Please Beam Me Up Biscotti

Are there some wee jokes or memes that tickle your funny bone?  I hope so.  Humour helps I find.  Humour makes the difference & just plain makes what feels like the unbearable actually bearable in my experience.  I don’t want to live in a world big or small without humour truthfully.  I don’t remember many days  where at least part of the day has  not included a good old fashioned belly laugh thank goodness.  I look for humour on purpose if necessary but most days I am either laughing at some sort of curflufal that I have created or a joke comes into one of my social media feeds naturally.  Don’t you think we ought to promote more of what makes us joyful?  I do & one of the things that I love, love, love big time is humour.

A couple of memes ended up in my social media feed this week that resonated with me & were just plain timely.  One of the memes was about that feeling that we can get of either feeling on top of the world or like a “broken biscuit.”  That pretty much describes life with diabetes don’t you think?  When blood sugars magically come into range for a while I know I get ten times more done & put a lot of life into the day of living.  I become pretty much the energizer bunny & those days just plain rock big time.  Those days I appreciate even more & they are the days that remind me of what life felt like before November 29, 2007 (before type 1 diabetes).  Whether I feel on top of the world or like a broken biscuit though the common denominator is that humour is medicinal to me.   Diabetes itself obviously is not funny but there are aspects about life with diabetes that I choose to poke fun at.  What’s the other choice?  Well it could be to be a woe is me kind of person aka a victim & no thanks to that.  When I am in a big time high blood sugar I will pretty much always say that I am about to pull up a straw to drink most of Lake Ontario.  Silly me since I can actually picture that in basically a cartoon form.  Low blood sugar is nasty & I find in my experience that high blood sugar is beastly & slows me down the most for extended periods of time.  That kind of infuriates me because I am still learning the life lesson to do what I can with whatever life throws my way & then let go.  Letting go after I have done everything I can is difficult because I am a stubborn rascal admittedly.  Small steps are being made though so that is progress be it ever so sloth like.  High blood sugars try to turn me into a sloth for sure.  With 3 sons home for summer holidays though there is no way being a sloth is an option.  My rascal stubborn streak also demands that as a family that we live life to the fullest & some days that is the motivational push that I need to get through a day filled with high blood sugars.  The second humourous meme that tickled my funny bone this past week is one where the caption was “beam me up biscotti.”  It had a photo of biscotti dressed up in the assorted Star Trek uniform colours from the original Star Trek tv show series.  My husband likes sci fi shows although I will admit to many an eyeball roll back in university days when the Next Generation Star Trek show came on & he insisted that I should give it a chance.  The “beam me up Scotty” line has a way of creeping into every day language.  My husband is an engineer so when I happened upon a Scotty action figure from the original Star Trek as well as a Howard from the Big Bang Theory I knew that I had to get those for him for his office at work.  Our sons have added to that collection for his work desk including:  a musical & talking Darth Vadar as well as a stuffy unicorn.  Yes, my husband has a bit of an eccentric sense of humour yet thank goodness for a sense of humour. 

Man oh man I have been fighting the big broken biscuit high blood sugar trend now since last Thursday.  Just like a unicorn I have no idea where this trend has come from & I am having a brutal time trying to get blood sugars in range.  I have been lucky to see 1 out of 12 blood tests in any day since Thursday under a blood sugar of 10 (Canadian measures) & have mostly seen ugly numbers ranging from 14-24 (Canadian measures).  I am eating, exercising, getting up at the same time as always & going to sleep (well attempting) at the same time yet for some weird reason my blood sugars are trying to knock me on my butt with the constant highs.  As a wee humourous aside this morning I did something that I rarely do & that was that I forgot to turn off my insulin pump when I disconnected for my morning shower.  When I reconnected insulin of course spurted out on my fresh shirt & pants so I declared that insulin would be the perfume of the day.  I will say that my freak out point with high blood sugar is the point where my blood sugar goes above 20 (Canadian measures) prior to bed.  That happened last Thursday night & that stunk because that meant no sleep just corrections & doing blood tests every 2 hours & testing for ketones on top of that.  What a headache literally.  Beam me up Scotty to my happy place…the land of the gorgeous 5.5 ville.  I will get there but right now it is brutal & if you have diabetes too then you know exactly what I mean.  Lows can come in waves & highs too out of nowhere for me & maybe you find that too.  Smooth waters are welcome when blood sugars are in range that’s for sure.  The smooth waters will come again & because none of us to my knowledge can be beamed up the feisty fight is on to get to the in range numbers again.  It sounds a wee bit counterintuitive to say that to get to peace being feisty is a requirement but I have experienced this exact phenomenon in every aspect of my life.  I am a feisty in range blood sugar fighter Jim not an engineer so at times when my engineer husband talks to me about the parallels between blood sugar control & process engineering I listen intently if I am in range & if I have high blood sugars I am less than a good student.  My husband sometimes shows his love with graphs & equations literally when he downloads my blood sugar data.  I will admit that if I am in high blood sugar I don’t want to look at the graphs so we have a code so that he knows when it is a good time or not to talk about process controls.  My husband has a soft heart although he is perceived as intimidating to many people.  He is a no nonsense, no small talk person who is the most honest person I know.  He also does not panic.  That comes in handy since I am a sensitive, emotional person who sometimes needs to just take a breath.  He tells me that he appreciates how I teach him how to “play nice in the sandbox.”  Okay, so where does the “beam me up biscotti” come into play this week?

