Home office

After a seven week paid "vacation" the Canadian had to go back to the salt mines last Monday; starting off his new job with four days of training in Santa Rosa. Friday was his first day back home working on his own.  His company set him up with the tools to work from home so he didn't lose any time meeting with a local engineering company and getting himself set up with a set of plans to review. When I got home on Friday he had commandeered the dining room table and was on speaker phone with his old wastewater company in Oregon.

Since he probably won't literally be working in the poo trenches with this job we got him all set up with fancy new duds (i.e. sweater vests) which with to dazzle the ladies. Meow! No seriously, he had three ladies give him compliments while he was gone.

While he was gone I spent my week at various doctors' appointments. On Tuesday I met with my general doctor to go over my allergy testing results. In short I'm not allergic to anything, just intolerant which needs to be treated the same as an allergy. So, I will continue eating gluten free (ideally grain free) and keep dairy to only hard, aged cheeses (lowest in lactose) if any. The best news was that my synthetic thyroid medicine is working. My T-4 levels went from 0.6 (minimum threshold) up to 1.4 which is towards the top of the regular range. I'll have to stay on the medicine for the rest of my miserable life, but at least I can get away with the cheaper synthetic. At the end of the appointment I asked him, if I don't have any food allergies then why do I continue to have a horrible eye and neck rash? He figured it must be something I'm coming in contact with, but wanted to send me to a dermatologist to figure it out.

The next day the dermatologist's office called and scheduled for me to see the physician's assistant, Jackie, Thursday afternoon. She was super nice and took about two seconds to agree that I'm having a nasty reaction to something before prescribing me two medicated creams. One for my eyes and a stronger one for my neck. I need to put them on twice a day for two weeks and then I go back for a follow up. Thankfully my eyes started looking better after only two days and while my neck still has a rash, it's very minimal and doesn't actively itch. Jackie said that even if I wasn't in contact anymore with whatever was causing the outbreak, my skin was in such a state of disaster that it very likely couldn't reduce the inflammation without some sort of help, hence the creams. Because nothing says holiday giving more than coughing up $140 in co-pays and prescriptions after only one week into December - Merry Christmas to me!

Carpool payment

It's nice to give rides to a co-worker with perks like...

a personal mandarin orange tree! Last week he filled my gas tank and this week he gave me a big box of mandarins - I should have got into this carpool business years ago!

Christmas Creches

Every year in December the Mormon church down the street has a Creche exhibit (nativities) and after two failed attempts I finally made it this year.

And one that reminded me of the one we had growing up;

There were hundreds of nativities to look at, and some of them pretty fancy-pants. My favorites were the ones from other countries while I insisted Chris take responsibility for the nativity made up of dog figurines.

Smells like Christmas

A week or two ago I ordered a Yankee Candle samplers set called Christmas Memories. They showed up today and smell fabulous.

They're damn near impossible to find so I ended up getting this set off of Ebay from England, but worth every Euro. December is going to smell pretty fantastic at the Hartman house!

Last day of food debauchery

Today is the last day of my 3 week gluten (and other allergen) challenge - woo hoo!! To celebrate, I had my first and last doughnut of the entire experience.

An apple fritter, which did emotionally fulfill me, along with a fresh mug of coconut mocha coffee (flavored k-cups from Kohls). After today I can go back to my little meat and veggie world where I will hopefully quickly shake this never ending stomach ache and face rash I've had for the last three weeks. Amen.

Tis the season

The Thanksgiving leftovers weren't even cold and I was already putting up the Christmas tree. I had presents waiting and no where to put them until now...

I shouldn't get too attached to all their prettiness though, most are getting shipped north soon. Even the post office is already selling their holiday finest.

And what better way to commemorate a day of gift wrapping and grocery shopping (and by the way, there's nobody at the grocery store the day or two after Thanksgiving) than a fresh batch of vanilla ice cream.

It's a simple as whipping cream, whole milk (or half & half), sugar and vanilla. I haven't run it through the machine yet, but the mix already tastes mighty fine.

Instant Thanksgiving

Since nobody was coming here and we didn't need to be anywhere, we went cheap and easy for our Thanksgiving meal.

I bought a rotisserie chicken yesterday and picked off all the meat for us to reheat today, baked some premade rolls, microwaved some frozen mashed sweet potatoes (delicious), made a green bean casserole, and heated up a container of gravy from TJ's. 35 minutes from start to finish. I didn't buy anything special for dessert, but do have a  chocolate ice cream mix chilling in the fridge for later.

We have spent our day being thankful for football while watching our second of three games playing today stopping only long enough for an occasional walk around the block. Living the dream, living the dream.