Through The Night

I don't usually sleep all the way through the night much anymore. At one point in life I laughed at my mom for such things and here I am doing them. Up at wee hours, unable to see to drive in the dark. I deeply apologize for being young and stupid. 

I'm usually up anywhere between 2-4 am. I will go down to the guest room (if no guesties are in it) and I will play on my phone a bit, turn on a podcast, go back to sleep. 

Most of the time, I do my best sleeping between 6-9am. 

There have been several nights lately though, where I find myself waking up between 6-7am. Making it all the way that far is miraculous. But then I have to pee so much. So. Very. Much. Part of it is I do well with not drinking alcohol at night - when I do, that adds a lot of liquid to my body and yes, I gotta pee so I wake up. 

Last night was one of those nights. At 6:50am, I hightailed it downstairs (please note, someday there will be an upstairs bathroom so help me God) and by the time I was done I was just ... all the way awake. If it was closer to say 6am than 7, I may have gone back to sleep. But no. I was up. 

Back upstairs, find the yoga pants, take the blood sugar, take the morning meds, creep back downstairs. I set up the coffee, did some steps around the first floor while waiting, just to sneak a couple hundred in early. It is funny because it is still so dark here at 7am.

The trash guys came and I realized there is a giant piece of plastic in my yard between us and the neighbor. It must have blown free last weekend when I put it out to the recycling (it is from the treadmill packaging). I was putting on my boots when they arrived so I figured eh, I'll get it later. 

I pondered an outdoor walk because it is 41 degrees, but the wind is howling. I pondered the treadmill but was afraid I'd wake Geoff up. I don't know what it sounds like downstairs for him. 

One thing I forgot to do yesterday was take pictures of the hot water heater. When we bought the house, our home inspector said the beast was on its last legs. She leaks, and while she does heat water very nicely she's 20+ years old and he recommended we get a new one. We negotiated that with the seller, and it is time. 

On Monday, I have a plumber coming over to evaluate the situation. 8am (dear God). He asked me for pictures of the hot water heater, model number, pictures of the hookup to the water source. So I went down and took those and texted them to him. 

My realtor gave me three numbers to call, she recommended all three. One didn't return my calls at all so I moved onto the next and they are not taking on any new customers at this time. So that left the third. They had a wonky voicemail messaging system that asked you for details, one thing at a time. Please state your name after the beep. Please state your phone number after the beep. Please state your address after the beep. What appliance are you calling about? please state.... 

I guess it cuts down on people (like me) rambling for months in a message and cuts to the chase. 

And then I didn't hear back from them either. I was ready to go to Nextdoor or Facebook to ask for recommendations, and their office manager called me at 7:50am the other day (so early) absolutely apologetic that my message and several others were incredibly delayed in getting to her. So yay. A connection. A human. And an appointment. 

I'm wondering if the big storm this weekend will delay our appointment. We'll see. I'd hope not but this is Maryland. 

Mornings include coffee and Toffee and couch cuddles. And phone games until I'm mentally ready to start working. So we got a lot of that in today. 

Work was good. Not sure how I managed a whole day without a single meeting but that was a thing! I did the treadmill at 1:30ish, and before I knew it, 4pm was knocking at the door. I made some candied cashews out of a container Geoff bought that were unsalted. I really don't care for unsalted nuts. So I doctored them up and they came out perfectly. I made dinner, which is usually Geoff's job but I wanted to make the meal and give him a break. We'll be asking a lot of him this weekend, I think. 

Dinner was very good, I must say. I used a different recipe and it kind of makes its own gravy which is nice, because your girl had none. 

After dinner, Doug hit the treadmill and Toffee was desperate for a walk. So I went outside to see the howling wind from earlier was no longer an issue. It was 45 today, and at 8pm down to 35, with no wind, you know it's a good to go kind of thing. 

I put on the winter weight fleece yoga pants and we headed out. With no other dogs out walking and hardly any other people, Toffee is a joy to walk. I thought about extending the trip and going off to the left instead of turning home but we did over a mile, and I think she enjoyed it very much. 

