What A Day! Food Friday - The Big Grocery Haul

I probably have no business trying to write a blog post today because I am so freaking tired! I slept poorly last night and have had the devil of a time trying to get some necessary prescription refills today... I'm really feeling salty... but I'll give it a shot and if it's fit to publish, I will.

Last month, like an idiot, when I left the pain doctor I headed straight down to Marvin's (that's not the dumb part). Instead of filling my prescription at my usual pharmacy, I went to (what I thought was) the same pharmacy at the location close to his house. It's really complicated because Walgreen's has bought out all the Rite Aid pharmacies in our area. My local pharmacy is literally a Walgreen's Pharmacy in a Rite Aid building. My Spidey Sense told me at the time that it was going to be a problem and I wish I had listened to that inner voice saying, "nothing in life is this simple" because... it's true. Well, that Rite Aid location completely shut down and the prescriptions on file were transferred to the Walgreen's across the street. That's a Walgreen's and my usual pharmacy is a Walgreen's so... easy, peasy, right?  Notsomuch. My Walgreen's Pharmacy in a Rite Aid building is not on the Walgreen's computer system so... in the eyes of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) I am "pharmacy shopping" with a controlled substance.

So... when my local pharmacist told me this morning that she couldn't transfer the prescriptions to my local pharmacy, she presented me two options: either go to the pharmacy near Marvin's house (45 minute drive away) or have my doctor call in the prescription to my local pharmacy. She said, "if your doctor will call me, I'll explain that it's really not your fault, it should not have been a problem, you couldn't have known..." etc, etc. Instead the nurse from my doctor's office calls and says, "why were you filling your prescription in Flowery Branch instead of at your local pharmacy?" My internal answer was, "none of your blankety blank business" but... like the polite drug seeking patient that I am... I said, "because I was going to be down there for a few days and needed refills so rather than drive all the way to Cleveland (the opposite direction) when I left  your office, I filled the prescription at the location that was nearest to where I was going to be". "You can't do that". Apparently. I swore on the lives of my grandchildren that I would never, ever, ever attempt to fill a prescription anywhere else in the world except my local pharmacy and she said the doctor would call in the prescriptions to save me from having to drive an hour and a half round trip for a refill.

Except... he didn't call in the prescriptions and they closed for the weekend at 2pm and... too bad for Heather. It's so frustrating. It makes me mad at the pharmacy for being in transition and making things so darn confusing. It makes me mad at the DEA for treating chronic pain patients like criminals. And it makes me mad at my doctor who knows, better than anyone, how severe the withdrawals are from these medications and what living hell it will make my life if I don't drive down to Flowery Branch to pick them up. My doctor also knows, better than anyone, how painful an hour and a half drive would be for me. What I'm going to do, rather than make the drive, is let Cody pick them up for me on his way up here tomorrow and just suffer overnight. BUT I'm not HAPPY about it, trust me!

Anyways... it's Food Friday so I will try to be on topic for a minute and talk about food. I didn't do a restaurant review this week but I will tell you where-all we ate on date night (and day and night and day) this week. On  Tuesday night we went to our usual Tuesday night - on the way to or from softball place - Twisted Taco. I had the ahi tuna tacos in wonton shells with sesame sauce because they are absolutely amazing and I love them with a purple passion. Marvin usually has the Korean taco (hold the mushrooms), the tropical shrimp taco and the ... wild Alaskan taco (I think... ). They also have really good chips and salsa and mine comes with a lot of extra avocado which we both munch on with the chips. Wednesday for lunch we went to Atlanta Highways Seafood Market which... if you're near Gainesville, Georgia, is the best place to go for seafood. It's incredibly fresh and quick and they're super nice there. I had fried crawfish tails because... yum... and Marvin had fried crawfish tails and fried catfish (and I shared some of his catfish and fries because... that's what we do). I bought some ceviche from there for my dinner Wednesday night (because Marvin eats at work on Wednesday and Thursday for dinner). On Thursday we went to our favorite little Chinese restaurant near him - it's called the Golden Phoenix but we always call it the Happy Lucky Golden Seven Phoenix because it used to be called the ... something Seven.... and we could never remember the exact name. I had shrimp fried rice because their shrimp fried rice is the best I've had anywhere and he had the General Tso's Chicken. It's a super affordable lunch menu so it was a win/win for us. Since we went to places that are our usual haunts, it didn't occur to me to take photos of our meals so you will just have to use your imagination.

Today I did a big grocery shop and a big food prep and I'm pretty stoked that I was that organized. I made a big batch of what I call "Three Bean Salad" but it's black beans, red beans and white beans (rinsed to remove lots and lots of sodium) with tomatoes, red onion, cucumbers, grilled chicken with olive oil and red wine vinegar and cilantro. I did my roasted salmon and veggies... I used tomatoes, sugar snaps, broccoli, carrots, zucchini and.... I think that's all. I've got enough food prepped to last me probably a week or more (if i don't eat more just because it's already prepped and ready to eat LOL!) AND I bought my favorite yogurt to have for breakfast because I'm pretty much addicted to it at this point. I'm fairly worn out from shopping without Austin and all the prep and cleanup but it's done and that feels great. Oddly enough my blood pressure was a happy, normal little 115/79 today after all of that so... who knows? Just the thought of eating better lowers my blood pressure. And I'm taking the beet root and... nothing else has really changed.

Tomorrow Cody and Oliver (and maybe Marquee) are coming up and I'll get Cosy in the morning so she and Oliver can play together. Marvin was such a sweetheart this week.... I sent him a text while he was at work Wednesday night and mentioned that I wanted to get the little swimming pool I had seen at his Walmart for the grandbabies... and he actually stopped on his way home from work after 9pm to get it. It's a good thing he did because it was the last one! He had a heckuva time getting it because the garden shop was closed and it was a real ordeal to get the upc code for it and then he couldn't do it through self-checkout and then he had a hard time getting it in his car (and was sure it wouldn't fit in mine but luckily it did!). I kept wondering why it was taking him so long to get home after work and he's out there getting the babies a pool. So they won't have to swim in buckets this time... all thanks to Marvin! He called this morning while I was in the middle of pharmacy hell and has had to listen to me whining about it all day. Sometimes I'm not so much fun to be around... a lot of times, probably... but he's a good egg and pulls me back from the brink when necessary.

And I guess that's about all I have to say today. Hopefully all will go according to plan and Cody will be able to pick up the prescriptions on his way up tomorrow... and the babies will be cooperative and I'll have some cute photos to share. How many of you are off for the whole week next week instead of just the 4th? Going anywhere fun? I've heard that this is supposed to be the biggest travel week of the whole Summer so safe travels or happy homebody week, whichever the case!