A Reunion + Some Accidental Cookies

Well, a miracle occurred at our house two weekends ago in the form of a family reunion that none of the people involved could have ever imagined.  It's not really my story to tell & I'm not big on giving up anyone's privacy, so I'll keep it simple: after 50+ years JP reunited with all of his remaining sibliings. 

It was as momentous as it sounds.  Think Hallmark movie or one of those shows where some investigative people find longlost relatives.  Exactly like that.  How this all played out could truly be a television show except that no one who is involved is interested in that sort of thing.  They are together now; that is enough.

So what do you do when three almost strangers fly in from around the country with no plans other than to spend time together and get to know each other after 50+ years?  You sit together in the family room for many hours and everyone gets comfortable and then you talk and listen and tell stories and you cry a lot.  Of course, I took my nervous energy and applied it to keeping everyone well-fed. They thought I'd done too much but they're new around here and haven't yet learned enough about me to know it's what I do - there's no changing that.  If you are here, I will feed you.  

I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit here because of the part I played in this story.
I am a wife who is in love with her husband and since the first day we were together I knew something big was missing in his life.  Turns out that missing thing was his entire family.  For a lot of complicated reasons, he was not ever able to find them for all these decades and I had even spent a ton of my own time over the years trying to find out something, anything...to no avail.  Until I convinced him to use the two DNA kits (Ancestry & 23andMe) I bought for him, figuring hey, why not give this a try?  The rest, as they say, is history.  

You can never know how happy your heart can be until you see one of the people you love most in the world embracing the siblings he never thought he'd see again...that he hasn't seen in decades...and filling that big, empty void.  

God is so good.

As an aside, I would be remiss if I didn't mention how good it feels for me to have people in my life again that I can call family.  

As part of the "well-fed" mentioned above, I made a lot of food including these French Chocolate Chip Cookies.  

The reciped is adapted from the traditional Hershey's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe; I just made it my own by using the far superior French flour and by omitting (by accident) the white sugar that the Hershey's recipe calls for in addition to the brown sugar.  I don't like overly sweet desserts to begin with and almost always reduce the sugar in most recipes...so by mistakenly omitting the white sugar, these wound up being a very happy accident.  Everyone loved them, so the proof is in the...cookie love.

For the record, I use Hershey's dark chocolate chips from BJs, which are larger than the ones you get in regular grocery stores.

If you're interested, here's some information on Why French Flour Is Better Than American Flour.

(It's not just French flour; European flours on the whole are far superior.  I also use Italian flour.) 

Still Winter Cranky + Trying Not To Be A Germophobe + Jeepsy

Remember about a month ago, when I last posted and said that I was "Winter Cranky".

Well, I still am.

Only it might be worse than it was a month ago and here's why:

Unbelievably, after having the flu in December that ruined the holidays and dragged on for more than two weeks, I got sick again in January. 
It started off as a head cold and quickly morphed into a raging sinus infection that still won't quit, two weeks later.

This picture of me shows you how I've been feeling thanks to my sinuses.

I am not a good sick person.  I don't like to sleep, I don't like to be idle, I don't like feeling like crap. I become excessively irritable and snappy, and my already overly impatient personality goes Defcon 1.
I can handle 1-2 days of being sick and then I am over it (mentally) so you can imagine my mood after being sick now for the better part of two months.  

To make matters worse, my anxiety-driven avoidant personality has kicked in and I have made the decision to not go out into public for the forseeable future.  Everyone seems to be sick and the CDC weekly sick map shows my area to be in the deep red, 'very high' status for flu and a bunch of other germ-y illnesses.  There were a few days where I was even freaking out if JP got too close to me, as if he were a 6'2" germ-ridden petri dish.

I can develop phobias within a matter of days and I recognized that my distress over being sick again was causing me to get a little bit germ-related hysterical and that if I didn't reel it in I was going to be in big trouble so that's what I've been doing as I very slowly heal from this sinus thing:  working on not being afraid of being near my husband who may or may not be carrying some germs. 

I still am resolute in not going out in public, though.  I wonder if that will turn into a phobia? 

I should mention that my extreme over-reaction to getting sick a second time is due in very large part to the fact that I became ill during the trauma anniversary of when my lungs collapsed in 2009.  Every year I struggle with that 10-day period (1/18-1/28) that is the anniversary of being in ICU, having a chest tube inserted without anesthesia, etc.  That event is a significant part of my C-PTSD; specifically the medical part of it.

Some years during those ten days I'm mostly a-okay; I just get quieter and keep things very low-key during those ten days because if I don't do that, things can spiral pretty quickly.  The big thing is being physically healthy during that time period so you can imagine the distress I felt when I got sick this year on 1/21.  Not good, not good at all.

But it's time to go forward now. 
Although the things I'm diagnosed with will often come up as I talk and write about my life, I try very hard to not make them the forefront of my life. 

One of the bigger parts of being sick in December and January is that I've only driven my new Wrangler - appropriately named 'Jeepsy' - a handful of times!  I got it in mid-December and then it was sickness, arctic cold, snowstorm, more arctic cold, sickness again.  

I was so hesitant about buying Jeepsy because I hate car payments and I mostly hate new cars with all their complicated bells & whistles. I still deeply regret selling my 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee even though it was time to do so before it started to cost too much to maintain it.  But that 2006 vehicle was so not fussy and it had knobs instead of push buttons and I loved how uncomplicated it was.
JP, though, really wanted me to have Jeepsy and wanted to buy it for me for our anniversary.
Being that he works for a Jeep dealership he was able to get it at an amazingly low price so after a lot of back and forth I gave in and he went forward with buying it and the only thing that made me not hyperventilate about that purchase was that I knew we could always sell it if I hated it.

Well, I don't hate it.
In fact, I'm madly in love with it.  It's the fourth Wrangler I've owned and I'm really not sure why I've ever NOT owned Wranglers because they are my perfect vehicle. And while this one does have some bells & whistles, it still has knobs and the Wrangler feel.

Years ago I had an official license plate that read WNDRLST. I wanted to get that plate again for this Jeep but unfortunately Delaware has suspended custom license plates because some lady sued them and that lawsuit resulted in ruining it for everyone no one being able to get custom plates. 
So I did the next best thing and designed a custom front plate...

Also, did I mention how much fun it is to be back to doing the Jeep wave again?  

Winter Cranky

We finally had a real snowstorm on Monday 1/6 this week.

It snowed all day long which was nice and soft and pretty.  

JP wisely stayed home from work even though it only snowed about 2 inches in the northern part of Delaware where his job is.
We got 8-10 inches downstate where we live and the roads were unplowed and treacherous so going anywhere was really out of the question.

It's Thursday 1/9 as I write this and there's still 8 inches of snow on the ground. Nothing is melting despite days of blinding sunshine because it's freakin' freezing outside.

I am so over it.

I am snow over it.

I like snow on the day it snows. Then, on the next day, I like when it melts away.
I do not like blinding sunshine (in general) that does nothing more than magnifies the brightness of the snow and hurts my already sensitive eyes to the point where I can't leave the house; blinding sunshine should have one job after a snowstorm and that is to melt the snow away.  If it can't do that it's useless.

I am winter cranky - which is very unusual for me.   

It is supposed to snow again tomorrow into Saturday and the internet weather forecasters were initially calling for "epic snowstorm" and "a whopper of a snowstorm" but they have all now changed their clickbait tunes and have admitted that it's going to basically be a non-event, maybe an inch or two.

Fingers crossed.