Another Quickie

Hello again!

The rain is gone now and we are slowly starting to dry out. The days are sunnier but cooler and shorter. The trees are just starting to catch, their leaves turning color in some spots. Soon the hummingbirds will move on and the cranes will come.

What else has been going on?

A couple of days ago I spoke with the nutritionist I've been seeing online for about two years (!) and we talked about how peri- and menopausal hormones screw up a lot of things (including sleep and energy levels) that make weight gain more likely. So that's been me for awhile.

I have been relatively successful at sticking to the Weight Watchers plan so far though. Soon I will have to lower my points and that's going to be a bit of a challenge--it always is--but hopefully by the time that rolls around I'll have gotten used to counting points and watching portion sizes. Honestly, my diet is really healthy--we eat out once a week (rarely twice if it's been a hard week or if we have company for lunch), we cook from scratch, we don't keep sweet treats in the house, we don't buy convenience or ultra-processed foods (except for Quorn nuggets and some condiments like ketchup). I mean, it really is healthy--it's just that I eat way too much and move way too little.

So now that I'm settling into counting points and limiting portion sizes, I also got my walking pad all set up and I have new shoes (and my feet feel better). All that remains is to get back on my walking program. Though not tonight, as it's the middle of the night as I'm writing this. 

No, I'm not sleeping. I've been up since just before midnight. (I had several broken hours of sleep yesterday throughout the day, though not enough to be truly rested.) I've been dreaming a lot of very vivid and strange dreams, only bits and pieces of which I remember after waking. These things generally mean that my hormones are all over the map. (Another clue about the hormone thing is that I cried during the new episode of The Great British Baking Show, which, I mean. . . And how great is Nigella Lawson? So great.)

I've not been sewing but I have been journaling and working in my art journals. I've also continued to sort through Dave's mom's paperwork. The latest batch turned up plans and receipts from the various redecorating and construction projects. She spent a shocking amount of money on things like pillows and drapes. I mean a truly shocking amount of money. Like, "spare no expense because I only want the best" kind of shocking. I don't get that kind of thinking, I guess. But I also know that sometimes early dementia can manifest in bad decisions, things like spending thousands of dollars on pillows, that make other people wonder without cluing them in that it is related to early onset dementia.

Anyway, sorting through her paperwork is good practice for me to try to be less judgmental. (Don't ask how that's going, please.)

Instead let's talk about dinners. Okay: Last night Dave made vegetable soup with cannellini beans. It was delicious and I had a bowl and a half for my dinner. The night before we had Chinese take-out (my "diet" dish consisted of steamed veg and tofu with no sauce and Dave had fried tofu in a spicy sauce). We had tacos this past week, too. I have some cooked chicken breasts in the fridge and those, with some sauteed veg and salad made other easy and quick dinners for me. Dave usually has the same veggies and salad with vegetarian "chicken" nuggets.  

This coming Sunday we're having my mom and aunt over again for lunch. I'm thinking of ordering some upscale pizzas, but first I'll see what everyone else wants of course. 

Hope everyone's week has gone well. 

A Quickie

 It's fall now. We've been getting a lot of rain recently, which is wonderful, but these long stretches of cloudy gray days can be stultifying. 

Here's a disjointed list of things that have been going on:

My knee is slowly getting better. Yes, it's still swollen and kind of weak. I've been doing my PT exercises faithfully and they're helping, but the progress is pretty slow. Still, better is better so I'm hopeful it will heal. 

We had lunch this past weekend with my mother and aunt Char. My aunt treated us to barbeque and brought enough food that we had leftovers for days. It was nice to see them both, although they soon ran off to the casino. 

I'm glad to have company come over, not only because it's nice to see them, but also because it forces us to clean up some of the clutter that accumulates on the dining room table and kitchen counters.

