I made macaroni salad for lunch. There are a million different ways to make macaroni salad of course, but the way I make mine is pretty simple and you have to love Miracle Whip or you just won’t like it because all it is is Miracle Whip, lots of it, tuna and whatever vegetables, frozen or fresh, that you can find in the fridge. In my case, all we had was onions, celery and french cut green beans (which is kinda like shredded, I hate them and they wouldn’t work for this anyway) so I used onions and celery, which, as it turns out, have next to no nutritional content. :o/ I also used penne noodles instead of macaroni because I like them better. They’re easier to skewer with a fork when you’re busy writing a blog post.

I can’t shave my head. It’s not that I’m chickening out or anything like that because it’s not like I haven’t shaved my head before, it’s because when I was in the ICU, I developed a bedsore on the back of my head because of where it rubbed on the pillow. I mean, I was laying on my back for 2 months more or less and I scar really easily so when the wound healed, I was left with two scars and hair doesn’t grow on scar tissue, at least, not fresh scar tissue. Behold:

If I shaved my head, with that bald spot, I’ll look like I was a victim of a lice infestation or something and people will want to stay away from me. As you can see, there’s the two little scars, but all around them hair isn’t really growing for some reason. I don’t know why, maybe it’s for the same reason that my hair is falling out.

Blake also said something like, would I rather be frustrated with regrowth with hair or without it? And he also said, would I just be moping around the house wearing hats with a shaved head? And if so, what’s the difference between wearing a hat all the time with hair and without it? That’s a very valid point, so I’ve decided not to shave my head and to just wear hats instead. So I bought this one and this one and this one, courtesy of my very special friend Charlie who is amazeballs. I also bought Madison this one and Wes this one (he’s obsessed with wolves at the moment) for Xmas.

I’ve been really depressed lately, moreso than I was before, because we’ve had a pretty big setback as far as my wound is concerned. The nurses wanted to switch my dressing changes to every other day, which proved to be a bad idea because the wound had too much discharge and because it was moist all the time, some of the new tissue around the edges began to break down.

In the pic you can see where it’s broken down around the edges, the parts that look like zombie flesh are the parts that broke down. On the right (well, my left) you can see my poor bellybutton.

I’m just disappointed because Dr. Hanrahan said maybe she’d be closing me up by Xmas but I don’t think she will be with the wound looking like this and we still haven’t heard from the stupid surgeon in Toronto about draining my pseudocysts. I am just so sick of being sick. :o( At least I’ve stopped throwing up though. I just decided that I wasn’t going to throw up anymore and I’m really very stubborn so thus far it’s been working. That’s not to say that I haven’t been feeling extremely nauseous and I always have my puke bowl within arm’s reach because I’ve had some pretty close calls, but I haven’t thrown up in about a week and a half. Maybe even longer.

Oh but back to my wound: we’re back to doing daily dressing changes, with Blake doing them on every other day and weekends and Siske doing them M/W/F. I guess the big deal is that they’re supposed to teach the families how to do them but in my case, I was having a nurse come every single day, which costs the company and the province money and I guess at the last meeting, the nurses kinda got bitched out about that.

Speaking of nurses, I’m fairly confident that I’ve scared Ben off completely. I know he’s gotten my Facebook message because he changed his profile pic recently so he would have gotten it when he logged in, but he hasn’t replied. He’s been doing orientation at the mental health hospital in Penetanguishene this week, according to Janice, so the rumour is that he’s going to leave Bayshore (the company that overseas the nurses) completely. He says he’s still going to work for them though, and I think the rumour is just a rumour. He mostly works weekends and since Blake is doing my dressings on weekends now, we probably won’t see him very often, if at all, so at least things won’t be awkward as a result of my Facebook message. I hope, anyway. I did send him a short message after the initial one saying that if he had like, a policy against fraternizing with patients on Facebook that was totally cool and understandable so again, I don’t think things will be awkward if he replies. If he doesn’t reply, then things will probably be awkward if he comes here because I’ll know he’s read it and like…do I say “hey did you get my FB message?” or just pretend I never sent it? I dunno! The protocol for this kind of thing doesn’t exactly exist or anything.

Whatever, I’ll cross that bridge when I need to.

A while back, you may recall that Madison’s teacher made Madison bring home the book White Oleander by Janet Fitch because Madison was reading it in class and the teacher deemed it “inappropriate” because she’s a fucking moron who has no idea what she’s talking about.

We’ve been recommending books for Madison to read over the past little while and she’s been enjoying (for the most part) the things we’ve been telling her to read. The only book that really gave her trouble was The Life of Pi, which was just over her head and probably a bad choice on Blake’s part. I recommended she read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides because he’s my favourite author, that book is fucking phenomenal and I think, being a teenage girl herself, Madison will be able to relate to it.

Since her teacher is a bloody idiot who will, no doubt, object to the book based on the title alone and Madison does a lot of her reading at school, she asked me to make a book jacket for it so her teacher won’t realize what she’s reading. So that’s what I did this morning. I told my friend Ashley that I’d take pics of the process but I forgot. I did take pics after the fact though and the process was pretty simple because all I did was glue the paper to the book using gel medium. I meant to leave the back part of the book cover loose so the synopsis was accessible should Madison’s teacher *gasp* wanted to educate herself on the book before deeming it inappropriate, but I fucked up and the first thing I did was smear gel medium all over the back cover and since I couldn’t exactly wash it off of a paperback, I just went with it and glued the paper to the whole thing. The back cover only had like, a 3 sentence synopsis anyway and the rest was praise so I don’t think it would make a difference anyway.

