Bruise and New Growth

A few days ago at the dog park, a bunch of dogs got into a fracas, Toffee among them. I reached in to grab her by the harness and pull her back. 

Another dog went to bite her, like dogs do, but contacted the back of my hand. No skin broken, no harm no foul, no big deal. We got them all settled down and sent them to their corners. I thought nothing of it. 

Until yesterday, when I noticed the bruise. 

I do bruise easily thanks to being on blood thinners, but wow, this is epic. The entire back of my right hand is mottled. Yikes and wow. 

So when people go at Trumpf about his bruises, he takes a butt ton of baby aspirin, and maybe he's on some other medications, but yeah - I can see it being a thing if he bumps he bruises. Probably the only sympathetic thing you'll hear me say about him. 

Wondering how long it'll take for this to clear. The picture doesn't even do this justice, to be honest. You'd have to see it in person to believe this one. 

In other news, back in November my friend H gave me a monstera cutting. I thought it maybe wasn't doing well, the leaves are a bit curled in, and maybe the edges are browned. I water her. I take care of her. I'm worried about her. I feel like I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. 

But today I noticed this shoot coming off one of the dealies, and it is a leaf. It started to unfurl through the day today and it is glorious and beautiful. So okay, I am doing something right. I just need to figure out how to make her thrive. 

Anyway, got myself a little off kilter today. Missed my meds at 1 and took them late. I fell asleep watching TV after dinner. I never do that. Anyway. Digits below! 

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours. Fell asleep on the couch and missed 7pm. Treadmill run, 30 min/2.06 mi. Finished up the 10k for the day on the treadmill, 16 min/.82 mi.  10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 122
5pm: 130
10:15pm: 149

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
1pm: big bowl of homemade chicken salad w/ grapes, walnuts. 
3:30pm: met+glip (forgot to take at 1) 
6:30pm: big bowl of chili by Geoff w/corn chips, shredded cheddar
9:30pm: met+glip
no alcohol

Early Morning Banana Bread

The windows were wide open all night, the fan blowing. Comfortable cool, resulting in a good night's sleep. 

I'm not sure what time they came by but the trash truck did its thing, noisily, somewhere around 4am? That's okay, I can fall back asleep. Also, I'm not mad. They bust their asses, and it is pouring out so, bless them for all they do that I don't have to, ya know? 

At about 5:30am, my neighbors' dogs (the beagle monster hounds) went out and barked their fool heads off, and that one I could not recover from. I got up, and Toffee joined me. We headed downstairs. My brain was spinning about work stuff. 

I need to do an audit of all the help documentation for the product that is retiring, and replace those help documents with new help documents for the product we are rolling out to take its place. 

That, also, I could not get "Yeah" by Usher out of my head. "She asked for one more dance, and I'm like Yeah, how the hell am I supposed to leave... and I said doot da doot doo dooda doooda doooo." 

Downstairs to make the coffee and feed the Toffee. 

She wolfed her brekkie down and I started the bean brew. I opened the door to let her out, and she stood on the porch for a while surveying the situation. I see a lot of things online where people post about their Pitties/mixes who hate the rain and this girl is right with them. 

She went, though. She must have really had to go because rain is like acid and poison to her.... But she came right back immediately. 

I had loaded the dishwasher last night after dinner, but there were still a lot of dishes in the sink. And we know I hate going to bed with dishes in the sink but I was in no mood for hand washing. After I went to bed though, Geoff unloaded the dishwasher at some point. Nice! So I the dishwasher was loaded up (still more dishes but they can wait). 3 hour cycle, they'll be done by 9ish. 

Coffee and phone game time, and big cuddles and snuggles in the still, quiet, dark living room with the Toff until about 7. I had wrapped her in a blanket because she was damp. She enjoyed that greatly and snored away. 

What next. 

There were four bananas on the counter, telling me they were ready to transform into delicious banana bread. Okay then. That's an hour long baking cycle with a 10 minute prep. Let's go. Hand mixing is hard for me anymore, so I got out the little machine, let her do all the work and prayed it was not so noisy that it disturbed Doug's sleep.  

Doug was not disturbed. 

The banana bread came out perfectly, I was already working and doing things well before 7:30am. Still working on helping that client out with the Google thing, and a couple other big setups and comms. 

