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TheOcean, I was writing my update as you posted! Yeah, I often take a sanity break from the forum on the weekends although I check in periodically to make sure there are no major issues. But yeah, I really had the wind knocked out of my sails this past weekend! Oh, and as for what games - The Sims 3, and Plants vs. Zombies. :p I just got a new laptop a month or two ago, my old laptop was slowly dying and it could no longer run any games (it could run solitaire and that's about it) and it even had a hard time with youtube videos, it'd freeze and chug and sometimes just crash. So a new laptop was needed, and now that I have it, I've been catching up on older games that I haven't been able to play for awhile - mostly the Sims, but also PvZ. :)
 
Oh gosh, I got so addicted to The Sims 3 for awhile, and I played it and modded it until I broke it on my old laptop, I think. I've sworn off of it until The Sims 4 comes out now. I'm really hoping it'll be good and have better customization! (And possibly less buggy, but EA doesn't inspire confidence in me.) And I play PvZ sometimes, too. I have PvZ2 on my iPhone and I'm so determined to get everything possible without spending a single cent on it. It's a "free to play" game so of course it gives you options to buy everything to make things easier. I refuse!

And aw, hope the neck pain goes away. I've had that before and dared to take an Aleve to help with it a little, just once. It's super painful, though. :(
 
Oh yeah, The Sims 3 has been really buggy for me too and I don't mod anything nor use any custom content for fear of more buggy-ness. The glitch that's frustrating me lately is, my main sim can't seem to get a job - he accepts the job, but when it's time to actually go to work, he glitches and suddenly disappears and re-appears at a different spot on the screen, but he won't ever go to work. When my old laptop was still able to run the Sims (it's been a few years), I had a sim who was in the park one day when the grim reaper sim appeared! But, he acted just like a regular townie and he said his name was Scot. :p So my sim married him, and their sim kids came out with pitch black skin and bright green eyes - very freaky! That was my favorite glitch, the grim sim appearing as a regular townie, but I haven't gotten it to happen on my new laptop just yet.

I don't have PvZ2 yet - I don't have a smartphone, and it doesn't yet seem to be available for PC nor for Kindle Fire. So I've just been replaying the original PvZ and trying to collect all the zen garden plants (please tell me the zen garden is in PvZ2 - it's not in the Kindle version of PvZ).

I took some tylenol for my neck pain - it didn't do much, but it did take the edge off a little bit. The pain has become tolerable enough that I can turn my head to either side without screeching pain, so that's promising. I think some yoga will help.
 
The one main one I found I absolutely needed was AwesomeMod, because it actually fixed most of the bugs that EA never bothered with. And that's a really strange glitch! I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but someone tried to find a fix for a job-related problem here. And oh my gosh, grim reaper kids. That's crazy!

And hmm, I'm not sure if there is a zen garden in 2, actually.
 
Yeah, I've noticed that EA isn't big on fixing bugs - but boy can they churn out the expansion packs! :p I think I saw an expansion pack called "Katy Perry stuff" or something like that - I don't think there's a need for a Katy Perry's stuff expansion pack. They're just getting silly now.

Oh, I'll be sad if there's no zen garden! That's like the main reason that I keep playing the original PvZ, I need to own all the plants and get the tree of wisdom as tall as possible.
 
Update 5/13/14: Well, yoga ended up not happening last night but not because I didn't want to. I got home from work and hubby already had dinner ready - he had forgotten that I had mentioned the possibility of doing yoga. I can't eat and then work out, and he made a really nice dinner that would have been cold & dried out if I let it sit around while I did yoga, so I decided to forgo yoga and eat the nice dinner instead.

I'm feeling relatively well today - my neck pain is almost completely gone, virus is gone, no migraine, guts are quiet, joints are quiet - can't ask for much more than that! :) So I'm going to go hit the weights today. I'll probably take it a little bit easy since it's been a few days since I've worked out, don't want to push myself too hard. I'm excited though, I missed the gym!

Oh, so about hubby's job interview - it apparently basically didn't happen. The manager or whatever of the bakery, apparently he couldn't come last night, but he didn't bother to let hubby know that. So hubby showed up and there was some other manager who had no idea what was going on. He introduced hubby to the bakery crew and showed him around, but it wasn't a full interview. The first manager, the one who didn't show up - I guess he had told hubby that the interview would be about 2 hours, but with this other clueless manager hubby was only there for like 20 mins. Supposedly the first manager is going to call hubby today and... I don't know. Reschedule the interview I hope? Hubby said it was really dirty in there though so between the manager guy not showing up/not calling, and the place being dirty and kind of gross, he's not impressed and is seeming far less enthusiastic about the prospect of working there. So at this point, if he gets the bakery job, he'll accept it but he will only work there until he can find something better.
 
Update 5/14/14: I hit the gym yesterday and felt great, so I did push myself a little bit. Feeling a bit sore today, but that's a good feeling! Because of the soreness, I'll either make today a rest day, or I'll do something gentle - if the weather is nice tonight, I think I might take the dog to the park. A quick walk shouldn't hurt.

Tomorrow, it's back to the weights. Friday, not sure yet.
 
Yay! I've been feeling a bit sore since my session on Monday, too, but it always makes me feel like I've made some progress. Now I just need to motivate myself to go back today!

And I'm sorry to hear about the mess-up with your husband's second interview... as well as how he was disappointed with the cleanliness of the place. I know that would be pretty disappointing to me, too.
 
Update 5/15/14: I walked the dog last night and that went okay. My dog apparently isn't feeling well, though, she had some diarrhea on our walk. But other than that, she was energetic and acting normal, so I'm not too worried. Sometimes she sneakily eats a little something that she shouldn't, so I presume she just ate a little something when I wasn't looking (out in the yard, she sometimes eats weird/inedible stuff like rabbit poop or dead leaves) and it upset her tummy a little bit. So, other than my dog having a few episodes of d, the walk went fine.

Tonight I'm going to hit the gym for weights. I'm feeling pretty well so I plan to push myself. Hubby's coming to the gym with me, which is good because he needs to work out more (he never goes to the gym by himself, he only goes to the gym when I ask him to come with me). He's going to follow up with the bakery manager guy today too, as the guy never bothered to call him back (this bakery thing gets less promising all the time). But, hubby got a little nibble of another job prospect, one that's actually in his field (art/animation). He sent his resume' to a local company and they responded asking him to send them more samples of his work, so that seems like a good sign! At this point, any response at all from a prospective employer is better than nothing. :p

Oh, and my job will hopefully be less stressful soon too! I can't remember how much I already talked about this, but in a nutshell, there were 4 people in my little department and one of them quit recently. The rest of us had to take over her projects for the time being, and one of the other people in my department is basically a massive screw-up and not very bright, so we didn't want to give her many projects or we'd just have to re-do them ourselves anyway. Sooo, as a result I got really stressed particularly with one big confusing project that I had to take on. But, my boss seems to have found a replacement for the lady who left, and it's someone I know and like (it's someone from a different department), and she apparently starts in our dept on Monday! :D I'm excited, I'm going to get some stress off my shoulders and I'll have a nice new co-worker. All good stuff. :)
 
Update 5/16/14: I hit the gym last night and pushed myself a fair bit. I usually do either 10 or 12 reps per machine (depending on the machine - some are really hard and I can usually only make it to 10). So, I decided to one-up myself on each machine - on the machines that I normally do 12 reps on, I pushed myself to do 13 reps, and on the machines that I normally do 10 reps, I made myself do 12. That was really tough but I did it! I don't even feel particularly sore or tired today, so that's encouraging that I can push myself to that extent and still be okay the next day.

Today I'm kind of tired - I sometimes can't remember if I took my medications or not. As a result, I think I sometimes take a double dose - I think I didn't take them so I take them again, when I really did take them the first time. My short-term memory is terrible! Anyway, so last night I was getting ready for bed and I couldn't remember if I had already taken my Amitriptyline. Just could not remember at all. But I figured, it's better to take a double-dose (50 mg rather than 25) than to take nothing, as I haven't had a migraine in a few weeks and I don't want to jinx that (Ami prevents most of my migraines). So I took my Amitriptyline, but it seems I had already taken it. I zonked out and slept great, but felt quite groggy and a bit out of it when it was time to get up. Not a huge issue, but I've felt a bit sleepy all day because of it (I nearly fell asleep at my desk at work and I had to get up and do some squats and lunges to get my blood flowing and try to wake up!).

So because I'm feeling sleepy, and the weather is cold and yucky, I'll probably just rest tonight. I was briefly considering yoga or walking the dog, but I'll probably just go to bed early instead. I'll hit the gym tomorrow for weights. Sunday I probably won't have a chance to exercise, as I'm going to visit my grandparents. That's always rather mentally exhausting - my grandpa is physically very ill (heart problems, kidney failure, diabetes, in a wheelchair, etc) but he's all there mentally. My grandma is fairly physically healthy - she can walk at least and she isn't at the doctor 6 days a week like my grandpa is - but she's losing it mentally, her memory is gone and she gets confused easily. We're going to a restaurant, so it's going to be a constant stream of reminding my grandma what she likes to eat there, then remind her what she ordered, then after the meal remind her (multiple times) of what she ate, etc. At least I can have a conversation with my grandpa and he'll remember it 5 mins later - not my grandma though. I can't remember if I took my pills, but she can't remember anything anymore and she gets confused over simple things - I presume it's dementia but I don't know if she's actually been diagnosed with anything as of yet. So anyway, last time I saw them I ended up with a massive headache from constantly having to remind my grandma of what's going on, and I just had to rest for the remainder of the day. I'm presuming this Sunday will be similar. The good news is, I'm driving them (they still drive which is really scary) and they're always really appreciative when I do stuff like that for them, so I know they'll have a nice time. Last time I drove them to a restaurant, my grandma kept saying what a good driver I am and what a lovely travelling companion my hubby is and she kept trying to give us money. :p So I know they enjoy getting out and having a nice time, it's worth getting a headache over. :)
 
Update 5/19/14: I rested on Friday - as I said in my last update, I was quite tired. On Saturday, we hit the gym. I still felt kind of tired, didn't have tons of energy and took it a bit slower than usual in the gym. I also got kind of nauseous towards the end, so I skipped the abdominals machine just to be safe. Not a great workout overall but I got through it. Went home after the gym and rested a bit, then decided to walk the dog, so I was actually quite active on Saturday. The weather was nice all weekend so it seemed a shame to waste it.

Sunday, I was in the car for a good chunk of the day. My grandparents don't drive on the highway anymore (they still drive in their city and on back roads which is scary enough). So I drove to my grandparents' city (an hour drive), picked them up, drove them to the city my parents live in (90 mins drive), took them to lunch with my parents, took them back to their home, went home myself. I was in the car for hours and hours. Plus, my grandparents are both going deaf so they talk loudly and I had to talk loudly for them to hear me. And my grandma is really losing it mentally, her memory is shot and she may have dementia, so it was frustrating to repeat the same thing to her 10 times. Because of all that, I did end up with a headache. But, when hubby and I finally got home from our chauffeur duties, I wanted to move around a bit because I had been stuck in the car the whole day. So we did some gardening and then took the dog on another walk. I think keeping active helped - my headache hasn't turned into a migraine, and it seems to be improving today.

So, since I'm doing relatively okay today, I'm going to hit the gym. Just a quickie lunch-hour workout in the little gym in the basement of my workplace. Wednesday & Friday, I'm planning to do my workouts in the big (paid membership) gym - that gym is less conveniently located, but it has more equipment and I can do a better, longer workout there. Not sure about what I'll do on Tues & Thurs - maybe yoga, or if the weather is nice maybe a bike ride, or I could always walk the dog some more (she needs the exercise too! She's a bit fat, ha ha). Hubby picked up more hours this week at his part-time costume shop job (his boss is going to be a vendor at a convention, so he's going to help her pack & set up and then he'll run the shop while the boss is at the con). So it'll pretty much be me by myself for most of the week - which is fine, I'm a huge introvert and I look forward to getting some alone time. :) During my alone time, I'm going to work out of course, do some gardening, some sewing & crafts, color my hair, catch up on some K-dramas, stuff like that. Just generally recharge and catch up on stuff.
 
Another quick update for today: Ugh. :( Well, about an hour before it was time to go to the gym, I got rather nauseous. I took a Zofran which helped a bit but I still didn't feel "right." Felt dizzy too. Still not a lot of head pain, so I'm not sure if this is a relatively painless migraine or a mini-flare or what. I made myself go to the gym anyway but I wasn't able to do much. I pushed through but it wasn't pretty and I skipped the abdominals machine, and I just generally felt un-energetic and yuck. I usually feel better after a workout, but after today's workout, I felt relatively the same - nauseous and bleh. Less dizzy, but still definitely feeling "off." Going to rest up tonight with my heating pad. Tomorrow, if I feel similar, it will definitely be a rest day. Ugh, yuck.

I have been doing somewhat better lately so I guess I wanted to keep that streak going, that's why I didn't skip the gym today. I probably should have, though. At this point, I'm hoping to recuperate and be gym-ready by Wednesday. That's the goal. I hate hate hate to skip a weight-lifting session, and I do weights every other day, so (in my mind) it's okay to take a rest day tomorrow as long as I'm back to (relatively) normal on Wednesday for my next weights session. In the meantime, I'll rest and eat low-res and just try to take it easy (no gardening or walking the dog).
 
I can totally feel you on the deaf grandparents thing. My grandmother is deaf and has a bad habit of always forgetting her hearing aids, which usually results in some interesting games of charades. Also: lots of yelling on her part even though I can hear her just fine. :p Sorry to hear about the dementia, though... one of my grandfathers had Alzheimer's so I know what that's like.

What color are you dyeing your hair?
 
I'm sorry it's been a bit of a rough one for you Cat. At least you still tried to get the workouts in, that counts for something.

Dementia is really difficult to deal with I know I have been around and interacted numerous times with relatives and friends' relatives with either Alzheimer's or Dementia. All the more reason to take care of yourself because it can be really stressful to deal with and provide support.

Tomorrow is another day. Hopefully you can get some fitness activity done then. Until then take care of yourself.
 
Thanks guys. :) Ocean, I'm mostly just coloring the greys out of my hair! :p (I started going grey right around the time that I got sick, so I consider it another symptom and hair dye is my medicine, ha ha.) But I do like to go a bit darker than my natural color. Naturally I'm sort of a light golden brown, and I like to do a darker brown with a hint of red. I've found a box color that comes out looking pretty natural (sometimes fake red in hair dye looks totally unnatural) and I get lots of compliments on it.

