A chicken in every pot

We got these chickens at a warehouse store in town owned by our friends... they come frozen in a block for restaurant use and they are already seasoned and ready to cook. We had a bit of a time getting them separated and wrapped, but now we have like 20 whole chickens in our freezers. They are the chickens that all the grocery store delis broil up and sell for $7.00 a piece.

so the last couple Sundays, I have taken one out frozen and put it into a pot to cook all morning. they are so handy and taste so good. Last week we made chicken and dumplings and then Chicken dumpling soup ( the left-over dumplings stay in the water and we add veggies and noodles and flavors and it makes a good soup - the dumplings thicken the soup and flavor it.) Today we are going to have chicken and dumplings and tomorrow, chicken pot pie. We make a really excellent chicken pot pie - Thank you Pier, for the recipe, all those years ago.

Anyway, the lengthy posts I have been posting on our blog and other people's blogs seem to be the result of this new medicine I am taking. I woke up one day last week and was ready to write my great American Novel... but I always think faster than I can write, so I usually only write a page or two and then get distracted. So this medicine is to be titrated up - which means that gradually I take more and more and then we lessen other drugs (in this case, the one that calms me down). So by this week, I was up til 4 or 5 every morning and then getting up at 9 or 10 AM, ready to rock and roll.

Finally Friday afternoon, I went in to lay down and all of a sudden I pushed my emergency button and Alicia came running in and I said, do you think we could fix the broken couch and put the TV where the stove used to be and my chair where your couch is now and cut the broken half off of Dad's couch with a cutting torch? She just looked at me and then went to tell the Life-Line people that she was with me and I was okay.
By the time she came back in, I was so tired and wanted to just lay there and die and then while she was standing there I said, "HEY, I had Dad buy some frozen strawberries, do you want to learn how to make strawberry smoothies, or should we make some strawberry jam today..... no, never mind, I'm too tired.....WHEW, I know I'm acting funny, but I can't stop ! ! !"

she excused herself from the room and went and called my case manager at the mental health center and it just happened that Dr. Burgess' office is next door to Margarets, and they both had a few minutes to spare, so he called Alicia right back and told her how to fix me. What I was doing was called rapid cycling and it happens to some one like me when we take upper drugs and don't get enough sleep. So he stopped the new drug for that day and had me take some of the calming drug and everything calmed right down.

the reason I am telling you all this, is because of our lesson in Family Home Evening this week, which was to listen to Pres. Eyring's talk on Remembering to keep track of the Hand of the Lord in our lives.

It takes at least six weeks to get in to see Dr. Burgess. He is NEVER available for phone call help because he has SOOOOOOOO many patients. He is leaving on a month long vacation next week, so if this had happened next week, he wouldn't have been there. Most of Margaret's job is out in the field, so we never catch her in the office. The chance that she would be in her office in the middle of an afternoon and Dr. Burgess not having a patient at that time and Also, the chance that Alicia would actually call someone for help ----- it is all a miracle. A genuine, old fashioned, New Testament, Hand of God, Miracle. So that was the Hand of God in our life for this week. No denying it. What a blessing to have the Holy Ghost tell Alicia exactly what to do and when to do it and the help was right there.

Also, both of them talked to Alicia a little bit and gave her kudos for calling them and also gave her support to get thru the situation. We are so blessed to have these wonderful people in our lives for help and support. And I'm so blessed to have Alicia here to take care of me.

Happy Sabbath, Charlotte