Sleep????? Not really.

Ahhhh, sweet sleep!  All the red lines are AWAKE times!  And the reason for each of those red lines is leg cramps.  What an absolutely awful night's sleep (or LACK of sleep, if you will).

My legs hurt so much today because of all the cramping done through the night and I need to be careful to not stretch, or the cramps are still coming today.

I am still going to the chiropractor for this sciatic nerve issue.  Someone told me that being manipulated can release toxins into  your system, so I'm kind of wondering if that can be cause of the severity of cramps.

My hand cream

I have a blog friend who makes her own hand cream.  Judy Laquidara's blog is called Patchwork Times.  She writes a fantastic blog and I love reading it daily.

She put her "recipe" for homemade hand cream on her blog and I made it over a year ago.  I absolutely love this cream.

Judy's recipe uses baby lotion, but I really don't like the scent of baby lotion, so I use a cocoa butter scented lotion.

Here's the recipe I used:

16 oz. cocoa butter scented hand lotion
2 jars (4 oz. each) vitamin E cream
1 jar (8 oz.) cocoa scented Vaseline

I put this into my Kitchen Aide mixer and mix the heck out of it.  This makes a lot of hand cream.  I fill the vitamin e cream jars and have a few other jars that I fill, too.  First time I made it, I wasn't prepared for how much it made and I didn't have enough jars, so I put a bunch into a pretty candy jar and have it on my nightstand.  I love using it this way, just dip my fingers in and get a little and put it on my hands (and feet) when I go to bed.

(Side note:  First time I made this, the Vaseline didn't incorporate well, so this time I put the Vaseline into my mixer bowl and put that into a dish pan filled with really hot water.  I melt the Vaseline and then mix everything together.)

Someone gave Judy a hard time because she called this her "homemade hand cream".  They said she couldn't call it homemade because she bought things and mixed them together!!!  Hahaha!  I make homemade stuff all the time from things I buy at the store!!  People get all bent out of shape over nothing sometimes!!

Sciatica

I've heard of sciatica.  I even had a little bout with it years ago...a pain then went down into the back of my thigh, but it went away in a relatively short period of time.

Last Saturday, February 10, we were at CLE.  We had just gone through US Customs and had been on our feet (after a 3.5 hour flight) for about 90 minutes.  We were waiting for our luggage when my left foot went "to sleep".  I shook my foot around and it felt a bit better, but within a few steps that feeling came back.  It stayed.

Over the weekend an awful thought went through my head.  I thought I probably had a stroke.  (My mind tends to go to the worst-case scenario.)  I was unpacking, putting things away and was dealing with a numb foot all the while.

Monday came and I thought..."I won't play pickleball today, probably not a good idea."  I took some Advil and plowed through things.  Then I thought, "I WILL play pickleball, perhaps the exercise will be good for me...maybe this is just a pinched nerve from the flight home from Mexico".  I went and played for about an hour and I was limping so badly that others were noticing I was having a problem.  I got ice and iced my back and my foot.

Tuesday morning I called the chiropractor that Rick has gone to in the past.  (I do not like chiropractors, so I asked Rick to go with me and stay with me.)  Well, I learned that I was suffering from sciatica and to my surprise, I learned that the sciatic nerve ends in your foot.

I have had 2 treatments and go back again on Monday.  The sole of my foot is still numb, but I have feeling in my toes now.  It's not a quick recovery or adjustment, but I am getting better.

The doctor has given me these instructions:  no sitting in my recliner with the leg rest up; put a pillow behind me and sit up straight; in bed, try to lay on my back with a pillow beneath my knees and if I need to lie on my side, put a pillow between my knees; don't cross my legs at the knees.

I'm looking forward to recovering completely from this.  It's a real PITA and PITF!

49th Wedding Anniversary Celebration

February 8th marked 49 years of marriage for Rick and me.  It's hard to believe that it's that long, on the other hand it seems we've been married forever.

We had a rough start to 2018 with us both being sick, some seasonal affective disorder and the feeling that the flu was making a second attack on me.  We made a visit to the doctor a few days before a scheduled trip and he assured us we were well enough to travel and thought it would be the best thing for us.  He gave me 2 prescriptions to take and we flew out of Cleveland on Saturday, February 3 to Cancun, Mexico.

We had a fabulous trip!  It was raining as we left the Cancun airport, but by the time we arrived at our resort the rain had stopped and we had an entire week of sunshine and 80F+ weather.  We relaxed, we enjoyed and it WAS the best thing for us.

Lots of photos to remind me of the wonderful time these two old lovebirds had on their 49th!

 Life together is better.