I drafted a great email for the product testing an my Work Son sent it for me. Folks are excited! I'm excited. 

Oh! Fitbit sent me this cute graphic yesterday about the miles I've walked. I feel like they used to send these little landmark graphis like "you've walked all the length of Florida!" So it feels good to have walked through the middle of the earth since I started using a fitbit in, I think, 2014? 

Digits, below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 32 min/2.11 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

6am: 91
4:45pm: 160
10pm: 135

food & meds:
6am: jardiance+phentermine
8:30am: banana bread slice
2pm: english muffin w/pb and regular sugar j; met+glip
3pm: atkins protein bar
6pm: bowl of rotini pasta and alfredo chicken (a la Geoff) 
7pm: ramekin candied cashews
8:30pm: met+glip
white wine

Storms and Storms

It was roasting hot last night. We had the windows open, and I brought a small fan upstairs. We don't have the AC in the window yet and there is only one little vent dealie in our bedroom anyway, so putting on the house AC doesn't make much of a dent up there. 

It is supposed to be 37 degrees on Saturday, chance of snow. So we're holding off on actually putting in the AC a bit. 

I didn't sleep that well. Thankfully Toffee wasn't flush up against me being hot. There was some sleep, just not enough sleep.  

I had a stupid crazy busy day today with meetings all up and down the calendar starting at 9:30. I didn't get a shower before the first meeting and well ... some days are like that. 

We have a client site launch on Monday and I am working like mad to help the person doing all the work get things set up. She is such a trooper. We ran into a snag with Google AdManager and the stupid required AdSense that you have to sign up with first. We've been fighting with this product for a couple weeks at this rate and my Work Son had a breakthrough realization on something, and boom - we got the verification to go through! 

Tomorrow we have to do another step. And another. And eventually we'll be able to get the Google AdManager account setup and working. Pray for us. 

So help me, I hate this product and wish nobody would ever ever use it. I wish our product team built our own advertising tool. But. It's an industry standard. Even though it both sucks and blows. 

We got hit by a big thunderstorm right after I had a check in with the client. It was really exciting. I was going to take an outside walk and thought better of it, right before the storm hit. 

Thank goodness for the treadmill. 

After the Treadmill (which went pretty well), dinner. Geoff found a Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork and it was outstanding. He started it at 10am, and let it sit in the slow cooker all day. Magnificent. I told him he can make this any time he wants. 

I did some further site setup work for Apple News for 6 clients who have a training tomorrow afternoon with them. I enabled some website sharing setups between a bunch of clients and one of them isn't working so I'm going to work on it tomorrow. I'm sure I am overlooking one small thing.

At about 9pm I finished up what I need to do, mostly. I sat outside on the patio, played some phone games, and just enjoyed it being not so roasting hot. 

Tomorrow is a lighter day but I'm going to be scrambling to help that client with the site launch. 

No picture. Digits below. 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 31 min/2.18 miles; 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 157
4:30pm: 134
11pm: 144

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
1pm: large bowl of salad w/can of tuna, mayo, bacon mixed in
2pm: met+glip
4:30pm: atkins protein bar snack
7pm: pulled pork, homemade by Geoff (amazing)
8:30pm: met+glip
no alcohol etc. 

The Girl's Birthday

My workwife and I don't get to see each other too much, so today being her birthday and all, I wanted to do something fun with her. She's got a lot going on in the personal life, and I thought the personal life needs some super fun time. I want to be that super fun time. 

She met me at a mall and we walked and walked, and ducked into a couple stores to browse. We got to the food court and I felt like I should eat but she already did before she came over. Everything was pasta and chinese food with lo mein or fried rice, so I opted for a very small cheesesteak (should have done the double meat for protein). We sat and chatted, caught up on all the things going on. 

We do this once in a while on zoom at work, but in person, at a mall, being besties, hanging out. I had a great time and I think she did too. 

I headed home, and traffic on 70 was so easy and good. Cruised along and just enjoyed the quiet. I had my phone basically turned off for battery saving, forgot the charging cord at home, so I wanted to be alerted if there were any accidents reported on Waze. 

Geoff made us burgers tonight, Doug took Toffee to the dog park and I passed because I was tired from the driving and the hanging out. I sat out on the patio and just chilled, talked to Linda a bit, and enjoyed the nice weather. 

