Another Trail Run

I managed to get out and do another trail run today. It was hotter than yesterday, but the humidity still seemed to be relatively low, so I was pretty happy. My run was okay, I’m still a little frustrated with my slow progress, but running has always been this way for me, even when I was younger and weighed considerably less. It just takes a long time for me to get to a solid place where I can do good mileage and run with minimal or no walk-breaks. So I have to keep telling myself that I have to be patient. It’s almost becoming a mantra with me, with the weight loss too. Even though I’ve lost (to date) about 43 lbs, the last couple of weeks it seems to have slowed down to a crawl. Even though overall 43 lbs sounds great, I’m having trouble thinking past the last two weeks. I have to be patient, I have to be patient. It’s such a long, frustrating process ARGH!

Well anyway, the run went relatively well even considering my frustration. There was one trail section that I’ve done many times before. And always before I’ve had to take multiple walk breaks. Today I only needed two on this section. One break because I needed it and the other because there was a new fallen & rotted tree blocking the path. Both times the breaks were brief, so I was pretty happy with that and could feel that I’ve made progress. I felt that I also ran more on a more technical trail section too. I ran through some of the somewhat hilly and rocky pieces that in the past I would have walked through. Lastly, I did my lovely, short trail section where I had my “success” yesterday and, again, I was able to run the entire thing without stopping. This time it was after I had been running awhile, so by the time I got to the end I was gasping & gasping for air. If there had been a bench or something I would have sat myself down for a bit. I really felt that one. Anyway, after that I was pretty much done, so I walked the trail in reverse and headed on back. Overall I did about 3 miles, but about ½ a mile of that was a walking cool-down at the end.

The Un-Friendly Runner

I was surprised to see more runners out today than I expected to and I didn’t really enjoy that so much. One of the things that I find appealing about running (especially on trails) is the aloneness of it. I’ve never been one for team sports, I’m a classic introvert and running is just perfect for introspection and for challenging yourself, just for you and not worrying about what anyone else is doing. But runners tend to be a friendly sort, and most like to nod, or say “hi” or otherwise try to share the experience. I tend to be that unfriendly runner who wants to ignore your presence, I like to go on with the illusion that I’m out there alone. Most runners HATE people like me. If you stick around enough running message boards or discussion lists, you’ll come across a complaint about the “unfriendly” runner eventually. If I wanted to be nice and socialize I would play soccer or volleyball or something (either of which would instantly send me hurtling back through time to the most horrifying school flashbacks imaginable). Ironically, I used to love to run in Central Park in NYC and people watch while I did so. I just didn’t want to have to talk to or acknowledge any of the people there -- which is actually perfect behavior in NYC as nobody there expects anyone to say “hi” for Heavens sake. Yet anywhere else my anti-social running attitude makes me feel a little guilty, I guess I should just fake it (and sometimes I do), but I'd really just rather not see people while I'm out there.

A Good Run

I had a pretty good run today and that was a bit of a surprise. It’s actually always a surprise to me when a run seems to go relatively well, I’m not sure why. I guess because I still feel like I am so new (again) to this and since I’m also carting around more weight than is really ideal for running (for my frame anyway). Additionally, with trying to lose weight by cutting calories while also starting up a running program, I am walking a fine line between cutting enough calories to make a difference on the scale, while also eating enough to fuel my runs. There is a reason why lots of people who train for marathons find that they actually GAIN weight. Their bodies either scream for more calories by making them ravenous, or they feel like they are burning so many calories that they’re entitled to eat a lot more (or some combination of the two). All you have to do is log onto the RunnersWorld.com forums and you can read many laments on the subject. This was not my experience when marathon training, however. I actually lost weight. But I was also running in the mornings and spinning in the evenings in those days, and I am also one of those people who tend to be more careful about what she eats when exercising. If I’m taking the trouble & effort to fling sweat around, I don’t like to mess that up too much by ruining the effort with too much junk food. It’s when I fall off the exercise wagon that I tend to run into the most trouble. Anyway, this time around the food part of the weight loss equation has taken precedence with me and so I know that my daily calorie allotment is on the low side. I think it would be fine if I was just walking, but when I add running to the equation, I tend to run out of steam. And that almost always seems to happen right around the two mile mark. I’m not sure how much of that is lack of conditioning and how much is the lower calorie thing, it’s probably some combination of the two.

Anyway, so it was a glorious day. The humidity has been chased out (at least temporarily) by the series of severe storms we suffered through here in New Hampshire last week and through the weekend (as an aside, I sure was glad that I hadn’t planned a vacation for last week, it would have been a complete dud). So, it was sunny with low humidity and the mosquitoes weren’t as bad as they have been. I ran a couple of my usual trails and was thrilled to find that I was able to run one of the shorter ones without having to stop to walk once! That was the first time I’ve been able to do that. It is only about .2 miles, so nothing to be too impressed about, but it has uphills and downhills and plenty of roots & rocks & a few logs to jump over. So, I was pretty pleased with myself. I then did my trail with all the big uphills, but the nice thing about it is that it has some lovely downhills and flat bits down the other side that are just wonderful to run through and it’s a great reward for all the suffering you have to do on the first half of that trail. And then coming back, I decided to run my little .2 mile trail in reverse back to the fire road. This time I had to take one walk break in the middle (by then, I had exceeded my two-mile energy limit), but did manage to run the rest of it. All-together I did just a hair shy of three miles, I’d say. Maybe 2.8 miles? Somewhere around that distance. Over all, It felt pretty good.

Things I Love

Burt's Bees lip balm. I'm one of those people who absolutely have to have lip balm on hand at all times. Always. I guess you can say that I'm addicted. And my very favorite lip balm is Burt's Bees -- bliss! I was in a store a week or so ago and discovered a Burt's Bees tinted lip balm! Imagine my excitment to find a product that combines that wonderful lip balm comfort with my girly desire for pinky, shimmery lips. Love!

Mad Men

I discovered a series last week that had previously somehow passed by my notice.
"Mad Men" is an original series on AMC (who even knew that AMC does original series? I know that I didn't). The series takes place in circa 1960 and is about a bunch of slick advertising execs on Madison Avenue. I know, I know, you're thinking, 'Eh', I thought the same thing. But I was intrigued because it's apparently been nominated for a shitload of Emmys, so I thought that it might be worth checking out. First I placed it in my Netflix queue (the first season is available on DVD and the second season starts this Sunday!) But then I did some searching around and found out that they were having a "Mad Men" marathon this past Sunday, every episode from the first season shown back-to-back. So I recorded them ALL on the DVR and have been working my way through them this week. I have to say that it's brilliant! It is SOOOOOOO sexist and I find that extremely disturbing, but it also adds such an element to the drama (and, yes, comedy) that I find myself completely riveted, sometimes just staring at the screen with my mouth gaping open. I don't doubt that the world was every bit as sexist in the bad old days as showcased in these episodes, so watching this is almost like being an archaeologist discovering a long, lost society or something. Like Atlantis. heh. Oh the other thing is, they all constantly drink & smoke throughout the show too, I find myself both completely horrified and engrossed at the same time. The story lines are all unique and so outside the usual standard boilerplate of TV content. It's completely refreshing and fun to watch, I have not seen even a mediocre episode yet. So great to discover something so delicious smack dab in the middle of a dull Summer filled with repeats and horrible contest/games shows and reality TV.

On a Roll

I managed to get outside and run the trails again today. I took a different series of them and did about three miles (distance estimated by using my pedometer). It was another swampy day, but again, the temps weren't quite as bad as they had been a couple of days ago. Well, when I say that the temp wasn't as "bad", I mean that it was about 80 degrees with about 90% humidity, rather than 90 degrees with about 90% humidity (just so as we're clear). Some of the trail is pretty rugged and I had to be very careful with foot placement since with all the rain and moist weather we've had, the stretches of slab granite and slate embedded in the paths can be very treacherous, those rocks get pretty slick when they're wet and it's easy to forget that the surfaces aren't always just dirt, pine needles and leaves. Still, this is the kind of stuff that makes trail running fun and interesting! So, another workout day down, I'm once again on a roll towards building some exercise consistency.

I had a surprisingly good run ...

today. I wanted to try a run outside, since I did treadmill intervals yesterday. But, geez, was it murky and nasty out today. It took a lot of convincing, but I managed to get myself out there and I'm glad that I did. I ran about 2.5 of trail loop, one of the steeper trails that I do. I had to walk some of the steeper hills, but I was able to run more of it than I expected to be able to do. It was very humid, but I think the temps were lower than they were yesterday, so it was actually somewhat bearable. We've had so much heavy humidity around here lately that there are all kinds of crazy toadstools growing out in the woods. I mean, huge, bright red ones the size of salad plates, mushrooms of all kinds of strange shapes & colors & sizes. I almost felt like I should be running through Middle Earth or the Land of Oz or something. Bizarre. Anyway, it ended up being quite a nice run, very satisfying. And I was even happier to have gotten it done when the torrential rain started about an hour or so later.

Trying to get back into it

I managed to start the new week off with a workout. In my former running life, my training week was always Sunday to Saturday. I liked to break the weekend up like that in case I have an off one, that way it gets split between two. Oh the mind games I have to play with fitness stuff. Anyway, it's been so stinking oppressive this weekend, today was downright murky (finally, the thunderstorms have just started) so it wasn't conducive to doing anything outside. So it was back to the treadmill for me. I did three miles of running intervals, followed with one mile of brisk walking on a higher incline. I found my energy really waning in the last ten minutes of the running part of the workout, I think because I ate a very small lunch today and hadn't had a lot of water either. Plus, I haven't been consistently working out for a couple of weeks now, so I'm sure that was also a factor. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it and I feel like I've started my week off right. Now I have to keep it up for the rest of the week. One workout down, five more to go (for the week).

Clothes, Glorious Clothes

Since I've lost about 40 lbs or so, I have of course found myself in the position where all of my old clothes no longer fit. I'd say that I'm down a little more than two sizes at the moment. Of course, since I still have weight to lose and I'm still in the middle of this process, I also don't want to invest a ton of money on lots of new clothes in what will hopefully only be a transitional size. Luckily I've been able to find a lot Summer stuff on sale at some of my favorite online stores (as well as Target and TJ Max), so I've been able to fill out my wardrobe enough to last me a good couple of months or so, without having to break the bank.

With the weight loss, I am now more interested in cuter clothes and in trying to look nice, even to run out for an errand or something. This morning I had an appointment and since I was already out & about, I decided to make a stop in the mall to do some browsing, something I haven't really done much of in many years. I browsed through a few stores realizing that I really didn't need anything, so I wasn't very intent, but I definitely felt different in these stores than I have in a long, long time. Used to be I would feel embarrassed or even almost apologetic for myself when searching through a store for something that would fit my ass. Now I felt almost cute and that I could walk into pretty much any store there and find plenty of stuff that would fit me. I just didn't really want anything. Anyway, it was a good feeling and one that I hadn't had in a while. It's amazing what losing some weight and becoming more physically active can do for your frame of mind. I feel so much more attractive and positive these days.

Boredom can be dangerous

I did a weird thing over the weekend. I was kind of bored and was doing some internet surfing and decided to go browse the Match.com site. Used to be you could browse ads in your zipcode without committing yourself to a membership, but it appears they've changed their policies and you have to now give them an email address to get onto their site. In addition to that, they apparently no longer accept free internet email addresses (such as Yahoo or Gmail or whatever) and there is no way I'm registering with Match.com with my work address, so I gave up on that. So next I went to EHarmony which allowed me to register with a Gmail address and took me immediately to this involved and very long questionaire. I shrugged my shoulders figuring I had nothing better to do and filled it out. Well. Since I did all this, my inbox has been flooded with matches and requests for communication and I haven't even joined the stupid program! So now I'm stuck with not really knowing what I want to do. I was thinking of maybe joining Match or EHarmony once I got closer to my weight loss goals, but I really don't think I'm quite ready yet. But in the meantime I'm receiving all these general profiles and requests for communication from men and since I'm not a member, I can't even respond or see their pictures or read anything beyond the most generic general canned profile descriptions. But I'm not ready to meet men! ACK! I should have just done some internet shopping and over-spent on stuff that I don't need like I usually do when I'm bored. Sheesh.

1st Post-Surgery Workout

So I decided to try a real workout tonight. I figured that I would keep it simple so I just got on the treadmill for a little over 30 minutes and did some slower running intervals. It was hard enough, but not impossible, thankfully. Running causes this deep ache at the site of my surgery, but none of the incision sites seem to be at all bothered, so that is good. I ended up doing one minute running intervals followed by one minute fast walking intervals, so I never had a break of more than a minute (and even those one minute breaks were kept at a brisk pace, so they were active rests). That seemed to work pretty well, so I think I can start some regular running again at this stage. I'm going to keep the intervals slower for this week at least, but other than that I guess I can say that I'm back in the running game. Not too bad really, only one week post-surgery, I can't complain about that.

Quick Weight Loss Update

As of this morning, according to my bathroom scale, I have lost 40 lbs since I began this journey back in March. I'm pretty happy about where I am right at the moment and am hoping now that the surgery is behind me that I can jump back into the fitness part of this equation very soon. I did take one of the dogs for a two-mile walk today and was surprised to feel some achy pain where my gall bladder used to be. It took me a bit by surprise really, I've been feeling so great sitting around and running out to do errands, I really wasn't expecting to feel much discomfort. Anyway, it wasn't bad enough to make me want to stop walking or anything, but it makes me think that I might not be ready to try some running this week. We'll see, I'll probably give it a shot at some point anyway.

Non-Scale Victory

I went to my hair stylist yesterday to get my highlights touched up and she said that I'm looking really terrific these days. And now with refreshed highlights, probably even better -- Ha.

Odd

I did the strangest thing today, I bought a skirt. Odd. I haven't even worn a skirt in years & years. I don't know what possessed me really. Oh well, it was only $12 or something. And who knows? Maybe I'll actually wear it.

Hunger

Well, my appetite has officially returned. That didn't last long!

Feeling MUCH Better!

I feel SOOOOOOOO much better this morning, closing in on almost normal, I'd say. Belly is still pretty sore and I'm really kind of scared to start peeling the bandages off, even though they told me that I could by now. I just don't think that I'm ready to see what's under them. But I took my first shower this morning (I just washed my hair in the sink yesterday) and I feel pretty clear-headed. I can take a deep breath without it hurting too much, but if I cough, that still hurts. Anyway, I think all the sleep I had Wednesday - Thursday and last night really helped. I still have to wear really loose clothing, because of the belly soreness, but a lot of the bloat seems to be gone now. The scale said that I am now only up about .5 lb from my pre-surgery weight, so it's getting there. Maybe I'll even try a walk later today.

WTF?

A very strange thing happened today. During one of the brief stints of time where I was actually awake and sitting in my living room, my door bell rang. Once I was able to get the dogs calmed down and squeezed myself out the door to see what was going on, I saw this huge delivery truck backed up to my garage with two guys hauling at this enormous box. The one guy came over with a yellow delivery slip with my name and address on it and told me that he had a furniture delivery for me from Target. What??? I also saw on the slip instructions to leave the ginormous box if no one was home. I told them that I had not ordered any furniture and that I was going to refuse delivery. He then asked if anyone else could have ordered it, and I pointed to the dogs pressed against the glass storm door and said, "not unless you think one of those four dogs could have." So they rolled their big cargo door closed and drove away. I can't even imagine what I would have done had I been asleep or something when they came. They would have left that humongous, and no doubt extremely heavy, box in front of my garage and I wouldn't have been able to move it at all, being two days post-surgery and all. My God.

The Big Weenie

Ugh, I just wish that I felt better already! I'm so swollen and bloated and sore. My throat is sore and my belly button incision hurts like a mother! And I still haven't really slept. I know I'm a big baby, but I'm used to feeling healthy. I think I'm going to try and skip the pain meds, I think that's part of what is making me feel lousy. I'm going to take some Tylenol PM tonight instead I think. Maybe it'll also help me sleep.

Sleepless

It’s the day after my surgery and I haven’t had more than two or three hours of sleep in total. I thought that I was going to come home yesterday and just crash! And that I would then need long periods of sleep for the next 24 – 48 hours. Well, not so much, at least not so far. I wasn’t at all tired yesterday, I finally went to bed around 11 and just laid awake all night long. Finally at around 3 AM, I got up and came downstairs and put on a movie and just zoned out in the dark with the movie on. I think I finally dozed off sometime after 5 AM, but then was awake again by 7:30. WTF? The pain came on last night too. The incisions in my belly aren’t too bad, pretty sore and I want to be careful not to strain the area too much, but it’s not horrible. But the worst of the pain last night was where the actual surgery had occurred (where the gall bladder had been removed). The pain feels much like a very sharp side stitch that doesn’t go away (only in the area of my upper torso, sort of to the right, under the rib cage). But still, it’s a fraction of the pain I was experiencing when I was having one of those attacks that I had been suffering through. And even this morning that surgery pain doesn’t seem as bad as it was last night, so I’m hoping that that means it’s beginning to subside some. Lastly, I have sharp pain in my shoulders. The nurses at the hospital forewarned me about this (and I’m glad that they did, so at least I know what it is). When they do the laparoscopic surgery, they have to fill your abdomen with air so that they can see and move around, and it bloats you and the air that gets trapped can travel (oddly) to your shoulders and get stuck up there, causing pain. So I know what it is anyway, what I don’t know, however, is how long it should last! (Of course I forgot to ask). I mean, how long can you expect air to be trapped in your shoulders? It’s got to dissipate sometime. Lastly, I stepped on the scale this morning and I was up 4 lbs! From yesterday! I mean, I know it’s all fluid retention and bloat, but … GAH!

