Hoping the third time is the charm...

From Sunday noonish to Monday noonish, I slept 20 hours.  I napped several times on Monday, including straight through the season opening show I wanted to see, before sleeping 12 hours with a few breaks.  Tuesday, I napped before FedEx came with the heart monitor and then I napped for nearly three hours after Sandra came and helped me attached it and start it.  I just awoke from another 10 hours of sleep, though at one point I was interrupted for over an hour dealing with pain.  I am still very, very, very exhausted.

Seriously, I have got to figure out how to have people visit (because a hermit can get rather lonely) and still rest and nap as much as I need to do when they are here.

Too, I received another medication rejection letter from the insurance company.

I really don't have it in me to fight it.  I mean, I really don't have it in me to fight my GP's office.  The surgeon's office took the notice, wrote a letter, and wham!  I got the waiver.  I have been trying to get my GP's office to write 4 letters for 4 drugs and apparently she doesn't write letters.  They have, in my opinion, spent far, far more hours trying to get some form mailed than it would have taken to write a letter with a short statement of need ... a statement outlined in my notification from the insurance company.

One of the drugs is the Erythromycin that I have been taking.  Even though I have had only one bout of writhing and one bout nausea in two whole weeks, I cannot see paying full price for the drug.  I just cannot.  Since I now react rather adversely (heart rate and blood pressure) to my asthma meds, I have to pay full price for the one cough suppressant I can take to try and keep from tipping over into an asthma attack.  I used to take it nightly, along with Singular, but I am trying to take it more sparingly because of the cause.

I thought about asking the surgeon's office to write the letter for the Erythromycin or asking the nurse to coach the GP's nurse, but the last call with the GP's nurse was so ... unpleasant ... I am more inclined to just give up.  Then, when I see the GP in December, tell her in person the difference the drug made, show her the notice, and ask if she would write a statement for me.

The thing about trying to find another GP is that few really want Medicare patients and she has been rather flexible and supportive for nearly 3 years.

In any case, right now, I am focusing on chasing down my heart issues.  It is all I could do to battle the hope and then disappointment and then hope and then disappointment and then hope again, trying to have a monitor that works.  Oh, how I am hoping that this is actually capturing my heart rhythms!

Last night was a period where I was struggling to breathe and it felt funny, though just about 20 beats faster than my normal.  Then, when I got up after lying down, there was the 60-ish beats per minute jump because I was changing position.  Sometimes, it goes the other direction.  But since July ... or there abouts ... I have been having these periods were my heart rate is between 135 and 200.  Fun times.

Something.
I just want something helpful to show up on all those hours of recording.
Anything.

To keep my mind off of this, I worked on two different lime recipes ... one of which I think might be just a disaster.  The second one, I decided that I want to truly marinade it, so I prepared the marinade and will put the chicken in it overnight in the refrigerator.  However, well ... you see, I used the dish I want to use for the marinading with the potential disaster, so I had to wait until it came out of the oven.

In a nut shell, I wondered what it would be like to cook chicken in what is essentially heavily limed and sour creamed avocado sauce.  In a bowl, I mixed up avocado, sour cream, salt, pepper, the juice of two limes, and cumin.  My friend had bought fresh chicken breast (not the flash frozen breasts I usually get) that were mammoth.  So, I took a large one and cut it up into four strips.  Then, I put all of it into my small GREEN casserole dish, since I knew the chicken would not fit into one of the French Oval dishes.

I was a tad paranoid about it since, after cooking for 35 minutes, the avocado sauce was not even browned in the least.  You see, this is my main cooking time that I worked out: 35 minutes at 350 degrees.  The chicken in all the other lime recipes came out perfectly moist and bloody fantastic.  The one time I went by the thermometer at the recommended 165 degrees, all I could think as I took each bite was that it was not cooked all the way. I mean, it was not pink in the least, but the chicken felt a tad squeaky instead of tender and falling apart.  I figured that since those long-ago-chicken-rice-soup casseroles were baked much longer, I would add at least 10 minutes since this is a very, very, very thick sauce.  I actually ended up cooking the lime-sour cream-avocado sauce thingy for 55 minutes.

I ate the chicken with just the sauce first.  The chicken was fall-apart-perfection.  So, I was right in keeping in there longer.  And then I melted a Mexican blend of shredded cheese on a flour tortilla and filled it with more chicken and lime-sour cream-avocado sauce.  I am, of course, stuffed with chicken at the moment.  Since avocado does not keep once opened, I could imagine that the chicken would keep either.  That is why I finished it off.  Seriously, two people could have fed off of this.  However, I wonder, honestly, if anyone else would like this.  I do not think I will cook it again, so I am not going to put it on my recipe remember blog.

