Gyno Gary, another armful of blood tests and Hugh Jackman

I wanted to start with this hilarious link - you'll love it! Worth watching right the way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-LTRwZb35A

I realised that the last blog ended with a bit of a rant, and I am sorry if I offended anyone, but for those who know me, will know that I am a firm believer in saying what I think. I don’t speak for all British/English clearly or for all women, but I do hope that I speak up for decency, fairness, equality, empathy for all human beings and against bigotry and racism and will continue to say what I see and feel despite the fact that others feel that we should not get involved and sit back watching it all unfold. End of…..

The WW meeting last week said that we are free to eat what we want; I think maybe that is my problem. Still I lost a lb this week. Its ‘old weight’ though that Id lost and put on since Ive been here. Ive been having too much of a good time!! We met a new member called Brett who was a student and was going to Washington DC for her University to study criminology with the aim of joining the FBI. Stef told her about the FBI involvement in the show 24, which she had worked on. You know you are old when what you think is a modern TV programme wasn’t recognised by Brett who is around 20. Our theme this week was body confidence and we were asked to close our eyes and visualise the part of our body we worry about – well I didn’t know where to start and switched between visualising my legs, arms, bottom (butt), neck, stomach – well everything! I had a chuckle when one of the ladies asked ‘are we visualising our bodies or someone else’s?’. In fact I’d much prefer to think of someone else’s body.🤣🤣 I’m not sure this worked as Char was trying to say that this body part was part of us and had been used throughout our lives. The idea was to love it, but in actual fact I was just thinking negative things about each part of my body, especially my bottom. Oh well….

We also discussed what to wear if you have ‘angel wing arms and bumpy legs. It wasn’t actually about embracing what you are, but more about covering it all up…. We discussed how Elizabeth Taylor was the most beautiful woman, but had issues with her hands and weight. I have since googled it and her hands looks fine, but maybe she had an issue with them.

I was reminded of the Shirley Valentine movie where the gorgeous Greek character of Tom Conti kissing her stretch marks said that she shouldn’t try to hide them as they were the marks of love🤣 and she says ‘aren’t men full of shit?’ Love that film!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJzD9FECEO4

At Choir we went early to Chili’s for dinner and this raises money for the choir as a % goes from the bill. We put our receipts in jar to pull out later and I won. I was very pleased about the toffees, but there was a diet book in the bag too. 🙄😬

We went over all the songs again, which I am still finding an issue to breathe in the right places. Hopefully it should improve over time. Lady Luck was still an issue and there were a few moments of painful out of tune parts. Still again, it was all of us. It does change key several times.

I have been given the job of updating the guest song books, - all 7 of them even though we only seem to have one or two newbies at a time. I made up 7 copies of the new songs and hole punched them, only to realise that not only are the page sizes different (so photocopying UK pages has to be done in two pages), but all US folders have 3 holes. After going to Walmart and Target, I finally found a three hole punch in Office Depot, where it appeared to be silver coated as it was $22!!!

I am enjoying my pottery again and have nearly finished my fish, although the tail broke again!!! I glazed all my jewellery and when it comes out, I will put it on ring and pendant fixings.

I met a new guy called Ruben from Argentina and who was lovely and chatty, I did ask him if he knew our lovely Argentinian friend Gus Staricoff. He said not. I think he said he worked for Nasa.

Katie, the girl who taught Poppy and I how to throw pots, works there most afternoons and she told me that she had been an advisor for a writer who was researching for a book about a girl who studied ceramics. The book Called Ruby, has now been published and is on Amazon and has been selected by Oprah.

I am walking Lulu much later in the day as it is way too hot to do it during the day. It is around 37 degrees most days here now and it is impossibly hot!!! Some people still wear cardigans for goodness sake!

