Cat's Exercise Diary

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Ha ha. :) I'm not musically inclined at all, but playing piano always seemed to me like it must be a good finger workout. With crochet, I pretty much just do the same repetitive motion over and over, so probably not the best finger workout. Maybe I should learn to play piano? ;)

Urgh, I don't feel well today. My guts, for whatever reason, always get unhappy when I have a cold or virus. My appetite goes away, I get a bit nauseous, I get d and I just feel very unsettled in the guts. I've had about 4 episodes of d between last night & this morning. That plus cold symptoms means I'm just out of it and uncomfortable and exhausted. I took some dayquil this morning which helped with the stuffy sinuses and the sore throat, but it had no effect on the guts. Today's definitely a rest day. Tomorrow I'll assess how I feel and will play it by ear - if I still feel like this, I'll be forced to take another rest day. I'm not happy about that, but I know I need to listen to my body and give it what it needs, and right now my body is saying, "Ugh, I need rest!" :(
 
Ugh this week keeps getting worse! I remembered a little while ago that I have a dentist appointment today. Bleh! It's just a cleaning, but it's one of the last things I want to be doing when I feel crappy like this. Oh well, at least I get to lie down in the chair for awhile. I doubt I'll be comfortable though. This week seriously just needs to end so I can have a restful weekend (not that it will be super restful as I have to do more xmas shopping and get my tires rotated and probably other annoying errands too). Pity party, table of 1! ;) Sorry for the vent, I am just not having a good day at all.
 
Argh, a dentist appointment! It sucks to remember something like that when all you want to do is rest!
My belly is having an unsettled day as well - lots of cramping today and I ended up with four rounds of D this afternoon already ( so much fun when I'm at work). Not sure why - I haven't eaten anything on my "No" list, except I did put mushrooms in the spaghetti sauce last night. I picked them out of mine though, so I wouldn't think that would do it. I've been taking the psyllium for a few days now, don't know if it's something to do with that either? Or my belly is just unhappy for some unknown reason, picky thing.

I'm sorry about your cold, Cat. I hope you get over it fairly quickly.
 
Spaghetti sauce can be tricky for me - if there's garlic in it, that always does me in. Mushrooms don't digest very well, and the sauce itself is so acidic that it really gets my GERD going sometimes. But I would say garlic is the worst out of all that, and it's one of those things you don't even really think about. It took me a little while to even figure out that garlic was a trigger for me. I ate spaghetti, was fine, ate spaghetti, was fine, ate spaghetti, felt awful! What about it was different? Oh, there was garlic in that last one! So maybe it was something like that that caused you to not feel well? One of the picky little seasonings?

I'm feeling somewhat better today. I actually almost enjoyed being at the dentist yesterday - it was nice to be able to lie down for awhile. :p I was sure it was going to be awful, but it wasn't so bad. I did some crocheting and took a nice hot bath last night, went to bed a bit early, woke up not feeling as hideous as I did yesterday. I still definitely have a cold, I'm coughing and sniffly still, but my guts are somewhat better. My appetite is returning and I'm not nauseous, so that's good.

Since things are on the upswing, I'm going to attempt to do a weights workout today! I'm not overly optimistic, I still may not have a lot of energy or strength, but I'll do my best. I'd rather try and have a mediocre workout, than skip it. So I'll go and I'll try, and I'll be pleased with whatever I'm able to do.

Oh, and tonight is the final episode of the K-drama I've been watching! :( I will need to find a new show to watch now when I ride the bike! K-dramas don't do second seasons, they typically run for 20 episodes and then they're done, that's it. It's not at all like American TV shows where something will run for like 8 or 10 seasons. So it's nice in a way, if you want to watch a K-drama it doesn't involve watching countless seasons, it's just 20 episodes and it's done, not a huge time investment. It's sad though if you really like a show and get invested in the characters and stuff! I want more than 20 episodes of my show! :( I need to find a new K-drama that will keep me wanting to ride the bike for an hour at a time while I watch. My big problem with the stationary bike all last winter was that I got SO BORED of pedaling without going anywhere - I really need good entertainment to keep me going.
 
I'm glad to hear you're feeling well enough to give a workout a try. Hopefully you get some energy and it goes well! I hate being sniffly, it's my least favorite part of a cold, the nasally part.

I'm not sure what the trigger was, it could have been a seasoning. Now that I think about it, I did put onion powder in it and onions really kick my butt. Garlic powder is usually safe for me.

I just watched the season finale of Sons of Anarchy last night and OH MY GOD! NOt sure how I'm supposed to wait for next September to see the last season and how everything plays out. It was SUPER graphic and left me in tears.... It's been on for six years and we're completely invested. So I see what you mean about the short season thing. It sucks when a show is on for so many years that you feel you can't stop watching but it's been for too long and then you can't stop even though half the original characters are gone! I also watched my season finale of The Walking Dead last week and that one was hard to watch too.... I really need to stop getting into these darned shows!
 
Being sniffly isn't bad, it's tolerable to me. I think I'm used to it because I have had messed up sinuses ever since I broke my nose at age 11 (I broke it on the bottom of a swimming pool, I dove in wrong and hit the bottom with my face, my parents said the ER wouldn't do anything for my nose and they refused to take me to the ER, so as a result it was never set properly and healed crooked and I am sure I have a deviated septum plus who knows what else going on in there). Ever since that injury, I've had lots of sinus issues - whenever I get a headache, it tends to be a sinus headache. My nose drips a lot, particularly when I exercise or if I drink a hot beverage like tea. I have a hard time breathing through my nose, and I can only do neti pots on one side and I can only do NG tubes on the other side (I'm not sure why that is!). I blow my nose a lot and as a result my nose is frequently raw & irritated and I get nosebleeds often, especially in the dry winter months. So yeah, a bit of extra snifflyness on top of the usual isn't so bad, I'm used to it and can deal with it. The nausea and fatigue and sore throat were probably the symptoms that were bugging me the most about this cold, and they've all improved somewhat, so I'm not feeling too bad.

I haven't watched Sons of Anarchy, but I have watched the Walking Dead (I've only seen what episodes are on Netflix, so no spoilers please! :) ). Yeah, shows like Walking Dead aren't afraid to kill off their characters, so as a result it's a slightly different cast each season (or even each episode!). I kind of like that about K-dramas, since there are only 20 episodes, you're in it with the same characters for the full run of the show. There are exceptions - I watched this show called "Iris", it was made in 2009. It was like a spy drama, kind of like "24". By the end of the show, a LOT of the characters got killed off. But the show was really popular, so finally this year they decided to make "Iris 2." But it was more like a spin-off - the main character of Iris 2 is supposedly the sister of the female lead from the first Iris, and there's only one actor from the original Iris who returned to make Iris 2. I couldn't watch Iris 2, it just wasn't good without the actors from the first one. For one thing you can't make a second season of a show when the first show ended 4 years ago, and all the good characters got killed off! So yeah, anyway, most K-dramas don't get sequels/second seasons anyway and it seems to me that it's a good thing they don't. But still, some shows really need more than 20 episodes!
 
Oh, that is always a bad idea. Kind of like when they make a sequel to a movie and it doesn't have the same actors or new characters in it. I am a huge fan of the Mummy movies, but I just couldn't stand that Rachel Weiss didn't play Evie in the third one. It really ruined the movie for me, it was too hard to buy into it with the wrong actress!

20 episodes would be rough - that's enough of them for you to really get invested into the plot and characters, and be left wanting more!
No spoilers for you on the Walking Dead, but let's just say they still haven't changed their trend of killing off characters! Good thing they introduce new ones all the time or they would run out. I kind of wonder if they'll just end the show with everyone being a zombie!
 
Oh, I loved the first Mummy movie! I watched the 2nd one and I recall it being so-so, I don't think I watched the 3rd one so I wasn't aware that Rachel Weiss wasn't in it. But I hate that too, when they replace an actress/actor and try to pass it off as being the same character. Did you ever watch "Dead Like Me"? They made 2 seasons and then the show rather abruptly got cancelled, so a few years later they made a DLM movie to try to tie up all the loose ends and to make the fans happy. But it was awful! They couldn't get 2 of the main actors to come back for the movie, so they wrote one of them out of the script and replaced the other one with a different actress (and like you said with the girl who replaced Rachel Weiss, this actress was just all wrong and I could not buy her as being the same character!). The script was bad too, the whole thing was just awful - it would have been better if they never made that movie!

Walking Dead - eek, I just hope my favorite characters last awhile longer. I love Glen & Maggie's relationship, and he's such an underdog (he should have died like 10 times already!). I don't want to know what's happening in the current season, but I really hope those two make it.

Ahhh. I just got back from the gym, and I feel great! :) Had a MUCH better workout than last time. Had decent energy and was able to do everything I wanted, except for jogging as my warm-up. When I got into the gym, I felt some gurgling and pain in my LRQ, and I didn't want to jostle my guts around by jogging, so I warmed up on the bike instead. Once I was warmed up, though, my LRQ quieted right down and I felt pretty good. Did all the weight machines including the abdominals machine, and LRQ stayed quiet throughout. I did have a few coughing fits and I had to wipe my nose even more than usual, so this cold hasn't quiet left my system yet, but overall I felt good and had a good workout. :)
 
Ughhh. Well, I felt great after finishing my workout yesterday. Then I ate lunch... and my guts revolted. I'm not sure why - I ate something safe (it was leftovers from the previous day's dinner and it went down fine then). My guts got very rumbly and then became crampy and I had to run to the bathroom. Had a few painful episodes of d (you know when it feels like hot lava?), including some blood. Guts remained very upset all evening so I skipped dinner altogether.

Today I feel very fatigued and exhausted. I'm in that weird state where I feel simultaneously hungry & nauseous, so I'm still not sure what's going on with my guts or if it's safe to eat yet. This morning I told hubby, "I don't know how I'm going to get through this day" and then I started crying. I just hate this, I did everything right and I feel like this cold is on its way out, I didn't eat any unsafe foods and I hit the gym like a good girl - why is my body doing this to me anyway? And with having to skip dinner and all that d, I've probably already lost a little more weight, I feel like every time I get on even footing then something else bad happens and I get right back behind the 8-ball again.

Sorry for yet another pity party. This has been a terrible week and I'm so glad it's almost over!
 
Hooray for a great workout! You made it all the way through! Such good news.
I'm holding steady on weight I think... 132 as of yesterday morning, and hoping to stay there for a while. My husband has been talking about how to start working out and I know he does better with a partner, but I'm leery of it being me, because I have to do my morning workout for my back, and if I work out with him in the afternoon, that's that many more calories to make up for. We'll figure it out somehow. I want to be supportive, that's for sure.

Maggie and Glen.... I do love their relationship! I won't give any spoilers for the current season. it was definitely a shocker multiple times. I will say I just HATE The Governor! And Carl drives me nuts. :D
 
Hey Cindy, I see our football teams are playing each other this week - Cowboys vs. Packers! Might be interesting!... Okay, maybe not, the Packers will probably lose. :p Ha ha.

I'm so exhausted. I just want to curl up and sleep for the rest of the day. I don't know why my guts went crazy like that after my workout yesterday. I had more d this morning but at least it wasn't bloody. I just don't think I'll ever get over how odd it is to go from feeling good to feeling horrible in such a short amount of time. Bleh!
 
It will be an interesting game, especially since Rodgers isn't playing.... You know I'll be rooting for my 'boys!

The exhaustion thing really sux. I'm feeling really tired today too, almost fatigued. Kinda sucks because we have dinner plans with friends tonight and have to drive an hour to meet them and then an hour back home. Looks like you need another rest day!
 
Cindy, I'm sorry my team beat yours! :p I was definitely not expecting that outcome, especially after the Packers' very lousy first half.

So I took Friday & Saturday as rest days. I felt so crappy after my bleeding/hot lava episode on Thursday, that I needed a couple days to recover. Sunday, I was feeling okay and I thought I would go to the gym and see what I could do. I did okay, didn't have tons of energy but had enough to get through a decent workout. I was happy and satisfied with what I was able to do, so it was a good workout.

Today, I was thinking of doing the stationary bike, but my muscles are feeling sore. I have been keeping an eye on the weather - they said 1 to 3 inches of snow falling quickly this afternoon. I have a couple errands to run, so I was going to let the weather make the final decision. If it's snowing at my lunchtime, then I'd stay off the roads and go ride the bike. If it hasn't started snowing yet, I'll go out and run my errands quick. Well, I am going to go in about 15 mins, and it hasn't started snowing yet, so that coupled with the soreness means I'm taking a rest day today and will go run my errands. That's fine, I know soreness means I need to let my muscles heal, so I'll let myself heal and will hit the gym tomorrow. If I'm feeling okay Wednesday then I'll either do the bike or yoga. Weights Thursday, not sure about Friday.

Friday will be my last day of work until the new year - I have some vacation days to burn, so I'm taking off from the 23rd thru the 1st. As a result, I may not be on the forum much during that time, but I'll still be working out as much as I can and will update this thread when I have a chance.
 
Scratch that last post! I just looked out the window and it's snowing! I'm pounding down some Tums and am going to head down to ride the bike momentarily. :) I'll do my errands another time! It's really cold here (like 10 degrees with a -5 windchill right now) so the weather reports said the roads will get bad quickly once the snow starts, as the salt won't work very well due to the cold temps. So bike it is after all!
 
boo! that stinks. Hey, more time off, that's pretty cool!

I will also be absent from the forum from the 19th-25th, as we are going to AZ to visit our oldest and his wife and then coming back in time for xmas eve with the family. we're pretty excited.

Yesterday and today I've struggled on the elliptical, made it 25-28 minutes and had to stop. I think I'm getting a little weaker with my weight down to 132 lbs. Kind of bums me out. I need to remember the Ensure I keep forgetting!
 
Cindy, I hope you can eat some fun touristy meals while on vacation and regain some of your weight! I weighed myself when I was down in the gym to ride the bike, and I'm down a few lbs myself. The scale in the little gym in the basement isn't the most accurate, but I think I'm at about 135. (I was up to about 138 last week before the "hot lava" & bleeding episode.) I do tend to lose weight around the holidays - I'm not sure if it's a stress thing or what. I try to keep up my workout schedule as close to normal as possible, and I try to eat my usual diet. But I can recall losing about 5 lbs unintentionally at least once during the holidays. I swear, everyone else gains weight during the holidays, why I can't at least maintain my weight?

