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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 4 years

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In Tatters: Two

Steve walked next to Bucky, their hands laced together. It felt good. The sun was shining, and Spring was finally here. And this, right here, he reflected, squeezing Bucky’s hand, was one of his favorite things about this time.

Affection wasn’t limited to dark corners or their apartment. They could hold hands. They could steal a kiss sometimes. It was just lovely. Comfortable. As they walked into the coffee shop looking for a snack and to find Bucky a coffee drink he might like, what he didn’t expect was for the shop to be mostly empty. He glanced down at his watch and nodded. It was after the morning rush but before the afternoon rush. Later then, he’d thought.

But then, they’d gotten distracted earlier in the bathroom. And one thing had lead to another. And well. It had been a good morning. Good enough, at least that Bucky had let himself be dragged to another coffee shop. Another coffee shop, another try to find a drink he liked beyond Black coffee. Another chance to pander to Bucky’s sweet tooth.

Still, neither of them expect to find one. And neither of them expect it when a girl breezes through the door.

Her hair is bound up in a messy bun, fly aways escaping and falling to frame a heart-stoppingly pretty face. Below that, a series of fashion choices. Thick combat boots, a knee-length hunter green pleated skirt, a black and white flannel tied around her waist, and a black t-shirt bearing the word “Killjoys” in red script handwriting. Cute. Modern. But Cute, they decide with a glance at each other. But she didn’t seem terribly interested in talking.

“You’re late,” one of the baristas called over the counter.

“I know, but I had a script to finish and then an episode to edit,” she says, yawning, “I haven’t even been home yet.”

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

“No, so do me a favor? Like three shots in that hippie.”

“Oh my god.”

“What? If my heart blows out of my chest, the hospital is like right around the corner.”

“Y/n,” she scolds, sliding you your pastry and taking your bank card.

“Eh, ‘s not like I’m using it anyway. Maybe a drag queen can soak it in formaldehyde and made a nice headpiece.”

That makes Bucky snort. Loudly enough that you turn around and give him a wink, “See, he gets it!” you tell the girl.

“Still, this much caffeine has GOT to be a liability. Ya, cryptid,” she says, handing you the cup.

“Yeah? Well, until I figure out who I’ve gotta blow to not do retail anymore, espresso and hope are all I got,” you say, giving her a mock salute and turning to stroll out the door.

“Hey,” the girl yells right as you’re at the doorway.

You half- turn with a ‘what?’ gesture.

“Tell Donny I need him to order me a new Lagoon Blue. And an Indigo Blonde.”

You nod and lope out, coffee in hand, and Steve and Bucky look at each other. They liked that. You were fucking feral, but still sweet. What they didn’t like was hearing a kid behind the counter say, “Fuck, she can blow me if she wants. I need a sugar baby.”

“With what fucking money?” the blue-haired girl asked, “She’s not gonna blow you unless your dick is gold plated, and you ejaculate chocolate. Not for no tip money and a coffee.”

__________

Bucky and Steve have a new favorite coffee shop after that. At first, they come in, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Figure out your schedule. But they always seem to just miss you. It’s disheartening but, at least the coffee is good, and the kids behind the counter are funny.

Still. Even just the chance of seeing you is enough to keep them coming back. It keeps them wanting more.

So when you waltz through the door carrying with you the smell of a coming storm and for some inexplicable reason, a Chia Pet of Bob Ross, neither of them can breathe for a second. Your skirt, has sloths on in and your shirt is a white men’s button-down, A floppy sun hat shades your face. “Your usual, your highness?” A barista asked, grinning, clearly teasing you.

“I told you, Ivy. If drunk me does things, Sober me was not in the driver's seat and can’t be held accountable.”

“How’s your ankle?” she giggles.

“Not too bad after jumping off a third-story balcony,” you admit, putting a cellophane-wrapped cookie on the counter.

Behind you, Steve and Bucky trade bemused looks. Your night had probably been a lot more interesting than theirs.

“What happened to Tinder Boy?” she asked.

“Oh my god. Ive. He lived with his mother and had unironic rocket ship sheets. I am not trying to do some Bates Motel shit.”

“It couldn’t be that bad.”

You sigh, “No joke, she walked in on us making out because like. I was gonna give him the benefit of the doubt because I, too, am broke as shit. But like. She told us to hurry up so she could come back and tuck him in when he was done.”

“No,” she gasped.

“Yeah. So... pretty sure I’m lucky I left that house with both kidneys.”

