40

My birthday is the day after Christmas, which means three days ago I turned forty.

Like all birthdays, the number attached this year was bigger than on the last birthday, but this number felt particularly big--bigger, I'm sure, than forty-one will feel. In fact writing "forty" out just now made me cringe a little, so evidently even seventy-two hours on, I have not quite come to terms it.
 
After the hubbub of Christmas and the strain of working my Byzantine medical schedule, naps, and uncooperative appetite around holiday traditions and family visits, I just wanted a day when I had as little to do as possible.

I didn't want to go shopping, although that's how I usually spend the day (because the best sales of the year are on my birthday). I didn't want to go to a museum and have to pack all my medicine in a bag and then rush home once the fatigue set in, I didn't even want The Poet to take me out to dinner as he had repeatedly offered, because I didn't want to make a reservation and worry about my dietary restrictions and whether I'd be hungry on time. I didn't really even want to talk to people, because conversation when I'm on the Samento-Banderol-Teasel protocol can sometimes be exhausting.

I've come to my parents' house to hibernate for a few months and that was exactly what I did. I hid out in my bedroom/study. I wrote a blog post, I looked for quotations for my memoir, and took an hour and a half nap. When I woke up I was still tired. I tried reading, and when I realized I couldn't really focus on the sentences, I gave up and just laid back against my bedrest, half-meditating, half-contemplating.

Most of the time my thoughts are in the mix. I think about my writing or my medicine, making plans with friends, what to cook for dinner, or when I'll go running and how best to take care of The Poet and Cleo. But the day you turn forty is the day you inevitably do some tallying up.

And these were the numbers that came to mind:

40 years of life
15 and 1/2 years of health problems
14 years of full-blown Lyme
14 years without gainful employment
6 years since diagnosis
5 and 1/2 years of treatment
213 days no-holds-barred treatment
60 drops of Samento per day
60 drops of Banderol per day
60 drops of Teasel per day

These numbers, especially the first part, are good grounds for feeling retropsectively sorry for myself.  This was no pity party, however, because I know I made the most of those oh-so-tough years. I can't quite call them lost years because I learned things about myself and about life, and I made the  most of what little energy I had.

It was also no pity party because in my mind, the last four numbers are good ones. I don't know if the Samento-Banderol-plus-Teasel protocol will work. Experience has taught me that the fat lady really does need to sing. But at least I can tell myself I'm doing all I can, the rest is up to the universe. And in the last few days I've had moments--a few hours here or there--when things in my body have felt different, that is to say, better.

And also floating through my mind was this bit of wisdom I'd found that morning, from Benjamin Franklin:

"He that can have patience can have what he will."

EASY VEGETABLE RECIPES

My mother asked me to make the vegetarian dish this Christmas dinner. Although many people in my family are vegetarians, I am not. But my sister, who is a vegetarian, would be busy up to the last minute running her bookstore, and I love to cook. I also claim, without being vegetarian, to be the family's biggest vegetable eater. While my vegetarian brother, sister, sisters-in-law, neices, and nephew are downing the cheesy pasta and bread, I am serving myself second helpings of salad and cauliflour and thinking about the next way I'll cook the delicata squash.

This is partly due to my restricted diet that allows no gluten and no sugar. But that's not all. You can be gluten-free and emancipated from sugar and still avoid vegetables. Not me, no siree! No matter how much the Poet teases me about my mild obsession with vegetables, I am not deterred. Vegetables are among the best things in life.

When I read about the diet most recommended for Lyme disease and many other illnesses, generally called the anti-inflammatory diet (which means you eat far more vegetables and fruits than meat or grains) I realized I had by instinct eating in the way that made me feel best.

Special foods when you are sick are a blessing and a curse. They make you feel wonderful but can wall you off from the rest of the world. It is difficult to go out because menus are perilous, portions for meat and french fries are gigantic while vegetables are "sides", and eating organic is astronomically expensive.

Staying home can be equally difficult if it requires cooking. But the recipes I made for this year's Christmas dinner are easy.

The first is socca, a very simple chick-pea cake. The recipe I found is so good it needs no amending, so here's the link:

http://www.theveganchickpea.com/2011/10/vegan-mofo-french-week-day-17-savory.html

In addition to this I made a dish of my own invention, which I call:

EXCELLENT EGGPLANT

2-3 many medium to large eggplants as you like, cut in half lengthwise
1-2 red or green bell peppers as you like, cut roughly into 6 to 8 pieces
2-3 medium onions with paper skins left on, quartered
3-4 cloves of garlic, roughly crushed under the heel of your hand
1/4 to 1/3 cup Pitted kalamata olives
1/2 cup parseley, in 1 inch dice, stems chopped to a quarter inch

The amounts of vegetables are not a cause for stress. If you like roasted bell peppers, put more in. Ditto for onions. It's your life!

Preheat oven to 375
Cut eggplant in half length-wise, salt for 30 minutes then rinse and pat dry
Meanwhile cut the other vegetables and parseley

Mix together:
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup olive oil
salt to taste and plenty of good quality black pepper
(The amount of oil and wine can be variable, so long as you have enough to generously coat your vegetables.)

In a large roasting pan, arrange eggplants and onions skins up, cut side down. Put the garlic garlic and parsely beneath the onions and eggplant so it doesn't dry out. Add the red peppers and olives in the gaps between the other vegetables and pour the oil and red wine mixture over everything, being sure to coat the onion and eggplant skins completely.

Cover pan with lid or aluminum foil.
After 40 minutes, start checking to see if it's done. When the eggplant is soft enough to almost fall apart when cut with a butter knife or side of a fork, it is done. The sliced sides of the vegetables should be nicely browned by then. Remove the papery skins from the onions and serve.

Variation:

Omit parseley
Omit olives
Substitute lemon juice for red wine
Substitute ground coriander for black pepper

This dish is scalable and can be made in large quantities as long as you have enough roasting pans to put two or more in the oven. It freezes well so you can make a big batch and freeze in small containers to have at a later date, any easy way to eat lots of delicious, healthy vegetables at home.

Enjoy!

painting at top of this blog by Sandra Galda

CLEOPATRA GOES TO WASHINGTON

 

 

Beautiful day, beautiful dog. Merry Christmas to All!

 

(Thanks to Gonzalo, the dog walker, for taking this fabulous photo!)

 

THE THIRD HERB: TEASEL

I have added Teasel to my herbal protocol, and it’s doing things the Samento-Banderol combination wasn’t doing alone. The sinus infection, which simply would not go away, not with eight different antifungal meds, not with nasal sprays or neti pots or extra long q-tips pushed up my nose, is now on its way out. I’ve been spending half my days plastered to the couch from the Herxheimer reaction, feeling the far back of my sinuses get itchy and drain; the other half of my days are mostly devoted to the busy-work of illness, with an hour salvaged here and there for writng.

A week ago as I was filling out a lab bill, I asked The Poet what our zip code was. For the life of me I couldn’t remember it, except that it started with nine and probably had an eight in it. I’ve also been extremely crabby on Teasel, and at other moments suddenly drowning in cry-me-an-ocean sadness. I’ve had a few days when I felt high—time seemed to be passing in a slow, ethereal, pace and simultaneous sprinting by too fast for me to take in. I couldn’t think ahead about anything, not even what I was going to have for lunch or what shoes to wear. On those days, I lay on the couch in a dreamy state with Cleopatra on my legs. A different week, I almost thought I was coming down with a cold: I had a sore throat, my sinuses were flowing, and I was coughing yellow phlegm out of my lungs. But these things were not a cold; they waxed and waned with each dose of Teasel until they passed.

