What's Up with Elliott?

Monday, January 13, 2014 – What’s Up with Elliott?

Elliott hasn’t made much of an appearance in my posts lately, and everyone always wants to know how he’s doing.  So I’m instituting a monthly Elliott status report.  Here’s the January edition.

These last few weeks have been a challenge, pain-wise.  Elliott hardly ever complains, but I hear his moans and groans, and I can see how difficult it is for him to move.  On the worst occasions, he has managed to get some relief from supplemental pain medication (in addition to his twice-daily dosage).  However, he doesn’t do this very often.  Most of the time, he is able to distract himself with mentally engaging activities, including a new lecture series from The Great Courses.  This one focuses on religion in the “Axial Age,” a period of time from about 800 to 300 BCE.  So far, we’ve learned about Zoroaster and the Indo-Iranians and are about to start on the Indo-Aryans and the development of Hinduism. 

Fortunately, our kitchen remodeling project requires plenty of Elliott’s attention.  We schlepped out to Lowe’s in the pouring rain last Saturday and spent nearly three hours going over design modifications with their kitchen planner.  While we’ve made a lot of progress, we still have quite a bit of work to do (so many decisions!) before any actual construction begins.  And yes, we’re definitely going with the island rather than the peninsula. 

The crazily erratic weather pattern has kept Elliott indoors more than he’d like.  Cold and Elliott don’t mix, so he avoids going out on the coldest days.  Fortunately, temperatures were in the 50s yesterday, so he went for a walk with me in the neighborhood.  By the way, he added a new 3-wheel walker to his transport collection.  This will be the downstairs walker, and it’s the identical twin of a 3-wheeler he currently uses upstairs. It replaces another 3-wheeler that met an untimely demise when he left it parked in back of our car and I accidentally drove over it. 

Despite Elliott’s relative inactivity, he still has a good appetite.  I was very impressed that he agreed to join me for lunch recently at Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant in Chantilly (right next to Lowe’s, in fact).  As you can see, he really enjoyed the pumpkin chowder and he made very favorable comments about the mock-chicken with cashews and vegetables.   

Digging into a bowl of pumpkin chowder

This foray into healthy eating was an exception, however.  For the most part, his eating habits are essentially unchanged.  But it’s hard to fault the Elliott Thompson Diet for Longevity – it obviously works for him.  If you want to try it, stock up on cookies, ice cream, candy, marshmallows, peanut butter, jelly, goldfish crackers, whole milk, butter, French bread, cheese, potatoes, salami, and red meat.  By the way, Elliott hasn’t gained a single pound in the past few months, which baffles (and infuriates) me, as I continue to ration out my tiny daily portion of dark chocolate and try to squeeze in another session at the gym. 

At Elliott’s most recent doctor’s appointment, he had no major concerns.  Really, he just wanted to get a new prescription for Cialis.  After all, what’s the point of living to 101 if you can’t have a little fun?