I did the stationary bike (in the little gym in the basement at work) to avoid going out in the snow, and I felt pretty good. Legs felt rather tired but I pushed through and did a half hour. It's supposed to snow tomorrow too so I'll be right back down in the basement gym for weights tomorrow. I may take a rest day Wednesday since I did the bike today, or maybe I'll do yoga. It'll depend on how I feel, how much energy I have, etc.
 
I swear, this week has been designed to aggravate me. :p Yesterday it snowed quite a bit, we got 3 or 4 inches of snow. My city for some reason decided not to plow at all, and I have a small car with small tires. So getting home from work last night was almsot a workout in itself! I got stuck going up a hill and spent about 5 minutes cranking my steering wheel and spinning my tires before I finally got some traction. And driving in the snow makes me tense in general, so I think my muscles were kind of tight the whole drive home.

Today I'm going to the gym, and I plan to push myself! I need to pre-de-stress as I feel like I'm going to have a stressful evening. I got my tires rotated on Sunday, and they screwed something up and my alignment is now a little wonky, so I have to take my car back there tonight so they can fix whatever they messed up. I just know I'm going to have to argue my case though and the thought of that stresses me out - I'm not good in social situations and I hate confrontation, so to have to tell the service desk people that they messed up and they have to fix their error, and what if they balk or say it's not their fault or that I have to pay for the aligmnent? Just the thought of it is stressful! So, I'll work off some of my worry in the gym and hopefully things will go smoothly at the tire place tonight. I'm trying to visualize things going well tonight - I show up and they promptly get my alignment fixed up properly without any need for me to argue or ask to speak to the manager and they do it for free because it was their error in the first place. That's what I need to happen! I'm a worst-case-scenario kind of worrier though so what I'm really thinking about is, they make me pay for it and it takes hours and they screw it up worse and I cry but the manager yells at me anyway. :p

Anyway, so gym today for weights and I'm going to make my body tired so that hopefully my mind follows suit and stops worrying so much about stupid stuff. Tomorrow, maybe yoga. Or maybe rest day, depending on how tired I am. Thursday, weights again, Friday, not sure. I'm thinking weights Saturday & Monday - then it's xmas, so maybe weights again Thursday? Speaking of stressful situations - xmas eve will be stressful. We usually spend the night at hubby's parents' house. My sis-in-law and her 5 kids will also be spending the night there, and those kids are loud, and I just cannot sleep when children are talking/yelling/running around/etc. (Side note, I'm SO glad I don't have kids!) Usually the littler kids go to bed early and the older kids stay up late, so the girls will be up talking for awhile - by the time they finally go to bed, the boys are starting to wake up, so then they start making noise. So there's noise all night and I never, ever get any sleep on xmas eve. I hate it! I've tried ear plugs, a white noise machine, sleeping pills, you name it - somehow I still never get any sleep on xmas eve. Drives me nuts and then I'm in a foul mood on xmas day. I think I said this earlier, but I'll be so happy when the holidays are over!
 
Aw, Cat, that sucks! Xmas Eve should be fun... but I know what you mean. I'm worried about some stress that day myself, as my least favorite SIL will be there and I am not speaking to her. She is one of the rudest, most selfish people I know, and if there wasn't a family component, I'd never have to see her again. Her children are all completely spoiled and ungrateful so I hate buying them stuff that they aren't thankful for. This year we decided to just get (all 4 of them!) gift cards, and so did my other SIL, so that should be fun, she'll be judgemental about that as well.
I hope you are able to get some sleep...

We'lll be in AZ for the few days before Xmas Eve so hopefully we're all relaxed and rested and can just ignore her!

Keep visualizing that tire appointment going smoothly and it will.
 
My husband's family has someone who sounds a lot like your sis-in-law. Hubby's aunt, she's this awful woman. She's one of those women who always wears leopard print and she always has on a ton of makeup even though it looks awful - now you have a visual. :p She lives in a trailer and loves Elvis. She's also a terrible person. When hubby and I first got married, this aunt's idiot daughter (that's another story!) gave us a couple hamsters that she couldn't keep any longer. The aunt then told me this "funny" story about how when she was a little girl, she had a hamster and she wanted to keep it forever, and she knew that if you wanted to keep a flower forever that you pressed it in a book, so... you can imagine how that story ended. I was horrified and the aunt was laughing like it was cute that she killed a hamster!

Fortunately we don't have to see this aunt any longer, she alienated herself from the family rather neatly. One year at xmas, she was visiting and my mother-in-law asked the aunt if she'd help her with the dishes. Well, the aunt acted very put out, she washed all the dishes while sighing and sniffing the whole time like she was above it all, and then she stormed out and we haven't seen her since! :) So no more crazy aunt at xmas, all because someone dared to ask her to help with the dishes. Hah, good riddance to crazy aunt! I heard on facebook that she moved to Branson to be where the "action" is in terms of Elvis impersonators (seriously), so now there's not even an outside chance she'll show up at xmas. My family may be crazy, but hubby's aunt is someone that I'm VERY relieved that I don't have to see anymore.

Maybe your crazy sis-in-law can move to Branson too? We can designate Branson as the place where all crazy relatives get shuffled off to. Does your sis-in-law like Elvis? ;)

Ahhh, I just got back from the gym and I feel good. I tried jogging as my warm-up, but my legs were kind of tired from doing the bike yesterday. I managed to do some jump-rope, though. I find that's a really effective way to warm up pretty quickly! I did all the weights - the abdominals machine seemed really tough today, but I did it. Legs feel quite tired now and my left knee is aching a bit. It sometimes aches when I ride the bike, so maybe it's just because I did the bike yesterday. My joints are generally a bit more achey in the winter, so maybe it's just a winter thing too. Although it's actually really nice out today, 30 degrees and sunny so the snow is melting! :D It won't melt completely, we got too much snow for that, but at least the roads are clearing nicely. Too bad I have to go to the tire place tonight or I'd spend the evening with my heating pad on my knee - that usually makes it feel a lot better. Anyway, I had a good workout and am just a little achey now.
 
Oh, wow, what a story! That's pretty crazy.... it's funny that dishes were the key to getting rid of her. Also funny because at Thanksgiving all the ladies help me out in the kitchen, cleaning up the food and washing the dishes EXCEPT that one SIL, who just sits on her lazy butt. Last year my mom actually asked her just to bring the glasses over from the table and she looked my mom right in the face and said, "no." I didn't hear it or I would have chewed her lazy butt out!
SIL isn't an Elvis fan (that's my MIL), but she is a Wayne Newton fan! Maybe she should go to Branson, that would be nice.

Yay for the good workout! I only made it 25 minutes again this morning and pooped out. Need to get my energy level up, hopefully like you said I'll eat some good food in AZ and get a couple of pounds back on so I can get back to 30 minutes at least!
 
Well, I visualized my car appointment going smoothly, and it did... for about 2 minutes. :p They said my car probably needed an alignment and that it would be no charge (they apprently screwed up my alignment when they did a tire rotation a few days earlier). So that all sounded good but it went downhill from there. I waited an hour and a half, and then they came out and told me that they rotated my tires twice (??) and balanced them but my car still pulls to the left, so it'll need an alignment (why didn't they just do the alignment??), and that I'll have to come back later to have that done AND I'll have to pay for it! They were a bit rude to me too. Wow, what a load of BS! The manager wasn't there so I just went home and sent the manager an email, telling him everything that happened. I was so upset! They wasted my time, didn't fix my car, and now want to waste more of my time AND my money - yeah, that's so not happening!

I went home super upset and hubby doted on me a bit to try to get me to feel better, but the whole thing made me so mad and upset and it affected my guts, I can feel it. I had loose stools this morning, not really d but approaching d, that happened like 4 times. Then, just now I went to the bathroom, I only had to pee. I don't know what happened, I swear I just peed, but blood started coming out of my backside. Bright red blood just dripping out - that's never happened to me before! I've had blood in with my stool before, and I've had like a tiny bit of blood on the TP when I have fissures, but it's never dripped out like that before. Freaked me out - why is it happening and what on earth do I do? I mean, you can't really comfortably put a tampon up there! And I'm at work without a lot of supplies. Fortunately, I remembered that I had stuck some incontinence pads in my gym bag - I got them as a free sample or something, and I put them in there "just in case." Thank goodness I did - I think they're for urinary incontinence, but hopefully they'll work for today's situation! I just had to wear light grey pants today! Eek!

Soooo. That's where I'm at, stressed and upset and bleeding. Today's a much-needed rest day, although I won't be resting. I remembered that I promised my best friend from childhood that I'd sew her baby son a stocking for xmas, and her older son dictated to me that he wants his brother's stocking to have a storm trooper from Star Wars on it (I had made the older boy a stocking last year with Darth Vader on it, so now he wants a semi-matching stocking for his new brother). He was very specific, he said "a storm trooper with a black gun and a red santa hat!" So that'll be my evening, I have to figure out how on earth to make a storm trooper out of fleece & felt. I've got most of my crocheting done, I only have to finish my grandpa's blanket, and I won't see my grandpa until the weekend after xmas, so I have a bit of time and am not too worried about getting it done in time (I've got about 1/3rd of it done already). I have said it before, but once the holidays are over with, I'll be so happy and (relatively) stress-free! (And hopefully my butt will stop bleeding!) I cannot wait for New Year's! I also cannot wait until I'm done dealing with the stupid idiots at the tire place, and once this is all over with I will NEVER take my car there again! And I'll make sure to pack some incontinence pads in my purse from now on because holy cow, sometimes you really need one!
 
Aw, Cat. well the upside is that you happened to have the pads with you, so crisis averted there! Hopefully you can get destressed and figure out what's going on. Are you close to your menstrual cycle? Is it possible you have a small fistula? One of the possibilities I can think of.
That stocking sounds pretty challenging, but if you successfully made a Vader one, I'd imagine you can pull off the storm tropper version. Sounds pretty cool to me!

I hope you get some vindication from the manager of the tire place, because it sounds like they are trying to rip you off. If your car didn't need an alignment when you got the tires rotated the first time, and re-rotating them didn't help, they did something wrong.
 
It was definitely not menstrual blood - I'm over a week away from getting my period (I'm on the nuvaring which makes my menstrual cycle like clockwork, so I won't get my period until I take the current ring out in about a week's time). I made darn sure it was coming from my booty - when it happened, I had only urinated, and I saw all this blood - my first inclination was that I must have peed blood? My hubby urinated blood all the time when he had kidney stones. But I wiped my backside and the blood was definitely coming from there - that was kind of a relief actually, as I really don't want kidney stones, so I was glad I wasn't peeing blood! I haven't had any blood come out of me since, and there's no blood on the sanitary pad either. I'm just going to keep an eye on things for now - if it happens again, I'll definitely call/email my GI right away.

In spite of all this, it has been an okay day. At work, people have been exchanging xmas gifts. I received some of my favorite things today in the form of xmas gifts from co-workers - chocolate, lip gloss, and lotion! That definitely cheered me up, chocolate is one of my favorite things ever. :) It's not always the best on my tummy, but I don't even care. It's really nice chocolate too, it looks fancy and the person who gave it to me said it's really, really good. Yum! So that cheered me up. I also bought myself a new nail polish while I was at the pharmacy today. When I first got sick, I was at the doctor & the pharmacy all the time, and it depressed me. I found that buying myself a little bottle of nail polish each time I had to go to the doctor/pharmacy really cheered me up. It's not expensive, it's pretty and fun and it makes me feel happy. So, as a result, I now have about a zillion bottles of nail polish in every color you can think of! :p But today, I was feeling down, and at the pharmacy I saw a color I actually don't own - silver with blue sparkles! Very pretty and wintery, so I bought it even though I don't actually need any more nail polish. Still, it made me happy. Nail polish + chocolates, I'm so easy to please. :p

I think I have a photo of the Darth Vader stocking on my facebook somewhere. Cindy, are you on facebook? Want to be facebook friends? I can PM you the link to my page if you want! I am taking like 12 days off of work very soon, and may not be around on the forum much, but facebook is pretty easy to access on my Kindle and I'm probably going to be checking my fb at least once a day, so it might be a bit easier to stay in touch that way during my time off.
 
Well, things are starting to come together. I got a bunch of work done on the stocking and am pleased with how it's turning out. It's really difficult to make a storm trooper out of felt, but I think I managed to do okay. Also, the manager of the tire place was super nice and apologetic to me and he says he'll do a free alignment on my car, so I'm hopefully finally getting somewhere with that!

As for my bleeding, I think it's definitely a fissure. It feels like fissures I've had in the past, and it's now acting more like my fissures have (blood on the TP when I wipe, no more blood dripping out fortunately). So that's good, I can deal with a fissure at least.

I'm going to the gym today for weights. Going to hunker down tonight as soon as I get home - we're supposed to get freezing rain tonight, yuck! (Cindy, I'm super jealous that you're in sunny AZ right now!) And they're saying 5-9 inches of snow on Sunday, ick. I'm glad I bought an exercise bike - yes, I can use the bike in either of the gyms I go to, but on bad weather days I'm glad I have exercise options at home so that I don't have to brave the elements!
 
Update 12/22/13: I haven't been to the gym much, but that's okay - winter weather is giving me a workout and a half! On Friday, we had freezing rain and the roads seemed very icy and unsafe to me, so I called in to work and stayed home. Took that day as a rest day.

Yesterday, I had to run some errands, so I had to chisel the ice off my car (the roads were better but my car was still iced over). That was a bit of an arm workout, there was a lot of ice very stubbornly covering my car, it took quite a bit of scraping to get my windows cleared off. I walked all around the grocery store - had to buy some groceries so that we'd have plenty to eat during & after Saturday night's big snowstorm. I also took the dog on a very long walk that day - we met up with a corgi friend of hers and the two of them played quite a lot. I knew she wouldn't be getting a walk on Sunday, with all the snow we were supposed to get, so I let her really tire herself out on Saturday.

Sunday (today), we woke up to quite a lot of snow - I think we got about 8 inches? We shoveled the driveway & sidewalk, plus we shoveled our neighbors' sidewalks (we have really nice neighbors who always help us with our shoveling, so we wanted to repay the favor). That was a LOT of work and I can feel it in my abs, back, shoulders, arms, even my legs - all my muscles got a good workout from shoveling so much. Phew! I feel good though. And now that we got the shoveling over with early in the day, we can spend the rest of the day resting and doing nice stuff. Hubby is baking xmas cookies, we're going to clean the house a bit and I'm going to wrap presents later today. It should be a very nice day. :)

Tomorrow, probably a rest day! Xmas eve, I'm hoping the gym will be open at least in the early part of the day, I'm hoping to squeeze in a quick workout before heading to the in-laws'. Xmas will likely be a rest day, I'm sure the gym isn't open on xmas. Hopefully I can get to the gym again on the 26th.
 