With the Samento and Banderol, I felt the Herx mostly in my body. I gasped for breath in a moderately paced dance class. My back ached when I went out to run. My ribcage was so tender the Poet couldn’t hug me without me yelping with pain. (The Byron White herbal remedy called “NT Detox” helped with both these things.) Teasel, on the other hand, is bringing on more Herxheimer action in my upper body and head. It makes me glad I’ve been using the two-doctor approach. Dr. Ross (my MD) put me on the Samento-Banderol in the first place, and Nesreen (the ND) added the Teasel. I’d be interested to hear if anyone reading this has found other herbs helpful for Lyme disease. Comments welcome!

PROGRESS REPORT: SAMENTO & BANDEROL

Last May I started the Samento-Banderol protocol for Lyme disease. According to recent research, these taking these two herbs in combination is extremely effective at killing off “dormant Lyme,” meaning that last little bit of Lyme bacteria that’s so good at escaping the antibiotics. These two herbs are so effective, they’re actually better, in lab tests, than antibiotics are at killing off Lyme in a biofilm. (And the biofilm is part of what makes Lyme such a tough enemy.)

One of the early signs of effective Lyme antidotes is the Herxheimer reaction, which is when your symptoms of disease increase as the medication kills Lyme and floods your body with toxins from dead bacteria. (Here's a beautiful illustration of the Samento plant!)

Judging solely by the Herxheimer reaction I had when I started Samento and Banderol, they have to be just as good or better than antibiotics. I have also been deliberately going for as big a Herxheimer reaction as I could, based on a theory that this is the best way to kick an entrenched case of Lyme. Instead of increasing my Samento and Banderol liquid herbs at the recommended rate of one drop every other day, I increased by two per day. By July I was on the full dose, and by August the big “Herx” reactions seemed behind me. So far, so good.

Enter my naturopath Nesreen. When I told her about the maximum Herx theory, she agreed. “You have to feel worse before you feel better,” she said. She also admitted it’s a tough sell. She’s lost patients who simply won’t, or can’t, go through the healing-by-fire method.

(And I realize that Herxing on Lyme meds is in fact a luxury in our screwed-up world. Try doing that while taking care of kids, holding down a job, or keeping up with homework assignments. Until our society recognizes Lyme for what it is and your friends and family rally round with casseroles and babysitting and the world at large accepts that you cant keep up with your job or your school work, the way it would if you had any number of other serious illnesses, turning the volume up to eleven on your Lyme symptoms—so you can actually get over this disease—will remain a luxury.)

At Nesreen’s suggestion, I added the herb Teasel and this has cranked up the herx even more. More on that in an upcoming post!

When I lived in Mexico these dried Samento pods (una de gato) were for sale on the street as amulets. They were said to ward off evil, and I actually wore one around my neck for some time. I'd love to get another but they seem hard to come by in the States.

SMALL TRIUMPHS: SKY HIGH

 

A week ago my parents called me and asked how I was ever going to get on my plane to DC.

 

“When’s your flight again?”

 

“Eight a.m., but I have to get there ninety minutes ahead to check Cleo in.”

“So you’ll have Cleo, and then you’ll have all your bags?” Cleo is my new dog.

“Yup,” I said cheerfully, although I had already been fretting over this little piece of logistics for some time. I blame it on Lyme disease that I never manage to travel light. Besides all my clothes, which I have trouble cutting back on, I’ve got a smallish suitcase crammed with my thirty bottles of supplements and prescriptions. I have my six daily pill boxes which I pack into my carry-on the night before. I have thirty-six hours worth of heparin needles in case my bags are lost or I get stuck somewhere overnight. Same for my thrice-daily cholestyramine, carefully doled out into Ziplocs. I’ve got my no-gluten, no-sugar, no-preservatives, no-additives, organic breakfast and lunch. And normal junk: book, laptop, iPod, cell phone.

 

It adds up to two immensely heavy suitcases, a backpack, a shoulder bag, and a laptop case. A turtle is streamlined in comparison. An elephant would beat me to the check-in line.

 

And now I had this extra air-travel appendage: Cleopatra.

