MS Update: I'm Getting Better!

I KNOW your prayers are working! I feel such a relief that I've had so many people praying for me when I couldn't find the strength to pray for myself! And, now I'm at a place where I'm confident enough to say that while I'm still climbing that uphill battle, I'm gaining so much ground and getting a lot stronger everyday. I'm almost a completely different person than I was this time last year. And I thank you for praying for that! So... what's changed for the better?

The pain in my neck is manageable on a daily basis, so I'm not holding my head crooked anymore. I still have issues with aches and weakness if I ride in a car or have to stand for an extended amount of time, but I have a neck pillow that helps if I rest my head on it from time to time.

The daily chronic migraines have shifted to regular daily headaches. Sometimes the headaches come every other day if I'm lucky! Now you may cringe at the thought of having a headache pretty much every day, but if you had a migraine almost everyday for over a year, you would feel SO blessed that the pain was reduced to a simple headache. The same kind of stress headache that every normal person gets from time to time. I don't even have to take migraine medication anymore! I take ONE goody powder either every day or every other day. I have to be careful taking Goody powders, because I'll get bleeding stomach ulcers and horrible heartburn if I take more than one each day.

Hmmmm.... What else has changed?

The pain in my joints still aches, pops, cracks, and wiggles around everyday, but one tiny muscle relaxer, Flexeril, helps me keep the pain manageable (such a blessing!). I feel stiff a lot of the time, but I could also contribute SOME of that to sitting a lot. I sit in the floor when I make jewelry, paint, upcycle my jewelry boxes, watch movies, write blog entries, etc... Pretty much just about everything I do is done sitting on top of a pillow in my living room floor, propped up on a huge lounging pillow. This isn't new, and I've been a "Floor Person" for months, since around November 2011 when I started having really REALLY bad upper back pain and dizziness. I wasn't nearly as nauseous when I was closer to the floor, and the room didn't spin as bad if I was "grounded." And the pain in my upper back could only be relieved if I was sitting in the floor, propped up on something.

The pain in my upper back was almost unbearable. It felt like someone was squeezing me as hard as they could right around my bra strap. It was hard to do much of anything without a lot of extra effort, even breathing.

• Good news, it was just the MS Hug, (also referred as Girdle Band pain) and it is something that comes for a few weeks and then GOES away. 
• Bad news is it will most likely come back in the future. 

I guess after the Girdle Band pain left, it just felt normal to do everything sitting in the floor. After all, having the Girdle Band pain force me to do everything in the floor MADE me learn how to adapt to doing a LOT of things sitting down. And I guess I'm just a lot more comfortable there now! Whatever works right?

Moving on...

Most of you know that I cut off all my hair last summer. And when I say "all my hair," I'm not kidding. The hair on the back of my head was shorter than an inch long. Maybe at one point it was half an inch, if that. I was having so much sensitivity on the back of my head and neck that I couldn't even stand my hair brushing against my neck. Finally, I just went in my bathroom one day and cut off all of my beautiful curls. I know I did what I had to do, and last year I wasn't in any position to keep my long hair fixed, washed, dried, curled, etc. In saying that, I am now growing my hair back out again! It's a long process, but I'm enjoying each inch I get back! About a year and a half, and I'll be back to normal "hair-wise."

My hair length as of March 2012

A BIG issue: My Weight has gone up quite a bit. When I got married in March 2011, I weighed about 93 pounds. Now I weigh about 125, give or take a few pounds. I struggle with accepting this weight, because I am making a conscious decision to maintain this weight instead of losing back to where I'm comfortable, which is about 105-110 pounds.

I'm really fortunate weight-wise, and Scott doesn't fail to let me know this (although I contribute it more to will-power than genes). Basically all it boils down to is if I wanted to lose 15 pounds, I have enough self-control not to eat sweets, drink only water, eat healthy, etc until I lose down to my goal weight. It's hard work, but it's doable and I've done it before many times.

Well, Scott and I still want to have a kid or two in the future. Not right now, obviously because our home is so small, the kid would have to sleep in a carseat on the porch. Maybe in a year or two (or three), not quite sure. What most of you don't know is before we got married, we planned on trying to have a baby as soon as we said "I do." Like 5 days after we returned from our honeymoon, I started to go downhill healthwise. Instead of thinking how hard it would be to take care of a baby AND me, we were thinking more like, "What if I only get worse from here and I can't ever have a baby because my body is so weak?" So, we just decided to keep trying. And month after month... nothing. I've had several female surgeries, so there is always the chance that it could take longer than normal to get pregnant. (It took Scott and his ex-wife about 18 months to get pregnant with Izzy, so he really wasn't as stressed about it as I was.)

In mid fall 2011, I was so weak, we were having a rough time dealing with the effects MS was taking on our new marriage, we weren't any closer to having a baby, Izzy and Evan had a lot going on, and the toll of my missing paycheck was REALLY starting to hit hard, and it all just built up and up. We had to deal with each issue one at a time. We decided to move to Valley to be closer to the kiddo's and their activities and save money on rent and gas each month, and we decided now was NOT when we needed to bring a kid into the chaos we were drifting through. I needed to focus on myself, my health, my marriage, and getting control over my own life back. I was disappointed the first couple of months, but I had an instant relief from the pressure off my shoulder each month.

Good news is my doctor said that when we do want to try in the future, I need to come see him about taking Clomid or a mild fertility drug to boost the "process." So how does this have anything to do with my weight? Well, I was really malnourished when I was so skinny, and my low weight made all of my female issues really "irregular" and "inconsistent," making conceiving a baby really difficult, if not almost impossible. That could have had a HUGE effect on why we didn't get pregnant (although I think it's nothing more than the fact that God knew that I would never have been able to take care of a baby the way I've always dreamed about. I was way too sick and far too depressed to have been able to be a good mom... I believe God will send me a munchkin when HE knows it's time!)

 So, the way I see it is I'm at my ideal weight. I am not going to work so hard to get down to a comfortable weight only to have to gain it all back in a year or two when we start to try again... I'll just stay where I am to make it easier in the future, so if we encounter fertility issues no one will be able to blame it on my low weight. I can do this... (A LOT of books I've read talk about how the first year after a MS diagnosis is one of the worst you will ever have, if not the worst. Not only because of the pain and adjustments you have to learn to deal with, but because of the horrible depression a lot of people deal with as they grieve about their diagnosis. So true! I'm in my second year and I'm almost a completely different person, a lot of which I contribute to me overcoming a year of deep depression!)

Well, I've told you about the struggles I've overcome, the pain I've fought, the prescriptions I've chunked out, and how I'm getting stronger every day. I haven't told you about my most debilitating symptom that I will always have, due to where my brain lesions are located: Cognitive Dysfunction and Sensory Processing Disorder. This is the main symptom that keeps my "working shoes" still sitting on the shelf, because I haven't learned how to control it. I'll explain it in my next entry, so don't forget to check back for Part 2! It's pretty interesting. Well.. I'll try to make it interesting for you. You never know who you will meet in the future that has MS, and you would like to know a little something about it wouldn't you? I wish I had known about it.

UPDATE: Since I posted the information above, it has come to my attention that I may have been too vague or misleading in some of my words. Just to make it clear to everyone, we are NOT trying to have a baby right now! We are still trying to make sure my health is stable, we're still organizing and settling into our home, we're enjoying our special time with Izzy and Evan and focusing all on them, we're still enjoying our quiet times and loud crazy movie nights with each other, all of which cannot be done with a new baby. While we DO want 1-2 more kids in the DISTANT FUTURE, we are NOT trying to make that happen now. I'm sorry for those who I mislead or stressed out! I'll try to be more clear in my future entries.

A Change In My Life and Blogging Style

Until now, I usually write my blogs by writing what comes to my mind when I have my blog entry page pulled up. As a result, most of my blogs are random and stray quite a bit from the topic I originally held in my head when I started writing that entry. I've been surprised by how many readers I've gathered over the past year, and I hope the numbers continue to climb as I write from my heart. You need to know the true life this crazy girl lives... even if it's crazy in my own way!