Home

Well, I'm home from he hospital and am feeling pretty freaking good, all things concerned. I just have a little discomfort, mild pain, but nothing really terrible. So, here I sit watching movies with all my dogs surrounding and cozying up to me. And my heinous gall bladder attacks should be a thing of the past. I've got to say, I'm feeling pretty content right about now.

Fabulous News

I just received word that
the Boxer rescue group is going to let me adopt Mojo after all! I am so happy and excited, I can't even convey it properly. They told me that they are going to be making an exception to their rules to allow this, so I feel especially lucky.

The Wrench in the Works

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been pretty happy with the progress that I’ve made so far with working out, watching my diet, getting in shape and losing weight (weight loss to date is approximately 37 lbs). I have some momentum now, my attitude is much more positive and focused on activity and health & fitness and I’ve been sincerely pretty happy. The wrench in the works to this recent lifestyle change, however, is a health issue that has developed with me starting in, oh about, the end of April or so.

It all started one day at work while I was on a phone meeting. I started feeling some mild discomfort that grew until I was actually in a lot of pain with pressure (in the center of my lower chest, upper stomach area), could hardly breathe, and felt like I was both going to both pass out and throw up at the same time. I thought that I was having a heart attack. And all I could think was, ‘just great. I finally decide to take control of my life and get healthy and it’s too late and I’m going to die anyway.’ (I think that I had lost about 20 or so lbs at that stage). So, I went down to the security office at work, put my head down on the counter and said, “I think I’m having a heart attack.” They hustled me into the office and whipped out an oxygen mask, started taking vital statistics and called EMS. Of course, right around the time that EMS came, I started feeling better and of course then started feeling really embarrassed for causing such a fuss. EMS convinced me that I should run down to see my doctor, however, to rule out that anything particularly dire was wrong. Unfortunately, my primary doctor was unavailable on such short notice, so I got passed to a new colleague with whom I just did not hit it off. She had the nurses give me an EKG that they had to do five or more times, never really figuring out how to do it properly. Then this doctor put me in a tail spin by telling me that she didn’t like my EKG and that I needed to go to the ER (she was ready to call an ambulance!). She then made a comment about the fact that I was visibly upset. I lost it at that point, practically yelling at her, “Upset? Of COURSE I’m upset! You just told me that there may be something wrong with my heart, I think I’m entitled to be a little upset, I really don’t think you should make me feel bad about that.” (She then had the audacity to tell the ER doctor I ended up seeing that there was a possibility that I was having a panic attack. I mean, WTF???) Anyway, I drove myself to the ER where they were able to take me right away, they did the whole host of tests (EKG, heartrate monitoring, blood tests, chest x-rays) and determined that the attack that I had had was NOT heart-related (TG). The ER doctor said that the issue was most likely a gall bladder or GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, basically, a fancy name for severe heart burn) issue.

Well, I had a second attack the following week and so went to see my doctor. She wanted to lean towards GERD and prescribed Prilosec and sent me for an abdominal ultrasound. That did confirm that I had gall stones, but my doctor still was skeptical that they were causing me these severe attacks, I think because even though I have stones, the gall bladder itself was not distended or compromised or irritated, etc. (if you let this go too long, it can get pretty bad, I guess, it can get infected, the walls become thick and it can even burst). Anyway, after experiencing two more attacks over Memorial Day Weekend, I called my doctor’s office again for a referral to a GI specialist. Of course the specialist wasn’t available until July, so I was pretty much in a holding pattern. That is, until Wednesday night/Thursday morning, June 25th / 26th. The start of a bad attack woke me at about midnight and kept me awake in screaming pain all night long. Finally things subsided enough so that I was able to drive myself to the ER at about 5:30 AM. Once there I went through the usual labs and the ER doctor became alarmed because my liver levels were elevated to 4x what they were a few weeks before. He worried that I might have a blockage of the common bile duct, which can be pretty bad, apparently. So I was whisked off for another ultrasound where they were able to determine that the common duct was most likely okay, but the gall bladder had “a bazillion little stones”. The ER guy said that this is something that they see a lot and that my attacks even sound “classic”. He had no doubt that these attacks were completely gall bladder-related. To be frank, I’m a little relieved, everything I had read about GERD didn’t hold out much hope that the condition is ever really satisfactorily treated and most people end up living with a chronic, and sometimes debilitating, condition. Anyway, so the ER doctor called my doctor and convinced her finally about the gall bladder theory and I was set up with a surgeon with whom to follow-up. That happened last week and he’s now scheduled me for surgery on Tuesday morning! That’s Tuesday, as in, the day after tomorrow! ACK!

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t freaking out a bit about the thought of surgery. I’m actually being a bit of a weenie about it. I don’t know why I’m so scared, I’ve had surgery before. But the biggest thing for me now is the wrench that this might throw into my working out and weight-loss efforts. The sessions with the personal trainer are going to have to stop for at least four weeks and the surgeon seemed to think that I was not going to be comfortable running for a couple of weeks either. He seemed to think that I was a little strange for asking how soon that I could run, that this seemed to be my biggest concern. He also said that I seem to be in pretty good shape, so that I should bounce back and recover quickly. It made me wonder, if I am the picture of health & fitness to him, what shape are his usual patients in? Scary thought. The other odd thing was that he suggested that I take two weeks off of work. That seemed pretty extensive to me, but he said that he likes to be conservative in case the patient doesn’t recover quickly, he wants people to have made the right prior arrangements with their jobs. But since I can work from home, I figure that I can play it by ear.

So, that’s the whole, long, sad story. I’ve wanted to blog about it before now, but I had also hoped that it was all going to go away. Since I now have a definitive diagnosis and it looks like it’s going to be a factor in my life for about a month, it seems like a noteworthy thing to write about. Maybe I can head off any roadblocks in the weight-loss area by writing about my frustrations with the recovery and my cravings for comfort food.

Dog Tired

I don't know what it is, but I am always exhausted on Tuesday nights, always. I mean, it's not even 9 PM nor is it fully dark out yet, yet I can barely keep my eyes open.

Catching Up

Ugh, it’s been so long since I last posted that I almost don’t even know where to start. I hate this, so much time goes by and I feel that I have so much to catch up on that I’m pretty overwhelmed. So anyway, let’s see, where to start, where to start …

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

Well, Mojo is still with us and has become a much loved member of my canine family, at this point I just can’t imagine having to give him up. He is such a total love. Wants to be petted and loved and he’s happy just to have that human attention. He can get pretty riled up and plays very actively with Tig and Fitz, they all play so hard that they completely wear each other out. But when not playing, he is very mellow and happy to just hang out and be adored. The Boxer rescue group still has him up on their adoption page however, and I have heard nothing definitive back about my keeping him, so I really have no idea what is going to happen. But at this stage, he is part of my family now, so giving him up will just be horrible, if it comes to that. Still, I would like to know soon, I think, as I would like to sign him up for obedience school and get him his tags and micro-chipped, etc. make him official. Right now we’re too much in limbo and it makes me uncomfortable.

Health & Fitness

So, back in March I took a good look at my lack of fitness, general health (or where it would be trending soon, if I didn’t take some action) and my weight and didn’t like what I saw, so I decided to get a grip on things. I have known for a while now that I had to make some changes and it’s been some time coming, so I finally managed to get the ball rolling. I started with diet, cutting back on portions, getting used to more fruits & vegetables and cutting out junky stuff. And also … cutting out BEER (I think that hurt the most!)

