Work has been busy and frustrating lately, so it hasn't left much time or energy for blogging. I did manage to have a somewhat relaxing weekend, and was able to forget about work for the most part.
I met with an acupuncturist/herbalist on Thursday, to talk about using acupuncture as a supplement to our IVF treatment. She gave me a list of dietary changes that I need to make, and it basically boils down to me no longer being able to eat anything that tastes good at all.
There's a lot of common-sense stuff on there - eat organic, lots of lean protein, no caffeine, sugar, etc. I can eat bread, but it has to be "sprouted" bread, which I guess is a method by which they take the wheat seeds and soak them until they sprout, which supposedly releases more nutrients. Everything I eat has to be slighty warmed (except fruit) - so no salads. Drinks have to be room temperature or warmer, and by drinks I basically mean water. No raw fish or seaweed, which means no sushi at all, which makes me a sad panda.
Marc and I went to Whole Foods and did a bunch of shopping over the weekend to stock up on stuff, and damn it's expensive. The bread isn't too bad - we got sliced bread, bagels, and hamburger buns. It all tastes pretty much like regular wheat bread. Dinner isn't too much of a chore - we had chicken breasts and brown rice and some veggies, which I actually really like when I'm not too lazy to cook them. Lunch is a little trickier, since lunch meats are on the "NO" list. I'm basically going to try to cook enough for dinner so that we have leftovers for lunch the next day.
We picked up some herbal mixtures on Saturday to go along with the acupuncture treatment. I'm a little skeptical that the herbs (heck, even the acupuncture) will have any effect, but I'm willing to give them a try. I feel a little bit like a hypocrite though, because I used to scoff at all the herbal stores in Chinatown when I was a kid. Although I still don't think tiger penis does anything.
The herbs are gross. They're basically in this powder form, and the first time I took it, I tried putting the spoonful of powder in my mouth and chasing it down with water. Epic fail. I gagged almost immediately, powder puffed out of my mouth, and the water caused it to turn into a paste that stuck to my teeth. It was wretched. We then tried warming up a little bit of water, dissolving the powder in it, and then drinking it that way, which worked out a lot better. Still gross though.
Saturday evening we went to Berkeley for the Cal game. I don't even have words. Kevin Riley seems to be a head case, and I'm not even sure what he's rattled by. What should've been a really promising season has gone completely down the shitter.
We spent Sunday mostly relaxing - watched a bunch of football and otherwise not accomplishing much.
In the meantime, I've been trying to nurse our big clownfish back to health - she appears to have some sort of bacterial infection (has stringy white poop), and she wasn't eating for days. I would find her just slumped over in one of the anemones, and I was sure she was dead, but she'd start swimming again once I opened the tank lid. She still has some stringy poop, but the last couple of days she's been nibbling at food and eating a bit, and she seems much more active, so hopefully she's getting better.
While we're dealing with fish poop issues, we're also dealing with kitten poop issues - we're vacation sitting for one of the cat fosters. She has 4 kittens, one of which has diarrhea. All 4 have to get medicated though, since they're all together, so I'm having to medicate these guys twice a day, which isn't the most fun thing to do. It's kind of nice having kittens (though these guys are more like teenagers) in the house again, even though they're pretty messy.
Okay, that's enough outta me for today.
Aye Bonz!
Good luck with all this!!!