When the new year started a few months ago, I wrote about how I was ready to have a new start. I wanted to make changes to how I was living, taking care of myself, taking care of my family, my job as a wife, and just my outlook on life in general. I was ready to have my old self back and regain some form of dependability again. Fortunately, I can say that I have almost done a complete 180 and I have really stuck to my goal to change. As a result, I'm learning new ways to adapt to MS and I'm also regaining control over my life. After pretty much living in a deep and devastating depression for almost one whole year, I'm thankful to say that I'm climbing out of that hole now. And it is so relieving!

Well, now Spring has almost Sprung, it's time for the famous "Spring Cleaning!" This year, I want to continue my "New Start" plan and incorporate this outlook into my Spring Cleaning. I guess you could call it Personal Cleaning instead of physical cleaning, although I do plan on actually putting a mega cleaning spree on my house as well.

The first goal for my personal spring cleaning is to continue to work toward more organization in my life. I've worked my butt off to get my house more organized as we moved, and I've tried to keep everything mostly in place everyday. This may seem like a tiny step, but when you let everything go for almost an entire year, it is really difficult to try to regain control and set new standards. Now I want to gain a better control over my Make Up and Mud Boutique shop.

Better control as in more organized records, inventory, faster shipping, consistent schedule, etc. I want to set goals for my shop and make myself stick to them. I know that I can work even harder to build a better client list, and I can accurately track my progress. As with any start for any goal or project, the beginning is hard because you don't see immediate progress. But if I have everything in line for 6 months, it would be much easier to track inventory and plan for holidays like the Christmas rush. So, being more organized with Make Up and Mud Boutique is on my list as well.

Last goal: more structured blogging. You know those bloggers that consistently post on their blogs, and you can count on their posts to be there by following their blog schedule. Yeah, I want to be one of those bloggers. I'm still trying to make my blog schedule, and I want my writing style to have a certain flexibility, so it's taking me a while to get it all straight. I don't want to have a blog schedule for a month, because I want to have posts about things that happen in the here and now, not the there and then. One thing... my life will be more structured, therefore my blog will be more structured.

I have a new blog notebook to help me keep up with my blog planning, and I'm excited to start that new journey. I always have the craziest thoughts and ideas, and I'll think, "That would be awesome to blog about!" and then I completely forget what I was even thinking about. Well, that's happened to me one too many times, and I now have a little notebook for jotting down ideas and notes. Then of course, they will go straight to you.

Beware... my random thoughts are crazy. They are unpredictable. But... they are honest. And I guess I'm at a point in my life where honestly is the most freeing quality in my life, even if it is on the web for all to see. There is something relieving about getting things off your chest, even if you do have anxiety right when you click the Publish button. In the end, it's worth it. So, stay tuned. Mrs. Organized is working her way toward productivity and as time passes, you'll see a change as well! Maybe someone will learn from my mistakes!

Moving Mayhem & Clutter Chaos

As I've written in past posts, we are moving about an hour and a half to two hours away from where we live now. We will be out of our current house by January 31, so we're steadily packing boxes, driving furniture to the new place, unpacking and organizing there, and starting back over at our current house. And each time we come back to our house we're currently living in, I would be willing to swear that somehow our stuff still to pack somehow grew while we were gone. And by stuff, yes, I mean junk. Clutter. Stuff I should-a thrown out a few years ago.

I'm a good packer. I'm an efficient packer, careful to wrap breakable items and label the boxes according to items inside and rooms it should go in. I'm organized with that.

What I'm not organized with is all of the junk I have managed to accumulate over the past few years since I moved out of my parents house. I even found a box that I never unpacked from when we moved to where I live now! I had just stuck it in the top of a spare closet. When I found it, there I went, distracted down memory lane of old Wal-Mart Receipts and half full Sticky Note tablets. If I haven't needed anything out of that box in all of this time, don't you think the obvious thing to do would be to chunk it right away without going through the contents? Yes. Was I able to do that? No.

I am a packrat, not a hoarder, but a keeper of tiny things that cost me more money and time to keep them unorganized than it would be to throw them out and buy it again if I needed it. What kind of items am I talking about?

