Energy

I love Enbrel!  It gives me so much more energy, and practically no morning stiffness (five minutes, tops).  I feel like I have my life back.

After having zero energy, scraping by on the bare minimum of all the tasks I should be accomplishing, getting so frustrated at how little gets done, things are looking up.  Last week my house actually got cleaned.  Saturday morning I cleaned out the refrigerator, changed the bedding on my youngest boys beds (why is that such a difficult task?), washed an extra six loads of laundry, gave the boys all a haircut, started to plan our upcoming vacation…

Now, if you don’t have RA, that might sound kinda busy, but pretty ordinary.  If you have RA and are familiar with the bone-crushing fatigue that overwhelms every waking moment, you know how truly spectacular a day like that is.

Monday Mr. WarmSocks took the day off work and we took the entire family to Seattle.  The kids got to see where we used to live.  We visited Greenlake and ate at Spuds.  Did you know there are biodegradable “plastic” cups/spoons made from corn?  Then we headed across the lake and toured Microsoft’s visitor’s center.

About the visitor’s center – I found what I want for my new coffee table:

Unfortunately, it is way out of my price range.  The Microsoft Surface sure is cool, though.  Two of my kids played chess on it much like you would on a 3D chess board – touch the screen and point where you want to move your piece – but there’s nothing to get bumped or knocked over, and no pieces to lose, nothing to have to clean up when you’re done.  There are other games, awesome maps, photos…  You can simply set your digital camera down on the surface and your photos will be downloaded, then you can look at your pictures just as if you were shuffling through a stack of prints, scatter them across the tabletop, etc. It was lots of fun.  And since this isn’t an ad for them, I’ll stop there.

The point is that we had a fun, full day.  Two long car trips, lots of walking around, and before Enbrel I don’t know if it would have been possible.  Especially after such a busy day Saturday.  Just a small portion of Saturday’s activities would have put me flat on my back for a few days, but I barely noticed it at all and was able to go out and do stuff Sunday and Monday, too.  Today we have violin lessons, and my boys have scouts tonight, then tomorrow we’ll hit the library.  I actually have the energy to do all this stuff!