Last week of October 2020: Monday, the dietician at Davita stopped by to give my most recent lab reports. Phosphorus is a little high. Am I taking Selevemere with each meal. No, only at Breakfast. Why? Copay is over 70 bucks. She noted that I had my trailmix snack on the table. I said I ate that the last hour on the chair, so that I did not feel wiped out by the time I got home. She said that nuts have a lot of phosphorus in them and suggested that I eat a TUMs with them. Ok, I love tums and I shall substitute them for Selevemere when the bottle runs out! Tuesday I processed seven pounds of green tomato pickles, I got 7 pints of pickles and four pints of juice. I like to use that juice to put small onions or carrots. Makes a delightful pickle. I took two pints to Gail and Patty, they were a hit. I also took the last batch of Mexican Cheesecake. I hope they can taste the cream cheese as well as the cumin. My dialysis taste buds cannot. So not making that again. I was hoping to get my new glasses this week. Nope. I am not confident in driving if I cannot read street signs. Oy. They folks at Davita have beeb using my neck cannula. Because I have developed a really hard knot above the fistula that has a whistle. So I think I will be seeing a local surgeon who will first perform a fistulagram and then raise the vessel higher for easier access by the nurses and technicians. We are also starting later at 11:10 am, This gets me off the chair by 3:15 pm. I like it because I can get walkies in seven days a week rather than four.

Yay, I haz lappy!!!

Got the computer and I cannot seem to make the font tize larger in the Blog Smit! Mailed Lappy to Phil who turned it over to a friend who fixed the thing within 4 hours!! He put a free virus program called Avast. McAffeey kept firing up and interferring with stuff. The main problem was in the boot sector. He fixed that. It is now functioning very well. However I cannot figure how to make the zoom function work or make the font size change. Grrrrr. Also Blogger will now allow me to paragraph etc. I woke to a two part dream the other day. The first part was where I was in a room full of men. One very handsome man was sitting at the bar wearing a jacket mae of brown, tan, thin black line and cream. It was gorgeous. He also wore it over a cable knit sweat of cream colored wool. I could see every man plotting to purchase or make a similar jacket. (As if) The seccond part of my dream involved my neighbors across the street. We were going ree climbing in a lush forest. At one point, Gale handed me a phone and said, "It's your grandma." So I took the phone and chatted with y grandma Horn who died in 1982. I then said "I have to go,I saw three lilac bushes in bloom." The lical boshes were perfectly round growing in the tree and I wanted to get a lilac bloom to smell. A to Z dream site says that to see clothing is a symbole of public self and how you are perceived. to see a tree repesentes your achievements of career goals and attainment of position. As usual it is all about me.

I forgot to add this to the fruit cake sage

I had intended to include this in the fruitcake saga. When I worked in Dillingham, I discovered that holidays are a big deal. Christmas especially. The local religion is Russia Orthodox and one of the things that happens right after Christmas is a forty day fast. In the old days when food sources were not so plentiful, fasting helped the food stretch out during the winter. We had a choir come into the department to sing Carols, more like Russian Orthodox favorites. The priest came in dressed in his black cassock and black hat shaped like a brimless top hat. He carried the Russian Orthodox cross which is a regular cross with an additional slanted cross bar. One of the customs at work was that we drew names and were expected give a gift each day of the week. I decided to make Fruit Cake for the lady whose name I drew. I did not realize that the gifts were supposed to be different. I am pretty sure she was a bit disgusted by Friday. To divert for a moment, Janice Snow was in the habit of adding "ster" to anyones name, which she uttered in high good humor. For instance, Tim was Timster. Bob was Bobster. I was unfortunately called, "Roycester". sigh.. One day I received a gift from Karen. It was a can of smoked oysters. I was thrilled, I was gushing about how much I liked smoked oysters. Karen interrupted to say, "No, Look at the label!" She had used a marker to add R to the word oyster. Thus Royster. I nearly wet my pants.

FRUIT CAKE AND HOW I CAME TO LOVE IT

FRUIT CAKE: When I was a child, none of my extensive family ever made a fruitcake for Christmas. The first time I ever ate a piece of fruitcake it was grey, soggy, crumbling and the taste was overpowering with dates. Which I do not like. Many years later, in the 1970's, I ate a piece of fruitcake that was totally different. The recipe was from Letha Fashauer, first husbands great aunt. I begged for the recipe and it is as follows: Two cups sugar or Splenda Eight eggs, I like to use Jumbo. Two cups flour. Four teaspoons Vanilla. (I am going to add 1/2 tsp of salt.) Fruit is floured dates. Cup of raisens. Couple cups of walnuts. Red candied cherries Green candied cherries Candied pineapple. Mix well, use large bread pans. Bake one hour at 350 F. When cool, poke holes to absorb your favorite brandy. This year I decided to expeiment (Mom throws up hands in despair). I had purchased in interesting fruit nut mix of cranaberry raisens, cashews and almonds. I also had some dried mango. I had on hand almonds, macadamia nuts and walnuts. I wanted to make this very lemony, so I decided to use Lemon jello in liquid form and pour it over the cake. Then for the adult version, I planned on soaking the cake in Limoncello. Who knew Amazon would mail liquor to me? It tastes okay but okay is NOT good enough. It tastes flat and I intend to add the half teaspoon of salt. I shall leave out all nuts except walnut, I shall add dried pineapple, leave out the dried mango and I will stir the package of lemon jello into the batter. This will eliminate the layer of jello from the outside of the cake, which was just silly. I also have a bag of pitted Bing cherries, I may add them just for texture. I attempt this this weekend. I may purchase Kirsvasse from the liquor store. This might be sensational. Do not consume near open flame unless you truely wish to experience tongue flambe.

To day I had an electroncephalogram. Hello? Anyone? Yoohoo!!

Today was interesting. I had an appointment for an EEG. This is all part of my local doctors work up for my self diagnosed petit mal. I had an MRI a couple of weeks ago and the findings were some white matter changes which is normal for my age. Normal is good! So, got checked into Bay Area Hospital via ER entrance. There was very little parking available. Holy hospital patient's! Busy, busy, busy. The procedure was a bit more complicated than I had imagined. A nice technician named Morgan, came to get us. The room had a large comfy bed, TV, and a largish chair. I sat in the chair. I was given two heated blankies, lovely!! Morgan explained that she was going to put 25 EEG leads plus one on each wrist. I must have looked like Doc Brown when he answered Marty's knocking on his front door minus the colander. She put green washable marker all over my head after carefully measuring circumference etc. Then using a combination glue stick she marked those spots and then applied the leads. After that, the TV got turned off and I was told to close my eyes. She said the last two minutes would be bright lights flashing and advised that I consume caffeine soon therafter to avoid a migraine headache. OK. The entire procedure took about 90 minutes. After all of the leads were removed she did some scrubbing and put a heated shower cap on my head. That was lovely. I put on my black hat to disguise the Elton John Wind Beneath My Wings hair. We left and stopped at Micky D's for lunch and caffeine in the form of iced hazel nut coffee. Yummm! Then to home. No idea what the results will be, doubtful anything interesting. The theory is that you need to be exhausted before the test, so I got about three hours of sleep. Oh well. We shall see maybe. I was hoping for curly hair but that did not happen.

I forgot about THIS episode

I just remembered this episode from Barrow days. While I worked most often in the medical record department at SSMH in Barrow, we would rotate out to the front desk to provide coverage so the other ladies could go to lunch. One day, it was my turn. From noon on it was customary for people to walk in to be seen in the ER. I was typing away one day and I heard a dulcet voice tell me that the name was Michelle K. I did a quick search and said that I could not find that name, could I have the date of birth. Oh, yes, here you are, Michael K. I asked him if he wished me to add Michelle to the Also Known As file. Yes, he/she beamed. I looked up then and realized that I sort of knew who this person was. He was kind of famous for wandering around towb dressed up in black Ninja clothes. He/She was seen and I didn't think anything else about it. A few weeks later, Ninja Boy kidnapped a married couple of teachers. He held them hostage in their own apartment. He was demanding that ACRC give him money for his sex change operation. Occasionally, Artic Slope Regional Corporation would issue dividends to their members. Ninja Boy was impatient and unwilling to wait until the next check. This went on all day and he decided to give up his demands for he ransom about the time that the SWAT team from Anchorage landed. I am umsure about the fate of this young man but am fairly sure that some time spent in lockup and hopefully counseling ensured. Only in Barrow.