Hm... here's one: Bobby Pins. I'm going through a box, and there's a lone bobby pin in the bottom of the box.

Now there are 48 brand new ones under the bathroom counter, but instead of tossing it in the trash, I'm the person who wastes 5 minutes to pick up the bobby pin and carry it to the bathroom, find the others that I already have, put the found one in with them, and then I'm SUPPOSED to go back to going through the original box right?

Well, there's my other problem....

As I'm placing the lonely found bobby pin in with the others, because I just couldn't throw out a $0.01 BOBBY PIN ( Gasp!), I notice an ink pen in the bottom of the hair bin. Which I just HAVE to take to put in the box with all of the other pens. And there I notice one single sock. And it goes on and on and on.  Now remember that ALL of this time, I have neither packed one single box nor have I finished cleaning out the original box I was going through.

By this time, I have a half empty box I didn't finish going through, the hair supply box pulled out from underneath the bathroom cabinet (still sitting in the floor), and the box of ink pens and pencils out on the table. Let me do this for a few days, and you can imagine how far I'm getting with this packing ordeal. And it ALL could be avoided if I would just think long and hard enough to THROW THE BOBBY PIN AWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!

What items are my main issues?

Panties... I don't want to get rid of any, even though I probably couldn't even fit my butt in them anymore... they're cute! But, I reluctantly have purged the stash...

Markers, Pens, Pencils, Crayons... Art supplies, you name it! We have SO many pens and pencils, I don't know what to do with them all!

Junk... Just JUNK (PERFECT picture I found in the internet)... a marker, a screwdriver, a million rubber bands, old gift cards, tiny paper to open... just random junk. I have a LOT.

I'm a note-taker, a list maker, a writer-downer of just whatever comes to mind.  And there you have it.  And now what I have is a million sheets of paper with random things on them that I've written since I've been home from work, and I've had time to actually find and jot down whatever I find that I may want to remember in the future.

And you know what my main "Inhibitor of Packing" is? BOREDOM. I can't watch T.V. because I have to focus on what I'm doing, so tv and the internet are out of the question if I'm actually going to be productive. The radio gets annoying after an hour or so, and I can't talk on the phone, hold it to my ear, and pack boxes... It's just a boring process that wasn't meant to be fun. And it's not. Fun. 

A Brand NEW Approach to Cleaning

Good Morning Everyone! (By the way, I'm totally faking this *CHEERY* attitude, because this chilly weather makes me want to go crawl right back in the bed... just to let you know.)  Now that we have that out in the open, I'll continue.

This post is about my path to a new MUCH more organized life.  Thinking about having an "Organized Life" really reminds me about how we think about our senses. While we often remember to give Sight and Smell a slot in our senses category area, a good majority of people forget that people actually have and use FIVE senses: Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell.

Similarly, when the term "organized" comes into play, what is the first thing you think of? Do you only think of how un-clean and "dis-organized" your house is right now? What I'm learning is that I can "pick up" the clutter in my home all I want, but I also have to remember that there is Mental Clutter, Financial Clutter, Guilty Clutter, Mourning Clutter, Sentimental Clutter,  Sad Clutter, Potentially Useful Clutter, Memory Clutter, "I Might Need It One Day" Clutter, Relationship Clutter, Time Clutter... and the list goes on and on and on. I'm just a clutterbug I guess!

Have you ever really thought deep down about what kind clutter you may be carrying around? I know I hadn't until recently.  I found myself beginning to feel overwhelmed, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the cause of this sudden stress.  Sound familiar?  For more information on types of clutter and how to take control of your clutter, click on the links below. (Don't forget to come back to the good stuff!)

{FYI: I'm about to tell you why these approaches do NOT work for me, but they may work for you.}

6 Types of Clutter
Oprah's Clutter Control Remedies
How Clutter Control Affects You

I have never really thought of myself as an organized person. In the past, I was never stressed out enough to feel the need seek out a cause to blame it on. That sure has changed! In the past 6 months, I've struggled with so many new changes in my life, and I've looked near and far for the main cause of the changes. The only answer I can come up with is that my changes were just in God's plan for me. That's fine with me, because I would rather be a part of God's plan and not understand why he dealt me these cards than be in a rough situation that I was responsible for on my own. I think that's why the clutter in my life is so frustrating: I did it to myself.