You yawn, and she hands you a coffee with a sympathetic smile, “It was your first date since Pash, though.”

“And it was creepy enough that I’m not dating ever again. No joke. Just gonna adopt a herd of yappy little dogs and be single forever,” you tell her, taking a sip.

“We just have to find you someone really hot,” she pressed.

“Can you put some brains in there for me this time? Test drives are entertaining, but I’d like to be able to carry on a conversation without my uterus cringing in fear.”

“That’s fair,” she said, picking up the chia pet, “Is this mine?”

“Yeah,” you say, “You know. Since Joey and I broke your other one.”

Her face lights up, and your smile, “Thanks!” she says, not waiting for a reply before scurrying to the back to put it away.

You find an empty table in a patch of sunshine and sit down, watching people out the window. You like a slow start to your day. Some time to adjust to being awake. You’re blissfully oblivious to anything but the warmth of the cup in your hands. You don’t notice Steve and Bucky trying to work up the guts to come to talk to you. But when their bulky frames block out the sunshine that you’d been enjoying, you aren’t exactly disappointed.

When you look up, guarded but still smiling a little, Bucky feels his heart skip, and he knows Steve does too. You have pretty eyes and plump, juicy red lips. They have a soft spot for that kind of thing. “Yeah?” you ask, taking a sip of coffee.

“We couldn’t help overhearing about your last date,” Steve said, grinning.

“And do you want his number?” you counter mildly.

Bucky snorted, “No, but yours might be nice,” he said, “It’d be a damn shame if you didn’t give anyone else a chance.”

You cock your head and smile a little as you assess them, “So, you expect me to believe that Captain America and Bucky Barnes are interested in me?”

Steve takes a seat at your table, and Bucky follows suit, “Why not?”

“Because you don’t know anything about me,” you remind them, “I could be a psycho.”

“We know you’re funny.” Bucky said, “And I doubt you’re a psycho. Too many social skills.”

“Ted Bundy had social skills,” you counter.

When they look confused, you sigh, “Serial Killer,” you explain.

“Listen,” Steve said, smiling, “All we want is one date. A test drive if you will.”

When you smirk, Bucky gets a distinct impression that “test drive” doesn’t mean a date.

“A test drive, huh?” you say trying not to giggle. Your polite euphemism for a one-night stand sounds incredibly strange coming from Captain America. “We’ll see,” you stand up and pull a card from your bag easily, “Pick me up at 8?”

Bucky takes the card. It has your name and number on it. As well as an email. Apparently, it’s your card for freelance editing, writing, and photography. It was good to know you had gumption. You had to if you had enough money to live.

“Yeah?” Steve said, grinning.

“I’ve made worse choices on a Saturday night,” you tease waltzing back out of the shop with your coffee in hand.

“Steve?” Bucky said slowly.

“Yeah Buck?” he answered

“What are we gonna wear?”

There was a silence as the gears ground to a halt in Steve’s head and he sighed, “Fuck.”

Tags:

@past-perfect-future-tense, @lookinsidemyhead, @rinkashirikitateku, @dumbubblegum

#Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #stuckyxreader #fluff #banter #poly stucky

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

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Ask D'Mine: Not Enough Onions and Food Tracking to the Rescue

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-not-enough-onions-and-food-tracking-to-the-rescue/

Ask D'Mine: Not Enough Onions and Food Tracking to the Rescue

Welcome once again to our weekly advice column, Ask D'Mine, where we talk all about navigating life with diabetes. In this edition, our host Wil Dubois (veteran type 1, author and diabetes community educator) takes on questions that may not only bring you to tears, but could also make you want to log some blood sugars! Read on!

Got your own questions? Email us at [email protected]

Joey from New England, type 1, writes: Hey, I was looking over some labs my doc ordered and I saw under the comprehensive metabolic panel the rather oddly named "anion gap." What's that all about?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: It's a measure of how many onions you eat. People with a low onion gap are not consuming enough onions. People with a high onion gap are eating too many.

What?

Ohhhhh... A-nion gap. Not O-nion gap. I'm sorry, I misheard you.

Anion gap is the difference between the concentrations of cations and anions in your blood. Huh? Don't worry about it; it tells your doc how acidic your blood is. When it's elevated it may be a marker of anything from diabetic ketoacidosis to drug poisoning to renal failure.

