This is my youngest when she was litle.





This is the older two when they were young.

Yesterday I went to the dialysis clinic for my monthly checkup. My nurse checked my vitals and gave me a flu shot. My social worker asked if I need to speak to her about anything, but I didn’t. Then I had a quick visit with my dietician, about my nutrition levels. My blood is tested every month because dialysis does not do as good a job as working kidneys do, and I am supposed to follow a special renal diet.

When I first started dialysis 3 ½ years ago, I was malnourished and weighed just over a hundred lbs., and I had a high time getting my protein level up. Dialysis does not remove Phosphorus from the blood, which is present in all foods, so I have to take binders with every thing I eat. There are foods that I am supposed to avoid because they are high in phosphorus, such as milk and dairy, and anything that comes from a nut, seed or bean.

This diet presented a problem at first because before I got sick I was practically a vegetarian, I ate eggs, chicken and turkey occasionally but must of my protein came from peanut butter, sesame butter on whole grain bread, and soy beans. All had to be eliminated from my diet, and my dietician and doctor said that if I wanted to live I had to start eating red meat.

The worst part was that I was told to avoid eating chocolate since it comes from cocoa beans which are actually a seed. So I had to give up many of my favorite foods, yogurt, cheese, ice cream and try to eat meat, and they wanted me to gain weight.

It seemed impossible at first but I am happy to report that my phosphorus and protein levels have been right on target for over a year now, and I have gained back 30 lbs. I have also found that I can get by with red meat once a week and I can have milk and dairy a few times a month, and I can also eat small amounts of chocolate.

Well my Thanksgiving went just as planned, the food was great, and the step kids stayed for almost 2 hours. After they left hubby and I relaxed and had a drink.

My daughter goes to a small school that doesn’t have enough science teachers so she had to take a virtual science course. She is not very good at keeping up with her assignments and I just found out that she is 4 weeks behind, so I have been brushing up on my high school chemistry so that I can help her. The course itself is very time consuming, there is no text book, they just reference different web sites so you have to search around a bunch of different sites to find the answers.

My daughter’s boyfriend came to visit from North Dakota, he stayed with us for 2 nights and they stayed over at my ex’s for 3 nights. He seems like a really nice kid, very polite and soft spoken. He and my daughter spent every waking minute practically attached to each other. Their long good-bye at the airport was filled with tears, kisses and embraces so passionate, I felt as though I were watching a movie—a real tear-jerker.

My husband is a good cook and he enjoys doing it so he usually cooks our Thanksgiving meal. Most of the time my daughter goes to her dad’s house as she will be doing this year. So usually it’s the two of us and his two children, his son is 27, and his daughter is 29.

They are both single, and they usually go out and party the night before, so they sleep most of the day and show up right at dinner time, eat and leave. So they are here a total of a little over an hour. Neither one of them have ever even stayed for desert.

This is so different from Thanksgiving in my family, which is an all day affair. Most Italian families have a first course of pasta and generally spend the whole afternoon eating. In my family I always was in charge of desserts and would make 2 or 3 different kinds.

So this year my husband decided that it wasn’t really worth it to go through all of that trouble. He thought we could spend a leisurely morning in bed and then go out to eat. Each year he gets a $50 gift certificate from work so he offered to give it to his daughter and suggested that she make dinner and invite her brother and maybe a few friends over, and told her that he and I were going out to eat.

I was excited because they have some wonderful all-you-can-eat buffets at the big hotels in Orlando and I had always wanted to do that. So I got online to find one that was reasonably priced.

Well his daughter called back with a bunch of excuses about why she couldn’t have Thanksgiving at her house.

She said she doesn’t know how to cook a turkey, so he told her that the directions are included when you buy one. The woman is almost 30 years old and she can’t figure out how to cook a turkey.

Then she said that she doesn’t have a dining room table, so he got annoyed and told her he’d call her back, and so he asked me if we could change our plans.

So I told him that it is his decision since he is the one that would be cooking, so guess what? He is cooking and his kids are coming over. Now he has to get up early and cook all day, then after they leave he’ll have to clean up, and then he’ll be ready for a nap.

So I hope a bunch of you will be blogging on Thanksgiving so that I’ll have something to do.

I suffer from chronic depression and always have a difficult time this time of year.

Saturday was a beautiful day so we went for a long motorcycle ride and spent the whole day outdoors.

The company my husband works for is closing in a few months so he'll be out of a job. He was upset last week, but is doing better now and is optimistic about finding another job.

On Sunday my husband cooked a wonderful seafood dinner, with mussels, clams, lobster, shrimp and scallops. And we had cheesecake for dessert.