Why Read this Book?

For the few men who brave MIP, you may think that reading a book about women’s cardiology is a waste of your time. Let me assure you that men could learn as much as their hearts as we women learn about ours if we all read A Woman’s Heart by Dr. Angela Maas. If you ask me, once you become an adult, everyone, everywhere, should read this book.

Since many cardiologists and doctors are not up-to-date on my weird heart condition, I have had to read more research about it than I care to mention. I’ve also learned a lot from my fellow vasospastic and microvascular disease compadres that are members of a Facebook group I help to moderate. Indeed, I now mentor some members who hail from a variety of countries because I’ve been dealing with this nutty condition for decades.

I’m not stating the above to  brag–I continue to be a student, and an ignorant one at that, on how this condition affects my body. But, it is becoming increasingly rare that I learn new information on it and much cardiovascular material does not pertain to my condition. So, when recommended to me, I was skeptical about it teaching me something new about the human heart. I only read it because people I respect with this condition were raving about it.

I now get it. Even as I read the first few pages, I was already learning a lot of new things about my heart! Thankfully, Dr. Maas, a world-renown cardiologist, has written this book in lay language that even I can understand. When reading cardiology research, I often have to look up their four-page long medical terms. And when a lay term won’t do, Dr. Maas carefully and clearly defines that medical term for me.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Dear Mr. President:

You recently asked suburban women to like you. I consider myself a suburban woman, although I’m now scared to death to live in a suburb and have elected to live where even the US Post Office can’t find me.

Here’s why this suburban woman doesn’t like you:

1. You lie repeatedly.
2. You bash your enemies and even decent people simply questioning your tactics, policies, and speeches.
3. You brag about your accomplishments, even when they’re not your accomplishments.
4. You claim you’re a Christian and yet, don’t seem to understand that humility, mercy and doing justice are the hallmarks by which God said we should live.
5. I can’t, as a mother and grandmother, point to you as an aspirational figure to my children and grandchildren.
6. You’re remodeling the government for your own political purposes.

Dear Former Vice President:

While I like your rhetoric far more than your opponent’s, your policies worry me. You have stated that you’re going to transition away from the production of

I am busy taking a nap today, so I’m going to let the Mom person have access to MY keyboard just this once. If I’m not satisfied with what she writes, I’m taking it away from her.

Dear Maizie Fans:

Our family has learned some sad news. Maizie has cancer.

She has had several benign growths removed recently, but the last one was malignant and she has other lumps on various parts of her body. We have elected to let nature take its course.

While we could pursue treatment for her, it’s costly and doesn’t have a great success rate. Maizie has handled the multiple surgeries well, but since she’s been such a great dog, we can’t bear to subject her to the difficulties that normally ensue from cancer treatment.

She is still a happy girl and often gives us her “cute puppy looks” when it’s playtime. She still jumps up and down when one of her favorite people arrives. She can’t wait to jump into the “big water bowls” when she gets a chance. She is eating pretty normally and still fond of chewing on bones.

While we were acquiring flooring, cabinets, counter tops, appliances, and plumbing fixtures, we were still existing with few interior doors. There are no hallways in the cabin to utilize every inch of floor space, so not having bedroom and bathroom doors all this time was often a problem.

If the hubby and I were the only ones there, it really wasn’t a problem, unless neighbors or contractors came without warning. But if our awesome family came to help, it really made things awkward for all of us.

Even for our little cabin, there were a lot of doors. Eleven interior doors had to be stained and sanded 3 different times. Since both sides of a door have to be treated this way, that makes for 6 different rounds of sanding and staining per door, or 66 rounds total.

Trying to sand and stain one side while another side is drying is very difficult for even the best do-it-yourselfer. Based on all of these factors, we decided to have our interior wall staining crew price this job. It turned out to be a very reasonable price and within a weekend, we had doors installed!

Good evening, Word Fans! (Okay, so I’m late with this post…)

Last week’s WOW was blench. Merriam Webster Online says that blench means: to draw back or turn aside from lack of courage or to flinch. Ummm….this begs the question: Why not just use the word flinch??? It’s the same number of letters. In fact, with the exception of two letters, it’s the same friggin’ word! Clearly, MaryAnn is not a part of the word wizarding team at Merriam-Webster when they’re deciding what words to label “archaic” in their dictionary. I suppose now that most of us look up the words online anyway, deleting out-of-use words from the dictionary is not a particularly cost-saving venture anymore. But, still!

