Chocolate Castles as wel

Well, here we are in Orlando, Florida enjoying the great state of sunshine and oranges. Except for today when it is cloudy and cold…and I have the flu. We were told that when we got to Florida everything would be sunny and glorious. That the weather now would just be perfect. And for most parts it has been, other than a few days of rain which was really neat to cool the day off. Guido has decided in the last couple of days that he is growing his mustache back. He told me that he thinks he looks to young to be with me so has decided before we go to Italy next month that he will grow it back so that we look more closely matched. When he left this morning for errands, I had the locks changed.
A friend of mine has been telling me about all the brain exercises that she and her husband do on the computer that is suppose to help your brain keep active. They do sound really fun and probably do work, but I told her that we have a game of our own that is not on the computer and that is certainly keeping our brains active.
The game is called, “keep moving around to different addresses”. As I was writing a few cards this morning while sitting and resting and drinking lots of Dr Pepper to help me get over the flu (I wonder if that is what the Dr meant when she told me to go home and drink lots of fluids?), I started to think about all the zip codes I have had to remember to put on cards and bills since we left Arizona the end of December. Yes, I know we could get a PO box and have everything sent there, but what is the fun in that? It is more fun to keep people guessing where we are and how long we will be in each spot.
Our kids have given up. They just text us and ask us what we are having for dinner and that helps them know where we are. For instance, if we are having Tex-Mex or Whataburger, we are in Texas. If we are having fried seafood, we are probably in Louisiana or Florida. If we are having Fried Chicken, grits and Pee..can pie, we have traveled a little north to Savannah, so I can hopefully catch a glance of Paula. Surely the third time will be successful. But, getting back to our memory, each time we settle for a little bit, I have to learn a new return address and zip code.
The last few days when I finally decided to find a urgent care to see if I was diabetic, dying from high blood pressure or high cholesterol, just the exercise of calling a million different places to see if they took our insurance was exercise enough for a week. After calling about 10 places, we found an urgent care about 25 miles away. Then we add it to our phones and have to navigate our way there, fill out 10 sheets of paper and then if you haven’t died yet, you get to wait for an hour to see a 15 year old Dr. But, my brain has had a great workout this week. So hopefully after I am over the flu I will feel good enough to try my hand at one of the brain games on my phone. But right now, I think it has had a good enough workout for a few days.
FYI, all the things you have heard that are signs of having the flu are not complete.
The only symptoms I had were: weakness, dizziness and so tired, I felt like I had baked 100 cupcakes in an hour and tried to walk in a pair of 3″ high heals.
No fever,no congestion, no cold symptoms, but when I crawled into the Urgent Care office, I tested positive for Type A…go figure! Would have never even thought about having the flu. But was to go home and rest and drink and stay away from others. I thought all the symptoms that I was having were a result of giving blood on Saturday.
Randy and I had seen a Blood Donating Bus in front of the movie theatre a couple weeks back with a sign out front that said “Donate Today and get 2 free movie tickets” Well, you don’t have to ask Randy twice to do anything if he is going to get something free. So Saturday morning we awoke to him saying, “let’s go online to see if the blood mobile is still in front of the movie house and we can get 4 free movie tickets.” Bless his heart, he gets so excited when he knows he can get free stuff. So off we went to the blood mobile. We climbed the stairs into the big red bus, filled out the forms and gave my butter laden blood to a poor recipient who, I pray will not have a heart attack from getting my blood. But as the technician gave us our paperwork for the free movie ticket, it said we would get one free ticket. WHAT? I had gone through all that for one ticket? When I ask her about getting two free tickets, she replied that that was a special promotion that weekend only and we only got one ticket each now. We took our free cookie, free movie pass and climbed down the stirs with a disappointed heart. I looked at Randy and said that if he took me to Dillards, I would forgive him for making me go through that ordeal for one ticket. So we walked across the parking lot to Dillards. By the time I got inside the door, I was close to fainting and about to vomit. So he sat me in a chair right inside the door in the shoe department. Normally any shoe department would immediately energize me but not today. I told him that he had better ask someone really fast where a bathroom was as I was about to loose it. So off he goes in search of a bathroom. People began to come over to me and ask me if I’m ok. I guess I looked worse that I had thought. The manager comes over and tells me she is going to call EMS and sends another lady over to get me a water. I assure her that my husband is someplace in the store and that he will surely be back in a few minutes and I will be fine. the 3 ladies standing over me tell me I don’t look fine and proceed to ask my husbands name. When I tell them, the manager pages Randy over the store intercom to please come meet his wife in the shoe dept immediately. Well, about 10 min later, here comes Mr. Turtle, moozing over to where he had left me. It took 3 people to help me walk to the car. As soon as I could talk I began to ask him where he had gone and why did it take him so long to come back. He told me he had finally found the bathroom on the second level. And anyone who knows Randy knows how slow he walks on a normal day. When I told him that I had got concerned that maybe he had walked off someplace and got as week and faint as I had got, he told me “no I was fine but just could not find any bathrooms on the first floor. When I ask him if he heard his name being called out over the intercom he replied no, he did not hear it. Our next brain exercise will be to find an ENT Dr. for him that takes our insurance.
I guess I already had the flu and giving blood just sent me over the top. So my advice to you is, if you are not feeling exactly “chipper” do not give blood, even if they are giving away free tickets to anything. It is not worth it. When I get well, Randy has assured me I get to choose which movie we see with our free ticket. He just gets sweeter and sweeter.