Survived!

In my last post I mentioned things I would talk about if I survived the end of the semester, my tonsillectomy, and Christmas. It would have been nice to follow up that post sooner, but alas it took longer than I thought to recover. 

First off, if you have a child who is prone to tonsillitis, insist they have a tonsillectomy as a child. It is miserable to have them removed as an adult. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer to keep what God gave me, but seeing as I was at the doctor and on antibiotics every other month, it was time for them to go. So I decided to have them removed right before Christmas.

The surgery went well and I had a great doctor. When I made the appointment to see him and then when I scheduled the surgery, I didn’t know he was a close friend to my best friend’s mom. Having known me since I was about 6 years old, my friend’s mom called the doctor and told him all about me, including my high pain tolerance and inability to stay still and listen to doctors’ instructions. She informed him to give me the good pain meds that make me sleep. She even called him at home to ask him a question when Vince mentioned he was going to call the doctor tomorrow about it, sometimes its nice knowing the right people.

In case you didn’t know, when you have your tonsils removed as an adult they proscribe very little activity for two weeks after the surgery. There is a chance for the scabs to fall/rip off and you to start bleeding out. (When the doctors and the paperwork describe this its very horrifying, like something from a horror movie.) It has currently been 11 days and I’m about to go stir-crazy!

I have managed to get a lot of work done on my new bedspread for the master bedroom and the quilt I “gave” my dad for Christmas. The quilt wasn’t quite done, but I showed it too him, and he used it anyway since he was sick. (It was a very sickly Christmas at our house since I had surgery and both my parents were also sick.) Hopefully I’ll have the quilt done in the next week or so, and the goal is to have the bedspread finished by August (August is an arbitrary date I picked so I finish it in a timely manner).

In the upcoming weeks I also hope that Vince and I can finish the guest room and office we started redecorating, more on that to come.

(sneak-peak of the bedspread I'm knitting)

Surviving

Somehow between finals, papers, and two funerals in three days, I am managing to survive. Then again it’s only Monday and I have only finished one out of four exams. To find out if I actually survive, ask me Saturday, when this insane week is done. Unfortunately, while I would love to rest some Saturday, that’s not gonna happen. I guess I could but then no one would get Christmas presents and I would go insane from the mess that will accumulate this week. And I have to finish presents, finish decorating, and make the house sparkly clean this weekend!

You see, I never had my tonsils out as a child. I really should have but my doctor assumed I would outgrow strep and tonsillitis. I am 24 and have not grown out of it… So they are coming out. They are coming out about a week before Christmas so if I don’t finish presents by then people won’t get present, they will be sad, and think I don’t love them, and since I wont be able to talk, I wont be able to argue.

The nice nurse who was giving me my instructions told me I had to stay in bed for a week and then do very little activity the second week. I had to clarify because my idea of little activity turned out to not be her definition, good thing I checked. She threatened that it would be painful and I could start bleeding and have to go to the emergency room if I didn’t follow instructions. I’m not good at following instructions. (Unless is a new recipe and then I follow it very well because I want my food to look as yummy as the picture.)

I'd love to actually get the rest of my decorations up, but I think this year I will have to settle for the tree and mantle decorations. I don't even have my lights up outside, and that's my thing. I go all out! The columns are wrapped in lights, the trees, the walkway, and the spiral Christmas trees. Right now there is nothing, and I look at all the bright lights at my neighbor's house and it makes me sad. But at this point I am just happy my tree is up and there are some presents under it. If all goes well this weekend there will be quite a few more gifts under the tree. 

So this weekend and the few days before surgery, if I manage to make it till then, I will frantically be cleaning the house and preparing soft easy to eat foods and freezing them. I already have an enormous amount of homemade applesauce in the freezer, but I can’t live off just applesauce so I am hoping to make some honey-pumpkin pies (no sugar, just yummy local honey), breakfast casseroles, and a few other healthy soft foods.

I will be making some other fun stuff too, but they are Christmas presents so they can’t be mentioned for now. So here’s praying I make it through this week, after all I will have to rest for two weeks.

The Beginning

Back in August the most amazing man in the world asked me to marry him. Since then the months have been filled with wedding plans, finishing up my last year in school, and discussing our wants and plans for our future. The last part has been the most fun.

Our dream is one day to own our own land and have a little homestead.

The dilemma has been jobs and money…what else is new.

You see, we met in college at the University of Mississippi, but we didn’t start dating until he had moved down to Greenville, MS to teach Latin. I am still in school and living in Oxford. Yay for long distance… that’s sarcasm. The original plan was after school I would move down to Greenville and we would find a small piece of land to buy while renting out my house in Oxford. This plan sounds great in theory, except for a few problems.

1. Finding land around Greenville and how mush the land cost. Fyi finding a small piece of land at a reasonable cost in big farm Delta is almost impossible.  

2. There being a house on the land or having to build. I dreaded having to live in a house that we needed to remodel while living there. Worse was the idea of having to quickly build a house.

3. All of our family is near Oxford and we want to be near family. We really wanted to be able to visit family often and more than that when we have kids we want them near grandparents, great-grandparents, and other family and friends.

4. All the land we liked and could afford was near Oxford.

So where did this leave us? Looking for a place to live while not actually wanted to live where we were looking.

After not much discussion, we both were of the same mind, and some family events, we made the decision to stay in Oxford. There is something to be said about this little town. If you can get past the college kids it’s a quaint little town, yes I am technically in college, but I’m not a typical college kid.

The new plan is to stay in my house for a few years and save up to buy our dream land and build our dream homestead.  Yay! Not sarcasm!

So what will follow is our journey into marriage and path to our own homestead.