Well, after about a month and a half of watching the eating as well as after losing some weight, I started to up the activity. I started using a pedometer (as I mentioned earlier in this blog) and I started taking walks at lunchtime at work. At first the walks were relatively tame, just around the various footpaths, but soon I started venturing out onto the wooded trails. And as I started going further & further and into the more technical trails, I more & more realized that I wanted to run. Badly. So, one day I brought gym clothes & running shoes to work with me, changed in the locker room and did just that. It wasn’t pretty, and I wasn’t able to run nearly as much as I wanted to, but I kept at it. Well, since then, I’ve developed a routine of running five to six times a week! I can’t even believe it, even at my most committed during my first running incarnation, I never managed to run that many days in a week, and particularly week after week. I alternate between running trails in the woods around work (I love living & working in New Hampshire!) with running intervals on the treadmill. So far I am extremely slow (not that I was ever very fast, even when I was in shape for it) and I still can only run for intervals of a couple of minutes at a time (at most), but I’m sticking with it and getting out there and hoping that eventually some of this training will kick in. (I’m still waiting for that).

Additionally, I decided to sign up for some personal training at the company gym. It’s a pretty good deal and I felt that if I have this to anchor my week, it will help motivate me and keep me on track. Plus, I tend to be the type that will blow off strength training and abs work, if left to my own devices, so having training appointments will help force me to do that stuff. The first couple of weeks I had one session per week, but starting last week I moved to two. My muscles are sore and sometimes it’s hard to work in those sessions around the various meetings and other commitments I have, but I think they’re valuable and I schedule them in on my calendar, just like any other meeting. I’m worried about building too much muscle as I tend to build it easily (and at 5’2”, I don’t want to be muscle-bound) but that’s another good reason to employ the trainer, hopefully he will know what he’s doing, where I have no clue.

I’ve even managed to get my bike fixed up and actually took it out for a ride this past weekend. That was fun and a pretty hard workout. I thought compared to the running that it was going to feel easy, but it was hard, just in a different way. It had been so long since I had been on a bike that I had completely forgotten what it was like.

With the diet changes and the exercise I’ve added, I’ve managed to so far drop over 30 lbs since March. Considering my age, my hypothyroidism and my general tendency towards a sluggish metabolism and other hormone challenges, I’m pretty impressed with myself so far – heh. I’m sure that this weight-loss will slow down or plateau eventually, but right now I’m feeling very happy and positive about it all. Also, with the addition of exercise and activity, I feel so much better in general, in a good mood almost every day, I’m sleeping better in general, am relatively energetic, and pretty happy overall. So if a plateau happens, I can concentrate on how great I feel and work myself through it that way, rather than get too discouraged (hopefully anyway).

All-in-all, I’ve had a pretty damn good Spring, I have to say. I can only hope that Summer goes as well. At some point I suppose I should set some concrete goals, but I don’t honestly know what those are going to be yet. I know that I am only looking at the weight-loss in increments of about 10 lbs, so I’m just looking towards the next ten right now. When I get closer to where I want to be, I will reevaluate and try to come up with a more specific number to zero in on. The running and working out too, I’m not sure what my goals are going to be yet. For now I’m aiming for general good fitness so that I can do whatever I want to do and maximize my quality of life. I would like to be able to go out my door and run five miles easily without it being a major effort, I’ll be happy if I can get to that stage. Doesn’t have to be fast, but if I can run all of it, I’ll be fairly pleased with myself. Eventually I might have some kind of race goal, like maybe to run a half-marathon or even a marathon again, but I don’t think that I will even start to think about that until I can bang out at least the five miles without too much trouble. Right now I am too far away from being able to do that, to really consider anything more ambitious yet.

So, that is the update on the major stuff anyway. I’ve been pretty boring really, keeping quiet, exercising, walking the dogs, going to work, sitting on my deck and reading a lot. Life is good.

Dog Foster

I volunteered recently to be a foster home for this New England Boxer rescue group that I have been dealing with. The dog that I was originally supposed to get last month fell through, but they contacted me last week with another dog who needed a place and I got to pick him up on Friday night. Mojo arrived on this rainy night right after his neutering and to much trepidation on all sides. The poor guy, I don't really know anything at all about his history except that he was in a shelter for some reason. I don't even know how old he is. Anyway ...

Can I say that I just LOVE this dog??? Mojo is unbelievably sweet. He’s gentle with my smaller dogs (he’s interested in them, but not too pushy or overwhelming to them), yet he gives the right amount of energetic horse play with Tig (my Boxer) that they both enjoy the experience and are able to fulfill that Boxer playfulness that they need, without it ever getting too aggressive. When not playing, he is completely mellow. He likes to stick close to me, always sticking his big head into my lap, or crawling on top of me to claim my lap for a nap. I don’t think anyone has ever taken the trouble to teach this guy much as the only command he seems to know is “sit”. But this makes me even more impressed with his wonderful good manners.

I had thought that bringing another dog into my home would make this place even more chaotic. But to be honest, I believe the opposite is true with Mojo here. He seems to be lending a nice, calm energy to the other dogs. Tig is no longer chasing Fitz (my boy Pug) in laps around the house, nor is he any longer baiting Lola (my girl Pug). He seems completely fulfilled by having another Boxer around, and the calm energy of Mojo seems to be rubbing off on him as well. I had worried that he might be a little jealous, but I really think he is whole-heartedly enjoying Mojo has a member of the pack. Even Lola seems happier as she now no longer becomes the focus of the other dogs when play escalates. Although, I suspect part of Fitz misses being chased a little bit.

I was of the mind that three dogs was my limit, but this happy circumstance is causing me to re-think that idea. I’m wondering if another Boxer (at least one with the same temperament and energy level as Mojo) might actually be a great situation for us after all. In any case, Mojo is doing wonderfully. He already seems quite happy and he has relaxed quite a bit from his first uneasy night. He is pretty skinny, so I’m hoping some good quality food (and plenty of it) and lots of treats will fill him out to where he should be.

Running Intervals

I'm actually a little bit excited. It's been a long time since running has been a part of my life and I kind of miss it. For me, however, I know that it takes quite a bit to get myself up to speed enough where I feel that I can really call myself a runner. So I've been rather overwhelmed and even a little bit depressed over what a task it will be to get myself to that place.

I've been trying to do more walking in general (thus, the pedometer) and I have also been throwing in some running intervals, where appropriate. And it's been terribly hard and daunting end even rather embarrassing (in public), but I've been trying anyway. And then tonight I got on the treadmill and started to do my intervals and I just decided to dial it down a bit. So, I brought it down to this horrifyingly slow pace and was able to run for intervals of 4 - 5 minutes at a time! (I had been doing 1-minute intervals) Color me amazed. Well, duh, I've been in this running game long enough to know that slowing down is the key to building mileage for a beginner (or re-starter, as I am). I've even advised newbies to do this myself. Duh, duh, duh. I think it's just that even my "too-fast" pace is itself an embarrassingly slow pace, that the slow-down from that is just almost ridiculous (at least if the treadmill display is to be believed). But at this stage in the process I really just have to forget about all that anyway. Forget about pace and speed, just get time / distance in. Get my time in on the road (or the TM belt) and the pace can come later. I know this, I guess I just forgot that I know it. Or something.

Pedometer = Motivation

So, I bought a pedometer after work on Tuesday after reading some personal stories on the 'Net somewhere about people who use them to help motivate themselves into walking more. I have also read somewhere that you should generally target about 10,000 steps per day for general good health and reasonable-average fitness. I figured that it couldn't hurt, they're cheap enough after all. And, while it might not train me for a marathon, it might at least get me started back down that old running road.

So I bought the pedometer on Tuesday. After 5 PM or so on Tuesday I managed to put about 8,000 steps on it. Yesterday I reached almost 13,000. And today I'm up to about 20,000. This sucker MOTIVATES. At least until the novelty wears off. Well, and the wonderful weather doesn't hurt either.

How to Feel Like an ASS

In the Ladies Room, run into a colleague who recently was out for several weeks for vacation to India. Mention to her that you had heard that she had been going to India to get married and how did that go? Deep silence (you can hear crickets). Colleague finally answers, “Oh, the marriage plans fell through”. DOH! (more crickets) Follow up with lame stumbled response, “ohhhhhh. Well. How did the rest of your trip go anyway?” (stupid stupid stupid – bangs head on sink).

Socially Awkward is my middle name.

You Think You're Having a Bad Day ...

When, on a Monday morning you are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic (on a road where that rarely happens). Until you pass: first a guy pulled over to the side of the road changing a tire. Then a car pulled over to the side of the road after an apparent fender bender. And, finally, an SUV that had flipped, finally coming to a rest on its side in the fast lane of the highway going the other direction. After all that, you somehow have to concede that there are people out there who are having a far worse start to their week.