Wow 8 inches of snow, I'd gladly take that over the freezing rain and ice pellets we had last night and today
 
Cat-a-Tonic said:
I think I have a photo of the Darth Vader stocking on my facebook somewhere. Cindy, are you on facebook? Want to be facebook friends? I can PM you the link to my page if you want! I am taking like 12 days off of work very soon, and may not be around on the forum much, but facebook is pretty easy to access on my Kindle and I'm probably going to be checking my fb at least once a day, so it might be a bit easier to stay in touch that way during my time off.
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I am! Under Cindy McDonald (Cynthia Mercer). Let's buddy up!
 
What a shock it was to come back from Arizona! It was 67 down there the day we left, and when our plane landed in Minnesota it was -10! OUch! hard to get used to again. We had a great trip and really enjoyed ourselves. My daughter-in-law told me she and my son decided it's time to start trying for a baby, so it's possible I could be a grandmother within the year!
I hope everyone else had a great holiday season as well!
 
I'm here, I survived xmas! :D It wasn't too bad, I managed to avoid trigger foods for the most part, and my guts are okay. They're pretty happy that the stress is over with, and the stress wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, either. For one thing, I thought my sis-in-law and her 5 kids were going to sleep over at my in-laws' house, in which case I wouldn't get any sleep with the kids making noise. But I was pleasantly surprised - sis-in-law's husband is sick, so she wanted to get home to him that night, so she & the kids went home that evening rather than spend the night. I got a quiet, relatively peaceful night and I managed to get some sleep! I still have a hard time sleeping in a bed that isn't my own, and my dog and father-in-law both made a bit of noise, but on the whole it was much more relaxing than if 5 kids were in the next room. :)

I haven't made it to the gym in a little bit. I've been shoveling which is like a full-body workout in itself, so I haven't been totally idle. I think it's snowed here every day for about a week straight! It's snowing now too, bleh. I want to go to the gym for a proper workout today though as it's been awhile since I've done the weights and I miss it. I also need to walk my dog. So I'm staying active for sure.

One detriment to my staying active? We got a Playstation 3 for xmas. :p That will keep my butt on the couch for hours at a time, which isn't great, but it's so fun. And for the days I'm not feeling well and need to just relax, this will be a great distraction.

So I'm thinking, gym today and probably shoveling too. Walk the dog tomorrow and perhaps shovel then again too? Weights Saturday. Sunday, I have to go see my grandparents, so that'll likely be a rest day. Hubby works Monday so I might go to the gym by myself. I kind of want to get some lobsters for New Year's Eve on Tuesday - I can do lobster, seafood/shellfish is okay on my tummy. I think we're just staying in on New Year's as hubby has to work part of the day - that's fine with me, I've never really been a party girl, I'm way too much of an introvert & homebody. So staying in with a nice dinner sounds lovely, I'll likely have a small glass of wine or two and watch movies or play games.
 
We are also planning on staying in on New Year's Eve. Just making a nice dinner, watching a movie or two, some snuggling with each other and the puppies! No wine for me though :( .

We have an Xbox360, and it's a geat way to pass the time when there's not a lot to do, or not feeling too well. We have a Gold subscription so if our son is home in AZ we will go online and play with him too. It's pretty fun!

I love seafood, and I tolerate it well, thank goodness, so we'll probably do surf and turf for NYE.
 
Hawkeye, lobsters aren't hard to find at all here. Multiple grocery stores here carry live lobsters, and there's this great seafood market in my city that gets fresh fish flown in daily. We went to the seafood market and reserved 2 live lobsters which we'll go pick up tomorrow afternoon. They even let us reserve what size - they said the average size lobster is 1.5 lbs, but that we could get 2, 3, or even 4 lb lobsters if we wanted! Holy cow, that's kind of crazy. They're about $15 per lb, so we stuck with the 1.5 lb size. I'm looking forward to it, I've had lobster in restaurants a couple of times in the past, but I've never cooked live lobsters at home. Hopefully it'll be really yummy!

Ahhh. I get to go to the gym in about an hour. I had posted about this on facebook and Cindy already knows all about this saga, but my car wouldn't start and that was so stressful and worrying. I don't have a lot of money with it being right after xmas, and I really was nervous about racking up a repair bill. Fortunately, it seemed that the issue was just that I needed a new battery, and my car seems fine now that we put a new battery in. I hadn't realized that the battery can be too low to start the car even if the lights & radio come on, so thanks so much Cindy (and Cindy's hubs) for telling me that! :) The new battery wasn't cheap ($90, eek) but still cheaper than a repair bill and paying a mechanic to fiddle around and put in a new battery.

So, now that my car works again, I can go to the gym! :D I had kind of a rough workout 2 days ago, felt a bit... not nauseous, but my stomach felt really full. I don't know if I drank too much water or what, but I felt like I might puke just because I felt too full. It was disconcerting! And then hubby, who hadn't been to the gym in a few weeks (he's been working a lot so he hasn't made it to the gym with me in awhile), apparently he way overdid things at the gym and he nearly puked too. So both of us just went home afterwards and sat around resting & recovering! Not great. Hubby's working again today so I'm off to the gym by myself in a bit, and I'm just hoping to have a better workout with no thoughts of puke. :p I'm also hoping the gym is quiet today.

On that note, I'm hoping to go lift weights again in 2 days, on New Year's day. I realize that may suck, as all the New Year's resolution people may flood the gym! So I'm not particularly looking forward to that workout, but I'll get through it.
 
Cat-a-Tonic said:
Hawkeye, lobsters aren't hard to find at all here. Multiple grocery stores here carry live lobsters, and there's this great seafood market in my city that gets fresh fish flown in daily. We went to the seafood market and reserved 2 live lobsters which we'll go pick up tomorrow afternoon. They even let us reserve what size - they said the average size lobster is 1.5 lbs, but that we could get 2, 3, or even 4 lb lobsters if we wanted! Holy cow, that's kind of crazy. They're about $15 per lb, so we stuck with the 1.5 lb size. I'm looking forward to it, I've had lobster in restaurants a couple of times in the past, but I've never cooked live lobsters at home. Hopefully it'll be really yummy!

Ahhh. I get to go to the gym in about an hour. I had posted about this on facebook and Cindy already knows all about this saga, but my car wouldn't start and that was so stressful and worrying. I don't have a lot of money with it being right after xmas, and I really was nervous about racking up a repair bill. Fortunately, it seemed that the issue was just that I needed a new battery, and my car seems fine now that we put a new battery in. I hadn't realized that the battery can be too low to start the car even if the lights & radio come on, so thanks so much Cindy (and Cindy's hubs) for telling me that! :) The new battery wasn't cheap ($90, eek) but still cheaper than a repair bill and paying a mechanic to fiddle around and put in a new battery.

So, now that my car works again, I can go to the gym! :D I had kind of a rough workout 2 days ago, felt a bit... not nauseous, but my stomach felt really full. I don't know if I drank too much water or what, but I felt like I might puke just because I felt too full. It was disconcerting! And then hubby, who hadn't been to the gym in a few weeks (he's been working a lot so he hasn't made it to the gym with me in awhile), apparently he way overdid things at the gym and he nearly puked too. So both of us just went home afterwards and sat around resting & recovering! Not great. Hubby's working again today so I'm off to the gym by myself in a bit, and I'm just hoping to have a better workout with no thoughts of puke. :p I'm also hoping the gym is quiet today.

On that note, I'm hoping to go lift weights again in 2 days, on New Year's day. I realize that may suck, as all the New Year's resolution people may flood the gym! So I'm not particularly looking forward to that workout, but I'll get through it.
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I'm so glad it was just the battery! With the cold weather, it's hard to be sure with these cars. They don't like our northern deep cold!
Speaking of that, this morning sure sucked! I hate it when it's so cold outside that it hurts my face just to be out there.
New Year's Day will probably be safe at the gym, as people will be recovering from New Year's Eve, but beware the weekend!
 
I find that in a cold climate, batteries last about 5 or 6 years - apparently it is the hot weather that is hard on the battery and they fail in cold weather when the power is needed to start the car.

My little guy and I were looking at the lobsters tonight at the supermarket - looks like they had a few cooked and on ice for New Years' Eve. We actually bought him a cooked lobster a couple of weeks ago at the supermarket and he ate the tail and claws for supper. They are about $5.99/lb live here and $6.99/lb cooked.

Lobster and melted butter....
 
Oh wow Hawkeye, $5.99 per lb is really cheap! We're nowhere near an ocean here - we're in the Great Lakes area of the Midwest, so I get a fair amount of trout & salmon that my father-in-law catches in Lake Michigan, but for ocean stuff like lobster, it has to be shipped in and so it's a bit pricey. Hence why I have never bought live lobsters before! But it sounds fun, it sounds like a thing to do at least once in life, and it sounds delicious. :p

I made it to the gym today. I brought the battery jumping thingy (it's hard to describe, but it's like a portable battery with jumper cables - you plug it in at home to charge it, and then if you need a jump, you don't have to get another vehicle involved - you just hook up this thing to the car battery and can jump it that way). I didn't need to use it, my car started right up every time, yay! It's quite cold here, well below zero (fahrenheit) even without factoring in the wind chill, so I didn't want to take any chances and I'm glad we have that battery charging/jumping thingy. I managed to run a few errands after hitting the gym and my car gave me zero trouble, so I think all is good now. :) It's a very reliable little car (it's a Toyota and it's 13 years old and has always been great to me) so I'm glad it was just a battery thing and that my little car is still overall awesome.

Anyway, I had a good workout. Felt pretty good, had so-so energy, didn't feel pukey - so pretty good overall. The gym was busier than I expected - I wonder if some of the New Year's resolution people are getting a jump on things? A fair amount of people in the gym seemed a bit clueless, too. I had to wait for the assisted chin-up bar to open up, as a guy was using it and he didn't really seem to know what he was doing. Hmph. The gym staff was giving lots of tours to potential new gym members too, so it's looking like it's going to be quite busy in January. Yuck! I seem to recall from last year, the first week of January was super busy, and then it gradually tapered down, and by mid-February or so it was about back down to normal again. So hopefully that'll be the case! I do have to disagree with you, Cindy, I think the 1st is going to be packed. Weekends are usually much slower than weekdays at the gym, so I'm thinking the weekend will be less busy than the 1st will be. I'll let you know what happens! I'm going to the gym on the 1st. On Friday, I'll be back at work and I'll probably just use the gym at work that day. Probably weights again on Sunday, so I can compare Sunday to the 1st.

I'm looking forward to a pretty relaxing New Year's eve. We're getting the lobsters, but other than that, we're staying in and keeping it low-key. We'll probably be in sweatpants, playing Playstation 3 (used PS3 games are so cheap, I picked up a couple more today while I was out running errands after the gym). I'll have a glass of wine, maybe two if I'm feeling crazy, but that's about my limit. Drinking more than that, it affects my bladder and I run the risk of UTI (I'm prone to UTIs, and alcohol, caffeine, sugar, etc all really irritate my bladder) - plus of course alcohol makes my guts unhappy, and dehydrating myself is a big no-no too. So probably 1 or maybe 2 small glasses of wine and that'll be it. Lobster and sweatpants, movies or video games. Watching the ball drop on TV and then going to bed! :) That sounds way more fun to me than going to a party or bar or whatever. I'm such an introvert and a homebody, I have a much better time staying at home than going out.

I hope everybody else has a good New Year's too! Everybody stay safe and be (mostly) nice to your tummies!
 
Cat-a-Tonic said:
I had to wait for the assisted chin-up bar to open up, as a guy was using it and he didn't really seem to know what he was doing. Hmph.
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:ylol: Gave me some chucks! I remember feeling like that when waiting for one of my machines and some doofus who didn't know what he was doing was taking forever on it!

My hubs made me homemade pizza last night (yummy with gluten-free crust and sauce, and dairy-free mozzarella cheese), and bought me snow crab legs for tonight! :queen: feeling a bit spoiled!
We're doing the same as you, Cat. Changing into sweatpants and playing some Xbox, maybe a movie or two. We'll be staying nice and toasty warm, as it's not going to get out of the below digits at all today and then be a solid -10 tonight.

Us and our three doggies, snuggling into the New Year!
 
The lobster was delicious! I wayyy overdid things though on New Year's eve and really paid for it yesterday. I not only stuffed myself with lobster (with lots of melted butter), but I also had 2 mimosas. The orange juice in them is probably just as risky if not riskier for me than the champagne was! OJ tends to really get my GERD going, it's so acidic. And I didn't stop there, either, I also had a bunch of candy and also a hot chocolate with Bailey's! Eek, I know, so much badness there. Between the sugar, the fat, the alcohol, the acidity, and the just plain over-eating, I went to bed feeling rather yucky and woke up on New Year's day feeling wretched.

So I didn't make it to the gym yesterday, spent the whole day on the couch with my heating pad on my poor angry tummy - both my guts and my GERD were not happy at all. I'm feeling somewhat better today and I'm contemplating hitting the gym but avoiding abdominal exercises. I feel like I'd probably be okay using my arms & legs as long as I go easy on the tummy area, so that's the tentative plan. In a way this works out okay, as this means I can go to the gym again for weights on Saturday rather than on Sunday - I remembered I have a family thing to go to on Sunday but I'm free on Saturday, so I'll make that my next gym day after today. Tomorrow, depending on how I feel, I'll either do yoga or I'll rest. I'll aim for yoga as it's looking like Sunday will be a rest day.

So yeah. A setback, and I'm frustrated with myself for being stupid and going so overboard, but I'm trying not to kick myself too much. Everybody needs a day like that every so often, right? Where you just let loose a little and don't let your body/illness dictate everything for a change. And I know, a setback like that doesn't mean anything in the long run, I'll just pick myself back up again and get back to my usual gym routine as best I can. Gotta stay positive!

And so Saturday will be the day that I'll see how busy the gym is with the New Year's resolution people. It'll be interesting!
 
Why not? You deserve those few moments of "Oh, this is so good" and not "gee, should I eat that...". I enoyed my crab legs on NYE but felt crappy the whole evening, with several episodes of D and a bad headache, and ended up dozing on the couch at 930 and going to bed and crashing by 1030, so I missed the turn of the year. :(
I felt just as bad yesterday, spent the day resting (no elliptical for me). I feel like so many things are contributing to my overall feeling of malaise. The headaches I'm getting are causing nausea, on top of the nausea I already had, and I'm having more belly pain, along with conflicting episodes of diarrhea and constipation. I'm also having more night sweats and my rash is back. <sigh> .
Made it on the elliptical this morning, despite the headache at the start of it that I had to work through.

Sorry to whine everyone, but I'm just feeling so off lately and not sure why.
 
It was really delicious up until my tummy decided it had had enough! Getting live lobsters was interesting, too. I felt bad about having to kill my own dinner, but hubby and I had seen this thing online showing how you can hypnotize a lobster. We both tried it, and we successfully got both of our lobsters hypnotized before putting them into the pot - hopefully that way it was a slightly less horrible death for the poor things. And they were seriously delicious, it's been years since I had lobster and it was fun. Hubby said he had a lot of fun just watching me try to crack mine open! :p So maybe next time I'll *just* have lobster and avoid candy, alcohol, etc.

Sorry to hear you are having a rough time lately too! :( Are the headaches getting worse again? Is there anything they can give you for the headaches? I'm sure I've mentioned this already, but I take amitriptyline which prevents most of my headaches & migraines. I'm not sure if it's work for your unique situation though. And it does tend to cause a bit of constipation so it may not be a possibility for you. I wonder though if there's anything else they can give you? What about Zofran/ondansetron for the nausea? I take that for my episodes of nausea and it's great stuff - I wouldn't have been able to sleep last night without it. But then again, it can cause a bit of constipation too. Anyway. When's your next MRI? Have you talked to your doc about the weight loss & symptoms you're having lately? I don't suppose something like prednisone would be a possibility, to get the guts feeling better and to get some weight back on you?
 
I saw my GP on Monday. He started me on Lexapro for the mood swings I get from the Keppra, which I'm thinking might be what gave the shakes yesterday for a while. The nausea is weird, I don't always have it, but almost always with my headaches, which are morning and evening often. SOmetimes I'm hungry (not often) and then when I've eaten a few bites, I start feeling full and nauseous. If I really eat slow and a few bites at a time I can get most of my food down. The GP also gave me Naratriptan for the headaches. I did take one the other night and it seemed to help, but I'm not sure because sometimes the headaches go away on their own. So I'm waiting for another bad one to take it again and see if it helps. The GP did order some blood work, which came back normal, and and EEG which I won't find out the results of for a couple of days.
the GP did say it's pretty difficult in my case to know what comes from where with the combination of brain cancer/GI issues/back problems that I have. He's waiting for the EEG results to see if there's any changes, and if there are he thinks I might need another MRI. My last one was in October, and was clear for any regrowth, so my neuro-oncologist says she doesn't think the headaches are related to any regrowth because it would be unlilkely so soon after a clear MRI. My next MRI is scheduled for April.

The last time I talked to the GI he told me to start drinking Ensure between meals to add extra calories and help maintain weight. I tried one on Tuesday but it really nauseated me and I couldn't eat lunch afterwards, so that didn't help much. I didn't ask about meds for the nausea, but maybe I should.... it couldn't hurt except one more pill a day on top of the 22 -24 I already take. :O
 
Nausea with headaches could be migraines. I am not familiar with naratriptan, but I've taken sumatriptan for my migraines - unfortunately it was too strong or something, and it caused a rebound migraine. I only ever get migraines in the right side of my head, and auras in the right side of my vision. The sumatriptan stopped the right-sided migraine but then caused a left-sided one! Very odd. But fortunately the amitriptyline I'm on prevents most of my migraines anyway. You may want to ask about something like amitriptyline or nortriptyline, just to see if it'd help.

Also, what flavor of Ensure did you drink? The chocolate ones sit okay in my tummy but the vanilla ones go right through me and cause wicked d, I'm not sure why - something in the artificial flavors I guess? But both of those contain carrageenan, which can cause upset, so I avoid those now. The Ensure "Clear" doesn't taste great but sits okay in my tummy and contains no carrageenan - so you may want to try one of those next time. The peach flavor is so-so. I believe there's also a mixed berry flavor which is pretty bad, and a pomegranate flavor which I haven't tried yet.

Definitely do ask about meds for the nausea - Zofran (or the generic, ondansetron) has been a lifesaver for me. When I first got sick, they gave me a different anti-nausea med, Compazine. It didn't work, it made me super dizzy, and then I developed an allergic reaction to it and felt like I couldn't breathe! So they switched me to Zofran, which has a very low risk of side effects, and it works great. So, don't let them put you on Compazine, I've heard others say it does nothing for them either but most people on the forum seem to have good experiences with Zofran.
 
I tried the vanilla. Previously I tried Boost -the chocolate one, and that seemed fine, but it has like 28 grams of sugar in it, which is a lot and sugar does bad things to me too. I'l check out the clear kinds too and see what they are like.

I should be talking to the doc again after the EEG results come back and I'll ask about Zofran, see what he thinks.
 
Wow, that is a lot of sugar! I wonder if making your own supplement drinks/smoothies would be better - that's what I do. I like Ensure, but the clear ones are the only kind that don't contain carrageenan. I'm really trying to avoid carrageenan, it's a "natural" additive that can make IBD worse in some cases. So I make my own smoothies now just as a means of avoiding carrageenan. I use almond milk (some almond milks contain carrageenan - Silk brand and Whole foods' store brand do not contain it so I use those), a banana, some carrageenan-free soy-based chocolate supplement powder, a big cup of ice, and a little cocoa powder for flavoring. Blend it all up and that's my breakfast most mornings! :) I usually don't have an appetite when I first wake up, so I put my smoothie in a to-go container and bring it to work with me and drink it at my desk once I do have an appetite. That's been working really well. So give some consideration to doing something like that. You can add other stuff to smoothies as well - I sometimes experiment with adding some soft tofu in place of the banana, and that's pretty good too. Or I'll add some almond butter if I need extra calories.

I just got back from the gym - I feel quite good and had a good workout! I'm always so iffy about going to the gym when I'm not feeling great, but it usually ends up with me feeling better. I wasn't going to jog as my warm-up, because I didn't want to jostle around my already riled-up guts, but I felt like jogging so I just did a few minutes on the treadmill, and that felt good. I did all the weight machines except the abdominals machine, and by the end of my routine, I could tell that my stomach was wanting me to stop. Stretched, cooled down, managed to eat a bit of lunch, and I feel okay. Definitely a successful workout, yay!

The one bad thing was, I weighed myself in the gym. I hadn't weighed myself since before xmas. I have lost a few more lbs. The scale in that gym isn't the most accurate, but I think I'm now at about 134. My "healthy" weight is 136 and I had been at around 138 before the holidays. So I lost about 4 lbs. I was expecting that, though. I always seem to lose weight around the holidays - I'm not sure if it's from stress or trigger foods or if it's just because it's such a change to my normal routine, probably a combination of those things. So, I've got some ground to make up now. Not too bad though, I'm still in the 130s - I start to worry when I drop into the 120s.
 
Interesting. I might have to look into trying that, at least on the days when I'm home, maybe start trying on a weekend.
I'm glad your workout went well after your rough couple of days. This weight thing... sucks! I haven't dropped into the 120s yet either, working on not doing that.
 
Glad you enjoyed the lobster. I feel your pain with over eating - I tread lightly on the eating front with the strictures. Saw the surgeon today and am being booked for a CT colonography to see how things look.
 
Good luck with the CT, Hawkeye! I hope it goes well and gives you a good result.

Cindy, yeah, I'm working on trying to stay above the 120s too. I had some rice for dinner last night, I'm thinking I need more calories than that. :p My guts are still pretty unsettled though so I'm trying to eat bland, safe foods.

I'm going to do yoga tonight, I don't care how unsettled my tummy is. I was sitting on the couch yesterday evening and my knees, hips, lower back all were just aching! A hot bath didn't help much. I'm presuming everything's achey because of the super frigid weather. But yoga might help, so I'm going to do yoga. This weather isn't going to change anytime soon (they're saying Monday may be the coldest day in 18 years for my city!), so I may just have to deal with achiness for awhile. Not good, so I'll do what I can. Hopefully yoga will help!
 
I had just rice for lunch yesterday too. Don't think I ate enough in total yesterday, and had D this morning. 2nd time this week, I think it might be from the Norotriptan... not sure. It really is a struggle to eat enough when every time I eat my belly feels yuk. I know the EEG results have come back and the doc has them, so I'm wiating til theycall me with the results so I can ask about the Zofran.
 
I hope you get those EEG results back soon - hope they don't make you wait all weekend! I hate that, when I'm running out the clock on a Friday afternoon and they never call me back, that's so frustrating. Good luck with the results, and I hope your doc gives you the green light to try Zofran.

I swear, this is dangerous for my bank account, but retail therapy makes me feel so much more chipper. I just bought a really cute new workout top! :) I guess this means I'm doing laundry soon so that I can wear it to the gym. I didn't need a new workout top, I have plenty. But I don't own any workout tanks in grey and it looked so cute, it's like a fitted sports bra and then it kind of billows out a bit below the bust. I tend to bloat out during the course of the day, so my tummy isn't always looking very flat, and tops that hide a less-than-attractive midsection are a good thing. Some workout tops are fitted over the entirety of the torso and that's just not a good look when I'm bloated out and look like I have a fat tummy. I have a few tops like that and I always wear a t-shirt over them because I'm self-conscious of my belly! So a top like the one I got today, that helps disguise my bloated tummy, it's really cute and helps me have more confidence that I can wear a tank top style workout top and still look okay.
 
Ugh - no word on the EEG, and now the doc is out all week. So no info on the results, and I can't ask about the Zofran. I might call my NO soon because I've been having brutal headaches for the last three days and none of the medications I've been given are helping. Frustrated.....

And I lost another pound. Boo! Last night I couldn't even eat I was so nauseated from the headache and my normal belly pain. So I drank an Ensure... managed to keep it down.
 
Oh no, Cindy, none of that is good news. :( I hope you're feeling at least a little bit better today and are able to eat something. I hope you can get ahold of the NO, too. Hang in there! Hopefully they can do something for the headaches & the nausea.

Is the weather causing some of your symptoms, do you think? My joints have been off and on bad. Today's supposed to be the worst of this cold weather. I just checked the weather, and it's -17 without the wind chill, -43 with the wind chill. Brrr! My hips, knees, lower back, and even my elbows have been aching - it seems like every day a different joint is playing up. So I put ice/heat on the achy joint, take tylenol, put on sports cream, etc - get that joint feeling better, but then another one starts acting up. So I'm just basically doing damage control right now! I can't wait for the weekend, they said Saturday's temp will be in the 30s (yes, above zero!). That sounds so lovely and warm compared to this arctic BS we've got right now! Hopefully my joints and your head will react well to the warm-up that's coming.

I was expecting to put in a full day at work today, so I was going to go to the gym on my lunch. But it turns out that we're closing at lunchtime, they decided we shouldn't drive in this icky freezing weather after dark, so I get to go home early. And I sure don't want to venture out to go to the big gym, once I get home I'm staying put. So I will probably ride my exercise bike at home at some point today, that is if my joints will allow me to do so. I'll try to do a proper gym/weights workout tomorrow.

I haven't been eating very well/much lately either. I had to go to a family gathering yesterday. My aunt made beef & pork, neither of which I eat, but she kindly made some chicken for me. But as I was cutting it up, I noticed that it looked very pink! So I avoided the chicken and just had some bread and a pickle and a small portion of potatoes, and that was it. I can't afford to get salmonella or whatever other icky bacteria are in undercooked chicken, and my aunt was clearly frazzled by serving food to the whole family, so I didn't ask her to cook it longer. I just tossed it when she wasn't looking. I hate having to do stuff like that, but I can't handle beef or pork and I refuse to make myself sick, so my option was to eat lightly and avoid all the meat. Not great, but not much choice either.

So, now that things have been shifted around a bit due to change in the weather, I'll tentatively do bike tonight, weights tomorrow. Not sure about Wednesday - yoga or rest, probably. Thursday weights, Friday not sure. Saturday weights and maybe walk the dog too. That uses up most of my energy, and I have to lift weights first and then walk the dog, I have to do it in that order - otherwise my legs are dead tired from walking the dog and I can't properly do the weights. I can still walk the dog, a bit slowly, but I can do it even after lifting. I'm excited about Saturday's "warm" weather so I feel like I need to get outside and walk the dog, even if it's a weights day too! As long as I feel relatively okay, I know I can do it. So that's the tentative plan for the week for now. Tonight, aside from doing the bike, I'm going to try to rest a bit, maybe play a bit of video games, maybe bake something or cook a nice dinner. I want to be productive a little bit, but I can also totally see myself curling up on the couch with a nice blanket and just vegging out! So I'm not really sure how productive I'll be. :p Anyway, I'm rambling on again. Stay warm, everybody!
 
Ugh. More setbacks for me. I went home from work early yesterday due to the weather, and when I got home I ate some lunch. It was safe, it was mac & cheese - as long as it's the boxed kind with the fake powdered cheese, it's tummy-safe for me (real cheese is an issue but fake is okay). After eating, I felt so bloated & overfull, even though I didn't overeat. It was like my abdomen was as full and distended as possible, it felt very uncomfortable! My guts started cramping, and going to the bathroom relieved the issue somewhat but not completely. Then, my reflux really started going nuts. That was the worst part, I think. I didn't get heartburn, but I could taste acid in the back of my throat. I have a sore throat this morning because of the acid coming up to the top of my throat, and I had to sleep propped upright. I also had to take a ton of reflux meds and some Zofran, but even so I only got a minimal amount of relief from that. Yuck!

So I'm feeling pretty blah today. Sore throat, stomach still kind of a mess (still having some cramping), didn't sleep great because I have such a hard time sleeping when I'm upright. I feel exhausted in both the sense that I didn't sleep well and in the sense that I skipped dinner last night (felt too full & nauseous to eat anything). So I'm just kinda down today. I didn't get to ride the bike yesterday due to these symptoms, and I probably won't be able to get to the gym today either, particularly not if I continue to feel this icky. So I'm having a bit of a pity party for myself. I just want to feel well and work out!

