Ear Ye, Ear Ye

I went to a neurotologist last week for my hearing loss. Next Wednesday I'm going to have an injection of a steroid into my ear canal. I am also on a low sodium diet and a water pill for 30 days in case there is fluid in my inner ear. I don't have all the symptoms of Meniere's disease, but my doctor wants to rule it out. Other than sudden hearing loss, one has dizziness and tinnitus. I don't have either, but the doc said I could still develop them. He just had preliminary blood test results, but so far, everything was in the normal range.

I continue to see my good friends of the American Medical Association next month. Time for the 3 month round of tests and exams. I have yet to schedule my breast MRI...must do that early next week. I'll see my medical oncologist, have blood drawn, see my surgeon and radiation oncologist. Yippee!!

I continue to work outside. It's been a little warmer these last few days. I did some MAJOR pruning of some shrubs. It's like I blinked and they grew at least 4 times their size. Tomorrow my nephew Steve is coming in for a business conference, but will hang out with us and watch the Steelers-Pats game at 4 pm. Cool!

Giving Thanks

Let's give thanks for those who protect our country and pray for those affected by the brutal terror attacks in India.

I am so grateful for God and for all of the wonderful people in my life. Thanks to all for your love and support. I truly appreciate it. I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Sunshine and cool temps

The weather has been fabulous. What a change from the hot, humid summer. Love it. THIS is why I moved here. Now if I could just figure out a way to escape from here in the summertime. That would be awesome.

I took this pic of my elephant ears this morning. It looks like snow or ice on the leaves, which you see better if you click on the pic. But it's just water drops from the sprinklers. I think they look cool.


This afternoon I have an appointment with a neurologist to see if there are any solutions to my hearing loss. I had blood drawn last week, so I imagine we'll review those results. This evening I have a support group meeting. I have my volunteer work tomorrow. I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with Joe and the family. I'm making stuffing (a new recipe) and pumpkin pie. I was doing pretty well eating healthily (is that a word?), then last week, well, hmmm. Then to top it all off I made cupcakes to bring to my brother's this past Sunday. They were very yummy. :o)

The Forgotten Man

A very wise man once said (125 years ago):

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or in the better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X...What I want to do is look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of...He works, he votes, generally he prays- but he always pays...
William Graham Sumner, Yale University, 1883

In my opinion, very wise indeed.

Pirates? Really?

Can someone remind me which century we're in?

Should old acquaintance be forgot...

...It's been great to reconnect with people this past year or so. I've been having strange dreams lately. The other night included a good friend from college. She was very good at staying in touch, me, not so much. Since she appeared in my dream, I thought maybe I should try to track her down. She's now in Colorado. We chatted the other night and she told me she tried to track me down several years ago. I'm grateful we're back in touch. You can't have enough good friends.

In other news, Angela and I didn't make it to Titusville for shuttle Endeavor's launch. she had to test a student for one of her graduate classes and didn't get home until 6. I had heard on the radio early in the afternoon that you really needed to get there early and with a full tank of gas. I didn't want to make the drive by myself, so we'll try again next year.

The scene from my backyard:
Ignore my neighbor's RV, lol. It actually looked better than this, but a shot is a shot. Before you could see it, there was a huge red glow closer to the horizon which I imagine was from the fuel burning at liftoff. The really cool thing was there was a football game at the high school which is across the main road from my subdivision. Everyone cheered when it went up. I heard an announcer mention the shuttle so I knew that the cheers weren't for a touchdown, but for Endeavor. Very cool. Now this is what it looked like if you were really close to the Cape, not 70 miles or so away like me.



I've been keeping relatively busy these days. I trained for my volunteer work on Monday. I'll work one afternoon a week in the Resource Center at the Cancer Institute. I'm going to a meeting at the local GOP office this week and I'm going to start attending another support group. I've been walking the dogs every day and I'm really making progress in the yard. I haven't painted inside the house for weeks, so that is on my list, too.

Hard to believe that Thanksgiving is fast approaching. And Christmas! I was in Wal-Mart last week and they were already playing Christmas music. I would prefer not to get bombarded till after Thanksgiving, but that is quite unlikely.

Do you have a cat? Are you confident he/she is not trying to whack you? My niece sent this very informative website. You really can't be too safe these days. Check it out.

I want a bailout, too!

Since we're bailing out every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, I want to put my name in the mix. The gov't (meaning all of you) can pay my mortgage for me. It's only fair, right? C'mon, people, where's the love?

