I love the holidays. Can you hear my faint sarcasm? I really do love Christmas, but I can't stand the (usually self-imposed) stress that accompanies the season. Whether the stress is a result of financial worries, extended family squabbles, an ill grandparent, or just busyness, it can take it's toll. Add to that not getting enough sleep and eating too many empty calories (a.k.a. peanut butter fudge and a couple boxes of Aplets and Cotlets...all by myself), and my immune system is beaten down to almost nothing.

I thought it was such a good idea...staying up until 2 every morning to do my writing. The house is quiet, the phone's not ringing, no one's on Facebook that late to distract me with silly jokes (which I love). But my stay-up-late-and-get-work-done plan backfired, and I found myself getting sick. It was a very mild virus, but ended up settling in my inner ear (doctor didn't find anything, but we know our own bodies, right?), and on December 10 I was struck by the most violent vertigo I'd ever experienced. I was sitting on my bed when the room started spinning, and it felt like the bed was rising up to tip me off of it. Talk about scary!

The vertigo waned over the next week but was overlapped -- and eventually replaced -- by dizziness. (Vertigo is when you feel like everything around you is in motion when it isn't, while dizziness is a spinning feeling inside your head.) This lasted in varying degrees until this past weekend, when it handed off the baton to a new virus better known as the common cold.

So here I sit, sniffling, complaining about my plight to friends on Facebook, and now here. My head feels like it's been stuffed with rocks, my neck hurts, and my eyes are burning. My throat hurts, too, so I'm medicating it with a cup of hot cocoa (the heat feels good, but the sugar's a no-no...oh, well).

I have learned, then, that to avoid a similar fate the next time I'm super busy, to do the following:

• Get to bed early. No late hours.
• Have scheduled times to just relax and unwind.
• Cut out the majority of sugar in my diet (I could never get rid of all of it).
• Take my Vitamin C, etc.
• Drink lots of water.
• Plan better for the big expenditures like Christmas, birthdays, etc., so it's not such a big stressor.
• Never, ever, ever skimp on using disinfectant wipes on shopping carts and shopping baskets! (Pretty sure that's how I got sick this time...the one time I didn't use one.)
• Continue to wash hands like a maniac, as always.

Hope you've all stayed well over the holidays. If you have anything to add about how you avoid getting sick, please share!

But a potpourri this post will be. Or maybe we could call it the "kitchen junk drawer" of blog posts. I have several things to tell you, but am just too lazy -- at almost one in the morning -- to give each of them their own pieces of blog post real estate. I should be in bed (but am not, thanks to the pumpkin spice latte I had this afternoon).

Maybe this would be a better analogy. My husband once told me of one of his mother's favorite ways to make casseroles years ago. She would take the leftovers from that week's dinners and somehow make another meal by putting them all together in one pan and baking it. I imagine it would've been something that either worked really well, or didn't work at all.

So, here we have it: My Leftover Casserole Blog Post for the Week of Oct. 19-24.

Sarah Palin on SNL

I had intended to post my thoughts on Governor Palin's being on Saturday Night Live. I'm a little late doing that, I realize. I'll confess I only watched the first portion of the program, and missed her second appearance later in the show. If I'd known she was going to appear twice, I would have suffered through the other skits. But what I saw was very good. I thought she was fantastic, actually. Not a ruffled feather on her. I won't give it away, except for what was one of my favorite parts -- when she told Alec Baldwin that her favorite Baldwin brother was Stephen (who is a born-again Christian).

I watched her other skit on YouTube, and wasn't as impressed as I was with the first one, but am very proud of Sarah for going on the show and showing them and the rest of the watching world that she is one strong lady. I hear that because of Governor Palin's guest appearance, SNL enjoyed their highest ratings in 14 years.

You can watch both skits here. Just a caution -- make sure your kids aren't around. A couple of the thumbnails that show up with the list of videos aren't that great. The actual skits themselves, however, are probably fine for older kids to see.

