The Gathering of the Clan

Thanksgiving '07 was the first gathering of the clan in nearly 6 years! I did not give birth to all of the people in this photo, so perhaps I should introduce you. Left to right: Alex 22, his friend Jon, Adam 14, Danica 12, Josh 17, granddaughter Alyssa 11, her mother Raygen, grandson Quentin, David 26, Tegan 19, Yummy Boy Randy, Me, Stephan 24, Mia 4, Trevor 28, Sarah holding Aidan 3 months and Jason 31. There ya go. Yowza!

I'm back!

Uhh... did you miss me? Forgive me reader for it has been 6 and a half months since I've blogged. Let's bring you up to speed then I'll drop a spiffy 'nuther blog with current photo of the gathering of the clan... the first in 6 years.

So anywho... back to catching up the last several months: After consistently losing energy over the course of several months I crashed and burned big time in June. I won't get into the gory and I mean gory details but will just say that I ended up in the hospital. The lovely nurses gave me knock out drugs and proceeded to put 2 units of blood and one of water in me over several hours. I didn't mind. I had nowhere pressing to be.

It's amazing how long it can take to walk across a parking lot when you have no energy. It's amazing how high stairs are and how heavy purses are and how daunting little things like grocery shopping and filling gas tanks are. I worked from home for weeks when I could and life came to a screeching halt.

Well, mostly a screeching halt. The non-screeching part was meeting a yummy boy, hereafter to be called 'Yummy Boy'. Now I don't know what you think of when you think of a yummy boy, but what I used to think of as yummy is not what I think of now. If you have seen me on stage chatting of why I don't date older men, you will be surprised when you see pix of Yummy Boy.

On stage I speak of the gruesomeness of men as they age. Getting beer bellies, not taking care of hygene... hair thinning on top, sprouting out of unexpected places like noses, ears and shirt collars. Unattractive. And the solution seems to be to grow the thinning hair long and sport a scullet.

Yeah well, you'll have to check out Yummy Boy cuz, uh, hmph, well, he has long curly silver hair and I do mean long. Wierd. I know. I like him anywho.

It's his cheesy grin that got my attention in the first place and he took his sweet time emailing, texting and talking via cel phone, seriously months, before we met in person. By then it was too late for me to be picky about hair and what beer does to bellies, cuz I like him alot and meeting him didn't stop that, as it generally had previously in my dating unacceptable men nightmare. Actually, the previous dating singleness seems so long ago. This man has changed my life. Yeah. More later.

Oh, and we're still working on getting back to prime health. Thanks to Tawn Lee, my acupuncturist who gave me the wake up call. When I was so ill I couldn't leave my house, she came to me to work on me. After checking me, she looked me in the eyes and said, 'You have to have energy for acupuncture to work and you have none. You need to see a medical doctor.'

The next day I saw Dr Heather Sojourner and highly recommend her. She jumped right on things, blood tests, prescriptions the hospital visit, sent me to Dr. Jane Bowman, OBGYN. Between them they saved my life, quite literally. The point of the story is, as much as I have researched health, nutrition and the best ways of getting and staying healthy outside of the medical field, I had no idea how quickly the endocrine system can fail. I had no idea how quickly hormones can get out of whack, causing a domino effect of destruction. A blood test can tell you where you stand. And in case you think it just happens to women, my doctors said this is happening to men and women all over the valley due to stress. Pass the word. This wasn't and isn't fun. But I'm still here.