Ladybug Studio

Misery…

First thing I want to say is that I am rather underwhelmed and lukewarm about Apple's Next Big Thing. It's called the iPad, which I think is a horrible name. One of my favorite bloggers described it this way: The name conjures up promises of freshness and confidence and not wanting to go to gym class.

Anyway, the tablet is really just a large print edition iPod Touch. It pretty much does the same things with a bigger screen. I'm sure watching movies and videos will be really nice. Having a larger screen and touch screen keyboard will make emailing and texting much nicer.

The iBookstore isn't turning me on either. Bestsellers will be in the range of $14.99 while they're only $9.99 on Amazon. Kindle Killer? I don't think so.

It's definitely slick, I'll give it that. Apple knows how to make beautiful products. I just don't think I will be an early adopter on this one.

* * *

I'm sorry to go on and on about my rash again, but I really can't focus on much else lately. It's taking over my life and making me very, very miserable. Some of you were lucky enough to get an email from me on Wednesday with a photo of my leg wound from the ill-fated jumping up onto the washer incident of 09. (it's an ugly photo, but if you want to see it, email me) Since it appeared to be getting worse, and the rash wasn't going away either, I saw the nurse practitioner again yesterday. She didn't like the looks of it, so she called in the doctor. He didn't like it either and sent me to my dermatologist's office for a biopsy.

The Derms, though, didn't bother with the biopsy as they determined that I have Contact Dermatitis. Which, according to MayoClinic.com is: an inflammation of the skin that results from direct contact with certain substances, such as soap, cosmetics, jewelry or weeds, including poison ivy or poison oak. The resulting red, itchy rash isn't contagious or life-threatening, but it can be very uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable.

After the appointment I went to Walgreens and spent a small fortune on pills, creams and whatnot. I have another Rx for Prednisone, a longer dose this time, an Rx for an antihistamine that will make me drowsy and an Rx for an ointment for the skin. So far, none of it is helping. In addition to not quelling the itch, the ointment will not rub in and leaves me feeling sticky. I did take a drowsy pill yesterday and had a fairly decent nap, but didn't sleep much last night. I think I'll try the oatmeal bath again tonight.

You're going to need an ocean, of Calamine Lotion…

Anticipation…

Apple is going to announce their Next Big Thing today. The super strong hardly a rumor any longer is that it will be a tablet, sized somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Maybe Apple's version of a netbook, but without a keyboard. Everything will be touch screen. Can't wait to see and hear all about it. The Gadget Girl in me is quite excited. At this point though, I am vowing to wait and see, instead of being an early adopter. Though I do so love being the first kid on the block with the new toy. I'm not at all unhappy with my original iPhone. The newest version is faster, but that doesn't bother me. The price drop, however, was disappointing. I suspect the same will happen with this new device.

It's also rumored to have an e-reader, which will supposedly bring big competition to the Kindle. I'm not sure though. Many people who own a Kindle just want to read books. They don't want to run programs, keep up with email, play videos and music, run apps or whatever the new thing will do. Also, one of the advantages to the Kindle (and the Nook) is that it doesn't have any back lighting, so it won't cause eye strain. So, no. In my opinion, people will buy whatever it is they had planned to buy, for the most part. Then there will those like me who will end up with both.

* * *

Looks like I spoke a bit soon about the rash. I had a rather bad evening, itching and itching and itching. Tom finally quit telling me to stop scratching as he must have realized it was useless. I think part of the problem is that the antihistamine wore off. It's good for 24 hours, but I took it Monday about 5:15 and wasn't able to take it last night until 8:00. So the itching got underway with a vengeance until the antihistamine started to do its thing, around 10:00.

I slept on the couch in the spare bedroom (TV room?) and woke up scratching my right arm several times during the night. Surely this will stop soon. Right? Right? Anyone?

Better…

I'm feeling much better today. The steroids and the antihistamine have started working and the oatmeal bath was a good idea, too. I still have spots and there is still some itching, but it's tolerable. I hope the antibiotics start working on my leg soon. It looks really hideous still.

Yesterday was such a beautiful day for tennis and I had planned on joining the KSC Scrub League in the afternoon. They're a casual group that gets together informally on Mondays and Wednesdays. Since I have played so little, I thought it would be a good idea to get in more hitting. But all I wanted to do by the end of the day was rush to the pharmacy and get my prescriptions. Oh well, there will be other beautiful days for tennis.

The washer and dryer were test driven last night. We did a load of towels and everything seemed to be working properly. You have to use HE (high efficiency) detergent with front load washers and the bottle of Cheer I picked up smelled very nice. But I'm really going to miss my Gain Apple Mango Tango. They don't make it in an HE version.

Itchy and scratchy…

That's me in a nutshell.

I have hives. Pretty much all over. My face has been spared, so far, but as every day the rash spreads further, I can only hope my face remains unblemished. I have no idea what caused the outbreak. I'm not using any new detergent, shower gel, soap, or lotion. I haven't worn any new unwashed clothing.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps I rubbed up against the wrong plant last Sunday while mountain biking. But even that makes little sense, as we rode the same trails we always ride and in fact were there just two weeks prior. No one else has developed a rash. Just lucky me.