I made the mistake of stepping on the scale at the doctor's office and now I'm back to following my Weight Watcher's diet. It's been about ten days but I can already feel a difference. (I haven't broken out my scale at home to check though since it's shoved under a cabinet and it needs batteries, but I need to fish it out sometime soon.) I've been meeting my daily protein goals of 100-150 grams of protein a day.

I also ordered some new walking shoes (my old ones were in really bad shape and my feet hurt whenever I walked) And since I was so sick of just going back and forth across the house, I ordered a walking pad. (Walking pads are low, slow treadmills; they have a very limited incline and are too slow to run on.) It should arrive tomorrow. 

What else? 

I recently spent a few days sorting and shredding my brother's old paperwork, things like tax returns, receipts, medical records and so on. (We actually bought a new shredder to do the job. We have a shredder, but we bought it when we lived in the casita and space was at a premium so it's about the size of a large shoe box so it takes a long time to shred anything more than a few sheets at a time. We also had Dave's mom's shredder--but it was pretty trashed and though it worked for awhile, it soon broke in such a way that it couldn't be repaired.) Anyway, I made it through my brother's paperwork. (I found a receipt from when he won $5K on a lottery scratch card, which is something he never told anyone. I hope he had a good time with the money and bought himself a nice treat.) 

After finishing that up, I told Dave to start bringing in his mother's old paperwork and I'd sort through it and shred anything he didn't want to keep. I started yesterday after he brought in a bunch of file folders from the garage. I found a couple of interesting things so far. One was a letter she wrote to someone she had bought a horse from. Soon after she bought the horse, it went into labor--a surprise to her and the vet as she had been assured by the seller that there was no chance it could be pregnant. Anyway, long story short, the foal died in utero and the horse had to be put down. Dave's mother's letter was written to tell the former owner this and to demand a return of the purchase price of the horse. Is that a thing, I wonder? Getting a refund for a dead horse. I haven't found anything to suggest that the money was returned anyway.

What else? 

I finished reading Boy Meets Boy and started reading All the Beauty in the World. It's a little tedious, though. I watched three seasons of Ted Lasso and went straight into Shrinking and watched all three seasons of that. The new episodes of season four of Ted Lasso are only okay, though I'll keep watching because Tracy Ullman is in it. I think she's hilarious. 

Okay, that's it. I'm tired. Menopause apparently means always being some degree of exhausted. 

No Explanation

It's been more than a month since I updated my blog. No real reason, just... haven't. 

Some photos. No explanation required, I suspect. 

Catch Up

 It's been awhile since I posted.

I'm still nursing my knee along. I was supposed to start PT last week, but the therapist canceled and I was rescheduled for the second week in August. In the meantime, I've been walking 20 minutes a day, wearing compression stockings, and keeping my knee elevated as much as possible. It seems like it might be helping, but progress is very incremental. Hopefully PT will help.

We've been dealing with some very hot weather here, topping 105 F/40.5 C yesterday. Next week is high 90s/low 100s.  There has been a very slight bit of rain some afternoons and evenings, the vestiges of the monsoon rains we used to get twenty years ago. Climate change is happening. 

I'm glad I won't be around for the worst of it. 

Menopausal hormones and the full moon have been pushing me around recently. I think I've cried every day for the last couple of weeks, sometimes multiple times a day. Here are some things I cried over:

YouTube videos about who knows what

A memory of my older brother

Some crappy Netflix drama the title of which I don't even remember 

Watching a rabbit get hit by a car on our way home

Putting the engraved stone we got from Etsy on Gray Kitty's resting place

Writing this list and thinking again of these things. 

 

Nevermind. This is too depressing.

What else has been going on? 