There is a group that meet and chat at this time in the field. I know Liza who is the 15 year old with 3 dogs and Lulu loves the black lab puppy cross that she has. There is a basset hound that chases after Lulu barking, whenever she runs for the ball, although he only does this the first few times and the owner gets all excited as normally, he never runs. I’m amazed he doesn’t trip over his huge ears though. The other people are friendly too, but are not really interested in me, so don’t ask any questions at all. I suppose as usual it will just take time until I am included. They had an interesting conversation about all the places they had travelled to in the world and the lovely most friendly man who was Japanese discussed how he was born on an island off the Japanese coast on an American airbase. I was told they’d known this man for decades, but none of them had known this and then he was asked if he was American and di he have an American passport. He looked taken aback and said his parents were American. I stepped in and said that my brother had been born in Germany on an RAF base and that he still had a British passport and was considered British… Awkward!!!😳🙄

The next day I had my Gynaecologist appointment. Look away now my male readers…..

The building is like a hospital, spread out in completely different buildings; all completely privately-owned companies. This time it was at 7320 Medical Centre Drive and on the 2nd floor. All doors on floor were fire doors and again, this looks really odd and uninviting. I found the right door this time and was greeted by 3 very young, but very friendly girls at reception. I filled in 6 pages of questions, not only on an ipad given to me, but then over 6 pages of documents which some of which were waivers and documents that said they were had a right to share my information. On the ipad I had to take a picture as well and I took two, as in the first one, I genuinely looked terrified.

I’d asked for a female Gynaecologist, but unfortunately, she had retired and Dr Gary Hart had taken over- sounds like an actor made up name. In fact, the receptionist had written his name down wrongly and his name was Gary Ott, which was reassuring, as I had tried to google him after the appointment and only discovered actual actors called Gary Hart. I did think that I’d been had! Thank goodness he was legit! Note to self – research the people/Business before the appointment! Wait - I think I said the same when I had the ‘interesting’ acupuncture treatment last month.

The friendly (18 year old looking) girl on reception was in jeans and a hoodie was helpful and welcoming. She also appeared to be his assistant and helped Gyno Gary, after I had sat completely naked for a 20 mins wait on a chair with stirrups in a paper waistcoat which barely crossed over my boobs and a paper towel over my down below area. All very undignified!!!

He chatted to me in his sing song voice, while he examined me- very weird!!! All I can say is I hope I don’t have to that again in a hurry. On a positive when I was weighed earlier I’d lost 2 lb.

I was told I’d have to do more blood samples and would have to bring my blood results from the other doctor. There doesn’t seem to be any central record of your information. Gyno Gary wants to put me on a different HRT type medication and gave me a list of what this drug can do – practically reclaiming my youth – of course I’m tempted as when you get to a certain age, you just accept tiredness, memory loss and weight gain, but this drug says it builds bone density, helps you lose weight and generally makes you feel better – well why wouldn’t I take them up on having a pellet inserted under my skin every 4 months? Well for one thing, it isn’t covered under the insurance and would cost $100 per month and another, after calling the insurance company, they also said that the drug was considered experimental. It is so difficult as I always felt you could basically trust your doctor, but here it is difficult to know who to trust…is he getting commission from the drug company and why it is considered experimental – something he didn’t tell me by the way. I have another appointment on Thursday where my blood results will be revealed, and I suppose he will persuade me to go a certain route….am I being too cynical?

The process of giving my blood this time was complicated too. I went up to floor 6 suite 605 to find a different blood clinic called Quest. I handed them the request from Gyno Gary and after the nurse had typed in my details, she said that’ll be $450. After I nearly fell off my chair, we relooked at the form and she saw that he hadn’t added a few codes, so I had to go back down to the 2nd floor, wait in the reception and ask the receptionist there to add the codes. I then went back up to the 6th floor and was charged $15. You can imagine how ticked off I was. This time they took 7 Vials!!! Testing for everything, definitely an arm full this time!!!

On Thursday I went to the Ladies night at the large Green Fingers garden centre with Marla. I was all ready for a nice coffee, but as discussed before they are missing a big revenue area and we had to walk 10 mins to the local Starbucks, where I had my usual Iced Non-fat Latte which I am now addicted to. We had a fabulous time wandering round all the plants for over 2 hours and we had to be kicked out at closing time. I bought a lovely mandarin plant which I am excited to grow, an agapanthus and a lion mane bush which is the weirdest thing ever.

