I've been gone a long time, I'm sorry!    Got ​really sick, found multiple causes, and started addressing them.  One of them was our diet, and Nikki and I are living on the DASH diet as best we are able to right now.  It's hard when you are staying at someone else's house (our repairs and slave labor to the house should be done tomorrow, and it should be listed within the week.  That took FOREVER!).  It helps that Nikki really loves my cooking, and has been visibly on the same page with me when my mom started trying to sabotage our efforts to get healthier.  I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's been a struggle while we're staying here.  I can't sell that house and buy a new one fast enough.  My mom needs me to stay sick and not be able to improve my health and life so that she can keep telling everyone that all her weight and diet induced illnesses arent' her fault.  And when I started getting better, so started the pressure to each junk food and salty things again.  I resisted though, and Nikki has been great backing me up.  It's kind of empowering to realize that I don't have to turn into my mother, that I CAN be successful after all without bariatric surgery (which I was ready to sign on for, but my insurance doesn't cover, and neither did my savings account!) and hopefully will continue to succeed going forward.  (If you have hypertension issues, and want to address them without medication in a real not-creepy-anti-science food culty way, I can't recommend DASH For DUmmies enough.  It explains how the science works, the research that went into it, how to shop, set up your kitchen, and a variety of starter recipes).  I'm still taking my meds, but doctor thinks she's going to take them off once we're back in our own home and the stress of dealing with my mom is removed.  I'm a bit stressed out. 

Nikki has been really great working on the prior issue I wrote here about about not backing me up and being on my page.  I can't say enough how awesome he's been about it!  I'm not sure I would have been able to deal with the last four months of illness and mom crazy if I still felt all alone like I did back then.  I think I'm flirting with depression, and maybe had slipped quietly all the way in for a while when I really sick, but the dash changes having improved how I feel dramatically on a day to day basis is helping me climb out of it. 

​So we have our eye on a house if ours sells and no one else snatches it up, but if they do, there'll be other houses.  ​I'm sorta stuck on a fireplace, so I did my due diligent Bree researches how to safely own and operate a fireplace.  I have learned a great deal about wood, chimneys, laying out the wood for a fire, storage, how to tell a good wood supplier and chimney cleaning profressional from a bad one, and I'm ready to spend a snowy winter's evening cuddling on the cough with Nikki making Smores!  I'm ready, so Nikki said okay, we'll prioritize a fireplace.  WOOHOO!

Aside from my health, Dash has propelled me thirty pounds lighter and I fit in clothes I haven't worn in years!  Nikki too, but for once I lost more because Nikki cheats at work and lunches at fast food.   I got to see his office environment, and if my last job had been that nice and calm I would still be working!  But I like my housewife life.   And ​I spend a great deal of it working on increasing our variety of food and compliance with Dash.  Salt is the enemy!  I was the average American, and WAY overdosing on the stuff.  It just never percolated how dangerous it can be in those amounts for me before. 

Life goes in waves like the tide.  But I came out of this down cycle with a long term plan to address my physical issues, and several new coping mechanisms for emotional ones, and I can finally see that at some point there will be an end to this weird "I have a roof, but I feel homeless" limbo.  We basically have a bed in a tiny room, and a corner in the sunroom where the laundry is, and that is our entire plot of "our space" here.  It will be lovely to move back into our own place!  Sell quick little house.  I will really miss you, but gotta go.

And supposedly one glass of wine a day is good for your heart too.  So...bought a cheap bottle of red and I'm going to try to overcome my aversion to alcohol like I did my aversion to broccoli, pepper, and cauliflower in the last few weeks.  It promises to taste like a cherry cupcake.  I somehow disbelieve.

I'm done rambling now.  Tell me about any adventures I missed while I was gone!