Here it is:

Front cover.

Inside front cover.
I folded the paper over a bit so it would adhere better.

Back cover.

Gel medium, so you know what to get if you wanted to do this for some reason as well.

And now I’m going to play Warcraft for a little while and eat ketchup chips.
Then I have to go work on my sketchbook because time’s a tickin’!

So I’m finally home and as I write this, I’m soliciting dietary advice from my vegan friend Katie to help me get more protein in my diet, ideally from plant sources for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s kinder.
2. We don’t have enough money to buy the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin.
3. I literally cannot eat the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin because meat is harder on my stomach than veggies.

I mean, the big revelation which wasn’t news to anyone but maybe my doctors is that I’m severely anemic. I had to have a blood transfusion because my hemoglobin was less than half of what it should be. My body is not making enough new blood and it’s making/keeping me sick. I need new blood to heal, especially after my big surgery, and if my body’s not making any or very little on its own, I’m looking at weekly transfusions and not only is that gross I think it’s wrong when I’m a mostly able-bodied otherwise healthy person. Save that blood for a hemorrhaging mother or someone who was hit by a drunk driver, I can eat my way out of this. I think I can, anyway.

So the official diagnoses were pneumonia, a bladder infection and anemia (but they called it a big long word I don’t recall where I’m not getting enough vitamin K and I’m not making enough albumin, specifically). I’m on oral antibiotics for the next 6 days (I think, we haven’t picked up the prescriptions yet but there are two of them) and I feel pretty okay. They thought that the anemia was the bigger problem and they spent a lot of government money to determine what I already knew and what most people would know just by looking at me, but whatever. One morning they took 7 vials of blood out of me and some of them had to be put in vials with tin foil over them because the testing had to be done without light. Weird. I had 3 blood draws in one day at one point and today was the only day they didn’t take blood from me. Last night they took out my IV, which was good because the site had been placed on Friday and it was getting old and had started to bleed a little. The damn thing was in the crook of my arm and really friggin’ hurt every time I moved. I was so scared sleeping with it in, afraid I was going to rip it out, that I didn’t sleep soundly a single night I was there.

Morale was very very low. The days were mostly dreary and I don’t like being away from Blake and my house at all, let alone “too long”, and I was just really bummed out the whole time I was there. The iPad helped of course. It kept me connected to all of you and all of my friends on Facebook and that really helped to keep my spirits up. One thing being sick had taught me is just how much I am loved. <3

I started reading a book that Charlie sent me called The Night Circus, which is really really good. It’s a slow read though, my attention span isn’t what it used to be, but I got about halfway through and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far.

The food at the hospital was oddly delicious. On Sunday night they had roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes and carrots and I swear to god I almost came while I was eating it, it was so amazing. I have NEVER had roast beef like that before in my life and I’ll probably never have it like that again, it was phenomenal. It was tender, juicy, you could literally cut it with a fork and the gravy….holy shit I’m getting hot just thinking about it. Seriously, the way to this girl’s heart is totally through the stomach. If you can cook, I love you, because I can’t.

Anyway, the best meal BY FAR that I had in the hospital was this one:

See up there where it says “cream of chicken”?
That should say “cream of screaming orgasm”.

It was homemade.
And it tasted like it was.
And combined with the egg salad sandwich, I was dying.

Another surprise from the hospital is that apparently I like tea. Who knew? That’s not true, I’ve loved tea before, when I was a teenager I liked getting loose leaf tea from the bulk food store and using my tea ball to make tea. I’d get like strawberry and blueberry etc. but now apparently I just like every day ordinary tea. I started having it with my meals at the hospital and then I began to crave it so I’d get Blake to hit up Tim Hortons* before visiting hours were over and get me the second biggest tea they have and I’d have them put in like, 8 sugars because THAT’S JUST HOW I ROLL. BAG *IN*, MOTHERFUCKERS! So I got in the habit of drinking tea at night and reading my book and I think I’m going to keep that going at home too because the tea really seemed to calm my stomach as well. Except that time I got the biggest tea Tim Hortons has and mixed it with a jelly donut and puked pink all over the place. That sucked. But other than that time, the tea really helped my stomach so, yeah, I already said that. Did I mention I’m on drugs?

Speaking of drugs, they mixed up mine yesterday which prohibited me from going home a day early. I’ll explain: I take hydromorph contin which is slow release morphine. Yesterday we had a student nurse and she gave me the fast acting hydromorph by accident and that accident was repeated all 3 times a day I take it and I wondered all day why the hell I was so tired. When my doctor came by my room, I’d been sleeping and she thought I was lethargic so she kept me in an extra day when in fact the hydromorph just had me knocked on my ass. So that sucked too.

Also speaking of drugs, I just want to state this for my own records: I am allergic to tegretol, ketamine and lamotrigine. If it’s ever called into question and someone’s gotta search my journal to see what I’m allergic to (like Blake had to do with the help of friends in June) those are the anti-convulsants I’m allergic to.

