Journal

2021 - Week 29 Cooking Results

Hunh, looking back over time it appears I have had more feet problem then I thought. After a bit of waiting for pickup on Monday, I may have over used my right foot, causing a bit of inflammation. this was complicated by having to take Shannon to and from work, since her car was in the body shop to repair hail damage. As I was hobbling around, I watched my heart rate spike as I head upstairs, which tipped me over to actually make an appointment with my podiatrist. His only appointment was way up in Ankeny at 8:00 AM. A couple of x-rays and a quick consult later and I’m back at treating a “very inflamed” tendon and the actual bone spurs hiding around and behind it. The anti-inflamatory prescribed has me feeling mostly normal, where I can still feel where it is but, it’s no longer making me think about waiting longer to go up stairs to get more water or go to the bathroom, making it worth the pain or not. Back on the path to healing, I suppose. We did vaguely talk about surgical interventions, and perhaps the next go round this may be the thing to do.

This week, driving was a thing I reminded myself I actually liked. I enjoyed the trips to and from my wife’s work to drop her off. The nice cruise up to and back from Ankeny. Listening to music, windows down, a good mild but humid breeze (at least in the morning). The vast majority of my trips have been regular errands. Which, even if you vary the pathway, can be kind of a boring drive. The, while not new, but not recently driven pathways just felt nice to drive. Even with that in mind, I am still enjoying working from home. I have started to build a semi-separation, even though it is on this same desk, of work space at home.

Other then the call with the Allstate rep (lots of mis-hearing), the whole process went pretty smooth, dropped the car off on Monday, got it back Saturday, and looks like they got all the hail damage repaired, including the ones that made actual scratches. We paid our co-pay to the body shop, and I guess we’ll see how they hold up. It’ll be nice to be able to return to my normal morning routine.

Brats

Pulled out a set that had been partially used, cooked them up. I had mine with some beet kraut, which was pretty good. Later int he week I had smoked pickled beets on a sandwich from the Cheese Bar, and that was really good.

Pasta

Fridge and pantry cleaner pasta. Had a bit of Italian sausage leftover from a previous recipe, and some onions and pasta that I picked up along the way. With the herbs and spices that I had around, we came out with and ok pasta. Certainly not my best, but not to bad.

Bangers and Fingerling Potatoes

I had trouble finding bangers in the random collection of meats in the upstairs freezer bin, so I pulled out some blue cheese and bacon brats, and on discussions we had brats again (it was warming up outside), this time, since I don’t recall having them before, I had them with a simple swipe of mustard. I do need to figure out something to do with the potatoes though.

North African Tuna and Rice Salad

I didn’t have preserved lemons. I forgot to buy cilantro. My wife is not a fan of olives. Did I make it? I guess sort of? I did add more harissa. It was pretty good. Nice cold meal, with fine tuna. I had some leftovers so I added a bit of hot sauce and it was even better.

Hot sauce burgers, vaguely based on this

Delayed!

2019 - Week 44 Cooking

While I took two days off this past week, it still has been quite stressful. After a PTO sale last week, I was able to pay off the last part of my medical stuff, and as I have met my out of pocket max for the year, there should be no surprises from my side anymore. Other then paying for it, things are going fine, I think. My next round of doctor appointments start soon to follow up on how things are going after the stents and drug changes. Beyond that we had quite the range of estimates for Máni getting his dentistry, I was quite worried since the money we had left was, in theory could cover most of it, but would completely strip the not full emergency fund. Luckily it was on the low end, and the procedure went well. 3 removed teeth later (and still on drugs) Máni seems to be doing a whole let better. So far it’s only canned soft food on the diet, but he does seem a bit more cheery and snugly.

So the other thing. A few weeks ago, I was renting a rug doctor, and figured without the cloth shelf thing, it should be able to stand upright. I was very gentle as I tested the rear hatchback, but apparently with the minimum amount of pressure, the large hatch back window glass shattered. I certainly felt stupid at the time, but ended up driving home with a fully open window and got everything mostly cleaned up. I had trunk tray in the back which certainly helped get the glass in the garbage (pick up tray, treat as funnel, into the bin). After calling a bunch of glass places on a early Saturday afternoon, I got a hold of one. I expected a lot of call backs on Monday, which I did not get. The one I worked with, said he’d get me a used glass from out of state, which was fine, but it would take a bit. It becomes very apparent how convent having two cars is, when you are really just limited to one. It made various appointment taking challenging and waiting sometimes a must (as times when things are done are often unpredictable). Eventually, after 17 days of waiting, I contacted a friend of mine’s brother in law at Sun Auto Glass (Ankeny). He provided a quote, and the next day (18) after asking for an update from the original vendor (still waiting for it to get from Kansas City to here?), I cancelled and told Sun to move forward. The next day, it was installed. After a bit of discussion, Shannon convinced me that it is what insurance is for, so I submitted the bill for reimbursement.

The positive thing here is that I didn’t dwell on it. I reacted in a fashion that was appropriate (upset, self blame), but didn’t drag that out into the following days, weeks or months. This would be my brains normal course of action, where it generally drags down my mood for the next quarter or two or three.

Remaining items we have are paying off my machine that I bought (since my bone spurs are preventing my walking, and I need cardio activity in my life), and an engine light causing problem with my car (I have a sensor, it’s not problematic problematic, just not exactly good). Then we should be back to normal expenses. It has been an expensive year.

2019 - Week 43 Cooking

Yesterday I took Freyja and Mani in for blood tests (a check on our upcoming expenses list). Freyja to see how she’s doing in her treatment of her hyperthyroidism, and Mani to make sure he’s good to have his dentistry later this week (tooth removal and general cleaning). I also paid off the last of my surgery bill (another check). Much to my delight, the insurance payment went through for all the doctor appointments and tests before the surgery (over $2k outstanding). So now I’m cleared of all the medical debt (only took a bit of wrangling and a bit of patience). We have the dentistry for Mani remaining, my exercise machine (actual bone spurs kind of not conducive to walking), and a couple of outstanding issues with my car (including my own dumbassery, and something that just needs to be fixed, but is not a dreadful problem). My car is to the point where the repair and challenges are to be balanced with the need to replace it. Maybe i should just look for something newer, but not new, to get started. Not now, but start looking in general. Anyways, more expensive year then expected, by quite a bit, but it looks like we’ll get through it all right (thanks to selling of banked PTO). It certainly has been stressful, but therapy and work helps me keep going pretty well (Been working from home for the last week (except Tuesday, when I went in to get a flu shot and went to therapy). Looks like it’ll continue this week (waiting for the part to fix the dumbassery problem I caused).

2019 - Week 41 Cooking

I graduated from cardiac rehab (effectively nurse supervised exercise) this past Friday, which effectively removes the restrictions I have had on me. Because of all this, I removed the delay of finding a solution to regular exercise. I do enjoy my bike thing, but unlike a walk where even if it is repetitive, it’s changing for my eyes (shadow changes as the sun rises, noticing something else in a tree). At the cardiac rehab, they’d normally play a health related video then Jeopardy, which between that and what I was listening to (music, podcasts or audio book) was enough to keep my brain distracted from 50 or so minutes of cardiac exercise. I’ll have to figure something to do at home, but I’m finding a new nice balance.

I still struggle with food choices. I’m eating less of things I shouldn’t, but break down from time to time (yesterday was a prime example of a problematic day). It’s not like I don’t make good choices, it’s that I seem to miss the not good ones to much.

2019 - Week 34 Cooking Results

I started cardiac rehab this week. I think it’s a pretty fancy name for nurse supervised / directed exercise. That being said, it is nice getting the movement in. We’ve been looking at something to effectively keep me off my feet (and thus spurs), but still allow me to get the cardio in. I does get a bit expensive though. I’ve got 5-7 more weeks to figure it out.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve added a number of drugs and quadrupled one, some of the top line numbers (blood pressure, for example) are well in control. I’ll have to wait for blood tests to see how the others do. My body seems to be coping well with all the changes so far. The only one I’m really struggling with is the general forbidding of my go to feet solver, naproxen.

I replace my battery in my close to 3 years old iPhone on Monday, and slowly wondered around the probably dying mall while the apple store was doing their thing. This was probably a mistake, as the next day, my feet were complaining quite a bit. It was troublesome After talking to my pcp, I’m convinced that the next step will probably be anti-inflammatory injections. I should make an appointment with my podiatrist. I meet with my cardiologist on Monday. I’m collecting doctors…

During the checkup I explained that this week there was only one pork thing on the list, while last week there were 4. I’m doing better?

I’m having trouble with judging the salt level. Knowing what I like and knowing what I should do is challenging. I want it to be flavorful, but not to much that it’ll be problematic. I always try to buy the low salt prepared ingredients, but I also have taste buds.

Reed’s Hollow announced it was closing at the end of the month. This is a loss for the Beaverdale neighborhood.

I paid a guy (tiny company) to mow my lawn, and he’ll do so for the next four weeks (hopefully by that time I will no longer be forbidden to do so). We were sitting in the basement and watched him whip back and forth on his riding mower on our tiny plot of land.

Sous Vide Fish

After taking a few weeks off from using my sous vide thing, I finally got back into it. So I wanted to see what the taste of the mirin that Cam brought me from Japan. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. I added a bit of mirin with the lightly salted tuna steaks. It added a bit of extra sweetness to the tuna and a nice savoriness on top of it. Served with a simple salad. and tada, a healthy meal.

Tinga de Pollo

So this may not be as healthy as the general target was set, but other then salt content, may have served the right purpose. I served it over rice and quinoa for a nice mildly spicy dish. I did cut out one of the peppers, because I thought it might be a little to spicy for Shannon, but after adding all the things, I was pretty sure it could’ve taken the extra pepper. That being said, it was pretty good. I added a bit of the adobo sauce to the rice while it was cooking, to add a bit more flavor to it and stirred in the leftover quinoa after it was finished.

Stir Fry Udon

Lots of vegetables, some pork and a combination of Cam brought mirin and soy sauce. This turned out real nice. I’ll have to make this again.

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

I was going to use this as a quick meal night, and it was. I also started the sous vide for the chicken for the salad. This wasn’t as garlicly as I thought it might be, but I blame myself. It was still pretty good. I had intended to use some of the chicken for pasta, but the 2 hour cook time removed that from the thought process.

Cold Chicken over Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette

So this is how to make a salad. We started off with a base of spinach, added some fried onions (bought for another purpose), some fresh cut super fresh cherry tomatoes from Wabi Sabi farm and some chicken sliced and put over it, then drizzled with the citrus vinaigrette. Good things. Still have a lot of leftover chicken to use.

A bit of thanks. A bit of memory. A bit of advice.

After being, poked, prodded, scanned, x-rayed, nucleartized, I would like to publicly thank Dr. Abdul Abdulbaki and all the people related to UnityPoint Clinic - Cardiology for their work on me. I also would like to thank friends, family and especially my wife, Shannon, for their support during this new experience.

The experience was a bit odd. I’ve been in for many scans of my GI tract, and they leave me feeling drugged, and my memory with holes and etc. This I was clearly awake and was able to watch on the screens as the probed through my arteries. I was able to converse with the good doctor and the nurses in the procedure (I may have made a few jokes). The experience was clearly not pleasant, but not really painful either (worst part was the last part when they were taking out the catheter, but the victories are good: out of the room, seeing Shannon for the first time after, peeing after, standing up to pee after, and putting on underpants (so my ass is no longer feeling the breeze).

I tried to keep an outward calmness, as I didn’t want to concern Shannon to much, as she was already dealing with a health concern due to her mother. I did debate leaving instructions under my keyboard (both for work and home) so Shannon would know what to do, just in case. I also may have broken down a bit chatting with my brother late at night, a couple of days before. I felt like I should tell my family, as it could have a lasting impact, but I didn’t particularly like the attention that it brought after. Understandable, I suppose, but still … I don’t know what I should’ve expected.

So, for those of you that don’t like seeing a doctor, Go, regularly, take their advice as best you can. If you know you have family history of something (colon cancer, heart disease, etc), make sure you make your doctor aware. If you don’t like your doctor, find a new one (I’ve done this once).

2019 - Week 25 Cooking

So two little health things. One I had a leg infection, from where? Who knows. I twasn’t painful, but was kind of gross. A round of antibiotics later, I have some lingering swelling, but am trying to keep my legs elevated, especially at night. The other one. I was cleaning out the stash of drugs I am no longer taking (which apparently has been piling up for more then a decade, to turn int for proper disposal (thanks Hy-Vee for taking 95% of them). One of the ones in there was a bottle of fluoxetine, which changes my timeline in acceptance and trying on my road to address my depression. This has kind of messed me up a little, as this was a couple of years before I started taking my current medication and because I don’t remember this at all. While me forgetting something is not particularly surprising, I thought I had most of the highlights of the journey in my head. I was in a bit of a funk over it, trying to remember if I could search my faulty memory over other things I may have forgotten. There are lots of steps forward and back in a journey like this, so it is best just to accept and keep progressing.

2019 - Week 4 Cooking

It has been a rough week for my brain. I have this long string of notes (763 words so far), a medication change (up) and I’m still…adjusting. Wil Wheaton made a post earlier this week, that is helpful not only to me this week, but to others. As a side note, the meh haiku, was part of my brain distraction technique (not all are, but a lot). I’m still concerned, but less so. I’m functional, if restricted. Thanks to my wife, boss and co-workers for their understanding, help and options.