Weekend Review - Bras & Decks

All in all, it was a really good weekend.  Super productive, lots of fun, worked my ass off.  It's like Ontario finally decided winter is over and skipped right to summer - lots of sunshine, warmth, the city just greened up overnight.

Our back yard has a two tiered deck.  We've had it painted twice and while the fence and vertical boards still look good, the horizontal boards flake by the end of the summer it's painted.  It was looking pretty awful this spring.  Our patio furniture is plastic that was given as a wedding present and while it's still functional, the time outdoors has not been overly kind.  The past two years we've said we'd get a new set and reached August without buying anything. 

I should have taken pictures on the weekend, but this is all I seem to have of the back yard, me in a Renfrew (and self made rather pointy Elan bra) and snow covered.



2012 - from upper part of deck.
 

Winter view looking over the upper part down to the lower part.

Mr. Lina decided enough was enough.  He sent me a link to patio furniture on Thursday afternoon, as soon as I said it looked good he bought it.  New furniture means our deck needs some TLC.  He worked from home on Friday and he started on that too.  Many, many, MANY 4 letter word were in the texts and emails I got from him.  Paint stripper did nothing, the paint peeler was only effective where it was peeling, the neighbour saw him struggling and loaned him a sander.  Well he couldn't find the right weight of sandpaper, each visit to Home Depot making him more frustrated than the last... it went on and on.  It didn't matter what I said to try and keep this in perspective, it just made him angry.  Saturday he tackled it again and I was very happy to have plans that removed me from the house.

I went into Toronto to see Kristin at K-Line.  We had a lovely afternoon comparing bra supplies, bras (I bought a new one, Suzanna by Fantasie), I put on Alma and she pinned the back and made suggestions for me.  It was a really awesome day and time just flew by.  I did have a dyslexic moment where I wrote down her address inverted (i.e. I wrote 121 not 212) and the wrong number didn't have a house and I didn't write her cell number on the map I printed like I thought I did...  So I phoned home and Mr. Lina was particularly grumpy.  He looked up her email for me but I can't say I enjoyed that brief conversation.  I knew it wasn't ME that was the problem, but I had enough of being in the line of fire.

I went home to a husband who was full of aches from being hunched over a sander all day and too tired to be angry.  We watched the third period of the hockey game (Toronto vs Boston), an Italian zombie movie, I made dinner, rubbed a few sore muscles and we split a bottle of wine... Very calm evening and early to bed (well, for me at least).   I spent Sunday by his side sanding the deck and I got my old husband back.  He appreciated my assistance (and massages) and while it's not totally done, we're down to the last quarter, maybe less.  It's good to have him back.

So no sewing but a very busy weekend.  I'm eager to transfer those changes from the blouse to paper. 

Thanks for the comments and support in the last email.  I will post about my efforts to make better food choices as a way to be accountable to more than just myself.  I did relatively well this weekend.  Today is a Monday where I weight pretty much the same as Friday (possibly 0.2lbs less, I can't remember the decimal from Friday) and I call that a win.  Friday night we were playing board games with friends and chips came out.  I tried to hold off, but once I cracked and ate one...  it was hard to stop.  Not a wise choice there, but all my other food choices were good on Friday.  On Saturday, I split a margherita pizza with Kristin and a salad, dinner was fairly healthy but what I'm more pleased about was a reasonable portion size and stopping when I was full.  With all that sanding, we stopped for a quick lunch of tuna sandwiches and I was too tired to make dinner.  We ordered take out sushi and edamame (rather fishy day now that I think about it).  So, a win in a healthier choice than other delivery options.

And FET updates... nothing going on but more communication from the clinic as to what's going on next cycle.  I wrote exactly that last post, but I got another email with a reminder that I'll be taking Fragmen (injectable blood thinner), Prednisone and the endometrial scratch (a small cut in the lining of my uterus).  I am really far down this path and my treatment is pretty far from standard.  But... they still try to use "standard" forms for me to outline treatment.  It seems like it's more work for them to cross out all the things that don't apply (or answer my questions when I raise an eyebrow) and write in the extras than to just start from scratch.  It's good they are writing things out in a document, and it did say I'm taking a brand of progesterone I haven't used before, but missed:  Fragmen, intralipids, prednisone, Provera, Humira, endometrial scratch, Lupron-Depot (which I still have not had conformation on) and Femara (again, no confirmation yet).  Kind of defeats the purpose of putting it into a document, no?  Emails are filling in the blanks but now I have details in multiple spots.  This doesn't stress me out, but I think it makes the whole cycle seem more overwhelming.

In the next 10 days or so, I need to:

1. Get Mr. Lina in for his screening blood work.
2. Sign all the permission forms.
3. Blood work that the clinic can't do, pretty sure it's testing for lupus and other auto-immune, I did this two years ago maybe (and not covered by OHIP if I remember right). 
4. Take Humira #2 on Thursday.
5. Check with the pharmacy on all the other drugs that are being called in, particularly Humira #3 since they will need to order it in again and Provera/Lupron that will be for Day 21 (May 13).
6. Send off all the forms to the drug company to claim Humira.  I'd like my $1,730 back.
7. Pay for the FET.
8. Actually do some work I'm being paid for.  My interest is waning as I'm looking forward to the cycle ahead.