Oh, My Aching Body

My fibromyalgia is acting up again. It seems to hit me just once or twice a month now, which is decidedly preferable to the weekly flare-ups I was dealing with a couple of years ago. I went for years suffering with this stuff before I self-diagnosed it (and later had it confirmed by my doctor). If you think you might have fibromyalgia, check your symptoms here.

Lonnie and MM

And lastly, but most importantly, my husband is still dealing with his Multiple Myeloma (MM). This is an "of course" statement, because it's something he'll be "dealing with" for the rest of his life. What's encouraging to us is something his oncologist told us two years ago, and that's that MM is no longer a death sentence, but more and more is being viewed as a "manageable disease." If something crops up, like the two tumors he had when diagnosed, it gets dealt with and we go on. So far, according to the MRI he had last summer, nothing is actively growing. The numbers for the bad proteins always seem to rise a little from one appointment to the next, but apparently they aren't high enough to do anything about right now (one thing that's been threatened is a bone marrow transplant).

He was wondering tonight, though, if his immune system is weakening a little. He took a very, very mild pain reliever last night and has been wiped out ever since. I would like to ask his doctor about this reaction, and will also look into ways that he can boost his immune system. If any of my readers have any knowledge in that area, please speak up!

(Note: Lonnie has been experiencing daily pain. Some of it may be from his psoriatic arthritis coming back, but an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in cancer patients told him that he also has "degenerative disc disease." Apparently, it's a result of the radiation therapy he received in 2006 for the tumors in his neck. That's the scary thing about radiation -- it seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.)

So, that's this week's "leftover casserole." Sorry if it was a little bland -- I probably forgot the Worcestershire. ;-)

I love looking at the old maple tree in our neighbor's yard. Our backyard borders five other yards (two on each side, one on a perpendicular street, and two on the cul de sac behind us), and this tree stands at the back corner of one of them. When I stand in my kitchen window and look straight back, this tree is the first thing I see.

It heralds the changing seasons and has provided many a great photo op. It's so big (and older than me, I'm sure), that when the sun shines on one side, the other side of the tree is in shade and the whole thing looks ethereal. Gorgeous.

I love that tree. The day it gets cut down (not that I've heard of any plans in that direction) is the day we start making plans to move!

All this talk of fall leads me to my next harbinger of the season: the hobo spider. Ugh. I truly dread them. You can read about our previous run-ins with the little beasts here:  Creepy Crawlies x 2  and here: A Spider is a Spider is a Spider...Unless it's Poisonous

So, all year, every time I see a hobo spider, I smush it. Yes, smush. Like smash, but with less force. Thankfully, every hobo I've found so far this year has been small. And every time I smush one, I say, "Thank you, Jesus." Really! Why? Because I got 'em when they were little, instead of toddler hand-size like our earlier friends. Just the other night I found one on my wall making a beeline for my bed. That one became acquainted with my slipper. Smush.

* * * * * * * * * *

In other news, real news, Sarah Palin, who's been parodied twice now on Saturday Night Live, will be on the show herself this weekend. Of course, if you miss it, it will be uploaded to YouTube by hundreds of people (who don't seem to realize that other people have already done so). I think, however, that everyone who can should tune in on Saturday. For me personally, it's a great way to show Hollywood -- or in this case, New York -- that I support Governor Palin. I never watch the show, but for this I will.

I'll post my thoughts on it next week. And maybe, in the meantime, I should go over to YouTube and get caught up on Tina Fey's impersonations of Sarah. I'm hoping that this time around, Sarah will get to impersonate Tina. Now that would be funny.

Tina Fey, by the by, said if McCain and Palin win the election, she'll phase out her impersonations of Palin. Fey remarked that if they win, she's done, as in "leaving earth."

