The Blog of mamapolo

Crisis and panic had been our 'new normal' for long enough that returning to 'old normal' (not quite, but far closer than we've been for a while) feels odd.

From July 20 until the middle of the first week in September, we did not have a week without an ambulance call or a hospitalization or a sugar-dive. My bloodstream was 90% adrenaline.

When things began to calm in early September, I "vegged" for a week or so. I did precious little but laundry, grocery shopping and cook eight meals a day trying to get my husband to gain weight. [Here's a challenge for you - low salt due to high blood pressure and the danger from the subdural hematoma, low fat due to cholesterol and the danger of stroke/heart disease and low sugar due to diabetes - your mission, construct tasty and attractive meals that will help a gaunt ill man gain weight so he can face the next challenges of lung surgery and chemotherapy.]

A warmhearted young man here on EP has taken the challenge literally, and has spent a good bit of his valuable, youthful time to create a meal targeting just those issues. It looks great. I went to the grocery store tonight and purchased the ingredients I didn't have in stock.

Looking for appealing treats for my husband, I stumbled on a line of frozen fruit crepes by Lupitas. First I brought home mango crepes, which he liked a lot, and then I found strawberries and cream crepes, which he loved. They made a perfect between-meal snack - right amount of everything.

I bought them twice, and when I went back again, did they have them? They did not. Cherry crepes, apple crepes. Mango, blueberry crepes. No strawberry. I've checked three times a week for several weeks - no strawberry crepes.

At the store tonight, I talked to the frozen food guy, told him we needed those crepes and he needed to get them for us. He looked baffled by the notion that a strawberry & cream crepe could be a basic staple of life, but agreed to order me a case. I told my husband that when I brought home 12 boxes with 3 crepes each, he had best not stop liking strawberry & cream crepes until they were gone.

He promised.

Tonight I went into the living room after cleaning up the supper things to see my husband sprawled out on the floor beside the coffee table (couldn't see his head, just his torso and legs). I think my heart fell out the soles of my feet and I raced around the coffee table, only to see him look up and grin as he pawed through a drawer of DVDs.

"Just looking for Harry Potter," he said.

He scared me so badly I would have been angry except I have always been a sucker for that grin. Still am.