I seem to recall that this feeling too full thing happened once before - at the gym in fact, I remember being in the stretching area a few weeks ago and feeling oddly full even though the only things in my stomach were water & Tums, and I hadn't been chugging huge amounts of water or anything like that. I don't know what this random feeling too full thing is, it seems to be related to my reflux maybe? I see my GI next month and I'm going to ask him about it then. If it happens again, I'll pay close attention to what I eat, what seems to trigger it, etc. I'm wondering if Nexium is failing me and maybe I need to switch reflux meds yet again. I don't know. I just feel yucky right now and frustrated too!
 
That reflux seems to get you about once a month or so..... related to monthlies at all? It sucks you are missing your workouts and not feeling well.

I missed my workout this morning after being up half the night and hanging out in the bathroom. Just didn't seem like a good idea due to the lack of sleep and feeling so punk.

Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day for both of us. :)
 
Nope, not related to my menstrual cycle as far as I can tell. I'm sure the reflux came on as a result of the bloating - I felt so full, I'm sure my stomach got squished a bit from the bloat and then the acid likely started getting pushed out of my stomach and up my throat. I have a hiatal hernia, so once stuff starts coming up my throat, there's really nothing to stop it. The hernia is at least part of the reason why I reflux so much. My guess is, the bloat and the hernia together are what did me in. So I just need to figure out what caused the bloat/fullness. I wonder if maybe I have stomach motility issues or a stricture? I don't know, and I'm not looking forward to the possibility of more tests. I may just opt to try a different reflux med in place of the Nexium, rather than do something semi-invasive or expensive like more tests.

I'm a little depressed. :p A girl at work who's been using the gym lately, she asked me if I've been to the gym yet today. I just said, "Not yet." She said she has to go to the gym soon and she was like, "See you down there!" I just smiled and nodded. I'm still not feeling very well so she can have the gym to herself today, and hopefully I'll be back into workout mode tomorrow. I feel like I need to heal and rest today, and as frustrating as it is to feel idle, I'll rest so that I can get back to it properly (hopefully) tomorrow.
 
Hang in there, Cat. It's just one day, and while I know that bums you out, you need to take care of yourself when you're not feeling well. I've been feeling some of the same guilt today for missing my elliptical this morning, especially since my back hurts more when I miss it.
We'll get through this miserable day!

I hope you can avoid more tests, I just wonder since you seem to be having more problems of late and it does seem to be affecting your QOL.
 
I'm feeling somewhat better today. Not perfect, but well enough to work out I think. Going to go hit the gym tonight after work. Hopefully it won't be overflowing with New Year's resolution people! Wish me luck!

I skipped dinner again last night because I just had no appetite. I'm hoping a good workout tonight will leave me with an appetite (I know I need to eat, in particular I need protein after a workout, so I'll force myself to have a little leftover chicken if nothing else).

It's going to be in the 30s all weekend and I really want to get outside at some point! I still need to get my ice skates sharpened, so that's my goal - get my skates sharpened, and get out to one of the great free outdoor ice rinks in my city. I think I'll be skating by myself, though. Hubby hates to skate (he isn't good at it so he doesn't want to do it - I've reminded him the only way he'll get better at it is to practice, but he still isn't interested). He told me he has ice skates, but I don't think he does. I seem to recall buying my ice skates like-new for about $1.50 at a thrift store years ago, so maybe I can find him some gently used skates in his size too. Or maybe I'll just say, forget him, and go have fun on the ice by myself! The sad part is, hubby grew up in a house that was next to his grandparents' farm, and on the farm they have a pond which is absolutely perfect for skating on in the winter. I had to go pay money to go to ice arenas to learn how to skate when I was growing up. Yet in spite of him having direct access to a free rink but me not so much, I learned how to skate and he didn't. :p Oh well! I really enjoy ice skating, I'm not terrible at it, and I really want to get out on the ice at least once or twice this winter. So I'm going to go skating, whether hubby goes with or not. :)
 
Glad to hear you're feeling better today, good news! Sucks about the dinner skipping,though. I had just a piece of cod and some canned veggies myself, no appetite again.

Ice skating- I always thought it looked so fun, but I didn't get to go much, so I never got very good at it. I remember falling and hitting my head a few times. Can't do it anymore.

Have fun, Cat, with or without your hubby!
 
Hitting your head, yikes! That's never good, especially on ice - and particularly now I guess skating is out of the question because you surely really don't want to hit your head post-brain surgery! :(

I kind of forced myself to get good at roller skating and ice skating when I was a kid. I was always so awkward and weird and never fit in, so my parents signed me up for Girl Scounts in about 2nd grade in an effort to get me socializing more. That didn't really work, I still didn't make any friends and everyone still thought I was weird. :p But anyway, one day my Scout troop took a "fun" trip to the roller skating rink. I had never been skating before and had no idea how. It was clear that everyone else at least had some proficiency skating - I was the only one going .000001 miles an hour and clinging to the wall for dear life. I felt humiliated, like I felt even more of an outcast than usual. So that summer, I got some roller skates of my own and I practiced every single day going up and down the sidewalk in front of my house. I forced myself to get good, it was something I really wanted and I recall working very hard to go faster and to fall less and just be better in general. By 5th grade, I was skating faster than anybody else at the roller rink and other girls were actually impressed by my skills. Then the roller rink closed down and I quit Girl Scouts, but I can still skate pretty well. On the ice, I can go backwards & do back crossovers, and I rarely fall as long as I don't showboat. :p

I haven't been on the ice in a couple years though - I think I either consciously or unconsciously put a lot of fun things in my life on hold when I got sick. I didn't kayak for the first couple years I got sick, that was a conscious decision as I was petrified of all the "what if"s. What if I need to use the bathroom in the middle of the creek, what if I get too nauseous or painful to keep paddling, what if my body just can't handle the strenuousness, what if I push myself too hard and end up in a flare, etc. I finally got the courage to kayak again in the summer of 2012, and it went fine, I had zero issues. I've been kayaking a handful of times since, and have had zero issues each time (I did have to pee once and had to duck into a bush, but haven't had any bowel-related issues while in the kayak). So that's given me a bit more confidence I think, and it's also made me realize that I haven't done a lot of the fun things I used to do, particularly physical things. I'm pretty sure I haven't been skating at all since before I got sick, and that needs to be remedied. So I'll go skating, and I'll be nervous and looking to where the bathroom is and hoping my joints hold out and all that stuff, but if it goes okay then I'll feel a little more confident the next time out. :)
 
Oh, you're one of "those" people! :D I always envied those super-talented and coordinated people who could skate backwards and do all the fun stuff! I didn't skate enough to get good like that. When I did skate, I used borrowed skates. Cool for you that you were so good at it. Time to get back out there! Show off to the other skaters a bit.
 
Update 1/9/14: I hit the gym last night and felt great. :) Our friend/massage therapist came over as he's having car troubles yet again (we live right near where he works, so on car trouble days, we let him sleep in our guest bedroom and he just walks to work), so hubby stayed home and entertained massage therapist while I went to the gym by myself. It was crowded, and clearly a lot of New year's resolution people were there, but overall it wasn't too bad and I got to do all the machines I wanted to, and I felt good the whole time. Had great energy and strength, I added a bit of weight or extra reps to a few machines even because I felt so good that things weren't quite as challenging as they usually are. Reflux stayed mostly quiet, joints were a bit achy by the very end but were okay during most of my workout, guts were quiet too. Felt very good, as far as workouts go it was just about perfect!

But the evening went downhill from there - I ended up only eating about 3 bites of dinner. And it was all hubby's fault! We were just going to have leftover chicken, but he decided he wanted to make something a bit nicer for dinner than leftovers since massage therapist was at our house, so hubby made spaghetti with turkey meatballs, and goat cheese for me. Yum! We all started to eat, I ate a few bites, then hubby told us to stop. He apparently had a very sudden wave of nausea hit him shortly after he started eating, so he said, "Stop. I think there's something wrong with the food, stop eating it." He ran to the bathroom... and belched, and was fine. :p His wave of nausea lasted like 30 seconds tops and then it was over once he belched. So the food was apparently fine, as I felt fine and so did massage therapist - all 3 of us are fine this morning, too. I'm not sure why hubby suddenly got nauseous, but it went as quickly as it came. But, having someone yell at me not to eat the food because it isn't safe, and then seeing that person run to the bathroom urgently as if to vomit, that just made my appetite disappear completely. So I couldn't eat any more than the few bites I had already eaten. Oh, and the sad part is, spaghetti sauce is a reflux trigger for me, so even though I had only eaten a little bit, I spent the rest of the evening refluxing! Ughhhh! This is getting ridiculous now, it's almost funny. :p Someday I *will* eat a proper dinner, ha ha.

Oh well, setbacks aren't going to get me down. I want to go ride the bike today, I think I'm going to do 30 mins of that on my lunch break. And I think we might go out to dinner tonight - someone gave me an Applebee's gift card for xmas, and I told hubby we should go there tonight. Partly just because I want to eat a nice dinner already! :p I will have to look at their menu to see what I can eat there, but hopefully they'll have some options for me. Hopefully there will be no more weird setbacks preventing me from eating an evening meal! Because this is just getting stupid now, ha ha. So wish me luck for a nice, uneventful dinner where I can eat, feel well, and nobody around me gets sick. :)
 
Oh, sheesh! poor Cat. That really stinks. I actually was able to eat a whole dinner last night! chicken, rice, green beans. This morning I was back on the elliptical again (made it yesterday too) but the headaches are making it hard for me to get all the way through. I did make it most of my 1/2 hour but it bugs me not to be able to finish, and I don't feel as though I am working as hard as I usually do. It's a bummer!

Yes, please get to Applebee's and have a great dinner... I think last time I went there I had a shrimp and rice dish that was pretty good.
 
I managed to do 30 mins on the bike, and I feel pretty good. And yes, I ate afterwards - it was lunch, though, I am still on a mission to eat dinner tonight! :p It was a bit annoying though, there was another lady in the gym with me pretty much the whole time, and I don't really like her. I think I mentioned her before, she blasted the country music channel once when she got to the gym before me and it was awful - I hate country! So she was changing into her gym clothes at the same time I was today, and I realized I had better hurry and get to the gym before her, otherwise I'd be stuck with country music again (there's sort of an unspoken rule, whoever gets to the gym first can do what they want with the TV/DVD player). Eek! So I rushed and zipped in there ahead of her and popped in an Utada DVD a couple minutes before she got in there. Phew! I got to listen to my music and not hers. :p Particularly when I do something like the bike, I need good music with a good beat to get me through and keep my legs pumping, so I don't know if I could have even made it through a bike session if country music was playing. I seriously do not like country. :p

This lady is annoying in other ways too, or maybe I'm just too easily annoyed. But she was texting on her phone for literally like 1/3rd of her workout which just annoyed me, I hate when people do that. And, this is maybe the worst part, I didn't see her wipe down any of the equipment she used! Ew! There are both towels and antibacterial wipes in the gym at work so that machines can be properly wiped down and sanitized, and I make a point of wiping down everything I use. I did leave the gym a couple minutes before she did, so hopefully she wiped everything down just before she left. Because if not, ew!

I'm still feeling pretty good, and my weight is somehow actually stable even though I've skipped multiple meals this week. I'm looking forward to a nice dinner tonight, and I'll do weights tomorrow. I'm a bit worried about tomorrow's weather - they're saying 36 degrees but freezing rain in the afternoon. Boo! Supposedly snow on Saturday, but nice on Sunday. I'm still hoping to ice skate this weekend, and I can skate in the snow as long as it's not heavy enough to cover the ice surface. I still haven't gotten my skates sharpened, but I took a look at them today and they're still fairly sharp. So I think I'll be okay skating on them as they are now. In high school, I let my skate blades get really super dull just out of sheer teenage apathy and laziness, and I was still able to skate on them like that, so the current state of my skates should be fine. Hubby still needs a pair of skates though, I might have to drag him to Goodwill after our dinner tonight to see if they've got a cheap pair of skates in his size. :)

Speaking of winter sports, anybody try snowshoeing? I saw some snowshoes on clearance the other day and it intrigued me. I could possibly snowshoe around the dog park with my dog since it's basically just a big field covered with snow. Is snowshoeing good exercise and enjoyable? I've seen people cross-country ski through the dog park, but I hate cross-country skiing. I'm bad at it and it's highly exhausting and I've never found it fun - a friend forced me to go with her once on a ridiculously long cross-country ski route and I fell in the middle of nowhere and nearly broke my ankle, so that's mainly why I hate it so much. Anyway, is snowshoeing significantly more fun than cross-country skiing?
 
congrats on the music save! I hate country music too and would hate to have to try to work out with it playing! and ew, not wiping down equipment, that's just rude and gross. People that text while "working" out tick me off... I used to get really mad if anyone texted or called me while I was at the gym and I refused to answer my phone.

My BIL and SIL both snowshoe and they really like it a lot. It's better than cross-country skiing, you don't have to be on a trail and can just kind of go where you want to. It's a great workout and my SIL said her ankles and calves were very sore after the first few times she went because it's hard work.
 
I agree. I don't bring my phone into the big gym with me, I leave it in my locker. When I use the little gym at my workplace, I admittedly do bring my phone into the gym with me, but it's for emergencies only. I'm often the only person in that gym, so if I passed out or got injured or something, I like to know that my phone is there so I could call for help if need be. I've never had to use it (knock wood) but it's there "just in case". I definitely wouldn't answer it if it rings, and I don't even have texting on it & it's not a smartphone. So it is in the gym with me sometimes, but I never let it distract me, I never even take it out of its case.

Thanks for the snowshoeing info! The snowshoes I saw were a bit pricey even on clearance (they were $60), so I'm hoping the price drops a bit more and then I might pick up a pair - the store had a lot of them left, so they may drop the price some more to get rid of them. I'm sure it would take some getting used to, but with winters being so long and snowy (especially this winter it seems like!), it could be something that I'd get a lot of use out of. We're fortunate that there's a huge dog park right near our house, so I could feasibly use snowshoes quite regularly each winter when walking the dog.
 
had the snowshoes out Sunday to take the Christmas lights down so I wouldn't sink up to my knees in snow
 
Hawkeye, our xmas lights are buried under the snow! We are going to have to wait until everything melts in the spring to take them down. The sad part is, our lights didn't even work - hubby put the net lights on some bushes, but he didn't test them first. They ended up not working, then it snowed right away and they all got buried. So once we can take them off, we'll just end up throwing them away anyway. Oh well!

I ate dinner last night, yay. :) We used our Applebee's gift card, and I had a shrimp & rice dish like Cindy mentioned. I don't go to Applebees very often, and I recall getting a shrimp & rice dish last time I was there which was very mild and easy on the tummy. They must have changed it, though. This shrimp & rice dish had a weird lemon-cream sauce and was kind of spicy! Not so tummy-friendly. I ate most of it but didn't end up finishing because the spicyness was starting to get to me. I feel okay today though so I guess I wasn't too affected by the spice & the cream.

I'm going to go hit the gym at work today on my lunch break. I was going to go to the big gym after work, but they're saying freezing rain this evening, so I'm playing it safe and just going straight home after work. So, that means I must do my workout on my break, which is fine. I just hope I can avoid the lady who likes country music - and I think I'll pre-emptively wipe down all the machines right when I get to the gym, in case she really didn't wipe them down yesterday! And I hope she's not in the gym so that I can listen to my music and not hers. As long as she's not in the gym with me, I should have a good workout. :) I don't know if it's an introvert thing or if I'm just selfish or what, but I really like having that gym all to myself. Other people cramp my style and annoy me! :p And it wouldn't be so bad if she had better taste in music and didn't spend half the time on her phone. I admire people who put in the work without getting chatty or distracted, I wouldn't be bothered if she were 100% committed to her workout and left the phone in her locker, and if she did country music on her headphones rather than on the communal TV I would also be appreciative! Anyway, hopefully I won't even see her today and it'll be a moot point.
 
No workout for me this morning, my stomach was a right mess when I got up - multiple trips to the bathroom before I left for work. :( The upside was no headache until about 1/2 an hour ago, so it was a pleasant morning, once my belly settled down.

Hawkeye and Cat, our lights are buried in snow also, except for the eave lights, which we're leaving up because there's so much ice on the driveway and sidewalk that it would be safe for the hubs to climb up there and get them. He really shouldn't do it anyway, because his shoulder's wrecked and he's having surgery on it the 29th. What with my headaches and trip to Mayo next week for that, and his shoulder issues, we're having quite the start to our new year! I'm hoping my inflatable Santa makes it through til spring, after he last deflated he got buried in snow. So we'll have to wait til then to get him and the bush lights back into storage.

I'm glad the Applebee's didn't get you today, Cat. I haven't been there in a while either, I don't remember any creamy lemon sauce on it last time I got the shrimp and rice. I hate the way restaurants like that keep changing their menus so you never know what's safe anymore! At least you finally ate some dinner!
 
Aw Cindy, sorry you had to miss your elliptical session again. :( How's your weight been, and how's the back doing?

I did my workout and everything went great, the country music lady didn't appear so I got to listen to Kpop (I did Jpop yesterday, so I had to mix it up today, ha ha). I did see that the country music lady definitely did not wipe down the machines after her session yesterday - there were gross handprints/fingerprints on the handles of all the machines. Yuck! I went around with an antibac wipe and cleaned everything before using it (and then of course wiped it all down again after I was done working out). Perhaps I'm a bit passive-aggressive, but I then made a sign saying "PLEASE wipe down the equipment after each use!" in about 60 point font, and hung it right by the cleaning supplies. Hopefully she gets the hint! :p This is a little gym in the basement at work, hardly anyone else ever uses it, but it's my happy place and it bugs me when other people abuse it.

It's raining right now! Like, a steady rain that's making the roads & sidewalks a little slippery. I hope it doesn't affect the outdoor skating rinks - it's very annoying trying to skate on a wet, sloppy rink. Hmmph, I am still going to try to skate!
 
I still have some lights to take down. We had an ice storm before Christmas and the ice just melted off the juniper tree that had lights on it on Monday. The ones on the back deck still had some ice on them last weekend too so they are still outside. I had extension cords freeze to the deck and in a snowbank that just thawed out on Monday.
 
Hey there, Cat.
I did get on the elliptical yesterday for 15 minutes and this morning I made it to 30. I had to do it for my back, which was beginning to act up from missing a couple of days in a row. It's a delicate balancing act when I know it will aggravate my head to do it, and my back not to do it. But as my hubs said yesterday, "You know your head will hurt anyway, so might as well do what you can to keep your back quiet". He's pretty wise that way.

My weight - ugh. Right at 130 yesterday morning. I lost that last .2 that I was holding onto. Boo. I have a bad feeling that if I'm not able to eat enough to maintain this week, I'm going to slip down into the 120s. Not so great. Definitely trying to keep things up, I've found if I eat my meal and then wait an hour, sometimes I can sneak in a snack without upsetting my belly too much. This weekend I kept having painful cramps off and on, and not sure why. D on Saturday, and actually a regular go yesterday for the first time in a week!
 
Cindy, I'm glad you were able to do the elliptical, and I hope you can maintain if not gain some weight! Have you tried making smoothies yet?

As for me, we had bad weather here Friday night/Saturday. It rained Friday night and the temps were just below 32 degrees, so the roads froze and got quite slippery. I had a bit of a scary drive getting home from work, and I decided I didn't want to drive anywhere until the roads were better. I heard on Saturday that the roads still weren't good, so I stayed home all day and had a lazy rest day. All we did was play video games & watch TV. I didn't do one productive thing. I felt kind of bad about that, but on the other hand, sometimes it's okay and even necessary to have a totally lazy day.

Sunday, I was more productive. I hit the gym, ran a couple errands, did quite a bit of cleaning and other various stuff around the house. My workout was okay, I'd call it average. I had an okay amount of energy but not great, my reflux was mostly quiet but I did get a case of the burps, etc. I did manage to do everything I wanted, including the abdominals machine, and the gym wasn't too crowded - I think (I hope) a lot of the New Year's resolution people are already done. Most people at the gym seemed serious, there were only a few slackers.

My workout schedule is going to change up a bit starting next week. Hubby's boss is going on vacation for something like a month or 6 weeks, so hubby will be working 6 days a week (the shop is closed Mondays so that'll be his only day off until the boss gets back). It's great that he'll be getting decent hours for awhile, but this means I'll be going to the gym by myself while he's working so much. So I'll probably be using the little gym at my workplace more often, and going to the big paid membership gym a bit less. I'll probably be walking my dog more, so possibly I'll have some days where I do weights on my lunch break and then walk the dog after work - I'm hoping I'll have enough energy to do so! I'll be cooking dinner more, too (usually hubby cooks dinner, but when he's working, I get home before he does). This is good, though, this means I'll hopefully improve my cooking skills and I'll be able to plan my meals better and think more about food and eating healthily. I know my diet can improve, so I'm taking baby steps to work on that. One of my goals is to pack a lunch every day that I work, rather than eat a microwaveable meal or pick up a sub on my lunch break. So, if I can make some healthy dinners that allow for leftovers, that'll help me with my lunches too.

So far so good on the lunch thing - today's lunch is a wrap, with leftover chicken, avocado, tomato, baba ghanouj (or however you spell that! Maybe I should just say eggplant spread/dip), and turkey bacon. I have some miso soup and a couple hard boiled eggs for snacks. I have some chocolate Pocky too, but I'm hoping to resist eating it today and saving it for when I really need a treat. I had my usual breakfast smoothie (almond milk, ice, chocolate supplement powder, banana, cocoa powder) too. Dinner will be a "tummy-safe" burrito - ground turkey, goat cheese, avocado, mild salsa. Yum!

The gym plan this week is - today, rest day (my legs feel sore & tired from yesterday's gym session). Tomorrow, weights in the little gym. Wednesday, either bike or yoga. Thursday, weights at the big gym. Friday, not sure yet. Saturday or Sunday, I'm hoping to go ice skating! I didn't get to go as the freezing rain made the roads bad this past Saturday, and I did a weights workout Sunday and then was too tired to do anything more. This coming Saturday should be a weights day, but hubby's going out of town that day and I am tempted to go hit the ice rather than the gym. I know I won't have many opportunities to ice skate outdoors, so if the weather is reasonable on Saturday, I think I'll put weight-lifting off until Sunday and will hit the ice on Saturday.
 
I forgot about the smoothies. My short term memory is terrible! Hey, can you PM or FB me a recipe?
I did pick up some Ensure protein shakes, and hoping those will help. We'll see, hopefully things improve once my headaches are under control.

Sounds like you had quite the weekend. My aunt was flying out of Milwaukee airport, and the freezing rain delayed her flight enough that she missed her connection in Denver and ended up sleeping in the airport overnight.
You sound pretty enthusiastic about the whole hubby working/making meals for yourself thing. I hope that continues and you do great with it!
 
Cindy, I don't really have a recipe per se for my smoothies, but I can tell you what goes into them, and you can modify things as needed. The ingredients I use are:

1 big cup of ice (I don't really measure how much, I just take a glass and fill it with crushed ice from the fridge, then dump that into the blender).
Almond milk - enough to cover the ice in the blender (you want to have slightly more liquid than ice, so that it mixes well and isn't lumpy).
1 large or 2 small bananas
Chocolate flavored vitamin powder - the kind I use is soy-based, there are many different types of supplement powder so this part is rather open to interpretation.
Cocoa powder (about 1 tablespoon) to make it more chocolatey.

You can also add things like vanilla extract for flavor, or more fruit if you want. If you don't have bananas on hand or don't like bananas/can't do bananas, you can add 1/2 container of soft tofu for bulk & protein. If you need more calories & can handle coconut products, you could add coconut oil (I cannot do coconut so that's out for me). It's really open as far as what you can add!

I blend it all together and put it into a to-go container and drink it at work every morning. I usually then have to have a mug of hot tea afterwards, as the smoothie is cold and makes me a bit chilled! That starts my morning out with vitamins, calories, and hydration, so I think it's a good thing. It's been going well for me so far. :)
 
Have fun making smoothies, Cindy! :) Let me know how it goes. It took me awhile to figure out exactly what I wanted to put in my smoothies. I used to try putting almond butter in them, but that was too gritty. I just have a cheapo $30 blender, nothing fancy, and it wasn't able to pulverize the gritty little bits in almond butter, so I ended up with gritty smoothies. And at first I didn't put bananas in, because I have trouble eating a banana as-is. They trigger my GERD and can cause abdominal pain too! But a banana in the blender, I guess that breaks down the fiber enough or whatever, and I can handle a banana or two in a smoothie with zero problems, no reflux and no pain. Anyway, have fun and enjoy your smoothie! :)

I'm going to the gym today on my lunch break. Going to do weights, and hoping that the country music lady won't show up and annoy me. :p Today's lunch is leftover spaghetti with turkey meatballs & goat cheese. Yes, spaghetti sauce is one of my GERD trigger foods, but it's pretty safe for me to eat it right after a workout. I load up on Zantac & Tums just before hitting the gym, so that stuff is still at least partially in my system when I eat right after my workout - so I'm usually okay with having spaghetti after a gym session. Tonight's dinner will be a whole duck (well, obviously I won't eat anywhere near the whole thing!) which is currently cooking up in the crock pot. Hubby always works on Tuesdays, so we usually do a crock pot meal on Tuesdays and that way neither of us has to cook - we get home and dinner's ready to go, plus the house smells lovely. Usually it's something like chicken. We splurged a little while ago and bought a duck, so that'll be dinner. Yum!

I might have to shovel tonight, so it may be a very tiring day. It snowed heavily for awhile this morning, and they're saying we're in for more heavy snow this afternoon/evening. I'd rather shovel tonight than get up early and dig my car out in the morning, so I'll probably just shovel right when I get home tonight. The good news is, hopefully that'll tire me out so that I sleep well. I didn't sleep well Sunday night nor last night so I'm feeling pretty exhausted. Last night, my stomach was very unsettled and I kept having disconcerting, vivid dreams. I had a dream where I kept smelling that something was burning, and I kept waking up worried that my house was on fire - of course it wasn't and the burning smell was all in my head & only in the dream, but I kept waking up and couldn't stay asleep. I couldn't really get very comfortable either because things were unsettled in the tummy. Not restful at all thanks to my stupid guts and my brain! So if I really tire myself out physically today, hopefully I can get to bed a little early and just zonk out. So that's the plan for now. I gotta work my muscles and then I gotta sleep!
 
Duck - I've never had it but I've heard it's pretty tasty! I think I'm doing turkey tacos tonight.
Shoveling stinks, but at least it's a good workout, especially after you hit the gym today as well (country lady STAY AWAY!). We've only gotten about an inch here and I think it's pretty much done, so we got lucky there. IT's supposed to get really cold again tonight (-5) but then warm up again so I can't complain too much.

I will let you know how the smoothie experiment goes!
 
Bleh. I don't feel well today. All day yesterday, my sinuses were going nuts and I was sneezing and blowing my nose a ton. I figured it was just a bad allergy day. But today, even though I had slept like a rock last night, I woke up feeling exhausted and fatigued. Sinuses are still bad, I'm coughing, and my throat's a bit sore. Oh, and my guts are kind of upset too. I am pretty sure I have yet another cold. I think this is my 3rd cold so far this winter? I've lost count. But anyway, I'm feeling very run-down and not well. Yuck!

So, today has become a rest day. I'm glad I did weights yesterday, and I'm hoping I'll be feeling well enough to do weights tomorrow too. I'll just have to play it by ear and see how I'm feeling, will have to listen closely to what my body is telling me it needs. Right now my body is saying, REST! So I will stay out of the gym today and take it easy.

I'm pretty sure this is a head cold. I feel a little loopy and I keep losing my train of thought. Bleh! I hope this gets out of my system soon.
 
Well that sucks! I hope you feel better quickly. Can you take Cold-eeze and Airborne? My last cold was gone in four days, and I started taking both the first day I didn't feel well.

I did make a smoothie last night. It was good (I did peanut butter instead of the soy powder bc Icouldn't find any) but I had a terrible belly ache afterward. Ugh! Not sure why... could have been headache related. My headache is back with a vengeance today, so no ellipitcal for me this morning, and I won't be able to do it tomorrow bc we'll be out of the house by 5 am to drive to Mayo. :(
 
You know, I've tried that Airborne stuff in the past, and I felt like it didn't really do anything for me. I've never tried Cold-eze but maybe I'll give that a shot. For now I'm just trying to do basic stuff like make sure I'm really well hydrated and getting enough calories (hot tea and potato chips it is, ha ha). I have some Dayquil, but I try not to take that stuff unless absolutely necessary, as it contains acetaminophen and too much of that stuff can damage the liver. I already have liver issues so I try to avoid acetaminophen as much as I can, and obviously NSAIDs aren't an option, so I'm just toughing it out for now.