The other lime dish is a honey lime baked chicken thingy.  Because I believe this has great potential, I decided to actually marinade the chicken in the refrigerator before cooking it, rather than let it merely sit in the dish for about 30 minutes before cooking.  The largest of those fresh chicken breasts was actually 14.8 ounces (yes, I plopped it down on the kitchen scale on which I used to weigh my cockatiels and which has come in rather useful now that I am trying to cook a bit from real recipes). Since the recipe called for two chicken breasts cut up, I simply cut up the monster chicken breast and divided it between two of the French Ovals.  I also whipped up the marinade and divided it between the baking dishes.  Then, I placed the tops on both dishes and put them in the refrigerator.  I plan to turn the chicken over tonight and then again tomorrow when I put them into the oven to ensure even marinading. The marinade smelled so good I was ready to just drink it down by itself, but I really do need to work on that whole will power thing.  I cannot wait to dive into that lime dish on the morrow.  If it is even a fraction of how good it smelled, I will definitely be cooking it again.

Already I am waiting for a chance to make the Baked Mustard Lime Chicken again.  The leftovers from that was equally as good as the day it was cooked.  And, well, the marinade turned sauce was Amos approved.

My help with the last bits of the garage door project has fallen through and I do not know of anyone else who can help me.  So, I am stuck finishing up by myself.

Today, I girded my loins and set about trimming the vertical piece on the right side of the door frame.  Because the door is crooked, all I could think to do was to trim the front of the wood so that it appears straight.  I seems to me that if I trimmed the back side, I would then have to figure out how to angle the top so that the whole thing still appeared straight.  Since my cutting ability is really poor and my measuring even worse, I went with just the one part trim.  As it is, the back side of the board is not fitted from top to bottom anyway because the door is multiple ways crooked, not just one nice slope of crookedness.  Anyway, I know I am making little sense, but here is the result of my labor.  Let me tell you, cutting a piece of 1x4 free hand with a circular saw and without any sort of sawhorse or table or clamps is rather difficult.  In my opinion, I think it would be rather difficult for anyone, much less a most thoroughly non-carpenter-middle-aged-shaky-hands-weak lady.

I also charged up the drill, turned the setting all the way up to 10, backed out all the screws, and then re-screwed them whilst pressing as hard as I possibly could.  Some of them are now flush, but not all.  I think I am going to have to live with that.  After all, this garage is from 1920 and I am definitely not a skilled carpenter.

So, the last little task needing done before I start priming and painting (a skill I definitely do have), is to miter cut the four pieces of glass bead trim for the window.  Let me tell you, I am setting my expectations rather low for this.  I figure copious amounts of wood filler is going to be necessary for each corner.  SIGH.

I do have a carpenter's square.  I do have a circular saw.  I do have a measuring tape.  It is the latter that is the problem.  Each and every measuring tape I have ever owned is simply downright faulty.  None of them have ever measured properly.  So, really, doing my own miter cuts is a doomed project.  Seriously, I would willingly give up an entire 12-pack of Dr Pepper if someone would just do those four little cuts for me.

I should grab the bull by the horns and go out and make them right now.  However, I think I shall take more naps and drink more Dr Pepper and actually taste the honey lime marinade on cooked chicken before I try to be miter-cut-courageous.

Should I admit, at this point, I decided to paint the door GREEN?  That means I need to buy a can of paint ... spend money on the project.  I do have to purchase a gallon of the red/crimson/brick color of the outside of my house in order to paint the screen door to the outside of the basement that was repaired in the winter when painting was not possible.  And I have a Lowe's coupon. So if I buy the gallon with the quart, I will not actually be paying full price for the quart.  I think the math will be something along the lines of half price.  The color I chose when I was not looking at paint colors because it makes no sense to spend money on paint when I have plenty of white for the garage walls, trim, etc. is called Grove.  Since I love the wood of the door, don't you think that name is rather fitting??

I guess I should also admit that I have not actually checked to see just how off the measuring tape was with regard to the cutting of the glass for the window. I should probably check that before I fetch paint in case I need Lowe's to trim it up a bit.  You see, I am essentially a chicken at heart.  I have yet to even pull off the masking tape from the nice brown paper the service clerk used to wrap up the glass.

When I went to start working on a second lesson about emotions, I found myself writing a First Lesson on Coping.  Oh, how hard it is to write what I want spoken ... what I want others to understand and to accept as good and right to be spoken!


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!