So we'll see how I sleep tonight! I made sure not to drink too much water and no wine/beer. Maybe we'll get two nights of me sleeping alright! 

Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Two walks. First, Treadmill, fastest average pace to date! 30 min/1.84 mi. Wanted to make it to 2 miles but meh. Second, Toffee walk! 20 min/1.17 mi. 12k+ steps by bedtime (woo hoo!)

blood glucose:

7am: 135
4:15pm: 97
10:45pm: 148 

food & meds:
7am: jardiance+phentermine
noon: english muffin w/pb
1pm: met+glip
4-6pm: some candied cashews as I was cooking them
6pm: shepherd's pie (left over mashed potatoes from the meatloaf night, corn, peas, ground beef)
8:30pm: met+glip

Impending Snowmageddon

People get ready, there's a storm a comin'
Don't need no ticket, just stay in your house .... 

In the DC area the weather prognosticators lose their everloving shit if some snow is on the way. Boom or Bust predictions always equal Bust. We could get 5 to 9 inches, or maybe a coating to 1 inch! 

It's always a coating to 1 inch. 

Right now, on Wednesday night, the weather guys and gals are up in the social media platforms yelling "It is too early to say but!!!" and my map shows 17 inches of snow. 

17 mother humping inches. 

First of all, finally. I'm living somewhere that it is supposed to snow. And it hasn't in forever. We get powdered donut amounts of snow where the grass is still visible through the coating. 

But. This one may pan out? Who knows? It is too early to tell! I'll check in Friday night or Saturday morning for an update. 

Second, we need the precipitation. We've been in a steady hard drought over much of this region. So bring it. Snow? Rain? Ice? whatever! If it is wet, let it fall. 

Today was a good day. I got a walk on the treadmill in between meetings and then at like 5pm, Toffee really needed a walk. Really. She's so full of pent up energy and she's been getting a solid walk a lot of days of the week. So I checked the temperature (35 degrees) checked to see if it was windy, and suited up. We had a good time. My friend S called because she had stories to tell me and we haven't talked in a while, so that helped pass the time almost as good as a playlist. 

Digits below the weather map! Please note, my town is .... not covered by the purple blob. So we're gettin' nothin. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Two walks. First on the treadmill, 25 min/1.42 miles; Second with Toffee, 23 min/1.2 miles. 11k+ steps by midnight

blood glucose:

8:45am: 105
4:45pm: 115
10:30pm: 190 (not sure why so high? One slice of pizza for dinner, and 10 buffalo chicken bites. No alcohol. Weird?) 

food & meds:
8:45am: jardiance+phentermine
12:15: LGBT salad (Lettuce, Goat Cheese, Bacon, Tomato). Hell yeah. 
1:45pm: met+glip
7pm: one slice of pepperoni & onion pizza; 10 buffalo chicken bites
8:30pm: met+glip
no wine/beer

Where was he going without ever knowing the way

I woke up feeling super gross. I think too many potatoes last night. I did it to myself. Sadness. I do love me some mashed potatoes. Sigh. Maybe next time, a lot less mashed potatoes.

My morning was very quiet work-wise. I didn't have a meeting until noon. My mom's neighbor S Jr.'s husband had knee surgery when I was up there, so I was wondering how he was doing. I don't have his number, so I texted S Jr. 

She said he was doing fine, healing well, PT starts Thursday. But my mom's neighbor E was missing. 

Missing? What? 

She filled me in. Yesterday he was going to visit his wife in the hospital and left around 9:30am. But he never made it to the hospital. 

Not really sure how this news made it back to people at Old Folks Land, but it did.  S Jr. and others sprang into action. They called the police. They called every hospital in Southeast MA.

No sign of him. Anywhere. 

I was going to call my mom, but S Jr. said she was out running her errands to the market and stuff, so I thought I'd wait. She told me that his friend was driving up and down the highways looking to see if there was some obvious sign that his car went off the road and into the woods or something. 

Could you imagine how he felt? Looking everywhere for some sort of obvious marks from tires, broken trees... worrying about your friend. 

After another hour or so I got word that E was okay, he was found. Safe.

In Connecticut. 

He must have driven past the exit he wanted, and kept going through Rhode Island. Confused, something. I don't know more details but I was absolutely surprised this happened. He's a sharp cookie and not one I'd expect to become lost. 

I was exceptionally relieved that he was okay. I guess that his friend who went looking for him was bringing him home. Not sure how the car is coming home. I never did call my mom so I'll do that tomorrow morning. 

After lunch, I felt sick. Tired, bloated, my eyes were burning but I don't have a fever or anything. 

Sometimes you just feel blah. Yeah? 

I managed to take a nap, which I normally don't nap. I haven't been able to nap for some time now. But I did. 

Around 4, I woke up from the snooze, and realized I should do steps to get my mile for the city challenge. I set out to do just the mile but was walking most of it, not jogging, no fast or fancy walking, and I just kept going. 

50 minutes? Can I make it to ... 60? 

Meh. No I cannot.

That was enough. And dinner was ready. And I was hungry. 

No picture today. Just digits. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 50 min/2.57 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 138
4:45pm: 81
10:30pm: 117

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
11am: english muffin w/pb
1:45pm: met+glip
5pm: kitchen sink cookie from aldi
5:30pm: spicy chicken and rice burrito a la geoff
8:45pm: met+glip

Out and About

We had two checks we needed to deposit, so we drove to the next city over to use the ATM. One of the checks just would NOT cooperate, frustratingly so. And the mobile app for depositing checks isn't behaving either. I'm going to have to drive down there again to take care of this in person. 

After the bank fail, Doug had a "drive around and look at stuff" vibe going on so we went way out into the western part of our neighboring county without our GPS on, without Google Maps. We saw signs for Ostertag Vistas, "Historic Ostertag Vistas!" and thought well heck now. Let's go look at that! 

Turns out it is a private and fancy wedding venue location, we were not permitted to drive up into the property without an appointment. I'm not interested in marrying anyone else, I've got my ride or die (35 years, bitches) and we felt ripped off for driving all the way the fuck out there thinking we would see something cool and noteworthy. 

Meh. Thanks for nothing, Ostertag whatevers.

But it was a beautiful day for a drive all through the woods, up and down roads, all over. And eventually we got to a road we knew that would take us home. 

We passed our house. 

We went further down into Hagerstown to the Hub City brewery, which is normally closed Mondays but I saw on Facebook they were open today. Happy to stop in after almost two hours of toodlin' aboot Mountain Maryland for a potty and a brew. 

Hardly anyone was there, so we had the barkeep to ourselves and it was a nice way to unwind before heading home. 

Tonight I made dinner - I've been wanting a meatloaf, so I asked Geoff to cut the potatoes and set them aside. 

Ha.

I should have said "cut 3 potatoes per person" but I didn't and he cut this entire giant ass BAG of potatoes. Huh. Okay. So we'll have left over potatoes. I can make a cottage pie or something this week. Meatloaf always takes about an hour, it was already 6pm by the time we came home, so dinner was on the later side than if Geoff was in charge. He's mister Make Dinner At 5pm. I'm not. 

After dinner, because I was shorted an hour of steps and behind anyway, I hopped on the treadmill for an additional 15 min. I intended to take Toffee out but it was so cold and windy. Neither she nor I wanted any of that nonsense. 

Good day all around!

Digits below! 

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours. Missed 4pm in the car; treadmill in the morning for 30 min/1.78 mi. Again to make up missing steps, 15 min/.83 mi, 11k+steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 132 
n/a pm: n/a
11pm: 129

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
2pm: met:glip; atkins protein drink mixed into my coffee
3:30pm: atkins snack bar 
5pm: 2 beers at the brewery
6:15pm: 1 beer at home; "kitchen sink" cookie from Aldi
7:15pm: 2 hefty slabs of meatloaf, carrots, a lot of mashed potatoes (more than I shoulda!)