We just found out that my nurse this evening will be Ben. Ben is a handsome young man, fresh out of nursing school from what I understand from Siske. We didn’t think anyone would be coming out today so hey, bonus, we don’t have to change my dressing ourselves! They SUCKED at dressing my wound at the hospital. First of all, they didn’t have the right supplies to even do it correctly and second of all, what they ended up using instead I think I ended up being allergic to because I’m itchy as fuck! Also the white tape they used to tape the bandage down with kept curling up and sticking to the inside of my gown, making me absolutely insane, especially while sleeping because I was afraid I was going to bust the dressing wide open and bleed all over the place. Not that that would have been the end of the world, the wound’s getting pretty small and is pretty dry, but still, not something I wanted to have to deal with. I’m glad I’m home and Ben will be coming over to dress it properly.

Anyway, I’m getting pretty tired and I’m wishing this post would finish itself, so I’ll leave you with pictures from the hospital:

I was in isolation for the first few days because pneumonia is contagious, so Blake had to wear all that crap.

This was the scrambled “eggs” they tried to feed me one morning.
Not ALL the food was fantastic, just most of it.

THE END.

(*Tim Hortons is a national chain of coffee shops that are Canadiana at its finest and they do NOT for some reason, use a goddamn apostrophe to denote ownership in their name, a fact which drove me crazy in college when I was doing ad campaigns for them.)

Who knew that GallbladderAttack.com existed? Well it does and they have a list of good and bad foods that I’m going to experiment with.

I’m glad to see “Vinegars of all kinds” and tomatoes on the “good” list since that’s what I’m having for dinner tonight.

Here’s the GOOD list, I’ve bolded the things I’ll actually eat:

Beets

Cucumbers

Green beans – are NOT the same as dried

Okra

Sweet potatoes

Avocados – a good way to get needed fats directly from food

Vinegars all types

Garlic and onions help with liver cleansing but not processed types like flakes or powder. But some people have trouble digesting them so pay attention

Shallots

Tomatoes – ripe

cold water fish- salmon, trout

Lemons (lemon juice in the morning with hot water helps to clean the liver)

Grapes and fresh organic grape juice (what the fuck? That’s what I puked up this afternoon!)

apples, berries, papaya, pears

Omega 3 oils like flax or hemp. Use these with fresh lemon juice or vinegar on your salads. DO NOT COOK flax oil.

Vegetable juices – Beet and cucumber are especially helpful to gallbladder You can add other green vegetables like tender baby greens, swiss chard, dandelion greens, beet greens, celery, carrots — avoid the cabbage family)

Avoid all fruit juices except organic grape juice and organic apple (self-juiced is best).

All the vegetables listed above for juicing are good. Use baby mixed organic greens for salads and avoid the bitter greens for now.

Fiber such as found in fruits and vegetables and guar gum

So that’s the stuff I *CAN* eat. Here’s the stuff I *CAN’T* eat. I’ve bolded stuff I’ll miss:

Eggs (Research showed that eggs caused symptoms in up to 95% of patients. Try substituting flax seed gel in recipes that require eggs for the “glue”. That’s 1 TBSP ground flax seed to 3 TBSP hot water. Let cool and add.)

Pork

Onions

Fowl (turkey, chicken)

Dairy (milk, cheese, cream)

Gluten (wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, etc.)

Corn

Coffee

Oranges, grapefruit

Nuts

Trans fats, Hydrogenated, partially-hydrogenated oils

Margarine

Fried Foods

Saturated fats

(even coconut oil until feeling better)

Red meats (I beg to differ on this one because I had liver for dinner the other night and was totally fine)

Coffee, regular or decaf

Spicy foods

Chocolate

Ice cream

Black tea

Alcohol, beer, wine, liqueur

Fruit juice

Carbonated water

Tap water

Turnips

Cabbage, cauliflower

Colas and all sodas

Oats (for some people)

 Avoid all artificial sweeteners, sugar, preservatives, refined and bleached foods (like white flour)

Avoid smoking if possible as it can exacerbate the symptoms. (I quit smoking 3 weeks before I got sick so I’ve been quit for 4 months.)

Avoid all possible food allergens.

So basically all the good stuff, I can’t have. :o( I refuse to give up diet ginger ale though because it DOES settle my stomach and keeps me from barfing some of the time. Works better than Gravol, that’s for sure.

If anyone has any recipes that involve the stuff I *CAN* have or even just food suggestions along the lines of the “good” list, please, let me know!

The last few days have been…torturous. My gallbladder has been acting up which has made me extremely barfalicious. The list of things I can keep down is significantly smaller than the list of things I can’t and I am really sick of barfing my guts up constantly. My stomach muscles hurt from throwing up.

Yesterday we went to my mom’s art show, which was my longest voyage yet and we got poutine on the way there. I only took a few bites of mine because we got it from Galaxy Diner and I’d forgotten that I don’t like their gravy and I’d also forgotten that I don’t like cheese anymore. My vanilla Coke was delicious though!

Anyway, on the way to the art show, I had to get Blake to pull over to the side of the road so I could throw up. Then when I was finished (I got barf on my shoe :o(), I got him to stop off at the gas station to get me a bottle of water and some chapstick because I didn’t bring any because originally I had full makeup on, including lipstick, so all I’d brought was lipstick. Oh and I got him to buy Kleenex. I used the kleenex to wipe off all of my makeup because honestly you guys, I’m sick. I’m really really sick. And I look sick. And when you put makeup on a person who looks sick, I think they just end up looking garish and I got paranoid that’s how I looked after I barfed, so I used the kleenex and water to get all my makeup off and rinse my mouth and I put chapstick on and we were on the road again.

My mom was pretty happy to see me when we got there and not to be a plug whore but my mom and the other artists involved in the show are really really talented and Xmas is right around the corner. It’s a sunny day, you should be outside doing stuff! So that’s what I suggest, go to my mom’s art show, have a coffee and some country harvest soup and look at all the things they have for sale. You’ll thank me.

So I sat with my mom and her friends for a few hours and one of her friends, Jamie, has the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen so that was pretty entertaining and I took my walker around with my mom to see everything they had for sale, then I hung out some more while drinking ginger ale which my mom’s friend Lisa gave me because she’s like, psychic or something. Then it was time to go.

I had a little bit of a break down when it was time to go because I needed both my mom and Blake to help me down the stairs and nothing much makes you feel more like an invalid than that. :o/

But then we said goodbye and got me in the car and off we went.

The ride home was pretty uneventful except for the fact that about 15 or 20 minutes from home I felt sick but I held it in and when we got home, Blake and I quickly got me out of my “civilian clothes” and back into my hospital gown (we stole two from the hospital, shhhhh don’t tell) and no sooner did I sit down on my living room bed and got the sheet over me and the pillow on my lap ready for my computer did I feel sick again. I keep a bowl on the bed for this express reason so I grabbed it and immediately started barfing my guts up. I don’t even know what came up this time. Can you barf up gallstones? Because what came up was basically ginger ale, bile and a whole bunch of weird stuff that looked like over-cooked hamburger (and I didn’t eat hamburger, over-cooked or otherwise).

Blake did some Googling this morning after I barfed up a pancake and basically I should be on the BRATY diet which really sucks because I don’t like half of what’s on it. The BRATY diet is: bananas (ew), rice (double ew), applesauce (meh), toast (blah) and yogurt (I can only stomach ONE brand of yogurt, which Blake is in Barrie getting right now, along with diet ginger ale if such a thing exists). I think I’m going to attempt spaghatta nadle for dinner with full knowledge that I’ll probably barf it up but with high hopes that I won’t. (I barfed it up last time, but that’s not to say I’ll barf it up every time.) About an hour ago I had Sunny’s Famous Barf-Proof Soup which I’m assuming is going to become a staple if I want to get healthy enough to have my surgery. Here’s the recipe:

Sunny’s Famous Barf-Proof Soup

You will need:
- one small onion
- either cubed, frozen carrots or baby carrots cut up (about a handful)
- half of a chicken breast
- olive oil
- Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup

Here’s what you do:

- Get a pot. Put as much water in the pot as the Lipton soup recipe calls for but DON’T PUT THE LIPTON SOUP IN YET OR SPACE YETIS WILL COME DOWN FROM PLANET ZENON AND EAT YOUR BRAIN!
- Dice your small onion and put it in the water.
- Dice your carrots and put them in the water. (Or put your frozen carrots in, whatever.)
- Cut your chicken breast into small pieces and fry them in the olive oil. When they’re done, add them to the water.
- NOW ADD THE LIPTON SOUP MIX TO THE WATER AND PREPARE IT AS INSTRUCTED ON THE PACKAGE, BUT STIR IT A LITTLE MORE OFTEN THAN YOU WOULD OTHERWISE.

When it’s done, put it in a bowl, add crackers if that’s your thing and enjoy.

If you e-mail me to say that you barfed this up, I will simply put my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and shout “lalalalalalalalala!” until Blake puts your e-mail in the garbage because it is IMPOSSIBLE to barf anything this bland up. The beauty of it though is that it gives you NUTRIENTS *and* replaces the salt you lose when you barf other things up. So yeah, there ya have it.

Okay back to me now. Blake’s in Barrie getting Madison new bras and jeans and me yogurt and diet ginger ale. I hope he hurries up because my stomach hurts and I would really like one of those ginger ales but for now I’ll settle for a 100 calorie “baby Coke” because that’s what we have. I know it’s the ginger that makes you not barfy, but Coke helps too because Coke is love. I hate that Coke Zero tastes like gross chemicals to me now because regular Coke is so bad for your teeth. :o/ I guess the acid in Coke Zero is bad for your teeth too, but according to my dentist it’s nowhere near as bad as the sugar in Coke. Whatever…barfing ain’t that great for my teeth either.

Right now my guts are in pain from barfing and this is apparently what’s called a “gallbladder attack” and it fucking sucks. On October 4th I see the surgeon and she’ll tell me when I can have my surgery to get rid of that motherfucker. Her name is Dr. Hannerhan and she’s like, a super ninja surgeon badass out of hell. And she has nice glasses too. I feel very safe in her capable hands.

I forget if I’ve explained the surgery yet but basically what happened was, when they cut me open at St. Mike’s and made my cheese pizza wound, they created a hernia that made my guts spill out of where they’re supposed to be. That’s why I currently look like a pregnant guppy. Dr. Hannerhan is going to go in there with Ginsu knives and put everything back in its place, except for my gallbladder, which she’s going to put in a little metal bowl and dispose of (no, they won’t let me keep it, I asked – though they may let me keep the stones). Then I’m going to wake up in a world of fucking pain and they’re going to keep me in the hospital for a few days to keep an eye on me and regulate my pain meds. I’m on a LOT of pain meds right now and they barely cut the pain, which means I’ll be on more than this after surgery.  Since she’s a plastic surgeon, she’s also going to get rid of the excess skin I’ll have once my guts are put back together. She said that when she was done with me, I’d have a flat stomach so SCORE! Go on the “almost dying diet” and you’ll come out of it 40 lbs lighter and with a flat stomach!

So that’s been my last few days. Right now my hydromorph and Tylenol 3 are kicking in, which means it’s time for me to have a nap. Gooooodnight nurse!

This is what I really learned at metabolic clinic.
Sherry’s 277 calorie dessert!
(Or at least my version of it, she made her cake herself and I don’t know what she used for drizzle.)

Wanna know how to make it?
Click here!

(more…)

Why hello there blog friends. How are you today? Me, I’m not doing so well. I seem to have caught a stomach bug and I’ve been barfing and shitting my guts out since Monday. On the plus side, I’ve lost 3 lbs, so there’s that…on top of this illness, the new anti-psychotic my shrink has put me on for sleep has made me have a total lack of appetite and if I force myself to eat, I feel sick. I don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse. If I don’t eat, my metabolism will shit down and start storing everything I DO eat as fat, right? But if I eat, I feel sick, so I dunno.

The kids are off this week for March Break and so far things have been okay. They’re at the library right now getting 2011′s dog tags and won’t be back until around 5pm, they said, so I have the house to myself. Right now I’m working and also working on my angel. I’m currently waiting for her wings to dry. I don’t normally paint my angels’ wings but doing girls of colour is not like doing white girls and when I overpaint the parts I would normally cut off, it shows through the mulberry paper so I have to paint this one’s wings white and then I’ll go over them with a pearlized white so they shimmer. Right now I have so many ideas and so little time and it’s really frustrating the shit out of me.

I’ve been splitting my time between writing the novel I’m working on and this angel and so far things have been going okay with it but I just wish I had more time. Last weekend I finally finished working off the hours I had to take off for Blake’s grama’s funeral so now, theoretically, I get a much needed day off and I absolutely cannot wait. We get the Oprah channel now and all I want to do is watch bad, Oprah-endorsed shows and paint pretty girls. My nights after work have been dedicated to the novel, so I’ve only been working on the angel as I work or on the weekends.

The novel is going well. I don’t really want to write about it all that much for fear I’ll jinx myself and stop working on it but I have a good feeling about it. It’s going to be self-published of course, and I know there’s a stigma attached to that but I don’t want to deal with submitting to publishers and getting rejection letters. Why would I do that when I have my own built-in audience? Plus, I can always submit it to publishers AFTER I’ve self-published it, if I felt so inclined, so that’s the plan.

Right now I’m working on chapter 20, which is about halfway finished.

Metabolic clinic yesterday was the pharmaceuticals module and for the most part it was pretty boring because I look up every drug I take before I take it so there was nothing new for me to learn there. I’ve always been worried about the amount of Tylenol I take because of the endometriosis and the pharmacist told me that liver damage from acetaminophen isn’t cumulative, it doesn’t happen over time, it’s when someone takes 30 or 40 Tylenols at once when liver damage occurs. You’re only supposed to take Tylenol 1′s every 4-6 hours (2), but lately the pain’s been bad enough that I’ve been taking them every 2 hours and sometimes even every hour, so it’s good to know that in doing this, I’m not causing myself permanent liver damage. I mean, it’s not GOOD what I’m doing, of course, but I’m not going to wake up one day and keel over from liver damage. Another thing I was/am worried about is the fact that often after I eat I get bad stomach pains, which could be a stomach bleed from taking so much Naproxen. Blake has to take a day off every time I go to the doctor’s though, which is why I haven’t had it checked out yet. And honestly, without the Naproxen I don’t know how well I’d cope with life so I’m reluctant to tell, the doctor about it at all. I’m probably being stupid. If it gets worse I’ll go to a doctor.

It’s going to be spring soon and I have it on good authority that my seeds should be ordered soon. This year we’re planting carrots, green onions, peas, big tomatoes, regular cherry tomatoes like the ones we grew last year, golden cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (upside down!). For the front garden, which I’ve decided to do this year because Blake thinks a big garden like mine will help sell this house better than a lawn, it’s just going to be several varieties of cosmos and Bachelor’s Buttons, as usual. Nothing fancy. Well, some of the Cosmos are fancy, like these ones, but really I’m only planting the two types of flower. Sunflower Alley is going to be pretty straight forward too with just your standard big sunflowers. Past years I’ve planted all kinds of different varieties of sunflowers but only the big ones seem to come up, so fuck it, that’s all I’m planting this year, especially since, ideally, we won’t be living here to even see them bloom.

