Not a very inspiring title, but since I went through the trouble of googling it for correct spelling it stays.

I have been getting tons accomplished (see: one less cat in my bathroom).  But I am getting a little worn down by it.  Yes, I have the flexible hardly-a-job-at-all-really schedule.  But this has allowed for me to try a few things here and there that seem so easy to fit into a few hours a week.

These days I’m stuck with a few hours in the afternoon where I sort of sit and drool until my PM activities take up.

I’m trying hard to not do that (sit and drool).  I’m trying to make time to sit at the computer and research stuff and do “work”.

Did you know that amazon.com is “work”?  (And you thought I was using quotes incorrectly!)

The sanctuary still takes up a big part of my week.  Or at least my week days.  Week days I’m in town.  I really only have 3 flexible days in my schedule and I do my best to volunteer all of those days in order to make the hourly requirements for my volunteer level.

It’s not the same.  I can’t remember how much I divulged when I left my paid position there, but suffice to say if there had been management/benefits/career advancement worth staying for then Gma would have had to suck it up and deal.  I made the decision to leave when many things were up in the air.  And now that the dust has settled…it’s not the same.  (And no one ever says that when the “not the” part is better than the “same”, do they?)

Yet I stay.  In part because at first I was concerned I needed more structure to my work week than 4 hours in the car, sixteen billion worried nosey questions, and some Jack Daniel’s.

And now?  Now I don’t know.  I suppose I stay because it’s a place where I am still an important person.  And I don’t have anywhere else that’s true.

But I am tempted to change that.  Tempted to look for another place where I am needed but not reminded of how it used to be.

In the middle of all that is the fact Tom and I want to do this hike.  We will do this hike.  It will be awesome or horrible or both.  Definitely not neutral.  I am toying with the idea of doing some housekeeping around here, adding some password protection on a few posts, and then outing myself to friends and family in order to use this blog to journal the hike.

So do I hang on to this sorta schedule?  Too busy or too bored and always too tired?  Or do I dump everything and charge headlong into a new project only to say, “Can you hold that thought?  I gotta go walk 2,200 miles”?

Tom and I had our 4-year wedding anniversary.  I tried to blog all sweet about it, but I still cringe at the cliches that come out of my mouth when thinking of how perfect – for me – he is.  And the relationship that we created, and continue to work on, is exactly what I needed.  I cannot imagine life any differently.

But through the “Yay!  We’ve now officially been married the longest I’ve ever been married!” celebration, things have seemed mighty shitty around here.  Nothing new.  Same old sick cat.  Same old sick A/C.  Same old sick Grandma.  (Although we did receive some less dire predictions from her oncologist than the surgeon’s office.  I’m not exactly sure who/what to believe, but since she is leaning towards little or no treatment anyway, I think it’s a moot point.)

Last Friday I was so fucking fed up with being me, listening to me, thinking about my problems.  I wanted to divorce my damn self.

I am joy to be around, let me tell you.

But…I solider on.  I think part of it is that I have no big goal in my life right now.  I put looking for a job on hold because of Grandma’s illness.  At this point, assuming the March start date we desire for hiking the AT, it would almost not be worth it to go through the hiring process somewhere.  And while that’s true, just as true as the fact that my schedule being so flexible puts less strain on our household with Tom gone 24/7, it still leaves the aftertaste of BS to me.  I have that midwest work ethic in my DNA and the fact that my job/schedule/priorities are a little…fanciful? superfulous?…at times gets on my last nerve.

We continue to sock money away, preparing financially for the 6-month leave when we hike.  But as far as other preperations, we’ve covered all the big items we can for now.  And it’s too early to get into the nitty gritty planning although if anyone’s reading this and would like to foster a slightly-used cat for 6-months, please let me know.

I started running, to give me some sort of goal and new challenge physically.  I’ve been pretty down about how the weightloss stalled and finally owned up to a 6-pound gain on my little weightloss app.  I mentioned that all my measurements are same/smaller so I can’t complain too much and someone else cheered that this means I’ve gained 6 poinds of muscle and that’s just awesome.  And I was like…huh.  Yeah, I guess that’s how it works.  I can honestly say in my weight loss ups and downs and my general enjoyment of physical activity, I don’t think I’ve ever reached the point where I can say I’m not focused on the numbers on the scale.

But since the measurement that stayed the same is my damn ass waist, I still have a dozen or so outfits I can’t wear and it’s driving me bat shit.

Also, how is it so impossible in this land of silicone to find a 34DD bra??  I need the girls to slim down a little bit more just so I can continue to shop at Walmart for all my lingere needs.  That’s how I’ve kept a man this long!

