Sunday, May 6, 2012

Friday, May 4, 2012

Poor Luci, she has suffered so much since the flea med treatment. This morning she got a bath with a soothing shampoo which helped her a lot. She's still very clingy and needy and wants to be held 24/7. We didn't use a hair dryer on her - her poor body has had enough. Friend Denise thinks that with the med being placed between the shoulder blades the way it was (per instructions) that it was absorbed thru the skin to the spine, and I tend to agree. Little Maltese have no under coat, just the soft silky hair so the med just goes directly to the skin. I will NEVER apply that stuff on her again; she will go the vet for flea med.

SO, this was also my day at Dr. Wilson's - endocrinologist. I took my glucometer and was loaded for a good conversation with him because I am so tired of this high riding blood sugar. I got sick on March 20, and have not been able to get the glucose under control since. The lowest numbers have been almost 300. He looked at the trend chart and the basal insulin (levemir) was raised to 40 units twice per day - 40 in the morning, 40 in the evening. Meal units were raised to 26 units each meal. Hopefully this will help.

The good news is, I was down 8 lbs. from the last appointment, and down 11 lbs since September of 2011. Yippee, only 100 more lbs to lose!! I'm going to try to get to Weight Watcher's this week. It's the only program that has ever worked for me. I have to lose at least 10% of my body weight, preferably 20% before bypass surgery can be considered. That means I have to lose at least 22 lbs., preferably 44. We'll see. Of course Dr. Wilson and Dr. Fishbach are of the opinion that if I can lose 22 or 44 that I can lose the rest without gastric bypass or band. We'll see.

We stopped at Kroger on the way home from Wilson's office. I am wanting to walk a LOT more, so instead of using a scooter I got a buggy to push thru the store. I made it fine until the last part of the shopping at the deli counter. I had not eaten lunch because I had the appointment with Wilson, and I guess the walking helped drop the sugar even more...I about passed out at the deli counter so had to find a chair. But, we made it home, got the groceries put away, and had some great sausage dogs for dinner.

I have received several emails from recruiters and potential employers. But, I have no interest in moving to Madison, Wisconsin for a lead engineer job; and don't care to move to Maryland or New York either. If something comes through for Colorado, I will be hard pressed to say no. I have a couple of workshops to attend this week so I can get my resume into a functional version rather than the responsibility format it is currently in. Hoping this will lead to some positions that are not necessarily engineering or full time. I really want something like receptionist, data entry, general clerical, etc. The counselor at Texas Workforce Commission says with the degrees and experience I'm probably going to have companies wanting to hire me for full time rather than part time or contract work. And probably for software engineering positions. I don't want to do that, I don't think.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Scarborough Faire is a Rennaisance fair that is held in a large area south of Waxahachie every year from early April thru Memorial Day. I've lived here all of my life except for about 9 months, and I've never been. My friend Denise King and her family go all the time and really get into the spirit of it, dressing in costume, etc. Going to this fair just one time was on my bucket list. So, we planned the trip, charged up scooter batteries, and headed down there today. The cost to get in was $24.00 per person!!!! Outrageous. Oh, my gosh, difficult gravel walking paths and roads and pot holes. But we managed to get the scooters to handle it. We figured out that driving on the grass as much as possible is a lot easier on the scooters than trying to drive on the gravel pathways. So we headed through the fair grounds.

We stopped at a falcon show -- ok, but the one at Medieval Times is a lot bigger and better and more impressive. Must say, however, that the hawk doing the demonstration was a beautiful bird. Then we wondered on down the paths past several shops, some selling rennaisance-type stuff (head gear, clothing, leather goods, etc.). We did quite a bit of people watching. It was so dang hot! And here were all these people dressed in heavy clothing, boots, etc., and you just knew they were dying! And they were attempting to speak in the old language of "My lady" and My lord," which was a bit silly. But they were having a great time. There were the usual places selling drinks, sausage on a steak, pretzels, etc.

We went to a leather shop and yippee I found a beautiful tooled leather bracelet. It's royal blue and it's really fleur de lis, but looks a lot like crosses (to me). I love it. Ken got one, too. His is brown with black tooling. They were $10 each or 2 for $15. I could kick myself for not getting one for all my family! Would have made great Christmas gifts.

