Thursday, December 28, 2006

Marathon Goals

Well, the doc gave me the go ahead to do some VERY light jogging/powerwalking. So I'll start that on Tuesday and hopefully build back up fast, as he allows.
Jo is pushing to set the goal for a 4:30 finish in the Green Bay Marathon this year....that's 26 minutes faster than last year. So, I need to get very serious about my training this season. Drop ten pounds, add one workout a week to what I did last year, and add actual speed workouts. It all starts (slowly) on Tuesday. Feel free to hold me accountable. Please do.

Monday, December 25, 2006

All I Want For Christmas Is Some Cold Medicine..Some Cold Medicine...All I Want For Christmas is Some Cold Medicine...

All four of us have colds...sore throats, earaches, boogers. Other than that Libby and Amelia had a nice Christmas. The girls had a lot of fun with their new toys and Libby really got into the Santa thing. Here are a few photos







Friday, December 22, 2006

Special Day for the Girls and Their Christmas Portraits

Yesterday I took lots of pain meds and hired a driver (my mother) and took the girls out for a special day. I picked up Libby at noon and took her to the salon.

When I came home from my hair appointment the day before with deeper red hair and announced that Libby had an appointment the next day for a special haircut she replied that she wanted pink hair. She said that I got red hair so she wanted pink hair. So, pink hair it was.

So, we went to the salon where "Sparkly Sara", as Libby calls her, pampered Libby like never before. There was bleaching and coloring and washing and cutting and styling and the word "princess" was heard several times.....
Next we picked up Amelia and came home. I tried to take their Christmas portraits, although it was not working the best. Amelia was tired and Libby was hopped up from the salon high and her Christmas party in the morning at daycare. I got a few of Libby and we headed off for the highlight of the day...Santa.
Libby was nervous. Amelia was downright freaked out.























After Santa we headed out for ice cream at Maggie Moo's and each girl ate an entire dish of strawberry ice cream by themselves.
Later in the evening after dinner and a bit of chilling out we tried again for some Christmas portraits. With Chris' help we got Amelia to sit still long enough to get a couple fun ones of her. The only way we got any of the girls together was to have them sitting on toys. Libby worked her new rockstar look and picked up her little guitar for some photos. Those are my favorites.













Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The Latest Update On My Schnoz

I know, I know...everyone out there (all three of you who read this) are dying to hear what's new with my nose. With my Nasal Septum Reconstruction.
The good news is that when my very sweet doctor (have I mentioned how much I adore him...thank God he hadn't retired before I had the surgery) removed the spllint he said the the bone is once again perfectly straight. Unfortunately, it is back to bare bone in my left nostril and I'm back to day one as far as healing goes. I have to be vigilant about not letting the girls anywhere near my face (which kills me because it means I can't kiss their beautiful little faces) or getting my nose bumped in any way. If it gets bumped even a little, it will be wrecked again. Same goes for any extra pressure (like blowing my nose or sneezing or anything).
Back to day one of healing. And that also means I'm nowhere near ready to start running again.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever EVER Have Sinus Surgery. For Real.

Consider yourself warned. Never have sinus surgery. Never let anyone you care about have sinus surgery. If someone you don't particularly care about mentions that they are having sinus surgery, tell them it's evil. And if your arch enemy plans to have sinus surgery.....well.....boy, this one is hard.....well, I guess you make that call on your own.

This has been a nightmare. I had a terrible doctor appt this morning. He looked in my nose and immediately asked if I'd been hit in the nose. I told him that the girls had bumped me a couple times, Libby got me once hard and square in the nose. "Why?" I asked, "it doesn't look bad, does it?" He replied, "it looks very bad" The part he'd cut apart and straightened was bent back sideways at about a 90 degree angle. He numbed it and shoved it back, then splinted it. No work until next week. I'm in agony again.

The Photography Site Is Up!!!

My Photography website is up and running and full of photos.
If you're interested, check it out! It is constantly changing, as I regularly add photos from all of my shoots.
www.SoulReflectionPhotography.com

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Christmas Photos

I was trying something with my camera last night and took some new photos of Chris, Libby, Chumley, and Holly......








Tuesday, December 12, 2006

$%#&*@##!!!!!!!

