What I Learned About Diabetes Yesterday (a public service blog)

My class went well yesterday. It was led by a 40-ish woman with a perky attitude and perhaps 1 percent body fat. Skinny little overachieving twerp!
Besides her, I was the youngest (and smallest) person there, so that it in itself was an education. Apparently my formerly sedentary, hedonistic lifestyle was not such a great idea after all. God, it was fun, though.

Here's what *does not* cause blood glucose levels to rise:
• water
• exercise
• breathing
Here's what *does* cause blood glucose levels to rise:
• everything else
The good news is, I found out any fake sugar ending in "tol" is an alcohol sugar. Sorbitol, mannitol, etc., do not cause the blood glucose level to rise quite as much as I thought they might.
Still, those fake sugars are most often used in diabetic products like cookies, candies, cakes and pies which contain flour and/or other bad things, so they are still part of a bad food selection. Grocery store diabetic treats are usually just plain bad.
Carrots are not a starchy vegetable after all, but acorn and butternut squash are. Fine. I like carrots and can do without those kinds of squash.
My suspicions turned out to be true: potatoes, for some people (like me) are worse than a chocolate bar rolled in sugar and dipped in honey. I have decided to walk away from them. They just aren't worth the angst, the delicious little troublemakers.
Pizza, I learned, is one of those foods that can prolong a spiked glucose level for hours on end. Pizza lingers on and on, with the fats egging on the carbs in a long ballet of elevated glucose torture. My pizza horizons are very limited.
Diabetics can have normal desserts as long as the meal before the dessert contains no carbohydrates. Such a dinner might consist of: four ounces of baked, skinless chicken without adornments, then dessert. Bleecch.
Butter is less harmful than margarine, but the best oils/fats to use are canola oil, olive oil and peanut oil. I am suspicious of canola oil and scared of peanut oil, so I use olive oil when I absolutely must have oil.
Deep frying is just the Devil's Kitchen Work and should be forgotten.
Pasta is better than potatoes, non-instant rice is better than pasta.
Summary: chicken, fish, whole grains and non-starchy vegetables are best to eat.
Sweet wines will fuck you up. Dry whites are best. Champagne is even better, if you can stop at a few measly ounces.
Isn't this disease a drag so far?

Blog Salad™

Today is my first day of "diabetes education," where Lila the certified diabetes educator will answer all my questions with, "You'll have to ask your doctor about that."
It runs from 1 to 4:30, just long enough to ruin my day and cause the entire class to go into glucose comas during rush hour on the freeway.

Looks like Survivor Amazon will start on February 13. I am not divulging any secret plans, but I plan to watch it with Aviva in a very cold location just north of the eastern United States.

With the Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Survivor on hiatus and a girlfriend 2,030 miles away, I realized I really have no life to speak of besides TV and the Canuck.

I stopped watching pro basketball. My team (the Spurs) are like a high quality wristwatch that loses ten minutes a day. They make me crazy with their inconsistency.

Every time I trim my toenails, I have a morbid fear of cutting myself and having to check into a wound healing clinic with a bunch of fat old men with impending gangrene.

I have lost four more pounds since Aviva left, so the black jeans I bought in a smaller size may now fit me without having to lie down to zip them up.

I am going to color over my gray hair with a lighter brown than my remaining brown hair so I can look like wKen (without the goatee).

I just remembered this writer's workshop I was in where we were asked to write about things we did for others during the holidays.
This woman said she bought a case of Mad Dog 20/20 and drove around on Christmas Eve, handing it out to lucky winos.
She said, "But I never buy the good stuff, it's too rich, it would upset they stomachs."

Aviva continues to beat me in Scrabble, but it's now just a 7-1 ratio instead of a 100 to 1 ratio. I keep waiting for her to accidentally slip a "u" into a word like color so I can challenge it and make her lose a turn.

A Word About Comments

Unless you want me to start doing Yoko Ono-inspired performance art on your blogsites, y'all better start laying down a little feedback, damn it.

...and Techiefluid, what's your new url?