Things that have annoyed me in the last few days:

Cleaning up after strangers. If you use the microwave and your CRAP spills all over the rotating plate thingie, don’t just slink away and leave it for the next person to have to mop up! Hello?! Why should I have to clean up YOUR slop before I can heat up my lunch? Could you BE more selfish? Sheesh.

People who don’t signal. Why is this so difficult for most people? I mean, what kind of effort does it really take to turn on a stupid blinker?

Tail-gaters. Yes, I see you latched there on my bumper. Can YOU see the string of cars in front of me? Just what, exactly, do you expect me to do?

Someone in my neighborhood each morning insists on driving her widdle pweshus to the end of our road (all of .2 of a mile long) and then sitting there idling at the bottom of the road so pweshus can sit inside in comfort and wait for the school bus. The problem is, anyone trying to exit the neighborhood (which is pretty much anyone who has to get to work in the morning) has to now swing around her stupid ginormous SUV while trying to merge onto a busy connecting road, making the maneuver all the more difficult and dangerous. But as long as pweshus doesn’t have to walk that grueling .2 mile and can sit and relax in comfort, it’s worth it. Right? Entitled cow.

Someone at work stole my guest chair and replaced it with a stained one. There are plenty of empty cubes around with spare chairs, couldn’t you have stolen one of those? SHEESH.

I don’t understand why my hair which was looking good and smooth and all going in the direction I wanted it to when I looked at it in the Ladies Room mirror in one hour, is suddenly all flippsidy-doodle and all going the wrong way and sticking out every which way in the next. All I’ve been doing for the hour that has passed is sitting at my desk! You’d think I had been through a wind tunnel or something. I. Just. Don’t. Understand. It.

My father. My sister called me yesterday to chat. And during the course of that conversation, she happened to mention that my father’s wife’s daughter (the one who can’t seem to exist without constant financial assistance from her mother) is finally buying a house. But because she is completely broke, “they” are buying her a brand new washer & dryer for the house! WTF?! I remember a year and a half ago when I moved into MY house, being all stressed out because I had to buy a washer & dryer right away. My father certainly didn’t offer to buy this for me. I just sucked it up and dug up the money to get it myself. I didn’t so much as get a house-warming gift from them! This really boils my piss. What also worries me is, I fear that they may have co-signed for Irresponsible Daughter’s mortgage. I don’t know if that is true (and hopefully it’s not), but I remember my father telling me that she had wanted to buy something for a good while, but that her credit was never good enough to qualify for a mortgage. And this was during the years when EVERYONE was qualifying for a mortgage! If you had a heartbeat, you could get 100% financing. Nowadays the requirements are more restrictive, so it makes me wonder.

I must be delirious

Seriously. I was just walking around the floor at work on my way to the Ladies Room and I passed one of the cleaning people dusting the wall separator for the pantry area with this floppy mop-type thing on a pole. Only when I first saw it, I swear that I thought it was one of those flopsy kinds of dogs, like a Lhasa Apso or a Maltese or Pomeranian or something. I had to do a double-take to understand what I was really seeing. My head is stuffy and congested today, but I think it’s affecting my brain too. Sheesh.

Mr. Tig Wiggle-Butt

I was trying out the video function of my new camera and so I took this video of Tig. I was actually trying to capture the "Boxer Bean", but by the time I got the camera out, he wasn't beaning as much as he had been earlier. Anyway, the video isn't the best quality, but you can watch it if you want:

Video here.

Dog Pictures

He actually lies down and rests sometimes.


Boxer - Pug Standoff


Snow!


More snow (WTF? It's going to be April in a few days!)

Fighting Demons

I somehow stumbled upon this book, I’m not even sure how or where I found it, to be honest. I sometimes will hear about a book, or see a description somewhere or someone mentions some book on a message board some place and I’ll order it, where it will sit amongst the piles of books sitting in queue around my house. And then, based upon my mood, I eventually get around to reading it, usually by then having long forgotten how the book came to be in my possession in the first place.

Anyway, I picked this book out of the pile a few days ago and I have to say that it immediately spoke to me (as many books do) but deeply, on an actual physical and psychological level, much as this book spoke to me on a spiritual level. You see, this story could easily have been a chronicle of my own life, or at least part of it anyway. Maybe not exactly or literally, and certainly I have not reached the levels of resolution (nor do I have the talents or the incredible insights and understanding) that the author has. Not yet at least, but her journey deeply moved me, it hit home for me on an intense gut level that I find hard to even describe. Even now, here late, late on a “school night” I find myself awake and weeping with the raw feelings that these writings have exposed in me. Awake with thoughts and ideas and frustrations and hopes and hurts and self-loathing as well as an anguish for the person I should have been and hope for the person that I could be, with my mind spinning with the regrets of lost opportunities, and feelings of worthlessness, unworthiness, uselessness and, yes, even the anger of the past & present and hopes for what could be in the future. Maybe.

You can say that people over-eat, or drink or take drugs or gamble or compulsively spend or whatever because of unhappiness or bad childhoods or abuse, but I think the reasons are far more complicated and myriad than those stale explanations. Unhappiness is just a trite and easy answer, a label or category that people want to slap on to explain something they really don’t understand. This chronicle is not all happy endings and pat answers and resolutions but a window into the deep and complex feelings of a person who went through the lows & highs of trying to conquer her demons.

Driving Me CRAZY!

My ears are ringing and it won't stop and I'm about to go. Stark. Raving. MAD! GAH!

I'm just saying ...

'Tis the time of year

for trying to fend off opportunistic viruses. Ugh. I've been feeling something coming on all week, I don't really feel horrible, but I've had this sore throat, general achiness, head achy and with an overwhelming fatigue and just this sense of a bug trying to take hold. I worked from home yesterday with the hope that I could head it off, but no such luck. I just hate this feeling, it's so hard to keep a clear head and concentrate on anything when all I want to do is just lay down for a while. And I suspect I'm not the only one around the office who feels this way. I've been hearing a lot of hacking and sneezing coming from neighboring cubicles.

Déjà vu

Wow. I heard a car alarm today in a parking lot for about three seconds and I suddenly realized that I hadn't heard one in a very long time. I very quickly had a flashback to living in NYC and being held hostage by that kind of noise pretty much on a constant basis. It's amazing how much lower my levels of stress and anxiety are these days. The funny thing is, I don't even think I realized how stressed and anxious I was all the time back then. But the constrast to how I feel now is astounding. And it's not just the way I feel either. The last time I had my blood pressure checked, it was on the low-end of normal. Back in NYC it was approaching "high". It's amazing what stress can do to you.

Sunday Night Dread

Used to be, with my job at Old Company, the dread for the coming Monday morning would always start setting in sometime around late afternoon on Sunday and just continue to grow throughout the night. Of course, Monday was never as bad as anticipated, but I think it was just this general dissatisfaction with my job that colored this feeling. I didn’t hate my job, not really, in fact I quite often rather liked it. But there came a time when things in my old group became political, there were some morale issues and along with some micro-managing that all coalesced to create a strong feeling for me of unease for any coming work week.

Well, it’s been so long since I’ve felt the Sunday Night Dreads that I was rather taken unaware by that old feeling today. But feel it I did, but for a different reason this time. It is nothing to do with my job in particular, but with the fact that I have to drive to Boston tomorrow morning for a two-day class. I’ve become so spoiled by my 12-minute commute here that the thought of a significant commute fills me with an almost horror. I occasionally have to drive down to Boston for a meeting or something, but I can generally avoid the major traffic hours on those occasions, so it’s usually not a big deal. But this is going to be a major pain in the ASS. I’m just saying (and venting).

Anyway, I sure am happy that the Sunday Night Dreads are history for me. For the most part.

On a note related to the subject of Old Company: I received a SPAM email from a former colleague the other day. I was a little shocked. It said something like, “Good News from < insert former colleague’s name > “ and then the body of the email went on to describe some great pre-paid legal BS that I could buy. I opened the email excited to hear some news from my former colleague, who left the company last Summer to (supposedly) get involved in real estate, only to be SPAMED. I was a little shocked, to say the least. I wonder if that real estate isn’t working out after all.

