oh happy day!

Hey friends! I promise I will inundate you with pictures again soon, but I've been busy getting things in order for the summer semester of grad school (though I'll spare you the details there, since it'll turn into an anti-ECU rant; the end of the story is that everything has gotten worked out!) and being active in general. Yep, being active. My joints aren't feeling 100%, but I have felt better the past five days than I've felt in at least a year, maybe longer. Since Saturday, I have swum laps at the pool twice, done a workout video, gone on a couple walks, spent a lot of time working in the garden, and used the Wii Fit a few times ... and I'm feeling fantastic! I've dropped my prednisone dose to what it was while I was pregnant, and I'm trying to drop it once more, which will put me at a lower level than I've ever been.

And, if all this wasn't good enough news, take a look at this (sorry that it's blurry!):

From May 2009

Yep, that's my wedding ring and engagement ring. On. my. hand! My fingers were too swollen for the past five weeks to wear them, and I was about to order a substitute ring (and, for a short while until I realized it wouldn't work for a number of reasons, considering getting a tattoo of a wedding band so I didn't have to deal with this). But my heart's desire was to be able to wear the ring Lee put on my finger when he popped the question on March 28, 2003, and the one he slid on when we were married on June 18, 2005. I wasn't bold enough to really hope for this, though, since a week and a half ago I was in near tears at a department store when I realized that my fingers had swollen so much (from a size 7 to a size 9) that most women's rings weren't even available in my new size and many couldn't be resized that large. That was May 9, eleven days ago. Today I'm wearing my size 7 rings. They fit perfectly, whereas they were loose enough pre-RA that I was considering having them resized to a smaller size, so my hands aren't back to their normal size yet. But no complaints here. My rings are back on my hand. I don't think words can adequately describe my joy.