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today was my Mom's 90th birthday. Here was our phone conversation:

M: Hello?
K: Happy Birthday, BooBoo!
M: Who's this?
K: It's Karen
M: Oh, hi Sharron
K: No, it's Karen, Mom
M: Yes I know. I hear you have good news from the doctor!
K: What doctor?
M: My eye doctor!
K: What did he say?
M: He said the red things in my eyes can be cured.
K: What red things?
M: The two leaders here introduced me all around to everyone at dinner.
K: Oh, you mean for your birthday?
M: Uh huh.
K: Did they give you a party?
M: Who?
K: The retirement home.
M: Oh no, the kids had a big dinner at lunch for me.
K: So, you had two parties today?
M: I had three!
K: You had three parties?
M: When?
K: Today, Mom.
M: Oh? You went to three parties today?
K: No Mom, I did some work, no parties.
M: Are you still working for that outfit?
K: Yep.
M: Uh oh, the people are here to visit me, I gotta go now.
K: Okay. Happy birthday, Mom. I love you. I'll be coming up soon to see...
M: You too! Bueno bye! (click)

Really Bad Jeans

I have gotten into the habit of shopping online for clothes because I hate malls and crowds so much. I don't really notice or keep track of fashion, I just buy the same kind of clothes all the time.
While Aviva was here, we hit a few malls just so she could get a taste of them.
What I want to know is this.
What happened to blue jeans? When did this trend for streaky skid marks start? The jeans they sell now look like they were washed in a dirty river, then used as grease monkey rags, then bleached to remove the motor oil. They look skanky, that's all there is to it.
Why would anyone buy new jeans pre-stained, with the ass sanded off?
And whose idea was it to bring back hip huggers?
When I was a young hippie type, we came by our fucked-up jeans honestly. We wore them until they fell off, and that's how we achieved that classic "worn-out" look.
Now kids plunk down $75 to buy fucked-up jeans they are too prissy to ruin themselves.
I tell ya, the kids today have it too easy.
(Yikes! Did I really say that?)

Apologies to Anna

My poor best friend Anna was inadvertently left out of my Lotto Fantasy. She complained bitterly this morning, which sounded even worse with her laryngitis.
She sounds just like the burger flipping teen who works in Krusty's Hamburger's on the Simpsons.
So, if I won the Lotto, which I didn't, here's what I'd have gotten for poor, pitiful Anna.

I'd get that hole she put in her brand new Benz fixed.
I'd get her even more of those $300 Prada casual shoes she likes.
I'd get the ladder in her lavish home library revarnished.
I'd pay her pool man, gardener, nanny and maid for a year.
I'd upgrade her frequent flights abroad to "Goddess" Seats.
I'd have someone else run the N.Y. Marathon for her so she could rest.
I'd pay a hypnotist to convince her her size 8 ass is not at all fat.
I'd bail out the country of Ethiopia so she didn't have to.
I'd take her to Vegas and let her have all the 79¢ shrimp cocktails she wanted.

I feel bad about omitting her from my Lotto fantasy. Clearly, she is a woman who needs so many things, and I'd be more than happy to provide them for her if I won.
Sorry, pal. I was a beast to forget you.

Victimized.

It had to happen one day.
I have been the victim of unauthorized nude photos, taken by the sneaky Canadian Jewish paparazzi.
It all started innocently.
See, we were in bed one morning and James was sleeping all curled up in the crook of her arm. I ran -quite naked- to grab her digital camera and I took some really adorable shots of them.
She had on a T-shirt and was under the covers, so my photos of her were chaste and innocent as newborn lambs.
When I went to crawl back in bed, I handed her the camera for safekeeping. It was then I was blinded by two flashes and the double whirr of her digital camera.
I said, at the time, "Hey, you didn't catch me naked, did you?" and she boldly lied, saying she "didn't think so."
So, last night she sends me two lurid photos. Well, one just showed the top of my breasts, so that was okay, but the other was just plain obscene.
I looked like an albino, furless polar bear. Naturally, lefty and righty were chilly in the morning air and, well, you know how that goes.
I have demanded she delete them from her files and she said she would.
I do not believe her.
I feel like Pamela Anderson, waiting for the lurid photo to appear on a website called "Naked Crones with really white skin."
I feel so...cheap.

