In order to comment, you now have to answer the captcha

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I moved my site to a shared hosting provider some months ago. So much comment spam is making its way to my site that I’m exceeding their hosting plan terms due to excessive sql traffic. I had to add a captcha to the site to keep from losing my hosting account. When you comment, you’ll notice that you now need to do a simple match calculation and enter the answer before you can comment. Sorry for the inconvenience.

So a guy walks into the Doctor’s office….

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…and the Doctor says ‘holy crap these bloodwork numbers are bad, and what’s this new thing your liver is doing. What’s going on with your body?’ The guy says ‘way to make me freak out, doc, off the cuff, I dunno?’ They chat, and conclude that the fact the guy had a kid and hadn’t been able to exercise as regularly as he had been for the past 10 years, coupled with maybe a little complacency about his health, are the likeliest contributing factors. The doc tells him he has to go on 101 different pills, and the guy says let me try to fix this before we go there. The doc gives him 3 months.

The guy is me. That happened 4 months ago. As of a couple of weeks ago I’m officially back on track, with bloodwork that’s almost back to the levels I had been seeing for the past 10 years. As of last night, I’ve also officially lost 20 pounds. I had let myself get up to 190 this winter, which is 15 pounds over what I had settled on as my acceptable body weight, and 25 pounds over my ideal of 165. I’ve only been at my ideal twice in my adult life – I was there for most of college, and I got there a few months after I was diagnosed with diabetes 10 years ago. I’m going to get there again within the next month or so. We’ll see if I can keep it there this time. I’ve changed my approach. Broadly assessed, this is still low carb to take care of the blood sugar issues, but I’ve been counting calories this time. It takes a bit more work in terms of data entry, and it’s a less satisfying eating experience (I used to eat until I was full so long as there were not too many carbs – now I’m eating controlled portions), but in other ways it’s kind of easier – some months into this, I have a fair handle on what portions work. I also have some new tools which I’ll touch on in another post, but a teaser: the Fitbit is a pretty awesome little device and associated web service.

A related aside – 10 years ago when initially diagnosed, I went on a collection of medications that made me feel unwell. This helped motivate me to find other solutions. One of those solutions was Niacin instead of other cholesterol control agents. I pushed for that approach in part because of concern for my liver – I was 35 when diagnosed and couldn’t imagine a healthy liver still in me 10 or 20 years down the line with the regimen of medications they were proposing to put me on for the rest of my life. Now it looks like maybe it was the Niacin fucking with my liver, and more recent research suggest a connection between Niacin, alcohol, and permanent liver damage.

!!!

3 months ago I was completely freaked out by this, and metaphorically shaking my fist at a universe that would put me in this position (ok, so it was me, not the universe, but me acting on the best information I could find, so let me blame it on the universe). Now I’m somewhat less worried since the liver numbers came back down, but I’m also taking half as much Niacin and 1/3 less alcohol (2 drink maximum for me. Before this, weekends I was commonly hitting 3 and it wasn’t unusual for me to have a 4th). Oh, and the Doctor is still pushing for me to go on a Statin, so in another way, I’ve come completely full circle. Where I go next I haven’t sorted out yet.

News of my grandfather decades later, with bonus coincidence

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So here’s a sad yet amazing small world coincidence I was recently made aware of. The older generation of the Yule side of my family had some unusual customs. Neither of my Grandparents had a funeral, nor did my Uncle John. Now I’ve discovered my Grandmother never even picked up my Grandfather’s cremated remains when he died in the 80’s, and by pure happenstance I was in the graveyard a short while after he was buried there, completely unbeknownst to me (!!!)

I found out about the article linked to and excerpted below because a possible distant relative has been researching the Yules and found my site via the stories I posted here when my grandmother died. He emailed with questions and noted he had recently found out about Arthur Yule’s burial via this linked article. It struck me when reading it that I had happened to be on Long Island a short while after these ceremonies, and had accompanied the Lords on a volunteer trip to this graveyard to plant flags on veterans’ grave sites. A small section of the area we planted flags on was for new burials. I’d like to believe I planted one of my flags on Arthur’s grave, slim though the chances of that might be (the place is enormous). Many of the graves were of roughly the right generation for this to be the case anyway.

