July 16, 2004

• I left out some of the best stuff.

  Perhaps blogging about yesterday’s town trip while it was fresh in my mind
  this morning in the wee small hours, wasn’t the best idea.  I
  realized after I woke today, while I lay in bed thinking about it, that
  exhausted as I’d been from the trip, I’d included at least one
  inaccuracy and left out some important details.  When I got up and
  reread that blog, I saw a few more things I’d neglected to mention.

  One of them is my justification for buying new clothes.  Yes, I do
  need justification for that, even at a bag sale where I got about a
  hundred dollars worth (at low thrift store prices) stuffed into a bag
  for five bucks.  There’s my frugal Scots ancestry to consider,
  plus the fact that I’m not earning much money on my own right
  now.  I work and my work supports Greyfox, but it’s his work that
  brings in the money that supports the family.  So I feel a need to
  justify expenditures.

  The inaccuracy I mentioned was regarding “Dagda’s Bag” or
  “Bagda’s Dag”.  I said that was an analogy drawn by Greyfox to my
  pulling item after item from my bag sale grocery sack.  What he
  actually said first was that it was reminiscent of a clown car in the
  circus, and then I brought up Dagda’s Cauldron and he played with those
  words.

  Two factors guided my selection of “new” clothes this time.  One
  was the hot weather we’ve been having every time the smoke clouds blow
  away.  Global warming has more reality to us here than I think it
  does for most people.  I’d never been uncomfortably warm here for
  the first twenty years or so that I lived in Alaska.  Even in
  midsummer, when it was always light, it was also always cool.  But
  not any longer.  Yesterday, I went for short sleeves and light
  fabrics.

  I also went for smaller sizes.  After almost a half century of
  off-and-on dieting for weight loss, when I finally stopped that and
  decided to eat for health and comfort, ironically I started shedding
  pounds effortlessly.  Okay, admittedly there has been some effort
  involved in choosing healthy foods and avoiding the ones I’m addicted
  to (mostly sugar and things containing gluten and/or casein), but I’ve
  not been going hungry or skimping on portions.  Nor have I had any
  exercize program, something I did a lot of before this chronic fatigue
  syndrome took over my life.

  When I kicked the addictive foods around the end of October, 2002, I
  weighed over 240 pounds and wore a size 20 in Gloria Vanderbilt
  jeans.  Since manufacturer’s sizes vary, and GV has always made
  comfortable well-fitting jeans, I use Glorious Vanderbutts as my
  benchmark.  I hadn’t been paying much attention to the bathroom
  scale while I was at my peak weight, so I don’t really know exactly how
  heavy I’d gotten before I started to lose.  Initially, the weight
  dropped rapidly.  I was tickled to find a like-new pair of size 18
  GVs on eBay and get them for under $7.00.  Then I was shocked when
  they soon were loose enough to fall off me.  My weight loss hit a
  plateau last summer at about 150 pounds and size 12 GVs.  Today
  the bathroom scale says 142 and yesterday evening I wore my “new” soft
  and faded preworn size 10 Glorias to the meeting, with my new suede
  boots and a “new” short sleeved blouse.

  I’ve lost over 40% of my body weight in about a year and a
  half.   This is especially important to me because of the
  chronic fatigue and the “asthma” or dyspnea that comes with the myalgic
  encepholomyelopathy.  I’m lighter on my feet and breathing more
  freely than I did when I was at top weight.  I had gained much of
  that weight through the inactivity associated with the disease, and the
  extra weight just made the symptoms worse.  I can hardly express
  my pleasure at how easy and pleasant it has been to stay off the sugar,
  gluten and casein.  It means taking care in selecting foods at the
  market and in restaurants, but there are many acceptable choices
  available.

  Mexican cuisine offers most of the safe foods I enjoy now, especially
  when I’m eating out.  Last night, the business meeting ran late
  enough that by the time I’d taken the van load of residents back to the
  rehab ranch our favorite Mexican restaurant was closed.  I had a
  low-carb burger, wrapped in lettuce leaves instead of a bun, at Carl’s
  Jr.