Lottery Fantasy, Part XX

The Texas Lotto is at $25 million, and since I opted for the cash option, here's how I plan to spend my 12 mil.
1. Make someone else figure out all this immigration crap while Aviva and I go traveling on the Orient Express and QE2
2. Buy Barcodie a new, fully loaded computer except for the "w" on the keyboard, which I will personally pry off prior to delivery
3. Install a bumper car ride in one of the wings of my new mansion
4. Send a pair of Land's End casual suede sports mocs to all my bloglink buddies
5. Buy a giant Caterpillar front end loader, install a jet engine and get on I-35 and scoop slow drivers in the fast lane out of my way
6. Hire someone to move my legs up and down, simulating exercise, while I read a nice book
7. Commission a scientist to remove all that's bad from chocolate and leave what's left indistinguishable from real chocolate
8. Have Michael Jackson's dermatologist visit Condaleezza Rice and Colin Powell so they can go ahead and become totally white
9. Send Hillary Clinton a million dollars for her presidential campaign just to piss off the righties
10. Hire Molly Ivins to ghostwrite my blog while I am traveling
11. Buy my 15-year-old nephew a beige Volvo station wagon as his first car

Pissed Off In General

I'll admit it, I am in a pissed off mood today.
My girlfriend was snippy on the phone last night, and that's what started it. Then I slept cranky, and James kept repositioning my arm for his maximum comfort, the selfish little stinky butted kitty bastard.
Then, after nibbling on tiny bits of fish protein and green leafy things yesterday, my morning glucose level was 158 (maximum normal is 126).
In case you're wondering, no, I didn't exercise at all yesterday.
One would think that eating the equivalent of three eye droppers of food per day would be sufficient, but with this she-devil called diabetes, the bitch wants exercise, too.
My legs are still sore from trekking 50 miles a day with the Canuck.
Well, my legs aren't really sore but my Achilles' tendonitis makes my normally svelte ankles look like Hillary Clinton's on a bad water weight day. Getting on my tiptoes feels like someone is driving hot nails into my ankles.
It's too cold outside to walk. Okay, it's 50 degrees and sunny but I am not a snowbird and that's too fucking cold to be banging up and down on my tender tendons.
What I'd like to do today is make some eggnog with a mess of Southern Comfort, smoke a huge joint that would make a raggae musician choke, and lay around eating chocolate truffles while I read a steamy novel and watch Aviva parade around naked, cleaning my kitchen.
What I must do today is call some people and interview them for some shit I have to write, do some laundry, mow my lawn, clean that disgusting litter box, ride my fucking exercise bike at least five miles and drink three times more water than I want.
My luxury of the day is the two aspirin I'll take to quiet down the tendonitis ache and this headache I have developed from scowling all morning. I may switch to Canadian Tylenol with codeine. Nahh. That would be too much like fun.

Obey the Rules!

One thing I've noticed, having had three Canadian visitors in my home over the last four years, is that they are unfailingly polite and they obey the rules.
In Canada, the rules are a set of standards that ensure order, civility and peace.
In Texas, the rules are challenges to be circumvented or surmounted at every opportunity.
Take speeding, for example.
When a sign says 70 MPH, I take that to mean in the slow lane, at night, in rainy or icy conditions, with deer all over the highway.
In Canada, they'll do 68 just to make sure they don't offend police officers who are kind enough to be manning the highways, ensuring safety and tranquility.
Noise:
In Canada, neighbors keep their stereos at quiet volumes so the noise does not penetrate their walls.
In Texas, if a neighbor's music is disturbing me, I aim my speakers out the window and put on Jimi Hendrix or opera at a level that tests my speakers' durability.
The Texas flag has a lone star on it, meaning we are the star of the United States.
The Canadian flag has a cute little red maple leaf on it.
Texans can carry concealed weapons, legally.
Canadians sew little Canadian flags on their backpacks, so nobody will feel threatened.
Texans have drive through liquor stores.
Canadians sell their booze through government-owned stores.
In Canada, they end sentences with "eh"?
In Texas, we end sentences with "get it?"