This week’s WOW is agon. Why do I have this weird feeling all my favorite MIP readers are going to know this one??? Heck, I feel like I should know it, too, so here are my guesses (both serious and not so serious) for agon:

agon (ˈä-ˌgän) 1. the condition or state of someone or something being gone 2. how a Southerner refers to processing cheese and/or wine 3. all gone 4. argon gas once it has started dissipating (Think about it–it will hit you later.)

What’s your definition of agon? Comment below with your guess!

Wednesday’s Post: Cabinetry at the Cabin

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I complained to the Mom person about not being allowed on her laptop. She said I wasn’t allowed on it because I shed too much and she’s writing yet another paper for some certification she’s working on. (PLEASE–do not give her any other ideas about getting more certifications…whatever those are…I don’t get my head scratched nearly as much when she’s getting one.)

The only papers I have ever cared about were the ones they let me use when I was a pup. Even then, I was sequestered to the cold tile floors of the house. NOT my idea of fun. I used to pout about it, but it never seemed to get me released from paper-and-tile-land. They did let me on a warmer floor when they realized I had chewed all the furniture legs in paper-and-tile-land.

But, according to some other papers (According to the Mom person, these papers cost a lot of money and have something to do with a Kennel Association. I don’t get how dog kennels get together or even why they get together, but apparently these kennels have a lot to talk about.) I am about to have a rather monumental birthday.

Shed porches going on!

Howdy, Cabin lovers! As I type this the hubby is out at the Reserve and is ensuring that the builder has all he needs to continue finishing the exterior of the cabin. This week’s projects include putting on “shed porches” over the exterior porches on the cabin, installing electrical wiring, putting bracing on the load-bearing trusses and cleaning the exterior logs.

I didn’t think that there would be a lot of “aesthetic” decisions to be made at this stage in the game, but I’m wrong! For the shed porches I needed to tell the builder which way I wanted the under side of the roofing to be laid. There are even several ways to do the corners and I’ll be honest, I may regret what I decided! But, it’s probably not an “end of the world” decision.

In a few places we are having “upside down T” trusses made by a local welder since we selected more detailed trusses in the front and back of the cabin. Even the size of the brace holes is a decision as well as how many holes per brace and the placement of these holes. One also has to decide the finish color and the type of bolts or screws used to brace these trusses.

Good morning, fellow Word Nerds! Last week’s WOW (Word of the Week) was thrasonical. Thrasonical, according to Merriam-Webster Online is: of, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of Thraso. Uh-hunh. Okay. Who or what the heck is Thraso???  Thankfully, Merriam-Webster gives us some information regarding Thraso as follows:

Thraso was a blustering old soldier in the comedy Eunuchus, a play written by the great Roman dramatist Terence more than 2,000 years ago. Terence is generally remembered for his realistic characterizations, and in Thraso he created a swaggerer whose vainglorious boastfulness was not soon to be forgotten. Thraso’s reputation as a braggart lives on in “thrasonical,” a word that boasts a history as an English adjective for more than 440 years.

That was your English and History lesson for today. This will improve your next Trivial Pursuit game??? (Does anyone even play Trivial Pursuit anymore?)

This week’s WOW is anabasis. Here are my guesses for anabasis:

anabasis: (ə-ˈna-bə-səs) 1. based on a Frozen heroine 2. basic analogue 3. basal analysis

What are your guesses for anabasis? Submit a comment below this post to let me know! (I have a feeling all you smarties out there are going to know this one!)

Wednesday’s Post: Clarification...

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Anyone remember back in 2013 when I was told that I had to self-inject myself in the stomach twice a day??? If not, go here to remind yourself.

Now, I’m on to a new adventure with this little phobia of mine. As one of my many health adventures, I have to deal with the ever-present possibility of anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis is a fancy way of saying that when I’m allergic to something, I usually wind up in the ER looking like some neanderthal wanna-be. My face swells up; I can’t talk (Some would call that a good development.); and I’m itchy from head to toe. I seem to do this at really random times with no appreciable pattern.

