My grandmother turns 90 next Monday.  Through much arm twisting and “I don’t care if you think you might die before then, we’ll have the party without you”, I have arranged a dinner party for 14 the Saturday before.

I have planned the meal, ordered the invites, taken the RSVPs complete with fish or beef selection, and nagged Tom to score free hotels both here in Clearwater for the night before (for my brother) and in Gainesville the night of the event (for me and Tom so my brother can use my grandmother’s guest room).

I have selected cakes, confirmed special meal requests with the event coordinator, and directed that the table set-up be two 7-tops versus one large table because my grandmother hates those large tables where you can barely talk to the person across the way.

I have a to-do list that includes buying candles, cute cocktail napkins, and Jack Daniel’s.  I have researched decorating dos and don’ts and come away with the idea of tying mylar balloons to potted plants and letting the guests take a plant home at the end of the night.

And yet…I really feel I suck at this party planning.  I have somehow been unable to do all of this without grace and ease to put my grandmother’s worry-wart mind to rest.  She has worried and worried over the guest list, yet every time we speak of it she decides to leave it as-is.  She worried that I might have addressed the invitations to the general delivery address of her community instead of the guests actual apartment addresses.  (For which I could not help but snap at her.  In a smiley way, yes, but still fiercely insulted.  I am 36-fucking-years-old.  I know how the postal service works.)

And through it all, she worries that she will not feel physically up to a party.  Despite the fact that I have arranged for it to be hosted in a private dining room at her community, mere steps from where she walks every single night for dinner.  And I am absolutely unable to assure her it will be fine.

On top of feeling like a failure at planning this party, she has one dear friend attending whom took it upon herself to call me up when my grandmother was first diagnosed with lymphoma and tell me how awful the chemo would be and it was horrible for grandma to go through it alone.  Grandma and I were both rather upset and insulted by this phone call as I had already planned to do my best to be there, but I was on a different career path at the time and did not have the luxury of making the choice to drop everything and make her a priority as I have done this past year. 

When this dear friend called me to RSVP, she mentioned she was looking forward to meeting me (obviously she forgot the time we ran into each other at Publix) and reminded me of that phone call and brought up how incredibly strong my grandmother was to have gone through chemo alone.

During my walk/runs (w2d1 of c25k)  in the morning I have imaginary conversations with this women, trying to figure out how I might respond if she brings it up yet again at the party.  There is a lot of swearing and tight, fake smiles in these imaginary talks.  I would dearly love to tell this old bat to fuck off, but that just doesn’t seem very hostess-like.  And since it seems my grandmother is determined to be the party-pooper at her own party, I need to plan out a response that doesn’t include a hissed, “Can you just drop it?!”

I am so over this party already, yet I still must visit with my grandmother once more this week and if I am not calm, cool, collected (yet excited and happy and chipper) about the weekend’s festivities, she’ll just worry more.

Maybe this is why people hire party-planners.  So it can be someone else’s fault when the poop hits the fan.

My poor grandmother does have quite a bit on her plate healthwise and I understand that her birthday did not fall at a particularly convenient time, cancer-wise.  But as someone who got on a plane with only 8 hours notice and would not have seen her father alive again if she had stuck to her original itinerary, I believe my family and her friends needed this chance to celebrate with her and hopefully she will feel the same after the fact.  Grandma has always been a nosy, butt-inski worrier so I have to remind myself that she’s just doing what she was born to do. 

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.)

***Warning/Note/Editor’s Remark/What-have-you.  My father passed away suddenly in October 2010.  If you find a letter to a deceased relative depressing/in poor taste/boring, read no further.***

Dear Dad,

It was not depressing to be at the farm.  I didn’t miss you a whole bunch, because so much of you is still there.  A pair of your non-prescription reading glasses are sitting in one of the cold frames.  They are cracked and dirty of course, but I bet if you found them you’d chortle a bit like you found gold and wear them until you misplaced them again.

A bit more esoteric but still true, you’re there in all those flowers.  All that damn lavender I now have carpel tunnel from weeding.  Even in the annuals I helped Mom plant, because I know you helped choose which kinds of flowers to plant and she probably wouldn’t have had the slightly idea how to seed, grow, and transplant them without you.

Seriously, you would have been proud of her.  I know you were the mastermind behind the actual farming aspect of the farm but she didn’t have one hesitation in what she wanted done and how to do it.

