The Spoonless Theory

A girl and her oversized potato.

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So many good oldies I have saved

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Hypoglycemia is sweaty hands, chapped lips, slurred speech, and the frequent public assumption that you’re under the influence. It’s being nauseated to the point that water is unappetizing but goddammit you’re gonna eat. It’s trembling in a cold sweat and yawning an alarming amount of times in a minute. The best part about it is it’s not covered by insurance and the only real treatment is “snack often”. 

Diabetes runs through my family, and much like all of those distasteful and untrue jokes, it’s the only thing that runs in my family. You guessed it, majority of those cases are Type 2. I managed to take after my family at a young age and got slapped in the face by a high A1C level and a failed glucose tolerance test. By the time I was able to bring my A1C down and get my body mostly functioning, I had fried my insides so much that now whenever I eat items with a high sugar content my body just kinda goes “Thanks.....I think. But what do I do with it?” 

But not today, no sir. Today I woke up thinking I must have really slept in because my head was spinning. my center of gravity was on vacation, and even my thoughts were running on auto-correct. But why wasn’t my lanky burrito alerting to me? Why was he just sleeping on the couch so peacefully? So I whipped out my meter as I resentfully glared at him across the room and found myself stumped at the sight of a glucose level in the 140′s before I had even done so much as smelled food. Fourth time this week my glucose had spike but I’m hypoglycemic, so what is this fuckery? Did I fall back into the trend of B&B (Benches and Burritos)? In one months time I’ll find out but in the mean time if you need me, I’ll be shoving scented cotton balls up Hemingway’s nose as he learns this new alert and having a stern talk in the mirror because my body needs to get its shit together.

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Possibly forever my favorite photo of him.

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Service Dogs and Sundays don’t mix so I’m beginning to learn. Let me tell you why.

I woke up on this fine weekend morning and delicately stretched my fingers and toes before making my way to the living room, only to be greeted by the sight of my husband half-alive due to a sudden onset cold. Being the humble and loving person that I am, I pounced 6 feet away and demanded he not even look at me. How dare he bring sickness into this house! Did he even think about how I would feel? Obviously not. Rubbish, absolute rubbish I say! Again, being the humble and loving person that I am, I decided a trip to our local store for Vitamin C and enough soup to go around was much needed. From the other room, for safety measures of course, Evan texted me a list of items he felt would comfort him through this internal storm and off me and the horse-thing went! As we walked into the store we were punched in the face by the strong smell of gluten-free and non-GMO items, meaning I’m probably in the right place to find a holistic remedy. Once the smell of organic deodorant faded, I realized the store looked how I envisioned New York would be. Isles completely clogged by carts and stray children running around screaming with their hands in barrels of peanuts they were clearly not paying for. I found an abandoned corner, had Hemingway settle, strategically barricaded him with my cart, and set off on foot to collect thy winnings. Finally we made it to check out and I’ve never been so happy to see the miserable faces of grocery store employees asking over and over “Would you like to buy a bag for 10 cents?” There were about 40 others in line with us, it was like being in a McDonalds drive thru and by the time you realized you weren’t ready to abandon your diet there were already 2 cars behind you. Here I am trying to lean over my cart and toss my findings onto the conveyer belt of success meanwhile behind us was some woman practically dry humping my dog since she had no room behind her, to my left was a child sticking his innocent hands inside my dog’s mouth, and the mother was too busy stumbling over her cart in a similar fashion as myself. 10 minutes pass and it’s finally my turn to cough up my family’s hard earned cash for some survival soup while simultaneously positioning my dog to lay between my feet and the register. Well squishy sally behind me had already scooted up so close to us that as I’m positioning him, he’s nose deep in her butt and the mother behind me is running over his tail. The best part about this entire trip? I didn’t get any vitamin C and only enough soup for Evan, only to come home and realize I too am getting sick. I’ll stick to Monday shopping.

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Where “we” began.

What an appropriate time to create a blog when exactly 366 days ago I drove a whopping 1 hour away to pick up the oversize potato you see in my header, and hoped with a little bit of time and pixie dust that he would become my "independence". I put quotes on that considering I'm a strong independent woman that don't need no man, although I do need a dog....and just so happened to have a man. I may possibly need him too. So who am I? Well I am Jae, pronounced like the 10th letter in the alphabet, because I 10 out of 10 recommend you try talking to me and then back away slowly in a considerate amount of time so you don't hurt my feelings once you realize how much I talk about dogs and potatoes. And no, the two are not mutually exclusive. I'm a girl (or WOMAN) entering her 20's that just so happens to have a chronic "invisible illness" and manages it by mellow dramatically whining to my husband on a daily basis about my knees and waddling around the streets with my service dog, Hemingway. Also occasionally asking him to pick up my phone for the 10th time in a day and politely ignoring him while he tries to tell me my blood sugar is low...I'm working on it, okay? Who is Hemingway? I don't even know. Some kind of rotten avocado on stilts perhaps? I was told he's a Great Dane with a little bit of Labrador but I'm starting to think he's just some kind of mutated pepperoni with a semi-functional brain. A service dog had been a strong consideration between me, my doctors, and loved ones for a long while. It wasn't until just over a year ago I decided who needs a super convenient fully trained "program dog" when my half-functional-ass can go buy a puppy and raise it myself? Spoiler alert, 2 weeks later I realized my mistakes and enrolled us into a program. I swear I'm a strong independent woman it was just one time! Sadly, not every dog is created equal, only very few dogs have the tempermant and drive to enter this field of work. So of course I spent weeks researching this magical mixture of traits to ensure I didn't end up being dragged around Target by Cujo at the end of the leash. The day finally came. There I was standing in front of the puppy. Ready with my treats and bag of goodies in hand to tempermant test the best fit. But then the soccer-mom that volunteered at the shelter for 2 weeks because she "wanted to give back to the community" after a rough retirement kicked in full force. I'm talking about that inner Debra we all have in us. And I saw 30lbs of scared puppy, accented by a puddle of urine around him as he screamed because a stranger was looking at him, and I told myself that I just have to have that one. I wanted to be one of those 20 second clips you see on The DoDo about "Determined Debra rehabilitates neglected puppy". I skipped to my car, buckled him in, drove 5 feet away, looked at his scared (literally) shitless face aaaaaaaaaannnnnddddd instantly called my husband on the phone crying and snotting about how I just made the dumbest decision of my life. I'm sure I’ll get around to all the in between moments but fast forward 366 days later and somehow it was the best decision I made. So here's our blog. The daily life of a girl that's kinda just winging it from one potato stand to the next with some weird dog. Oh, and don't worry, this will probably be our longest post.....probably. Don't quote me on that one.