Happy 25th Birthday, Nick

Today was Nick’s 25th birthday and Meg has been busy planning a big celebration for him.  She helped her parents order him a long wanted espresso machine and started baking desserts yesterday.  She also learned how to make his favorite pancakes from scratch.  She bought him a new game that they could play together on the Nintendo Switch and a birthday banner along with party hats for decoration.

I enjoyed listening to all of Meg’s plans.  Nick has been a wonderful addition to our family and we appreciate him very much. Nick and Meg have been together for so long that I barely remember her life before they met.  It will be a lot of fun having them in Florida soon.   I know that they will really like the sunshine and all that Orlando has to offer a young couple.  

Connections

When I met Maggie’s parents last November, her mom, Nancy told me about an online word game called Connections.  She thought that I would really like it as it was made by the New York Times who also produced Wordle, a game that I played daily.  It took a few days for me to completely understand how to play - I had to find groups of 4 word connections inside of a set of sixteen words.  After I learned the instructions, I then struggled to make the connections in the four allotted guesses.  After a few days, I finally caught on and was at least able to play.  I wasn’t the greatest at seeing the connections, however, which made the game extremely frustrating at times.

When Brett was here in February, I showed him the game and soon realized that he saw the connections a lot quicker than I did.  We worked on the puzzle together while we were waiting in lines at Disney World and then again while we were hanging out at my house.  I enjoyed sharing the game with him and after he left I missed having a “Connections” partner.  

Doug started helping me with the game after Brett left, but sometimes the groups were also too hard for him.  Whenever we both were stumped, I would screen shot the words and send them to Brett.  After a while it became a daily activity that I really enjoyed.  With his help, I became better at the puzzles and there were days that I didn’t even need his help.  I now have a 74 day streak of “connections”, but the best part has been “connecting”with Brett and solving them together.

Good News Out of Bad

Today, was my six month check up and I made a list of a few topics that I wanted to talk to Dr. Aich about this time.  The first was the Lipitor that I had been taking for my high cholesterol.  It had worked to lower the numbers to a normal range, but I had noticed recently that the medicine was absolutely killing my stomach.  I didn’t realize it at first, but once I tried the medicine without any other pills with my lunch, I instantly got sick.  It wasn’t just once, but every time.  I took a break from it and right away noticed a difference.  Dr. Aich was concerned that my cholesterol would rise again, but agreed to let me try it for three months.

I was very happy to hear that, but not the second piece of news.  She thought that the pain in my toe was from gout.  I was bummed to hear that, but not surprised.  I had never had a pain list this before and it made sense from what I had read.  We agreed to cut out some of the foods that increased uric acid.  

I left the office feeling good about my visit until later when I read what foods increased the chances of a gout flare up.  I was absolutely floored when I saw that tuna, watermelon and turkey were high on the list.  One of the three of those were in almost every meal that I ate recently.  I was going to have to really do some research to see what I could eat that was still healthy, but wouldn’t have high levels of purine in them. While I was bummed to read all of this until it dawned on me.  Since I had stopped taking my statin, I could start drinking Fresca again.  That definitely made up for all of the food that I had to stay away from for the next three months.  Doug and I stopped and bought three liters of my favorite drink on our way back from McAlister’s tonight.  I couldn’t wait to open one up.