On Friday Jackson graduated from high school. I cannot believe how fast time flies by. I know that he will cherish his time at East Texas Charter School and that him going there was the best decision ever. Small class size, teachers that truly care and an amazing superintendent that kept the school in tip top shape made for an amazing 4 years.
The students get to pick their first and second choices of who to stand up and speak about their time at ETCS. Jackson picked his favorite teacher Mr. Damoude.
It’s so interesting to hear about each graduating senior. I’ve never been to another school that does this. There are no valedictorians. Each student has a chance, if they choose, to speak after the teacher gives their speech. Jackson did not want to.
There were a whopping 29 graduates this year.
Group shot before the hat toss.
A proud dad who unfortunately had to go back to work right after this was taken.
Proud mom and sister.
Jackson’s best friends. Two of them will be also heading off to Kilgore College in the Fall.
We have a tradition that when it’s your birthday or another special event, you get to pick whichever restaurant you want to have dinner. Jackson’ picked Rotolo’s. I loved it because they have cauliflower crust pizza. That was the last meal I have eaten because I got sick.
Right before we were about to leave I started having floaters in my eyes. The headache came right after we got home so I went to bed early. Saturday morning I woke up and felt like I couldn’t get out of bed. My body felt like it was made of lead. I still had a horrible headache. I ended up sleeping all day.
Sunday I was feeling a little better so I made a quick Aldi run. When I got home my stomach and back were cramping so badly. I was also coming down with a UTI. The fatigue was also back in full force. I asked Donny to pick up so AZO and cranberry juice. He knew that I was not eating sugar so he picked me up the only zero sugar he could find. I highly recommend NEVER getting this juice. My whole body puckered and seized up. I tried diluting it with water and stirring in some honey. Nope, that didn’t work at all. Hannah didn’t know that it was awful and had the same reaction.
I went to bed early on Sunday night and by Monday I still wasn’t feeling well. Now let’t throw in a sore throat and my TMJ acting up. It’s like my body’s check engine light came on. I slept most of the day, again. Today I feel like I’m at 75% which I’ll take over the previous days.
To make matters worse a skunk sprayed a possum right outside our patio door on Sunday night. If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn it had sprayed in our kitchen. It made Donny so sick to his stomach and gave me another headache. So that’s how the weekend ended.
I am ready for some good days ahead that’s for sure.
I’ve mentioned the stray cat that found us who we named O’Malley. Well, O’Malley had really wanted to come in the house all the time. That was great, except that unless you watched him like a hawk, he would spray. I felt bad having to keep him outside so I made an appointment to get him neutered.
We kept him in the house the night before the appointment. Now the funny thing about this cat is that he stress eats. Whenever you pet him or even just talk to him, he has to run to the food bowl and eat. It’s like his comfort thing. We were told by the vet to take his food up at midnight. The morning of the surgery he came into the kitchen and I was petting him. He will always roll over on his back to have you scratch his belly. This particular morning, while I was doing just that, he identified as a gator and chomped down on my hand. I felt his teeth sink into my skin and blood started pouring out of the wounds. He, realizing what he had done, jumped up and ran to the now non existent food bowl.
I immediately washed the bites and sprayed hydrogen peroxide on them. My whole right hand was throbbing, but I couldn’t miss the appointment, so into the makeshift crate he went. I do actually have a cat carrier somewhere I just can’t find it. It had poured the day before and I had only a bit of time to search the stacked up with totes to the ceiling shed. I had to just make due with what I had which was two laundry baskets, a Bungie cord and hair clips.
It was a little embarrassing walking into the vet with so many people in line staring at my “carrier”, but you do what you have to do. Six and a half hours later Jackson and I went to pick him up. He was supposed to be crated for 2 days, but that wasn’t working. Milo was very curious about his friend.
After about 8 hours he seemed fine so I let him out. He ate and used the litter box. We did keep him in for about 2 days and he was fine with that. It seems like he has taken to house life because he now is in more than out. This was him today and now he’s curled up on the bed with me.
