Staying home without going shopping.

I don't know about you, but I am a girl who when I have extra time will sleep or shop. I used to have all kinds of things I liked to try. I once had high hopes of being very homemakery and crafty. I took classes, read Good Housekeeping and tried to buy every kitchen gadget known to Martha (Stewart that is, not Washington, she played the spinet). Sleeping was getting boring. Since I am not working and therefore poor, shopping was out.

So a home-makin' I will go, or at least Google-map it. It all started with making bread, moved on to painting fabric, more bread, scrapbooking, bread, organizing and labeling everything in sight, bread, a failed attempt to make jam. Now, the failed attempt at the jam was because I was too tired and besides, the Olympics were on.

Why the homemaking? I think it was all the working parent thing and now my job title is sans "working". My husband's mom, Deb, worked full time and was crafty. My mom, Joyce, was a stay at home mom and I remember her taking the popular 70's art classes like macrame (yep, it's spelled right, I checked), and whatever that "art" is that you have a ceramic figurine and you spray paint it (apparently the only color they had in those days were were gold and sparkly gold). Even though I was exposed to all of this culture, the only person who took to it was my sister, Kama.

Kama took sewing and macrame classes and did NOT get kicked out of ballet. Her sewing class and expertise scored her a special area in the house with her own sewing machine and pegboard filled with wondrous pointy objects hanging on it. I on the other hand, held to my feeling that sewing was stupid and who wants to make big owls with prickly string, big bead eyes and deadwood anyway. I was a tomboy. I mowed lawns for gosh-sakes. I only dressed up when threatened with giving me "something to really cry about".

Why the latent interest in crafts? If I am to get all existential, it is my need to have something to show for my time here on earth. To give something for my kids to remember about their upbringing and time with me. I don't want my kids only memories of me to be injections, unpredictable "cane days", dropping on the floor seizing, shaking and bleeding in a bookstore or the ziiiiiippppp sound of a grocery store-made Thanksgiving dinner in a box (Whole Foods has a great one, by the way) opening. My kids have gotten to the point where not much phases them as far as my health. My current craft interest, however gives them pause. They look around wondering if Rachel Ray is cooking dinner in 30 minutes.

Well, I'll show them. They will paint their shoes, lunchboxes, canvas bags and anything else I can throw their way. Garden, bake bread (I guess I should seek therapy for the carb addiction), cook with stuff from our garden, have cut flowers on the table from our garden and actually make dinner with non-processed ingredients. Then, they will scrapbook, create masterpieces with various sizes and types of stickers so they will damn well remember how crafty and homemakey their mommy was!

As God is my witness, they better have fun doing it!
I know I am.
Are you?
:-)

The Beginning of "The Year"

I have worked since I was 12 (I mowed lawns, so that counts, right?). I have either been in school or worked. I have worked as many as 3 jobs at a time (oh to be young). For the last 14 years I have been a special education teacher. I always worked summers.

5 years ago, I was dizzy (not in the fun kind). After a bunch of tests, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It sucks. I have 2 little kids, a great husband a job I love, friends, family and a chronic, progressive, autoimmune disease that has no predictability. Great! OK, so I am not dying, but with all the weird crap that goes along with an autoimmune disease (fatigue, depression, fatigue, dizziness, fatigue and OH the FATIGUE! but I will get into the fatigue part some other time) it was tough to deal with.

Basically, I felt awful for 4 and a half years.

Then, for 6 months I felt great. OK, not the way most people feel great, but great on the MS scale (ya know, being able to stay up past 8pm). On April 12th I was at a bookstore with my 8 year old son and I started having aura's or what I affectionately like to call them, "flashy things". Long story short, I had a grand mal seizure, right there in the bookstore, right in front of my son, right in front of the sports book section. EMS, FD, ER, EKG, EEG, MRI = TCS If you don't have a siezure from the tests of flashing lights and heavy breathing, you can get one from all the acronyms (there is a blog of acronyms, I swear!).

So now, if you are keeping up, I have Multiple Sclerosis & Tonic-Clonic Epilepsy.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

My brain surgeon doctors (I mean they really are brain surgeons) tell me that these are two chronic, unpredictable diseases that BOTH affect the brain, MY brain. Seriously? Oh yea, and the best part.......THEY ARE NOT RELATED! Yea, I just happen to have them BOTH. Well, aren't I the little petri dish!

Thus, the blog, 1 Year To Health. I decided to take a year off of paid work and see what it would be like to let my body rule my life rather than forcing my body to live my current life. I mean, who wouldn't want to take a year off work and try and focus on personal health and wellbeing and who wouldn't want to read about it? :-)

Thanks for reading!
Kris