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Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

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Trying to eat healthier meals

February 13, 2009 by Tricia

I’ve always tried to cook healthy meals for Chris and I, but over the last few months and especially the last two weeks since Chris got out of the hospital I’ve really stepped it up.

We’d occasionally have a pre-made frozen dinner such as Loblaws Blue Menu grilled vegetable lasagna, but after re-reading the ingredients list and cholesterol listings on the package we’ve even cut that out of our “occasional easy food menu”. Chris has really high bad and good cholesterol levels as well as very low triglycerides. He’s on medication now to control his cholesterol and given the way we normally eat we don’t think our diet has much to do with his high cholesterol levels even the docs say it’s probably genetic, but it sure can’t hurt either him or I to eat even better.

Lately we’ve been eating a lot of skinless boneless chicken breasts. I bake them in the oven in a casserole dish and they are very tender and moist. I also steam up to three different veggies in the microwave – usually carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Last night we had Teriyaki chicken and tonight we’re going to have chicken breasts marinated in a honey Dijon marinade. Yummy.

Sometime in the future when we have a little extra cash I’d love to get a fruit and vegetable juice extractor. We used to have a juicer but we found that we didn’t use it as much as we should have and gave it to Chris’ aunt. Of course now that it’s gone, and now that we are really trying to eat healthy, I’d love to have a fruit and veggie juicer again. Store bought juices contain far too many sugars and well, buying veggie juices in a health food store is pretty expensive. I don’t see why I can’t make our own carrot juice and other juices right at home.

Each year we grow strawberries, raspberries, carrots and tomatoes in our “flower” garden so I could even save money by using the fruit and veggies that we grow to make juice too.

As I said we don’t have any extra money right now so I’ll have to wait until we have some spare cash and wait for a juicer to go on sale before we get one, but I think that’s definitely on our want list. In the mean time we’ll just eat as many fruit and veggies as we can – they certainly help fill you up and they’re healthy.

Do you read the ingredient labels on the items you buy in the grocery store? Have you been trying to eat healthier lately too?





Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Garden, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Nutrition, Shopping Tagged With: chicken, cholesterol, diet, dijon, eat_healthy, extractor, foods, fruit, healthy, healthy_diet, heart, husband, juicer, sale, Shopping, sick, skinless_breasts, teriyaki, vegetables

Is this a kitten or an alien creature?

February 11, 2009 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

tiny wet kitten

Poor pathetic looking tiny tiny wet kitten!

I think cats are one of the funniest looking creatures when wet. 

They look scrawny, tiny (and this kitten really is tiny!) and their eyes look abnormally HUGE.  The big whiskers and ears don’t help all that much either.

Isn’t this a cute picture though? I wonder why such a young kitten needed a bath?

Filed Under: Humor, Pets and animals, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: alien, bath, cat, funny, Humor, kitten, weird, wet, wordlesswednesday, WW

Chris is home from the hospital and feeling better!

February 8, 2009 by Tricia

It feels like forever since I last made a post in this or any of my other blogs! In fact I think this is the longest absence I’ve had on this blog!

Well if you read the last post you’ll know why! Chris was admitted to the hospital with chest pains or rather a strong pressure feeling in his left chest and dizziness last Friday and he was in the hospital until early Monday evening. He had to wait until Monday before they could do the angiogram to make sure that his coronary arteries were clear (they were!), and then he was discharged on Monday evening to recover at home from the angiogram. He was also sent home with a prescription for cholesterol lowering medication (Crestor) since his good and bad cholesterol was sky high and his triglycerides almost non-existent.

So at this point he’s fine. They couldn’t find anything wrong with his heart, but he still has those symptoms (not now, but every now and then) and a permanently changed electrocardiogram reading that makes it look like he has that rare heart arrhythmia called Brugada.

We have to set up some out patient tests – like a 48 hour Holter monitor (like a 2 day constant ECG) and a stress test as well as followups with two doctors. Otherwise he’s all recovered from the angiogram and the needle in his groin and he’ll be going back to work on Tuesday.

One neat thing that happened or that might have happened this weekend … apparently there’s a big cardiology conference here in Toronto this weekend and one of the two doctors that discovered the rare heart arrhythmia, Brugada, that Chris might have (but tests can’t prove) are apparently attending the conference. So the cardiologist that first saw Chris on Friday when he was admitted asked Chris if he could discuss Chris’ case with Dr. Brugada himself at the conference. I presume he’ll also be taking Chris’ ecg as that is the biggest indicator that Chris might have this rare arrhythmia. Isn’t that cool? The discoverer of Chris possible heart problem might look at Chris’ case?

So I guess we’ll know sometime early this week what Dr. Brugada thinks of Chris’ ecg and symptoms. If he does think that Chris might have Brugada then Chris will have to have a pacemaker defibrillator installed which will shock him and get his heart going again if it suddenly stops due to this rare arrhythmia. Not a great thing, but I’d rather Chris have something that could save his life than living in the unknown and possibly losing him suddenly. That’s stressful!

As for me … well, Chris’ illness took a toll on my health as well. The hospital’s close by and within walking distance so I was trekking back and forth for four days bringing Chris things like my Laptop, dvds to watch on the computer, his big heavy pillow from our bed, clothes, toiletries, reading materials etc … and well of course my Crohn’s got worse, and so did my back. My back’s been bad for most of the last year and walking a block or two sets off spasms. I seriously think my vitamin D deficiency has weakened my bones and that’s why my back is getting worse and worse – the top of my left thigh – to below my knee is now numb (since Monday or so) as well, so something is pinching a nerve.

Plus I seem to have hurt my wrist last week – how I don’t know – maybe playing with the dog, so my wrist has been aching enough for the last week and a half that I’ve even wondered if it was broken! Hopefully it’s just a muscle or tendon that’s been pulled, but if this keeps up I’ll get it checked out this week -as well as getting a back xray!

