I ruined my solid blogging fest since I reopened this place. I blogged every day since I reopened until I stopped for a couple days. I will have to try again next month to reach my goal of blogging each day for an entire month.

I do have reasons, though, aside from laziness. My grandfather has been in the hospital and is not doing well. He has an infection in his blood and I have been quite worried about him. I have been on and off the phone with my mother who has been in contact with the North Carolina crew who have kept us all posted on his situation. He is doing a bit better now that they know what is wrong.

I also had my hives come back. They are worse than ever. This time they were all over my body, even my neck and face. I felt like a hideous monster. I ended up finally caving to the idea that they are not stress related and going to see an allergist yesterday. Something is up with this. They’re not there all the time and something must be causing it. I had to figure out what. I didn’t want to have hives all over my body if there was something I could do to stop them.

The allergist told me that it was not something that I was doing and it was not an allergic reaction on the outside of any type given the circumstances. It was definitely something on the inside – something with my immune system having to do with my system. Not what I wanted to hear… that I’m somehow sick and have some sort of disease maybe? He told me I had to get bloodwork and we would go from there but not to worry too much because he sees it a lot and it could be nothing serous. (To me, all I heard was “It could be something serious.”)

This morning, a pattern finally dawned on me as far as my hives are concerned. I am not keeping my hopes up but I am definitely going to talk to my doctor about it. I had my monthly visitor and realized the hives appear every time alongside of it. Oh… there’s a thing for that and I fit the bill. Could it be? Could I have finally figured it out? I’m going to get my bloodwork done but I’m also going to call my doctor and see what he thinks about my thoughts. I just want to stamp a diagnosis on this damn thing so I can finally feel better and maybe start treating it.

I love how Josh left 2 comments on my last blog as “J-Boone Pickens” and “Surly J” to add to his recipe. It really made me giggle to see those. Hahaha. I just felt the need to point that out.

I’m feeling better today but my grandfather was in the hospital today. He is home now but he gave everyone quite a scare and is still very weak and not doing well. They ran a bunch of tests and such. I hope he keep feeling better. I hate being so far away. Most of my mom’s side of the family, including my grandfather, live in North Carolina.

I found a really neat website that monitors mouse movements while you’re on the computer. This is what my movements look like when I browse the internet for 2 hours. I found it very interesting. What does yours look like? You can download the neat little program at IOGraphica.com. That’s my little find of the day.

Josh loves squash. He decided that he was going to cook dinner tonight since I was sick with a fever and was home from work today recovering and resting. Not only was he going to cook, but he was going to make up his own recipe and invent something to make me feel better! How awesome is that? Well, it turned out to be really awesome so I wanted to share it with you!

I asked Josh to write the recipe down exactly as he did it. Some of it made me giggle, like his ingredient called “fake chicken” which of course us vegans of course would call something like textured soy protein or a meat substitute. Anyway, I am going to write the recipe exactly as Josh did! If you try it, let us know if you like it!

SQUASH AND MUSHROOM THINGIE

Ingredients:
1 green squash (zucchini)
1 yellow squash
half onion
punnet mushrooms (chopped)
half cup soymilk
fake chicken
cup chopped stringbeans
2 tsp margarine
vegetable stock cube

Directions:
Heat large saucepan, melt margarine into saucepan, add mushrooms and 1/4 cup soymilk. Whilst mushrooms are cooking, cube squash, chicken. Add all at once to saucepan. Dice beans, add to saucepan with remainder of soymilk, add veg cube. Dice onion, add to saucepan, cover, simmer for 25-30 min over low heat.