Lazy Thursday

Well, almost.  The phone woke me up early.  Yeah, I actually slept last night.  Really great feeling, and woke up feeling even better.  So, the flu shot didn’t give me any side effects after all.  I just felt bad last night because I was exhausted.

So, at 10:30 my first visitor arrived to do an evaluation for in-home therapy.  While we were talking she asked if I had lost any weight.  I laughed at that one, and told her almost 100 pounds since last Christmas.  She asked how, so I started talking about getting involved with the Slow Food movement, getting my fresh veggie deliveries from Cecil Farms, and eating healthier meals, plus snacking on my dehydrated veggies (I didn’t mention the 2 ingredient fudge) and she got excited about the veggie deliveries.  I have a feeling she will be contacting them about next year.

Vegan Chocolate Fudge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Usually I don’t post a regular recipe, but I found the fudge one on Facebook, and gave it a try, and it’s great!  So her ya’ go.  One can of sweetened condensed milk and 18 ounces of chocolate chips.  Melt together in the microwave or a double boiler, stir occasionally until the chocolate has melted, then pour into a buttered 8 x 8 square dish.  When cooled, cut into pieces and enjoy.

I’ve made the chocolate version several times, and since I finished the last batch today, I’m thinking about trying it with some other flavors of chips.  Just happen to have some peanut butter and some caramel ones on hand.   Sorry, I erased the photo of the first batch of fudge, but I can tell you, it’s really good.  And just use your favorite type of chocolate.  I personally like the dark chocolate, but I know a lot of people prefer other types, so, do your own thing there.

Pulled that photo off the public domain stuff that shows up on the bottom of my page when I’m typing, so just to get your taste buds working here.

Okay, so back to the therapy.  Happy to say that when she took my blood pressure this morning it was back to my normal, which would be a normal persons low BP.  I’ve decided mine goes up about 50 points for every minute I sit in the doctor’s waiting room.  Before she had finished, the intake person for the physical therapy part came in.  I guess that makes her the occupational therapy intake.  Whatever.  She left after he came in and he put me thru some paces I wasn’t really happy about, like showing him how I got in and out of the bath tub.  It’s hard enough doing it one time a day, without having to demonstrate it for someone.  At least I was warmly clothed for the demonstration, and he agreed with me that I needed more pull bars in the bathroom.  After thinking about it all day, I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I just need a different type of shower chair, that I can scoot out on.  Oh well, anyway, next I had to stand up and sit back down for 30 seconds, while he timed me to see how many times I could do it.  Two and a half times.  And getting up the last half time almost upset the apple cart.  Glad he was nimble enough to catch before I fell.

Okay, end of visitors for the morning shift.  Real therapy begins next week, three or four visits a week.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?  Hey, if it helps, anything can be fun.  It all depends on your point of view and sense of humor.  And in my family, if you don’t have a sense of humor you might as well live on the moon, because you won’t survive here.  This about sums it up for the Goetz family.  My dad could crack a joke with a poker face and we would sometimes wonder if he was joking or telling the truth.  But then one look at the sparkle in those blue eyes and we would know.  I’m not quite as good at it as my brothers are, but I managed to get my youngest one once.  Only once, but that was a real high for me, because Ray is just like dad.  And they all know just how to get me.  I trip over my tongue more often than I tripped over my cat.   That’s Callie.  She’s now my grandcat, because after tripping me every time I turned a corner I realized I jus couldn’t deal with all the bruises any more, and my grandkids had fallen in love with her, soooo.  My son-in-law wasn’t exactly thrilled, because they already had two cats, Mischief and Mayhem, but being a doting dad, he gave in. Now he’s the one who gets tripped, but he’s young and athletic, so he deals with it better than I dealt with the concussions.

I had all kinds of plans to make bread today, and do some cooking, or maybe it was cleanup in the kitchen, but instead, after the therapy people left, I just vegged out in the recliner and watched TV all afternoon.  Did a little bit of knitting while I was sitting there, played some Solitaire, but mostly just vegged out.  That was kinda fun.  Just do nothing.  Interesting concept.

I finally got myself up and came in for my evening fight with the computer, and of course the phone rang again.  A friend from the other building asking if I wanted some Mexican cornbread she had leftover from a dinner she had been to.  And a mostly full jar of jalepenos.  Sure, why not?  I asked her if she happened to have an extra jar of peanut butter around while she was at it, and she did, so now I don’t have to make a grocery run for that tomorrow.  She said she would be over in a few minutes, which I knew meant a couple of hours, so I was almost finished with my email when she came in, with two huge bags of food.  The cornbread, which I had already forgotten about, the jar of jalepenos, a couple of jars of her home canned relishes, a quart of her home canned salsa (yummy), two boxes of cereal, which I won’t eat, but can recycle into something else, like crumb topping for casseroles, and jugs of juice and can after can of fruit and veggies, plus some cheese and several bags of pasta.  Tomorrow I will definitely be making Don Charisma’s fried pasta.  His method, which he shared in his blog yesterday, is to make the sauce, cook the pasta al dente, then heat the sauce in a large pan and put the pasta in the hot sauce to finish cooking, while at the same time absorbing the sauce into the pasta, instead of just dumping the sauce on top of the pasta.  So, it’s a gotta try in my book.

So, Carol and I visited for about an hour, and as predicted, she was two hours late, but anyway, we’ll be going out to dinner sometime in the near future.  And I have loads of pasta, mac and cheese, plus all my fresh veggies still to hold me over until then.  I sent her home with some fruit syrup and some of my apple/sweet potato leather to snack on, so we were both happy at the outcome.  Now we just have to get to JoAnn’s again and buy more yarn.  I’ve almost used all of mine up, so my vow to not buy any more until I have used all of my stash is accomplished.  Or will be by the time she gets around to making the trip there.  I might have to take the bus if I run out of yarn before then.  I think I live at a faster pace than she does.

A.

Advertisement