Do nothing, eat food, watch football

We didn't do much today. 

I wanted to do things like, oh, clean and tidy. But nothing came of the day. I ended up sleeping until just before 10am, and missed the 9am steps by just a couple. But I made up for it. We each took our turn on the treadmill, and it was football time before we knew it. Playoff football weekend excitement! 

I will aim for getting things done tomorrow with my day off. There are some boxes in my bedroom that need unpacked, there are downstairs things, and maybe we'll leave the house and do/go somewhere. Maybe? Doug's birthday is Friday so maybe we'll do something nice and special? 

Somehow I managed to make myself stay on the treadmill for 45 min and that was a touch over 2.5 miles. I keep entertaining the idea that maybe I can do a 5k, which would be 3.1 miles. 

Maybe I can force myself to a full hour and that'll be a 5k? Can my brain let me do that? Stay with this and not scream with boredom? 

An actual 5k would be something that I'd have to finish just to get home, or get to the celebratory beer at the end at the brewery. So there's your motivation to finish, right? As of right now, I'm already home. I can just decide one mile or 2 miles or 5k, if I can bring myself to do that because I'm here.... 

Wish me luck as I attempt to make this happen as a goal. 

I remember when I started doing the 'dedicated 10' because the nutritionist told me to pick something that I hated the least, and do it for 10 min a day. I should send her my fitbit stats. 

Geoff went to the market and I made spinach artichoke dip that actually would be a REALLY good stuffing for chicken breasts. Note to self. Use more cream cheese next time for creamier dip.

So a lot of doing nothing. And that's okay. Right? Right. 

Digits below pictures. 

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours. Missed 9am by a few steps. Treadmill, 45 min/2.53 miles, 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

10am: 130 
4:30pm: 121
10pm: 164

food & meds:
10am: jardiance+phentermine
3pm: met+glip; atkins protein bar
5pm: an epic ton and a half of homemade spinach and artichoke dip, pita chips+ round butter pretzels
Kaluha sombrero (to get the milk out of the fridge) 
6:30pm: big piece of pork loin in a geoff sauce w/4 pierogi and buttered peas
white wine

The Cheese and the Airplanes

When I was staying at my mom's she came tearing down to the bedroom where I was working (and by "tearing" I mean actually using her cane, and shuffling her feet faster than usual. That's "tearing) and she yelled from the kitchen "DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE AIRPLANES!?" 

I ... sat there for a second thinking holy shit was there some sort of terrorist attack? Did planes suddenly fall from the sky? Millions of people dead everywhere? 

I quickly opened our work slack to see if there was anything in Breaking News while I uttered "uhhhhhhh, no? What about the airplanes?" 

"The water on the airplanes is bad! Don't order coffee! Don't order tea! DON'T WASH YOUR HANDS IN THE SINK!" 

Feeling a touch confused, I think I just stared at her. "People are getting sick! They did a big test. Only Delta scored highest." 

Still confused, still staring "You're flying this weekend. BE CAREFUL!" Oh okay. She's concerned about me. I get it. Very good. I don't drink coffee or tea on airplanes, and I don't usually order anything that needs ice. I carry a small Purell hand sanitizer in my backpack instead of using the bathroom sink because of a lot of reasons. I don't know how good the soap is but now okay, I don't know how good the soap and water are. 

"Thank you for letting me know," I said. 

The woman was in an absolute tizzy and she told everyone at her restaurant about this news report. And I sat there, dumbfounded.

The other night Doug's mom called us and was very concerned, "Did you hear about the cheese?" 

Oh my. Same thing. What. What about the cheese?

"There is a big cheese recall. Didn't you hear?" 

No. We didn't hear. 

"Well, I just bought cheese at Aldi. I think I have to throw it out." I spent time looking things up on the internet from the FDA about the cheese. She didn't have the cheese that's being recalled. We assured her that if she wanted to bring it to Aldi and ask - she could but we thought she was safe enough to eat it and be okay. 

"There's only one way to find out," she joked. 

