The Restaurant

Well, let's see.  The porch has been many things in the pretend world -- a store, an art studio, an animal sanctuary -- and now, a restaurant.

The cash register was busy as customers purchased their meals at the Nelsen Family Restaurant.  I thought I'd go for broke and ordered the Chateau Briand (for one), a Caesar salad, iced tea and for dessert, baked Alaska.  Nice.  There's no liquor permit or maybe I'd have ordered wine.

I got plastic carrots, a plastic whole chicken, a tiny glass of nothing, and a glob of either ice cream or mashed potatoes -- hard to tell which.  Then I used my plastic credit card (a fake) to pay for the plastic meal.

So that's life at the Nelsen Family Restaurant.  And there wasn't much going on in the real family restaurant either.  Last night I had a can of soup.  My husband was off watching a grandchild play ball and I was enjoying a little solitude and quiet. 

After a while, I read the newspaper during my time of quiet and found an article that talked about how to prevent Alzheimer's.  It's a three-pronged process and there is no absolute formula.  Eat healthy, exercise, and do brain games. 

Okay, so how are we doing?  Can of soup.  Sitting on my butt.  BUT, I did do the Jumble, the crossword puzzle, and the Sudoku!!  I win.

Then an interesting TV program aired.  Might have seen it before but it was worth another watch.  In Leroy, New York, about 10-15 individuals, almost all teens, began to show signs of something very strange.  Tics, seizures, Tourette's symptoms, pain in the joints, headaches, and some other things.

So the medical/psychological community came up with a diagnosis -- some sort of psychogenic disorder that passes from one to another because of stress and near hysteria.  Wow.  So I really watched the teens as they were filmed, their arms flailing around, their verbal noises, and their obvious distress.  I could see a teenager doing something like that for a couple of minutes but not for months.  So I felt it was something medical.

So did Erin Brokovich's group that came in and did all kinds of tests, including tests on the athletic playing field.  Although Brokovich still believed that there was some contamination, tests proved negative.

The cure wasn't 100% in one direction or another.  Some of the teens got an antibiotic that was designed to treat a strep throat that morphed into some kind of neurological event.  And they did well, almost completely recovered.

The other group got counseling and other types of interventions, and in time, they also recovered.

One girl who did not recover immediately was diagnosed with Lyme Disease complications.  She could talk well, but every sentence was interrupted by an, "Ent, Ent, Ent," sound.  Lyme Disease does sound logical.  We still don't know that much about Lyme Disease, caused by the bite of an affected tick but we know that it can cause sore joints and a host of other symptoms.  So who knew that ticks could cause tics?

At any rate, the world isn't watching Leroy anymore, and I think Leroy is probably pretty happy about that.