500

That's the number of posts I've published on my blog so far. In many ways I wish that I'd have been able to keep up with daily posting. I'd be close to 1000 posts right now, if I had, and that would have been sort of cool. That being said, I want this to be a place for me to unwind and decompress, and pressuring myself to keep up with daily posts is not conducive to decompression. 

So 500 it is.

At the same time that I want this to be a place to decompress, I don't want it to just be about kvetching about my life. My mama taught me that if I can't say anything nice, I shouldn't say anything at all. I think there can be a happy medium, though, so I'll probably be back here complaining from time to time.

It is what it is, and I am who I am.

So I figured something out the other day. One of the amino acids I'm taking to help with the neuropathy sort of counteracts my thyroid medicine. I don't know why I didn't see that when I researched the amino acid. I don't know, if the information just wasn't there, or if I overlooked it at the time, or what. What I do know is that I've been absolutely dragging the last few months. I've had no energy, and that's a major symptom of hypothyroidism. 

I've been taking the amino acid for over a year now, and I hadn't noticed a difference in the effectiveness of my thyroid medicine until somewhat recently. I don't know, if it's because it took awhile for the effectiveness to be altered, or what. Unfortunately, my neuropathy has been out of control lately, so giving up the amino acid isn't an option, and in fact I'm needing to double up on it and take it twice a day. It's the only thing I can take that makes any difference in the pain level. I'd love it, if the prescription nerve meds worked for me, but they don't. If I take them, I sleep for days, and that just isn't an option. So I've made an appointment with my doctor to discuss it all in the next couple of weeks. 

In the meantime, I'm hoping we'll all be feeling well enough soon, (This hit and miss stuff that always happens once school starts for the year is so frustrating!), so we can finally officially celebrate the 4 birthdays that have happened since the end of June. 

We're also hoping to get a bunch of yardwork done and get rid of a bunch of elm trees in the backyard that have once again grown into a jungle back there. We'll take down our apple tree when we're back there, too. A windstorm took about half the tree a couple of years ago, and another wind took half of what was left back there a couple of weeks ago, so it has to go before it falls on the house. And then there's the scraggly little peach tree in the corner of the yard that has been slowly dying over the last few years but is tall enough it's in the middle of the power lines. 

Once we're done getting the trees down, we're hoping to toss some grass seed down and cover it with straw to help it stay alive over the winter. If it survives, we'll just rake up the straw in the Spring and have an actual lawn instead of the dirt pile we have back there now. We'll also be chipping the trees with a professional chipper and we're hoping the wood chips put down between the fences will prevent future saplings from taking root. We so need to get the trees out of there, so we can lower our fire risk. After all the wildfires we've had in Colorado this year, we don't need to add to the problem.

And to end this on a good note...I spoke with the attorney today, since we still haven't gotten our paperwork in the mail showing that we are officially the girls' guardians. He said that he mailed them yesterday or the day before, and we should be getting them any day now. 

We can hope.