A near perfect holiday

This has to be one of our best Thanksgiving dinners yet. Every year we squeeze two dinners into one day. Rich's family lives an hour and a half away in Richmond so we have dinner #1 around 2pm and then head back home for dinner #2 at our house where my family has taken over our kitchen for us. All the guests have now gone home or gone to bed and I declare today a total success. It wasn't without excitement, though. My brother volunteered to take care of the turkey(s) this year as well as several other items. We had juice from a previous turkey this week to make the gravy ahead of time. All Perry needed to do for the big meal was show up with the turkey he had been cooking all afternoon. The plan was for dinner around 6pm but we were behind schedule a bit. By 6:15, Mom called Perry because we hadn't heard from him. The phone rang and rang but no answer. She tried again a few minutes later and Perry answered but said he had been asleep when she called the first time and had forgotten about the turkey.

When Perry did arrive with the turkey (he only live a few miles away) he was convinced the turkey was ruined. Mom and I said we thought it would be fine, but he just kept lamenting that it could have been better. We learned that part of his stress was how he had overslept and then woken up. Mom's first call woke him up but he didn't answer because his first thought was "oh, Mom's calling" and then "SHIT the TURKEY!". He sprinted to the kitchen where his very fancy remote turkey timer was beeping and wouldn't tell him the temperature but just kept flashing "OVERDONE". He scrambled to extract the bird and assess the situation, wondering just how bad it all was and all this super expensive timer could shriek at him was OVERDONE OVERDONE OVERDONE!

We think it was about 200 degrees but amazingly it turned out fine. We had tons of gravy and it was one of the smoothest run dinners overall that we've had in years. A big factor was that we are now in twice the house with twice the space to cook, eat, and package leftovers. It was a joy.

The only flaw in our plan was dessert. Since we were cramming two meals in one day we skipped dessert at dinner #1. And by the time we got to the dessert portion of dinner #2, we were all really full. My brother had also bought a sweet potato pie instead of a pumpkin pie, much to Rich's disappointment. Rich had foregone pumpkin pie at his parents' to come back here but had no pie. So I think at some point I'll be going out and buying him a pumpkin pie to have with his leftovers. And I think I'll be making desserts ahead of time for Christmas to make sure they're ready.

Diabetic Christmas came early

Curtis had just walked out of my office to check on something when my cell phone let out its alarming "Cat Party" ring. I didn't recognize the number and considered not answering it since I thought Curtis would be back soon and we could finish upgrading this server. But on a whim I answered and it totally made my day. On the other end of the line was my Minimed representative calling to check on the status of my insulin pump. He reminded me my pump warranty was expired and it was time to get a new one (really? so soon?). I told him I had just talked to my endocrinologist a few weeks earlier and was interested in upgrading to the Paradigm pump that talks to a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).

He asked what kind of insurance I had and how long I had been diabetic. He asked for my most recent HbA1C rating and if I could sense my low blood sugars. And then he said he could send me a new pump and the continuous glucose monitor as early as next week. It was that fast. I had told myself this was going to be a battle with the Insurance Giants and I was going to have to write a dozen letters or pay a lot of money out of pocket to get the kind of blood sugar control I've been wanting for a long time now but all of a sudden he just told me I have "the right" insurance company and it's not a problem.

I felt the need to ramble to him and justify why I wanted the CGM. My A1C was 7.1 this last time but I would like to have it lower. Somewhere in there I said, "and if I wanted to get pregnant I would want that number to be lower." My rep suddenly blurted out, "Oh! Well, I'll be sure to put down that you're trying to get pregnant because then the insurance should cover your sensors. They should cover a 30 day supply of sensors every ... 30 days, I think." My mind quickly did the math of $35 per sensor times 10 sensors in a month.

Oh yes, we'll be "trying to get pregnant" if that means I don't have to pay for sensors. In fact, my husband works at the same office I do, so we could start trying right now if that would get the insulin pump, CGM and first 30 day supply of sensors delivered by Monday. I'm not sure if some savvy person at the insurance office will realize they're reimbursing both my birth control pills and the sensors in the same month, but I doubt those departments talk to each other. Ideally, just wanting more control should be reason enough itself.

Cat versus bird

Whenever I get home I'm amazed at the cats. I think they spend the entire day in bed keeping up with the sunbeam through the window. After a long day, I could be quite envious of a cat. When my mother was married to her first husband (early 1960s), her young brother-in-law came to stay with them for the weekend. Her husband's brother was much younger (a change of life baby perhaps?) so he was about 9 or so at the time.

My mother asked Richard what he wanted for breakfast and he declared he wanted cookies. Mom patiently told him cookies were not on the breakfast menu and that he could have waffles or eggs or cereal or oatmeal or any number of things other than cookies. No, he wanted cookies. She told him that she was going to make some breakfast for herself and maybe he would think of something he wanted.

After a bit, Richard asked her, "if you could be any animal what animal would you want to be?". Mom considered for a moment and said she thinks she'd like to be a house cat because they don't have a lot of cares in the world and don't have to worry about money and can sleep all day.

Richard sat silently for a few minutes and then declared that if he could be any animal, he would be an eagle. Mom asked him why that was and he said, "because nobody tells eagles what to do." Well, alright then. I suppose eagles could also have cookies for breakfast if they wanted.

As we begin preparations for Thanksgiving while all the hubbub of Christmas looms, I think about my mother's desires to live as a house cat. It seems like there are so many items on our collective "to do" lists, I'd welcome the chance to just follow a sunbeam across the bed. Cats and eagles really aren't all that different, I suppose. An eagle may force the issue and defy anyone who might try to take his food from him. But if other house cats are anything like ours, they will just ignore you when you tell them they can't crawl in that cabinet or have the left over cereal milk and they still manage to have a pretty stress-free life.

I'm enjoying this house cat mantra of just doing what I want by setting my own agenda and not letting other people stress me out. And for all I know the cats may have cookies for breakfast after we've left for work.