As for my grandma, I'm not sure if it's Alzheimer's or another type of dementia or what. She's mostly just forgetful but she's gotten a little aggressive at times lately, too. (Like, she yelled at a waitress for bringing her the wrong thing - but apparently she just forgot what she ordered, it was correct but she couldn't remember.) It's just starting to become frightening and I'm sure that it'll get worse. She's 81 and relatively healthy so she could live quite awhile longer and she'll likely just continue to decline. It's sad and scary! And it gives me migraines. She has a hearing aid too but she "lost" the batteries in the bottom of her purse and she didn't bother to look for them.
 
Oh gosh, fake red. I think the worst cases I've ever seen of it are elderly European ladies. They love it, for some reason. It looks terrible. :p Always looks something closer to this color. As a natural redhead (or a previous one, thanks to my medication!) I get a little offended by it. I have no idea why it's so popular!

It sounds like you're dyeing yours a nice red, though.

Aggression, personality changes, changes in taste and paranoia are a number of the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. My grandfather was originally diagnosed with dementia, so we've really seen him through all the stages. Like CC said: definitely remember to take care of yourself, because it often ends up being far more difficult for the caretaker than anyone else. :(
 
One time my brother was coming to visit our parents and he told my mom he had colored his hair. He was going on about how good it looked. Much to our surprise and amusement it turned out he had turned it into almost exactly the same color as mine (red). Of course I could not let him live it down. :)
 
Kel, my brother did something similar. He's naturally blonde and I naturally have rather mousy brown hair. He tried dyeing his hair black, but the dye didn't take right and he ended up with dull, mousy brown hair for a little while - very similar to mine! :p It looked terrible on him, too. He hasn't dyed his hair since, I think he learned his lesson.

Ocean, oh yeah, I've heard that particular shade of old lady fake red hair color referred to as "menopause red"! :p I've also known several older women who went for the extremely bad faux red dye, I don't know why that's such a popular thing for older ladies to do. Like I said, the dye I use is primarily dark brown with just a teensy hint of natural-looking red! Even though I am dyeing out the greys, I'm not terribly old (I'm 34) and I am not ready to go crazy with the weird "this color is not found in nature" shade of brassy almost-neon red hair dye. :p

Thanks, Hawkeye. How are you doing, better since your surgery & obstruction? Getting back into running yet?

I suppose I should update - I am almost certain now that this nausea is due to a relatively painless migraine. When I woke up this morning, I had some head & neck pain and it felt like a migraine, but once my head got off the pillow the pain subsided. My stomach is still not right though so I'm taking it very easy food-wise and sticking to absolutely safe foods in small amounts. I think this is the first migraine I've had where I've had more nausea than pain! I usually get very little if any nausea during a migraine so this is abnormal for me. But, I have zofran and it's not like I'm not used to dealing with nausea, so I'm actually coping better with this than I have with my last handful of (painful) migraines.

So I'm doing okay-ish. Still going to take today as a rest day - the bad hip is acting up today too so I may stretch it out a bit, but a workout is off the table today. I'm hoping that as long as I stick to low-res safe foods and rest today, that I'll be well enough to hit the gym tomorrow. That's the plan. I do feel a bit better today than I did yesterday so hopefully the migraine is on its way out.
 
Another quick update for today: Yep, it's definitely a migraine. There's some pressure and a bit of pain. Still not too bad, I'm still functional and the pain is tolerable. The nausea is getting better but the head pressure seems to be getting a bit worse. Yuck! In a few days, I'm going to try to taper down from 6 mg to 3 mg of Entocort - that should help with the migraines quite a bit. The big question is, will my guts be okay with me tapering, or is it too soon? If it's too soon then I'll have to go back up to 6 mg, which I don't really want to do. But I do want to get the guts under control and back into proper remission, so I'll go back to 6 mg if I have to. But anyway, hopefully the taper will go fine and the migraines will stop happening so often.

The weather here is super nice today! It's a shame it's a rest day - if I didn't have a migraine, I'd want to walk the dog or take a bike ride. It's supposed to be nice here all week though, sunny and in the 70s, so hopefully my body will allow me to do something outside at some point soon. Tentatively, I'm thinking of taking my dog on a hike on the weekend - hubby has to work at the costume shop all weekend, and it's supposed to be really nice weather. There's a state park not too far away that has nice hiking trails and they allow on-leash dogs, so that could be a lot of fun. So that's my tentative weekend plan!
 
Update 5/12/14: I'm doing somewhat better today. Still feeling like I have a bit of a migraine, but I don't feel too bad. Some head pain, but the pressure has eased up. The nausea is mostly gone too. I did pass some mucus last night but otherwise I had normal, solid stools, so I'm not too worried about the mucus. My arthritis started acting up yesterday evening too, but it's feeling better today.

So, given that I'm relatively okay-ish, I'm still planning to hit the gym tonight. I probably won't push myself too much and am just aiming to get through my workout. If I am able to push myself, then that'll be a nice bonus. So yes, gym tonight for weights. Tomorrow, I think I'll walk the dog. Friday, I really want to go see that big meteor shower that's predicted for late Friday night/early Saturday morning - so, I'm thinking I'll hit the gym on my lunch hour for a quickie weights session, then after work I'll nap for a bit, then get up when it's dark out and pack myself a little picnic, and drive out into the country and watch the meteor shower for awhile. That sounds like fun. :) Saturday, I think I will take the dog for a long hike, and Sunday gym again. Oh, and Monday is a holiday here, so if the weather is nice and if my health cooperates, I'd love to take the kayak out on the water! We have a 2-person kayak and our dog fits in it with us, so it's a lot of fun when me & hubby & Lily pooch go for a paddle. Lily loves to look at ducks and sniff everything, ha ha. So, those are my tentative plans for now! Of course everything is subject to change depending on my health and the weather. (Can't go meteor-watching if it's cloudy and don't want to go kayaking if it's raining.)
 
Update 5/22/14: I'm doing well today. :) Still a bit migrainey, but it's still not too bad and the nausea is gone. My migraines that I've been getting from Entocort, on average they've been lasting about 5 days each, and today is day 5 of this migraine, so hopefully it'll go away fully soon. Speaking of Entocort, I looked over how many capsules I have - my GI said I can taper when I feel ready, and my guts are doing okay so I'm just about ready to taper. I'm going to stay on 6 mg through the long weekend, and on Tuesday I'm going to attempt to taper down to 3 mg. Hopefully my guts will be okay with that, and also hopefully the migraines will go away or at least be less frequent and/or less intense. So that's the plan! I'm excited to taper - I really want to get back into remission and this feels like a good step in the right direction!

I went to the gym last night with hubby. Chicago talked about this in her thread a little bit - like she said with her gym, it was wayyyy too warm in my gym too. I could tell they were running the air conditioning and the fans, but it was quite warm outside and that's a big space to try to cool down all at once, plus the gym was quite busy which seems to raise the temp in there a bit just because of all the body heat & heavy breathing. So, it was too hot and I felt a bit miserable. I somehow had a good workout anyway - I felt strong and didn't run out of steam - but I also sweated a ton and felt a bit gut-crampy. I hate working out when it's too warm in the gym, but anyway, I got through it and I felt good when I was done.

Tonight I'm just going to walk the dog and that'll likely be it. Tomorrow, gym. I think I wrote all this out before so I won't repeat myself! :p I'm looking forward to the long weekend. It'll be nice to have an extra day to relax and recharge before my taper.
 
Cat-a-Tonic said:
Thanks, Hawkeye. How are you doing, better since your surgery & obstruction? Getting back into running yet?
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Looking at doing a 5K during the local marathon weekend here in August, got to get out on the lunch hour walking now that the weather is getting better and then build up the running. I've got loads more energy since the surgery, mowed the lawn and put lime down Saturday afternoon (our lot is 100 feet by 150 feet) there is no way I would have been able to do that in an afternoon last year without taking a lot of breaks.

Had a GI appointment this week. Doing a scope in November,the past 2 scopes weren't successful due to the stricture so I am still off any meds until then. Apparently they like to do a scope 6 to 12 months after a resection, not sure if that is a general rule of thumb for GI's or just how he does things.
 
That's great that you're doing better, Hawkeye! A bit weird that they won't put you on meds until November - hopefully things stay quiet until then. I'm planning on doing some yard work myself tomorrow - I'm going to put in some edging blocks around my hedges, and if I have enough energy I'll also mow the yard (we have one of those manual push-mowers, so that in itself is a workout even though our yard is pretty small!).

Update 5/23/14: I walked the dog last night and was fortunate enough to run into my dog park friend (she's my neighbor - I have one corgi and she has 2 corgis, and the 3 of them get along well and my neighbor is a nice person to chat with, so we like to walk our dogs together when we run into each other). So my dog had a nice walk with her corgi friends and I had a nice time walking & talking with my neighbor. :) The weather was lovely and a good time was had by all.

Today, I hit the little gym on my lunch break. Had a good workout, and then when I got back to my desk I had some projects that required me to lug a few boxes around and also to keep going up & down the stairs, so between the gym and my job, I've had an active day! I'm feeling rather tired now. When I get home, I'm going to take a nap so that I can wake up late tonight and go watch the meteor shower. (That's the plan anyway - we'll see how peppy I feel when I wake up at midnight-ish.)

Tomorrow, yard work is the plan - as I said, I'm putting in some concrete edging by my front hedges. The concrete paver things weigh 18 lbs apiece and I bought 16 of them, so that'll definitely be a workout to dig a trench for them all and then move them and put them in place. If (big IF) I still have energy after that, then I'll mow the lawn and/or walk the dog. Sunday will be a gym day and probably not much else, as it's supposed to rain. Monday is a holiday so no work for me or hubby, so the plan is to get the kayak out on the water for a bit. I'm so looking forward to that! Now we just have to decide which creek to paddle! There are 2 nearby which are relatively easy, and there's another one a bit further away which is a bit more challenging but still not too bad. Since it's our first paddle of the season, I will likely vote for one of the easy creeks. Hubby's not a big fan of the challenging creek, so I'm sure he'll feel likewise.

Since I have a lot of activities planned for the long weekend, I probably won't be online much - so, everybody have a good weekend and I'll "talk" to you in a few days! :)
 
Update 5/27/14: I had a very active weekend! Friday evening, I walked the dog and then stayed up late to watch the meteor shower (which was a bust - I saw 5 or 6, and apparently I was lucky, as some of my friends were saying they didn't see any). Saturday, I did a lot of landscaping work in my yard. I basically dug a long trench across the front of my front yard and put in edging blocks. It looks really nice now but it was a lot of work, I think it took me about 4 hours of fairly intense labor. The edging blocks went in right near my front hedges, and the hedges apparently have long, tough roots so I had to contend with those. It took a lot of work, but it does look really nice now.

Sunday, I was thinking of going to the gym, but I opted to do more yard work instead. I mowed the entire yard, which is a chore because we only have a manual push mower (no motor). Pushing that thing around is definitely a workout in itself, so after mowing I didn't feel the need to go to the gym. I walked the dog on Sunday as well.

Monday was a holiday here, so no work. Hubby and I took the kayak out - it was a bit risky as the weather report called for scattered thunderstorms. We fortunately avoided the thunderstorms (the first round of storms came through about an hour after we got home). We just paddled in the little creek near our house, which is usually an easy creek. But, it hasn't rained much lately, and as a result the water level was quite low and we kept getting stuck in spots where the water was too low. It really took a lot of arm strength and core strength to get the kayak unstuck when it became wedged on sandbars! The water was murky, too, so we couldn't always see where the sandbars were. So that was a bit more challenging than I anticipated, but in the end it went fine and we made it from one end of the creek to the other and back again.

Today, I'm thinking it's a rest day. My shoulders are still sore from kayaking, and my whole body is still a bit sore from all the yard work! Tomorrow I'll hit the gym for weights. Thursday, I may have a cardio day and do the stationary bike on my lunch break, then I will (hopefully) get a massage that evening. Friday, gym again, and I haven't throught as far ahead as the weekend just yet.
 
Update 5/28/14: It's been a busy time at work lately (there's a new person in my department which is awesome, but she needs to learn a lot of stuff and she's understandably leaning on me for help) so I haven't had much time to update. I'm here though and checking in when I can!

I did rest yesterday - I thought about walking my dog after work, but as I was leaving work yesterday it started pouring rain. I mean, it was ridiculously pouring heavily to the point of flooding. Some of the city streets got flooded and my mom called me to see if I got home okay! So that was a rather wicked rainstorm and I obviously didn't take the dog on a walk in that mess. I practically could have kayaked in it though! :p So yes, yesterday was a rest day, which was fine as I was still rather sore from my weekend of gardening & kayaking.

Tonight I'm going to the gym - headed there shortly. I'm excited and I hope it's not too busy. I'm feeling well today and am looking forward to a workout. Oh, I started my Entocort taper yesterday - I went down to 3 mg. I feel hopeful that I can come off it altogether soon. I felt the start of a migraine last night with the strong storm moving through, but I think being on the lower dose of Entocort is helping, as today I feel fine (I did take a benadryl last night before bed, but those usually aren't enough to stop a migraine). Anyway, I'm off to the gym in a bit! Tomorrow I likely won't get a massage - my massage therapist has been super flakey with me lately. Hmph. But I'll likely do something active, maybe go for a bike ride. Friday, I plan to hit the gym again. The weekend is a bit up in the air - I was hoping to visit my mom, but long story short, my brother is crazy and so I might not go over there because I don't want to deal with his BS. (He literally thinks I'm going to steal his childhood toys - he's 28 by the way so yeah, he's crazy.) So I will probably stay at home and avoid my family because I cannot deal with their stress! :p
 
Update 5/29/14: I hit the gym last night and felt pretty well. It was too warm in there again, so I had a bit of a hard time getting going, but once I got warmed up enough to the point where I was sweating, then I felt better (it seemed really difficult for the first few mins of my warm-up before I started sweating!). I did everything including the abdominals machine. Knock on wood, but my GERD has been super quiet lately. Sometimes about halfway through a workout, my GERD will kick in and I'll start belching - I'll suddenly have to belch 5 to 10 times in a row, and then I know the reflux is going to start coming up. But last night, I belched only once, and it was during my cool-down at the very end of my workout! So that's fantastic, I don't know how long it'll last but it's really nice that my GERD is being so quiet lately.

So, I had a good workout last night. Today, I very likely won't be able to get a massage, so I'm thinking that on my lunch break I'll do a bit of cardio on the stationary bike in the little gym. Then this evening if the weather is still nice, I'll walk the dog.

My Entocort taper is still going well - like the GERD, it's almost suspiciously too well. :p I had a bit of LLQ pain yesterday which was weird (my usual "pain spot" is in the LRQ) but I think it was stuck food or trapped gas? Eating and drinking a bit seemed to help whatever it was move along. So hopefully that was just a fluke. Other than that, the guts have been quiet and no further migraines either. I feel like I'm getting back into remission - I hope so anyway! I'm cautiously optimistic. :)
 
Update 5/30/14: I did 30 mins on the stationary bike yesterday and that went fine. Then after work hubby and I walked the dog. We met up with her corgi friends and our human friend again so that was really nice. I found a 4-leaf clover in the dog park, and I gave it to my neighbor, but then her corgi tried to eat it! :p So it got chewed on a little bit. My hubby actually complained that he didn't want to do a full walk around the park, but I made him do it. (He had already walked the dog earlier in the day, so it was a 2nd walk for both of them.) My dog really enjoyed the walk though, and when we got home she was so tired she slept and started snoring, loudly! It's sometimes hard to tire my dog out, so that was nice that she was so zonked out after 2 walks. :)

Today, I'm going to hit the little gym for weights on my lunch break. I'll maybe walk the dog again tonight, too. My bad hip is kind of aching today though so it's possible it didn't like the walk yesterday after I had already done the bike - so I'm not sure if it's going to hold out if I do weights and then another walk today. So, I'm going to play that by ear - if my hip is still aching this evening then I'll likely just rest it rather than go for another walk.

This weekend, I'm not really sure what my plans are fitness-wise. I'm not going to visit my crazy family (phew) and hubby's working, so I'll be on my own. I'll probably do some gardening, maybe some crafts. Possibly I'll do a bike ride outside tomorrow if the hip is doing better. Sunday, it's supposed to thunderstorm, so I'll go to the gym but probably won't do much else besides that. I might grocery shop, too. I've been making baby steps at eating healthier. Instead of chips, I find that I can snack on carrots and my guts are surprisingly okay with that, so I've been having carrots & hummus. I'm also slowly introducing probiotics back into my diet in the form of soymilk yogurts - I've had 2 so far this week and I've had no trouble with them at all. And now that berries are in season, I've been eating blueberries and those cause me no trouble either. We're growing our own raspberries & strawberries, too! So I should go buy some groceries and stock up on more of my new go-to healthy snacks.
 
Cat-a-Tonic said:
We're growing our own raspberries & strawberries, too!
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Keep us posted on how you do with this. I've got 7 tomato plants (Sunsugar - an excellent cherry tomato variety) and a pepper plant that I am planting tomorrow. I would have liked to have them in before this, but we are about 3 weeks behind weatherwise this year. It was below freezing here Wednesday night.
 
Good luck with the crazy family! I can definitely relate to what that's like -- fortunately (unfortunately?) that's my SO's side rather than mine, haha.

How is soymilk yogurt in comparison to regular yogurt? I've been trying to have probiotic yogurts myself but can't find one that's in a snack-size -- only the large tubs, and then I feel like I'll just waste them.
 
Hawkeye, we had a cool spring but it's finally warmed up to where we can properly garden. We did start seeds in those little plastic tray things this year so that we could bring them inside at night, and that worked great. We just transplanted the little seedlings to the garden a couple weeks ago. The strawberry plants we actually got at a garage sale, there was a sign saying $1 for a shovelful (and the guy wanted to get rid of his strawberry plants so he let us take 2 shovelfuls for $1). So those are mature and flowering and will hopefully produce some strawberries soon! The raspberry plant, my hubby saw it growing wild on some public land near the dog park and he took part of it home (he left enough of it so that it's still growing just fine on the public land, he didn't kill it nor take it all). So that's mature and flowering as well and should also produce fruit soon. The seedlings we planted from scratch are cucumber, bell peppers, broccoli, pumpkins, tomatoes, snap peas, basil, cilantro, and loofah sponges (apparently they come from a gourd?). We also had some things come back from previous years - peppermint and spearmint (you apparently can't kill mint), onion, and ginger. So my little garden is slowly but surely coming along! :)

Ocean, the soymilk yogurts are quite good although I do have to say that there's not enough fruit in them. For example, I ate a blueberry one the other day, and I think there were maybe 2 actual blueberries in there. I can do fruit okay as long as it's been processed like that, so I like having lots of fruit in yogurt, and it's disappointing to have hardly any. So that's my one complaint. But other than that, the soymilk yogurts taste good and haven't caused me any tummy troubles at all. Oh, and I can get the small individual sized containers here, they're 99 cents apiece which is slightly more pricey than regular yogurt but still not bad.

Update 6/3/14: I had a super lazy weekend. On Friday evening while walking the dog, I noticed that my back felt kind of sore. I didn't sleep well on Friday night, and when I woke up I felt even more sore. It felt like that pinched nerve or whatever it is was acting up again. It wasn't quite as bad as last time, but it still wasn't pleasant and I wasn't in any state to be able to exercise, so I just rested. I watched TV, I crocheted, and that's about it. I just laid around and felt a bit sorry for myself, didn't leave the house, just had a totally lazy time.

Yesterday, I was still feeling the pain somewhat but I was doing better, so I decided to try to go to the gym. That kind of sucked, I was nervous about making my neck/back worse so I held back quite a bit and did fewer reps and/or less weight and just took things very easy. My bad hip started aching too so overall it was not a good workout. Today, I'm finally actually feeling better, and I think I'm going to do yoga tonight. Tomorrow, I plan to head back to the gym for a proper workout.

I'm not sure about the rest of the week, but I really want to go kayaking this weekend. Last time we went kayaking (on Memorial day), the water levels in our local creek were way too low and we kept hitting the sandy bottom of the creek. But we've had some torrential rains on Sunday and Monday, and it looks like the water level in the creek has gone up by quite a lot because of the rains. So I really want to kayak now that I know the creek is going to be easier to paddle!
 
Update 6/4/14: After a few rough days with the pinched nerve thing, I'm back to feeling very well again. :) I had a rough day in the gym on Monday, and I hope to have a much better day today - I'm heading to the gym shortly. My neck/back feel almost totally better so I'm encouraged and I think I will push myself a bit in the gym today. I did yoga last night and that went quite well and I felt good the whole way through, so that's encouraging too.

The "try to eat healthier" thing is still going okay, too. For my snack today, I again had a soymilk yogurt and also some carrots & hummus. I'm not sure if it's because I'm on Entocort or because I'm getting close to remission, but eating carrots doesn't bother me at all lately. I fully expected my poo to turn orange, but it's been fine. If anything, my stools have been a little bit too firm which is unusual - I think I got a tiny fissure today from passing a hard-ish poo as there was just a teensy bit of blood on the TP when I wiped. I am currently not taking psyllium to regulate my poo consistency, as it was causing me a lot of cramping recently, so that may be partly the cause of the stool firmness. I tried oatmeal yesterday but that caused cramping too. So I don't think I'm fully back into remission yet, because in remission my body can handle some soluble fiber such as psyllium & oatmeal. Or maybe my body has changed - perhaps it's just like how every flare is a little different, perhaps every remission is a little different too? I'm not really sure. At any rate, I'm still avoiding most fiber at this time. But carrots are okay. Weird! :p
 
Update 6/5/14: I hit the gym yesterday and did very well. I felt good the whole way through and I feel fine today too. Today, I'm thinking it'll probably be a rest day. My quads feel a bit tired so I'll give them some rest. Tomorrow, going to the big gym after work with hubby. Hoping to get the kayak out on the water again this weekend!

It's kind of funny, I have a new co-worker in my department and I've been helping her with some projects as she learns her new job. My habit of working out has come up a couple times in conversation (I went to pick up a box and she said it might be too heavy, and I was like, no problem, I have muscles - she was like, oh right, because you go to the gym a lot). I felt like she was getting borderline snarky about me working out, but then today she walked up 2 flights of stairs and she was totally winded and sweating (she's not overweight) and she said she felt very embarassed that she was so out of shape! So perhaps now I can get her to understand that fitness isn't a bad thing. :p
 
Update 6/6/14: I didn't end up totally resting yesterday - I spent all day cooped up in an office and the weather looked so nice, so when I got home, I took my dog to the park. Hubby came too. We do this thing where we look for 4-leaf clovers while walking the dog, as the park seems to have a lot of them. We found 3 yesterday! I found 2 and hubby found 1. I've been pressing all of our 4-leaf clovers in a book, and I plan to go buy some small, inexpensive picture frames at garage sales, and then frame my clovers and give them away as gifts. :) I think I've found about a dozen or so 4-leaf clovers so far this year, the book I press them in is starting to get a bit full!

So yeah, we had a nice walk with our dog. Tonight we're going to the gym. I keep checking the weather for this weekend, and they keep saying thunderstorms on both Saturday and Sunday. Hmph! I still hope to get the kayak out on the water for a bit, but obviously it's not safe to be in a tiny boat while holding a metal paddle during a thunderstorm, so I'll just have to see what the weather is like when I wake up tomorrow. I really hope the thunderstorms stay away so that I can go kayaking!
 
Oh wow! I think I've only ever found a four-leaf clover once, in my grandmother's garden when she was still living in another city. I love the idea of framing them and giving them away as gifts -- that's so thoughtful, and unique! I've never heard of anyone doing that before.

Here's hoping the weather holds so you can go out on the water!
 
Well, we didn't get out on the water today - we did a bunch of much-needed yard work instead which was a workout in itself. I may have mentioned in the past that I have a gigantic lilac bush (more like a lilac tree, it's huge!) in my backyard. It's nice for the 3 days or so that it blooms every year, but it's way too huge. My house was built in the 1950's and I presume the lilac was planted when the house was built. So every year, I cut a bunch of it off - not enough to kill it, but gradually I will make the stupid thing a more reasonable size! :p So today we got out the loppers and the saw and we cut a bunch more branches off of it. It's still too big but it's getting there. Then we had to haul all the cut branches to the front so that the city can haul them away, so there was a lot of manual labor involved. We did a bunch of other stuff in the yard too (pulled a lot of weeds, planted some more flowers, trimmed the hedges, etc). So we had a productive day and got all that done before the rain started!

The weather might be better tomorrow so we're tentatively thinking of taking the kayak out in the morning if it's nice and not raining. We'll see what the weather does. Oh, and yeah, I haven't heard of anyone ever doing 4-leaf clovers in frames, either. We did hit a few garage sales first thing this morning and I got a handful of small, nice frames for very cheap. In fact, 2 of them I liked so much that I'm keeping them for myself! :p But I am going to give the others away as gifts. I framed a few of my 4-leaf clovers and they look really nice! (In fact, I found yet another 4-leaf clover while we were out garage sale shopping - I looked down in the grass in some random stranger's yard, and there was a nice one!) I have a co-worker who is getting married next month, and I am going to put a few clovers in a nice frame for her, I hope she likes that. I also made a little frame for my neighbor with the corgis - I had found a 4-leaf clover for her but then one of her dogs tried to eat it, so it got chewed up and icky. But she wanted to keep it anyway, and I was like, I'll find you a better one! So I'm going to surprise her with a framed 4-leaf clover, I'm sure she'll like it. :) It's actually not difficult to find 4-leaf clovers, just go to a park or somewhere that isn't mowed super regularly - the dog park is ideal for me because they mow paths but they don't really mow anything else, it's a lot of tall grass and big clovers. Then you just sort of scan the clovers until you see one that doesn't quite match the pattern. Honestly, that's it! I told a friend about how I find a lot of 4-leaf clovers, and then he went out looking for them, and he found a bunch near his workplace. It's just a matter of specifically looking for them!
 
Update 6/9/14: We didn't get the kayak out on Sunday, either. Saturday evening I felt like I was becoming headachey, and Sunday morning I woke up in a lot of head pain - oh yay, another migraine. I rested awhile, took some tylenol and had some dark chocolate (sometimes the small amount of caffeine in a bit of dark chocolate will help my migraines, but too much will trigger a migraine) and I put my heat wrap thing around my neck. That all seemed to help and the pain eased up to where I was functional. Not well enough to exercise much, so all I did was walk the dog and do a bit of stuff around the house. Today the head pain is still there but still tolerable. I think I'm going to attempt 30 mins on the stationary bike this afternoon and see how that goes. Hopefully I'll be well enough to do weights tomorrow.

So, the tentative plan is, bike today, weights tomorrow, maybe yoga on Wednesday, weights Thursday, Friday rest day. Friday is hubby's birthday so we'll do something fun - I think he wants to go see the new "How to train your dragon" movie. We'll probably eat something fun too.

Oh, speaking of eating something fun! I had been reading online about protein because protein is important particularly after a workout, and I read that rabbit meat is extremely high in protein and very low in fat (it's practically all protein), so I had been wanting to try eating rabbit. We finally found a place in town that carries it, and for a fairly reasonable price too - it was about $9 for a whole rabbit. We roasted it, and it was good although the meat was rather tough/chewy (apparently that's just how rabbit is, pretty much). We'll prepare it a different way next time to see if we can get it to be less chewy. But my guts seemed fine with it, so now that we know where to purchase rabbit, we'll do it again sometime. Hubby also found out that there's a butcher shop about 30 mins from here that supposedly has all kinds of exotic meats - alligator, ostrich, etc. So we may check that place out on his birthday (he's a total meat eater - I don't do red meat so much, my guts can't handle beef and I don't like pork, but I'm willing to try other meats to see how my guts do with it). So, we may be preparing a rather interesting birthday dinner for hubby on Friday depending on what we end up bringing home from that butcher shop!
 
Ooh, rabbit! I've only had it once before but I liked it -- I actually tend to prefer gamey meat (and can't eat red), but my favourite is duck so it's kind of the antithesis of what you're aiming for. :p That butcher sounds awesome! I hope you make some great dinners together.
 
I like duck a lot too, sometimes we make duck in the crock pot. It's a bit pricey (about $17 for a whole duck at our local supermarket) so it's something we just have every so often as a nice treat.

I found out the butcher shop isn't as great as hubby said. :p No alligator nor ostrich meat - they basically only have beef, pork, lamb, and goat. Hubby was intrigued by the goat so we may end up trying a bit of goat meat. I'm curious to try lamb, too, I'm not sure if my tummy could handle it or not. So that'll be a bit of an experiment.

I should give a fitness update - on Monday, I did 30 mins on the stationary bike and felt very well, my legs felt strong and didn't get tired easily so I was able to push myself a bit. Then that evening we walked the dog as it was a nice day. We saw our neighbor and gave her the framed 4-leaf clover, she liked it very much and showed it off to other people in the dog park. :) We also found 5 more 4-leaf clovers, and hubby even found a 5-leaf clover! He thinks I should start selling framed clovers on etsy. :p

Yesterday I hit the gym for weights. The TV in the gym isn't working right - we had a power surge in the building the other day and I think that made the TV work even more wonky than it did before (sometimes it doesn't want to play DVDs and it seems to be worse now). So I had a hard time getting it to play my music and that was frustrating, I think I'm going to have to rely on my ipod and not DVDs in the little gym from now on. Other than the technical difficulties, my workout went fine.

Tonight I think I'm going to do yoga. Tomorrow, weights. Friday, hubby's birthday. :)
 
Lamb I actually find pretty agreeable with my stomach -- I'm just not as fond of it taste-wise, unfortunately! And aw, that's a shame about the butcher. They're not even able to maybe order things in?

Happy birthday in advance to your hubby! :D
 
No, hubby was just plain wrong about the butcher shop. :p I have no idea where he got that information - when I looked at the butcher shop's website, it just talked about how they only do locally sourced meats and slaughter everything on-site themselves to ensure freshness and quality and all that - that's why they only have a few types of meat, and they have nothing exotic. So basically hubby told me the complete opposite of what was true about this butcher shop! :p We'll still check them out as we are curious about lamb & goat meat, but yeah, hubby was just totally wrong and I have no idea where he heard that misinformation. Anyway, in looking on the butcher shop's website, I found out that they have a retail store right here in the city, so now we won't have to drive 30 mins outside of the city to check them out at least. So that's one nice thing.
 
Hawkeye, I'm so jealous! We're nowhere near the ocean so lobster is much more expensive here. Lobster is $15.99 per lb (live) here - I know the price exactly because hubby spontaneously decided that he'd rather have lobster than goat/lamb for his birthday dinner, so we picked up a couple of live lobsters on Friday. We got 2 lobsters which were about 1.5 lbs each, and the cost with tax was about $51.00. Ouch! Fortunately my grandparents gave hubby a very generous amount of money for his birthday, so we were able to afford lobsters because of that. (It was funny, all hubby really wanted/needed was new socks & underwear for his birthday, so he bought socks, underwear, and lobsters!)

Update 6/16/14: I had a pretty good weekend overall but one bad workout. Thursday after work, I went home and tried to get hubby to go to the gym with me. But he was tired and didn't want to go, so I went to the (big, paid membership) gym by myself. For some reason, when I go to that gym with hubby, I never get bothered by other guys. But when I go alone, sometimes total creeps hit on me, stare at me, follow me around, etc. Unfortunately Thursday was one of those days. This weird old bald dude (he looked to be at least 65) totally creeped me out for the entirety of my workout. I warmed up on the arc trainer, and he came over and just stood next to me - he was pretending to watch the TV, but I could tell he was staring at me. Ick. After my warm-up, I moved on to the weight machines, starting with the assisted pull-up bar. Again, he just stood near me, uncomfortably close and staring at me, and as soon as I was finished with the machine, he leaned in and said, "Is that hard to do?" I just said no and walked away really quickly! I did the rest of the weights and my stretches with him being somewhat less creepy - he at least kept his distance even though he still stared at me a few times. Then, during my cool-down (walking on the treadmill), he got on an elliptical right in front of me so that I'd have to see him. Ugh, go away! :p When that kind of thing happens, I always get the most nervous as I'm leaving the gym - I don't know what I'd do if the creep followed me out to my car (fortunately that didn't happen, but I was afraid it would). I was followed by a different creep in that same gym awhile back and I had the same fear - fortunately he didn't follow me to my car either. But jeez, how creepy anyway! I don't understand how certain creepy guys like that think that kind of thing is okay. And it's not like I'm going to like someone if they stare at me and follow me around, even if I wasn't married! (Yes, I was wearing my wedding ring in the gym which should tell people that I'm taken, plus I was wearing headphones the whole time which should convey a message of "I want to be left alone".) Ugh, anyway. I hate when that kind of thing happens, it really bothers me to basically be stalked and leered at during my workout. The gym is my happy place, and stuff like that makes it a lot less happy.

Anyway, so yeah. I did come up with a plan - if I do ever get followed to my car by a creeper at the gym, I'm going to call the police while driving to the police station. That seems like a safe thing to do - I definitely wouldn't want to drive home and have the creep know where I live! And if I get blatantly stared at/followed around again, I suppose I could also mention it to the gym's management. I'm not sure if they'd do anything or not though.

Other than that, the weekend went well. Hubby had a great birthday and my health was good enough to allow me to have a nice time, too. I did eat some things I shouldn't have, so I'm paying for that a bit now (it was worth it, though - homemade cheesecake!). We went kayaking on Saturday, the weather was absolutely perfect and we had a very nice time paddling down a local creek. Friday we walked the dog and did a bit of yard work, and Sunday we walked the dog and then walked around the zoo with my parents. So mostly walking and some kayaking, that was our weekend.

Tonight hubby and I are going to the big gym after work - he's definitely coming with me this time to hopefully ward off any other creeps! Tomorrow, I have a dental cleaning happening on my lunch hour and then it's supposed to thunderstorm tomorrow evening, so I think my options will be stationary bike or yoga. I'm leaning towards doing the bike. Wednesday I'll hit the little gym at my workplace. Thursday, there are supposed to be more thunderstorms (it's supposed to storm every day Tuesday thru Saturday!) so again I'll probably have my options limited to indoor stuff - my poor dog may not get walked for a little while! So I may do yoga on Thursday. Friday, gym again. Saturday, haven't decided yet. Sunday, it's finally supposed to be nice weather, and I think I may ride my bike to the gym. That's always a good workout - it's about 4 miles to the gym, so a 4-mile ride to warm up, then a weight session at the gym and some stretching, and then another 4-mile ride home. That's definitely a workout! I did that a few times last summer and it's tough but do-able. So I'm looking forward to that. Hubby does work on Sunday, so I'll do the bike-gym-bike thing by myself, but usually the creeps seem to hang out at the gym in the evenings, so I'll head to the gym around lunchtime on Sunday as there's usually hardly anyone at the gym at that time of day and shouldn't be any creeps. :)
 
Update 6/17/14: Hubby and I hit the big gym last night. Yet again, it was way too warm in there so I was sweating buckets. It was nicely empty in the gym though, I think most people were at home watching the soccer game on TV (a few people in the gym just stood around watching the soccer game too). So that was pretty nice, the gym is usually busy on a Monday after work but it was pleasantly un-crowded yesterday.

I'm not sure what's up though, I felt very tired after my workout. Hubby said he was the same. Literally walking down our basement stairs to get the laundry was exhausting! I don't know if the heat sapped our energy or what. I was feeling a bit achey too, particularly my legs, so I took some tylenol PM at bedtime and zonked out. That turned out to not have been the best idea, as some major storms rolled through during the night and there were tornadoes in the area! A few miles west & south of here got his pretty hard, with roofs blowing off and trees falling over and stuff. We fortunately were fine though. My co-worker said the wind was super loud and there was tons of thunder. I slept through it all and I slept through the tornado sirens too! Oops. Hubby also slept through everything even though he didn't take any tylenol/sleep aids.

I was thinking of riding the bike today, but my legs still feel a bit sore, so I think I'm going to rest them instead. There are supposed to be more strong storms tonight, so I won't do anything that requires more tylenol - that way, I might actually wake up if tornado sirens go off again. So yeah, a rest day today. Gym again tomorrow.
 
Update 6/19/14: I rested on Tuesday and hit the gym yesterday. That went okay - I think the DVD player in the little gym is totally fried, so no more DVDs for me - but my ipod kept me going just fine. My legs didn't feel so good on the hamstrings machine though - I keep feeling like I'm going to (re)injure myself on that stupid thing (I think I got a minor injury from it in the past as I had some pain awhile back for about a week and things haven't been quite the same ever since). So, I'm thinking I'm just going to skip the hamstrings machine for awhile. I can do other stuff (bike, yoga, lunges, etc) to work on my legs, so it should be fine. Other than that, my workout went well.

I walked the dog last night too. I had to take a couple tylenols because my legs were a bit achey, but fortunately that worked, and walking seemed to help too. We had a good walk, we met up with my neighbor & her corgis again. My neighbor has started looking for 4-leaf clovers too as she had never found one - she found 2 last night, and I found 6! Hubby and I have been discussing it, and I think we're just going to focus on finding as many 4-leaf clovers as possible right now during the warm months, and then in the fall & winter we'll start to frame them or maybe even embed some in resin, etc and then hopefully start selling some online. I thnk it would be really neat to have a little clover business. :)

Anyway. Today, I'll walk the dog again if it's not raining (it's been raining here a LOT this week). If it is raining, then I'm thinking I'll do yoga - I got some new yoga pants and have been wanting to try them out. Tomorrow, little gym again. Saturday, not sure - if the weather is nice, I'll probably seek out some garage sales as I want to buy more small picture frames for my clovers, and I'll likely walk the dog too. If it's raining then I'm not sure what I'll do - maybe the stationary bike. Sunday, I was hoping to ride my bike to the gym, but now they're saying rain on Sunday, so I guess I'll probably just do a regular gym session without biking there and back. Hmph.
 
Update 6/20/14: I had a rough night last night. I tried to refill my Pentasa prescription days ago, but I apparently ran out of refills so I've been waiting and waiting for my GI to send through some more refills. He still hasn't gotten around to doing that, and so I ran out of Pentasa last night. Now I'm quite worried, if I don't have mesalamine in my system then I tend to flare pretty quickly (that's what happened last time - they stopped making regular Asacol, my GI switched me to Asacol HD but I couldn't break down the tablets, so they passed through me undigested and I wasn't getting the meds in my system, and I flared within about a week and that was the mild flare that I stayed in for about a year!). So I'm stressed and nervous. I'm still on Entocort so I hope that'll keep the inflammation at bay. I also still have a small amount of Asacol HD and Delzicol, so I've been taking a few Delzicols (I know, self-medicating is bad, but flaring would be worse I think) just to make sure I still have Mesalamine going to my guts. REALLY hoping my GI puts through the stupid refill soon already! The stress of it is making my guts very unhappy - I had a safe dinner (baked potato, no skin), but even so, I ended up in the bathroom for quite awhile last night with explosive d and wicked cramps. Today I feel a bit weak and tired because of that. Not good. I see my GI in August and I plan to lecture him on how he needs to put through refills promptly and not make people wait a week+. I know he's a busy guy, but this is unacceptable.

So yesterday was a rest day - it was raining when I got home and I just didn't feel up to doing anything. Today I'm going to attempt to hit the gym, although I'm going to skip both the hamstrings machine (to avoid injury) and the abdominals machine (because my guts are still quite unhappy). Soooo it might not be a very good gym session. :p The little gym only has 8 weight machines to beign with so I'll only be doing 6 of them - if I feel up to it, I'm going to try to do extra squats, lunges, etc to make up for it!

It's supposed to rain all freaking weekend according to the weather report, with maybe a few breaks here and there. So I'll walk the dog if/when I can and maybe do some yard work if possible, but otherwise I'll be hanging out indoors from the sound of things. Bleh. A crappy rainy weekend to match my crappy mood - great.
 
Another update for today: Ugh. I'm supposed to go to the gym in about an hour, but I just don't feel well and I'm thinking I should skip it. I hate doing that, it's been a little while since I've had to skip a gym session due to feeling crappy, but I know I need to listen to my body and give it what it needs. And right now, it's saying that it needs to rest. So I'll rest and hopefully be feeling better tomorrow and can get to the gym then.
 
They always have loads of samples of the mesalamine products. In an urgent case like this you can call their office and explain you need samples until the doc gets the script put in.

When I used to take pentasa the GI's nurse gave me a paper bag with easily $200 of pentasa samples.
 
I didn't even think of that, Kel. I'll keep that in mind if it happens again! I did get my Pentasa so it worked out, fortunately. I managed to get ahold of one of my GI's nurses on Friday, she said the pharmacy never sent them the fax requesting the refill (???). So somebody dropped the ball somewhere - my pharmacy said they sent the fax twice. Hmmm. At any rate, my GI's nurse was able to send through a few refills, so I got my Pentasa on Friday evening. Phew!

I had a pretty hideous weekend though. Or at least it started off hideously. I had wanted to go to some garage sales on Saturday morning - that's one of my favorite things to do in the summer. I woke up early and felt horrible. So fatigued, guts were a mess, just felt awful! But I pulled myself together somewhat and headed out for the garage sales anyway. I hit 3 or 4, and then as I was pulling up to the next sale, parking my car on the street - my car's shifter apparently broke?? I have an automatic, and when I went to put it into park, the shifter suddenly had no resistance and seemed completely non-functional. Oh no! The car would start and run but it wouldn't move, so I was worried that my transmission had a sudden failure. I started crying because I felt like garbage and now my car wouldn't work. I called the hubby and he came out to where I was, but he couldn't do anything, so I called for a tow. Got the car towed to a shop (fortunately we found one that's open on Saturdays!). The shop was able to diagnose it - I broke my "shifter cable" - I don't know much about cars, but apparently there's a cable that attaches the shifter to... the transmission I guess? And that broke, so my shifter became worthless and I couldn't put the car into gear. That makes sense, and I'm glad it wasn't my transmission itself! They didn't have the parts they needed (of course) so they're supposedly getting the parts and fixing it today.

So my weekend started off on a bad note, and I felt yucky most of Saturday. There was so much to do around the house but hubby told me just to rest, so I did. We didn't want to cook so we ended up going out for dinner - I figured, I was already feeling yucky, so I ate what I wanted. That ended up being a hot fudge sundae and a salad! Eek, normally that stuff would do me in, but I actually felt okay after eating it. I have avoided salads for over a year after the last one I had went tremendously badly, but this one went okay, so that gives me hope that I might be able to eat the occassional salad without too much trouble.

Sunday, hubby had to work and he obviously took his car, and with mine in the shop I had no transportation. But I wanted to go to the gym, and the weather looked okay, and I was feeling somewhat better. So I rode my bike to the gym. That went pretty well - sometimes when I ride my bike, I get wicked abdominal pains afterwards (I think all the steering & balancing and so on requires me to keep my abdomen flexed, which puts pressure on my guts - that's my theory anyway, all I know is that my guts sometimes get angry for days after a bike ride). On my bike ride, I tried to pay attention to how I was breathing and what my abdominal muscles were doing - I tried relaxing them as much as I could. I don't know if that made a difference or not. I had a little bit of abdo pain after my ride to & from the gym, but not nearly as bad as it could be. So maybe being mindful of it did help. At any rate, it's about 4 miles to the gym, so I did an 8 mile ride plus weights and stretching. I avoided the hamstrings machine and the abdominals machine but did everything else. The gym was nice and empty, and it seemed less horribly warm in there than it's been recently. I had a pretty good workout although I got really sweaty from riding my bike outside in the heat (it was in the 80s).

Today's a rest day - I was thinking of walking the dog tonight, but it sounds like my car may be ready this evening, so I don't know if I'll have time to walk the dog after picking up my car. So probably I will just get my car and that's it today. Tomorrow, assuming I have my car back, I'll go to the gym. Everything's kind of up in the air with the car situation so I can't really plan much in the way of workouts just yet!
 
Another quick update: Ughh. My car won't be ready until tomorrow evening. This means I get a bonus bike ride in tomorrow evening. Hubby and I both work tomorrow, at different times, so we had to figure out how we're going to do this with one car. So this is our plan - he's going to drop me off at work in the morning, with my bike (fortunately he can fit my bike in his big car). Then he'll go to work with his car. When I finish work, I'll ride my bike to the shop where he works (about 5 miles away, not bad) and I'll hang out there with him until he finishes work. Then we'll put my bike back in his car and both go to pick up my car. :p Sheesh, it sounds confusing, but I think it'll work. Oh, and my car is going to cost quite a bit more than I expected to fix, too - wonderful. So my stress levels are high, I'm frustrated and upset, but I'll do weights AND a bike ride tomorrow so hopefully all that exercise will help me relieve some stress. I really hope my guts are up to the challenge. They're doing okay today and the weather looks good tomorrow, so I am optimistic that I can get through a weights workout and a bike ride in warm weather. Honestly, this should be easier than yesterday's bike-gym-bike. I'll be going to the little gym tomorrow, so fewer machines, and I'll be riding 5 miles instead of 8 - so surely I can do this.

Since my car won't be ready tonight, I guess that also means I can walk my dog this evening. So that's good. More workouts, and the end is in sight. I miss my little car so much! I like my car more than I like some people, ha ha. I've been driving hubby's car today (he didn't have to work today) and I just don't like it - there's no air conditioning so it's very warm, the muffler has issues so it's very loud, it's huge and I'm used to driving a nimble little car that I can park in tiny parking spots (I seriously suck at parking this big behemoth car). I can't wait to get my car back tomorrow! But in the meantime I have a dog walk, a weights session and a bike ride to look forward to. Trying to stay positive. :)
 
Update 6/24/14: My car has been repaired and is officially drive-able again! I just gotta go pick her up! Can't do so until hubby is done with work though. So the plan of me riding my bike to his workplace tonight is happening. I brought my bike with me to work - I felt iffy about parking it outside at the bike rack (it has a lock but you just never know, you know?). But I have a good-sized desk cubicle, so I parked it in my cubicle. :p Multiple co-workers have come by to compliment me on it, so I guess it's cool that I brought my bike to work today.

So yeah, in a short while I'll go to the little gym for some weights. Then after work I'll get on my bike and head over to hubby's shop. When he's done with work, we'll go get my car and then hopefully things will go back to normal-ish. (The stress of not having a car and having to worry about how I'll get to work, and the stress of how much it was going to cost to fix, were both getting to me - that should be just about over now.) My car does need one more minor repair which I'll have done in a few days when it's more convenient, but for now, my car is road-worthy and I'm just so excited to get her back. :)
 
Wasn't this week a national ride your bike to work week too? I know we had one in Chicago. If so then it's suitable to bring your bike into the office :)

Glad you got your car fixed. Much more convenient than a bike for important travel.
 
I think our local ride your bike to work week was about a month ago? I recall seeing something on facebook about it. I can't ride my bike to work, it's just too far. It's about 12 miles and that's my upper limit for the day. So I guess I could theoretically ride my bike to work but not home. :p

My 5-mile ride on Tuesday from my work to hubby's workplace was super challenging. There are a lot of hills squeezed into those 5 miles! Plus it was really warm out which didn't help things. I was exhausted and very sweaty when I got to hubby's shop, and it took me about an hour to ride 5 miles (on the stationary bike, even on a hill program, I can do about 12 miles in an hour - on the real bike it's much more challenging though, real hills are wayyy tougher than virtual ones!). About an hour before my bike ride, I had felt my stomach gurgle a bit and then I had an episode of runny d. Not good! I took some Zofran to settle things down, and fortunately I was okay on the bike. But that night, as I was trying to sleep, my guts kept cramping and giving me pains and I had to keep getting up to use the bathroom, so I just couldn't sleep. I think I finally zonked out and slept for a few hours, but still felt crappy and obviously exhausted when I woke up, so I called in sick to work yesterday. Did nothing but sit around and rest and try to recover.

Today I went to work and I'm feeling somewhat better. Guts are still a bit wonky although better than they were. I was able to fall asleep last night - although at about 4 AM, the power went out so my white noise machine turned off, and that woke me up and I wasn't really able to get back to sleep after that. So I am still kinda exhausted today! I was sort of hoping to hit the gym today, but my guts are still iffy enough that I'm going to rest instead. Tomorrow and Saturday I have plans that will take up a big chunk of both days, but I'm hoping I can make the time to fit in a bit of yoga and stuff like squats, lunges, planks, etc.

Oh, and my car saga isn't quite over yet! :( I picked up my car Tues evening, it went into gear and was driveable and seemed totally fine, so I was quite happy. But a few blocks away from the repair shop, I heard a metallic sound and saw something small and metal bouncing away in my rearview mirror. I suppose I could have just ran over something metal in the road and kicked it up, but I am worried that something wasn't bolted down correctly or whatever when they fixed my car and a piece of... whatever (I'm not very car-knowledgeable!) came off of my car. My car still runs and drives fine so I'm not sure. So, I am taking my poor little car back to the repair shop again tomorrow as they needed to fix one more minor thing anyway, so I'm going to have them check everything over to see if any parts are missing. Hopefully nothing fell off of it and I'm just being a worrywart! Ugh though, this is like never-ending. My car has always been really awesome and reliable so this is very unusual, having to have it in the shop so much. I want to get back to having a super reliable car again! Because it's clear that I will never be able to ride my bike to work. :p Hubby did offer that I can buy a moped, though (with what money I'm not sure!). I've been longing for a Honda Metropolitan scooter for several years now and there's a used one I've been eyeballing on craigslist recently, and with the car situation it would be nice to have a scooter as backup transportation (although only for the summer months obviously!). So I'm mulling that over. It probably won't happen because I already paid a ridiculous amount of money to fix my car so I don't exactly have money to plunk down on a moped too - but it's a nice thought.
 
00808_1rnhbIjQuto_600x450.jpg

This is the scooter I've been eyeballing. I like the Asian-themed pattern on it. :) I probably can't afford this specific one, but if I save up, maybe I can get one next summer (I have probably been saying that every year for awhile now!).
 
Update 6/30/14: I didn't do much for a few days. On Wednesday I had felt pretty icky, so I rested Weds & Thurs. Friday, I had taken the day off of work and we went out of town for a quick overnight trip. My mom was running her 100th (yes, 100th) marathon and she wanted me and my brother to be there at the finish line. My brother even ended up running the last 10 miles with my mom so that was nice of him (he's been more tolerable lately which is good but I don't trust that it'll last).

So yeah, Friday and Saturday were spent doing that and we also went to a little amusement park. As a result, From Wed thru Saturday I basically did zero exercise. We got home Saturday night, and Sunday I did ride my bike to the gym and back so I got a nice workout in there. Today, I was hoping to walk my dog tonight after work, but a big storm is rolling in so I am thinking I'll do yoga instead! Tomorrow, weights again. Not sure about the rest of the week. I'm hoping hubby and I can take the kayak out on the 4th of July since we'll both be off of work - hopefully the weather will cooperate.

I think I'm going crazy though. :p My last post, I was still ogling the moped. I still want a moped, but hubby and I talked quite a bit on our little road trip this weekend, and we have decided we want to get an old (like 1960's) camper and restore it. Apparently, old campers from that era are much lighter than modern campers and can be pulled with a regular car, no truck needed. Hubby thinks he can do most of the grunt work, and I can do stuff like sew pillows and curtains for it. :p Yes, we're ridiculous.
 
Hawkeye, yes and no - yes, of course it's great that she's in good enough shape at age 60 to do that many marathons. But she totally overdoes it, she over-trains. She's had a few bad falls, she's got a bad back, and she's given herself running-induced asthma (I didn't even know that was a thing until she got diagnosed with it, now she has to carry an inhaler with her everywhere because too much running has messed up her lungs/airway). I kind of look at her as an example of what *not* to do fitness-wise. There's a fine line between doing yourself more harm than good, and she's crossed way over that line.

Anyway. Update 7/2/14: I did yoga Monday night but it was delayed a bit - the storm that rolled in that evening was huge and produced tornadoes, so I spent some time in the basement waiting for the worst of it to pass. Then I did yoga. It felt tough, it was difficult to get through my entire yoga routine. I felt good afterwards, though. Yesterday I did weights, and again, that felt tough and difficult. Sometimes the weights feel heavier than usual and I struggle to get to my usual number of reps, and yesterday was one of those days. I made it through, and again I felt good afterwards, although kind of sore too.

Today's a rest day. And supposedly I'm actually finally getting a massage tonight! My massage therapist has had some family issues lately (his father is dying of cancer) so he hasn't been available much and I haven't had a massage in a few months. But supposedly we're definitely on for this evening for a massage, so that'll be nice. I still don't completely trust that it'll happen, since massage therapist has cancelled on me the last 3 or 4 times, but we'll see.

I also found out, hubby doesn't work all weekend, and of course we get a long weekend because of 4th of July. So I told him I definitely want us to go kayaking, and I want to do a lot of stuff around the house too (cleaning, organizing, purging unneeded stuff, etc). We'll probably do yard work/gardening as well. So that's the plan! If my health plays nice then we should have an active and productive weekend.
 
Update 7/7/14: I had a rather interesting long holiday weekend. I did stay active every day! Friday, I was off work for the holiday. Hubby and I did a bunch of yard work and we also walked the dog. Saturday, hubby went to visit friends so I went to the gym by myself. I felt pretty good, although once again it was way too warm in the gym. I also walked the dog by myself that day and did a bunch of stuff around the house.

Sunday, we went kayaking on a pretty long and sort of difficult creek. The "easy" creeks we paddle, those take 1-2 hours and have minimal waves & currents. This creek, it has more waves and currents and takes more like 3-4 hours to paddle. So we were really tired when we finally got back to the car! The worst part was, I got a bit injured. :( When we got back to the car, we put the kayak up on the roof rack. We hadn't strapped it on to the roof rack yet, so it was just sitting there. I was untangling the straps so I wasn't looking at the kayak, but apparently a gust of wind came along and knocked it off of the roof and right onto me! Ouch! The kayak hit me full force on both arms. (It's a 14-foot 2-person kayak so it's quite big and a bit heavy.) Nothing's broken (well, except for the car's passenger side mirror which got taken out by the kayak!) but I have massive bruises on both arms now. It really hurt when it happened (still hurts a bit now) too.

So, seeing as how my arms are a bit sore anyway from strenuous kayaking and even more so from getting huge bruises, I'm taking today as a rest day. Just going to wait and see how I feel tomorrow and will go from there. If my arms aren't feeling up to lifting weights tomorrow, I could always try something leg-centric like riding the stationary bike or walking my dog. I'm just going to rest up a bit for today and then play it by ear.
 
OUCH! That must have hurt terribly I'm glad you are okay!

Kayaking does sound like a great thing to do this summer, so long as injuries are able to be avoided. I wish I had the opportunity to do so (without paying to do it which is my only option lol).

Take it easy, you've got the right idea. Focus on lower body work if you can, if not, it's okay to take a break, I think you earned it after this recent adventure!

Feel better!
 
Thanks! Yeah, this is the first kayak-related injury I've gotten (and I was standing on dry land when it happened, ha ha). Kayaking is really fun, I guess I just need to be slightly more careful about getting the kayak up on the car roof rack! And to put it in perspective, I'll heal up soon and this won't affect me at all in the long run (which I guess is more than I can say for hubby's car's side mirror - that's probably going to be held on with tape for the rest of the car's life, hah). I'm feeling fine for the most part - the arm bruises only hurt when I touch them, so I'm just trying to let them be so they can heal. I will definitely rest up today, probably do the stationary bike tomorrow, and then assess how my arms are doing on Wednesday and possibly do weights then.
 
Update 7/8/14: I did 30 mins on the bike today and felt pretty well. Did some stretches afterwards, and I noticed while stretching that my arms (particularly the left arm, which has the nastier-looking bruise) still hurt when I move in certain ways. The worst was, I did the cobra pose as part of my stretching, and that caused me to feel an uncomfortable amount of pain from my arm bruises. So I'm thinking I'll give my arms at least one more rest day, I will not go to the gym for weights tomorrow but am hoping now to get to the gym on Thursday. It kind of sucks but I don't want to make things worse, these bruises go deep and are still painful so I don't want to mess up my muscles or injure myself worse or anything. So, I'll probably walk the dog tomorrow since I did the bike today. Just gotta stay positive, and also gotta keep my legs moving while my arms heal!

