When Energy Levels Matter

 

Well, it's been a while since my birthday!  Seems like yesterday.

I met up with my favorite cousin Julie at the Zombie Burger!!

Oh my goodness, the fun talks we had!  It's so great to talk to someone without having to avoid certain topics and who gets me on every level of life!  I love that chick!

Afterwards, we thrifted a little and LOOK what I found!  Magnetic tiles for a road for only $5!  I sent Jen a pic and she said GET IT!  THAT'S A $50 toy!

No worries, it was already in my cart!

Got home and was playing with Aggie on it when Jen got home from work.

Um Val...  you should have saved that as a gift for Aggie's upcoming birthday! It's on her birthday wish list!

whoops.  Guess who's spoiled in MY household right now?...

but it was only $5!

:) Here she's taking care of her babies.  We sit on the porch with them a little every day and she fusses over them while trying to wrap them in a blanket and feed them. 

Then they fall on their heads on the floor.

Here's the banana tree I brought back from my Kentucky sister's house a year ago this past spring!  Isn't it lovely?!  They're not indigenous around Kentucky either, but Tammy has several pots of them on her deck, pulling them in each winter.  I'm going to try to keep that up with this one. So far so good!

Within the last couple weeks, I invested in a smart watch. It had been a while since I'd had one and the prices were a LOT lower than what I had been expecting. This one is amazing.  Besides counting my steps, it keeps track of a ton of different things.  The phone app even will keep track of my calorie intake each day.

Well, was I in for a surprise on Monday!  I had a horrible night that night, waking up half way into sleep in order to be sick for a while.  I was so miserable from several hours awake feeling icky,l that I slept in until 6!

Can you imagine?!!!

So I was sick and NO energy.  I sat on the deck with some bone broth for breakfast for over an hour before trying to start work.  Mostly lethargic.  A co-worker knew I was wanting to go take a nap but I had things that had to get done.

At 11am, my watch suddenly buzzed and said, "Your energy level is draining too fast!  You need to take a break and rest!"

Whoa.  Who are YOU to tell me what to do!?

My watch.

So I took a break and slept most of the afternoon.  Uggh.  I WAS drained. How did my watch know?!

Here's the graph from the app from when I went to bed around 7pm that night.

as opposed to my energy levels yesterday when I got a 1.5 mile walk in yesterday morning!

I guess I WAS sick, but seeing my energy all spelled out and what walks do for recovery is amazing!

So I walked again today and before work, besides the walk, I'd taken the garbage out, cleaned out the van, moved a bunch of framed stuff up to my new office and pulled some weeds!

On Tuesday even, just moving the frames would have zapped all my energy!  So I'm feeling so much better now!

Ok, so I spent the last two days working from Meri's house so that the excavation people could get into Meri's basement easily.  They didn't even come Wednesday but I was so busy with work, that I spent the entire day there anyway, working from her dining room table.

Here was my view.  We were keeping her cats in the living room so if the guys showed up, the cats wouldn't get lost under the house with the basement door open.

Reedus was roaming free with me in the dining room.  

Back to the yard issue.  The water line between Meri's house and the street hookup had corroded beyond repair and flooded her yard.  It was basically lake front property with a big water bill.  Her basement sump pump was running NON-stop and at one point couldn't keep up with 2 inches of water touching her furnace.  And the sidewalk was flooded.

Thanks be to God for other situations that made this a doable fix and His timing is always best.

They finally arrived to finish the job yesterday and her yard now looks like a missile testing site.

In that spot where the puddle is, later became a gaping hole and then buried again a few hours later.

Currently the rider mower would get lost or high centered in any of the peaks and valleys that is her yard, but they're coming back today to level it out a bit more. whew!  

It will be nice when things calm down.

Then at the local farmers market, Jen, Aggie and I went to last night. The food truck had this on their menu for a few minutes!  Yikes!  The food truck gal was scared to death of it but didn't know what it was.  It's roughly 2 inches long!

So I took the pic and did a google pic search. It's a Cicada killer wasp!

Sheesh!  I wouldn't want to be in a dark alley with that scary thing!

Oh and I need to enter some stuff in the fair a week from tomorrow.  I've started about 5 projects and don't have ANYTHING ready.  I might just enter one of the jackets I made for Matthew, but who knows what my energy level will be this next week!

Cousins! Favorite Cousins!

I met up for lunch with my favorite-est cousin in the world, Julie!!

We've done Zombie Burger twice now or was it 3?   It's a little farther for her to drive to it, but she loves it too.

We spent a two hour lunch talking about everything under the sun.

I'm so glad I have this chick in my life!!

This was us last year.

She brings back ALL the wonderful memories!  We were hoping to do this every 6 months but January and life got in the way, so it's been a whole year.  We're going to remedy that!

