And the Total is now.....

28 tubes of blood and 2 cups of pee.  Today's contribution was 4 tubes and 1 cup.  Surely, we can finally get a diagnosis this time.  (Okay, all together now...."don't call me Shirley!")

Got an e-mail from Ginger.  One of the swimmers made it to the finals.  I don't know anything more yet.  Ginger met the Crown Prince of Bahrain and got his picture.  All kinds of fun stuff.  I'm just ready for her to be home.  A week is long enough.  She arrives at the Dayton Airport on Sunday afternoon, just in time to get home, have dinner, and sit out in the front yard to watch the mega-fireworks.  It will be a good day.

We almost had a disaster here at home yesterday.  I saw Snowflake (the albino squirrel) and other critters in the backyard rummaging for peanuts, so I opened the door to go outside and oblige them.  The two furry princesses (Thelma and Louise, the wonder kitties) were right there ready to run out on the patio.  Snowflake sees me and also comes running down the hill onto the patio to get her peanutty goodness.  Louise sees Snowflake.  Snowflake sees Louise.......and the chase is on!  They both take off like bats out of hell.  I'm yelling at Louise to stop.  Snowflake is half way up a big bush and looking at me like I'm Salome and she's about to be the head of John the Baptist while Louise is poised at the bottom of the bush.  So I go get Louise.  Being the good kitty that she is, she comes right back over to the patio.  I go up to the top of the hill and start tossing the peanuts around.  Louise stays put.  Snowflake climbs down the bush and comes up to the top of the hill.  All is well.  Whew!  Never a dull moment around here.

So I guess you all are probably getting tired of all this "day in the life" stuff.  Nothing witty or life changing.  No diet news.  No book talk.  Which reminds me.....someone who shall remain nameless (PEGGY! PEGGY! PEGGY!) wrote to me yesterday, "aren't you supposed to be writing?"  Well, hey, I've been doing a lot of word pushing this week for work.  And I've blogged a lot this week, which is more than I can say for someone who shall remain nameless (PEGGY! PEGGY! PEGGY!).  :-)  (Time out for a commercial.  If you want to read Peggy's blog, it's here on Blogger/Blogspot/Whatever and it's called "To Ponder, To Chortle, To Weep".  And it's good.)

Seriously, there will be some talk here about the diet and the book soon.  I can tell you that I haven't lost any weight and I haven't written a word of the book.  I can also give you 10 or 20 excuses, none of them worthwhile.  I've been doing a lot of thinking this week, some contemplation, a little self-examination.  Ever since I turned 30, I try to have at least one mid-life crisis per decade, and I think I'm having the crisis for my 50's now.  Nothing like being in a good blue funk to make you clear out the cobwebs and figure out what's important.  So I'm a little busy right now clearing and figuring.  I'll write more about that later.

In the meantime, I'm going to Joey and Tommy's graduation party on Friday night and then fetching Ginger from the airport on Sunday.  I'll be doing some mass cleaning of the house and some outside work on Saturday so the place looks fabulous when Ginger walks through the door.  So it will probably be just a few days before I'm blogging again, unless I hear from Dr. OhMyAchyBody about the labs I did today.

Everyone have a fun and safe holiday.  Happy 4th of July!

We're Up to 25 and other Odds and Ends

And maybe more.  I got a call today from Kathy at the office of Dr. OhMyAchyBody.  I will be reporting to their lab tomorrow at 1:30 PM to part with more blood and pee in their cup.  (Better their cup than mine!) I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.  Not.  The next tube of blood will be number 25.  I wonder if I get a free microwave or something when I hit number 100.

I had the weirdest thought today.  (My random thought generator has been in overdrive all day.)  I was officially diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1995, and so I have now officially had 5,475 consecutive days of pain (not counting leap year days or all the months I had the pain before I finally got a diagnosis).  If I live to be 80, there will be at least 8,395 more days of pain.  Not that I'm complaining.  Excedrin is good to me. :-) It's just that I find those numbers mind boggling.  It doesn't take much to entertain me.

Today in Bahrain, the temperature was up to 103 degrees.  Yuck!  Out in Vegas and near Phoenix where I have family and friends, it's not unusual for the temp to hit 112 or 115.  My sister always said, "But it's a dry heat, it's not so bad."  Baloney!  That's freaking hot!  You can fry eggs and burn toast on the sidewalk in that kind of heat.  Anyway, I haven't heard from Ginger yet about how the International Children's Games are going, but I have had a couple of e-mails from her.  She said that her hotel is fabulous and the food is magnificent.  I can't wait to see all the pictures she's taking.

So yesterday I was in my usual stall in the ladies' room at work.  No one in the bathroom but me, myself, and I.  Another woman comes in and sits down in the stall right next to me.  I swiftly move my feet over so she can't recognize me by my shoes.  Pretty smooth, huh?  But I recognize her shoes.  It's the same woman who brushes her teeth in there every afternoon.  Now I ask you: would you brush your teeth in a public restroom?  I've read that when a toilet is flushed, bacteria and microscopic poopy flecks come barreling out of the bowl at 600 miles per hour.  Even with the stall door closed, you know that potty sludge has to fly right over and under the door and straight to her toothbrush.  EWWWW!  I'm all for good dental hygiene, but that's too much for me.  I'd rather just chew sugar-free gum after lunch and brush when I get back home.

I was thinking today about all the idiots who are screaming for everyone to boycott BP.  Do they really think that by not getting gas at a BP station, they can have a huge effect on BP's bottom line?  That's nothing.  Not even a drop in BP's profits.  The only finances they're affecting are the poor people who actually own the stations.  Why would anyone want to make a hard working, barely getting by, station owner lose his or her business?  That's just mean.  I'm as pissed off as anyone else about what this oil mess is doing to our coastline and the life it sustains (animal, fish, and human), but let's not penalize some station owner who has absolutely nothing to do with the problem.

