Category Archives: Health

7 Quick Takes: Clearing out My Links Cache

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

A serious uff-da! In #5 of last week’s Quick Takes, I completely blanked on having met Kym in 2011. This is why I crowdsourced stuff last week — I’m lacking the brain power and memory to do this well! Sorry, Kym.

— 2 —

Ulcer. For those who don’t normally read this blog, I ended up in Urgent Care last Saturday afternoon with stomach pain, nausea, and some other unpleasant symptoms. After an equally unpleasant exam, I was put on omeprazole (because giving me Dexilant would be wrong even if it is what works) and told to get in with my PA to get a referral to a G-I specialist. I was also given a list of foods to avoid. My PA ordered blood, various other labs, and an abdominal ultrasound as well as giving me a referral to a G-I specialist. All but the ultrasound have been done (the ultrasound will be August 18th and I’ll be having to go 12 hours without food or water which is not making me happy) so, God willing, I’ll have some preliminary results in a couple days.

— 3 —

So you’re, like, Catholic, right? I’m Episcopalian and apparently, autocorrect can’t spell it. Some of these suggestions are pretty funny, especially the one about cotillions because Episcopalians have tended to be the richer people on the mainline Christian spectrum.

— 4 —

Secret Catholics in Jamestown?!?!?!?!? Apparently, one of the bodies dug up was buried with a reliquary. Considering that a number of settlers fled England due to religious persecution, it makes total sense that one (or many) was a crypto-Catholic. The Anglican church is also very similar in terms of worship to the Roman Catholic Church so someone who was privately Catholic could hide in plain sight. That’s not to say that Jamestown wasn’t anti-Catholic; but it was not any worse than it would have been to stay on the other side of the Atlantic.

— 5 —

For those who attend book signings… A couple days ago, Twitter had the hashtag #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter and some very well-known authors weighed in. I recommend reading it.

— 6 —

A Giant at a Dodgers game. There has been some good-natured teasing going on between my husband, my priest, and me over our plans to attend Episcopal Dodgers Night in September. For you not familiar with baseball, I’m a San Francisco Giants fan and the Dodgers are our hated enemies. However, I have never been to a professional sporting match and I love baseball, so we’re going. My priest suggested wearing my Giants socks and I’m going to be sourcing a pair of those. (I’ll also be wearing black.)

— 7 —

Agnostic or atheist? Neil of Godless in Dixie has a wonderful YouTube video that explains it. Go check it out!

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.

The Simple Woman’s Daybook + Answer Me This: July 26, 2015

Posted on by

Simple Woman's Daybook

FOR TODAY July 26, 2015

Outside my window… dark. (Surprised?) Earlier, it was about 90F and thankfully, the park was breezy when we were there between 4-5 p.m.

I am thinking… about my to-do list tomorrow: calling my doctor to get a consult with a G-I for my ulcer (which landed me in Urgent Care on Saturday afternoon), calling Daniel’s pediatrician to get a referral to radiology for the x-rays that the orthopedist wants, and calling Microsoft to figure out what in tarnation is happening to my laptop.

I am thankful… for Margaret, my partner in doing music for VBS earlier this month. Our music director/organist had a medical emergency and she stepped in to play piano for Communion and the recessional hymn. We did the first hymn acapella (which sounded amazing) and spoke the service music instead of singing it though the choir could probably have cantored it. Girlfriend is hella talented and did a better job sight-reading than I could have done actually *playing* back when I had decent piano skills in high school and the beginning of college.

In the kitchen… crackers and chevre for dinner because I knew it wouldn’t mess with my stomach.

I am wearing… grey shirt and capri sweats. For church, it was a black shirt (Old Navy) and a paisley skirt (Kohl’s).

I am going… to watch some Viperkeeper videos when I’m done with this.

I am wondering… if we will ever get Daniel to sleep through the night in his own bed. (I just came into the bedroom and found my precious sweetling asleep on my side of the bed.)

I am reading… Vanishing Grace by Phillip Yancey. Next on my TBR list is The Alpine Zen by Mary Daheim.

I am hoping… to get in with the G-I specialist soon. This stupid ulcer is driving me crazy.

I am looking forward to… Daniel going back to school in a month — the kid is bored!

I am hearing… silence as I haven’t put anything back on Youtube.

A Daniel story for today… my in-laws had new lighting put in the kitchen including one over the sink. Daniel can’t reach the switch for that one so he’ll pull an adult over and point to it to get it turned on and off. (His pulling on me is why my pinky is sprained at the very least and possibly even fractured. Kiddo is strong and has a good grip.)

Around the house… silence. Everyone is asleep except for me.

A favorite quote for today… “A pilgrim is a fellow traveler on the spiritual journey, not an experienced guide.” — Phillip Yancey, Vanishing Grace

One of my favorite things… this rendering of the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili by Peter Hollens and Malukah. (It was the main theme of the game, Civilization IV.)

