It's been busy around here!

We've finally been on a painting spree. I say finally because our original paint buying started in May? Or March? Eh, it's been a while. After months of looking at paint chips we (well me, with lots of lobbying to convince Josh) chose the house colors. We bought paint for the entryway/stairs/upper hallway, kitchen, living room, master bedroom, and master bathroom.

Entryway/stairs/upper hallway Kitchen

Living Room

Master Bedroom Master Bathroom

The paint for the half bath downstairs was already purchased.

Yes it is that bright.

So why is it OCTOBER and we finally are really getting some painting done? Well because Josh did the flooring downstairs first (we replaced vinyl with tile). And then there may have been some marital discord over ways to paint, ways to tape, etc.

This discord made it so NO ONE wanted to paint. At all. September turned all that around and we (well Josh) started the downstairs entryway. I LOVE the color.

The before was... white. Bleh. See?

Well because of our techniques we needed to repaint some of the molding. Josh being industrious went to Home Depot and asked them to color match the small can of paint the builders left so we could repaint the molding but not the doors, etc. He came home all excited. Painted two coats. It was... pink. No lie. Not like super pink that I could take a picture of, but in incandescent light it was a very light pink. Uh oh.

He was angry. Very angry. I hid upstairs and cleaned. Next weekend he went BACK to Home Depot and guess what? The paint mixer guy did it WRONG. He tried color matching on his own instead of USING THE COLOR MATCH FORMULA IN THE COMPUTER. Seriously dude? Mean paint lady corrected it no problem and gave him a new can of paint. We really love our Behr paint. Lol.

So Saturday Jason came over and him and Josh took care of all the molding. It is white now. Just a plain white, but not a white white, but... well white. OMG painting and color stuff is EXHAUSTING.

Then the two of them decided it was time to do the kitchen. I was not expecting that really. They taped up and got started.

Ugh I was nervous. As you can see here the walls were WHITE. As is the whole house. I love orange and Josh agreed that anything but yellow would be good, so here we go. When it started the orange looked a little... peach. I was nervous.

But here is the finish product.

(yes the kitchen is a mess. no it's not put back together yet. sue me.)

I love it. I really do.

So next is our living room. We are waiting for the builders to come tear up our carpet to fix a squeaky board and we will paint then (because the furniture will be all pulled out for the carpet fix).

I'll do a whole slew of before and after pictures when we are ALL done. So check out the blog same time same place... next year? Lololol.

Here is the 1/2 bathroom downstairs.

Josh wants to put sunglasses down there as decor. Jerk.

Oh, and if you are a painting/color person I got all the swatches from HERE. Just put in your color and it will bring up all matches. Choose your brand and there you go!

Our color choices were:

Entryway/stairs/upper hallway - Behr's Porpoise

Kitchen - Behr's Vintage Orange

Living Room - Behr's Creek Bend

Master Bedroom - Behr's Sapphireberry

Master Bathroom - Behr's Caribbean Mist

Half Bathroom - Behr's Orange Burst

*hugs and kisses*

mj

So now for the bad health news update...

My beauty mark was sliced off. I was told that no news is good news if I didn't hear anything in a week. So Tuesday came and went with no news and all was well.

Yesterday was WEDNESDAY and I got a phone call from Derm Associates. I was informed that large beauty mark was JUST.A.MOLE. Yay! Then she says "but the other one we removed..." Now the next few seconds about a million things went whizzing around my brain. She could have said both moles were okay. She could have not used the phrase "BUT the other one." She could have finished the sentence with "... was JUST.A.MOLE. too." Yeah no.

She finished the sentence with something about the mole being aplastic (or dysplastic? or OMG YOUR MOLE HAS ISSUES AND NEEDS TO BE CUT OUT WITH A SHARP INSTRUMENT THAT WILL HURT FOR DAYS AFTER AND REQUIRE STITCHES). Oh wait, she mentioned the bolded part later while scheduling my next appointment. December 9th I get sliced and diced again. Seriously?

See here is the thing, for some reason I can handle large scale invasive surgery. Like rearranging my digestive system. Or cutting out large sections of super sensitive breast and nipple tissue and stitching the whole thing back together smaller and perkier. But a cut, a sore throat, a bruise and all holy hell breaks loose in our house and I become a complete whining baby.

Poor Josh. Poor me. At least it isn't cancer right?

*hugs and kisses*

mj

Excellent Health Update!

Last Thursday I went in for blood work as a follow up to my AWESOME cholesterol levels.

This time(ish) last year I had blood work.

My total cholesterol was 363. Normal according to my paperwork is <200

Borderline high is 200-239

High is >/= 240

My LDL (that's the bad stuff) was 289. Normal is <130

Borderline high risk is 130-159

High risk is >/= 160

HDL (the good stuff) was 53. It should be between 35-75. Yay! I win on that one!

Triglycerides were 106. The range is 20-150. Another win!

The CHOL:HDL Ratio for FEMALES

Moderate risk >5.17

High risk >6.39

Mine was 6.85. Ouch

For MALES (just in case I have some reading and interested)

Moderate risk >6.09

High risk >7.30

Basically that is a lot of numbers indicating one thing. That was BAD news. Now, I understand a lot of people don't put much stock in high cholesterol numbers. There are a lot more factors that go into determining whether or not "high cholesterol" really means an increased chance for heart disease. And a lot of those people do not have numbers that are almost double or triple the recommended numbers.