Today I was on my way to my grandmother’s.  (Surgeon post-op appointment tomorrow)  Around mile marker 322 or so, 7 miles before I-75 meets up with the turnpike and becomes a 6-lane interstate, traffic stopped.  Completely.  No scootching along.  No fits and starts.  Just stopped.

I was lucky in that I was listening to a local-ish radio station, and despite it being past traffic-reporting-time the DJs did announce that I-75 was completely stopped due to a fatality investigation.  A pedestrian was hit and killed at mile marker 341.

At the I-275/I-75 merge (what?  You aren’t familiar with the FL interstate system?), a gold Toyota Tundra had been an absolute ass, swerving lanes and braking in front of me so I couldn’t pass.  When I finally could, he rolled down his window and gave me a cute wave, like he was so pleased with himself.  I can only assume he felt I’d cut him off somewhere further back and was extracting revenge.  I am not the best driver, but since doing the Tampa to Gainesville stretch once a week for over a year I’ve become very prudent.  I drive 5-10 miles over the speed limit.  I drive in the right most lane.  I try and slow down versus speed up when I want to change lanes and someone else is riding up because we all know if I speed up in front of them they are going to also speed up and let me know how I ruined their day by passing in front of them.

So what I’m saying is that I think the gold Toyota Tundra guy was completely off-base for giving me any shit, let alone the dangerous swerve into my lane to immediately brake so I couldn’t pass a truck on the merging ramp.  Whenever someone does shit like that, I have to wonder why they are giving me so much credit for being a good driver.  Because he kinda just put his life in my hands.  Plus, he’d been behind me – way behind me – and I’d let him pass me once.  Why couldn’t he just appreciate the passing and pass on by?

Anyway, it bothered me a lot.  (Can you tell?) More than I think it should.  I’m not sure if there’s a way to quantify how much random acts of asshole-ness should bother you, but since I’m big on letting things go I was starting to get pissed at myself for still being pissed at him.  Especially because I’ve been into yoga lately and isn’t that suppose to calm me and make me one with the universe.

Thinking of yoga made me think of karma and then my fake if-you-smile-you’ll-feel-better-smile turned into a real smile as I imagined passing him later on stopped by the police.   (Yes, after I got to the speed I wanted, he passed me.  AGAIN.)  I even wondered if it was possible for a citizen to stop while a police officer was writing a ticket and give their two-cents on additional infractions for which the person could be charged.

At mile marker 322, I stopped thinking about him completely for a while.  Until I had the horrific idea that perhaps he was the one who hit the pedestrian.  A quick google search reveals it happened an hour before I even got on the road.  But this line of thinking in general made me reflect that when bad stuff happens to me, I never take it as a sign that I’ve been a horrible person and the world is giving it back to me.  I just wallow in the misery.  Sometimes I try to be a better person afterwards.  But I never put it together with my past trangressions.

So now I wonder if gold Toyota Tundra guy thought about me at all during the hour+ wait on I-75.  I also kind of wonder if all those accidents/speeding tickets I got in 1999-2003 were trying to tell me something.

The wait on I-75 was annoying, but somber.  And relaxed because I knew what was going on.  I realized afterwards how calming it was to know right away the problem and not sit there wondering every 6 seconds, “WHY AREN’T WE MOVING??” 

I also reflected that since I’m not the best driver, it was kind of against the odds that I stopped completely for an accident in which I was not involved.  It’s been 3 years since I rear-ended someone who darted back into traffic from a left turn lane.  When I started seeing Grandma once a week, I was sure I was going to see a speeding ticket in my first six months (OK, SOMETIMES I go 15 miles over the limit.  Maybe 18).

After an hour, I reached Exit 329 where all traffic was diverted to exit.  I got gas, peed, and attempted to use my iPhone to figure out how long it would take to reach Gainesville on back roads.  I knew the general roads, but not specifics once I got to Gainesville nor timing. 

Of course the GPS was wonky and kept saying it couldn’t find that location.  (Not where I was, but where Gainesville was.)  But on the way to Hwy 301, I stopped at Wendy’s for lunch and actually sat in the car to eat so as to not tempt fate with another accident.  It also gave Lady a chance to pee in their nice grassy field littered with gin bottles.  But most importantly, it gave me time to listen to the radio and hear I-75 was re-opened and I was still close enough that I could see the traffic driving by.

I had heard there was a 100-yard “debris area”.  So when exit/mile marker 341 started coming up, I tried to pay attention.  That’s gruesome, I know.  But someone’s life ended and it effected my life for several hours which is more than most strangers’ deaths effect you.  I wanted to know where to…pay respects?  Have a moment of silence?

There was no sign anything had occurred.  No police car still canvasing the area.  No crushed-in railing from where someone tried to swerve.  No nothing.

After all my bitching and moaning about figuring out how/when to get the dog, my grandmother’s surgery consult went well but left her exhausted and not interested in doing much else for the day so I made the impromptu decision to skedaddle and drive up to GA that same day.

Then when I got to GA, my brother-in-law was on vacation and visiting, so they had dinner reservations and, “Go get changed!”  Except my change of clothes were rather formal for rural southern GA and my MIL saw me a real true skirt and said, “Go change back!”

While I doubt there is much my inlaws and I will ever agree on (except that frugal shopping should be made an olympic sport and we could all compete), I am thankful that I can show up practically unannounced and pass time with them without Tom needing to be there for a buffer zone.

Originally I thought about spending the night in GA or Gainesville, but I got a bug up my butt to just be done already.  I knew staying in GA meant my BIL would sleep on the couch which meant when I got up at 5:30AM, I’d have to just make him move.  And I was making good enough time (Thank you cruise control and lack of traffic-enforcement officers!) that I knew I’d get to Gainesville and not be able to relax and sleep, all revved up thinking about getting home the next morning.

So I drove 10 hours in one day and hey, would you look at that!  Remember eons ago when I had a bulging disc in L5-S1?  Me too.  And it came back for revenge.

But it was worth it because spacing the driving out over a few days wouldn’t have made that much of a difference and this way I could relax in my own home with my own husband.

Getting home early also meant I go do real, true grocery shopping for us for the next few days.  While I joke about how I like to eat pie (I do) and FunYuns (…I used to?  I’m not quite sure if I can stomach that much artifical crap these days) and margaritas (do you have one now?  My back would appreicate it), I actually enjoy eating healthy.  It’s part and parcel with the fact that I enjoy eating.

So on top of the zucchini, viadala onions, and weird tiny peaches that my MIL gave me, we now have in our fridge baby bella mushrooms, fresh spinach, broccoli, a bag of “gourmet” salad, strawberries, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes (which will never get eaten all the way but I needed one to make potato rolls and could not stomach the price per each versus 3 lb bag), a bag of apples, and cherries (!!!  It’s the start of the season!  I love cherries so very much and this heralds the start of a month-long cherryfest in casa de Progress).  There was also a cantaloupe, but it was too mealy and had to go.  And of course there are the everpresent frozen blueberries for breakfast smoothies and canned beets since I try to eat 6 servings of veggies a day, canned veggies are easy, and while fresh beets definitely taste better, they are not a food that suffers horribly from the canning proccess (hello asparagus, mushrooms, and potatoes!  WTF.).

So far I have made a fruit salad and an every-veggie-I-can-find fritata.  Tonight I think I will grill some zucchini and carmelize the shit (fancy cooking terminalogy!) out of some onions as a topping for Mahi Mahi.

Tom would like you all to know that I if keep up with this veggie fiber-fest, I may need to shop for a new toilet.  Actually, he probably would not like for you all to know that but I said it anyway.

I got back this afternoon from my second air plane trip in two weeks.  Now I just have two car trips in the next 4 days to get through and I’m back to my semi-regular schedule!

I am not at my lowest weight loss recorded right now.  But I have done pretty well eating and purposely planned active trips so I am at a comfortable point on the scale which I know from past experience I can dip down to my low point with a week of regular exercise and non-travel eating.

But today the combination of no lunch due to poor planning and horrible flight times, plus a few too many phone calls stressing about the schedule for the 1st of my 2 road trips, led me to really want to indulge this afternoon.  I turned on streaming netflix, took off my bra, and ordered in.  Fuck exercise.  Fuck fruits and veggies.  (OK, not really.  I ordered a salad along with my sandwich and dessert).  I couldn’t go buy fresh food at the grocery store anyway with the next 4 days planned as they are, and anyway I would have bought MUCH more crap at the free-for-all of branding and 2-4-1 marketing of the store.

Point is, I just really felt justified in ordering delivery versus poking around in the freezer for another boneless skinless chicken breast.

Later in the shower, I looked longingly at the “fancy” shower gel that has a nicer scent than my usual soap.  I’ve been trying to use up my old, regular soap before I broke into the new fancy stuff.

And it hit me that even with a smokin’ new body, even after a year of struggles and modifications and triumphs, I still am easily swayed to indulge myself with food.  Whereas I am gloating to myself over some sort of iron will power over using the fancy soap.

Granted, you can’t eat soap.  But still.

I have purposely shied away from the people that say, “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change” because I call bullshit.  Yes, it’s a lifestyle change to eat healthier and exercise more.  But currently as I wish for a certain number to magically appear on the scale, I am dieting.  I am eating 300, 600, sometimes even 1,000 less calories per day than I would be if I just wanted to have a “lifestyle”.