Home Improvement Fantasies

Lately I've been watching a lot of HGTV and I'm finding that, between all the home improvement TV and the work I'm currently having done in the hallways in my house (old, horrible-mustard-colored-textured-walls scraped down, new beautiful creamy-beigey paint going up, with crisp white trim) that I am becoming completely obsessed about things I want to do with here. Bathrooms to be renovated (and of course I keep changing my mind about what I want there), kitchen cabinets to be updated, new carpeting, new tile, doors and windows to be replaced, colors to be painted in this room or that, furniture to be bought, the list goes on & on and I just can't stop thinking about it all, I'm even dreaming about it now. And I have a very small, simple house! I can't even imagine how I would feel about this if I had a big and/or charming house with tons of potential. The mind boggles. I will say one thing though, I truly can see why people are so tempted to take out equity loans and Helocs and whatnot. Very tempting as I sit here trying to cash flow the bit of work that I'm having done. Must. Resist. Urge.

Of course, I'm also watching a lot of House Hunters as well, which makes the temptation to start real estate shopping also very tempting ... Someone, please save me from myself!

What?

I'm relaxing. So sue me.

Extreme Pug Close-Up

Things I Love

A Friday night, snow falling fast & furiously outside, fire going inside, dogs all cuddled up and piled on top of me. Nowhere I have to be for a couple of days, fridge is stocked, movies are queued ... ahhhhhh, life is good.

Lunar Eclipse

I was able to stand out on my deck at around 10 PM last night and witness the lunar eclipse. It was pretty amazing! I stood there in the dark (once that I determined that the view would be more effective if I turned off my outdoor lights) with my mouth agape just staring off into space for about 15 minutes. It was a crystal clear night too with all the constellations in attendance. Of course the dogs were a little weirded out by the silence and the dark and had to make some of their own noise as accompaniment.

That sure is something that you don't see everyday, I'm glad that I got the chance to.

All Apologies

So, I had a tech guy at my desk today to fix something on my computer and he was making fun of me for having a picture of a Pug (Fitz) as my wallpaper by saying, "nice kitty". So I start to talk about how I used to live in NYC and didn't want to have a big dog in a small apartment, blah blah blah. And then I stopped myself. I mean, WTF? Here I am defending my decision to own a certain kind of dog to some total stranger ASS (who was wearing far too much stinky cologne, by the way). Why do I feel the need to do that (about everything), why? And it's not just about the dog, I am forever apologizing about myself to people. I've got to stop that shit.

Tig the Obedience Star

Tonight was Tig's last night of his "basic" obedience course. He got a graduation certificate and everything! Anyway, from the start of the class he was a total star, completely enthusiastic and over the moon with happiness to be there each week. And he always seemed to have a lot of admirers. Kids who always seemed to want to touch him, other participants who complimented him. He even seemed to be a favorite of the instructor. I've signed him up for the next level of class, but that doesn't start until the end of April, so I spoke to the instructor after class about what I can be doing with him in the meantime and she suggested that we can perhaps sign up for some private lessons with her in the interim, which I think we'll do. Tig just loves going there so much and seems to get so much out of it and I actually enjoy it too. I've also signed Fitz up for the class that Tig just completed. So it looks like I'm going to pretty busy with dog stuff for the foreseeable future.

Things I Love

Trader Joe's. How many different ways do I love this store? I can't even count them. From the wonderful produce, to all the fancy cheeses, to the many and various prepared meals and other items, and all the ethnic selections and flash-frozen fish! It's a complete delight at every section. I went to my "local" Traders this morning and had to wonder to myself why I don't shop at this place more often, it's just such a wonderful store. Of course it's probably not the best idea to go there when you're hungry as I was, but I now have a fridge completely stocked with plenty of goodies. Too bad there isn't a blizzard in the forecast.

That Wacky Pug

So the other night I was sleeping and I woke up at some point and couldn’t find Fitz. He had somehow completely disappeared. Sometimes he gets under the covers and may migrate more towards the foot of the bed, but he’ll usually pop his head out from under the covers if I call him. But, nope there was no response, he was no where to be found. But, oddly, I could feel him moving around. Delirious with sleep, I finally turned the light on, got out of bed and started digging through the covers trying to find him. It turns out that a snap or two of the duvet cover had come undone at the bottom and he had somehow managed to crawl inside of that opening and gotten himself disoriented and lost inside of the comforter bag. I think he heard me calling him, but couldn’t find his way out and ended up stuck and trapped in a corner. When I figured out what was happening, I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t even help him at first. But finally I unsnapped a few more of the buttons and reached in and was able to drag him out and rescue him. That silly, silly boy. Of course you have to also realize that this all happened at around 3:30 AM. 3:30 – 5:30 AM seems to be prime dog drama time, after all.

Things that Crack Me Up

There is this auto-parts store that I pass sometimes, I think it's a chain or something. Anyway, what makes me laugh is that they have these little white cars that I keep seeing on the road, all over the place, I'm forever passing them everywhere. So they have these little, white cars and each car has this little hat propped up on the roof (a hat!), and it just completely cracks me up every time I see one. I also have to wonder, what about this after-market auto-parts business necessitates the need for these weird little cars (with hats!) to be out and about everywhere? Like there is an auto-parts emergency somewhere and some guy has to jump into his tiny car and speed some parts out to the customer. Weird. But, funny.

Sleep is Good

Do you ever have those days where you feel just absolutely exhausted, and for no good reason? You haven’t been working out hard, you haven’t had a bout of lousy sleep. Work hasn’t been overwhelmingly aggravating or worrisome. You’re just bone tired, just because. That was the way I felt yesterday. Just exhausted and spacey all day long and feeling generally horrible. I came home and felt like a zombie, I didn’t even boot up the computer, never even took it out of my computer bag – that NEVER happens! Finally, I just went to bed early (9:00!)

Of course, the problem with going to bed early is that I tend to wake up a few times during the night and last night was no exception. And last night was of course also the night that a couple of the dogs decided to have a puke fest. Tig at 4:30 AM (what is it about 4:30 AM and dogs puking? I swear that is the Puking Hour) and then Fitz at 5:30 AM. Ugh. So between all that, waking up suddenly at 1:30 AM and thinking it was morning because I had been asleep for a good, long while, getting up for the bathroom multiple times (which happens every night, of course), I still feel much better today, so I must have managed some good sleep after all. Somehow.

Things I Hate

People who are so self-important that they think sitting on a conference call meeting on speaker in a cubicle is perfectly acceptable. You know, because the World revolves around them. And everything.

Note to Self

If you're drinking a glass of wine and you get up to go do something in the other room for a few minutes, you might want to put your glass up somewhere where that Pug (Fitz) can't get to. Otherwise you might come back to a glass full of Pug slobber. This is especially applicable when it happens to be last of the wine in the house. Dammit.

I suspect that my GPS thinks that I’m stupid.

So I bought myself a GPS about a month or so ago as a sort of combination birthday / Christmas gift to myself. I wasn’t sure how much use I would get out of it because I don’t tend to go anywhere, but on the occasions that I do, it sure is a pain in the butt to drive and try to read a map and directions, since I’m usually driving alone and the dogs aren’t much help in that regard. So I bought it and in a way, it’s kind of opened up a new world to me. I’ve had to make a couple of trips into Boston for work over the past couple of weeks and it’s been very relaxing to be able to just plug in the address and go. I’ve had a couple of appointments here and there too where it has been helpful to be able to just drive and not think about it. I finally found this riding stable out on the twisty roads a few miles from my house that I had been looking for (got lost a couple of times previously looking for it). It’s really a great gadget and one of those things that once you have one, you wonder how you ever functioned without it.

I like to try and confuse it though. Sometimes I will ask it to take me home and then I’ll choose another route. I swear the machine sounds exasperated by the second time it states, “re-calculating”. I imagine an intelligence behind the voice shaking head, rolling eyes and muttering, “what an idiot, what part of ‘turn now’ did you not understand”. It’s fun to drive down some country roads here and make an unexpected turn and wait for the GPS to direct me to an alternative route and see how confused and snarled it can get. So far it has always managed to direct me home though. Heh. It doesn’t take much to amuse me after all.

Ahhhhhh work, I love it!

Between the holidays, a whole bunch of vacation time, a number of days working from home ... it feels like forever since I've actually been at work. It was nice to have a true break, I really did forget all about work for a bit, but I have to say it sure is nice to be back now too. I'm feeling all fired up and ready to dig into anything that comes my way. I missed working! Hopefully this feeling will last for a good while (ideally until the end of 2008 when I can repeat the whole holiday process again and refresh).

What do you do if

you stupidly buy a frozen pizza on special at the grocery store, but when you get home you realize that there is no way it's going to fit in your freezer? Well, if you live in New Hampshire in December, 2007 you bury it under a big pile of snow that is sitting outside on your deck. Sheesh.

