*yawn*

I’ve been trying to get a snapshot of Zoe on her favorite perch. It was also Stasia’s favorite place to nap and watch birdies. But the lighting is impossible! Even being able to tweak things in PSP doesn’t make it work. I suppose I will have to try the flash.

yawn

I want to do a comparison shot with a picture I took of Stasia on the back of the back of the chair. It might show the difference in size. Zoe looks like an average cat until you put her next to another cat. She’s not as small as Petee, but she’s small. Big teeth for such a little kitty.

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lyrical life continuing

Seriously, this is just so I can keep track of what I’m doing with the Lyrica and how it acts for me. I know from experience that I will do a better job of that here than I will in a notebook. I wonder why that is. Perhaps I’m a secret exhibitionist?

Anyway, I had decided to wean off the Lyrica in favor of getting my blood sugar under control first. I’ll probably be starting insulin in some form. Dr. G&P wanted me to come in before my June appointment but there’s just so much I need to do around here and… well it’s generally impossible to get an afternoon appointment with him in under 3 months. It’s only an extra couple weeks.

I’ve been off the Lyrica completely about 2 weeks. It reminds me of when I decided that I could switch from prescription Voltaren (an anti-inflammatory) to Aleeve. Turns out that the Voltaren does more than I thought. Sure, I’ve still got pain in my knees while on it but wow, the Aleeve doesn’t come close to managing the inflammation. I still hurt while taking Lyrica and the side effects – including tiredness and problems with word find – are annoying, the pain difference in not taking it is extraordinary. Could still be coincidence as the pain tends to be somewhat cyclical. At any rate, I decided to go back on the Lyrica for another month and see what happens. It’s expensive, even with insurance, so it has to really benefit me. And I have to weigh the pain benefit versus the side effects. Apparently, I get to go through an adjustment period again. I hope it’s faster than the first time.

Current side effects, for the record: a fuzziness, sort of a feeling of disconnection. Tiredness. Oh, but much better sleep.

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respite

Today I was meant to be trying to get Dad out of the house and to his doctor’s appointment in Springfield. This is probably my least favorite chore these days and I start stressing about it well ahead of time. His doctor’s office called me yesterday and asked if I minded bringing him in earlier. What’s funny is just how surprised she sounded when I said No, we couldn’t come earlier. There was this empty space like nobody ever says no. Having Dad ready to leave the house by 11:00 is already a huge fight, no we can’t come earlier. So we rescheduled and actually nabbed a slightly later time for next Monday. I’m just glad she called me before I told him about his appointment.

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Filed under Alzheimer's and Dementia

i’ll figure it out

I’m blatantly stealing this from Ally Bean. I could use more spunk. I’ve been feeling so helpless lately.

A Credo for Making it Happen by Danielle LaPorte

1) you’ll figure it out.

2) life is on your side.

3) start fresh.

4) fear is natural.

5) make tough choices.

6) passion is fuel.

7) come out.

8) do it now.

9) you’re growing.

10) integrity.

11) focus.

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another night alone

I can tell it’s gonna be
Another night alone
And I don’t have the energy to go out on my own
When you’re gone, I just want to hide
I can’t go on,
Til you’re here by my side

But I will never give up, I’ll never give up
I’ll never believe that love just fades away
Never give up, I’ll never give up
I’ll never give up
I’ll never give up

In the middle of the night, I wanna reach for you
I’m so uneasy when you’re gone
I don’t know what to do
It’s so hard just to go downtown
I’m not happy
Til I’m home safe and sound

Tim Weisberg with Amy Holland

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Filed under Depression

a run of cuteness

i wuz snoozin

Zoe is, after all, a cat. And taking pictures of her is something of a challenge. She was looking so cute all curled up but opened her eyes as soon as I pointed the camera at her.

big stretch

Then, of course, she had to get up.  Big blurry stretch.

whut dat thing

What is that thing you’re pointing at me Mom? Can I eat it?

I’d like to get a snapshot of her most recent efforts to acquire the food of the gods. She’s stopped talking to the refrigerator in favor of rolling around on the floor rubbing her head on her bowl. Perhaps if she rubs hard enough Fancy Feast will magically appear there!

p.s., I can’t tell you how much I hate the visual editor on WordPress! I accidentally click on it once in a while and spend more time than it took to write the post to correct all the crap it inserts!

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Filed under Kitty

lyrical life, part deux

Mostly just so I keep track of the Lyrica experiment…

I’ve cut the lyrica by half for the past almost week. It was time to refill or quit and my reality is that I can’t tell whether the trouble I’m having with blood sugars in the afternoon is causing my extreme tiredness or the Lyrica. The light headedness has pretty well gone away but I’m still tired in the afternoon during my daily glucose spike. I have decided to hold off on the Lyrica until my glucose is under control again. It’s weird, I don’t even eat in the morning and my pre-lunch sugar is better but I’m still spiking after lunch and then zzzzzonk out. So, I’ve contact Dr. G&P and we’ll see what he thinks.

On the plus side, I really think the pain was much improved. Even cutting the amount in half has caused a resurgence of the pain. Could just be the normal cycle or could be that the Lyrica really helped. If I can’t get past the tiredness, though, it’s just not going to work. Oh, and word-find. Anticonvulsants can cause memory and concentration issues. I haven’t had this much trouble with word find since I was a kid when – surprise! – I was taking anticonvulsants for a childhood seizure disorder. Guess that explains the word find problems I had back then when Mom and I would play a game to find the word that I couldn’t, um, find. I used to be able to define the word, tell you what it started with, and sometimes even spell it – but couldn’t say it. So, that’s not a side effect I enjoy but it’s an adjustment I can make if it keeps the pain under better control.

