And This is Why Resolutions Are Silly!

How about it?  It is May 29, 2013 and the last time I blogged was January 1, 2013.  So much for good intentions!  I’d love to tell you all that this mom has been spring cleaned in the many, many days since her last post.  That too would be silly!  It hasn’t been such a bad year so far though.  After hitting the 20 lb post-surgery mark, I joined Weight Watchers and lost half of those pounds.  The switching of doctors to one who has me on a better pain-control regimen has resulted in more exercise.  The acceptance of the fact that full-time employment and mothering are just barely compatible has also helped reduce my stress levels.  I think I am finally heading towards a better place for me!

So what’s next on the agenda?  More weight loss would be great.  I have been enjoying a great book called “The Blue Zone” by Dan Buettner.  It is an interesting look at some small communities which have an unusual number of centenarians amongst them.  I haven’t quite finished yet, but the overwhelming thing that jumps out at me is that most of these folks are vegetarians, or rarely eat meat.  I have often wondered what the data tells us about the health of vegetarians vs. meat eaters.  I am not sure that “The Blue Zone” is exactly a scientific thesis, but it is interesting just the same.  A meatless diet is also very conducive to weight loss.  Do you see where I am going with this?  There is just one major obstacle for me – I LOVE MEAT.  And so does my family.  I am definitely not a slab of steak kind of girl and prefer smaller pieces of meat to great chunks of it, but I do enjoy meat.  On the upside, I also love vegetables and if I was on my own, I don’t think I’d have much trouble at all to convert to a meatless diet.  Instead, I am trying to formulate a plan to reduce the amount of meat that my whole family eats. To be honest, we aren’t huge meat eaters so we won’t have to make big adjustments, but there isn’t much easier than grilling a hotdog when there are not enough hours in the day!

So in my first attempt to substitute meat, I decided to buy various products and try them out on me.  I have discovered some wonderfully delicious veggie burgers in the frozen section of my supermarket. I actually think my husband and boys will like them.  These will be a great substitute for those nights when we do the horribly unhealthy processed chicken patties and oven fries.  When I joined Weight Watchers, I cut out potatoes. I have added back a tiny bit, but I need to find a substitute for fries. I don’t even like oven-baked fries unless they are made from potatoes that I cut up.  But alas, my husband and one of the kids, love them.

Snacking is my downfall.  I get the 4 PM munchies every single day.  So far, I have found nothing that works to curb them.  Sure, I ignore them at times, but if I reach for something salty at that time of day, I am in big trouble. I cannot bring myself to eat fruit at this time of day. It doesn’t do it for me.  So I need ideas – lots of them.  Added to my fruit woes is the fact that I have some fairly severe tooth sensitivity going on.  So if you add fruit plus cold together, I cannot eat it comfortably.  Since we are heading in to summer, fruit doesn’t do well on the kitchen counter, and if any of you know me well by now, you know I am not organized enough to take fruit out of the fridge so that it warms up by an appropriate time for me to eat it!

So there you have it.  I am a meat-loving, veggie-eating, salt-craving, fruit-hating mom.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

My 6-year-old kindergartener started singing this song yesterday as the snow started to accumulate on the ground.  I love snow.  It is so pretty and it is quiet!  I love being outside during a heavy snow fall or right after a large dump of snow when no one is on the roads. Everything is so peaceful.  Add the Christmas lights to all of this and it is hard to be in a bad mood.  Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I am not religious but to me, Christmas is a time for family and friends and reaching out to those who are less fortunate than us. At this time of year, the little things we do can make a huge difference to families in need.  I hope all of you are in a position to help in some way.

Yesterday’s weather was miserable. Light snow and howling gales.  So imagine my surprise when I agreed to go for a run with one of my friends!  I even paid a babysitter to watch the kids so I could do this.  It was one of the best runs I have done since returning to running after my surgery.  We knocked off 5 miles in under an hour.  No records broken but I cannot begin to tell you how great I felt afterwards.  And of course, this earned me quite a few Weight Watchers points 🙂  I love that I can buy points by exercising.  I hear Tony Horton calling my name today.  I don’t imagine the trails are runnable today.

Again I have two questions.  What do you do to help those in need at Christmas?

Who else braved the elements to get in a little exercise and what did you do?

