Sleeping

Evy and I did go for a morning bike ride this morning.  It was a bit later than I intended.  We went out at 10am and it was 90 degrees already.  We just went out about four blocks and back.  That was about all Evy could take at this point pedaling her big trike, it was her first ride on a road, and it was just really wiltingly hot.  We spent some time in someones sprinklers at the halfway point.

When we got back Sheldon had a client so Evy and I retreated upstairs with our respective apple devices.  I browsed a while and then proceeded to sleep for SIX hours, right through to the evening.  I even convinced Sheldon to sleep through part of the afternoon.

Not getting enough sleep and not sleeping well has been a HUGE deal for me for about the past, hmm, 9 years but I even got MORE problems with it in the past few.  Here are all the things that can mess up my sleep:

• I have hypothyroidism, which causes me to need/crave more sleep.

• I often have a hard time getting to sleep.  I can be very tired, but I always seem to be wide awake at the time I should go to sleep.  I'm often wakeful after I lie down, and have a hard time getting comfortable.

• I have sleep apnea, so I have to wear a c-pap mask.  It's pretty comfortable and I'm used to it, but sleeping in a mask with a long hose attached is really not as nice as just sleeping "naked."

• I probably have a bit of PTSD type stuff going on still.  I have nightmares often.  I think I probably have them every night, but thankfully I remember just a few dreams a week.  Dream after dream of being chased, hunted, stalked, threatened, and ones where I somehow have to go back to my former life.  I really don't think it's restful.

• Once in a while I get uh, like stuck half asleep but paralyzed.  It's an AWFUL feeling.  It's probably something to do with PTSD or anxiety.

What's saved me is that I don't have any problem *staying* asleep or with falling back asleep if I wake up.  It's only the initial starting to sleep that's tricky.  Exercise seems to help too, so exercising more should have a positive effect on my sleeping.  Losing enough weight to get off my c-pap would be an ultimate goal.

Whew!

This has been a LONG week.  I have a LOT to do at work, and I didn't get as much done as I wanted.  I have a plan for what I'm going to do next week.  I'm also on standby jury duty next week, so that might be a problem.  Thanks to Sheldon looking it up just now I already know I'm free until Tuesday morning at least.

I got a fairly good amount of exercising in by getting up earlier and doing it then.  I aim to continue doing that tomorrow by taking Evy bike riding.  I've only done like C- work as far as nutrition.  I think I may have justified overeating because I felt like I earned it by exercising!  I need to curb that next week and try to be a bit better with the intake and I'll be golden.  I think I can keep doing the getting up earlier to exercise.  I'm going to set a goal of 3 times a week and hope for five.

Tomorrow one goal of mine is to research and possibly buy the parts I'll need to build the electronic stuff I need for Burning Man.  I'll start with the stuff I must have, so the stuff to make my c-pap machine go.  I do hope though to actually be able to generate a little extra power, enough to charge phones and power some LED lights maybe, nothing fancy.   I'll do some of my own research on hexayurts too, and help Sheldon decide if we should do that or seek a tent and shade structure.  

Almost forgot again!

Today was really nice.  I don't think one unpleasant thing happened all day.  I ate a bit too much lunch, but I skipped dinner.  My downfall was these two giant Arizona creame sodas I had.  Sugar overload.  Tomorrow I'm up early to exercise again, so I'm off to bed.  G'night Inkernets.

Oh crap, I forgot to write a blog post today.

Hi blog.  So today was the first money-day weigh in for the rewards program at my work.  I missed getting the cash (which I think was only $15) by one pound.  It kind of sucked, because 4 weeks ago I pledged to lose a pound a week for 4 weeks which isn't that much.  It just so happened that on the first weigh-in of the period I was a little dehydrated or something, because it was 3 pounds lower than I was expecting.  Those 3 pounds showed back up the following week, giving me 3 weeks to lose what was now a total of 7 pounds.  It was very discouraging and in the end I managed to lose 6 pounds in three weeks, leaving one short of my goal.  That's how I lost six pounds in three weeks, yet failed to win a game where I only had to lose 4 pounds in 4 weeks.

Went for a walk this morning!  I like walking.

After that I forgot I was writing and shut down my machine.  Thanks to blogger for saving this draft!

The Opposite of the Opposite

The short of it, I got quite a bit more activity than usual, but didn't eat super well.  I didn't add up the points yet, it's probably only borderline not well.  Other than that I've been riveted to this Texas filibuster:  http://www.texastribune.org/session/831/live/ (the feed on the right).

Work was better, I didn't get as much new done as I wanted, but a lot of the things I was in the middle of yesterday came to a satisfying and easy conclusion.  My friend that's helping me with fitness came over and helped me do some strengtheningish stretching exercises.  That felt good.  It was really early in the morning.  That felt bad until I'd had sufficient caffeine.  Bed very soon.

This evening I rode my bike around the neighborhood.  This is really funny, but this is definitely the hilliest area I've ever lived in.  I didn't even notice it was this hilly until this evening.  So my bike riding was mostly because I didn't want to go out with my friend later this week and still be at the beginning stage of learning how to ride again!  I can pretty much turn OK now, but I don't feel stable enough to take a hand off the handlebars to shift!  So I'm stuck in kind of a hard gear.  I only had to walk up one hill though, and that's because there was a stop sign at the very bottom of it so I couldn't get any momentum to get up.  I may have run a few stop signs after that to avoid walking up again.  That's when I realized I couldn't look over my shoulder very well, so I was terrified there was going to be a cop right behind me when I ran a four way stop that was obviously empty except for me kind of thing.  I wondered about how much the ticket for that would be.  Resolve to figure out one handed handlebars so I can shift...or possibly obtain a rear view mirror.

