Category: health

2025 in review

It was a year of highs and lows, but never have I been so ready for a year to be over.

(I’m not even going to touch politics or the state of our country but if you know me at all, you know which of the two that falls under.)

January

The year started by waking up on New Year’s Day to hear about a horrific attack just across the river in the French Quarter. Lovely.

A few days later, my friends took me to brunch to celebrate my 50th birthday a few days earlier. And the best part was Kiki came in and surprised me! I burst into tears when I saw her at the table. (In a good way.) It was such a fun day, even though I don’t remember the end of it.

And then, the day before my birthday, the fires in Altadena destroyed my brother’s house. He and my sister-in-law and niece lost everything. I spent my actual birthday mostly crying. We did have a yummy dinner at an Indian restaurant at least. I got to get as many books as I could carry from Barnes & Noble. Well, my back hurt that day so I couldn’t carry as many as usual. Boo.

My sister and I set up a GoFundMe for our brother and his family, and that at least restored a tiny bit of faith in humanity.

We took family pictures.

And then, on January 21, the most magical thing happened, something that brought everyone* in New Orleans immeasurable joy. It snowed. A lot.

* I mean, sure, probably there were some people who didn’t like it, but I don’t know who they are. Grinches, I suppose.

February

The boys were extras in a movie (that will be released in a few months.) I made a quilt for my brother and SIL. I got a new desk and new ink.

March

Mardi Gras. It was fine. I dressed as Sally O’Malley and kicked and stretched my way through the French Quarter. Went to Kiki’s for her 50th. George got mugged outside our house (no pics of that.)

April

I went on a cruise with a lovely friend and had a wonderful, relaxing time. Until George called me to tell me his father had passed away that morning. I’m grateful we had visited him a few days before. Meanwhile, I missed my uncle’s funeral which also happened while I was on the cruise.

I went to the orthopedist because my shoulder was still hurting, and he informed me I’d need surgery and gave me orders for an MRI. But first I’d need to do 6 weeks of physical therapy. Fun.

Ren turned 50 and there was a clown party! I got another tattoo.

May

The boys finished their junior year. One year left of high school?! I’m not ready for this. Start physical therapy. I don’t have many pictures from this month. Ziggy was cute. I made George a shirt. We ate Indian for Mother’s Day. I convinced Miles to donate blood.

June

Made another quilt. We went to Virginia for Emily’s graduation, and visited some colleges while we were there. Noticed a weird thing on my arm. Got it checked out.

July

Kiki and I meet up in London after my work thing. (At least I documented that already.)

Finally get MRI. Made another quilt, for a friend’s baby. Volunteered at the SPCA and played with kittens. Got weird thing removed from arm (fortuitously, was hidden within new tattoo.) Participated in first speed-puzzling competition. Realized I’m not as good at puzzling as I thought. Boys took senior pictures.

August

Take the boys to University of Alabama for a visit. I go to Portland for work. Doctor says I will need surgery on my shoulder. We schedule it. I buy lots of things. Katrina was 20 years ago.

September

Went to Virginia for a Pulp concert. Found out a favorite coworker died. (Enough with the deaths already!) A week before my surgery, I get bloodwork done and it comes back all weird. Platelets super low, weird! Other weird things! Surgery is pushed back a week and goes ahead when platelets return to normal. Mystery. I finish the month in excruciating pain (post-surgery). Shoulders hurt, yo! Kiki visits to help me recover. I spend a lot of time in my new power recliner.

PS I didn’t really get a robot arm. Don’t tell my mom.

October

Spend the month recovering, not working. Evan came for work so hung out with him. Couldn’t pull my own hair back. Couldn’t drive for most of the month. That sucked. Visited LSU.

November

Went back to work. Visited Tulane. College application crunch time! Soccer season started. The boys got their first suits, wore them to Homecoming. George and I celebrated 20 years of marriage! God, we’re old. I got an emerald ring and we had lunch at the place we went for our first date.

December

The boys turned 18. Went to LSU for another visit. I went to Edmonton for work. So much snow! College acceptances (and not) start rolling in. I saw one of my favorite movies on the big screen. Christmas was lovely.

2026, you can be chill. We don’t need the ups and downs of 2025, thanks. A less exciting year would be juuuuust fine.