So it just felt like you had stepped out for a really long time to buy groceries.  Which was sad, but not depressing.  If that makes sense.

I never told you this, or anyone for that matter because it’s just one of those random things you think to yourself once or twice a year, but I have always missed the lilac tree blooming in the back yard.  I don’t think I’ve been home for a spring or fall until this year.  But I remember having my top window cracked on rainy April nights while the lilac was in bloom and just feeling like everything was right with the world.  I am sure you pointed out the lilac trees you planted at the farm, but I’d never been there to see them in bloom.

Maybe it’s morbid, but I think it’s kind of neat you can continue to do things to make me happy even though your dead.  I don’t know that there will be many more opportunities to feel like that, so I’m soaking it up.

At 1216*, Mom has made great strides to clean the house up for eventual sale.  It was a shock to see the 5 shelves bare of books in the downstairs bathroom.  It will be weird when this place is gone.  But right now it doesn’t seem as sad as maybe it should when thinking of the loss of your childhood home.  Of course, you might not understand that anyway what with how often your family moved growing up.  And maybe since just about all I did for the first 10 years of leaving here was apartment hop, I don’t get it either.  But I think a big part of why I don’t feel sad is because you and Mom made such a great home of the farm.

I came back to Chicago instead of staying at the farm today because the weather was iffy for this afternoon.  I wasn’t psyched about driving your truck back in a thunderstorm (sorry, Dad.  I know you love your beat-up old vehicles but I have heard enough horror stories from both you and Mom about that truck to have second thoughts), and luckily we got enough accomplished at the farm that there wasn’t enough left for me to do to warrant risking bad driving weather.

Except now I’m back here, and it is a little depressing.  Mom asked for me to go through the kitchen and make piles of what she should keep, what should be thrown out, and what might be given away/sold.  It is a chore exactly opposite those at the farm where I could feel your praise and appreciation for all I did.  You would be hurt to see all the “thrown out” and even given away/sold.  You might even get down right angry and banish me from the kitchen after I decided Mom did not need three different types of blender.  (She’s keeping two Cuisine Arts!  Don’t haunt me in my dreams where all you do is die over and over again like you did the 3 months right after you passed!)

I’m pretty sure Mom feels the same way; that she’s going against your wishes as she purges and cleans.  I bet the books were easier because she saw them as joint custody while all kitchen appliances were solely yours.  So if this is something I can do to make the process less stressful for her, I will.  Even if it means you will visit me at night moaning that all you wanted to do was poach one more fish before you died and now you can’t.

Love,

Your Daughter

*1216 is the family’s nickname for our red-brick townhouse on the south side of Chicago.  In 1997, my parents bought several acres – with no pump, electricity, nothing – in south Michigan, a little over an hour away.  They turned it into a dried flower farm during their weekends and eventual retirement.

1)  I am down to just two to-do lists!

2) I’ll be down to one once I get the airport this afternoon!

3) I’m pretty sure these lists suck though since I couldn’t think of anything to add to my “Chicago To Do” until this morning.

4) And I’m unsure of how to cross off “call sitter – figure out when we need her” because

5) We came home to Spike having bloody, hard to pass urine.

6) I don’t blame her for that, but on the other hand obviously having someone stop in was not as soothing to him as previously thought.  (We have a huge water fountain, automatic feeders, and two huge + 1 regular litter boxes, so leaving the cats to fend for themselves for 1-2 days is often a valid choice)

7) It was stressful to have him prescribed twice-a-day meds less than 24 hours before I had to drive up to Gainesville.  I managed to time it out to dose him 7 hours apart.  Then I thought about him constantly while going over medical paperwork with Grandma.

8) But I came home to non-bloody urine in the kitchen sink which was awesome because

9) Hello, not bloody.  And

10) He’d been peeing bloody urine in the bathroom sink which is easier to jump up to.  So he must be feeling better to reach the kitchen counter!

11) What with me leaving on a Thursday and not returning until Tuesday, Tom and I will go almost 2 weeks without seeing each other.

12) And then someone has to go get the dog which we could do together but would mean leaving Spike alone and I will not be sold on that idea until I get back next week.

13) I could in theory drive up and get the dog after driving straight from Gainesville from the airport (OK, not literally.  But almost) to take my grandmother for her surgeon consult.

