Give me a U!

Give me a T! Give me an I! What’s it spell? Macrobid! What’s it spell? Macrobid! What’s it spell? A $30 co-payment and $10 at the drive-up window of my pharmacy.

When I wake up most mornings, I have the slightest of backaches, more pronounced on those days when I’ve had too much salt the day before. A glass or two of water, and it goes away. Sometimes a little lemon juice in the water makes it go away faster. But this morning it was still there, about midway between the bottom of my bra band and where my waist used to be, about four hours after I got up.

Hrmm, I say to myself, I think that is where my kidneys might be lurking. I wonder if they are unhappy about something? It wasn’t the sharp rolling waves of pain I remembered from when my gall bladder revolted in 2001. It wasn’t the dull nausea from when I had hepatitis in 1979. It was just there, like a fine shred of pot roast caught between two molars. Something a little bit off, barely enough to notice, but I did. And so I did a most un-Ravelled thing: I picked up my cell phone and called my doctor’s office and requested an appointment.

Two hours later I was sitting in the waiting room, chatting with a most delightful elderly woman who used to knit and embroider, while we waited to be called back to the examining rooms. (Note to self: be a delightful elderly woman when 90 rolls around. People enjoy that!)

The doctor confirmed that what I was feeling, was not all in my head. Slight traces of blood and leukocytes in the sample I gave them. While I am not entirely thrilled to be on antibiotics for the next week, I am intrigued by a possible side effect: “May cause discoloration of the urine or feces.”

My vote is for magenta with turquoise spots.

I came home, had some leftover lobster ravioli and a carton of Greek yogurt, and took a nap. When I awoke, Beloved was back from Costco with, among other things, a vat of cranberry juice. He has fired up our new grill and is baking potatoes out there as we speak. I heard a rumor there will be steak for dinner.

And I have gotten a whale of a lot of knitting done today. I’ve reworked the yarn I frogged on Sunday night (or maybe yesterday morning); the Moebius cowl is somewhere between six and eight inches wide. I may very well finish it tonight and get the original Moebius cast onto a Knit Picks circ with one of the new needle tips I bought on Saturday.

After dinner, we are emptying out the Shelf Reliance storage rack, moving the microwave onto the counter temporarily, moving the tall crate upon which it now resides, sweeping and mopping that part of the kitchen floor, and moving the storage rack over there. Then we will roll the tall shelving unit into the corner, making room for a second unit which Beloved will pick up and assemble while I am back at work tomorrow, which means that I can empty out the half-dozen or so boxes still in the living room and put their contents to use. We are also planning to move the boxes that are currently in the dining room, into the middle bedroom. Tonight, after he disassembles the bed whose mattress we removed and bagged up last night before crashing.

Not bad for a guy who is allegedly terminally ill (did I mention his cancer cell count is down 83 from last month?) and a woman with a kidney infection (!) who just tries to keep up with him. And now if you will all excuse me, I need to top off my glass of cranberry juice and see what mischief Beloved is up to.