He waits patiently.

Sad kitty….awww!

This is all he wants for now. He’s my kitty!

Of course! Time for a kitty nap.

=(^+^)=

Good grief! My heartbeat exceeded 100 after petting Andy! And my oxygen went down four percent. Being a kitty person has a price I guess.

=(^+^)=

Kristen the hospital dietician brought our blood reports to us at dialysis yesterday. I had some low points, some of which are indirect consequences of diet, others that can be affected by medication dosage, and the simple one that just means I need to add more protein to my diet. 

Confession is good for the soul.

The latter, protein in diet, I confess is hard for me because I don’t like a lot of meat in my diet so try to get it through yoghurt or plant protein. Clearly, that’s not working so I decided to try my favorite restaurant-sourced protein, a half-roasted chicken with velvety, perfectly prepared and seasoned mashed potatoes and the vegetable of the day for yesterday, a corn prepared with a hint of blackened chiles and just enough salt and pepper to bring out the yummy qualities of the kernels.

What else? A loaded Bloody Mary. (I should have gone with a simple lager beer). It came with a stalk of celery, a vegetable that the strings sometimes causes me problems, though this stalk had been crisped in the refrigerator and was crunchy, cool goodness! On a skewer: a shrimp (yummy!), a pepper (I left it there), and a couple other things I forget but ate. The Bloody Mary, unfortunately, was too spicey, something I forgot about this drink I haven’t had in forty or so years.

I savaged the crunchy-coated leg, first with a knife and fork, then by picking up and attacking like a caveman! Yum! I always take off the skin or buy skinless chicken parts at home, but this was a celebration of naughty variations on a food so, well, “skin and all”!

The thigh I tried to return to civilization with knife and fork, but finished with the caveman approach when I saw too much meat left on the bone. Likewise the wing. Well, not the wing, which I just said to heck with civility and chomped down on with gusty till every tasty bit of it was in my tummy!

What about the breast – this was a half of roast chicken after all? Sadly, it was a bit tough and I tried to eat most of it but gave up halfway. I hate to waste meat because some creature sacrificed its life to sustain mine. In part, that’s one reason I don’t eat a lot of meat.

I tried vegetarianism a few times in my life, yet, as a son of the West, this is cattle country; my town used to be the Cattle Capital of Nebraska; the police badges used to feature a bull and that slogan on them; lots of cattle were sold and shipped from the stockyard where the railroad now has a repair shop; my best friend’s father was an auctioneer who helped sell those cattle; and one of the world’s best pastures, the Nebraska Sandhills is east of here… Yeah, I like beef! Chicken is fine, too, though breast meat typically is two meals for me.

=(^+^)=

Not a lie detector, but a measure of the effort it took to tell you my “meat story”. Oxygen saturation up from 95% and heart beat down from 107!

But what about the too spicey Bloody Mary, you [don’t/do] ask?! Don’t leave us in suspense, Doug! Well, I wasted three-fourths of it. It came is a huge 20 ounce/0.6 liter glass, so you do the math! The best part about it was the cool crispy celery stalk, many of which I could have sucked down instead!