It is supposed to be nice like this again tomorrow and then possibly storms and .... possibly snow. As Homer Simpson says, "Stupid Smarch Weather." 

Tomorrow is a busy busy day but here's me and my birthday girl pal. Digits Below. Sad the moose's antlers are cut off. (I typed ears. then... horns. Those are not the right words). 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.   2 walks in the mall, one for about .9 miles and another for .79. combined 1.8 miles. leisurely. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 121
4:30pm: 160
9:15pm: 170

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
noon: very small cheesesteak in the mall w/onions, peppers, lettuce, tomato, mayo. ate the roll. 
2pm:met+glip
6:30pm: one cheeseburger over big bed of salad w/bleu cheese dressing, a little coleslaw
8pm: small pieces of a brownie from the bakery, one of the pb/reeses chocolate one, and one piece of the oreo and cream one 
8:45pm: met+glip

Late night phone calls

I was all ready to write my entry and Aaron called from Oregon. We'd been playing phone tag for a while and finally connected. 

It's so nice to hear from him. We hadn't talked since maybe August. Long time to go without a chat with a bestie. He's been working on a boat in Alaska, had some surgery on his hips in the fall, is back at it and feeling super good. 

Today was a hard day mentally. The day after the spring forward always kills me. I spent most of the morning in zombie mode, got my brain unfogged by mid-afternoon. Geoff took Toffee for a walk, and initially I thought Doug and I would take her to the dog park, but I had a super emergency "help me" session with a favorite client in Alaska. I worked until after 6 while Geoff made supper. I should have been supervising him because again, he made a mistake in the recipe and it came out horribly watery (nothing worse than watery soup!) Flavor wise, it was decent. No complaints. But yeah. Not the most fulfilling supper. 

Notes for next time. The house smells amazing though. 

After dinner, I decided to make use of this later sunset business and went for a solo walk. I headed one direction, around the senior center, then up to the main drag, crossed over and down the hill. There is a cut over to the dog park about a half block down but I went to the next stop light to get to the big park. 

It was so nice to see so many families out, kids on the playground, and I thought about walking past the ice rink and to the other park and coming back around to our street at the top but said "meh." 

All told, an easy walk, a little over 2 miles, 45 min. No running. Just didn't feel like running. 

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off to go to Baltimore. The work wife's birthday is tomorrow and Tuesday/mid week birthdays are hard to have fun. So I'm going to take her to lunch. Looking forward to that! 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.   45 min. outdoor walk, 2.25 mi. Took it very slow but went further than I'd planned. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 92
4:15pm: 113
10:30pm: 119

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
several cashews all day
11:30am: english muffin w/pb and low sugar j
1pm: met+glip
6:30pm: carrot & ginger soup w/ nice piece of crusty bread; more cashews
8:30pm: met+glip
no alcohol/wine/beer 

Dam 5 and the Four Locks

There was no argument about what to do today. It was a get outside and enoy the day kind of day. 

I let Toffee out, and noted immediately that hey. Oh, hell yes. OH YES! I'm having coffee on the patio. Fuck YEAH. 

I cleaned the table (thought about doing it last week but eventually said meh). Toffee was doing her usual tour of duty around the yard, and I came out with my coffee and just plopped down. 

Bliss. 

We had kind of a breeze coming from the north east, so a sweatshirt was handy. I enjoyed a good hour of just playing phone games and sipping coffee. 

One of the main reasons why I wanted this house was this spot. I'd love to screen this in, someday. Future plans, but for today and right now... this is what your friend needed and wanted most. 

I surveyed the yard and thought about all the things that need to be done. Mental notes, get the big rake and hand it to The Boy. Drink more coffee. 

Doug let me know that he didn't want to dilly and/or dally today but go out and have some fun. He wanted to take me up to Dam 5 on the C&O canal. He went there when I wasn't around at some point, maybe I was at my mom's. But he thought it was a super cool spot and I could get my mile walk in easy peasy. 

We headed up and the parking area is closed, everything is roped/guarded off. He was disappointed (Information on the work being done is here at the official website.) We parked up on the street and came down around the Lock House, and managed to get onto the trail at about mile 106.5 I think. 

