Small medical update

Well, I went in to the clinic, bearing my blood-pressure log with the readings that caused dizziness circled in red. The nurse really gave the hairy eyeball after she took my blood pressure. 158/98 and I think I should cut back on my medication?

My nurse practicioner, however, looked at the log and made no difficulty at all. After some discussion, we decided to leave the hydrochlorothiazide alone because it's very cheap and is usually the one drug left when people taper off; and we decided to leave the beta blocker alone because my pulse rates were pretty high even with it. Then she asked me which of the remaining two was more expensive, and we ended by deciding to cut the lisinopril down to twenty milligrams.

Unsurprisingly, my blood pressure went up for a day or two. However, it was 106 over 67 this morning, so obviously this was not a crazy thing to try. Maybe if it stays like that I can cut another drug back. Whee.

She also told me something Eric had mentioned a few months ago, that there were new hypertension guidelines out, and that anything higher than 120 over 80 was being considered worthy of treatment or at least changes in diet and exercise habits. Yipes.

Pamela

Weekend

Eric was still recovering from the previous weekend and wished to be by himself on Friday. I made a tremendous fuss and then mostly got over it. I had a very nice evening with Raphael, having conveniently forgotten that Lydy's family was up visiting and I was invited to have dinner with them and David and Lydy. It's perhaps just as well; I understand that what really freaks them out about Lydy's romantic life is that David's wife lives in the same house and thinks the whole relationship is lovely.

In the middle of the afternoon on Saturday I went over to Eric's. We had plans to go shopping, to go to Loring Park and look at wildlife, and to go to the Minn-Stf meeting. Although I could have sworn that last weekend was Pride, David had mentioned to me when I told him goodbye that he and Joel had seen a lot of pavilions being set up in Loring Park on Friday; and indeed when Eric and I got there, there was Pride. We were much amused. We inadvertently walked into the Pride celebration last year when we were looking for the Cromulent Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night, which was incorrectly listed as taking place in Loring Park that Saturday. We had agreed that we would try to go on purpose this year, but then the weekend was too hectic.

We did some people-watching, and when the rain began we figured we'd have a late lunch or early dinner at Big E's. They don't open for dinner until 4:30, so we dawdled back to Eric's, looking at trees and plants and such birds as presented themselves. We got back to Big E's not long after 4:30, and the tables had all filled up by the time Eric had made up his mind what to order. I had the vegan etoufee, with blackened mushrooms and eggplant. It was very tasty, but, absent the richer sauce and more abundant protein of the true etoufee, a bit light. Eric had some catfish and a lovely assortment of sides. While we were eating it rained torrentially and mostly sideways, but by the time we wanted to leave it had stopped. After a pause for digestion and literature, we got on a bus and went to 42nd and Nicollet, after which we walked over to the Minn-Stf meeting, admiring and identifying trees with the aid of the book my mother gave Eric as a graduation present.

It was a very small meeting, but that did mean we got to talk to the hosts and hear dog and house stories. Eventually we went out for dinner with David, introducing Eric to Little Tijuana, where David has been eating since 1974 and I since 1977. I can't eat most of what's on the menu any more, especially since any request to not put cheese on something never makes it to the kitchen intact. But they've added a huge black-bean veggieburger, so I'm happy enough.

The sky was spectacular on the drive from the meeting to the restaurant: dark blue and dark gray and light gray lines of cloud in the north, huge puffy yellow and pink clouds in the east, huge dark clouds underlit with sunset in the west and south.

It poured while we were eating, and at one point the server came and told us that there was a tornado warning. I don't remember what all we talked about, but I enjoyed it. David then very kindly drove us back to the Minn-Stf meeting so Eric could reclaim his belt bag, and then took us to Eric's. It had stopped raining again by then. The cat was glad to see us. I read Busman's Honeymoon and Eric read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I gave up and went to sleep first. We had some good conversation and some fraught conversation, and got up late.

More later.

Pamela

Local Phenology

On my way to Eric's on Saturday, I saw a Red Admiral butterfly at the bus stop. We also saw one just outside Loring Park, and when I was going home on Sunday I saw two from the window of the bus. None in the actual yard yet, however.

