World upside down

After a week of Covid, I had no clue how I would feel for running and or working two jobs.  Fatigue has been a huge problem with me and Covid the last time I had it.  I needed to run for mental sanity as my stress levels were through the roof. I ended up getting a couple of short runs in but that was not enough for what was about to happen.  Let's just get to it shall we?

It's funny how everything is normal and then boom, life changes so quickly.  My hubby Tony has had headaches for months now.  He thought it was just the stress of owning a business.  The problem was, he would throw up, but yet not feel any better.  The pressure and the headache would just get worse.  We are very lucky that upon a routine eye exam, they saw something they wanted to monitor and upon his re check, decided they didn't like what they were seeing.  Upon his eye Dr's insistence, he headed to the ER to have some imaging done (FINALLY) and then was taken to Topeka to Stormont Vail to have immediate surgery.  They found a baseball sized tumor on the left side of his brain that appears to be sitting on the brain.  We will know more once they get in and remove it.  It appears to be benign but again we won't know anything till surgery.  They decided upon getting to the hospital that we needed to pump the brakes, so we have been waiting all week.  He is on massive doses of steroids and anti convulsant medications.  His blood sugar is out of control thanks to the steriods.  I am glad that he is here being monitored.  More to come, stay tuned.  

Andrew did have his last football game as a junior red raider.  Next year, middle school ball!  They raiders got a win and he got some playing time.  His friends have been so supportive and kept him so busy this week that I think we have kept him pretty distracted.  

We spent the rest of the weekend at the hospital.  Please keep your family in your thoughts and prayers.  

Covid week 2023 edition

Being stuck in a room all day and night gives you way too much time to reflect.  Sometimes I get stuck in rumination and I can't seem to switch back to reflection.  I am working on this in therapy, but I have a long way to go.  Life can be soo good till it isn't.  I am horrible about jumping to worse case scenario. It's my super power really.  Let's take this week day by day like I use to when I was training for big races because honestly I need to write every day so I don't lose my ever loving mind. Enjoy some random memes because there probably won't be a ton of photos taken this week.

Monday:  Day 4 of this crap if you don't have a Day 0 like the current Covid protocol likes to have.  Why not just call it Day 1 and make quarantine 11 days instead of 10?  Why do we waffle on when the start of this mess actually starts?  I was sick on Friday night, bam, day 0 should be deemed that day if that is the system we are using right?  I digress.  After several days of fever and not being able to breath through my nose, my hubby was able to get me some real deal turn in your driver's license to prove you aren't making meth sudafed that knocked this mess slowly out.  Still running fever however, still coughing.  After multiple nights of little to no sleep, I had hoped for something, anything.  I put vicks on my feet (home remedy?  Wives tale?) and socks.  I took the musinex which seemed to be keeping the cough a little under control.  I took Advil since *trigger warning if you are a male reading this blog* my monthly friend came early and was being a vicious bitch.  Can you say three pairs of period panties super absorbent in ONE FREAKING DAY?  I can.  It's like my body is saying, hold my beer dear, let's pour more onto this fire.  By sleepy time I actually could breath out of my nose without squeaking and snorting, but damn it,  I was WIDE AWAKE!  Apparently a side effect of Sudafed is sleeplessness.  WHY!  I doubled down on my CBD and finally, after a few hours of laying there praying for sleep and talking to friends on Marco Polo, drifted off.  I think I slept till around 4 am when I started coughing, but was able to still get a little bit more until I had to get up and get kiddo ready for school.

Tuesday:  Woke up feeling a little refreshed.  It's amazing what continuous sleep can do for you.  I re read all of my old blogs about having this the first go around and it looked like I was down for the count for 3 days total and then a week or so to totally get over it all.  This is about in line with how I am feeling now.  Still not great, but much improved.  Got my kid's Covid test going, got his backpack ready, and got him dropped off at weights.  Still negative on his Covid test, praise the LORD!

Wednesday: Woke up feeling like a truck had hit me.  Let me back up.  Previously Mucinex was my go to for the cough and sudafed for the head cold.  The sudafed still is working and keeping my head unclogged, but the other just quit working.  It's hard to sleep when you are coughing your head off all night long.  Again, I know it's an old wives tale, but vicks on the feet did nothing.  I know I got some sleep here and there, but not much.  I certainly had plenty of things to do to keep myself awake like help my electricians get billing done.  I swear I am NEVER going to be able to walk away from Coleman Electric, even if I get 10 jobs on top of the main job I have.   

Thursday:  Did not want to wake up LOL.  I was sleeping so good and so hard that I think I could have slept all day.  Decided to see if going Sudafed free might be a good thing.  I was tired of everything tasting horrible and being hungry, but not being able to eat.  I figured it was related to Sudafed but not totally sure.  It was.  I was able to enjoy food again.  