I, on the other hand, was not fine. I didn’t want to tell Donny about the bite, but my hand started swelling, getting red and was still oozing. There was no way in hell that I was going back to the bougie ER and luckily I had a doctor’s appointment the next day. It was just the twice a year appointment to go over my labs, but I was definitely going to ask for antibiotics.
The bite was Wednesday, the appointment was Thursday. He did give me a prescription for antibiotics, but by Friday I was so sick that I stayed in bed all day. I couldn’t eat anything, but Donny got me a vanilla shake so I could take my medicine.
I felt lousy. We don’t know if it’s cat scratch fever or if I developed cellulitis but whatever it is it is taking its own sweet time healing. It’s not as swollen, but still has a hard area around both wounds. The antibiotics make me nauseous and give me zero appetite. Next pic is gross, but it was taken this morning.
I guess we’ll just take it one day at a time. Geesh, the things we go through for our pets.
Monday started off great. I got the front yard mowed. We had grabbed some honeysuckle off our trail 2 years ago and this year it has finally vined.
Some of the plants are growing back from where the neighbor butchered it bald. We still have plans for our cozy corner, but rain is heading our way for the next few days so all of that will have to wait.
Then, while I was mowing the backyard, my foot slid into the infamous hole. I had marked it with a faucet cover the last time I mowed, but apparently it had fallen in. This is what the hole looked like.
I KNEW it was there, but in the heat of mowing, I completely forgot about it. It’s about 14″ deep and my foot slid down pointed and I jammed my whole foot.
After falling to the ground and yelling some not so nice words, I kept mowing. It hurt. Bad. That, however, didn’t stop me from going on to my next project which is our shed. That poor thing was chipping and the wood needs tending too. I got our some wood screws and tightened the panels.
Next I sanded and scraped the loose paint off. Everything looks better with a tan so I used the brown storm coat paint I already had.
By this time my foot was killing me so I only got the front done. I have more plans for it but had to stop for the day. My foot was swelling and bruising. I iced it that night but it couldn’t sleep well because of the pressure the covers put on it. The next morning we were concerned that I might have fractured it so off I went AGAIN to the bougie ER.
After the x-ray it was determined that it was just a really bad sprain so they sent me home with this beauty.
It actually does help stabilize my foot, but I am so ready to be fully functional again. Rain is supposed to let up by Saturday so I’m planning on at least finishing the paint on the shed. Fingers crossed.
Everyone knows that you are supposed to drink water every day. I would always fill my tumbler up, take a few sips, and then somehow just lose the tumbler, forget about it, you get the idea. Lately I had beginning to feel dry. Kind of like my skin like a sponge left out in the sun. I googled how much water I should be drinking every day and it was a lot, 80 ounces to be exact. I knew for a fact that I wasn’t getting anywhere near that so I came up with a plan.
Every hour I would fill up my mason jar to the 1 cup mark and then I would just chug it. Think guy at a frat party chugging. I would mark it on the dry erase board on the fridge because I knew throughout the day I would lose track of how many cups I drank.
This is the third day I’ve done it and it’s been so easy. I will admit that I have probably gone through a roll of toilet paper per day but I hear that it gets better once your body adjusts. I can honestly say that I feel so much better. It’s amazing how fast it works. Hannah is even trying it out too. She has the blue tally marks. Even if you don’t like water, you can chug 8 ounces in under a minute and the benefits are so worth it.
I also found this amazing pumice stone. We have a VERY old gas stove. Even though I clean it there was always this flat burned on stain. I have tried scraping with a razor blade, baking soda, bar keepers friend, cleaning paste, really just about everything. I was in Drug Emporium and ran across this.
I thought it couldn’t hurt to try. So I got to rubbing.
You can see the spot where I started. It took a lot of elbow grease, but it came off like a charm.
I couldn’t believe how much better it looked and there were no harmful chemicals used so even better.
Today is my birthday. It has hovered around 22 degrees all day. Donny had his quarterly meeting in Dallas. Needless to say, we put off celebrating until later this next week. Those aren’t the only reasons though. Starting about 17 years ago Donny would have flare ups in his ankles and sometimes knees. It always seemed to happen around Halloween or Thanksgiving. Whichever joint it decided to hit it would cause redness, swelling and intense pain. It would last a few weeks and then just go away until the next time.
He started going to doctors. He had x-rays, blood work, you name it he probably had it. We were referred to an orthopedic doctor. He was told he had gout, but gout medication only made it worse. The weird pain would always just stay in his lower extremities and only occur once, maybe twice, a year. About a week ago his shoulder started to hurt. It then moved to his left hand. It was so swollen he couldn’t even bend it. When his hand started to get a little better it moved to his right knee. It swelled up the size of a cantaloupe and he could barely walk. The pain was intense. We were trying everything. I have googled his symptoms for years trying to find an answer. For a while I thought that it might be lupus. He had some symptoms, but not all of them and not the ones that were major markers for the disease.
I gave it one more try and did the exact Google search I have always done and this time the first 5 answers was something I’ve never even heard of. I clicked on one of them and started reading. I would bet everything I own that this is what he has. It’s called Palindromic Rheumatism. He checks off every single box. I also found a blog that a women writes about her battle with PR. Turns out it’s not very common and can be hard to diagnose. It’s different from RA because it hits hard with extreme pain and then basically goes into remission until it decides to strike again. There a few prescription drugs that help, but some have horrible side effects and getting the dose right can be tricky.
Last Saturday was particularly bad pain wise. I told him that I was going to make him a doctors appointment first thing Monday morning because we needed a referral to a rheumatologist. He was able to get an appointment on Monday. When we went in they pulled up his last blood work and told us that because his blood work didn’t warrant a referral they didn’t think they could give up one. One thing I have learned along the way is that if you don’t advocate for yourself nothing will happen and I was not going to let him leave the doctor without a referral. I KNOW doctors hate when a patient comes in and basically says, this is what I have and we need to treat it, but that’s exactly what I said. Luckily this doctor had heard of PR and agreed with me that this is presenting as exactly that. So now we are just waiting for the Rheumatologist to call us.
Here are some of the remedies we have tried because basically when Donny is in so much pain we will try anything. I chopped up avocado seeds and mixed them with alcohol and let them sit. It does work, but not for him. He takes supplements that take the edge off a little bit. He takes NSAIDS, but those can wreck your gallbladder so we have to be careful. He has started on a high dose of Vitamin D. There is an arthritis cream that my friend’s mother uses for her RA that I picked up for him tonight. My landlord has a friend whose son had very similar symptoms and the hospital told him to take Claratin everyday so I went out and got that today. I normally don’t talk to my landlord about stuff like this but I got locked out of the house today and had to have her come bring me their key. There are many other things we have tried throughout the years. These are just the most recent. Thank goodness we kept the crutches from one of his really bad flares because he’s back on them.
From more that I’ve read they don’t know the exact cause of why this happens. One of the theories is that it could be something in his diet that triggers the attacks. I found this book that we’ve been looking through. The hardest part it the trial and error because it just seems like it takes so long.
I’m hoping that something works soon. It’s so hard to see someone you love going through this.
I did end of having a perfectly good birthday though. I didn’t do anything and took a nap which was heavenly and the perfect weather for it.
It’s only Tuesday, but this week has already been a juggling act. Donny got had jury duty on Monday. The guy settled, so there was no trial. He came home for a bit since he had taken the morning and afternoon off just in case he was chosen. I got a wild hair and decided that we needed to clean out our bedroom closet. Donny has two large fabric cubes that he had just been throwing clothes in that either didn’t fit or he didn’t like. It became a problem when every time I had to pull down my jeans basket his stuff would fall on my head. I couldn’t go through it because I didn’t even know what all was in there. Well yesterday he went through both cubes and the hanging clothes. I went through my stuff and this is what we accomplished.
That’s a LOT of stuff. During the process I looked around and thought, there’s no way we will ever finish this today. This was the bedroom mid clean.