We walked up to the next Lock House, before mile 108, and enjoyed a hang out there. Hardly anyone was on the trail. We did meet one family and the kids were in love with Toffee. We listened to Peepers and I took a bunch of photos. 

Doug suggested we go home and I was kind of like, um... no? Can we do some more fun stuff out here in the world? 

He suggested we drive up to Four Locks next, and we took another short walk. You can stay overnight in the house there at the locks, it seems pretty cool! 

We stopped at one more location, McCoy's Ferry. Not much happening there, a nice trailer put-in for boats, but the action probably kicks in there really soon. 

We were thinking we'd go to Cushwa Brewing but I had some chicken in a marinade waiting for us, and we opted to head home for dinner. 

Daylight saving meant neither of us were hungry at 6pm, so Doug took a nap, I got dinner ready for grilling and goofed off for a while. 

Then, I talked to Linda for 3 hours. Hi Linda. Reading this on Monday Morning. 

Digits below. Of course.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours.  Big leisurely walks at the C&O canal. Combined/measured: 67 min/2.8 miles. 13k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

9am: 128
5pm: 113
10:30pm: 84

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
11:30am: 647 everything bagel w/cream cheese and turkey
1pm: met+glip
5:30pm: beer 
6:45pm: big salad, 2 slabs of chicken breast. beer. 
8pm: met+glip
made candied cashews so I ate a bunch of cashews in process.

Sometimes it doesn't work out exactly right, so ... pivot

Both the men in my house (my housemates! lol) had rough days today. 

After a leisurely morning hanging out in the living room, I asked Doug if he wanted to go and do anything today. It was cloudy and dreary, a bit colder than they'd told us it would be so he said no. Okay. I'll get ready for the treadmill then. 

As I was getting my shoes on, he went to try and work on the light fixture in the bathroom. 

It has these 3 hangy-downy dealies, and only the middle one works. The other two flicker a bit, and then shut off. He thought it was the bulbs, but no. It's the fixture itself. Something is loose.

I need Doug to do things that are not this light fixture, to be honest. I need him to sort through 6 bags of clothes that he has schlepped from Massachusetts to half of Maryland. I would like him to caulk the inside of the bathtub so we don't get water dripping down into Geoff's bathroom and need a whole new ceiling down there or some shit. I need him to clean up the fucking walnuts he harvested and put in boxes in the carport, thus making it very easy for squirrels to just feast all winter long. I need these things to happen. Not the light fixture. 

But, Doug is gonna Doug. And if I ask him to do those other things he gets mad, and says he'll get to them.

So instead of getting to the things I would love to see done, he set to trying to fix the dumb light fixture. 

I got on the treadmill. I knew it was going to be chaos. I love him. I love him so very much, but he is not a fixer upper guy most of the time. And today the situation was on brand. 

Earbuds in, I could hear yelling. I thought to myself just ... let him rage or whatever. Keep going on the treadmill. Keep running. Keep running.... I got to my half hour mark and even went a little further just because of the song that was playing. When I came out, he was working with Geoff to get the breaker switched back on. 

His face said it all. 

"No luck?" I asked.

"I busted it. It's busted. Now we have to replace it." 

Okay, I'm not mad. Not mad at all.

I hate the light fixture. So not a big fan of it, so when he busted it (and was VERY angry about it) and he sat down to shop for a new one online, I said great. Go for it. 

So now, he can't find anything that has a full rectangular wall mount that he actually likes. He HATES them all. Running commentary about how shitty this one looks, "ooooOOOooOOOoo INDUSTRIAL CHARM!" He doesn't like clear glass covers and those are super popular right now. Industrial and clear orbs. 

Finally he finds stuff he likes, but. 

It's a small circle mount to the wall, not the big giant rectangle. 

"Oh, I like that," I say, very supportively. "But we're probably going to have to paint the ... bathroom wall. Right?" 

And he gets angry. The minute you try to do something, it turns into a full blown out of control project. So yeah, now he's extra mad as he buys the light fixture. 

"Yeah. That's gonna have to happen." 

So, okay. I'm okay with that too. I am not a big fan of the wall color in the bathroom. Heck, I'll even paint the bathroom. Heck, we have a handyman that will do it. I'm sure that Victor will do an amazing job. 

And yes, also do the grout dealie on the tub. 