It started in a mild way early last week. A couple of itchy bumps on my hands and arms. Nothing visible and not too terribly annoying. But they increased gradually each day. By Saturday it had become obvious I had a problem, and Sunday was rather miserable.

Back Story

I was actually at the doctor's office Friday on another matter. In mid-December I wounded my leg while trying to get a towel from the shelf above the washing machine. Instead of taking the time to get the step stool, I tried to leap up onto the washer. I have done this many, many times successfully, but I guess I wasn't trying hard enough that day and my left leg banged pretty hard against the edge. It left a dent in my leg and it hurt like heck, but I never suspected it would become a problem.

But about four weeks later, itchy bumps formed around the wound. It looked pretty awful and infectious. So that's why I went to see the doctor last Friday.

He prescribed an antibiotic ointment (Bactroban) to put on the area twice a day. He said that if it didn't look better in 72 hours to come back to the office. It didn't seem to be getting any better and I would have made an appointment regardless, but the rash thing pushed me to call first thing this morning.

This time I saw the nurse practitioner (I liked her a lot). She prescribed a sulfur based oral antibiotic for the leg and Prednisone for the hives. Also an over the counter antihistamine. I am looking forward to picking them up this afternoon.

I have cut and filed my nails down to nothing in an attempt to save my skin. I am a scratcher. I know I'm only making it worse but how can I stop? Tom keeps telling me, "Stop scratching!" But he's not the one with the rash. How can he understand?

Oh, I did talk with the pharmacist at Target yesterday and she suggested that I try liquid Benedryl. (children's, but they have an adult dose) It's supposed to work faster. She said that if it was an allergic reaction to something, the Benedryl would help. Nothing doing. I took it before going to bed last night and I kept waking myself up scratching.

In other news, yesterday morning our washing machine died. I heard a clattering sound, then silence, so went to check on things and things were not looking good. I will skip on ahead to say that Tom's dad came over to help work on the thing and even he determined that it was dead. Dad is one of the most frugal people I know. So if he says it can't be fixed, you can bet on it.

So Tom and I spent much of Sunday washing machine shopping. We went to Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, then back to Lowe's. We bought a Maytag washer and dryer set there. We figured since both of our machines were ten years old, the dryer probably didn't have much life left and we might as well get them together so that they match and are both energy efficient, etc. Tom stayed home today for their delivery. Can you believe I'm looking forward to going home and washing clothes this evening?

Up and down…

The weather has been pretty nice this week. Cool in the mornings and once the sun goes down, of course. But otherwise sunny and pleasant. I haven't spent much time outside though. On Monday I went to Target and Lowe's which got me home about dusk. Same thing yesterday with a trip to The Shipping Depot and Publix.

Tuesday I was able to play tennis, though I'm not too sure that was a good thing. I hadn't played since December 8 and it showed. However, as luck would have it, one of our four players had an injured arm and couldn't stay. So he will be the one to go down a court and I have somehow managed to stay on the upper courts once again. That's both good and bad. I feel good about being on the higher courts and I'm competitive enough to want to stay there. But it's more serious there and I seem to have a lot more fun on the lower courts. Guess I'm not too disappointed whatever happens.

Brown is a color too…

Florida is not supposed to be brown. Even in the middle of February, Florida is still green and bright. At least, that's been my experience prior to this winter. But now Florida is brown. The grass is brown, the shrubs are brown, the flowers are brown. Even the palm trees are brown. The recent cold spell with its freezing temperatures and overnight frosts took away most of the green. It's not a pretty sight out there.

Unless you go deep into the woods along the Little Big Econ River. There you will find lots of plants still green. Perhaps the mighty oak trees provided some protection for the plants below. Or else they're just a hardier bunch. At any rate, it was refreshing to be among happy and healthy plants for a few hours while mountain biking yesterday.

Matt took this photo of a great blue heron. The bird is really taking his chances, as he sits on the edge of the very aptly named Gator Pond.

I'm glad we were able to get out and exercise on Sunday, because luck was not on my side earlier in the weekend, starting with Friday afternoon. I had plans to play tennis with a friend right after work. I was extremely surprised and disappointed when I left my building and found that it had very recently rained. The courts were soaked, so we weren't able to play after all.

The weather man said that the rain was done for the night and wouldn't get going again until Saturday night. Rain was forecast all day Sunday. Well, Friday night it started to rain about 9pm, which it was not supposed to do. When I got up for tennis on Saturday morning it became immediately apparent that the weather man had it wrong again. It had rained throughout the night and the ground was saturated. No tennis again.

