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Today is my first day home in a long, looooooong, time. Since last Saturday. Not that long ago I guess.

I've been sleeping at my house every night, but all day every day I've been at my in-laws' house, focused on frosting 236 wedding cake shaped sugar cookies for a wedding coming up this Saturday, July 3rd. As of 10:30 pm last night, the job was done, the cookies were in their treat bags with cute little bows, and they were packaged and ready to go over to the reception hall tomorrow.

Oh my goodness. I'M. DONE. WITH. COOKIES. For now.

I had the nerve to put a little gold foil label on the back of each treat bag that says "Hayley Tyler Sugar Cookies," then it lists my email and phone number. Am I really advertising for a job like this again?

Yes. I am. Because I love it, every single bit of it. :)

In other news, some of you might remember my health ordeal that I documented on my old blog back in 2008. To attempt make a long story short, I was having once to twice daily severely painful "attacks" in my upper abdomen, the likes of which reminded doctors of gall bladder attacks. Every test for gall bladder disease under the sun was done on me, each of which came back negative. Then the doctors started testing me for pretty much every other gastrointestinal illness under the sun, and one of the tests came back positive; I was diagnosed with gastroparesis. Gastroparesis explained why I was rarely hungry and why I had lost so much weight, but it didn't explain the pain. When I started medication for gastroparesis, my pain slowly went away.

However, every once in a while I go through a couple week phases of frequent "attacks" again. On June 17 of this year, my "attacks" returned worse, more prolonged, and more frequent than ever.

I saw my GI and his best guess is that I actually DO have a problem with my gallbladder, that it is emptying too slow. That would explain the pain, and if a test that I'm having done soon comes back positive, then they'll take that little painful sucker right out of me.

In the meantime, I'm so desperate to stay out of pain that I am on day 3 of an extremely minimalistic diet. Sports drinks, saltine crackers and chicken broth. Day 1 was a giddy day for me, because I remained pain free. Day 2 I remained pain free as well, but it was less giddy because it culminated in a family dinner at Islands. I ate more saltine crackers to ease my constant salivation at that restaurant than was probably good for me.

This morning, Day 3 of the diet, it's 10:45, and I've finished a pack of saltine crackers. For comparison, each of the past two days, an entire pack was slowly eaten throughout the day.

It might have had something to do with the fact that this morning I've been getting caught up on the cooking section of Pioneer Woman's website.

I'm in bad shape.

It's gonna be even worse at the family bbq tonight. Ugh.

Thankfully, tomorrow I get to add fat free milk products, simple carbs, eggs, peanut butter, vegetable juices, fruit juices, and low-fat hard candies. (Except, I don't even like hard candies...for the most part.)

Please pray for an accurate diagnosis of what is causing my pain. Pray that it is curable, so that I won't have to eat so minimalistically and un-nutritionally the rest of my life.

Also, I have some good news. Yesterday I received my test results from the state exam I took at the end of February. Passing the exam qualifies one for a position in the Radiologic Health Branch of the California Department of Public Health. I passed the exam! Hurray! I can now be considered for jobs that open up within the department! Please pray that God will give me a job soon.