But in the shower, comparing my fancy soap to an inulgent meal I justify to myself, I realized perhaps at some point I’m going to have dig deeper than calories in versus calories out.  Otherwise I might end up justifying my lifestyle diet yet again down the road.  And I am getting too old for this shit.

(I used the fancy soap too.)

Grandma’s test results show no cancer activity anywhere but her uterus!  Yay!  (Oh how I have gone from 0 to 60 on feeling comfortable speaking of my grandma’s lady parts.)

So…meeting with the gynecological oncological surgeon (yup.  It amazes me how my regular old internal med NP will cover my pap to my skin biopsies yet get the C-word and the specialists abound) set for later this month.  She may get squeezed in earlier without me there, but that’s where we stand for now.

I showed her the birthday invites and she was pleased with them.  She might even let me send them out now.

So, yay!  On the Meh front…it appears the sniffles were an actual sinus infection.  Which I usually don’t get until day 2 OFF the plane, but probably all the little things I found to stress over dog-piled my immune system, extra vitamin B12 be damned.  I was pretty much a log for the past few days, and most tragically had to abstain from wine and whiskey during my all-important weekly cocktail and dinner hour with Grandma.  But I woke up today 1) feeling a little better! and 2) with a script for a super-duper decongestant that specializes in clearing the ear canals.

The decongestant is something Tom was prescribed a few years ago and we realized how awesome it was for hard-core allergy sufferers/weirdly-shaped-internal-ear-parts people like us.  And when I got really sick in January, I had wet dreams about it.  But I never asked the Dr for it by name, I just asked for something to make me feel better and that led to a script which 1) my pharmacy didn’t carry and 2) would cost me $122.  Which led to a cluster-fuck of nurse/pharmacist/me phone calls and a bottle of cough syrup with codeine which was the exact opposite of what I said I needed (assuming cough suppressant is the antonym of decongestant…it’s been awhile since I took the SATs), but hey codeine.  Plus my fever was 103+ by that point and all my gumption was in the toilet.

So on Thursday when I realized this allergy/cold thingy might hang around and check out DC with us, I called the Dr with a very polite but firm and concise request for this particular decongestant because I was getting on a plane soon.

It cost $70. (Meh)   But worth it.  Tom picked it up while I was still in Gainesville and informed me he’d already swiped one because his ear was hurting.  My flexeril will be forever safe because he can’t stand feeling that woozy, but Rescon is evidently his kryptonite.

We are mostly packed.  Yay!  And also…meh.  Because it was a lot harder to fit two full backpacks into two suitcases and I am not looking forward to any unpacking/shifting/re-packing that might need doing over the next week.  I have finally decided that my cute-yet-heavy-midsized hard sided suitcase needs to be upgraded.  Evidently I bought my Samsonite right before they made some huge hard sided plastic stride in technology and even though Tom’s is about 1/3 bigger than mine, it weighs 1/2.

But, here we sit.  The dishes are in the dish washer.  We’ve agreed on pizza for dinner, so nothing to argue about until we need to get topping-specific.  It appears iteration 6,504 of our plant fencing is holding cat-strong so maybe everything won’t be dead when we get back.

And this time tomorrow, we’ll be heading for Front Royal, VA with two awesome friends we haven’t seen in forever.  Definite Yay.

(Real time update.  Tom just walked out of the bathroom, went to the patio door, and said, “Baby…there’s a cat in there.”  Meaning the plant area.  To which I replied, “No I just blogged it was working.  It can’t not work!”  So…meh?  And also ARGH.  But mostly, yay.  Because in less than 24 hours I won’t give a fuck.)

I’m feeling a little better!…

Except that I’m not.  I woke up this morning with a sore, mucusy throat.  But I believe it is from allergies, and not congestive heart failure so Holy Grail quote is still a win!

My Dr decided things looked good enough at my follow up to just keep me off my meds and see me in a month.  If I were gonna be honest here, my heart rate is looking better and better to me each workout but my blood pressure seems to be remaining high.

I am remedying that by not taking my blood pressure so often.  THE STRESS OF HIGH BP IS GIVING ME HIGH BP.  I didn’t even have to google for that diagnosis.  I am that good.

Sadly (really sadly, not funny sadly), the reason that I hadn’t come to spread my heart rate joy sooner is because my grandmother has developed another cancer.

No, not her second.  Her THIRD.  She is a month and 10 days away from turning 90, kicked breast cancer’s ass in 2001 with a simple lumpectomy and radiation, responded amazing well to chemo and put lymphoma in remission 2+ years ago, and now she has to deal with aggressive uterine cancer.

The Dr told her that no treatment at all meant a possbility of bleeding out.  She said she wouldn’t mind that so much.  And I totally get it.

What I didn’t totally get right away is how much of all this is now completely my responsibility.  Not her physical care – we agreed way back in the beginning that I was a coordinator/facilitator/and procurer of hard-to-find items such as a Bunn coffee maker delimer.  I have no medical background, unless you count the fact that I can hide tramadol in ground turkey and make a picky lion eat it.

But…with my father gone, not only does it make sense for me to be her health proxy there’s really no one else qualified to do it. 

It also made me realize that all the annoying red tape that occurs after someone dies will fall solely on me.  I am not adult enough to call social security and inform them of someone’s passing.  I cringe at being one-on-one with her southern good ole boy lawyer.  And the idea of being responsible for a funeral just plain gives me the whillies.  Or high blood pressure.

BUT!  NOT DEAD YET.  Me or grandma.  So I’m gonna cross that line then set it on fire with Jack Daniel’s when I come to it.

She has been more tired lately, and a little ditzy about remembering where we were on a conversation, putting words in my mouth that are actually from her dinner companion the previous night, etc.  Ya know, basic I’m 90 Get Off My Lawn stuff.  She is still with-it enough to make sure her own decisions so for now she will.  If she chooses treatments, I will coordinate more in-home care for her and rearrange my schedule as best as possible to be there for surgeries/appointments/what-have-you.

If she chooses no treatments, I will coordinate more in-home care or hospice as it appears to be needed.

In the meantime, I ordered the invitations to her 90th birthday dinner.  Because if my options are to plan for death or plan for life….well, one of them can include balloons and wine and one…huh.  I guess you could have balloons and wine at a funeral.   But maybe not as brightly colored balloons or such sweet wine (a tempranillo she and I drink almost every Wednesday together).

We will see her oncologist on Friday to get the results of further tests.  There is still one more Dr we will probably have to meet with before she decides on her treatment – the one that can say for sure whether a hysterectomy could be done laparoscopic or not. 

In the meantime, I will drive like the wind home from the Friday appointment to finish packing for the DC trip.  Our plane leaves at 8:10am Saturday.  I will get four days home (two of those spent with Grandma) before I fly to Chicago and help out on the farm for 5 days.

I am very worried that I will somehow injure myself hiking and will be unable to help care for Grandma or help my mother with planting.  Given my track record of spraining an ankle by tripping on PINE NEEDLES, I don’t this it’s an unjustified concern.

So if you see some squat lady in a hot pink leopard onsie traversing the north part of the SNP on hands and knees, stop and say hi.

In my last post I likened having a baby with breast cancer or a dead dad.  Fruedian much?

Don’t worry, the friend wanted and loves the baby very much.  And I tolerate my baby-having friends because they kicked so much ass prior to breeding I can’t hold it against them.  Too much.

(I have actually held said baby for over an hour straight, but only Momma was there and no one will believe her.)

(Don’t tell my in-laws.)

Also!  I mentioned my Dr would find something else completely different to worry about and I was right!  Except I kinda knew it going in.

I got a heart rate monitor (HRM) for my birthday.  It was the one thing I really wanted because I would never spend that kind of money on that kind of item just for myself.  But they are very helpful to get the most out of your workouts.  Specifically, cardio machines lie their buttons off to you about burning! So! Many! Calories!  Quick, go eat some pie before you wither to nothing!

And since I fully intend to eat pie the rest of my life, I figured it might be helpful to get some real calorie burn numbers for my workouts.  That way I can have pie, but maybe eat less carrots to even things out.

So, bright shiny new toy for my birthday.  And what do I do with any bright shiny new toy?  Use it immediately without reading any instructions whatsoever.  It’s just my personality.  Even if you made me sit and stare at the instruction manual for six hours straight (feeding me pie all the while), I would jump up from the chair, fall down because my legs fell asleep, then grab the gadget and push random buttons.  If you started asking me what the buttons do, I would give big lengthly explanations using any 3-syllable words I happened to remember from the box.  I am a great bullshitter. 

It’s actually quite easy to use a HRM.  So I strapped it on, entered some bio stuff in the watch, and pressed “Start”.

About 2 minutes into my elliptical routine, I noticed it was beeping.  A lot.  Continously.  It was very upset over something, or happy about something, or felt something else should stop/start/be happening.

It appeared to be still recording my burn, so I just adjusted the volume on my earphones and carried on.

Close the end, I began figeting with the buttons a bit more, looking at all the possible readouts.  I know this info might be interesting to some, but for me it’s just boring.  I just wanted my MORE PIE number.

Until I realized the beeping might have had something to do with my heart rate being 215.

