I'm Sorry That Last Weekend Didn't Happen

Last WEEK was an insane week for for me.

My nurse, who takes care of me during the week, started the week with the flu. How do medical professionals gets sick? Isn't that impossible? That pretty much much had her out for the week. The feeling sick part was over and she'd come in for short stops to take care of the basics”weak as a kitten" during therecovery portion.

Add to that a sick husband during the first half of the week. David didn’t have the flu, just a REALLY bad cold. " Husbands aren't supposed to get sick either, right? No, wait, that's moms. Moms aren't supposed to get sick according to the commercial. I don't know if that's a fail as a commercial because I don't remember the product, I just remember that moms aren't supposed to get sick. Okay, I do know the truth that when husbands get sick they turn into big babies. When are husband of a disabled spouse get sick, he retreats into a sleeping and coughing shell.

So it's been a very rough week for me because it's been a rough week for the people around me.

I finally had some private time where I could actually do phone calls to go with the research I've been doing all week. After an exhausting five hours of answers that were the opposite of what I wanted to hear, Yannie, my nurse, was here for about an hour and a half. (she usually does a LOT more than nursing stuff for me) and then after she left I drifted into a semi defeated nap.

The greatest understatement I can make right now, is it my social media mojo, heck, my mojo in general, is kind of not there.

I did have a couple how long phone calls with family members, friends up in Michigan. That was good for the soul, as it always is. But right now things aren't generally fabulous for any of us. So at least for now, the two hour phone call with one of my to beloved butt kickers didn't even push me in the direction of solving my problems. She just presented me with a few more avenues to use to look for help. I'm grateful for that but it's more work, maybe better answers. I have two sisters that have been in my life for a long time, who have traditionally grabbed me by the shoulders faced me in the direction of the better choice of the ones I'm considering and kicked me in the butt to get me moving. Unfortunately what I'm dealing with right now isn't that simple. So a couple of calls felt good but it didn't inspire my creativity… Yet

Stay tuned - I'm planning to do last weekend's Friday by Request and Weekend Playlist this coming weekend.

Checking In

There has been so, so, so much going on! Don't worry, I am NOT “hanging in the balance" or anything like that, but I can say that I much prefer going to the local hospital during the day when the good coffee bar is open. There're a few things coming up in my too many doctors world that should make the future much more bright. In the meantime I'll be using the last month of the year to really plan for getting my act together next year. I just have to remember “baby steps."

I will, or won’t, share more details about hospitals later. The only thing I'll say now about hospitals is ladies, make sure you get your mammograms! Do it for yourself. Do it for the people who love you. And for those of us older ladies, yeah, every year. This is why the quality of the coffee at the hospital you choose is so important. After a mammogram I've EARNED a real latte and one of the BEST banana muffins in the world!

I'm getting ready to start work on my Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies gift for this year. I'm not totally sure what it will be yet but it will be available here on December 1.

In the meantime, I stumbled upon a set of templates in my hard drive. These were in my Scrap Bird Store in 2009. It took me a minute to remember to them! It's a simple set of templates that is now on my MediaFire Account to share!

click on image to go to MediaFire

I hope you enjoy the templates. I'll be back soon!

New Look - Pardon The Dust

If you’re a regular or even occasional visitor to The Chronicles of Nani you may have noticed a tiny little change. And you probably just noticed that my occasional sarcasm is not the change! The biggest update I wanted to do was to give the old blog a new look. I’m not big on doing that often because it messes with “brand recognition.” But every now and then an update is a good idea.

Right now The Chronicles has a new layout and background from the standard Blogger choices. A background needs to fit but not be distracting so I didn’t want to overthink that. I also created a new header, which really is the face of the blog. I’ll be creating a new blog badge soon too for link swapping. I’m going to go with the slightly larger static badge which is more commonly used now. The shorter, animated badge was popular and appropriate for scrapbooking forum signatures, which when the blog started on Blogger in 2008 was appropriate as I was just starting scrapbook designing. But now, I’m only designing things hit and miss for fun and I want to create a badge for The Chronicles of Nani that fits more with current trends in blog-style.

I’ll be tweaking things over the next few days or weeks, depending on what I get obsessed with doing. I have spiffed up the Good Reads badge, the favicon, which I guess some browsers post in the address line or title on the page; Firefox does not, nor does Safari on the iPad, so I’m not sure wat the favicon does, but if you see the favicon on your browser, It’s the MS Awareness mug instead of the baseball now. I updated my profile pic to a more recent photo that represents my current hair and that I’ve almost quit wearing my glasses. (I’ll talk more about the glasses soon) I also updated language from the old “coffee shop on the information superhighway” (Who really calls the web that now?) to “cyber neighborhood coffee shop.” I think it sounds friendlier.

I’ll share one last treat today as I’m debuting the new look. In addition to the time-honored calorie-free cyber black forest cake at The Chronicles of Nani, have some cyber tiramisu!

It’s made with all the wonderful ingredients we're accustomed to in cyber cake with no fat, sugar or gluten to cause any guilt and all the flavor a good photo prompts your imagination to have!

I hope you like the new look … and the tiramisu!