Tomorrow is ST. Patrick’s Day (my 6 month anniversary of having this job!) and I’ll be making Jade’s Swiss Potato Soup with fresh biscuits for dinner, pending Blake brings me home a big pot to make it in because I accidentally ruined my old one by trying to put those dried “pulses” (beans, peas etc.) in a stew and they all stuck to the bottom and burned so bad there was no saving it. Here’s Jade’s potato soup recipe, it’s pretty simple and tastes wonderful!

- 2 tbsp butter
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 2 cups diced raw potato
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 chicken bouillon cubes
- 3 cups milk
- 2 tbsp flour

Melt butter. Saute onions. Add potatoes. water, salt, bouillon cubes. Cover & simmer 10 minutes. Combine milk and flour. Stir into potato mixture. Cook over medium heat. Stir constantly until thickened and boiling.

And voila! Homemade potato soup! I’m going to add chives to it and possibly I’m going to put in leeks instead of onions if Blake can find any. Also I’m using chicken broth instead of cubes and last year I think I just used a whole tetra box of chicken broth and skipped the boiling water.  Anyway, it’s good stuff and if you make it, let me know! Last year we featured it on Buttercup and I know a lot of you made and liked it, so I’m hoping this year you will as well!

Tomorrow is Day 1 of no more smoking. I just opened a fresh pack right now and when I go to bed tonight, the rest of it will be destroyed. I started smoking again on March 1st (my birthday) and it just time to give it up again, this time for always and forever. My throat is sore, I’ve developed a smoker’s cough and I’m getting headaches so it’s just not worth it anymore. So I’m just warning everyone in advance, if I’m bitch, that’s why, but after the 3 days it takes for the nicotine to leave my system, I should be okay again. Luckily this time I only developed the chemical addiction and not the mental habit, so it shouldn’t be as hard to quit as it was last time. Theoretically.

The dogs had their shots last week and the new vet said that they’re both overweight. Hoover definitely is, but I don’t see how she figures Lucky is. Either way, they’re both on diet dog food now so hopefully that’ll help. She also said that their teeth could use some rawhide, so we got them each a bone on Saturday, which they’ve both been enjoying (although Lucky threw up twice after we gave him his). Now that they’ve had their rabies vaccination for the year, they can get their municipal tags, which, as I mentioned, the kids are doing now. Hopefully Madison won’t lose my credit card this time!

Well, I’d better get back to my angel while work is slow. I hope everyone’s day is going well and I’ll probably post tomorrow.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Pixies these days because we’re going to see them in April. None of us (me, Blake, Alex, Ronny) have seen them before, so it should be a good time. Blake was supposed to see them a long time ago when they opened for U2 (how insulting!) but he decided to go see Mr. Bungle instead because he didn’t want to see the Pixies in a giant auditorium. That week? They broke up. So this is kind of a big deal for Blake. It’s their Doolittle tour so I’ve been mostly listening to songs from that.

I also got Blake the new Trail of Dead CD yesterday, which should be here by the weekend. Back to the Pixies for a sec though, we realized yesterday that the only Pixies CD we don’t have is Bossanova, and that sucks because that means I’ve never heard it. (Although I’m sure I’ve heard most of the songs from it anyway, with all the b-sides, live, compilation stuff we have, but that’s not the point.) So once I have money again, I’m going to do what I can to obtain that so our collection is complete.

Yesterday was metabolic clinic. According to their scale, I lost 2 lbs but according to their measurements, I gained back 2 of the 3 inches I’d lost last week on my waist. So be it. I weighed myself on the Wii Fit this morning and it also said I’d lost 2.2 lbs, so yay!

For some idiotic reason, I decided to break in the boots Charlie got me for Xmas, which are a lot like these, except yellowy brown and with a heel. I wore them with my brown Free People dress that I bought to wear for The Square Foot Show and Blake said I was bonerific. I don’t really go anywhere, normally, because of the whole “leaving the house” thing, so I’ve been kinda dressing up for metabolic clinic because Charlie’s bought me all of these beautiful clothes for Xmas that I’ve never worn because I have no occasion to. So now I am. It sucks that I still only have one pair of jeans though, but that’s okay, I have a million other things to wear that I haven’t yet.

Creepy nurse boy was there this week, but OF COURSE he was because today was our second module with Stephanie, the dietitian who he’s so obviously crushing on it’s ridiculous. I welcome this though, because that means he’s not staring at me and that’s a very good thing.

Yesterday’s class was about reading food labels and it was all extremely basic stuff. One thing I did learn though, is the rule that “5% is a little, 15% is a lot”. So if you’re looking at a food item that has 20% of your daily intake of salt, you want to avoid it because that’s a lot, but if it only had 4% of your daily intake of salt, then you’re good to go. And the opposite is true too, if something only has 4% of your daily intake of fibre, you probably want to skip it, but if it has over 15%, you’re good. Pretty much everything else in the class I knew already, but I found that “rule” helpful.

