scrapbookbuzz Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 (edited) Morning and welcome to the Lounge! (could also be called the Lounge of Hormones today!) Notice I didn't say "good" morning. I'm still working on that. Menopause is not my friend right now but I'm working through it. This morning is particularly ferocious in hormone activity so I treated myself to Starbucks with soy! LOL Anyone else in this minefield with me? Between my hormonal 15 year old boy and mom being hormonal, I'm surprised anyone in this family still wants to come home at the end of the day! What's the adventure of the week for your family? Here: see above. Plus, I'm planning two events for towards the end of the week for the dd's bday and dh and ds are headed out to go camping this weekend so I'm sure there will be camping gear everywhere, as well! What's annoying you this week? here: EVERYthing! Hormones will do that to you. Now I know why my son gets irritated when I tell him, "You control/choose your attitude, no one else." Not so easily done when in the throes of Hormone Production Day! Possible, just not easily done. Have you seen/will you be seeing any movies recently? Here: dh and I went to see a free prescreening of Angel Has Fallen starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman. Don't waste your money. Lots of f-bombs and not much story. I have yet to see the live version of The Lion King, although my son and his friends went. I did see Spider-Man Far From Home. Not stellar but very entertaining. However, Jake Gyllenhal has not yet have the chops to pull off being a villain. Talk to me! 🍌 Edited August 27, 2019 by scrapbookbuzz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrapbookbuzz Posted August 27, 2019 Author Share Posted August 27, 2019 Notice: I'll be in the corner of the Lounge (read: my dining room) clearing out all the junk that seems to have accumulated there. Just in case you come in and don't see me right away. 😉 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 I am in early perimenopause. It’s been a return to my teen years with cramps, headaches, and floods. Pretty awful. I just dropped extended family off at the airport. I have a lot of laundry and cleaning to do to catch up. I paid ds’s fall tuition bill at the cc and I feel relieved that the younger three are doing well at public school. I hit complete physical and mental burnout a couple of years ago and am still in recovery mode. Physically, my RA has gone back into remission with me being able to relax, sleep, and exercise more. Still working on other issues. We still plan to bring my older daughter home for junior high and teaching her is delightful. I just wish my ideal lined up with feasible more often, iykwim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 I'm postmenopause. Adventure of the week - dh is off work this week for a staycation but we are talking about going hiking one of these days. Annoying me - see above. Dh (and yes, I love him very much) is off work this week for a staycation. . . . Movies - not really. I just never seem to find the time. I did watch Mary Poppins Returns on Netflix about a month ago. I'm actually glad that I didn't spend money on it. The songs were not as memorable as the first one and even the plot didn't seem as fresh as it could be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 3 hours ago, scrapbookbuzz said: Anyone else in this minefield with me? What's the adventure of the week for your family? What's annoying you this week? Have you seen/will you be seeing any movies recently? Yes, and I have a 15 y.o. boy to boot. 🙂 He's less hormonal than me. We're about 7 or 8 years into this perimenopause thing, and I am tired of it. We're also have tons of rainy weather, which hasn't helped the heachaches and migraines. Or the brain fog. The hot flashes have subsided mostly, but once in a while I get really hot from the inside out in the morning and cannot cool off easily. Older DS took aptitude and interest testing at the local vocational school. Younger one will be having a campout with DH to talk about the next stage of life, so to speak. 🙂 (More hormone talk!) We are getting our FIRST brand new living room furniture delivered tomorrow. It's fancy but not exorbitant, and we're quite certain this will reduce chiropractic bills, lol! Everything was annoying last week. This week is looking up. Hmm...It seems like we saw something decent recently, but brain fog...oh, it was an older movie about Vietnamese refugees. Maybe The Green Dragon? We liked it. I liked learning more about that time period and about how well/poorly things were handled (mixed bag for sure). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Keeper Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 Peri-- which has been triggering 3 weeks of migraines. 3 weeks. Move on already, hormones. Adventure of the week: just getting school stuff scheduled and organized--- but there is light at the end of the tunnel. DH and I are going to an art show on Saturday night. 🙂 Annoying this week: my head-- I get dizzy, nauseous, and nasty when the migraine flares. Good movie: re-watched Groundhog Day, because we needed the laughs. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 Adventure of the week: we went to a new beach for us---we saw a kid dragging around sea kelp. We've seen kelp forests from certain viewpoints, but we hadn't seen kelp float ashore before. The plant was at least 6' long. Annoying this week: My air conditioner doesn't keep our upstairs warm. It's freezing downstairs and 82F upstairs. I used to be accustomed to hot weather, because Texas, but not anymore. I'm sweating and it's hard to go to sleep. Good movie: We are Netflix/Amazon prime people. We rarely make it out to the theater. We're looking forward to the new episodes of The Good Place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 18 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said: My air conditioner doesn't keep our upstairs warm. Ugh! Do you run the fan continuously? Is your attic fan working? We have more options now that we've upgraded our whole furnace and A/C (lots of fan settings!), but with our old unit, we had to run the furnace fan at all times to get it even reasonably cooler upstairs. We have an open stairwell, and when it was really bad, we'd put a fan at the top of the stairs from suppertime until bedtime to draw cooler air upstairs--that was a big help. Later, we also found out our attic fan quit and that our flexible ducts in the attic were bent such that airflow was not good. Fixing the attic fan was significant. Putting rigid elbows on the flexible ducts where they connected to the room vents (and off the box that takes the air to the attic) was a big help as well. It's frustrating when it's too hot to sleep! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 It doesn’t keep it cool.... The heat is already addling my brain! The ac has been evaluated. Last year we replaced the thermal expansion valve thinking that was the problem—it’s not. We really need to split the house into two zones and add more vents and return airflow in part of the upstairs of the house but $$$$. We put in ceiling fans upstairs while we save for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 No attic fan in this house....and given my kids’ severe allergies and asthma, couldn’t run it anyway even if we had one... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 14 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said: It doesn’t keep it cool.... The heat is already addling my brain! The ac has been evaluated. Last year we replaced the thermal expansion valve thinking that was the problem—it’s not. We really need to split the house into two zones and add more vents and return airflow in part of the upstairs of the house but $$$$. We put in ceiling fans upstairs while we save for that. Lots of PNW houses have inadequate insulation. I discovered that our house didn't even have insulation on the walls when we went to replace the siding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 27, 2019 Share Posted August 27, 2019 Yikes, Jean! We are good in the attic--it was one of the first things we checked during our home inspection. Our winter heating bill seems to indicate we're good on overall insulation, but I haven't peeked behind the cement fiberboard. In the winter I do see frost on the exterior siding between the joists, so I think there must be something like fiberglass batting there.....the studs aren't nearly as well insulated and I see the heat escaping there. We borrowed a thermal camera from the library and our windows don't seem to have leaks. It's just a south facing house and so we're getting max sun. It's FABULOUS in the winter, but not so great right now. We have blinds AND curtains on the windows. We just have ONE vent in each room (including our master) and no vents in our bathroom. It was poor planning by HVAC. We at least have a unit large enough with big enough ducting that we can drop more vents...we just need that money tree in the backyard to start producing. We're almost to September, I just need to hang in there. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 On 8/27/2019 at 5:41 PM, prairiewindmomma said: No attic fan in this house....and given my kids’ severe allergies and asthma, couldn’t run it anyway even if we had one... I just mentioned it because if they stop, it can increase temps, and it's not something you might think of right offhand because it's out of sight, out of mind. No big deal. I don't quite understand the comment though. I have severe allergies and asthma, and the vent causes me no problems. Our old home didn't have a fan--it had a different type of ventilation. Whether you have one or not would probably depend on the other ways your attic vents. (Attics that don't vent in some way usually cause problems which vary by geographic region.) The fan doesn't take air in--it moves hot air out when the attic reaches a certain temperature. Maybe where you live, they are not a good fit for the climate, and that's why they are an issue for allergies? Good luck getting things more balanced/zoned, etc. It's frustrating to be the wrong temperature all the time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prairiewindmomma Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 Aahh.. I was thinking whole house fan---which is called an attic fan in the Midwest. It is like a really big fan seated in the ceiling---you open windows and it circulates air through the house in a really powerful way. You're talking about a powered ventilation fan. Yeah, this is not the right climate for that. We put solar powered ventilation fans into our house in the midwest...had mixed results with them. When we lived in south Texas, we redid our roof with a different ventilation system (and really looked seriously at putting in a radiant barrier). We've done thermal readings in our attic here, and it's not that bad...our issues seem to mostly be solar gain from being south facing and an insufficient number of ducts upstairs. The heat wave passed through and things have already improved. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 On 8/29/2019 at 6:48 PM, prairiewindmomma said: The heat wave passed through and things have already improved. Yay! I have never heard of the kind of fan you described. Interesting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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