Back from Sabbatical!

Well here it is, February 5th and I have no idea where the time went.  I did very poor with my blogging last year because of all my medical road blocks but I'm still dealing with them today.  So, time to pick myself up, brush myself off, and batten down the hatches!  I miss writing terribly and I've had so much to say but just couldn't find the energy or heart to say it.

New day.

So I'm sitting here with 2 very hungry puppies in my lap thinking about what to cover!  What is important enough to blurb about to catch you up?  What really mattered to me?  What milestones have I not recorded since November?

So I shall begin.

November was a particularly difficult month for me and honestly may have been why I stopped blogging.  You see, my apartment had become horribly infested with cockroaches and November was the month where I had to literally pack my entire house up for a month in order to have 2 fog bombs done.  It's February and I'm still not done unpacking because the whole situation was so unpleasant and draining.  Long story short, we still have roaches but it's much better than before and now we have a much more knowledgeable person handling the situation.  I've already seen a huge difference in the last 2 weeks.  *here's hoping for bug free living*  I honestly can't express the feelings of never being able to cook, food going bad, eating out all the time, etc.  It was my own personal hell.  Getting my kitchen back was all I wanted.

My living room before I had to cover it with blankets...

December brought the normal holiday stress.  I, being the cooking fiend that I am, decided I wanted to put on Christmas dinner for my parents.  So I did!  And it was lovely!  I surprised them with my Grandpa's caramel recipe.  I made everything from scratch.  And I had a BLAST doing it all!  But heaven forbid if someone should offer to help!  My kitchen's not even big enough for me!  So I enjoyed the company of my mother talking while I did all the finishing touches for one of the best dinners I've ever put on.

 My super awesome dining room table!

 My HUGE 20lb turkey that didn't quite fit in the roasting pan.

 The yummo innards!  Sweet lemons, onion, thyme.

 The professional way to carve a turkey!  Much better than just hacking at it!

 My plate! Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh green bean casserole, and a wild rice stuffing.

 My first pies ever. 

 It's just so darn pretty!

Caramel cooling... just begging to be cut and eaten!

January was fairly uneventful.  It blew right by me.  I tried a little harder on my weekly food prep.  I got a little more active in my kitchen on some nights and a little too friendly with eating out on others.  My challenge to myself for the year was to let go of numbers.  To be FREE.  I had originally planned on going a whole year without a scale and I decided that was a touch drastic.  But I will be sticking to the end of every month and no more.  It honestly wasn't hard to give up.  I told myself I was tired of looking at the number and that was that.  I didn't NEED to weigh myself at the end of January but I did out of sheer curiosity.  I didn't move a pound!  Down to the tenths!  Like I said... there was some eating out love during the month.  A bit more than I'd love to admit to.  but I was also finishing up 3 of my 6 weeks of physical therapy for my hip (more to come).  I'm not disappointed, but I was a bit shocked.

And so here we are.  3 months in a nutshell of vague but enough to fill in some blanks!

I will touch on my medical stuff but I don't feel like weighing the post down too heavily so I'll go easy!  I was finally referred to an orthopedist who got me a new MRI of my hip.  Lo and behold... I have a labral tear.  Now, if any of you were around when I first hurt myself (in late 2013!), I posted this little pic...

Now, I know what you're thinking!  How on earth could I have known??  Well, that's called listening to my body.  What I proceeded to do though... was let doctors walk all over me and tell me I'm fine.  Not so.  Thanks crappy doctors.  Anywho!  We got the MRI, I tried a steroid shot, that didn't work.  I was prescribed 6 weeks of physical therapy.  While I found muscle I didn't know still existed... It made my injury worse.  So here I am, with a hip surgery in the future (end of March) in hopes that the terrible statistics don't cast bad juju on my hip.  I have a very long recovery ahead of me, but I'm at the point where if I don't do anything, I'm stuck here as I am now.  This is the last attempt to repair it and from there, then I have to live with it.  Wow, didn't mean to sound so down!  I honestly do have my head up high and I'm looking forward to the surgery in the hopes that all will be well!  I am doing really well mentally with all my ailments which is extremely important.

All in all, there's a lot more to what's been going on, a lot more on my plate, but who needs the boring back story?!  Not you guys!  This post is dragging on as is!

So here I am.  February 5th.  Proud I've picked up the metaphorical pencil again to get my thoughts down on metaphorical paper.  Thanks for hanging in there and waiting for my next post!  I am going to try my hardest to stick with it this year.  It's a good therapy that I need to utilize with all that's going on around me :)

And so it begins again.