After the clinic, I had a meeting with the pharmacist, whose name is Afra and she’s really super nice and not a moron. We came to an understanding right away that I’d Wikipedia’d every drug I’m on before I take it and that I know about them all for the most part (I knew one of them was messing up my period, but I didn’t know which one) so we kinda skipped that part of the talk and her only real recommendation was she wants me taking 500 units of calcium every day along with 400-800 units of vitamin D because I guess you need the latter to make the former work. She never said for sure, but I’m assuming this is due to bone density loss which starts in your 30′s. She did say it was because of my age, which made me feel elderly. :o/ So on the weekend, we’ll be getting more pills for me to take. Yay.

After the clinic, we had half an hour to do some groceries at the “good” grocery store in the town where the clinic is. I love this grocery store, it’s big, beautiful and it has so much variety, especially compared to the grocery store in our town (THE grocery store – there’s only one) that’s only about 4 times the size of my house. The grocery store we went to yesterday actually has a BUTCHER on the premises and their meat department is just beautiful. They also have salmon steaks, whereas our grocery store only has fillets SOMETIMES and I think those are gross (it’s a texture thing).

So for dinner, I made myself a salmon steak, fried in olive oil, salt and pepper, sauteed mini portabellas and a small Caesar salad. For lunch, right when we got home from the grocery store, I had sweet potato fries because they are low on the Glycemic Index and that’s apparently a good thing, although I’m not sure I remember why. For breakfast I only had 1 kwish, instead of 2, because I felt a little bit sick and was not at all in the mood for broccoli that early in the morning.

This is all riveting, I know. You’re all on the edge of your seats. I’m just trying to demonstrate some of the stuff I’ve been learning at the metabolic clinic.

OH! One thing we got at the good grocery store is a half a turkey breast and the thing is HUGE! My plan was to put olive oil at the bottom of a roasting pan, throw the turkey breast in the middle and cut up potatoes and carrots to go around it and roast the whole thing at 350 F until it looks done. Does that sound like a good plan? I don’t really cook, and I’ve never cooked that, so I’m not totally sure what I’m doing.

Last night the Leafs beat the Islanders 5-3 which made me very happy because I hate the Islanders and they were 5 goalies deep so if we didn’t beat them I would have been completely and utterly ashamed of my Leafs. BUT they won so yay! This is the first game I’ve been able to watch since “the incident”, which I’m still not over, but I will be eventually. At least I’m at the point now where I can watch a game without feeling like a complete failure as a human being so that’s a start. Maybe next year I’ll be able to actually go to a game. (Although to be perfectly honest, I think I prefer to watch games on TV because then I have an announcer telling me what’s going on which is good because I paint when I watch TV.)

Speaking of which, I got my Valentine girl’s skin shaded last night and this afternoon when work slows down a bit, I’ll go in and do her eyes and then her black outlining. There’s no way she’s going to be done for Valentine’s Day so I don’t think I’m going to put her on Etsy until next year…or maybe I’ll keep her…I don’t know yet, we’ll see how she turns out. I am getting better at shading black skin, though, so that’s a plus. It’s trickier than white skin because with white skin you can paint and paint and paint and it’s never really going to change colour but with black skin, if you do too many layers, your girl will end up super black and then you won’t be able to see her nose and painting her lips is going to be difficult. And it’s really easy to mess it up by doing too many layers in an effort to get her skintone even. That’s what I’m learning to perfect right now and while I don’t have my technique down pat yet, I’m definitely better than I was a few months ago.

Anyway, I think that’s all I have to say and I have 10 minutes before work starts to eat this morning’s kwish. OH! Speaking of kwish! Y’know how I told you guys that last week I gave everyone at the metabolic clinic a copy of my modified lower fat kwish recipe? Well the one lady there, Sherry, (who is also super nice and not a moron) told me that her and her family made kwish on the weekend and they all loved it! My little kwishes are moving up in the world! Something I found out  the hard way though, is that if you use too much broccoli in them, you have to cook them longer and even then your kwish is going to end up soggy at the bottom. Also, when you’re using low fat cheese, you have to put ham on top of it or the cheese like, crisps but not in a good way. In a plasticy way.

Anyway, I thought it was awesome that someone else actually tried them and loved them.

Okay, time to work.

PS. I had a drink last night and was asleep by 10:45pm. Woke up this morning before all 3 of my alarms, at 7am, because Lucky was barking to be let out and as per usual, the children were ignoring him. But whatever, I was up and couldn’t sleep anymore, so hopefully tonight I’ll be tired enough that I won’t need a drink to fall asleep.

~*THUMBS UP*~

So last night was “spa night” for Blake and I and here I go again, raving about Lush products – deal with it.

The first thing we did was wash our faces with Herbalism which I actually think I miiiiight like a little more than Dark Angels because it’s way less abrasive due to using crushed almonds as its exfoliant as opposed to DA’s black sugar.  Then we put on our Masks of Magnaminty which was well, clay-y and very minty. I’m actually glad that I got the smaller container (when I meant to buy the bigger one) because a little goes a long way and I’m not sure we’d use the bigger container before its expiry date. So we left the MoM on for about 15 minutes, while we watched Dinner for Schmucks (which I liked) and then we took hot washcloths and washed it off. Immediately I began running around the house and making the children feel how soft my face was because it was AMAZING. Today it’s still super soft too, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The next thing we used were Tea Tree Toner tabs in bowls of boiling water. What you do with these is, you boil water in the kettle and have 2 bowls and 2 towels (well 1 if it’s just you) ready to go. When the water boils, you pour your bowl (medium sized) about half-way full and then you plop in the toner tab and quickly put your face over the bowl with a towel over your head, creating a facial sauna. Then you sit there like that for 10 minutes while the steam opens your pores and the toner tab’s tea tree oil does its work unclogging them.