I did it.  I got back on Facebook.  I'm keeping my friends to just relatives, girlfriends and boyfriends of relatives, and a couple of friends from way back when.  So far, the "Let's Kill All the Gays" and "If You're Pro-Choice, then You Must Be Pro-Abortion, So Let's Kill You, Too" folks haven't found me.  (Just for the record:  I don't condemn anyone who has an abortion.  Sometimes it really is necessary.  I wouldn't have one myself, though, because I believe that life begins at the moment of conception.  I also wouldn't have an abortion because that's my CHOICE.)  Anyhow, so far, so good, and I hope it stays that way because I really like keeping up with my nieces and nephews on FB.

My cat just walked across my keyboard and past my face, and she left me a cloud of kitty fart.  I really have to go now.

Excuses, Excuses

I was going to post a new blog tonight, but I used up all my time playing with the fish at the bottom of the screen.  :-)

It's Party Time!

You know it!  We're talking a pound of bacon and sausage for breakfast, whatever I want for lunch, cereal and popcorn for dinner.  And the best part?  I can run around the house in my pajama top and underwear the whole time.  Why?  Because these are the kinds of things I do when Ginger leaves the country.

Yep, my better half is traveling to the other side of the world.  I drop her off at the airport tomorrow.  She heads to Virginia to hook up with her traveling companions; hops a plane the next day to London by way of Minneapolis; from London to Qatar; and, then from Qatar to Al Manama, Bahrain.  "Bah-what", you ask?  Bahrain, an island country in the Persian Gulf, east of Saudi Arabia.  How come?  Because she's way cool, that's why.  Also because she is traveling with Team Chesterfield from Virginia.  This team will be participating in the International Childrens' Games which are being held this year in Bahrain.  Her daughter has been taking Team Chesterfield to these games for several years now and is doing it again this year.  The three grandchildren (one in college, two in high school, all former participants) are making the trip, too.  What a great family thing to do together.

Better her than me.

I am such a homebody that I miss Ginger and the cats when I'm at work.  We're talking seven miles away from our house.  It's not like I've left the country.  I just love being at home.  I did venture to Italy last October and had a fabulous time.  But I like my home and the family I live with in it.  I like sleeping in my own bed.  I like trips where I'm away for only 2 or 3 nights and I can drive back home in an hour.  I'm not much of an adventurer in travel.  I miss home too much.

Ginger, on the other hand, retired a few years early just so she could travel.  This woman has the good energy and health of someone half her age.  She's been all around the world and still going.  I love that she doesn't mind traveling without me and I think she loves that I don't mind her doing it.  I hang out at home, take care of the kitties, fetch the mail and newspaper, whatever needs to be done.  She doesn't worry about anything at home and I don't worry about having to try to pee in a small trench dug across the floor.  (Don't ask.  You don't want to know.)  But as I was saying, she's okay for me to stay.  And I'm okay for her to go, because.....

I can sit around the house in my pajama top and underwear!  No pants!  There's just something wickedly fun about that.  I can head to Frisch's for breakfast and eat my way down the breakfast bar (with an extra plate for all the bacon and sausage, of course).  If I don't feel like cooking dinner, I can just toss a bag of popcorn into the microwave and there's my meal.  I can stay up all night on the weekend and watch movies without worrying that I'm being loud and keeping her awake.  Actually, I can do that now.  But it feels like I'm getting away with something naughty if I do it when she's not here!

So here's to Bahrain.  Here's to Team Chesterfield.  Here's to Ginger and everyone traveling with the team.  Have fun!  Safe passage!  Tomorrow afternoon I'll be sucking down nachos and cheese at the movies followed by M&M's for dessert.  It's so good to be me!

Restroom Etiquette 101

I can be a little a bashful in the "public restroom" department.  I'm much better at it now than, say, even 3 short years ago.  But there is still an occasional episode when my kidneys say "hell, no, we won't go" and the number 2 zone won't do a "number" or a "2".  So I know already that I have potty issues and I'm okay with that.  But there are a few things that just totally creep me out and they should creep you out, too.

The first one is that I absolutely cringe when I go into a public restroom stall, drop my drawers, sit down, and the seat is warm.  I just can't stand sitting on someone else's butt heat.  If the seat is cold, I can pretend that no one has ever sat on it before me.  But if it's warm...well, I don't know where that butt's been.  I know that's weird, but there it is.

It gets weirder.

The ladies' restroom by my office has either 7 or 8 stalls in it.  Almost every time I'm in there by myself, whistlin' a tune and doin' my business, someone else comes in and sits down in the stall right next to mine.  Why, when there are 6 or 7 other empty stalls, do you (and you know who you are) have to sit right next to me?  That's just creepy.  If you really gotta go, by all means come on in and sit for a spell.  But when I'm on the throne and it's just you and me and all that empty real estate, don't sit next door.  That ain't right.  I'm sure there must be a law against that somewhere.

If, when washing your hands, you get water all over the counter, please dry it off.  I'm short, okay?  And I'm tired of dragging my belly...I mean, shirt...in it.  And stop shaking the water off your hands and flinging it on the floor.  Were you born in a barn?  That's why God makes paper towels.

Finally, wash your hands.  Yes, you.  And you.  I know who you are.  You never wash your hands after you've wiped and flushed, and it's really grossing me out.  STOP IT!!!

Whew!  I feel so much better now!