Catch-All...

It's been a busy week, or so...  I know, shocking.

I had a good doctor appointment on Friday, where my blood pressure was low enough for the doctor to take me off some of my medications.  So I got that going for me.  I try to stay on the straight and narrow, the past few months have been a titanic struggle (yes, I'd been sinking), when it comes to my blood sugars.  They'd been averaging in the 160s.  As my goal is below 120, that's not good.  However, it turns out that due to my wife's job change last fall to a better insurance package, the change of one of my insulins was ...  Well, it was messed up.

I had been using Lantus and Humalog - which I expect are someone's trademarks.  If they are, I apologize, they did me well for a decade and a half.  But my doctor changed me to the oh-so-trendy Ozempic and the insurance company required I use Baseglar.  The Ozempic claims to make it easier to control and reduce blood sugars, food cravings, and weight.  Not in my experience, no.  I guess I should give it some credit, in that my overall consumption of food has, well, modified, though I do not know if that is due to it's influence or thanks to my own work.  I used to sit down to a meal which would, generally, consist of more food.

I'd order two sandwiches in the drive-through menu (not Subway foot-longs, mind you, but a typical burger joint), along with fries and a large drink, and maybe some sort of dessert.  These days a single sandwich fills me - because I've deliberately chosen to eat less.  My day is usually starting with a home-made quiche-like concoction, which I'll make in a large pan, and includes two large onions, 1 1/2 pounds of standard breakfast sausage, a pound of chorizo sausage, eighteen eggs, a cup of bacon bits, a pound of cheese, and some random seasonings, split into 20 servings.  Yeah, I'd make up a large pan of it, bake it, then cut it into servings and freeze almost all of it so it would last.  

Lunch, most days, is a piece of beef jerky.  Why?  Simple - I do not move much during the day.  Totally opposite to the days I used to do at the store, I'm on my butt, using the knob above my shoulders, rather than my arms and legs, to make a living.  It works - but it's not very athletic.  I do get the dogs out most days for a fifteen minute break, but that's a lot of standing still while they sniff and stare.  

Dinner?  During the summer it tends to consist of a hamburger I grilled up over the past weekend, or maybe a big old salad with too much dressing and croutons - so I need to own that part.  But I have managed to lose 15 pounds so far...

Speaking of my recently-past life in Retail, I see my former employer is running a new series of ads about a "Circle" thing.  I do not know who the actress is who has appeared in most of the advertisements I've seen, but I do think that she does a very good job at destroying any efforts they're making at recruiting new employees.  I cringe every time I see these things because what ever it is she is supposed to be selling, she fails miserably, and all I want to do is avoid the place, because I still have a few friends who work their (turnover is the bane of retail, I suppose, but they do it to themselves, so I'm sure they do not feel any reason to apologize).  

Then there's life in the news.  I will avoid politics, because I'm not particularly well-versed when it comes to that whole thing.  My wife is more of a political wonk, if that word is still used, and while I do know that the continuing implosion of the Republicant party is a cause of concern, I do find the cult of personality around one of the candidates is reminding me ever more about 1930s Germany, including growing threats and claims of falsehoods that are blatant lies.  But I suppose we do owe the Republicant Party all of their due thanks to their efforts to destroy education, establishing a standardized test that students must pass, rather than relying on the local schools to set their standards and apply their own policies.  

I do see a lot of legal cases flying by with famous people literally acting like, well, northern ends of south-bound animals.  Like a music producer who says "she can't sue me for that because it wasn't a law back then."  I am not a lawyer, as the old saying goes, but it sure does seem to me that a truly innocent defender might say "I didn't do that" rather than a defense which ends up being interpreted as "It wasn't a law when I did it, so she can't sue me for doing it."  I know, I know, all defendants must be presumed innocent, but when the rebuttal includes a tacit admission of committing the offense, well, OJ Simpson and many of his lawyers are dead and facing their inevitable judgement, so I'll let that lie on them.

Speaking of Animals, around here, both the dogs are doing well, and regrettably once again making me part of the circle of life in a very unwilling fashion.  Many years ago, our second pup, Lily, whom I still miss, gave me three dreadful examples of what a Blue Healer-bred prey drive will produce with a yard that is not secured from other wildlife such as wild rabbits.  She brought two injured and one dead rabbit out to play with, and I had to finish the jobs. Yesterday, Cheyanne, in her very first such example that I can recall, managed to wade into the strip of flowering plants which have not yet done so (I believe they may be lilies of the valley, in an homage to Lily and my mother and grandmother, who grew them at our house along the Mississippi River), and she pulled out this small creature that was perhaps the size of a full-grown mouse, which squeaked pitifully and was unable to move it's rear legs.  

Yes, I am aware that new-born rabbits are often unable to move on their own - I've seen enough baby-animal TV shows.  However, when the animal is also bleeding, I'm very abundantly aware it's not going to survive long.  So I dispatched it with what I had available - which was an ice chopper I keep next to the back door during potential winter storm season, which around here does not end until Memorial Day.  The truly horrific moment that has likely scarred me for the remainder of my life was when the chopper landed and the carcass sprayed milk all over my shoe.  Yeah.  That.  I am a soft-hearted fellow, don't like killing anything, so that stung, but the fact hat it was a baby animal was even worse.  

So there's that bit of news.  Lets hope it gets better.