Pain in the neck.
Literally.
I haven’t been around much lately and part of the reason is because I have a pain in the neck. For those of you who know him, no, it’s NOT my husband (he’s a pain somewhere else).
I decided to mention my neck issues here in case any of you reading this have had the same problem and can tell me your story. I’m one of those people who researches things to death and can never have too much information at hand.
I’ve been dealing with neck pain for almost a year now. I actually fell while playing the Wii with my daughter. Yes, the Wii can be hazardous to your health! Actually, it was my fault because I was running in place and it’s not required, I just couldn’t help it, and I slipped and fell and landed flat on my back and hit the back of my head on the floor. Niiiice. My head hurt for a while, but it was a bit later that I started having terrible neck pain in the back of my neck. I haven’t had much support from my doctor and finally got sent to physical therapy in October after what was I think my 5th visit to him for the pain. It was my physical therapist who finally got the doctor to order an MRI, and it turns out I have some degenerative disks in my cervical spine (neck) but also I have a bone spur pressing onto the thecal sac (it’s what surrounds your spinal cord) and that’s causing a lot of pain 24/7 and also causing spinal canal stenosis (narrowing). It equals to a big pain in my neck that never goes away. I’ll be going to see an orthopedist or a neurosurgeon soon, but I really would love to hear from other people who have had this same problem. It’s technically called a cervical disk spur at the C5-6 region of my neck. I’d love to hear how other people have been treated for this. It’s been very difficult and emotional to be in pain all the time; it’s emotionally draining to say the least.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to complain too loudly because I know it could be WORSE so I’m grinning and bearing it! Leave me a comment or click on the link to contact me and send me an e-mail privately if you don’t want to tell your story in the comment section.
Anybody?
Filed under Life | Comment (0)Sunday Shutterbugs once more.
It’s Monday, which means Edie and I posted up our photos on the Sunday Shutterbugs blog. The theme this week was HOLIDAY, which should be pretty easy for you all to link your own photos to because you “might” have taken a holiday photo or 2 in the last few days, perhaps? 
Go to the blog at www.sundayshutterbugs.blogspot.com and play along!
Filed under Photography | Comment (1)It’s Monday again.
And that means Edie and I posted our photos on the Sunday Shutterbugs blog last night. Our theme this week is GLOW. Come share your photos with us too! Go here.
Filed under Photography | Comment (0)Pet Photo Contest.
The Pets Jubilee group is having a pet photo contest on their blog that ends on Monday. You can head over there and upload a photo of your pet with their favorite gift, giving a gift, or even just a holiday photo. There are some cute entries already! Go check them out even if you don’t want to enter a photo. The blog is here.
Filed under Life | Comment (0)Fallen Soldier.
The flags in my little town were at half mast today. Beneath each of the town’s Christmas decorations on the poles lining the streets a flag had been placed to honor a soldier who lived in my county in a town 10 miles away who was killed in Afghanistan. He was flown home to his family, and the procession drove past my house.
I thought about how that could be any one our families. Thought about how that could be MY family, as my nephew prepares to graduate from the Army basic training next week. My worst fear is that he will soon go overseas also.
Watching those cars go by brought tears to my eyes. That soldier was a young man. I didn’t know him, but I am GRATEFUL to him and I am heartbroken for his family, for his wife, for his young children left at home without their daddy.
May he rest in peace.
Sunday Shutterbugs again.
Monday went past me and I forgot to remind you all to head over to the Sunday Shutterbugs blog and check out our photos (and link to YOURS of course!). This weeks’ theme is HEART. Go here.
Filed under Photography | Comment (0)She’s Gone.
Woman’s best friend.
This old girl of mine saw me through 15 years of my life. She was beside me through some tough times and some good ones. Poverty. Divorce. Moving and having to get used to a new house (5 times). Getting married again. Having a baby. Adopting cats that she was scared of (she was a bit of a wuss in her old age).
I drove 2-1/2 hours on Christmas Eve 15 years ago to the breeder’s house to pick up my new puppy. I had desired a miniature dachschund for some time and had scrimped and saved and finally had enough to buy her. She was my Christmas present to myself that year. She was only 4 weeks old when I got her, and she literally fit into the palm of my hand, just a bit bigger than a newborn kitten. It’s impossible to hold a precious puppy that small and not fall deeply madly in love with her.
When she was younger, she would follow us all over the house. If you went to the bathroom, she wanted to come in too and sit there by your feet until you were done. If you wanted some privacy and shut the door behind you and didn’t let her in, she’d just sit outside the door in the hallway and wait for you to come back out!
My husband still talks about the time years ago that he was sitting in the living room in a chair watching television and had a sandwich in his hand. He was leaning forward sort of, knees bent, and had his hand dangling down between his knees when suddenly she raced up to him, grabbed the sandwich from his hand before he knew what to do, and ran away to eat it!
She brought me so much joy. I will miss my girl for the rest of my life…
Filed under Life | Comments (2)A special mini book.