Oh for the love of Pete. Yesterday I went to my one week post operative appointment and it was horrid. He cleaned and suctioned (I say that he 'Dysoned me' because he used superior suction)and then.......get this......he said that my septum had moved back......so..... he. pushed. it. back. Have you ever given birth without an epidural? I have. My head spun around and green smoke came out of my ears. Well, this was like that. Except the smoke was purple because of all of my narcotic painkillers.

And now I feel the worst I have so far...eight days post surgery. That's just wrong, don't you think? My head and face are pounding, my nose hurts and is filled with gunk, and my eyes feel like they are sticking three inches out from my face. (have you ever seen that black woman who can pop her eyeballs out like a cartoon character? She was on Letterman doing it... well, that's how my eyes feel)

Oh joy. Gotta love sinus surgery and complications.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Add Insult To Injury

The pain in my face continued to worsen all day today, to the point of being unbearable. I am in worse shape, in general, than I'd been in in several days. I called the doc on call and explained all of the symptoms.
Now I have a post surgical sinus infection.
That's just grand.
More meds.

Friday, December 08, 2006

The Website is Almost Set!!

My photography site is about ready to go. I'm just waiting to load the photos. Check it out! Heck, bookmark it while you're at it!
Soul Reflection photography

Give it another few days and you'll have lots to look at. Today there is just a bunch to read (about my services, prices, bio, etc)

My nose hurts.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Splintless and Packless

Well, that was certainly a lot of fun.... having the packs and splints removed from my nose, that is. About as fun as waxing your eyelashes, I imagine.
Yeah, it hurt. Bad. The doctor is so sweet, he looked at me afterwards and asked if I was okay. I told him I didn't feel so good, and he said he could by tell by my sudden change in color, then laid my chair back and stroked my forehead, telling me to relax. I'm telling you, he is the nicest doctor ever. He's past retirement age, funny as all get out, and kind. Then he washed my sinues. Not so kind. That was murder. But then he asked me to breathe out of my nose. I was actually scared to, and it took me a minute to force myself to do it, but when I did it was like heaven. I've never breathed so well out of my nose in all of my life. He said that it will be like that all the time once everything is all healed up in a couple of months. That feeling was gone in a few minutes, but after he cleaned it all out it was amazing.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

My Extended, Two-Day Outpatient Surgery

I went in yesterday morning at 6:30 for what what supposed to be my quick outpatient sinus surgery. I expected to be home, in lots of pain, by noon. Unfortunately, it did not go as planned.
It started well, with me joking a lot with the doctor and anesthesia guy. I warned them that I've had troubles with anesthesia in the past. As a teenager they once could not get me to wake up from a surgery and there was a lot of dry heaving, and I had to give birth to Libby with my head lower than my feet (no help from Mr Gravity in that position, my friends) because my epidural kept making me pass out and take my blood pressure to about 10 over -8 :) They put a little patch behind my ear to prevent any post surgery nausea and wheeled me in. I got a nice cocktail in my IV from the funny anesthesia man and helped my doctor pull off a joke on the nurses. And then I was out.
The surgery went well. I'm told that I had a very large spur in there that was removed, he broke my nose and reconstructed it, and recected some thingies and scraped some dealies. He said that it was a mess in there.
I woke up in the recovery room only partially. I remember very little, but do have sporatic little snippets of memories from this time. I woke up to a violent flopping. My head was flopping back and forth from side to side, my legs were flopping all over the place. I vaguely remember asking someone to hold my head still for me, which the funny anesthesia man did. They ran out and grabbed Chris to ask him if this is something I do with my epilepsy, and he was pretty startled by what he was seeing, of course. My eyes were rolled back througout the flopping, although I was apparently talking throughout.
I guess I was having this sort of grand mal seizure looking thing for well over 15-20 minutes. Although the emergency EEG showed that I was having lots of my temporal lobe seizures that are normal to me, it showed that this flopping which was happening was not my epilepsy, but apparently a bad reaction to the anesthesia. There was talk of sending me to the ICU, but when I finally settled down, they decided to just admit me to a regular hospital room.
It was an extremely painful day and a half after that in the hospital, but the hospitalist took fabulous care of me, as did one nurse in particular.
I got home today at about 4pm and am still in tons of pain. I'm on oxycotin, percoset, and prescription ibuprofen...at the hospital is was morphine every hour or so.
I took a shower tonight after the girls went to bed, to try and get all of the glue out of my hair from the EEG and to wash three days of scum off of me. It did not go well. I was in hideous pain and then began shivering uncontrollably. Chris had to help me because all I could do was moan and cry. I guess a bath would have been a better idea.
I go in tomorrrow morning to get the packing and splints removed from inside my nose. I'm pretty scared about that...I can't imagine that it will be a pleasant feeling.