Now that I've gotten today's mini-rant off my chest, I'll continue. Funny I mentioned the word "chest." Last night was my monthly BC support group meeting. There were just 10 of us this month and half either have had or are planning to have reconstruction surgery post-mastectomy. I just had a lumpectomy, so the conversation was very enlightening. Curiously enough, it became a sort of show-and-tell exercise. I got to see what reconstructed breasts look like aside from seeing pictures online and in brochures. They look very natural, in fact, one woman's looked so fabulous I briefly entertained the thought of getting rid of mine and starting all over again! HA! If weren't for the fact that the process takes months and can present serious complications, I might seriously consider it.

Food item: I've been trying to cut most of the highly processed foods out of my diet. Every now and then, though, I must make an exception. So, if you like yeast rolls (and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't), you've got to try Sister Schubert's. They are sinfully delicious. They can be found in the freezer section of most grocery stores.

There's a night launch of Shuttle Endeavor Friday and my niece Angela and I are considering driving to Cape Canaveral (well, most likely Titusville) to watch. It may be delayed due to weather, though, so we'll see. That's one of the very few things on my bucket list.

I'm going to post a Scripture passage at the top of my blog every time I post. Good for me, good for you!

Crazy Crossword Clues

My friend Lorie was in Daytona Beach with some friends, so I trekked over there Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, I picked her up and we went to New Smyrna Beach for lunch at J.B.'s Fish Camp, but it was kind of cold on the beach and it was high tide. Friday we hung out at the timeshare they were staying at in Daytona. The tide wasn't quite as high and it was sunny and warm. I had a great time just shooting the breeze. I think I need more human interaction (but not too much)! Now that's it cooler, I need to get my butt to the beach more often, even if it's just me and a good book. It's so relaxing to sit or walk and watch and listen to the ocean.

In an earlier post I mentioned doing crossword puzzles and promised to share the most common clues I come across. Feel free to add to the list. Listing these is just a lame exercise to amuse myself. :)

French sword: EPEE
TV's Tarzan: ELY
Captain Hook's right hand man: SMEE
Stable morsel: OAT
Songwriter's org: ASCAP
Greek letters: ALPHA,BETA,GAMMA,DELTA,EPSILON,ZETA,ETA,
THETA,IOTA,KAPPA,LAMBDA,MU,NU,XI,OMICRON,PI,RHO,SIGMA,
TAU,UPSILON,PHI,CHI,PSI,OMEGA
Roman numerals: I,II,III,etc.,V(five),X(ten),L(50),C(100),D(500),M(1,000)
I never seem to be able to remember the high value ones.

Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for visiting.

A non-racist, non-redneck, native western Pennsylvanian, sitting here bitterly clinging to my guns and religion

I sat here earlier today and wrote a post detailing the very newsworthy items about Barack Obama that the mainstream press sat on, ignored or brushed over. I decided not to post it. What's the point? We elected someone we know very little about. Done, it's over. What I have done this morning is join several PACs and I, along with many like-minded friends, will start to work immediately on the mid-term elections in '10. I posted earlier in the fall that I would not use this as a political forum. Well, it's my blog and I just changed my mind. If you're offended, you have the right to ignore it.

God bless America.

All Clear!

Got the thumbs up after the colonoscopy today. Everything is A-OK. The prep, as most people will tell you, is far worse than the actual procedure. I don't know what they give you to knock you out for conscious sedation, but you feel fabulous when you wake up!

My friend Lorie is in Daytona for the week and tomorrow or Thursday we'll get together. She was here visiting me early June. The weather hasn't been real warm this week. Good for me, but bad for beachcombers!

I've been doing crossword puzzles regularly and I've been getting better at them. It helps when you realize that crossword creators use a lot of the same clues. I'll list some for ya tomorrow.

It's Election Day and I'm already sick of the TV pundits analyzing what little info there is to analyze. At 6:44 p.m., it's not much. I discovered that my absentee ballot was received by the county election office on October 23rd. Remember that I misplaced it and don't recall ever mailing it....so I don't know what to think of that. I really don't. TOTALLY BAFFLED.

It's November already?

Last week I had a follow-up appointment with my ENT doc. Nothing on the MRI indicates an abnormality to explain my hearing loss. Next step is to get some screening bloodwork done then see the neurologist on staff to see if he has any suggestions. Tuesday is the dreaded roto-rooter procedure.

The weather really cooled off last week. One morning it was only 41 degrees and I was loving it! I got a lot of yard work done. Finally. Still lots to do. It rained during the night and it's not too hot, but it's muggy.

I've started to do some (volunteer) writing for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Wycliffe and several associate mission organizations train linguists to study the population groups who have no written language. They, in turn with the community, develop a written language and translate the Bible into the group's mother tongue. Quite an undertaking. I'm working with folks who are doing this work in the Philippines. If you're interested in learning more check out the Wycliffe website.

I neglected to mention that the month of October was breast cancer awareness month and I must do my periodic shout-out for mammography screening. If you're due or overdue, schedule one. Early detection is the key!