My doc thinks I'm on the verge of being a diabetic.  She told me that back in July.  "If we don't get your blood sugar under control, we'll have to put you on medication."  Well, I'm not going to let THAT happen if I can help it!!  So I've been studying and reading and changing my diet...  Watching my carbs, but more than that, I've learned that the CAUSE of diabetes in inflammation, and the CAUSE of inflammation is our horrible American diet.  It's all the processed foods we eat.  So I've been working on getting back to basics.  I'm eating a LOT more vegetables, more fruit (though not tons because fruit has a lot of carbs...), a lot more fiber, and adding things like green tea, vinegar and honey and knox geletin to my diet every day.  The green tea is a great anti-oxident and I've read that people who drink at least 4 cups of green tea a deay drastically reduce their risk of diabetes (and a lot of other things, too!)  I've known forever that honey and vinegar are really good for you, but apparently they're a big gun in the fight with arthritis, which I'm sure I have plenty of in my joints.  And so is the knox - that's something that Dr. Joel Wallach has been prescribing to people for years, and I used it myself for a period several years ago, but back then, my arthritis wasn't bad enough (or in enough of my joints) to keep me interested in doing it.  NOW I've got more motivation!

And I'm happy to report it all seems to be helping quite a lot!  I don't know about my blood sugar specifically, because I don't have the means to test it, but here's what I can report...  I feel better, much better.  My joint pain is often non-existent, and when I do have it, so far it seems less severe.  (Mind you, I rarely have what I'd call HORRIBLE joint pain, but it gets me up at night sometimes, and it can impede my work at times, too...)  I'm pretty sure I've lost some weight.  I don't do the scale-thing - it just depresses me.  But I can feel changes happening.  Maybe it's just a shift right now, but my clothes are fitting differently and I don't have that big-as-a-house feel, that bloated-to-the-point-of-floating-away feel.  I can't see a difference in the mirror, so I'm not jumping for joy, but I guess it should be more about how I feel than how I look.

Anyway, I haven't been doing it long enough to throw a parade yet... maybe a month or 6 weeks.  But I figure if the way I feel can turn around this fast, imagine how I might feel in a year?  I'm pretty pumped about it right now.  Of course, the hard part is Mark and the whole fixing two meals every night.  It sucks beyond sucking.  He would never, EVER consider eating any of "that crap" - you know, healthy stuff.  Vegetables - oh shudder!  Skinless chicken breast - YUCK!  Fish - OMG, he would surely die!!  (Unless, of course, it was either Joe Tess's fish or Long John Silvers - you know, fried and greasy...)  Which is how I got this way.  Back when I met Mark 26 years ago and started cooking for him, I would fix veggies and he wouldn't eat them.  And there came a point when I thought it's too much work to fix them JUST for me.  So I pretty much quit and only fixed them when I got a real craving...Dummy.  I'd advise any young lady taking on such a man (hopefully these cave men are going extinct...) to either run for the hills or at the very least, don't change your good diet to his bad diet.  If you don't believe me, let me send a photo of me when I met him and one of me now!  That'll cure ya!  LOL!  I know, I know - I can't blame it all on him.  It's always been ME putting that stuff in my mouth.  And it's ME that decided I'd rather make him happy with what he wants to eat rather than fixing what's good for us and let the chips fall where they may.  His health has suffered some because of it, too, but that doesn't make him want to change.  Let's just say he's none to happy with the way I've been cooking lately...

Anyway, enough about that stuff.  On to plant stuff...

About a few new ones - not necessarily THIS year new, but let's say in the last year or so new.  Once again, I got a few cuttings of Hoya linearis...

(Don't ask me why I can't get photos to stay the way I turn them when I post them here - damn it!)  Linearis has always been a troublesome one for me.  It's so delicate, so un-Hoya-like, and it seems to either lose it's roots and the stem dries and dies, or it rots.  Well, I got these cuttings this year, some from Jessica and a few from another GW trader, and so far, they're doing just fine.  And they've grown (yay!)  So this morning, I chopped off a couple of the longest lengths and put them back in the pot.  I'm hopeful they'll root in, but even if they don't, it will encourage some branching.  It seems to like it's spot on an east windowsill in the sunroom...

Ditto Hoya retusa - another problematic Hoya for me...

Also very un-Hoya-like, but the leaves are much stiffer, less delicate.  I like it a lot and hope it'll grow for me.  Again, I got some of it from Jessica and some from the same GW trade I got the linearis from.  It seems to be holding its own, though I don't think it's grown much if at all. Maybe I'll put it next to linearis in the sunroom...

This one I got last summer from Regina from Cubits.  It's H. blashernaezii...

I've got it in one of my smaller heavy B.J. pots and it dries out really fast.  I keep it on the shelf in the sunroom and it hadn't grown much at all for me, but always looked healthy.  But now, it's putting on the tiniest new leaves - you can see one if you look really close, down by some of the older leaves.  I really like the long leaves and the almost white veins.  I think it could be a pretty one!

H. ??...

I can't quite figure out what this one is.  I lost the tag and I've been guessing ever since.  I think it might be one I got from Dee, but I'm not sure.  I'm going to e-mail her and see if she knows what it is...  It's looking quite happy, so I need to figure it out!

And lastly (for today), I got a Sansevieria at the RCCSS auction.  It's S. pulchra coppertone...

A small offset, but very pretty!  I'm keeping it in an east window in the sunroom and so far, it seems to like getting a few hours of sun.  It could turn into a real beauty!

'Nuff for today.  Got to get ready to go to the dentist...