Relaxing Christmas / Chaotic Week

Christmas day turned out to be quite lovely and relaxing. I went down to my cousin's house in Hollis, NH and had a really great day. It was my cousin and his wife (and their two, teen aged kids floating in and out from time to time) and my other NH cousin and his wife and me and that was it. We had a great time just hanging out all day and socializing and drinking wine and even watching some very old home movies from when we were all incredibly young. It was a hoot to see their parents and mine hanging out in the movies when they couldn't have been much older than 30! I don't remember them ever being that young. For a change, my cousins' step-sister did not show (with her four children). She's okay, but I've always had a rather uneasy relationship with her and four brooding teenagers tend to add a real chaotic element to the day, so I found the day much more fun without her and her brood. I didn't want to bring all the dogs with me because I thought it would be too much, so I selected Fitz because he's been such a good boy lately and I thought he would get along well with the other dogs (cousin Peter has an enormous English Bulldog and cousin Greg has an Italian Spinoni, which is a type of large, shaggy sporting dog). Also, Peter's daughter, Viv loved Fitz as a puppy, so I thought she might like to see how nicely he has grown up. I'm proud to say that Fitz behaved beautifully and had a very good time himself, sinking into the passenger side car seat and snoozing deeply the entire ride home, he was that tired from the visit. So, all in all it was a very great day.

The mystery of the Hunk of Orange Salt continues. I received a perfume bottle (!) in the mail from my father on Christmas Eve. This is a somewhat odd gift too as I don't wear perfume and am not too sure where to put this either, but it's not nearly on a par of strangeness with the salt thing. I spoke to my sister at length yesterday and while I did not bring up the salt rock, neither did she mention having sent something. I guess I'll just come out and ask her once she gets home from her vacation in Salt Lake City.

So, the rest of the week is taken up with appointments, ugh. Yesterday was a consultation with the oral surgeon for my dental implants. My original surgeon ended up leaving the area, so I have to start new with someone else. And of course, since he has his own requirements, I have some other prep stuff I have to do (and pay for) -- impressions and labs and such. But I've made the appointment and am having two dental implants done on January 11th. Then that has to heal for three months and I have to go back to my original dentist for crowns, etc. Which will be a few thousand more, of course. I wasn't aware that the crown part wasn't part of the whole implant cost and process, so the costs just continue to grow.

I have an appointment this morning to put some cargo netting in the back of my car (to hold packages so that they don't roll all over the car) and then it's back to the regular dentist for yet more work for other issues that are plaguing me. Basically, I've been in more or less constant pain as the teeth on side opposite of where the implants are going bear the entire pressure of all chewing activity. One tooth with a huge filling literally cracked under pressure last month and has since been further broken open by the dental work and root canal (last week) to eliminate decay. I'll eventually have a crown done for this tooth too, but in the meantime the sharp edges of the broken tooth cut into my check without relief. And now the newest development is the tooth underneath that one is flaring up -- there seems to be a pocket that's opened up between two teeth and underneath the gum line that packs with food immediately (which also causes immediate pain) as soon as I eat anything at all. So, I'm getting all of that looked at this afternoon. Ugh. Just UGH.

The expense of all this is literally making me shake, but I really don't know what else to do. Except, that is, to curse my former NYC dentist whose incompetence caused most of these issues. The tooth that cracked, for instance, was mostly made up of filling and thus was very fragile. I've been told recently that most dentists would have put a cap/crown on it to protect it. The dental implants are necessary because of this ill-conceived canter-levered bridge that same dentist had talked me into years ago which never worked well. He then added insult to injury by jamming a huge screw post into a tooth under the bridge after a root canal -- a result of the bad bridge -- which completely fractured the root, finally making that tooth not viable. I am just depressed and livid and trying to find the positive in all of this. But in the meantime, it's endless ongoing dentist appointments, constant pain and discomfort and a diminishing bank account for me. And I don't even get a new kitchen or bathrooms once it's all done. But there is nothing else to be done really, the alternative is losing teeth and it's also not something you can sit on and wait about either. So I just have to suck it up and deal. It doesn't make for a very relaxing vacation week, but it's easier to try and do it all now than to run around on work lunch hours or something. Sheesh.

Merry Christmas!

Some Pictures

First, a picture of the Orange Rock Thing (ORT) or, if you prefer, the Hunk of Orange Salt (HOOS):







Some pictures of the incredible snow we had over the past week and a half (the snow is up to almost my waist in some places -- and I know because I had to go out and push through it to drag Fitz out from under a bush the other night. Lovely):

That Time of Year and Weird Mystery Gifts

I used to really hate this time of year. The commercialization, the financial pressure, feeling like an outsider to the season by not having a significant other or close family. But I've found that since my financial picture has improved, I feel so much more optimistic about the holidays. I now love to give gifts while not having to stress about paying the electric bill. I've also gone past caring about what I get in return. Well, that is until today. Kind of.

So, the mailman came to the door this afternoon carrying a box that he said was kind of heavy. The box was from a place called the, "Alive and Natural Health c/o Horizon Distribution Logistics" (what the ... ) I opened it and inside was this bubble-wrapped thing with this electrical cord dangling out. Cutting away the bubble wrap revealed this orange rock on a stand, with a cord to plug it in (WTF???) The tag tied to the cord reveals it to be a, "Salt Crystal Lamp (mined from the foothills of the Himalayas)" and is apparently a natural air purifier. Whatever. So I plugged it in and am currently sitting here looking at this glowing orange thing completely mystified as to who sent it (there was no card or even a gift receipt or catalog included in the box). It could maybe be from my sister (she is the person most likely to send me something like this, I suppose), but she had already send me three embroidered stockings with my dog's names on them a few weeks ago to hang on the mantle, so I wasn't really expecting anything else from her (and she hadn't given an indication that anything else was coming). Or it could possibly be from my father, but it really doesn't seem like the kind of thing he would send and also, when he asked about a week ago what I maybe wanted, I had sent him an email with an idea or two, neither of which was even close to this orange rock lamp. On the other hand, I haven't received anything from him yet, so maybe it is his gift. So, I'm not sure what to do. I guess I can call and ask him if he sent me something, but it's just so weird. Really, a Pottery Barn gift certificate would have been perfect. I don't mean to be ungrateful (and I'm not, really), but I don't know why he thinks he needs to suddenly get creative now. It can't be from him, I just can't imagine! But who then, WHO??? The mystery is killing me. And where to put this orange rock is the other part. Where do I put it? Where??? Sheesh.

Things I Love

Whole Wheat penne pasta with (my own) meat and garlic chunk sauce and fresh parmesan sprinkled on top. Had some last night and it was yum!

Things I hate

Prime Time game shows. This one is on. Every. Night. This. Week. I mean, WTF???

You know that you're having a bad day when ...

You are actually looking forward to the root canal appointment you have scheduled in the afternoon because it means that it will release you from what you are dealing with at work for a couple of hours. Sheesh.

Yikes

It's a little disconcerting to come to work and have the person in the cubicle right beside you hacking away with a phlegmy cough. Ick.

There's nothing like online shopping

My Christmas shopping is done, done, done. Not only done, but also all delivered & received at this stage too. I can't even imagine going to a mall during the holidays. I think you'd have to bind and gag me and drag me there kicking & screaming. Seriously.

I feel so lucky

Since finishing up on my two-year project about a week ago, I was finally able to move back to the other building where my team is located. I wasn't sure if or when a cube was going to be found for me, so I was a little concerned about where I would end up or if I would have to work from home everyday (which is great as an option, but maybe not so great when suddenly it's your only option). So they wanted to move me into a currently occupied cube and move that person out of that cube and into a nice window cube (since she considerably outranks me). But the current occupant didn't want to move because she has been there for three years, so I got the window one by default! So Day Two of sitting next to a window and I have to say that I really love it. I never realized before how much I was missing natural light and being able to easily glance outside without getting up and making a big point of it. And being by the window also means that I am also at the end of a row, which means that it is so much quieter (a huge plus for me because nothing stresses me out more than noise). This area is also much more laidback and casual than my former location too, so all-in-all I am not feeling the cubicle stress and claustrophobia that I normally feel. I am so grateful to now have this great space! I hope I get to keep it.

I'm really in the mood for ...

Grand Marnier. It's just that kind night, cold, snow dumping down, wind whistling outside, fire going inside, etc. Too bad I don't have any though.

Things I Love

Mario Badescu Seaweed Cleansing Soap. LOVE!