And then I Did the Opposite

So this morning at 7am, I crawled back into bed and refused to get up, and I shouted things like, "Tooooo tired!" and "I dun wanna!"  It wasn't my proudest moment.  Likewise at work, I intended to walk around the campus twice at lunchtime, but everything took FOREVER.  I barely had time to grab food and bring it back to my desk.  Then I worked kind of late, and I swear it was one of those days where I worked all day and didn't actually even start on the things I *intended* to get done today.
Now it's bedtime and I haven't done any meaningful exercise.  Oddly though, I'm 10 points under goal as far as food.  *shrugs*  Also, I didn't do any Burning Man prep, so meh.  One thing I did do though is look into counseling, which is probably something I've been needing to do for at least 20 years or more, and never have actually gotten around to.  Pity the poor intern or whomever gets me as a client!

Oof

Ok, so I actually did well whatever day I last posted, but after that I just stopped tracking again.  I KNOW if I track I do well and if I don't track I eat badly, but at least I didn't gain any weight at all.  It looks like it's going to be a fight all the way down, stupid fat.

So now it's getting awfully close to burning man time, so I'm going to focus on getting more fit and increasing my stamina so I can have a good time there, and also for sourcing the stuff we need to take and gathering it, plus building some things.  I'm going to try and "be good" about eating, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time obsessing over it.  If I'm not gaining now, and add a bunch more activity, that could also tip the scale downward which is a bonus.

I've agreed to get up at what is for me an ungodly hour, and do something about moving.  I feel oddly relaxed about it.

Discouraging!

I've been being careful to stay within my points all week, and I even counted the heavy food I had in San Francisco Saturday, all definitely within my points.  I accidentally put my weight watchers activity monitor into assessment mode, so I didn't get ANY activity points this week, so I had none to "eat" despite being plenty active.  Yesterday when I got on the scale I was 5 pounds UP from last week, and today at weigh-in I was up 2.5 pounds from last week.  I know it's just me retaining water and stuff, and perhaps I was a bit dehydrated last week when I weighed in.  It's still discouraging though to see anti-results when I worked so hard this week.

I'm not sure what it does to the health rewards payment program either.  If I said I'd lose a pound a week for 12 weeks and I fork up the very first week, I don't know if that means I'm "out."  Probably not for the whole series, but maybe for this month.  Poop.

Right now I'm struggling to not get a candy bar.  I want to save my points for dinner but I've got a bunch of dollar bills in my wallet and the evil vending machine is right over there...  I'm not going to, but I really want to as a way to get revenge.  "I didn't lose any weight, so I'm going to eat this effing candy bar, that'll show 'em."  Show who?  I know, it's absolute nonsense and totally self defeating, but I still feel that way. 

I don't feel hungry right now, but I feel kind of empty, and it feels like food will fill me up, even though it won't.

Proud of my Kid

We took Evy to San Francisco for the day, and she was very good!  She has some social problems which include her not dealing well with crowds.  Too many people pushed in too close tends to make her irritable and angry.  For the last year we've been avoiding crowded places with her completely.  She was good on a trip to Santa Cruz a few weeks ago though, so Sheldon thought San Francisco might be fun.  We decided to have lunch with Daigan and then head to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and then do whatever seemed fun around there.

She did pretty good at lunch, and she didn't complain at all when we had to park a few blocks away from Pier 39 and walk.  She has flat feet and kind of poor coordination as well, so she does NOT like to walk very far normally.  She stood right in the middle of everyone and watched the sea lions for a LONG time, and didn't get mad or shove when she was jostled.  I didn't mind watching them either, they're really entertaining.  She spoke very politely and appropriately with the naturalist that was there too.

After that we went into the interior of Pier 39 and she was in awe of all the gift shops.  The gift shop is pretty much her favorite part of any outing, but she didn't get upset that we couldn't go in all of them.  We went to the back and looked at Alcatraz and talked about it, and she was a lot more interested than I thought she'd be about seeing an old building way out on an island.

Then we decided to go to the aquarium and she was very patient and interested in looking at all the fish.   She asked good questions too, and finally I did let her get a few things from the gift shop, including a sea lion stuffy she promptly named Happy.  She also got a little monocular thing, and wanted to go all the way back to the back to see Alcatraz again.  We wearily trudged after her so she could look, and we all agreed our feet hurt a LOT on the way back to the car.

On the way home we got dinner at The Dead Fish in Crockett.  It felt SO good to sit and eat a hot meal after all that walking around.  It's kind of swank-ish, nothing for kids to do, but she sat nicely and made conversation, and actually turned down my offer of my iPhone to entertain her while we waited for our food.  After dinner she fell asleep on Happy while we waited for the check.

She'll graduate from 5th grade Tuesday.  She's a little worried about moving to Jr. High, but I'm optimistic.  Days like Saturday make me pretty hopeful!

In other news, I CAN ride my bike now.  I went out and stuck Evy's Hanna Montana helmet on, told myself that I didn't want any more farting around about it and to get my ass up on the seat and pedal.  Then I did just that and pedaled up and down the driveway and across the street and such.  I'm having a teeny bit of trouble making tight turns, but otherwise I think I can go out on a bike path soon.