1. This week I turn even more attention than usual to kidney disease and a possible (inevitable?) transplant. Today I had two telephone appointments. The first was with the transplant program's dietician. He strongly emphasized that because the transplant requires that the patient be immunosuppressed, to keep the body from rejecting the kidney, in the weeks and months following a transplant, cleanliness is vitally important. Wash produce. Make sure meats are cooked through. No more raw fish -- so no more sushi, no more ceviche, post-transplant. Medium rare steaks are cooked enough. Be careful about being around people who are ill. And so on.
My second telephone appointment was with the financial person and because I'm in good shape with insurance, we didn't need to talk for long, but she'll have some information for me to pick up on Thursday when Debbie and I go for appointments at Sacred Heart -- the information is mostly about the medicines I'll take after the transplant, how long I'll take them, and their cost.
2. As I age, I'm becoming a bit more forgetful. I am always checking myself to make sure I know where my cell phone is, that I've taken my daily medicine, remembered to medicate Luna, and other everyday things.
Today, I needed to go try to find boxes of the cat litter Copper and Luna are accustomed to. I have read about 20,000 times that cats do better when their litter pans are not only scooped out regularly, but when they can count on the type of litter remaining the same.
One problem, though, as I prepared to go litter hunting.
I couldn't find my set of keys.
I tend to leave my keys out in plain sight on one of our tables either in the kitchen or the living room. If I put them away, I have a lot of trouble remembering where I put them, so out in plain sight works really well for me.
Well, my keys were not out in plain sight. They weren't hanging up on the wall above the basement stairs. They weren't in any of my pockets.
They were flat gone.
I sat, cleared my head, and tried to reason out where they could be.
Accidentally dropped in the trash?
No.
Gibbs doesn't play with keys.
In the car?
Shouldn't be. I had to have my keys in hand the last time I exited the car in order to unlock the front door.
I checked.
Not in the car.
Wait.
Did Debbie grab my set of keys by accident when she left for work this morning?
Debbie's students leave school around 2:40. I texted Debbie and emailed her, wondering if she had my keys.
Around 3:00, she answered.
No.
Crap.
Then another text flew in.
Debbie wrote: "Oh shit. Yes I do."
Profound relief.
3. I used spare keys and drove to Yoke's. They were out of the cat litter I wanted. Then I drove to WalMart. Same story.
I continued west to Pinehurst. (The litter pan in the bedroom was very low. I HAD to find cat litter!)
I went to Barney's.
Success!
To celebrate the lost keys being found and Barney's having boxes of the litter I wanted (needed?), Debbie and I split two delicious beers.
First, Stone's Double Hazy IPA called
Then we split a Hazy IPA brewed by Untitled Art in Waunakee, WI called Juice Drops (Prickly Pear Strata).
Both beers were delicious.
Mine put me in the mood to cook our other HelloFresh meal for this week: Vegan Coconut Ginger Noodle Soup with Sweet Potatoes, Snow Peas, & Crispy Onions.
The soup was much simpler than its long complicated title might suggest!
All I had to do was, first of all, remove the snow pea strings and cut the peas in half, peel and chop a sweet potato, and peel and finely chop a plug of ginger and a couple cloves of garlic.
I heated up some oil and cooked the sweet potato, garlic, and ginger together with a packet of fry seasoning for a couple of minutes. To this mixture, I added three cups of water, brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer for about ten minutes.
I had already put a pot of salty water on to boil and in it I cooked the ramen noodles.
I drained the noodles, bathed them in cold water, and divided the noodles between two bowls.
When the sweet potato mixture had finished simmering, I added coconut milk and the juice of a lime to it and ladled this soup over the noodles, topping it all with cilantro and crispy fried onions.
On a cool fall evening after splitting two very tasty beers, let me tell you:
This soup worked!
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