The respiratory infection then set off my asthma which is normally almost non-existent. It was definitely not a good time to be sick from work because several of my coworkers were at a big conference in Washington D.C. and I was scheduled to work Mon-Fri. I wound up working just Tues and Wed. I think it was a good 3 weeks before I was fully well again.
3. I've been doing work helping plan our local American Diabetes Association fund-raiser walk in October. It's just around the corner, so it's time to really knuckle down and do some work. So I've been spending some of my days off making phone calls and running errands.
4. We've been nailing down all our plans for the Sydney trip - we've got our passports and travel authorities, hotel reservations, flights, itinerary is set. I can't believe it's just over 3 weeks away now.
5. I recorded most of the Olympics on NBC and watched a lot of it. I still haven't finished it all off - I've got about 2 days of events left to watch!
6. I found a cookbook on sale at the supermarket that intrigued me. It's all low cal/low fat recipes and I've been trying to replace some of my high fat indulgences with these recipes. I'll have to write more about that in another post.
7. And yes, I must admit, I've still been playing Packrat on Facebook a bit more than I'd like to admit.

Reading them again

I haven't read the Chronicles of Narnia in years and I thought it was high time to enjoy them again. I asked for the all-in-one volume for my birthday last year, but hadn't started reading it yet until a few weeks ago. In the past, I've read them in the order in which they were released, but this volume is in "chronological order" as the events unfold in Narnia. I'm up to the third book which is A Horse and His Boy.

I'm sure that I've read these books at least twice through in the past, but I'm surprised at how much of the details I had completely forgotten. Everything is familiar to me, but I can't remember how the different storylines will come together in the end. I still really enjoy C. S. Lewis' humor sprinkled through out.

I win!

Ever since I became a cat owner, I have not been able to have flowers around my house. I really like to have a cheerful boquet of flowers on a table top or counter, but whenever I do, curious cats always manage to get up when I'm not looking for a sniff. They don't stop with a sniff - then they have a nibble and before I know it, my beautiful flowers are not very beautiful anymore. Petals fall off, greenery disappears. Not only that, I'm not really sure what plants are safe for a cat to eat, so I worry about them

Well, I found this tiny vase at a local street fair a few weeks ago. I thought it was a rather ingenious solution to my problem. Last time I checked, my cats were not able to scale a refrigerator!

Big changes coming...

Denis is making a big change in his employment - it's a change to benefit his sanity rather than our pocketbook. He is changing his status in the Emergency Room to on call only. That means that he loses his full benefits as an employee and will go on my insurance. We'll pay a bit more each pay period for that.

He's been working some shifts at two other jobs for the last two months and this change will allow him to accept more work for them. One is for a local pediatrician and Denis really enjoys that one. When I ask him how his day was his reply is generally, "it was great fun!" Such a change from the stress of the ER. The other job is in the Occupational Health department of our same hospital. That job involves caring for people who have had on the job injuries as well as doing work-related physical assessments. There are some legal details to be learned in that job and it's not quite as fun, but it is a low stress environment.

Denis will still fill in with shifts in the ER, but he'll be able to pick and choose, which will be nice. He hopes to cut down on or eliminate working on Sundays so that he can attend church. Eventually, there is the chance (and we hope that this happens) that the Occupational Health job can become a half time scheduled job. That would give Denis back his benefited position. This was a bit decision and a long time coming. The big change happens in July. Now he just has to get through June... Prayers are welcomed. :o)
These are some photos of some of the more noteworthy flowers in our garden this year.

HOW?

How can two small people generate so much laundry? It seems like the basket is overflowing every other day. I think I probably do about three loads of laundry each week. I'm sure that is NOTHING compared to you with families. How many loads do you do in a week?

Busy Weekend

These are pictures from last week when we were busy pricing all the items for the garage sale this weekend. So I guess I should have titled this post a busy week! The sale was pretty successful. None of us made a ton of money, but we did get rid of some of the largest items that we really wanted to be rid of.

An interesting thing to note is that Denis and I were not actually around for much of the garage sale taking place at our house. We both worked on the first day of the sale, Friday. Saturday afternoon, we left for a wedding at 12:30 and didn't return until the sale was over. And Sunday we went to church and then out to a local vineyard to pick up our wine club selections. We returned in time to make quick work of the pack up. A local charity will be picking up all the left-overs on Wednesday or next weekend.

So who was manning our sale while we were gone? Our staff - my mom and her good friends who came down from Yakima, WA for the occasion. They have a whole system for doing garage sales and did SOOO much work. I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures of the "staff" at work, though. We had them over for dinner (with our locally produced wine) last night as a thank you.

Blogging Excuses

1. I have been working more than usual - doing some extra projects on Tuesdays
2. Denis and I went away for two weekends to professional conferences recently. One was in the Mt. Hood area and the other in Portland.
3. I have been consulting for Denis on new plant location in our garden and admiring his work.
4. I have been monitoring our cats' adjustment to the new Litter Robot (see beolow).
5. I am on the American Diabetes Association fund raiser committee and I have been doing some leg work for the walk.
6. Denis has been working more day shifts and so I've been spending the evenings with him instead of blogging.
7. I have been going on some day trips with a friend from church.
8. I started discipling a gal from my church.

All of the above are true, but they are not the real reason that I have not been blogging lately. I am hopelessly addicted to the Facebook game Packrat. I'll just come out and admit it. I have been spending waaaay too much time playing that game lately.

Wireless

We've decided to ditch the home phone line and use only wireless phones. It's a step that I have resisted for the last several years because I prefer the quality of a land line call. However, we've had unending trouble with our current land line anyway. Our line went dead a couple of times, seemingly due to one of the older style corded phones that we had. It was impossible to tell which phone it was that caused the problem, so we were only using our cordless phones. And for some reason, the cordless phones that we had (not very old at all) we not working very well. Needless to say, the "land line quality" that I was looking for was sorrowfully lacking and we were paying an arm and a leg to the phone company each month. Our wireless venture is going to save us about $50 a month.

So, to celebrate, we each got a new updated cell phone with more features than our old ones. I haven't had a flip phone in a while, but so far I'm liking it. I'm just afraid that I'm going to forget it somewhere.

Cleaning, or supposed to be...

I've got some of my new music in the CD player and it's nice. Shelby Lynne is kind of bluesy. Bethany Dillon was folk-ish. Now, i think it's Shelby Lynne again and its a nice mellow groovy kind of sound. This music is not motivating me to clean however, which is what I really need to do. Then I need to get some papers in order for a meeting we have next weekend with our financial adviser. Maybe I need to wait until Jonny Lang start playing so he can inspire me to get moving. What about you? Do you listen to music to help you get moving on housework?

Early Christmas

Denis and I are very excited because each of us just acquired a new toy! Here's mine:

I have completely fallen off the exercise bandwagon since about March! After I went through that wonderful 6 week period of going to the gym really regularly, I just haven't been able to get motivated to organize my stuff, drive to the gym and use the equipment. It never seems to be convenient to go during the off peak hours and I find it annoying that I can't watch what I want to on the TV or listen to my own music. SO, I'm very excited to have a piece of equipment that I can use at home. One of my coworkers had this unused and offered it to me for FREE! yay. It obviously takes up a lot of space, but it can be folded up if we need to get it out of the way.

Here is Denis' new toy:

The espresso machine that he has had for several years now seems to be giving up the ghost. So we went to Starbucks and found they had this very last unit of last year's espresso machine. It had a clearance tag on it and then they took even more off because it was not clean at the time... (I think it had something to do with me being a regular customer who they know by name) This machine is so pretty and it is a step up from the old machine. Denis is still working on getting it to give us a perfect shot of espresso, but we have faith that he will. The reviews on coffee lovers' websites are good.