But he's mad. He cheered up enough to suggest we take Toffee to the dog park. He asked if I wanted to go and I think he expected I would say no because I did the treadmill. 

But the sun had come out, it was warming up nicely, the gloom was lifting. So I agreed to go. We had a good time until all 9 dogs got into a fight. There was a male English Bulldog that kept trying to mount a very scared hound mix named Iris. She was trying to run away, other dogs came in pursuit, and Toffee. Well. She detects chaos and sayd "I'M IN!" and jumped in to fight with the bulldog. It was chaos. We made sure everyone was okay and I told Doug we needed to take Toffee home. Exhausting! 

Meanwhile, Geoff had picked a dinner to prepare for us from a cookbook, and he was prepped and wanting to make this for days. I told him he'd probably need my help, it was a complicated recipe. What was it? Chicken Croquets with diced ham. 

So while this looked complicated, I figured he could do it. He set to getting things ready, and ran out to the market to pick up the parsley because he had forgotten it the other day.

Doug (after buying the new light fixture) read the recipe and got really irritated. "Oh he is NOT. NO. He is not making this." I told him to relax - let Geoff try this out and if it doesn't work, it won't be the first time he made something that wasn't perfect. 

Personally, I like when Geoff gets adventurous and wants to cook something new. I get sick of chicken parm or cheesesteak. He's been branching out and doing all kinds of interesting things. Fried rice from scratch. Really amazing Southwestern creamy chicken soup. 

We worked on getting the mix all together, and when it came time to take the chilled meat out of the fridge and turn it into little balls of happiness...

Let's just say, something wasn't right. 

The croquets didn't hold together, they seemed dry and uncooperative. Also, we don't have a deep fryer, so he opted to use a frying pan with a lot of oil in it. Probably never got up to the right temperature. They fell apart almost instantly. 

I helped him get the food out of the frying pan and into a big bowl - it looked an absolute mess (smelled good though). I'm thinking that he didn't multiply up the butter and egg mixture, or something, because he had a LOT more meat product than what the recipe called for so I told him to math that out to "triple" what it was asking for. 

I asked if there was anything else we could have for dinner, and he threw the tongs at the sink and stormed off. 

Reminding him that sometimes things don't always work out, being mad isn't the best plan. I told him hey, you tried. This wasn't an easy recipe. I'm not mad. I'm proud of you for giving it a shot. But we do need dinner so what else is available.

He said chicken parm. Which made me laugh inside. "Sounds great. Chicken parm it is." 

"That's five hours of my life I won't get back." he says angrily. Indeed. The recipe as complicated. You had to do things, and chill things and then form these blobs of chicken and let them chill again. It was a long time. 

I wished indeed that it had worked out. Just like I wished indeed that Doug was able to fix the light fixture. 

Sometimes it doesn't work out exactly right, so.... pivot. 

I told Geoff maybe the stuff he made would be good re-fried and mixed with alfredo sauce over pasta? He seemed unsure. 

But I think that mix of stuff can be saved, and I'm willing to take a shot with it.. 

He made the chicken parm up, and threw it in the oven. He grabbed a beer, set the timer for 30 minutes, and went downstairs. 

Dinner turned out just fine with the pivot. 

Holy shit I did a lot of steps today. Funny how that works when you use the treadmill AND take the dog for a walk. Beyond Basics. 

Anyway, no pictures but not for lack of trying. Dogs are fast at the dog park. 

Digits below. 

 

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. A day of walks. Treadmill run, 32 min/2.25 miles. To the dog park, 14 min/.6 mi. Home from the dog park, 19 minutes/.9 miles (3.75 miles total for the day's measurable exercise. 65 minutes). 15k+ steps by bedtime. 

blood glucose:

9am: 120
4:30pm: 103
11:30pm: 63* (tested 2x, both the same basically. rather low. Looking forward to testing in the morning. 

food & meds:
9am: jardiance+phentermine
1pm: met+glip; some chunks of ham from dicing up food for a recipe Geoff was working on
6:15pm: 2 chocolate chip cookies from Aldi
7pm: 1/2 a big slab of chicken parm (and it was damn good). 
7:30: met+glip
no alcohol

"You're an Athlete Now"

So I wanted to write about the massage therapy session. Also, last night was the first night in a very long time that I slept all the way through the night. Well, I did wake up a few times to roll over, or push Toffee out of the center of the bed, but I managed to fall right back asleep in my own bed without going downstairs. 

Yay, me.

Anyway, massage.

When I booked the massage online, I selected "I don't mind which gender therapist" because you could select male or female on the form. I understand when women may not want to be 1:1 massaged by a dude. 

Personally, I just want someone who is good at what they do. 

I was assigned a guy, no problem. 

He was a Geoffrey. I'm not kidding. When he came out to get me and introduced himself I had to smile. He is about 6'3", 250 lbs., big curly hair, little chin beard, glasses, great big smile. 

We had a chat before the massage to go over what I was hoping to get out of the session. I told him that my right hip was killing me, my knee hurt, and I have a good case of tech-neck. After talking to my family care practitioner, she suggested I start with massage and if things did not get better we could ponder arthritis.  

I told him that I'd entered the 100 miles in 100 days challenge, and that in the past few weeks I'd been running more than walking. He was stoked for me. 

"Your hip hurts because of running, not arthritis, I'd put money on that. So let's check in there and get the hip abductors and glutes taken care of." 

I also told him about how I can't take ibuprofen for pain, thanks to the blood clotting disorder situation and how it ... isn't good. And that my doctor has instructed me to not take tylenol because my liver enzymes and other blood tests over the last year have been high. I was taking a lot of tylenol, so I've super scaled back. Instead of daily, maybe twice a week max. But yeah, I'm feeling pain a lot. 

She told me to use biofreeze on the hurty bits. 

"And how is that working out for you?" he asked. 

"Not as good as taking tylenol, of course." I said, "but it is better than absolutely nothing."

Onto the table.

He started with my neck, back, and shoulders, said he could feel some tightness on the left shoulder and that is exactly where my tech-neck lives. 

Down my back, asking me if anything hurt from him pressing. "I'm a big guy and sometimes I get my whole body into this, so let me know if any of this is painful. Some people hate it but they think that's what deep tissue massage is. They're supposed to hate it. No. I want them to tell me if I'm going too hard." 

No dude, you're ... fantastic. 

We talked about how massage is therapy. You go to the doctor, you get meds. You get mental health care, meds or therapy. You eat food, fuels your body, you don't deny yourself any of these other things but really - massage is not a luxury or a "Treat Yo Self," but an essential therapy. You don't have to do it every day, but once a month, every other month. Get your muscles worked out. 

He got to my hip, my glutes, and the backs of my thighs. "Oh yeah. You're right. You're an athlete now!" I laughed. 

"No, I'm serious. You've been doing the walking challenge, probably doing a lot of walking before you started tracking the challenge, and now you're running. You're tight. Your muscles are screaming." 

I told him that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in years. Calling my doughy fat body an "athlete," thank you.

He flipped me over and did my quads and I could feel it so much. He pressed on each of the muscles, adductors, abductors, quads, hamstrings, and tendons. I told him that before I recently lost some weight I had no idea what this .... thing was on the side of my knee, the hamstring tendon. And he laughed. Discovering and learning about my body is fun. 

We talked about how he played high school and college football, and blew out his shoulder 5 games into his freshman year season. Once you get injured and decide to not play football anymore you have no scholarship money, and you ... basically drop out. 

He took some gap time, he had some surgery and said "for the rest of my life my shoulder will be fucked up but I'm a very happy person. I tried. And the universe pointed me in a very different direction. I would be graduating this year if I stayed at a 4 year college, and now I'm fully employed, working on my Bachelors in Finance online, and making people happy."

Wait a minute. 

"You said, you'd be graduating this year?" 

He said yes. 

"How... old are you?" I asked. "If you don't mind me asking. You don't have to say." 

"I will be 22 in May." 

Holy shit. You are a baby. 

"Well, you present, if I can steal that phrase from gender identity discussions, you present much older." I said. "I would have guessed by this discussion and your skills, and everything that you were maybe 27 or 28."

My son doesn't present as old as he does. 

"I am an old soul, I guess. But also you're super easy to talk to," he said. "I'm an incredibly introverted person, and I think this is the most I've talked to anyone during a session. You just make it easy." 

I wanted to bring him home and have him become friends with Geoff or something. 