A few plans for the rest of the week: errands, medical appointment scheduling, possible doctor’s appointments, PT on Tuesday, and whatever comes up.

A peek into my day… A raccoon we’ve been feeding and her four kits. Jon had only seen two of them and had named them “Bonnie and Clyde”. We’re currently searching for more fitting names.

The five banditos at the back door.

Post Script…

After you’re done reading my answers to these questions, go congratulate Kendra on her new little sweet pea and see what everyone else has had to say.

1. What’s your favorite grocery store splurge? For me, it’s probably ice cream or some kind of fruit that I want but isn’t in season. I’m in California so I can get pretty much anything but I’ve lived in places where the selection of fruits and veggies was limited due to the climate and what the store chose to stock.

2. How’s your penmanship? Mine is pretty as long as I’m printing. I can’t do cursive anymore without seriously thinking about it. Seriously, the only time I use it these days is to sign documents and even then my signature has flattened out and is pretty utilitarian.

3. Do you have a “Summer Bucket List?” Nope. My life would probably be improved if I did but there’s too much in flux in my life to create one.

4. What’s the best thing on the radio right now? I generally only listen to Air 1 or NPR so I’m liking the latest Casting Crowns album, Thrive.

5. Ice cream or frozen yogurt? Ice cream is a weakness. My favorite flavor of all time is Oatmeal Cookie Chunk from Ben & Jerry’s. What I would eat on a daily basis if I had a choice would be sorbet because I’m lactose-intolerant and I have an egg allergy.

6. Have you had that baby NOW? (Again, you can skip this one if you want.) Funny you should ask that… my friend Jenny just wrote a blog post on that!

Hosted by The Simple Woman.

7 Quick Takes: Crowdsourced Content

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

What I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Daniel is off school for the next month and now that we’re back from my parents’ house, I’ve got him pretty much all day. My mother-in-law has stepped up and helped *A LOT* this week because I’m fighting stomach issues (which is meaning that I’m feeling more run down than usual and am napping a lot) but today, I had him pretty much all day so writing this post with insightful Quick Takes was just not going to happen.

So… I decided to take a page from Kelly of This Ain’t The Lyceum and crowdsource some content. I had three people give me questions that I’ll answer (and I’ll put one person’s two part question into two Quick Takes) and then I’ll give you two things I saw online that amused me. Sound like a plan?

— 2 —

From Kelly of This Ain’t The Lyceum: Your feelings on Klondike bars? Absolutely neutral. I don’t think I’ve eaten one in years so I honestly can’t say what I would or wouldn’t do for one.

— 3 —

From Beth Anne of Beth Anne’s Best: In honor of your 15 years of blogging, what site did you start blogging on? I started out hand-coding a web journal on Peacefulwaters.Org, my own domain, in July 2000 and used Microsoft Front Page to generate some of it. (I’ve been doing website stuff for 18 years so this wasn’t that weird.)

— 4 —

From Beth Anne of Beth Anne’s Best: What sites have you used over the years? This is actually the second part of the question and I split it up because her question could honestly have been a post of its own. I did the hand-coding for a year and then did Livejournal for a bit, tried Grey Matter a few times, used Moveable Type for a few months, and then switched to WordPress’ predecessor b2. I fully switched over to WordPress in 2004.

::Meditatio:: itself has existed in pretty much unbroken form since 2003 when I switched to b2 and has been hosted on Grace-Filled.Net since 2005. I’ve imported all of the hand-coded stuff, the Livejournal entries, and one of the Grey Matter sections. I still need to import about 6 months or so of Grey Matter and Moveable Type which unfortunately has to be done by hand and it requires a working CD-ROM… which I currently do not have. (Laptops don’t like falling on hardwood floors. It’s under warranty but that would involve sending it to HP for weeks at a time.)

— 5 —

From Jen (@Jentoinfinity): How many people have you met IRL from blogging? You can name them if you want or just a number. This is kind of a weird question because I’ve known some of my blogging friends since before they had blogs, as in the case of my BFF Rebecca who was my maid-of honor, is Daniel’s godmother, and whom I have known for 20+ years. As far as fellow people I’ve met because of my blog, I’d say 3? I met Ellen of Stranger in a Strange Land in 2002, Dawn of ladydusk in 2003, and Chris of Father Christopher (and formerly of SomethingUnderstood.Org) in 2004.

Related to this, I think one of the stranger things that has happened was standing in the receiving line at a church in Ponoka, Alberta where Jon was interviewing for an associate pastor position in 2009 and having someone come up to me and tell me that they love my blog. It turns out that they were talking about my Blogathon site but it gave me a shock for a few days because I keep pretty quiet about my real name on here.

**UPDATE** I also met Kym back in 2011. Sorry for missing you in my count!

— 6 —

Something for which I really respect Sen. Lindsey Graham. So some of you might have seen the news about this yesterday:

This was Senator Graham’s response:

Stay classy, Senator!

— 7 —

Finally, some lovely music. Here’s one of my favorite videos from The Piano Guys:

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.

7 Quick Takes: Taking on Some Controversy in the Media and Talking About A Couple Books

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

The bakers fined $135K for refusing to bake the wedding cake. I actually had some sympathy for the couple who refused to bake the cake. They should be allowed to politely refuse to do so and face some bad publicity for their decision. My sympathy vanished, however, when I found out that they not only declined rudely to make the cake but they also doxxed the lesbian couple by giving out their names, address, email address, and phone number. Granted, this information *IS* public record because of the lawsuit, but the husband of the baker specifically shared it in anger and people used the information to send death threats to the lesbian couple.

(Libby Anne has a good blog post on this.)

— 2 —

The Planned Parenthood debacle. So here’s the thing: it wouldn’t surprise me if Planned Parenthood has had some unscrupulous people selling fetal tissue and I’m good with Congressional panels looking into this. HOWEVER… the Center for Medical Progress acted pretty dishonestly inasmuch as they had actors portraying people from a tissue company and in the fact that the video was pretty edited. All of the sites like LifeSiteNews that have broken the story are acting really smug about it and in a really distasteful way. LifeSiteNews in particular is so liberal with the inaccuracies in the news that they report that I honestly wouldn’t believe them as far as I could throw them and this is making me really leery to believe what they’re saying. On the other hand, I don’t trust Planned Parenthood either.

Truthfully, the news makes me feel tired. This article from America Magazine probably comes the closest to how I’m feeling.

— 3 —

A situation completely foreign to me as a West Coaster. Libby Anne’s blog post referred me to this one about a teacher in Mississippi who lost his job when a student outted him as an atheist. This horrifies me because I’m the daughter of a secular humanist and an agnostic/Buddhist and it scares me that one of my parents could be the person behind Godless in Dixie.

— 4 —

Why California does better under Jerry Brown. My mother-in-law gets a happy expression on her face every time someone mentions Governor Jerry Brown because, according to her, the state just does *sooooo* much better under his leadership. I’m having to admit that I agree, especially as he just signed into law a bill ending religious and personal exemptions for vaccines. Only kiddos who have specific medical conditions and a note from their doctor are exempt from the requirements. The only two other states who have passed a similar law are West Virginia and Mississippi, which kind of surprises me because you’d think that those two states would allow religious exemptions given the religious nature of their populations.

— 5 —

Owning one’s atheism. Neil Carter of Godless in Dixie appeared in a report on CBS This Morning on atheism. I’m watching it right now and it’s interesting. It saddens me however that his girlfriend’s father shunned him and his girlfriend because of it. The father just passed away and specifically asked that Neil not be allowed to be around the family while they mourned. That’s pretty serious hatred of someone right there.

Still, I’m glad for Neil and the others in the video that they are owning what they believe. Do I agree with them on their stances? No. Do I respect their dignity as people and would I have a drink with them? No question that I would!

— 6 —

The book I just finished. I just finished The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows and while it wasn’t as good as her first book, it was pretty fabulous.

— 7 —

You know your book is old when… Killer Pancake by Diane Mott Davidson has been interesting to listen to, partially because the book is pretty dated. They’re talking about things like payphones which I haven’t personally seen in probably 5 years!

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.

7 Quick Takes: Pretend This Has An Interesting Title

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Blech. I’m actually in bed right now sipping some Coke to see if it will help calm my stomach. My Annie’s Deluxe Shells and Real Aged Cheddar is not sitting well on my stomach tonight for some reason and I’m not feeling like staying up at the kitchen table when I’m feeling nauseous like this.

— 2 —

Hoping and praying for this! The weather powers-that-are seem to be predicting a strong El Niño this winter for California. For those who are confused, an El Niño event means a seriously wet winter for California, especially northern California, and this could really help with the current drought situation. The last really significant El Niño I remember was during my senior year of high school and it meant massive flooding in some places and huge storms in the Sierras. (And yes, I’m aware that “Sierras” is redundant.)

— 3 —

Simcha nails it again. Her latest excellence: Is Your Facebook Feed the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea?. The reason for its excellence: I’ve found the most ignorant people I’ve met to be the ones who surround themselves with people who think the way they do, believe the way they do, and vote the way they do. My blog readership is pretty diverse and I read a pretty wide variety of blogs as well. While I don’t agree with ever blogger out there, some of them say some interesting things and I think I understand why people might vote differently as I do as a result.

