It's a birthday

 We interrupt our regularly scheduled bloggings for a little celebration. Today is my best bestie's birthday. And she's had a rough year with a lot of stuff going on in her little corner of the world. I actually put it in my google calendar this year, because I always know December but forget the actual date. 

Is it December 3? 5? 9? 12? when the hell is her birthday! 

So the alert went off on my phone at 6am. But magically, I knew before I went to bed that it was today and that made me smile. 

I want her to know how special she is. I don't think she knows how special she is. I don't think I could give her a gift that could reflect my love, adoration, and appreciation for her (I do have a little something to send her but keep forgetting to ship it! Note to self...). 

She's the kind of friend where you say you need something, it shows up on your front porch, delivered by the FedEx folks, the next day. She's constantly thoughtful and faithful to remembering things (much better than I am) and is a loving host when you come to visit. I'm wearing a pair of slippers she bought me one year that I came up to camp, because the forecast was for cold weather and camp is camp. So feet have to be protected. 

Somehow, she knows the perfect time to send a text or email, when the universe is beating down on my brain, I get a love note or an "Oh, hello" from her that brightens my day.  We can go a week without connecting but she's there. She's always there, and like the Temptations sang in "My Girl," I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. She is just that.

She tolerates my Guster obsession and was willing to join me for this show in Boston (photo from the meetup with GusFans before the show). While she isn't as into a lot of music as I am, she's a good go-along for the fun friend. Once, she told me after a Barenaked Ladies concert that she had more fun watching me watch them. 

It's that kind of acknowledgement of who I am that I love and appreciate. Doug would choose to not go to a show at all, which makes me sad, rather than come and watch me be deep in my joy. 

Through her job, I've learned so much about her field that when I see something relevant to it, I stop to talk to the person and I sound like I know what I'm talking about, thanks to her. 

I can turn to her with gripes and with happiness. Share my oys and joys as it were. 

There are few people on this earth I love this much. And she's in the top 5 hands down. And the four others are Linda, Doug, Jess, and Geoff. 

She is family, chosen family, and without her I'm often rudderless. 

Oh, and she always says "we need to get a good picture of us next time we see each other" but to be honest, this picture brings me so much joy. At a bar, in Fenway, with a shiny neon Baseball sign over our heads. How hilarious. It's perfect. It's us.

Happy Birthday Caroline. Wishing I could hang out with you right now, but soon. And soon and soon. I love you. 

Miss Her Already

I had thought about going to a breakfast joint down the road. Linda had to put in some work so I opted for sammitches for all. We left for the airport at 11:15 or so. Doug was working and I had taken the day, so we enjoyed some time without anyone else. 

It takes a lifetime to get to the airport. Probably my only regret about where we bought our house, but to be honest, the highway goes fast. The speed limit is 70 so of course everyone is doing 80+. We were there in no time, and I headed back west. 

I was sad driving away. Looking forward to the next togetherness.

The plan for the day was to go to the gym since I wasn't working and if I was already out in the world, why the hell not. The gym was good, just did the treadmill and put in a solid and fast half hour with actual jogging to things while watching a cooking show with food that I wanted to eat. Lin texted me right when I finished my treadmill time to say she landed. Perfect timing. 

It was 3pm, and I realized damn - I'm hungry. It had been a long time since brekkie sammitches. I was going to go to Target but realized I could just get everything I needed at Aldi so I went on the way home. 

Dinner was an important moment. Doug had made really good turkey stock and it was in the fridge. Not the freezer. I knew if that didn't get turned into soup, it was going to have to be turned into garbage. Usually, 7 days from Thanksgiving is when you pitch your leftovers, but I felt confident - our fridge keeps everything super cold to the point where things are sometimes frozen (like the carrots in the drawer). 

I had chopped up the turkey before we went to Richmond, froze it, and got everything out to make soup as soon as I got home. I thought I had a bag of mixed veggies in the freezer but it was mostly broccoli and watercress, more of an asian meal mix than a soup mix. So I used some noodles, mushrooms, green onions, and the rest of the parsley we had in the fridge that by a miracle was still good (see the super cold fridge fact above). 

Everything came together really nicely, and I'd gotten some ciabatta sandwich bread at Aldi to make into nice lil' planks of garlic bread. 

