Tag Archives: family

happiness

Backwards shirt day

Today would have been mom’s birthday and my emotions have been all over the place. It’s also right before thanksgiving and this is a difficult holiday for me as memories of a violent incident from my marriage pop back in my memories at this time.

With that said, I really needed something to laugh about today. I was in town doing some errands and swung by our butcher shop. I am in there a lot lately because my diet requires that I eat a lot of meat and theirs is such good quality – I find grocery store meat makes me feel ill at the best of times. Because I am in there so often I’ve got to know the guys who work there a bit – they all seem really nice and it feels like a happy place.

Anyway, I walk into the store and I was chatting with one of the guys who works there. They usually wear chefs coats, but he was leaving for the day and was in his street clothes. I noticed that the front collar of his t-shirt looked like it was up a bit higher than normal and I had a thought “his shirt is on backwards”. I have no idea if it actually was or not, could have just been how the shirt was sitting. But once that thought was there it stayed. And it made me laugh a little because when my kids were little no matter how hard I tried at least one of them headed off for the day with their clothes on backwards.

That’s not the funny part though.

I came home and was sitting on the couch telling the story to the girl when I looked down and went OH MY GOD. I jumped up and said MY BLOODY SHIRT IS ON BACKWARDS!!!. So yeah. I don’t know if he went home and laughed when he noticed his shirt was on backwards, if indeed it was, but I certainly laughed when I got home and discovered my shirt was on backwards.

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happiness

Grandpa’s turquoise ring

When I was a little girl of about 6 we went to Phoenix to visit my Grandpa who used to winter there. I remember very few things about the trip. Some woman with cleats stepped on my bare foot and then yelled at me when I cried because it hurt. We went panning for gold and I found a nugget in my pan and got to keep it. And I got a pretty little turquoise ring.

My foot has recovered and I’ve learned to stay away from cranky people in cleats when I’m barefoot. My parents took the gold because they said I was too young to be responsible for it. Once in a while mom would pull it out and show it to me, but even as an adult I never was given my gold nugget back. I assume it’s somewhere in the treasure pile that is our home. But I was allowed to keep the ring.

When I was little the ring was too big for my hand. As I got older my hand was too big for the ring, and I kind of missed the tiny little window when hand and ring were both the right size. But I do wear it often as a pinky ring. It’s made all of my moves with me and has always had a small and special place in my heart.

Last night I was left unsupervised again which is never a good thing. My hands had shrunk in water retention/swelling/fat to be smaller than they have been in ages and I was playing around with my rings. I put my turquoise ring on my ring finger to see how close it would come to fitting and then twisted and shoved it right onto my hand.

Huge mistake

So then my hand swelled up and I couldn’t get it off. After looking on google and YouTube, I tried lotion, soap, ice, and the ribbon/dental floss trick. Nothing. And the ring was starting to hurt.

This morning I did a walk of shame into our Urgent Care and told them what I’d done. The staff there were so kind and thoughtful as I told them what I’d done. They brought me back into the little cast room and a nurse came in to try the windex trick again. Nothing. Then about 5 nurses all came in – one was their “ring getting off professional” and i think the rest were women who could relate to what I was going through. She tried windex again but it wasn’t happening. Finally she got out some archaic looking device that was able to cut through the ring and free my finger.

So now my precious little ring is broken and I will somehow figure out how to get it fixed. But I figure it kind of adds to the value of the ring through this story. There was never any real monetary value to the ring, it was all sentimental. And I figured Grandpa being the jokester that he was would have got a real kick out of my plight. I am so grateful for our Urgent Care. They have saved us in much more serious incidents, but I appreciated the dignity and humour that I was afforded in this less serious one.

The “before”
Icing icing icing to get the swelling down
My poor little ring, but man my finger feels better.
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happiness

Where were you when you heard the news?

I was sitting in Tulip Room 2 with my girl waiting for a doctor appointment. I had left my phone in the car and was just sitting there when her phone buzzed. She looked down and casually said “the Queen is dead” and I promptly burst into tears.

A few minutes later we could hear two women talking about the Queen’s passing. We couldn’t make it all out but they were clearly upset and sharing some of their memories of her. When my doctor came into the room it was the first thing we spoke about and it turned out that it had been her processing the death.