Go on and google.  You’ll find that’s a great heart rate if you wish the ambulance driver to use the sirens.

The thing is, I wasn’t even giving it 110%.  (Figuratively.  From the HRM’s standpoint, I was giving 126%.)  But I mean, I was grooving along OK.  I could have totally leaned over to you and said, “Holy shit!  My heart rate is 215!  I’m dead!” And if you aren’t in the medical field you could have been snarky back and we could have snarked the rest of the workout.  And then had pie. 

If you are in the medical field you probably would have whipped my ass off that machine and decided my great birthday treat would be a ride to the ER.

Since I was alone, and am not in the medical field, I went, “huh” and finished my workout.  I continued with my birthday weekend plans of cupcake for breakfast, a nice hike, dinner with friends…not exactly walking dead itinerary.  

But Monday, I googled.  And after my googling, I called the Dr and made appointments for bloodwork and a phsyical.

The phsyical wasn’t for several weeks, and while I didn’t want to keel over in the meantime and leave Tom with a “no show” Dr charge, I also wanted to be as skinny as possible to wow my Dr since last I saw her we put me on thyroid medicine due to my bloodwork and difficulty losing weight.  I’m happy as hell to shock friends and family with my new body, but her vote is the one that really counts.

(And sadly, she was so wrapped up in the heart rate drama she didn’t compliment me once.  And she had numbers in front of her and everything!)

So…in the weeks leading up to this visit, I still worked out.  I just modified my program a lot and wore the HRM to keep my heart rate under 200.  (Yes, this is still too high by conventional standards, but I had to decide on some number and I could hit the 65% target just lifting a fork.)  And lucky for the other gym goers, I did read the manual enough to learn how to turn off the beeping.

Cut to this morning when she leaves a poor med student to go over my blood work with me.  Evidently, my thyroid meds were working a little too well and I needed to cut down.  Maybe by half a pill.

Then I mentioned the heart rate. 

That lady stethoscoped me for about 5 minutes straight all the while checking my face to see if I had turned blue and expired right there and then.

She couldn’t hear anything wrong, so she went and got the “real” Dr (who is actually a NP and I prefer NPs to Drs except I never know how to ask for her when I call the office so I just call her Karen, which I also like very much although I don’t think I’d call her to her face but luckily we’re usually in a one-on-one situation so I’ve never had that awkward “hey you” moment.)

ANYWAY.

Turns out, my heart rate seems elevated in general.  And the meds thyroid meds could be the cause.  And instead of lowering the dose by 1/2 a pill I am quitting cold turkey and seeing her again in a week.

Both student and Karen were entirely perplexed that I had no other symptoms from the medicine.  I had to repeatedly assure them I had no hair loss, palpitations, or tingling in my extremities.  Of course, that’s not really reassuring since that kinda points to maybe it’s not the meds.  But whatever.

Before I left, I did ask Karen if I could continue working out this week as long as I kept my heart rate below 200.  She said yes.  So maybe she’s not as impressed as everyone else by the weightloss.

I went into this hoping either 1) she’d say 215 was perfectly acceptable and some people are just wired differently or 2) she’d order a stress test.  I’d kinda like to jump on a treadmill now that I’m all buff and see what I can do if I go all out.  But maybe she thinks exploding hearts are a pain to clean up or bill or something. 

If I go back in a week and the heart rate is still elevated, I have to wear a cardiac halter 24 hours.  Which will not be a good thing.  Especially if it has buttons.

The AC is fixed!  It took until 7pm Saturday night, what with ordering parts and techs not showing up for work.  But the owner of the business came over and installed the new part himself Saturday afternoon (tech was supposed to work Saturday AM).

Life was not entirely a dress rehersal for when I burn in hell though, because Wednesday evening when we knew the problem and knew the part wasn’t getting in until Friday earliest, I snagged a window unit from some friends who have real homes with storage space for contigencies such as this.  The unit was tiny, but that was fine because 1) I couldn’t have installed a larger unit safely on the 3rd floor by myself and 2) the bedroom is the only room with a window and the only room (minus bathroom) that is separated by a door from the rest of the condo.  So unless we hooked up some industrial AC unit (like say a compressor and air handler?), a window unit was only going to cool the bedroom anyway.

It made for comfortable sleeping, a hideout for the animals, and saved us from boiling alive in the late afternoon.  A great plus, of course.  The biggest problem was that I still didn’t want to even use the GF grill, let alone a burner or the oven.  There was a lot of snacking and it wasn’t even that horrible except I never really felt full since I never sat down for a meal. 