  My breakfast with Doug brought me a pleasant surprise yesterday,
  too.  I took him to The Windbreak, a Wasilla cafe whose menu I
  knew had the waffles and strawberries he was yearning for, and where
  some careful selecting could get me a safe meal, too.  Their menu
  now has a great breakfast option they’d never offered before:  low
  carb.  In addition to the regular hash browns and toast, they now
  also serve breakfast with either grilled vegies or sliced
  tomatoes.  I went for the vegies and had a big satisfying
  breakfast of hot link sausage, scrambled eggs, and grilled California
  blend:  broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini and yellow
  squash.   A few dashes of Tobasco sauce made it perfect.

  Doug also found something on the menu more to his liking than plain
  strawberry waffles:  stuffed French toast.  He got two thick
  slices of bread, battered and grilled, filled with a stuffing of cream
  cheese mixed with orange marmalade, topped with strawberries, sliced
  banana, whipped cream and walnuts.  It looked both yummy and
  toxic, and I told him so.  I keep telling him he won’t be able to
  go on eating like that forever.  He acknowledges my wisdom and
  persists.  It’s gonna catch up with him and we both know it.

  We had a fun time together.  I told Doug as we were going from one
  thrift store to the next that I’d been enjoying the conversation, and
  reminded him of how most of our conversations at home go.  I say,
  “Doug,” and he responds with the grunt that means he’s intently focused
  on the book he’s reading or on what he’s writing at the computer, or he
  gives me a wordless yelp or a quick, “Not now!” that indicates he’s at
  some demanding point in a game on the PS2.  If they’re not
  demanding and absorbing, they’re not worth playing, to him.  Then
  I wait until he can spare me some attention, and say what was on my
  mind, if by then I still remember what that was.

  We read the Daily News while waiting for breakfast and laughed together
  over the political shit.  Shopping together gave us numerous finds
  and observations to share.  While I was paying for my purchase at
  Budget Tapes and CDs, which updated its name from Budget Tapes and
  Records around the turn of the millenium to fit its inventory, but is
  still the “record store” to me, Doug was reading the humorous pin-on
  “buttons” in the display on the counter as I checked out.  One
  that got a laugh out of him said, “Every time I try self-help I get it
  all over my hand.”  Another one said, “They’re trying to figure
  out if it’s a chemical thing or if I’m just an asshole.”  
  He’d laugh, I’d say, “What?”  Then he’d read them aloud and we’d
  laugh together.  I said he had a kinky sense of humor and he
  replied that he’s his mother’s son.  That drew an emphatic yes
  from me and a big laugh, and the old biker who runs the place gave us a
  funny look as he handed over my music and the receipt.

  My new music is perhaps harder to justify as an expense than the thrift
  shop clothes, but I don’t care.  We were browsing the record store
  to kill some time after lunch and I saw this CD.  It grabbed me
  because R. Carlos Nakai has long been one of my favorite
  musicians.  On it, he’s teamed with another of my favorites,
  William Eaton, and two others with whom I wasn’t familiar.  Here’s
  what the blurb says–I can’t say it any better:

  The sweet voices of the Native American
  flutes of R. Carlos Nakai and the Tibetan flutes of Nawang Khechog
  blend together against the rich sonic palette created by the magical
  harp guitar, lyre and spiral clef guitar of William Eaton and the
  pulsing world beat percussion of Will Clipman.  Distant peoples
  and distant places come together in this musical exploration of the
  worlds of Native America and Tibet.

  The moods of the different tracks vary widely.  Some are soft and
  flowing with the clear lucid strings of William Eaton dominant, others
  blend Tibetan chant with Native American chant, and the final track, Barbarians at the Gate, dominated by Will Clipton’s percussion, is effective psychoactive sound for shamanic journeying.  It’s delicious.
  

  • 3:06 pm
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