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Friday, May 16, 2008
live from Waverly
Listening to:dogs whine
Reading:newspapers
Weather:rainy, cool, Londony
I'm chillin on the couch with Connie's laptop. I am presenting a workshop today on medical advance directives at the senior center in St Marys, so I came down last night and crashed with my friends Connie and Stacy in Waverly.

St Marys and Waverly are little river towns along Rt 2. Connie and Stacy's righteous old house is right on the mighty Ohio, freakin beachfront, yo. They have gargantuan maples all around the house, certainly over 100 yrs old. They create a beautiful green canopy this time of year. It's so gorgeous here.

Well, I've been avoiding my blog in part because my politics rants are just not that inciteful, and that's what's been on my mind lately. Suffice it to say I'm embarrassed to be from a state where in many counties less than 10% of the registered dems voted for the presumptive candidate because they're a bunch of racist hillbillies. That just makes me even gladder at the thought of a black dude waking up in the Whitey White House in January.

State and local primaries were mostly loserville for me. A few of my favorite local candidates had victories, but many of my people went down in flames, dangit. But I still get a little charge out of the act of casting my ballot. Democracy is not entirely dead.

How about the natural disasters in Myanmar and China? I keep wondering how can I make a little contribution to help desperate survivors in those truly undemocratic corners of the planet? I don't have scads to give, but I want my bit to actually do some good for some needy individual, not get skimmed off by some corrupt soldier or bureaucrat. Ideas?

I got to enjoy the absolute pleasure of sharing some shrimp on the barbie and fresh cherry salsa and lively conversation and guitar-smelling with my pals last evening. Lucky me. Chinese mothers were weeping over dead children buried under piles of rubble while I lived the sweet life. My great fortune is so mysterious to me sometimes. Why did I get born into this place and time? Why did my absolutely groovy collection of kind, creative, smart, generous, and loyal friends find their way to me? Willie said we were passing around my sexy new rosewood Taylor like a beloved new baby in the family. So right. Everybody wants a chance to hold it. Oooh, it smells so good. Calls to Donnie, cat's in town with the new baby, ya gotta come see.

School is winding down for Liv, the big AP tests are over, SAT coming up in a few weeks, the seniors will be gone soon and her classes will be mostly empty. She's thinking about colleges. My baby will be nearly out the door this time next year. It's really bittersweet, cat says tritely, since it rocks to see the amazing adult she is becoming, but she is the centerpiece of my every day and there will be a big hole there when she's on her own.

Well Oprah and Phil (my two giant gallstones) have been quite well-behaved and quiet since I learned of their existence and what riles them up. Basically dairy products and eggs are complete off my menu for perhaps ever. I've successfully eaten a little bit of cheese, but looking back I can remember some viscious belly aches that I now figure were those two raising hell, and many of them were related to fluid milk or cream in my giant glass of iced coffee, or eggs. I ate two boiled egg whites the other day for a test and got that tell-tale little nag in the belly, which fortunately subsided shortly and wasn't terribly painful. So now I know.

Plant fats don't seem to be much of a problem, I ate a pretty big plate of Chinese take-out last week with no ill effects. I've been reading a lot about gall bladder/liver/pancreas health and I've found: 1) there's a ton of conflicting info, even from credible medical sites, 2) medicine seems to have given up learning much about gall bladder disease prevention and rememdy because they are just too easy and profitable to laparoscopically snip out, and 3) I'm a member of the 5 F gall bladder club (fat, forty, female, fair, and flatulent). That last bit cracked me up when I read it, mainly cuz it's so damn true, like all the best comedy. But seriously, I have talked to so many women since I found out about this shit who have asked me my age, and then responded with "oh no, the mystical age of 42 is when you must sacrifice your gall bladder to the scalpel gods." Or something like that. Scads of women in their 40's are gall bladder-free, apparently.

But here's the thing: I said it before but it bears repeating, I'm pretty sure I do not generally have any spare parts. Spare tire around the middle, but I made that myself. I'm talking about the cogs in this machine, I think the machine is not designed to work right without any of them. It might be able to limp along with one or another, but there is no actually useless organ up in this bitch. Y'all just may not know the uses.

And herein lies the rub. Docs snip out so many gall bladders they no longer care to learn more about their functions. I'm here to say that I believe whatever we do to damage or harm our gall bladders will also harm our livers once the gall bladder is gone. So yeah, you can eat all the eggs you want without bellyaches after you yank this thing out, but you are really taxing your liver, which no longer has a little cauldron to concentrate it's main product: bile anymore. I'll spare you my detailed medical theories for now, but suffice it to say that Oprah and Phil will likely live safely in my gullet for a long time to come. And if I evict them it will probably be through a juice flush rather than surgery of any sort. That's the way I'm seeing it for now, anyway.

A'ight, time to get my head on straight for the day. It's pickin and grinning Friday at the senior center, so maybe I'll get to show off the new baby in the family to some oldtime banjo players down in St Marys today.


permalink posted by cat 8:51 AM

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