The Life and Times of Alann

So the week of 4-19 I was at an owner's house taking some paint off a chain link fence that I had accidentally over-sprayed on to it while painting some of the interior doors. Now mind you this house is in a subdivision and surrounded by a built environment and not out in some wooded area. There were several brushy, viney, planty growths on the fence that I took no mind of when I decided to wire brush the fence. Well I should have thought twice about my actions and attitude because the largest plant with no leaves turn out to be a large poison ivy vine. I spent at least an hour to an hour and a half working on the fence while in the mean time being touch and slapped in the face by the vine. Then I went home and worked the rest of the time on the fence posts for our chicken coop yard and as luck would have it decided not to wash my hands or shower all day except for at meals where I quickly washed my hands.

Saturday came around and I noticed my eye itched and I had a small itch on my arm but I didn't think much about it. Later Sat night I felt terrible, my throat felt swollen, I had the shivers, was dizzy, nauseous and just felt terrible. I called my parents to talk with them to see if they had any thoughts on what it could be since mom has some previous EMT training and both mom and dad have experience with blood sugar issues. After talking with them a while it was decided that I should eat an apple and go to bed to see if it was low blood sugar. When I woke up Sunday morning it was obvious that I had a larger case of poison ivy than I thought. My eye was swelling shut and areas with other rashes were starting to swell up as well. I skipped church and stayed home to soak in the tub and then nap which helped a little.

Once the family got home I went to Walgreen to get something for the itch, the pharmacists recommended I go to a family doctor to get a steroid shot. However we don't have a family doctor and didn't know of any place to go that wouldn't treat it as urgent care which costs us $100 instead of $30 on our insurance. Finally after some research I found a St Mercy's clinic in Washington MO that does both urgent and casual care visits at the same office. I went to the office and was given a steroid shot and a prescription for Prednisone to keep the ivy rash at bay. On the way home all the surface rashes went down and my eye unswelled and I got my prescription at Walgreen feeling pretty good. The rest of the day past uneventfully and at the end of the day I could see why I had such a bad night on Sat. Both my forearms, part of my biceps, some of my inner thigh and left side of my face were covered in red rashes where I should have been oozing out poison ivy gunk.

It has been over a week now since the incident and I am mostly better, a couple of days ago the Prednisone really started messing with me, I wasn't digesting well and I was starting to have anxiety and depression attacks at night. On Monday the 29th I decided to stop taking the Prednisone and I have felt better ever since. My throat still swells when I get real tired and am under hydrated but I am hoping that will pass in a few more days. Normally I recover from this in a month, but hopefully I will be fully functional again in a total of 2 or 3 weeks. Now I just have to wash everything and stay away from anything may looks remotely like poison ivy!

So I was cleaning out some of the favorite links in my google chrome tab and found my links to my blog. I have 2 links 1 allows me to see my blog, the other one allows me to sign into my blog. Something about the current layout doesn't give me the option to log in, it kinda weird. With 2.5 yrs going by since my last epic moving theft adventure there is way too much to try and catch up on and with my own company being so demanding I don't know if I will really pick up blogging again. So a few bullet points about life is what I think I will start with and I'll see if a habit develops.

• Married 8yrs this Dec
• 3 Children now
• Claire- 4
• Alex- 2
• Elizabeth- 9mo
• Family is happy and healthy, Claire is in Preschool
• Living in parents house while they are in CA
• Graduated with Masters in Real Estate Development
• Just got chickens and trying back to eden gardening

• worked/working with Provident Development group as a Project manager (1.5 yrs) and now recently as an independent marketing event planner (2 mo)
• Own my own company Provident Property Management for 2 yrs now. A good starting of clients allowing me to get my feet wet and start supporting myself.
• Just starting this month to upgrade all our services to owners and tenants by purchasing more packages from our service provider, it like starting the company all over again with all the contracts and changes in procedures.
• Once things settle down a little with the upgrades I need to find a new commission based leasing agent to help expand the company
• Have my first rental property 8107 Winfield Ave. Found it while cleaning it out for a friends friend, and it has been a learning experience from the beginning. I could do multiple stories on this house.

• I was in the 11 yr scout program for 2 yrs and an elders quorum teacher for 1 yr (which I loved). Just last week I was asked to be the 1st counselor in the YM Program over the teachers and released from my teaching position :( .

So for those who don't know we have moved from Ut and now live in Mo. We moved to Ut for me to go to school, we had planned on being there for 5yrs but through some hard work, luck and no summer vacation we were able to do 2 degrees in 4 yrs and finish early. Now all I have to do is get a job and start making money. The move out here was definitely no picnic, i won't go into too many details (if you want a longer story check out Becca's blog), but it suffices to say that it was very long and painful.

Some of the high lights include me sleeping on a pile of boxes the last night in Ut, because we packed the blow up beds, the truck radiator breaking down within the first 2 hrs of moving and a rainstorm at the end of the trip that I decided to pull over and sleep through because the truck was making an odd noise and it was 12:30 at night. The rest of the trip went as I expected it would with 2 kids, lots of pulling over and rest breaks. I was actually in another vehicle than the kids, but because they had to stop so often I was usually in front even though i was moving slower, so I can guess how it was going in the van.

It is good to finally be done moving and now we just have to unpack everything and settle into a our new lives. Internet access time is kinda limited right now because i am way busy trying to unpack and look for a job, but I should be able to post once or twice a week for now and hopefully more often once things settle into a routine.

This is the first night that I don't have to blog about any theft stories! Granted we still have to pack up the garage, but i think it was too messy for him to want to bother going through, so i think we are safe for the most part. Today we did some more packing and yard work to get the house ready for when we leave. We had a lady come by today and look at the house, she said the same thing that we hear every time. Wow this is the nicest house I've seen, but its kinda small. More and more I think about converting our garage into a second living area and just putting a carport off the front of it. We probably wont do it, but it is way tempting.

One possibly exciting thing that happened today is that our Fuji apple tree grew 3 offshoots 2 of which we where able to dig out and trim off. We are going to see if we can't get them to live and take them to Mo with us. We have been semi-joking about taking the tree with us, but if these shoots live then it will be like taking the tree and we will start a little grove somewhere in mo. Becca really wants a little fruit tree groove with 2-3 of a couple trees like apple, pear, fig, peach, and money. I personally am hoping for that last tree so i can just stay home and tinker around on projects. Well thats all for tonight, we have to get up extra early tomorrow and run errands.