Editing

Veggies for My Fried Rice.

What this image doesn’t show are the three critical ingredients of my “dietary” fried rice: two strips of bacon, chopped; a slice of ham I cut into little cubes; and two eggs, over-easy, on top.

This was a meal that was a little off the map. Pre-surgery my fried rice would have four strips of bacon and maybe no ham.

But this image looks so healthy.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails that make me think that I’ve been making it sound like I’m on a terrible diet and I have more discipline than a renal dietician. Neither of these things is true.

I've always been a person who has been able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted and not gained weight. In the past, I ate sensibly, which means fried food only maybe three meals a week. (That is to say, deep-fried, which doesn’t count stir-fry). But I'd overeat without really thinking about it. And I used to eat more than my share of red-meat.

It's only been in the last couple years that my doctor even told me I should try to get my blood pressure down. In those last two years, my BP was just edging up from the high side of normal to low end of high.

Remember that x-ray I posted last May? I’m sure my outline was the effect of the close-up P.O.V. and the wide-angle lens used on those machines. NOT!

Basically though, I've never had to diet long term at all. Essentially, my “diet,” which sounds so restricted, is just no overeating, eliminating the dumb fatty things that I was eating, and cutting serving sizes of meats by about 1/3. Oh, and I’ve been eating oatmeal seven days a week. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Since it appears that my other kidney has taken over normal and complete kidney function, I'm not going to follow a strict kidney patient diet. I'll just keep exercising and watching the scale to see if I am gaining weight. Then I'll wait for my next blood test to see how I'm doing.

This was weird: to reduce my cholesterol, I’ve been taking red yeast rice because it is said to be as effective as statin type medications, such as Zocor. Although it is effective, there seems to be problem with red yeast rice itself. I’m not taking it anymore.

The study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings is labeled as open access.

Stay tuned.

Mall Walker

I have these moments where I think a little bump on my skin is suddenly melanoma or something. I've had a small, round, red bump on my forearm for some time. I never worried about it because it's round. After surgery, I started to obsess about it as the bump is on a part of my arm that gets a lot of sun. I finally asked Dr. "PC," my primary care doctor, who looked at it, described it as just some kind of mole and says it's nothing to be worried about.

I’ve been walking. Dr. "PC" was not happy when I told him where I've been walking. It seems that the heat is a problem if you have a questionable kidney. My family is pretty much on a summer schedule, which means that we're up until 11 PM. It's a bit daunting to get up at 5 AM to walk when it's cool.



Long story - short ... I think 15 of my last 21 miles have been in nice, air-conditioned malls, which makes me feel really, really old. At least I've got my power-walk speed back and no one is leaving me in the dust. I'd feel really bad if some 70-year-old retiree was shuffling past me!

Today I walked with the official, before-the-mall-opens, mall walkers. There were some moms that were as fast as me, but they were pushing strollers!

I’m still holding at my post-surgery weight of 134 pounds – about nineteen pounds below my weight three months ago.

The incision sites still get a little sore as the day wears on. They are slowly getting a bit better, and I am hoping soon to be wearing something other than giant underwear.

Again, more information you probably didn’t want!

Anyway, here is a walking story.

Last Wednesday, I made this image of a phone booth in disrepair.

The shot wasn’t made at a mall. I’ve been interested in pay phones as they are disappearing from the landscape. I found this subject as I walked north on South 7th Avenue, which for those of you who don't know Phoenix, is an economically challenged part of town.

Just before I stopped to make this image, I had observed a guy, who was also walking north well ahead of me, suddenly turn around and start to walk toward me. When I stopped at the phone booth, I noticed there were another man approaching, this one from the south. The phone booth, where I was standing, was right where these two guys were going to meet.

Although I had briefly looked through my camera at my subject, I stepped back to wait for them to pass while resting my camera in my left hand, near my shoulder. I waited, and I suppose the idea crossed my mind that waiting was a bad idea.

I could now see the guy coming from the north was in his early thirties, well cut, tattooed, with dark glasses and a white T-shirt. The man coming from the south came closer. He was very skinny.

Then I could see that he was perhaps my age or a few years older.

His age put me at ease.

As they approached, I looked at the skinny dude, said, “Good morning.”

He said “Hey.”

The southbound guy walked past. He could see that I wasn’t looking at him.

The skinny man said something I didn’t hear. I said, “What?”

“Is that a bird under your arm?”

I lifted my arm and my ratty old water bottle belt was there. “No, it’s this.”

“Oh.”

He turned to walk away.

I stepped up to try to square up the frame on the phone booth while trying to avoid my shadow. I wondered if I had heard his question correctly.

The phone booth contains broken technology and graffiti. The damage signifies telecommunication’s transitory state as well as the failure of communication, in general. In its stylized text, the graffiti suggests codified marks, which speak to a kind of mystery. The words themselves appear to be proper nouns. That suggests a sort of tribal marking, or at the very least, the mark-maker's statement that I am here.