Retreat, part 1: An overview

I'm not sure how many parts this is going to have, but I'm guessing more than 1, since there is a lot to cover from the last week.
To start with, I was at a convent in Dondalson, Indiana.  It was called Lindenwood. I had never been to a convent before so I had no real schema for "convent".  When I thought about convents I thought about "Sound of Music"...not the most accurate picture in the world. The convent turned retreat center was beautiful.  I can only imagine how much more beautiful it would be when there is not snow on the ground.  The building we stayed in had a couple large conference type rooms, a lounge and then a whole bunch of sleeping rooms. We all had our own sleeping room, which was nice.  I like having my own space. The sleeping rooms were simply furnished and reminded me a little bit of hospital rooms in their simplicity: two beds, a desk and chair, and an attached bathroom.
We had the option of connecting to wireless internet in the lobby, using a shared computer in the lounge or going off-grid.  I chose to go off-grid for the week...no internet.  The first day or so was hard, but after that I began to enjoy not checking e-mails or facebook or dealing with the outside world.  It did mean I had to deal with it when I got back though...Not quite sure how I feel about that.
Our days were broken into 3 main parts.  We started each day with a short chapel time before breakfast and then after breakfast we dove into our first discipline of the day.  Each peer group presented one or two disciplines (meditation, prayer, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, confession, worship, celebration and guidance).  We also covered service, but that will get it's own post and we will cover fasting tomorrow morning on campus.  The presentations were about 30-45 minutes, then we were led in a guided experience to help us practice the discipline, either individually (prayer, study, submission, solitude) or with our peer groups (guidance, confession, mediation) or as a large group (simplicity, worship, celebration, service).  After the guided experience we had free time until the next meal or bedtime.
We took our meals over in the "mother house", where the nuns stayed.  The food was simple but good.  I did eat a lot of fruit and salad. The only time I got sick was Wednesday and that was mostly because I was careless.  Gluten is not my friend. It wasn't pleasant, but it was not my worst reaction ever.  Enough that I did get dehydrated and passed out, but overall it was minor.
Tuesday and Thursday were the days that I was weaning off of Prednisone, so I had expected them to be a bit rough (Prednisone withdrawal is never pleasant). Tuesday was about as expected and I slept during most of our free time.  Thursday though (which I expected to be the rougher of the two days, especially after being gluten-sick on Wednesday) was just fine.  No withdrawal symptoms at all. Thank you all for your prayers.
Also, offer praise to our Father who heals -- I am currently at 28 days seizure free. This is the longest I can remember being seizure free in the last 2 years.  Medically, there have been no changes.  The only explanation is G-d.  Which is enough for me.
I'll post more about the retreat in the next few days (and there will be pictures).

Piñata

There will be more pictures and posts of substance from my J-term retreat, after I get a chance to settle and unpack and locate my head again.  It was a really great week and I am currently at 25 days seizures free. I just wanted to get some pictures for my brothers who made the piñata for the spiritual disciple of celebration (because sometimes, I am a nice big sister):

First, you talk your little brothers into making the piñata for you.  This saves you a lot of time and effort, however, you do need to talk them down from a giant form to a smaller, more transportable form.  Then you just let them have fun with it.

You spend all week at the retreat looking for the perfect place to hang it. 

This was the best spot we found.  We had to be careful of the exit sign...it survived intact.

 Then you let people smash it (click on the picture to make it bigger).  At many points we were concerned about the integrity of the broom handle.

More pictures of people smashing it (and some repeats, just because I didn't have 60 different shots)

Then at the end, while we are cleaning up, the boys discover this secret compartment full of candy and tear into it. 

When all is said and done, you sweep it all up and throw it away.  Much fun was had by all.

J-Term

I am safely back in Holland for the beginning of J-term, a short semester like thingy between Fall Semester and Spring Semester.  It's only two weeks long. I am leaving Monday morning at some point to go somewhere for my class retreat.  It's at a convent in Indiana.  I don't know much more than that.
I do know that I will have very limited internet access.  Even if wireless is available at the convent, I won't be on much because I will be spending time bonding with my class.  That means there will be nothing posted here until Friday the 7th at the earliest.
If you are the praying sort, I would appreciate prayers for this retreat. I am still recovering from my reaction to agave nectar on Thursday, I expect Tuesday and Thursday to be a little rough since those are the days that I decrease the amount of prednisone I am taking. I have come off of prednisone before and it has not been the most pleasant of experiences.  Also I would appreciate prayers that this retreat is a time of bonding and relationship building within my class as well as a time of learning. And one praise to finish this off - As I write this it has been 21 days since my last seizure.  Praise the Lord!
Have a blessed week and I'll post more when I'm back!

