Getting On Regular

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I'm up early this morning. That's because I went to bed early last night. I lay in my bed waiting for the morning light to shine through the window on the south side of my bedroom to tell me that the day has started for the working folk. Many mornings I lie there for a while and listen to the morning traffic noises to begin. I was too antsy to do that this morning. When I did finally get up the clock on my computer said it was earlier than I thought. Four a.m.

The only thing on the television was the all-night news shows that I like. They run on for hours reviewing the past weeks news. They have the new presenters giving it their best in the hope that they'll get on regular. I used to go through that feeling a lot working in construction. Many "road whores" that work the industrial construction circuit will say they like being on the road, but given the chance to "get on regular" a great majority of them would probably say "Yes."

It's really quiet at this time of the morning. I should have been getting up this time of the day to write. There is no reason whatsoever that I shouldn't. I don't have any appointments for anything until the nineteenth when I have to go face the rheumatologist and decide whether to tell him I'm not taking his drugs. My high school class is having a reunion on the seventeenth at a pizza joint. These people got real class. I like it okay. At least they have a salad bar and non-meat spaghetti sauce.

Starting a vegetarian diet is not such an odd move for me. It started out with me thinking that the Atkin's low carb diet might be responsible for the onset of my arthritis. For a fairly long time I didn't eat much else but meat, and when I read that older people lose some of their digestive juices as they age, I figured that it was the load I put on my digestive system that caused my body to revolt. I didn't plan to go on a vegetarian diet. My intent was simply to cut back on or eliminate meat for my GI tract's sake. After a few weeks of that, the change was such an improvement I decided to go all the way with it.

I stopped eating meat on December 1, 2009. It's been colorful. My sister-in-law got me interested in the wheatgrass diet about the same time as I decided go meatless, and that has been a real influence. I bought a real expensive juicer in order to give it a whirl. Then, I had to use it or feel stupid. Using it has been a lesson unto me.

Take pineapples for instance. I used to buy cans of sliced pineapple basically to drink the juice in the can. I didn't really know that until I bought a fresh pineapple at the grocery store, brought it home, sliced it up, and fed it to my masticating juicer without peeling it. My juicer did the same thing with it that it does with the wheat grass and celery and carrots. It smashed the fresh juice out of it and vomited out the peeling as pulp that will become compost. Very tasty.

The sprouting of seeds I've been doing has been enlightening. I got all worked up about getting the wide-mouth jars and the stainless steel screens I use to germinate and sprout them. I located several fairly local places where I can find good seeds. My first efforts were actually the most successful sprouting I've done. The surprising part of it is how little it takes for one person.

I thought at first that I'd have to start a new jar of sprouts maybe every day, but it didn't take too long before I had more sprouts than I could eat before they got too old. My stomach has a time with digesting raw food. It can only process about a cup or two a day, and those two cups of sprouts plus the wheatgrass smoothies I make are as much food as it takes for me to have more than I need to stay healthy.

Raw foods may make as much trouble for my digestive system as meat. It takes a lotta gall to break those vegetables down to being useful. That's part of the reason I bought a masticating juicer instead of a centrifugal one. I don't have any upper molars left to chew food with without my partial dentures. The dentures I have don't fit now, if they ever did, and the side affects of the methotrexate causes sores in my mouth and especially my tongue, and it can be very irritating to wear the dentures. I manage to chew some with my front teeth, but it becomes very obvious that's not what they were designed to do.

The prednisone series is finished a couple of days ago, and I'm finally becoming sane again. I've had people tell me they hate using steroids because they get bold and say stuff they wouldn't usually say. That's the exact reason I like it. Sure, I get a lotta accusations of being crazy, but that's normal for me. I found out a lotta hidden stuff that's useful I wouldn't have found out otherwise.
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