Warning: Infectious

Boy, people -please keep reminding me to keep up-to-date or at least close to up-to-date with the blog reading.

I got way behind in that, beginning last Saturday and it took me till about an hour ago now till I finally finished reading ALL the backlog of blog posts there had begun accumulating on Saturday when I took a break, escaped from the house and went shopping at Joanne Fabrics. Then Saturday night, Sunday and until about 2:30-3 a.m.ish Monday morning, I was on my manic bi-polar attempt to catalogue as many of the embroidery skeins I have on hand as possible.

Yesterday became a "lost" day for me in the wonderful world of blogging due to several situations that developed here.

But the biggest thing around here lately from Friday thru yesterday seemed to deal with matters of an infectious nature.

First, my son-in-law -Bill -came home from work, sick and went straight upstairs, crawled into bed and resurfaced maybe 3-4 times over the next two days only out of sheer necessity. (The bathroom being on the first floor here and their bedroom, on the second floor, ya know.) Sunday, he did get up and was "about" for maybe 5-6 hours tops but come Monday, he skipped going to work and spent the entire day, back in bed! I am not really sure what his issues were but he said he felt like total crap anyway.

Tuesday morning, Maya awoke -throwing up in her bed. Lovely, huh? Mandy wasn't overly impressed with having to strip and clean up her bed first thing in the morning. Then, after she got downstairs and as Mandy was finishing cleaning Maya up, she got sick again. This time, though she aimed at the commode, she missed and ended up barfing all over the side of the commode and on to the floor. Mandy was heard in the bathroom, cursing Bill and his dammed disease while cleaning up that mess.

Then, during the night Monday into Tuesday morning, I started getting these sharp, stabbing pains in the middle of my upper spine -about half-way down between the neck and where my waistline "used" to be. Those pains got closer together and much sharper as the night grew closer to the dawn and I didn't get to sleep till around 6 a.m. but by 8.00 a.m. the pains were so sharp that they woke me up! I dug around and located a lidocain patch leftover from when I had the shingles and got Bill to slap it on my back and then, waited to the time that I knew my doctor's office would be open. I called her about 1 minute after I knew that office was open and functioning and got the nurse to squeeze me in for a visit there yesterday afternoon.

My thoughts were that this pain was very reminiscient of how I felt when I initially contracted those stinking shingles about 2 1/2 years ago and if that was what this was, I wanted to try to nip it in the bud as much a possible. So yesterday, I got to the doctor, she checked the area on my back and at that time, felt it wasn't the shingles but yet, it could be -just not in full bloom I guess. However, she did give me a prescription to get filled if they did develop. I stopped on the way home and got the prescription filled because while I was getting some groceries at Walmart, I could feel that darned stabbing pain returning all over again!

Then, as if to add insult to injury, it seemed the website for the Autism Walk the kids and I are participating in on APril 4th didn't want to cooperate with me and I couldn't do any registrations of members for our team. Could not get the website to work, no way, no how, in that respect for about two days! Two of my cousins tried to use it and it wouldn't let t hem in or if it would, it still wasn't wanting to function properly so I had to try to find a contact person at the Walk's home office who could help get me and my problems as well as my cousins too, all straightened out.

In that respect, I am really glad now that I found out how to put the paypal donation button up on my website because I see today one of my cousins decided to use that method rather than fighting with the Autism Speaks website to make her donation. A special shout-out of thanks too goes to two of my blogger friends (Mary and Pat) who each donated to our team's efforts. I really appreciate your generosity and the support to our team as well as to me with your day-to-day following of my blog as well!

Several of you have made little comments pertaining to Miss Maya and the directions needed to get her to help pick up her stuff -toys, clothes, whatever -off the floor and the fact that I had told her something was laying in the middle of the floor and she corrected me, saying no, it was on the right! I'm glad you all got as much fun out of that as Mandy and I did here too! We both cracked up laughing when she corrected me, called me on my location error, she did!

Last night, at supper, I thought I had a big full-family hit entree with the cream of chicken, tortelloni and vegetable soup I made because on the first bite, Maya had declared she really liked it and that it was very good. That is until she got another spoonful and realized it contained that dreadful substance known as vegetables. Heaven forbid we ingest a yucky, yucky vegetable, you know. The 4-cheese tortelloni was fine, but the vegetables -a total no-go then! Kurtis just politely pushed the veggies aside, the pulled them out from his bowl and happily munched away on the tortelloni. By the time he was finished and announced loudly -as he pushed himself away from the table by bracing a foot against the edge of the table, thus scooting his chair back about 3 feet -that he was "AHH DU" -which translated means "All done!" he was one big sloppy mess of the cream sauce of the soup smeared all over his face, clothes and the table top as well! Messy Marvin is his alias you know.

This morning though I just thought what he did to me then was one of the cutest things ever. I was trying to work through reading all these blog posts on my reader and the next thing I knew, there was Kurtis by my left arm. He leaned forward so as to be able to give me a full-face view of him and he hollered at me (yes -he is quite loud and very presistent at times too) "Cookie? Cookie?"

Being such a high level intelligent person as I am, I asked him if he wanted Grammy to give him and cookie and he repeated himself. So I got two cookies out -one for Kurtis, one for Matthew -the little guy Mandy babysits two afternoons a week and settled the boys in their seats at the table. Kurtis was a very happy camper munching on his cookie as I leaned down to give him a hug and a big kiss on his cheeck. I did this 2-3 times and he suddenly looked up at me, put his hand up to his mouth and yes, he "blew me a kiss." Gotta love a sweet response like that now don't 'cha? And he kept doing that then, blowing me several kisses. Keep in mind, I did not do that first so he wasn't just imitating that action but rather, he was pulling this from his repertoire and using it quite appropriately there.

I really does make my socks go up and down when he -and Maya too -show some new thing that I think we would just take for granted if thise were a neuro-typical 3 or 5-year-old doing but when either of these two does something along those lines, it really is a big and very special event to me, to Maya and also to the therapists when they show up to work with Kurt.

Back to the Autism walk now for a minute before I close this post today. Right now, we have seven walkers registered and a total of $240 collected. Kurt's speech therapist and a friend of hers -a teacher at the school -are going to register to walk with us tonight too so that will up our total then to close to $300. I'm including in this figure the money deposted to our team via my paypal button on my blog here although I have not yet withdrawn it and deposited it to our team site.

I still have to talk to the lady from our church and get her to get our paperwork started to apply for the matching funds from Thrivent too. I'm hoping we get a really great online response from all the e-mails I sent out to folks notifying them that we are doing the walk again this year and asking for their support of our team.

This is one event that does really make me very happy and excited about participating in it. It gives my kids -all three of 'em, plus my grandchildren a chance to be together and do something really positive for a great cause.

If you would like to join forces with us, you can always go to the Autism website and register to donate in under our team's name (Kurt and Maya's Team) at the Autism Speaks website here. If you do chose to do that, here is some additional information you will need -my full name to enter as the walk participant, which is Jennifer Ertmer and then you have to enter the name of our team - Kurt and Maya's Team. Or, you can simply go to the button on the upper right hand area of my side bar -it's located just below the picture of the river by my profile and simply click that button and fill out the form to make a donation there with no fuss, no muss -just your credit card of choice information!

If you would, I'd really appreciate it very much if you would spread the word to other bloggers you visit to stop by and make a donation -however much you care to give as there is no minimum donation required to use my "PayPal donation" button there!

Help us -my kids and I and our team -make this the best walk ever for Kurt and Maya. This is one of my big events of the year and yes, I will probably drive everyone bonkers relating how our team is doing most days between now and April 4th!

Come join our team, won't you?