She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls

Proverbs doesn't mention cleaning snow off your car while it is dark out, but I think we can agree this is implied.

So the house is bad. It's really bad. Sooooooo bad. But one thing I have been totally on the ball about lately is making sure I have a plan for dinner each night. I have been very guilty of letting Kim do this entirely too often after his long day at work. Granted, sometimes I do legitimately have migraines or overwhelming fatigue and pain, but I can admit I allow myself to get lazy and rely on my husband who can cook a little too much.

So I've made sure to make a plan each day as I am driving home. We have vacuum packed most of the meat and poultry we have bought recently, so I can defrost it quickly in the sink. I haven't copped out with chicken nuggets in a few weeks! I've even made... salad. I know. Salad. Though I am not good at salads. I like salads, but I lack salad creativity. My mother in law can make a mean salad, so I should ask her for some tips when she comes in March.

This weekend I HAVE to start working on the house. I am putting the Christmas decorations away, so that should help motivate me. But it's really not good over here. I'm scared!

Ruby Rating - 3/5

Dry & Chapped Hands: A repair guide for Nurses and Mothers Alike

So, working in the nursing industry, I wash my hands a lot. Because I don't do the laundry or dishes much at home (Kim's office is by the laundry room and he does it most of the time and we have a dishwasher) and haven't been changing baby diapers in quite a while I don't wash my hands ridiculously often at home. I wash them, let me clear, but just not as much as I did when the kids were little. On the other hand, I wash my hands countless times a day at work, and I hand wash dishes a lot for my clients while I am there. As a result, this past week my hands have become terribly chapped. On the verge of having cracking knuckles, which would make using hand sanitizer intensely uncomfortable, I set about repairing my hands with vigor.

So, my guide for preventing and caring for chapped, cracking hands:

1. Don't wash your hands in hot water. Use warm water. It works just fine and will dry your hands out a lot less.

2. Pat your hands dry instead of rubbing.

3. Use hand sanitizer if you can instead. For me, this is a lot less often than you would think at work because I have to wash my hands between patients, and after dealing with patient incontinence, including diaper changes and taking out the incontinence briefs in the trash. I wear gloves the whole time, but regulations state you should actually wash your hands with soap and water. I use hand sanitizer as much as I can in between.

4. Use gloves when you do dishes. At work, I use medical gloves, but dish gloves would be more cost effective and ideal at home. This protects your hands from the hot water you should use on dishes.

5. Use hand cream after you wash your hands. Honestly I don't have much time for this at work. It makes the gloves slide around and I don't like that. But if you can prevent your hands from getting over dry with plain old hand lotion, why not try to do that? At home I use lotion every other time I wash my hands.

6. Let's assume you abused your hands this past week. The baby was sick and you had to wash hands every 10 minutes. Now for the choose your own adventure portion of the post!

If they are:
a. chapped (looking like a dry dessert or red, but not cracked open) put on an intensive hand cream and some cotton gloves to lock in the lotion. I am typing with a pair on as we...type..er... poor English.

b. If the lotion stings, or if your hands are cracked and possibly bleeding, break out the aloe with lidocaine from summer. Put some of this on the sensitive/cracked areas, then follow up with an unscented, dye free balm like A&D ointment or Aquaphor. After THAT you can put on the hand lotion and gloves. If you have one of those paraffin hand things like my sister does, this would be the time to break it out.

Your hands could potentially look swollen and very red after moisturizing them because they are damaged. Mine looked like I had a run in with a toxic chemical and were very VERY attractive. Throw in some ragged cuticles and... can we say hand model awesomeness? Or not. At all. But the next morning they looked much better. Still dry, but not horrible. Or red and puffy. You will have to keep on top of them until they are normal, which for my OCD hand washing sister is never, or for the non-OCD folks reading the post probably a few days. Start protecting them now, because cracked hands are awful.

Recommend products:
A&D Ointment
Aquaphor
Sally Hansen Salon Severely Dry and Chapped Hand Remedy
Neutrogena Hand Cream (the ointment stuff)
Vaseline
Gloves in a Bottle Shielding Lotion

Feel free to post your suggestions in the comments and I will add them to the post.

Merry Christmas!

We are up in Pennsylvania celebrating Christmas with Kim's family. I always find it a struggle to mesh secular Christmas with the celebration of Christ's birth and this Christmas has been no exception. We didn't manage to make it to church yet again this year since we made it up here so late, but I would like to take the family to my sister's church Sunday morning.

