So I was back to work last Monday, teleworking except for the afternoon James went to the doctor. I already have an order awarded, two advertised, and three more in progress. I spent the first morning just cleaning 500+ e-mails out of my Outlook box and following up on a delivery that still had not been made (and still hadn't when I logged off on Thursday—grrrr...).

Friday was my compressed day off, and I did my best to sleep late, as even getting up at seven seems exhausting. I will never be a morning person!

We started out the shopping on Friday at Nam Dae Mun, the Asian/exotic grocery on Spring Road. We wanted low sodium teriyaki sauce and none of the grocery stores carry it. We did pick it up there, as well as some tea and Light Asian Sesame Kraft salad dressing, which none of the grocery stores seem to stock, either. James was still looking for little packets of no-salt seasoning. They gave them to him at Northside, so the hospital has to get it from somewhere. We tried a new place on Roswell Road called Restaurant Depot. We had gone to the little restaurant supply store in Smyrna, and it was just supplies, but this place had food, too: big containers of spices and herbs, big bags of shrimp, big cans of veggies, etc. along with cooking implements. Well, they had everything but little no-salt packets: little honey packets, tiny jellies, lemon juice packets, salt and pepper, of course, syrup, sugar substitutes, in short, nada.

If life gives you no Mrs. Dash, go to a bookstore. We did, the Barnes & Noble at Town Center. I'd already ordered the book I wanted with the coupon I had, and James got the new 1632 book with his, plus the recipe book from the Cook's Country television show, which was on remainder, and a magazine. I wanted the new Entertainment Weekly, but they didn't have it out yet. I bought it on Zinio instead.

We had never had lunch, so we went over to Hibachi Grill early enough to get the lunch rate. James chose food as carefully as he could, trying to pick the less salty things, and he mostly had vegetables and some watermelon. I pretty much stuck to chicken and had one shrimp. No scallops in the afternoon, though. Had watermelon instead. He did have a headache later, and figured they had used MSG.

We were in bed early Friday night because James' followup appointment with the cardiac surgeon was at 8:30. Yes, a.m. on a Saturday morning. All the way on the other side of town at the Gwinnett County Kaiser office. We had no trouble with traffic, but when we got there the building was closed and there were two other people waiting outside. However, there was an arrow pointing to the "specialty building," so trundling off we went. Yes, this building was open. We ended up sharing the elevator with James' doctor!

Well, it was a really strange appointment. We thought we would be discussing when James would have the other stent(s) put in. Instead the doctor took an EKG and asked James if he was having any kind of chest pain (running through a checklist). James responded honestly and said he had none, even climbing stairs. The doctor then said he wanted James to continue watching his diet and making sure no edema was returning, and do as much exercising as he can with his arthritis, stay off work until his temp disability payments expire, and then go back to work. He'll have more blood tests on September 1 to monitor the kidney function. But he doesn't want to put the other stent in right away; he said the stents they put in at Piedmont corrected the "ticking time bomb" portion of the event. His analogy was a tree. He fixed James' "trunk" and the other blockage is in a very small branch. He said if there's no trouble (i.e. chest pain, heaviness, breathlessness, etc.) in the next few weeks he isn't going to worry about the "branch" unless the chest pain comes back. Right now our job is the kidney function. Very unexpected.

Anyway, since we were already on that side of town, we stopped at the Buford Highway Farmer's Market. We haven't been able to find cardamom anywhere (it's good for meat), and I wanted frisee if we were going to have salad. We also got some nice pork chops (enough for four meals) and some chicken thighs and ground turkey), plus I stocked up on lupini beans and some peppermint chocolate for desserts. We also stopped on Roswell Road to get James some alternate-salt seasonings at Penzey's Spices, and get a few things at Trader Joe's.

With all this we still got home in time for James to head for his club meeting. I let him go on his own for the first time since the heart attack. It was a bit scary for me at least. Not sure how he felt. I had a headache, so after tidying up the house a little I lay down on the futon until Juanita and Betty arrived. They had let me know they were coming by with a turkey from Honey-Baked Ham as a welcome-home for James and also so we didn't have to stress so much about making a couple of dinners. I was happy to see them; it was nice to have a really good chat with someone about what had happened, and get it all off my chest. James arrived home from the meeting in time to talk for a little while, too.

We had supper at O'Charley's because we had a coupon; they made James' steak with light salt and we both had big salads and plain baked potatoes. Afterwards we stopped at Kroger to finish the shopping.

James was up early this morning to finish thawing the turkey and then warming it up (it was already cooked). His mom and sister were driving up from Warner Robins to join us for dinner. We cleaned off the dining room table so we could actually eat at it (I know! What a concept!) and cleaned off the rocking chair so James mom could have a nice place to sit. They arrived just as James had finished resting the turkey and completed the potatoes and heated the gravy, and we sat down to all that as well as carrots and carrot salad. We had a nice chat at table, and while watching House Hunters, and during dessert (trifle they brought along with our strawberries). It was a great afternoon, and after they left, we dismembered the turkey. We now have four packages of breast meat to eat with salad, two legs for a meal, two big wings for a meal, one bag of thigh meat for a meal, and a carcass to make soup with.

And now we're watching 50 Years of Star Trek to end up the weekend.

Labels: food, friends, relatives, shopping, television

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