Our Thanksgiving

As fascinating as my GI tract is, I think it's time to write about Something Else. Like Thanksgiving weekend. Here's how it went.

Wednesday

--We started the gluttony with a late night meal at Chili's.

--I assembled the stuffing, koshered the turkey and mapped out cooking times for each dish.

--Dragged myself to bed circa 2 am. Not so smart.

Thursday

--Set alarm. Bwah ha ha ha! Realize that nothing will proceed according to schedule from this point forward.

--An hour later, start things off with some quality nookie.

--Shower, approach kitchen.

--Open oven to adjust racks. Find loaf of bread that was supposed to go in the stuffing. (Has wondered why there was so much egg/broth left over). Break bread into sacrament sized pieces and stir into stuffing.

--Butter & season turkey. Slide extra fat under breast skin so it can self-baste while cooking. Wrestle into oven. In retrospect, a 20 lb. turkey was much too much for four people.

--Bake pumpkin pie, baste turkey, bake stuffing, make cranberry sauce; kids help with rolls & green beans. Mike handles cooking & mashing potatoes.

--Casualty: a sweet potato/green apple/pineapple concoction. I didn't roast the sweet potatoes long enough by themselves, so they didn't cook through before adding the other ingredients.

--Got snappish with Mike in the home stretch. To his credit, he was trying to be helpful and I was less than patient while trying to explain cooking steps to him AND stay on top of the 4 things I was cooking. (My bad).

--After we sit down to eat, I hear cooking sounds. ?! Mike had put my sweet potatoes in the top oven (cold) and put the turkey back in the bottom oven (hot) where it got roasted all over again. This rendered the dark meat unusable for anything except making stock. :(

--After dinner, my friend Minerva stopped by for dessert. After she left, we went to go see Enchanted. Fun movie! Again, collapse into bed in wee morning hours.

To be continued...

Is this, how you say, progress?

Morning visit with the GI specialist. I 'splained my symptoms, their duration and how I'm not sure if my PCP's office really did test for giardia and cryptospiridium like I asked (or which donated substances they performed tests on).

She listened sympathetically and said she'd review the test results. They'll do more testing if needed; a lot depends on the testing lab's capabilities and parasites are not necessarily shed in every stool.

In the meantime, she gave me a 5-day course of antibiotics to take before my next appointment. When I Googled it, I found this drug is used to treat giardia and crypto. If I have either of those things dwelling in my gut, it should make short work of them.

Only it might be a rough 5 days. After the first dose, I became nauseated and gassy. I calmed the nausea somewhat with the crystallized ginger I keep in my desk drawer ( as vending machine repellent). Shortly after that, however, the drug I'm taking to treat the diarrhea GAVE ME diarrhea.

Go figure.

Poetic Justice?

Mike set up KSL radio to listen to the BYU-UofU game. A few minutes ago, the U scored a touchdown and Mike turned into a screaming, hooting, whooping, happy sports fan, the likes of which I've never seen.

And then...BYU got the ball and moved it down the field and got in good position and ended up scoring a touchdown, putting BYU ahead.

And then I was the one whooping and jumping up and down and asking facetiously "Does that mean my team is ahead and going to win?" "How many seconds are on the clock?"

Mike answers all of these questions with "SHUT UUUUUUPPPPPP!"

Current situation: 16 seconds on the clock, BYU 17, Utah 10.

Mike says "You better not be blogging about this! Shut up!"

How could I not blog? It's turned into a VERY interesting game, indeed.

What Women Know

It would be accurate to describe me as an activist.

I recycle and compost and try to be mindful of my impact on the Earth I inhabit. I recently joined a discussion/activist group that connects our religious tradition's theology and scripture with care for the Earth.

I'm active in my local community, protesting the idea that a multimillion dollar border wall will have any meaningful impact on illegal immigration.

I was an activist in college, protesting a daylight attack on a female student and the myopic reaction on campus telling us that women walking alone was the problem.

I took part in my college town's first Take Back The Night march. I wear my commitment to women's issues on my skin as well as in my mind and heart.

I'm gratified and proud to have had a small part in the statement of values posted on this site: What Women Know.

For the past decade, I've been in conversation with the women who contributed their time, energy and life experiences to create this statement. I admire their thoughtfulness, their resilience in adversity, their faith and the wit and wisdom they bring to the discussion.

I've also been blessed to work with, sing with, laugh with, cry with, serve with, visit with, vent with, read with, teach with and rejoice with some utterly amazing women.

