The Saturday 7

Did you miss me last week? I had a killer migraine that completely knocked me off my feet, and I couldn't bring myself to stare at the computer screen. So I have two weeks of wit and wisdom to catch up on!

1. Last week, we ended up having pre-spring break from school. First of all, the Friday before was a snow day. We had Monday and Tuesday scheduled off for mid-winter break. But then Wednesday and Thursday were snow days again, and then our administrator gave us Friday off too, because what's the point of going to school for one day? It was crazy! I wish I would've known ahead of time that we'd have the whole week off. We would've jetted off to Florida to see Justin's parents or something! Instead, we watched a lot of TV, did some puzzles, read some books, and made cookies.

Levi also made this cat house for Stella.

She really likes it, and lays in it on her own volition all the time!

2. On Monday, we went "ice skating" in the town square. Our town had this up for almost the whole month of February, but we didn't check it out until the day before they closed. I didn't realize until I got there that it wasn't real ice. I don't know what it was - some kind of slippery board - but you wear real ice skates. It was impossible to maneuver on. I'm not great on ice, but I was even worse on this stuff. Lol. I wiped out once, landed flat on my stomach! I caught my face from smacking with my arms and they were sore for days afterward. Lol. Lucy was not interested, but we got Nova to come with us, and the kids had fun.

Lena, my athletic one, took to it like a pro

Levi was very uncertain at first

He eventually found his groove

But his favorite part was the s'mores afterward

3. The weekend of the 24th/25th was a women's conference at church. The speaker was Dr. Rosalie de Rosset from Moody Bible Institute, and she was amazing. She's very blunt and says it how it is. She talked about how much students have changed in the 50 (!) years she's been teaching, and how we're truly living as exiles as Christians in America these days. I also appreciated that she said there's no perfect formula for prayer, and that it's a difficult discipline you just have to choose to do. But her last session on Saturday was about the evils of technology. She had all kinds of statistics to show how our technology addictions are destroying us and ruining our kids. It was very convicting, but I just don't have the gumption to change. If anything, it gave me more fuel to refuse Lucy getting her own phone (something she's been desperate for lately). I'm going to hold off on that as long as I possibly can. But cutting back on my kids' screen time, and loosing my own grasp on my phone is proving incredibly difficult. I just don't wanna!

4. Levi's birthday was on the 28th (kind of). We kicked off the celebrations with my family on Sunday:

Saylor's birthday is the 23rd, so they got to celebrate together.

I don't know what he's saying here, but I love how Niki and Cove are both smiling in the background as well.

On Tuesday, the kids finally had school again, but Levi got his traditional cinnamon roll breakfast and one present in the morning.

When Justin got home from work, he got to open the rest of his presents.

The big 7!

His first real fishing pole. No more Spiderman!

And a tackle box full of goodies, of course

I told him he could choose anything he wanted for his birthday dinner, and he picked McDonalds. 🤦

5. We got Stella fixed this week, and it was such a fiasco. When we got Lola 15 years ago, we were broke college students, so we took her to CSNIP to get fixed for cheap. Justin dropped her off and picked her up, and I don't remember it being terribly inconvenient, even though we were living in Sparta. We're still semi-broke, so we decided to take Stella back to CSNIP. 15 years later, however, more people have discovered this cheap option and they're crazy busy, so they have very specific drop off/pick-up parameters, that are incredibly inconvenient. They only have appointments on Wednesdays. You have to schedule weeks in advance, and then you have to drop off the cat between 8:30 and 8:45 a.m. No exceptions. No other options. The office is 40 minutes away from my kids' school, so I dropped them off early, then took her straight there. She was not a fan of the car, crying so pitifully I finally let her out of the carrier to roam. Of course, she just ended up crawling all over me while I was trying to drive. Lol.

She literally climbed inside my jacket at one point. (I took the pic at a stop light.)

I finally zipped her back into the carrier when I got on the highway, because I'm an anxious highway driver, and didn't want her distracting me. When we got to CSNIP, I had to text them "here" and wait to be called to come inside. We ended up waiting 15 minutes, wherein she sat curled around my neck purring like crazy because she was so happy we weren't moving anymore. Haha.

Finally, I dropped her off and drove the 30 minutes home. The real inconvenience came on Thursday when I had to pick her up. You have to pick your animal up at 7:30 a.m. No exceptions. If you're more than half an hour late, they send it to the pound! Of course, I work on Thursday mornings at 8:00, so that was a real dilemma for me. Fortunately, my first class isn't until 8:50, so I just picked Stella up at 7:30 (7:40 by the time they actually called me in and we left there), then I drove fast to drop her off at home and get to school. We were only half an hour late, but what a pain. I was feeling kind of bad about dropping her off and leaving after her big surgery, but as soon as we let her out of the carrier, she was jumping on the couch and running down the stairs like no big deal.

6. So I went back on my meds last week. I was off them completely for about a month. The first two weeks were smooth sailing, but that last two weeks were torture. I wanted to stick it out longer and see if I'd adjust and go back to normal, but it got to the point that it just wasn't worth it. I had to ask myself why I was so determined to get off them, and the main reasons were vanity and pride. I gained 15 pounds in 6 months when I went onto the highest dose years ago. I was hoping that if I went off them completely, those 15 pounds would melt away. Maybe it takes longer than a month, but nothing melted away except my sanity. I also wanted the pride of saying, "I don't need them anymore. I can live without them." Turns out, I can't. I was in a constant state of despair and weepiness. But the worst part was the rage and irritability. It's not fair to my family for me to be like that all the time. I had weaned myself down from 200 mg to 50 mg over the course of a year and a half before I went off them completely. So I messaged my doctor and asked if I could start back on them at a lower dose and ease into it. She wrote me a prescription for 25 mg, and even after just over a week of taking it, I can tell it's taking the edge off and helping so much. Maybe that's the placebo effect talking, but oh well. It's making me more tolerable to live with. Thanks for the encouragement from many of you that there's no shame in taking meds. Maybe if I kicked my tech addiction or gave up sugar or something else equally as unattainable, I wouldn't need them, but I'm a millennial, so that seems unlikely. I guess if I want to lose weight, I'll have to do it the old fashioned way . . . also pretty unlikely. 😂

7. I have lots of pics and memes to share from the past two weeks. Buckle up!

Camouflage kitty

Camouflage kitty part 2

This is how Stella sleeps every night. I finally got a pic, but woke them both up with the flash. Haha.

I keep forgetting to take a pic of Lena's "silk." It's actually a yoga swing, but she uses it for all her acrobatic tricks. Ruby loved swinging on it when she was here.