Update LONG overdue...

(I'm breaking the promise I made in the last post...some medical issues will be discussed)

We have learned some very important things the last couple of weeks

Numero uno:

I can eat, drink, sleep, walk around without getting exhausted...

But apparently I am not quite ready to walk on the treadmill for an hour

Walk

Very, very slowly

The speed was even under 3.0

I did fine that night, didn't have any problems

But in the morning I woke up ridiculously nauseous

Like when I was sick

I still have some anti-nausea pills, so it didn't stick around very long, but it left me exhausted

And then the rest of the week I became very good friends with the bathroom

Needless to say I didn't get back on the treadmill last week

I tried again on Monday and only went for 30 minutes, which was definitely more manageable 

I still had a tiny bit of nausea the next day, but it was practically nothing in comparison

So I'm apparently not as ready for that part of life as I was hoping

But at least I can do some, which is better than nothing

I'll just have to work at it slowly and try to be patient

Numero dos:

Not all over-the-door shoe organizers are created equal

And not all doors are created equal

In other words, not all over-the-door shoe organizers will work on all doors the way you want them to

The home where we live is built a little...odd

Cramped spaces, not a lot of storage, weird angles...it's just odd

We tend to keep our shoes by the back door, but they just get in the way because the doorway is so narrow and....3ish feet in front of you is the doorway to the basement, and the basement door opens towards you (so outwards) and the back door opens away from you (inwards)....so it's just the most awkward section of the house that I think we have 

And there is really no room for shoes

So we started taking them off by the front door, but that's a small entry way as well, and whenever we had guests over (the missionaries come over pretty much every week for dinner) it becomes very cluttered

Plus in the winter time I don't love having the snow tracked all over our home since it's all linoleum/wood and it becomes super slippery and gross, so I don't want to track them through the kitchen

The point of all of this babble is to say that we don't have a good place to put our shoes

So I found this on Amazon

(image from Amazon)

It's not the prettiest thing, but it works and it was the only one Hubby would agree to

We bought it, tried to put it on our basement door and realized that the functionality of the stupid door made it so that we had to hang it on the back side of the door which is facing the basement which is infested with spiders

So, no thank you

In the end the only door it would work on was the door to our study, so there it sits

But the most frustrating thing about it?

These had been hanging on our basement door

So when I ordered the shoe thing I took them allll down (I'm not wearing many hats right now since I'm not outside very much) and packed them away into storage

(and we're not going to discuss the fact that I took the majority of them down and realized that I never took a before picture, so I put them all back up just so I could take the picture and took them all down again)

So now, after all that, the dumb thing doesn't even work?

Not nice

Very rude

Not my friend

And numero tres:

Might I suggest that you not move twice in one year whilst working on a 2,000 piece puzzle?

Especially when one of those moves is across the country

Otherwise, it might end up like this

I know that's a little hard to see, so here's an edited version

Two pieces missing

Two!!

So not nice

My original plan was to just buy a new one and start over because I really, really want this puzzle

But one of my brilliant sisters (Peach...aka Noelle) came up with a brilliant plan to buy a new one and just find the two missing pieces

That's a whole lot less daunting than putting the whole thing together again

So I decided that's what I would do

I found it on Amazon, purchased it, and one night when the Elders were over for dinner I told them they could help look while we were finishing getting dinner ready

And that's when my hopes and dreams were destroyed into a bajillion little pieces

(literally and figuratively....)

One of the Elders realized that the stupid pieces were cut differently on each puzzle

...seriously?!

That's just downright rude!!

So now I don't have a choice but to put the whole thing together again

*sigh*

I was going to start it right away while it was still fresh in my head, but the Hubster convinced me to wait

And now I'm kind of glad I did because our lives have been so crazy lately

Plus, I'm a little scared that after I'm about halfway done with it, we're going to have to move again, or something like that

Since that's all we've done with that poor puzzle

****

Just for the record? Almost everything written above was from about a month ago

Maybe even longer, I honestly don't remember

That's how long it's been

Bother

I am now happy to report that since my first walking on the treadmill for an hour attempt failed, I have been able to work up to it since then

I haven't tried doing it every day yet, but I know that I can do it a couple of days a week

And that's a very good start

We had a good Thanksgiving

Some friends that we've made here invited us over to their house, which was fun

We had talked about inviting the Elders over for Thanksgiving, but someone invited them first so it all worked out really well

But, since I'm me and I'm really good at making life more complicated than it needs to be, we still made a small Thanksgiving dinner the day before and fed the Elders

But, since I'm me again, everything we planned didn't execute because there wasn't enough time in the day, our kitchen is way tooooo tiny, and Hubby had to work so he wasn't able to help for a good portion of the day

I mean, we even forgot the stuffing

Who forgets stuffing?

So on the Sunday after Thanksgiving we had another pseudo Thanksgiving dinner and made everything we didn't have time to make before

Like stuffing, candied yams...and I'm sure other things I don't remember

We had leftovers for a very long time, it was nice

Other than that things are good

Hubby is still enjoying his job, I'm still working on school, and not too many changes

Besides the fact that I must have slept funny and my back is a little thrown out of whack this morning

So I'm not doing much today...just sitting at my computer, forcing myself to finish this post, and working on lots of school

And listening to lots of Christmas music!!

Because I'm officially allowed to now

It's heavenly

Well, besides the back part

Hmm...what else

We're going home to Utah for Christmas

We'll be there for 2 weeks!! We are SO excited!!

We leave this Friday, we're driving (another reason I need my back to cooperate) and we'll be back sometime the beginning of January

It's been over a year since we've moved out here, and Hubby hasn't been back since, so it will be good

And I think I'm actually done Christmas shopping!! There might be one more thing I get, I have to think about it....but I'm pretty much done, it's such a nice feeling!!

And now I must go help my mother with some computer stuff

Because I'm just amazing like that

Just not so much with keeping 2,000 puzzle pieces together...