I came home to a huge hole in our screen on the sliding patio doors... by huge I mean the entire width of the door and about a foot high. There were some really big dog paw prints in the snow on the patio, and lots of paw prints and slobber on the inside of the window. It appears that some big dog came up and tried to get into our house to kick our dogs' asses. He has chunks of our screen laying all over outside. Chris followed the tracks and there were tons in our back door neighbor's back yard, but then they went off into the street. So, no way of knowing who's dog it was. This is at the house we are still just getting moved into. It's pretty freaky. What if it was Summer and the glass door was open? Our kids, our dogs.... We instantly made the decision to fence in the entire back yard.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Awesome Photo Session Today

Today I had the privilege of photographing a beautiful and LARGE family. They are all full of energy and spunk and are SO photogenic. I want to share just a few of them. In all there are two parents, six children, two dogs, and a bunny.









Wednesday, November 29, 2006

New Photos of the Children.....

We're about 75% moved in and the walls and murals are all painted and dry. We are beat. And Chris has is big day on Friday (snip snip snip) and I have my surgery on Tuesday. There is a *little* stress in the house.
Tonight I took photos of the girls for our Christmas/We Moved cards...here are some of them that I did not choose...







Friday, November 24, 2006

Nearly Done!!!

We are closing in on the completion of house painting. The walls are completely done and Kitty and I are a little over halfway finished with the mural work. I've painted clouds on Libby's ceiling (and on the master bathroom walls because Chris wanted to feel as though he was pooping in the heavens)...and butterflies on her walls. Amelia is getting very large fun sea creatures and bubbles. When we finish her room tomorrow we will move downstairs to paint the backdrops on my studio walls. That's it. Then I don't have to look at another paintbrush for a long while. Thank all that is good and holy.
Tomorrow the muscle comes in and moves the big stuff. The muscle being several of Chris' friends. Tonight is our last night sleeping in this house. Finally.
I'm going to finish my big orange blended drink and fall into bed.

Oh, and yesterday Jo, her sister Mo, and I went on our second annual Turkey Trot yesterday. Each year on Thanksgiving we get up very early and go for an outdoor run together. Yesterday was 5.6 miles in just under 56 minutes. It was a lot of fun. Mo booked me to do Christmas portraits of their family of six kids, two large dogs, one rabbit, and two parents.
Then today I was asked to do a portrait of a family of ten.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

SHWEW!!!

I finally had a moment to sit down and figure out why my new strobe/umbrella wasn't working with my camera. Oh my God I can't tell you how much better I feel now that I have it working right. The quality of my portraits is going to be a hundred times better with this new strobe, and I'm psyched. Next thing is to get the backdrops painted in my studio and get it all set up...but that doesn't happen until we're moved in and done painting.
Have I mentioned that our completion date for the move is now moved up to December 1??????????? December 1 is V-Day. (Chris' vasectomy) so he won't be able to move anything for a few days, and then my big sinus surgery is on the 5th. (for which I'm freaking out, by the way)
We're progressing on the painting. Libby's room is done (except for the clouds I'm painting on her ceiling) and looks awesome--blue sky ceiling and pretty spring green walls, master bathroom and bedroom are done--two different shades of denim blue, main bathroom is done--bright yellow, and the living room has a couple coats on of the beautiful and rich looking rust (rusty orange/red), but it's going to take a couple more coats to be done. After that it's just Amelia's room (blue, with big tropical fish painted on the walls (Chris' mom and I will do that this weekend) the kitchen/dining room, which happens to be the toughest room to paint. It will be a nice mellow light green.
Here are a couple shots of my little ladies from tonight when I was testing my new strobe.


Sesame Street, aka "The Big Date"

Okay, Sesame Street was FUN!!!! And our little lovebirds had a great day. Danielle, aka "Mommy Ethan" and I took Libby and Ethan to Starbucks for a little coffee (hot chocolate, but don't tell Libby...she loves her 'coffee'), then headed off to pick up their friend Esdon and his mother, our friend Jodi. Drove to Green Bay and found our way into the venue. Once the show started, the kids were completely enthralled...as were we :) At intermission we got Elmo balloons and after the show went to our big lunch at "Uncle Ronald's" (Libby's name for McDonalds). It was a wonderful date for the kids, and us moms had a lot of fun, too. It was a really nice break from painting for me :)
Afterwards, Danielle came over and helped Chris and I paint while Libby and Amelia tried out a new babysitter. Between coffee, tickets, balloons, popcorn, Uncle Ronalds, and a sitter it was a spendy day...but well worth it. Here are some photos.