Home Improvements

December is always an exciting time at my company because it's bonus time. And this year was even more generous than last year (as a side note: I dearly hope that I will continue to have a job at this most wonderful company until the day I'm ready to retire.) Once I knew how much to expect, I started planning what I was going to spend it on! Well, I have to really save some of it, but I do want to spend some of it on some house stuff. Late this afternoon I met with a custom window treatments place (they came into my home with samples) and chose a roman shade design and fabric for my triple living room window and a shutter for the side-light window beside my front door. This week I also contacted the guy who painted my living room, kitchen and guest room last year about coming back and starting on my horrible mustard-colored textured hallway walls -- I've been living with those for a year now and I hate them as much as I did on the day I moved in. It's going to be a mess and an enormous pain-in-the-ass to live with, but the end result will be worth it.

Anyway, it's a little exciting to have a few home improvements on the horizon. I haven't done anything about the house in so many months that it was starting to get to me. Of course, the big projects, like renovating all of the bathrooms, are still going to have to wait a few years, but it feels good to be inching forward in some fashion.

It never ceases to amaze me

How a woman can get all dolled up, skirt, high-heeled boots, meticulous make-up, hair just perfectly so. Yet come out of a Ladies Room stall and not give herself even the most cursory hand washing. This same woman will then take the time to step up to the vanity mirror and zone in and analyze the state of said hair and make-up, but a little hand washing apparently requires far too much effort. As Holden Claufield would say, she must be a "secret slob". Sheesh.

Bitter and not getting over it

Last Monday was my birthday. I hate my birthday. I try not to have any expectations so that I won't be disappointed, but it's hard to expect absolutely nothing. This year my father topped his emotional distance by completely forgetting my birthday altogether, he's never done that before. I received nothing from him, not even a phone call. At some point afterward he finally did remember (frankly, I think my sister called to tell him) and he has left a couple of voice mail messages during the week, but has done nothing else to make up for it. He has had a week now to send me a card or a gift and I have to finally come to the realization that nothing is forthcoming. This is what my family relationship is reduced to now, I guess. I'm a little miffed at my sister too, to be honest. She did call me on the day, but would it have killed her to send a card? I spend $100s on her kids each year for their birthdays, and I make sure to at the very least send her a card for hers (sometimes a gift too), I feel that the least they could do is all get together and send me a card. The kids are old enough now (11 and 14) to do this too. It's not that I am going to stop sending birthday & Christmas greetings and gifts for my family, but I do feel pretty hurt and bitter about it all. I have a couple of very nice friends who sent me cards but, other than that, I got absolutely nothing at all and it just completely depresses me. I know, I know, I'm a grown adult and I shouldn't care. And it's not even about the gift or the materialism of it, certainly there is nothing that anyone could give me that I couldn't easily buy for myself these days, so that's not it at all. It's the fact that someone thought enough of you, to take the time to think about something small that you might like (even if it's an amazon gift certificate for $10).

So, I'm mad and bitter right now. I'll eventually get over being mad, but I think the hurt feelings are going to take longer to overcome.

Best Shoes EVER

And so incredibly comfortable (and I usually have trouble with shoes). I bought them in "shale" and like them so much, I think I'll buy a pair in "black". Gotta love a good pair of comfortable shoes.

Things that annoy Me

Women who wear copious amounts of perfume. Particularly, women who wear copious amounts of bad perfume. Particularly when I have to stand behind one in line for coffee. Particularly when I have to stand behind a string of women ALL wearing copious amounts of different bad perfume. Blech.

Shorter Days

I rushed home today to try and get there in time to catch enough remaining day light to take the dogs for a walk. That's the bummer with these shortening days (as much as I absolutely love the Fall) and the time change makes it even worse. Fitz decided to be squirrely about putting on his harness & leash (I'll never understand why he has a problem with it) so he got left behind (with a raging tantrum once he realized what was happening, of course) while Tig and Lola and I took a new-ish route across the way. We meandered through a church yard and then a school area and were going to try a road that would have taken us farther away from home, but it was getting dark fast and there was also a lot of ground fog making things murkier and I thought better of it. Instead, I found this trail through the woods, that was kind of creepy, but also kind of cool in the deepening gloom, that I correctly suspected would lead us into a neighborhood with which I was familiar where we finished up our walk. So, it only turned out to be about a half an hour or so for the walk, but at least it was semi-interesting. And there aren't going to many more opportunities for post-work dog walks now, unless I invest in some reflective gear for the dogs (especially Tig who is pretty dark) and a headlamp or something with myself.

When I got home since the walk was shorter than I had wanted, I decided to get on the treadmill for about twenty minutes -- I even threw in a couple of running intervals and kept the belt on an incline. I hadn't been on the treadmill in a long time as I had lost the magnetic/key thingie in my move last year and just got around to ordering a replacement (for $5, I might add). So, I feel a little better today and managed to forget my dental issues and work worries for a little while. And now that we're in my most favorite time of year, I really should be trying to get out and walk at lunch or something more. Hmmmm, maybe I should buy a pedometer.

The Cat

This is really funny and very cute:

The Cat

More Bad News from the Dentist

Went in yesterday to repair a fractured back tooth and prepare it for a crown, once into the process the dentist realized that the tooth is probably not going to be viable. He's sending me to a root canal specialist to see if they can save it (but he didn't sound too optimistic). If RC won't work, I'm looking at another extraction and implant, at about 5K+ a pop. So, just for those who haven't been paying attention, I've already spent about 5K out of pocket so far this year for dental work, with another 5K to be spent in January for the implant I've already got scheduled. Now if I need this additional extraction/implant (and it sounds like I will) that is about 5K more. Bringing the grand-total spent on dental work in less than a year to about 15K, not including what insurance covered! And I'm not even going to mention what a horror show the actual extraction was last time, I'm freaking out about the thought of having to go through anything like that again any time soon.

I had really hoped to start saving more aggressively now, wanted to start an additional IRA as well as a non-retirment investment fund. I also wanted to move forward and do some more painting and other home improvements on my house (window treatments, re-surface some textured walls, replace some damaged windows, etc.) and now it looks like I'm not going to be able to do any of it. I feel sick.

On a good note, I wasn't charged for yesterdays appointment. I think the dentist felt sorry for me.

A bit of a blow

Well, it looks like we are in for a bit of a blow for tomorrow. A good nor’easter is making its way up the coast and due to hit New England by Saturday. Happily it will be a weekend and I have no hair appointments, no pedicure scheduled, nowhere I have to be. So it will be lovely and cozy to be cocooned at home with the dogs while the weather rages outside. Most people pray for great weather weekends and that sure is nice, but once in a while it’s wonderful to have a weekend where it’s in your best interest to stay warm and safe inside. I’ve got stacks of movies and books around the house, and plenty of beer and beverages. One last stop at the grocery store tonight will ensure that I will be fully prepared to enjoy the time-out forced by the storm.

Dealing with Hardware

So, my laptop is broken. Again. This stupid thing has had the hard drive re-built two or three times (the last time was about a month ago) and had various other issues that have needed to be fixed. Every time the hard drive has to be dealt with, I also then have to go through the exercise of re-installing various needed software, re-establish all the various certificates or whatever needed for VPN and wireless access, etc. not to mention trying to re-find all of my bookmarks and whatever. It’s all an enormous pain in the ASS. Anyway, so last night it crashed yet again. I got a very ugly black screen (never even made it to the Blue Screen of Death) error about some missing or corrupted file. So, I dragged the machine in today and opened yet another tech problem ticket. The technician contacted me with the bad news that I would need a new hard drive – ARGH! And then he went on to say that I have the dubious distinction of being the most interesting problem ticket of the day by starting off my ticket description with, “I can’t believe this, but my laptop seems yet again to be broken.” (I guess those tech guys don’t get out much). He also asked if it would be problematic if I didn’t get the machine back today and I said that since I have a desktop supplied to me by The Business Group, I could luckily use that today. His response was to start to reply, “huh, well we handle The Technical Group … “ since I am used to this response, I had to patiently explain how I am working for The Business Group, but am really a member of The Technical Group, so my laptop is owned by The Technical Group, yet my desktop is a Business Group machine. Sigh. This always confuses them and I have to explain it carefully lest I be pawned off onto another support group. So he paused and then said, “Oh, so YOU’RE the one!” I hope I’m not on some support black list somewhere! Yikes!

I swear, I’m going to buy an Apple laptop for personal use after all this.

Things that PISS me off

People who decide to lean against your cubicle and have a whole meeting while standing over your head like you're not sitting there trying to work. Uh, hello???? Am I invisible??? FREAKING pisses me off. Bastards.

Happiness is ...

Butterscotch pudding. Yum!

It's the simple things in life.