"I think I could talk to you all day," I said, and he laughed and agreed. 

He made it down to my feet, and talked about how my arches are a little stiff. I said I'm for sure feeling that. He encouraged me to go barefoot as much as possible and I told him for sure, I'm barefoot all of the time. A suggestion to use a golf ball to rub the bottoms of my feet daily, just kind of work it out. My feet will feel a lot better.

He finished up, I got dressed and he waited for me in the lobby. He asked if I'd come back, and I said hell yeah. We shook hands and parted with a smile. 

He said I'm an athlete. 

Thanks.

Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 31 min/2.11 mi. 11k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 143
4:45pm: 103
11pm: 134 

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
protein shake in coffee
1:30pm: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j; met+glip
4:45pm: hostess ring ding dealie
6pm: bowl of penne pasta w/meat sauce and a slice of garlic bread; white wine
7pm: ramekin of cashews
8:30pm: met+glip

Massage Therapy Day

I really want to write up the whole massage therapy thing because it is hilarious and I had a great time. But I'm super tired. Again, did not sleep well. Brain full of work. Meetings. Stress. Meh.

So I'm going to save it for tomorrow and just give you the digits. Good night.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill between meetings, 18 min/1.12 miles (super slow start but wanted to knock the mile out while I had some energy!) Another treadmill tour, much slower but got some good distance, 34 min/2.03 mi. 12k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:15am: 104
4:45pm: 103
9:45pm: 200 *notice when I took my meds and last thing I ate

food & meds:
8:15am: jardiance+phentermine
protein shake mixed in my coffee
12:30pm: pb & low sugar j on 647 wheat
1pm: met+glip
7pm: one small piece of stromboli and salad (did not enjoy stromboli) 
9pm: bowl of 2 good mixed berry yogurt w/granola bar smashed up in it. Met+glip
no alcohol

Gloomy ass day

I have not been sleeping well. Today was exceptionally damp and gloomy. And it made me a lot extra tired. 

I had late meetings today, and a ton of morning time wide open so I opted to treadmill before lunch. Strangely enough, I felt really good even though I was basically exhausted (4 hr. of sleep last night AND the night before). 

Usually I aim for hitting 2k steps by lunch time. If I'm able to do that I know I can get to 10k. Today, I was at 5k by lunch time. Whew. 

Work was exceptionally busy this afternoon, we're getting closer and closer to the big project product launch and it is time for my work son and me to send out notifications to the clients we've chosen for testing. I started drafting the emails tonight, and set up a meeting for him and me to hash it all out. 

There are still some futzy things happening and I'm so thankful my own manager is doing the bulk of the user testing and discovering things. Because I have not touched it.

There is a quarterly reporting requirement for this product, and the quarter ends at the end of April. Our goal is to have the product launch fully right after that, and training and everything done the first week of May before I go to Molly's wedding in NH. 

Wish me luck. 

Geoff made a kick ass fried rice dinner but he really has got to start adding more protein to things. Still, I'm not complaining, it was delicious. 

If he didn't live here I'd probably just have an english muffin w/pb and low sugar j for dinner most nights. 

The only other exciting thing is I bought a new lint filter for our dryer. It kicks ass. It's the right part but the door does not want to close right unless you kind of lift it up a wee bit. I had to demo that for Geoff tonight when he started his laundry. 

I scheduled a massage therapy appointment tomorrow. I've been having that problem with my hip, and now my left shoulder is like restless shoulder or something. And the bottom of my right foot is being stupid like the left one was when we went to Vegas in 2024. 

I'm looking forward to that. It's been quite a while since I've treated myself. Expensive but do not tell Doug. ha. 

Anyway. Bedtime. After you look at my cuddly doggo.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. Treadmill, 30 min/2.16 mi. (almost broke a 14 min mile! so close!) 11k+ by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:30am: 114
4:45pm: 168* (see meds below)
10:15pm: 110

food & meds:
8:30am: jardiance+phentermine
protein shake mixed into my coffee
12:30: small container of mac & cheese with hamburger
3pm: atkins protein snack
4pm: met+glip (completely forgot to take at 1pm) 
6pm: bowl of fried rice w/shrimp a la Geoff
white wine
9:30pm: met+glip (since I messed up the lunch dosage I went later tonight with the dinner dosage).