This morning Hannah had a doctor’s appointment at 10. I had made the appointment last week. They informed me that she already had her yearly appointment scheduled for today. They said they would add what her GP had suggested be looked at. Well, when we arrived, where we always go, we were told that her doctor had moved closer to the hospital. We rushed over there and they had no record of her appointment. When he switched offices he also became the assistant chief medical doctor and all of the appointments made in 2024 were just dropped off. They were supposed to call and let us know, but didn’t. They told us that they could try to get us in in a few weeks. Nope, what they are thinking this is cannot wait. Hannah is learning how to make her own appointments and she learned an important lesson today. Everyone needs to advocate for themselves. We told them nicely that we understood there was a mix up but this can’t wait and we need to be seen asap. They were able to squeeze us in tomorrow morning at 8:15.
Next Hannah drove around our neighborhood. She’s working toward getting her license. She did really well. Longview is a scary place to drive. The amount of red light runners, DUI’s and wrecks is insane in a town of this size. Also just people driving and being on their phones adds to the problem. She’ll get there though.
She wanted to come with me to pick Jackson up so we could go thrifting. She hadn’t been able to go in a while due to work and she wanted to hang out with her brother. She found some cute tops for work. Even though she works in a department store she’s very frugal and saves her money. We were in the one we call relish when Jackson came and got me because he found some framed artwork that he wanted for our home. If you have ever been in our home there’s really no space for anymore artwork. The pictures were really cool so we bought them and I found a place that I think is just perfect.
They are right above where the cat bowls are.
The past two days have worn me out. I feel like I’m living in the kitchen when I’m at home. Last night I’m thankful that Donny cooked the steaks and all I had to make was the broccoli and rice. Tonight the kids wanted waffles, sausauge, bacon and eggs and that was alright by me. I just took a shower and really do not feel like going and cleaning up the kitchen. I’ve found that if I just go and push through it doesn’t take much time and I’m not walking into a messy kitchen in the morning. I’m getting better at staying on task and making sure what needs to get done does. Although it does sometimes feel like I’m juggling balls and keep getting new ones thrown in.
P.S.
I saw a video that if you do 10 body weight squats every hour your mobility increases. Ever since I quit working the bounce houses I feel like I’m getting creakier. The squats really help with that. Just a though.
If you read here you know how much I love our backyard, especially the tree line that acts as a natural privacy fence. It is lush and the trees curl over making a great hiding place/chill out place for our chickens. It’s like you are in a little forest.
We had to disconnect part of the lights because of the chickens heat lamp that is in their coop.
Yesterday I was at the kitchen window and looked out. I thought our yard looked different, then my brain registered what I was seeing. The tree line was disappearing.
I immediately called our landlord. She doesn’t own the house directly behind us, but owns the white house next to it. We are friendly with the neighbor who lives there. Our landlord had no idea what was going on. I told her that I had seen a dumpster in their driveway so maybe they had moved. She didn’t think so, but something was going on. I walked over to the house and knocked, but no one was there. I opened the door to the dumpster and there was a lot of household things in it. As I was walked over to the white house to find out if that neighbor knew anything Trent, the neighbor saw me and came out. I asked him if he knew what was going on and he told me that the neighbor had died and that the daughter now owned the house. He gave me her cell number.
I took pictures for Donny because when they were cutting everything down they were just leaving it in our yard.
Today it got worse. The lawn crew was out there bright and early this morning and Donny went to tell them to get all of the branches out of our yard. They did but not before cutting every single bush, plant and tree down. It’s awful. Our whole backyard is now exposed. Before it was so nice to not have to look at the neighbors behind us. Now the whole fence is naked. When I went out to feed the chickens her two young girls were leaning over the back fence just staring into our yard. Not only is their no privacy now, but we are going to have to put up more chicken wire along the back fence so the chickens won’t jump over.
While I was out there I noticed my string lights that I had attached to our tree were down.
They had cut right through the wires. I did call the owner and tell her what had happened. I also asked her why she had everything cut down. She just said, Oh, it had gotten overgrown. No shit, It’s a natural privacy fence. Donny assures me it will grow back some and we are planning on planting a new fence in the spring, but until then we’ll just have to grin and bear it.
Jackson asked if we could go to the thrift store today so I figured some second hand retail therapy might help. We went to Goodwill first. Ours is not that great, but I did find these plant stands for $1.99 each that I’m going to use out on the patio when it warms up and we can plant again.
We also went to the big thrift store where I found one of the two cookbooks that have been forever on my wish list. Yes, I know I could buy it new, but finding it secondhand is so much better. Plus it was only 50 cents.
I also found this 1979 bread cookbook that I am going to love cooking out of. The Julia Child book is the one I was the most excited about though. Now if I could only find the Jacques Pepin’s Le Technique. One day.
I also picked up this vintage whisk. I use a whisk everyday and I just loved this little guy.
My sister is 14 years older than I am. I have no other siblings, it’s just the two of us. When I was 3 years old she started dating this guy that was quite a bit older than she was. She was a senior in high school at the time. I’m not exactly sure how my parents felt about it because I was too young to be included in these conversations, but I know that they probably weren’t too happy. The only things I remember about him was that he drove a big car and, in my 3 year old mind, he wasn’t bad looking. His name was Fred.
Here is a picture of my sister and me. I was the mascot for her high school drill team.
My sister broke up with Fred. From what I have gathered is was an ugly breakup. She left for Kilgore College when I was 4. We were living in Corpus so it was, at that time, about an 8 to 9 hour drive. He followed her up to college and my parents had to get the college security involved. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it was about to get worse for us in Corpus Christi.
We started receiving obscene phone calls at all hours of the night. We didn’t know who or why they were calling, but my parents finally found out that someone had written our phone number on just about every sleazy bar bathroom wall there was. My parents fully believed that it was Fred who had done it since we had had so many problems from him.
Then one day my mom got a phone call from a women she didn’t know. She told my mother that she had gone to San Antonio with Fred and while they were there he had told the woman that he blamed my mother for him and my sister breaking up. He told her the only way he knew to ruin her life was to kidnap her youngest daughter, which was me. The woman was freaked out about it because, as she told my mother, he was serious and she thought he was crazy. My mother got in touch with the police, but because she didn’t have this woman’s phone number, this was way before caller ID, they couldn’t do anything. They did come out and show her how to shoot a gun and told her that if he was climbing into our window to shoot him and drag the body inside.
By this time I was 5 years old. Everything was going smoothly. We would still get phone calls, but we had someone go into every bar restroom in Corpus and if they saw anything about us they made sure it was taken care of.
Fast forward several years. It was a Sunday morning and my parents and I were getting ready for church. The phone rings and I answered it. There is a man on the other end and he asks, “Stacy, how old are you now?”. I asked, “What?’ and he repeated what he had asked me. I told him “I’m 11.” and he hung up. I went into my parents bedroom because for some reason the call really made me anxious. My dad just looked at my mom and said something like, never tell anyone how old you are on the phone. Now mind you, I had absolutely NO idea that he had threatened to kidnap me. I still ran around outside with my friends and came in when the street light came on or my Aunt Norma rang the big bell. It was life as usual.
A couple of years go by. We live out in the country. My dad was Principal of the school that we lived right next door to. Our house was kind of tucked away behind the school. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, lived with us 6 months out of the year and with my aunt in Mandeville, LA the other 6 months. That arrangement had been going on for years. One day our phone rings and the man on the other end of the line asks me, “Stacy, where is your grandfather?”. We had recently taken him back to Louisiana for his 6 months with my aunt. Luckily my dad was standing right there when the phone rang and he took the receiver from me and told Fred not to call us ever again. I still didn’t know the extent of the situation.
