Well, we're back. It required 9.5 hours to drive from the airport home, due to a blizzard. Usually, it's about 3.

We're all quite tired still, and we forgot a small suitcase of goodies at the hotel, which I'm still trying to track down.

I'm still working on details of the trip, and I'm too tired to hit into them right now.

I just wanted to wish everyone a wonderful and spectacular New Year.

Well, it wasn't asthma, it was bronchitis kicking in hard. I'm on antibiotics and while there's improvement, there's also the total agony of coughing up lung chunkage. My whole back feels like someone ran over it with a bulldozer. On top of which, we had to have the entire house spiffed up for an appraisal for the refinance we've decided to do on Monday. So bronchitis diagnosis on Saturday -- appraisal on Monday. Insomniac on Tuesday...Okay...super freaking early Wednesday.

I've pretty well said "fuck it" to getting anything further done toward Christmas. I have revised what I am doing for Genny's princess dress for Disney World and she could care less, but I'm somewhat perturbed. I did find at JCPenney outlet a dress that would go with the Santa cape for $13.

I'm just depressed. I have all of this stuff towards xmas boxes done that I can't begin to do before Christmas. So, I'm sending out New Year's presents. I'm celebrating Christmas on New Year's Eve. When I get home on the 30th, I will make up my presents, finish my mailings and do it then.

I can't sleep because I can't breathe, so my Christmas wish is a small one -- 8 -10 hours of sleep.

*sigh*

On top of all of this shit, Mike's raise was essentially nonexistent. He didn't do the spifftacular job they'd come to expect and raises were substantially nailed because they had to pay the shareholders their dividends. I'm angry, worried, and just generally pissed.

With the refinance, however, we'll be okay.

Ultimately, we'll be okay. I keep trying to get past being angry and just give it to God, but I'm being familiarly human and failing at it, so far.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Peace on earth and in your neck of the woods.

I'm not entirely sure why, but my asthma is kicked up. I did some manual labor today, but nothing is blooming, so there's nothing that should be making me icky, yet, I am. I just poured bags of rocks next to the garage in a place that is usually the weedy corner of the building. I sprayed round-up, put down black plastic, and then poured about 10 bags of rocks out there. They weren't even dusty or nuffin.

I've been doing that high tight cough thing and it hurts. I don't want to go on steroids again, but it's pretty bad and I'm not sure what would be best to do. I guess I'll be calling the doctor to determine that or making a quick run to the emergency room.

*sigh*

I've started up my sewing again -- halfway through the xmas blanket for my bro and his wife, starting to put together the pieces of the princess dress for Ms. Thang.

We have all the shelves done, just drying and Mike is insistent that we must have a certain bracket in order to put up the shelves, despite the fact that I bought it for him and now, it's disappeared. Tomorrow at the butt crack o' dawn, ostensibly, I'll be making a run at Home Depot, which is actually a thinly veiled excuse to go to Starbucks.

So tired.

The appraisal is on Monday at 11AM. Unfortunately, the guy that was supposed to come and do our garage door never called or showed, so we're going to have to get some help to get the damned garage door fixed. We're going to try calling Gorden and Dan and see if they can help just close the darned thing. I don't care if it works, I just care that it is closed when the appraiser pulls up.

Now, the doctor call. Ain't we got fun.

We're going to refinance the house. We hadn't really planned it, but we went to get a holiday loan to pay for Orlando, and the woman involved was trying to refinance our house for us. Only her rate really blew, so we thanked her for her time and looked at each other with disbelief. I was thinking, wow, I should think out bills paid every month was a good thing! So, I called my accountant and asked him for advice -- what should we do? Is it worth it to refinance, should we get an equity loan, or what? He gave us the name of a friend.

The guy can refinance our house at a boomin' rate -- a full percentage point lower than what we were paying and only one point! The other gal was offering us 2 percentage points higher and 4 points! When I heard our credit rating, I realized I was being had by the holiday loan person and was soooo mad.