(I realize I wrote real sentences for January but gave up after that. Seems appropriate.)

September recap

Well, that was a month.

Started off nicely with a work trip to Ireland that really deserves a post of its own. But let’s face it, I’ll never get to it if I don’t post about it now, so let me post about it now.

I arrived in Dublin around lunchtime on Saturday, and met up with my coworker Tiffany, who also arrived that day. Everyone else was getting there on Sunday. I went a day early so that I could meet up with Alicia, but for reasons, she was unexpectedly in Louisiana. So Tiffany and I met up with her husband Mat instead, and it was a fun night. Maybe too fun. I did not feel well the next day, let’s just put it that way.

The next day, we picked up the rest of the team and made our way to Kilranleigh Lodge, a house a bit over an hour outside of Dublin, the location of our meetup.

It was gorgeous, but somewhat rustic. The wifi wasn’t great, the heat wasn’t on yet so I was freezing the whole time, and it took a while to get anywhere, but the scenery made it worth it. And the dogs.

We spent one day in Dublin, and I did finally get to see Alicia, so that was fantastic. And then we went on a little Irish music pub crawl, which was very entertaining.

My trip home was not uneventful. Due to my flight being delayed, I missed my connection in DC so I got to see my sister and her family, and I got to stay with Kiki that night! Bonus!

And the other bonus I got from the trip:

After 3.5 years, it finally got me. Thankfully, it was mild, just like a cold, but I tested positive for over a week, so I only just got out of isolation. It was nice to get to hug the boys again!

So that’s about it, really. Ireland and Covid. What a September!

May so far

It’s been an eventful month. Maybe too eventful.

Went to Virginia to visit Kiki. That was good eventful. Being on an airplane was weird. We baked a lot, including croissants. PS buying good croissants is much easier. Just do that. But it was fun.

Oh wait, but the night before I left, I had to take Oliver to get stitches. Well, a stitch, really. (He lost a fight with his desk.)

When I got back, I got the house cleaned professionally for the first time and IT IS STILL CLEAN.

Then a tornado skipped through our neighborhood last week, and we lost power for a while. Spent the day with the boys at Starbucks and Target.

I did a dumb thing and booked a (non-refundable) hotel room in a half-asleep haze, not even thinking about the fact that hotels don’t let you check in until 3pm. The power came back on at 2.

The boys and I went to our suite and hung out for two hours. I took the soaps and shampoos yet I still don’t feel like I got my money’s worth. Ah well. An expensive lesson.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any damage from the storm, at least not physically.

And then on Sunday, Linus was having a tough time with this asthma, which ultimately resulted in an ER visit followed by overnight admission.

I’m ready for the rest of the month to be boring, thanks.

Here’s a bunch of pics. You’re welcome.

  • Oliver’s stitch
  • Kiki’s cat, Maxie
  • Check out that lamination!
  • Finished croissants
  • Macaron!
  • Clean kitchen
  • Clean bathroom
  • Clean living room (and adorable dog)
  • Clean dining room
  • Boys at Starbucks
  • The worst $150 I ever spent
  • At least he enjoyed the wheelchair ride
  • Our “other” hotel room. I suspect more than $150 a night.

Things and stuff

I think it’s time for another blog post full of randomness.

Like…

My sabbatical starts in 32 days, 7 hours, 41 minutes, and 43 seconds! (A bit less by the time I actually post this, of course.)

And our cruise is coming up fast (don’t bother robbing us while we’re gone, we’re going to have a house sitter. Plus we have nothing to steal unless you like fabric. Please don’t steal my fabric.) and I’m working on shorts for the boys.

After the cruise is the boys’ school Winter Fair and my friend Bea is having a booth and she’s letting me sell some of my bags! So exciting! So I uh, need to make some bags. I wish I could bring my sewing machine on the cruise. Hmm.

Remember when I tripped and skinned my knees like a little kid in my friend’s backyard way back in August? (I may not have mentioned it here.) Well, I also hurt my right foot a bit at the time, but not a ton, but it’s just been bugging me ever since. I finally went to my orthopedist and he confirmed it was nothing major, which was a relief. It’ll just take a while to heal, and it’s fine to continue exercising and not do the things that make it hurt (mostly lunges and burpees OH DARN and anything that causes me to flex my toes.)