I find myself a bit caught up in what I have received this year, or rather what I have not. I keep praying for God to make the true spirit of Christmas alive in my heart. I want to feel the joy over Jesus' birth and what an amazing gift God has given us. Instead I feel a bit bummed. It's been a rough season this year, I guess. I am so glad I went to RBC's Christmas worship spectacular. The music and preaching really hit the right spot for me, and I am trying to think of Pastor Minter and D.R.'s messages today.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE my Christmas jammies and Whaler's jersey from Kim and the kids. The Christmas jammies were a tradition started by my father. He gave my sisters and me fun jammies each year. Most of the time a colorful plaid which coordinated but didn't match each other. When we took a break in the middle of opening gifts (hey five kids take a long time to open presents) we would run and put on our new jammies before coming down toeat breakfast and open our stockings. Then we would finish up opening gifts and break out the Monopoly board. Then someone would get mad because the older siblings were winning and throw the board, scattering the pieces all over the family room. When I was little, it was me, then my little sister took up the torch, then finally my little brother. Ahhh the warm and fizzy memories. I miss a lot of our Persing Clan traditions.

So off I go to finish Christmas for today. Soon Kim's dad will come for a third wave of Christmas. Tomorrow more distant family is coming, and then we are driving over to Annie's house for another wave of Christmas. Hopefully I will feel Christmassy by then. Sorry for the downer of a Christmas post, but it is what it is this year. lol Merry Christmas y'all!

Today I want to give up.

I suck at life right now. I'm a horrible homemaker, and mother and wife right now. My house is ridiculously messy. Not just a little messy, or "gosh it looks like a bomb went off in here", but horrific. When my older sister told me her house was a wreck when I went there last week I was expecting something awful, but it looked as good as my house could look if I cleaned non stop for months. My messy and your messy is probably very different. And I don't like living this way. I want to give up, run away, and hide.

That is all.

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I am a girl of the digital age. I know this. Sometimes it comes in handy for work, or whatever little computer thing comes up, but today is one of those days that I am very aware of how digital my life is.

Today I downloaded 17 books for my Kindle. Ranging from fluffy romance novels, to non-fiction discussions on Christian nursing, to a Bible with concordance that may come in handy. All of them were free. This, I love. Days of reading on the Kindle for FREE! The great thing about the Kindle is it will read the book out loud in an amusing robot voice, which I plug into the car stereo while I am driving. Romance novels are a good length and style for this because they suck you right in.

But in addition to this, I also downloaded 14 sermons just from my church. It occurs to me I need to get my ipod over to my desk so I can charge and refresh it's contents. Perhaps tomorrow.

With all of the gadgetry, including my cell phone and such there never seem to be enough outlets. Oh sure the house has enough (except at Christmas) but never right by the door where my "charge it where you see it near your purse or you will have a well charged cell phone on a useless shelf at home just when you need it" philosophy plays out.

My favorite patient died today

Free of her body
and mind plagued by a disease
dancing with Jesus.

I'll miss you beautiful lady. Your wonderful and gentle spirit made me smile every day.

Seven Quick Takes

~1~

My laptop is broken. It always ran hot, and eventually the video card went kaput. It was just out of warranty when it happened, and even though it is an HP defect they won't replace it. Do until Kim gets the replacement part (which will also eventually overheat and go kaput due to the defect) I am using the desktop in the dining room. Which is why I haven't been posting as much. This chair is very uncomfortable. Maybe I should recover them and put in some extra foam. My mom did that when we lived in Connecticut and it made a huge difference. Anyhow, I miss my laptop... a lot.

2.

Julia has an admirer. And I found a note form him in her back pack mentioning dating. I do not like this. Problem is he is her only friend. What is a mom supposed to do? ack!

3.

We had Joe's parent/teacher conference this past week. he is doing well in school and his teacher thinks he is funny, smart, and delightful. I'm good with that. His only issue is that he reverses some things, but it's his idiosyncracy and we don't even notice it anymore. We are trying to notice now and make an effort for him to correct things like "I can have water?" into "Can I have water?". It'll work out.

4.

I need to give Kim a haircut. He looks shaggy and I've been in such bad shape I haven't done it. He always looks so handsome when I am done.

5.

Trying to get back on track with weight loss. Halloween candy is not helping the cause. The Wii Fit Plus is helping a little, but it's hard to get time on the games when the kids are playing. lol

6.

Speaking of Halloween:

7.

Am motivated to clean to get ready for Christmas decos! The problem is, no one else cares.