A plethora of stuff.

This is one of those posts that are going to cover eleventy gazillion topics which have nothing to do with one another.  Some of it is to answer questions or comments y'all have made.  Some of it is my normal rambling.

First of all, I think the stomach thing finally went away Monday night.  THANK GOODNESS!  I met two friends for dinner that night at Sweet Tomatoes and had a gigantic plate of salad because that's kind of their thing at Sweet Tomatoes and I figured it might kill me dead later with all of the roughage and fiber.  I also had a bowl of soup.  Shockingly, I felt fine afterwards.  I ate normally yesterday and my stomach has not hurt at all.  So I think I can safely say that it was 9 days of awfulness but it seems to be over now. 

Second, a couple of y'all have asked if my plantar fasciitis socks have been working.

YES!  They have been working wonderfully!  I did try to wear some cuter shoes one day.  And I tried taking the Walk Fit inserts out of my ugly ass shoes another day.  On those days my feet hurt a decent amount.  Apparently it is the combination of the ugly ass shoes, the inserts and the sleeves that work for me.  When I wear all 3 I only have foot pain on very rare occasions in the morning when I get out of bed and even then it is nowhere near the severity it was before.  Not that I wear them all to bed.  That's just when I notice any pain.  I still can't walk barefoot without pain, but maybe we'll work up to that eventually if I keep wearing all of this stuff on my feet regularly.

So yes, my stomach and feet don't hurt anymore so I have much to give thanks for tomorrow on Thanksgiving.

I mentioned that I went to dinner with some friends on Monday night.  One of the friends is someone I've known since we were 5.  And Oh Em Gee that means I've known her for 40 years because girlfriends, I am old.  The other friend is someone I met through her at a Pampered Chef party.  For whatever reason, everyone canceled and I was the only guest who showed up at my friend's house so we had kind of a private party and then guess what happened?  The PC lady convinced me to have a party.  And then guess what happened?  She convinced me to start selling Pampered Chef.  Me.  Who hates cooking.  And hates selling crap.  It was a rather short-lived career but I'm still friends with the PC lady.  I remember when I was doing one show and the homeowner's fireplace screen fell on top of me right in the middle of my presentation.  It was an awesome job for me - cooking, washing lots of dishes, selling and getting hurt. 

One Saturday she reserved a booth at a small town festival and asked me and some other people if we wanted to work it with her to try and get new parties/shows booked so I volunteered.  And I stupidly volunteered to be there for the early shift of the day.  What that meant was that I had to meet my friend there at 7:00 a.m. so we could unload all of the Pampered Chef products, set up a tent, and set up the booth.  The best part?  It was in Loganville which is about an hour from my house so I had to leave at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning to get there which meant I had to get up at 5:00 a.m.  I was still not completely awake when I got there.  A cop had the road blocked where the festival was with his car and one of those barricades that looks like a sawhorse with a sign on it.  I politely asked him if I could get through to unload my car and he said I could and then told me where to park after I unloaded, etc.  He moved his car and I proceeded to drive right into his barricade thing with my car. 

Do you know what I would not advise?  Driving into a police barricade with your car right in front of a cop.

He laughed at me as I sat there with a completely mortified look on my face because that's the kind of look you get on your face when you plow your car into a police barricade. 

We both got out of our vehicles and that's when I saw the huge and horrible scratch on my bumper and the giant crack in his police barricade.  He told me not to worry about his barricade and I rambled on and on and said a whole bunch of stuff that made me very surprised he didn't give me a field sobriety test on the spot and then I went on my way.  I unloaded at our booth spot and then went and parked my car in a lot.  The PC friend got there and for the life of us we could not get the tent up so some man had mercy on us and came and helped, we ran the booth until the afternoon crew showed up, and then she and I walked to our cars.

I got to my car and there was a note on a scratch piece of paper stuck under my wiper blade that said, "Call me about your car" and had a phone number.  I told PC friend about hitting the police barricade that morning and she said I should probably call in case it was the police officer.  I thought he might have something more official looking to leave me a note written on than a piece of ripped off paper, but agreed with her that I should probably call.  But I was exhausted after getting up at 5:00 a.m., driving an hour, hitting a police barricade, unloading a car full of stuff, trying to set up a tent, and working a booth at a festival most of the day AND I was meeting the friend I've known since we were 5 for dinner before I went home.  So I decided to wait and call the next day.

I was hosting a cookout at my house the next day because I like to torture myself when I'm already exhausted, and Hot Brazilian was coming over for it.  When he got there I told him about my Saturday and showed him the note.  He showed me how to call on my cell phone while hiding my number and I dialed the number on the piece of paper.  A guy answered and I told him I was calling because of the piece of paper he left on my car the day before at the Loganville festival and he said he had no idea what I was talking about.  And that right there is the very anti-climatic end of that story.