Those of you who know me may remember that I fell madly in love with Lady Diana before she married Charles and my love and respect for the People’s Princess carries on today. I’ve also had a lot of respect and admiration for Queen Elizabeth. No matter the situation, she has always conducted herself like royalty, I’ve never heard anything bad said from her or about her (not saying there isn’t anything – but really if there is it must be fairly uncommon – her children are another matter).

Lately I’ve said that the only thing that would be worse than the Queen dying is him becoming king, and with that her becoming queen consort. Bleh. Mostly it’s just that I don’t like how they were dirty with Diana.

And it was pretty much the same thing my doctor said – she just said it with more kindness than I just did. Really upset about the Queen, but even more upset that she was going to now be called queen. Then we had a long and lovely talk about how much we both loved Princess Diana. Finally my girl understood what I was saying when I said that there were so many of us in my generation who loved the People’s Princess.

I’ve loved the Queen too – for all of my life. And I sure will miss her. I will miss her class and grace. I will miss the way she kind of reminded me of my Auntie Mary who is also gone, and who also made it to a lovely old age (95). I am grateful though that I was given the opportunity to process the information of her passing with an adult whom I trust and admire and respect. It was very meaningful to be able to share our memories of both the Queen and Princess Diana with each other.

God Save the Queen.

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happiness

SIBO: Relapse? Never resolved? Frustrated

Things are not going well in SIBO land for me right now. It’s been at least a couple of weeks of pretty extreme discomfort (achy joints, headache, brain fog, anxiety, not sleeping etc) and I’ve finally decided that perhaps we never got rid of the sibo and with me introducing new foods it’s flared up again.

Now, by new foods I don’t mean things like chocolate cake (sob), or even things like potatoes or grains. It was things like Swiss chard, eggplant, asparagus, and olive oil – all things cleared with or suggested by my naturopath. I kind of blame the olive oil even though it’s supposed to be good for sibo but at this point I have nothing besides a hunch. I was doing well when I was using avocado oil, but when I ran out a month ago I switched to olive oil and it’s been a steady decline since. But there could be other reasons.

Of course it’s not just a weekend but a long weekend so I have to wait for my appointment with my naturopath until Wednesday. But yesterday I kind of snapped and decided to help myself because the pressure building inside me was becoming too much to take. By pressure I mean that it feels like I’m being wired with very uncomfortable electricity that just vibrates through my body giving me a headache and feeling of pressure that makes me feel like I’ll explode. And I’m sharing this in case there are other people out there suffering who have no idea what is going on or feel like they’re alone. Although I would never wish this on anyone, so I kind of hope I’m all alone with it.

I went to our local drug store – Two Pharmacy in Cochrane- and picked up some liver support, berberine, and oil of oregano, all of which I had been on before during the kill off phase. I bought a different oregano oil though and I think I’ll wait on that until I see my dr. So far there’s a lot less pressure but I still feel like crap. I’ve cut out everything besides hamburger meat, because I know meat doesn’t feed the sibo. And while i’m grateful for the cows that are healing me, damn I miss vegetables. But I have a lot of gratitude for those cows, they are healing my insides not to mention that my house and my life here was literally built because of cows, and I am eternally thankful for what they are doing for me. The fact that their lives were given to improve my health is not forgotten and I am constantly in a state of gratitude for that.

So I go Wednesday and find out whether or not becoming my own doctor over the weekend was a good idea. I don’t know what else to do- it’s not like you can go into urgent care and say that you feel like you’re dying because of sibo because it doesn’t show up on regular tests. But damn, it does kind of feel like you’re dying. And that’s not me being dramatic, it’s bloody awful. I can’t believe I ever used to just cram food in my mouth and not worry that it was going to debilitate me.

But this will eventually be resolved and I’ll feel like I’m back on track with my healing journey. Actually even though I feel like crap I still know I’m on my healing journey. I’ve come so far, and so much of this is just using intuition and stepping back and allowing God to be present (that and a lot of crying and trying to bargain with God for my health – but those aren’t probably as helpful as the first two).

Blessings

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