But what I found out that was interesting is that I have extra bones in my foot! Under my toes! And they’re all broken up! Most people only have this tiny bone under their big toe, but I have them under all of my toes, and they should be in one piece, but they’re in a few pieces. He said that is due to some old trauma, and it wasn’t causing my pain, it was just an interesting discovery that we found because of the x-rays I had.

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Yellow arrows point to normal (broken) bones. Red ones are bonus bones!

If I had to guess, the “trauma” was running two marathons and 13 half marathons overweight. Whatevs.

In other news, competitive soccer is done for the fall, but school soccer has begun! It’s not as time-consuming, though. But I do have to pick them up from school a couple of times a week. But that’s okay, I guess.

OH, this is exciting – I have been wanting to volunteer in a NICU starting during my sabbatical but I hadn’t had much luck getting into any of the programs in local hospitals. Finally, I got a call back from two hospitals, even though neither of them had openings in the NICU. I chose the local Children’s hospital because it’s smaller. I went to volunteer orientation, got my TB test (negative, whew) and some other tests, and I’m just waiting for an interview now so I can be put on the schedule. To start, I’ll be walking people around the hospital so they don’t get lost (it’s kind of a maze) but at some point, I’ll get into the NICU to rock babies. I’m in this for the long haul, so no rush. I can be patient.

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That’s where they injected tuberculosis into me. Or something.

So sabbatical plans:

  • Organize house (i.e., throw away a lot of stuff)
  • Sew!
  • Volunteer at hospital, hopefully get to rock some babies at least
  • See Kiki at some point
  • Work out a lot, make muscles bigger

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    It’s a start.

Pretty low-key.

In yet other news, my lemon tree might be dying. My black thumb strikes again. I’m so sad. It was full of lemons, but they abruptly stopped growing at some point, but ripened really fast, and ended up the size of ping pong balls instead of grapefruit like last year. The leaves on the tree are all withered and it’s v sad. It doesn’t look good.

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This is a shoebox.

My theories are either that the Bradford pear next to it is stealing all the sunlight (but surely it wasn’t that much shorter last year?) or something to do with fresh, healthy lemon tree growth at the base of the tree? Sapping all the nutrients from the rest of the tree? I have no idea.

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Sad leaves (from before I picked the lemons). Not the big, healthy, glossy green leaves I’m used to. 😦

Anyhoo, that’s about it for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more as soon as I hit “publish” but I’d better do it before I have to change the sabbatical countdown at the top of the post again.

Marathon #3!

Okay, not really. But you know I work out at Orangetheory and I usually go three times a week or so, four if I can swing it. And in April they had a marathon challenge where you added up your mileage from the treadmill from all of your workouts and tried to hit 26.2 miles.

Now, the sensible thing to do would have been to sign up for the half-marathon, especially considering I knew I’d be traveling for a week of the month. And with the garage sale weekend right before my trip and jetlag and having to attend a funeral right after I got home, it meant I was really out for 13 days! Almost half of the month. But by golly, I was going to do the marathon and get the dang t-shirt!

This may seem not too hard, but consider an OTF workout is about 55 minutes, and at most half of that is on the treadmill. So I have about 25-27 minutes to get in my miles. Oh, and I’m not exactly a speed demon. On average, I can do between 1.75 – 2.25 miles in a workout. So you can see how it can be problematic to get 26.2 miles in 17 days without killing myself. By the time I got back from Singapore, I had 10 days to get about 16 miles. So that means I basically had to go every day. Yikes!

When I remembered that April 2002 was when I did my first (real, actual) marathon, I was especially motivated. It just seemed fitting.

Well, I’ll wrap up this long story now with this…

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I got it!!!!

10 years, 2 months

I almost forgot today’s picture (gasp!) Between Mardi Gras and three sick children, it just slipped my mind until this evening, when Miles reminded me. So that’s partly why the picture was taken in the living room instead of outside. But I may have changed the location anyway since no one really felt like doing much today anyway.

Look at those rosy cheeks…

As of right this moment, they seem to be on the mend, but after battling vomit, asthma, ear infections, congestion, coughing, headaches, and fever for the last week, I just give up.