So Much for Good Intentions

Why is it so hard to blog regularly?  I love talking and I love writing.  Yet, blogging is a chore. It isn’t as though I have nothing to blog about either.  Heck, no one needs to have material other than day to day life!  But here I am.  Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging is because all of my good intentions to change my lifestyle have not come to fruition.  My recovery from hip surgery was a lot longer than I anticipated and as a consequence, I have gained 20 pounds since my last marathon.  I also had a very busy semester so time was not on my side.  The upside is that I feel as though my hip is 99% recovered and I can run again.  I joined Weight Watchers online on Monday and plan to use it to help me through the silly season.

The easiest way for me to lose weight would be to give up my wine in the evenings.  During the semester breaks, this is easy, but during the academic school year, I have made a habit of unwinding with a glass of wine while cooking dinner and then usually another one with dinner.  And my glasses are no 5 oz!  What can I do instead?  That is really what I need –  way to unwind in the evenings that doesn’t involve alcohol.  Having two young children means that I am not free to just disappear and do whatever.  I have the Tony Horton Power90 DVDs and they have been instrumental in getting me back into some form of shape but the kids hate it when I do it.  They want my attention.  I even try to get them to do it with me, but they last through one set of exercises and then they’ve had enough.  So today I have two questions:

How do you maintain and not gain weight during the holidays?

How do you unwind after work?

The Old New Me

I was doing so well.  I was off the booze, off the Lortabs, off the Ambien.   Life was starting to look better, feel fresher and I was sleeping OK. My semester ended on a high note.  So what, you may ask, is the problem?

Put simply, I do not do injuries well.  When you take away my exercise, you also take away my mental health therapy.  Add to this the fact that the weight stacks on quickly when I am not exercising.  I have gained about 10 lbs in the last couple of months.  Fortunately, I have a consult with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday.  I want resolution.  I don’t want months more of conservative treatment.  Clearly, conservative treatment isn’t working.  I am ready to confront this thing head-on.  My MRA shows a labral tear and detachment.  Again, no mention of osteoarthritis.  I will be interested to find out from the OS if he thinks I have any OA.

So here I go again, time to spring clean myself.  Actually, if I am honest with myself, the booze hasn’t been much of a problem, and neither has the Lortab.  I take it because I am in pain.  The problem is that I am on a narc contract and taking it for the hip (which is not why it is prescribed) makes me feel like a junkie.  After Monday, I will be able to contact my neurologist and perhaps do away with the narcs for the time being.  If I am given a cortisone shot in the hip, I shouldn’t need pain meds for a while.  This would be good because if I need surgery, I don’t want to have any degree of tolerance to any of these drugs.

I really feel for those who are worse off than me.  This is the first time that I have ever been totally restricted due to mechanical failure!  And I am proving to be a great big baby.  Yes, there are other forms of exercise I could do, but I have a 3 and a 5 year old and most other forms of exercise take a lot more time than going for a jog or lifting weights in the basement.  Somehow, I need to find a happy medium.  I am still searching.

Savor the Moment

So many things lead to this point in time. Tonight/tomorrow we are expecting snow.  Yes, snow in April.  Not only are we expecting snow, but we are expecting accumulation of several inches.  Last weekend we were outside spraying each other with the garden hose!  Last weekend I rode my bike on the trail.  Monday just past, it was in the 90s for the Boston Marathon.  Tomorrow, parts of PA and NY are going to get over a foot of snow.  I am thankful I spent most of last weekend outdoors.  Just as my title says, savor the moment.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Exercise.  Many of us take it for granted.   Many of us don’t do it.  We always say we will.  But we never seem to start or if we do, we don’t continue. There is always tomorrow, or is there?  My hip is continuing to get worse.  I am still able to get about and I could still probably run or cycle but the payback pain isn’t worth it.  We walked for 3 hours with the kids at the mall on Saturday.  Today I struggled to walk around the supermarket.  For those who keep saying they will start tomorrow, my advice to you is start today and enjoy every moment of it.  I had hoped to train for my third marathon this summer and perhaps get a couple of short distance triathlons in.  Now I am wondering if I will be spending my summer recovering from surgery.  For those who can, savor the moment.

And how am I doing with the spring cleaning?  I devoured a bottle of wine on Friday night.  Not very pleased with myself for doing this but one slip up in about 3 weeks is pretty good.  I fought the temptation to refill my Ambien prescription today.  I have no reason to do this.  I don’t seem to need it right now and it wreaks havoc with my short-term memory.  It makes me sleep like a baby though!  Migraines/headaches have been responding well to Zomig and nothing has escalated to the point of requiring intervention from a health care provider.  This is good news.  Perhaps I am finally outgrowing my migraines!

Tomorrow it is back into the battle zone at work, but I do actually practice what I preach.  We had a fabulous weekend with the kids, even though the weather was miserable.  Littlest one fell asleep before 10 PM tonight which is a miracle!  Now I am going to savor some moments of responsibility-free time.

A Little Bit of Anxiety

Over the winter, I did what many less serious triathletes and runners do, I cross-trained. I am definitely a fair-weather runner/cyclist. I also find it difficult to find those daylight hours for exercising outdoors during the school semester. Say hello to Zumba. I had fun. I sweated. I laughed. I groaned. I made new friends. Fast forward a few weeks of only going once a week and I discovered a new pain in my right hip. Now hip pain isn’t new to me. I have had ongoing issues with my hips since about 2005. But it was always “bursitis”. Two primary care docs and two orthopedic/sports docs said so. So I went with the flow. Cortisone injections did seem to help for a few days. Voltarin pills got me through my first marathon. But I digress. This Zumba-induced pain was new and it was different enough from over-use injuries that plague most distance athletes, that I sought medical attention once again. I was referred to a family practice doctor who specializes in sports medicine. He promptly referred me to an athletic trainer for exercises. I thought this was a bit odd but went with the flow once again. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this wasn’t helping. I sent out a call to my friends on Facebook and was hooked up with a PT who specializes in this type of thing. She saw me FOR FREE! Wow. When the heck does that ever happen? So I offered to teach a class for her if she needed me to. And I have always said that I have nothing to trade!

Long story short, my insurance company finally authorized me to visit an out-of-network orthopedic surgeon. This is just such good news that you are probably wondering what is up with the title of this post. Well, put your hand up if you have ever had an MRA of the hip, or anywhere really. They take a big long needle and insert it into your hip joint and inject dye. Then they stick you in the MRI machine for about half an hour. I am not so concerned about being in the MRI. It is the long pointy thing they want to jab into my joint. I am feeling a bit sick just thinking about it. I cannot sleep just thinking about it (and this explains why I am up blogging instead of sleeping at 12:30 PM when I need to be up at 6 AM in the morning). So there it is. My little bit of anxiety.

Life in the Fast Lane

Long time, no blog.  This isn’t an unusual phenomenon for me.  I have these wonderful intentions to write daily but life just gets in the way.  Take for instance, the fact that both kids got strep throat.  Before they had even finished their course of antibiotics, dear child number 1 wakes up with horrendous croup.  Several days later, dear child number 2 wakes up with even worse croup.  A day later, dear mom wakes up with a rotten sore throat.  And so it goes.

Work has been steady and ever challenging.  But this is a good thing.  I haven’t been as stressed as in previous weeks which means that I haven’t felt the need to self-medicate.  In fact, tonight, for the first time since, well, I am not sure, I would have to read back through my posts to see when the last drink I had was, I had some wine.  I bought a bottle (after much deliberation) to have with dinner.  I had one glass of wine with dinner and a second after dinner.  It was a very drawn out process though and it left me without any buzz whatsoever!  I had no desire to keep drinking to seek that buzz either.  This is a major breakthrough for me.  I wasn’t sure if I’d be capable of sensible drinking again and this gives me great hope.

Along with my sore throat, I have had really nasty headaches and so I have had to dig into the migraine meds the past two mornings.  But they did their thing – one pill each morning of the weekend – and I have managed to have a reasonable weekend.  I even wiped the cobwebs from my bike and went out for a ride on Saturday morning.  It has been a very long time since I have been on the bike.  It will be quite some time before I can sit on the seat again!  My hip pulled up sore after the ride and I continue to chase down a specialist who can give me a firm diagnosis for the source of pain.  Because the weather was relatively nice this weekend, I managed to get out into the garden to dig up weeds and plant new plants.  In a couple more weeks, I will head to the nursery to buy some seedlings.