We then went to the Westfield Village for a meal in Eureka. Marla is a very good influence on me as she orders like Meg Ryan in the movie ‘When Harry met Sally’, where everything is on the side with lots of things taken out of the dish.

Aqua with Steph was great fun this week, when a black lady who was friends with one of our regulars came and stood on the edge of the pool and danced and sang, while we all joined in, which was hilarious. A very old lady requested a song called ‘nasty’ and kept repeating it over and over which made me giggle. Oh, we all said, ‘Janet Jackson Nasty Boys’ – ‘Yes I love it’ she said🤣

Interesting Steph played Michael Jackson the whole lesson and I chatted to mark that evening about how I find it difficult to separate the man and the paedophile accusations from his music. I certainly don’t have his songs on my playlist anymore. I suppose that also opens up the question to all famous people, especially artists. I know that Salvador Dali had a number of sordid secrets, but we do separate his art from his life don’t we?

I worked at the Animal Sanctuary again this week and also took the Cat Handling Training Course. There were loads of kittens which were adorable. There were a few that were feral, but others that were very tame and wanted just to be cuddled. There was one called ‘Easy’ of all things, that was a 4 month old orange kitten – so very cute. I had all ideas in my head about taking over a room in the house to take on a number of cats and kittens. We learnt about how cats react and how to watch out for stress behaviour, as well as how to feed and clean the cages. We managed to get a couple interested in Easy while we were there, and they decided to have him. It felt so good to help him have a home. I stayed after the training and in the 37-degree heat, helped clean out the dog runs with a lady called Terry, who is trained to go in, so I she used a tall metal dust pan and shovel to clean up the mess and I hosed the runs down. You are supposed to encourage the dogs into their sleeping areas and close the door to do it, but some dogs (who are like Lulu) love the water, so I had good fun hosing them down. They all had treats after being let back into their runs. It is very rewarding. I met a lady called Carolyn on the way out who is keen to help me climb the ranks and get to walking the dogs, so she’s offered to let me shadow her and Ive signed up for that in August. They are big dogs, so that should be interesting…

At the weekend Lulu went off to have a fab time with her Wagon Tail Ranch chums and we stayed at Lowes on Hollywood Boulevard and went to the Hollywood Bowl to see the multitalented Huge Jackman. We picked up our picnic from the marketplace shopping area inside and also visited the shops. I was going to buy a blanket from there, but after looking at a number of the price tickets without my glasses, was shocked to see that all of the items were $600+. Bloody hell I said to mark, let’s get out of here, it’s so expensive. He looked and said that I’d been seeing the $ sign as a 6 – what a daft cow I am!

Mark got amazing seats and we were right near the stage. It was the most amazing evening! If it is possible, I love Huge Jackman even more. He performed les Mis songs as well as The Greatest Showman. I laughed, I cried!!!! He danced, sang, told jokes and dedicated songs to his wife who was in the audience. He also talked about his life and his career (ups and downs). Keala Settle also performed ‘This is Me’, which made me cry again! Mark is now a converted fan and we had a Huge Jackman marathon the next day watching The Greatest Showman and Les Misérables. I’m moving him onto X Men Movies next week.

Mark is on his second golf lesson as the very glamourous Woodland Hills Golf and Country Club, where we did consider joining until we realised it is over $600 per month and I did have my glasses on and yes the $ was before the 600! Its still cheaper than the Calabasas Country Club which was over $800 per month. It’s to keep out the riff raff like us. Mark was just walking off the driving range when his golf instructor said hello to a black guy who he was told later was called Sonny Emory from Earth Wind and Fire, one of mark’s favourite 70’s bands. Still not worth $600 though.

So, we now have Boris as our leader……😳😱😱😱😱

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrBxrRLCdn8