Workin'

Allistair, feeling groovy

Juvy, tongue out

Stephen, wet food dried on his little nosey!

Even though the cats may have been relaxed over the weekend, we weren't!

The first surprise is that I made spaghetti with sauce from a jar!

I usually make the sauce myself, but I was in a rush because I wanted to get my latest video (it's really good - go check it out!) posted before the end of the work week, so I used this sauce from Target.  It's quite good and I will use it again.  Recommended!

I don't do noodles, so I decided to try veggies as a base for the sauce.

Broccoli and a teeny bit of cauliflower.

I'm not sure how broccoli and cauliflower do with my digestive system, but this was their second try.

Usually I give something at least three tries because I don't want to cut out more foods unless they truly bother my system.  

Looks yummy, huh?

On Saturday, Greg and I went to Lowe's to look at more bathroom light fixtures

(ours are getting replaced as part of our renovation!)

The choices at Lowe's didn't impress us, but after some more internet searching,

we found some lights we like better than the ones we found last weekend, 

AND they were on sale, so we ordered these!

We'll see what we think when they arrive (they're not available in stores).

I love how they look.

They're really neat because they have up lights AND down lights.

We are planning to install dimmers so that we don't always have ALL 

the light from these bad boys, because there's a lot available!

Then we came home and on the way saw a garage sale with an Ikea Billy Bookcase!

I had two already in my office for storing curriculum binders and other important work things, and I had been considering getting another one because I had the room and the need . . . 

and we only paid $30!

So I spent a lot of time on Saturday reorganizing and getting rid of stuff. 

This will be helpful when we need to move all my stuff out of my office when the flooring is redone.

Lots of the stuff in this photo is still part of the "before" . . . 

some will be taken to Goodwill, and some will be thrown away.

But, mine is a "stuff-heavy" field, so I expect to need lots of storage in my office forever.

At least the shelves are tidy!

Look at all the binders, lined up and pristine!

I tidied up the shelves in the desk nook, too.

 Our contractor dropped off tile for us to peruse . . . 

I laid it all out on our kitchen floor.

Allistair investigated first.

Eventually all the cats sniffed it and walked on it a little bit.

They decided it was fine.

Allistair picked the right one!

Here's a close-up, so you can see the pretty "grain"

and the beautiful rich color.

***

Quick health info moment:

One of the weird things that has come with this autoimmune disease is Raynaud's Syndrome.

It's a condition where the tips of some of my fingers turn almost completely white

due to lack of blood flow.  It started happening to me a few years ago when I would get really cold - usually after eating.

I've been trying to capture it in progress, and it partially happened at church this morning,

so I snapped a photo.  This is a mild episode; I've had it much worse,

but you can see the normal color of my fingers on the right-most finger.  

My middle finger and ring finger have lost a good amount of color.

At this point, they were numb and starting to hurt, too, as if they were asleep.

Keep in mind that this is in Arizona and it was in the high 60s outside at the time, 

though it was chilly inside the church.

(It's difficult for them to anticipate the weather and adjust the thermostats for it this time of year in a huge warehouse-style building because we pack a lot of people in, which raises the temperature, which necessitates a lower-set thermostat, but on rainy days we often don't have as many people there, which means it wouldn't need to be as cool . . . you can see why it would be tough to manage!)

It's very strange.  The rules are that I'm supposed to get them warmed up as soon as possible by sitting on them or running them under warm water.

There can be damage after a while if the blood flow doesn't return to normal.

When it started, I had some blood tests done because my doctor wanted to rule out Lupus and things like that, which can be a primary cause of this phenomenon.  Nothing showed up until Crohn's 

(which has only anecdotal links to Raynaud's so far).

End of health info moment!

***

We've had RAIN!

I'm all cuddled up on the couch right now (Juvy on lap)

because it's cloudy and breezy and chilly, and I feel very content!

Happy Sunday!