Oh, I'm sorry to hear the smoothie didn't go over so well! :( Do you think it was a specific ingredient that did you in, or maybe a combination of everything? Maybe the cold temperature of it? Sometimes drinking something really cold or really hot will upset my guts, particularly if I'm walking around for some odd reason. I can drink hot tea just fine when I'm sitting on the couch, but if I'm walking my dog and I try to drink hot tea, my guts get very upset and I wind up in cramps and desperately needing a bathroom. I had the same thing happen with a cold Ensure, I was walking around at the Farmer's market a couple years ago and sipped an Ensure, and suddenly needed a bathroom right that instant. (Fortunately there was a fancy hotel with a really nice bathroom right nearby!) Anyway, I hope you don't have a repeat bad experience if you do try smoothie-making again. Good luck at Mayo!
 
I'm thinking it might have been the cold, especially as my head was making me a bit nauseated. Next time I'm going to leave out the ice and see how that goes.

I'll update you by Friday after my appointments tomorrow!
 
Well, my cold kicked me down pretty hard yesterday! Wednesday night, I tried to go to bed early and I took some Nyquil to try to help me sleep. It didn't work, though, and I ended up not being able to fall asleep until about 2 AM, and even then I was waking up every hour or so. When I finally got up at 6 AM, I was totally exhausted and had a massive sinus headache. The exhaustion & headache plus the cold itself and my guts being unhappy, it was just too much for me to handle and I had to call in sick to work. I spent the day on the couch, napping and watching TV. I did find a new Kdrama to watch, yay. :) I also sorted through some craft supplies while on the couch, to feel like I was doing something semi-worthwhile. I hate just sitting there and doing nothing and feeling worthless, so I went through some of my grandma's old buttons and sorted them into bags. It was either that or crochet another scarf, and I so don't need any more scarves! :p

I slept okayish last night, and fortunately the headache is mostly gone now and the cold is easing up somewhat. Guts feel less angry, too. Overall I'm still not well, but I'm a lot better than I was. I'm reeeeeeally tempted to try to go to the gym today. We're supposed to get snow tomorrow, I heard 1-3 inches but a co-worker said something about 6 inches, so I don't really want to leave the house tomorrow and deal with whatever amount of snow it'll end up being. So a weights workout today would be ideal, and I can do yoga/bike at home tomorrow if I'm up to it. My arms feel like they could do weights today, and my legs too - I'm still coughing and sniffly though, so I don't know if I'm up for breathing heavily. Still, I'm tempted to try, so I'll probably make an effort to get into the gym and do what I'm able to. I won't push myself too hard, and I'll probably avoid the abdominals machine so as not to re-upset my guts. I think I can do it! Wish me luck! :)

Cindy, how was Mayo? I was thinking of you yesterday - particularly with that bad headache I had, I was thinking it must be awful that you get headaches every day, and I was really hoping Mayo could figure things out and do something to get you some relief. I hope it was a worthwhile visit and that they were able to give you good news or at least useful information!
 
Hey Cat. I saw by your post that you saw my Mayo news on the Undiagnosed thread, so I won't get detailed about that here. :D I got laughed at by an old guy - Denny and I were watching a movie (Galaxy Quest!) on my Kindle Fire, sharing my ear buds and I kept dozing off. He thought that was pretty funny I guess. I'm feeling pretty good.

Doing weights is a good idea, but make sure to avoid any cardio, as that's not a good idea when you have an upper respiratory illness. Take care!

So far the majority of the snow has completely missed us here in Central MN, and I can't say as I mind that. It's a bummer that you keep getting it though! We just keep getting cold and wind. I'd rather have snow.
 
I had a good workout. :) I did do a teeny bit of cardio during my warm-up, but fortunately that went fine. I just did a couple mins of jogging and about 1 min of jump rope. I had okay energy during my workout but maybe not quite my usual amount of lung capacity? I had to stop at several points during my workout and just breathe and catch my breath for a few seconds - I usually don't have to stop like that. Other than that, I felt quite good. I even was able to do the abdominals machine. And, last time I had been in the gym, I had increased the weight on one of the machines (triceps machine). I thought about dialing it back down to where it was to go easy on myself, but I figured I'd try it at the new, heavier weight first. And that went fine too! So quite a good workout considering that I've got a cold. I think the cold is definitely on its way out, though. My appetite is returning and I feel significantly better than I did yesterday, and I'm not blowing my nose nearly as much. Yesterday I could barely get off the couch, and today I got right back into the gym - that's a good feeling to get right back at it so quickly. :)

As for the snow, I don't mind it so much except that I dislike driving in it, and I have to shovel every time it snows. We don't have a garage and we don't have a snowblower either, so it's a repetitive process of scraping & brushing off the cars, shoveling the driveway, moving the cars so that we can shovel that last little bit of driveway, shoveling the sidewalk, etc. It seems like it has been snowing so much this winter that I'm getting sick of the shoveling process! On one hand it's a decent workout, but on the other hand, my GERD doesn't like it at all (so much bending over forward to shovel, and it requires a lot of use of the abdominal muscles). So even though it is quite physical, it's not tummy-friendly, and on bad days I have to send hubby out to shovel without me, and then I feel bad and useless. Tomorrow, hubby's going out of town for most of the day, and we're supposed to get anywhere from 1-6 inches of snow tomorrow depending on which weather report you believe! If we get 6 inches, I'll have to shovel by myself just so that he can get his car back in our driveway when he gets home. I'm not particularly looking forward to shoveling by myself, but I'll suck it up and do it. I'm hoping for less than 6 inches so that I can stay in the house and bake things and do crafts and not shovel!

So yeah, I guess I'd rather take bitter cold over snow, because I can drive in bitter snow and no shoveling required! ;) Ice is the worst of course, I at least can drive in snow even if I don't like it. If the roads are icy, it's so treacherous and I refuse to drive when it's icy if I can avoid it. So I'd rather have snow over ice, but I'd rather have cold over snow I think.
 
Oof. I hope you didn't get as much as they thought you might, and had some time to relax. We are going back into the deep freeze this week, with temps and wind chills below zero again. I can't wait for January to end and start the slow climb back to reasonable temperatures! We did get a few inches of snow over the weekend, but hubs has a snowblower so got it cleared up fairly quickly. Good thing too, as he has a bad shoulder injury and will need surgery soon. Hoping we don't get ANY snow the first couple of weeks after his surgery!
 
Cindy, yes, we fortunately only got about an inch or two of snow, so that was fine. It did pretty much snow all day on Saturday, though, so I ended up spending the whole day indoors and just doing stuff around the house. Didn't do much in the way of exercise but did get some cleaning, laundry, dishes, etc done, so it was still a productive day. Sunday, my parents came for a visit and that's always mentally exhausting to me, so I ended up not working out that day either except to shovel the small amount of snow that we got the day before. We went eagle-watching and to a winery, I was bad and did a wine tasting and had a bit too much and felt my stomach burning a bit. Oddly, though, I didn't really pay for it - all weekend, my guts were really good and I had nice, firm, normal stools.

Yesterday, I was off work due to MLK Jr. Day, but my gym was open so I went and had a nice long workout. Felt pretty good, didn't have tons of energy and I think I was a tad bit dehydrated, but overall it was pretty good.

This morning, I woke up in pain! Not sure if it was a partial obstruction or what. My right side, sort of middle-right part of my abdomen, it felt painful. It almost felt like food or gas was trapped and would not budge. I tried going to the bathroom, that didn't alleviate the pain. I tried walking around to get stuff moving but that didn't work. I tried my heating pad, that helped a little bit, but once I took it off, the pain was right back. I then massaged the area of my tummy rather forcefully to try to get things un-stuck and moving again. That hurt but I think it worked! I felt stuff gurgling afterwards and the pain eased up. I'm feeling better now than I did this morning. There's still a teensy bit of pain if I move the wrong way, I think that's just because my guts are still a little upset about whatever was going on earlier, maybe it's food moving through the irrtated area, etc. On the whole, though, I'm doing a lot better, so I think I'm in the clear.

So, seeing as how I'm doing better, I'm thinking of riding the bike on my lunch break today. It's so cold outside that I don't want to go anywhere, and a bike ride would help warm me up. I feel well enough to ride the bike. So that's my plan. I am a bit excited, I saw that country music lady is off today, so I should get the gym all to myself! :) I have a new music playlist that I set up and I'm excited to listen to it while I ride. I'm just going to do a short ride, about 30 mins.

Tomorrow, weights again, probably in the small gym at work. Oh, and starting today, hubby's working pretty much full-time hours for awhile, so I'll likely be doing more workouts at the little gym at work. (If hubby's available then we like to go to the big gym together - if it's just me then I can do whatever, but it's usually more convenient for me to just do a workout in the gym at work.) Hubby will be working all weekend, so I'm hoping to finally go ice skating at some point! The weather was bad Sat and my parents came down on Sun, and then I did weights Mon, so there just wasn't a good opportunity to skate this past weekend. I feel like I keep making excuses to not ice skate, and I hate that, so I'm really going to try to go this coming weekend! My week is shaping up to be weights Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun, so I'm earmarking Saturday as an ice skating day. I'll have to walk the dog, too, so hopefully I will have enough energy to do both. I've learned that I can usually do weights and then walk the dog afterwards, but if I walk her first I find that my legs are tired and it's very hard to do weights. So I'll maybe get up a bit early and skate first, then walk the dog afterwards. That's the tentative plan for now.
 
I saw your eagle pictures, they were pretty cool!
I did get on the elliptical despite my belly pain this morning, worked through it although at one point I thought I'd fall right over. I just didn't want to miss it and have belly pain and then add back pain to the equation.

I'm thinking of starting some light weights on the floor, since I can't lift while vertical. I'm always so tired when I get home I just haven't started yet! Good excuses.... not!

You inspire me though, you're so well-rounded in your routine.
 
Awww, thanks Cindy! I do try very hard to be well-rounded fitness-wise, if not I'd just do weights and only weights. :p I'm not a huge fan of cardio. I don't mind doing the exercise bike here and there, but last winter I was doing it all the time for an hour each time, and that got soooo tedious and boring. I love to ride my real bike to somewhere or through some nice scenery, that never gets boring. But sitting on the stationary bike going nowhere and just watching TV or whatever, that made me so bored I almost couldn't stand it! I've been doing the bike less this winter, and so far I haven't hit that wall of massive boredom yet. But yeah, it's sometimes difficult to be well-rounded when I get bored with cardio.

I have a similar complaint with yoga, and I know I just need to vary my routine more. I usually do yoga on the Wii Fit, and I've programmed in a routine I like, but then I end up doing that same routine every single time. I know what the Wii virtual trainer is going to say before she says it. So again, it gets tedious. Weights, I don't know what it is - I like doing the same weights in the same order each time, but even so, it's fun and not boring and never gets tedious the way that yoga & stationary bike do. I need to figure out what's magical about weights and try to translate that into cardio and yoga, somehow. And honestly, like I said, cardio is great fun if I can just go somewhere on my bike rather than staying in the same room for an hour! :p Yoga, I think I just need to do different moves or in a different order. But yeah, weights, I can do the same weights every time and it's like visiting an old friend, rather than it being tedious and dull. Maybe I just need to reframe how I think of my exercise bike and my Wii fit trainer? They're kind of like old frenemies, I like them but also hate them, ha ha. :p

Speaking of the bike, I'm headed to do 30 mins on it right now! Got my new music playlist so I won't be bored this time around (hopefully).
 
Cindy, I forgot to mention this earlier - you talked about possibly doing weights on the floor. I'm sure there are some yoga moves that can be done from the floor too, although I'm not sure if they'll all be safe for your back. The reason I thought of this was my aunt. She broke her neck in a really bad car accident a couple years ago, she survived and wasn't paralyzed fortunately. But they had to put a metal rod in her neck to fuse it, and while she was healing from that, she really really wanted to do yoga (she's a yoga fanatic and does yoga pretty much every day). She wasn't even really allowed to walk around, she was only allowed to lie there. So she'd lie on the floor and do some floor yoga that didn't put any pressure on her neck. I'm not sure what poses she did, but I think it was the only thing that kept her sane for awhile! Anyway, if you're interested in yoga, what my aunt went through makes me think there must be some gentle floor yoga that you could possibly do too. I'm sure your back and my aunt's neck both pose their own unique challenges, so maybe there isn't a lot of overlap between what you can do vs what she could do, but I was reminded of her doing floor yoga when you mentioned doing floor weights.

(If you're wondering, there is a happy ending to my aunt's story - she healed as much as someone with a broken neck can heal. She still has the metal rod, it's permanent. But she's allowed to do most yoga poses again including headstands, no more floor-only restriction. This is my aunt who has IBD, so she's been through a lot in life and is so tough! She's kind of my hero, she's awesome. :) )

So I rode the bike, did my 30 mins. It was tough and I was really sweaty and tired by the end, but it was a "good" tired. My legs feel pretty tired now and I'm looking forward to having a nice dinner and a hot bath. I had a good lunch (I made myself a high-protein pasta salad - it had lots of turkey bacon, tofu, and hardboiled eggs in it). Dinner tonight will be tummy-safe lasagna, with goat cheese and ground turkey. Yum! I eat a lot of pasta because it's a safe food for me, and I don't mind having pasta twice in one day like this. Pasta salad is pretty different from lasagna, too, so it doesn't feel like I'm eating the same thing. But I know with working out that I need protein, particularly right after a workout, so this is one of my ongoing goals, to get more protein into my diet so that my muscles are happy. I eat tons of carbs but I think I should have more protein, I'm wondering if I get enough. I have chicken at least once a week, but I have bread or pasta pretty much every day. So the goal is to incorporate more protein with my carbs since I'm going to eat carbs anyway! :p
 
Update 1/22/14: I am having a bleh day. You ever hear the saying, "same sh**, different day"? That's my day today. :p Yesterday I passed a little blood after dinner - seems to be happening with more regularity now. I had been having such nice, formed, non-bloody stools lately, too. Ugh. It's also snowing, again. It seems to snow just about every day and I'm so sick of it. My stupid ear won't stop ringing and it's massively annoying. It's just a lot of little stuff like that today. I feel okay guts-wise in spite of the blood, I don't feel bad, I just feel... like burned out, I guess. Physically okay but mentally exhausted. I'm just having a day!

