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While on a low-carb diet, I have made friends with most of the diabetics that work at OSR. This week, I brought in low-carb creme brûlée and it started a discussion:

Me: So, how did you like the creme brûlée?
Diabetic Staff Member: It was great, and knowing it was low calorie made it even better.
Me: It’s not low calorie in any way.
Diabetic Staff Member: But you said it was good for diabetics.
Me: Yes, it has 3.4 grams of net carbohydrates. That’s pretty low compared to normal creme brûlée.
Diabetic Staff Member: How many calories were in it?
Me: About five hundred.
Diabetic Staff Member: Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have two in a day. It’s good to know it’s only 3.4 grams though. It’s hard to keep to my limit.
Me: What’s that?
Diabetic Staff Member: 200 grams a day.  What do you keep to?
Me: Twenty.

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I purchased a set of weights off of Walmart.com and had them delivered to one of their physical locations.  I went to the customer service area to pick up the weights and the attendant went into the stock room.  After a few moments, followed by a grunt, the attendant returned straining under the weight of the 50 lbs of weight discs I had purchased.  She lifted package onto the counter:

Her: What’s in here?  Iron?
Me: Yes, 50 lbs of it.  Thank you.

Other Vignettes Today:

I made two low-carb pound cakes today, one with hazelnut flour and one with almond flour.  After baking both I noted that the almond flour one wasn’t browning but realized why after a bit: Because hazelnut flour is browner.

My barber asked me if storing antimatter was possible.  I said yes, that it’s done in a charged donut.  He said that wasn’t possible because he was told it couldn’t be done by a very smart electrical engineer.

 

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I’ve been applying to jobs at a pace of about four a week since my position was eliminated and while reviewing my resume today to tweak it for a position I was hit with an almost violent feeling of “this is wrong”.  I’m not sure what caused it, but I quickly found a half dozen things I didn’t like about it and changed those things.  This is the second time this has happened and I am unsure of the root.  Maybe my unconscious has been chewing on something or maybe I finally understood something posted on a job board but I hope this represents a slow approach to ideal as opposed to me flipping through flavors of presentation.

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Low carb eating has resulted in a few functional food shortcomings that’ve proven hard to work around. For instance, while most dips can be easily modified to be low-carb friendly most chips cannot. I miss the dip transport function of chips but feel them necessary as I’d feel like a barbarian if I simply ate blue cheese dressing or cream cheese-centered French Onion dip with a spoon, but while holding a chip, I am a gourmet, a gentleman.

I had tried chip alternatives like making my own crackers, but this brought flashbacks (https://www.suburbanadventure.com/2010/12/17/dinner-prep-crackerquest/). Another option I investigated was cooking pepperoni until it was hard but by the time it gets firm enough it’s also quite… toasted. Then I moved onto broccoli but had to keep steaming new batches which prevented me from late night consumption which I suppose may be a good thing.

That ended today when I spotted, in my very own fridge, cucumbers. I took one out, sliced it and it performed admirably. I’m pretty sure I had gotten them for this purpose which has raised the side effects of keto to include not just strange breath but retrograde amnesia.

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45 kids participated in this evening’s Magic Tournaments at Ockanickon which is 15 more than I can comfortably manage by myself. I enjoy short spurts where I am running close to capacity and tonight that happened until at 7:45 PM when a Naylor Ex Machina occurred and Joe arrived. He smiled, did the the 30 things I asked of him and allowed the next two hours to pass as a kinetic blur.

The evening was satisfying. An unusual number of people said “thank you” or that they enjoyed themselves, possibly because they could tell we were understaffed. I had brought food to thank you staff and I derive a simple satisfaction from covering someone’s basic needs. I ejected two people from the event and neither person argued with me. One of my auras appears to be one that radiates a sense of “you’re not special” and I’m glad that a certain part of my imposing presence has not been lost as I shrink. A final note was funny:

Staff Member: Terry?
Me: Yes.
Staff Member: Can we be friends?
Me: Why couldn’t we?
Staff Member: Because you’re like 30 and I’m 17.
Me: Well, don’t expect me to invite you out for cocktails and I doubt we’ll see each other outside of summer camp, but I think we meet the friend definition of “being on good terms”.
Staff Member: So, if I need advice or something, I can contact you?
Me: Yes. Yes you can. Here’s my card.
Staff Member: *receives card* Wow.

Be mistaken for an adult. Achievement Unlocked.

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Mike, Kacey, a friend of Kacey’s, and I went out to dinner this evening and I reflected for a moment before diving into my dinner. I was quite hungry, but I had to smile at the 6 oz beef patty with cheese and some red peppers on it served on a portobello mushroom with a side of broccoli and some ranch dressing. I had negotiated “½ Price Burger Night” at Stanley’s without looking like a tool or doing a “hey, could I substitute” and also because I was eating broccoli.

Maybe I just assumed I didn’t like broccoli or there was a time when I genuinely didn’t like broccoli but I’ve been eating a lot of it lately. I put together a list of foods I’ve eaten more in the past three weeks than during the rest of my life combined:

Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sugar Snap Peas
Portobello Mushrooms
Babybel Cheese Rounds
Chicken Sausages
Cocoa-dusted Almonds
Toasted Salted Almonds (outside of mixed nuts)
Hazelnut Flour
Almond Flour
Soy Flour
Stevia in the Raw

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I woke to a thudding noise that filled me with horror. Max was repeatedly standing up, walking a few steps, and then falling over. His incontinence had continued and after a few falls he laid back down on his sleeping mat. My father and I took him to the Langhorne Animal Hospital and in his weakened state I had to to lift him into the car, then into the hospital, then into the examination room. Some initial diagnostics suggested that he had a case of Lyme Disease that had blown out under his prednisone-weakened immune system. When done and while my father was attending to paperwork, I saw a family with a small girl walk into the hospital. The girl held a drawing in her hand that said “GET WELL SOON” and she said to her parents “I made Mittens a picture”.

My father was shaken by Max’s time in the hospital. He couldn’t physically move Max in the same way I could and I was also keeping track of Max’s medication. This has reminded my dad of his own limits but also reminded him that there are others. I’ve found the compassion required to care for this 82 lb dumb mass of incontinent, quivering, yet loving fur to be effortless and to tap into my “this is right” well that rarely gets touched. I hope I am equally able to draw from this well should the people around me one day need me to clean up after then, take care of their medication, and lead them through a medical structure where they have no idea what’s going on.

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A side effect of a ketogenic diet has been a nose-dive in my ability to do distance running. Once a week, I try to run 10 or more miles in a single stretch and this week and last I’ve simply not been able to go more than about 8 before I reach a level of discomfort where I don’t want to continue. This isn’t exhaustion or muscle failure but simply not wanting to run any more. So I suppose the alternate explanation is that keto has not reduced my stamina, but turned me into a bitch, albeit a lighter one.

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A byproduct of Max’s medication is that he drinks a lot more. He’s not quite fast enough to go outside when he needs to pee so our kitchen has been graced with various patches of doggy tinkle. Sometimes the patches were in the living room or dining room but never on a portion with a rug or carpet. Good dog.

I took today to pound out Chris Sollars’ nee Lutz’s wedding photos and experienced a rare drive to finish them. I did three passes and realized I didn’t know who some people were. I called Chris, not there. I called Stephen, not there. I cried a little. I very strongly wanting this chore off my to do list. Stephen called back, hooray! During his lunch break, he walked me through who each person was. This doesn’t seem too impressive until I realized he was doing this over the phone as follows:

Me: Stephen, who’s the person next to your aunt in this picture?
Him: Is she wearing purple?
Me: Yes.
Him: That’s my aunt Gene.
Me: And on the other side.
Him: Is he making a stupid face?
Me: Yes.
Him: That’s Mark.

HIs memories of his wedding were clear enough to remember the order that people were standing during seven person group shots.

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Max has had some itching problem for a bit that wasn’t responding to standard flea treatments so I took him to the vet. The vet was wearing rain boots and I wonder if this is experience or forethought. Max was diagnosed with Mange, which is like finding out that your kid has lice. He insisted it wasn’t something I did wrong but I felt a little responsible even though the red foxes around my house were probably to blame.

The vet put Max on a parasite treatment and gave him a shot of steroids followed by two prescriptions to help with the itching. Max didn’t flinch at the shot. Sometimes our pets are better people that we are.