14) Just typing it makes my blood pressure rise.

15) I have evidently become a huge wimp.  Because that just described at most 14 hours of travel spanned out over 4 days with almost bat-shit else to do in between.  (Although it does mean another 4 days straight away from home which is a little stressful what with the peeing and all.)

16) In all fairness, I have always been a huge wimp.  I am a fan of incremental planning.  If I were building the great wall of China, I would not make a picture of the entire wall.  I’d offer up 5 feet and let them know how much I could do in the next progress report.

17) This is why I never want to become a manager.  I am not a “Big Picture” person.  I like the trees, not the forest.

18) I also like actually doing things versus sitting around feeling accomplished because other people are doing things.

19) I think I’m a little scared that I’ll be sad going to the farm and Dad’s not there.

20)  No good segue to that one.  Took me 19 fucking lines to figure out that was bothering me so once I got there, I ran with it.

21) It’s silly to be scared about being sad and I’m fine with being sad because I’m a late-mourner so I’m aware I haven’t full taken-in what his death means to me, but I just don’t want to have it all come out on my mom.

22) She’s probably a little bummed herself and doesn’t need that shit.

23) In general I haven’t been psyched about this trip, so hopefully that means it will be kick-ass.  I’ve rarely not had fun that the farm. 

24) At least I’m pretty sure I won’t have to sleep on any down pillows that cause my sinus infection to return.  Thank you, hotel check-in preferences, for proving how useless you really are.

25) I packed some of that super-duper decongestant just in case.

26)  Time for lunch!  Gotta love cleaning out the fridge.  Think I should down the last glass of wine?

27) The cats might knock it off the counter otherwise.

28) Ya know, when they’re trying to pee.

29) Argh.  Also, meh.  (So I guess I’ll have some whine after all!  WHY must we just have put down our most unhealthiest, neediest cat only to have another one take her place?  Spike isn’t even 5!  Stop peeing like an old man!)

30) In another segue-less point (which, isn’t that why this is a list?  To be able to spew the randoms without the need for connectivity?), while I haven’t been able to lose more weight this month I seem to be doing a good job holding steady.

31) And having this much time off makes me realize how crazy my old workout routine was.

32) So I am looking forward to a new, slightly less-insane, plan of attack for June.

33) It does help to pack my skinniest pair of jeans and wear them often.  They are not quite so bad that I can’t breath while sitting down, but I definitely don’t think of them as “eatin’ pants”.

34) Sadly, a lot of my other pants fall in that category because I’m too cheap to buy in-between pants.

35) So I’d better get off my ass and lose the rest of this weight so I can buy some damn pants that fit.

36) Maybe next time I write I’ll share, “Farming, how to lose 15 lbs in a week!”

37) Or maybe not.  But I am trying to figure out how to bring protein powder in my luggage without getting a narcotics rap.

38) Until I’m done with farming or my jail time, watch out for bloody urine, down pillows, and eatin’ pants!  Downfalls of civilization, I tell ya!

Slightly lesser known than LOL or WTF, HYOH stands for Hike Your Own Hike.

It’s used most often when hikers wonder if their gear/pace/shelter plan/food rationing is up to snuff.  Does it work for you?  Are you able to sustain it/carry it/eat it/get good sleep?  Then carry on.  HYOH.

It’s also used right after someone gives a detailed reasoning of why the gear/pace/shelter plan/food rationing of someone else is definitely NOT up to snuff.

Maybe because hiking is a form of exercise, and I’ve been wading in the deep end of that pool for over 15 years in my quest to eat tasty things without looking like I eat tasty things, but I have had very few questions of the “am I doing this right?” variety.  I’ve taken in opinions and consulted gear reviews and most importantly obsessed about what things weigh.  But in the end I seem to have a strong gut feeling that I prefer trail runners to boots, pig tails to a crew cut, and peeing standing up with a feminine helper funnel to obsessing over shrubbery coverage and squatting.

Did you know about the funnels for women to pee standing up?  Some people swear by cutting a salad dressing bottle at a certain angle versus purchasing a specific device.  But I was of the strong opinion I didn’t want to mess up the design or have rough-cut plastic near my vagina.  I use a pStyle and I love it.

All of these opinions aside, I have wondered.  Maybe I’m missing something.  Maybe I like what I choose to wear/carry/eat because I don’t know any better.

So I was very excited to plan the trip to Shanendoah with Kat and Shane.  Especially when I found out they hike in boots and think trail runners (slightly sturdier sneakers) were crazy-talk.  And they filter their water whereas Tom and I use a chemical treatment – saving us over a 1 lb to carry but not an FDA-approved way to remove Giardia.  (It’s rumored that it is allowed to claim such in Canada.  And since most sites do agree that “Beaver Fever” is less caught by beaver feces contamination than humans just not pracaticing good hygiene, we decided to risk it.  Giardia has a two week incubation period, so we’ve got another 8 days or so before we are in the clear.)

Another good reason to do some small “shakedown” hikes – you can get intestinal issues back in the comfort of your own home and HMO.

The hike itself was a great success.  For me and Tom at least.  Kat had mentioned to me that she too had the sniffles prior to our flight up there and I sort of assumed it was of the same variety as mine.  But she definitely was sicker yet insisted on sticking to our plan for the 1st day.  Unfortunately, she felt worse and couldn’t breath well enough to do any strenuous climbs, so we hiked together down to a goood outlet for them and then Tom and I struck out to hit the top of Knobb mountain and find a camp site while they went to the trail head and agreed to pick us up the next day.

It was a very selfish decision to stay that 2nd night without them, but I don’t regret it.  I think Kat would have hated herself more for making us leave the trail than she did for leaving us there alone.  And Tom and I got to really hike at our own pace the next day, proving that we can average 2 mph in the mountains which is what we’re sort of counting on in planning the Big Hike.

But before we were alone, I got to see first hand how different people hiked/camped and felt very good about the decisions Tom and I have made. 

The biggest thing I am still up in the air about is clothes.  I have been wearing some convertible pants that I like and are really quick-drying, but have a terribly small zipper/inseam which makes using the pStyle diffficult.  I’m not sure if I lose a bit more weight if that will be less of an issue or if it’s truly a design flaw of the pants.  I also brought the pink panther onesie after much debate and worry about being cold.  The weight wasn’t a huge issue, but it doesn’t pack down well and I really dislike my backpack towering over my head.  I can still justify it if I decide to bring less clothes in general and use it as a full outfit.  Which I think we all know I am not too shy to do so.  I just am still worried I’d be kicking myself for not having separate shirt-pant combos.

Oh, and my shirts seem a bit on the heavy side, despite being good wicking material.  And my kick-ass socks are so fluffy I am afraid they will not dry well on the trail.  Although I did fall into the river wearing a pair and they dried OK.

But, for all that waffling about what to wear (so sad that I don’t put that much thought into it wearing regular clothes), I became strongly attached to my footwear.  Specifically, trail runners or bare.

The 2nd day of hiking included 15 river crossings.  Because whoever made the trail is evil.  And I had decided awhile ago that I didn’t want to carry a pair of water shoes or “camp” shoes (shoes to wear while at the camp site).  So that means finding rock-hopping pathes at water crossings, or going barefoot through them.  And in between water crossings, I have to either take the time to re-shoe and un-shoe or just grin and bare it.  (I did bring a pair of flip flops in case I was wrong about the toughness of my feet.  They now sit in my shoe bin, unworn.)

I fell into the water trying to rock-hop because I felt self-concious holding up the group to untie my shoes again.  I had just put them back on because I was falling behind walking barefoot on the trail.  There are lots of rocks on trails.  And even more scary are piles of leaves.  That might contain rocks.  And millipedes.  And snakes.

But besides having to watch where I put my feet a bit more (which I should probably do anyway), I really liked going barefoot.  It was a nice break from wearing shoes.  And with every squeak Kat or Tom’s water shoes made, I heard chafing and blisters and prune feet.

After falling into the river (sliding really, I extended my leg too far to make it to the next dry rock and couldn’t hold my footing so down I went), I decided I was going to HMOH.  I wanted to stay barefoot until the river crossings were over.  And so I did.  It was really hard to not keep justifying myself to everyone.  Especially Tom.  It seems that slowness on the trail is equated with some negative quality I can’t quite name…but that because I chose to be barefoot and went slow that I needed more help or guidance.  And considering that he’s been trying to get my to slow down ever since we started hiking together, maybe he should just shut up and try to convince me to go barefoot all the time.

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.