Isn’t it exhilarating to meet new people especially super thoughtful gems?  There are no words to express my appreciation for my family & friends as I have shared with you countless times before.  My Dad is the person who almost daily sends me a humourous email & I love that big time.  There is nothing like having a laugh with that first morning cup of coffee.  I pinch myself to be so fortunate to share a bond with so many family & friends as well of care, encouragement & love.  Sure there are some irritations out in the world & unfortunate behaviours in the wide wide world but I would rather concentrate on the beautiful family & friends that I am blessed to have in my life.  I like to say to our sons often “choose wisely.”  This pertains to pretty much everything.  They have made some pretty super choices about friendships as well & this gives this mom so much peace.  No life is perfect but there’s the important & then there’s the rest is the way that I look at it.  I may have shared this with you before but just in case I will mention it again…I am addicted to a double espresso daily at 2pm.  It is like a beacon of enjoyment.  Prior to being diagnosed with celiac I also really liked having a small biscotti.  I have a circle of lovely Italian friends who use to make homemade biscotti & bring over for visits.  We would all laugh about how I had a lot to learn about “proper” espresso since I made it with an automatic machine.  They described a small pot that sounded a lot like a percolator of sorts that “proper” espresso should be made out of on the stove.  Then I switched us all over to tea which is something that yes grasshopper I have massive experience with.  My espresso friends came over to the light side & began to look forward to tea instead at my home & that is what we have now although we almost always reference with a laugh my improper espresso.  Thankfully I have found a gluten free biscotti that is delicious so about once a month I add one of those biscotti to my improperly made espresso.  This morning I opened one eye & grabbed my glucose meter & crossed my fingers for something under 10 to magically appear on my meter.  A gross looking 15.4 stared back at me yet again.  I really did feel like taking a hammer to my glucose meter.  I am a grown up though so instead I just started to the day with the breakfast of champions for people living with type 1 diabetes who have high blood sugar…insulin.  It worked out well that our second born son, Brian had made plans to go to a buddy’s house so taking him over took my mind off needing to delay breakfast due to high blood sugar.  How silly is high blood sugar that it also has the nerve to convince us that we are hungry?  When we arrived at the buddy’s house, the friend’s grandma was there.  I was wearing the uniform of choice & that is my “keep calm & drink tea” shirt with the picture of the cup on it.  The buddy’s grandma saw the cup & immediately thought it was an espresso cup & told me in no uncertain terms that it was non negotiable that I come in for an espresso.  3 “properly” made espressos later & over an hour later & with recipes, homemade biscotti & a new friend I returned home.  I love it when you meet someone for the first time & you just click right away.  We just talked about everything & did not resort to the small talk aka the weather conversation.  That was the most refreshing espresso I have had.  After the visit I checked my blood sugar & it was sitting at an ugly 14 so I had some more breakfast of the champions, aka another insulin correction.  Our 2 other sons are enthusiastically munching on the homemade biscotti in disbelief & admiring their other brother once they also heard that the buddy’s Italian grandma had gotten up at 6am to also make spaghetti sauce from scratch for a homemade pizza lunch.  Although I cannot eat this gorgeous looking homemade biscotti it brings a smile to my face to see our sons enjoying it & I don’t feel the least like being “beamed up biscotti.”  High blood sugars or not, today has already been an otherwise good day.

My heart’s hope for you is that the broken biscuit, beam me up days are few & far between. 

Smiles, Saundie :)

Enjoy your week & be ready for new friendships to blossom when you least expect them.  Be sure to hug & appreciate old & new friendships.  Next Monday's story is on just in time delivery or in other words out in the creative ether as usual.