Friday's Foibles

This was a good weekend.  Friday night, Leon and I headed to Des Moines where the wedding was going to be held.  We made it to the rehearsal in time but the bride, groom and pastor were late.  Whew!  It's good to not be the last ones there!  So Leon goofed off with his cousin

 

Here is Amanda and the dress.  It turned out ok, but the chiffon over dress was too big...  She cinched it up with the belt and went with it.  After wondering why it draped down on the sides, I realized that I'd sewn the back panels backwards.  The side seams of the back became the center seam of the back...  I hoped people would think it was a design feature!  The fitted dress actually worked though!  After two fittings, each with a different girl of different sizes too.  May miracles never cease?!

 

Leon walked down the aisle slowly carrying his little pillow and when he got to the end of the aisle, he jumped up on the nave (alter area) like he was a super hero.  In fact I think he yelled something heroic.  

Go stand with your cousin!!!  

I was thinking that it was going to take either Ritalin for him or Prozac for me to get through the actual wedding...  Turns out it took a bribe.  But I'll get into that tomorrow.

Unfortunately the bride's twin/maid of honor was late as well. She was in a car accident and her tire was taken out as well as a lot of scraping on one side of her car  She was fine.  But their dad went to get it towed and bring her back.  For a while, Amanda thought her new father-in-law would walk her down the aisle for the rehearsal, but just when the back doors of the church opened, it was HER dad standing with her.  *queue clapping & cheering*

After several failed attempts to get Leon to do the aisle right, we gave up and went to the rehearsal dinner.

Leon played dinosaurs vs Transformers with one of the musicians and they had a ball.  

His cousin, Josh, was feeling pretty stupid that he didn't opt to sit closer to us, because being an 18 year old boy, he liked dinosaurs too...  

After leaving the dinner that night, I realized that I'd forgotten the dress so I could enter it in the fair on Saturday.  I made a few cell phone calls and finally got through to the bride's sister.  Got lost in downtown Des Moines looking for the hotel.  Leon kept saying THERE IT IS!  But he was wrong.  After asking some homeless guys, we found it.  Met them there and got the dress.  Leon was OUT by that time.

 

We got home pretty late, but not too late to see Maddy and Matthew who had just arrived for the week.  

More tomorrow.  Life is getting in the way...

Whirlwind Rectangle Tour

Ok.  SO, you go to Paris, France!   

* sorry - too much Steve Martin's Wild & Crazy Guy on my itunes...*

Sunday, immediately after church, the girls, Leon and I took off for my home town, almost straight West of us to attend my nephew's graduation party.  A three hour drive.  A three hour drive.  Everyone took naps, except me of course.  I was driving.  I woke up Meri half way there to work on her memory work for confirmation, next weekend already!

YIKES!!!  I only have 5 days to get that dress done!!!!  Good bye lunches!

We saw relatives galore at the party and Leon mostly enjoyed playing in the dirt and play house rather than the SpongeBob bouncy house.  

He saw it as we drove up and kept yelling Bappy House!  

But when we actually got to the Bappy House, he must have had a flashback of THIS TIME and decided to play in the dirt and the play house.

 

He was filthy when we left...

and he just DIDN'T understand what a tire swing was for...  So he put toys in it.

 

The graduate and my dad.  Jordan hopes to become a police officer!

My aunt and uncle visiting with my mom.

 

Maddy and Meri giving me their "uni-brow" obligatory photo.  Reason = unknown.

We couldn't stay TOO long at the party, as we had another party to go to directly South of here about an hour or so.  I was relegated to the back seat while Maddy took the wheel.  

I even got a few minutes of shut eye!  Leon got more than a few.

The next party was for my favorite cousin Julie's, son.  And I didn't even get a single photo of him!!!  I hadn't told her I was planning on coming, just in case our plans changed.  They had a little because Robb found out at the last minute that he couldn't go along with us, but I wanted to see Jules.

We stepped into their house and were greeted by the graduate, then meandered into the kitchen where she was sitting at the table with her sisters and friends.  She was in the middle of a sentence, saw me, looked away, looked back and suddenly no words would come out of her mouth.  Well, at least nothing that made sense.  She almost tripped over someone to get to me and squeezed the air right out of me for a solid 3 minutes!!  All I could do was hug her back and hold back tears as I laughed.  Because Julie is deaf and wouldn't hear me if I'd said anything anyway unless she was looking right at me and reading my lips.

As kids, we were inseparable when the families got together.  And per usual, when we needed to say good bye, the farewells lasted a solid 45 minutes amidst hugs, tears and laughter.  JUST like old times!

But we FINALLY left their house and headed home, much later than we had anticipated.  But I should have known...  And it was 3.25 hours home from there.  We came straight east, then north, making almost a perfect rectangle or parallelogram if you want to be more precise, making it home right on the nose at 11pm.

I need approximately 3 more days to recover.  Is that possible?