Friday, November 17, 2006

Sesame Street Live

Tomorrow is a big day for Libby. She starts off by having 'coffee' at Starbucks with her boyfriend, Ethan. After some nice time at the coffee shop, we all pile into The Hornet (my yellow Vue) and head to Green Bay for Sesame Street Live. After the big show, it's all capped off with a nice lunch. Quite the date for a couple of pre-schoolers, ay? I'm pretty sure that I'm as excited as she is.

I have not had any time to play with my new strobe and umbrella to figure out why it's not working right. Every spare moment has been taken up by running (a very small amount) and painting in the new house. I have been showing all of my coworkers the colors that we're painting....by pointing out the colors on my hands. "the blue on my knuckles is in the master bathroom....the yellow on my fingernail is the other bathroom...." Actually, I could show people the colors tonight using the color swatch that is my forehead and hair.....

I have to get up and run early in the morning in order to get it in before the big date begins. Not what I want to do on a Saturday morning at six o'clock, but I am one run short this week, and all of them are very short runs as it is.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I'm being sent to Froedert in Milwaukee to get the full diagnostic treatment to figure out what is wrong with me. They haven't scheduled it yet, and I don't know how long I'll stay there. They are supposed to be excellent and hopefully they will be able to solve the medical mystery that is me. They are like the 'House' hospital of the dairy state.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

I Got My Strobe!!!

My strobe and umbrella came yesterday.....now I need to find out why my photos are not turning out when I use it. I'm guessing it's a setting that I'm missing. Hmmmm

Ran three miles at five this morning. ick.

Got the primer over the stencilling in the new house, wallpaper borders down, and the trim work painted in one bathroom last night....the new house work is underway!!! We need help with painting/moving/babysitting, if anyone's interested :) We have to be totally done and moved in by my surgery on Dec 5

Monday, November 13, 2006

Another Photo of Libby Was Chosen

....I hadn't submitted a photo of either kid since the hoopla of last time when Libby's entry got to the finals a few months back....and for some reason decided to submit one I took of her when she bumped her head and got an impressive goose egg on her forehead. With the tear and the bump and the sad eyes, I think it tells a story to which every parent can relate. Anyway, it was selected for the contest.
That means it's time to review this old post

And if you'd like to see it or vote, go to the BabyZone site choose the option to vote in the preschooler contest (scroll down a touch and there is a bright pink 'vote now' thingie and a dropdown menu to choose preschool contest) and there she is. Don't do it more than once a day or she's disqualified. Ends this coming Sunday,

We picked out paint for the new house and begin painting this week!
And I have my sinus surgery on Dec 5....so we have to be totally moved in by then. No, our house hasn't sold, but Merrill, the owner of the house we're buying, has been extremely generous and is letting us move in. He's totally out of the house, so as long as we pay the utilities/taxes/etc, we can move in early. Thank God. We're so anxious to have enough room for all of us and our stuff...and I cannot wait to have an actual studio!!!!!!

Another Photo of Libby Was Chosen

....I hadn't submitted a photo of either kid since the hoopla of last time when Libby's entry got to the finals a few months back....and for some reason decided to submit one I took of her when she bumped her head and got an impressive goose egg on her forehead. With the tear and the bump and the sad eyes, I think it tells a story to which every parent can relate. Anyway, it was selected for the contest.
That means it's time to review this old post:
http://runningbikergirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/regarding-my-photo-of-libby-in-contest.html

And if you'd like to see it or vote, go to http://www.babyzone.com/photocontest choose the option to vote in the preschooler contest and there she is. Don't do it more than once a day or she's disqualified. Ends this coming Sunday,

We picked out paint for the new house and begin painting this week!
And I have my sinus surgery on Dec 5....so we have to be totally moved in by then.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Two Portrait Sessions Today!

Today I did portraits of two of my favorite little people. Both are the sons of good friends of mine. I had a lot of fun running around the park with them and trying to pull smiles out of them.......
here are a few: