Celebrating Mother's Day included planting the 7.5 foot Red Oak that was DW's Mother's Day 'flowers.' It felt great to be putting in a tree that has the potential to outlive us. Of course DW reminds me that some serious watering is required for it to outlive its first summer, LOL.

The dried tomatoes in last night appetizer tray were healthy and low calorie. Until someone showed me how good they tasted when wrapped with the gourmet salami. Ouch! It's easy to eat a bunch of salami with the brain thinking of healthy dried tomatoes.

Cogratulations on planting the tree Bill. You and your DW will have a living memory of this mother's day for the rest of the time you live at your house. Beautiful!

michele I read your post from last week's thread and I think you experienced a "midnight blood sugar crash". I have literally passed out on the bathroom floor during one of these. For me eating a lot of sugar and/or drinking caffeine in the evening produces this.

I had an uneventful weekend - work, housework, lawn-cutting etc. I maintained the exact same weight all last week - 135.4 lbs. - without really thinking about it. I didn't drink any beer or eat any chips and allowed myself one treat - the ice cream cone yesterday. Hmmm.

I have been eating one salad every day, either for lunch or with my dinner. I will continue with that and see where I can cut a bit of cals to get down below 135. I did buy a thing for the microwave with which I can make chips from anything without any fat or oil. I'm curious to see what I produce. It should arrive later on this week.

Good day all!

Dagmar

Michele, you could also be developing a shellfish allergy. Have crab, shrimp, lobster, etc. ever bothered you before?

Shellfish allergies can appear so quickly it seems like "overnight." For me, I was suddenly allergic to clams one day. And then clams and I had to part ways.

Jay

Michele~I replied in the other thread, but like JayEl said, it could be a sudden onset of a food allergy. My BIL had a bad reaction to shrimp a year ago. It raised his blood pressure sky high and he had to be hospitalized over night. Scary that our bodies would allow us to suddenly react to something we're accustomed to eating, but it does happen. My MIL for years could not eat avocados, broccoli or cauliflower. This past year she has slowly reincorporated them into her diet with no problem. It used to be they would cause her to have severe stomach cramps.

Dagmar~I've been having a salad every night with dinner since January! Well, one night a week we have broccoli instead. It does help to fill up on low calorie veggies. Just watch the dressing! I found a new one at Trader Joe's that is a champagne pear dressing with gorgonzola--only 40 or 45 calories for a 2 T serving! Some days, I think I'd rather just take a red pepper and lightly dip it in the dressing instead of making a whole salad.

Today is my 24th wedding anniversary. We're not doing anything special to celebrate, though.

Not a good morning here.

Our ill neighbor -- the one with COPD, the one whose family was acting strangely unattached to her during her last hospitalization, all leaving or ignoring her while my mother stayed at her bedside all night -- once again had to be hospitalized. Since it was Sunday, her husband took her. This time, right after admittance, she died.

The phone on my mother's bedside table rang at 2 AM. As soon as I heard that, I sat straight up in bed & I knew what happened. I didn't even have to hear my mother say, "She did?" and sort of whimper & burst into tears. I went right into the room and sat beside her on the bed & hugged her.

The woman's husband was incredulous. He said he hadn't expected that at all. This was strange, since my mother had been telling me, even before I moved back home, that this woman did not have much longer to live and was visibly wasting away. The husband had been annoyed that the wife wasn't cleaning or cooking enough during the day. I mentioned that during a previous hospitalization, my mother sat with the ill wife all night in the hospital while the husband went home.

The husband said he did not know what to do, but a social worker was with him. My mother told him to call his mother. He said his two sons at home weren't picking up the phone. My mother asked if he wanted her to go to the house, and when he said no, told him he ought to come home to them. She told him to call a funeral home. He didn't know which one to call.

After she got off the phone, my mother & I went back to bed. Of course, neither of us slept at all, but we tried. I got up at 4:10 to eat breakfast & head to spin class.

My mother's at the house now. I imagine that she & I will be helping in some way but I don't know how yet.

This is bringing back bad memories of watching my father die in the hospital bed in the middle of our living room in November 2008. We kept cranking the bed up and down, because he was choking, and we needed to get him upright to keep his breathing passages clear. In the end, I think his heart gave out. He died the day after we visited the funeral home to set up prior arrangements.

Apparently we are now the neighborhood's go-to family for this sort of thing.

I'm glad my mother will be helping but I am sorry that this is probably taking her back to that dark time in our lives.

She's been telling me for weeks that the woman's family was going to be really surprised one day, and she's been marveling aloud over their odd behavior, and the constant fights they engaged in.

I suspect that the family of this woman was in total denial and just had not accepted how ill she was. I would prefer to believe that than to think how uncaring and selfish they seem to be. I wonder if they realize what a friend they have in your mother.

Oh, Bargoo, who's to understand all the varieties of human nature? If someone had told me second-hand that a family would react in this way, I'd have difficulty believing it. I think you're right, but it's hard for me to conceive of denial running that deep. Deep denial can probably help people cope, at times, but it seems to me that when it finally cracks, because it has to, because it's met a reality that's so hard the impact shatters it, it's a bad, bad place to be in.

With my father, I felt sorrow and constant foreboding and fear, but also incredibly deep love and consciousness that time was precious and ought not to be wasted, that there were very clear priorities. I'm often indecisive in my life about what I ought to be doing or self-critical about my choices & behavior. During that time, I was never hung up in that way. The illness brought a strange kind of order to my days. The "right thing" nearly always seemed clear to me.

Everyone gets through life and crises differently. No wonder other peoples' reactions seem so alien.

My mother feels better when she **does** something. When she's unhappy, she sets lots of tasks for herself. I expect there will be many tasks in the days to come. I suspect she'll be picking out clothes for the woman this morning. I am sure the husband and sons will not be able to do this.

Hugs to you and your mom Saef. Hopefully your mom will find some peace in helping this family. When my mom passed away, my dad was in denial and shock. He couldn't have done anything for her or even himself. We had to put him into assisted living almost immediately.

Interesting thoughts about sugar and shellfish. I'm hoping it's not shellfish. I'm guessing it may be sugar as I don't react well to sugar anymore. I did have a big chocolate dessert at dinner. Hmmmm.

Michele, I read of your waking up and feeling ill with great interest. I've experienced this a few times and I don't know why. I've been fearful that it's blood sugar, but I have to say, I'm starting to lean toward a theory that it has to do with my hormones and the approach of menopause. That said, a reaction to something you ate seems like the more likely answer if you have no history of this happening. (I've got a history.)

Morning all,

I tried to call my mother yesterday, and my sister as she is a mom now, and nobody answered their phones. Pooh.

Michele, my thoughts were exactly on those same lines. When I was 23, I was following weight watchers and had been eating smaller meals and no junk for about six months. I went out of town for work, lost control and ate a huge meal at a steakhouse, the biggest meal I'd eaten in months by far. I ate several white bread rolls and drank a huge pina colata with my meal - you know one of those fishbowl sized ones. About 2-3 hours later I was standing on the porch of the hotel and started to feel nauseous. Thinking I was going to be sick I excused myself, but I didn't get very far. I blacked out, fell over and slammed my head on the concrete walkway, and came to bleeding the hotel bathroom with my boss pressing a washcloth to the cut on my face (so embarrassing! I didn't know him well at the time either). It's never happened again but I am convinced it was something to do with my blood sugar. OTOH my 64-year-old neighbor developed an allergy to crab last year after eating it his whole life. He passed out the morning after he'd eaten the crab. Since he has a history of stroke his wife called 911 thinking the worst. Thank goodness it was not too serious.

Allison, I'm glad Chico is playing with his favorite toy! He must be feeling ok. Congrats on your anniversary!

