Why hello, diabetes

Well, not me, but my husband has diabetes.

We learned this about a week and a half ago. He has been experiencing some pretty serious fatigue in the past few months (sleeping 18 hours a day) and then started experiencing some pretty serious dry mouth symptoms. After a week of dry mouth, and peeing every hour from having to constantly drink to have enough wetness in his mouth to not go insane, he agreed to go to the doctor. Here is how it went

Doctor: You are stressed out and this is all in your head.
Us : Well, he's not really stressed right now. Are you sure there is nothing wrong or anything you can give him?
Doctor : No, it's just stress and there is nothing I can give. Well, here, take some anti-anxiety medication to help. It will go away on it's own.
Us : Will you at least run some bloodwork to test for thyroid or diabetes or if his hormones are off?
Doctor : Fine, but I'm 100% sure they will come back fine, because it's just stress.

30 minutes later we get a call from the doctor, telling us to come back in immediately. The blood test came back that Scott had a blood sugar of 650 and he needed to retest. Scott retested using a hand-held monitor and got a reading of 550.

Now for those who aren't in the know, a normal sugar reading is around 80 - 140. The doctor actually said that Scott would have gone into a diabetic coma if we had waited another few days. He was given an immediate shot of insulin and away we went. (You know, because it's just stress, and all in his head. Safe to say, we switched doctors)

It has now been about a week and a half, and he is doing much better. He is on 40 units of Lantis per day (a long lasting insulin) as well as taking about 4 units of Humalog (a fast acting insulin) with meals. It was a rough first few days, but now his sugars range from 80-150 and he is feeling a ton better.

Cleaning tips that work for me

Well, the great summer cleaning experiment has come to a close. I do feel like I made a ton of progress. The office is much better now and is actually usable and organized. The laundry room has been clean and efficient

ever since that first cleaning, and the house has been fairly clutter free. Here are some tips that worked for me.

1) Split up chores. I know, I know, this is not rocket science, but it was hard. My husband works insane hours and I always felt guilty asking him to do things, or would get frustrated when he would wait hours (or days) to do it.

So, I gave him one thing to do. I have grown to DETEST our kitchen. Between breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and dinner I am always cooking or cleaning in there, and it is driving me absolutely up the wall. Now my H is in charge of the kitchen and it is wonderful. I don't even mind cooking or cleaning now because he will do it 99% of the time, and waking up to a clean kitchen  really is a wonderful, wonderful thing

2) Split up the laundry. I don't mind doing the laundry, but the clothes never seem to make it into the drawers/closets. I started being really strict with myself about doing laundry every other day, and that helped immensely. It takes me a whole 5 minutes to put clothes away with that system, and I can easily do that while  Bug is playing in her room.
    I also bought more laundry baskets (for $2 a piece at Wal-Mart). Now there is a laundry basket in our room, in the bathroom (clothes go straight into it during bathtime), in the dining room (bibs galore), and in Bug's playroom. I also now have 3 plastic laundry baskets for clean laundry (at $4 a piece). One for Bug's clothes, one for our clothes, and one for towels/sheets. Another time saver as I can just drop the correct basket in each room and work on it when I am in that room.

3) Make lists, even with repetitive chores. Again, sounds stupid, but helps. Some days it makes me feel overwhelmed (how on earth did I do all of this today? and I'm going to do it again tomorrow?!) and some days it makes me feel awesome (Wow, look at all I did today!)

4) Have shopping lists on your fridge. I actually have 4. A Target list, Costco list, Martin's (grocery) list, and Other. This way when I'm running errands I don't forget something while I'm out, and write things down as I need them.

I finished the cleaning project!

I did it!

My house is now catalogue ready. I have donated every item that is not needed or loved, every surface is clean of clutter, and laundry is always done.

Ok, maybe not so much. In fact, that toy I just tripped over suggests otherwise. I have learned some things during this process though.

1) Life is not clean. It just isn't. I have my plan for the week and sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Cleaning with a child in the house is also a bit like trying to lose weight by eating. It doesn't work so well.

2) Life happens. Yep. Life did not stop for cleaning. This summer my child turned 1, my marriage was stressed, and now I'm dealing with a close family member/friend/mystery-person-for-now who has just been diagnosed with a fairly serious disease. In light of everything else that has happened, having some dust or clutter is A-ok in my book.

That being said, I have made progress! (and will update with pics later)

This summer I have:

- cleaned out and organized my downstairs closet
-cleaned out and organized our garage
- cleaned out and organize our office
- cleaned my closet (and kept clean)
- cleaned my laundry room (and kept clean)
- donated 5 boxes of baby clothes to a local women's shelter
- donated an Acura full of bigger baby items to mentioned shelter
- donated 6 boxes of other random stuff to the local hospice thrift store

I also did something else pretty exciting.

I published a book!

Yep. I'm still so excited and it still feels so surreal. I also had my first interview with author, Kristina Circelli which you can read if you visit her blog
My interview with Kristina Circelli

Where did I go?

Omg have I been busy! Here are some highlights of the past few weeks. 

My baby is 1! We had a blast at her party and did her first professional photoshoot. She refused to smile for the camera but we got some adorable serious shots, as well as some goofy moments. Her party was an incredible time and toddler invasion. All told we had 18 adults, a 6 year old, 4 year old, 3 year old, two 15 month olds, Kaylee, and a 7 month old. Yeep! 

 

 

I've also been having fun making photo collages of me. Such as this one. Me on July 29th, 2011 and me July 19th, 2012. 

 

I've also been cleaning like mad, although I still can't really see the results. What I can see is the clutter slowly going away as I've been donating items like a crazy lady.