I can’t really decide how I should feel about this. One assumes how this was handled accorded with my Grandfather’s wishes, so who am I to find fault? I’m also not especially sentimental in this realm, but it’s a little unsettling all the same to imagine my Grandfather’s remains sitting in a funeral home storeroom for decades, forgotten, until Uncle Sam noticed and decided to take action. Thanks, I suppose, for that.

(this is excerpted from a piece that originally appeared in the FarmingDale Observer.)

Exclusive: Dozens More Veterans’ Names Released For Cremains Burial May 19

Written by Christy Hinko: chinko@antonnews.com Friday, 11 May 2012 00:00

(Editor’s Note: This is an extended list of the cremains to be interred on Saturday, May 19 at the Long Island National Cemetery. The original exclusive article appeared in the Friday, April 27 edition of the Farmingdale Observer and online at http://www.antonnews.com.)

On Saturday, May 19, Long Island veteran organizations and funeral homes are set to give proper military burials to more than 50 unclaimed veterans’ cremated remains.

The funeral procession will assemble near exit 49 on the Long Island Expressway at 8 a.m. on Armed Forces Day and travel to Long Island National Cemetery at 2040 Wellwood Avenue in Farmingdale, led by Patriot Guard and Legion Riders for a 9 a.m. military honors burial service.

The Nassau-Suffolk Funeral Directors Association (NSFDA) has led the project, representing all of the funeral homes that will participate since last spring. NSFDA has worked with the help of many veteran organizations, including Roseann Santore, director of Long Island National Cemetery to bring these veterans to their final resting on May 19.

The following is the complete list of names of veterans by custodial funeral home, as of May 4:

[excerpt with my Grandfather – Arthur Yule]

Brueggemann Funeral Home of East Northport:

William G. Sullivan, Army, Korea, and his wife Margaret
Arthur M. Yule, Navy, WWII

 

Pride in…pee?

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Yep! My ~18 month old son used the potty for the first time last night, after some months of us gradually introducing the concept to him. Hurrah! May pride in, erm, poop, soon follow.

I don’t know how single parents do it

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Susan’s out of town on business so it’s just Brady and me this week. This morning, the following happened, beyond the normal ‘make breakfast and lunch for both of us, feed the dog and chickens, and get everyone bathed and dressed’:

  • Second day in a row Brady didn’t like his breakfast, which had me scrambling to get food in him. Muffin ftw.
  • I shave every other day, and today’s a shaving day. I leave Brady playing in the tub while I shave, during which the first poop emergency ensues – a floater, shouts of no touch, and emergency cleansing of boy, butt, and bathtub follows, whilst my face is half slathered in shaving cream.
  • Inexplicably, while feeding the chickens and retrieving the eggs, the chickens attack me as part of a broader inter-chicken clan skirmish. This has never happened before – I’m shocked. The yellow rooster gets some good ones in on my leg, I nearly drop Brady, kick a rooster (it was unharmed and undaunted), and fail to notice one of the white hens concluding it’s better to flee and fight another day – it escapes the coop.
  • While chasing the hen around Brady wanders into the garden and plays in the dirt, soiling basically all of himself. Fortunately chickens are dumb and I quickly corner and catch the escaped hen.
  • Unfortunately, Brady also manages to soil lots of me when I retrieve him from the garden. So much for heading to work in clean clothes.
  • Unbeknownst to me, while all of this is going on, Soolin finds some poop to roll in. I discover this after we’re all in the car and I realize that smell is not a dirty diaper. This is the second poop emergency.

Despite all of this, I was only 15 minutes late to work, and mostly I found it funny. But honestly, how do single parents do this day after day? My guess is, they don’t have chickens for starters.