Dagmar, my friend loaned me one of those microwave "chip" makers that's been sitting on my table for weeks now. I planned to try sweet potato chips. I need to try it! I've revived my love for salads w the spinach, strawberry, walnut, and homemade honey mustard combo lately. I eat them so much I get bored and need to change my ingredients up, but love how filling they are.

Saef, I'm sorry for the loss of your friend. I'm glad you were there to comfort your mother. I remember how you remarked before how this woman's family was acting. This just seems to confirm there is some kind of warped reality/denial going on, and it is hard to say we know what's going on between others. This woman was lucky to have your mother as a friend and I'm sure she appreciated her friendship and support.

Have a great week everyone.

Denial takes some strange forms. My mother was dying and my father wanted to take her out to look at the cherry blossoms. He wouldn't let my sister and I get her a hospital bed (she'd made the couch her bed because it was easier to get off, but we didn't want her dying on a couch) or a potty chair when she could barely stand. He was just in utter denial. We overrode him on the bed and potty chair. We were pretty upset with our father, but the hospice people told us that spouses often have strange reactions, refusing to believe that death is imminent.

Saef~hugs to your Mom for doing what that family was unable to do. I'm sure they'll probably depend on her for a lot in the coming days. Which is really too bad--they should have seen what was happening. I know when my Mom died (and Dad was in the room at the time--along with me, my sister and DD) my dad had a hard time accepting it. When we had her memorial a few weeks later he seemed to have accepted it but he still talks about missing her. Well, duh, they were married for 64 years--of course he'd miss her!

So as death is happening there, we're dealing with new life. One of our employees saw something move in our back parking area at work and thought it was a couple of kittens. A few hours later, I sneaked back there and saw one. I'm really hoping they are the offspring of the tabby that went missing a bit back. We thought she had been spayed, but if it is her, we'll now need to catch her (and the kittens) and get them all fixed. In the mean time, at least they're somewhat safe back there. They are hiding in some pallets of paving stones that the contractor who used to rent next door abandoned back there. So it's a small safe place for kittens--no bigger cats could get in to hurt them. I took out some bowls of food for them--I hope they eat. My FIL put some water out for them, too.

Cesar Millan would have been proud of us today. I and another dog walker had 10 dogs down at the beach all playing together - her 6 and my 4. And 8 of them were under 4 years old, 5 of them under 2!

They were all running and swimming and fetching. The two older boxers were off a bit, digging holes and dropping stones into them (apparently that's their "thing"). The younger set periodically ran over and helped them dig a bit but generally they were engaged down at the shoreline.

No one was barking. No one ran off or ran after joggers or bothered anyone else. They were all engaged and well-behaved. No fighting over the various toys (though there was a lot of "exchanging" ie stealing) or running off to steal from other dogs.

Sometimes you just have one of those glorious, glorious times with a group of dogs that stays with you. Today was one of those.

And I found out the "key" to young Lucy. She has to have a "job", even while she's screaming around playing. If she has nothing to focus on she becomes obsessed with rocks. I watched Lucy start to pick up her long line when the others were briefly ignoring her or had stolen her "bumper". She was trying to collect it and carry it (it's 25 feet of bright orange nylon rope).

I grabbed her and coiled the line for her and stuck it in her mouth. Off she flew, coils firmly in her mouth. When I got her toy back she dropped the line and I gave her the toy.

So I also taught Lucy to carry her long line back to the car today. Too long to detail but it only actually took about 2 tries and she had the concept. I think I will progress with her to the point that I buy her a "doggie backpack" and she will bring all the junk (I have a whole backpack full for this group) to and from the beach play sessions.

Hap has some competition now in the brainy and beautiful department.

Dagmar

Gosh I'd love to see pictures of your dog outings, Dagmar.

I found a new forum (tripawds.com I think) for owners of three-legged dogs. Someone pointed me to a thread about a Lab with the same cancer as Chico. His amputation was 4 years ago. It gives me hope.