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Cold or allergies?

February 24, 2009 by Tricia

Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle … cough, cough … That’s what my days been like. I think I might either be coming down with a cold or else my sniffles and coughing are remnants of the allergic reaction I had on Saturday night thanks to the shrimp that I ate. I’m still patting my self on the back for that great addition to our meal (NOT).

I still have some hives on my face and neck, and I noticed today that the area above and below my eyebrows is a little puffy and red … kind of like I just plucked my eyebrows.

So as I said I’m not sure whether I’m getting a cold or it’s still my allergic reaction that’s making me feel yucky today. Either way, I think that by the time Chris comes home tonight he’s going to find me curled up in our new Sferra sheets that I just put on our bed. All warm and cozy and trying to recover from whatever my body has decided to do to me today.

Hmmm maybe I’ll make myself a hot Toddy later … yeah that will make my raw throat feel better and make me sleepy too.

I hope that you guys are having a better day than I am!

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

February 22, 2009 by Tricia

I’m starting to get sick and tired of our bedroom being freezing cold when I go to bed. Our master bedroom is the coldest room in the house in the winter. Changing into my PJ’s each night is quite the experience as I end up covered in goose-pimples! LOL

We live in an older house. It was build in 1927 and as a result it’s probably not quite as warm as newer homes. Our bedroom is upstairs at the end of a long hallway so that likely makes it harder for the cold air that builds up in the room to escape. Remember cold air goes down (as in down a staircase) and warm air goes upward.

When we moved in we had some duct work done including adding a cold air vent in the master bedroom. I’m sure this has helped to make the room warmer than it would have been without the cold air return vent, but it’s still pretty darn cold in the dead of winter.

We did have an electric heater that we’d use in the bedroom for the first hour or so after we went to bed, but it stopped working in early December and we haven’t replaced it yet. After suffering through a very cold January (February has been warmer here, but it will get colder soon) I think it’s time to buy a new heater.

I’m going to watch for an electric heater to go on sale and hope that I can get one for a good price soon.

Our last electric heater was a tall standing one that oscillated to move the warm air around the room, but I’ve been look at this Honeywell Cool Touch heater and it looks like it might fit the bill. The description says it will heat a large living space so it might be too powerful for our small master bedroom.

What we’d normally do with our old electric heater would be to turn it on when we’d come upstairs to use the washroom and wash up before bed so that it would take a bit of the chill out of the room before we’d have to go in there to get changed. It also had a timer on it so we could set it to run for only an hour or so. That would ensure that the room was warm as we were trying to fall asleep, but we usually didn’t need it to run all night. Not once the bed was warmed up anyway.

Do you find the the upstairs of your house is a lot cooler in the winter than the rest of your home? Do you use a heater in your bedroom or do you just suffer the cold?

Flowers all year round indoors and out

February 15, 2009 by Tricia

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Some how this year I’ve managed to have flowers almost continuously, by this I mean I’ve had flowers either in my yard or in my house since last spring!

At the moment my kitchen is the bloom factory. If you’re a neat freak you wouldn’t like the look of our kitchen table as it has at least 10 plants on it, but at least that only happens in the winter. During the warmer months most of my plants go outdoors or onto our enclosed porches.

We have two types of Orchids blooming (another just finished it’s flowering), a small hibiscus that puts out one or two flowers every few days, one Amaryllis that just finished blooming and when my husband was in the hospital the nurses that cared for him gave him an African Violet plant – in bloom.

Our Thanksgiving and Christmas Cactus’ keep putting out the occasional bloom as well … so as I said we’ve had flowers surrounding us for a year now! That’s a first.

The Orchids are just lovely right now.

This purple one is one of my favorites. I love it’s intricate pattern. I almost looks like a butterfly to me.

These white Orchids are new. I bought the plant in the first week of January and it’s still blooming!

I love how the flowers all line up in a delicate row like that.

Oh … here’s a shot of my messy plant covered table … the plant with the weird spider like things is an orchid that’s producing babies. Those spider leg like things are air roots and the green leaves are new plants growing high above the base of the main plant.

Do you have any flowers blooming in your house right now? Even some store bought Valentine flowers?

