Hurricane Sandy Jersey Shore YouTube VIdeos

If you're reading this at work you may want to press MUTE.

The following are from The Highlands, the town our grandparents had lived in from the early 1960's through the mid-1970's and the scene of Kevin Smith's movie Jersey Girl. Even after they died, my husband and I used to bring our son here each summer just to roam the beach and stop in Bahr's for dinner. 

As a kid, my brothers and I played in Veteran's Park,  especially when the grands were having a family cook-out and the adults were getting drunk and rowdy. We bought comics in Katz' after church right up the hill. My dad and I used to take fishing trips in the ocean on boats out of Bahr's. How scared I was walking up those stairs at Twin Lights and so proud of myself when I finally did it. I learned how to drive on the dirt road between Bay Avenue and the hill, behind the stores right off of Waterwitch Avenue. Remember, that was pre-1970! The city is so built up now compared to then. In the video below where a guy rides a bike or ATV through the streets, that "dirt road" now has the fire department and a load of homes on it and is fully paved.

And I remember when ANY hurricane was forecast my grandmother would pack 2 overnight bags and my grandfather would get out the sandbags to put around the basement windows and on the top steps blocking the doors on their way out to the shelter at the elementary school at the top of the hill. They usually only had to stay overnight, because all the land at the bottom of the hill - where all the stores and most of the housing was at that time - would ALWAYS flood, and the waters would usually recede by the next day. Luckily the basement was only a crawlspace and not storage, and the only time they suffered any real damage was the year the garage door warped. More than once after a hurricane they had a boat land in their yard (they were only 2 houses away from the bulkhead), and once found an overturned car.

These people weren't so lucky. More housing of cheaper quality means more damage when something like this hits. Sure, a lot of the old converted bungalows, like my grandparents owned, suffered some water damage, and I see many houses got damaged by boats whose owners didn't bother to take them out of the water before the storm, but they're generally intact. I wonder how many of the condemned houses are pre-1950 and how many are post-1970.

Here's that bike ride I mentioned:




This one is the view from the bridge between The Highlands and Sandy Hook:

And just another view of the town in the aftermath of the storm:

 

And who can forget Sea Bright, right over the bridge? This is the town The Weather Channel always sends someone to when a storm is predicted off the coast of NJ. This city, especially Ocean Avenue in the strip between the Highlands Bridge and Shrewsbury River Bridge, is always under water for a while after even mild storms. Across the street from these houses is the Atlantic Ocean, right up those stairs you see in the beginning of this video, and the Shrewsbury River is in their backyards. I used to have an aunt and uncle who lived right on this stretch, my grandfather's brother Pete. When he died, my aunt said she had enough of the water and moved back up to drier urban areas.

Many Terminal Cancer Patients Put False Hope in Chemo, Study Finds

Many Terminal Cancer Patients Put False Hope in Chemo, Study Finds

I wish my dad had known this when he was in his last year of life instead of him and my step-mom spending ALL their savings AND taking out a loan to pay for his experimental chemo (ran through all the routine chemo drugs) that gave him just a few extra months of life, all of them suffered in agony with bone-wracking pain and shortness of breath so severe he could no longer eat.

You Say You Want A Resolution . . .

Hi, boys and girls! It's that time of year again, the time when every adult (And many of you kiddies) make promises to yourself that you rarely keep. Most people resolve to lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier, better their relationships, and all that good stuff. Kids resolve to do better at school, listen to their parents, get a better score in their favorite video game.

I've even seen people resolve to make no resolutions. Three different comic strips this week used that old joke.

So, what will MY resolutions be for 2012? Let's see . . .

Stop weighing in daily. Why bother?

Allow myself to eat some feast meals without feeling guilty.

Ditto eating from mouth hunger (emotional eating) in times of stress. NOT doing so only adds more stress, which eventually leads to a binge.

Watch more videos and read more books.

