There was a nurse who said to call or write to companies that do produce and healthy foods and tell them that you're trying to eat healthier, but there are no coupons available for their products and they'll send batches of coupons to you.

I've heard this, too. I know several people who've emailed Amy's Kitchen to say that they want to buy their stuff but it's too expensive, and they got a bunch of coupons.

I like the dude who goes out and gets a thousand dollars of food/hygiene products for free and donates it to food banks and makes care packages for the military. I think the couponing is more like a sport for him and some of the others who give food away.

The minister? Yeah, I liked him.

I would love to have a big garden and grow all my produce, and can the fruit and tomato sauce and stuff, but I've tried canning once in a while with farmers market fruit, and it takes way more time than I'd expected. I got a book of recipes for small-scale canning, like making just a few half-pint jars of something, rather than the 20 quarts or whatever that a lot of the usual recipes make. Actually, I think I'll check that to see if they've got some suggestions for what to do with the rhubarb I just bought.

Nearly all the farmers at the farmers markets around here are Amish or Mennonite. It still startles me a bit each time I go.

I knew about the guy who donates stuff and makes care packages. I think that's really cool. I hadn't heard about the family that mostly hunts their meat, that's cool.

They hunt with bow and arrow. Those arrows looked pretty flimsy -- wouldn't the deer be alive but injured for a while after being shot with an arrow? (That's the reasoning behind the Jewish prohibition on hunting -- in all likelihood, you're going to end up injuring the animal rather than killing it directly, and injuring an animal needlessly is prohibited.)

Hmm. I found the expected strawberry rhubarb jam, a rhubarb ginger jam, rhubarb gooseberry jam (I don't know where to get gooseberries), and a rhubarb, date, and apricot chutney. That chutney seems like it could be interesting, and it just makes three cups, which is manageable.

The grilled cheese truck didn't show!

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

That is tragic!

I got bonus early menopause with the chemo. I made the oncologist laugh when I shrugged and said "oh well".

Making the oncologist laugh! Now that's a skill.

No grilled cheese truck AND no french fry truck! Betrayed!

BTW, Tom, we had to run to the library. We may be back, depends on the kids.

I’m halfway through the lobster roll truck line. Only 20 more minutes to go!

for me...well, instead of giving life to someone else, it have me MY life back.

As with most chronic illnesses, it worsened by such slow increments I didn't realize how bad it really was (My GP: It's all a part of getting older. You can take three of these at the worst times) until in the midst of the usual miserable cramps, one physically jerked me double. Two months after surgery I was ecstatic at how *good* I felt--all the time!

that was the hardest damn removal I've ever done. So sorry we had to leave a bit of your cervix in there."

Yeah, my surgeon was appalled at the horrid infection my GP had somehow not detected. Because one abcessed ovary burst during surgery and contaminated the cavity, he expected a long and difficult recovery. But I think my body was just so happy and relieved to have all that gone it bounced back without a single complication. You hate to recommend major, life-changing surgery to anybody. But my experience was wonderful and life-restoring, so take from that what you will.

Meanwhile, my practicioners continue to do PAP swabs. Finally I pinned one with, "I don't have a cervix--exactly WHAT are you swabbing?" She agreed every other year was often enough for random tissue checks.

No grilled cheese truck AND no french fry truck! Betrayed!

Maybe the Rapture did happen after all--and the people who were raptured consists entirely of the folks who run the grilled cheese truck and french fry truck, and the Apple employees who were supposed to put last night's Doctor Who episode on iTunes....