I did make good use of the day though. I did lots of things around the house in the morning, then ran a bunch of errands in the afternoon. I took some cardboard to the recycling place, returned the TV wall mount to Sears, went to the jewelry store in Cocoa Village and bought a pink flowered Pandora bead, went to Sam's and bought a membership so that I could purchase my beloved chicken sausage, and stopped at Publix for some groceries. The only place I didn't make it to was Target. Maybe today. I'm always up for a trip to Target.

Working late…

I should be feeling much worse today than I do, considering the amount of sleep that I got last night. Three and a half hours doesn't tend to fuel one for long. Yes, blame it on freelance. I got on a roll and could not stop working. At least I caught up on some of my Tivo recordings. Better Off Ted is really hilarious and I like The Middle more every time I see it. And no evening would be complete without a good dose of The Food Network.

So far, the osmosis thing isn't happening, but if I ever find myself forced to include zucchini blossoms into a meal I now know to stuff them with cheese and herbs and fry them. You're welcome.

Warming up…

Even though we had a lot of frost this morning, it was ten degrees warmer than yesterday morning and that's a good thing. Especially since I had to stop for gas on the way to work. It would be nice if someone would stop on his way home and get fuel, but he doesn't. Then this morning he says, "I'm going to move the Mazda to the street since it needs gas." Which is against the neighborhood rules, so naturally I accept my fate and drive the Mazda myself and suffer in the cruel cold.

I've been feeling so blah lately and I have been getting nagging headaches every day. I thought my new Mac foundation might be bothering me so I didn't put it on today and I still feel bad. Maybe I'll try taking some vitamin D, see if that perks me up. It's so hard going through the day feeling like this. Being so sluggish and unproductive guilts me, but I just can't help it. The warmer weather might make a difference too. I'm looking forward to getting outside and doing something active. However, it's supposed to rain Friday night and Saturday, which ruins my plans to finally join my tennis group.

Stupid weather.

Jack Frost…

This morning we had the coldest temperatures yet and the most frost. It was 24 degrees when we got up. That's crazy. The yard and roof looked like they were covered with a light snow. The Mazda was frozen over. Tom poured warm water over it to melt the frost and the water that ran down the sides froze into ice.

The doubles league voted and agreed to cancel tennis this afternoon. A few die-hards voted yes, but I'm glad that they were outvoted. Even though it's supposed to warm up this afternoon, into the high 50s I believe, it will get cold very quickly as the sun goes down. I'm feeling no motivation whatsoever to do anything active.

Here are two photos of the IKEA unit:

Some assembly required…

It was a really cold couple of days. But it's supposed to start warming up and with any luck we'll be in the 70s this weekend. Hallelujah! Bring on the warmth! And the humidity. My hair is all static-y and my hands are dry as dust.

That was one busy weekend. We got a lot accomplished, but didn't do anything fun and athletic like biking or tennis. It would have had to have been a lot warmer for that. We did drive up to Daytona in a light drizzle to meet Frank at Cracker Barrel. I had breakfast, as I usually do. I'm so in love with their breakfasts that I haven't ordered anything else in years. I always get the same thing, too. Two eggs over medium, hashbrown casserole, smoked sausage patties, sourdough toast and chocolate milk to drink.

After lunch we drove all the way to the south side of Orlando to do our shopping at IKEA. The store was really crowded, which added to the already high aggravation level. Though I have to admit, overall the visit wasn't as bad as the first time. Maybe because I knew what to expect.

Tom and I knew exactly what we were buying, but I wanted to see the item in person, to make sure it was as nice as it looked online. It was, and we would have purchased it, except that we got distracted by another item. Perhaps at this point I should explain what we were looking for and why. I do have a habit of leaving out critical points of information.

A few days ago we purchased a flat panel LCD television for the spare bedroom. The plan was to hang the TV on the wall. The previous TV sat on a stand that was originally designed for a corner. It worked well enough with the large tube style TV on top, but would look ridiculous with the new one. So the quest was to replace the TV stand. I definitely wanted something with doors or drawers and a shelf for the Tivo box and DVD player. And the unit couldn't be too wide either. Harder than it sounds!

We weren't able to find anything at Best Buy or Rooms to Go and I didn't want to spend a lot of money. Then I thought of IKEA, did a search online and voila!

So in the Living Room Showroom area at IKEA, we saw a entertainment center that we rather liked. Actually, we liked half of it. IKEA furniture is very customizable, if you didn't know. The part that caught our attention wasn't too wide, had side by side drawers, above each drawer was a cubby, it had a back wall created with four horizontal panels with stainless steel looking frames, and a glass shelf at the top. The TV could be mounted directly to the back wall, instead of to our actual wall. Adding it all up, but subtracting the cost of the TV mount we had already purchased at Sears (and will return), and the new setup cost $30 more than the stand we had planned on purchasing originally. Not bad!

Tom spent pretty much all day Sunday assembling it. The project went well, just took a long time with all of the pieces and parts. While Tom handled that, I took the ornaments off of the Christmas tree and boxed everything up. If you can believe it, my project took longer than his!

I took photos of the new TV center this morning, but they are terrible. I'll try again and post one soon.