I understand the concerns with taking drugs to try to "fix" something that may or may not be broken is not what some people would do. But here is why *I* do it.

Because I can. Seriously. I have these tools at my disposal that may or may not make a difference in my future health. If I were to find out that I did not use something that was available to me that could prevent future problems I think it would bother me. No, I know it would bother me.

Yes I am placing a lot of faith in science, pharmaceutical companies, researchers and doctors. I'm not very into conspiracy theories. Sorry.

So back to ME.

Blood work. Last Thursday. Results today.

Ready??

Total Cholesterol - 308!

LDL - 229!

HDL - 55!

Ratio - 5.70!

Triglycerides - 124 (I like carbs. Sue me.)

How did I get here?

Yep. That big bottle (of 180 tablets for those reading it) lasts ONE MONTH. You take SIX per day. This is how large they are.

Okay that isn't ACTUAL size. But break out your meter stick and check it out. They are NOT small.

So six of those a day for 6 months (I didn't start taking them religiously until April after my breast reduction surgery) and you can see where I'm at. I would love to get under 300 total, but we'll see what happens.

Now, according to SK (and I know she's right), if I were on Lipitor (or another statin) I would most likely be well under that 300 mark. But I will not take Lipitor.

That's for another post.

But on other good news quickly (we're watching a movie)...

My glucose levels are also down (102 --> 88).

Just a tad bit of bad news. My ex beauty mark area that is now a HOLE in my back is slightly infected. It's super painful and red around the edges. If it gets worse I have to make a phone call on Monday to get some antibiotics. Ugh.

Two out of three ain't bad.

*hugs and kisses*

mj

More slicing and dicing.

So I FINALLY made a dermatologist appointment. I've needed to make this for like 10 years now. Whatever. Actually I made the appointment back in... oh... MAY. It was yesterday. Dermatologists around here are hard to come by.

Let me take that back, GOOD dermatologists around here are hard to come by. In fact, my GP's office suggested I take my moldy body all the way to Lancaster (a whole 30 minute drive!) to see the derm office over there. So off I went yesterday to Dermatology Associates of Lancaster.

The office ladies were super nice and helpful. The waiting room was clean and well maintained too. And full of old people. I was the youngest person in there by... 40 years or more. Ha.

Why did I do all this? Well because of the photo below.

See that? That's my beauty mark. Cindy and Marilyn may have rocked them on their faces, but mine was shyer and ended up on my back. It used to be large and flat and happy. I liked it. It added character to the vast barren landscape of my back.

And just so you know I did not take this picture just to show off my mark. This photo is a cropped photo of my super sun burnt back at the beginning of summer. I'm not a complete photo taking freak. I didn't even take a picture of the cool owl necklace I wore yesterday that everyone complimented me on. (Yet. *hrmph*)

So back to my mole (who am I kidding calling it a beauty mark?). It was big and flat for YEARS and then two years ago it raised up. One theory of mine was that it felt like my ever expanding chest was in competition and felt it had to do SOMETHING so it grew too. OR, my body felt it necessary to balance me out. Hmmmm, who knows.

I assumed I would go yesterday they would look at everything, say all was well, MAYBE discuss removing my friend in the future and all would be well.

Ummm... she took one look at it and said "that's coming off today." Huh what? Like, ummmm, okay. I guess. Now I do not like to show fear to doctors (weird right?) so while my whole "huh what?" was going through my brain my mouth was all "yeah sure awesome! no problem! what pinch? Oh look at that lump of mole you just cut off and placed in that jar!" Ugh. She took one off my arm too.

She is considering removing the one on the bottom of my foot as well. Apparently bottom of foot moles have a higher rate of skin cancer? Weird.

I should hear in a week.

And wouldn't you know it that the nurse (who totally saw me all but naked in just a tiny bra and tinier panties) is the sister of one of Josh's teammates. I was in LANCASTER people!! And somehow I ran into someone who knows someone I know. Hi nurse!

I'll keep you all updated on my moldy outcome.

I see SK on Friday for a general wellness checkup.

*hugs and kisses*

mj

It's someone's birthday today!!

My Mom is celebrating her 29th birthday (for the 22nd time)!!

Actually I celebrated it with her last weekend at her house. And this weekend down here.

And I called her today.

She got a new camera too. It was a this one.

I've been busier than usual.

Life is good and filled with lots of family and friend time. I have no idea when I'll get a chance to blog again. Someday I'll get back on the bandwagon.

*hugs and kisses*

mj

Photographs

Tonight is my first of three advanced digital photography classes. I'm excited but apprehensive. I had a dream that I got there and it was all *ahem* older students. They kept asking questions like "how do I turn this on again?" "where is the push button to make it go?" "oops, I turned it off, where is the on button again?" for the whole two hours and I left in tears. Let's hope THAT dream doesn't come true.

I obviously know how to use a camera, but I want to be able to use it better and take more interesting photographs.

I did take this fun picture this weekend. It looks slightly better in black and white. I think I may actually print this and frame it.

I also took this picture of my mommy. Her birthday is Columbus day, but I was home celebrating with the rest of the family this weekend. She's so pretty. :-)

Wish me luck tonight!

*hugs and kisses*

mj