The Howdygram 2: I have no idea why I ordered six packages of fine egg noodles.

Hey. Good morning! It’s a few minutes past 8 a.m., Sam is in the study watching videos on YouTube, and I just finished one of my all-time favorite breakfasts … canned Hormel Beef Tamales with a side order of pitted Greek Kalamata olives in a teeny bowl. I suppose I should write my official product review now in case there are other senior citizens wondering what they should eat today.

I’ve been enjoying HORMEL CANNED BEEF TAMALES for as long as I can remember, because they’re really not too bad whenever you need a “Tex-Mex” fix and there’s nobody volunteering to cook anything for you. In the standard 16-ounce can — retail price $1.57 from Wal-Mart — you get six skinny tamales wrapped in wax paper (sorry, no corn husks) standing at attention in a flood of tasty red juice. Actually, the red juice is probably the best part, so I highly recommend eating everything with a teaspoon.

Hormel’s canned tamales are a cheap and speedy meal, well-suited for senior citizens who can’t stand up any more to cook things.

I’ll only award Hormel with a three-chopper rating, however, because canned tamales aren’t the healthiest food on the planet and contain a terrifying amount of sodium … even if you’re desperate during a Coronavirus plague. As for the mystery juice, it doesn’t resemble “chili sauce” in any way, shape or form; it’s just good. Thank you.

It’s a few minutes past 10 p.m. on Wednesday night now, and I can hear Sam talking on his phone in the study. I’d be willing to bet he’s calling the hospice’s 24-hour pharmacy in Fort Worth, because they fucked up my drug delivery earlier today by not refilling all of my maintenance medications*. Sam didn’t go into too much detail with me (he tries to prevent me from getting hysterical if at all possible) so I’ll be interested to find out what the hell is actually going on. I don’t know which drugs we didn’t receive, but I take a lot of medications and I NEED ALL OF THEM … AND I NEED THEM NOW!

When you’re under the care of a hospice you have to request your prescription refills every two weeks, which is a real pain in the ass after spending so many years with luxurious 90-day refills. On the plus side, however, not counting my two insulin prescriptions, everything else is paid 100% by Medicare with no co-payments and free delivery from the hospice’s 24-hour pharmacy in Fort Worth. (Maybe I should stop complaining.)

I suppose this would be as good a time as any to dive into a comprehensive list of my current health hoo-hahs. You know, my official whine list. Here goes …

MY FEET ARE TURNING BLACK. They’re frightening and ugly, and there’s nothing even remotely normal about this. Almost all the toes on my left foot are black, and a few on my right foot are partially black. I’ve asked my hospice R.N. to explain what’s causing this but I never get much of an answer, and if I look up “black feet” online I either get information I don’t want about gangrene and amputation OR a 1957 video clip of Sammy Davis, Jr. on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” My life is insane.
I SLEEP 14+ HOURS AT A TIME, all day, all night or both. Yesterday, for instance, I was unconscious when my hospice C.N.A. showed up to give me a bath … and I slept through the whole thing, thanks to a perfect cocktail of pain meds. (Hydrocodone and a Xanax.)
MY BACK ITCHES. Constantly. Whenever I manage to convince Sam to give me a good solid scratch he makes me promise not to wail and scream — e.g., YES! THAT’S IT! YOU FOUND IT! MORE! MORE! DON’T STOP! HARDER! HARDER! — because it scares him half to death. I’m actually surprised that the neighbors haven’t called the police on us.
THE PAIN IN MY KNEES IS INTENSE AND ATROCIOUS. I can’t stand up and I can't walk, and I finally stopped trying to do both in May 2018. Today the pain is just as intense … and all I do is lie here on a hospital bed in the family room with the TV remote in my hand, peeing day and night on six layers of absorbent wee-wee pads. I can’t move my legs without Sam’s help (an inch to the left or an inch to the right) and always cry out or scream when he does this for me.
I HAVE “NIGHT SWEATS.” Multiple times a week I’ll wake up from a nap soaked to the skin, my hair is dripping wet, my arms, my legs, my face. I swear I sometimes see steam rising from my body, and it’s so bad that my eyeglasses get fogged over.
I HAVE VERY, VERY LOW BLOOD PRESSURE. Actually, “scary” low is a better description. Yesterday it was 82/54. And it was once even lower during a trip to the hospital via ambulance in March 2018. I was in septic shock at the time, my blood pressure was 60/40, and I overheard two E.R. nurses talking to each other: “Don’t let her fall asleep!” Holy crap.
THE BACTERIAL INFECTIONS ARE WINNING. I don’t need the Coronavirus … I’ve already got a pair of bacterial infections trying to kill me! I’ve got a years-old urinary tract infection (my pee is so hot it’s like trying to piss lava) AND cellulitis in my left leg, which is red and hot to the touch. Worse yet, I’m resistant to all known antibiotics, and there’s nothing I can take.

Let’s talk about Wal-Mart, okay? Sam just got home from a quick trip to our Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market (they open at 7 a.m.) to pick up a few odds and ends that we haven’t been able to order online, such as two gallons of sugar-free iced tea, “everything” bagels, Sargento Pepper Jack Cheese and so on. Then at 9 a.m. he’ll drive over to the big Wal-Mart Supercenter to bring home a huge order I placed last night for all of the following:

Banquet Chicken Pot Pies (two)
Marie Callender’s Chicken Pot Pies (two)
Peeled Hard-Boiled Eggs (half dozen)
Red Baron Deep-Dish Individual Three-Meat Pizza
Red Baron Deep-Dish Individual Pepperoni Pizza
Ore-Ida Steam & Mash Cut-Up Russet Potatoes
Stouffer’s Cheddar Potato Bake Frozen Meal
Great Value Heavyweight Plastic Knives
Sara Lee Deli Oven Roasted Turkey Breast (one pound)
Deli Potato Salad
Jimmy Dean Sausage, Egg & Cheese Croissant Sandwiches
Great Value Unsweetened Iced Tea (two gallons)
Lipton Unsweetened Black Iced Tea (30 quart jar)
Crystal Light Peach Iced Tea Drink Mix
Great Value Cream of Celery Soup
Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup
Great Value Chicken Noodle Soup
Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup
Hormel Black Label Bacon Crumbles
Panda Express Mandarin Sauce
KaMe Stir-Fry Hokkien Noodles (two packages)
Mezzetta Pitted Greek Kalamata Olives (two jars)
Great Value No Sugar Added Sliced Pears
Clear American Peach Flavored Sparkling Water (12 cans)
Triscuit Original Whole Grain Wheat Crackers
Philadelphia Garden Vegetable Cream Cheese Spread
Philadelphis Original Cream Cheese Spread
Parent’s Choice Distilled Water (one gallon)

For your possible interest I’d like to offer an explanation for several of these purchases.

#4 AND #5. Those little Red Baron Deep-Dish Individual Pizzas are awesome and satisfy our craving for a $20 pizza from Pizza Hut.
#7. I discovered Stouffer’s Cheddar Potato Bake by happy accident a few months ago and loved the damn thing. I’ll eat it with a handful of rehydrated freeze-dried Seasoned Sliced Grilled Chicken from Thrive Life.
#19. I’m planning to use Hormel’s Bacon Crumbles to make a Senior Citizen B.L.T. Sandwich, which is similar to a regular B.L.T., except there’s no “L” and you don’t have to stand in the kitchen frying any “B” or washing a skillet afterwards. You just glue those bacon pieces onto a slice of white toast with a thick layer of mayonnaise, add a few thin tomato slices, and WHAMMO BLAMMO! You have a Senior Citizen B.L.T. Sandwich!
#21. KaMe’s Stir-Fry Hokkien Noodles are actually fully-cooked ordinary spaghetti noodles that you nuke for 90 seconds to make an instant meal. This is a swell product for senior citizens with shitty knees who can’t stand up any more to cook things! Each package costs $2.88 and includes two pouches of noodles; each pouch can feed two people. Get it?
#23. Everybody loves canned pears! Woo-hoo!
#28. If we don’t use distilled water in my oxygen concentrator my nostrils will have a nervous breakdown.

In addition to all of the above in today’s grocery pickup, I also ordered some additional products from Wal-Mart’s regular website: Jif Peanut Butter, Sam’s Choice Almond Butter, nine jars of Mezzetta Pitted Greek Kalamata Olives (stop laughing … there’s no such thing as too many Greek olives!), Great Value Heavyweight Spoons and Forks, two jars of House of Tsang General Tso Sauce (this will work well with those KaMe Hokkien Noodles), Gia Russa Fine Egg Noodles (six packages), and 12 rolls of Bounty Select-a-Size Paper Towels.

I have no idea why I ordered six packages of fine egg noodles. Maybe I thought it would be a good idea for Sam to use them for soup with a quart of chicken broth. If you have a better suggestion please feel free to shoot me an email. Thank you.

There’s always one “constant” in my life: FREE FONTS. Therefore, every time I wake up from one of those confounding 14-hour naps I pay a visit to iFonts.xyz to check out what’s new, and there’s ALWAYS something new … dozens and dozens and dozens of free fonts. Unfortunately, I don’t know why there’s a current trend for illegible scripts, because I refuse to download them or use them. (The only fonts I share with you here are the ones I install on my iMac and would actually use myself.)

So today I’ve got some fine freebies for y’all. Wonderful scripts (“Baisley,” Madame,” “Emerald”), hand-drawn fonts (“Kneebls,” “The Breakdown,” “Spaghetti”), display fonts (“Takatuka,” “Easy Salads,” “Evereast”), an elegant font (“Gron”), a huge family (“Kasia”), and last but not least, even a layered font (“Hillray). I’ll include download links below the font list. Enjoy!

Madame • Insieme • Gron • Angler • Talilta • Vrindals • Caride • Baisley

Miss Rhinetta • Kneebls Bold and Extruded • Emerald • Spaghetti • Easy Salads
Hillray • Takatuka • Cintiya • Slapstick Comic Regular • Slapstick Comic Bold
Slapstick Comic Shaded • Kasia Family • Evereast • The Breakdown • The Rughton

Ooh, here are a few more gorgeous textures and backgrounds from one of my favorite shops on Etsy.com … and a ton of additional inspiration to design classy new products for The Howdygram Store! I’m trying to balance Howdygram posts and creative projects. This is what keeps me alive, but you probably already guessed as much. (Thank you for putting up with me.)