(If you're not familiar with the cobra pose, it looks like this stock photo below. Using my arms to prop my upper body up, that didn't feel so good on my poor injured arms.)
cobra-pose-for-disc-degenerative-disease.jpg
 
It was mainly the left arm that became sore/painful when I did the cobra pose. It is feeling somewhat better today, but still sort of painful and I don't want to push it so I'm resting again today. The bruise on that arm has gone from reddish-purple to yellowish-purple, so hopefully that means things are healing!

In addition to the lingering arm issues, I'm having kind of a bad tummy day as well. I'm totally exhausted and a bit nauseous today and no appetite. Having a hard time focusing and just want to go back to bed but I can't. I did taper off of Entocort recently, my last day of taking it was Sunday, so this may be due to me coming off Entocort. Not sure though. So anyway, even if my arms were doing okay, I'm too exhausted and just not feeling well enough to exercise today anyway. Just feeling bleh all around. If the bleh feeling continues then I'll get in touch with my GI and ask to stay on Entocort longer. That's not what I want, I wanted to be done with the stupid stuff and get back into remission already. I'm really hoping this is just a fluke and that tomorrow I'll be okay again.
 
I'm sorry about the stomach issues. Entocort was a beast to me when I tried it. Gave me horrible cramps and the worst gas I ever had in my life. Hoping all it is for you is a tapering side effect and it wears off eventually. Those bleh withdrawls. I know them well. Keep resting for as long as you see fit and I hope you feel better soon. :hug:
 
Entocort has always been good to me, the only side effect I got from it was headaches/migraines. Those certainly suck, but I tell myself it's worth it to suffer through a few months' worth of migraines in order to obtain a few years' (hopefully) worth of remission. It's not working out that way this time though. I don't think it's withdrawals I'm experiencing - I am pretty sure I'm flaring. I went home sick from work shortly after my last post in this thread, I got so nauseous that Zofran was no longer helping enough and I didn't want risk barfing at my desk at work (the bathroom is too far from my desk to make a run for it). And the abdo pains and bathroom trips were just starting. I even had to get up in the night last night to go, which for me is a sure sign that I'm flaring. Ugh ugh ugh.

So I put myself back on Entocort - I have a handful of capsules left over - and I emailed my GI/his nurse to ask for a refill and to explain what's going on. I've been sleeping a lot and I feel slightly better, but I'm not sure if that's because I took an Entocort this morning or if it's just because I slept all morning and haven't eaten anything today.

At any rate, I have to get through the worst of this flare before I can even think about going to the gym, which sucks. I really hope the Entocort kicks back in quickly and blitzes all this crap and makes me feel human again right away. I hate that Entocort didn't get me into remission, I feel like a failure, and I hate that I have to go back on it. Trying to stay positive but it's really difficult right now! I see my GI next month, so hopefully we can figure things out then. In the meantime I just have to keep taking Entocort and hope it helps.
 
I'm really sorry Cat :( You are doing the right thing though and taking care of your symptoms first to avoid making things worse than they actually are.
With regards to eating, I started using this meal replacement shake from Ideal Shape and it's super helpful for days my body doesn't feel like accepting food as well as others and has a good deal of protein and nutrients. The chocolate version even tastes a million times better than Ensure and that other stuff.

The ups and downs of this disease and being undiagnosed is so burdensome in so many ways. You'll pick back up soon! If the Entocort helps, then do what you gotta do to get things back under control for now. Keep us posted on how you are doing. Hope you bounce back quickly!

:hug:
 
Chicago, does that shake you mentioned have carrageenan in it? I'm trying to avoid carrageenan, and it's in almost every supplement drink. I did find some supplement powder at the grocery store, it's called "Total Soy" and it has no carrageenan, so that's what I use. I usually mix it into a smoothie, although if I'm in a hurry I just stir a spoonful into a glass of almond milk. It comes in chocolate flavor and it's actually pretty good.

Update for today: I'm on day 2 of being back on Entocort and feeling somewhat human again. I went to work today - I always feel weird about calling in sick on Fridays, my hubby says that if I call in sick on a Friday then they'll think I'm faking and just want a long weekend. :p I told my boss that and she was like, I know you have a chronic illness, so if you're sick on a Friday then you're sick on a Friday! But I still feel weird about it, and I felt okay-ish enough to come in, so I did not call in sick today.

I got some good news, too. My GI is on vacation, but I emailed him anyway and his awesome nurse responded today. She found another doctor in the clinic who was able to write me another refill of Entocort, so this means I can stay on it at least until my GI appointment on Aug 25th. Phew! Hopefully my body just needs some more time on Entocort to get me back into remission. And of course I'll tell my GI everything at my appointment and we'll figure things out from there. So I'm feeling mentally more positive today as well as physically somewhat better too.

But I'm not feeling great physically and I still don't know when I'll make it back to the gym. I'm hoping at this point that I'll rest and get over this flare on the weekend, and will re-assess how I'm doing at the start of next week. Ideally I'd love to go back to the gym as soon as possible, but I know I can't push myself when I feel like this and I need to rest and recover. At least my arms are doing better though! The bruises have turned yellow-ish/brown-ish and are starting to fade, and my arms don't hurt anymore. So at least there's that. I recovered from my injuries, now I just need to recover from this flare! What a weird, rough week this has been! I feel like I've been majorly put through the wringer. Looking forward to a relaxing weekend! Going to do some sewing and other craft projects, might do a little bit of shopping, but otherwise going to hang out on the couch and relax. I'm going to make my hubby walk the dog and do the yard work, ha ha. :p
 
There's no carrageenan in it. Here's the link to the ingredients: http://www.idealshape.com/ingredients/

It's also about $60 for a 30 day supply and you have to order it online but it comes in the mail really fast and I personally find it worth it. I mix almond milk with it to make it more filling. Tastes even better that way too. And like I said if you go for it, get the Chocolate version.

Glad you are feeling better today! Sounds like the Entocort is the key. How long have you been on it, long term, right? I try not to call in on Fridays for that same reason. Almost did it today because my throat is sore and I feel a bit drained but pushed myself out of bed because I didn't want them to think I was playing hookie.

Enjoy your weekend I hope it is more relaxing for you than the last few days have been. :)
 
Ouch, $60!! That's a bit out of my price range sadly. The Total Soy stuff I get is something like $12 for a big container of it which lasts me a month or two. It's not super delicious like you described your shake as being, but it's not bad either and I can afford it.

Yeah, I've been on Entocort since February. The first time I was on it a few years ago, I stayed on it 7 months that time - it took that long to get me into remission. So now I've been on it 5 or 6 months but still clearly not in remission. My GI did say that he feels it's safe to be on Entocort for up to 9 months or so (not sure where he got that number from but I suspect he pulled it out if his, well, you know). So he's not too worried about the timeframe and I'm mostly just concerned with getting into remission. I know one of the big concerns about being on corticosteroids long-term is bone loss, so I try to get plenty of calcium (in foods & supplements) plus vit d and magnesium, and I do weight-bearing exercise of course which helps my bones stay strong too. So I'm also not too worried about that. I'm way more concerned about the effects of uncontrolled flaring than I am about being on Entocort for awhile. Obviously it's not ideal to be on Entocort somewhat indefinitely, but it's far less ideal to just flare out of control and have damage going on etc. It sucks a bit but my goal is remission so I'm going to do what I have to do to get there.

I hope your throat feels better! Hopefully you can have a relaxing weekend too. I heard next week we may get Polar Vortex part 2 - the news said some areas may get as cold as 40 degrees! 40 degrees in July, that's insane! So stay warm!

(This is total coincidence as I didn't know about the Polar vortex thing yesterday, but when I'm flaring and can't do much of anything, I like to crochet as it makes me feel worthwhile and gives me something productive to do while I'm sitting on the couch & resting. So yesterday when I was home sick, I crocheted myself a new winter hat - didn't realize I'd need it quite so soon though!)
 
Update 7/14/14: I'm still not doing very well. I'm only going to the bathroom about 2-3 times a day, but it's almost always d. I have random cramps and abdo pains throughout the day which seem to be gas pains? If I go to the bathroom when the pains & cramps are happening, I almost always seem to only pass gas or maybe a bit of mucus, no stool. My appetite is very small and I basically have to remind myself/force myself to eat. I'm pretty exhausted and just feel run down and very bleh. I'm kind of afraid that I screwed myself - by coming off of Entocort and flaring up like that, I'm afraid that now 3 mg of Entocort isn't going to be enough to get the flare back under some semblance of control. Which means I may need to ask my GI for a higher dose of Entocort AGAIN, and I don't want to do that. The higher doses give me migraines (even on 3 mg I've got a fairly wicked sinus headache today) and I also don't want to be on Entocort for what's seeming like forever - I really just want to get into remission and stop taking the stupid stuff, but that's apparently not in the cards for me right now. I'm just tired and sick of this.

So needless to say, I haven't been to the gym since this flare started. It's been over a week now since I lifted weights - I miss it, but I'm in no state to try to go back to the gym just yet. I did end up taking my dog on a short walk yesterday - she may have eaten some insect poison (she ate a mystery substance near former wasp nests in my neighbor's yard, and the neighbor wasn't home to tell us what it was) so we had to induce vomiting in her. We gave her the hydrogen peroxide (apparently that stuff is fantastic for making dogs vomit, who knew!) and then walked her around outside until she barfed everything up. That seems to have worked, she seems fine today. So yeah, I was okay walking her for just that short little while - it only takes about 15 mins for the peroxide to cause vomiting in dogs.

I was hoping to maybe try a bit of yoga today, but honestly I don't even feel well enough for that. So maybe if the weather's nice tonight then I'll try walking the dog again (without the induced vomiting this time though). I'm just trying very hard not to be frustrated with my body and resting as much as I can, but I really really really want to go to the gym. I just know that wouldn't go well right now though. Ugh.
 
Another quick update: A grumpy little grey cloud came through just now and it started sprinkling, so I guess the rain means I won't walk my dog after all (neither of us enjoys walking in the rain - some dogs like water but my dog doesn't like it in any form!). But, I'm feeling slightly less terrible than I did earlier. I managed to eat a little something and my guts didn't revolt (I just had some turkey and some white bread, I'm trying to stick to low-res during this flare). I feel slightly more energetic and less, I guess less mentally bad? This morning I was all woe is me and trying not to cry at work, but this afternoon I've had fewer episodes of my eyes welling up with tears and I just generally feel slightly better physically and mentally. So, with the rain and me feeling slightly more human, I think I will try some yoga tonight after all. Since I only do yoga on the Wii Fit anyway, if I find I can't do it then I can pause the Wii & rest or just turn it off. It would be different if it were like an actual class with other people, but it's just me at home so that'll be okay I think. I'm gonna give it a try shortly.
 
Hey Cat I hope you get through this flare and start feeling better soon. I tapered off pred earlier in the year and had to immediately go back up to 40mg. It's frustrating but for me it was the right thing to do, as I recently tapered off completely and have not gotten worse. Good luck with whatever you decide on.
 
The joys of steroids...I'm sorry you are still struggling but glad to hear you are at least we'll enough to attempt to do some sort of mild physical activity and that you are able to eat even if only a tiny bit.

Maybe try some fresh ginger tea (boil some water in a pot with slices of fresh ginger) and see if that breaks up some of the gas in your system and relieve some discomfort.

Things will get better for you :hug:
 
Thanks Kel, it's good to know that it's possible to have a successful steroid taper after an experience like that! Glad to hear you're off the pred and doing well now.

Chicago, I love ginger tea! Ginger and chamomile are my favorites. I'm drinking chamomile right now and I think I'll have some ginger tea a bit later today - it's cold out (it's like 50 degrees out, I guess we're in a summertime polar vortex according to the news?) so hot tea is really nice today.

Update 7/15/14. Apparently it wasn't just gas but it was also stool in my system - I wasn't exactly blocked, but things weren't moving along properly and seemed a bit jammed up in one area of my intestines. I did manage to do yoga last night - it was a bit tough, my balance was worse than usual so I fell over like 3 times (stupid tree pose!) but I got through it. During the half moon pose, in which you sort of bend and stretch to the side - as I was stretching to the right, I felt a pain in the LRQ. After yoga, I massaged that painful spot which apparently did the trick, and suddenly I felt things start to move along! I had to high-tail it to the bathroom and it felt like everything just came rushing out of me. It was a relief once it was all over with, I felt like I lost about 5 lbs. I poo'ed so much yesterday evening that I didn't go at all this morning (highly unusual for me).

I feel significantly better this morning, not sure if that's because of yoga or because I finally got to poo or if it's just Entocort starting to work its magic again (maybe all of the above?). I actually have an appetite today and I just feel more human both physically and mentally. Yoga went okay yesterday, and since I'm feeling reasonably well today, I'm tempted to attempt doing some weights today. I'll of course take it easy and I'll avoid the abdominals machine as I don't want to make my guts angrier, but I am really feeling like I could do weights today. That makes me excited and happy, I've missed the gym so much! So I'm going to try it. I'm not 100% but I think I can give it about 80% in the gym today.
 
Update 7/16/14: I went to the gym yesterday and felt wonderful. :) It was so nice to get back to it! I wasn't able to push myself too much, and on a couple of things I had to do fewer reps than usual, and of course I avoided doing anything with my abdominal muscles - but even so, I felt really great during & after my workout. I had a bit of a headache going in, but that disappeared once I started working out. My guts quieted down, my whole body just stopped being a jerk and went along with the workout. It was really nice, it was just what I needed.

Last night before bed, though, I had a really wicked episode of d and cramping. It's nice that things weren't so backed up anymore, but having d like that makes it clear to me that I'm not out of this flare yet. I felt rather icky this morning too, and I had to go to a big meeting first thing in the morning for work, so I took an anti-diarrheal just so I could get through it without having bathroom trouble (it was an off-site meeting and I had to walk a bit to get there from where we parked and I didn't know where the bathrooms were, etc). So I may end up just getting backed up again because of the anti-d meds I took! :( But you gotta do what you gotta do, and I couldn't miss that meeting.