So I really, really need to go lift some weights. I need to lift a lot of them and they need to be heavy. I need to just dump some stress! I'm going to the gym in a little while and I cannot wait! It's the one bright spot in my day. I really need ideal gym conditions today, though - I'm keeping an eye on country music lady, I really want to get to the gym when she's not in there. I want the gym all to myself and I want to crank my music and push myself and try to force a better mood to happen. And if the music is loud enough then I shouldn't even be able to hear the ear ringing anymore, right? ;) At least for a little while. I just feel like I need a reprieve from my life.

This reminds me, I was thinking about bears the other day (sounds weird, I know). My hubby did a freelance animation project awhile back for a company that makes educational science videos for school children, and he did an animation about bear hibernation once. It was really interesting, apparently before bears hibernate they eat tons of food and get really fat. When they hibernate, there's some sort of body process that uses the fat not only to keep the bear alive during hibernation, but it also converts the fat into muscle! So when bears awake in the spring, they're lean and muscular. Oh man, I wish I could sleep for a few months and wake up more muscular! That sounds like possibly the best thing ever. That's what I want right now, I just want to hibernate (and waking up with more muscles would be a lovely added bonus). I could wake up in the spring feeling refreshed rather than burned-out, and having more muscles - that would just be the best! Bears really have it made!
 
Cindy? I get worried about you when you disappear from the forum for awhile! Check in and let me know things are okay, if you can?

Update 1/23/14: I'm having a bad joints day today. I jogged for just a few mins yesterday on the treadmill to warm up before doing weights, and my bad hip has been unhappy ever since. My knees are aching too, and my left wrist was painful earlier this morning, although the wrist is somewhat better now. It's very cold out and it's been snowing just about every day, so I'm sure that's a contributing factor. My joints hate bitter cold and snow, and the hip has never liked jogging. Today was going to be a rest day anyway, so it's just as well that I'm having a bad joints day. I'm going to take it as easy as I can. Hubby's working late tonight, so dinner's already in the crock pot (chicken). I won't have to cook anything and can just relax on the couch tonight. I have a new crocheting project that I just started (hubby wants me to make him a "Doctor Who" scarf like what Tom Baker's character wore on the show) so that'll keep me occupied, as long as my wrist doesn't start acting up again.

Oh, I think I forgot to say how my workout yesterday went. I was in a foul mood and just wanted to be totally alone in the gym. I kind of stalked country music lady, I peeked in the lunch room and she was there, and I peeked in the gym and it was empty, so I thought I was in the clear. Went to change clothes, and while I was changing somebody sneaked ahead of me into the gym! Oh no! It was a lady who's relatively new at work (not country music lady), and fortunately she wasn't an annoyance. She apparently only walks on the treadmill, so I still had the weight machines all to myself (there are 2 treadmills in that gym, so I still had use of one treadmill too). Also, she didn't know how to work the TV, and she asked me if I could put something on. I said I usually only do DVDs, and she said that's fine! So I got to listen to my Kpop DVD even though someone else was in the gym - score! And this lady only stayed in the gym for maybe 15 mins tops, so I had a good chunk of gym time to myself and got to listen to my music the whole time. So, it was as good as a workout can be when there's another person there. :p I pushed myself pretty hard and I can feel it in my shoulders & back today, there's a bit of soreness (but that's a much nicer soreness than the painful joints I've also got going on, I'll take post-workout soreness over cold-weather joint aches any day!).

So today I'll rest, and tomorrow I'll hit the weights again. Hubby's working all weekend so I'm going to do some crafty type stuff, more crocheting and some sewing and I'll also clean a bit, etc. I'm still hoping to ice skate, I hope my joints get on board with that idea.
 
I want to be a bear. They get to have babies while they hibernate too.

Interesting about the floor yoga. I've tried a couple of things before, but couldn't do a lot because I can't bend backwards at all - I've got a stainless steel appliance that fuses my entire lower back and it doesn't bend. :(

I feel like I really need to do something about my butt! Since my back surgery I kind of fell off the squats and lunges wagon and it's noticeable..... think I need to do some work there. not that it's a big deal when I'm dressed, it looks fine, but I'd like to have a nice bootie for the hubs to look at! Silly, yeah? but I gotta start lifting that thing up again, I am in my 40s.... otherwise it will just keep going down......
 
Sorry I disappeared! I had a leadership forum yesterday so no time to get online, and today's been nonstop meetings! But here I am! Everything's going well!
 
Yay, I'm glad everything's good with you. When I was away from the forum for a little bit a few months back, you said you missed me - now I can totally say I missed you too! :) Sounds like you've been busy - how's your health doing? Are the new medications helping your headaches? How's the tummy lately?

And oh goodness, the booty! Yes, especially at our ages, it takes a little bit more effort to keep it perky. I've been working mine with squats and the leg press machine and hubby says it looks better than it ever has before (and we started dating when I was 19, so apparently I look better now than I did 15 years ago as a teenager!). You have to keep up with it, though, for sure. I'm 34 and I can already feel gravity pulling things downward (I work my triceps twice as hard as my biceps because I feel like I may have a bit of "bat wing" arms going on otherwise!). Anyway, get back at those squats if you're able to - I have been trying to do more squats in between weight machines, particularly in the little gym at work. Sometimes to beat the afternoon slump, I'll do some squats in my cubicle too.

Geez, the steel appliance in your back does sound a lot like what my aunt has in her neck - I can't recall which vertebrae she has fused, I think it's the 1st thru the 3rd? I know she broke one and cracked the other and they fused the whole area together, so she can barely turn her head a slight bit to the side and that's it. She basically has to turn her whole body in order to turn her head. There are a few yoga moves she can't do anymore, but for the most part she can still do a lot. It sounds like your back situation is a lot more limiting than her neck is. I can ask her what floor yoga moves she did, though, if you want. I know she had a broken foot at the time too (she had to wait for her neck to heal a lot before they could take care of her foot) so she could only do moves where her neck and foot weren't really involved at all.

So this is getting a little silly, but I bought more workout clothes today. :p (I'm going to go through my pile of workout clothes at home and get rid of some older stuff over the weekend because I now officially have too many workout clothes.) I went to the consignment shop today, and they had a whole bunch of really nice workout clothes that just came in. Some of the stuff was brand-new still with tags, and it was all nice name brands. I got a very cute hot pink workout top (long tank w/ built in sports bra), brand-new with tags, and it has a cute little pocket for my ipod and fits perfectly and it was really cheap! I also got a new pair of black workout capris that fit really well too. I'm kind of obsessed with cute workout clothes at this point, and today's haul cost me something like $12 total for the top and the capris. I didn't need new workout clothes, but it's a little added motivation, I guess. I want to wash them tonight so that I can wear them to the gym tomorrow! Anything that makes me excited for the gym like that is a good thing, whether it's a new outfit or new songs in my playlist or whatever - I never really need motivation, I'm going to go to the gym regardless, but it's nice to get new stuff and to have a reason to be excited to go to the gym, you know? And it's nice to feel cute and stylish, even if it's all going to get sweaty within the first 5 minutes. :p
 
Update 1/24/14 (it's still weird writing "14" at the end of dates, I'm not used to it yet!): I'm going to go to the little gym on my lunch break for weights today. I was hoping to go to the big gym after work, but the weather is supposed to be pretty hideous today. They're saying 1-2 inches of snow, which isn't so bad, but also 30+ mph winds so blowing snow plus very cold wind chills. I don't want to be out and about more than I need to in those conditions, so I'll do my workout on my break and just head straight home after work.

Speaking of this hideous cold, my joints are still pretty unhappy. My hip feels okay when I'm sitting, but when I walk I can feel that it's painful. My knees are a bit better but still a bit achey, same with both wrists. The bitter cold weather is supposed to continue for awhile (at least into early next week), lovely. I had really wanted to ice skate tomorrow, but with the bitter cold & wind and my joint pain, I'm doubting it'll happen now. Disappointed, but my body's saying don't go ice skating when it's like this, so I will probably stay inside. So tomorrow may be a rest day, or if it's semi-okay weather then I'll walk the dog. She's been wanting to stay indoors herself during this bitter cold! She normally loves cold & snow, but it's too cold lately even for her. Hubby walked her the other day in like -30 wind chills, and he said the dog was so sad and looked like she was being punished, she hated going on a walk in that kind of cold. So we're not walking her when it's so crazy cold. She gets a bit stir crazy being stuck in the house, so I'll play with her indoors to try to keep her entertained for awhile.
 
Aw, it's nice to be missed! I just finally got the new medication tonight after a week of dealing with the pharmacy. I don't think my body like these med changes because I do not feel good at all today... achy, belly hurts, burning in my right ab, and super tired. Grrr. trying to be patient and give it time to adjust and then hopefully things will improve.

Wow, your aunt sure got lucky. A lot of people with cervical fractures that high die instantly! It sucks that she can't turn her head though. There's a likelihood my disks will continue to degenerate and I'll need more fusions in the future, but the doc and I are putting that off as long as possible bc the more fused I get, the harder it will be to move and the more painful it will be. Heck with that!

I feel for your pup! Our three girls like to go out the back door, tear around the yard for a couple of minutes and then dash back into the house. They whine and bark and jump around like crazy if I leave them out too long, and then stand around with one foot up in the air looking sad and pathetic. THey love playing in the snow but not this cold!

Here's hoping your joints cut you a break sometime soon. It's been going on too long!
 
Yes, my aunt is super lucky for sure! The accident she was in was horrible. She rarely wears a seatbelt, but she said that out of the blue decided to put it on about 45 seconds before the accident, and I don't think she'd be alive if she hadn't put her seatbelt on. Her pickup truck was overloaded and two of her tires blew while she was on the highway - her truck flipped, rolled, spun, went into the oncoming lane, hit multiple vehicles including a semi. When the truck rolled, she hit her head on the roof of the truck, and that's apparently how she broke her neck. She was able to crawl out of the truck on her own, though, and somehow didn't have any paralysis. I saw photos of the truck later on, and it was amazing that anyone survived that - it was just crumpled. She's definitely a tough lady!

I'm sorry to hear the new meds are doing a number on you, that sucks! I hope things calm down soon and that they get the headaches under control without messing with your guts any further. I'm glad the pharmacy finally came through for you at least - if it's not one thing, it's another, as Gilda Radner always said!

My dog does the thing with one foot in the air outside too, I think her paw pads are sensitive to the extreme cold temps. Sometimes she'll even limp when she's out in the yard, but as soon as she's back inside she'll start walking normally again, so I think the cold is really affecting her feet. Booties are out of the question, though, she'll take them off (she had to have minor foot surgery a couple years ago, so I tried putting a bootie on over the bandage so she wouldn't chew on her stitches - that was ridiculous, she took the bootie off about 10 million times even though I tried watching her closely and tried putting the bootie on tight). So it'll be us girls (me, the dog and the cat, ha ha) hanging out indoors tomorrow and staying warm. :p
 
Update 1/26/14: Yesterday was a rest day although I did a bit of heavy lifting. I needed to run a couple errands, but it seemed like the things I really needed were all heavy! I went to the store and bought laundry detergent and hauled that heavy thing around. Then I went to the grocery store and bought a 10 lb bag of potatoes and carried that bag with me while I picked up a few other (smaller) items. So I feel like I got a bit of a workout just from carrying heavy items!

Today, I was going to go to the gym for weights - but the weather and circumstances had other plans. It snowed quite a bit last night, about 5ish inches I think. We had to shovel, which is always strenuous. And my dog really needs a walk, and it's not terribly cold out today, so I'm going to walk her in a little bit. Tomorrow & Tuesday, it's supposed to be super cold again - they're saying -50 wind chills. So I'm probably going to have more joint pain, and will want to stay inside - this means lifting weights will happen during that time, and maybe yoga too. So the plan now is, long walk with the dog today, weights tomorrow, possibly yoga Tuesday.

I wish I had gotten those snowshoes that I mentioned awhile back, they'd be great for walking the dog today in the fresh snow! They had been on clearance for $60 which was still a bit out of my price range, so I went back to the store yesterday to see if the price had dropped any. It had... to $59. Ugh! :p But at the thrift store the other day, I saw a pair of gently used snowshoes for only $20. I get paid in a few days, so I'm going to go back to the thrift store on payday and see if they still have those snowshoes. If they have them, I'm going to get them. Seems like a decent investment for $20 and likely something I'll get some good use out of! Really wish I had them today though! And I hope nobody buys them in the next few days.
 
Update 1/27/14: It's so cold again today! It was reasonable yesterday, windy but above zero even with the wind chill, so I was able to walk the dog yesterday. Today it's something like -8 with a wind chill of about -35. My joints are already feeling it, my left knee in particular is quite unhappy. Tomorrow's supposed to be even colder, I'm dreading it! Ugh, I just hate this weather so much! I can deal with normal winter weather, but this is not normal. This is way colder than my body can handle!

In spite of the weather, I'm going to hit the weights today anyway. Going to go to the little gym on my lunch break. I sometimes jog to warm up, but I don't know if my joints can handle jogging today, so I'll probably do the bike for my warm-up instead. Tomorrow, I think I'm going to do yoga, hopefully that will help my joints a bit. Wednesday, weights again. Thursday, likely a rest day, and Friday weights again. If I can buy those snowshoes, I'll hopefully take them out for a test run on the weekend at the dog park with my pooch. I haven't been ice skating yet either, the weather has just not been conducive to skating! It's been too cold/windy etc. I'd really like to have a weekend day where the weather is nice enough (and my joints & guts are well enough) that I can do a bit of snowshoeing AND ice skating! That would be ideal! So we'll see if it happens, I'm not holding my breath. :p
 
I skippped the elliptical all weekend, with our crazy traveling/moving more stuff/seeing people plans. It was not a restful weekend! I put new batteries in my scale and it turns out the darn thing was overweighing me. I've lost more weight again.... slipped down to 129. Less than I weighed even in high school. My old peeps back in WI were commenting on how thin I look. It really sucks! More Ensure coming my way, I guess. I did get back on the elliptical this morning bc my back was pretty unhappy about the skipping. So hard to find a balance. Still feeling a little funky today, I think I'm still adjusting to the meds, but a little better than Friday.

Cat - dog booties, we tried them on our MOlly once and it really was the funniest thing we'd ever seen. she absolutely hated them and we've never tried them again! So they all just get to go out there quickly and then come back in. I swear the newest pup is spring loaded, she comes to the door and pops up nearly to my face height when she wants to come in!
 

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