No More Fishy Blender

Oh dear friends, YIKES, the MRI is on Friday!!! Danny and I are trying another fast today, we stopped eating at about 8:00 pm last night, so I'm hoping to make it to 8:00 am tomorrow morning. It's great to get another jump on things. My favorite part of fasting is not having to worry about cooking, or going to the grocery store. It's also handy because my blender is on the fritz. Here's the problems with the blender:

In Order Of Importance:
1. It stinks like old fish oil. GROSS.
2. The blades are mangled so they don't blend things well
3. Even after five minutes, there are solid chunks of bananas
4. The blender sounds like a racing motorcycle, sporadic and uncomfortably high pitched
5. Did I mention the fish smell
5. Did I mention the inability to blend even the softest of items....like a banana?!?

So, after receiving an email from Meghan (my girl friend who is managing Hope For Jess on Etsy), saying that a few more art pieces have sold, I can finally buy us a TurboBlend Vitamix!!! Yay!!!

For those who are not familiar, the Vitamix blenders (there are several types) are so powerful that they can blend whole almonds into almond butter. You can grind whole grains into a powder. These machines are AMAZING! I'm mostly excited to have superb green drinks where I won't have to gag down chunks of broccoli and kale. Kale is very scratchy on the throat, and always triggers my gag reflex. I need to eat 5-7 servings of power packed veggies each day to keep the inflammation down in my body, and green drinks do such a great job of packing the goodies. Thank you to everyone who has bought art, or donated to my account. I truly appreciate it so much!! There is such a relief, knowing that I can pay for certain bills, or purchase necessary things (like a powerful blender - that has a 7 year warranty!).

On a side note, my mom gave me a little bird feeder to place outside our living room window. I've been watching for the past two days and birds have no idea that there's a delicious treat out there. How do I get birds to swing by? Any ideas?

My Lonely Bird Feeder

Abdomen X-Ray

Another Rainy Day In The Hood!

Kisses For Jess

I tried to take a photo of both Emma and I smiling, but she kept trying to kiss me. That was the final shot of about 13. Kisses for Jess because she took Emma to the Green Lake library to renew Dan's book. Dogs are so easy to please.

The fast lasted until about six o'clock last night, a total of 24 hours, until my stomach started cramping so badly that I couldn't function. I had to eat something which, in our limited resources, consisted of raw broccoli and my homemade spinach and jalapeno humus (note to self: horrible combination on an empty stomach). I haven't been mentioning it on the blog (because I feel like it's TMI - for those out of the loop, that means too much information), but I've been dealing with a digestive problem for the past couple of months. It has gotten progressively worse so my doctor scheduled an x-ray for tomorrow.

Originally, my doctor was concerned about a lump in my lower left side, but she wanted to make sure that it wasn't just a hard bowel (GROSS). This digestive problem is my own fault, I've been a phantom pooper (thanks for the term Jessaca!) for years, which is very bad for your digestive system and your whole body. It has come to the point where girl friends joke that they're going to get me the book, Everyone Poops (it's for children). Anyway, to make a long story even longer, Dr P, my general practitioner didn't like the lump and put me on some sort of laxative for a week, telling me that if I didn't pooh every day she wanted to take a lower abdomen x-ray.

Well friends, that day has come and tomorrow we will find out what's going on. Dr P's biggest concern is that my diet is so full of vegetables, fruits, lentils, brown rice, etc. that I should be pooh-ing once, maybe even twice a day. Yikes. That seems like a lot, and is definitely not even close to my regular routine.

I'm nervous about the x-ray. As you all know, I despise radiation, but I need to know what's happening in my body. I want to have a healthy, functioning, happy system, and for some reason, things aren't working the way that they should be.

As always, I'll keep you posted. Unless it's just horrifically gross, in which case I might omit some details.