A Mexican Fiesta!

Allow me to begin by saying Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.  My husband and I do not, but it was still a crazy day.  Since I had a long weekend I told him I'd make him anything he wanted for dinner Saturday night.  He said he wanted a Mexican Fiesta.  So a Mexican Fiesta it was.  Thursday night I compiled a list of recipes, and on Friday I headed to the store.  Big mistake. 

Since it was Christmas Eve, and they weren't open on Christmas Day, the place was a zoo.  I may as well have walked from my house with how far back I had to park.  I waited in line to get a cart and then went to the produce section, where there was enough room down each aisle for a single cart.  I parked my cart at the end of the aisles and ran down to grab the produce I needed.  After about half an hour in the produce section I went for meat, where for some reason people were parking their carts and gabbing.  Yay for bottlenecks!

After I got the various meats I needed, I went toward frozen foods, and was on the lookout for international foods, and baking.  International foods had food stuffs for nearly every country except Mexico.  Yay!  I must have missed baking in the gigantor store, and after grabbing frozen corn, I made a bee-line for the registers.  I'd had enough of impatience, being slammed with shopping carts, and screaming children.

Then I headed for my friendly, local grocery store for the rest of my ingredients.  All around the store were complaints of the place being a madhouse, but had they been through the hell I had just endured they would have been grateful for the semi-peaceful store they were in.

That night we went to my Mother-in-Law's for dinner.  It was nice and relaxing, and my husband invited them over for our Fiesta.  They agreed.

Fast forward to Saturday morning and there I am, realizing our place is a mess, and with a list of 8 dishes to make.  AAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!  The husband had to work at 8, so from about 7:45 on I cooked and cleaned like a mad woman.  He got home from work around 4 and I still had 2 dishes I hadn't even started on, but the apartment was clean as a whistle.  The In-Laws never arrived.

We scratched the last 2 dishes, and sat down to our Fiesta.  Well, he sat down.  I continued to cook all while we ate.  Everything was delicious, and well worth the work.  By 8:00 we were serving dessert and the day had finally come to an end.  I laid down on the couch for a breather and could see my ankle swelling like crazy.

Within a few minutes I was asleep, pain or not.  We didn't even do any cleaning up until this morning.  As I type this the dishwasher is running it's fourth load in 2 days and all I want to do is go back to sleep.  Today will be a mostly lazy day, though, so that will be nice.

My ankle is still quite swollen, and very painful.  The current pain level is an 7/10, which is to be expected, I suppose.

Ugh, winter :(

I used to love winter.  It used to be my favorite time of year.  I remember playing King of the Mountain atop the skyscrapers of snow left at the end of our driveway with my family and friends.  Skiing and sledding were some of my favorite ways to pass the time.  Who can beat coming inside after making a snowman, dripping with melting snow, to a waiting fire and a big cup of hot chocolate?  Ah the memories.... but not anymore.  I can't go out and make a snowman anymore.  There's no more snowmobiling, skiing, sledding, snowmen, snow angels, King of the Mountain, or snow dripping from everywhere (even off the hat on my head).  The Winter wonderland I remember from my childhood is now far out of my reach.  At least there's still waiting fires and hot chocolate... well sometimes.

Now those wonderful winter memories have been replaced with constant pain that keep me firmly seated in the present.  I can never warm my leg up.  I have layers of blankets on my bed, I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, but still the leg is chilled to the bone.  I HATE winter now.  Don't get me wrong, my stimulator helps a great deal, but even with the stimulator the pain never goes away.  The warmth never returns (not that I would expect that to happen), and I'm left longing for the winters of my childhood.

All I can do now is to find indoor activities to keep my mind off the cold and pain.  Like tonight.  The family is having a murder mystery dinner, and as of last night I'm in charge of running the game.  It should be a ton of (warm) fun, and hopefully the pain will stay away.

Current pain level: 6/10 :(