First, Happy Thanksgiving to all of our family and friends in the US who are celebrating this particular day, which is constantly occurring from the second to the last Thursday in November. This year, it falls on today, November 23. May your day include love, laughter, fantastic memories, and a meal to be remembered.
With no turkey and ingredients for the various dishes served today and a minimum of pans and serving plates in this holiday home, we have a usual dinner of roast, rice, broccoli, and green beans. There won’t be pumpkin pie this year, either. I’m cooking the meat in a large saucepan when we don’t have a proper roasting pan, which will be fine.
We have everything seasoned and prepped to be cooked later in the day when we eat at about 5:30 pm. Since I have been dieting, we tend to eat dinner early and not have anything more after dinner. This has helped me to lose over 13 pounds, 6 kg, so far. I am determined to eliminate these pesky remaining 11 pounds, 5 kg. I feel confident I can do this.
Wow! What a tiring and stressful day we had in Manta yesterday. It started out a little whacky when the cardiologist’s office contacted me via WhatsApp to let me know the doctor had an emergency and couldn’t see me until 3:00 pm. This upset the day’s plans to leave in the morning and return in the early afternoon.
Thus, we decided to return the rental car with Avis and pick up the next car with Europcar at the Manta airport. That should have been easy, but as it turned out, Europcar required us to pay $15 a day for insurance when we already had insurance for 30 days using our Visa Sapphire credit card, one of the many perks offered by this excellent card.
We tried everything to negotiate a better rate, but at first, they wanted $25 a day, but we got them down to $15 a day but this was a penalty for not taking the $25 a day insurance. The rental cost twice as much as we’d paid for the Avis car. But, at that point, we had no choice and had to go through with it. We spent well over an hour at the Manta airport dealing with this. The clock was ticking by, and my 3:00 pm doctor appointment was at the forefront of our minds. We’d planned plenty of time before we left the house, and it wasn’t enough.
We didn’t leave the airport until 2:00 pm, with the doctor’s appointment only one hour away. We had to find our way to MegaMaxi supermarket, a 25-minute drive in traffic. We didn’t walk into the market until 2:25 pm. We’d have to go to the grocery store, check out, and return on the road to the doctor’s office, arriving at 3:00 pm. We shopped in 20 minutes, leaving out many items on my list.
With the doctor’s office nearby but with lots of traffic, we arrived at 3:03 pm, when they were waiting for us. I was stressed through all this hustle and bustle, feeling Afib could start any minute. Once I was seated opposite the doctor at his desk, I finally relaxed and got back on track.
My biggest question for him was…Do I need surgery for my mitral valve issue? The answer was “yes,” but not necessarily right now. This scared me since I am hardly ready for another possible open heart surgery after all I went through in 2019. I won’t jump the gun here, but he explained the sooner, the better, perhaps within a year. The older I get, the harder it will be.
What are we going to do about this news, right now, we are discussing our options and will post what we decide in the next few days. Please bear with us as we figure this out.
We’ll be back with more soon.
Be well.
Photo from ten years ago today, November 23, 2013:
No photos were posted on this date in 2013:
For the story without photos, please click here.