Creeva’s Neighborhood

Xavier aka Rudolph

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So... I will try this post again since I had to walk away in frustration yesterday.

Things are going great! I feel wonderful, this weird ass diet is working! No more headaches, yeah life is good. I am back to editing pics. Even got around to doing a fantasy piece again.

Lady in Red

Edited some pics from the trip down south that made me realize that something was wrong with my belongings and not me!

Welcome!

In Memory

Edited some pics of my grandpa's old cameras that were passed on to me. I think I got my love of photography from him :)

Duaflex retro

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my first camera

And some pics from where I live! OOooh I just love the superstition mountain range!

Superstition Mountain

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I have also realized that I have a ton of pics that I was uploading to Flickr with no back story. Sad unattached pics that they are, I will have to find ways to incorporate them into posts here and hopefully I will get more active here again. Vox used to be so cathartic to me.

My baby

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Tranquil Ride

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So yeah this is not as good of a post as I had written up last night. Heck if anything it is minimalistic. But it's a start.

So I am off for a walk!
Namaste

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ~Bilbo Baggins
 

There are times that I really hate Voxes posting. Well.. I had a huge post but clicked on a pic that I was putting on the post by accident and of course it took me to the pic and lost my whole post... so blah.

I originally posted this story on Sparkpeople, but I have friends here that I wanted to share this with, you have all been on the rollercoaster ride with my health over the past few years, the ups and the downs. I have just not felt like blogging for awhile now. With the ups and downs with my health I just have not felt like doing much of anything for months now.
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Over the past 5 years I have laid the blame of my weight anywhere I could. From my husbands diabetes (uncontrolled so he tends to go low alot, meaning he eats often, which means I would munch with him alot of times) , to Lyme disease, to depression.

I started at 126 lbs in December of '04.
It seems a life time ago.

Within a few months I had gone from a size 8-10 to a size 16, I never imagined walking down the isle in July of '05 in an extremely tight size 16 dress. (it was not tight in May when I bought it!) I can hardly look at my wedding pics because I can't see past the bulges, remembering how I had to squeeze into one of those body molding underwears that pulls all your fat in and hides it.
By Christmas of '05 I was pushing a size 20.

I started having all sorts of weird pains, heart wise and musculature around October of '05. My energy level was low, I was still walking daily. I just wasn't' building up any endurance... or losing weight.

In June '07 I was struck by a case of bells palsy with a side of shingles that had attacked the same side of my face as the palsy. My health was deteriorating faster than I could explain to the doctor.

We initially were trying to diagnose me as having lymes disease. Everything going wrong with me pointed in that direction. But the tests kept coming back negative. My heart was starting to really give me the worst trouble after the bells palsy. I was bed ridden most days. The pains through my body had me bed ridden the other days. Finally my doc just didn't know what to do anymore and suggested I try a holistic approach with another doctor.

She was giving up on me.

I almost gave up... on everything.

I finally made an appt back with her and she put me on anti depressants after I had a break down in her office. Needless to say they did nothing for me and the husband and I started making plans to move out of overcast rainy New England to sunny Arizona thinking that my problem was S.A.D. aka seasonal affective disorder. Massachusetts had been in a 4 year bout of constant daily overcast, cold rainy days.

After the move I felt great for a few weeks. I had a lot of days down recuperating. My energy had bottomed out over the years to the point where just getting out of bed winded me. I started eating healthy again, cut alot of junk food out of my diet and started to get sick. Real sick, I started having anxiety attacks often and felt as if I was worse then before the move. I would end up back in bed eating comfort foods trying to build my strength back up. I gained back every pound that I had lost.

Finally something clicked, a few weeks ago the husband and I left the house for a few days. I felt great! A bit wore out, but all in all really good. The day after we got back home I was sick again, and that is when it clicked. I realized something in the house was making me sick. Going back over the years the one constant that followed us through our moves was our furniture.

In the late winter/early spring of '05 our basement flooded from snow run off. We didn't know it right away since we never used it and it was just storage. I started smelling something odd, mildewy and moldy. We went down and found that the basement had molded from the flood. Huge blooms of black mold covered the whole downstairs, walls, boxes, old clothing. Everything was covered in black mold. We promptly cleaned it all out, tore down the dry wall and cleaned up best we could.

Around fall of '05 we noticed black mold starting to show up through the house. I bought some spray that supposedly would kill it. Not once in all this time though did I ever bother to read up on it.

When we moved in June '07 a week after I was diagnosed with the bells palsy, we moved all our belongings to our new house. All our furniture, which would have had black mold spores on them. We found out that winter that our new house's basement flooded, every time there was a melt off, or heavy rains. So yet more black mold sprouted.

All of this dawned on me a few weeks ago as I sat here wondering what in Gods name is wrong with me. So I finally, after 5 years have got around to researching if black mold can harm you.

It does!

Every thing that I have complained to my doctor about over the past 5 years is a symptom of toxic black mold syndrome.

Every time that I felt better was my body killing the spores in my body. The resulting couple days of down time afterwards was the poisons that the dying bacteria were releasing into my body to repopulate themselves. It is actually a very wild reaction that happens when mass amounts of bacteria die off in the body called The Herxheimer Reaction they release up to 79 different toxic products when they die! They get in the bloodstream and travel to all parts of the body where they can cause all sorts of havok.

It's going to be a long road to recovery from what I have read. But with just a few days down now and knowing this time, that this feeling sick now is a good thing and sticking with the healthy eating.. well I think I can do it this time.

My outlook is positive finally! FINALLY!

I have a goal and I can actually see it. It is not the goal of a number on a scale, it is the goal of getting the old energetic me back. The me that wasn't sick every single day.
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*This all began 2 weeks ago, I cut gluten out of my diet and the change in my life was immediate. I began with my black mold treatment today. So I am praying that good things happen with that!*

*The real meaning behind this post is, research what is wrong with you. Don't ever let yourself believe that your doctor has a crystal ball and can diagnose you. Some things in your life they cannot know about. What doctor would have just randomly asked "Hey do you have black mold in your house?" In real life that just doesn't happen. We have to take care of ourselfs and research and then go to our doctor with what we have found. But most of all, be alert to what is going on around you and with your health, your doctor can only diagnose by what you tell them.*

First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!

The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.

TypePad Micro

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A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.

Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.

And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!

~ daisy

As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.

The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.

When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.

It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.

Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.

As always, thanks for your patience.

~daisy

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy