A Moment in the Life: Whose Hand Is That?

A few weeks ago, I was up late and it had been a day of low water and considerable hand washing.  As I was flipping channels, I caught a glimpse of something that horrified me:

Whose old effin' hand is that!?  That is not what my hand looks like.  There's no lotion on it, I'm not hydrated but the light caught it just right to be able to make me recoil in horror.  Sooner than I'd like, that IS going to be what my hand looks like.  It reminded me of my great grandma's hands when I was little.  She lived to be 100 so they ended up looking way worse than that by the time she checked out.  I found a picture of her the other day and she would absolutely be used in a modern day 'judging' meme.  Judging cat got nothing on my paternal great grandma, yo.  But I thought of so many things.  How I'm going to be flipping into new numbers this year and I remember throwing my mom a huge party for hers.  We were at our heaviest then and I've never watched the video from it.  I want to now because I want to hear my mom's voice but I also know it'll be hard to see me looking the way I did then.  I would've called you a bold faced liar if you told me she wasn't going to be around to see me turn the same age 17 years later.  

I don't think anyone properly prepares you for what natural aging does to your psyche and even worse when your mom isn't there to guide you through it.  Even though she and I had different approaches to life, you still want a hug from your mom when life gets hard whether it's a hard situation or you've discovered your hand looks like a 'before' picture for an old school cold cream.  Sooner than later, no amount of my favorite lotion will moisturize the old out of my hands.  I'm one of those people aging is going to hit hard because the Mr and I have been together since we were teens.  These hands have seen a lot.  Though I guess it's presumptuous of me to assume my hands will get much older than this.  We all assume we'll get to a ripe old age but my Mom and his dad are proof that isn't always the case.  

I guess I'll have to work on my grip strength to hang on for dear life the rest of my years.

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Chatty Weekend Recap

I said a hip-hop, the hippie, the hippie

To the hip, hip-hop and you don't stop the rockin'

To the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie

To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat

You're welcome and kudos if you rapped it.

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I hope you had a bitchin' weekend and are rested to begin another weekly grind.  (Me either.)  Friday I took down the tree.  All other Christmas accoutrements are still up because that was all I had in me and I'm good with that.  The room always looks so empty with it gone but when the stuff is off the floor, we're grateful for a little more moving room in the shoebox.  

Last week, we were formulating how we were going to do a new to us approach to weight loss.  I came across some YouTubers who are big number crunching gals and the stuff they said made some sense to us as we were dreading going back to the usual BS we've done for over 10 years.  Basically the gist was instead of following a massive calorie deficit and grueling exercise programs that throw your body into constant inflammation and stress, you start with an 11% deficit of your TDEE maintenance calories and do exercise you enjoy like walking, chasing your kids at the park, strength training maybe 2-3x week and make stress control/sleep a priority.  Track everything as far as how you feel, if you're going through some emotional crap, periods, your food, etc.  When you hit a plateau, you bump up to maintenance calories for a week and if you see something needs tweaking like your stress or sleep and then go back to the deficit.  Does that sound too good to be true?  Maybe.  But a lot of people said they were killing themselves with HIIT, tons of exercise, following the calories from calculators and not losing, or worse, gaining for all of their efforts.  This sounded familiar and since we're beginning again while still wading through grief and needing something to focus on, this sounded like a new approach that was somewhat exciting for us.  The biggest thing though was a TDEE calculation gave us a number so outrageous for our 'maintenance' calories that we were not comfortable with it even after subtracting 11%.   The spreadsheet those ladies created (which you have to pay for with their coaching services) is shown in enough of their videos you can see the columns.  It tracks fat mass and muscle mass.  I found a very inexpensive scale with over 160K positive reviews that measured both as well as other metrics.  So I added it to cart and we had it the same day.  Come Saturday on weigh in day, we were able to measure our body fat.

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When we went to the TDEE calculator and were able to enter the missing body fat percentage in there, it made a huge difference in our maintenance calories which I don't know if that was ever mentioned in their videos.  So subtracting 11% from those numbers seemed much more manageable to us and we're going all in on this philosophy for a bit because we're just ready for something different that doesn't leave us feeling broken.  It will also be nice to potentially have new metrics to use because if there are weeks the scale doesn't move and I feel like I've been perfect and done all I could do, it could tell me maybe body fat went down a little or something like that.  Who knows.  We'll see.  

We both agree we still need our high cal days but we would put a cap on them calorie wise.  We got close and added exercise by walking at a park which we don't normally do on Saturday.

It was cold but nice to be out and about and later I used my floor bike to get me to 500 calories burned for the day.  We concentrated on eating slower and made sure to get way more water in than normal Saturdays.  Actually I started all last week with chugging my 25 oz water bottle before getting out of bed which was a big help in me getting to my goal of a gallon of liquid a day.  I've made it two weeks in a row before and this is the start of week two so we'll see if I can pull a week three out of my bum next week.  I made a point to try to focus on my sleep last week.  You all know I'm a bonafide night owl like my mama and 12:30-2am is a normal bedtime for me and then broken, crap sleep most nights especially the past year.  So I made a point to tell the Golden Girls I was going to have to break our nightly date and put on some dark ambient scenes from YouTube to eliminate the flashing and annoyances of commercials.  I made a point to attempt to stop scrolling by 11:30-11:45, pop in my earplug, have my nightly chat with Mom then do a 'stress scan' and start with the top of my head and move down to purposeful unclench.  This seemed to have me asleep within 20 minutes every night except one.  The night we watched a show before bed called Rico to the Rescue on HGTV where the dude helps people who have been screwed by contractors and calls them in to either recoup money/help out or calls them out and it made my body as hard as concrete.  My shoulders tensed, my heart rate shot up and I could NOT shake it at all.  So that night's sleep was horrible.  I immediately took it off the DVR schedule.  I told the Mr he could watch it if he wanted to but I couldn't because it brought back too many bad memories with our contractors over the past 3 years.  So there's the sleep portion that I'm trying to take care of.

With a new plan and needing to up our protein meant a lot of groceries and trying to figure out how the hell to do it all, what we could prep ahead of time but that would be a Sunday activity.  Saturday prep of a different kind went on.  I had been uploading our tax documents into our tax program and it said efile wasn't available until the 29th.  Well, the tax lady was like "I've started working on your return" and I'm like "uh...I was just uploading documents."  (I usually do them then have someone look them over at the end to make sure they're right and I like to do that as a control freak.  Their question system seems to get more convoluted and frustrating every year so I wasn't exactly looking forward to it especially with Mom's stuff in the mix.)   Then she's like "it's done, I've applied a $100 coupon to make it more reasonable" and I told her we always do them, I didn't realize she was doing the whole thing and what is her idea of reasonable because we weren't planning on paying more.  I was freaking the hell out because we're at a money bleed right now and she wasn't telling me the total.  I told her what we were used to paying and waited for her response.  She ended up applying a ton of discounts and got us to $40 less than we've paid and she did it all for us which was a first.  I was beyond thankful since I didn't know how death stuff all figured in and it took a huge mental burden off of me this year.  

Then came Sunday and prep time.  The Mr had soaked some beans overnight and got them cooking in the crockpot for adding to salad and eggs and stuff.  I made a protein breakfast for each of us to have two days this week with an egg, egg whites, garlic hummus, cottage cheese and nutritional yeast whipped up in the Magic Bullet.  Then I put them in some glass dishes with 2 cubed slices of Canadian bacon, black beans, onions and red peppers and popped all four into our family sized Hot Logic in the dining room so it wasn't taking up valuable kitchen space while cooking.  Then I had to make lunch and a bit of a complicated dinner so I felt like I was doing nothing but cooking all day which I did not care for.  Meal prep is always my nemesis.  Sounds so good until you actually realize how long it all takes.  Pfft.  When I'd had enough and we let lunch settle a bit, we went down and did this Fitness Blender upper body strength session.  I still kept my weights low at 8, 10 and 15's because my left shoulder is probably a good two weeks out from not feeling like it's going to fall out of the socket.  We got a decent little burn to bank and I figured since I was making a new to me recipe that was going to require about a 40 minute cook time on one ingredient that I'd better get to it.    So I went back into the kitchen and got to work on the sweet potato nachos I scrolled past at some point to see if they were a rotation meal or not worth all of the trouble.

Crap...they're worth the trouble.  😕  Maybe not every week but I thought the Mr was going to kiss me long on the mouth for that one.  That about did me in and my feet were definitely not appreciative.  Which brings us to now.

Oh, before I forget...I hate to have to ask this but if you follow me on Facebook, can you please make sure you throw a "like" at a post even if you don't get to read it when you see it?  Algorithms have changed again and if you don't, I won't show up in your feed and that is being highly reflected in the numbers.  You may need to only do it for a week or two for it to be consistent, I don't know.  I don't make money here so I don't have $14 PER POST to 'have the potential to reach 532 people' and some of them may not even be my regulars.  I barely break even through the generosity of those who click on Amazon links or put up with those curse worthy Google ads that literally took me 18 months to get $100 from.  I'm just trying to be transparent with y'all!

How was your weekend?  Any meal prep, walks, shenanigans to share?

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What I'm Reading This Week #4

Happy fan-flippin-tastic Friday y'all.  I hope your week went off without a hitch and you're ready for some weekend shenanigans.  We're still kind of reeling over the information overload we took in last weekend and trying to figure out what will work for us going forward.  We saw this video about eating 7-11% under your TDEE instead of the huge slash of 30% deficit most calculators give you.  While it sounds good, it's also terrifying because that's a lot more calories than we're used to consuming.  I actually was somewhat low this week and I need to figure out some grab and go stuff that doesn't have fat like cheese/nuts, etc.  So again...if anyone is reading this and has some go to snacks, we'd really love to hear it in the comments.

Now let's hear about:

20 Ways to Boost Your Protein Intake at Every Meal  (I need all the help I can get.)

5 Ways To "Feed" Your Muscles Daily To Support Longevity  (Good tips.  I put some of this in my oatmeal Monday and while it wasn't bad, it changed the texture of the oatmeal so I need to tweak with a bit more liquid or something.)

Not Drinking Enough Water Is One of the Worst Things You Can Do When Stressed—Here's Why  (Hmm, did not know that.)

Why Sleep Doesn't Come Easy To People With ADHD & What To Do About It  (Sorry but I cherish the bed rotting time with my man!)

Snacks to Lower Cholesterol: A Guide  (Some good stuff to keep on hand!)

Can ‘micro-acts of joy’ make you happier? I tried them for seven days  (Might be worth a shot)

5 Surprise Retirement Expenses (If anyone is retired, feel free to leave other surprises we may not know about!)

The Most Common Causes of Death in the Home and How to Prevent Them  (Always good to know what's lurking in your home to take you out.)

Con Watch: Artificial Intelligence Is Making Scams Worse  (Sadly my favorite great aunt just fell for one.  Stay alert y'all.)

Just to see if anyone is paying attention

Miss some posts here this week?  Catch up below!

Testing the Gams Weekend Recap

Midweek Check In from the Wagon

I guess I might be ready for the tree to come down.  We clearly aren't getting any snow again ever.  We've already got people bitching about the rain here.  I will take the rain but in January, I want some friggin' snow please!  I'd like to find something not house oriented to get into this weekend but no idea what.  We basically feel like we live in an upgraded prison and that's not super fun so a change of scenery would be nice.

Would love to hear what you're up to this weekend as well as those snack suggestions!

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Midweek Check In from the Wagon

I feel ya, Kermie!

Ahh, there's nothing like getting back 'on the wagon' as you're fighting holiday weight gain along with grief weight gain along with injury recovery.  The first thing is always getting in the right mindset and my Lord, the enthusiasm of the past is just not there because of everything else I'm mentally trying to work through.  

I didn't realize how utterly blown my left shoulder is.  You should have seen me attempt this Fitness Blender upper body workout.  I knew I wanted to go with functional because the pain in my shoulder is hindering my ability to do a whole lot, especially over head.  This happens when I let strength training go for whatever reason and shows me what life would be like without it, which is painful.  It's like my big melon is crushing the joint because that's what I sleep on at night.  I knew to go light at 10 lbs to test where I was but when it came to stuff like front and side raises, holy shit!  I had to go down to 8's and the pain was not pretty.  I know it will get better within a few weeks but it's the rebuilding that sucks.  It also sucks when you break down in tears at the end of the workout bawling in your husband's arms about why have we not conquered this yet?  We were so on our way over 10 years ago.  Yes, we've kept 75-85% of the weight off but we're not in the same boat to be able to lose like we could back then.  It's just frustrating and definitely not something I thought I would still be dealing with if you told 2010 me we wouldn't be remotely close to our personal goal weight.  

The throes of grief put your body through SO. MUCH.  I was a horrible sleeper before but this?  This is just next level crap and the fact I have to sleep with crap in my ear hole because we have asshole neighbors on both sides and brace for slamming or barking dogs 24/7 puts my body in a permanent state of stress and then shovel grief stress on top of it.  My body is conserving like it's storing me up for an impending asteroid.  I've been reading all of these studies about how critical good sleep is for weight loss and I have no idea how to rectify that.  Melatonin does nothing for me (and it's not good to take regularly apparently because your body will stop producing it), NyQuil, Benadryl and all of these non narcotic options people use on occasion have never worked for me.  Even when I was prescribed the equivalent of valium, my body was like "nope."  So I really can't think of a good solution for someone whose hamster is at the ready on the mental wheel anytime.

I began upping my water this week which is good but I've done that before.  I know doing it for a week or two and then slacking isn't going to help me so it's going to be hard to stay on that track.  I think my record is maybe 2 1/2 weeks before I start to slack.  I've been starting the morning chugging my 25 oz water bottle so I can get the ol' system jolted into action.   I'm trying to be better about drinking the Metamucil the doctor has recommended.  (I still don't get why they recommend that when I already get my 100% fiber according to Cronometer.)  Just like with water, it's something I may stick with for a week or two before pooping out even though it's supposed to help me with exactly that.  

A food rut is also a problem.  We've been eating crutch meals for months and the tastebuds are bored.  I did get some Hawaiian Chicken from Aldi over the weekend and I used the sauce as the dressing and added a pepper and a quarter of a zucchini in there and it was quite good.

Even though it was more sodium than I like, I was able to fit it in.  I found a cream cheese chicken chili recipe that sounded amazing and I paired everything down to low salt and made it doable for us and I must say it was damn delicious!

The one thing I need to figure out is how to add more protein in general without adding fat with it since I'm on cholesterol watch now.  So I'm open to ideas if you have any outside the box thoughts on that.

I need to get better about doing plantar fasciitis specific PT.  I go between trying to do enough and not doing too much to overload it and make the pain flair up.  I am being diligent about ultrasounding after dinner as we wind down for the night on both feet to aid healing.  

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to pee for the 757th time.

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Testing the Gams Weekend Recap

Happy Monday, party people!  We're sliding into the last full week of January.   Last week we got back to our first week of full exercise.  Not full blast for me, mind you, but I did what I could.  We started with a 3 mile WATP last Sunday, then pulled it down to 2 miles, the next day fitness blender's idea of a "walking" workout and it was nothing of the kind.  Then I was desperate to do a Turbo Fire.  I know, it sounded bad before we even did it and I waited to pay the wrath Thursday and I just felt the usual foot pain.  What came next was seeing how my legs would react to a lower body strength session.  We did one complete with lunges, deadlifts, squats, etc.  I kept the weight light but my calves were giving me occasional fits so I'd do soleus stretches in the middle of a set to attempt to keep things looser.  I got some wide calf compression socks and would wear those after to help with swelling.  What was my bright idea for Friday?  Welp, we got just over 2" of snow and it was set to be melted by today or tomorrow.  Given our track record the past few years, I knew this could likely be the only time we could pseudo snowshoe.  (Not deep enough for conventional snowshoes)  Did I mention it was 22 degrees out?  Well, that's what thermals are for.  I knew the odds of me undoing the minute amount of progress I was just beginning to see and making me worse off than I started was high.  Did it anyway.

We had our walking poles and snow sneakers on because no way was I attempting to use actual snow shoes.  I brought my regular tennies in case the snow sneakers, which are quite hard with little toe wiggle room, didn't work out so I could change if I needed to.  We were only able to get one slow full lap in and both of us were having issues with our fingertips being painful despite having on two pairs of gloves.  We forgot to grab hand warmers on the way out and it got a little scary at a few points.  I had to pull a Mary Catherine Gallagher and put my gloves in my pits and wiggle my fingers and encouraged the Mr to do the same.  After a minute, it made a difference to be able to forge on.  Afterward we saw some woodland friends.

While I knew it was probably the worst thing I could do for my feet and despite having froze fish sticks for fingers, it was good for the soul.  As we were exiting the trail, a horribly underdressed twenty something in her Lululemon wear showed up and I warned her to be careful since quite a few spots were pure sheets of ice.  Just like that, I was the next subject for the Progressive becoming your parents commercial. 🙄

We went down and rolled and stretched when we got home but the Mr was hobbling so that made me nervous.  I immediately got to ultrasounding my feet and when we went up to watch Queen Bees on Netflix I threw on the my compression socks and slathered on some magnesium foam before bed.  I was pretty nervous about what Saturday would hold for me and knew given how bad my usual middle of the night pee was that I'd better brace for the worst.  

I was happy to wake up Saturday and only have slightly worse pain on the left foot for about 10 minutes after walking and it went away.  So I don't feel like I did any damage and I can maybe look into adding some more movement in the coming week as long as I keep up on my PT/rolling after exercise.  Saturday we tried a new to us taco place and it was okay.  We both agreed we would likely just get the taco (burrito really) we got but get our own no salt tortilla chips which we like better.  My lips were stinging after eating theirs and I'm not used to that.  We went out a little later and then finished up a Netflix doc before turning in for the night so another lazy Saturday.

Sunday was a grocery pickup and a healthy breakfast to start the day.  I was waiting on some gloves I got hoping they would arrive so we could test them in the last cold day this week.  Whilst waiting for those we decided it was time to watch some health oriented documentaries to see if we could glean any motivation or new to us information.   On Amazon Prime we watched Beyond Weight Loss.  The format kind of sounded like some rando decided to do a documentary as production value was low but it did give some good formulas to keep in your back pocket going forward.  What it also did was basically tell us that yo yo dieting has effed us up so badly that our body will never recover and even strength training won't help.  But then out of the other side of their mouth gave solutions which is basically stuff we already knew- cardio and strength training.   They all seem to subscribe to the multiple meals per day model and claim the body can't process more than 300 calories at a meal.  (???)  Literally the first time we're ever hearing that.   (Not the 5-6x day eating thing but about what your body can't take in more than 300 calories without storing it.)   We went to the park and got in another round of snowshoeing despite some melt and did one extra lap.  That did it as far as feeling like I did a little damage so I got to ultrasounding.

Then we watched parts of a Netflix doc called You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment where they feed one twin omnivore diet and one plant based.  It doesn't take a genius to know that the vegans are going to lose all the weight, improve all the numbers, etc.  It felt very one sided (and I'm not saying they're wrong) but it pissed me off so bad that what I thought I was watching was highjacked by 60% with another agenda that we just skipped to the last episode to see the results like we thought we were watching and then watched Homestead Rescue to get the bad taste out of our mouths.  So that's how we rounded out the night.

How was your weekend?