 

Experts agree: Cleo is awesome. They also agree she is an integral part of my Lyme recovery. This last few months herxing on the Samento-Banderol-Teasel protocol, it has made all the difference in the world to have her sleeping next to me, chasing her tail in the morning, forcing me out of the tiny apartment for walks and runs.

 

“Cleo is the best decision you’ve made in a while,” The Poet tells me a couple times a week.

 

And yet when leaving for a three month visit to my parents she is one more thing to manage at the airport.

 

“Who is going to drive you there?” my dad asked.

 

“I’m taking a cab.”

 

“Will the cab be big enough? Does the dog crate fit in a cab? Will it block the rear window?” he asked. “What are you going to do once you’re at the airport with all your bags and the dog and the crate?”

 

“Oh, well, there’ll be people around. The cabdriver will help,” I said. “I’ll give him a big tip.”

 

“He can’t get you to check-in,” my dad said. My dad was also of the opinion that there would be no roller-carts handy, curbside check-in might not exist at all, and there certainly would be some regulation against checking a dog curbside, not to mention a suspiciously heavy suitcase crammed with Vitamin C powder, turmeric capsules, and syringes. He said I needed to send a box or several boxes ahead of time with all my pill bottles and things, so I would have all my hands free to handle Cleo.

 

I didn’t send the box, but I did buy a super sporty, hiking-style backpack with a laptop compartment, forty-seven pockets, and bungee-cord lacing on the front. (Somehow I still ended up with three carry-ons.) I called the cab ahead and told them about all the boulder-ish suitcases and the dog and the crate. I told them to come at six.

 

And I worried. More than about checking in, I worried about getting up at 5 a.m. to walk Cleo, do my own morning medical insanity, and get all my boulders down the stairs and out the door for the cab all while feeling like hell on my Lyme meds.

 

Miraculously, I felt decent getting out of bed at 5. By 6, Cleo and I were out in the front yard throwing and chasing a ball, our mountain of stuff stacked by the driveway. And not only does curbside check-in exist, but the tall white guy working curbside at SeaTac airport is my new hero.

 

After the cabby pulled up to the terminal and heaved all my stuff from the cab to a spot that was an equally impossible distance from the cart stand and the curbside check-in stand, then wished me a Merry Christmas, I just stood there, stranded and with an extremely energetic dog on leash. If moved to far from my bags to get help, security would surely swoop down on my stuff and destroy it in seconds. Cleo was running and hopping in as many directions as her leash would allow, all the while giving out little nervous barks. It crossed my mind that my dad was right. It was impossible. And then the curbside guy dashed over to me and told me not to move. He went to-and-fro with suitcases and I.D. and even ferried my credit card over to the stand and brought the receipts and the check-dog forms and back for me to sign while I stayed with Cleo and her crate.

 

Easy peasy lemon-squeezy.

 

So now I am in flight to three months with my parents, which I’ve been longing for, sometimes maniacally, over the past few weeks. The Lyme meds are doing their job, which means my body cycles out of symptom hell several times a day. I am deliberately taking as high a dose as I can stand, because I’ve been treating this illness long enough. It’s time to kick it at no matter what price of present-day discomfort. But being in the house I grew up in, with my mom and other family around, is a kind of support not even Cleo and The Poet in Seattle can approximate.

 

DC here I come.

 

 

INJERA: THE EASY GLUTEN-FREE BREAD

The word on the street is that true injera is difficult to make. This is not true!

Really? you are saying as you scratch your head, injera is easy? I always thought you needed some serious cooking mojo to make that. I thought there was some secret to injera that no average muggle could master.

Not at all. Injera is not hard to make, it's a simple injera recipe that's been hard to find-- until now.

But wait, you are asking yourself, what is injera anyway?

Injera is the flat, spongy, circular bread traditional to Ethiopia. It is somewhere between a crepe and a pancake, it stores well in the refridgerator and can be easily reheated before a meal. It's a sourdough bread, which is part of what makes it so tasty.

