Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
We’ve had such nice weather for most of February.
It warmed up to above seasonal temperatures for several days making it seem very spring like and all the snow that we had melted away. Unfortunately that’s over now … it’s snowing like crazy this weekend so all we’ll see for a while is white when we look outdoors.
I think for today I’ll remember how nice and warm summer is by enjoying this lovely Cactus Dahlia:
How’s the weather in your area?
As I was writing my last post I was overcome with a fit of itchiness. Suddenly my neck, scalp, back and the sides of my face were itching like crazy.
Trying as hard as I could not to scratch I finally gave in and started scratching in madness. My hair is likely now standing up on end due to all the crazy scratching. After about five minutes of itchy madness Chris who was watching me with concern as I scratched and tried to rub my back on the couch (and ask the dog to scratch me) suggested I take a Benadryl (allergy medication).
I told him to follow me into the kitchen where the light is brighter so he could check me for hives. At that time I only had one or two hives on my back and neck, but by the time I took two Benadryl and walked back to the living room (10 minutes or so after the itching had started) my face, neck, upper arms and back were covered in hives.
This evening, after we came home in a snow storm from shopping I decided to prepare skinless boneless chicken breasts and mixed veggies for dinner. Then I decided that since I’d had a craving for shrimp for a while, why not saute a few shrimp to go with our meal? Yeah … why not. LOL
I’m actually supposed to be allergic to shrimp, but I rarely seem to react to them. Oh I’ve had some mild itching occasionally after eating shrimp but only every 4th or 5th time. Well not this time! This time I’m sure my hives and mad itching are a result of the shrimp I ate. I guess their off the menu from now on.
I’m trying my best not to scratch. If I don’t scratch for a while the itching dies down a bit but there’s still that burning strange feeling. When I do scratch the itching gets worse and more hives appear. Every time I have a new itchy area and start scratching it hives show up a few minutes later. At this rate … If I keep scratching I’ll be covered in hives from my head to my feet!
I hope the allergy meds kick in soon. Of course I’ll then become super sleepy, but they work!
So … did reading this make any of you itchy too?
Last week I wrote a post about how Chris and I have been trying to eat healthier in the past month. Not that we usually don’t eat good low fat foods or anything, but we really stepped it up in light of Chris’ high Cholesterol.
Well let me tell you … that post has received more spam comments in the past week than any other post I’ve written in the last month!
The comment spammers are all from sites that talk about weight loss, health foods and diet pills. Oh and a few of the spammers seem to be fixated on hamburger for some reason, even though I never mentioned hamburger let alone hamburgers in the original post. Weird.
Do you ever write posts that seem to bring all the comment spammers out of the woodwork? What topics draw the most spammers?
Some how this year I’ve managed to have flowers almost continuously, by this I mean I’ve had flowers either in my yard or in my house since last spring!
At the moment my kitchen is the bloom factory. If you’re a neat freak you wouldn’t like the look of our kitchen table as it has at least 10 plants on it, but at least that only happens in the winter. During the warmer months most of my plants go outdoors or onto our enclosed porches.
We have two types of Orchids blooming (another just finished it’s flowering), a small hibiscus that puts out one or two flowers every few days, one Amaryllis that just finished blooming and when my husband was in the hospital the nurses that cared for him gave him an African Violet plant – in bloom.
Our Thanksgiving and Christmas Cactus’ keep putting out the occasional bloom as well … so as I said we’ve had flowers surrounding us for a year now! That’s a first.
The Orchids are just lovely right now.
This purple one is one of my favorites. I love it’s intricate pattern. I almost looks like a butterfly to me.
These white Orchids are new. I bought the plant in the first week of January and it’s still blooming!
I love how the flowers all line up in a delicate row like that.
Oh … here’s a shot of my messy plant covered table … the plant with the weird spider like things is an orchid that’s producing babies. Those spider leg like things are air roots and the green leaves are new plants growing high above the base of the main plant.
Do you have any flowers blooming in your house right now? Even some store bought Valentine flowers?
I’ve always tried to cook healthy meals for Chris and I, but over the last few months and especially the last two weeks since Chris got out of the hospital I’ve really stepped it up.
We’d occasionally have a pre-made frozen dinner such as Loblaws Blue Menu grilled vegetable lasagna, but after re-reading the ingredients list and cholesterol listings on the package we’ve even cut that out of our “occasional easy food menu”. Chris has really high bad and good cholesterol levels as well as very low triglycerides. He’s on medication now to control his cholesterol and given the way we normally eat we don’t think our diet has much to do with his high cholesterol levels even the docs say it’s probably genetic, but it sure can’t hurt either him or I to eat even better.
Lately we’ve been eating a lot of skinless boneless chicken breasts. I bake them in the oven in a casserole dish and they are very tender and moist. I also steam up to three different veggies in the microwave – usually carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Last night we had Teriyaki chicken and tonight we’re going to have chicken breasts marinated in a honey Dijon marinade. Yummy.
Sometime in the future when we have a little extra cash I’d love to get a fruit and vegetable juice extractor. We used to have a juicer but we found that we didn’t use it as much as we should have and gave it to Chris’ aunt. Of course now that it’s gone, and now that we are really trying to eat healthy, I’d love to have a fruit and veggie juicer again. Store bought juices contain far too many sugars and well, buying veggie juices in a health food store is pretty expensive. I don’t see why I can’t make our own carrot juice and other juices right at home.
Each year we grow strawberries, raspberries, carrots and tomatoes in our “flower” garden so I could even save money by using the fruit and veggies that we grow to make juice too.
As I said we don’t have any extra money right now so I’ll have to wait until we have some spare cash and wait for a juicer to go on sale before we get one, but I think that’s definitely on our want list. In the mean time we’ll just eat as many fruit and veggies as we can – they certainly help fill you up and they’re healthy.
Do you read the ingredient labels on the items you buy in the grocery store? Have you been trying to eat healthier lately too?