Merry Christmas, two days late

I didn't get a chance to get on Monday to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I ended up having a reaction to food on Christmas morning and a worse one Christmas night, and have spent the last two days pretty miserable. I am getting better, and we're seeing that I am having relatively short (as in under a week) recovery times to non-gluten reactions. That's quite a blessing, and is a good sign that I'm starting to recover. This round has left me with no bone pain, so we assume that it wasn't dairy or gluten. Problem is, we can't figure out what it could be. We're suspecting corn, but that only explains one of the two reactions that day, at breakfast. The other one was purely out of the blue, 7 hours after a meal that only consisted of a roast, potatoes and carrots, salt, pepper, and some garlic. It makes no sense, and is very frustrating. I haven't reacted to other cuts of beef from that same cow, and I don't see how the potatoes or carrots could have been an issue unless I'm developing an allergy to veggies now, too.

I'm very much looking forward to the new year and getting past the first anniversary of loosing the twins in January. 2006 has been a very difficult year and I'm more than ready to see it over with and try to move on to better days ahead. The isolation and depression from what I've been through has been crushing at times, plus dealing with all of the anniversaries we're trying to get past right now. It's been almost six months since I've been able to get out of the house and do much of anything. I feel like I'm in a holding pattern, and I'm sick of it. I've only made one church service since July 4, and seen few people in the last two months outside of my parents and the two men who work with Jeff on the biofuel (they're outside all day in the backyard with dad) and last Sunday when we had to ask the church to send help for a few hours after an exposure when I was going to be alone with the kids. However, I do realize that with the the holidays, most people are busy and it's easy to forget someone when you don't see them.

My goal in life right now is to reach the point where I can take care of my husband, my kids, myself and my house all the time. Right now, I recover to the point where I can play catch-up from being sick, get caught up, might go as long as a week fairy caught up with the house but exhausted and struggling and unable to drive or go anywhere, then I get sick again. My parents have been the fall-back plan for so long with this, but they're out of town right now, leaving me alone with the kids all day. I need to hit the point to where I can get the house caught up and get some meals in the freezer so I can have that to fall back on on bad days. As it stands now, I don't have pre-cooked meals in the freezer I can fall back on, and that would be a huge blessing to have right now, on days where I have the kids alone all day and mom and dad are gone or sick themselves.

I always need more sleep than normal after an exposure to help my body heal the damage that was done, plus I spend a fair amount of time on the couch during the day resting between chores. Food, especially protein, is critical to helping my body heal from the exposures. At times like this, adequate and nutritious food and clean clothes becomes the priority and housework takes a back seat for a few days. The dust and strewn toys will still be there when I'm back on my feet. :-)

As of Dec 31, Jeff becomes a contractor with CE group and his hours there drop to 25 a week, plus he'll work for other companies as he can find engineering work to do or classes to teach. We now begin our big push on the biofuel business. So he'll be going to Raleigh on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and will be between here and Warsaw and all over the place for meetings the rest of the week. So the good news is that he might be more available if I get exposed but he's still going to be horribly busy. Starting your own business is never easy or loaded with free-time, and is full of stress. We long ago hit the point where all he eats, sleeps, and breathes is biofuel.