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Filed under Lyrica

it’s a weird world

Remember those silly pastries I bought Dad and he promptly lost? I found them yesterday while making space in his fridge for the groceries I bought him. Tucked at the back of the bottom of the fridge. And neither of us had seen them in all this time. At least the mystery is solved.

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Filed under Alzheimer's and Dementia

in which I babble about some other food issues

I was playing around with Twitter this morning. I don’t follow many people and I don’t tweet much so even the people who might follow me don’t have anything to follow. I don’t know who to follow. Mostly I’m not interested in pithy quips from celebrities and I don’t have many friends who are into the whole twitter thing. So I tried to figure out what interests me. Now I’m following Alton Brown, Mario Batali, and Michael Simon. Don’t know where we’re going but I seem to be following. And isn’t that a strange idea? To “follow” people you don’t even know. Where?

Anyway, I have a point here somewhere.

Alton Brown was apparently in a twittery conversation with someone about foie gras, which I will say up front I have never tried because I hate liver. I have told certain chef friends I don’t eat it because of the horrible treatment the geese undergo in order to produce it, but seriously – liver? Eww. So Alton tweets “We make our cows stand knee-deep in crap, shove our chickens in cages smaller than cereal boxes, and you want to complain about foie gras?” Then, “And by the way…animals don’t have rights. We have the responsibility to care for them…all of them. Not just ducks and geese.”

I used to be a vegetarian. I chose not to eat meat because of corporate farming and the treatment of the animals and the planet. It’s a bad thing.  I think most of us can agree with that, whether or not we choose to take action on it. I tried not to be preachy when I chose to eat vegetarian. I eat meat these days. That’s a choice, too. It’s hard not to eat meat. I had some ideas about healthy eating but you can be a vegetarian and eat crap just as easily as you can eat meat and eat crap. It’s all a matter of choice. As a person with diabetes, it’s pretty hard to not eat meat. Add to that some interesting digestive issues that preclude most fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, rice, and many whole grains and the vegetarian lifestyle becomes pretty hard to support.

That’s not, by the way, why I returned to eating meat. It was far less idealistic than that. When my dog, Fred, died I just stopped caring about all those damn chickens I wasn’t eating. Weird how the mind works but that was my tipping point.

So, I eat meat.

In an ideal world I would eat locally sourced, organic, free range, humanely slaughtered animals. I cannot afford that, however. So like most Americans, I eat meat from the grocery store which is often, if not always, from corporate farms with inhumane conditions and disturbingly scary slaughterhouses. I pretend that those conditions and slaughterhouses don’t exist. Meat comes neatly packaged and presumably clean from my local grocery. I hope that some of those sad and frightening things from the world of meat production have improved with our awareness but I am lying to myself if I think the meat I eat has come from kindly treated animals. This bothers me, but I still eat meat.

But, and here we approach my point, is vegetarianism that much better? Once again we are stuck with the impossible choice of finding locally sourced, organic, humanely produced food.

Yes. Humanely produced. Not only do corporate farms use a lot of scary chemicals and overwork the land, a lot of it is produced, picked, cleaned, and packaged by overworked, underpaid migrant or illegal workers. I worked with migrant farm workers in Wyoming and while they don’t get the publicity of cattle mistreated in slaughterhouses, little children are out there picking the sugar beets that eventually find their way into our sugar bowls. This is true around the country. Small, organic, family farms are not the norm in our grocery stores. And even some farmers market produce is not certain to be from these idyllic farms we imagine. In many places, you’ll find the same produce that is shipped to your grocery store. So, you need to know your local farmer as well as your local chicken rancher.

And to my mind, time, and wallet, that’s just not possible. It’s not that I disagree with the locavore pundits. I’d love to eat nothing but local, organic and humanely produced food. And I’m not even addressing the fact that if you truly eat local, you are going to have a very limited choice of produce since oranges just don’t grow in Minnesota or Iowa.

What are we supposed to do?

Adam Roberts from Amateur Gourmet wrote a piece about attitudes regarding our diet last fall (and he kindly sent me the link because I was damned if I could find it). He was writing more about the idea that we should make healthy choices all the time – also an unrealistic idea – but his article struck me because we have so many people not only telling us what is healthy but being so judgmental about food.

What’s so hypocritical about those who preach from on high is that so many of us food people eat food that’s just as fatty, just as caloric, just as unhealthy as the food that we’re urging the unwashed masses to stay away from. True, the fried chicken that we eat in Brooklyn may be locally sourced, it may be pasture-raised and fed a steady diet of organic grasses, but guess what? It’s still rolled in white flour and it’s still submerged in a bath of bubbling oil, just like the chicken at any fast food emporium.

…What is a necessity is that those of us who are privileged enough to know what’s good for us and who can afford to buy the food that’s good for us get off of our high horses. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that big ball of grass-fed beef sitting on that artisanal bun is still a hamburger. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Food and eating are so complicated. What is healthy? What is humane? What is good for the planet? What comforts you? Small wonder we’re all a bit crazy about what we eat.

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Filed under Opinions

loling

Disclaimer: If you didn’t like Whose Line Is It Anyway? you probably won’t like this, so don’t watch it then complain to me that you didn’t like it.

We all need a good laugh, yes? Last night, I intended to watch just a few minutes of this to see if I liked it before I went to bed, then I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe and was forced to stay up late to finish it. Good thing, too, cause the best bit is at the end.

Colin & Brad: Two Man Group

Colin and Brad were part of the Whose Line group and yes, it repeats some bits from the show. Some are funnier than others but, oh the mousetraps. You can watch it for free on Netflix if you do that sort of thing. There seem to be more available on Amazon… oh dear. I’m trying to save money, you know.

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