The trumpet lilies and the Asiatic lilies (Sorbet, specifically) are blooming, along with hairy bellflower, orange daylily, ornamental sage, and a great deal of stuff mentioned earlier, like the daisy fleabane and the Shasta daisies and the common yarrow. The purple coneflower has buds on it. The phlox has shown no inclination to bloom yet, but it has grown tall.

Cardinals are eating mulberries, much to the interest of the cats.

Pamela

Sunday

I would say that I am nothing if not thorough, but it isn't really true.

We had thought of going to Natraj for brunch on Sunday, and of doing the shopping we had not done Saturday. But we got up quite late and were due at Elise's at 5:30 for dinner. So we had a quick lunch at Acadia, after which I was going to go home to give Eric a bit of time to himself. However, it was a perfect summer day, so we decided to go to Loring Park, on the grounds that dragonflies would not be much bothered by the Pride celebration. We went out on the little wooden dock, gazing earnestly at a small shallow bit with water lilies and a nice stand of cattails. No dragonflies for quite a while, but a number of red-winged blackbirds. I was scanning the lower bits of the cattails for perching dragonflies and saw a cunning concoction of dried plants arranged in rings like a coiled clay pot, attached somehow to a number of cattail stems. "Is that a nest?" I said. It was. A female blackbird flew busily in and out of it, and Eric was the first to spot a baby: "I see the little head!"

We eventually also saw high-flying egrets and a cormorant, and a number of blue damselflies, and a couple of darners, and, thanks to Eric's quick eye, a brief glimpse of a widow skimmer. We left reluctantly, and dawdled, as is our habit, to try to identify some handsome shrubs with red berries. Eric had thought he recognized them and tasted one of the berries the day before, just after we were cheered for kissing one another by a man in a car. "I'm going to be doing that in five minutes myself!" he said. We joked that it was nice to be cheered for apparently heterosexual kissing in that time and place.

Anyway, we couldn't identify the bushes, but Eric got some good practice in identifying box elder. I had really no idea what it looked like before now, but I think there is some in my yard.

We ran unexpectedly into an old friend of Eric's returning to the park; his family was selling jewellery there. They exchanged email addresses, and Eric told me that this was the person in whose basement had been Eric's connection to Fidonet in the nineteen-eighties.

We found a bus stop in the shade for me, and Eric was then further delayed by a male house finch, who obligingly perched on a light fixture and sang for several minutes. Eric went home, I got on the next bus, and got home just in time to look up the 23 schedule and call Eric to tell him when to be here, take a fast shower, give Raphael a back rub, and rush off again.

We ran into Elise's dear Mr. Ford on the bus.

I enjoyed the evening very much. H and X from next door were there. They had brought a huge platter of fruit, including mangoes. Mike had brought baba ganoush, hummos, and pita bread. Elise made bean glop. H is a great anecdotalist. I realized during his longest story that some of his methods and sound effects reminded me irresistably of another storyteller of my appearance, Jon Singer. I know they know one another well, but I don't know which way the effects run in this instance.

I got to talk to X a bit, and Elise took Eric and X and me up to her workshop and showed us some works in progress.

My favorite moment was probably when I mentioned Steve and Terri's theory that if one leaves a long relationship, one reverts to the age one was when it began. Mike got that look of helpless bemusement that one learns to be wary of if one knows him, and said, "I'm sorry, but I was just thinking -- Beren and Luthien? 'Excuse me, is it the First Age again?'"

In the last of sunset on a perfect summer day, we came outside and began to walk back to my place, where Eric had left his bicycle. It was a similar walk to the one we had made in the other direction to get to the Minn-Stf meeting -- we took 37th Street rather than 42nd, and went from Bloomington to Blaisdell rather than Nicollet to 11th Avenue, but the neighborhood was similar. There is an amazing variety and number of trees. On our way to the Minn-Stf meeting we'd seen a huge Douglas fir; in this direction what I recall best, aside from the large lovely silver maples, are a huge walnut tree and a big un-American elm. We also came across a wonderful garden full of blanket flower and cornflowers and lilies and delphinium; it was on a corner lot, and the people with the lot on the other side of the alley also had a long garden, but more given to leafy texture than blossom.

When we got home we had some slightly fraught conversation in the living room, and then stood in the back yard and were visited by a bat, as often but not invariably happens. Eric identified some stars for me. Then he went home, and I went in.

Pamela