2017 in review

Years that end in 7s have typically been pretty eventful for me. Well, at least two of them have. I spent a good chunk of 1997 in London, which was life-changing for me. And 2007 brought a trio of little clones into our lives. So I expected 2017 to be equally eventful for me personally. I mean, hey, it was also the year I was 42, so expectations were high.

But it didn’t end up being particularly noteworthy, at least not for me. In fact, generally speaking, I’d say it was not a great year overall. But for our family, it was fine. Let’s recap. Read More

Goings on

It’s been a while since I wrote a regular old boring blog post, so here goes.

The boys had their third guitar lesson yesterday. They still like it! Ha! They’d better, at what it’s costing me. There’s still some frustration about getting chords right and finger placement and finger (it hurts to press on the strings!) but no one has given up yet. Ha.

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I say “boys” but really it was just Oliver and Miles. Linus is still sick from whooping cough. Even though they had all of last week off, he’s still getting sent home from school every day because of the cough. It doesn’t sound good, that’s for sure. I’m so ready for this to be over. I’m so ready for him to complete a whole day of school. Especially because the nurse said she’d bake us a cake when all three made it through a full day. I’m thinking yellow cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles? Yes?

img_9429-2Also next week is the big standardized testing week so he has to stay in school all day. I can’t have one triplet repeating third grade! (Don’t worry, that won’t actually happen.)

On Sunday, I accidentally signed up for two Orangetheory classes in a row. I figured, why not just do it? (The alternative being to pay a $12 cancellation fee.) Everything was going swimmingly until the point when my back seized up and was like “nope.” So now I am in pain but got a massage yesterday which helped but thank goodness for leftover painkillers from surgery is all I can say.

I’m excited for this summer. The boys and I are spending a couple of weeks at the beginning in Austin, housesitting with Deborah and her kids. It will be fun! We’ll be able to work together and the kids can all play and we can go swimming and all sorts of fun stuff.

And then there will be a work trip to Orlando, and some Kiki visiting, and possibly a trip at the end of the summer to DC to see Aunt Jenny’s giant house finally. We’ll see.

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Scary!
We’re really enjoying the patio. The giant piles of dirt are finally diminishing, and once my back is better I hope we can get some hedges in. I’m also dreaming of a hydrangea bush, but I’m not known for my green thumb so it might not be the best idea. But maybe.

Ooh, this is exciting! The movie Miles filmed last year finally has a release date! It’ll be in theaters in June and then it also have a VOD (video on demand) release date a few days later. I’m really hoping it will be playing in a theater in Austin while we’re there. The production company that made the movie is based there, so I’m hopeful. We’ll see. Fingers crossed! (I won’t be taking the kids to the theater, but at least we can show them Miles’s parts on demand a few days later.) I also hope his part wasn’t left on the cutting room floor. Hmm.

Anyway, I’m not such a huge fan of horror movies, but hopefully this one won’t give me nightmares. Sure, why would seeing my kid play dead give me nightmares?

IMG_0176In happier news, two of my baby cousins are having babies! I mean, they’re not exactly babies anymore, they’re grown women, but they’ll always be my baby cousins. They’re due a month apart, and neither know what flavor baby they’re having. How is it that I had no problem not knowing the sex of my babies, but when other people do it I get wildly impatient?

Anyway, they’re adorable, and I can’t wait to take lots of pictures of their squishy babies! (I’m convinced both are boys. Well, at least one is a boy I’ll bet.)

Quick rundown of other things…Ziggy is free of heartworms, we got a new fancy thermostat (not Nest, but like Nest), sno-balls are yummy, I got to drive a fancy Corolla for a week, Miles and I had a streetcar/beignet adventure last week, and we played Monopoly.)

 

 

Cough, cough, cough (times infinity)

Other suggested post titles:

“The Sicklets”

“Whooping it up!”

This has been a terrible year for sickness. I don’t know why. I thought the boys got all the sicknesses out of their systems when they were younger. We had a great run of it for a few years, but this year has been constant. There was the coughing and asthma from the fall that lasted three weeks, then the barfing in the winter, and now this.

