Busy

We've been pretty busy around here the past few days. Tim had Chemo on Thurs morning, a family doctor visit Thurs afternoon and a visit to the Radiologist Oncologist right after the family doc. His family doc visit was a check on how the extra BP meds that Dr. Steve gave him the previous week were working. They seem to be helping. When he was at chemo that morning he mentioned to the nurse that he was put on another BP med and she told him she wasn't surprised as Avastin is known to raise BP. She said it was good of Dr. Steve to put him on it right away. Following that appt we went to Flower Hospital and the new Hickman Cancer center (mostly finished) it was in remodeling in all our previous visits. We were able to see Tim's most recent PET scan on 24" monitors and learned that two of the lesions on his lungs appear to have grown in size. One appeared to have stayed the same or even gotten a little smaller. Even though we were not happy to find out two of the lesions were growing at least we were able to know a little better what is going on and discussed options for getting a CT scan or just going with the same chemo regimen and waiting for the next PET scan which should happen within the next 2-4 weeks.

I am still unemployed and have one week of unemployment compensation left. I will be able to file for an additional 13 weeks due to our poor economy. I feel horrible that I'm still unemployed and Tim is getting Chemo and working. I apply for a few to several jobs every week and still only hear from someone for an interview only every so often. I recently took a typing test only to be told since I did so poorly I most likely would not be considered for the position which was temp to hire. I was only 5 wpm off of what they were looking for! I type every day and I know I can type what they were looking for, but am not good with typing tests. Also, the test was only one minute long. Any typing test I've taken before is 3-5 minutes in length and usually is five minutes long. You barely get started with only one minute.

We are also looking for a new place to live, we were given a head's up that the rent may go up or that the place may go up for sale. So we've started the process of looking for another place, hoping to stay in the same school system so Noah doesn't have to leave his friends and possibly move to Toledo Public schools. Washington Local has always been rated very well and continues to be. It's a strange boundary that is very large, large enough to include Tim's son who lives about 15 mins from here, but also if you were to cross the street to the west of us, it would be TPS, go figure. So please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that we are able to find an affordable place to live and that I soon will be employed.

I've been trying to keep busy with cards or layouts to keep my mind off of all that is going on. Also, I need to switch gears and start going through stuff and tossing or packing. It sure would be awesome if we could find a little bigger place for what we're paying now or less.

Here are some of the things I've created for swaps this month for Scrappin In Toledo - Yahoo group.

The first is a recipe swap. This month is Halloween recipes. So I found a good recipe and searched for a pumpkin image that I could add type to. I found one on Maria Bell's Blog here.

This month we have a Criss Cross card swap and here is what I came up with.
I was lucky enough to be able to use a friend's Cricut machine to cut the stars. I did stamp the pumpkin with a See D's stamp and then colored it in with a Marvy LePlume II pen, then I covered it with Glossy Accents, let it dry and then cut out the image.
I tried several times to add scans of these cards, so you can see them closer up and see the inner card, but no luck. Maybe tomorrow I'll have better luck adding them.

Also, you can see I've shortened the number of posts that show on the blog and added a bookshelf to the bottom of the blog. Right now I am reading Photo Finished it's on the second shelf I believe. The rest I've read previously, as you can see I'm a big Nora Roberts fan. She really can put out the books. I'll add others as I think of them. I really want to finish reading Home by Julie Andrews. I got the book from library, but since it was so new it was only a two week loan. At that time we were not going to as many Dr., radiation or chemo appts. So I had to return it. But I'm sure I'll get it again.

Oh and on a last note, I finally tried one of the recipes from A year of Crockpotting blog. The link is on the right under Other Awesome blogs if you want to check it out, just click the link. I made the brownies in the crockpot, you mix up brownie mix put the batter in mugs and wait a couple of hours. We topped them with vanilla ice cream OMG YUM YUM YUM! Definitely will be making those again.

Thanks for stopping by!