And the home of the......CHIEFS!

What a week!  While my anxiety was still playing in an endless loop in the back ground, we had overall a great week.  I guess I am just high functioning at this state.

We started out by going to Monday night football at Arrowhead Stadium.  While Neyland Stadium is larger and in my opinion louder, it was a ton of fun.  I had put out a plea on FB to find someone to ride with because the whole parking situation sounded like a nightmare.  I am so very glad that the Marions that use to live here in our area contacted me and said come on over and ride with us!  I would have seriously been in tears getting into the stadium and parking.  It seriously is the worst I have ever seen getting into and out of any big event I have ever been to.  We got a small taste of it years ago going to the Billy Joel concert at the K, which is next door.  It was so bad we almost didn't even see the beginning of the concert, but luckily he went on a little late so we didn't miss.  Talk about no direction or crowd control.  However, once we got in, it was easy to get around and get what you needed.  Plus, they had a gift shop right by our entrance to our seats so SCORE!  New hats and a clear bag for me, little tiny football players for Andrew and a magnet for our fridge.  The score didn't end of being what we wanted at all, but we had fun, slept at our friend's house for the night, and drove home the next day on 4ish hours of sleep.  Enjoy a bunch of photos taken in the rain with my phone not in order because iphotos has lost it's ever loving mind.

Kelce touchdown!

Chris Jones Sack!

My man, Jason Kelce.  Love him!

First time walking out and seeing an NFL game.  He just stopped and was in awe!

Jason Kelce warming up.

Glad to have the video boards because we were so short we couldn't see the entire game!  People stand up for four hours straight.  That is dedication!  Let me tell you I was sore from standing all night on that concrete.

ESPN Monday night football crew!

Coin toss with the captains!

Getting soaked but still loving it!  Little red's poncho ripped pretty badly walking over so I had to give up mine.  I think i was cold and wet for days after I got SO wet!

Chris Jones!  My favorite defensive player.  If I was sure he was going to stay with the Chiefs for longer I would totally buy his jersey.  I think he had 4 or 5 sacks just this game.

Warming up and drying off for a minute.  New hat, who dis?

Patrick tried so hard to get us the win.   No one could catch and or hold on to the ball.  It must be very disappointing for him but he is a true team player.   This has been a weird year and I hope they can resolve the issues and get back out there and be better than ever. 

Get that SACK!

My man :)  Love him.  Everyone loves Travis and not going to lie, he's a cutie, but give me a man with some substance.  Give me a thic boi.  

I honestly can't thank Chris, Evan, and Landa enough.  They drove us to the game and navigated the horrible down town traffic, got us to the parking lot and parked after a long slow wait, and then got us home post game after sitting in one spot for almost an hour not moving. You would think a professional sports organization would have their shiz to together to get people in and out of the game, but nope.  That's okay, if the weather, the loss, and the parking were the only bad parts, I will take it.  Little red got his first NFL game and got to see some amazing players play their hearts out.   Plus, during commercial breaks they dance and get silly and it's so fun to watch.  You think of them as robots but they are real people and they like to have fun too. 

It was also my birthday this week too!  Tuesday, my actual birthday day,  I worked all day on 4 hours of sleep and a ton of caffeine  It was totally worth it!

Came home to roses, beautiful flowers, and a card from Andrew that melted my heart.  Plus, Tony cooked me a simple but wonderful dinner of beef tips and gravy over mashed potatoes with my most fav veggie, asparagus.  YUM!  AND to top that off, my co worker knowing that I love peppermint made me a peppermint cheesecake.  I feel so loved.

Thanksgiving day/weekend was all about eating and resting.  I am not good at slowing down and just enjoying the moment, so my goal lately has been to just do that.  Tony and I worked hard together, him cooking and my cleaning.   We had an amazing dinner and we only did four loads of dishes that day LOL!  While we had said we were going to scale back this year, I don't really think he did.  The food was amazing, we froze half of everything and had two days of good food before tapping out.

Running was really good this week.  I did two threes and an 8.5 because the snow made everything yucky in town and I am not a fan of falling.  I had tony come and pick me up so I didn't have to risk running on slick, slushy roads.  I LOVE running in the snow so timed my run so that we got the beginning of the snow storm.    

Have a great week y'all!  I am bummed to go back to a full week of work with no celebrating but here we go!

I'm ready

I never am totally sure about how to get my words out, so how about some word vomit?  Ew right?  It's hard to believe I have been blogging for years and years now every week and how this blog gives me a tiny bit of sanity every week when I write it.  Words get stuck and jumbled in my head, and it's a relief some days to get them out read them out loud and then leave them and walk away.  

Here lately anxiety has been my queen.  She has ruled over my every waking moment and I moving back into fight, flight, or freeze, which I just felt like I had successfully moved away from.  Just this week I was having panic attacks so bad that when I went for my morning run, I had a panic attack during my run because I couldn't even remember what day it was and what experiment I was doing.  Funny, it calms down when I am at work and allows me to work but I feel it creeping in there as well, slowly.  I am feeling like medical intervention may be necessary to give me some peace and some sleep.  I am pretty sure I am losing what little bit of hair I have due to stress.  Yet I am not sure how to get away from it?  How do you successfully compartmentalize the daily stresses and live a normal life?

 

 Sometimes, well most of the times I wish our small business would just fold.  Yes, we had stress prior to having this business, but nothing like now.  I want to go back to that kind of stress please.  I know that we could both make good money because even if my hubby is not the greatest at running a small business, he is a great electrician and now that he is on the road to being 100 percent healthy, I know he could do amazing things.  I know that closing something down that you have put your heart and soul into is never easy, but I am ready. I am ready for the stigma, the talk, the probably court for him to file bankruptcy to get out of the debt. I am ready for the bank to take all of our assets, even our house if necessary.  I am ready to be done.  I am ready to just live my life and not worry about who is quitting, who is stealing from us, who is writing down 8 hours and not working 8 hours, who do we owe money to and who is not paying us for whatever reason.  I am ready to not to have to work my main job, come home and then head to a second job.  I am ready to not to have to fight the bank every month to fund us one more month.  I am done. For those of you who keep your small businesses going for years and years and years, I am in awe.  We are on year 7 and each year gets worse, not better.  I know for me, I am not cut out for this roller coaster and I want off so that I keep any shred of mental capacity I have left.  

Sorry to be such a bummer.  I actually jumped the gun and wrote last week about what was happening this week because of course, anxiety.  We had our check up with the brain surgeon on Tuesday and all was good.  I posted the MRI in last week's blog and it was a doozy.  Here is again just in case you didn't see it.  

I really don't know how he was functioning with this in his head.  When he would say his head felt like it was going to explode he wasn't kidding.  We are so amazingly lucky that he didn't have a stroke.  He is enjoying being headache and staple free now and back to wearing hats and working as much as he can in a day.  His biggest complaint is fatigue from doing too much.  He was released to do short drives but he is driving all over the place no matter what right now.  We are slowly navigating through this to his new normal.  He has gotten back to cooking a lot which is fun to see and even helping me clean.  He's been doing laundry and some remodeling of the house by adding can lights in areas that previously were super dark and had no lights.  We finally got rid of our old treadmill and are thinking about options to replace. I am leaning towards a peloton mainly because I think that would be better for Tony and the plethora of classes would keep everything super interesting.  I don't think he will ever be a runner and I feel like walking on a mill with no tv or anything to look at would not be fun for him.  Plus, I have secretly wanted one for years as I love to bike and I know through other bloggers that there are some super simple and quick classes you can take for strength and stretching that are awesome and have a big impact.  I need to get back to strength and re ignite my love for lifting and maybe that would be the key.

I will end on running. I got three runs in this week, two 3 mile runs and one 8 mile run.  I talked to my mommy the whole time I was running my long run and it made the time fly by.  This seriously is my favorite time of the year for getting my runs done and makes me really want to figure out something to train for.  Joy to the Run starts in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to see what they have up their sleeve this year.  They made speedwork fun for me again and that is hard to do!  Plus, I have the Girls on the Run 5K coming up in a few weekends.  

I post this last because well Facebook reads my mind and then posts all of these recommended for you memes.  All of the ones I posted today in the blog have come up on my FB feed this week, but this one was the best.  Someone once told me that you truly know who your friends are when the worst hits and you are at the lowest of lows.  I have had SO many amazing people including my mom of course come out and support me and support Tony.  I will never be able to thank them enough or give back to the universe what they have given to us in this time period.  From the calls, texts, messages, cards, visits, to just the simple I am thinking about you, we have been so blessed and lucky to have so many great people/families in our lives.  

Have a great week y'all! I am going to try with every ounce of my being! 

A new normal?

Brain tumor update:  Thought i would start with this.  If you don't recall or are just reading this, my hubby who had had some pretty bad headaches finally got sent to the ER and then had brain surgery to rid his brain of a baseball sized tumor.  He first had to stay in the hospital several days pre surgery to take massive doses of steroids, but then had brain surgery and was discharged 3 days later.  I am amazed you can have your skull cut into, your brain exposed, a giant tumor removed, and then be home 3 days later.  We had our first follow up with our GP just for a check in and everything looks good.  He is progressing nicely to complete recovery and should be back to no restrictions next week.  Holy moly batman, everything is moving so fast, but I am happy.  There has been a lot of reflecting and should of could of would of.  Lots of plans made for the future.  Lots of shuffling at work.  Lots of priority shifting.  I hope it isn't too little too late kind of deal.  I am also ready for the roids to be out of his system.  He has been redecorating/moving stuff around/adding can lights to every room of our house and up all night not sleeping.  The GP said it could take up to 10 days post taking the last pill.  

Running update:  Got three runs in and even a longish run!  I love this time a year for running!  I feel like I am floating on air when it's cold out.  Plus, the bird of prey are very active when it's cold outside and I can play is that an eagle or what is that?  I am contemplating races and goals and what my schedule can handle and what it can't.  While part of me wants to commit to something, the other part of me is very grateful to be able to run whenever I can and NOT follow a schedule. I am doing the Another Mother Runner Joy to the run again this year which includes work outs, yoga, and running.  I have had fun doing this the last few years and look forward to doing it again.  