And that's how I spent my day off. I thought about finishing the bookshelf, but my umpfh was gone for the day. 

No word from John yet on if the's been moved to the nursing facility. I'll touch base with him tomorrow. No pic today. Too busy driving! 

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 30 min. treadmill 1.73 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:45am: 110
4pm: 140
10pm: 103

food & meds:
9am: phentermine+jardiance (forgot to take when I woke up)
10:30am: brekkie sammitch - egg, cheddar, sausage, english muffin
4pm: met+glip; atkins protein bar
6pm: 2 big bowls of turkey soup w/egg noodles, carrots, scallions, mushrooms, parsley, slice of toasted ciabatta bread; white wine
10pm: met+glip 

The waiting game begins

Doug woke up at 8:30 and knocked his glasses off the side table so the light had to come on. I said "I guess I'm up?" 

And it was a good thing. I wanted to hit the treadmill because we were going to be in the car for at least 3 hours. 

So I got us coffee, Doug got into the shower, and I was on the treadmill by 9:15. 

I had the gym to myself, which is always fun because your girl likes to sing out loud and punch at the air and look like an idiot while doing this. 

Anything to keep my attention span engaged. 

The playlist was perfect. I got to actually run to Frank Turner, Rage Against the Machine, and Smashing Pumpkins. 

A song came on that I would have skipped so I took that as my queue to head back upstairs and get ready. I promised myself 10 minutes and got 26 under my belt.

We assembled in the lobby at 10:30, checked out of the hotel, got the car, and headed to breakfast. I'm actually very proud of myself for knowing how to get around the city to get to things. We were at a rotary (Stevens Circle) and I pointed up the street and said "that's the way to John's apartment in the Fan." After all I did drive that road dozens of times in July back and forth from my hotel in town to his place over to VCU back to his place back to my hotel... it became muscle memory.

The Village Cafe is an old school style restaurant, beautiful wood booths (built when people were a lot skinnier than we are these days). Lin and I got mimosas, and they don't screw around. 

Fucking pint glasses of champagne with a splash of "color" just the way Linda likes it. We chatted and initially I wasn't going to tell my cousin Bill how things ended up the last time I was with John but I did. 

It felt good to tell him, since I thought he should know. To be honest I think was looking for approval or something, acknowledgement that ya know, kid, you did the best you could even at the end of your rope. 

And he gave that to me. My anger about how all that went in July, it felt good to be seen and understood.

Breakfast was great. Fellowship was great. Honestly out of all of this, I'm exceptionally thankful for the time we had with Bill, telling stories and remembering family shit. 

It was funny because yeah, this is a hot spot and brunch is brunch and timing can be a challenge. John texted us to "be prepared to stand in line for a long time" to get in the door. Yeah, that makes sense, and we know because we're grown adults who have experienced restaurants in the past in our lives. 

He likes to be the "expert" on things Richmond. Telling us this like we wouldn't have ever thought it. Like, somehow we'd think Richmond was not a cool and hip enough city to have a restaurant on a college campus with a wait.  

Doug doesn't wait on line for food. No restaurant is worth more than a 20 minute wait in his mind. So we were prepared to ditch and run. 

Bill said "there's always Bojangles." And I thought that was hilarious. Doug said he was going to put "Waffles near me" in Trip Advisor and see what came up. We had a plan B, C, and Z.

Doug dropped us off to find parking because that is honestly the hard part in Richmond. He had to go up the block a few buildings to score a spot. And then, literally, we walked right in, dozens of open spaces, great table... in fact it is where Doug and I sat last time we were there in like 2021. 

John had texted to say he had permission to get outside food, so he asked for fruit salad, Fruity Hawaiian Punch (of all things) and one package of quality hot cocoa mix. 

We got him a whole box of hot cocoa mix (nestle, for the record) a really nice pineapple/strawberry/kiwi fruit salad (he didn't want melons, so this one was a slam dunk). And a 6 pack of small red fruity red Hawaiian punch. I hope when they transfer him tomorrow, it all goes over to the new place with him.

When we got to the hospital there was a college friend already visiting. Linda and Billy went down to the room and Doug and I went to the waiting room. After a bit, they came out, and we went in. It was kind of funny because there were 3 of us, another person came in, and then ANOTHER person. So we'd been kind of following the rules by doing the only 2 visitors thing, and next thing we know five people are in the room with him. 

He was awake and lively. Very excited for visitors, the two college friends, a lady he used to work with at a restaurant, and Doug and me. We were watching the Ravens/Steelers game, and John has a great memory - he brought up Doug coming from Pittsburgh to tell his friends about us, and that Jess went to Pitt for a while. We talked about how there's a guy on the Steelers that Geoff went to high school with, and played JV football with for a year back in the day. And John said his name. He literally knew this fact already and I didn't think he knew it. 

The guy is a douche sometimes but he pays attention. He knows the details. He remembers things that most people forget. There's something to say about that in a family member. 

We finished up our visit, Bill came down to the room and we said goodbye to him. His flight is very late tonight out of Richmond and I'm honestly not sure when we'll see each other again. 

Team Mini Cooper (us) headed north and traffic was great until we got to ..... LORTON. It always falls to shit there. Luckily it wasn't long, and then getting over to the beltway/395 was shitty. Once we were on 270 it was smooth sailing. An interesting sunset, home and a very enthusiastic dog welcome. 

We ordered pizza, drank wine, watched football. Doug took a nap and woke up at 9:30 (oh the poor thing) Linda forced herself to stay up until 10. 

Tomorrow, I'll take her to the airport. Doug didn't take the day off, so I'm the responsible adult with a vacation day. 

Not sure if it will be a go out to brekkie first kind of thing or what. But. It'll be a drag getting rid of the sister. 

Digits below. We were lucky to get that one pic with Toffee. Ha.

digits

exercise: 10/12 hours, missed a couple hours due to being in the car. 26 min on the treadmill/1.5 miles; 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

10am: 170
5:15pm: 117
9:30pm: 170

food & meds:
9am: phentermine+jardiance
10:30am: breakfast sandwich on biscuit, homefries, mimosa, 
2pm:met+glip
6:30pm: buffalo chicken bites, piece of pizza crust, 4 oreo cookies. White wine
8:30pm: met+glip

Gotta Love A Parade

We left our hotel and walked towards the hospital. Only when we walked out, there was a parade. A great big Christmas parade. It took us a lot longer to get to the hotel than we planned but it was worth it to see all the shenanigans. 

Doug and I went into visit John first and he was out cold, and out of it. We ended up getting booted while they did some medical stuff for him, and we waited in the family waiting room. 

Doug opted to go for a walk, Linda and I were hungry, and Bill was going to the apartment to look for some stuff that John wanted him to grab. 

Linda and I went down to visit and he was awake, alert, aware. We had a good chat, and watched some football together. Bill came back from the apartment, and we had some more time together before John nodded off and we opted to head out. 

Bill went to his hotel and we went to ours. Doug was napping so Lin and I hit the bar in the lobby. It was hopping, a big huge office holiday party, lots of people everywhere. Very dressed up, very fancy, looking good.

A couple sat with us, they were passing by on their way home to Maryland. Next thing you know we're just laughing and telling stories. Linda can talk to a coat rack and make it laugh and have a good time. 

Eventually I needed some protein so I ordered us burgers from the bar rather than us schlep out and explore and find food. 

I needed to do steps, and Linda found more people to talk to (we entertained them by doing accents). and I came up to check in. Doug wasn't hungry, so I did steps up and down the hall instead of going to the gym. 

Initially the plan was for John to go to the nursing facility tomorrow, but that has been moved back to Monday. None of us will be with him for the move so I hope everything goes smoothly. 

We are meeting in the morning to go to breakfast and then back to John for a final visit before heading home. Bill's flight is about 10pm tomorrow, so he'll be here for the full day. Wishing him the best. 

Bedtime. Digits below. I took a bunch of pictures but am too tired to go through them. Here's the Grinch shooting fire into the air. You know, like the Grinch would.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  a few measurable walks but I won't write them out. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 115
n/apm: n/a
10pm: 129

food & meds:
11am: phentermine+jardiance
2pm: bowl of cream of broccoli soup and chicken bacon sammitch from Panera
4:30pm: met+glip
5:30pm: wine. wine wine wine 
7:30pm: cookies from Panera
8pm: met+glip. cheeseburger w/tomato, lettuce, a few fries, no roll

Well isn't that just something

We left our house just before noon and made great time to Richmond. We checked into the hotel and connected with my cousin Bill. He told us where to get to the hospital, what floor, etc and said to text him when we were at the Panera. 

