Halloweening-Part I

The 2nd Annual Carper Family Pumpkin Show Trek!

For part of our Halloween festivities, we went to the Circleville Pumpkin Show! We went two years ago, when we were dating, but we missed it last year, because we were too busy getting married! But we went this year with some friends of ours!

Here are some highlights!

The Large Pumpkin Pie. (I think it looks gross)


The first place winner! 1, 622 lbs!


A gigantic tower of pumpkins! (Notice, the
one on the tippy top has a crown!)



And finally a pile of weird gourds, with the tall weird green ones
attempting to spell out "O-H-I-O."

Oh, the pumpkin show. It was very fun. Someone was crowned the Pumpkin Queen, there were parades, there were hog races, and there were lots of weird fundamentalist Christian organizations with booths full of children singing strange songs (one was even rapping!). There were Shriners, and Rotary Club members, and Senior Citizens groups, and the community band. And, of course there were lots of different pumpkin foods to eat! I had pumpkin chili and a pumpkin donut. Mmmmm. Donuts. . . .

Also, this year there was this weird back-alley part of the pumpkin show with a bunch of creepy carnies manning freak show booths, and exotic animal viewing tents. Spooky scary, indeed! We avoided that area.

Happy Halloween Week! Mwa ha ha ha!

Ahhhhhh!

Why is my life so stressful right now?!!! I don't even have a job!

Ridiculous!

I need to learn the art of saying "NO."

A few things:

Just a few quick things of late:

1) It's open enrollment season for health insurance! And I'm excited! Is that weird? Probably. But I USE my health insurance. EVERY DAY! So, you can imagine, that if the opportunity to get some better benefits arises, or maybe some different options, I am excited to find out what they might be! Also, we will definitely be increasing our coverage this year, because our insurance company totally lied to us last year (those evil and conspiring men!) and we got stuck in a super high deductible plan. So, I'm excited about having a much lower deductible this year. Also, that means I can GET AN INSULIN PUMP! Woot! I have been told that our open enrollment packet should be arriving in the mail some time this week. You better believe I've been anxiously waiting by the window to see when the mail man comes, EVERY DAY THIS WEEK! So far, nothin'.

2) Speaking of health insurance, a gigantic miracle happened. My health insurance authorized my request for a prescription of 8-10 blood glucose test strips a day, the first time I asked! Without fighting me about it! This is practically unheard of in the health insurance world. For some reason, insurance companies think you only need to test 6x a day (because, you know, they have extensive knowledge about what it takes to manage diabetes), and they almost always fight people when they ask them to pay for more strips. What does this mean for my life? Well, I don't have to ration my test strips, and can get better control because I can test more! No more will I have the following conversation with myself: "Hmmm, I feel like my blood sugar is high. . . is it high? I'm not sure. Maybe I should take insulin. What if I'm not high? Then I'll go low! But, I can't test, because I don't have enough strips, so I better just wait and do nothing until it is absolutely necessary to test." On rare occasions, the insurance gods show some compassion. Emphasis on RARE.

3) In non-diabetes related things, we have been Halloweening it up like crazy here in the Carper household. Halloween is my favorite secular holiday. I feel bad saying it is my favorite holiday, because I feel like that should be Christmas or Easter, but I just have this nagging, deep and abiding love for all things spooky scary, and, ok, it's my favorite! I admit it! It just is! I will devote an entire post to our Halloweening activities later, but just to give you a little teaser, I will tell you that we dressed up for our church trunk-or-treat party and we WON A PRIZE! Oh yeah!

Okay, friends. That's it! HAPPY HALLOWEEN WEEK! Mwa ha ha ha! I think I'm going to go watch Thriller now. And fantasize about health insurance options.

I need some ideas!

Help!

I'm going to start a blog all about diabetes for Diabetes Awareness month (November) and World Diabetes Day (Nov. 14th). I plan to write a different, small blog post every day that month, and then link it to my facebook page/status each day in that month.

So, my question is this: What's a good blog name/URL for this blog? I want it to be short enough that people remember it, but to also say what it's about. I'm a little limited, because I'm going to do it on blogger and some of the URLs are already taken, but that's OK.

So, here are my ideas thus far:

• ErinsDiabetesAwarenessBlog
• DiabetesAwarenessbyErin
• Diabetes101byErin
• Igotthesugar
• ErinsBetesBlog

You get the idea. Any suggestions?

Also, wear blue on Nov 14th. And send an e-mail to the White House at this link http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact and ask them to light up the White House blue for World Diabetes Day. That's what the WDD campaign does, they get famous buildings and monuments and stuff lit up blue. (They had the idea before Susan G. Komen, thank you!).

Thanks, kids!

I'm a game player.

Well, not really. But right now, I AM playing one game against Old Man Winter! I'm trying to see how long I can go without turning the heat on in our house.

So far, I'm winning. But, we have had a very hot summer, and a very warm and dry fall thus far, to give O.M. Winter some credit. We've had a couple of cold days in early October. Today it is pretty cold, but it's still 69 degrees in our house!

I've got on socks and a hoodie and am often bundled in a blanket on the couch! Booya! Take THAT Winter!

Latest A1C

So, it's not in the range that is my goal, but it's a number I can live with. I'm trying really hard not to attach a big fat "FAIL" emotion to this number and just look at it as information to help me change what I'm doing. It's not "bad" or "good", it's just information. Life is one big science experiement!

I'm sure my last crappy endocrinologist would say I was being "non-compliant". Yeah, right. I have been working SO HARD these past months! I am not a pancreas. I'm just trying hard to pretend to be one. :) Anyway, it is what it is, and while I'm not elated by this number, I refuse to let it get me down!

Take THAT diabetes!

(p.s. I still love that I can get my A1C done at home now! SO much cheaper, and so much less anxiety than going to the doctor!)

Diabetes Breakfast Success!

I've finally done it! After 17+ years of having diabetes, I've finally found a combination of things to eat for breakfast that doesn't spike my blood sugar in the mornings! (Stupid dawn phenomenon!)

If I eat one whole grain ( it must be whole grain or else there's not enough fiber to slow down the absorption of the carbs) english muffin, 1 apple, and 1/2 C of cottage cheese and then take 6 units of insulin, my blood sugar stays stable after breakfast! This is a pretty amazing thing for me.

The only downside is, I have now eaten pretty much this same thing for the last month or so for breakfast.

So, I guess now it's time to experiment with other breakfast foods, but I'm reluctant to do so, because this is working SO WELL right now! Also, the stuff I really want to eat for breakfast (pancakes, waffles, smoothies, cereal and milk, etc.) has WAY too many simple carbs for my insulin-resistant-in-the-morning self to handle. Sigh. My body can however handle these things perfectly fine after about 1:00pm, so needless to say, we have Brinner in our house a lot.

Oh well. This is the nature of the 'betes. Everyday is one big science experiment.

Here's to finding a new "go-to" breakfast soon! And until then, here's to LOVING the morning without a post-breakfast blood sugar spike!

GPS Fail!

What ho, friends! Ben and I took a small trip down to Chillicothe a few Saturdays ago to visit the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park. It was pretty sweet. And it was only an hour away, and it was FREE! This is just one of the many places in Ohio (and throughout much of the midwest we found out!) where there are a series of mounds built by Native Americans.

It was kind of an adventure getting down there. We trusted our GPS, and it totally led us astray, taking us past this creepy house.

To give the GPS credit, the site it took us to was technically part of the National Park, just part of it that was not excavated, and that did not have any official tour, was closed to the public, was located in a very creepy area and was only marked by a small plaque.

The part of the park with the nice visitor center that was open to the public is actually located in the middle of three, yes THREE, state and federal prisons. (And they send school groups to this park all the time! Maybe it's a "scared straight" thing?) So, I'm not sure which one I found creepier. But, the mounds were really cool, and you could walk right up to them, just not on them.

One more interesting fact about the mounds: During WWI there was a big military training camp, called Camp Sherman, that was built right over the mounds! They built army barracks right on the mounds! Just disregarding them all together! This seems so ridiculous to me, because it seems like it would be hard to build a building on top of a big lump of earth rather than on the nice flat part right next to it, but hey, what do I know. I'm just a civilian. :)

Any way, that was our trip! It was cool, I highly suggest it. But be careful, and don't get lost in Chillicothe, because you'll either end up in a creepy area or a prison parking lot.

Operation: Trying to make a house more of a home.

We finally got some curtains up in our kitchen! They ended up being red, when we really wanted blue, but now that the red is up there, we actually really like it. Yes, I realize they need to be ironed. Also, I'm trying to make some blackout lining for them because we lose SO much heat through these sliding kitchen doors! Hopefully that will help with our gas bills this winter!

So, this is my latest sewing adventure. Good thing it still only requires sewing in straight lines. Although the fabric is MUCH thicker than anything I've used before, so that's a new challenge. :) Wish me luck! Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

Blogging for sleep.

Blogging for sleep is my version of walking for the cure, or racing for the cure, or swimming for the cure, or whatever people do these days*. Except I'm blogging to try to help me fall asleep. It's a long shot, I know.

But, it's 3:50 am, and I'm in the throws of a fun night of insomnia, so this is what's happening. "They" always tell you that if you aren't asleep after twenty minutes that you should get out of bed and do something else until you get sleepy, so you don't associate your bed with NOT sleeping. Welp, that's all fine and good if you're the kind of person who can fall asleep within twenty minutes of laying your head on the pillow. I am not that person. I can't remember ever being that person. I'm not even that person when I'm doped up on Nyquil, or Benadryl, or melatonin, or a combination of the three.

I have toyed with the idea of trying Lunesta or Ambien, but something about the commercials with the radioactive butterfly tend to make me wary of that. Also, I have a friend who may or may not have had a bad Ambien experience in which she ended up in her sister and brother-in-law's bedroom, in nothing but her skivvies, in the middle of the night, hallucinating that her fingers were turning to liquid and falling off her hands. I'm just sayin'.

So instead, I'll blog. And I'll leave you with this gem. I smooshed my finger in the bathroom door the other day, and developed this awesome blood blister in literally 5 seconds. Cause that's how I roll.

*By the way, while I fully support the breast cancer awareness peeps, and think it's a very worthy cause, etc., those people have a serious monopoly on the fund raising events these days! Practically every other day there are loads of people wearing pink wigs and boas walking down the street! And, almost every product at my Kroger is now packaged in pink with proceeds donated to the Komen foundation! Even the NFL players are wearing pink now! Someone has a seriously brilliant marketing team, that's all I'm sayin'. JDRF, you totally missed the boat on this one.