NOT buy any weight-loss related videos or books. I *will* allow myself the pleasure of purchasing Dr. McDougall's new book when it's finally released this year - The Starch Solution.

Here's the first chapter for those who care.

The only other books I'll allow myself to buy (as opposed to get from the library) are the few cozy mystery series I'm working on and the rest of the Dresden Files books. I still have 3 to go to be caught up. 





And that's all I'm saying for now. 2011 has been a very crazy, messed-up year, and although I HOPE 2012 will be better, I'm not too optimistic. Fat-phobia is worse than ever, not just in my own life (doctor, extended family, strangers on the street) but in the world in general. The economy still sucks. My son, who graduated with an engineering Master's degree 2 1/2 years ago, still can't get hired to even pick up dog poop and still has about $30k in student loads to pay off, so every spare penny we have goes towards helping him out. And those spare pennies are getting harder to find as prices go up in every facet of life, from a bag of beans to rent on the apartment, while income decreases as companies cut back and tax and insurance rates rise. Everyone and every thing is getting older and in need of repair or replacment, from hormones to car radiators. Winter is coming here and snow won't be far behind. Spring is a long way away. I'm just glad we got the aunt into a nursing home (and her house sold) so she won't be left alone when the roads are closed and nobody can get to her house an hour away to cook, clean, and care for her and her shovel her sidewalks and that long driveway.

Okay, so one good thing to look forward to.

Late December Update

Latest lab work - chemistry, blood count, etc. - showed just about everything is perfect. No diabetes, or even the hint of it, no anemia, no liver problems due to meds. My Vitamin D is now *just* in the normal reference range at 31 (normal 30 - 100) so my dosage is increased again to 5000 mg 5 times a week instead of 3.

The past few months I haven't been sticking to any strict food plan, although I would say 90% of my meals are low fat, starch-based vegan. That other 10% includes the occasional fast-food burger and fries, pizza once or twice, even a Blimpie here and there. And yeah, all my lab work is fine! Because of that, I'm going to continue to eat this way and not feel so guilty about it.

Guilt. About eating foods the rest of the world eats without worrying about, like water-packed tuna and low-fat mozzarella cheese. I wrote about this over on the new Overcoming Overeating forums. You should take a look at the newly re-vamped OO website - lots of bells and whistles but the forums are the only thing new. But I love forums, so it's a big plus for me.

The elderly relative I've mentioned in the past is still sinking physically and mentally. She's only out of bed an hour or so a day, and even then she prefers to sleep rather than eat or participate in any activities. I was told she even sleeps through the children's choirs who have been streaming in on a fairly steady basis all month. Her bedsores aren't healing, she's still anemic and they can't find out why. She doesn't even wake up when we visit any more, just groans and tells us she's tired and is going to go back to sleep. The staff is at a loss as what to do next for her, and they even discontinued her physical therapy because she refuses to allow the therapist to even do range of motion exercises while in bed. All the appetite stimulants are doing are giving her a sweet tooth, and all she's eating are the pastries and donuts that are part of each breakfast, rarely anything else.

At least her house has been sold so there's enough money in her bank account to pay for her nursing care for a few more years.
 

So this is how we're entering Christmas week and the end of 2011. I hope 2012 is better. Right now we're all hoping it WILL bring the end of the world with it!

Another Boring Update

I'm sorry of my blog is beginning to look like it's just a collection of videos gathered from various web sites, but I really have nothing new to say.

Each day I debate over what food plan - if any - to follow, from Dr. Fuhrman's very restricted Eat to Live program to the very liberal and freeing  Overcoming Overeating's philosophy, and everything in-between. It doesn't make a difference on the scale. I've gained weight some days I followed Eat to Live and lost weight on days I ate everything not tied down.

I'm still getting in as much aerobic/cardio exercise as my sciatica allows, a minimum of a half hour a day. Out of the last 6 weeks I did not exercise only 4 days. Burn out? Possibly, but my doctors insist I exercise that much for heart health and their futile hopes I lose weight by doing more than they tell other patients to do.