For example, I left my university office one day (air-conditioned, mind you!), got in my air-conditioned car in the middle of an asphalt parking lot, drove home, got out of my car in my own garage, walked into my air-conditioned home and then went into full anaphylaxis. How did that happen? What triggered that? Apparently, the culprit was the vacant lot across the street that hadn’t been mowed in several months. It was rife with ragweed in full bloom. Silly me–I neglected to put the garage door down before exiting my air-conditioned car for 30 seconds. And my allergic reaction to that was basically similar to a tsunami mixed with a tornado.

Thus, I began getting allergy injections twice a week back in 2004. I would like to tell you that I no longer need such injections, but that would be making the assumption that my body acts like every other homo sapien’s on the planet and by now, you surely know that that is just not true.

Now that I’m traveling more often, this twice-a-week allergy shot thing just doesn’t jive well with my current schedule. Plus, nurses are not usually fond of giving allergy injections and are busy people doing REAL nursing, so they only give allergy injections during certain hours on certain days. In my lovely state they’ve also added the requirement that a doctor has to be on-site. Why? Good question–would you please ask that the next time you visit with your local politicians???

So, I had my favorite doctor recommend a place where I could learn to give myself allergy injections. Yes, Phobic MaryAnn actually asked how to give herself allergy shots. Now, you may think that this is no big deal after the stomach shot deal, but you would be wrong. With those shots, the syringes were spring-loaded so that once they were fully injected, the spring-loading mechanism would retract the needle out of my body for me.

With allergy shots, you don’t get this little advantage. To boot, the stomach syringes also came pre-filled with the correct amount of serum. With allergy shots, I would have to fill the syringe myself and not get air in the needle, etc., etc., etc. This may not be a big deal to you drug addicts, but it’s a rather large deal for Ms. Phobia over here.

So, for the past three weeks I have been trying to learn how to give myself thigh shots. All the little steps required to do this right and remembering them in order is enough to make me run screaming into the doctor’s office hallways, except that it might scare the little children assembled there.

No one forewarned me that it might be necessary to wear short shorts after shot attempt # 1. That right thigh hurt like a mother for at least 3 days. I think I may have emptied a rather large-sized bottle of Aleve on that one. (There goes my liver.)

Attempt number 2 seemed to be much better, but I glanced down at my left thigh at the end of the day and it was pretty misshapen. Apparently, I had been scratching it through my clothing without realizing it all day. The good news? It made my thigh muscle look much more impressive. (I don’t think this is listed as a benefit from allergy injections anywhere. Perhaps they should add it???)

Today I pushed the injector (for lack of a better term) too soon and gave my skin a good portion of the shot. Awesome. My thigh skin was not impressed.

But, in some sheer delusionary moment, the nurse handed me a pile of syringes, the shot log sheet, some alcohol prep pads and my serum and out the door I went. I’m told that I push the syringe rather fast (I personally don’t think one can be too fast doing this nonsense–I just want it to be over with!). We might want to report her to the medical board for such obvious malpractice.

So, if you hear a scream coming from Texas next Monday, it’s just me giving myself my first allergy shot solo.

The next challenge? Trying to get syringes through TSA at DFW. May God have mercy on my soul.

Good morning, Word Lovers! Last week’s WOW was solatium. Merriam-Webster Online says that solatium is:  a compensation (as money) given as solace for suffering, loss, or injured feelings. So this means that when I lose my keys for the 49th time, I should get paid??? If so, I think this is a practice which needs more emphasis in our culture!

This week’s WOW is zeitgeber. Since I never took German and this word definitely has that “flavor,” this could get really interesting for my definition guesses:

zeitgeber: (ˈtsīt-ˌgā-bər, ˈzīt-) 1. the acne on Goober’s face (the younger generation just said, “Who’s Goober?”) 2. the person who pops the acne on Goober’s face 3. gawking at acne in Berlin

I warned you it would be interesting. What’s your definition guess for zeitgeber? Go here to tell me all about it!

Wednesday’s Post: Word of the Day!

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