Completely unrelated story coming up now......

My mom and her husband live in Texas and they decided to go to Illinois for Thanksgiving to see some of her husband's family and some of my mom's family.  My mom is kind of over flying anywhere.  She hates having to pack for flying, security checks, waiting and waiting, being crammed into tiny seats, etc.  So she decided they should take a train.

Oh.  My.

I told her my ex and I took a train during a leg of our honeymoon trip because I thought it would be very romantic like in the movies but in reality it was more like riding a Greyhound bus and seeing some of the grossest towns I've ever seen in my entire life.  But our train trip was not an overnight one so we had no sleeper car and I told her that her trip might be way better.  She was excited about the dining car and I told her on my trip it was more like a concession stand with hot dogs and vending machine quality sandwiches.  But that hers would probably be better.  At least she won't arrive in Penn Station in NYC in the middle of rush hour wearing overalls and carrying a week's worth of luggage and then have to get on the subway and get off at Grand Central Station still with a week's worth of luggage and wearing overalls.  Because I will tell you that native New Yorker's don't like that shit and they get a bit irritated with you.

My mom and her husband left Texas last night so I texted her around 11:00 this morning and this is how the conversation went:

Me:  So....how is the hobo train life?  Love you!

Mom:  Oh my goodness.  Ready?  Cause you're not going to believe this adventure!!  Left Longview 1 hour late.  Dinner on train.  Tried to use upper bunk - too small!!  Then......at 2:00 a.m., stopped in Little Rock.  Rail issues there, soooooo, got everyone (several cars full) off, onto buses.  Rode 2 hours to Walnut Ridge.  Got back on a train.  Now heading to Bloomington - only 8 hours behind schedule!  But we are still laughing - meeting nice people and truly having an adventure.  Love you!

Me:  Oh wow.  Sounds like glorious fun there, Mom.  Glad y'all are still laughing!

Mom:  The Griswalds have nothing on us.

So see, y'all.  My whole family has craziness happen.  It's not just me.

Another unrelated story coming up now......

I think I mentioned in a recent post that my cat is about to be eating a more expensive and healthier diet than I eat.

I've told y'all she has tummy issues.  What she has is irritable bowel syndrome and it makes her poop all over my damn house.  I am tired of cleaning up cat diarrhea up to 6 times per day.  She whines a lot sounding like she's in pain when she poops.  Her fur looks awful.  Medicine has not helped.  Prescription canned cat food did nothing.  She's lost a ton of weight.  She's not healthy and it's driving me to the edge having to clean up after her.  There is an entire room in my house that will have to be re-tiled because apparently the tile was not sealed and her poop stains it.  OMG.

A friend I work with has a cat with the same issue.  She has spent a buttload of money on different things and taken her cat to 6 different vets and no one can give her any treatment that works.  She found a company online out in Washington state that makes raw pet food with no grains, chemicals or preservatives.  It comes frozen in pouches and you thaw it out and give them a small amount twice per day.  She started feeding it to her cat a couple of months ago and said while he's not 100% better, she can actually walk in her house at night and not almost vomit from the smell.  He makes it to the litter box most of the time now.  She can stand to have him sit next to her because he doesn't smell awful anymore.  He has more energy.  His fur looks way better.

This food is Bailey's last hope.  If it doesn't work on her I may have to consider having her put down because I can tell she doesn't feel good and nothing else has worked.  But my word is this stuff expensive.  The shipping alone is $30 because it has to be shipped frozen.  My friend lives on a farm and has tons of cats and dogs.  She said most of her cats eat it now.  A few of them don't like it but the majority of them gobble it up.  She said even the healthy cats look and seem even healthier now.

So yes, my cat is about to eat raw chicken organs from chickens that are free-range and hormone free with kelp, salmon oil and catnip mixed in.  Yum.  Tasty, huh?  It just got delivered to my desk and I will start her on it tomorrow morning.  This should be interesting.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I will be hanging out with my brother, fake daughter (at least I assume - she told me she wants to join us but she hasn't stayed at my house in a week so we'll see if she shows up) and my awesome neighbors.  We will have one vegetarian and two vegans there and I looked for vegan recipes to make my two casseroles which are sweet potato and green bean.  And I decided they just won't be able to eat my stuff because I had no desire to go through everything required to make vegan cream of mushroom soup.  Soaking nuts, expensive almond milk, etc.  No thank you.  

What will all of you be doing?