Trying to eat healthier meals

February 13, 2009 by Tricia

I’ve always tried to cook healthy meals for Chris and I, but over the last few months and especially the last two weeks since Chris got out of the hospital I’ve really stepped it up.

We’d occasionally have a pre-made frozen dinner such as Loblaws Blue Menu grilled vegetable lasagna, but after re-reading the ingredients list and cholesterol listings on the package we’ve even cut that out of our “occasional easy food menu”. Chris has really high bad and good cholesterol levels as well as very low triglycerides. He’s on medication now to control his cholesterol and given the way we normally eat we don’t think our diet has much to do with his high cholesterol levels even the docs say it’s probably genetic, but it sure can’t hurt either him or I to eat even better.

Lately we’ve been eating a lot of skinless boneless chicken breasts. I bake them in the oven in a casserole dish and they are very tender and moist. I also steam up to three different veggies in the microwave – usually carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Last night we had Teriyaki chicken and tonight we’re going to have chicken breasts marinated in a honey Dijon marinade. Yummy.

Sometime in the future when we have a little extra cash I’d love to get a fruit and vegetable juice extractor. We used to have a juicer but we found that we didn’t use it as much as we should have and gave it to Chris’ aunt. Of course now that it’s gone, and now that we are really trying to eat healthy, I’d love to have a fruit and veggie juicer again. Store bought juices contain far too many sugars and well, buying veggie juices in a health food store is pretty expensive. I don’t see why I can’t make our own carrot juice and other juices right at home.

Each year we grow strawberries, raspberries, carrots and tomatoes in our “flower” garden so I could even save money by using the fruit and veggies that we grow to make juice too.

As I said we don’t have any extra money right now so I’ll have to wait until we have some spare cash and wait for a juicer to go on sale before we get one, but I think that’s definitely on our want list. In the mean time we’ll just eat as many fruit and veggies as we can – they certainly help fill you up and they’re healthy.

Do you read the ingredient labels on the items you buy in the grocery store? Have you been trying to eat healthier lately too?

Darn – I think I might be getting the flu now

February 10, 2009 by Tricia

I’m grumpy and not feeling well again today. I know … I’m always not feeling well (thanks Crohns), but it just seems like the past few weeks have been worse than normal.

I’m actually starting to wonder if I might be getting the flu or something. Last week I had a few days that I had sneezing sessions – like 5 to 10 sneezes in a row. Now that leaves you feeling weird, even if it does kind of clear your head!

The sneezes seem to have stopped, but yesterday and today I’ve had really bad stomach cramps – worse and different from normal. Plus I’ve been nauseated as well. Yes I do occasionally get slightly nauseated with the Crohn’s, but this is worse than normal. At 5 a.m. I really thought I was going to have to run to the bathroom because I felt so bad.

So it’s either the flu or my Crohn’s is worse than ever. Oh and when I do get the flu or a cold it seems to drag on forever, probably because the Crohn’s has my immune system in high gear so it’s fighting the germs but very slowly losing the battle. I’d rather have 24 hour flu’s and 48 hour colds like I used to! Either way I’m not doing much. I run a number of blogs and I must say between my husband being sick and my not feeling well my blogs have been badly ignored.

What have been doing is simply lying on the couch watching TV. Unfortunately a lot of the shows that I normally watch have been running re-runs lately or have been canceled due to those darn award shows. During the day I watch a few channels that play old sitcoms. Trouble is that I’ve seen some of the shows oh … maybe 50 times in my lifetime! LOL Oh and the commercials! One station puts on a commercial for technical colleges and schools at every commercial break. Ahhhh … don’t they have any other advertisers?

Anyway I’m sorry that I haven’t been writing as much lately and that when I have it’s been either about my or my husbands health. At least blogging about these things seems to help get it off my chest.

Oh … Chris went back to work today. He should be home soon. It looks like his day was going well, at least from the time he called me this afternoon to check in. Hopefully he won’t have any more chest pains or dizzy spells. I’d hate to get another phone call that he’s been admitted to the hospital again.

Cold or allergies?

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

Flowers all year round indoors and out

Trying to eat healthier meals

Darn – I think I might be getting the flu now

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