Dear Reader:

I sure do love onions…anyway you cook them…I love them. I met Anne and Mary for hamburgers at Oscars yesterday to kick off 2017 in our traditional way….hamburgers and french fries…the day to leave healthy eating behind and just enjoy good old comfort food! And you can believe I ordered onions for my burger.

I, also, love to order those wonderful barbecue baskets that come with a sandwich, french fries, and a huge fried onion to boot….almost more than I can stand in one sitting….pure happiness….but it is love at first sight for onions sauted, fried, baked, floured….and served just plain raw. Onions just put  zap into flavor. Nothing smells better than onions cooking in butter in a frying pan….

Well, now that I have established my love for onions…let me tell you why I enjoyed them (and the burger they were on) yesterday. My “risky” low blood count in several hemoglobin categories last week (December 28) at my oncologist office has improved!

All the ominous words like “risky” or “critically” low (that showed up on the blood work analysis sheet) were gone. Sure there were still some “lows” but no scary descriptive adjectives or adverbs hanging around. We are back on course with the medication that will hopefully stabilize “little c” again while carefully watching for more potential serious side effects. Life is a balancing act. Dr. Seuss was and is right.

I told Dr. Silgals that it must have been the “hoppin johns and greens” that took me over the top…He said it was definitely a lucky stroke to get the blood count heading back in the right direction. (We were going to have to re-examine the dosage if things were still critically low or look at other options down the road.) So I am very happy. I will return in three weeks to see if I am still climbing up that happy blood count hill.

*I forgot to let Dr. Silgals know that the pivotal turning point last week came last Saturday- New Year’s Eve- when the Clemson Tigers beat Ohio State…I could literally feel my blood count climbing higher and higher (probably as well as my blood pressure) because I had more energy after that game than I have had in weeks.

 Hummm…I think I will text Coach Dabo and tell him that Clemson needs to win Monday night to kick my low blood count into outer-space…no pressure…just wanted him to know this. Go Tigers!  🙂

I will admit that I did pamper myself the entire week before returning yesterday to re-check the blood work….I ate healthy, starting with Anne’s delicious supper a week ago Thursday, consumed  lots of veggies (along with your wonderful soup Gin-g) I slept practically around the clock, read, and occasionally walked in the garden and cleaned up a little…but basically I just rested. It paid off…(that I am very thankful for)… but I am ready to get out a little more now and be around people…it was starting to get a little too “solitary.”

Now back to our onion. Did you know that the sweet onion is Utah’s state vegetable?..Somehow I figured they put the potato under that category like Cracker Barrel labels “dumplins” as a  vegetable. ( Picture of their vegetable plate)

In this folklore story (I had never heard) it is the onion, not the apple, that brings about the fall of one poor woman.

That’s My Onion!

There was this rich lady who lived on her own and led an impeccable life as far as the externals of religion were concerned. She went to mass daily, and found little or nothing to confess when she went to confession. Eventually she died and to her horror and surprise found that she had been assigned to hell.

She complained bitterly explaining how she had lived a virtuous and utterly blameless life on earth. Satan inquired of Peter and was told there was no mistake. But Peter conceded that if she could think of one single act of kindness she had done on earth, heaven would be open to her.

The woman returned saying: “One day,” she said, “as I was cooking the dinner a beggar came to the back door. He was hungry and I gave him an onion.” Peter checked and found that it was true and said to Satan. “We are going to lower the onion into your department at the end of a rope. Tell her to clasp it and then we’ll pull her up here.”

Needless to say the woman grabbed the onion and suddenly her feet left the nether region. As she was being pulled up, some of her companions, seeing the opportunity of getting out with her, clung to her. “Let go, let go,” she shrieked, kicking out at them, “that’s my onion.”

With these words, “That’s my onion,” the rope snapped and she fell back, with her onion, into the arms of Satan, who said to her, “That rope was strong enough to save both you and your brothers, but it was not strong enough to save you alone.”

James A Feeban from ‘Story Power’

The truth in this story really hits uncomfortably too close to home for me…“If the road to hell is paved with good intentions…well...let’s just say I do have a lot of good intentions…it is following through that seems to make me stumble.

I get a bad case of the “Someone else’s” every now and then….as different projects, needs, etc. are read at church I think to myself that “somebody else” is surely better qualified to do that than me. I am a spontaneous giver and enjoy that type of giving enormously because I love spontaneous creative giving…but I not a long-plan giver. Somehow I need to find a way to connect the two different directions together. (After all, as much as I love onions, I don’t want it to be the last thing I see in my hand while falling the wrong direction.)

So until tomorrow…Help us Father give up the idea of perfect giving and replace it with needed giving…giving when someone else needs it and not when we have time to provide the perfect giving.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh