The list keeps growing of course because the needs outweigh the wants in rank of importance or at least that’s what I keep trying to tell myself. Yet that list keeps growing.

I’m sure you know what I mean. On the list of needs are things like groceries, utility bills (heating, electricity, phone, cable) prescription medicine, mortgage payments and so on.

On the list of wants are things like occasionally ordering in for dinner, buying a new computer or laptop, maybe getting an iPad, getting a new cellphone (I’d love an iPhone) oh and I’ve been saying for years that I can’t believe we’re pretty much the only people on the block without MP3 players. LOL

I’m sure I could list a lot more needs and wants – especially wants – like walking through the grocery store and “wanting” to pick out a lot more of the often higher priced items that I really like, but don’t because we’re on a tight budget … but you get the drift.

One thing that’s kind of halfway between a want and a need is new clothes. A lot of my clothes are on the old side. I haven’t been on a shopping spree for quite a while and there’s definitely a few items that need replacing.

There’s also the fact that the new medicine I’m on for my migraines, Topamax, sometimes has a side effect of making people lose their appetite and thus makes them lose weight. That’s already happened to me (three weeks in) and while I haven’t weighed myself, I think I’ve lost at least 5 pounds if not closer to 10 if the looseness of my clothes is any indication. If this keeps up I’m going to need to get new clothes soon whether I like it (or can afford it) or not.

Do you struggle with wants versus needs? Particularly if you are on a tight budget?

I had sort of been dreading the long weekend because I’d started a new medication for my migraines about three weeks ago and it’s making me feel really odd (spacey, forgetful, mixing up words, tingling hands and feet etc) and on top of that my nephew and niece (and her fiance) were coming in from Chicago for the weekend, and my in-laws were coming in to town for a day or two to see all of us.

When I’m not feeling all that well I don’t really like having other people around or worse, I don’t like having plans to go out, especially when I’m not sure if I’m going to be feeling up to going out.

Luckily everything turned out ok.

My husband picked up our niece and nephew t the airport and took them to our family friends house where they were going to stay for the weekend. Oh and on the way there they stopped off at a restaurant bar and my husband bought my nephew his first legal drink. He’s 19 and thus it was legal for him to drink in Ontario. Our nephew was thrilled … oh and he’s the one who asked Chris to buy him his first legal drink. LOL

The next day my husband went over to the house with our dog to see the kids and to drive them to where ever they wanted to go in the city. He did that every morning – Saturday, Sunday and Monday so he got to spend a bit more time with them and they got a lift to where ever they wanted to start there day.

Surprisingly – for a 19 year old and two 23 year olds they didn’t spend a lot of time going out and partying. They did hit a few bars, especially on Saturday, but they didn’t go out clubbing like we thought they would. Instead they did things like taking a tour of the Rogers center, walking around the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition), touring a micro-brewery (SteamWhistle) and tasting their beers, going to the CN Tower, shopping, and going to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I stayed home on the Saturday and just rested up.

On Sunday my in-laws came into town and we got together in the late afternoon with them and the kids at an Irish restaurant called Murphy’s Law and had dinner. My father in law usually doesn’t drink, but when he does he normally only has one drink. That night he had 4 double Bailey’s! It was interesting!

After dinner the in-laws went back to their hotel. Usually they stay at our house, but we’d warned them that with this medication that I’m on I’m feeling really off and that maybe staying over wouldn’t be so great. Usually they come in threes – Chris’ mom and dad and his aunt (although this time Chris’ aunt didn’t come) … so that’s a lot of people to land on someones doorstep when you’re not feeling so hot.

I wasn’t feeling too bad after dinner – a little wonky … I’ve found if I don’t drink enough water on this new medication (Topamax) I kind of feel drunk (and no I didn’t have any drinks with dinner) so we drove the kids back to the house and sat with them on the back patio for an hour or so talking. They were kind of tired. The day before they had walked everywhere they went .. we worked it out and we figured that they walked over 15 miles!

The next day, yesterday, was Labour Day Monday – my Birthday. So we all met up at Cora’s downtown for brunch. Well … ok breakfast … but it was 1 pm. I haven’t been to a Cora’s for a long long time and man – it’s delicious! I had French toast Brioche covered in a mound of assorted fruit, and a sunny side up egg and a few slices of bacon. I think it’s called “1990’s Harvest” on the menu. Delicious!

