Cheap Thrills More Crochet and More Digestive Issues

Digestive issues. Just part of getting old I guess. As mysteriously as my...whisper...diarrhea issues started up last year they have just as mysteriously gone and now I am back to the daily challenge of trying to get enough fiber and water in the hopes of everything that goes in comes back out again. I had just gotten used to not straying too far from a bathroom and actually liking the part about losing weight because the fats in my foods were not getting digested when okay, enough of that, now you are not going to be able to go at all! So...metamucil is once again my friend and how many times a day can you drink that stuff anyway? I keep a bottle of magnesium citrate saline solution on hand for emergencies but be careful with that stuff and definitely don't drink too much of it! It's cheap though and doesn't taste too bad nor does it give you cramps like some laxative pills can.

I try to get fiber in my foods but my appetite is just so bad these days, food does not sound good but I still get very hungry and have to eat something, anything! Unfortunately my taste for sweet stuff looks like it will never go away, but my taste for anything healthy like chicken or a salad is just non existent. And lets not even get into cooking anything, it's too hot to cook and I just plain old don't like doing it, especially when I just can't face eating the end result because it just doesn't look or sound good. I do mix up and drink a lot of Trutein protein shakes (which come in wonderful flavors like peanut butter marshmallow!) but as far as real food goes, ugh.

We did go out to lunch with Joe last week and went to a cafe down the road that we hadn't been to in years. They had expanded both the cafe and the menu since we were last there. I seem to remember it only being open for breakfast and lunch but it's now open for dinner too and they also have a full bar, not that either one of us can drink any liquor anymore. I opted for the hamburger patty diet plate and it was really good, the hamburger was really tasty and tender and the sliced tomatoes and fruit that came with it did whet my appetite and tasted really good. Keith had pork chops and eggs and Joe had bacon and eggs which came with home fried potatoes and a biscuit and gravy (yum!). The service was really good and the heavily tattooed waitress very cafe/truck stop friendly so I'm pretty sure that we will go back next time we are looking for a good meal. However I don't think I'll be trying the tongue sandwich that is on their menu any time soon.

We went to the movies last week to see Jason Bourne which was good, but I have an incredibly hard time sitting through a movie in a movie theatre these days. I get very uncomfortable and always have to go to the bathroom halfway through and am looking around for the remote control so that I can put the movie on pause. It's also really expensive to go to the movies, $10.00 each to get in and then Keith spent another $14.00 or so on a small popcorn, coke and a bottle of water.

Yesterday Keith created his 'poor man's water park' in the back yard by propping up the hose so that it would shower down on him. Millie does not like water spraying on her so she watched from the sidelines looking quite confused as to what Papa was doing.

He sat out there for about 30 minutes under the water and said it was very relaxing. Plus it cooled him off after we had worked in the front yard getting things cleaned up that morning.

More crochet. I've gotten a lot of patterns off of Etsy and am really enjoying trying them all out. I did this mandala coaster pattern yesterday.

I have so many different colors of the 'I Love This Cotton Yarn' brand from Hobby Lobby that I could probably make hundreds of these in all different color combinations. I went a little overboard last time I was at Hobby Lobby and now have boxes full of yarn!

Bear and Mimi and MRI scans

Well, here we go with Keith having been bumped off of the yard job board. There really are no other options as far as traveling to another district for work, all the other districts doing their own cuts, so he will have to go onto the furlough board which is basically an unemployment board where you sit and wait and hope that in a few months they start recalling people to go back to work. He thinks you get a small amount in railroad unemployment, smaller than state unemployment pays, which as anyone whose been on unemployment knows is not much. Something like $1000.00 a month. We are not sure if he loses his benefits while on the board so we may not have any insurance for a while. We have our annual doctor visits coming up and some dental visits which will all have to be put off until he hopefully gets back to work.

I did go back to the urgent care doctor on Monday to see if results had come back as far as intestinal parasites go, and they had and I don't have any parasites but still having issues so they sent me to get a scan to see what the heck is going on with my digestive system. We think it may be diverticulitis which I was diagnosed with back in '07 when I had my colonoscopy. I have never had any real problems with it before unless you count occasional constipation, certainly nothing like I've been going through for the past 6 weeks or so.

I went yesterday for the scan which was no big deal except for no food or water for 4 hours beforehand, which was actually more like 12  hours since there wasn't enough time between waking up and going for the scan to have any food or water. They do tell you to drink 16 oz of water before you come for the appointment and then they give you a bottle of water when you get there. The actual scan only takes about 15 minutes, the checking in and getting your IV in for the contrast dye took longer than the actual scan. I should find out the results from that in a few days and then go from there. If nothing is conclusive the next step would be to see a gastro doctor but if we don't have insurance then that will get put on hold for a while along with the other doctor and dentist stuff.

Other than digestive issues, the two blood draws I've had done had good results, nothing going on with my liver or anything and my blood pressure has been really good too. And no weird parasites living in my body.

Millie is almost done with her antibiotics, she was getting to where she wouldn't eat all of the pill pocket treats so last night we tried some turkey lunch meat with the meds sprinkled on it and yum yum yum, she liked that a lot! It's not crappy lunch meat from Walmart but the good meat from Trader Joe's that is actually turkey cut from the breast in recognizable slices and without all the preservatives you find in regular lunch meat. She seems to be feeling much better and back to her barking at noises and tearing up her toys.

Bear and Mimi were sleeping together on the bed the other day, Mimi being a very convenient pillow for Bear's head.