Life has been incredibly crazy for the past month or so, and this website has completely paid for it.

So, here’s what’s been going on.

Last November my kid started getting horrible, debilitating ear aches. They’ve been getting worse and worse, until they kind of exploded about two or three weeks ago. I’ve never had ear problems, so I had no idea ears could hurt someone so bad. Her ears were full of gross liquid and other sorts of ooze that was coming out of it. She couldn’t eat because it hurt her ears. She couldn’t sneeze or cough, which is hard because it’s allergy season out here. She couldn’t drink. We put her on medication that did nothing for her. Then we took her back to the doctor and they gave her shots in her legs with serum that was as thick as peanut butter. That was horrible, but finally that helped a little bit. Then we went to the ENT, who basically rushed her into surgery to get tubes in her ears and her adenoids out. That happened last Friday.

The doctor, after her surgery, came to update us on how it went. He said he’s worked as an ENT doctor for 30 years, and Fiona’s ears were some of the worst that he has ever seen. He said the fluid in her ears was like cement and it was incredibly hard to get out. No wonder why she hurt so bad.

So surgery happened. It went well, and was far more necessary than we realized. I regret that it took us so damn long to get her there, but oh well. It’s done now. Recovery after was kind of shaky. Apparently my kid pukes after surgery, and she had a fever for a few days. But, things seem to be on the up and up with her. For the first time in November, she’s not in a horrible amount of pain.

On my side of things, life has been a little hard. I’m pregnant. We knew, as soon as we found out that we were expecting life was going to get a lot more difficult. My body doesn’t agree with pregnancy. My joint disorder, mixed with the pregnancy hormone Relaxin makes my life hell. That’s what basically caused my spine to cave in on itself and keep me absolutely unable to walk (resulting in three spine surgeries) when I was pregnant with Fiona. Now that my spine is fixed, things are kind of touch and go. I was paralyzed from week 14 on when I was pregnant with Fiona. I’m 20 weeks now, and still walking, which is a huge victory, but I also feel like each day is borrowed at this point.

It doesn’t stop with my back (which hurts an incredible amount because most spines make room for babies, bend certain ways that make life easier for pregnant mamas, and mine doesn’t. It wants to bend, and it can’t, and it HURTS SO BAD.). My shoulders completely dislocate pretty much if you touch them. My hips subluxate, and I’m getting this fantastic pelvic girdle pain due to my pelvis stretching weird, that just about makes me want to scream. The point is, chronic pain is nothing to shake a stick at. On the days that I hurt so bad I can hardly see straight, I spend just about all my energy trying not to scream and cry at work. Then I pick up my kid from daycare, and sit in my comfortable chair on my heating pad and refuse to move for the rest of the night until I kind of crawl into bed and start it all over again the next day.

Chronic pain is exhausting, and it’s absolutely depressing. It’s a huge, huge kick in my pants when I need assistance to walk. I hate the weird looks I get from people who don’t understand that, hey, at least I’m walking. I haven’t always been able to say that.

Between my kid, and the pain I’m dealing with, I haven’t had the energy (or the brainpower) to put into writing reviews recently. Some days are better than others, and on those good days I write reviews. On the bad days I read a lot. I have a huge backlog of reviews I need to write, and I will get to them.

Things aren’t all bad, though. I have a vacation coming up, and I’m counting on it to recharge my batteries, because I’m just exhausted, and my constant battle between pain and dealing with my busy daily life is just absolutely burning me out. I’m very, very excited for a change of pace and a change of scenery. I think it will do more for me than anything else. I have a feeling it will help me gain back some energy so I become more active on this site, too. I also have a few irons in various bookish fires, things I’m waiting to come to fruition that I can’t talk about yet. I have accommodations at work to help me deal with my current (fun) situation, which has helped me quite a bit. Baby girl seem to be healthy. We have our anatomy scan in the middle of April, which I’m excited for. We’ve picked out a name for said child. Now we just need to put our house together and get it ready for the new child.

So yeah, it’s not all bad. I feel bad that all of this is causing my website to slacken a bit but maybe you’ll understand why. I hope, after my vacation I’ll recharge, and stop feeling so exhausted and drained all the time. It’s disheartening. I don’t like feeling like this, and I feel very guilty for letting my website activity slack. Hopefully I’ll have some news, and more vigor (which I will use to catch up on reviews!!!), soon.