Shortly after we finished our meal at Cora’s it was time to take the kids to the Island Airport for their flight to Chicago. However, since there was a little bit of time before they had to board the Ferry to the island we walked over to an Irish Memorial.

I have to admit that I only glanced at the huge black stones at the Irish memorial at the port because just as we reached the memorial area jets flew overhead and I realized that the airshow was starting.

I’ve never been to an airshow! So while most of our relatives looked at the Irish memorial my husband and I stood by the waters edge and gazed up at the sky as jets and the famous Canadian Snowbirds did amazing areal feats overhead. I never thought I’d enjoy an airshow that much, but I loved it.

As we walked back to the Ferry area and airport check-in the airshow was still going on, so I was a little distracted in those last few minutes with our nephew, niece and her fiance. I actually almost tripped as I was walking along. Someone had stopped right in front of us to watch the jets do a fly by and I just missed tripping on the wheels of one of the most unusual baby strollers I’ve ever seen. I stopped long enough to ask the lady what it was and she said it was called a phil and teds explorer. I couldn’t help laughing at the name – do you remember the movie – Phil and Ted’s excellent Adventures?

Anyway … The weekend that I thought I’d struggle through because of in-laws and relatives being around turned out to be quite nice. I had two fantastic birthday celebration meals and seeing the airshow just topped off my birthday. I loved it.

How was your long weekend?

This past March when I happened to be seeing a Neurologist for a different problem (numbness and burning in left thigh) I happened to mention that I’d been having more and more migraines and that I’d had a new symptom – zig zag visual disturbances a few times since the previous July. We discussed my medical history (including migraines since the age of 12) and he though that since the auras were new I had an increased change of stroke so he wanted me to get an MRI.

I finally had that MRI near the end of July and between my original appointment with the neurologist and the follow up appointment that I had with him on August 19th to discuss the MRI results I started having constant 24/7 dizziness and balance problems, blurred vision, began feeling confused, occasionally had hearing problems and ringing or buzzing in my ears and I just had this overwhelming feeling that things were getting worse and worse. I couldn’t think, I was having trouble talking – mixing up words, losing my train of though … never mind attempting to write blog posts! I’d click on Add New Post and then sit and stare at my computer for an hour at times.

I’m sure I could add a few other symptoms to the list above, but the overwhelming constant pain (one migraine lasted 24 days in a row!), lack of sleep, dizziness and “brain fog” were my main complaints and concerns.

Back to August 19th when I saw my Neurologist … I had learned through my family doctor that my MRI wasn’t normal. I had white spots in my white matter. As it turns out pretty much everybody gets white spots in their brain matter as they age and my Neurologist said that I actually have less than most people my age … so that’s good.

Then we discussed what to do about the migraines and the other symptoms. He believes the dizziness, vision and hearing problems are all related to the migraines. I had already come to that conclusion as well.

When I was in my teens and twenties I suffered badly from migraines and I think I’ve tried most of the mainstream migraine treatments. None really did much to help me. I just suffered along with my migraines and then, sometime around the time I turned 25 my migraines started to die down and they gave me a break for a few years, came back for a year or two, then went away for a decade and now they seem to be back with a vengeance.

I had tried Imitrix in the past but it made my heart race – like 200 beats per minute and that’s NOT good. Now that I’ve had an extended visual aura with my migraine (squiggly lines that lasted more than an hour) I can’t ever use Imitrix or any of the related drugs (Triptans) again as the risk of stroke is very high.

So … after discussing all my options, including the fact that I don’t have a drug plan right now to cover the cost of my medications we decided that I should try an anti-convulsive drug called Topamax.

The new drug isn’t cheap, but considering how much pain and misery I was in I thought it was worth giving it a shot.

Now I tend to react oddly to most medications. Half or more of the new medications I try I tend to end up having an allergic reaction to or an adverse reaction to … or end up being severely sensitive to … Of the other half of new medications I try … well, only about 25% of those seem to do whatever they’re supposed to do.

So I was hopefully starting this new medication, but fearful that I’d have either a bad reaction or that it wouldn’t help at all.

I took my first pill on the evening of August 19th and by the morning of August 20th I realized that I didn’t have a migraine any more. In fact, two weeks in to taking this new medication I can say that I’ve been migraine free the whole two weeks!

I do seem to have low grade headaches a few times a day and what feels like the start of a migraine on occasion but if I take a Tylenol that migraine feeling just goes away.

It’s a miracle!

