Goodbye, Summer

I spent so much time making sure our travels were well-documented that our summer is pretty much going to get summarized in a couple of posts with highlights because I want to move on to FALL,

my favorite season!!!

When we got home from Europe this summer, it was HOT.

I was very grateful to have spent so much time out of the heat this year!

It usually feels okay until October, and then I get really testy when it's above 90

(as it is all week this week).

My health conditions are worse when it's hot, and I don't like sweating.

It's still very beautiful where we live, but the Phoenix area in summer is like a beautiful woman in the middle of the night - less appealing and not very friendly.

It was really great to get home to our lovely, fluffy, snuggly cats!

They were happy to finally have their people home to give them appropriate amounts of attention.

Allistiar

Claude

Stephen

Stephen

Allistair

Juvy

Allistair

Allistair

Claude

Claude

Juvy, tongue out!

After we got home, some of my long-standing strange symptoms got a bit worse,

and my doctor recommended I see a specialist to rule out additional auto-immune challenges. 

I saw him last week for the follow up to lots of blood tests, and he said he thinks my symptoms, though suspicious because they appear to be a cluster, are unrelated to each other.  While that seems odd to me, I'll take it!

I have been working on trying to figure out any additional foods that might be contributing to having less energy since we've been back, and I haven't found out much.  For the last week and a half, I've pretty much been eating brown rice, sweet potatoes, and veggies.  It's HARD and I am feeling pretty sorry for myself food-wise!  

I'm doing my best to keep with it until Friday, but I've already cracked a few times and had ketchup twice (I've removed most nightshades for the time being), pickles (I've taken out spices except for salt for now), raw veggies (I'm supposed to cook everything!), and chocolate.  I'm not doing very well at this!  It's way harder than any of the other shifts I've made diet-wise . . . I don't know why.  Maybe because there don't seem to be very many options and I already work hard to not feel deprived.  Also, I don't really see this making a difference, so it's not easy to stay motivated.

So far I've discovered that I'm allergic to Honeycrisp apples - and that was an accident unrelated to this elimination diet.  I dried a bunch of them and ate them during a day-long conference last week, only to discover that while eating them, I developed a painful rash inside my mouth right where I was chewing!  So I'm leaving apples out for sure right now, though I've never notice that happening with other types of apples - just Honeycrisp.  But still, I'll leave raw apples out for now and add them later.

I've been eating a lot of brown rice with cooked veggies.

And a lot of sweet potatoes.

Yummy!  But getting boring.

Tonight I'm going to make this - a sweet potato & brown rice burger patty.

I will pile it high with raw veggies because I want to.

I won't have the tomato or the tea, though - both are off my list.

We had a fun get-together for Independence Day:

fireworks on TV - it's too HOT to go outside for them!

Vegan snacks:

Brownies:

Oatmeal bars:

Cashew butter & chocolate chip cookies: 

  

Foosball:

Dutch Blitz: 

It's a vonderful goot game!

Now that you're mostly caught up on our summer, you can look forward to upcoming posts about our everyday life (yippee!)

Happy Tuesday!