Saturday of a three day weekend, Geoff woke up before us and made coffee, Doug and Toffee were in the guest room and somehow, miraculously, I slept until 7am and went down to the bathroom, and then back up to bed. I slept until 9:30 and that was bliss. 

Doug went to the farm stand and got a bunch of apples. We all used the treadmill. We ate a good dinner and watched a lot of football. Super exciting.

Digits! Below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. One treadmill trip. 40 min/2.25 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

10am: 122 
5pm: 132
10pm: 113

food & meds:
10am: jardiance (phentermine on order)
2pm: met+glip; english muffin w/pb+ spot of peach jam
5pm: plate with apple, cheese, cashews, and some left over steak tip pieces; white wine
6:15pm: cheesy shells and broccoli w/ mushrooms and mixed in bacon (usually I add chicken breast chunks but we didn't have any) 
8:30pm: met+glip

3 Day Weekend

I wrote a whole big entry and am too tired to finish it, so. Just the digits today. Watched an interesting mini-series on Netflix about President Garfield's assassination called Death By Lightning. Michael Shannon - amazing. What a performance. And Nick Offerman, serious and funny all at once. 

A couple days ago we listened to a podcast episode about Garfield's assassin, and how Garfield actually died (sepsis, not from the actual bullet). 

Digits below. zzzzzzz!

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Treadmill, 36 min/2.02 miles; Treadmill, 18 min/.83 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

7:30am: 120 
4:45pm: 100
11pm: 146

food & meds:
7:30am: jardiance (phentermine on order)
10am: english muffin w/pb
12:45pm: tuna salad on 647 sub roll; met+glip
5pm: bowl of cashews
6pm: big piece of chicken parm
9:15pm: met+glip
no wine

Windy Windy Day

No warmer out today, and extra windy. Thankful for the treadmill for my steps. I had a lot of meetings so I got a quick walk in during lunch time, and then late I needed 2500 steps to get to 10k. 

Poor Toffee. No walk for her two days in a row and she didn't even want to go outside today!  

We had a couple minor oopsies today. Geoff put some boxes near our water heater, which has started leaking, and needs to be replaced (we knew that going into the house but figured we would wait until absolutely necessary, and now it is absolutely necessary). Doug lost his mind when he went downstairs and saw the boxes he had moved AWAY from the water heater put back. He doesn't understand how Geoff's mind works sometimes. Like. WHY did you move these back. At all. Who asked for that. No one. 

One of the boxes was my wedding dress - and the box is soaked. I don't want to open it. Well, I should. I think it is in plastic and in the box. Maybe it is okay. But I honestly don't know why I still have it. 

Once, I tried to find an organization that took wedding dresses and converted them to burial dresses for infants. I believe they are called Angel Gowns. The last time I looked into this none of the companies were taking dresses, they had plenty. So yeah, maybe I'll open the box and make sure it is okay and attempt again to donate it. 

All the other boxes were fine. 

Second oopsie was I went to take a shower after the treadmill this afternoon and the shower door came right off the track. I was standing there, holding it by the tiny little nub of a handle and trying very hard to keep it from falling anywhere. I called for help, Doug came down and was able to assist me. It made me think of that time we were in Arizona at the World's Worst Hotel Ever, the Willcox Inn, and the window fell out of the track and I was standing there in my underpants in the middle of the night trying to get it back in place. If you've never read that entry, go ahead. Probably one of my favorites.

Luckily, this was not as dramatic but I still had a good laugh. 

My work son and I had a great client meeting/training. Then we had our regular digital platform office hour and that was great. 

I did a bunch of work after the office hours. Geoff made an amazingly good dinner, and I cleaned up after it. He's messy. I need to have a talk with him about not being as messy as he goes, and cleaning up when he is done. We share a lot of the duty. But. I feel like he can do a better job cleaning up after himself. 