This is the first migraine (well epilepsy) medication that has ever worked for me!

It’s not without it’s side effects of course. There are tons. I feel kind of buzzy (like I’ve had a couple of drinks) most of the time, and my hands and feet tingle like they’ve gone to sleep or go numb. My tongue tingles or buzzes too and sometimes everything seems to just tilt sideways … it’s one of the weirdest medications (that’s working) that I’ve ever been on. I’ll talk more about the odd side effects in another post – ’cause they’re weird!

Anyway .. since my Crohn’s has actually been doing well for the last several months (dare I say most of this past year?) … and now these darn migraines might actually be under control (knock on wood) there’s a real chance that I might get back to work sometime soon … maybe I’ll be coming through the jobs in healthcare sometime in the very near future if things keep working out for me!

Has anyone else tried Topamax for their migraines? If you have, what was your experience? Did it take away your migraines? Did you get them less frequently or not at all?

I guess it’s only fitting the end of the heat wave was marked with a huge storm. At about 1 pm I was upstairs and I hear a rumbling sound. At first I thought it was an airplane going over the house, but then I realized it was thunder.

Shortly after I heard the sky rumble a major downpour started. Normally I can’t even hear the rain hitting the roof of the house, but this time I could. Oh and it was loud! It was really raining hard!

When I went downstairs to our main floor I looked out in our backyard and our patio was flooded with water. Hmmm all I need is one of those spa covers and a pool heater and I’d have a redneck hot tub. LOL

I think it rained hard for about half an hour and then it died down. Now it’s just humid out – but overall cooler than it has been most of the week. I’m glad it’s cooler … I mean, with humidity, it’s been getting into the 42 and 43 Celsius (109 F) range. I’m glad we have air conditioning!

This weekend is going to be a lot cooler. Autumn temperatures – 20 to 23 C (68 to 73 F) – not too cool, but a huge difference from earlier in the week.

Oh and Monday is my birthday! It’s my true birthday day too. I’m a Labour Day baby – so whenever my birthday actually falls on Labour Day Monday it feel like it’s my true birthday. Perhaps others who were also born on holidays feel the same way?

We don’t have anything special planned for my birthday yet. All I usually want is a nice dinner and this birthday will probably be the same too.

I know we’re going out for lunch or dinner with my husbands parents, his aunt and his nephew, niece and her new fiance who are flying in from Chicago this evening for a weekend in Toronto (the niece and nephew I mean). The outing on Sunday will probably turn into an engagement party for the niece though rather than a birthday celebration or even a combination event.

What are your plans for the long weekend? Are you going away to cottage or doing anything special? Hopefully your weather will be better than ours.

September has arrived and I decided that I want to start a new health regime so I decided to take the Activia 14 Day Challenge.

Activia has been advertising their Activia 14 Day Challenge for several years and I guess it’s about time that I gave it a try. Yogurt is supposed to be good for you, isn’t it?

Activia Yogurt contains a probiotic bacterial culture, an exclusive strain of bifidobacteria, called Bifidobacterium (animalis) lactis, or BL Regularis. We need some good bacteria in our digestive tract in order to digest our food properly, so it only goes to reason that eating a yogurt that has live bacterial culture in it would help out our digestive system.

I’m not normally a yogurt eater. My husband is. We always have yogurt in the house, but I usually only have one once a month or so. Obviously this is going to change over the next two weeks as I do the Activia 14 Day Challenge.

Yesterday I went out to the grocery store to scope out the selection of flavors. Activia comes in wide selection of flavors in both regular fat and fat free. Some of the flavor choices are vanilla, strawberry, prune, peach, apple and raisins, pear, raspberry, sweetened plain, peach and cereals, red fruits and cereals, apple-müesli and nuts.

I bought two 8 packs for my 14 day challenge. One of Fat free Raspberry and one Fat Free Strawberry and Rhubarb. Yummy. I have enough for at least one a day and a few extra for snacks. Of course, knowing my husband, he’ll eat a few, so I’ll probably have to buy a few more before the challenge is over.

So let’s see. I’m feeling pretty good right now, let’s see if I feel even better by the time I’m finished the challenge. I’ll post again next week at the half way point and tell you how the challenge is going.

Has anyone else taken the Activia 14 Day Challenge? If you did it, how did it go? Are you still eating Activia? What’s your favorite flavor?

Now though it’s like it’s suddenly autumn. The days are cooler, it’s raining almost every day and the nights – the nights are really cool.