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What I'm Reading This Week #3

It's finally Friday.  As usual a short week felt just as long as a regular one.  We finished up the Netflix Dahmer series with Evan Peters just in time to see Niecy Nash win an Emmy for her performance.  She did do a great job.  I kept fact checking the whole time because I had just wrapped up the real trial a day or two before so everything was pretty fresh in my head.  We watched Luckiest Girl Alive which was decent.  Also finished up Emily in Paris so I need to see what to get into next on there.  I will usually list a Netflix gift card once a year for friends to get for birthday or whatever and we catch up long after the hype for everything is over.  Apparently if you don't sign in for over 6 months, Netflix will completely wipe your account and saves so make sure you write down what's in your queue if you do something similar.  I know no one does but still.  

Now let's queue up:

Any physical activity burns calories, but these exercises burn the most  (Do tell!)

10 Signs Your Body Is Craving Movement  (Interesting!)

Scientists Say They'll Cut Back on Bottled Water After Learning 1 Liter Contains a Quarter of a Million Pieces of Plastic  (For anyone who still uses plastic bottles.  Trust me, get a big ass one like we have and this isn't an issue.)

Functional Fitness Is the Most Practical Form of Exercise You Can Do — Here’s How  (This is literally just as important, if not more, than traditional strength training.)

Squat vs. Hip Hinge: Which Is Better for Training Your Glutes?  (I didn't know what a hip hinge was.  I can see the benefit though)

How Much Money Do You Need Saved to Live Entirely off Interest?  (Good to know!)

Stop Believing These Longevity Myths to Live a Longer, Healthier, and Happier Life  (Okie Dokie artichokie)

Steve Jobs thought devices would become ‘a bicycle for the mind’–but their effect on our brains is similar to that of smoking and junk food  (I friggin hate what technology has done to my brain.  I would give anything to retrain my brain.  I won't even sit through credits or suspense builders because I'm that impatient now.)

Why Bad Grammar Bothers Us So Much (Yes those do but it's the misspellings that are like nails on a chalkboard to me.  'Loose' weight and 'excercise' drive me up a wall.)

10 Big Music Moments from 50 Years Ago  (Some iconic moments!)

No big plans for the weekend that I know of.  All of our Christmas stuff is still up.  Might be time to think about taking it down in the next week or two.  I don't usually like to take it down until there's been at least ONE snow with 2" or at least something that you can't see through it but doesn't look like that's ever happening.  *kicks pebble*    Even if we did, it's going to be in the 40's in a few days.  We really need to move to a snow belt area.   I'm going stir crazy though...might need to see if we can get into something and test out my PT.  

Any tomfoolery on tap for you this weekend?

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Sorry, I'm Not Doing That! 😒

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Anyone else noticed an annoying AF trend on Instagram where instead of just telling people in the caption what ingredients were in the recipe they just showed or list what colors and materials they used on a project, they're now like "comment RECIPE, LIST (or whatever magic phrase) for links/list/recipe."

So if your little reel goes viral or even has 50 people who respond to it, you're supposed to DM every single person a link????  What if an old one gets a lot of traction and you have to start digging back to find stuff?  It's even worse if there's some tool where it's now scanning the creators DM's for said magic phrase because where is your privacy in that??  Now, links I kind of get because they aren't clickable in the comments section but most people have a "link in bio" section where they'll share info.

So if you, like me, ain't got time for that BS go to the home page of the account, look for a little link icon 🔗 in their description (might look like a paper clip) and about 80+% of the time you will find the link for whatever recipe, project or item they're talking about.  Otherwise out of pure irritation I no longer care enough to comment "recipe!"  "Pantry hack" or whatever secret word handshake to bow to the IG overlords.  

So hopefully that saves you as much time as it saves me!

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Talking Turkey Weekend Recap

Happy Monday my pretties!  I hope you had a good weekend and that any of you in the path of any snowstorms still have power and are doing okay.   We're down to about 10 degrees with not even a dusting of snow.  Definitely won't be any walking outdoors for us this week!  Yikes!  At least the last time we walked we gave the turkeys a concert.

Have y'all seen this on IG?  Well, it cracks the Mr and I up and we started singing the horn part to the turkeys and one group of them stopped and genuinely looked at us like they were going to start following us like we were pied pipers.  Then there was a different group and they were like "they're the devils!" and ran away.  Before you ask, no there was no one around.  😆

Friday night, I thought about our old neighbor when I was a teenager and thought maybe I'd drop her a note since I knew Mom was friends with her on Facebook.  The next morning I was checking Mom's feed as I do every morning and I saw it was that neighbor's birthday.  I was excited because I thought that would be the perfect chance to get back in touch.  I got on her page to see what she'd been up to and I saw a message from her husband wishing her a happy 'heavenly' birthday.  She passed away one month to the day before Mom at 56 years old and only 10 days after her own mom passed.  I just lost it bawling.  She was always the nicest, funniest woman.  She was friends with the family of my first crush and would tease me a little.  When he was injured in a fire, she told me about it and I was able to go visit him in the hospital which he said meant the world to him because his own girlfriend didn't come to visit him.  I was always grateful to her for that.  She and I would knock on the bathroom wall to each other if we heard the other in the morning.  You know that knock that everyone does  "dum dum da dum dum" and then then the other knocks back "dum dum."  Well, one time she did it in the hall at the top of the stairs and when I did the response "dum dum" in my 80's slick heels and I slipped and flew down the stairs!  The thought of what that had to sound like to her on the other side made me lose my shit laughing and she ran over banging on the door "are you okay!?  Are you okay!??!"  I limped to the door laughing saying I was okay (maybe that's what's wrong with my legs!)  When my dog was dying, she took me to the ER vet because my mom was gone that night.   She was the type who was so adorable and you could see her playing Mrs Claus when she got older with white hair.  Big twinkling blue eyes, sweet little round cheeks and a laugh that was contagious.  But, like Mom, she didn't get the chance to get old.  I cannot take anymore death.  I really can't.  Thankfully, the Mr was down with driving around aimlessly because I couldn't be in the house after learning about her passing.  It was nice to be out and about a bit and get my mind off of that.  We watched some tube and passed out but then I had insomnia until about 4am.  I made sure we got our car battery jumpers all fully charged knowing how cold it was going to get.  

Sunday was all about getting my 'new' laptop charged up.  I've had it since November 2022.  Mmm hmm.  The Mr got me up and running and I had to log back in to everything which was a pain in the butt.  We had the fireplace on a few times because that heat seems to retain more than the forced heat.  We went downstairs and I tried my Walk Away the Pounds 3 miles and I was able to get through it.  I'm on day 3 of using my ultrasound.   I need to try to save money right now so I'm going to see how far I can get on my own with that and PT and digging around trying to release what I can.  I talked on the phone with my friend from middle school for almost two hours.  It was nice to laugh and reminisce about our weddings, momzillas (not mine), and what's going on.  I made the Hello Fresh chicken pot pie skillet which I haven't made in a while and it was pretty good.  We watched some of the Netflix Dahmer special because I didn't want to start it until after I watched the real trial to know what was real and what wasn't.  

That about does it!

How was your weekend?

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What I'm Reading This Week #2

Tis Friday y'all!  I hope you had a good, productive week and are ready for a hearty helping of weekend tomfoolery.   I've been dealing with bait and switchers on rental sites and the aftermath of that.  So irritating and it was not how I wanted to start or end my week.  We have retreat booked and it's the first time we don't really have any space to go outside in a lawn setting and chill.  It is so weird to see how places we've stayed in the past regardless of where we've stayed aren't available the following year or the next time we're in town.

We binged season 4 of the Netflix show You which was good the first season, went downhill the second season, irritating and grating the third season and this season was "didn't think it could get more cringe, I was wrong."  We had a lot of shows to catch up on and I think that was the last of the old shows and now it's new to us stuff.  Anyone else still think these streaming services seriously don't live up to what they claimed they were going to be when spit balled?  

Now let's claim:  

These Muscles Are Key For Healthy, Comfortable Aging: 9 Ways To Flex Them Today  (They are not wrong and I need to work on it.)

Mysterious Neglected Part of Our Body Is Vital to Our Health, Scientists Discover  (Dude...I can tell you first hand how important it is and keeping it pliable because if you don't, you'll be in big trouble.)

8 Plant-Based Foods Rich in Pectin, an Anti-Inflammatory Fiber Linked to Longevity (Some yummy options to add in if you don't already!)

Brain Function Dramatically Boosted by Certain Fragrances During Sleep   (Interesting!  I'll have to drag my diffuser back out!) 

Shin Splint Exercises  (Yep, got those too. 🙄)

We stopped taking Ozempic and Wegovy — and regained more weight than we lost  (Given the price of it monthly and more and more stories like this (and the ones yet to come out in 5-10 years)- I'll pass even though I'm really tempted with grief weight.)

Things People Don't Realize You're Doing Because You Have Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (Holy crap, there's a name for it!?  I've got basically every one of these but would love to know WTH you're supposed to do about it!  Also what happens when you have examples of people actually rejecting you?)

4 Brilliant Ways to Respond to Someone Gaslighting You, According to a Therapist  (#4 should shut down pretty much anyone.  If they dig in, reply 'according to you.')

6 Things You Should Never Store in Plastic Bins, According to Pros  (In case you're doing the whole declutter thang)

How to Erase Your Personal Information From the Internet. It’s Not Impossible!  (Nothing like getting a call from some asshat asking if you want to sell your deceased parents APARTMENT.)

It's the weekend and the Mr said the only thing about going back to the office is that he has an appreciation for the weekend again.  I'm sure he'd much rather be back on his 4/1 schedule going in on Fridays when no one else is there.  We're both hoping they come to their senses because people are doing no work, blabbing around each other's desks for well over an hour at various times of the day, whistling and humming just to be annoying and see who they can get to snap.  I encouraged him to walk the halls for five minutes at the top of the hour to get away from the masses and give his legs some circulation.  Still no snow here and I'm ready to road trip for it.  I literally watched a huge system come in, break up around our city and rejoin together 30 miles outside of it.  It happens without fail- every. time.  

You got anything planned for the weekend?

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A Moment in the Life: Clue Edition

Since I don't have enough of a life right now to warrant a full post, I may start bringing you a Moment in the Life.  Something that catches my attention in the day to day.  

Yesterday it was the view the Mr sees every night when we retire to watch Lord knows what for the evening.

It's like Mr. Body doling out the weapons in Clue that he has to scooch aside to hop into bed.  

So the question is was it Mrs. Peacock, in the bedroom with the lymphatic tool, rumble ball, yoga strap or metal muscle scraper?

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First weekend of 2024 Weekend Recap

Sup party people?  Happy Monday.  I hope you all had a great weekend with some snuggling in close if you're in the snow path (not us...sigh) or getting milder warm days to enjoy if you were down south.  The best our weather could do was a few lousy attempts at slush and that about did it.  So the faux snow will remain on the slider until Mother Nature falls in line.  I would like a blizzard of  '78 scenario.  I'm not old enough to remember it but I've seen pictures and it looked glorious.

I found on Facebook that several of you are also suffering from the delightfulness that is heel pain/plantar fasciitis.  It'd be one thing if it was that initial getting out of bed hobble until it works itself out but this has been 24/7 for over a month.  At one point, I almost had to army crawl to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Last week, I started doing physical therapy.  I looked up my old post about my lower body PT and started incorporating that and stair heel raises to stretch the Achilles.  I won't say it's worked miracles but there is a slight improvement.  The Mr was kind enough to slow his stride beside me in thermals to walk in the chilly air as I hobbled for just over two laps at our old park where there was no inclines or stairs.  

It still hurt...a lot.  But afterward we would make sure we went down to roll and stretch.  It would still hurt after too but I need to be able to exercise.  So it's a slow attempt to build up to being able to do something.  I started doing EHOH (every hour on the hour) last week too.

Squats

"Good Mornings" (Bend forward to 90 degrees with hands clasped behind head)

Side Lunges

Calf Raises (Hold for 3, lower slowly)

Tap Backs (Reverse lunge without "lunge/dip" portion)

Sidesteps with slight squat

Kickbacks (Heel to butt for quad stretch)

Sumo Squats

Calf Raises on stairs (allowing heel to slightly go below step on lowering)

Some days I have to back off because after the first time, I felt like I'd done a full on leg day which tells me how super weak all of my leg muscles are.  I have to see what I can handle daily.   The ones that do the best for me are the stair calf raises, squats and good mornings.  I mean they all do but if I have to stick to three basics, those are it until I add others in there for variety.  At some point I'll have to add bands in there for resistance but I'm probably 2 weeks out from that at this point.

The weekend was pretty uneventful.  Actually, we were basically a meme:

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We are both at maximum density.  When your clothes don't fit and you have body parts saying hi to each other that haven't partied together in years, it's not good.  We always pop a few Fukitol's around the holidays but with the addition of trying to fill a grief hole, it's been bad.  Really.  Bad.  I know...it doesn't help.  I know...it won't bring her back.  I know...I can't lose weight the way I did 10-15 years ago.  I know...weight gain isn't helping my foot problems.  It's all stuff I know as I shove whatever into my face and stress eat.  I want that motivation that typically comes this time of year and it's nowhere to be found.  I want to want to do better.  I feel like I'm failing.  I'm failing myself, the Mr, Mom and you.  I feel like I should rebrand the blog as "Incredibly Increasing Grief Hag" and see how that does for retention.  Success Along the Weigh feels like a lie.  I suppose I should start scouring the internet for the bazillion success stories out there to see if they spark any motivation.  I'd advise you to do the same because clearly those days are gone here.  Sigh.

What did you get into this weekend?

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What I'm Reading This Week #1

Welp, we're at Friday links #1.  You've made it through almost the first full week of the new year.  High five!

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I'm not going to lie...it's been difficult, starting a new year without her.  No one ever thinks of that part.  The forced abandonment of leaving your loved one in an old year while you start a new one.  The Mr said he remembered that feeling well from when his dad passed which will somehow be 20 years in September this year.  That turns my stomach to think of how fast 20 years has passed and just knowing how the memory of my father in law feels so far away than when he was here even though we only saw him once or twice a year because of living out of state.  I can still hear his voice though and the Mr carries on his laugh as well as his occasional BS explanations that I laugh at and say "just say you don't know" just like his dad did.  I know parts of my mom will live on through me as well.  People say they know I'm related by smile alone.  I hear her laugh when I laugh as well as phrases and cadence of her when she spoke.   Regional  phrases or sayings that slip from my lips and hear both her and my grandma at times and I smile and feel a little sick inside.  

Anyhoo!!

Now it's time to get to our first go round this year of:

Why Eating a Banana a Day Can Make Bones Stronger, Even As We Age  (Five days a week for me.)

6 Things to Do Every Morning to Support Healthy Aging  (Sounds good)

Here's What a Perfectly Balanced Weekly Workout Schedule Looks Like  (Looks good to me for the most part)

4 Exercises You Need for Better Full-Body Mobility  (These look like they could loosen you up!)

How to Rest, for Real, When You’re a Very Anxious Person  (There are actually some decent tips and not patronizing BS)

6 Ways Stress and Weight Are Connected  (Welp, I'll clearly be fat forever.)

What to Do When You’re Super Cranky and Hate Everyone  (That about sums it up)

Home Cooking Mysteries, Solved  (A good one to keep bookmarked.  Do people still bookmark??)

We are ready to leave the comfort foods of the holidays behind as most people are but I need some suggestions.  I just don't have a whole lot of brain power anymore to research and scan through online recipes so if anyone has any suggestions on their healthy faves that I can put into rotation, feel free to share it in the comments.  I've got some Hello Fresh recipes I need to look over and put together grocery lists.  I'm really hoping I can get back to some kind of regular exercise.  Tomorrow is epiphany for those who celebrate the actual 12 Days of Christmas.  It would've been nice to get some snow for the occasion but apparently we don't get that anymore.  If I get my feet/legs back, I'm going to start searching it out, chuck the Mr in the car and going to go play in some friggin' snow dang it!

Whatchu got planned this weekend?

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First Rando Update of 2024

It's 2024.

Byeeeeee!

I thought I'd share the pantries/cart that FINALLY got done just before Christmas.

The two larger cabinets are Ikea Brimnes which we had to fight with to get since both cabinets were damaged, the Mr frankensteined one full cabinet and then they were out of stock again so I had to stalk their stock for it to come back in for a few hours and place an order.  In 2019, we got two other pieces from the Brimnes line so these match however, these now smell like whatever natural fiber backerboard is on the back.  You read that right.  😑

I no longer care.  I don't have it in me to fight anymore.  So we've just had the doors open for over a week with 6 boxes of baking soda inside.  The boxes on top are to store things that have porous bags like flour or whatever until it gets transferred to glass containers so it doesn't pick up the stank.  So I can tell you firsthand that, as seems to be the pattern with everyone and every company, the pandemic has been used as an excuse to make some kind of substitution in either glue, binders, ingredients, etc. for anything and everything and not in a way that seems to benefit the customer.   

The piece in the middle is a cart from Amazon.

It's small but could be used to house stuff like bulk spices or mason jars and stuff like that.  All we know is the more storage the better for our shoebox.

So there's that whole thing.  I don't know what else to write here because it's basically just been physical limitations and grief as far as the eye can see.  I am going on one month of pure inability to go on our walks which has severely affected my already flailing mental health.  As you can imagine, that has sent my weight in the wrong direction.  I feel like I am a physical therapist's office and the Mr chuckles when he hops into bed and has to push aside a yoga strap, Beetlejuice the fascia tool, my wooden tomahawk and hope he doesn't step on a random ball I may use for fascia release.  I mean how much damn 'rest' is one supposed to give it???  My calves are in a permanent state of lock which scares me.  I'm going to have to give it a week or two for everyone with the creeping crud of their choice to settle down and make an appointment for deep tissue/trigger point massage.  Clearly nothing I'm doing on my own over a month is working.  I did order a floor bike which is not my ideal and it gives me zero cardio as I can do 15 minutes and burn a measly 30 calories so it's definitely not a replacement for exercise sessions but might help in some other way.  Given this is the 3rd time in 10 years I've been banished to non-weight bearing exercise, I suppose I should keep it.  (I got one before but I think it was cheaper and I ended up donating it.)  I can get strength in there but standing for it is an issue so I may have to do it in a chair.  I'm a hot friggin' mess y'all.  The last thing I want is if we happen to get our ONE day of snow at some point and I'm not able to go out in it.  I try to go for walks here and there but it's really painful during and iffy as to how I feel if I don't do a crap ton of digging after.  I'm trying to gauge how it feels but I hate that the Mr has to slow his speed when we are able to limp out a few laps.  

Speaking of the Mr, he has to go back in office this week.  There is literally NO ONE from his team at the office, they are all geographically dispersed and in no way require being in office as all work is done remotely.  There is no 'team building' or 'collaboration' that can be done by being in office.  So it's a BS front that others who have very real health issues have to pay the price for.  He'll protect himself as necessary but shouldn't have to given there are just as many people on his team on site at home as in the office.  We'll see how long that lasts as no one including his supervisor is happy about it.  He's still continuing to apply for jobs that are fully remote but those take months to even go through the convoluted sorting process.  You can get an email months later "congrats, you made it to the next level!" and then hear nothing ever.  Dumpster fire all around.

So that's about it for us. 

How's the new year treating you so far?

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