I'm thinking today is a rest day. I feel okay now but I don't want to push myself too much. I may walk the dog tonight, but that's as strenuous as I'll get. Tomorrow, presuming I'm still feeling reasonably okay, I'll do weights again. Friday, I am taking the day off of work because there's this sidewalk sale thing that hubby and I like to go to, so we'll do that. That will involve a lot of walking, so that'll likely be just a walking/rest day as well. I don't want to plan too far ahead because with this flare, I really don't know how I'll be feeling on any given day. Last year at the sidewalk sale, I was doing okay guts-wise but I was having a bad arthritis day, so I walked with my cane. Then I ran into a bunch of people I knew, including some family members. Everybody just sorta rudely stared at my cane but didn't say anything, except for my aunt, who made some remark like, "You're too young for this." Gee thanks, I'll tell that to my hips. Seriously, my age has nothing to do with my health. At least she acknowledged it, though, she didn't just let it be the elephant in the room like everybody else. Anyway! So this year I'm hoping to be well enough to walk around without my cane! My bad arthritis days most often occur in winter, I'm usually pretty good arthritis-wise in the warmer months, so hopefully last year was just a fluke.
 
Update 7/17/14: Well, the anti-diarrheal med definitely backed things up. :p I haven't gone at all since I took it! I don't feel uncomfortable though so it's okay for the time being. I'm drinking some hot tea in an effort to hopefully gently move things along.

I still feel fairly well. Still not quite back to my normal, but I'm definitely functional and able to be fairly active. I did walk the dog last night after all - the weather was really nice and I just wanted to go outside for a bit, so I took Lily to the dog park and we walked around.

Today I'm planning to hit the gym for weights - I'll probably still avoid the abdominals machine, but I think I'll try doing a plank and see how my guts respond to that. I'll probably push myself a bit harder than last time, too, just to see how my body reacts. I feel good, I feel like I can do that. I won't push myself too too hard of course, but I want to push myself a little more.
 
Very happy to hear you are starting to feel somewhat better and you got to get back in the gym :)

How often are you currently using the cane now? Just remember to get your stretches in when walking and exercising.

You might not be doing as much as you would like to at the moment but everything you are doing sounds pretty delightful to me (minus the symptoms, of course)! You're definitely not letting being ill hold you back from living life and that's good. :)

People's comments and ignorance never cease to amaze me but I often have to remind myself that they are just ignorant (not necessarily in a bad way) and go about my business. If I stopped and said something to every person who sounded insensitive I'm sure a vein would show in my head and explode and I don't want that :p
 
I probably should use my cane more often than I do. My hip pains are significantly worse in the winter - bitter cold and snowy weather seem to both trigger hip pain. And the worse the snowstorm is, the worse my pain is. But, I kind of hate to bring my cane to work with me because I know I'm going to get comments and stares and whispers behind my back, and I just don't need that at work. It's one thing to walk around the grocery store with my cane and not bump into anyone I know - it's another thing to come into an office building where like 50 people I know are all suddenly wondering what's wrong with me. Some of my co-workers know a little about my tummy issues, but few of them know I have arthritis too. And since I sit at a desk all day anyway, it usually makes more sense for me to just forgo the cane on work days when the hip is bad. But yeah, usually winter is worse than summer.

Thanks, I really really try not to let illness hold me back too much! I know it does somewhat, that's just a given, but I try to limit the control it has over my life. As long as I'm able to, I'm still going to work and exercise and live like a relatively normal human. I'm not pregnant and have never been pregnant and don't ever plan to become pregnant - however, I sometimes feel like I'm a perpetually pregnant woman as I seem to have a lot of things in common with pregnant women. I have nausea, reflux, mood swings, I tend to feel pretty crappy in the mornings (the IBD version of morning sickness!), etc. And I had read an article somewhere saying that for pregnant women, if you were already leading an active lifestyle, you can continue to do it in pregnancy but maybe dial it back to about 80% of what you were doing. So I sort of apply that logic to my IBD - I'm leading an active lifestyle when I'm in remission, and as long as I dial things back a bit and don't overdo it, I am going to try to do things the same in a flare, including exercise. That seems to be working for me okay

Oh, and the hot tea worked! :)
 
Update 7/21/14: I did well in the gym on Thursday - felt strong, was able to do my usual number of reps. Still avoided the abdominals machine but was able to do a short plank without issue. Friday we walked around downtown a bunch and that's about it. Saturday, I woke up feeling like I had slept on my neck all wrong. But it turned out to be my pinched nerve (or whatever it is?) acting up again, so I was in pain in my neck/shoulders/upper back all day on Saturday. As a result, I didn't do anything active, I just rested on the couch all day with my heating pad on my neck. I think that helped, as I felt significantly better on Sunday (still fairly stiff & sore but not as bad and not as painful). I had a family thing to go to on Sunday, and I still wasn't feeling gym-ready, so I didn't work out then either. Today I'm almost back to normal - things just feel slightly sore but not too bad, so I think I can make it through a workout this evening. So that's the plan.

Guts still aren't back to normal either. I'm vascillating between c and d. As long as I stick to safe foods, I seem to have c. But if I eat something naughty then I'm running for the toilet. On Saturday, with the neck pain, I was having a little pity party for myself so I ate some pizza (not a safe food for me!) and had to run to the bathroom about 5 minutes after eating. Watery, floaty, totally unformed d - yuck. But since then I've eaten safe foods, and I haven't had a poo since. So things are still not right with my guts. Other than that, though, I don't really feel very flare-y. My energy levels are decent, I haven't really been nauseous lately, haven't gotten up in the night to go, very few if any abdo pains, etc. If I can just get the d and c to turn into more normal bowel movements then I'd be doing quite well.
 
Update 7/22/14: I did make it to the gym last night. We're in a mini heatwave right now, so it was quite hot in the gym (they have air conditioning but it doesn't seem to work super well at cooling such a large space, and the more people that are in there, the warmer it seems to be). So that was a bit tough, and because of the heat I did go a bit slower than usual. I sweated a ton too! But I made it through, did everything except the abdominals machine. I did do a 30 second plank with minimal abdo pains (just a few prickly little pains which I think was due to being constipated/bloated).

The c slowly went away-ish. I'm still more distended than usual, I have a little fat-looking belly. :p But I did manage to go a bit last night and again this morning - it was loose stool though which confuses me. I feel constipated but then I have d? It's weird. I think I'm still constipated or at least I still need to go more to flatten out the distension in my abdomen. I might try some stool softeners and/or a bit of miralax if this goes on any longer.

Today is super warm again - the high temp is 91 F! That's just too warm for me so I'm going to rest today and stay in the air conditioning. Tomorrow is supposed to be less hideously hot, so I'll try for the gym again tomorrow.
 
Update 7/23/14: Yesterday was indeed a rest day. It was way too hot to do anything. It was 91 degrees and humid, and I just can't function in weather like that (too hot for me, and my guts hate it as well). I had to pick up a couple things at the grocery store and even that was miserable, so after that I just kind of hibernated in the air conditioning at home rather than attempt to do anything active.

Today it's much nicer weather (it's like 78 degrees and less humid) so I feel up to working out. Going to go hit the gym in a little while. I'm expecting it to be too warm in the gym because it usually is and I'm sure yesterday's heat didn't help matters any, but I'm also confident that I can get through a workout even if it's a bit too warm. I feel pretty strong and well today - my bowels have kinda sorta regulated finally, my stools are semi-formed and not really d anymore and I don't feel constipated anymore either. I still have a teensy bit of pinched nerve stiffness and soreness in my neck/shoulder area, but it's not bothersome at all and barely even noticeable, so I think a workout will be just fine. :) I'm looking forward to it!

I'm also looking forward to having a weekend by myself. Hubby and his boss are going to be vendors at a convention out of town, so I'll be on my own. I'm very introverted so I'm looking forward to having some "me time." I'll of course work out - I'll walk the dog and I plan to go to the gym at least once, I might do some yard work which is always like a workout in itself, if it's nice out then I may go for a bike ride, and there are other things I want to do too like sewing (I have a few shirts to mend/take in, I am going to make my dog a new cushion to sleep on, etc). I may be getting over-ambitious, but I do always get a lot accomplished when hubby is away, so I think I can hopefully do everything. The weather report says it might rain, so the bike ride and yard work may not happen, but I'll still go to the gym and get stuff done around the house regardless, as well as recharge my introvert batteries with some lovely time alone. :)
 
Update 7/25/14: I've still been having issues with the stupid pinched nerve or whatever it is. I was thinking of hitting the gym for weights today, but I really feel like I need to let the stupid nerve heal or at least stop hurting so much (the pain kind of comes and goes and I think I've been aggravating it by stubbornly going to the gym and lifting weights). But, I realized that since the nerve issue is in my neck/shoulder blade, that shouldn't stop me from riding the bike, right? So I did 30 mins on the stationary bike, I feel good, and I don't feel like I aggravated anything. It was a good compromise! I think I'll give it another day, maybe do yoga tomorrow and see how that goes, and if it goes okay then I'll attempt weights on Sunday.

Yesterday was mostly a rest day although I did walk the dog. We met up with our neighbor who has corgis. One of her corgis was super naughty though! In the summer, the Parks department kind of lets the grass in the dog park grow way too long, then they mow it. So they mowed recently - and when they mow, they often kill a lot of little toads, mice, moles, etc that have been hiding in the tall grass. And they don't bother to pick up the little carcasses. So my neighbor's dog found a dead mouse and rolled in it, yuck. As my neighbor was cleaning up the mouse corpse, her dog found another dead mouse, rolled on it and then ate it! YUCK!! So we kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn't find any other "treats". But for about 5 seconds we took our eyes off of him, and sure enough, he managed to find yet another dead thing, roll on it and eat that too! Ewww. My poor neighbor, she had to bathe her smelly dog and then keep an eye on him to see if he puked up the horrible things he'd eaten. :p My dog is not always the best-behaved, but she rolled in and ate zero dead things yesterday, so she looked super obedient and awesome in comparison. :)

Anyway. Hubby's away all weekend so I'm going to both get stuff done and do some relaxing! It's a bit cool out today (rainy and in the upper 60s/low 70s) so I'm thinking a bubble bath might be happening tonight. And of course I'll do some cleaning, crafts, etc as well.
 
Update 7/28/14. Well, I didn't do much exercise this weekend as my stupid neck was STILL hurting. I'm going to call my GP and set up an appointment because this is getting ridiculous. I did walk the dog but that's about it. Still some pain today, but I don't care anymore, I'm going to go lift weights in a bit. It seems I'm going to be in pain either way, so I may as well lift weights! If my GP says not to then I'll probably have to listen to him, but in the meantime, screw it, I'm going to do what I want and hope that my body plays nice, but if it doesn't I'm still going to do what I want.
 
I just read your thread and absolutely agree that exercise is the key to both controlling your crohn's and providing a better quality of life overall. With that being said, man is it hard to get into the gym on some days! The toughest part of working out is just getting to the place that you do it. I've never, ever had a regret after I'm done however. I'm 63 now and I still have the mobility and strength I had in my thirties. I know also that I've been able to control my crohn's flare-ups and reduce my stress levels because of a regular schedule of exercise. I particularly like weights but cardiovascular is great too. I enjoy your posts, please continue.
Jim
 
Thanks Jim! I agree with most of what you said - I don't think I can control my flare-ups with exercise alone, but everything else you said I agree with. I like weights too, they're probably my favorite thing! I like going into the gym and transforming from sick girl into healthy girl for a little while. I don't feel like a sick girl when I'm working out. I feel super awesome and strong and healthy when I'm lifting weights, I can forget all about being sick for awhile.

Update 7/29/14: I did go and lift weights yesterday, and I feel a lot better today. I finally was able to sleep a full night without neck pain. Hopefully this pinched nerve is finally easing up! I did feel a little bit of pain in the gym - after my warm-up, as I sat down at the first weight machine, I felt a bit of a pain in my left thigh. I think I strained a muscle? Because of that, I focused on arms/shoulders/back and didn't do much with my legs. Later that evening I walked the dog, I wanted to walk around on my leg as I hoped that would help, and it did seem to help. My leg feels fine today. I'm taking a rest day today just to be sure, but with a little luck I'll be back in the gym tomorrow. Hopefully my neck and my leg are both on board with that idea!
 
Update 7/30/14: My leg and neck are both feeling pretty good today so I'm giving myself the green light to go hit the weights tonight. Hubby's coming with me to the gym - he hates working out, but he's been seeing results lately and he likes what he sees, so that makes him more apt to come to the gym with me. Hubby's never been a muscular guy in the past - when we were dating, he was just plain skinny, and then when we got married he started eating more and got, not fat, but definitely more meat on his bones. He felt fat when he gained the weight (he gained it almost overnight) so I know he didn't like how he looked either way - he didn't like being so so skinny but he also didn't like it when he gained the weight. Now that he's been coming to the gym with me at times, he actually is liking that he's gained some muscle, he likes how his arms look.

So we're hitting the gym tonight and then we're going to get take-out for dinner from this great little falafel restaurant (yum!). Tomorrow, I think I might do the bike or possibly yoga. Tomorrow evening we're going grocery shopping - it's been way too long, my fridge is almost empty and I haven't done any juicing for awhile, so I'm excited to buy a bunch of produce and make myself some healthy juice. Friday, gym again (presuming my body is still playing nice). Haven't planned as far as the weekend yet. The way my body's been lately, it isn't worthwhile to plan out more than a couple days at the most.
 
Another quick update: I haven't been to the gym yet (going in about an hour), but I did go shopping. :p I have a serious addiction to workout clothes at this point. I recently started bringing in my old clothes, jewelry, etc to the consignment shop - when an item of mine sells, then I get a little money... and I turn right around and use it to buy more workout clothes. I went in to the consignment shop today and there was a pair of really cute grey workout capris that fit me perfectly, and a pink sports bra that also fit perfectly - both items look like they're brand new, too. So of course I bought them. They were only $10 total, and I had a $5 credit from some of the stuff I had brought in, so I only ended up paying $5. Love that! But it's also dangerous, I'm on the cusp of being a workout clothes hoarder. :p I think I need a workout clothes intervention. I can see it now... "Tonight on a very special episode of Intervention: Cat: 'I can stop buying workout clothes whenever I want. Ooh, is that sports bra in my size? I NEED IT!!'"
 
I love consignment and resale shops. I've never done a consignment sale myself but I should it's almost time for my seasonal closet cleanse. As for the hoarding...you could be hoarding much worse things :p at least when it's time to get rid of it you can make some small sale off of it lol.

Glad you are well enough again to get your workouts in!
 
