9th of Av

 It’s been a while. I had hoped to blog more often. Maybe I can now. I guess I’ll go over my most recent things.

I started going back to my ‘diet’. It’s where I try to have a certain range of calories for each meal. That being 240-320 calories. It was a bit hard at first, but I’ve been getting the hang of it. For the whole day, the range is 1200 calories to 1600 calories. I have 5 ‘meals’. 5 small meals, I was told when I was diagnosed with IBD, is better on my gut than having 3 big meals a day. Plus, most of the time you don’t feel as hungry in between meals. I have already noticed small changes. I think it’ll work to help me feel healthier and lose weight. Last time I did it for a while, it really helped. I’ve also noticed how big things are again. I’ve noticed how little I can have for a meal. Having a full serving of my cereal and a little milk ends up being like 230 calories. I can’t really have a banana anymore with breakfast. (If I have the cereal. Might have it as part of a snack instead.) Can’t have the sausage patties or turkey bacon with it either. Having plain frozen pancakes and a little syrup is about in the middle of my range. It’s interesting. I also thought of it as like a game. Like you can only ‘pay’ with 1200-1600 calories. However, the weekend is usually my ‘splurge’ days. Especially for dinners. For those days, I might try to have 1800 calories or just a little more. I’m trying to look at other things like protein, carbs, sugar, and fat. I’m usually low on protein, sodium, fiber, and fat. Occasionally sugar, too. I use My Fitness Pal for it. It’s interesting that they now have a separate thing for water. I drink quite a lot according to that.

I’m still walking on top of the diet thing. I try to walk 3 times a day inside. Right now, each one is 10 minutes. I plan to increase each one. Last time I didn’t do it evenly, and my last walk was longer. That being 40 minutes. I’m thinking it might be better to add more to each one. I’ll have the last walk for 15 minutes. Then, eventually have the second walk as 15 minutes as well. Just keep going with each one like that. I might try doing outdoor ones when the weather gets better. Maybe once I get even healthier, I can try to do sit-ups again. They (my health team) were worried that I might break a bone again.

I splurged a bit and went out for dinner on Wednesday. I feel like I kind of broke it that way. We went to Burrata Bistro/Paella Bar. It’s like 2 restaurants in one. We shared some of their focaccia. It’s always so much. The rest are good for snacks. Had a little of the Marcona almonds. I got their penne alla puttanesca. It was much spicier than I expected. There wasn’t any spicy ingredient listed on the menu. The olives were weird. They had like little pieces of hard things inside. I mostly just had the pasta. I got their key lime tart. It was decent. I liked the crust. I wished they had their nutrition info somewhere, or even just the calories next to things, like some other restaurants do. I tried to add similar things to My Fitness Pal. Turns out, if it’s like what I found on there, that I actually ended up under the 1600 calories all together. I didn’t have my 5th meal. Well other than just having pills and water.

Getting my meds through CVS has been a headache. They say they sent things to my doctors, and yet they don’t get them. (I think they have the wrong address, at least for my primary care doctor.) My primary care doctor had to have one of her nurses call Molina about the ‘prior authorization’. They faxed the forms to them, my primary doctor filled them out and sent it. I had to call Molina in order for them to approve it. Might have to do that every time. I have a lot of meds. I tried to get something from my palliative care doctor as well. I called him about the whole thing. I’m still waiting on it to be approved. Hopefully all of them will go through with the way my primary care doctor had to do it.

I recently figured out a schedule for myself. This way I can try to get done what I want to do. Most days except the weekend, I figured out how to add playing my clarinet into it. I’ve been playing it for the first time in years. I think the last time I played was either in 2021 or 2020. It was close to when I was diagnosed with cancer. I also figured out when to blog, like what I’m now doing. Added my bed bath, and what I can do around it. Also, a little bit of doing my coloring books. It’s fun. Added Shabbat services to it, as well. I’ve figured out a pretty easy and accurate schedule with it all.

We (parent and I) recently went on vacation to Bellingham, Washington. I think it was the first time I was there. I haven’t traveled much since the cancer diagnosis. I got to a lot of things that were on my list. Some of those were restaurants. Those were some fun and good tasting food. We saw deer near one of the restaurants. That was cool.

We went to a 3-level bookstore. That was apparently famous. They had 2 cafes. One that was like a restaurant, and the other had a limited amount of things. It was a nice place. Wished there was more than one bathroom. We couldn’t stay very long, either.

The Marine Life Center was really small and cramped. Not much there. There were a lot of people, mainly kids.

We went to a Serbian/Russian market. We got hazelnut caramels, plum jam, cherry jam, pretzels, kvass, and cherry filled chocolate. I’ve had a caramel and some of the plum jam. They were very good. I was surprised there wasn’t much sugar in the plum jam.

We went to the Spark Museum. It started with electricity info, then things like telegrams or morse code or other earlier ways of communicating, telephones, TVs, radio, and more. It was quite packed with stuff.

One of the nights, there were police vehicles circling the hotel. We had to park near the hotel, because they were blocking the way to it. I’m almost afraid to find out what happened. We just hunkered down in the room once they cleared the way.

I’ve also gotten into reading. I made a top 100 list of classic books. I’m going through it. I got a Kindle that I’m reading books on. That’s been interesting. The first one was Pride and Prejudice. It was kind of boring except for the last 30 pages. It got intense. My 2nd book was going to be 1984. I didn’t want to read it, so I changed it. I tried to get into Crime and Punishment. It's a long book, too. I decided to drop that one. I started reading Hamlet, which was next. It's surprisingly short. It probably won't take me very long. 

It’s been hot lately. It’s affected my health, too. I seem to always be sweating. We don’t have ac, and the house stays warm for a while even when it’s cool outside. It’s been interesting watching the temperature in my room. My parent gave me a thing that shows the temperature and humidity. It’s humid in my room apparently. It also shows the lowest temperature and highest temperature in the last 24 hours, along with the humidity.

I was wearing one of my Jewish Pride shirts on yesterday. It has a big star of David in rainbow colors. It says B’tzelem Elohim. Meaning in the image of G-d. It also lists the congregation that was selling them at one of the local Prides. I went to Central, and someone saw it. They quickly said shalom. It was kind of cool. I don’t get a reaction to it very often.

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4th of Nisan

Passover or Pesach, this year, starts on the night of April 12th to the 20th. I’m going to do it this year. The seder and ‘diet’ during the holiday. Ashkenazi Jews have a more restrictive diet than Sephardi Jews during the holiday. In addition to no leavening (from 5 types of grains: wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt), which is chametz, we don’t eat kitniyot. Kitniyot (lit. ‘small things’) are legumes, rice, corn, and other foods considered similar to grains. Even mustard is on the list. I try to keep it as close as I can. There’s a surprising amount of corn products in things.

Seder lit. means ‘order’, it’s a ritual dinner that goes in a certain order. I didn’t do a seder for a couple of years after my fall and cancer diagnosis. I think this is my 3rd year getting back into it. I’ll be the leader at our family one. It’ll just be my parent and I. It’s a bit sadder when it’s just me. (Had that for a couple of years.) We used to go to a friends’ place for the 2nd night. Most people do (or go to) seders on the 1st 2 nights. The hostess had an accident (I don’t remember exactly what happened) and got brain damage from it. So, they haven’t hosted one since. They might have stopped it when Covid came around, too. I kind of miss their seders. There were a lot of people. I got to see their dogs. There was interesting food. I usually was the youngest one, so I had to ‘search’ for the afikoman. Afikoman is a piece of matzo (cracker like unleavened bread) that’s been hidden. The kids have to find it. They usually get a prize of some sort. The best present I got, I think, was an illustrated Hebrew dictionary. (Most of the time it’s like $1 or something small.) The seder can’t end unless everyone eats a piece of the afikoman. It’s also the last thing that’s eaten. I think some strict families don’t sing or listen to music after.

I decided on the actual dinner things for ours. We’ll have the usual hard-boiled eggs and gefilte fish first. I got 2 jars of the fish, which will be nice to have during the week. Then, matzo ball soup. I got 2 jars of this. We’ll probably use all of the 1st jar that night. My parent wanted to make the roasted chicken. The last couple of years we’ve gotten it from one of the markets. It might be even better made at home. I thought having a salad would be a good side. Probably get a spring mix. I can put a few leaves from it on the seder plate. I was hoping to mix in shredded carrots and shredded cabbage. I think Safeway used to have those already prepared. I’m hoping they’ll still have that. Craisins or dried cranberries would be great in the salad, too. I already found a good looking dressing and got it. It’s a garlic vinaigrette. I got quite a collection of desserts. Double dipped chocolate macaroons, almond macaroons, fruit slices (candy), chocolate seder plate (it looks impressive to me. Hopefully it’s in one piece), and Osem's chocolate chip Pesach cake (they make amazing Pesach cakes. I think they crushed this one, sadly). I bought 2 boxes of matzo. Even though I’m the only one that will eat it after the seder, I’m going to use it a lot. Matzo pizzas, matzo with charoset (fruit, nut, and wine mix, which the one I bought is like a jam) on it for a snack, matzo sandwiches (almond butter and charoset, egg salad, and tuna salad), and more. I decided not to try to roast an egg this year for the seder plate. I’ll just put a hard-boiled egg on it. I’m not sure how many hard-boiled eggs I’ll need for sandwiches for the week. Safeway has a couple of brands, and they all have 6 to a bag. Maybe if I want more I can just go back to get more then. We’ll put an orange on the seder plate again. It represents marginalized Jews. Like LGBTQ+ Jews, Jews of color, etc. We’ll have to get parsley for the plate, too. I noticed we have ‘extra hot’ horseradish. We could use that for the plate and the little matzo sandwich we have during the seder part just before dinner. I hope I can handle a tiny piece of it. I’ll get sparkling grape juice for my 4 cups. I don’t drink alcohol. I think I’ll get 2 bottles. I can have the rest during the holiday.

I got 3 bags of Pesach noodles. They didn’t have any at the markets, and they only came in 3s on Amazon. (I got most of the Pesach stuff from there.) I love those noodles. It’ll definitely last longer than the holiday. I’m going to try and find a good pasta sauce to have with it. Kind of hard to find without soy or corn products. I’ll have some cheese with it as well. I’ll use both the sauce and cheese with the matzo pizzas and noodles. I also found a premade roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots boxed meal. They say it can be used for camping. They say they’re kosher for Pesach. I might try more of them in the future, if I like it. I got bbq potato chips. That would be a nice snack. I got an herbal tea sampler. Most teas are kosher year round, but it was on sale in Amazon’s Pesach section. Hopefully it’ll be good. I thought a sampler would be nice. I can try a variety of them. This holiday is one of my faves, but it takes quite a bit of planning.

The main picture on the Jewish calendar is of an old French seder plate. It has the spots for each thing, each one is also in Hebrew and French. The outer part of the plate has all the sections of the seder in both Hebrew and French. That’s kind of cool to see. Most seder plates don’t do that. The other (secular) calendar has someplace in Scotland, I think. It has the Scottish flag. It’s of a sunset around some ruins.

I downloaded my ancestry . com data, and uploaded it to MyTrueAncestry. They supposedly do a deeper dive into how far back they go. My parent did it before me, and it looked interesting. It only took less than 10 minutes. It was free, although they show more if you pay for it. Not sure how accurate it is. A big percentage were Illyrians. I still don’t know much about them after looking them up. I’ll look at the other groups at some point. (A lot of them I don’t know much about.) Another big percentage were the Romans. I’m surprised by this one, but they got around, like the Vikings. I didn’t see any Viking in there, oddly. It had an era circle of what percentage of people were for each era. They also have a map, so you can see where they travelled around in certain eras. My parent also recently tried another DNA thing. Something that sequences your whole genome. I might be able to do that when they have a sale. It takes a while.

Went to Kettlefish for the first time on Saturday. There’s only 3 entrees I can have there: fish and chips, cod tacos, or Caesar salad with cod pieces. I got their cod tacos with coleslaw. The fish was really good. There were way too many things in the tacos, so most of it fell out. Even with eating the fish first, it was still too much. The pico de gallo tasted like it had curry spices. Interesting. The tacos also had too much lettuce. The coleslaw was interesting and good. They also had ice cream. I got a chocolate eclair bar. Reminded me of the strawberry shortcake bars. Just with chocolate. I might try their fish and chips next time.

I ordered quite a bit of meds lately. My primary doc’s ‘team’ also ordered 400 mg gabapentin. They want me to take it once 3 times a day. They think it might help me more than the 300 mg once 3 times a day dose. I had been waiting for my morphine 60 mg pills. I’d run out by Friday morning. (I take it 3 times a day.) I was so happy to get it today. It really cut it close. I also got the gabapentin. It was 90 days worth. I wanted it to be a 30 day one. I ended up with 4 huge full bottles of it. Too much. I barely had space for it and the other meds I got. (There were a few more.) I think the gabapentin was $16, but I wasn’t charged for the others. I thought it’d all be a lot more expensive. Maybe I’ve already hit the deductible or whatever it is.

Today I didn’t miss any of the Spanish sentences on Duolingo. Did 3 lessons. Finished a unit and my Spanish number went up to 62. Hit a milestone for my daily streak, which was 1,250 days. Finished all the quests for today. I’m 5th in the league. 

Someone tried to basically harass me on Shabbat . com. He sent weird messages and tried friending me twice. He seemed to only be there to look for a wife. He made quite a few false assumptions about me. I eventually just blocked him. Oddly, I noticed I haven't used that app for 3 years. I might get back to it. It's kind of like a Facebook for Jews. Including part of it where you can find places to stay and host Shabbat dinners. They got a dating part of it, which I never really used. Most people on there have been nice.

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