I've been decluttering, focusing on art supplies I don't use anymore. All the non-working pens and markers went, followed by old, cheap, well-used sets of watercolors, then a bunch of old, half-dried acrylic paints. It takes me a long time to declutter art supplies because I always uncover things I haven't used in awhile so of course I have to use them. So in between sorting and decluttering, I sketched and painted and did some collage. I used the tempera paint sticks that I've had for years but which I'm still not sure I like. I used the set of acrylic markers that I do like. I used the nicer of my sets of Prismacolor pencils. I used the metallic brush pens I've had for a few years (used them up, actually). I used two of my nicer sets of watercolors and some of the drawing pencils and metallic pens and markers that I have. I finished off a watercolor pad. I finished another art journal (and started another and found another two half-finished that I added to the rotation). I also finished two journals and started another. 

So I've been doing stuff. It feels like I've been treading water, but I have been doing something with my time.

I've been watching old episodes of Hazel, a sitcom from the early 60s starring Shirley Booth) on Prime. I watched a couple of comedy specials on Netflix and started the latest Jodie Foster film (but it's in French, so I couldn't use it as background noise while I was painting so I turned it off). I watched the Heartstopper movie, the end of the series, thankfully.

I've been reading. I read the last Heartstopper graphic novel and I started a book called Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan who I think was related to a NP I used to work with. (She was an awful person, rude, lazy and entitled.)

We had lunch with my mother a couple of times. In fact, we had lunch with her and my aunt today. We had Greek food and a pie and ice cream my mom bought.

We came home after and got into our pajamas. It was too hot to do much else! 

 

Just Things

 It's been awhile since I updated; not much has been going on. 

My menopausal hormones have taken control of my sleep schedule and flipped it nearly completely. I sleep through part of the early morning (from five or six until eight a.m.) then I get up and take my meds. If I'm lucky, I can get back to sleep around ten-thirty or eleven and sleep until one or two. Today I slept from eleven until almost three.

I've recently had some bad dreams, disturbing, like, serial killers coming into the house. But today I had some good dreams, though I don't remember the details. 

My leg is still distressing me. It's healing, but very slowly. I made an appointment for late July (the earliest opening) with the physical therapist the orthopedic PA recommended but that appointment got cancelled and their next available was in August. So I called my old physical therapist who went on maternity leave about a year or so ago.  She had an opening also in August, so I took that one. (I have yet to cancel the old one, but that's what I'll probably end up doing.) Until then, I'm stuck hobbling around and trying to keep the swelling (yes, it's still swelling) down. 

What else has been going on? 

Dave's birthday was this past Monday. It was a quiet birthday that we celebrated at home. He didn't want anything gift-wise, but with prodding did ask for a 3D printed instrument from a musician in France, so I got him that. I also framed some of the photos we scanned at his father' house and I bought him a few other things, including a book about edible plants and a counter-top ice maker. (I wasn't sure about the ice maker, so I bought it from Costco because they have a very liberal return policy. But turned out he likes it, so it's been getting quite a workout. I have to admit, it's nice to have ready ice for drinks without having to empty and fill and find space in the freezer for ice trays.)

Aside from the business of turning the page on another year, Dave has been diligently working away at his new job. He still works from home, thankfully, but he will soon have to travel a bit to meet with his coworkers and their new clients. It will be a quick trip, but even quick trips can be stressful.

My mom and aunt came out for lunch last weekend. We had a good lunch and a good chat. My poor aunt is dealing with an invasion of elm seed bugs. Nothing she's tried has worked to get rid of them. I told her to vacuum them up and seal and throw away the vacuum cleaner bag. 

My mother's broken wrist continues to heal. She is using just a brace now. I just saw on my desk a note I wrote to myself to start investigating the kinds of wearable buttons that can be worn and that will call for help in case of falls. Her apartment is quite sound proof (though not smoke proof as her pot smoking neighbors have shown), so she is trying to remember to carry her cell phone everywhere with her, even in her apartment, but I think it's time to have a backup plan.

What else?

We got and I read the last book in the Heartstopper series. Yes, I know it's for young adults, but I like it. It's a very sweet story. I would have loved it as a teenager, but I can still appreciate it at my age.

Tomorrow, if I update, I'll tell about the project I completed today, with things from my brother.