On Sunday, even with a cool breeze blowing through, I felt too tired from the week’s events to cook and really craved a burger so we got take-out.  Exactly what you need to spend money on after you’ve blown $800 on home repairs.  I’m going to go ahead and say it was worth it though.  I figure when I actual crave cow, my body’s looking for it’s own sort of repair.

I had assumed that my tiredness had to do with the heat and my lack of real meals, but yesterday it was all I could do to stay awake until 3:30, drive to the sanctuary, feed some cats, then head home.  Today I did manage my usual workout routine, but now that I’m showered and fed, I’m kinda feeling nap time creep up again.  I’ve been at a stand off with the scale since my birthday victory but I’ve thrown so many new things into the mix that I’m not too concerned as the dust hasn’t settled.  But this sleepiness does have me worried that I might be over training and I’m not sure what I will do if that’s the case because I feel like every single workout in my schedule is needed for one thing or another.  I suppose it’s possible to back off and only work on one thing at time, but that’s not really my style.  And then I have to pick which thing to work on and I’m not sure which should have priority.  Losing more weight?  Gaining more muscle?  Strengthing my shoulder?

Luckily, I see my Dr tomorrow.  I am not too hopefully she will have great insight into this, but more likely she’ll have found something else completely wrong that requires my full attention.

In other news, I enjoyed Rent as the Play in the Park this past Thursday with some very special friends.  Going into it, we realized we hadn’t all been together since 1) one of us had a baby inside her, not outside 2) one had saline and cancer vs silicon and no cancer 3) one of us still had a Dad.  We’ve all been friends for a while and I can remember several birthday and Christmas cards where one of us has written how crazy the past year has been and we’re stronger for it.  Evidently this was the year all those years were practice for.

We chose to go on this Thursday because it was the only evening you could bring your dog to the play.  Lady sported her blue and black tiger striped bandana and got to lick the cutting board after the brie was packed up.  I thought she might bark at all the clapping/noise but mostly she just curled up in her doggy bed.  She did seem a little confused when everyone mooed.

Moo.

I am so sorry y’all, but this is not going to be pretty.  It is currently 80 bagallion degrees in the condo and I think the cats have mutated sweat glands so when I receive the Nobel prize in genetics you can say you knew me when.

What makes me so mad about this is that WE KNEW!  WE KNEW the AC had a leak!  We had our friendly, neighborhood AC guy come several times last year to check and test and recharge and perhaps give a handjob to our compressor.  Last time he was here, he seemed…not that confident.

But he was such a good guy!  And he picked up the phone when we called!  (If you do not currently have an AC guy, this is #1 priority in picking an AC guy.  Over whether they can actually fix stuff.)  We wanted to BELIEVE in our AC guy.  So we shut our eyes to the fact that, ya know, AC AIN’T FIXED.

It’s been in the 80s here in central FL for a few weeks, but the night time lows plus several cold fronts resulting in only a few steady days of heat at a time meant I hadn’t really turned on the AC much this year.

But Friday…it was hot.  And both of us were home.  And I baked muffins, then protein bars, then roasted a chicken.

And after having the AC on for a few hours, we decided we like our money too much to give it all to Progress Energy and we turned the sucker off.

And then we set up some fans, took the dog to a friend’s, and went hiking.  Because…what else you gonna do?

It wasn’t until Sunday night, after my after-camping shower had worn off and I might have possibly had a slight stomach ache from comsuming my weight in pizza (Ask me how weight loss is going!), that I felt fullblown stress over our lack of cooling breeze.

I think we can all agree that I’m not a girl who is afraid to take charge.  Get things done.  Bull=horns=Jessica in Progress.

Except…I am not southern.  And not a guy.  And I cannot keep panic and outrage out of my voice that my problem is not everyone’s #1 priority.

Tom’s profient at all 3 and damn.  That shit works.  So it just became a lot easier to make him responsible for certain aspects of our household, like those that require outside assistance.

Except…he travels for work.  All.  The.  Time.  And our AC/dishwasher/microwave don’t travel with him (although he did drive around for months with a small fridge in his car because the hotel we stayed in at New Year’s didn’t give you one free in the room and it was so much cheaper to just buy one then pay their rental price and aren’t we smart expect no one on craigslist wants a mini fridge and it is an everlasting reminder to 1) never book on orbitz again 2) never book within 72 hours of your father’s funeral because you’re stressed the vacation’s not set).

Wow….just.  Wow.

ANYWAY.

So, it’s partially Tom’s fault because out-of-sight-something-something and partially mine because I did not keep my nagging skills up to snuff.  But Sunday night he jumped into hero mode by making a lot of phone calls and leaving manly, southern, non-panicked messages.

