What is wrong with people? Oh yeah, they are people.

A few months have gone by since my last post. I am gob-smacked by the election process. This has become a nightly scene on every channel: The craziness of the GOP, the sniping of the DEMS. Although, Hillary and Bernie are slightly more civil: They don't call each other names. 
There have been new state laws over bathrooms. Which bathrooms you can use as a transgender person. You MUST use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender you "were born with".
Crap. I would be quite startled to see a gentleman coming into the ladies because he formerly had a vagina. And Vice Versa. I think the men would be startled to see a ma'am stepping into their bathroom because she used to have a penis. 
CAN'T PEOPLE JUST GO PEE?
Ted Cruz et al has been particularly nasty, as have several governors that state "We must protect our women and girls from men dressed as women that will molest them." OMG
Let me tell ya, I was terrified to let my young son into the bathroom by himself due to the common occurrence of boys being molested by professed "straight" men. Most priests who molest identify as "straight". Did you know STRAIGHT WOMEN have been known to molest little girls in restrooms too? OMG We cannot and should not EVER go to ANY public restroom. Nor should we allow children to use the bathrooms at home. They may "accidentally" touch themselves creating pleasure and we can't have that now, can we?
The government needs to get the hell out of the bathroom business except to see that they are clean and have TP and soap. 
Otherwise, up yours. And also while on the subject: Stop creating laws that make it OKAY to discriminate based on your religion.
YOU ARE IN BUSINESS. To turn someone away based on your morals is morally wrong. If you don't like what people do, close your business. People have been using those excuses for thousands of years, whether against Jews, Blacks, Women, Hispanics, Blondes, haha threw that in for fun. or anyone else they deem as not "the same as us". Please just go away. Please? You make me sick, therefore I don't have to serve you. Bam.

Sweet '16

Hard to believe another year has come and gone. What the heck happened? 
Bit of an update: We hit the road this year. Or perhaps I should say the ocean? Hubs and I went on a cruise for a big birthday (mine) to celebrate. What a fantastic time we had. 
He continues to get better post stroke. He still has some residual problems such as having a hard time in crowds as he doesn't "see" someone in his blindspot. So when we traveled, I constantly tried to watch out for him and warn him such as " On your left!" or "behind you!" I felt like it was nagging. He didn't. He says it helps, so I still do it. 
I continue to struggle with auto-immune stuff. Now I have an electrical problem with my heart. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say, it was a fishing expedition when it came to doctors this year as they tried to figure out the source of the problem. Now they are tooling with meds to fix it. Uh, yeah, about that. The cure is worse than the problem sometimes. When you have an allergy to medication your whole world goes:
D
O
W
N
H
I
L
L
rather quickly.
But, we press on. And keep on going. I mean, what else is there? Just one foot in front of the other....
If you are going through crap, you know what I am talking about. Still... 
I read other blogs that auto-immune people put out. Sometimes the whining gets to me. I am not saying I don't whine, but I try to keep my whining to upbeat ratio balanced. Or hopefully the whining is less than<upbeat. Take care and Happy Birthday Sweet 16...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WusQjMnD0cs

Life is Amazing

Yes, I know I haven't been blogging for almost 2 years. Why? Because it's ALL good. Okay, not ALL, but certainly a good portion of it. Hubby is doing GREAT post stroke. We are thankful everyday for his good health. Mine? Not so great. new things have cropped up. I won't bore you with details, but some issues have come up with an electrical problem with my heart. That's the bad news. The GOOD news is: ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE IOTA OF HEART DISEASE. As my cardiologist said, "You hit the genetics lottery!"  meaning that with my horrible family history of rampant heart disease (killed my grandparents, killed my dad, my brother had a quadruple bypass at a very young age and who knows who else it has affected) I am clean!
When I had an angiogram recently, they fully expected to find a clogged artery due to stress test results. I hd to sign papers to put in a stent if needed. When I woke up from the procedure, they were in awe of my cleaner than clean arteries. Go Me! I was truly in shock over that news. I was preparing for the worst and expecting the best. Best won. I feel like I should get a Blue Ribbon for clean arteries. I guess there is something to good food, exercise, and okay...luck.