A new injury to my every growing list is a tendinitis or ligament injury on my left hand from twisting it weirdly while carrying bags of groceries up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. It first happened a few weeks ago, and this weekend it happened again, and again with grocery bags. I feel guilty making my husband and son carry everything, but I guess I'll just have to sit back and let them do it all for a while.



Still not getting along with the elderly relative with early Alzheimer's disease. The last time we visited I walked out, telling my husband I'll meet him at the car, when every 2 minutes she would moan loudly begging Jesus for death, complaining she's so lonely, yet refusing to have people over, locking out the homemaker, and the few people who do visit her (us, mainly) she makes their lives a living hell. Yesterday again she refused to open the door to let the homemaker in (but still has to pay for the whole 3 hours), and before he even heard about it my husband was discussing with a co-worker that he's ready to just hand all her paperwork back to her, get our names off the bank accounts and power of attorney forms, and let her do what she wants, since she refuses to do anything that needs to be done or we suggest she have done.

And before I start getting nasty-grams about caring for the person-with-AD, let it be known that aside from her short term memory loss, this woman has been like this her entire life! Her own mother used to cringe when she heard she was coming for a visit and would sometimes leave the house rather than be home and let her in. Her sister (my m-i-l) would end every phone call in tears. Her own husband waited as long as possible to take his retirement (was forced to go, actually) then immediately got himself part time jobs so he would be out of the house when she was home because even he couldn't stand being with her for hours at a time. She has alienated every other family member and any local acquaintance she ever had. One woman, a bit younger than her but in bad shape medically, has complained that this aunt has the nerve to insist she do her shopping for her, that she take her places in her car at a moment's notice. She as happy when her doctor told her she could no longer drive because now she had an excuse to tell this aunt NO! It's the antics of this aunt that put me in the hospital 2 years ago with stress cardiomyopathy!

ARGH!

So, nothing new, just SSDD, as the gang in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher would say - Same shit, different day.

Can't Wait Until This Year Is Over!

It hasn't been a good few weeks.

The elderly relative we care for, the one who lives an hour away, suddenly had no heat on the first day the outside temps stayed in the 20's. Twice that week we had to drive over after work and stay until 1am while the utility company did its thing. We still had to get up at 4:30am the next morning. Then my husband had to use his last vacation day of the year the next week when they came to remove the old, broken furnace and install a new one. They left at 9pm, leaving her with a new working furnace but also a clogged up sink and a broken radiator, the one they installed a new steam vent on hours before but was now spurting brown water like a deranged Old Faithful! They eventually told us to get a plumber, that it's no longer a utility company job. Since my husband used up all vacation days and won't be off again (not counting New Year's Eve, when the plumber isn't working) until January 17th for Martin Luther King Day, she is now without a sink or radiator in her downstairs half-bath. OK, she can live with that.

Then her kitchen phone starts breaking. It was a $100+ phone with special volume boosters for the ringer and handset, but now it's so low that even my husband, he of the animal-ears and can hear a mouse squeak 3 rooms away while the stereo is on, had trouble hearing anything. I ordered a new special phone from a company that specializes in items for the hard of hearing and deaf, but it won't arrive until next week.

Her hearing is getting worse and she not only can't hear her alarm clock, but she no longer hears the radio part of that alarm clock even though the volume is on full blast, nor does she hear the bedroom phone ring and it's mere inches from her head. I ordered one of those loud ringers with the strobe light flasher that attaches to the phone. We had bought one last year for her kitchen phone so now she does hear that ring if she's anywhere downstairs. We also bought an attachment for the new flasher that goes under the mattress and is supposed to shake her bed when the phone rings, but my tiny cell phone vibrates more than the shaker does so we're returning that. The ringer/strobe arrived at our house the other day, but we haven't been able to get to hers yet to install it.

