After a brief nap on Friday afternoon, and some medication ahead of time, I was mostly ready to handle an evening out at Hershey Park with the kids (and by kids I mean Alyssa, Ryan, and my brother – I kind of lump them together) and Jason. Jason drove, and when we got there I rented a wheelchair, which he kindly pushed me around in. It got pretty cold, but the kids were okay because I insisted on them wearing warm clothes, their winter coats (note: those $20 puffer jackets that Target is selling this year SUCK. The zipper on Alyssa’s won’t stay up, so needless to say it’s going back to the store this week.), and hats and gloves. I was dressed warmly too, and I had my spiffy new winter coat on, as well as a hat and gloves, but since I was just sitting there and I’m now pretty sensitive to the cold, I was freezing. Since Jason had on a thick hoodie and the work of pushing me all over the damned park, he didn’t need his winter coat (or so he says), so for the last two hours at the park I wore my new winter coat plus his on top. And I was still cold. But it was worth it. Alyssa and Ryan had a blast riding all of the rides that were open, though Alyssa was disappointed that none of the roller coasters were open (I was disappointed too!). My brother, Jason and I had fun watching their fun, and it was nice to get out and see all of the snazzy Christmas lights and decorations that Hershey Park puts up in honor of Christmas. We went last year, though we went after Christmas and during the daytime, so of course we didn’t get the full experience of the lights like we did on Friday night.

My kitchen smells awesome from the spontaneous batch of taco soup I threw together in the crockpot last night. I started it around 8:00pm and let it cook on low until 9:00am today, heh. I had 1.3 lbs of ground beef I wasn’t doing anything with, a vacuum-sealed pack of sliced tomatoes from Dan’s aunt’s garden, a stray can of diced tomatoes, and a pack of spicy ranch dressing (powder form) I wasn’t doing anything with. So I browned the beef and added a packet of taco seasoning to it, then tossed that, the tomatoes, two cans of black beans, one can of kidney beans, one can of red enchilada sauce, and half of a can of diced green chilis in the crockpot, along with some seasonings (cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper). Oh, and I added the liquid from all of the cans in too, so there was a nice pre-seasoned and tasty broth for the ingredients to simmer in. It smelled amazing, and I’m sure it tastes amazing, too (no, I haven’t had any yet).

As you can see, the soup will make many meals for me (the bigger containers are for anyone else who may want some and will need more than a Jenn-sized portion)!

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I spent four hours at an amusement park tonight. I’m so cold… I can’t wait to cuddle up in bed next to my warm husband.

P.S. I’m too tired and cold for a proper blog entry (cell phone blogging ftw).

Thank you for subscribing to Jenn.nu's RSS feed! ♥ Jenn | Flickr: kiss-my-kitty | Twitter: @kissmykitty

I spent the majority of Amanda. As she announced in her recent blog entry, Oh, you know. This and that., Amanda was approved by a surgeon in Baltimore, MD, for revisional gastric bypass surgery. That was why we went down to Baltimore. After her surgeon’s appointment, Amanda’s failtacular freebie GPS app took us through the most ghettolicious part of Baltimore to Inner Harbor, where we had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. Their food? Delicious. Their cheesecake? Amazing. But pricey: I purchased a 12″ red velvet cheesecake for $52.50. I was praying that Dan would at least like it. For the record, he loved it. Whoo! Money well spent.

After we finished our lunch, Amanda and I, along with a cake that felt like it weighed 20 lbs, headed over to a nearby mall. Amanda was dying to check out Urban Outfitters, and I was curious myself as to what all they had to offer. I wasn’t impressed with their selection of clothing (Kmart circa 1980 meets Goodwill circa 1992), but I loved a lot of their accessories and interesting selection of books and other odds and ends. Besides a few Christmas gifts for Dan, his brother, and his brother’s wife, I found a spiffy hat for myself – the knit trapper hat in green. Oh, and two NYX nail polishes for just $0.99 each. Score for cheap glittery nail polishes!

Amanda and I then checked out the rest of the mall, despite another visit of abdominal pain (for me, of course) putting a damper on things. She looked around for some sports stuff for her husband and Sophie, and while she was in the bathroom I was approached and slightly harassed by some random guy asking if he could touch my hair, call me Pinky, do I have a boyfriend, do I want a boyfriend, did I get married in Las Vegas (um, what?!), blah blah blah. At that particular time we were in a somewhat isolated area of the bottom floor of the mall, I was trying so hard to keep my composure despite my bowels feeling like they were trying to twist themselves inside out, my foot was hurting and my left hip was hurting from all of the walking, and I was loaded down with bags, including the huge-ass red velvet cake whose bag ripped on one side. I got a little shrill with my response of, “No thank you, not interested, do NOT touch me, get AWAY FROM ME” response when random crazy dude started to get persistent, and a little too up in my personal space. Ugh. I actually got hit on oddly/creepily by several random guys that day. What the hell, Baltimore? Don’t you produce any decent men who know how to approach — or dare I say not approach — a woman!?