Digits below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill 27 min/1.51 mi. 2nd Treadmill, 18 min/1mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:45am: 165 
4:30pm: 91
10:30pm: 162* note late met+glip

food & meds:
8:45am: jardiance (phentermine on order)
noon: last of Geoff's chicken marsala (3 tiny pieces and a lot of sauce) 
1pm: met+glip (ha. on time today!) 
4:30pm: atkins snack bar; handful of unsalted (eww) cashews
6:30pm: bowl with some tater tots, covered with homemade pulled pork from Geoff
no wine
9:30pm: met+glip ( a little late, meant to take by 8:45 but was on the treadmill)

Rainy Rainy Day

I had a couple humorous oopsies today. The big one was in our training class, my work son asked me to show the attendees how to do a thing.  I could not remember how to do the thing. 

I fuddled my way through it, and said "so right here, B, what would you suggest that I add now" and "Say we wanted a two column lay out... how do I just add a new column once I've selected a one column layout." 

He played along wonderfully but I think he totally knew I was talking out of my butt. And we sounded convincing. 

Today it rained all day, Toffee was not interested in outside and I was not interested in taking her for a walk, because I also did not want to be wet and outside. 

I hit the treadmill, and entertained myself. I got to a mile, then I said well, how about just get to 30 min. And then okay I am at 1.75. Why not stick with it until we get to 2 miles? 

And the music was pumping, and it was working out really well. I made it to 2 miles and then realized we had training in 20 minutes so I had to shower and make ready. 

I also realized at 4pm that I forgot to take my met+glip around 1pm, I had eaten my english muffin at 11:30 and thought that was too early to take it, so I said I'd take it before training. Ha. Remembered after it was all over.

My work son's sister had a baby yesterday. Number two for her. So we wrapped up training so he could go run to see his brand new nephew. 

So she's by proxy my work daughter and that's my work grandson? 

Ha. 

He sent me so many pictures. We're all in love. 

I spent a lot of time tonight fixing a problem with some user pages in the content management system, and there has to be a better faster way to do it, especially because the next person has four people pages with tons of stories assigned to them, and .... well. manually editing all of these will suck. 

Right then. Bedtime. Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 35 min/2.03 mi. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 140 
n/apm: x
10:45pm: 132

food & meds:
9am: phentermine+jardiance
11:30: english muffin w/pb and lil'bitty dollop of homemade peach jam
4:15pm: met+glip (completely forgot to take after treadmill time)
5:45pm: cheese tortellini w/spicy sausage and cheezy tomato sauce (a la geoff)
white wine
10pm: met+glip

Training Day and Bloodwork

I woke up early this morning to spend time training a colleague who needed to learn how to use one of our products. He's contracting, and is a firefighter most of the time, so he has been working 6am-9am. Today we met at 8. 

I love teaching people how our products work, and, because he'll be doing testing on the next product I showed him all the fun broken things in our current product. 

It was a great hour long training. 

I dove into work then, got a bunch of things ironed out and had a client meeting which went okay but they've messed up their website in such an epic fashion I don't even know where to start with it. I have to set up a meeting with a colleague and the product owner to ask how they did this thing and undo it. meh? 

We then had client training and it went very well. There is always one person in the training who has 100,000 questions. About 10 minutes before the training ended I had to leave to go get bloodwork done, I was about a week overdue for my PT/INR test. Thankfully traffic was really moving, and I made it there in plenty of time. 

On the way home, not so much. 

I didn't get to do a walk during the work day, and it was too dark by the time I got back to take Toffee out for one so I hit the treadmill for a while. And then again to get another couple hundred steps done after dinner. I need to time things better and make the best use of hours. Tomorrow morning I think I'll have time. 

But I do want to walk Miss Toffee. 

Anyway, good day, overall. Digits below! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill 21 min/1.3 mi; treadmill 10 min/.55; 10k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

7am: 100 
n/apm: x
10pm: 170

food & meds:
7am: phentermine+jardiance
10:30am: zero sugar yogurt w/granola bar crushed up
12:30: met+glip
3pm: mixed nuts
6pm: Geoff's mexican mess. White rice, spicy beef, peppers, cheese jalapeños. 
8pm: met+glip
white wine
10pm: protein shake