I do appreciated the rain. Our garden really needed it and frankly I was getting tired of having to water my garden pretty much every day (and water some of the potted plants twice a day!).

I guess the break in the heat isn’t that terrible either. In one of my last posts I was talking about how we were trying to find ways to cut expenses since we’re going to have to add car payments to our monthly budget now (man that was nice having a paid off car for several years!) so NOT having the air conditioners on for the last week or so has been nice. At least I know our electricity usage is getting a bit of a break.

Speaking of weather. All day it looked like it was going to rain. It would get really dark and I’d think – “ok, it’s really going to pour soon” – but then the skies would lighten up again and things would be ok for a while.

Just a little while a go the skies were so dark I though we were going to have a thunderstorm, but again, I could see the skies brightening up on the horizon so I though that it wasn’t going to rain … but it fooled me. All of a sudden it started to rain hard and surprise – it started to hail.

We haven’t had hail all summer. Not that I know of anyway! Since we just got a new car all I could think was please don’t let the hail stones turn into big golf ball sized hail. LOL They were small and plentiful though … covering the ground and grass like hundreds of loose diamonds. I guess it was warmer than I thought because they sure melted fast!

Are you having strange weather this summer? Super hot and humid days, weeks or months and then rain, rain, rain?

BTW it’s my dogs birthday to day! She’s three. I’m making her homemade doggy biscuits (peanut butter dog biscuits). Think she’ll like her birthday gift?

If they were all paid weeks off that’d be great, but he’s really only being paid for two, thanks to vacation pay … and receiving that vacation pay messed up his unemployment application as they count vacation pay as “money received” so he won’t be getting any unemployment money for his two layoff weeks. If you count the two layoff weeks in December that makes four weeks that he’s been laid off work in less than a year (thanks to the hospital going over budget) and he should qualify for a little unemployment pay … but thanks to that vacation pay it’s not going to happen.

I’m just trying to survive with Chris off work and at home all the time. I have a hard time getting my work done when he’s around because he asks me questions while he’s working on the other computer.

I do have a little reprieve. Chris just took our car to Brantford to see if the garage / dealer where we bought the car with repair the back window that won’t go up or down free of charge. We just bought the car and the window was working when we test drove the car so in our minds they should repair it for free.

We spoke with the man that sold us the car earlier today and he said it probably wouldn’t cost anything. I sure hope he’s right because we don’t have any extra money for car repairs right now … and as I said above I don’t think we should have to pay for the repair anyway. Also, if they are going to charge us we’d rather hold off on fixing the window. We can live with one window that won’t move for a while. At least it’s in the closed position! It would be a different story if it were stuck in the open position.

Man, the garage we bought our car at is a mess. When we drove down there a week ago to see our unrepairable Contour and test drive a car on the lot I had to use the washroom. Normally I don’t use public or even private washrooms if I can help it. I just don’t like to – but in this case, after looking at all 10 cars on the lot and test driving two of them I just had to go!

The whole garage was a mess. I think they saved everything that the business has ever owned (they opened about 80 years ago!) and of course everything in the place was covered in grease and I think metal dust. All except their new epson receipt printer and cash register.

The washroom was the dirtiest washroom I’ve ever been in. It was bad. Everything was covered in black dust or grease – even the inside of the toilet! If I hadn’t had to go so badly I would have turned around and walked out of the washroom. As it was I just tried my best not to touch anything and got out of there as quickly as I could.

Anyway … if Chris didn’t hit any traffic he should be in Brantford by now and with any luck the guys at the garage can look at our car today. If no parts need to be ordered and if it’s an easy fix he might be home tonight, otherwise I guess he’ll stay over at his parents place and get the car fixed tomorrow (for free I hope!) and drive back sometime tomorrow.

I’m hoping he’ll be home tonight -even though he drives me nuts when he’s home all day LOL, but I have a feeling I’ll be on my own tonight for a solo dinner.

Have you ever bought a used car and then discovered a problem almost immediately after buying it? Was the repair covered by the business that sold you the car?

I guess we could have waited and gone carless for a while, but with family out of town and my husbands parents getting older (his dad is 82) we feel better having a car at our disposal.

Now thanks to our big, unexpected, purchase we’re not going to have any money to spare for months or perhaps even the next year.

