Plantar fasciitis

June 22, 2009 at 9:00 am (Uncategorized)
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I have not been able to run for a long time, not since the end of May, due to having a very small but very sore spot on my arch. I have foot “issues” – they are almost nearly flat (found out about that when I had pain from running track in high school), I over pronate, I have bunions. My shoes have been fantastic and really had prevented the ankle pain I always had when I’d run before, or even walked. I’ve had arch pain before but this time it was just not really getting better. It got to the point where I couldn’t walk on it in the morning and when I put shoes on, it felt like I was walking on a lump!

Off to the doctor I went. It turns out she is a runner too and had just been to this big conference. She gave me a bunch of exercises and stretches – plus motrin for 10 days and rolling my foot on a frozen water bottle. One of my exercises is an activity I enjoy anyway – picking up objects with my toes! I saw her less than a week ago so it’s hard to tell yet if it’s helping. I think that it’s pretty inflamed, and it will take a while to go away. I am not allowed to run at all right now, but I can power walk, which I did the other day. That went well with a lot of icing and stretching. She was also not at all alarmed about my weight gain, she said it was muscle and encouraged me to keep going!

I also had a bunch of blood tests. I have suspected that I never got rid of the mono I got two years ago, and now have chronic Epsteinn-Barr virus. I will find out early this week what, if anything, turned up. It could be still fibromyalgia and it could also be that I just need more time to recover from 5 years of never having enough sleep. Will update on that later!

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Communicable disease of the month

June 8, 2009 at 4:21 pm (sickness)
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This month, it’s Coxsackie virus – otherwise known as hand, foot, and mouth disease. Not to be confused with hoof and mouth disease, which is a disease of cattle. This one starts with a really high fever, then progresses to a child with sores in his/her mouth, and the whole thing is nicely decorated with extreme fussiness. Sophie went from fairly OK to suddenly screaming Thursday evening, and we didn’t know why. Then Saturday I saw the blisters in her mouth. She never did get a hand/foot rash but she did have 1-2 spots on one hand. Not much you can do except tylenol/motrin and benadryl. By the way benadryl does not make my kids sleepy. It does not wind them up, but it doesn’t make them sleep either. Lucky me right?

Yesterday Will had a fever and was puking but he went to bed, stayed there all night and was fine this morning. Appetite not the best but he’s nibbled a little here and there all day. Sophie seems herself for the most part but I can see spots in her mouth, including a big one under her tongue. No wonder the poor thing has hardly been able to nurse! :( And it is crazy contagious… so we’ve all been staying in.

I was feeling OK, tired, but today my throat is sore. However it could be mono again, which flares up whenever I don’t get enough rest. Before the kids got sick, I was up several nights coughing from a mild cold. It’s always something…

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It’s going!!!

June 5, 2009 at 3:24 pm (Uncategorized)
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My beer seems to be doing well. After 48+ tense hours of wondering whether it would start fermenting, suddenly I had lots of foam! It’s still going strong and once it’s done I’ll get it bottled if the specific gravity looks good. I know I said I’d take a picture of the bubbling airlock but there really isn’t much to see, just a blurp now and then. I’m excited that things are going along like they should. What a fun biology/chemistry experiment!

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As the wort turns!

June 1, 2009 at 3:08 pm (Uncategorized)
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This is my first of hopefully many adventures in beer making! I used a Brewer’s Best kit, English Brown Ale. Here are the contents of the kit:

kit

And here is some of the equipment from my brewing set I used:

supplies

The first step was to make a “tea” out of crushed crystal malt. (The unfermented beer is called “wort” and this is the first step for this kind of beer.) First the crushed malt is put in a stockinette bag, while a pot of water gets its temperature taken. (Note my beautiful 1970 harvest gold cooktop. It’s an original!)

waterpot

Then as the water heats, the bag of malt steeps.

steep1

It is a lovely color! And the smell! SO good.

steep2

You could get a good steam facial with this!

steep3

Once the crushed malt steeps for 20 minutes, the “tea” is brought to a boil and the malt (sugars) and bittering hops are added. Here are the hops, processed into pellets:

hops

The hops are added to the boiling malt sugar solution and continue to boil for a total of 55 minutes. At that time, the flavoring hops are added (a different variety to give another layer of flavor). I had two types of malt in this kit – a can of syrup and a bag of powder. The powder malt made some crazy foam when I added it and it was a little bit scary! Eventually it all settled and happily boiled away. Made every room in the house smell good!

boilingwort

Once the wort was done cooking, into an ice bath to cool to 70 degrees.

icebath

After the wort came down to temperature, I poured it out of the pot and into the ale pail. The sediment left at the bottom of the pan actually has a name – it’s called trub!

trub

Water goes in after that,then we check specific gravity. Just like chemistry class! The specific gravity will go down once the beer is done fermenting.

sg

After that, yeast is added…

yeast

Temperature is checked again… (can’t see it well but it’s about 75)

temp

Then the pail is lidded and fermentation lock applied.

fermlock

Notice the order. That was my first mistake. I put on the lid and pushed in the fermentation lock, and the little rubber grommet went into the wort. This was followed by much swearing and fishing in the wort for the grommet. Once it was located, the fermentation lock went in the lid BEFORE applying the lid, then lid was applied and water was added to fermentation lock.

Now the beer is in its resting place for 3-7 days. Will take pictures of bubbling fermentation lock. Once bubbling has stopped, and specific gravity has decreased to stated number, then bottling process can begin.

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Turning 40

June 1, 2009 at 10:20 am (Uncategorized)

It was my birthday last weekend and I turned 40. I don’t understand why people get all upset about turning 40 (or 30 or whatever) because I really don’t feel any different than I did at 39. Besides, I don’t give a crap what people think about me anymore and that’s very freeing! Here’s to turning 40! It’s good!

The birthday festivities stretched out over a week. Last Friday night I went to a friend’s house (My Big Blue Comfy Couch) for mojitos, then out to a bar for some dancing. Stayed up way too late and was very tired the next day! On Saturday, because it was Memorial Day weekend, we packed ourselves up and drove to my in law’s summer home about an hour away on Lake Huron. It was a nice overnight up there with the family, but for some reason I cannot sleep up there, so again a second night of not enough. By Sunday (my actual birthday) I was pretty tired! But we got home and I opened my gifts – the most interesting being a beer making kit. All the equipment I need to make beer except the ingredients! I’d asked for this because it’s something I’ve wanted to try for a while. I just picked up a kit for brown English ale and I’m excited to get started. Hopefully we have enough bottles, guess we need to finish up that 12 of Bass so I’ll have enough of them!

That evening we had dinner at a local Japanese steakhouse that has good sushi and they cook dinner right in front of you. The kids enjoyed that even though they fussed through dinner! We bribed them with ice cream which helped a little bit! We were too full for cake so the next day (Monday) we had cake. It would have been a lot of candles so I asked my husband to figure out how to do it in binary – which you can see here.

binarycake

On this past Friday, the girls who couldn’t make it had a brunch for me. I got some wonderful gifts – a nice selection of Bath and Body Works goodies, a gift certificate, and another goody bag filled with incense, candles, candle holders, earrings… wonderful things! I have been wanting to burn more incense and candles and have been trying to create little pockets of things that make me feel good in this house of chaos! It’s time for me to dig out all those things I packed away when I started having babies and put them back out. Anything to create a little corner of serenity. My kitchen window is now a work in progress. I still need to stick some hooks in the soffit so I can hang a few things up. I love windows with glass things hanging in them to catch the light.

I had a very, very good birthday this year. 40 is good and all I can say is that life keeps getting better. It should be fantastic by the time I’m dead!

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