After that we headed back to Amanda’s car, which was in a parking garage. God, we navigate like such women. I was all, “we’re on the seahorse level!” and “I remember we left the parking garage and then turned left on Gay Street!”, which resulted in GAY SEAHORSES. But we found the car, I popped a painkiller, and after our ride back through the ghetto, during which some random homeless-looking dude comes sprinting across the middle of a busy roadway and then starts bellowing at Amanda (through the window) likes its her fault that her car got in the middle of his impromptu dash of rush hour traffic, I fell asleep. I woke up once we were not too far from my town, and Amanda kindly drove me back to my house since Dan wasn’t on the ball with meeting up with us at a nearby convenience store.

Once home, I introduced Amanda to the delicious cheesy amazingness that is Jason’s made-from-scratch enchiladas, and I gave her another enchilada as well as a slice of the $52.50 cheesecake to take home with her.

So that was my Wednesday. Long, painful, crazy, but FUN! I can’t wait to do it again (just with less ghetto and weird men next time around). ♥

P.S. Tonight is Daylight Saving Time. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back! Enjoy that extra hour – I know I will!

Thank you for subscribing to Jenn.nu's RSS feed! ♥ Jenn | Flickr: kiss-my-kitty | Twitter: @kissmykitty

So, with Halloween out of the way, there’s only one more speed bump — Thanksgiving — to get over before it’s time for Christmas. I’m kidding about the speed bump remark, of course, but there are many people and companies that seem to treat Halloween and Thanksgiving as mere obstacles to Christmas, what with the way they’ve been subtly pushing Christmas products and sales since late September and all. As for me, while I’m all CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS!, I love the holiday season in its entirety, from Halloween to Christmas. It’s after Christmas that I get a little bummed, because it’s an immediate drop into blah, boring, cold, holiday-less winter again.

Man, my wrists hurt tonight. I parked myself in front of my laptop at 8:30am this morning, and didn’t move from it for anything more than bathroom breaks, breakfast and lunch (enchiladas both times — what can I say? Jason makes kick-ass enchiladas, especially when he adds more cheese simply because I requested it!), a load of laundry, and a few phone calls. I finally called it quits about an hour ago in order to finally take a shower, but here I am again — only this time I’m on my Macbook (different keyboard layout + different screen = breath of fresh air, so to speak, for my hands and my eyes), and I’m here for pleasure.

I’m also here for NaBloPoMo. I’m doing it, dammit. A few months back I managed to blog every single day of the month, and as much as I love blogging I know I can commit to blogging once a day (at least) during the month that has been officially deemed National Blog Posting Month.

I’m tired. I was up later than anticipated last night, what with pre-Trick or Treat dinner, then coming home and hanging out with Jason watching House and Terra Nova (he DVRed Terra Nova when a sharp-toothed dinosaur vs. man scene came on right when Alyssa, Ryan and Dan arrived home from ToT, which is why we wound up watching House first) while he made yummy enchiladas and threw random Halloween candy at me and I did my nails (I know, I’m such a girl) and tried to stay off my stupid non-healing broken foot¹.

Today I called not only my doctor to make a follow-up appointment for my broken foot, but also my gastroenterologist (did I even spell that right? Google Chrome says no, but Google itself says yes) to see if there’s been any progress with an order for a CT scan and contrast dye so that the next time I get hit with an attack of abdominal pain, I can go to the hospital and actually get a CT scan done right away to hopefully pinpoint the location/problem, in addition to getting yummy pain meds, instead of just getting yummy pain meds and then being sent home with nothing really being accomplished other than short-term relief. The notes/doctor’s order for a CT scan are in my file, and a physical copy is being mailed to me. As far as the contrast dye, that unfortunately can’t be ordered/given to a patient except in a hospital setting, but the doctor said they can most likely concentrate the dye more, so I won’t have to drink as much in order to get enough of it in my system for an accurate scan. It’ll taste nastier, but I’m used to drinking non-pleasant things (protein shakes, protein shots), so that’s no big deal.