BACK to the point: (See, the same thing happens when I try to clean: I get DISTRACTED!)

If you open any "Lady" magazine, you can almost bet that somewhere inside there will be at least one article about household organization. I'm waiting for the day when all of the "Women's" magazines realize that they just rotate advice around from one article to the next... and it doesn't work half of the time.

Common advice doesn't always work for everyone, and it amazes me that magazine editors still haven't created a few more reasonable or unique approaches to housework. Below, I have listed a few "Common Clutter-Clearing Tips" that I see ALL the time. So, underneath each useless tip is a little tidbit of what I think about it and why it doesn't work for me.

The Common Advice 

• Walk into a room and pick up everything you see that doesn't belong there.

                            - I don't like this tip, because I feel like the writer is trying to make me feel like an idiot. Obviously, IF I could go into a room and pick up everything out of place and it was really that easy, there's a pretty good chance that I wouldn't need to read the article in the first place. I would have already picked everything up and put it away. Strike One... NEXT.

• Everything in your house needs to have a "place" where it belongs.

                             -  REALLY? Everything needs to have a place? Uh yea, obviously. And if I KNEW how to make a place for everything, again, I wouldn't be reading the article. I want to know HOW to find a place for everything. A "REASONABLE" how-to... Not one of those, "Save 20 cereal boxes and cover them with wall paper and have your husband use his circular saw to cut eleven of the thirteen 2x4's you had to buy from 'Herald's Home Place' specifically for this project" and hotglue them together and so forth.  That is NOT the norm...

                             - First of all, I said "Herald's Home Place," because there is a 50/50 chance that you will have never heard of the hardware store recommended in the magazine, the one with "the lowest price around." Around what? Sometimes I think writers google all over to find the store with the cheapest lumber prices, even if the only one in the entire United States is in Idaho. Second of all, I can almost promise you that IF you indeed routinely volunteer your husband and his circular saw for every cereal box DIY craft that you run just happen to across, there's a good chance you will need to read to the "Why Does My Husband Avoid ME" printed a few pages over. Long point short: Give us some eco-friendly, easy, CHEAP ways to organize. Strike Two... NEXT.

• Only save the "Really Special Artwork" that your child has made, and take digital pictures of the rest. You can print the pictures and look at them forever without the clutter of all of the coloring pages.

                            -  Ok, let me be clear for those who do not know me personally: I am not a mother to a biological child.  I do, however, have two creative little stepchildren who constantly draw and design oodles of pictures and items for their Daddy and me. I even have a box in the top of our closet with special little keepsakes they have created. While they are only at our house every other weekend, they still draw like 10 pictures at a time... each. I wish I knew how many "books" with silly little stories they have created and stapled together for us, but I lost count a while ago. And I've kept every single one.

                            - My point is: I don't want to take a picture of their artwork. And it's probably not for the reason that you may think. I don't want to take a picture and toss out the art work, because I just don't agree with the reasoning. You're swapping out an original for a duplicate. Printed pictures are also going to take up space, right? So, you might say, "I'll burn the pictures of their artwork on a c.d. to save space."  Really? You're going to take the time to round up the artwork, take an individual photo of each page (usually double sided as well), so around two pictures of EACH page, and upload or scan them into your computer, name each picture describing what it is, who drew it, and what year it was made. Then, you're going to either upload the files to Rite Aid and drive there to pick up your child's artwork pictures? Or if you opt for the Image C.D. route, are you going to put the images in a folder and burn a million C.D.s and then label each C.D. and create a way to organize them?

                          -Either way, you're going to be in a bad mood, because you just threw our your kid's precious artwork! Just take twenty minutes and stack each paper individually, neatly, with one on top of the other and put it in a clear $4 bin from Wal-Mart and slide it under the bed or put it up in the top of the closet. Do you really think you're going to have that day where you say, "You know what? I don't have anything to do today. I think I'm going to go find the disc with Tommy's artwork from 2nd grade and look at all of those pretty scribbles on the computer this afternoon?" Please just stop kidding yourself.

