Such a Slacker I have been such a slacker in updating this blog!! But at least my reasons for being such a slacker are good ones – I have been busy and I have been well!!
After the Jingle Bell Walk for Arthritis, I had a very busy holiday season. For the first time in a few years (having spent last Christmas in Australia and the one before in Groveland) I decorated the whole house for Christmas – all the way down to cutting snowflakes to tape all over the sliding back door (which my hands were actually feeling well enough to do!!!)  I decorated because it made me happy and also in preparation for welcoming APL’s parents, and their two dogs, into our home for Christmas. With the family in town we had a very fun and lovely Christmas!
APL and I have also been spending a lot of time with our friends lately. MM took us to our first NHL hockey game (Go Avalanche!) and we had so much fun we went to a second game! On New Years Day for some reason we decided to have a Jurassic Park Marathon and we watched all three movies in one day (fun, though I recommend just sleeping through or skipping the whole second one as it is awful). We celebrated RK’s birthday at our favorite sushi place and my 28th birthday with homemade tacos. We went to the National Western Stock show rodeo for the fifth year in a row. We’ve romped with River through the snow and played endless rounds of our new favorite game, Dominion.
At the end of January I got to take a trip to Los Angeles to visit with my family, since I didn’t get to see them over the holidays. My dad took me to a LA Kings game, just the two of us (I went from no hockey to three NHL games in the span of a month!) We drank beer and ate pizza and had a grand old time. Then my sister came down from Seattle and my little brother (a culinary school graduate) made us brunch for my mom’s birthday – the peach pancakes were delicious!! Then we did a little photo shoot for my mom, recreating pictures from our childhood – including the one in this post of me and my brother and sister all in the bathtub.
I’ve also been very busy with wedding planning over the past few weeks. While I was at my mom’s house we had a “wedding invitation making party,” which doubled as a mini bridal shower. My sister and her good friend LD made us all kinds of yummy platters for brunch ,and some girls came over to help put together the patchwork paper flowers APL and I are going to use on our wedding invitations. It was a lot of fun (and a great way to save costs on my invitations, too!)
Then, as soon as I got back to Colorado, APL, RK, MM, and I took a road trip to Santa Fe for the weekend. For the most part we spent the weekend relaxing and eating amazing New Mexican food. But we also went jewelry shopping, and APL helped me pick out my wedding necklace – a gorgeous turquoise piece to match the bolo tie APL is planning to wear that belonged to his great grandfather. We’re both really excited about the necklace and the memories of the really fun weekend we had with our friends when we picked it out.
After that, believe it or not, I went back to Los Angeles for another week of wedding planning frenzy. I had my final dress fitting and my wedding dress is now safely in my mama’s closet!! Then APL’s mom and I drove up to the wedding site by way of San Luis Obispo, where we checked out an amazing place called Picking Daises that rents wonderful colorful cotton napkins. From there we continued on to Groveland where, over the course of the week, we: checked out rental houses for the wedding party, talked to the staff at the rehearsal dinner location, picked out tables and chairs and dishes from the party rental company, did a trial run on my hair, picked out coffee from the local Firefall Coffee to serve with wedding cake, visited the sprouts of my future wedding flowers at Golden Brodiaea Flower Farm, and walked circles around the property with the pups making plans and lists for the rest of the wedding day prep. All in all, a very busy – but very successful – week.

Amazingly I have been feeling pretty good through all of this and I haven’t had too much trouble with my stamina. Either I’m doing better generally, or I’m better at pacing myself, or  probably both. But I guess it’s no wonder that I feel pretty exhausted right now as I look back on all of this while I wait for my plane back to Boulder! I’m also all very congested right now– either from allergies from tromping through the fields all week or the beginning of a small cold. So I’m looking forward to APL greeting me with a hug at the airport in a few hours.
Unpleasantly, I also found a tick on my belly yesterday (which I probably also got from tromping through the fields all week.) When I found it I realized it must have been there for hours, which freaked me out so I immediately ripped it off my belly, which apparently is exactly what you are not supposed to do because it increases the chances of transmitting diseases. Also because its mandibles (pinchers), which are barbed, got stuck in my belly and we had to try to remove them with tweezers. I think we got it all the pieces out of my belly, but unfortunately I’m not positive – total yuck!!! BL called her doctor friend (who actually was my pediatrician for a while when I was little) and she said we probably don’t have to worry about disease transmission due to the season and what the tick looked like. But we do have to worry about infection at the bite site (uh oh…memories of boob wound coming back to me now…)
Ah, the joys of a compromised immune system – you can get busy and forget about it for a while, but in the end it always comes back to bite you! (Hahahahaha!! See what I did there? The tick and my immune system bit me…hahaha…yeah.)
Time to get on the plane. Posted by ~Mariah~ at 3:46:00 PM Labels: Infections, Optimism, Travel Gisela said...

So good to hear that you are doing well. Best wishes.

February 10, 2011 at 8:18 AM Thanks, Gisela!

February 10, 2011 at 9:16 AM Glad to see your "back" and that things have been going well!

February 16, 2011 at 7:43 AM Thanks, Mandy!

In other news, looks like no harm came from the tick bite, which is awesome. ~;o)

February 16, 2011 at 9:59 AM Hi Yiah Yiah,

Just found this... thought I would show you. Love you!

March 5, 2011 at 9:39 AM I think one of the bloggers you link to is the last girl on that NY Time page?

March 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM Hahaha...SARAH: I thought I had seen that article before, so I went back in my blog and looked: http://fromthispoint-forward.blogspot.com/2009/11/voices-of-rheumatoid-arthritis.html

Apparently YOU sent that article last November. ~;o)

March 7, 2011 at 10:59 AM hahaha the same thing?!?!? funny!
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