If you're female and reading this, you are one of them. I can't begin to thank you enough for being you, for voicing your opinions, for showing me the communion and unity of spirit that can exist in a diverse community. You are blessings in my life--ones that I feel fortunate and grateful to have.

Because I deeply value the women in my life and the myriad ways they enrich, support, love and encourage me, I wanted to reciprocate by sharing this statement of values.

Shout Out to Laughing Catholic

I have a very funny friend named Marilyn who does stand-up in LA and creates irreverent merchandise for the recovering dogmatic in all of us.

Check out her wares here:
http://www.cafepress.com/laffincatholic

We have a (nearly) full set of fridge magnets--missing only the Ether Bunny. They go well with the Davy Crockett magnet ("You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas") and my Anne Taintor magnet ("Guess where I'm tattooed).

More Entrails Tales

8:15 am: My Dr appointment time.

9:00 am: Called back to exam room. Vitals & history checked. Yes, I still have frequent headaches, a stiff neck and the trots.

9:20 am: Dr comes in, reviews my test results. Abdominal MRI was fine. Blood work, fine. Stool cultures, fine. Nothing showed up. Not even giardia? Cryptospiridium? Nope. Everything came back just FINE.

I point out I don't FEEL FINE.

Dr whips out his pass-the-buck pad; do I know any particular gastroenterologists in the Valley? No, I say, sullen and trying not to cry.

But hey, I don't have a tumor or need surgery. I do, however, need a colonoscopy next. And judging from the still primitive (read: barium) approaches to testing here, I'm virtually assured of having a piece of PVC pipe shoved up my bum for a look-see.

He refers me to a woman in the Renaissance Hospital system. Any more questions for him? Not at this time. I trudge to the front so the thick headed receptionist can make the GI appointment (they do that for you here; it's damn inconvenient, like not being able to pump your own gas in Oregon).

I also have to haggle with Dim Sum to get an earlier appointment for my recheck next month. She ASKED and I said my preference was early morning. My appointment card: 10:45 am. Got anything earlier so I don't miss another half day of work?! Oh, I have 8:15 am available that day.

9:40 am: I escape to my car and burst into uncontrollable sobs, disappointed with the lack of answers/solutions and those damnably normal test results.

Collect myself, drive home, curl up next to Mike while he strokes my hair and says he's sorry it's turned out this way. He gets ready and drives my draggin' ass to work.

Weekend Update

Well, I'm obviously not doing the one-blog-post-a-day in November for national bloggers month or whatever it's called. My posting schedule is irregular--as I have time, if something happens or if I'm sufficiently conscious to string words together at the end of the day.

Here's what happened with us this weekend:

* We ordered pizza Friday and Saturday night

* I taught the RS lesson on Women in the church to a crowd of nine women (I did it workshop style and it went well)

* Once the bishop was informed we were NOT moving (that's the other Stevens family), Mike got tapped to be the new Sunday School president

* My premonition that I'd end up teaching gospel doctrine: true

* The above: karma for bitching about previous dull instructor

* Still no RS presidency, instructors or visiting teachers; rumors indicate it will stay this way until January when more changes in the stake are expected

* Mike fixed my printer so it doesn't chop off the tops of tall/capital letters

* Conclusion: we like Lowe's better than Home Depot

* We measured and even if we install a new, smaller shower in our bathroom, there's still not room for the 5 foot double sink we'd love to have

* Still no word form the newspaper re: unsuspending my Valley Girl column :(

* A project I'm involved with is coming to fruition (more about that in a separate forthcoming post)

* Right this minute, Mike is baking me chocolate chip cookies!

*I've killed 3 ants on my desk since I started writing this post. I think it's time to clean.

Data Dump

This morning, I dropped my shit off at the doctor's office. Walked my HazMat bags through a half-filled waiting room and, in case anyone missed seeing the load in the bright orange bag, I had to spell out giardia for the receptionist. Then I had to trot to work.

As I mentioned, it wasn't easy to aim an orifice you can't see. By the turd one, I finally figured out how to get it into the cup without running over.

What is it about stool samples that brings out the Grey Poo Puns? Are they just intrinsically funny? We're all just one poop joke removed from 5th grade, admit it.

Mike sent me an email asking how things went with the early morning drops of doo. My mom said, "I hope they get to the bottom of this."

I made chili for dinner. Wishing I had one of J's toilet-shaped dog dishes to go with today's theme.