How Are We Doing?

Hey folks. How is it going? Are we all doing all right tonight? It’s Friday the 13th, has the universe thrown you any curve balls?

Today has gone okay for me. I found out my nephew has Covid. Sigh in frustration. I hope he’s okay, and I hope he kicks it way faster than I did. I don’t want him to be sick for three weeks the way I was. I have a whole new perspective on this particular plague and somehow it makes everything worse.

I had another one of those empty stomach things that I wrote about last night. Usually it hits about three hours after eating. Today it hit two hours after I finished lunch. I had a snack and thought I would be okay until dinner, but an hour later it came back. Weird. That’s the first time this issue was not predictable. I didn’t eat dinner until 7:00, which was about an hour after the stomach ache came back. We’re going to have to keep an eye on this tonight. I don’t want any weirdness. Unpredictable weirdness is not as fun as you’d think.

Jen and I just watched this week’s episode of Loki. Season two episode two. At lunch today I was poking around news.google.com and I was almost spoiled about seven times. I am going to have to be more careful on Fridays for the next four weeks.

I just checked the weather for the weekend. It is going to be clear at sunrise tomorrow and clear just after sunrise on Sunday. There must be photos this weekend. It’s a necessity. I have a lot of stuff on my agenda and I’m booked pretty solid. Still, from a mental health standpoint a photowalk somewhere must happen. The mornings are getting cold and there are only so many more opportunities left before the winter ruins everything. I have to take advantage of this. Ocean sunrise and maybe some Merrimack River stuff tomorrow and then either around town on Sunday or maybe finally spend an hour or two walking around the city? Boston at sunrise on a Sunday should be easy to social distance, shouldn’t it?

Like I said, there is a lot on my plate this weekend. I need to make time for some creative stuff. I’m still feeling a little shell shocked from the covid journey so my brain needs to stretch its figurative legs a little.

Here’s hoping we can make something happen this weekend. Assuming Friday the 13th lets us through the day, right?

Today’s Photo a Day

Hello and welcome to another addition of today’s photo a day. I don’t do these every day, but I do them now and then because I want to and it’s my page and I do what I want.

There is a “where’s waldo” element to this photo. Somewhere in there is a squirrel giving me the stink eye. Do you see the little furry bastard?

43/365
43/365

Charity

Daily writing prompt
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
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Jen and I were just discussing this the other day. Was the daily prompt eaves dropping? I wonder…

With the recent Powerball lottery coming close to two billion dollars, we had a little bit of fantasizing about what we would do with the winnings. Giving to charity was high on the list of things to do with the money but it followed spreading the wealth to our families and friends. First we take care of the kids and set them up for the future. Then we take care of our parents, my siblings, and their kids. Then we take care of some of our friends and their kids. I don’t think we would give enough to set anyone up for life, but colleges and mortgages and things like that would never be worried about again. Then we would set up a trust for ourselves in an attempt to allow us to just live off the interest earned. Sort of like a salary for ourselves that would hopefully keep us at a stable point for our future.

After all of that gets taken care of, then we start giving to charity. Our day dream didn’t include an actual dollar amount to play with, but let us just say it was a cool million dollars, which sounds like a fortune, but once you get down to it wouldn’t be enough to enact any real change for any charity. It’s the thought that counts though.

I think we would focus on medical research. My step son has type one diabetes. Finding a reputable diabetic research group would be my primary goal. I would want to give the bulk of the mil’ to them. Anything that might have a chance to make his life easier in the future.

Another research direction to give to would be finding a research group working on dementia. After what my mother went through in her final few years… I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. If we could be even the tiniest bit of help with unlocking the mystery of memory then that would be money very well spent.

One more obvious point of focus would be cancer research. My mother’s problems started with a brain tumor. One of my friends lost his seven year old son to a brain tumor. We know a few people who are dealing with prostate cancer and different forms of leukemia. Research into any of those would be worthwhile research topics to focus on.

So there you go. If I had a million dollars worth of charitable donations burning a hole in my wallet, and assuming we had already taken steps to make sure our family and friends are taken care of, then those would be a few primary targets. Chances are I would give it all to diabetes research as that would do the most good for my step son, but any of these would be worthy of my money.

Stomach Fun

It’s been an eventful day in terms of gastric bypass life today. My stomach has not really been a team player. I think if I am being honest with myself I cannot blame today’s fun on my stomach. I have to put all of the blame on myself. Which is really the same thing, isn’t it?

Twice today I have had stomach pain caused by my poor little redesigned stomach pouch being too empty. Three hours after breakfast and three hours after lunch I had stomach pain bad enough that I had to eat something to make it go away. As my doctor said when I told her about the occasional hour-three-pains, duh you’re hungry. I thought about adding something to my lunch in the hopes that it would keep me full for longer, but I felt pretty stuffed when I finished lunch and I didn’t want to risk overdoing it. Looking back, I wonder if I should have pushed things a little more. Probably not.

The next fun came during dinner. I had a couple of ounces of chicken on my plate along with a scoop of instant mashed potatoes. I had finished the chicken without issue but I really wanted to get into those potatoes, babie. Just call me a red haired Irish stereotype. I had what I thought were a couple of small bites but either they were bigger than they should have been or I just ate too fast because my stomach felt a little blocked. Something was keeping the last bite or so from getting into the tiny little redesigned stomach pouch and that leads to some real discomfort. Worse than that, it lead to those few bites of instant mashed potatoes coming back up for an encore. Yikes! Sorry about the gross TMI here folks, but I need to document this stuff for posterity… or something like that. It wasn’t bad, just a couple of blasts and it was over. This happens with mashed potatoes once in a while (not very often, but enough to spot patterns) and as usual I felt better almost immediately. I still paused on eating for about half an hour and then I finished my dinner without further issue.

The last bit of stomach excitement is happening as I type this and it really is a non-issue. I don’t like going to bed without having eaten something. It probably makes my sleep less than ideal, but it is WAY better than waking up in the middle of the night with those empty stomach pains. I try to be full when I turn in for the night and tonight I think I may have over done it a little. I was a little behind on the old protein goal so I had a small protein bar to get over the hump. Then 20 minutes later I had some crackers. The two things combined were a little too much and now I feel SUPER full. Not painfully full but a little uncomfortable. I am going to try and stay awake for another hour or so to make sure I feel better before I lay down, but hindsight tells me I should have skipped the crackers. Oh well. It’s hard to gauge what my stomach will need at night so I may actually have to eat something else before I sleep, but I doubt it. I think food and I are done with each other for the night.

So four instances of stomach issues over the course of a single day. That is a lot more than usual for difficult days and given that most days are issue free it’s WAY more than normal for the average day. None of it was really too bad. I mean the vomiting was unpleasant but only for a couple of minutes and as soon as it was over I felt fine. All in all it wasn’t bad. I’d rather a full on easy day, sans-problems, but as problematic days go this one was pretty good.

In closing, I will quote the band Traffic, whose legendary self-titled second album was released 55 years ago this month, and say who knows what tomorrow may bring?