— 4 —

Taking a page from Bonnie. Bonnie usually starts her Quick Takes off with a song so here’s my latest discovery.

— 5 —

Wow. One of my friends from Reece’s Rainbow shared this today. You seriously need to watch it.

— 6 —

Why you should leave service dogs alone. Someone distracted a woman’s service dog, even after being instructed by the woman to stop petting him, and she was injured while having a seizure. Had her dog not been distracted, he could have signalled to her that the seizure was coming and they could have gotten her to a safe place.

— 7 —

Prayer request. If y’all could please pray that my car would be done getting fixed tomorrow afternoon, I’d appreciate it. I have plans to head up to San Jose on Saturday and I can’t do that unless I have my car back because my rental car from my insurance company has to be returned the day my car is done being fixed. If I’m in San Jose, it will be impossible as I’ll be 350 miles north of where I’d need to return it and pick up my own car. Thanks!

For more Quick Takes, visit Bonnie (our guest hostess with the mostest) at A Knotted Life. While you’re visiting, congratulate her on her little one who is due on January 1st.

7 Quick Takes: VBS Week

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Most *interesting* thing I heard at VBS tonight. I had to run Daniel home during my free period (he was in a mood and starting to melt down) so I was a couple minutes late getting back to start music with my oldest group. When I walked in, one of the boys said, “Oh good, you’re here. The Hippo Song isn’t the same without you… not that you’re fat or anything.” Ummm… thanks?

— 2 —

Best mommy line. From one of the teachers of the youngest group (preschoolers and kindergarten): “Hey! Arms and mouths to yourselves!” (I find it actually kind of funny that all three of the teachers for that group are moms with all boys.)

— 3 —

Speaking of that youngest group… I can’t remember which song precipitated it but they started all linking hands and dancing in a circle. (I think it was “Earth and All Stars”?) Margaret (the other young woman doing music with me and the lead on our team) and I were busting up laughing.

— 4 —

All the things that can praise God… We were trying to teach the kids some “adult music” this week and one of the things we did with each group was to get a list of things that could praise God so we could improvise some verses based on the suggestions. Some of the answers: tacos & fries, Dr. Who & Tardis, space, trombones, Princess Leia, jingle bells (one of our preschoolers wanted sing the song every day), dinosaurs, sheep, cupcakes, dirt, mac n’cheese, dirt, trains, and school buses. If I can get Margaret’s permission, I’ll post the verses that resulted.

**UPDATE** Margaret was chill with it so this is the link.

— 5 —

Mission accomplished! The two most popular songs this week were the two that I taught the kids: the Hippo Song and the Penguin Song. Apparently, my kids are going home and singing those songs every night… as are some of the VBS staff people because they have them stuck in their heads. In other words, I’ve managed to teach them that God made hippos and that penguins drink tea. My work here is done!

— 6 —

We need to invest in a church-owned selfie stick. Mother Kelli Grace (our vicar) had all the kiddos and staff crowd into two rows in the church so she could do a VBS selfie. Someone commented that we need a church selfie stick and I guess one of the men offered to bring his tomorrow. I remarked that one of our bishops has one and we should just borrow hers! Still, this is a church where worship selfies are normal so maybe we need acquire one for church purposes. (I’d pot the one from today but it would involve getting permission from all the parents of the kiddos.)

— 7 —

Totally over this freaking cough! Apparently, I’m coughing so loudly that I’m waking my mother-in-law up and likely to wake up my father-in-law down the hall. Oops! I’m thinking the M&M’s in the trail mix tonight were a bad idea? At least I didn’t try doing the popcorn!

For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.

Answer Me This: Home Sweet Home Edition

Posted on by

Answer Me This at CatholicAllYear.Com

When you are done reading my answers, go read what other people have to say on Kendra’s blog.

1. How long have you lived in your current home?

We’re living with in-laws and what we thought was going to be two months with them has stretched into a year while we’re in between pastoral calls.

2. How do you find out about news and current events?

Usually via Facebook and Twitter. 🙂 If I see or hear something that piques my curiousity, I’ll sometimes go to other news sites. We don’t have TV so that’s not usually an option and I don’t listen to any local radio stations.

3. Would you be able to make change for a twenty right now? For a dollar?

Nope. I keep very little cash on me out of habit more than anything else.

4. What’s the craziest food you’ve ever eaten?

Probably sea cucumber at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. The weirdest to a lot of people would be bison (it tastes like gamey beef) or sushi (I grew up in California so it’s a taste I acquired 25 years ago).

5. Which of the commonly removed parts have you had removed? (tonsils, wisdom teeth, appendix, etc.)

I’ve had my adnoids (1986), wisdom teeth (1998), and gallbladder removed (2005).

6. What’s your favorite sport to watch on TV?

Definitely baseball. Go Giants!