Letters From Home

My parents were devoted coffee drinkers. When I was little, Mom would brew coffee on the stove in one of those percolator pots (if you’ve never seen one, I bet you could find one of the old Maxwell House commercials somewhere online and see coffee perking in action with catchy music). Both parents liked plenty of cream and sugar, and it was a constant battle between kids who were grossed out by little clumps of coffee-fused sugar in the sugar bowl and parents who didn’t think before they spooned.

When instant coffee came on the market, my dad was all for it. And not just because it meant he didn’t actually have to perk the coffee (we are talking about typical 50s kitchen-helpless male here). My mom was prone to zoning out somewhere else in the house and forgetting she had the percolator on the stove, and she had already melted two pots into the electric stove burners. You can imagine how long you have to leave an aluminum coffee pot on an electric burner for that to happen.

So from that day forward, my parents drank instant coffee. And the freeze-dried stuff when that became available. Always with plenty of sugar and cream. That was what “coffee” was in our household.

Any wonder I hated the stuff?

In fact, I was a dedicated non-coffee-drinker till I was diagnosed with diabetes and had to give up sugary beverages. On a business trip, I decided to try a cup of coffee with just a little cream in it. Whoa! I still didn’t brew it for myself at home, but at least I had something to drink at restaurants.

Then my daughter started working at Starbucks to help pay her way through college. Needless to say, I had never set foot in a Starbucks at that point. She very carefuly wrote down the name of a drink she though I would like (tall sugar-free-vanilla caramel macchiato) and I dutifully went in and ordered it. And I liked it.

One of the perks of Starbucks employment is one free pound of coffee per week. So my daughter got some for me and I acquired a coffee grinder, and from then on I happily ground and brewed my own. This continued in later years when my son worked at Starbucks in turn.

But after he left Starbucks, I realized there would be no more free (otherwise expensive) Starbucks coffee, and my favorite online source Cup of Heaven was really just for the occasional special treat, so for the first time I had to really think about what was available at the supermarket. I decided my best chance of good coffee at reasonable prices was at Trader Joe’s.

After sampling several different varieties, I have found a winner: Costa Rican Tarrazu.

Now let’s just hope Trader Joes’ doesn’t discontinue it.

photo credit: slimninja

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I’ve been officially a diabetic for ten years now. Had my suspicions well before the official diagnosis, but in typical fashion I kept going in for fasting blood tests and I kept showing up as being within normal range. It wasn’t till I had a test after lunch that I got the bad news.

Diabetes is a cantankerous and capricious disease and it treats no two humans exactly the same. Some
people have to be put on insulin or oral medication immediately and struggle to find the right balance of medications and food. Some can go for years controlling it with just diet and exercise. I suspect most of us are somewhere in between.

I did fine with diet and exercise for quite a while. Unfortunately, I worked in an environment where my supervisors not only did not understand but made no effort to understand. My boss came from a culture where food and eating are very important and I think she took it personally when I said I couldn’t eat the food provided for departmental parties. I had no choice. It was greasy, salty, high in carbohydrates and sugar. I would try to find something reasonable, somewhere on the tables, but often I couldn’t.

One party, there wasn’t even any diet soda. I sat there with nothing until one of the supervisors unearthed a warm, dusty can of Diet Pepsi from somewhere. They didn’t even spring for a cold can from the vending machine. I think that was the nadir. After that, I really preferred to be assigned to work with the public while everyone else was partying.

I eventually went on medication. Like most people I went through a long period of adjustment, including a major change when I was taken off the beta blocker and other ineffective blood pressure meds by the first doctor in 20+ years who was able to figure out what was causing my blood pressure problems and do something about it.

I had about a year of good blood sugar control with just metformin, one of the most common drugs, but then something went flooie and my blood sugar levels started climbing. I asked for an appointment to the diabetes clinic, figuring it was time to give the specialists a shot at it.

And so, this week I started giving myself insulin injections at bedtime.

Many Type 2 diabetics have the idea that if they have to start taking insulin they have somehow failed. I didn’t, and don’t, see it that way. This gives me much more control over my own treatment. I get to adjust the dosage till I find what works. The doctors trust me to figure it out, and that in itself makes me feel very good.

The injections themselves are not painful in the least. I know we’ve all been conditioned to think that “shots” hurt, and I’ve certainly had plenty that did. I fretted a lot before giving myself that first injection. But insulin needles are not much thicker than a human hair and less than half an inch long and there literally is no pain. The anticipation was way worse than the actual event, like so much else in life.

So, here I am on my way to better control and better health. I feel positive. I feel good.

photo credit: gratiot

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My dad died in 2002, a few months before his 80th birthday. He’d been in declining health for several years and had Alzheimers, so it wasn’t unexpected. In fact, my brothers and I were amazed he hung on as long as he did.

In the years since then I’ve found that events like his birthday and what would have been my parents’ anniversary if they hadn’t gotten divorced don’t really impinge on my consciousness the way Father’s Day does.

My son put it best, the first Father’s Day I had without my dad. He said “You still have a father. It’s just that he’s not interested in material things any more.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you.

photo credit: RobW_

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My daughter remarked the other day that this year her birthday falls on a Thursday, the same day as the day she was born.

That led me to thinking about something I discovered about my… what do you call the family you were born into? They’re not your immediate family any more, are they? … anyway, one of many interesting things about my parents, my brothers and me is that my birthday, my mom’s birthday, and my two younger brothers’ birthdays always fell on the same day of the week, and my dad’s birthday and my oldest brother’s birthdays always fell on the same day of the week (a different day from the rest of us). I don’t suppose the odds against that are as phenomenal as having everyone’s birthday always be on the same day of the week, but I suspect it’s pretty unusual. The more so because ten years separates me from my youngest brother.

Both my kids were born on Thursday, but three years apart, so they will never have same-day birthdays.
However, my son’s birthday and my husband’s birthday fall on the same day of the week. No such luck for the female half of the family.

It was hard enough on me when my son went off to kindergarten for the first time. What will I feel like in two years when my daughter hits 30?

Regardless of what day or year I was born on… I feel old.

photo credit: Richard Parmiter

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