Now we have moved into the city of Corpus. I was getting ready to graduate high school. My cousins, who lived in this tiny town in Texas near San Antonio, came down to go to the graduation. We were all sitting around the kitchen table talking when my cousin told my mother that they had the weirdest thing happen to them recently. This guy walks up to their home, they lived on a dairy farm far from anything and down a dirt road, because he had car trouble and asked to use their phone. I need to mention that they are the ONLY people in Texas that have our last name that we are related to. It is also a very unusual last name. He asked what their names were. When they told him, he asked if they had relatives in Corpus. They told him that they did and confirmed that it was our family. The very next question out of his mouth was, what is Stacy doing now. They didn’t know not to tell him, so they told him I was graduating from high school and told him where I was going to college. My mother’s face turned white and she asked my cousin, “What was his name?’. My cousin couldn’t remember so she called out to her husband in the next room and he said, “Oh, it was Fred, Fred Lerma”. My parents told them what had been happening for years and they felt so bad for telling him anything about me. They said he just seemed so nice and what a coincidence it was that he happened to have “car trouble” right by their house. They told my parents that all he really wanted to talk about was my family and mainly me.
This is when my parents had to tell me what was going on because now that he knew where I was going to be going to school and the fact that it was several hours away meant I had to be very aware of my surroundings. It really did freak me out now that I had all of the pieces to the puzzle. My parents had told me when I was younger that if I ever saw Fred near our home or anywhere that I should immediately tell them and not to speak to him but to just get away from where he was. I did think that was a little weird at the time. One day I was playing outside and a car that looked just like his pulled around to our house. I jumped up and ran inside to tell my mother but it turned out to just be a friend of my sister’s coming to visit. Even though I was very young I still remember the fear when I saw that car.
I have no answers to why he did this. My sister doesn’t like talking about it and my parents are both deceased. I never heard anything about him after my graduation, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still keeping tabs on me. I couldn’t figure out why there was a big gap from when it first started until the phone calls started, but when I googled him I found out that he had enlisted in the army.
Here is his death information and the picture of him that I found on his social media.
I have mentioned before how we were loaning our lawn mower to Jimmy because his broke and he walks around mowing lawns in the neighborhoods around our house. Almost daily during the summer he would knock on our door asking to borrow our mower. We thought it was a little weird when he started coming back the beginning of January to borrow it again. We were leaving our lawn dormant until the weather started heating up again and Jimmy would ask time and time again if we wanted him to mow our yard.
Anyway, Donny went to get the mower out of the shed so he could mow inside our greenhouse. He came in and asked me where the mower was. I told him Jimmy borrowed it about a week ago. He normally just puts it back in the shed when he’s finished. A couple of days later Jimmy knocked on our door and told me that he had it at his friend’s house and it was “taken”. Hannah and I were walking out the door because she was late for work so I couldn’t talk to him very long, but he told me that he would buy us a new one. I was not a happy camper and I’m pretty sure he waited so long to tell me because he sold it.
A few weeks ago I saw him walking down the side street by my house PUSHING A LAWN MOWER! By the time I had run into the house to tell the kids I was going to find him, grab my keys, he was GONE. I drove around looking for him, but he must have seen me and took off.
I saw him about a week after that cutting through the neighbor’s house two doors down and across the street. I tried to find him again with no luck.
My landlords called me to find out how the plumbers did and I told them that I was sorry that our yard was not mowed and then told them why. It turns out they know Jimmy and said that he’s homeless. He had lied and said that he lived with his mother. He had been staying at this homeless camp and with some unsavory people a few streets over. My landlord said that if she sees him she’s going to text me so I can find out just what happened.
It sucks when you think you are doing a good thing by helping someone and they completely screw you over.
Anyway, Tuesday we got a delivery.
I loved out old mower. It was a better one than this one, but we don’t have an extra $600 dollars to buy another Troy-bilt. This one cost half that and it’s going to take some getting used to because it has rear wheel propulsion instead of front and it’s so fast. It’s like walking a great Dane that isn’t leash trained. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Here’s the before of our poor lawn.
We have so much work to do on it this Spring. It used to be beautiful St. Augustine. Not so much anymore.
It does look a lot better after I mowed.
And after being sick for almost 2 weeks I’m finally feeling like myself. I had enough energy to deep clean the house and that in itself makes me feel so much better. I love to open up the curtains and let the natural light in.
The Funky Frugalista 