Why the rush to get this thing installed? She's now gotten her days and nights reversed and stays awake until almost dawn, sometimes stays up 2 days in a row. She's asleep in bed when her homemaker is trying to get in at 2pm. So it's now my job to phone her and wake her up before 2 so she can let the homemaker in. But she doesn't hear the phone! I start dialing her number around 11 am and keep trying until she answers, and last week alone we had to send the homemaker home twice because I couldn't wake the aunt up after three hours of phoning her. Only one of those days was after a 1am furnace call. We're paying over $20 an hour (three hour minimum) for a homemaker who can't get in the house because the aunt is puttering around the house at 3 in the morning instead of sleeping.

At least once the ringer/strobe is installed she'll wake up on the first phone call. Why hasn't this ringer been installed yet?

Have you looked outside (or on the TV, if you don't live in the NY/NJ area)? We got 22 inches of that ugly white stuff the other night and our car is completely buried by the drifting snow. Nobody on our side of the street has been able to dig out yet. The other side of the street got less than 6 inches because the wind blew it all over this way. Everyone across the street has already been driving their cars since the morning of the blizzard.



The snow is up to his shoulders, and that's our car in the upper right corner there.

The homemaker phoned yesterday - she has no where to park her car. The aunt's city only plowed the main streets, streets that allow no parking on normal days. None of the side streets have been plowed, and the neighbor that uses the aunt's snowblower only makes a footpath from the back door to the garbage can and down the driveway to the sidewalk, and a path on the sidewalk. He doesn't clear her whole driveway - and we don't expect him to - because she no longer drives. Luckily her next door neighbor saw the homemaker's dilemma and told her to park in her cleared-out driveway for the 3 hours she was going to be there. Hopefully their city got around to clearing side streets since then so she has somewhere to park today. We're going to ask the neighbor around the corner from her if the homemaker can use his driveway if he's not going to be home. The only other thing to do is for her to find a space a few blocks away in the town's shopping district and walk over. The service's office is there and they have a parking lot. I don't know what else to do. We may wind up having to cancel the homemaker until that city finally clears its streets.

On top of all this, my son has been sick. It started out as the sniffles and went into a full blown ear infection and strep throat. He's 27, and has been sick for all but 2 Christmasses in his life. This is the first time he's ever had an ear infection though. Even as a baby he never got them. I'm the one who always had the ear problems, which is why I'm partially deaf since childhood. Anyway, he was glum enough at the lack of employment opportunities around here and being unemployed since he graduated 2 years ago, then his best friend went away to Thailand with his family for the holiday season and won't be back for a few more weeks, then he had to get sick at at time I had to be out of the house and at the aunt's place playing with the furnace. Poor baby! He's got me now - I can't get out of the house with all this snow!

All these mini-catastrophes have upset my food and exercise routines. It's hard to get an hour of exercise in when you had only 3 hours sleep and have to drive to the aunt's place again at 6 in the morning during rush hour traffic near the Holland Tunnel. I didn't have any leftover healthy food to bring with me on those days so we relied on fatty, salty fast food to sustain us, for all three meals on a few of those days. Then comes all the holiday goodies my husband brought home from work or we got for the aunt/kid. We bought for them but they both kept waving those boxes of butter cookies under our noses. After not having any for 5 years, who can say "No?" Not me.

Luckily I insisted we hit the grocery store on Christmas Eve, when we heard the first rumors of getting more than an inch or 2 of snow. "Snow showers" is what the forecasters were saying up until then. Suddenly it was now up to "a foot or more" in a forecast an hour later. I have a freezer stocked with veggies, a pantry and extra boxes filled with all kinds of beans, tomatoes, pasta and grains. I have enough TP to last us a month. If I need anything else, my husband walks right past a grocery store every day in his journey home from work, and between our house and the light rail station he passes not just that store but about 5 mom & pop delis, a Walgreen and 7-11 if I get desperate.

My lab work was drawn the morning the aunt's furnace went out. I was supposed to get the results this past Monday, but with the doctor stranded in his home city and the office workers stranded in their homes in this one, the visit has been rescheduled for next Monday. Even if my car is still buried I can walk over there. If my B-12 is low he can give me an injection right there and I can increase the amount I'm taking at home. If my Vitamin D is low I can order a vegan version of supplementation from on-line. If the thyroid med needs to be increased the office can phone it in and my husband can pick it up on the way home from work (Since he already walks past Walgreen, anyway). Any other prescription changes will get mailed in to our long-term pharmacy, but I don't foresee anything else changing. It took a long time to get the right combo of asthma meds and I'm sure he's not going to mess with them.

One good thing about being snowed in - I have no excuse not to do my exercises, and have done my workouts every morning since the furnace business was finished, including Christmas morning. My meals have been back on plan, but with those cookies still in the house, well, a few always find their way into my tummy. There aren't that many left and I told my son last night to keep them in his room and enjoy them, NOT to try share them with us any more. They lasted this long because of his sore throat. We'll probably get him more when he's feeling better and I'm back on plan for a while and strong enough to resist them again.

After all this, I only gained one pound this month. That is a miracle in itself. With diligence and sticking strictly to my food plan, that pound will be gone before I hit the doctor's on Monday. Unfortunately I'm up 7 pounds since my last visit to him 3 months ago. I'm sure the thyroid med is going to need to be increased again.

I know I'm hoping 2011 will be better, but know it won't. Already my husband had to use one of next year's vacation days because none of the trains, busses, or light rail were running yesterday so he couldn't get to work. And with the aunt getting more and more confused she's going to need care a lot longer than for 3 hours a day. During the furnace fiasco (started because she forgot it needed to get flushed and have water added) she asked "Where does the coal go in?" even though she has had a gas furnace for over 60 years, and most days when I call and wake her she can't remember who I am. So it looks like this is the year we'll be moving in with her. God help us all!

It's A Problem We're Having, Too

We have an elderly relative who needs assisted living but can't enter until her house is sold, and with what appears to be more houses for sale than not in her town, it looks like that's never going to happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/22home.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

November 22, 2008

Housing Crisis Snares Elderly Who Can’t Sell

By JACK HEALY

The housing crisis has kept thousands of older Americans who need support and care from moving into retirement communities or assisted-living centers, effectively stranding them in their own homes.

Without selling their houses or condominiums, many cannot buy into retirement homes that require a payment of $100,000 to $500,000 just to move in. So they are scratching themselves off waiting lists, canceling plans with packing services and staying put, in houses that fit well 30 years ago, but over the years have become lonely, too large or too treacherous to navigate.

“It is part of the hidden problem of the recession,” said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “Every neighborhood, every family’s got them.”

Facilities that have watched their waiting lists wither and their occupancy rates fall in the last year are now scrambling to bring people through their doors. Some assisted-living centers have called in real estate agents to teach prospective residents about online advertising and how to clean and preen their homes for showings. Others have set up programs with banks to provide bridge loans to homeowners, or are discounting apartments and offering low-interest loans.

The Cedar Community, which provides a range of housing for the elderly in West Bend, Wis., has seen independent-living occupancy rates drop by 4 percent this year. There were so many people waiting for their homes to sell that the facility decided, in some cases, to let new residents pay month-to-month until they could unload their houses and use the proceeds on the facility’s entry deposit.

“We’ve never done that before,” said Tracey MacGregor, a spokeswoman at Cedar Community.

But for people like Ruth Scher, 85, selling their home is a critical first step before moving on, or moving anywhere. Ms. Scher put her two-bedroom condominium in Delray Beach, Fla., on the market last year, but no one has made an offer.

In the 34 years since she moved to South Florida, Ms. Scher’s husband has died, the siblings who moved south from New York to join her have died, and her friends have moved away. She is recovering from a fall that broke her clavicle and suffers from arthritis in one shoulder, and she says it is time to move back.

“It’s lonesome,” Ms. Scher said. “So many other people have passed away or moved away. It’s very lonely. The children would love me to come up and I would love to, but I just can’t sell.”

Ms. Scher hoped to move to a retirement community in Cornwall, N.Y., where she has friends. But in the year her home sat on the market, she could not even find a broker willing to sell the property, she said. She finally de-listed her condominium.

“They tell you, ‘We’re sorry, we can’t get any people to come and look,’ ” Ms. Scher said. “If I can’t sell here, I can’t go nowhere.”

There is no way to say how many older Americans are in similar straits, as no statistics track how many of America’s 4.27 million unsold homes are owned by people 65 or older. But industry groups and administrators at retirement homes call the problem a growing one, which worsened as the financial crisis spread from real estate to lending markets. It has been felt worst in regions hit hardest by the housing bust.

“It remains to be seen whether we have a short-term stress, or whether we’re facing a crisis,” said Mr. Minnix, of the Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “We’re into brand new territory here. It is deeper and potentially broader.”

Across the country, occupancy rates for independent and assisted-living facilities have fallen slightly in the last year, by about 2 percent through the middle of 2008, according to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing and Care Industry.

But the problem is playing out acutely in hard-hit areas like Florida, where the vacancy rate at some facilities is up 20 percent to 30 percent over last year, said Paul Williams, director of government relations for the Assisted Living Federation of America. At Luther Manor, a retiree community in Milwaukee, the number of residents moving into independent living has dropped 20 percent this year. In southern Ohio, 65 percent of the people who visited the Bristol Village retirement community this year said they could not buy a unit because their homes were still hanging around their necks.

For these businesses, each occupied room generates thousands of dollars each year. Retirement condos charge monthly fees ranging from a few hundred dollars to $5,000, while the average price for private-pay care in assisted living is $3,013 per month, or $36,156 per year, according to a MetLife study.

At the Crosby Commons assisted-living center in Shelton, Conn., where waiting lists that once ran two years or more have shrunk to six months, some residents who moved before selling their homes are spending through their savings as they wait, said Lois Poultney, the center’s director. One resident had to move from Crosby’s free-market homes to its subsidized rent-controlled apartments, Ms. Poultney said.

“I’m hearing it over and over again: ‘Mom needs to sell her house before she can afford to move in,’ ” she said.

There are signs some families and retirees are turning to adult day care services as a stopgap. Providers say their business has spiked as people look for an alternative to continuing care or home aides to provide food, companionship and therapeutic services. But Mr. Williams of the Assisted Living Federation said that people who need more day-to-day care, those who have trouble getting up stairs or who need someone to check on them, were taking a risk by staying at home.

“When they’re coming in at 85, they’re coming in very frail and needing services,” he said. “They can’t wait this out. They need the care when they need the care. That’s the scary part. You have people putting it off when they need care right now.”

For Katherine Styberg, 84, that moment of realization came when she slipped on a patch of ice in February and fractured a vertebra. She has to use a cane when she walks now, and she says she has been thinking about how she lives alone, and if she fell in her two-bedroom condominium in Milwaukee, no one could catch her or help her up.

The real estate broker calls Ms. Styberg a day before bringing potential buyers to see her apartment, and a few have come to look around, but no one has made an offer yet.

As parents linger in their homes, they say their children start to worry. Some adult children are even facing financial hardships if they cannot sell their parents’ homes.

In April, Ruth Swessel, 84, of Milwaukee, had a stroke that aggravated the effects of her aging, leaving her unable to follow “Meet the Press” or read the political magazines she once loved. Her daughter, Laura Westling, had to put her into skilled care, and the family began the process of selling Ms. Swessel’s house to pay for the facility’s $60,000 annual cost.

The house has been sitting on the market since the summer, and Ms. Swessel’s family has lowered the price twice, to $174,500 from $189,900, but they have not been able to close a deal. Her children are spending her investments to pay for her care, but Ms. Westling said they did not know what they would do once that money ran out.

“It’s not easy,” she said.

As stock markets have slid in the last year, homes have become a more critical source of wealth for retirees who have watched their mutual funds and 401(k) accounts hollow out. Next to accrued Social Security benefits, housing is the single greatest asset for people 60 to 70 years old, making up 22 percent of their total wealth and outweighing investments and pensions, according to the Center for Retirement Research. For retirees like Herman McHan, who watched the value of his mutual funds fall to $35,000, from $70,000, or Sylvia Merlin, whose portfolio has lost nearly $200,000 of value, owning an interminably on-the-market home compounds the worries of their dwindling investments.

For Ms. Merlin, it is a disconcerting place to be at age 93. She said she and her late husband, Al, had lived modestly to raise their four children, taking one vacation a year, to the Jersey Shore. She is on oxygen now, and finds it harder to get around her fifth-floor apartment outside of Philadelphia. The doorman’s wife takes her to the hairdresser on Fridays, but Ms. Merlin said she wanted more consistent care.

“I’m going to be 94, and I need help,” she said. “Making the bed is difficult. I need a little help taking a shower. Those things are difficult. I was a great cook, but I really don’t cook anymore. I bought the TV dinners, and they’re pretty lousy.”

No one has made an offer on her condominium, and Ms. Merlin said the retirement home had refunded the $1,000 deposit on the $130,000 unit she hoped to buy. Now, instead of moving, she said she had decided to stay.

“I just couldn’t go anywhere until I sold my apartment,” she said. “I and a lot of other oldsters are stuck.”

It All Comes from Eating Too Much

Remember that line from Winnie the Pooh? Rabbit says it to Pooh after he gets stuck in the rabbit hole. I, like Pooh, love to eat. I'm not that much of a honey-lover, but give me a ring of kielbasa and mashed potatoes and I'm in culinary heaven.

Mmmmm, kielbasa!!



(Gee, remember the episode of Scrubs when Dr. Molly Clock, played by Heather Graham, uttered those famous words?)


I think I know what I'm making for our anniversary dinner tonight. We pretty much decided against pizza last night. Right now we have so much leftovers in the refrigerator that we'll still be eating them over the weekend, so my husband suggested instead of making our traditional anniversary pizza tonight we'll work on the leftovers. At the time I agreed, but I don't want leftovers! Come on! 31 years of marriage and we celebrate it with leftovers?!?! If he doesn't want pizza, fine, but maybe phallic shaped meat would be more symbolic. I'll concede defeat with the leftover bread.

Yes, I am a food lover. I eat when hungry; I eat when happy or sad; I eat when nervous or relaxed; I eat to celebrate or to mourn. But mostly, I eat because I love the taste of the food. And what's so wrong about that?

So tonight we celebrate. If we're lucky, besides celebrating Thirty-one-derful years of marriage, we'll celebrate getting the kid's ultrasound results (Yep, still waiting) and getting our Rosie back from the garage without too big a dent in our credit card (Still waiting for that, too). Unlike 31 years ago, we'll be celebrating with our son and will most likely spend the night like every other night - watching Jeopardy, 21, then popping a DVD in the machine, maybe Kung-Fu Panda or hey, what about a Dr. Clock episode of Scrubs?

November Menu Is Set

November Menu Is Set

It's been a crazy month so far, between the kid's job interviews and medical problems, the election, 3 doctor's appointments, lab and radiology (some for me, some for my son). Then the gloomy weather - I don't remember the last time I saw the sun. Oh, wait - it was as I was coming home from the opthamologist with my eyes fully dilated from the drops he gave me, and because it was raining when I went in I didn't bring my sunglasses so I was in pain for the next few hours.

And it's not over yet. My son is still waiting for the doctor to call him back with the results (He was out of the office at the time my son was told to call), and he still hasn't heard back from the job interview, but in that case she did say in 3 weeks and it's only been less than 2. I hope he hears something soon - his first student loan payment is due in 2 weeks.

And I'm still jerking myself back and forth between vegan foods and SAD (Standard American Diet). Don't get me wrong - I do love the healthy vegan foods that are available. It's just that some of it is so darn expensive! Rice milk is more than twice the cost of powdered skim; a batch of scrambled tofu costs about ten times more than 2 scrambled eggs; vegetarian sausage is more than twice the price of real sausage and sometimes has the same amount of fat, unless I make it from scratch. And I miss dairy cheese and yogurts. Not only are they much cheaper than vegan versions but they taste so much better.

But I really should avoid them. Tonight we were supposed to have this mushroom and barley thing, but my mushrooms turned fuzzy, so we're having burgers instead. I have no veggie burgers made right now so we'll have the turkey burgers that I have in the freezer. At least I have plenty of stone ground whole wheat burger rolls. I have plenty of fruit for snacks, especially bananas and apples, but have to get used to not putting peanut butter on them, or in my morning oatmeal. I made a tofu scramble this morning and felt guilty because of the price, but I was just so sick of oatmeal and needed a change.

And the dinner menus are not just chosen but printed out and hanging in the kitchen for all to see for the rest of the month. I have December's planned but not printed, too. Out of all these meals, every one is McDougall legal, as long as I eat cheeseless pizzas on Fridays, that is. :) This month we have 2 birthdays, and in both cases they want pizza, so again, a cheeseless pizza for me, with cheese for the birthday boys.

Our 31st anniversary is also this month. On the day of our wedding, my husband and I never got to eat dinner. As soon as the meals at the head table were served we were called by the photographer to get the cutting of the cake pictures. While we were gone the waitstaff cleared our plates! We complained loudly, even calling them idiots - Didn't they notice that every plate for the entire bridal party was untouched? They had no food left in the kitchen (Even the band ate their meals while we were getting snapped) so we were to go hungry. The kitchen helpers felt sorry for us and did give all of us a larger piece of cake each, but we were still going table to table asking our relatives if there was any FOOD. Our best man's mother and an usher's wife had some leftovers that they ate up, but the rest of us had to make do with some candy from the machine in the bar.

My husband and I were almost the last people to leave the reception. What the heck, we were paying for this party and not leaving for our honeymoon until the next day so why not?! As soon as we got to our apartment we popped a frozen pizza into the oven, put Tom Waits on the stereo, and started counting the money and signing the checks from the envelopes, as my mom was going to deposit it into the bank for us while we were gone. Every anniversary we go through the same routine - we eat frozen pizza while Tom Waits is playing on the stereo, and since we have no money we just count our blessings.

NaBloPoMo Day 3

I know I promised to write a post a day for a month, but what does one write when there's nothing new to say?

Should I blog about my son's current health problems? Nah, that would be a HIPPA violation.

About my food problems? Nah, you're all sick of that stuff.

The weather? What can one say about November in New Jersey, when it's too cool to be a "nice" fall day and too warm to be the harbinger of winter.

Landlord? Crazy aunt? Depressed husband? Failed recipes?

I guess I really don't have anything to say today.

Same Old Song and Dance

Nothing to say, really. Still obsessing over food and calories, yet my weight is still the same as it was in previous posts, +/- 5 pounds either way.

Kid is preparing to graduate magna cum laude in a few weeks with his MS in Electrical Engineering. Too bad the only job offers so far have been an unpaid internship for the summer in Rhode Island and working a register in Target.

A few more weeks and I get my thyroid lab work repeated, and the week after that I'll see if I get to go back on Synthroid or just remain in this fatigued state for the rest of my life. Since my pulse is still dipping into the 40's I'm sure to go back on at least a low dose of the med.

And it took almost a month but I finally sewed the City Bag from Lazy Girl Designs. One of these days I'll take a photo of it. This is the one from the web site, but I used a similar color scheme.