                        -In reality, you are going to want to pull out that old dusty box of "Scribbles" after your "baby boy" moves off to college and cry as you have your midlife crisis, wishing that he was five years old again. You actually DESERVE to keep the originals as proof that you actually kept another tiny teacup human alive AND they were somewhat creative. SCORE! (ha... that makes me crack up to hear someone say that, and I've been looking for a place to throw that in!)

Back to the point: You'll be in even more distress if you regret throwing the originals away. Most of our world is digital and made up of replicas, so I think there's something special about original items to bring you back in time. So if someome tells you to take a picture of your kids artwork and "bid it farewell," then I suggest that you tell them to go take a picture of their grandmother's 100 year old china cabinet and sell it for $10 at a yard sale... Strike three... THE MAGAZINE ADVICE COLUMNS LOSE.

                       -(I HAVE to add this last tidbit just because it annoys me to read it over and over... so here's one more piece of useless advice.)

• Ask yourself, "Do I REALLY need this?" If the answer is "No," then toss it out.

                       - What kind of dilusional world do these overpaid organizers live in? Don't they think that IF indeed you are reading an article on how to get organized, then you have probably already asked yourself IF you need a specific item like a million times already, and the answer is, "Yes. Yes I do need to keep the busted float from the beach trip in 1999, because it CAN be fixed. And what if there's a time in life where we don't have the money to buy another $2 float? When everyone else needs a float and they can't afford to buy one, I won't have to worry about anything, because I kept AND fixed mine!"

                       - Now we're just going to ignore the fact that IF you did happen to keep a ripped $2 float for 12 years, waiting to need to fix it during a economical depression, then you are probably not JUST a "tad bit unorganized." You're probably well on your way to arriving at your next "Hoarders Anonymous" meeting. The main point I'm trying to make is, people who keep pure crap and wierd junk are horrible at organizing, but they have a freakishly awesome ability to rationalize anything. They will indeed ask theirselves IF they actually need something, and the ALWAYS "yes". I ask myself all the time if I REALLY need something, and I'm so distracted and unorganized that sometimes I even forget to answer! :)

The REAL Bottom Line:  Don't these Martha Stewart clones think that if everyone could/would "spend twenty minutes a day" putting away items that we wouldn't have an issue with clutter?

BACK TO MY OWN MESSY HOUSE:

I think I may have FINALLY found the solution to my clutter... FLYLADY!!!

You have GOT to check out this site! FLYLADY takes a whole new approach to cleaning, and I believe she specifically works well for people with "Attention Issues," much like myself. She teaches you how to use new approaches to my three main demons: PROCRASTINATION, GETTING SIDETRACKED and BOREDOM! I LOVE this site!

One of the HUGE things I find motivating about this new sight is that the FLYLADY herself, Marla Cilley, is not one of those "Organizing Fanatics" that was practically born obsessively color coordinating and organizing her crayons when she was like 3. She didn't spend her childhood making her parents beam with pride at how clean she kept her room. No, Ms. Cilley was once a dysfunctional personal herself, so she really knows what she's talking about. Regular methods didn't work for her, either. LOVE IT!

I have found that I work much better if I set my own goals rather than follow another person's schedule. All of our lives are going in different directions, right? All I know is, when I found this site, I just about peed in my pants with excitement, because I finally found someone who just seemed to "get" me and my organizational issues. I now have a new title to add to my chaos: I am a... "FLY Baby."

Here are a few links to get you on the right track!

Getting Started with FLYLADY
Start with BABYSTEPS
What to Expect from FLYLADY

So, if you want to try to make an attempt at become more organized and efficient and the regular methods just aren't helping you become successful, I recommend that you check out FLYLADY.  I really don't see how it could hurt!

Here are a few of the motivational pictures and quotes that I use to "BOOST" my cleaning genes...

Now, in the words of the FLYLADY herself.... "Go Shine Your Sink!"