We got together, had a chat in the hallway. It seems that Sunday is when he'll be transferred to a facility to hospice him. Bill flies home Sunday night. We can leave whenever to head back north. We'll play everything by ear. If he is still around next weekend.... I'll come down again

Bill took us up to John's room, they were more strict than previous nights and told us that only two of us could visit in the room at a time. Bill had been there all day so he was happy to go hang in the family room, with Doug. Linda and I went in to be with John. 

He was mostly asleep when we got there, but we held his hands and sat quietly until he started to stir. He was happy we were there, squeezed our hands in silence. We just sat there. Harry Potter was on TV. The one with the time traveling and the hour glass. It felt appropriate and funny. 

He started chatting and said "How the fuck .... did I perforate my bowel?" 

Absolutely the best question. 

With everything going on with his body, this? Of all things. This? This is the thing. Jesus. I recalled that he had texted me the weekend before Thanksgiving to say he was throwing up a lot, and I thought that was just a natural byproduct of everything he was going through but yeah. There it is. He's not got a stomach bug, or anything else, this is his body shutting down. He had called a friend to take him to the emergency room after a few days. I can't say I could have said "oh, I should run down there" or something, because honestly, throwing up is sometimes just part of things and life. But that's how they got him figured out. And got him to where he is today.

We chatted about a bunch of things, a lot of music like Phish and his favorite songs. I mentioned "If I could I would," and he said that's his favorite. He asked me if I had the Joy Box he gave me, and if I looked at the posters. I told him I did, but truthfully I hadn't - because I didn't want to take them out of their packaging but I may want to frame them and go for it. We talked about how Linda does not have any love for Jam Bands but is willing to try some Phish. I have an easy "starter kit" list of songs to introduce people to Phish that I love. 

He and Linda got to sharing some pictures and talking about when we were kids. John had some pictures on his phone that I would love to have, so tomorrow I'm going to text them to myself. 

After about an hour he politely kicked us out. He was wiped out, wanted some sleep, and we were happy to give him that. 

Billy and Doug were in the family waiting area, so we connected and walked from the hospital to the Capital Ale House for dinner. We swapped stories, Billy told us a couple doozies and Linda had a great one about our mom. 

Honestly had a napkin over my face at one point because I was laughing so hard. 

It was pretty great. 

After dinner we headed back to our hotel, Doug went up to the room. Linz and I hit the bar because we did not have any wine (note to self...) and the bartender was super sweet. We talked with him a lot and then a guy came and sat down. He is from Ireland, works for NATO, and we just talked and talked about our country, and how if we can prove we have grandparents from Ireland, Ireland wants to give us Irish passports very very much. 

Well, okay. Let's look into that. 

I crawled up to my room around 10, wiped out, ready for a deep sleep. 

No pictures today but we'll get some tomorrow. After a good night's sleep. 

Digits below. 

 

digits

exercise: 10/12 hours. missed 12 and 2 being in the car.  3 measurable walks . Hotel to hospital, 17 min/.82 mi. Hospital to Capital Ale, 19 min/.89 mi. Capital Ale to hotel, 12 min/.5 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:
9am: 180
xpm: no afternoon reading
10pm: 171

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
noon: atkins snack bar
2pm: some peanut m&ms, met+glip
6:30pm: some potatoes & sausage appetizer w/ cheese sauce; big huge steak salad w/bleu cheese; 2 beers
Hotel lobby, no exact times: 3 glasses of wine.
9pm:met+glip

61 day streak

Today we got our dishwasher hooked up. She ran on her maiden voyage and cleaned like a champ. She is beautiful. I may just cry a little. The handyman was awesome. He was here for almost two hours and we talked about screening in the porch in the spring. Oh my goodness, yes please. 

Funny thing about him, he told me he has 8 dogs. Two of them are brand new great dane puppies. I couldn't imagine. So no, Toffee was not annoying to him. He loved her. We had a great time. 

At one point when things were not going just right (the dishwasher flooded again, he thought the pump was broken but no - it was the positioning of the hose) he said to me "you're really easy going." It kind of made me laugh. I told him a long time ago I learned that nothing is worth freaking out over. There is always a solution, and we will get there. And we got there. I was satisfied.

