Another Hurricane Conference and Key Lime Festival!

 Another opening of another show! Today was chocked full of fun things to do things from my scooter view...Above is the Weather Authority of Wink News, our CBS affiliate, right here in Southwest Florida! This Expo is held yearly at our Charlotte Harbor Events and Conference Center in Punta Gorda, Fl.

 Lois is with Chris, two of their news anchors.

 These attractive youngsters are what I like to call the Newbie News cast, that's Andrew in the middle.

 Lois was nice enough to pose with some woman whose name escapes me.

 The reason this group of guys made the cut is due to their product that cleans the air and is added on to your existing heating air-conditioning unit and there is one for every size; Joe Paul Tvaroch is the fellow in the middle. www.grandeaire.com or 941-697-4884; they are out of Boca Grande, but care/service most all of sw fl.
This is Lyn the woman and Lana the Rottweiler and they are part of the Peace River K9 Search and Rescue Organization. They are in Englewood, FL and can be reached by calling 941-548-7560 or www.prsar.org They are private, but do assist the local and national law-enforcement units, anyone from Alzheimer patients to disaster victims they are there to help find. More trainers and dogs are also involved.

 The Animal Welfare League, as usual, could use your financial support as well as great homes for their temporary four-legged guests, so help your local chapter.

 This fellow was just plain fun with his multitude of die-cast classic and antique miniature autos and his company is Auto Air Specialists: 941-743-3113 or www.autoairspecialist.com (Where they take care of full size vehicles)

On to the Key Lime Festival for the second year held at Fisherman's Village Punta Gorda, Fl!

Diane Koby is handing Hubby a beautiful basket of Italian goodies that apparently the actual winner forgot to pick up and after we spoke, her and I, for some amazing reason she decided that I would receive her left for no reason generous gift! I wish I knew what I said, it was too much, but I also realized the time was growing closer for everyone going home from there. Just too sweet and amazing!  Her business is Bubbles Baby Diaper Bouquets and Cakes a wonderful concept of not giving unnecessary hospital gifts to the proud new parents, but beautiful practical collections of necessary diapers, blankets, and stuffed animals and other toys for boys or girls or vice versa... all displayed and in the shapes of cakes or bouquets! What an incredible concept for the addition to any layette! You can go to their site at www.BubblesBabyBouquets.com
PS I didn't tell her that I had a BLOG until after she bestowed that gift on us with complete fixings for a spaghetti dinner, including olive oils(3)and a cruet with powdered salad dressing as well as tomato sauce, and Ghirardelli chocolates, crackers and that's all I could see without opening it yet... I feel a bit badly for the original people it was intended for, but there is nothing I can do?

 The whimsical characters above and below as seen with their, Artist Margaret A. Stinson whose more amazing Gourdeous Critters can be seen on her  website at www.AnniedotsAttic.com, or 941-697-9263

 Below is Cathy Graham who is a book seller with a bookstore called: Copperfish Books in Punta Gorda, Fl, with an amazing array of books for all tastes, and speaking about that she found just the right ones to fit the bill for today's Key Lime Festival at Fisherman's Village, their second. She brought an assortment of proper key lime themed titles and everything from recipes to just about anything you could think of; her site is www.copperfishbooks.com or just visit her store right next to the historic Punta Gorda Train Depot or call 941-205-2560.

 Jugglestheclown.com

Looking for signs of more lime and I found it!

  Below you will find a lone true key lime, which is the makings for another tree of the same name that we had had years ago, brought home from a trip to The Florida Keys, specifically Key Largo, but alas it was devastated by Hurricane Charley, our key lime tree, as well as so much else... I must thank Jim Fendrick with Edward Jones financial in Port Charlotte 941-743-0028, due to him having a bowl of key limes on his table and I blatantly asked for one and he was kind enough to give this emerald green jewel to me! I grew an avocado tree from a pit and now we have avocados every year, so why not? 

On that note of raw hope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too! 

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Funny thing...

...about another day is, its another day!
Sure any of us who suffer the doldrums way too often knows that the best way to shake them off is either by distraction or waiting it out for the next day!
Usually one can make it a better one with little or some or no effort whatsoever!
That depends on your mindset.
Yep, turning off the negativity and switching on the positivity!
Simplistic for your most basic brains, such as mine; sometimes simple mindedness is truly the best. bud dub bum...
Sure I have been known to harp on bad things, but I am also willing to let them go...just like Adele Azziz (Idina Menzel), kidding, I am NO John Travolta, ha! See even I know who sang that award winning song, Let it Go!

Bad, hard things that we cannot change aren't worth bestowing our misery thoughts on.
Of course physical pain is more difficult to derail in our thought processes, don't get me wrong, but even pain can be deflected by changing one's thought patterns...
I don't mean a cure from any of our own true harsh realities or even preventing the pain from hurting us, but a mind respite, a vacation from it, ya know?
Most people who study how the mind controls the body knows it is not that far fetched to think of that possibility.
But we mustn't think that not trying at all will magically work.

Most people do profess to think and do what they feel is best for them, but I have been known to be more of a do what I say type person and not listening to my own commonsense advice, huh?


 All in all being alive is not always as easy as it may seem to some, but the effort to make it look that way will be an honest way to do something, and doing something is always better than doing nothing, true?

TRUE!

On that note of some thoughtful hope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and I would like to ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Spirits are down tonight...

I seem to be having an emotional and physically not too good day.
Let's face it I awoke with stiffer arms and legs than usual.
Even with my usual movements that have helped in the past, today they did not seem to do that for me this time.
Although, I take nearly half my old dosage of the Baclofen still, at 40 MG. daily; when originally months ago it was 70 MG. and although back on the Gabapentin it too is less but back up to 1200 MG., it had been at 1800 MG. prior to my first time weaning myself off last winter.
I am beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake, with weaning then completely and then going back and weaning again and having to go back, twice prescribed by my old neuro, but this last going back was  my own decision, albeit approved by this new neuro when told my reasoning and the fact that I had not been told to wean myself off again, actually both times were my idea, not the doctor's.

Sometimes we make mistakes, and all I am asking for is guidance from someone I respect that is more knowledgeable than myself.  So I hope this new neuro who has been in practice nearly forty years will be able to help me figure it all out...even my fingers are double hitting this keyboard without me making that decision, it is scary uncontrollable when it happens daily, when I am overtired I think

This will be done shortly, due to how I am feeling, and that is poorly.
I am writing from bed now and even while here it is not too comfortable, with my laptop on my chest.

Moving on...

The opening of the 9/11 Museum was today and was a sad remembrance of that horrific devastation of so many lives lost. We had indirectly known people lost at all three crash sites and perhaps that may have added to my personal sadness of frustration of this disease and it being affected by the slightest thing, such as weather changes outside... as well as major sad historical events.

I am a wimp!
On that note of trying to find some hope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and may I ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

A full moon means...?

YES! It means half price Jersey style 18 "thin crust coal fired pizzas from our Jersey Guy, from Toms River NJ, now right here in Port Charlotte the owner of  Bocca Lupo and two other different types of restaurants! Hubby went on the run for our half priced ones, $7.50 each, due to a full moon tonight, that means two, one for us to eat tonight and whatever is leftover goes into the fridge for lunch and the other is separated and put into freezer containers to be accessed when we feel the desire for such a treat!
Sometimes we might forget, but not often!

Moving on...

I will be going in to see my new neuro for a plan of attack on how to handle my MS and an in depth explanation of my test results next week. My preliminary results were given to me without all the results back, but it does appear my brain MS lesions are stable, great, and my thoracic and lumbar showed my arthritis, even though my blood work was back she, the person who called me back, Cheryl, was unable to tell me for some reason those results; all info told was rather vague. The cervical report was being sent to them later today, and so by next week I guess I will be better informed.
All I know is this medication for pain, the Gabapentin at 1200 MG. and my Baclofen 40 MG. seems 
to be working less and less, and I hate having to take any of it! What might be next?
Well, at least I don't seem to be having an exacerbation of the MS, which would call for more IV Solu Medrol (steroid) at 1000 M.G. for days and at an additional 15-20 lbs. added to my body!
At least this doc got that; he mentioned the weight gain from the IV steroids before he ordered all my tests! I have been on those IV's five times, you do the math; pounds wise, not counting all those lbs. from quitting the cigs in July of 2006 too, thus my grandeur of size!

Any-who, at least I have some idea with what is going on, but still no resolve...
MS is so bizarre that unless you actually have it it is difficult to understand all the crazy daily symptoms from the parathesia to spasms to pain to falling, dropping things you are sure you have... and on and on with exhaustion, memory of words gone and frustration due to it all...and these are daily, not an exacerbation just a so-called 'normal' day with Multiple Sclerosis; welcome to my world!

Sadly, I was hoping they would find with the higher tesla of 3 MRI machine that my ole neuro had misdiagnosed the MS too and that it wasn't there, but alas it is, like she had done with my "dead optic nerve", causing the blindness in my right eye and that she kept saying that the cataract was not worth fixing due to that and that was NOT true! We would have had a heck of a case if she misdiagnosed the MS too! Since she was at least the one who did start me on the Copaxone back in 2010 and if nothing else she could be responsible for it being stable due to that, oh well... that was a very good thing; but my sight was important too and she goofed there!
And so did the other eye docs not checking my MRI's like Dr. Klein was willing to do and using a simple flashlight to check if anything was there with my pupil dilating and contracting.

On that note of trying to cope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you kindly to count those blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear? 

White rice pasta and scallops...

Got to go out today again!
This time with Hubby to the  grocery.
Dinner for tonight is my title.
Never had Asian white rice pasta before, I suppose it will be a bit of an adventure; it takes longer to cook at 17 minutes.
Even after it was done for the prescribed amount of time it was still al dente.
The scallops are sold behind the fishmonger's counter, in shells, breaded like the stuffed clams, but even so at a dollar a shell they are a bargain these days with all other fish at very high prices, although the Tilapia was priced very nicely at $6.99 a pound. Would you believe medium white shrimp was on sale for $7.99 a pound?
I can remember, a time, not that long ago, when jumbos were that price!