Short story long?  We have new AC guys.  Who are not quite as prompt as our old one, but they did just call me (3 hours late) to tell me they’ll be here in an hour and a half.  Oh yeah, and they also had hydrogen AND nitrogen and cut lines and had much more impressive tests than Brian ever did PLUS they had a probe beepy thingy.  And you know that means business!  (The tests are impressive because they are expensive.  And take over 24 hours so they can leave you hanging a second time.)

So…we camped at the Withlacoochee State Forest over the weekend.

It was a lot of fun.  We did not get lost on the trail!  Just on the ride up there.  Like, a lot lost.  Or maybe just a little but I really, really, really, really, really had to pee and Tom did not respect my desire to just pull over and pee on that farmer over there.  I told him next time just do what I say.  It will give him another win in the “I told you so” column and isn’t that what every good marriage is about?

Getting to the park late meant hiking in the heat.  (WITH NO AC!)  I will say, the park is more shaded than many others, but the loop we hiked in on had dappled shading at best.  It was also our first time hiking with Tom having trekking poles.  I’ve mentioned before, boy hikes like the wind with poles.  Which can be a good thing sometimes.  But I had to purposely slow my stride to not catch him because I was already sweating buckets.

A major negative to the park is that there is no water anywhere on the trail.  Not pumped.  Not even in the little lakes marked “Lake” so nicely on the map because the “Lake” is really “Bunch of Weeds In a Muddy Ditch”. 

Now, we knew this going in.  And many people cache water by walking/driving straight up forest service roads, dumping water at a good location, then walking/driving back to the start of the real trail and picking up their cache when they reach it.

We did not do this.  It sounded to me like a lot of work.  I’m not sure why carrying 6L of water (at 2.2 lbs/L) did not sound like a lot of work, but it didn’t.  Probably because it could fit in my pack.  That is the backpacker’s horror – if there is room in their pack, they’ll add stuff to it.

6L of water was actually 1L more than I thought I’d need (Tom carried 6 as well).  But with the late!  And the heat!  We both drank 3L upon reaching the campsite.  At 3pm.  Where we needed to cook and live until the morning when we hiked out.  In the heat.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  It was worse for me, I think, since I drink about 9L (I shit you not) a day when left to my own devices and bathroom access.  But I am used to rationing myself a bit on hikes.  And it really was OK.  Except that we had NO extra water to dip our bandanas in and wipe grime/sweat off and that would have felt awesome.

Besides the water, we had some great tent antics.

Our tent has 3 parts.  The footprint – basically a tarp to lay flat on the ground that saves your tent bottom from rough terrain.  The tent – a “bathtub bottom” with just bug netting for the rest of it.  The rain fly – basically a tarp that lays over the tent for privacy/warmth/rain.

A pole holds up both the tent and rainfly.  The tent clips to it underneath, the rainfly lays over.

While it is easiest to set it up footprint-tent-rainfly, it is advisable to learn how to set it up rainfly/footprint-tent.  So that if it is actually raining during setup, the “bathtub bottom” of your tent doesn’t fill like a bathtub.

This is how we set up the tent at the campsite.  And we did great until we got to the sides.  It took us a while but we finally figured out our tent was made by MSR, not RSM.  (We put the rainfly - with the logo - on inside out and the side pole attachments are not ambidextrous.)

But then!  When we put the rainfly on right, we crawled in for a nap.  And immediately decided it was too hot.  So we took the rainfly off.  Except then once the sun set it got too cold and damn who took off the rainfly?

One of the lessons learned I put down in our spreadsheet is that when it’s hot, stay up later and put the rainfly on just as there is so little sun you need your headlamp for the tricky parts.

Other lessons learned…don’t bring chocolate when the temp is above 75.  An extra large bandana makes an awesome shirt when you want to dry out your regular one but don’t want to scare other hikers with your white boobs (there was a cache – I think just a tent (yes, I poked it.  I wanted to look into it but Tom told me not to) at the campsite, but no one came by that day/night/morning).  Just cache the fucking water and drink mightily without a care.

We did get a little sleep, and luckily we packed better this time (more real stuff sacs, less garbage bags) so it was an easy break down in the morning after Starbucks Via and some oatmeal.  The hike out was a shorter loop (around 7.5 miles instead of 11.5), and through some amazing old growth forest with lots of shade.  We also walked through a just burned forest (found a smoking log) and a new growth – maybe 3-4 years.  Those weren’t as shady obviously, but it was pretty cool to walk through so many different habitats.

Then we picked up the dog, came home, showered, ordered pizza, and commenced the great AC panic of 2011.  Since we married in the great AC panic of 2007 (where I evidently used the “evolve sweat glands” joke), I guess I should feel nostalgic.  But somehow all that my brain is picking up from my neurons is HOT.