“This” is Whooping Cough. Wait, what year is it? 1938? No, it’s 2017, my kids are fully vaccinated, and they were diagnosed the other day with pertussis, more commonly known as Whooping Cough.

Well, I say “they.” Not really. But let me go back to the beginning…

February 28, Mardi Gras day: I took Oliver to a parade, but George called me because Miles had a fever. We headed home and I took Miles to Urgent Care, where he tested negative for strep (which was my guess) but was given a z-pack (azithromycin) anyway. The doctor thought it was some kind of throat infection.

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Infecting the whole Smoothie King Arena at the twenty one pilots concert!

March 5: Oliver has been coughing a little bit, but it’s not terrible, and I go to Australia/New Zealand.

March 15: I arrive home, and Oliver is still coughing.

March 16: I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up someone (I can’t keep track) because of coughing.

March 17: I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up someone (I can’t keep track) because of coughing.

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Spreading disease at the Aquarium!

March 20: I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up someone (I can’t keep track) because of coughing.

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Ha ha ha ha ha yeah like that was gonna help.

March 21: I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up someone (I can’t keep track) because of coughing. I take Oliver to the pediatrician because his cough is not getting better. But he’s showing no other symptoms. He had a very mild (like 99 degrees) fever, though. The doctor suggests maybe it’s a post-nasal drip from a sinus infection, so she prescribes a z-pack.

March 22: I have to work at a conference in town, so George stays home with all three kids.

March 23: The boys go back to school, and that afternoon I triumphantly post on FB that I didn’t have to pick up anyone from school! My triumph is short-lived, though.

March 24: I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up all three because of coughing.

March 27: Me and the school nurse are buddies by now. But the kind of buddies you dread hearing from. I really do like her. But I hate it when she calls. When I go pick up Oliver, she says, “this is going to sound crazy, but it might be Whooping Cough.” I poo-poo the idea. He’s vaccinated, after all!

March 28: I volunteer as a chaperone for a field trip in Miles’s class. This way I know I can give cough syrup midday to all three, so maybe we can make it through an entire day again! I dose up Miles and Oliver, but when I get to Linus’s classroom, he’s already been sent to the nurse’s office. Sigh. I take all three home.

March 29: I keep all three home from school. WHAT’S THE POINT? Meanwhile, I desperately make an appointment with the pediatrician, who agrees it can’t hurt to test them for pertussis. That afternoon, we head to Children’s Hospital to get the test. It involves shoving a thin tube up the boys’ noses after squirting saline up there. There is a surprising amount of laughter while they have it done, even though it’s definitely not pleasant.

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At the doctor’s office. Notable because they’re reading!

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Waiting to get a tube shoved up their noses.

That evening, I get a call from the doctor. “Are you sitting down?” she asks. “Linus tested positive for Whooping Cough. The other two were negative for that, but positive for rhinovirus.” (Which is just a cold.) Dr. Google had already told me that the treatment for pertussis is a course of antibiotics. As it happens, a z-pack. We realize that must be why Oliver tested negative – he had a z-pack the week before!

But what about Miles? We were going to have this in our house forever. Do you know pertussis is called the “100 day cough”? Yeah, I believe it.

But then it hit me – Miles did get antibiotics, for the mysterious illness he had on Mardi Gras day! It’s only a theory, of course, but it makes sense…Miles was Patient Zero! We got, dare I say, lucky, that we treated him unknowingly. And correctly. Never have I been so glad that the boys have a penicillin allergy! Z-packs FTW! And Miles finished his antibiotics before he went back to school after Mardi Gras break, so at that point he was no longer contagious.

So here it is, March 31. Linus is on antibiotics. I am on antibiotics (preventative.) I sent Oliver to school this morning because he seemed to be feeling okay. (And is no longer contagious as he finished his z-pack already.) But right on schedule…

I get a call from the school nurse. Need to pick up someone (I can’t keep track) Oliver because of coughing.

When I go to pick him up, the nurse’s office is filled with third graders. Earlier today, I got a call from the state Department of Health about the whole situation. I’m really glad they’re tracking it and everything. But it really hit home when I got to school to pick up Oliver. Every parent of a coughing third grader was getting a phone call with a recommendation to start antibiotics. If they weren’t vaccinated, they have to stay out of school for 21 days.