"I've had people I worked for who would lose their minds over this," he said, "but I like how you're helpful and assisting me. You are right. We're giving it more than the old college try, and we'll get there."

I liked him. He'll be hired back for more things, I'm sure. 

Linda flew into Baltimore and we picked her up. Doug and I got a later start out the door than we intended but to be honest it was alright since she had to wait forever for her luggage. I was so happy he drove because I didn't sleep well last night, I don't see well in the dark, and some of the roads were difficult for me to see on the passenger's seat view. Happy to get to her, hug her, throw her in the car.

After the retrieval, we wanted to go downtown Ellicott City to Manor Hill Brewing because the beer is amazing and the food even more so, but we could not find a parking place anywhere. Nowhere. So we gave up and started to drive out of town. "Your loss, Ellicott City!" Doug yelled as we drove out of town.

We were willing to drive west for as far as we could until we saw the just right thing. For some reason, Doug started singing My Sharona when he saw a sign for a Schwarma restaurant.... "My my my my Sch-a-warma." That got stuck in all our heads. 

After a couple minutes driving west, we found the EC Diner, glowing like a chrome beacon on the side of the national pike. Hell yeah. Bang that U-ey Doug my may, and let's eat. 

It was Greek Night, and so I had the Lemon-Egg soup (so good) an open face gyro sandwich (too much rice, pitas were toasted too hard, but otherwise the meat and wee potatoes were delightful. And I got a dessert, which usually I'd eschew but. It was like baklava with a custard filling. Outstanding. I wish I remembered what it was called. It isn't on the menu on the website but I really enjoyed it.

Home, football, wine, toured the house with Linda so she could see it. I really wanted her to be my first house guest but it didn't work out. But she is here and I'm happy. 

We had time with Geoff which is fun. He was tired, and Doug started on the college courses thing with him. And I could tell Geoff didn't want to talk about it. I get it buddy. Let's talk in the morning. He needs to make a decision NOW so he doesn't miss another year of enrollment by missing the February deadline for his program. But we didn't need to talk about it tonight. 

At some point, I realized I only needed 1500 steps to 10k at about 11:15pm so I said do not break your streak, lady. Go do it. GO DO IT. It was cold out, very cold, but no wind. I can walk a ton in this weather. But you put a 5 mph breeze in my face and I'm out of here.

15 minutes later, done. Perfection. Playlist was the key. I even did the jogging thing (to "City Kids" by Karina Rykman, perfection).  I could have kept going but I wanted to hang out with the family. 

I feel like tomorrow and Sunday I'll have treadmill time at the hotel and I'm already looking forward to it.

Speaking of hotel... Tomorrow we head to Richmond. I spoke with my cousin Bill for a little while tonight after we got home. He's looking forward to spending time with us and he thought we were already in Richmond. Ope. Nope we are not.

He said John was asleep when he got to the hospital this afternoon, and that when he woke up he perked right up seeing his brother. He'll hopefully feel joy when he sees Linda, and well, maybe me too. And Doug, for sure. He likes Doug. They gave Billy a list of nursing homes to take a look at. One of John's friends is his medical proxy, so he's the decision maker and the two of them will hopefully be able to come up with a good decision for John's last place. Because that's truthfully what we're looking at.

Long day at work. But a lot of victories between getting that dishwasher all set and a successful run to the airport to retrieve Linz. 

More adventures tomorrow. No picture. Digits below.

digits

exercise: 10/12 hours. Missed 6 and 7 pm in the car.  10 min indoor walk between meetings. .53 mi. End of night quick walk, 15 min/.91 mi; 10k+ steps by bedtime (61 day streak. boom)

blood glucose:

7:45am: 148
4pm: 93
11:45pm: 171

food & meds:
7:45am: jardiance+phentermine
10am: 2 blueberry muffins (to get them out of the way before they went bad)
2pm: atkins protein shake; met+glip and 2nd glip on accident because it got stuck to my finger, it is tiny. oops)
7pm: greek dinner, a bunch of stuff too much rice and too much dessert. one glass of wine
10pm: Metformin (no glip since I took it on accident at 2pm) 
white wine

Hey Baby I'm Your Handyman

It was a very busy day. We're on deadline to finish a number of help documents, and I'm way behind. I worked late tonight to get 3 done. 