We'll miss her. ;-)

So I'm not so sure this whole online learning thing is working for me. Oh, it's working for the kids just fine -- they're doing great. But here I sit...in my pajamas, drinking cold coffee, laptop in front of me, toddler watching the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and I'm getting nothing done. Around the house, that is. It's 10:34 a.m., and I'm feeling pretty pathetic. Mostly, though, I'm in denial about said patheticness. I should be cleaned up by now and well on my way to cleaning the house, organizing bills, yada, yada, yada. Yet here I sit, writing.

But...really...this is one major reason we're doing the online schooling -- so that I can build up my writing career. Mainly in the area of copywriting, and I plan on spending a decent amount of time later today working on the course I'm taking. I'm thinking I'll go to the library, though, because there's no way I can concentrate around here. Not when it's something I have to do.

Speaking of writing, there's something coming up that I've been looking forward to ever since I found out about it almost a year ago: National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Do you have a novel brewing inside of you? Need some motivation to work on it and get it done? Can you spare time each day for one month in the effort to crank it out? Yes? Then take a look at http://www.nanowrimo.org and see if it's for you. Join the rest of us (nutty bunch that we are) and see what you can do.

And about my pajamas...and the long hours I spend at my laptop writing (maybe I didn't mention my late-night writing marathons?)...I'm learning more and more that it's not a fault I have (oh, no, of course not), but a very admirable trait of true writers. It's not laziness, it's dedication.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I don't like to be told what to do. Never have. Whether it was my mother telling me to clean my room as a child, or my husband telling me to pulleaze balance the checkbook...doesn't matter. Almost automatically, my lips would press together, I'd get that defiant look in my eye, and though I may have never said it out loud (or did I?), I was thinking it: "Make me."

My mother no longer worries about my messy room (which is still messy on occasion...am I still rebelling?), and I'm not such a clod with the checkbook anymore. Yet that streak of rebellion is right there, firmly ensconced in my heart. Probably has something to do with being a human being who needs Jesus just a tad more each day, and may have something to do with me still needing to grow up in certain areas of my life (which, frankly, I refuse to do). Like my room...do I let it stay messy just to placate my inner child? Or am I just a tired, slightly undisciplined mother who has too much to do? Dr. Phil, are you reading this?

It's because I don't like being told what to do that I don't make New Year's resolutions. I rebel against myself, too. 

Me: "You must resolve to finish those piles of filing this year."

Me: "Make me."

I like to make the betterment of myself just happen naturally. As if it tiptoes softly into my life through the side door so as not to disturb my inner brat. Like this Christmas, I got rid of a bunch of needless junk without having to tell myself to. As I took down certain things (vases, pictures, knick knacks) to make room for my snowmen and other cheerful holiday dust collectors, many of those extra things went into boxes to be given away. And when the Christmas things came down, some of those went bye-bye, too.

(You'll be happy to know that several of these things -- vases, mainly -- will no longer be clutter in anyone's house, because when I opened the hatch on my SUV at the thrift store, they fell out onto the pavement and broke into quite a few unrecognizable pieces. Obviously, it was for the best. No one else needed them, either.)

Another way some of that New Year betterment happens is by one of my favorite downtime activities: Visiting web sites that deal with how to organize, how to be a better parent (wife, friend, etc.), and how to get closer to God. These sites are full of tips that come in like a gentle teacher through the side door of my life, and after while even my inner brat is behaving -- never having known what hit her. Here are a few of my faves:

Martha Stewart: It's my opinion that most of the people who put her down for her uber-domesticity have never really perused her web site at length. There's a ton of fun stuff on here. Don't get stressed out thinking you have to do everything she says, or exactly as she says to. The point of the site is to make life easier for you. Look at it that way.

Get Organized Now: Maria Gracia is a professional organizer with a load of great ideas. It's not a huge site (which is a good thing for the easily overwhelmed), but you're sure to find some tips to help you with your time, money, and general organization.

Christian Women Online: This site is pretty new to me, but already a favorite. If you need encouragement, this is the place to be.

I may add a few sites later. Right now my inner brat needs a cookie. ;-)