Wish I was well enough to go out in our boat and go get them.
We used to get all sorts of fish and blue claw crabs, you name it, swim a little, shell a little on the beaches down in the islands; lunch along the way...oh what fun we had...

Dinner tonight was fine, not great, we had picked up lunch at Subway, me seafood salad over a spinach salad with every veggie and pepper they have no dressing (I make my own with balsamic and extra virgin olive oil, a touch of honey and garlic, here, at home), and Hubby had a meatball sandwich.

We spent again $175 at the grocery and it looks like very little, this is at least three times a month at that amount, for two people, who eat out, often! Hubby just said he wonders how young couples can make it? PS no wine anymore for weeks for Hubby and me months with all  my meds and my taste for it has gotten sour, but the same amount of fruits and vegetables fresh and frozen! It had to be due to my Nova and herring desire... but not that often, really!
Quite a bit of those veggies and fruits fresh and frozen too and can goods now too, due to it getting closer to hurricane season in about two weeks, on June first,and it lasts till November 30th!

On that note of our addition to the my diary, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good  night and may I ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Dallas Buyers Club

TV trays stationed appropriately as little soldiers with our chosen dinners of pizza with peperoni and Greek salad, and one lone calzone all from what Hubby had picked up from our favorite coal fired pizza place sans the full moon, Bocca Lupo!
Our lunch had been very tasty too at the Fish Market Restaurant at Fishville. I had had the Mother's Day special of rainbow trout healthy broiled, four ounce, with rice pilaf and cole slaw, unsweet iced tea with  extra lemons, Number One's gal had fried cod and mashed potatoes and cole slaw too with a Coke. Number One Son had fried cod sandwich with lettuce and tomato and fried onion rings and a Coke. Hubby had a seafood casserole, cole slaw and fried onion rings with a coffee back with sugar.

So two slices of the medium pie with peperoni and my club soda while watching that award winning movie was not too shabby or foolish an idea and we all had fun in spite of the movie's extremely serious content about the beginnings of the treatment mal and good of AIDS. Matthew McConaghey lost around fifty to play the gritty character of Ron Woodruff an electrician/rodeo rider, after being a straight guy diagnosed with AIDS he is treated with a preferred drug of the time AZT and told he has 30 days to live. Through a bunch of realizations that his coke snorting and alcohol abuse is magnifying his symptoms and killing him faster he ends up being cared for by an eventual sympathetic woman doctor, played by Jennifer Garner as Dr. Eve Saks and Jared Leto as the gay friend to both.

Below is another synopsis from Wikki:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club

"In 1985, Dallas electrician and rodeo cowboy Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with AIDS and given 30 days to live. He initially refuses to accept the diagnosis, but remembers having unprotected sex with an intravenous drug-using prostitute. Ron quickly finds himself ostracized by family and friends, gets fired from his job, and is eventually evicted from his home. At the hospital, he is tended to by Dr. Eve Saks, who tells him that they are testing a drug called zidovudine (AZT), an antiretroviral drug which is thought to prolong the life of AIDS patients—and which is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for testing on humans. Saks informs him that in the clinical trials, half the patients receive the drug and the other half are given a placebo, as this is the only way they can determine if the drug is working."

The link below is the true story in more detail:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/03/the-true-story-behind-dallas-buyers-club-meet-the-real-ron-woodruff.html

To me the story in spite of colorful expletive use and graphic sex scenes it told a story of how the beginnings of a killer virus was being handled by the patients wanting a better way to solve the mysteries of how to find natural and healthy logical nearly homeopathic ways working in tandem with changing the dosing of harsh FDA approved drugs like AZT and so the AIDS cocktail was born and people of every possible ways of contraction could realize that they now would no longer have a death sentence and hope could be had.

Many of the ideas of treating AIDS with vitamins and healthy eating non-processed foods are working for so many other autoimmune diseases today like Multiple Sclerosis, balances have been made with both old ideas and new methods in medicine and I personally find that there is hope for so many diseases that have no cure and that there is no written rhyme or reasoning documented yet  in medical volumes... 

On that note of much hope; I found that my cringe factor issues with most R rated movies I can look past some of my still prudish thinking and learn more. Allow me to be the first then to wish all of you a very happy good night and to kindly wish all of you a very happy good night and kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too!


And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

PS Number One Son and his gal are both over forty, so they were old enough to see the movie.
No harm, no foul and if you are eating while watching a R rated movie with adult children less blushing ensues! LOL! Bottom line: a great flick, highly recommended to see with an open mind and a learning curve to boot! Wish I took notes; many useful logical ways to help many chronic ills!

Mother's Day!

Today it is wonderful seeing our two out of four children/adults, and we had an incredible visit.
They are still here and we will be enjoying another meal, but this time picked up and brought home!
Those Belgian chocolates were very select and selected by our son's girlfriend when on their last cruise to the Bahamas!
So far I had one and so did Hubby, they refused to take any, since they have their own at home and insist that these are mine! But I will share with Hubby.
They too are checking out their tablet (surface) while I write tonight, Hubby went to pick up dinner!
He should be back soon...
I hope all of you Moms out there are also enjoying your day...
Love and prayers to all...
Good night.