So basically, Chris came home from the hospital on Monday evening feeling pretty good – well his groin and right leg hurt a lot due to the angiogram, but it’s better now … and I came home a mess! I was exhausted, had abdominal pains from the Crohns plus fevers, back pain and wrist pain … you name it. It took until about yesterday for me to start feeling somewhat better. That’s the main reason I haven’t written all week! Just feeling too crappy, plus the wrist makes it harder to type.

Ha, between Chris and I we’re a sad tale. LOL God forbid we start looking for life insurance quotes or anything like that. I’m sure the companies would just laugh at us right now.

I certainly hope that you have all had a better week than Chris and I have. I also hope that those of you who are getting some unseasonably warm weather (north east) are enjoying watching the snow melt away. We certainly are … although Midnight, our Lab, who likes to pee in snow banks is finding it strange.

Speaking of Midnight – the stress of the last week took a toll on her too. Between having three people she’s not used to in the house (the in-laws and Chris’ aunt) and the excitement that goes along with that, being in her crate for longer than normal while I was away visiting Chris in the hospital and of course missing Chris it threw her off. By Sunday she was barely eating her food (and she’s a Lab – they live to eat!). It took her until Thursday or so to start eating mostly normally again. She’s still being a little picky, but she’s pretty much back to normal. I guess she didn’t like all the changes and stress anymore than I did. I’m glad she’s pretty much acting like her old self as I was beginning to wonder is she too might be sick.

Also, thanks to everyone who left kind messages in my last post wishing Chris well. We really appreciated each and every comment. Thank you.

Filed Under: Chronic Pain, Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Inflammatory bowel disease, Items to Try, Life with Chris, Our Puppy, Toronto Tagged With: angiogram, arrhythmia, back_pain, brugada, chest_pain, Chris, crohns, Doctors, dog, eating, heart, ill, sick, Sore, Stress, vitamin_d_deficiency, Walking, wrist

Dog sprayed by a skunk? Here’s the solution

January 26, 2009 by Tricia

Yesterday evening after my husband had been watching a show about California’s green energy program a show about Skunks came on PBS. It was part of their Nature series.

I’ve always been kind of fascinated by skunks. There were several in my hometown neighborhood in Ottawa, and now that we have our own house here in Toronto I’ve noticed that we have a number of skunks around here too.

I’ve never had a problem with skunks. If I see one I stay away from it and try not to startle it. Plus I know that they don’t climb, so our yard being solidly fenced all the way around (in the back) it’s unlikely that we’ll have any skunks in our backyard unless they dig under the fence.

Now that we have a dog I’m a little more cautious about skunks. Midnight, our Labrador Retriever (18 months old) thinks every animal or person she comes across is a potential friend. Typical of the breed I believe.

We always walk her on leash in our neighborhood. In part because it’s the law around here and secondly because she’s so excitable I’m afraid she’d run out in front of a car if we didn’t!

There are some nice off leash areas here in Toronto, but the only one that worries me as an area where she might disturb a skunk is the off leash area in Taylor Creek park. It has a large wooded area, trails and of course that pond that she likes to take a dip in every time we go there.

One great tip that I picked up from the “Skunk” show was how to easily remove that skunk smell if you or your dog gets sprayed by a skunk.

Get rid of that skunk spray smell

Go outside with a bucket and the following three ingredients:

  • 1. 1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide (you can get that in your local drug store)
  • 2. 1/4 cup Baking Soda
  • 3. 1 teaspoon liquid detergent

Mix the three ingredients together in the bucket. I think it will fizz up, so use it while it’s fresh.

If it’s your dog that’s been sprayed by a skunk use a pitcher or measuring cup to gently pore the solution over your dogs fur. Be careful not to get it in your dogs eyes. Let the solution sit on your dogs fur for about five minutes and then rinse with clean water.

I know the old cure is to bath your dog or yourself in tomato juice but they said on the show that that just covers up or masks the smell for a while … the real cure is the solution I listed above.

One other thing that I learned while I was watching the show was that it seems that where feral cats are located in cities there are often a lot of skunks. In one town discussed on the show the cats and skunks were actually hanging out together. Since there were so many skunks in town they were becoming a problem for the residents so once the towns people discovered the correlation between the feral cats and skunks people stopped leaving food out for the free roaming cats and the skunk population went down!

Most of the years we’ve lived here I’ve seen a few free roaming cats regularly visiting my garden during the day and night. I didn’t see them very often last year, but I think that might be because of the dog. Anyway … that got me thinking that we might have more skunks running around this area because of the free roaming cats too. If you’ve noticed the same in your area encourage your neighbors not to leave food out for the cats and other opportunistic animals and maybe you’ll notice a drop in skunks in your general area too.

Filed Under: Pets and animals, Television, Toronto Tagged With: dog, feral_cats, get rid of skunk smell, get_rid_of_skunk_smell, Neighborhood, skunk spray, skunks, skunk_smell, skunk_spray, smell, spray_solution

Winter is almost half over!

January 25, 2009 by Tricia

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Today I’m thinking about spring. Only two more months and we’ll be starting to come out of this frigid, icy, snowing winter!

I know I’ve posted this photo or a similar one in the past, but I love the light bright green of the hosta leaves and the purple of the grape hyacinth (muscari) just go so well together. Plus this photo makes me think of spring, spring flowers, the scent of spring, first cut grass and more.

Muscari and Hosta 2

Are you as happy as I am that Winter is almost half over?

Filed Under: Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, Photography, Toronto, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: flowers, garden, grape_hyacinth, greens, Green_Thumb_Sunday, GTS, hosta, Muscari, purple, spring, winter

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