This wide variety of possibilities segues beautifully into my next subject, 'cause anion gap is but one of fourteen different tests that make up the comprehensive metabolic panel, called a CMP in the medical trenches. A CMP tests the levels of junk in your blood. It gives your doc a snapshot of your overall health by showing liver enzymes, markers of kidney function, sodium, potassium, and calcium levels, and more—even our friend glucose!

Because it can pick up on a wide array of health problems, a CMP is part of most annual physicals, especially for those of us who are "chronically ill" with conditions like diabetes. Each value of a CMP is assigned a "reference range" that's considered to be "normal" (but varies from lab to lab, even for the same test) and any value either above or below the reference range deserves a raised eyebrow from one of the white coats.

But, and this is important: Have you seen that TV commercial where the skinny balding doctor (in his white exam coat and stethoscope) is trying to run a jack-hammer and hits a water main? Meanwhile, the burly construction worker is in the drug isle of a big box store trying to choose a med? The tag line is something like "You wouldn't want your doctor trying to do your job, so why are you trying to do his?" There's another version with a lady doc and a violinist, but I think the jack-hammer one is 300% times funnier.

Nothing could be truer about the CMP. Because while any fool with a search engine can look up individual results, the real diagnostic skill is recognizing that if two elements of a CMP are near the top of the reference range, a third is a hair over, and a fourth is near the bottom, it all means something. In short, it's the dance between the elements of the CMP that tell stories, more than the individual results. And developing the literacy necessary to read those stories in a column of numbers is something that takes time, training, and experience. It's not something you can do with Google.

So. Go chop up some onions to treat that onion gap problem, but for God's sake leave anion gap and all the other labs to your doc.

Janet from Maryland, type 3, writes: Help! My 60-year-old type 1 husband is having trouble. His glucose readings are swinging from 38 to 250 multiple times a week! Do you/can you suggest a way to track his food intake? I think it's important to have a food diary just like his insulin log, which he is great at. We can't get in to see the new doc/dietician for another month, so do you think a food diary will help us see the whole picture?

Wil@Ask D'Mine answers: I hear your cry for help and I'm doing my Bay Watch dash to come running to your rescue. I think that a food log is a great idea, because an insulin log by itself is about as about as worthless and a submarine with a screen door. Knowing how many units of insulin you took without knowing what you took it for is pointless, so not only would a food log of some sort be helpful, but will probably be the smoking gun that lets you and your medical team sort out why your hub's blood sugars are doing the funky chicken dance.

But how to log that chicken, and everything else he eats? The first thing that comes to mind is to combine it with the insulin log he's already keeping, if there's room. I mean, he's recording it somehow now, so adding a little more info shouldn't be that of a big deal. Even if he's just logging his insulin in a good ol' fashion blood sugar diary, there will still be room to note something like:

BGL 199

5u Humalog

Chicken, rice, six glasses of wine

Or whatever. His dinner last night might have been different from mine.

Recording the very basics of meals (not precise measurements) is often enough to identify trends. Oh. Look at that. Every time I eat potatoes my blood sugar goes too high. Hmmmmm.... Oh. And look at that over there. Every time I eat just chicken it goes low.

Because what looks like a completely random mess probably isn't. There's almost always a hidden madness behind the crazy numbers. You just gotta find out what it is.

Now some people do go to extremes, weighing and recording the most minute details of every meal. While that's a good exercise in precision carb counting in real-time, it usually results in waaaaaaay too much data for your doc or dietician to review, given the realistic time constraints of the modern office visit.

Of course if you are iPowered with iPad or iPhone, or use any other electronic device on a regular basis, that's always an option for logging your meals, too. Back in the day I used Diabetes Pilot on a Palm and found it helpful and easy. And I'll bet there are a hundred other apps for this purpose by now. Being a bit of a Luddite, I find a pen and a piece of paper the fastest way to record anything—I don't have an iAnything at all—so I'm probably guilty of not being up-to-date on all the electronic options. I'll bet our readers won't be shy in comments about what works for them, however.

So maybe I wasn't all that much help on the whole "how to track" part of your question. But I can tell you what to do next.

No matter how the information is recorded, here're my Three Rules for food logs: 1) Do it in real time. Don't rely on your, or his, recall at the end of the day. Record it as you eat it. 2) Be consistent. Do it all the time. 3) Don't cheat. Cheating on your food log is like cheating at solitaire.

Then after a few days go find the three lowest blood sugars and the three highest. Pull out the meal details and write them on a separate piece of paper. What are the similarities? The differences?

I think you'll find the food log, no matter how you record it, is a powerful tool, and probably just the life preserver you need right now.

This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

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