I love to watch things grow.  Gardening is something that my boys can help me with too.  Last year, they each planted a gerbera daisy plant.  My older son delighted in watching it flower all summer.  I love gerberas so I plan to do this again this year.  They don’t seem to have much interest in vegetable gardening just yet!

Well that is about the sum of my life over the past few weeks.  I am proud of myself for not hitting the bottle and I am not feeling guilty for enjoying a drink tonight.  I never intended to quit drinking altogether, although there have been times when I wondered if I would need to.  I am still trying to figure out how to spend enough time with the kids in addition to working, keeping a clean house, and exercising.  Exercising has somewhat fallen by the wayside due to the hip pain, but the house still needs to be cleaned, meals to be cooked etc.  I wonder if working moms ever truly figure this out?  If so, please let me know how you do it!

Day 4: Sunshine

Today was a good day. From time to time, it is nice to write something positive. Of course it is occasionally difficult to find positives when life has been so difficult but it does happen.

The day started on a high note. All 5 Zebra Danios were still alive when we woke this morning. Even though I have many years of experience with tropical aquariums, I have never had all of my Neons die so quickly! The two goldfish that we had prior to getting the Neons, lived a great life and grew to sizes that I didn’t know was possible for a 10 gallon tank. But Syd and Manny were strong and they thrived for a very decent amount of time for goldfish in captivity. Day 2 with the new tank set up and still all of the water chemistry is spot on. Phew.

The second high for the day was a 2.25 mile jog with a friend. Nothing makes me feel better than running, even when it makes me feel like crap. Does that make sense to anyone? Let me attempt to explain to the non-runners out there. Even a bad run feels good when it is over 🙂 Every day in which there is a run, any run, is a better day than a day without. Call it an addiction if you will, and I will! Of course 2 miles isn’t going to help with the weight but at least I am out there doing it.

My morning of work was from my home office. This makes life infinitely easier than having to travel to the not-home office. Plus, I have a window at home whereas my not-home office is windowless. It is cosy, and nicely furnished so I wouldn’t call it a hole-in-the-wall, but I have a very strong attraction to daylight.

In the afternoon I went to visit an old friend who, not by coincidence, is a chiropractor. It is a long time since I have felt as good as I did leaving her office. She couldn’t do much to the hip because there is simply too much pain and inflammation, but she was able to relax just about every other part of me and I walked away with a prescription for MASSAGE! I believe my insurance will be dropping therapeutic massage as of July 1 so I had better not do my normal practice of sitting on the prescription (not literally) for long.

I have to say, that appointment with my chiropractor friend made everything feel so much better and so less overwhelming (in the sports injury department). I set about running down my bank balance by purchasing some supplements that she recommended (and, by the way, so have all the other health care professionals – I sat on that advice too). I felt very proud of myself for having rather flexible hamstrings and quads – I don’t usually. This means that I have been doing my ATC-prescribed exercises – yay for me.

For the first time in a long time, I managed to stay fairly calm at home this evening. I am often at the end of my tether by the time the kids get home with my husband. And the first thing they do when they get in the door is dump their things all over the floor and start whining at me to get them this and get them that. But tonight was so much nicer. I don’t remember any whining at all! Is it just my attitude that has changed? Quite possibly. Could the washout of CNS drugs be responsible for the change of attitude?

Now on to the challenging part of things. I did have fairly strong cravings for a drink tonight. This isn’t unusual by Thursday. I always figure that Thursday is close enough to Friday to have a drink. But I will tell you again, I was held back because of you, my almost non-existent readers! I am posting on a public blog and I don’t want to let myself down by screwing up in the first week! So far, so good. No Lortab today either. I actually had no reason to take it. Sure, my hip was sore, but not as sore as yesterday. I could walk relatively easily today and only had to hobble a little. Tonight I confess to cough medicine. Hubby is in the midst of a snotty cold and it would appear that I am about to begin down the same path. Hopefully it will pass quickly. I hate to ruin a perfectly good weekend with the crud.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day. I do need to go to the office, but my duties tomorrow are mindless and easy. Can a task be mindless and difficult? Hmm, that is something to ponder, indeed. I would like to do another short run before I go to work. I have time so unless the army of little bugs that have invaded my respiratory tract multiply overnight, I think I will try to do this. Now, the other difficult decision to make is whether or not to buy some wine. Friday nights are typically pizza night. I usually buy a bottle of wine that lasts me the weekend. On day one of my blog I said that I wouldn’t drink wine during the week. I think I have done very well – I haven’t even had any beer and there is still that lone Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade sitting in the fridge in the garage. I tell you what. If I finish tomorrow feeling great, then a bottle will be bought. If I am not feeling great, then I won’t buy a bottle. I actually feel pretty good for not having drank all week. It would be nice to keep it that way. But a couple of drinks (and I do believe I promised you all that I would remain within my migraine-trigger limit) might be a nice way to end the week. I am not going to stress about this decision. It will be made on the drive home from work tomorrow.

Speak of the drive home from work, I am busy working through Pimsleurs Spanish at the moment. It is thoroughly enjoyable and I can say “Pardon, where is the hotel Bolivia” and “Pleased to meet you”, “are you from America” etc. Oh, I can also say “I understand…” or “I don’t speak…”. So I am fairly confident that I could at least start a conversation with a Spanish-speaking person without muttering “no hablo espanol”. The conversation might end quickly with a “hablo un poco de espanol” or “entiendo un poco de espanol pero no mucho” but at least that is a start! Please pardon my spelling as this is entirely colloquial Spanish and I have not seen a written word.

I must email my Dad. When I am feeling brave, I will tackle the topic nearest to my heart, the death of my mother. This sad event took place in December, 2011 so it is still very fresh and very upsetting. However, my Dad, who lives on the opposite side of the world to two of his three children (me being one of them), still needs us very much.

Buenas noches.

Day 3, The Irritables

If I could get any more irritable, I could be mistaken for a woman on Clomid (at least that is what my friends tell me about that awful, yet wonderful fertility drug). Combine PMS with perimenopause with low-grade detox with lack of sleep and that gives you an idea of what my poor husband has to live with at the moment. Today I was so irritable that had we stayed in for the evening, I’d have chewed through everyone! To disguise my infliction as best possible, I cleaned out our fish tank (all the Neon Tetras died) and dragged the family first to CiCi’s for dinner and then next door to PetCo for new fish. This time I got smart and read up on fish before buying them. Turns out the perfect fish for my 5 year old is the Zebra Danio. We how have 5 very robust-looking zebras swimming around a very clean tank. I am proud of myself!

I know you are all wondering how I did with the drugs today and I will tell you. Day three of no booze and day three of no Ambien. However, have I mentioned the arthritis to you yet? I am sure I have as my husband tells me that I repeat myself all the time. Anyway, here it is again. I have recently diagnosed osteoarthritis in my hips and possibly my knees. I suspect spinal involvement too but that is just me guessing. My sports doc told me to keep running. He’d prefer I did lower volume running than cycling or swimming. So I did my little 2 mile run yesterday and today my hip sucks. Since I am already maxed out on NSAIDs, the only pain meds I can take for it are the Lortabs. So I did succumb to the pain and took two of my precious migraine meds for my hip. The smart thing to do would be to have my neurologist and sports medicine team talk to each other so they can figure out a way for me to treat all of my pain. Instead I am struggling to make what I have work for everything. I am not feeling guilty for taking the Lortab. But it does only leave me with 6 pills until mid-April. Despite the setback, I plan to do another 2 mile jog in the morning. If exercising is what I am supposed to be doing, then that is what I will do. Let’s face it, the best prophylaxis for my migraines is running.

Let’s talk about my weight. I feel as though I need to start thinking about taking some very positive steps towards losing some. I don’t like my current weight (which is up 2 lbs since I first started this blog a few days ago). If I go public, perhaps I will find the strength to stop eating a pro-diabetes and obesity diet. So, the alcohol is mostly gone. Now I need to work on cutting out unhealthy snacks. I have been pretty good with this but I usually blow it on the weekends. I while back I joined Weight Watchers online. I was amazed at how good their current plan is. The free fruit and vegetables were such a clever thing to do. For those of you not in the know, this means that you can eat as many fruit and vegetables as you want and they don’t count towards your daily food allowance. As someone who would rather not eat fruit, this was revolutionary for me. I could snack all I wanted, as long as it was fruit! And, not being a fruit person, I didn’t over do it. So this is where I have to go.

I also decided not too long ago that if I actually paid extra to buy organic food, perhaps I would waste less and eat less. I am going to stick with this theory for a while because I think I might be on to something! I have just come off a bad weekend and this week isn’t looking too good so far so I will have to re-initiate this latest of my bright ideas. Since I already plan to have a breakfast casserole for dinner tomorrow (home-grown eggs by the way- or is that home laid?) so I will begin again tomorrow. I really need to see my weight go down. I am outgrowing my closet and before long, I will not even have my “fat clothes” to choose from. Sigh. Need I say it? YO YO!

Day 2: Make Me or Break Me Day

Usually on day two of a detox, I have convinced myself that I am not a problem drinker and that one beer after work isn’t going to hurt. And so, I have that one beer! Today I didn’t do it! I almost did because let’s face it, I felt like one. Just one. And I probably would have had just one. I don’t seem to need to keep going with beer like I do with wine. But, for two reasons, I didn’t reach for the beer. The first being that I am determined to do this. The second being, there is no beer in the house LOL. There is however, Black Cherry Lemonade which is very, very good. I don’t even like cherry flavored stuff but this stuff is gooooood!

Also on day two is the no unnecessary ingestion of Lortab. This was a pretty big battle today for two reasons. First, I had a headache. Wasn’t bad, but was annoying, and like all headaches, it had the potential to transform into a migraine. But I was feeling as though it probably wouldn’t, and I was correct. Second, I went for a 2 mile run this morning. Finally decided to check out the hip to see if any of my exercises were working. Turns out that 8 days of strengthening exercises and stretches do not help at all. By late afternoon, my hip was considerably painful. Now, instead of taking Lortab (I only have 8 left until sometime next month), I took Panadeine. This is an over-the-counter medicine available in Australia that contains acetaminophen and codeine. The codeine is in ridiculously miniscule doses which I doubt have any greater effect than the acetaminophen alone, but I took it just the same. I needed to at least try for a placebo effect. At least the pain got me on the phone making all sorts of appointments around town to try to sort this out.

Tonight I would like to introduce a third addiction of mine – Ambien. I have had sleep-onset insomnia all my life. This was a real problem as a kid and now it is just a real nuisance. Ambien changed my life. I could finally sleep again. I don’t even care if I am addicted to the stuff. There is just one problem with it, it DESTROYS my short term memory and probably has other more subtle effects on cognitive function. So, it is best for me not to keep it in the house. I have prescription refills that will give me enough for 1 a months for the next 3 months but for now, I am not filling it. I want to, but unless I can limit myself to using it only once or twice a week, I refuse to keep it in the house. Tonight will be night 2 without Ambien. In its place I have lorazepam (Ativan). This drug is OK. I use it sometimes. I believe that while I am detoxing from alcohol, Ambien and probably hydrocodone, popping a couple of lorazepams a night is probably a very sound thing to do. I don’t really notice its anxiolytic effects but I think I sleep better with it onboard. Eventually, my goal is to be drug-free except for when needed for the migraines and the arthritis.

I was the crankiest mom you could ever imagine tonight. I knew I was going to be. What with the premenstrual stuff going on which is probably also perimenopausal stuff AND detox, what can you expect? I feel a little sorry for my adorable little boys and a lot sorry for my lovely husband. They get the raw end of the deal when mommy/wifey is like this. But I can promise you all that I do not neglect my children or my husband. They are well taken care of both physically and emotionally. I am also the major breadwinner in this household and have managed to raise us to the social status of “soccer mom family”. Big house, big cars, big vacations, too many toys, a dog, a cat, a hamster and fish. Three fish at the moment. Just put 5 neon tetras into a 10 gal tank and two died right away. The other three look great so hears to hoping that they remain that way.

Ah, but blogging is therapeutic. Every time I thought about a drink or medicine today, I thought about my blog. Heck, no one has even read it yet but just the thought that it is public makes me want to stick to my guns. Now I just need some followers who can encourage or flame me. Tomorrow is going to be a great day!