We wondered on, stopped at the glass shop, Ken got a shot glass for his collection for $4.00. I did NOT get a wine glass -- wasn't willing to pay $130 for one!! We did finally find a silver shop with puzzle rings. Ken wanted a replacement for the one he used to have (which he purchased years ago at Scarborough). His original one had broken. We stopped at the Crown Rose Restaurant for late lunch, had Shepherd's Pie - really good, had not had it in a very long time. We stopped at a dog show which was so boring we left. We managed to wonder thru the entire park, made our way back toward the entrance, stopped at the Don Juan Miguel show where we realized both of us were checking our phones instead of paying attention, so we headed to the Lemon Chill booth and bought one pint of the stuff. It had 39 grams of sugar so we bought only one, shared 1/2 of that, threw the rest of it away. That means we each had about 10 grams of sugar instead of 39.

We had pulled across the road from Lemon Chill into the shade, and as we were about to pull away Ken's scooter died. We had been on them on that rough terrain for over 3 hours so the batteries were gone. He did his usual freaking out and melt down. Security was called, a couple of guys came to help and then the lady on the golf cart came to help. Ken was throwing a ridiculous tantrum, would not do anything that made sense (get on the cart, the guys will push the scooter to first aid, we will plug it in to charge). Finally got him to do what was needed, we made it to first aid, the staff were very helpful, Ken continued to make an ass of himself and to embarrass me. i told him the same thing I told him last weekend - come Monday you tell your psychiatrist that the meds are not working, and you cannot live here at my house any more - you have to either enter an institution or find somewhere else to live. I can't do this and will not do it any more.

While we sat at first aid waiting for the scooters to charge we found out about the people in hot costumes -- we saw so many people coming into first aid due to heat exhaustion, a lot of them in those ridiculous costumes. Thank God we don't have to wear those crazy kinds of clothing any more!! Every few seconds a call would come in, the safety folks would run jump on a golf cart to go pick up somebody. These were announced as DFO's...someone "Done Fell Out."

The batteries finally charged enough that we hooked up the scooters and made it to the car, loaded and headed home. We stopped at Whataburger for food to go, made it home, ate, gave it up for the night. I had a good time, it's not really my cup of tea - I wanted to go, but have now done that, would not spend that kind of money again to get into the fair. Wish we could find a place that sells the leather bracelets somewhere else. It was a very expensive day - for the price we could have gone on a short trip, spent the evening in a nice cool motel/hotel room, had a nice dinner, relaxed, etc.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Piddled this morning, did not make it to church -- we won't go until after Mother's Day. Going during this season hurts too much because the entire world is focused on Mother's Day. Since my children have decided I'm not worthy to be their mother, I try to stay away from the painful reminders.

This afternoon I went to a Lockheed Blanketeer Bee at friend Susan Taylor's home. It was fun to see everybody, I really miss working; can't wait to find a job. Today we were not working on a community project so we each took our own individual projects. I took the afghan I'm finishing up for Katie Jo. I got the chain edging on it completed. Now all I have to do is tie it off, work in all the many yarn strings, run it through a washer/dryer cycle, and it will be ready to send to Katie. One project completed - check!!! (I drove Ken's Beetle today; it's fun to drive. Can't wait until 2014 when I can get another car. I'm hoping for a Mini Cooper.)

After getting home from the bee I decided to fix pan fried pork chops for dinner, with fresh cooked asparagus with vinegar mustard sauce (sweetened), oven fried new potatoes, and seasoned corn. Yummy. Been a while since I've cooked, but I did ok. I've got stew fixings for tomorrow -- Monday, Monday -- laundry/bathroom cleaning/house cleaning day.

Luci has been a brat since being sick. She has learned "up up" because she wasn't feeling well, and now she does not want to be put down. She cries if she is put down, immediately dances around to be picked up, cries if she does not get what she wants. Most of the time this is because she either wants to go wherever Ken is going or wants me to pick her up while I'm doing something else. She is sticking like glue.

That's about it for today...life is boring in our world. Hopefully this coming week will be a good one. Hope it is for everybody.

Listen to this oldie but goodie: Mr. Don Williams
Lord I Hope This Day is Good