Remember my cousin Natalie? Back in May of this year, she was on death’s doorstep. She was in a drug-induced coma and on life support for about a month, hanging on for dear life, and during that time the doctors told our family not to expect her to make it. Every day and every week that passed, they were amazed that she was still hanging on. The girl has got a fighting spirit, that’s for sure. Today, other than having pneumonia twice since, she says she feels just like she did before, like she never got sick at all. But back in those dark days when we all prayed for her recovery, tons of people left her messages on the CarePages website that her aunt set up for her through the hospital. People she loved, her family, her friends, total strangers reached out to her and talked to her through those messages, typed up good wishes and prayers for her. And her aunt updated it every single day with Natalie’s status, any tiny bit of improvement, and kept us all informed. Natalie, of course, doesn’t remember those days, and I wanted her to have a record of that outpouring of love and support. I wanted her to see and feel that she is LOVED and never forget it. I wanted her to know how close she was to no longer being on this earth and appreciate every day that she has. I wanted to give her something that she could show her future daughter someday and tell her the story about how her mommy is a walking MIRACLE and show her the goodness and kindness of people, even total strangers, who wrote her messages.
So I took all of those messages from that website and all the updates her aunt posted on there every day and I copied and pasted for DAYS, putting those into a Word document and then sizing them down to 5×7 and printing them out on my printer. It was rough, people. I screwed it up the first time, realized I had put the messages in the wrong order, had to throw it away and print them all over again. It nearly brought me to tears! But I made it through and used my Bind-It-All machine to punch holes in all the pages. The book ended up being 3 inches thick. I called several printing places to see about having it spiral bound, and nobody had a spiral that large. At this point I just had to laugh because it couldn’t get any worse with this project. I ended up splitting the book into TWO books, which meant that I then had to make covers for the second book. In an ideal world, I would have used the same paper and made them matchy-matchy, but I do not live in an ideal world (I live in crazyland), so I just MADE IT WORK. ha ha
Anyway, and now here I am sharing with you these wonderful books. I hope that Natalie reads them and cherishes them and lets them remind her how lucky she is and how loved she is.
(inside front cover in photo above). This is where I was cursing Zip Dry paper glue or whatever the hell it’s called. I keep hearing how fabulous this glue is and I must just say here that I HATE it.
I have this problem where I am just physically incapable of making a mini book without tying something, some little trinket, SOMEthing to the spine of it, so I dug this out of a drawer and I think it’s perfect!
That first page is where I put the very first entry that Natalie’s aunt put on the website, which is the story of how she got to the hospital in the first place, how she was sick with what they thought was the flu and the doctors at the clinic sent her home, how a few days later she went to the ER and was again sent home, how she then developed a fever and wound up in the hospital in ICU, how she crashed and nearly died, was put on life support and flown to the next hospital, and how the doctors there said she was in very grave condition. I really wanted that page to stand out because it’s the beginning of the story and really speaks to how serious Natalie’s condition was (and shows how far she has come now), so I printed it onto a transparency and then painted the back of the transparency hot pink. It gives the page a different feel than the rest of the pages.
Here’s the second book that isn’t matchy-matchy but I almost like it better than the first one anyway, so I’m good with it.
This is an old book page given to my by my friend Abby. I’ve been holding onto it for the perfect project, and I found it. The words are a rub-on.
It KILLED me that I couldn’t find anything appropriate in my stash to tie onto the spine of the second book! But I called it done and sent it on its way.
Those jewels I used are self-adhesive and my new favorite thing EVER. They are Basic Grey Bling-It. I LOVE these.
This project was my first time using a mask, and on both the book covers (front and back) I used the Heidi Swapp butterfly mini masks, having no idea what I was doing. But I think I did a pretty good job and I’m pleased with how they look and can’t wait to use them again on something else!
Does anyone know how long these masks last? I’d love it if you’d leave me a comment if you have any idea.
Filed under Projects | Comments (4)Photography challenge
I belong to a great website called I Heart Faces. It’s for people who love photography and are photographers or want to be photographers. Lots of info there, and I always love to learn more stuff about taking photos. Anyway, they have a challenge every week and for the first time I’m going to take a second to join in on that. Usually the challenge is to show your photo with a FACE in it (hence the name of the website), but this week is all about the tooshie and you’re supposed to show a photo with a tooshie in it!
As it turns out, I recently took engagement photos and one of my favorites was of the happy couple walking away from me. So here’s my entry for the challenge!
The Special Tree.
Once upon a time when Summer was 4 years old, almost 5, she got the idea into her head somehow to decorate one of the giant trees in our backyard. She came in and gathered up necklaces and bracelets and such. She talked her daddy into hammering some nails into the tree, and she hung things on it. Then she named it her special tree. It was so much fun to watch her choose her jewelry and hang it on there JUST SO, very precisely. She had such a great imagination back then and still does and I hope she always will! I took photos, of course, and here’s the layout I recently made with them. (Click them to see larger)
This page uses my all-time favorite American Crafts thickers letters, the blue glitter LAX font. Love these!
I outlined lots of the flowers on the paper with Stickles (love!). I cut out flowers from the leftover I wasn’t using (being an 8.5×11 scrapper I ALWAYS have leftover!) and stuck those on there with pop dots for a nice raised effect.
I used coordinating colors of Stickles, green on the green parts of the fower, red on the red parts of the flower, and diamond on the white parts of the flower. You get the idea.
This is one of the chipboard trees made by Creek Bank Creations. It comes brown/natural, but I inked it up with Colorbox fluid chalk then added Stickles and jewels to it.
It’s little everyday moments like this that I like to put into my scrapbooks, moments that I’ll never remember 20 years from now, moments that show my daughter’s personality at one of my favorite ages of her life so far. THIS is why I scrapbook.
Filed under Scrapbook Layouts | Comment (0)