Go figure, I’ve been having abdominal pain since about 9:30 this morning. But on a scale of 1-10 it’s only a 3 or so — enough to be noticeable and annoying, but not enough to really impact my day or warrant a trip to the ER. I’ll save that hassle and co-pay for when the scale is at an 8 or a 9 and I’m curled up in the fetal position on our bed. Then it’s time to go and beg for both pain relief and a CT scan (preferably in that order). The last time I went, back in August, I was given Morphine (hardcore shit that makes me hurl into next week unless I’m given hardcore anti-nausea/anti-vomiting meds at the same time, which fortunately they did right away, thank god). But when I went last October, I was given Dilaudid. That stuff is… whoa. When it’s first injected my entire neck/throat stiffens, which is the oddest (and slightly freaky) sensation, but after that I feel like I’m high, if I knew what being high felt like. Pain-relief wise, it doesn’t seem to take the worst of the pain away as quickly as Morphine, but I’m so warm and fuzzy that I couldn’t give two shits, so it’s all good. (For those curious, I’ve also had Percocet and Vicodin for post-operative pain relief and gallbladder attack/abdominal pain relief. I really don’t care what they give me, so long as it works!)

Okay, enough of the narcotics talk. I’m going to try to go to sleep within the hour, because tomorrow I’m meeting up with Amanda for a girls’ day out. Sort of. We’re girls and we’re going out, but we’ll only be able to fit in some shopping/girly crap before or after a doctor’s appointment that she has.

Then on Thursday I’m going with Jason for his wisdom teeth removal. Lucky boy. I told him to ask to be knocked out, heh. Speaking of knockout drugs, Ryan has a cavity in one of his back molars (I hope it’s a result of him grinding his teeth and thus damaging them, rather than me being a shitty parent who didn’t keep up with her son’s teeth brushing habits, because I swear that is not the case!) and is getting that filled on Thursday. His appointment was originally two weeks ago, but I called and rescheduled it once I found out that it was just a standard filling – no gas or sedation or anything. Have I mentioned that it took two nurses and I to hold him down for vaccinations in August, and he still screamed and flailed bloody murder? Yeah, and that was just needles that HE COULDN’T SEE going into his THIGHS. Imagine needles and drilling instruments in his MOUTH. That is so not happening without a slight dose of unconsciousness. Since I’ll be with Jason, I won’t be there with my baby. But I know Dan will take good care of him, and hopefully Ryan won’t be too upset about the experience.

Friday will be a down day, I hope, because Saturday is Alyssa’s [rescheduled] birthday party. 56° and sunny – what more could I ask for in a Saturday afternoon in early November?

Thank you for subscribing to Jenn.nu's RSS feed! ♥ Jenn | Flickr: kiss-my-kitty | Twitter: @kissmykitty

Then today I was busy with work. And phone calls. And a little more work. Then Jason asked about having lunch, so I woke Dan up and the three of us had lunch at a 50′s style restaurant (I totally killed my “diet” for the day by ordering loaded fries, though I ate less than a third of the basket. But hey, every girl has her “bad” days, and at least I got half of the day’s protein in this morning!). Then Dan and I went to two different craft stores for a few odds and ends, and then to Lowe’s, the equivalent of a toy store for Dan (Lowe’s is to Dan as Sephora is to me, heh). By then my broken right foot was throbbing (despite being in the “walking” cast) and my left leg was aching due to compensating for the increased height of my right leg and the tilted up/rocked back angle of my right foot, so Dan grabbed a wheelchair — I refuse to use the motorized carts; those are for the little old ladies with atrophied upper muscles — and off we went. The highlight of that trip? Plantation-style blinds for Alyssa’s bedroom.

We were only home for a few hours — during which a lovely surprise from Nichole arrived (thank you darling! ♥) — and then we wound up going back out to dinner. Eating out wasn’t a plan for tonight, but it was 6:05pm when Dan and I suddenly realized that dinner should have been on the table like five minutes ago, and as if on cue Alyssa, Ryan and my brother started asking about dinner. We decided on Cici’s. Nearby, filling, and cheap – for the five of us it was $30. Yeah, the food is less than stellar, but whatevs – we eat healthy most of the time, so the occasional splurge isn’t going to significantly shorten our lifespans. Plus Alyssa and Ryan love playing games in the game room and watching Spongebob that always seems to be on the one wall-mounted television, so Cici’s is a special treat for them we indulge in every 6-8 weeks or so.

So that was my day, and that’s why the poor neglected cake didn’t get taken out of the cake pans, frosted, sprinkled and covered up on my cake tray until nearly 9:30pm tonight. But it’s just as delicious as if I had taken care of it last night, so it’s all good.

Thank you for subscribing to Jenn.nu's RSS feed! ♥ Jenn | Flickr: kiss-my-kitty | Twitter: @kissmykitty