Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ate last night, Sheila noticed something tiny latched onto her inner leg just above the ankle.   It looked like a tick with its head buried into her skin so I grabbed the magnifying glass from my desk and a flashlight to get a closer look.  I would need the magnifying glass to remove this tiny thing anyway.   Looking at it under the magnifying glass wasn't much better than looking at it with my bare eyes.  It was too small to lightly grasp with my fingers so I retrieved a pair of tweezers.  I carefully grasped the tiny thing with the tweezers and pulled.  It easily unlatched from Sheila's leg.   Whatever this tiny thing was, it sort of resembled a tick that had been accidentally partially brushed off or unknowingly scratched because it appeared to be crushed.  When I lightly grasped it with the tweezers, it pulled off so easily that I was thinking to myself that this came off far easier than the bloated tick I had embedded in my s...

S heila and I had a quiet Thanksgiving at home.   I've been sick with a cold of some sort over the past few days and I'm still feeling pretty lousy.  Laying down causes the stream flowing from my nose to run down my throat so sleeping has been difficult.  Breathing is difficult.  And, it is mildly affecting my mast cell disease too.  It was good we had no plans to go anywhere because I definitely would not have been up for it.   Honestly, I don't like going anywhere on Thanksgiving anyway.  I despise the "so-called traditional" Thanksgiving dinner (it is not traditional to me) so I don't eat much when that garbage is offered at someone else's house and then I'm starving by the time we get home.   Even as a child, one of my uncles and I used to throw some steaks on the grill (and fresh fish if I had been fishing earlier in the day) on Thanksgiving while the rest of the family ate that Thanksgiving garbage.  So not liking the tra...

I had already posted about this television commercial on my Facebook newsfeed about a month or so ago but thought I should probably share it here too since this is where I write about my illness and living life with a chronic illness.   In that Facebook post, I had mentioned that I had never seen a commercial about my primary illness before seeing this commercial.  I've had this illness for more than two decades and very few people know anything about this illness including many medical professionals so we've always been hoping for some awareness.  I've always felt that if there was more awareness, then there would be more understanding.  If there was more awareness among the medical professionals, then I wouldn't have to educate medical staff in emergency departments every time I land in their hospital.  There is so little understanding and familiarity of this illness even among medical professionals that both Sheila and I must carry around an emergency c...

O n our last journey to Ohio on Amtrak with Lukey and Kenzie, we spent a little bit of time in Manhattan, both coming and going on our journey.  We had a layover in Manhattan going each way so we could transfer from one Amtrak route to another.  This allowed us to walk around a little bit and to get some "real"  pizza each time we were there.  Honestly, the pizza alone is worth the nightlong layover! This first photo, below, shows us in Penn Station's subway corridors.  This part of Penn Station has not yet been renovated (Penn Station is undergoing a decade-long, much-needed renovation) so it is still the same dark and dirty place it has been for many decades.  We also encountered some problems here at the beginning of our trip.   Naturally, we had planned for either Sheila or me to pay for the subway tickets so we had both of our phones all set up already in anticipation of having to pay.  The current way you pay for the subway is electroni...