We also had our end of year racing banquet.  While this year starting out exciting and fun, the middle and end were horrible and no good, and I am not sure how to feel about the totality of the season.  I find huge fault in our side (meaning Tony and I, not Andrew), but also have grace because we are trying to work multiple jobs and keep all of the plates spinning and in the air and we did the best we could.  We practiced maybe 2 times total all season, had very little time to devote to the cars, and of course was dealing with Tony's constant debilitating headaches caused by his tumor.  So what do you do?  I honestly two years ago wanted to walk away, but we keep coming back because maybe things will change.  Will they?   We are going to give it one more go next year.  We loved traveling and would love to do that more.  We have a great group now at the track that we have fun with.  Andrew ended up 6th out of 9th which is better than his usual last place.  He also came in second out of three in animal, a class we may not do next year due to low participation.  Time will tell and we are not making any decisions today, tomorrow, or the next day for that matter.  

Have a great week y'all!

The week of the tumor

The week started off with me having a crazy calm come over me.  If you don't know why I am so stressed, go check out my blog post before this one.  In a nut shell, upon an eye exam we were sent to the ER in Wamego and then onto the ER in Topeka Kansas for immediate brain surgery.  We ended up having to wait on the surgery as they tried to get some of the swelling down with massive doses of steroids.  I am going to break this down day by day, so I can read back on this nightmare when we are on the other side.

Monday:  I had to work which was a good thing.  Staying busy keeps my mind from wandering and I had lots to do at work to keep me busy.  We also got a call that our football family had something for us.  Upon arriving at his defensive coach's house, we were given a huge basket filled with gift cards, snacks, cards, and goodies to keep Tony busy post surgery.  We are so blessed by our wonderful community for lifting us up in prayer and for taking over for Andrew and me. 

 

Tuesday: Surgery day.  Up at 4 am to head to Topeka to be there before they wheeled him out for anesthesia.  We joked that he was going to be Harry Potter for Halloween with his surgeon's initials looking like Harry's scar.   They were very good about giving us updates throughout the process of pre op and keeping us calm.  We got to stay with him till they rolled him back to be put under.  The surgeon came in and we talked briefly about the plan.  He was very optimistic this would be doable with complete recovery.   Tony was in surgery for about 4 hours and in recovery for about 2 hours before we could see him.  I let his mom go in first and then I went in second.  He looked amazing for just having brain surgery!  He was in and out of grogginess, but he had no deficits when it came to neurological functions and he could talk and answer questions.  

Wednesday:  Came to the hospital in the morning to see Tony up and eating!!!!  I was so shocked.  The doctor had warned us that he would be out of it for a day or two.  He was awake, talking, and eating like no big deal.  He got his drain out, his arterial line out, and his picu line out all in one day and at that one day post surgery!  He also got moved to a regular room, so we could all be there.  

Thursday: Lots of PT, lots of walking, lots of more steps to get to come home.  Being back in a regular room means a ton less interruptions.  The moms took over so I could focus on working my science job. I am out of PTO until I earn more.  

Friday:  GO HOME DAY!  I am still very blown away that we could leave the hospital this quickly, but also very thankful.  At the point of writing this, he is still having much confusion and having some memory issues and swelling on his face, but he is mobile and on his way to recovery!  

Saturday/Sunday: Lots of eating, lots of walking, lots of working for me and lots of love from all over.  He is so excited to get to the other side of life minus that huge tumor.  He is going back over all of the things he has done lately and thinking, hmmm, was that the tumor that made me do that?  We also got out a few times and did some walking and went over to A and H farms to spend a couple of hours enjoying the sunshine and awesome fall temps.  

A couple of pictures to end.  This has been one very crazy and quick journey.  Our community has been so amazing doing a gift card shower for us.  We got a variety of cards with money, gift cards, snack boxes, chips, and so much love and prayers sent our way.  So many prayers and positive thoughts sent our way and we could feel every single one.  I have never had that kind of calm come over me like I did during all of this.  Our racing and football family have really stepped up and our community as a whole have taken care of us immensely, even taking care of my mom this week as well.  

This is a picture of a third of the tumor and those are my hands holding it.  It's a meningioma and it's non cancerous.  We are so very lucky that it is what it is even if it is huge.  His brain will have a period of time of healing and getting back to it's normal size minus that huge depression.  He is home and motoring around but still has some issues with memory loss and confusion.  They say that is all to be expected.  

I will never be able to thank everyone enough for what they have done for our family.  We have felt so much love over the last two weeks of this nightmare.  I am not sure how long the moms will be here but just having them here has allowed me to be able to focus so much more and not worry about every little thing.  I will never be able to repay them.  

Have a great week y'all!  I did get three runs in by the skin of my teeth.  I could have gotten four ,but chose to watch Chiefs football instead and just spend the day with family.  

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!