Tuesday-8pm

Can't believe it! Have been able to have the windows and porch open since last night and not even be uncomfortable in the heat! Cooled off considerably! Ahhhh!

Dagan came over lunch today. Turned out the cord he sent over here won't work in the monitor (or whatever you call the little box with all the lights that "sends" to my laptop). So, he needs something else from home to be able to do the spare brains thing. Eventually it will get done. Good thing there is no hurry.

We aren't meeting for painting tomorrow. Dagan and Leah have a corn feed event they are going to with friends--if it doesn't rain. Hopefully this cooler weather will keep up and it will be very nice for them.

Dagan was back at 4:30pm for his pacemaker check--over the phone. (He's been doing this since he got his first pacemaker at age 12--he's 31.) He and Leah don't have a land line and only have cell phones, which won't work on the machine to transmit properly. So, he comes over and borrows Mom's old-fashioned phone. :)

Last night Dagan brought me to Dr. John's. Bad news! Dr. John, his wife, and new baby girl, Ceydee, are moving to set up a practice in Arizona (his wife is also a chiropractor). They have sold the practice to a new guy, Dr. Mike. Dr. John will be done giving adjustments the end of August but will be around for the re-testing until the end of September. I am happy for them, but will have to ask some questions about payments!! I am just giving him so much a month and still owe him a lot of money!?? (I have a co-payment above what Medicare pays.) How is that going to work? Will I be sending him checks to Arizona? I can't afford to make payments every month to two different chiropractors--so this might alter things considerably? May signal the end of my adjustments for a while--until I have Dr. John paid off? We would still be able to buy supplements from the new guy, of course. He is supposed to be similar in his treatments? I will have some questions, that's for sure.

Going to Dr. John has been the catalyst for the first positive physical improvement I have had in the last thirteen years! The changes have begun and I want to keep them going. I guess I may find out how well I will do with less visits to the chiropractor pretty soon?? I have the feeling I will need to go once in a while, tho, for some time. The changes in eating habits have been pretty much established. The supplements are coming next--we order on Thursday. I am still hopeful that this upward direction will continue. I am off my meds for pain and sleep--and still doing okay. Sleep--as okay as a born night owl can be when left to her own devices--haha!

Anyways, after Dr. John's, Dagan and I went to Hornbacher's grocery store and shopped for dry good ingredients for the three recipes and the fresh stuff for the Mandarin Orange Chicken. We got to their place and were so busy getting all set up with ingredients and doing all this prep work--we totally forgot about starting the rice--chuckle! So, took a lot longer for us to get dinner ready. Plus, we didn't know where everything was in "Leah's" kitchen--chuckle!

Buying dried peppers was absolutely a first for us! We were supposed to roast the dried peppers till they were brown and smelled and then remove them. Well, they are already brown to begin with and didn't seem to change color--and they never had a really strong smell--so we stand there and stir them and smell and stir. Finally we just took them out. We had no idea that the oil was so hot! (We discovered that roasting peppers do not sizzle or make any noise at all?!) When I put the chopped garlic in--it fried up almost instantaneously into little brown specks!! We laughed! Decided our dish needed well-roasted garlic--ha! Only way to learn-- just do it, right?

Anyways, we also discovered that snap peas take longer to cook than snow peas (substitution), so they were quite crunchy (of course, the snow peas might have been also?). Anyways, it was "interesting" as we would say in the Midwest--Dagan and I liked it okay. Mandarin oranges fall apart quickly in heat, BTW--hehe! Odd combinations--peppers and oranges! We'll be brave and try something else new and different next week. (Going to give my Swedish taste buds a real workout!) It was really fun! I was still chuckling to myself as I was writing this. (I bet Leah would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to watch us stumbling thru this recipe and looking all over the kitchen for stuff--hehe!)

The sky has darkened up considerably to the east since I began writing. Maybe another storm passing thru--good! We could use days and days of rain. :) Gotta go....