After that we moisturized with Vanishing Cream and today we’re still marveling at how soft our faces are. Like, baby’s butt soft.

Did the toner tabs work though? Honestly, I don’t know. At $1.95 a piece, I kinda think they’re a gyp because I give the steam more credit than the tabs and I still have as many blackheads as I did before we did it. I think you could skip the tabs, just do the steam, and then finish off with Tea Tree Water and it would do a better job.

We still have 3 more toner tabs to use, and we’ll use them, but I think they’re kind of unnecessary if you have Tea Tree Water, which I really do think would work better. Steam is good, it opens up your pores, but maybe that would be a better “step 2″, before the mask, than a step 4. Or maybe it IS better as a step 4 and then use the Tea Tree Water while your pores are open. I DON’T KNOW.  But I did love the Mask of Magnaminty and plan on using it regularly, like once a week, because I am still in absolute awe as to how soft my skin is and how bright it looks. Five stars, 2 very enthusiastic thumbs up.

I did not paint Blake’s toenails last night because I ended up going to bed shortly after our facials, but it’s possible that I’ll do them tonight. Currently my own toenails are a hideous shade of mint greeny blue that I bought last weekend and I don’t like them, so I think I’m going to go with metallic turquoise with turquoise glitter.

See? Dreadful.

Tonight is Big Love and sour cream & onion chips. The dietitian said that I should give myself one or two days where I’m allowed to have one thing that’s kinda junky and that I should compensate for that by consuming less calories during the day so I don’t go over. (Although she still never told me how many calories I should consume, but according to Raya, it’s between 1400-1800-ish. I average about 1600.) Anyway, by giving yourself that one day (or two if you can compensate with the rest of your caloric intake during the day), you shouldn’t feel as deprived as you would if you cut yourself off from the good stuff altogether. THEREFORE, my day is Sunday, where I eat a small bag of sour cream & onion Ruffles (400 calories) and watch Big Love. Sometimes I’ll also take a Thursday so I can eat chips while watching Grey’s Anatomy, but so far that’s only been one time because I’d rather eat good food during the day than junk food at night. Not because I want to lose weight, just because that’s my preference. But I take the Sunday to do the chips/Big Love combo so I don’t feel deprived and think “fuck the world” and buy a big bag of chips on Tuesday when I watch V. Y’know?

Makes sense to me.

Well, I suppose I should go eat the toast the dietitian is making me consume, for some reason, after I have my kwish every day. But know that I am doing so IN PROTEST!

KWISH IS FAMOUS!

Last night I wasn’t able to sleep for some unknown reason (like I ever know the reason) and then today I was in a lot of endo pain so I was on heavy painkillers and that made me sleepy as fuck and the whole thing resulted in me only working a half day today, which sucks, because I’m going to have to make it up on the weekend, which I already work anyway. And while we’re on that subject, working weekends for the past 3 weeks non-stop really has my nerves frayed but there’s nothing I can do about it because I need the flex time for the metabolic clinic. As soon as that sucker’s over (the end of March), I’m taking a weekend off.

So basically I slept a lot today, then I went to bed tonight around 9pm, but only slept an hour and now here I am, unable to sleep again. When I see my shrink on Friday, I am going to MAKE her rx me sleeping pills because this scenario happens far too often and now with me working weekends too, I don’t even have a day off to recharge so I’m going to burn out very quickly.

The metabolic clinic yesterday was the first of two modules done by the dietician and what I basically took away from it was how your plate is supposed to be set up. Half your plate is supposed to be vegetation, 1/4 is supposed to be a starch and 1/4 is supposed to be protein.

Actually, that class was actually kinda boring so let me fast forward to the exciting part: before each class, they weigh us, take our blood pressure and measure our waists and while I’m not going to tell you my stats, this week I lost 3 inches on my waist. It was student nurses who did it this time and I was convinced they didn’t measure properly so I had the head nurse measure me again after class and low & behold, I’d lost 3 inches. I haven’t lost any weight though, but apparently before the weight starts dropping, your body starts to rearrange your fat so that’s what’s going on.

So whatever, yay me.

Creepy nurse boy was there this time and…he was weirdly animated, unlike the first class (he wasn’t there last week). He high fived me at the end of class and kept giving me sideways glances and he’s either got a crush on me or I had something up my nose or something. The first class his staring freaked me out but now I’m just kinda humoured by the whole thing. And who knows, maybe I’m reading way more into things than what’s actually there. (I still theorize that he’s maybe seen me naked on the internets or can’t figure out where he’s seen me before and it’s online…*cough*)

Well, that’s all I really have to report. I should get back into bed and hopefully get some sleep because morning comes early and I cannot have another day like today, tomorrow.

PS. The dietician liked my latest kwish recipe (ham instead of bacon, diet cheese instead of full fat cheese, broccoli instead of onions) and I madce copies, with caloric breakdown, for everyone in the class. It was very well received.