Thanks Chicago. I'm not always well enough unfortunately. My health has been up and down lately so I get in workouts when I can! In addition to the flare (which is now semi-controlled by Entocort but I'm still having sporadic bouts of nausea, fatigue and d), lately I've been dealing with a pinched nerve in my neck, so that's been holding me back a little bit too. It seems to finally be getting a little better the past few days though. It's still painful if I do certain things (sleeping on my left side seems to make the pinched nerve incredibly painful) but I can usually work out without aggravating it.

Speaking of my health being up and down, yesterday was an up day and today is decidedly down. I felt good yesterday, and had a great workout. I felt strong the whole way through. You know those days where the weights don't feel quite so heavy and everything just feels good? Yesterday was one of those lovely days. But today, I woke up with a wicked sinus headache. You know those headaches where your sinuses are full of pressure, and if you bend over or tilt your head too much then the pressure shifts and the pain gets sharply even worse? And the sinus pressure is so great at times that it kind of forces tears out of your eyes? Yeah, that. Sometimes if I catch these headaches early enough then I can at least take the edge off with tylenol, but so far tylenol doesn't seem to be doing anything this time around. I was kind of hoping to have a cardio day today, but now I think it'll be a rest day instead. My guts aren't feeling too great today either so rest is probably best. I'm just hoping to be feeling better tomorrow.

Yeah, it took me awhile to become a consigner at the consignment shop, I just became a consigner recently, but it was worth it. There are hoarders in my family (my dad and my grandma) so I try not to be a hoarder too, and getting rid of stuff is obviously a key element of that. If I can get rid of some old stuff and make a bit of money/get a nice new item, then that's okay. Otherwise I'd just be giving my old stuff to goodwill or whatever, I'd still be getting rid of old stuff regardless, so I may as well get a little bit of a profit out of it. And I try not to hoard workout clothes too too much - they are worthwhile to have (I use my newer & nicer workout clothes to work out in obviously, and my older but still fairly nice workout clothes are used for stuff like walking the dog and doing yard work). And I try to keep my workout clothes limited to what fits in one laundry basket. Okay, the basket is kind of heaping and overflowing, but it all kind of still fits in there? Yeah, I'm definitely a borderline hoarder! But at least I'm not saving hundreds of old egg cartons like my grandma does, and I don't have a path through the piles of stuff like my dad does. I don't want to ever get to that point though!

So I do feel a bit bad about basically hoarding workout clothes, but I don't feel terribly bad about it. My eye is so attracted to workout clothes, I like to buy them even more than I like to buy regular clothes. I think part of it is, most of the time I feel like a sick girl, and I always have to be thinking about things like, did I take my medicine and should I eat this and should I call my GI and what does this symptom mean, etc. It always has to be on my mind, I always have to be conscious about my illness. But when I go to the gym and I put on my workout clothes, it's kind of like I'm putting on a superhero costume. I transform from sick girl into healthy girl when I put on my workout clothes and hit the gym. In the gym I don't have to think about sick girl stuff - I can just think about, what rep am I on and what's my form like and how's my breathing, etc. Normal, healthy girl stuff! That's why the gym is my happy place, it's the only place I can go to and forget about being ill! And workout clothes are the thing I wear when I transform into healthy girl for an hour or so in the gym - so I think I like workout clothes so much because of that. They just make me so happy, like I'm buying another superhero costume when I buy another pair of workout capris or another sports bra. So I know that's a big part of why I hoard workout clothes, and I don't particularly want to deny myself that happiness that I get from buying my healthy girl superhero clothes. I know realistically I don't need quite this many articles of workout clothes, but what they symbolize for me is so important, you know?
 
Hawkeye, yum!! I wish someone would come to my city and hand out free lobsters!

Update 8/1/14: So, yesterday I started out feeling pretty yucky and I figured I'd just have a rest day. But as the day went on, I was like, screw this. :p I wanted to work out so I decided to just work out anyway. I did 30 mins on the bike - since I had strained a quad muscle the week before, I didn't go quite as intensely as I usually do. I still worked up a nice sweat, didn't aggravate my quad at all, and felt really great afterwards.

Today I'm feeling so-so - less yucky, but still not stellar. But, since I was able to do a workout yesterday, I knew I could do one today too. So I hit the gym for weights. I even did the abdominals machine, which is something I've been avoiding lately. And that went well. I feel fairly good, the icky sinus headache is mostly gone, I feel less exhausted than yesterday and my guts are slightly more behaved today than yesterday.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking I'll do yoga. It's supposed to rain, so an indoor activity sounds best. If it doesn't rain, I'll walk my dog. Sunday, presuming I'm feeling well, I'll hit the gym for weights again.
 
Update 8/4/14: It ended up not raining for most of Saturday (a few sprinkles in the evenin and that was it) so I did walk my dog on Saturday. That was nice although it was pretty warm out so we were both hot and tired when we got home!

Sunday, I had wanted to hit the gym, but then it occurred to me that we should play tennis. We've lived in our house for nearly 6 years now. There's a big park about 1/2 block away - this big park contains the dog park, a soccer field, a community garden, and public (free) tennis courts. We've always meant to go over to the tennis courts and play, but in 6 years we never actually made it over there! So on Sunday, we decided to go play tennis finally. It was fun! Neither the hubby nor I are particularly skilled, so we spent more time running after the ball than we did actually playing. But we did have a few good times where we were able to hit the ball back & forth to each other. I could definitely see us doing that again. My only complaint was that it was a bit too hot out, and I forgot to put on sunscreen, so I think I got a teeny bit sunburned (not bad though). On a slightly cooler/cloudier day, I think tennis would be ideal. We had a lot of fun and spent about an hour playing. We were both super sweaty and tired! And today, I feel fairly sore in both my arms and legs. So it was a good workout, it was fun, and I'm definitely going to do that again sometime.

So, I was hoping to hit the gym today, but with this soreness, I'm now thinking that perhaps I'll just do something easier like walk the dog instead. I'll hit the gym tomorrow for weights.
 
That's pretty great you finally got over there and tried it!

Is your park well shaded by trees? Too much heat is a good way to get me hiding unless there's plenty of shade. I just can't take it and after only 5 minutes outside I have a tan line. Being on 6-mp makes it even more important that I protect my skin too. I'm going to Spain in 3 weeks and need to start thinking about sun protection. Anyway, glad you pushed through the heat and made the most of the day.

Living near a park is great. My last few apartments have been walking distance from parks and the lakefront. I'm convinced living in those types of areas really make you more motivated to get out and get active.
 
No, there are hardly any trees at the park by my house unfortunately. The park is built on an old landfill, which apparently means no trees (I am not totally sure why, I think it's because the ground is too unstable to support the roots or the weight of a tree?). There are just a few very small trees in the dog park (literally there are like 4 tiny, sickly-looking trees), but for the most part it's just a big empty field that dogs can run around in. There are a handful of pine trees near the tennis courts as well, but it turns out that those are actually kind of annoying (if you hit your tennis ball outside of the fence, which I did several times, then you have to go searching in the pine trees and pine needles to find it!). So no, not much shade at all. I did wear a baseball cap to play tennis, so at least the sun was off my face and out of my eyes, but the sun really got hot on the tennis court. I will definitely be checking the weather reports and looking for cloudy days to play tennis! I truthfully did get a bit overheated on Sunday, and walking that half-block home, my guts were painfully cramping the whole time. Getting home in the air conditioning, drinking some cool water and taking a cool shower stopped the cramps, but it was still quite uncomfortable for a little while (that's normal for my guts, they hate heat & humidity and they do tend to cramp in those conditions).

Chicago, can I ask, how close are you to the lakefront? My hubby lived in Chicago for about 4 years when he was in art school, he had a small studio apartment near the intersection of Foster and Sheridan, so just a few blocks away from the lakefront on the north side. His building wasn't the nicest, but it was nice that he was right by the lake like that. Being able to walk to the lake in under 5 mins was a big plus!
 
I used to live off of Sheridan too! :) My last two apartments were near Irving Park / Addison and Sheridan not too far from your hubby, actually. All walking distance. The buildings up there are mixed. Some good, some old. Small square footage and large rent prices. However the bonus about living along the lake is that the further north you go (near where your husband and I both lived and further), heat/water/gas is typically included in rent and there's an abundance of transportation options which was great for me because I don't own a car in Chicago so I could walk or take a quick trip to almost anything of necessity and fun that I wanted to do.

I liked it over there but the reality is that it's super congested these days with due to all of the bars and new condos and apartment complexes being put up. Also the last place tried to raise my rent one year by almost $100/mo. so as much as I loved the space and the area, I decided it was time to go.

Where I currently am is walking distance as well. I'd say it takes about 10 minutes to walk to the lake.

Baseball caps trap too much heat since heat escapes via your head. I noticed this while jogging and stopped wearing them in the summer when I am exercising outdoors. That's interesting how your guts respond to the heat and humidity. Is there anything that helps while you are out besides escaping the heat?
 
Yeah, a baseball cap wasn't my first choice, but I couldn't find a visor anywhere in my house so I had to opt for a cap instead. I'm actually going to make some purchases with tennis in mind - our tennis rackets are both in good shape as far as the racket itself is concerned, but both of our handle-grip things are disintegrating. So I need to go buy a visor and some new grippy handle stuff! :) (I'm sure when I buy a new visor then I'll find like 5 of them in my house, ha ha.)

And yeah, when my guts cramp due to heat/humidity then I just need to go cool off, there's really nothing else that I've found that stops those cramps. The first year that I was sick, that summer was so miserable because it was a very hot summer and we had no air conditioning. The house did come with one window AC unit, but the previous occupants were heavy smokers, so if we turned on the AC then the smoke smell overwhelmed us! So we lived with no air conditioning, and my guts gave me a lot of cramping and pain all summer long. It was really awful. The following year, we installed central air conditioning. It was really expensive (several thousand bucks) but so worth it! I looked at it as an investment into my health and I've never regretted having central AC installed, it's been just lovely.

Wow, it sounds like the north side has changed a bit since hubby lived there! He moved away from Chicago in 2002 when we got married, so I'm not very familiar with how the area has been since that time. We used to go down to Chicago every so often to visit friends, but since I got sick that hasn't really happened (we do sometimes take a day trip to the northwest suburbs to go to Ikea, but that's as close as we've gotten to Chicago in at least 5 years now). Yeah, his building was one of the older ones, the radiator would make clanking sounds all night sometimes and I think he said the building was over 100 years old (I guess now it's over 110 years old! :p ). His apartment was tiny, and it had mice and roaches, so it was just kind of an icky place. But like you said, I do believe that heat, water, and maybe even electricity were included in the rent. And he did actually have a car (just so that he could drive to WI on weekends to visit me - we were doing the long-distance dating thing at that time when we were both in school so we'd commute back and forth to see each other on weekends) and parking it on the street was always interesting. There were several hit-and-runs, at least one break-in to his car, not to mention the parking tickets! So I think you're doing it right, not having a car. If you aren't going out of town/out of state every weekend then it's not worth it to have a car in Chicago. Too expensive and more trouble than its worth!
 
Update 8/7/14: Sorry, it's been a busy week, I haven't had much time to update! Monday was a rest day to recover from tennis. Tuesday I hit the gym for weights and I also walked the dog that evening. Yesterday I also walked the dog, plus I had to lift some heavy stuff at work so I essentially got in a mini weightlifting session.

Today, I'm headed to the gym for a proper weights session. And, I might have company. I have a co-worker, she's pretty new to my department but I really like her. She's close to my age and is fun to talk with. But, she's said a few times that she doesn't like to exercise, but she's also said that she's unhappy with her weight. So yesterday, she was moaning about her weight again, and I told her that I'd be going down to the gym today (there's a gym in the basement of our workplace) and I told her what time I usually go, and offered to show her how to use the machines if she'd like that. She said she'd think about it. Today, she showed up to work with a brand-new pair of tennis shoes and says she'll go with me to the gym - it is pretty clear that she's more excited about her new shoes than she is about working out, but I'm happy to show her the ropes anyway and we'll see what happens. She's not huge but she's seriously out of shape (she recently had to walk maybe 2 miles in one day to check out a venue for an upcoming work event, and she said the next day that she could barely walk because of "all the walking" that she did the day before - 2 miles is not that much so that's a bit shocking and sad). So, my goal is to show her how to use the weight machines, and maybe I can get her to do some squats or a plank with me as well.

Tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Maybe yoga. The weekend is kind of booked up too so I'm not sure when I'll be able to work out! I'm hoping I can maybe get in a bit of tennis Sunday morning as that's about the only free time I'll have.
 
Update 8/11/14: My co-worker did join me in the gym on Thursday! I showed her how to use all the weight machines... and then all she did was walk on the treadmill. :p (I did my usual weights routine while she walked.) I think the idea of using weights is still a bit overwhelming to her. I guess the walking went well though, because this morning she asked if I'm going to the gym in our workplace today because she wants to walk again. I said no, I'm not going down there today - she said that's okay, she's planning on going down and walking by herself anyway. I consider that a success, I'm glad that she's at least making an effort and isn't dependent on me being down in the gym! Maybe once she gets bored with walking then she'll move up to the bike or the weights. We'll see what happens!

So, my update - Thursday I of course did the weights while my co-worker walked. Friday, I walked the dog. Saturday, hubby and I got up early and took a day trip to Indiana and Illinois to do a few things (shopping and touring historical sites). That was really fun, it was a really full day, and my guts behaved themselves even though my whole schedule was thrown off (we didn't eat lunch until almost 4 PM and dinner at about 9:30 PM!). I was really happy that my body allowed me to have a day like that - I had enough energy to do everything I wanted to, and my guts were super well-behaved. It was a really lovely day, I had a great time and felt almost normal! :D Didn't do much in the way of exercise (walked around a fair bit but that's it) but it was still fantastic.

Yesterday my parents came down for a visit. After they went home, hubby and I went to the park for an evening tennis session. That was nice, it wasn't too warm or sunny by that time of day, and we played for over an hour.

Today I'm heading to the big gym after work and hubby is coming with me. Tomorrow, I'll probably walk the dog or maybe yoga or bike if I'm feeling ambitious. Tentatively I'm planning this week for weights Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun. Saturday, I have to help out at a work event, so I'll probably be running around and probably also carrying heavy stuff around for that event, so that'll be like a mini-workout. So Tues & Thurs, I may either rest, walk, do yoga or ride the bike, depending on what I feel like doing.
 
Ah the gym death stare, reserved only for those who site on the machines and talk on their cellphones whilst not doing any exercise

We usually get a week of cooler mornings in August
 

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