Injera is made from teff, a gluten-free grain that is highly nutritious. (More on teff here.) If you go to an Ethiopian restaurant, they will serve you injera, but chances are good it won't be gluten free. In the U.S. at least, most of the injera has wheat flour mixed into the batter. (Sometimes it is made entirely from wheat.) You can make your own pure teff injera quite painlessly at home, however.

But why, you ask, would a person want to do that?

If you are on a gluten-free diet, like me and like so many others with Lyme disease or other causes of gluten sensitivity, then a simple, delicious bread recipe might well be welcome. If you are health conscious and obsessive about reading food labels, like me, you know that most gluten-free breads on the market are full of junk, and no more nutrious than your average white bread. Teff on the other hand is packed with protiens and minerals, and has a nutty, whole grain flavor that brown rice or chickpea flours can't hold a candle to. It has the robustness of a good whole wheat or rye, something I've missed sorely since I gave up gluten. Teff's taste is smoother and subtler than those to grains, however. Teff makes me want to jump for joy!

So how do you make injera?

Funny you should ask....


EASY INJERA RECIPE

STEP ONE: SOURDOUGH BATTER (Make two days ahead)


In a large mixing bowl, combine:

1 cup of filtered water
1 cup of teff flour

Wash your hands and use them to mix the flour and water together, smoothing out all the lumps.
Cover the bowl with a clean cloth, set on your kitchen counter and leave for approximately twenty-four hours.

While the earth makes a full rotation on its axis, your batter will show signs of fermentation. It will bubble, it will puff up, it will have a pleasant, sour, grassy smell. Some water may well separate to the top by the end of the twenty-four hours, and have a bluish-brownish tint to it from the teff. This is fine.

At the end of first day, stir batter back together (you will see bubbles) and add:

1 cup of filtered water
1 cup of teff flour

Again, mix batter together with clean hands until lumps are gone, cover with clean cloth, let sit at room temperature for approximately twenty-four hours.

If you want to enhance the sourdough flavor from the start, or if you want to make more flour for a bigger first batch of injera, repeat this step as many times as you like. You can add as little as 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup teff flour per day, but remember the two basic principles: 1-1 ratio of flour to water; feed batter every twenty-four hours while it is at room temperature. Ifyou are impatient to have injera sooner, you can cook your injera after two days, using step 2 first (see below).

You are now on the path to having a good sourghdough batter. This is a living thing that you will keep alive by saving approx. one cup of the batter each time you cook and storing it the in refridgerator for next time.


STEP TWO: CHEATING A BIT

While I was figuring out how to make injera, I found many recipes on the internet that added quick-rising flour immediately before cooking, meaning adding wheat flour with a bit of baking powder and salt mixed in. Since we are making pure teff flour, this step will be a little different for us. Here we go:

Save at least one cup of sourdough batter in a jar. Put in fridge and mark the date on the lid.

Measure the rest of your batter. Per one cup of batter, add:

1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt (optional-- salt can also be sprinkled on bread at table to each person's taste)
stir briskly with large spoon or with hand held blender


STEP THREE: COOKING THE INJERA

Use a skillet or cast iron pan such as you would use to cook pancakes (or crepes if you have such skills) and a large lid that fits tightly on the pan. (I have found it's easiest to use a glass lid that is small enough to sit on the bottom of my largest cast iron skillet, so the seal is complete.)

Oil pan lightly with high-heat oil such as grapeseed or organic canola (non-organic canola is GMO, folks!). Put burner on medium heat. Test pan by flicking one or two drops of water. If the water sizzles and evaporates, pan is hot enough.( If oil starts to smoke, turn down heat.)

With a ladle or large spoon, pour batter onto skillet, starting in center and making a circular, outwards motion.

Stand patiently over your pancake and watch while bubbles form and the edges start to brown, about thirty seconds.

Cover with lid, set timer for seventy to ninety seconds. Do some dishes or straighten up kitchen until timer goes off. Once timer rings, remove lid, use spatula to take cooked bread from skillet and put on a plate to cool.

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, until you have used all your batter.

Note: there is some finesse involved in cooking you injera, so the cooking time is approximate. My cast iron skillet tends to get hotter as I cook, especially once I've used the lid to cook the first pancake, so after that I turn the burner down to 3 on my crappy electric stove.

Bigger Note: this is homemade, whole grain injera. It's just not going to look like the injera at a restaurant. That's Barbie injera. This Naomi injera. The bread I cook isn't going to win any beauty contests. It's not perfectly circular and it's not giangantic. At first I aimed for making larger and larger bread, but then I realized I didn't have a container big enough for easy storage, it's harder to get off the pan, and the burner under my skillet wasn't big enough to cook it evenly. So now I just make injera about the size of the burner under my skillet, or about the size of dessert plates.

One cup of injera batter will make about five dessert-plate sized injeras.

Injera is delicious hot off the griddle, or you can cool it, layer it between waxed paper, and store in fridge in ziplock bag or large tupperware.

Refridgerated injera will keep up to nine days or so. I think it taste best hot, so I pop it back into the toaster for a bit and sprinkle with salt before eating.


STEP FOUR: REPEAT

Store the cup of batter you saved in the fridge. As I mentioned, there are living, healthy bacteria in this batter (just like yogurt) and you will need to feed them to keep the sourdough going. Every week or so, take the batter from fridge (it will have separated a bit, don't worry), transfer to mixing bowl, stir it up and add flour and water as in step one. You can cook more injera the next day, or you can return the batter to the fridge for the next week. I have gone as long as nine days between feedings and all was fine.


STEP FIVE: CUT OUT STEP TWO

Over time, your sourdough starter batter will be strong enough that you no longer need baking powder to help you form the bubbles when you cook your flatbread. You may notice the fermentation is going faster, the smell is stronger, or you might just feel ready to cook it without the baking powder. After you've fed your batter and reserved  your cup for future batter, you can stir up the remainder with a ladle and start cooking your injera directly, without baking soda. (If it's not spongy enough, no harm done, just add baking powder and try again some other time.)

This is what 100% teff injera looks like. Mine, as I said, is considerably smaller. (Photo borrowed from National Geographic.)

CLEOPATRA SAVES THE DAY

I have been wanting a dog for years. I grew up with dogs and was the only member of my family not to have one. I could barely take care of myself, how could I add a dog into the mix?

On the other hand, when you are sick you spend lots of time at home, alone. If you are a writer you spend lots of time at home, alone. It's not as exciting as it was for McCaulay Culkin. In fact, it gets lonely. It makes sense to have a pet.

"It's really too bad you're allergic to cats," the Poet kept saying. "A cat would be perfect for you." But I am allergic. A ferret? A gerbil? Tropical fish? None of these things conjured up what I wanted, which was companionship.

For a while I thought about getting birds, until my massage therapist for an inexplicable reason brought her two parakeets to work and had them in the massage room during my session. The birds spent the whole hour diving at the massage table (i.e. at me) only to swoop away at the last second, return to their perch and chirrup frantically until they were rested up for their next dive-bomb feint. No, I decided, birds were not for me.

It was a dog I wanted. As I got stronger and more active, a dog seemed in the realm of the possible--maybe just a glimmery figure barely within the far edge of that realm, but within the realm nonetheless. And the trick, I told myself, was getting the right kind of dog. Dogs came in all shapes, sizes, ages, energy levels, and temperaments. I could get a suitable dog. For example, not a puppy, not a puppy that needs to be potty-trained and walked at six a.m. and taught not to eat books or tear your clothes to shred. Definitely not a puppy. And not a Grate Dane either. We live in a tiny apartment.

And now is when I need to come out and say I hate lap dogs. I have friends with tiny dogs, and you, dear reader, might love tiny dogs. More power to you. I don't love tiny dogs. Anything can be said to yip I do not find comforting. Anything that yips gets on my nerves. Anything that is so small that I would have to slow down to walk it would get on my nerves, because walking slowly gets on my nerves. Walking slowly is high on my on-my-nerve-getting list. It might be number one-- or number three, after yipping and blue grass music.