Bringing in the New Year (and other randomness)

Another year has begun.  Last night we did the traditional finger food (at least it's tradition in my family) and oliebollen (people in Pella call them Vettbollen, basically they are sweet dough with raisins, apples, etc in it that are deep fried and then eaten with powdered sugar.).  We watched a movie and then tried to find the broadcast from Times Square to watch the ball drop.  I don't know if we ever did or not.  I didn't make it until midnight.  I crashed at about 11:15...more than an hour past my bedtime.  I'm turning into an old lady. :) Somewhere in the back of my head I think I heard them (rest my family) setting off fireworks, but I'm not sure.
So another year is upon us.  What will it bring?  What causes for celebration will there be?  What causes for mourning?  What adventures? What new relationships will be formed?  What old relationships will be lost? It's fun to wonder what the new year will bring, but important to remember that G-d is ultimately the one who decides what this year will be like.  That's comforting.  I don't have to worry about it, because G-d's got it all under control.  He even has a plan for the fact that it is raining outside right now on the first of January instead of snowing.

In other news, I've done a lot of baking this week. Apparently my family debated awhile about whether to give me my new cookbook as a Christmas present or save it for my birthday.  They decided to give it to me for Christmas so that I could try recipes here at home...their rationale was that if anything went wrong with the recipes I would still be in Canada where healthcare is free. I laughed and told them it was just because they wanted to taste test...it was an allergy friendly cookbook.  The only recipes that would give me trouble were the ones with banana in them and I was smart enough not use banana (I'm allergic).  They did concede that taste testing was part of the plan.  As it turns out, they were wise in giving it to me here.  Some of the recipes in the book called for agave syrup to be used as a sweetener in place of refined sugars.  I'd never used agave syrup before.  I sent mom on a mission to find me some so I could bake.  She did, because she is amazing like that. I made dinner rolls that had agave syrup in them.  I ate one.  Then I took advantage of the free health care in Canada.
This is agave:

This is pineapple:

Notice how similar they are.  That is because agave is a type of pineapple.  This would have been good to know before I ate the dinner roll, since I am severely allergic to pineapple.  I figured out really quickly what was happening and was able to start myself on medication and call mom for a ride to the hospital.  We got to the hospital so fast that I was still going in to the reaction when we got there.  I actually got worse in the hospital (despite have 100 mg of Benadryl in me before arriving).  Since I caught it so quickly we were able to treat it before it got really bad, which means I got to stay conscious for the whole time.  I also managed to stay very calm and matter of fact about the whole thing.  The nurses were a little be surprised by that.
Being conscious throughout an entire reaction was a weird experience. First they gave me lots of Benadryl (in addition to the 100mg I'd already taken).  It began to kick in and make me really really sleepy.  Then they gave me a shot of epinephrine.  That made me really awake, but I still had lots of Benadryl in me.  So I had the Benadryl making me sleepy while the epi was making me really awake.  It was like my body was fighting with itself.  Very weird.  Usually I'm so close to unconsciousness by the time we get to the hospital that I'm not aware of what's happening.  Not so much this time.  I did eventually fall asleep and had a nap full of trippy dreams.
The good news about this, is that all things considered, it wasn't a bad reaction.  Because I caught it quickly we could reverse it before it got really bad.  And I was home for it, so the hospital trip was free.  And, it explained what I reacted to in June.  I'd had a really bad reaction at an open house with Isaac and Mom (see this post if you want to read more).  At the time we figured it was just cross contamination with nuts.  As it turns out, the food that I had eaten had been sweetened with agave syrup.  Now we know.  And now, I won't bring the agave syrup back to school with me and have a reaction there.

To close off, one more piece of good news to start this year off:

Praise the Lord!

Adventures in Baking

 Some very wise family member (I think it was my sister if I recall) got me this delightful cookbook for Christmas.  I'm not sure who was more excited: me or my family.  Regardless, we've all been eating our share of baked goods this week (and it's only Wednesday!)

The first recipe I tried was double chocolate chip cookies.

I made them before church Sunday morning and they turned out marvelously.

We brought them along to family Christmas and didn't bring any of them home at all!  I also made apple butter thumbprint cookies (they were supposed to be chocolate, but I was chocolated out!) and chocolate chip cookies.  I wasn't overly impressed with the chocolate chip cookies, but I think that had something to do with my oven temperature being off (our thermostat for the oven is temperamental).

Today I made a mango betty.  I'm not quite sure what a betty is supposed to be, but this was not a big hit with my family.  It was rather dry, so it got a sad face in the cookbook.  But after I was done baking that, I made these:

Cinnamon rolls. They were supposed to be for tomorrow's breakfast.  About half of them are left in the pan. I had never had a cinnamon roll before, so I don't know how they are supposed to taste, but I didn't hear any complaints.

Isaac pretty much inhaled his. He's never had a cinnamon roll before either.

The project for tomorrow is some sort of bread type thing. I haven't decided what yet...maybe rolls.

How Much Do You Hear?

When people find out that I'm hard of hearing I often get asked how much I actually can hear. What usually follows is a long, confusing explanation of the nature of my hearing loss.  What makes my hearing loss weird, frustrating, confusing, and sometimes wonderful, is the fact that it is a fluctuating loss.  That means exactly how it sounds.  It changes.  Below I'm going to post some pictures to explain it better.
In addition to an organic hearing loss (what I explained above) I have a central auditory processing disorder (CAPD).  The CAPD basically means that my brain doesn't always know what to do with sound.  Getting it through my ears is only part of the problem.  I might be able to hear an alarm going off, but my brain won't necessarily realize that it is an alarm.  If a sound (music, voice, etc) is coming from one location, I won't likely be able to identify the direction it is coming from. My siblings used to take advantage of this in a rather cruel, but humorous game...we had a portable telephone that they liked to hide.  Then they would push the "find" button on the base to make the handset ring and I would have to located the phone just using my ears.  They enjoyed it and if I was in a good mood, I enjoyed it too, just because I was so bad at it.
In addition to bilateral (that means one for each ear) hearing aids, I rely largely on visual input (lip reading, the written word, sign language, flashing lights), since my brain knows how to process that much better. So if you tell me something on the phone, even though I hear you in the most basic sense of the word, I'm much less likely to know what you said than if you e-mailed me.  Likewise, if I only hear your name, I'm more likely to forget it than if I saw it on a name tag or saw it signed.  If my signal light flashes I'm more likely to realize that it's time to get up and get ready for class than if an alarm clock simply rang.
Now for some pictures.

This is an audiogram...actually it's a composition of two audiograms thanks to the wonderful audiogram creator on this site that let me enter data from two of my audiograms.  The numbers on the vertical axis are numbers that represent loudness.  The bigger the number, the louder the sound.  The numbers on the horizontal axis represent frequency.  I think that has to do with lowness/highness of sounds.  The blue lines and "x" marks are my left ear, the red markings and "o" markings are my right ear.  The two lines on top are from one audiogram (on a relatively good day) and the bottom ones are from an audiogram on a less good day. 

This is another version of the same two audiograms as above, but this time with pictures.  The template was found on this site. Anything that is above the red and blue lines is sounds that I am not likely to hear without my hearing aids in.  My aids are set mostly in relation to better days (the top set of lines) since I have more better days than bad days (at least as far as we can tell without doing audiograms daily), so on a less good day (the bottom lines), even with my aids in I'm not going to get much better than the top set of lines.  This means, that on a less good day, even with my aids in, I'm likely to have trouble with hearing conversations or lectures. 

These are my hearing aids.  The clear one goes in my right ear and the other one goes in my left ear.  On better days they bring my hearing almost to a normal level, but they can't do anything for the CAPD, so even with them in I tend to rely largely on visual input for comprehension.

I also just got fitted swim plugs to keep the water out of my ears when I swim.  Because my ear canals are funny shaped, water would get in and get stuck in there and I'd get ear infections almost every week.  Now that I have these I shouldn't get near as many ear infections. :)

Christmas Day, Part 1, Take 2

There were some troubles with the pictures in the original Christmas Day, Part 1 post, so I'll try again and it should work better this time around.  Sorry for the troubles!

The Lucia buns rose in a "warm friendly location" (aka a seldom used shower) on Christmas eve day.  They were devoured Christmas morning

The advent tree was finally complete...for about 37 seconds.  Then we began to eat it.

Lollipops are the best breakfast ever!

Especially lollipops with rubber ducky tea!

If the wood pile falls when no one is home, does it make a noise?