We are trying to get the house appraised for a very high amount, obviously. We think that if we can clean it up nicely, it'll appraise for more. I spoke to our old realtor and she sent me some comparative stuff for the area, and I think we're going to have to work our tails off. We'd been concentrating on shelves in the bedroom, but I think we ought to concentrate on redoing the kitchen cupboards. I need to talk it over with Mike. The fact that we have had the oven's innards completely updated and revamped and updated the stove top with a glasstop jenn aire are to our credit. However, the other stuff, we're not so sure of.

We're going to toss a coat of paint in the kids' bathroom, reorganize the livingroom, by putting stuff on shelves in the bedroom. I stained a decorative shelf for our bedroom, too, to put over the computer desk to hold the printer, fax machine, printing paper, and cd's.

Ideally, we should sand down the kitchen cupboards and restain them and put cute little pepper knobs on them. Not gonna happen this weekend, is my guess. I can dream though.

I'm still not right. I am going without prednisone for the first time in a week because I'm exhausted and hosed physically and I need my energy. My hope is that I can still breathe and that going without the prednisone will make me less wiped out.

Right now, I'm lucky if I can stay awake for a couple hours before I want to go back to bed.

I feel old and frail and it frightens me a bit.

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In other news, we're working on refinancing the house, so we can finish the garage and convert it into more living space. What's nice about doing that is that we could essentially pull all the computer and office crap out of the bedrooms and put them out in the garage.

We're still talking about exactly what we want to do, but I think when we get all done, it'll be really beautiful.

This is my bi-annual whine o' sickness. I hate diabetes and I hate asthma and I hate my body for having both.

Every danged cold I get, I get a bronchial infection and asthma and I have to take freakin' prednisone and then inject insulin and it happens EVERY STUPID year at the holidays, so I have to be super careful at a time when I'd rather not be so careful. I resent making sugar-free cranberry sauce and some stupid sugar free pie thing that only I will eat. I hate having foods around that I have to warn the kids out of. I want to eat something naughty and not have to be an food plan angel. I would also appreciate not having fingers calloused from poking them for blood samples and a belly covered in injection site bruises. I also would like to not widen up like a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. I swear, I inflate over the holidays at an exponential rate due to the annual holiday ingestion of prednisone and I spend all of January walking it off.

I like fruitcake, mincemeat, and all kinds of bad things. (I know you read fruitcake and said,'Well, you are what you eat, you know.')

I've been struggling and it really sucks. I am sick of being sick. The kids were peeved at me because in lieu of french fries, I made them eat broccoli when we went out tonight. But they've been sick, too, and I'm sick of everyone being sick. I figure any way to get vitamins into them is good. (Although, Russell's been angling for me to go to Costco and buy the gummi vitamins and I haven't had time) Mike's sick, too, and he NEVER gets sick. It's just been a sickening time, ya know?

Thankfully, I am not working while I'm this sick. The gal I was replacing at the counseling center decided that she wanted to work full-time not part-time and my job ended. I asked the temp agency for something after the new year that used my computer skills and was for a non-profit. I said I have the business acumen for profit ventures, but no desire to use it. I will NOT turn to the dark side.

Yesterday, I got up, had perfect sugars and then promptly turned around and went back to bed after 4 hours to sleep for two more. Of course, now I'm here at this hour posting because my body clock is completely thwacked.

I want to go off prednisone, but my doctor said that if I can't get off it and insulin, that going to Orlando would be a bad thing. Somehow, I can't imagine that 80 degrees is a bad thing. I just can't. And I have a one piece, so no one will see my bruised belly, though the large whiteness should be frightening enough.

Mike asked me, jokingly, to ask him anything about the future. I said more seriously than I meant,"Will they find a cure for diabetes, so I don't have to die from this fucking disease?" He said,"That is uncertain." I said,"You sound like an 8-ball." He says,"Yeah, but I was accurate, huh?" I groused and grumbled.

I guess I feel behind the 8 ball, lately.

Thus, endeth my whine o' sickness until March-April.