I can think of ways that AI could just do this. I started working on these documents at 4pm. Stopped without being fully finished at 10. 

I have to rewrite a number of articles because terminology has changed, screenshots are 4 years old, it is a lot. Also, some of the articles are too wordy, or not explainey enough. It's hard for me to not create fake content about my dog or Guster. They both slip in sometimes. 

This song is stuck in my head now. Doug let me know we should contact a handyman to finish off the diswasher. 

He said "I tried three times..." And I had to correct him. No. You tried five. He said no, three. 

I counted off. The first one you did while I was out walking the dog. I came back and you tried again. Then a third time. Then you changed the hose to the old hose just to see if it would work and it didn't, and then a fifth time, where you had the dishwasher laying down on her face. Five.

So trying a sixth time would be the definition of insanity. He checked to make sure we had the right part and we do. So. Let's call a ringer in. 

Also, I pointed to the giant pile of freshly washed towels I was folding. This is the result of five attempts at running the water into the washer. Five.

With his agreement and "blessing," as it were, I called a guy my realtor recommended. She gave me a handyman (this guy) and a fully licensed building contractor for when we're ready to do the bathroom. 

He's coming over between 8-8:30am tomorrow. He seems just as charming as the wildlife guy who came out a few weeks ago. 

Seems to be the style in these parts. 

Hopefully he can get us ironed out tomorrow, before we go to Richmond. I don't really mind doing the dishes. It is somewhat relaxing. But I did four sinks worth today (and I didn't finish tonight's dinner dishes, I worked instead) so I'll do those in the morning, or hey - I'll load up that dishwasher for her maiden voyage! 

Wish us luck.

Okay. Tired. Digits below what my kitchen looked like last night (the counters are cleaned as is the stove). She is pretty and she is going to be fun.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. solo walk, 22 min/1.26 mi; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:15am: 170
4:45pm: 135
10:45pm: 84

food & meds:
8:15am: jardiance+phentermine
11am: bowl of mac&cheese and hamburger
2pm: Met+glip. turkey on 647 bread w/mayo and dollop of cranberry sauce
6pm: steak and egg fried rice by Geoff (really good!) 
9pm: met+glip; pita chips & hummus
red wine

The Snow and The Dishwasher

Sometime after 4am the snow started. We got a trace amount, but schools were closed and the region is paralyzed. 

I woke up at 2:30 and went down to the guest bedroom. Put on the podcast as usual, eventually fell back asleep. I had a bad dream and woke up thinking the chair in the hallway was a person standing there looking at me, so that was kind of a jolt. I was up fully as a result at 7. 

Because we were planning on the delivery guys coming at some point with the dishwasher, I wanted to get the laundry washed and I put it on. Started the coffee. Stood and admired the snow. Waited for miss Toffee to come downstairs to get her big outside surprise. 

And she was surprised. It was adorable.

The snow changed to rain around 8. And she hates the rain so there was no going off the porch for her. Happy to stand and look. Eventually she did go out and did her thing. 

One can hold it only for so long. I mixed up some blueberry muffins because I was up so early. Just because. Sorry, today's blood sugar.

Work was busy, some good meetings and discussions. I didn't get some of the help documentation things I wanted to get done, but I did close some old tickets that I didn't know why they were still open. Followed up on a few of them to find out the people still needed some help. Glad I asked on some of those old cases to see where things were.

Our dishwasher was delivered, and somehow it is stainless steel. Doug had ordered white, because he didn't want to have a stainless steel dishwasher, white stove, and white fridge. The fridge & stove work wonderfully so there is no need to replace them. 

He asked me if I was mad. I said no - I actually preferred the stainless and we had a whole big discussion about ordering that the other day. 

I asked him if he was mad and he said yes because he thinks we got the wrong parts to go with the dishwasher. Or. We got the right parts to go with the one we thought we bought, but it is the wrong dishwasher. 

I asked if he was sure he ordered a white one and he checked the order. Yup. He did. 

Okay then. I'm not mad and he's not mad enough to call and get it picked up and taken away. So 1/3 of the kitchen appliances will be stainless and we wait to see how long we go with the others. And tomorrow he'll figure out the parts.

To be honest here, friends, I'd love the fridge to go to the basement for keeping food for storage. Disconnect the icemaker, use the freezer, she runs exceptionally cold - we can keep food in there for a good long time that we don't need upstairs immediately. I'd be down with that. 

He said we're not in the market for a fridge at the moment, so I'll wait. Happily. I'll wait. 

I made homemade meatballs and pasta & sauce for dinner. Oh and my blueberry muffins were great. 

Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 25 min walk with Toffee 1.4 miles; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 120
4:30pm: 141
11pm: 159

food & meds:
7:30am: jardiance+phentermine
11:30am: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j
1:15pm: met+glip; zero sugar yogurt+granola bar
4:30pm: blueberry muffin
7:30pm: meatballs, pasta & sauce; another blueberry muffin
8:30pm: met+glip
9pm: blueberry muffin
white wine

Trip to Richmond

My cousin John is not doing well. 

Y'all know I spent time with him in the summer for his radiation and all that. Good news is the radiation shrank his tumor on his hip. Bad news is the shrinking tumor broke his hip. He messaged me repeatedly over the weeks saying how much pain he was in and how the doctors/hospital were not helping him manage his pain. They were not taking him seriously. I felt bad but there was nothing I could do for him but encourage him to keep at them. 

They didn't realize until late September when he had his follow up scans that his hip was broken. Uh, oops?

Well yeah. Good job, assholes. Someone give this guy some pain killers for fuck's sake. 

When he and I spoke last, it was a couple weeks after we'd moved in here. I'd been incredibly busy and exhausted. He'd text me and I'd either not reply or send back "i'm sorry to hear that," or something else simple. 

One day I took a break and called him. He let me know about the broken hip, and how he had been yelling at them about how much pain he was in, and they said "that's normal." So he felt wildly vindictively JUSTIFIED in his brutal anger at them when he let them have it. This is and was not normal. The fuck did you think, people?

Anyway... he was going to see an orthopaedic oncologist. Doug said they'd probably do a hip replacement. And I said well fuck? Why didn't they do a hip replacement in the first fucking place when he got a fucking tumor on his fucking hip?

I don't understand medical shit sometimes. I don't understand.

He said he had to go, his friend was there with dinner. He'd call me back. Anyway. I didn't hear back from him. 

Last week, his brother messaged the cousin group to say John had a perforated bowel, was going in for emergency surgery, and if he survived the surgery was not going to continue cancer treatments. He'll enter into palliative care instead. But to be honest, he should maybe be transitioning to hospice. Maybe that is exactly what it is. But for right now he's in the ICU.

So. 

That said.

Huh. 

When we last saw each other in July, it didn't end well. If you want you can go back and read about our final afternoon together. 

If you don't want to go back and read, the short version is I ended up leaving in a state of fury about shit he said. I still don't want to talk about it. A few people know what went down. But he and I never cleared the air on it. I wanted an acknowledgement and apology from him. Everyone who knows him that I've shared this with said he never will acknowledge or apologize. 

I have a couple choices - just forget that he said incredibly horrible racist (and other things) and move on with my life. I could bring it up and press it to see if he'd realize that he said horrible things that were super horrible. 

Or I could just ignore it and let it go. What good does it do?

I talked about this extensively with my best girl at work, someone I value as a best best friend. My work wife. My soul mate. Who happens to be black. 

She asked in July "If he called you and needed you, would you go to help?"

In July, I told her I didn't know if I would or not. 

So it is almost December, nothing is really different aside from the fact he is most likely going to die very soon. His brother went to visit him a couple weeks ago and said he didn't think he'd make it to Christmas and well, that's probably the best prediction of the truth there could be. None of us banked on a perforated bowel being the thing that would probably hasten the situation. But. Here we are. 

Linda is flying in on Thursday. She, Doug, and I will head to Richmond Friday morning. His brother will already be there, I think he's going down on  Thursday.  We'll get back up here Sunday and get Linda to the airport to go home Monday. A little bit of a whirlwind tour. Not what I imagined for her first visit to the new house.

To be honest, Doug thinks we're going to be too late. And sometimes Doug's medical intuition is spot on. But we'll see. We'll see. And if nothing else, we can maybe just help pack up his stuff in his apartment? 

I have boxes. So many boxes. I save boxes when the vast majority of folks will pitch them or recycle them. But I've got 'em. I was going to start collapsing them into each other for storage. Still can.

So that's the muppet update there with that whole scene. More later on things. Not a great picture but this was the last time the 8 of us were together. At gammy's funeral. Back in the day. I'm top left, John is next to me. He's half that size now. He'd be quick to mention that. "Cancer is a hell of a weight loss program."

Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 10 min indoor walk between meetings/.46 mi. 20 minute outdoor freezing my ass off walk, 1.25 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:15am: 140
5pm: 100
11pm: 110

food & meds:
8:15am: jardiance+phentermine
10:45am: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j
2pm: met+glip
2:45pm: 2 pieces of left over quiche (sausage, red pepper, goat cheese)
6pm: some sort of chicken and rice concoction with sauteed mushrooms (a la Geoff). Red wine.
9pm: Met+glip (almost forgot to take).

Back to the Planet with You!

Last day of a holiday break for us. I wish I had a couple more days. But it was a very good break, and I did zero work after I shut my laptop on Wednesday. That's new for me.

We woke up to a light coating of snow, mostly on the cars but nothing really on the roads or sidewalks. I laughed thinking that this would close schools for tomorrow in our former county. Literally. 

We may get 3 inches of snow Tuesday. We're paying close attention to the prognostications. They are pretty much always wrong. Always. They get so excited in these parts for snow, that they do a big BOOM forecast that is an absolute BUST in the end. 

But now we live 2 hours out of DC, in the mountains, and the likelihood of there actually being actual snow is actually a reality actually. 

We'll see. 

Doug set to putting the second bookcase together and I stayed out of his way, waiting for him to call me in to help put the shelves in place. Instead he came out at 1 to watch football, and fell asleep. 

huh. Okay. 

It was too cold feeling out there with a wind and all to take Toffee for a walk, so in order to continue my 10k+ streak (I'm at like day 56 or something) I opted to go to the gym.

I hadn't been to the gym since June, maybe once I think... If you recall, I had broken my toes falling down the stairs at C's cabin, and my right foot couldn't really deal with real substantial walks. By August things were better, but then we were in packing mode. 

I transferred my membership to the gym here in town before we even moved, and just hadn't gone yet. We have such good opportunities for walking around here that I just have not thought on the gym.

Today was the "you really have no excuse, do you? Just go" moment. 

It is a much smaller gym than my last one, super nice staff, there wasn't any football on TV so that was slightly disappointing but they had Law & Order SVU with captions on, and the original Willy Wonka right next to it. Seems like a good spot, away from all the news stations. 

Put on a Phish and Friends playlist, most of the songs were on the faster side which was good. Nice Blues Traveler and My Morning Jacket tunes thrown in and a really good fast and kind of angry one from Rusted Root that I didn't recognize. 

I put in a solid half hour, jogged a bunch of it, and got to over a mile and a half. 

On the way home, I stopped at a little store in downtown that opened in October that I'd been meaning to go to. Jess and I tried to go there on Friday but it was 2 pm and they didn't open until 4 (uh. Black Friday? Foot Traffic? Maybe?)  It's kind of a hippie gift store and I had been wanting to check the vibe. It was super cute, I'll be back. Oh and it has a bar attached to it. Shut up and take my money! 

I got home and the book shelf wasn't finished, Geoff was making dinner. Toffee greeted me, and I noticed it had stopped being windy at least, and the thermometer in the car said it was 46, which felt like a lie. It felt much colder than that. 

She needed a walk so I put the harness on and we did the block. I usually do that walk in 10 min but we moved fast, so it was 8 min. Boom. Happy dog. 

Now to face this week. I have to give a presentation with a colleague tomorrow and have not finished my slides. Oops. I'll aim for up early and finishing. Best I can do. Not doing it at 11pm right now. That's stupid. 

Digits below my big head. Had to take a selfie for proof of life. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 30 min treadmill/1.62mi. 8 min quick paced Toffee walk/.4 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 117
4:3opm: 107
10:30pm: 179*
(pasta for dinner and a slice of pie will do that to ya).

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
9am: 2 entenmann's devils food chocolate covered donuts (wanted to get the box out of the way, naturally)
1pm: turkey sandwich w/mayo on 647 white bread; met+glip
5:30pm: large bowl of chicken and pasta fra diavlo (a la Geoff). White wine
7pm: slab of pumpkin pie
8:45pm: met+glip