Tag Archives: health

The Mystery of the Shyly Wagging Tail

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As she waddled toward me, I knew that something was very wrong. I’d just gotten home from a one-week trip to Maui and she greeted me with cool nose and an unusual shyly wagging tail. That spoke volumes as it traditionally pounds enthusiastically against the cabinets. Yup, she’d done something and it was my job to discover exactly what!

Suzi appeared to have gained weight (perhaps 5 lbs.) over a very short period of time. The man of the house swore that he’d only given her “the usual” food and supplements. So, knowing that she thinks that she is starving, literally, all the time, I suspected that she’d discovered an alternate food source!

My suspicions were confirmed when I took her outside to “do her business.” Upon seeing the specimen that she deposited, one of two things were made clear. Either Suzi had developed a plethora of unusually shaped parasites or she’d been eating birdseed from beneath the feeder! This had been done in spite of the little snap-together fence that we’ve had around it for a few months. She’d clearly grazed on seed for days!

It was obvious that Suz had valued volume over taste as the seeds were undamaged — leaving peanuts easy to identify! So, her size was less the result of weight gain and more the result of BLOATING! She was about to explode!

Wrong. She had already exploded…in my office area! It took me a while to discover the…shrapnel but even longer to repair the damage. Each of the no-less-than eight piles were brimming with seed!

Now, I knew that I couldn’t change the “quality” of my hubby’s “watching the girls” because retraining (at his age) is all but impossible. So, we now have a new, one-piece circular fence around the bird feeder area. Suzi will have to either dig…or fly in order to get to her recently discovered food source.

Gramma’s Drinking Thick Water! Will It Kill Her?

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We were visiting our “kids” (who aren’t really kids) and their kids (who really are) for Christmas. That’s always an experience in and of itself. And, I love every minute of it! For as long as I can remember, though, I’ve had kind of a target on my back…and front (so far as my son and his wife are concerned, that is). Some of the pleasure in their lives is found in teasing “Mom.” Yeah, they harass, throw verbal barbs, and generally make fun of my many idiosyncrasies.

These two lovable nut-bars seem to enjoy finding things about me that are strange (and there’s quite a selection, to be honest). There are plenty of areas in which I fall short (like memory when we play UNO, etc.). My senior citizenship has provided them with plenty of material most recently, and that was the case here.

As a Weight Watcher, I have to focus on drinking a minimum of six cups of water every day. Sadly, I’ve found that, if left to my own yearnings, I wouldn’t drink that much because I only drink when I’m thirsty. I’ve never awakened from a sound night’s sleep thinking about how great it would be to guzzle water cup after cup. So, I have to make a deliberate attempt to drink water. One 2-cup bottle gets me started in the morning. At least that’s my intent. Then, I usually fill my 32-ounce bottle with the rest of my requirement.

Sadly, some maladies of old age have recently struck! One attack of diverticulitis was plenty! I’ve read (and heard from my doctor) that the best way to fight the reoccurrence of diverticulitis symptoms, is to increase fiber intake. So, fiber has now become my friend! (Yeah, right!) But, it seems that the fiber in the food I eat isn’t enough! I’ve been forced to start supplementing it with the powdery white stuff that stirs into liquids without adding either taste or grit. Sounds delicious, huh?

When I first get up in the mornings, I add about one and a half teaspoons of the white stuff to a bottle of water and give it a shake. Naturally my son was aware of all this preparation so when Jesse (grandson #2) reached for my first bottle of the day in hopes of snagging a sip or two, his dad said, “Jess, you don’t really want any of that. Gramma is drinking thick water.”

At that point, I filled in with a bit of explanation. At least it was enough to wipe the confused expression off of Jesse’s face. Just the thought of “thick water” truly is sort of disgusting I must admit but, in the end, instead of killing me, it’s my hope to both lengthen and enhance the quality of my life. We won’t discuss the “jet propulsion” which the increased fiber inevitably provides for THAT is always quite embarrassing.