Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a marvelous few days. Me? Not so much. I’m doing my best, but I’m covered in bruises and there are many more that have yet to surface. I can feel them. Not fun. 😦

While trying to pack and get my shit together (Waste Management must hate me when they pick up the trash. I am breaking records with how much I am getting rid of. I have a twisted sense of humor, so this brings me great pleasure for some reason.), I badly injured my left knee. It’s swollen and difficult to walk, so I’m hobbling. There’s not much I can do about it until after the move. My right hip and lower back have also taken the time to act up and scream at me in daily agony. To add insult to injury, it was 28 degrees the other night. Every part of my body is in full-blown Fibro flare. Getting out of bed this morning was four hours of me saying “No.” to Cat and Kitten. Insomnia has taken over, so I’m not sleep-sleeping, which is making me unpleasant and grouchy.

I’ve virtually had no time to work as I sort through things and box up bits and pieces of my life. Thankfully, most of what I have is not moving with me, which leaves room in the truck for boxes, but I’ve decided that I want my life to be as minimalist as possible. I don’t want the next generation to be going through my stuff in 40-50 years saying “Wow, Mom had a lot of crap.” I am trying to reduce, purge, recycle, and donate. In fact, I am going through my things now, trying to put another box together for donation. As soon as I know how many there will be, I can schedule a pick-up. I’d like to aim for eight. So far, I’ve got three.

I did make a lot of progress throwing things out today, which makes me happy. I am certain that aside from photos and things that were handmade, I do not need to keep anything from before I was born. Sorry Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and all the Greats, but one person does not need roughly eight different sets of dishes, a multitude of wine glasses, and things she will absolutely never use. I don’t plan on having a dinner party any time soon for eighty people, but I’m almost certain I’ve got roughly eighty wine glasses that have never been used. I need to nip this in the bud NOW. On top of not being my taste, it’s too much and I’m worried about things of this nature breaking during the move. No matter how well packed things are, there’s always something that happens and I have to take that into consideration.

I am still adjusting to the new mattress. I’ve had maybe two good nights of sleep on it, if that. The replacement box spring was supposed to come out last week, but at the last-minute the store called (three times, no one can say they’re not trying to be helpful.) and said they only had one in the warehouse and had tried removing a stain from it. I called and said they could keep the stained one since that was only going to be temporary and to simply let me know when the new one was ready for delivery. I followed up this afternoon and the new one that I’d been told was “on order” has since been discontinued, so they’re now sweeping the store for a similar item to deliver to me. I don’t know if it will make an immense difference or not, but I credit them for doing their best to help. I was told by other customers how awful their customer service is, but I’ll be able to write a review stating otherwise. They even found instructions for me to take my bedroom furniture apart. The dresser has a mirror that screws into the back and the bed is four different pieces, but they got me a PDF file so that it can be detached and put back together as safely as possible. That’s major effort considering they no longer sell this furniture and I do love it or I wouldn’t have bought it. It’s no longer pristine from the store, it no longer has the “just delivered” newness to it, but it’s all mine and that’s what matters to me. Everything I am getting rid or and/or leaving behind can be replaced at an IKEA or a slightly more upscale store and quite frankly, IKEA has some really nice stuff. Again, this falls in line with my minimalist approach. My poor books are going into storage, but eventually they will be in a new place on new book shelves and I look forward to that. Books, DVD’s, music, and art are timeless items that I simply cannot live without for any real length of time.

My migraines have remained the same, they exist and they’re not going away anytime soon. 😦 The sudden shift in temperature hasn’t helped much and today is probably the warmest it will be for a while. Unlike most people, I don’t mind the change of seasons, but I DO mind it shifting so quickly from warm to “Holy crap!” My poor body doesn’t know what to do with that, so my pain levels go from manageable to sky-high. In times like these, all I can do is focus on what needs to be done and rest when I need to. No matter what I am putting my body through, I still need to rest and slow down. The last few nights that has meant watching baseball, and last night I sat through one of the worst football games I’ve been tortured with in a long time. If a team has no intention of showing up <cough, GIANTS> they should forfeit before embarrassing themselves. I’m happy for the Blue Jays though, and I promise I will try not to refer to them as the Maple Leafs any more. Or perhaps I’ll try not to do that next year. LOL. I clearly have hockey on the brain. It happens.

For those of you that submitted questions for the AMA, it will begin after my move, so I welcome people to continue to submit their questions.

I’ll be back soon. Have a wonderful evening everyone! 🙂