I don't know about you but spending my morning upside down in a chair while a nice lady pokes my gums with sharp sticks is not my idea of a fun time. I'm not afraid of the dentist or anything, I just find clinging to the arms of the chair for dear life so you don't slide headfirst onto the floor to be sort of uncomfortable. And I'm not a great fan of the suction thingy either. That goes back to when I was little and you used to spit the flouride into a suction device that grabbed onto my chin one time and left it a big purple bruise. Now they use a little vacuum tube, but still I get tense when I hear the noise.

DH went to the big library to poke around while I was at the dentist. Afterwards we took the long way home so we could stop by a farm in Lynden that sells fresh brown organic eggs. We got 2 dozen jumbo eggs for $3.60. Some of them are huge double yolkers, I'm sure. I usually eat 2 eggs for breakfast but with some of these babies I'll be having just one.

We are spending the afternoon cleaning in T's room, excpet Rose, who has algebra homework. I don't think I care for algebra and geometry to be taught in the 5th grade. The basics sure, but this is getting complicated for a ten-year-old.

Aside from the eggs we spent no money today, so it is a low spend day.

I am mass producing lasagnas today, it is a long and exhausting process making these babies from scratch, but I'd rather do several in a day than one at a time anyway, since it pretty much involves getting every pot and pan in the house dirty, not to mention the food processor and the salad shooter, a couple cutting boards and a chef's knife.

But it is coming along and it is sauce time so the house is about to smell very, very good. In the midst of thawing and cooking hamburger, boiling whole wheat noodles, shredding cheese, chopping onions and garlic, digging around in the cupboard to find the big bulk containers of basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sea salt and green, white, and black peppercorns, draining diced tomatoes, making sure there is enough butter to grease all the pans with (hey, this is not low-fat lasagna, after all, even if I am using leanest hamburger and skim mozzarella), I also had to make peanutbutter cookies for Santa Claus.

I did make the peanutbutter cookies a little healthier by using extra virgin olive oil instead of vegetable oil, whole wheat flour instead of white flour, and an omega-3 organic egg. At least they are higher in protein than most cookies. I had one with my balanced dinner and they taste much better than regular peanutbutter cookies so I'm happy. I probably won't eat anymore of them, though.

Well, my break is over. DH has processed more onions for the second batch of sauce. He is crying. Literally, from the onions, so I best go help him out.

By the way my blood pressure is down to 120/80 and I am feeling a lot better today.

Today was a really long day. The good news is that we have completed all of our Christmas shopping and I only have maybe 20 rows left to knit on my Dad's second hat. We did not use credit at all, it is an entirely cash only Christmas.

The bad news is that I have been feeling kind of generally bleh this week, even though the sinus infection is starting to clear up with the antibiotics. This morning (12-22-06) I woke up and my hands and feet were horribly swollen and my face was all puffed up. I immediately went to take my blood pressure and it was 145/95, yikes. Called the doctor and he sent home some samples of a different BP med with a diuretic in it with my mother who just happened to be in the office when I called (happy coincidence, especially as they closed at 12:30 today and I couldn't get him on the phone until noon). And called in a potassium prescription to my pharmacy.

I'm to monitor my BP, which is already down after one dose and if it gets too high, I'm to go to the urgent care clinic. I think this will solve it but it was a little scary for awhile. Most of the time I don't even think about the fact that I have high BP, I just take a pill and eat right and I go along with my life. This sort of thing really throws me for a loop when it happens. Makes me remember that yes, I am still dealing with a disease that causes high BP and with a family history of high BP. Just because the disease is under control 99% of the time does not mean it is not there.

DH and I did manage to pick out a new door knob and deadbolt set several hours later when I felt more normal again. It is really pretty. We were going to go for brushed chrome but when we saw this gorgeous brown brushed copper we got it instead. It matches the brown trim on our house almost perfectly. DH installed it tonight and we now have a front door that opens and shuts again. So much more convenient. We spent almost $60 on it.

DH and I argued about that for a bit. I just wanted to replace the door knobs as the deadbolt was perfectly fine, but HIS opinion was that having a door knob and a deadbolt with two different keys would drive ME crazy. Not him, me. And he didn't want to be changing them out again in a month when it happened. So I eventually agreed with him that it probably would bug me and so we got the full set. For twice the price. Sigh.

I think our EF is going to take a major hit. It isn't going to be as easy to absorb the cost of the new generator as I thought it would. $867 is a huge purchase to just take in without a blip. We'll see. I'm going to try really hard to not touch the EF but I think in the end I may have to sink it down to $700 or so. Sigh, again.

Other spending today included $10 for the potassium prescription.