We’re already pretty good about watching how we spend our money, but I’m going to have take another hard look at our bills and spending and see where we can cut. I’m pretty sure we can get a better long distance plan with our phone company, and I can cut out a few things on our cable bill too. I’m also pretty sure I can cut down our grocery bill a little bit as well. I’m sure our savings between all of those things won’t be all that much since we’re pretty careful already, but with any luck I might be able to cut an extra $100 or so. Even that will help.

When it comes time to buy new clothes we can always try an online wholesale apparel store for deals. Oh and we shop at Costco – mainly to fill my many prescriptions, but if we buy more things in bulk we might save a bit there too.

Oh well … I guess we’ll just have to be really careful with our money for a while. I hope nothing else breaks down! We’ve already replaced our washer, drier and a TV this year … The furnace is probably next on our list.

Last week, Chris was on his last week of holidays and I spent part of the week at home on my own because Chris was off camping with his brother, and the rest of the week was spent traveling out of the city to Brantford twice and going to some friends of ours for a BBQ.

The main reason we went out of town twice was because our car broke down in Brantford. GRRRR … I wish our in-laws had told us that it had broken down, but they didn’t tell us until five days after it had happened. again – Grrrr! Once we tried to get the car fixed we found out that the transmission was shot. It’s apparently pitted and therefore it leaks.

So … rather than putting $3000 into a 14 year old car (it had worked well until this happened) we decided to buy a newer used car. That accounted for our second trip to Brantford as there was a good deal at the used car dealership that’s attached the garage where our old car was being “not” fixed.

Last Friday night we took a few cars for a test drive and decided that a 2006 Pontiac Pursuit would be fine for us. Unfortunately we couldn’t finalize the deal until Monday so Chris had to go back on Sunday night so he could get the ball rolling on Monday morning … then he drove home with the new car on Monday afternoon.

While he was in and out of the house over the last week – or week and a half I noticed how much cleaner the house was without him around … especially the bathroom! I think I finally figured out why we have this odd white spot on the front of the Hansgrohe faucet … it seems he leans over to take a sip of water when he’s brushing his teeth and of course this leaves some toothpaste foam on the edge of the tap. Guys!?!

Anyway … we’ve got our new car now. It was a little more than we can afford … especially since we weren’t expecting to have our other car breakdown like that. Although, given that our old car was 14 years old we had been thinking that we’d need a new car sometime soon. Just not this soon.

Unfortunately we’ve found something wrong with the new car. When Chris came home from work this evening we decided to get the dog and take a drive along the lake. It’s a hot day but we didn’t turn the cars air conditioning on (yes it works). We opened the windows and the back drivers side window wouldn’t open. It had been working when we test drove the car – but now it’s not .. so I guess it must have a loose wire or something.

I guess we’ll have to call the used car dealership tomorrow and see if they’ll fix the back drivers side window. The sales bill says all sales final so I don’t know if they will fix it free of charge or not – but I hope they will as we really can’t afford another expense … plus it’s only right – we find something wrong just 24 hours after buying the car? Yeah they’d better fix it. Hopefully we can get it fixed here rather than driving back to Brantford yet again.

My husband came back last night from his sisters cottage … a trailer up north and he was as red as a lobster! He’d been partying with his brother and sister for four days. The trailer is in a little town on a lake. Very nice place. Chris says that her sister and her husband almost have their rv loans paid off too. That was fast – they only bought the trailer four or five years ago!

I’m glad he’s home, but we have to scramble to do a bunch of stuff before we get hit with weekend visitors! Chris brother and nephew will be coming to Toronto on Friday. Then we’re going to a baseball game Friday evening and to a barbecue at some friends. I don’t know what’s in store for the rest of the weekend.

Actually we have a visitor right now. Our nephew came back with us from Brantford. He has some Extra work in a series that being filmed downtown tomorrow so he’s staying with us overnight.

Oh and our car broke down! Some plug or module apparently fell out of our transmission on Saturday. My husband had borrowed his parents car to drive up North and his parents had our car. Only problem was they didn’t tell us that our car was sitting in a garage until today! So now that we’ve said yes to the repair a special part has to be ordered and I guess our car won’t be fixed until Friday or Saturday. Nice eh … I wish my mother in law had called me seeing as I was at home. Grrrr!

Well I’d better get to bed soon … tomorrow and probably the next few days are going to be busy!

BTW I heard back from my family doctors office on my head MRI … I’m going to need follow up with my neurologist. My MRI showed Non-Specific changes – whatever that means. See I knew something was wrong with my head.