Batter My Heart

"Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."

--John Donne

Phooey.

That about sums up today.

Icky, Sicky, Yicky...

Okay, yicky isn't a word, but I needed something that rhymed. Yep, all of us are going through a stomach bug; Emily was first on Friday with a low fever and lots of gross diapers, then me Saturday evening/all night, and Jonathan today. So no church, and no small group this week, which was horribly disappointing. Lots of sleeping, though, which is wonderful!

But man, I haven't been that sick in ages - we're talking before I was pregnant with Emily, probably when we were living in North Carolina two years ago. You know that I'm-so-sick-I-want-to-sleep-on-the-bathroom-floor type of sick? Yep, you guessed it. Awwwwful.

So glad I'm on the other end of it - I have a full day tomorrow with work. It should be a good sales day, but with a staff meeting thrown into the middle of the day, it makes me have to run all over town. And since we didn't go into town today, we have to do our weekly shopping trip tomorrow after I get off work, so a late night for us! But hopefully, I'll get back up to blogging regularly again - it's just been a stressful couple of weeks.

How Do You Keep Them From Getting Older?

Cheerios.

Sippy Cups.

*sigh*

My little girl is growing up! We're now 7 months and counting...

Long Time No Post...

Holy cow! Has it really been almost two weeks since I've done a post? Good grief - what have I been doing?

Well work, I guess, mostly. That's a big one.

Using most of my time at home to spend with Jonathan and Emily. That's an even higher priority.

We're getting more involved in our church, too, and have joined a Bible study/small group. That takes more time out of my week, too, but both Jonathan and I are truly enjoying it, and yes, it's been good for a marriage, too. Probably a good thing, because it's a marriage enrichment study! :-D

But the news for the day - SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so none of it stuck, but it was beautiful for about four hours. Dirt cold, though - we never did get about freezing. I ended up not working, though - I dislike having to do a commute with people who don't know anything about driving on ice.

Emily enjoyed her day, though, so I'll leave you with a picture of her, in a butterfly outfit from her aunt and cousin:

Healthy Lasagna

Okay, I tried a new recipe the other night, a twist on my traditional Italian lasagna. Usually, I go all out - 5 different cheese, all whole milk, homemade sauce, lots of noodles, etc.

Really can't do that with us on our diets.

So I tried a twist on it; instead of my homemade sauce with all the stuff added in, including some red wine, I used a Classico sauce (low sugar in it), part-skim ricotta cheese with a bit of light sour cream added, and turkey sausage (or ground meatless sausage). However, the biggest twist was the noodle substitute: cabbage.

Yep, you read it right. Cabbage. Not gobs and gobs of it, but separate leaves laid across the pan like you would regular lasagna noodles. As it cooks, the cabbage just soaks up the juices of the dish, and you would never know - the texture is actually pretty similar.

Just food for thought for you! :-)

Back in the Grind

Not necessary speaking of the coffee grind, though I did drink more of that than I usually do. Nope, I was back to work yesterday, finally. I've only worked 3 days in the past two weeks due to the holidays, Emily's viral infection, and Jonathan's eye injury.

I don't know if Jonathan was too thrilled that I went back to work (he at least had mixed feelings) - taking care of Emily while still getting over his eye injury can be a bit challenging for him. Thankfully, Jonathan's mom is coming into town next week to help out and that will be a huge blessing. Yet, money needs to be made to cover the new medical bills, as well as pay our current bills, so high ho, high ho, it's back to work I go.

In general, yesterday good day. I spent five hours in our information kiosk at Walmart and enjoyed the conversation and the leads. However, I got preached to, twice. Don't get me wrong - I'm a Christian and all about sharing my faith, but oh my goodness! It was soooo offensive, even to me. If I already didn't have my faith and beliefs, I would not look at Christianity after my run-ins today. It's so sad to me that Christians are often the reason than Christianity often leaves such a bad taste in other people's months. Makes one think about how I appear to others.

Anyway, it was a good start to what looks like a good week; I'm enjoying working as an agent now, which I've been doing since "the divorce", as we've started calling the takeover that led to the creation of a new company, which I now work for. The hours can be a bit longer sometimes, but the growth is great, so I can't complain. Never thought my background in linguistics and Bible translation would give me the aptitude for insurance and sales! :-)

But speaking of work, I've got a 9:00 AM appointment, so I must go.

Have a great day, y'all!

The Journey

As I've posted here before, and as many of you well know, struggling with my weight has been more than a decade-long journey. Add my recent pregnancy, and I'm the highest I've ever been.

Ugh.

Truth be told, I hate dieting. I hate starving myself and being so hungry I'm nauseous. But I need something, anything; a program to help guide and motivate me. That's why when I discovered Atkins a year-and-a-half ago, I loved it. And the weight came off. 35 pounds in four months. Then I got pregnant and gained 45. I've only lost half of that baby weight.

But Jonathan does Weight Watchers and loves it. Hmm.... problem there. The principles of Atkins and Weight Watchers don't exactly mesh, so that means cooking two dinners for us.

I hate that.

In addition, I hate counting points. I hate counting calories. I hate counting carbs. I'm too stinkin' busy for it.

So I started doing research and I've found one that I can use, but still cook a supper that works for both of us. Low-fat and calorie for Jonathan, lower carb for me. Hello, South Beach!! And so far, so good - it's been a week, and we're both truly enjoying it, and I'll be posting more about that later.

To help track our weight-loss progress, Jonathan has created a new blog called "The Journey" for the two of us that you are welcome to visit it at http://jdrogers.blogspot.com/. Please leave comments and encouragement - losing the amount of weight we both need to lose takes a long time and a lot of commitment. But we didn't put it on overnight, so it won't come off overnight, so please continue to follow with us!

She's Coming For Me

Everyone knows that babies are cute.

Cuddly.

Cheek pinch-able.

Little toes to nibble on and play "This Little Piggy".

Absolutely Adorable.

Now don't get me wrong, my Emily is all of those. Except for in the mornings. Not first thing in the morning, mind you, but those last three minutes before I walk out of the door, and then it is watch out!

The ugly spit-up monster morphs my little girl into an infant version of the pea-green soup head-spinning character from the Exorcist. Spews. Everywhere. And this new infant of mine is especially attracted to my suit jackets; you know, the ones that have to be dry-cleaned?

Am I the only mommy who gets dressed in her last 30 seconds at home and does not put on her suit jacket until she's at the car?

Recovery

Sorry for the delay, but here's the update on Jonathan. If you didn't know he needed an updated posted, well, here is what has been going on!

For a quick recap, Jonathan developed a large abrasion on the cornea of his left eye on Wednesday. We saw our local eye doctor for treatment, but had to go back Thursday when his pain became more severe. He immediately sent us up to MCG Hospital in Augusta for Jonathan to see a specialist, as his cornea had become ulcerated and infected. After most of the day there, and a painful outpatient procedure to clean the infection out of his eye, we came home for the night, but have continued to spend at least half our days there since.

Today, though, Jonathan saw a cornea specialist and surgeon, as the healing of his cornea was becoming a concern, first due to the size of the tear and that the beginning healing was not lying down smoothly against his eye, and secondly, the potential scar tissue that would come as it healed. We know now that he has recurrent erosion syndrome with his cornea and this most recent abrasion was not the first, thus there were several layers of tissue on his cornea. So this afternoon he had another surgery to completely remove all the tissue on the surface on his eye, most of which was already damaged, so the cornea has a "clean slate" to heal onto, as well as some work done on his tear duct to help keep his eye moist during this healing process. He has a bandage contact he has to wear for the next three months as his eye completely heals and as it does, we should see an improvement in his vision. Thankfully, they don't foresee any lasting damage to his eyesight, as the abrasion and infection did not go deeper than the surface of his eye and they've removed the layers of badly and partially healed cells that would cause the scar tissue.

So where does this put us now? Our most pressing concern is still infection, but that should greatly diminish over the next 48 hours, and pain management, but we have that under control for now. Jonathan seems to respond very well to Percocet, maybe a little too well! ;-) So our weekend is one of rest for him, and then Monday morning, we have a post-op appointment scheduled and we're hoping to see a huge improvement then.

I'll continue to post updates as I have them. It's been a long couple of weeks for us with Emily's virual infection and RSV scare, death in the family, and now this, so please know we are deeply appreciative of your continued thoughts and prayers.