Since 12-2013 (my last blog entry), we have had some awful times. A dear friend got a divorce. SEVERAL dear friends have gotten breast cancer. A daughter got married. A great-grandchild was born. Another daughter moved to a distant state to serve in Americorps. College graduations. Another child started college. A couple of close friends have died.

Since starting this blog I have received over 13,000 hits. I hope and pray that it will help someone else on their own road to whatever recovery path they are traveling.
And read and reread the above note. Life is Amazing. Then it's awful. Then it is amazing AGAIN...
Blessings to you.

Happy Holidaze

I thought I was being SO clever to say "Holidaze" but apparently it is a THING. A TV movie! A book! A blog! A band!
But what the heck. I decided it perfectly describes the end of 2013. Sometimes, looking back it is a daze, a blur, a whirlwind of activity like the eddy in the pond when you toss a big fat rock in the middle.
 April 2013 marked the one year "anniversary" of DH's stroke. (I put that in quotes, because you always want to think of an anniversary as a happy occasion of celebration and joy. But hey, even though the original stroke was not a celebratory event, rethinking it though, an anniversary of survival IS an event of joy...)
I digress. The one year (and now almost 18 months) since the awful event has seen lots of changes. The best change? We are getting complacent! What I mean by that is that we don't think about it day after day after day. It no longer haunts our waking moments, although truth be told, it sometimes haunts my sleeping moments. I wake up in a panic because DH no longer snores. Yep. Since stroke day, he hasn't snored. He no longer has deep rumbling breathing either. "This is a good thing"  you think, right? Wellllll...sort of. Except I constantly place my hand on him gently so as not to disturb him, but just to make sure he is breathing. But, it wakes him and he stirs. I feel sort of badly that I woke him, but happy that I can go back to sleep.
This year has brought us pain in other ways. Our next door neighbor suddenly died. He had health issues, true, but...still unexpected. DH and he were pretty close.
Another friend took a belated honeymoon and her husband of a few months had a massive heart attack and died on the cruise. Both these events were "gulp" moments in our lives. The first, barely over 60, the other was 49. Forty nine! His whole life ahead of him.
How can we honor the dead? By living.
Living every moment with joy.
Getting toxic people that are harmful out of (y)our lives, surrounding (y)ourselves instead with people who love and care back.
Spending more time with children and grandchildren.
Try to bring more joy to others.

Cherish each other.
Hug more.
Kiss more.
Fight less. (or not at all)
Compliment more.
Give gifts of time, not necessarily material things.
Hug even more.
Ditto on the kisses...

One very big joyous moment this past year was celebrating DH's 70th birthday. Best. Day. Ever.
When I think of the past year, that really stands out. Also, adding new babies. Four amongst our extended family members. Two marriages. (One was a dear friend whose husband died last year that I have written about before) An engagement. "Dating" the grandkids each month.
Visiting faraway family. Reading a hundred books. Remodeling a room or two. An around the world trip. Just kidding. THAT would have been nice...
Yes, we have had some very low points. But, we have had many many more joys.
Surround yourself with joy...always. See you in  2014 and may it bring you joys and blessings.










                                                            

Good Golly Miss Molly...Where did the time go?

Wow, here it is August and I realized I hadn't posted in more than a month.
To recap:
Both DH and I are doing pretty good.
He is still having bouts of unexplained nerve pain, especially on one side, so that is disconcerting. So many tests have been run, so not sure where to go from here. Fortunately it is not horrible all of the time. It is there all the time, but as he says "It is a matter of degree".  Some days bad, some days, not so much. Still...worrisome.
However he is not letting this stop him.  In fact, his keeping busy seems to make him forget the really tough times. He has been building a fence and as always, it is meticulous and precise. A thing of beauty and a joy forever, okay, we'll settle for 20 years or so.

I myself have been trying to find humor in everyday life. I do not have to look too far. I was watching a cooking show with the Barefoot Contessa at the gym. I am not listening to the sound, but glancing at the screen now and again. I look up and for some bizarre reason, someone is showing someone how to use a weird condom. I was outraged! Porn on a cooking show! Oh wait, they are making sausage. Good joke!

I have also had a real problem with patience while driving. People don't go when the light changes to green. People cut you off in traffic or they don't let you in. Aggressive drivers frankly make me nuts. But then so do slow slow slow drivers. Move it already!

I have really been working on this because I feel the problem is with ME. As they say, everyone has crap thrown at them, it's how you handle it. What to do? Well, I figured it out. So so simple!
I got books on tape! I don't care if I am stuck in traffic! More chances to hear my book! It is bizarre though, I am listening to one, reading another at the gym on my Kindle, and then a paperback at bedtime. It is hard to keep them apart.... But I digress. Truly, it has really changed my life. I am more relaxed and just happy to listen to a book. I have "read" 4 or 5 since the start of summer. I am a happy camper.

So, here's a very weird thing that happened to me last night. We had gone to an outdoor event honoring our second to the youngest granddaughter. It was in a beautiful outdoor setting. a garden with a pond, a tea house, picnic facilities. Lovely. We left after and on the way home, I looked down and saw this weird dark hair like thing on my arm. standing straight up. As I examined it closer, I see it is a caterpillar worm-like thing that probably fell from a tree. I was fascinated because it was standing straight up, not crawling...
OH MY GOODNESS, it was burrowing into my skin! I calmly stated screamed to my husband "what do I do????" It was one of those stunning surreal moments when you are kind of in denial. I mean it is boring into me head first! My husband says "Pull it out!!!!" (Duh, why didn't I think of that????)
 So I did. Then threw it out the window. I started thinking of all those third world countries where things bore into people and become a parasitic thing or causes blindness or some other horrible disease. I just never thought of something in the US doing that very thing. Alas, they are not uncommon, it is a matter of which ones in what part of the world. I think one should not think too much about it. It will make you CRAZY. Meanwhile, I called my stepdaughter and told her "Check the kids' skin and hair!!!!"  I never want to see THAT again!
Of course he tells me later that they secrete some kind of scuzzy stuff to break down tissue. Thanks. I need more to think about. It left a hole in my arm the size of a pin dot and it still is tender. But...it won't live to see another arm!
Have a great week! (and watch out for worms...)

The Living is Easy er Crazy

The strangest thing has occurred. Having lived nearly all my life with painful lesions in my mouth, sometimes as many as 10-20 a week, I have been almost lesion-free for the past 3-4 weeks. In June, I had a couple small ones, then...nothing. I rarely notice when I have them anymore. I only keep track of them for my doctor's benefit. (She has asked me to.)

So it was sort of odd to realize that I hadn't had any of significance these past few weeks. Well, until today. This morning when I got up, I noticed I had inflammation on my upper and lower gums, but no lesions. Hmmm. Then, when I was at the gym, I started getting an awful earache, which usually indicates a lesion inside my throat. I started feeling yucky, exhausted, and just plain awful.
Sure enough, with my handy dandy flashlight shining brightly, I saw the mother of all lesions in my throat, surrounded by little baby lesions. Oh aren't they cute? The position of the lesion just on the other side of my ear, explained the awful earache. This reminded me of several years ago, before I ever heard of Behcet's. I had a horrible headache (over 1 week in duration) and a wretched earache. I was in screaming pain and decided to go see the doctor. I had lesions on the roof of my mouth at the time. The doctor looked in my ears and said "You have shingles in your head." I think I was a little skeptical. I had never heard of such a thing. Almost a year later to the day, it happened almost exactly the same way! Again, I went to the doctor. Again the same diagnosis. Huh?

A couple of years after that, a neurologist said "Uh, I am thinking what you had was a migraine." (after he heard all the symptoms of light and noise sensitivity, etc)

NOW I know that I will almost ALWAYS get a migraine when I get a lesion on the roof of my mouth. I honestly don't know what is cause and effect. Migraine or lesion first? I dunno.

Well, back to the shingles. I decided to look it up. Gotta love the internet. It really IS a "thing".
I got this off a British site (nhs.uk)

Ramsay Hunt syndrome

Ramsay Hunt syndrome is a complication that can occur if shingles affects certain nerves in your head. In America, Ramsay Hunt syndrome is estimated to affect 5 in 100,000 people every year and it may affect a similar number of people in the UK.
Ramsay Hunt syndrome can cause:

• earache 
• hearing loss 
• dizziness
• vertigo (the sensation that you or the environment around you is moving or spinning)
• tinnitus (the perception of noise in one ear, both ears, or inside your head, where the noise comes from inside your body rather than from an outside source) 
• a rash around the ear
• loss of taste
• paralysis (weakness) of your face, known as Bell's palsy

Ramsay Hunt syndrome is usually treated with the following medications:

• antiviral medication (medication to treat viruses)
• corticosteroids (medication that contains steroids)

The earlier treatment is started, the better the outcome. Around three-quarters of people given antiviral medication within 72 hours (three days) of the start of their symptoms usually make a complete recovery. If treatment is delayed, half of those treated will recover completely. 
You may be more likely to have some permanent facial palsy (paralysis) if:

• your face was completely paralysed before you started treatment
• you are over 50 years of age

Around 1 in 20 people with Ramsay Hunt syndrome may experience some degree of permanent hearing loss.
*******************************************************************************
 Migraines as described by Mayo Clinic:
Attack
When untreated, a migraine usually lasts from four to 72 hours, but the frequency with which headaches occur varies from person to person. You may have migraines several times a month or much less often. During a migraine, you may experience the following symptoms:

• Pain on one side or both sides of your head
• Pain that has a pulsating, throbbing quality
• Sensitivity to light, sounds and sometimes smells
• Nausea and vomiting
• Blurred vision
• Lightheadedness, sometimes followed by fainting

*******************************************************************************8
 Certainly they share similarities!
Back to me. Okay I can see why they might diagnose it as such.
But, it has been shown that Behcet's patients can often have headaches/migraines/ other neuro/vascular disturbances ranging from mild to OMG I'M GONNA DIE. (Sorta kinda kidding about that last one.)
So anyway, the jury is still out. No one really knows what causes headaches/migraines in Behcet patients specifically. They are discussing the possibility of doing MRIs during a headache to see what is really happening. Of course, this seems hard to predict, therefore making it hard to SCHEDULE an MRI. I mean, I have a hard time scheduling a neurology appointment, let alone an MRI. Last time I tried to schedule a neurology appointment, it was a four month wait. TO MAKE THE APPOINTMENT. That's right, I could not make an appointment for 4 months, then they estimated another 2-3 months after that to get an appointment. Shameful. Shameful. Shameful.

So, I am tired of talking about the crappy medical professions lack of specialists.
Let's talk something fun.

During the "downtimes" (when kids are not home and we are not traveling) we enjoy watching movies on TV. Or at the theater. Wherever. So here's a funny story.
DH and I were planted in front of the TV watching a movie on Netflix. If you are familiar with it, it is "streamed" to you, like having a DVD, but there is no DVD, it is digitally sent to you. (Oh I love techno anything) ANYWAY. DH was trying to fast forward a movie and he was freaking out because it was going backwards. So he pushes the BACK button and it starts to fast forward. Oh this was so crazy!!!! Then Boom Badda Bing! He realizes the remote was upside down. Best. Day. Ever. I was looking around to see if we were being pranked.
Speaking of being pranked, it is nothing new. For you old-timers, you remember "Candid Camera" . Now that was pranking before pranking was a word!

PS: We are spitting distance to 8000 page views. Thanks, you rock.

Having a Blast-O-Rama

Life has lots of Fireworks!

Oh it is hot. This is an understatement. I cannot for the life of me figure out why temperatures past 80 were invented. Yeah, yeah. I know some people really thrive on the higher temps (DH among them) but I start wilting at approximately 75. We live in an area that is slightly humid usually, along with the heat. Rarely is it super humid, but it can get uncomfortable. Last week, my daughter and family in Ohio was experiencing 80% humidity. I think this qualifies as a "wet heat".

We went to visit another daughter in Reno: It started creeping up to the high nineties, with very low humidity. This is the "dry heat" that people brag about when you whine about the heat, as if this makes it any better. To my way of thinking, it does not excuse the temperature. But one thing is certain, it is aptly named: It quite often brings out the "temper" in some people.

Girl fight at a Starbucks: Made me giggle.

People getting snippy: I'm sure they are nice in the reasonable weather.

Horns honking. Tempers flaring. Road rage.

Then the really sad part of hot weather: People dying, or getting ill. Drownings. Near drownings.

So, I'm not sure there is a lot of good things about heat: Wet or dry, it's all the same to me. (Although I must admit, having lived on the East coast during hot humid weather, it is pretty awful.)

But this is not all about whining. We took a road trip and had a blast.
 Observations:
Casinos are fun to people watch in: People sitting quietly while winning thousands. I would be screaming and jumping up and down if I won like $5. Buffets: The woman who got three pieces of lettuce and 4 large scoops of dressing. The Crab Leg Station: It's like a feeding frenzy at Sea World.
How high can you stack food before it topples?

Museums are awesome. I love historical things. I especially like photos and clothing from real people. It's also fun to see that fashion has about four looks that are recycled over and over.

Visiting with family. Got to see two kids on this trip and their significant others and the other's families. I love the visiting part. Meeting new babies that have been born recently. Seeing your grown-up kids' new environments, work/school/houses. Love it. It makes you so proud to see your kids as responsible adults.


Saw my first black bear! He came bouncing up to the road up ahead of us, took a look and decided it was not a good idea to cross in front of out large vehicle.
(Why didn't the bear cross the road? Cause he was a chicken!)

Good thing he didn't run in front of us: He looked like a teen-age sized bear, and I think we would have won that match. We had fun thinking about what he told his buddies upon running back:
"Oh you should have seen this big metal box crossing my path! They got scared of me, coz they kept running!"

Spent a lovely couple of days in a Nat'l Park.
Score:
Mosquitoes: 500 hits, 3 deaths
Us: 3 kills, 500 welts
Met people from all over the world. Nice people, annoying people, smokers. UGH. Why don't they ban cigs from every public place?  Ahh, breathe in nature! And the smell of YUCH.

Older couple sat next to us on veranda, the beautiful lake in front of us. They were not talking. She was looking at her tablet and fiddling. He was looking at the lake. She spoke up.
"We can get the cruise for $13,000 but it's the last day."
"Oh, is that the Groupon one?"
"No, it's the cheapcruises.com one."
"Oh, okay." He pulls out credit card.
REALLY? My eyes bug out. Zowie. Where are they going to? Mars? LOL

Headed from there to the coast. (I think we were dragging our feet coming home) and it was unusually hot there too. But we did get to go on several hikes on day two as the weather calmed down a bit to "normal". It is also where there was a girl-fight in Starbucks.

Older woman sitting on right hand side of small table in comfy cushy chair, writing letters in her lap. Coffee cup on table.
Younger woman sits on left with her cold coffee placed on table.
OW nastily says: "You can't do that, you'll spill on my stuff."
YW:" I have a lid on it." Voice getting sharp and loud.
OW: Pouting.
YW: Glaring.
OW: pushes YW's cup away
YW: puts it back.
Me: Giggling, taking in the drama. This is WAY better than TV.
Drama continues for a few more moments. Man steps in to offer his two cents. (Bad idea)
YW: Loudly and shrilly: "I am 48 years old, I can do what I want!!!!"
Cushy chair opens up across the way. Neither moves. Both sit in silence hating each other. I think I would have moved. Hard to enjoy one's drink when you are choking on hate.

So what do these things have in common? Well, I thought my life had drama at times. But after watching and observing different situations, I am now thinking we are a bit boring. And I like it. A LOT.

Happy Fourth of July!