And also I go running. I needed a dog that would run with me so I didn't have to walk a dog after I went for a run. There are just so many hours in the day.

Last March the Poet and I were at the Ballard farmer's market when we saw two dogs, spotted brown and white and in the forty-pound range. They were dogs that looked built for running. Not ghostly-skinny greyhound type dogs, but athletic looking dogs. Their owners had lean, runner-type bodies and were wearing jeans and windbreakers that were not the windbreakers they would wear while out for a run but announced nonetheless that these people were runners. Were distinct from the grungy REI hiker fleeces you see in Seattle.

I followed these people until I caught up with them and asked them about their dogs. Pointer, French Pointers, to be exact. Yes, they were great runners. "She just ran six miles with me," the man said, petting the smaller one. "And then when they're in the apartment they just want to curl up on the couch and take a nap with you."

This was my dream dog. I needed a pointer of approximately 40lbs. A 40lb, rescue pointer that was four years old.

On August 14th I adopted a 37-lb, two-year-old, black and white pointer-mostly mix. The rescue lady had named her Oreo. As in Nabisco, as in health-rotting, environment-destroying, soulless coorporate greedsters who call what they sell us food when it is really poison. (Yes, I loved Oreos too when I was a kid.) I renamed her Cleopatra, or Cleo for short.

Cleo has a good, strong bark, but she only barks at appropriate times, for example when someone's at the door. She loves to run with me. She chases her tale and catches it several times a day! She laps up my bathwater when I am taking an epsom salt bath and gets really upset that I don't let her into the shower with me. She licks the shea butter lotion off my calves and arms and is the reason I now have under-lotioned skin. She follows me from room to room in the apartment. When take a nap she climbs on my legs and slumbers with her head on my lap. When I write, she lies on the floor at my feet and chews her bone.

She also needs to be walked, which is good. Although she will sleep however late I manage to sleep, I have to take her out every morning, and no matter how crappy I feel when I get out of bed, I'm always a little better for having walked a few blocks and then let her off the leash to chase her ball for ten minutes in the yard.

Last night I got home and was in a Lyme-medicine induced terrible mood. Plus I'd gone to the dentist. The dog walker had taken Cleo out for a long time that morning (one of my bargains with the Universe was to spend a small fortune on dog walking in exchange for having a two-year-old dog while undergoing intense Lyme treatment) so I thought I didn't really need to walk her more than a short bathroom outing. But not so. Cleo has this way of hurling herself at me when she needs to burn off energy. I was just going to have to walk her. I was tired and hungry and in tears over some stuff that had gone wrong with my rental property and it was rainy in Seattle for a change and I wanted to stay home and be miserable. I had to walk her instead.

I put on my raincoat and found my Dorothy Sayers audiobook on my iPod and got Cleo leashed up and out the door we went.

A friend had once told me about a scientific study that concluded people who own dogs walk more. It is true.

There is also a study, or two or ten thousand, that says walking elevates your mood and balances your blood sugar and lowers your heart rate is good for what ails you. It is true. I felt a whole lot better after Cleo and I walked for half an hour.

OUT TO LUNCH

Wow-- my last post was August 8. I have been woefully neglecting the blog while I worked hard on the 5th draft of my memoir and searched for an editor to help me get it ready to send to publishers. I'm glad to say I found a top-notch editor who hand picks her clients. I will be paying a small fortune to work with her but somehow it seems like I'm the one who won the lottery. Getting the book published is still a long shot, but with Marjorie working with me I know I'll have the best of all possible chances. So last week I finished draft 5. I will send it to Marjorie soon and she will read it in January. So can now get back to the blog. I'm sure the universe is wailing away for more tales of my battle with Lyme! More posts coming up, on this same bat channel.