Friday: Back to work day!  I decided to take meds to get through the day without snot and coughing.  There were only 3 of us left at work and boy did we have a ton to do.  I am glad I didn't decide to stay home one more day.  We got lots cleaned, washed, put up, and taken care of.  I was glad to be back in my lab and back into the groove for next week's experiments, even if I was thoroughly exhausted at the end of the day.

Saturday: Last home football game for the JR Raiders.  I tested just for fun and i was negative as well as Andrew.   Our stadium is huge so I knew tony and I could sit away from others and be mask free.  Previously, we had beat this team pretty handily, but I had heard they were much improved this year which means no playing time for my kiddo.  As I predicted, the game was close and he ended his home games as a raider with no playing time.  Sigh.  He was very sad about it but again, the best I could do was remind him that he had worked hard all year and that is what is is about.  My heart breaks for him, this has been a very tough year for him, with lots of realization about where he was athletically.  In previous years, he didn't care as much but this year he wants to play, he wants to be in.  

Sunday: I thought I was good to go and spent a night out having fun with friends at Dueling Pianos.  Woke up feeling very horrible, puking my guts up all day and not being able to move.  I spent a whole day on the couch feeling the worst I have felt in years.  At least there was football on tv all day.  Watched several really good games.

And there you go, for the record how Covid round 2 went for me.  We are both battling extreme fatigue and Tony's entire shop now has Covid which will hurt our pocket book.  

Travel week plus NOT AGAIN!

I was so excited to have a travel week at work.  Until I got Covid.  Sigh.  At least it was at the end of the trip?  Let's dive in.

I did get two runs in before my trip and before I got sick.  It's now super cold in the morning, but also super humid.  I am running in long sleeves and shorts and I am so freaking happy.  This is seriously my favorite time of year to run, before the winter wind starts howling over the prairie.  

We also got some football pictures done for his banner for the last home game of his 6th grade year.  I wanted to make something that he could hang in his room to remind him of how far he has come and the photographer (one of his teammate's sister) knocked it out of the park.  I love these so much!  I picked this one for his banner, but he picked this one.  I guess if he likes it then I will like it.  

The rest of my week was spent traveling for my job.  My boss is taking each of us in the lab on her business trips so we get to see the other aspects of our job.  My turn was up for the trip to Madison WI where we have our bacteria coated.  While I can't really talk about what we did since it is all under wraps and proprietary, I will just share the fun we had.  My boss is about 10ish years younger than me and very brilliant in her field, and we have a lot in common in our love for science and bugs/animals.  

This was flying into Madison.  First flight was a puddle jumper and scared the hell out of me.  Second flight was much better and a bigger plane.  

The first night we found a little local bar right down the road from our hotel and had a couple of beers.  I had a Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewing and a Lakefront Pumpkin beer from Lakefront Brewing.  We also had cheese curds and some really yummy burgers.  The next night we just had a favorite of both of ours right by our hotel, Texas Roadhouse.  Can you believe she has never eaten the rolls?  Have you had the rolls?  We both had yummy steaks and good beer.  I have been so blessed that my last two bosses (not counting my hubby of course) were amazing strong women who lift others up and also are interested in personal growth of their employees.  

Since the experiments we had set to do Thursday and Friday did not go our way, we had a freeish day on Friday.  Our flight was out much later in the day, so we chose to sleep in, do some touring of the city and campus, and have one nice last lunch.  Plus, we had to find something fun to take home to our kiddos.  The rain made touring difficult but we saw not only the capital building, but also a large chunk of the campus.  Their campus is HUGE and super spread out.  I don't think I could make it as a student at such a large college.

Everyone recommended this brewery The Great Dane Pub and Brewing Company, and we just happened to be over by it by accident. We stopped in to have food and one little beer before heading to the airport.  I figured maybe chilling out my flying anxiety with one beer might be a good thing.  This was the Good Dog IPA and it was really delicious.

We got to the airport in plenty of time and I started oddly enough feeling achy.  Like super achy in my hands and neck, which is usually an ominous sign.  Of course I don't travel with a thermometer so I had no way to check my temp.  I knew when we were getting ready to land that I had had a fever as I started sweating buckets and it wasn't due to being nervous.   We had to sprint to catch our next flight in Dallas and literally made it there as they were closing the doors.  The flight was a little bumpy when we landed but other than that, I had a row all to myself and enjoyed my book I got at the airport on the way to Dallas.  I honestly just thought I maybe had the flu since one of our co workers had been diagnosed with the flu and I had been around her a lot this way.  The next day when I woke up with a much higher fever, I decided to take a Covid test.

Of course my HR department had a requirement to get a test done at a clinic or hospital so I drug my very sick self to a local walk in clinic.  After waiting for HOURS to get the results on a "rapid" test, I finally left and got a call a few hours later that I was indeed Covid positive and Flu negative.  Let's just say I will never go to the wamego walk in clinic ever again.  It's bad when the nurse asks you how to do a flu test.  Sigh.  At the point of publishing this I am fever free but completely congested and tired of being stuck in my bedroom.  It's times like this I wish I had TV in here for sure.  Oh well, I've been wanting to catch up on reading books and my UltraRunning magazine right?  

Have a great week y'all and pray I can break out by next Thursday!

I did it FINALLY!

It's funny that I would run out of things to say or blog about about the time I had more than 3 people reading my blog.  I use to write a paragraph a day because it brings me so much joy to write, but here lately, I am just so tired that writing has fallen to the way side as well as my running for that matter.

This meme accurately describes my life.  While this is my most favorite time of the year, the pace of things just about kills me.   We have several weekends of football Friday night, junior raider football Saturday morning, activities Saturday afternoon/night (KSU football sometimes), and Sunday racing.  Stick a fork in me!  Plus, I am still trying to work one day a week ONLY at Coleman Electric, my hubby's business that I worked for for five years as he still hasn't gone back to doing my job, which was his job first. I would love to just work one job but hey, having an extra 10 hour a week paycheck isn't the worst thing ever.  Just keeping my energy up to do all.the.things. is the worst thing ever.  I tried to reframe and say I am super blessed to have not one, but two very well paying jobs right?

I did get three runs in this week including a longish run.  The weather shifted to more fall like temperatures and I couldn't be more happy.  I am such a cold weather running person, plus the dogs LOVE the cooler weather.  As football and racing wind down, I can feel myself coming back to life with regards to training for something.  With us not having a league championship to defend, I just might get my wish at a race.   Time will tell.  I do miss racing so much!

Football was a mess this weekend and since there is where I air my sadness, here goes.  I am very grateful to all of the volunteer coaches.  Some of them have really put a lot of time and effort into my very not athletic son and for that I am very happy and will always be in their debt for that.  They could have given up on him a long time ago and they haven't so there is that.  Here is my big but.   I have watched him have really crappy practices where it was obvious he wasn't trying or he was scared.  This week he has worked his ass off and had major improvement.  I was hoping since the kid he backs up on red defense (second string defense) was out for the week that he would get an increase in playing time.  This was not the case and I was mad and sad.  Instead a newer kid, a kid that started this year got put in his position and he and one other kid got stuck on 3rd string on the nights they worked plays.  So he is getting very little practice time which means when he does get in to play on game time, often times he is clueless or makes mistakes.  I am not going to argue that he has any ounce of athletic talent and that some if not all of these kids do , but he is working his ass off for nothing.   I am seeing it and he is starting to see it.   I don't know how much longer I can keep him showing up.  We were up 20 something to 8 and the starters were still in till almost the 4th quarter.  If he gets no in game reps, he will never get better.  He maybe got 3 snaps, had a bunch of kids trample him when he got pushed down, and didn't go back in.  I heard the coach ask if he wanted to go back in and he never answered but that would have been maybe 2 or 3 more snaps total before the end of the game.  I was super upset for him and probably said some things I shouldn't have in frustration to him and around him.  I know I shouldn't but I did and I regret it.  I am not a perfect mom and I should have just walked away, had a good cry, and then went on with my day but I reacted in frustration.  I know many wonder why we leave him in football while he still is so behind athletically but we all feel like it's in there and it will come out some day.  He actually now loves football, will watch it with us, and asks lots of questions now where in previous years he has not.  I really feel like when puberty hits, he will change and I could be totally wrong but I hope I am not.  

 

We also did have some fun this weekend with Oztoberfest.  Our little town is Oz crazy and this use to be a three day event.  Now it's down to a one day event but still special.  We had great food, bought awesome home made stuff, and listened to bands and watched performances.  Till next October Wamego!

Have a great week y'all!  I am heading to Wisconsin for a business meeting, we have the last home game for the high school football, and we have another game for the junior raiders.  Yes, we are football crazy here!

Two weeks???

Sorry for being MIA.  This time of year is so busy for me and add in working 2 jobs and being a board member and you have major time loss.  I'm also having some computer issues in which any picture I download from icloud comes as a zip file (if anyone can help, please send me a message at redaussie3@gmail.com).  This is a new thing and makes me have to open each zip file, save the photo as something else and then upload to my computer.  It's a pain in the butt.  Here are some bullet points from the last couple of weeks:

• Had a 3 run week, had a two run week
• Summer returned the second week and gave us temps near 100 yet again
• Andrew had two football games, one win at home and his first tackle and one loss at Junction City that was ugly, as we knew it would be
• Mom came to celebrate her birthday with me and my MIL Donna came too. In a span of a weekend we had a homecoming high school game, a KSU game, a junior raider game, and a race.
• regular therapy=so much clarity.  My therapist and I have totally clicked and I love the journey we are on together.  So many light bulb moments.  
• Had our annual Need for Speed fundraiser for our track

Have a great week y'all!