Creepers won't stop me!

I continue on my road to good health. My road involves faithfully counting carbs, calories, protein, etc. (Thank you to Lose It! The best iphone app that helps me keep track of everything).  My road also involves lots of time at the gym and appears to be paved with sweat and chlorine.

I'm doing 60 minutes of cardio 5 days a week and swimming for 60 minutes on the other two days. Eventually, I'm going to go to a 5 day a week total work out schedule but right now I'm excited to exercise and feeling especially motivated so I'm going with it, going with it all the way to the gym every day.

My blood sugar has been a bit higher this week. Not sure what that's about. It's been about 130 which is spectacular compared to where it was 3 weeks ago but not at my goal of consistently under 100. Consistently under 100 means weaning off the medications and that's what I want. If I have to be diabetic (still feels weird to say it), I want to be a diabetic who is controlling her disease with diet and exercise, not medication.

I probably just need to chill out about it- 130 is really good and it's only been 1 month since diagnosis and lifestyle change. I do have a tendency to get a little obsessive about things :)

In good news, my weight is steadily dropping. I've noticed that the day after I've gone swimming, my weight is always 1 pound lower. I like that. That's what's keeping me in the pool because there are things that make me want to avoid the pool.

1. The pool looks kind of dirty to me. Is it because I haven't swam wearing goggles in years and now I can see every fuzz in the water and every speck of brown stuff on the pool bottom? Or am I just being obsessive (see two paragraphs above)? I have a touch of OCD, I'm not afraid to admit it, and yes, if I could clean the bottom of that pool, I would. Happily.

2. Pool Creepers. Mostly, the pool scene at the gym has been fine. A little weird and as I'd mentioned in a previous post, a bit of a good old boys club when it comes to getting a lane. Today was my first experience with an out-and-out creeper. Some dude that was shouting at me while I was swimming, asking me my name and then telling me how cute I am. Ew. Ewwwww. I think that's creepy, not flattering at all. It's along the same lines (but WORSE) of someone I don't know calling me "Sweetheart" or "Honey". You've got to know me pretty well to use those terms of endearment and most likely, if you do know me well, you won't call me "Sweetheart" or "Honey". I may look very young and sweet but I'm really not.

3. Despite my issues described in number 1 above, I leave the pool smelling so strongly of chlorine that I almost smell like bleach. This would not bother me if I smelled like bleach because I was cleaning the bottom of the pool with bleach but that dream is out of my reach. Even after I shower, I can still smell the chlorine on me. I don't like it.

Although I have some valid gym-pool issues, I do like to swim, it feels good on my body, and has pretty much guaranteed another pound lost. So I'm going to keep swimming, creeper or not.

P.S. I had my blog settings wrong and the comment section didn't work. I have fixed that and now expect massive amounts of comments from the millions of people (or 1 or 2 people) who are reading my blog. I'm sure that's why I've never had a comment before :)

Gym Nut

I've been faithfully following my low carb diet AND my workout plan. My blood sugar has been higher in the mornings for the last couple of days (140 this morning). I'm working on that. Tonight, after my workout and before dinner, it was 91 (!) which is the best it's been. If I can keep it below 100 for the next two weeks, my doctor is going to start taking me off these crazy diabetes pills. That's a big goal for me.

I'm very lucky, it seems we've caught the diabetes before any serious damage to my system. My cholesterol is normal (although my good cholesterol is too low which my doctor says will improve as I exercise). My kidneys are normal, the blood flow to my feet is good. I'll be retested in 3 months and I'm excited to see the improvement at that time after all my hard work!

As for the gym, it's a different world in that place. And by different I mean...different! Interesting people in that place. If I wasn't so busy fighting to keep myself moving, there would be some serious people watching going on in there.

I don't want to bash other women so this next comment is as non-judgmental as possible: What is with all the make up at the gym? I can't figure it out- some of the women are actually fully made up with everything, even FOUNDATION and EYE SHADOW.

I can't comprehend the make up. Of course, after just 10 minutes my face is purple and dripping sweat, so make up at the gym would not work for me. But that can't be good for the skin. Anyways, I really don't want to be all judgmental or anything, I'm just so thrown by all the make up at the gym. And it's not just the females. I've seen some men with seriously styled hair and I've wondered about that, too. I would sweat all that gel and hairspray out in 10 minutes!

Despite these little observations, it's a nice gym. All kinds of people there, working hard. And I'm one of them.

A Day at the Concrete Beach

Kind of a crazy night around here. Woke up to spotlights shining through my bedroom window. Turns out a neighbor's condo caught on fire and it was just total chaos. Luckily no one was hurt. Unfortunately, I have a fear of fires and this has triggered extra anxiety. Truthfully, I'm afraid of a lot of things (fire, sharks, airplanes, germs, etc). The good news is that I worked some of that anxiety out at the gym/

Day 5 I decided to mix things up and went to the gym to swim laps. I'd planned to swim for 60 minutes but didn't remember how challenging swimming is! It was a weird atmosphere at the gym pool. Kind of a good old boys club. But I finally got a lane all to myself and I used it.

Started out with 4 laps of the breast stroke, did one lap of backstroke, one lap of freestyle (which I am REALLY rusty at), and then went back to breast stroke. I walked a couple of laps and for the last 10 laps, I resorted to my favorite "stroke" in childhood, dolphin dives. That was fun, not sure if it's really an effective exercise but I figured it was good to just keep moving. Who knows, maybe dolphin dives cure diabetes :)

I made friends with the elderly man in the lane next to me. His goal was to swim 40 laps so I decided to adopt his goal as my own. I had trouble remembering which lap I was on so I ended up doing 50 laps (45 minutes) to make sure that I got more than 40.

There aren't very many lanes in the lap pool, only 3 (which can be shared to make 6 lanes total). They were full when I got there so I waited patiently. While I was swimming/dolphin diving my 50 laps, there were people waiting to swim so I had an audience. I mostly ignored them although there was an embarrassing moment when I first got in the pool and was swimming under the lane dividers. I surfaced in a lane, only to smack my head against the lane divider. I pulled a kitty move by pretending nothing happened/I meant to do it.

The pool was kind of dirty. That grosses me out (remember my fears, including germs). The pool drain was really dirty, as far as I could tell through my new pink goggles. The drain is in the middle lane and my goal is to never get stuck swimming in the middle lane. I don't want to pass over that nasty drain 50 times! I'm going to find out when the pool is cleaned and plan to swim the following day. Hoping to incorporate swimming into my fitness routine 1-2 times per week.

Plan is to take a day off from working out tomorrow. First day back at work after the holiday break and I have a dermatology appointment for a skin cancer screening (another of my fears) in the late afternoon. Back to the gym on Wednesday for 60 minutes of cardio.

Blood sugar this morning was 117 (!)

Yikes or A Whole New Life

3 1/2 weeks ago I went to Urgent Care for a suspected bladder infection. I'd had symptoms for a couple of days and had been drinking massive amounts of cranberry juice to get rid of the problem. I hadn't taken any time off of work and on that particular day, a Friday, I'd worked all day. But I was concerned that the bladder infection was getting worse and figured I'd just swing by for some medicine.

It turned into a horrific ordeal. My blood sugar was so high that Urgent Care's machine couldn't even read it. They diagnosed me with probable Type 1 diabetes, Uncontrolled. They sent me to the hospital (where I fell in love with my doctor. Oh.My.God, he was amazing!). My blood sugar was 471 at that point. I didn't really know what that meant at the time, plus I was a bit distracted by the flaming pain in my bladder. Hours and hours later, I was home with those life-saving little orange bladder infection pain pills and a new diagnosis. Diabetes.

I'm a diabetic.

My doc thinks it's Type 2 because my body is producing some insulin (blood sugar higher in the mornings). I have been busting my ass for the last 3 1/2 weeks since my diagnosis. Low carb diet (not easy as a vegetarian) and exercise. My number one goal is to get off this diabetes medicine by controlling my blood sugar through diet and exercise. Goal number two is to lose weight.

The last 4 days have been a jump start into working out. 50 mins on the elliptical the first day (3.19 miles). 60 minutes on the elliptical the last 3 days (average 3.5-4 miles per session).

I can hardly move this evening.

Tomorrow- planning to swim and hoping for 60 minutes of swim movement.

I'm going to do this.

2 am Catnip Party

It's 2 am. Sunday night/Monday morning. I should go to sleep. I have to work in the morning. It's not a bad day, just seeing 3 children for therapy and then coming home to do a ton of paperwork. Paperwork that I should have done on Friday. Or Saturday. Or Sunday. But I just never got around to it this weekend. And really? I shouldn't be doing paperwork on the weekend.

So it's 2 am. Did the dishes. Finished laundry. Did a tiny bit of paperwork. I just started watching Big Love and I just gave my kitties some catnip. Why not? If we are all up at 2 am, a catnip party makes perfect sense!

Charlie approves!

"Don't Call the Police!"

Last winter, at about 8 pm in the evening on a Sunday night, there was a knock at my front door. My front porch light was burned out so I couldn't quite see who the person was. I didn't open the door; instead, I called out, "Who is it?"

"It's your neighbor. I locked myself out of my house. Let me come in." A male voice shouted.

My first instinct was to step away from the door and firmly state, "No." I didn't recognize the voice and I didn't like the demand he made to come in my house. Then I was confused; what was he asking?

"Wait, what's wrong? You locked yourself out of your house?" I took a tentative step towards the door.

"It's more than that but if I tell you, you'll think I'm crazy. Let me in." Something about the whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable. I was confused and my instincts were shouting internally at me to not open the door. Before I could say anything, he pounded on my door again. I shouted out, "No. You can't come in."

"Fine," he said. "I'll just wait here until you come out. I'll wait here for you until you leave for work in the morning." Suddenly my heart started pounding. WHAT? And then he shouted, "Don't call the police."

I ran for the telephone as he pounded on my door. I dialed 911 and was immediately put on hold! A real person didn't even answer, just a recorded message telling me to wait! The man was pounding on my door, shouting at me. I turned off the lights so he couldn't see me and ran upstairs with the phone, trying to peek out the upstairs window to see who this person was. He was standing so close to the front door that I couldn't see him from the window.

Finally, the 911 operator came on the line. Almost apologetically, I described the situation. "I'm not even sure if this should be a 911 call but he's really scaring me." She validated the call, saying that I definitely had a reason for calling. The police were on their way. He continued to yell at me through the door but my heart was beating so loudly and I was so focused on the 911 operator, I couldn't hear him. It took the police nearly 5 minutes to get there- it was a looong time.

I saw the three police officers' flashlights and I could hear them through the door as they approached. The scary man was standing with his face pressed against my door. An officer called out, "Hey buddy, what are you doing?"

The man shouted at the police officers, "You can search me but I'm not moving from her door."

"What?" said a policeman.

"I can't move from her door. I'll explode."

Oh. My. God. What?!? The 911 operator was still on the phone with me and she heard what he said. "Get away from the door!" She shouted at me through the phone. "Get away from the door, get as far away from the door as you can! But don't go outside!" I grabbed my dog and ran her upstairs to a back bedroom. Did this guy have explosives? What the fuck was he talking about? I ran back down stairs and grabbed my kitty Lucy and ran her upstairs to the back bedroom. I was shaking and terrified.

The 911 operator relayed to me what was happening. "They're searching him, he doesn't have any explosives, doesn't have a weapon." I went back downstairs and peeked out the window. It took the three officers to literally carry the man away from my door. They laid him down on the sidewalk in front of my house. They talked to him and he told them about how he'd been implanted with computer chips that were going to take over the world. He told them he had things he wanted to give me. Toys he wanted to give me. He wanted to tell me about the end of the world. Blah blah blah.

They eventually took him to a psychiatric hospital. The whole ordeal lasted about 3 hours. Of course, I was totally freaked out. Turns out he IS a neighbor and he's obviously seriously mentally ill. The psychiatric hospital released him that night. He came home and, according to neighbors, spent most of the early morning hours banging rocks against a wall and screaming. The police came back 3 or 4 times that week. I was a mess. I called in sick to work for the entire week. I was afraid to leave my house. I was afraid to be at home. It was pretty freaking traumatic.

Eventually he was hospitalized for about a month. And then he came back.

He has a mullet. When he came back from the hospital, he had shaved it into a mohawk. It's grown back into a mullet. He scares me. I wish he would move away. Every time I see him I think about how ill he is and I hope that he's taking his medication. When all this happened last winter, I had notified my HOA and they warned him that any further egregious behavior was not acceptable. But if someone is that sick, with serious psychotic delusions, can the HOA really regulate egregious behavior?

Tonight, I was in my backyard with Sophie and I heard someone yelling at someone/something, "Get the fuck back in the house!Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I peeked over my wall. There he was, by his car. I think he was yelling at his dogs, two little Chihuahuas that he walks everyday. He carries one in a baby sling when he walks them. I quickly went back into my house. I don't want to draw his attention to me, ever.

I never used to be scared of him but everything is different now. I still see him sometimes walking his dogs. He walks by my house. I don't like it. I have a house alarm now and some mace. He makes me nervous because I won't know if he's gone off his medication unless he freaks out again. I don't like being part of any one's psychotic delusions.

New Love(bugs)!

I've been a terrible blogger. Not a single post from March to December. And in that time, some things have changed (or I should say, some things have been added) in my life.

Introducing......

Charlie

AND

Leo

My new little lovebugs!

It's been quite a jolt of energy in my home; two kittens = a lot of kittens! These photos are of the boys in their foster home before they came home with me. They are now 8 months old and HUGE! I'll post updated photos soon (because I've got at least a million photos of these guys!). And I'll have to update on the challenges that have come with parenting one of these kittens. Can you guess which one is giving me a hard time?

In other news, I've applied for a new job. I LOVE my current job as a child therapist but the politics and administration of the program I work in is too much lately (well, for the past year). It's definitely outweighing my love for my work and another opportunity may be in the works. It's a huge new grant to provide mental health consultation with a focus on children birth to 5 years old to child care centers, doctor's offices, and other agencies. Depending on which agency gets the grant and whether I get the job, it will hopefully give me a chance to take a break from the intense clinical work and, more importantly, from the office politics of my current program. I'm also hoping for a substantial raise with the new position but it's still non-profit so I'm not holding my breath! I should know more in the next week.

In the meantime, all is well. Christmas shopping will start and end this weekend for me and hopefully I will have everything that needs to be mailed/shipped ready to go by Monday (or Tuesday). I'm not going back to Iowa this year. There's too much going on here and I just need a break- no traveling this holiday season. Thank goodness.