FRUIT

I first became aware of fruit picking as a child. We lived in the Evergreen Trailer Park east on Main Street. There were five or six small cabins which were routinely rented out to fruit tramps. We knew of one family who followed the fruit circuit. They lived in New Mexico and came to Emmett in the summer to pick fruit. The family consisted of father, mother and a teenaged boy. They parked their little trailer in the same park as we. The orchard owners financed and built a labor camp. The building were made of cinderblock. I think they were hot to live in and pretty bare essentials. The Mexican laborers lived in these buildings. The orchards consisted of cherry, apple, prune, peach, apricot, nectarines, strawberries and watermelon. Watermelon was not picked commercially. I picked strawberries for 80 cents a flat which consisted of a dozen baskets. The berries were weedy and you had to fight the Daddy Longlegs for the berries. Fortunately there was a strong teenaged boy to pick up the flats and give you a new one. One summer, I earned about $35 which which I purchased one reversible black and whiteplaid wool skirt. Mom asked me if I was sure I obly wanted to buy one item, yep it was what the popular girls were wearing only about four sizes smaller. One very cool thing about living by orrchards was that Mom was call to ask if they had sprayed yet. If not we went to pick asparagus which grew in the irrigation ditches. It was wonderful My brother, Jim, called in green carrots. A memorable experience I had was picking cherries. I ate almost as many cherries as I picked the first day. By the next day, I was at the top of the ladder picking away and needed to have a bowel movement. I didn't make to the bottom the ladder. I walked home, went into the outhouse to clean up as much as possible and tossed by blue jeans down the shaft. Then I went in the house to get cleaned up and some new clothes. I returned the next day without eating any cherries. We were payed by the pound and the goal was to leave the stems on, do not remove the spur from which they grew. I think they paid from10 to 15 cents per pound. The Mexican teams were very fast, very efficient. Richard and I were picking prunes, we had four trees with a big bin in thd middle. The bins held about five hundred pounds. The Mexicans would pick the four trees clean in about an hour and move to the next. Once a orchard boss came around and said, you are slow but steady. One season, Richard and I were at Grandma Berglunds and we walked to an orchard. She had made lunch for us and of course about nine a.m. we were hungry. The sandwiches turned out to be buttered bread. We felt cheated but ate them anyway. I never got the chance to pick apples becauses the season started after school started. Kids could get an excuse to pick apples but Mom never allowed it. Mostly because she knew we were safely occupied at school. One time Mom and I worked in a nectarine packing shed. We dressed rather nicely, she let me wear a pair of her wool pants. At that time we were miraculously about the same size. After that, however, I grew a bit. She told me that she used to wear Uncle Taters hat band as a belt. She could not pronounce Clayton, it came out Tayton and evolved into Tater. At any rate she was offended that I was not as dainty as she. So she purchased a flat of Metracal. This was a chocolate diet aid. I drank that stuff down and enjoyed every can. Dad reported that a guy he worked with drank so much that he became constipated. The Metracal ceased as it was a tad expensive to waste on a chubby teenager. When I returned to Emmett as a displaced housewife, both Ellen and I worked on the South Slope at an apple packing shed. We met many people. The head guy came around to introduce two men, these are our friends from behind the Iron Curtain. The Mormon housewives shivered in their shoes. The two men were Romanian. One was a cattle rancher and the othebr was a wheat farmer. I got to know them. I askedn​one man what he was taking home for a Christmas gift for his wife. He replied, "Ool." ??? bah, bah...oh WOOL. I asked him to say good evening in Romanian he said Buna Sera. Wow, that sounds like Italian. He then gave me a brief history lesson of invasion by Imperial Rome. Huh. There was also a crew of Japanese men working there. I was driving the loaded truck of apples to the rail head in town, where they would unload the truck and load onto the freight train. I was gently warned to be careful because the men were lonely. Okaaaaaaaay. We used to go pick a tiny black cherry called Tararian. It was used as a pollinator only. We would pick and Mom would make black Tartarian cherry dumplings. Delicious! Which reminds me, have a quantity of pitted black cherries in the fridge and I have some bicquits in a can which I will peel into thin sections and bake for 30 minutes at 350. Maybe next weekend.!!