A little while ago, a letter went out to the whole school saying there’s an outbreak of Whooping Cough in the third grade. Ugh. We’re not named in the letter but it’s obviously not a secret since I’m blogging about it.

I feel irrationally terrible. I know it’s not our fault. We had no idea. We don’t know where we got it from. We vaccinate our kids. We get vaccines ourselves. Who would have thought we’d come down with some preventable disease? But we have friends with small children. The boys were at school all month with this. They’ve been in public. They’ve played with friends. We went to a one year old’s birthday party!

We may have weeks of coughing ahead of us. It’s “only” been four weeks. We could have another month of this.

Here’s what our house sounds like now…

Send wine.

15 minutes x2

Yesterday was (relatively speaking) exciting. First I got a text from my cousin’s wife who works at a local tv station. The medical reporter was looking for someone to talk to on air about the stomach bug that’s been going around. Katie knew we’d battled it, so, well, long story short, this happened:

The house was a mess and I was in the middle of interviewing someone and they wanted to come over right away, so I called Terry and yelled, “COME OVER RIGHT NOW” and she got the boys’ beds made up (I knew they were going to film them, as they had been the scene of one of the crimes, as it were) while I frantically put on make up in between asking questions.

After Terry left and I was waiting, I got a message from a reporter who wanted to interview “normal” parents of triplets after some famous people announced they just had triplets. So I sent over answers to her questions and voila:

30 Fingers and 30 Toes: These Moms Talk What It’s Really Like To Have Triplets

Good, bad, and ugly

Good:

The boys had their slumber party (now over a week ago!) The cake was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Love so much. They had a great time, and most importantly, I survived a night with nine 8 and 9 year old boys.

Oliver had his last day at the zoo classroom. Got to watch him in a movie and he gave a presentation on endangered species.

Oliver’s new purple hair:

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Miles got his roots done:

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Bad:

How I felt the day after we went out for tiki drinks. But it was totally worth it. 🙂

Linus is currently sick. His asthma is acting up. We’re leaving soon for our trip, so I really need everyone to be healthy again. Yeesh. I mean, look how sick:

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Ugly:

Ziggy has heartworms. 😦 I was so upset when I found out, but I’m a bit calmer now, after doing some research. We seem to have caught it pretty early, thank god. Not looking forward to keeping him still for two months, though.

These sweaters:

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Weekend and things

Had a lovely weekend. Went to Orange Theory Saturday morning, then took Oliver to Target to get a pair of pajamas (in theory they all have pajama day this week, but I haven’t actually heard anything about it from their teachers, but it’s not like he’s not going to wear his new pajamas that have the design of some YouTube dude he admires. [WTF, btw. A guy who makes YouTube videos has licensed stuff like pajamas. Also he has blue hair. That is not a coincidence.])

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After the pajama trek, I went and drank wine in Heather’s backyard, and was in theory going to only be there for an hour or two but that turned into coming home at midnight. Ooops. So didn’t go to OTF on Sunday as planned. Instead, made these delicious chocolate chip cookies to bring to my cousin Lisa’s house.

Going to Lisa’s house is always fun. The boys love her boys (who are not really boys anymore, but legit grownups) and there’s always delicious food (some insane corn dip yesterday is something I need to eat every day except not really because it has mayo in it) and Lisa and her husband are super laid back, so it’s just nice.

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They are very comfortable at Lisa’s. Maybe too comfortable.

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Eli and the boys. Awww!

But the best part is they have a deck along the back of the house, which makes the perfect stage, so now you have to watch this play the boys put on. JK you only have to watch it if you’re related to us.

After the play, snowballs!

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Want to talk a tiny bit more about OTF – I’ve been going a bit over a month now and it’s exciting because I can see muscles that were not there before! Today I was doing this arm exercise thingy, and I couldn’t take my eyes off some muscle, while sweat dripped down my nose. Tomorrow I have an appointment for an assessment with one of the trainers, and I really wish I’d done that before I started. But it’ll be interesting to see my progress from here on out.

Random cute picture of Miles and Ziggy:

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It’s the last week of second grade! I can’t believe it. I’ll be glad not to have to do the drive to school every afternoon, but I don’t think I’m ready for third graders.