Author: sandcastle

Counting calories eaten.

Counting pounds lost.

Counting steps taken and minutes working out.

And it is, slowly but surely, paying off.

I’m eating between 1000 and 1100 calories a day and having trouble keeping them up that high. The food here is tasty but so low-cal that I have trouble eating enough food. My stomach doesn’t want to hold those quantities. So I have been given permission to eat as many almonds and walnuts as I need to get up to that 1000 calorie minimum. Isn’t that an interesting phenomenon?

I’ve lost ten pounds. Which doesn’t sound like much to me. So I keep reminding myself that it would add up to about 150 pounds if I kept it up for a year. Fortunately, I don’t need to lose quite that much. 🙂

I am using a FitBit to track my steps but I’m not even half way to the recommend 10,000 steps a day. So I remind myself that when I got here just walking from my van into the building left me huffing and puffing and looking for the nearest chair. I can walk a lot further than that now with no huffing and I even received a compliment from another participant on the increase in my stride.

And I am keeping a list of my non-scale successes. Such as now being comfortable in a size smaller jeans than I was wearing when I arrived. And walking down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. And now being able to do two exercises classes on the same day when I couldn’t even do one when I arrived. And being able to walk my Travel Scoot to my van in the back forty at Target when its battery died just as I was leaving the store.

And I am astounded at how social I have been here. I eat every meal with people to whom I talk instead of burying my nose in a book. And I chat with people between classes. And, of course, I give tours of my van to people who have trouble believing I can live comfortably in the parking lot.

Well, maybe not so comfortable this weekend. It is cold and rainy. But that seems a small price to pay for all the benefits I am receiving from being here. I made the right choice when I decided to come here. And I’m staying on until I feel ready to leave. So many more insights to discover and pounds to lose and strengths to gain, you know.

TTYL,

Linda

 

Is it possible to get jet lag when crossing only one time zone?

Because that’s what I appeared to have last week. I was so brain fogged I could barely function.

I have decided it’s because of my sleep schedule.

In Minnesota I had been going to bed about 3 am and getting up about noon.

Now I am in North Carolina and asking my brain to get up and function about 7 am.

It has no problem getting up at 7 am but it expects me to make a quick trip to the bathroom then go back to bed. So it says, “What do you mean ‘that’s it’? You don’t really expect me to function at this hour, do you?”

Slowly but surely it is accepting that, yes, I do expect it to function then.

So, I only went to one exercise class all week. And I’m not sure how much I learned in the lectures. I may have to repeat some classes.

But, I feel happy and I have lost almost 5 pounds so some things are going right in spite of my recalcitrant brain.

It can only get better from here, right? Right?

TTYL,

Linda

On October 7, 1964, several families gathered in one room in preparation for becoming members of the same church. At the end of that gathering the oldest son of one family offered a ride to the Sunday evening youth group to the daughter of a different family.

Thus it began.

Two years, two months, and twenty-two days later that young couple held their wedding reception in that same room.

And we are still a couple after all these years.

And are glad to be so.

TTYL,

Linda

It’s been a wild and wooly life for me the last couple of weeks. As you all know we’ve been on a search for the fuse to my macerator all the while I was making plans to head to North Carolina. Finally, Paul, from Sportsmobile Texas said he thought I should call Sportsmobile North in Indiana and see if they could work me in on my way southeast because someone is going to have to actually LOOK for that fuse. So I called and they said they were booked for awhile but they could probably work me in if I could come Wednesday. I said sure and hung up the phone. Then realized what that meant.

Dave and I spent the next few days on a roundup. Trying to sort out and corral the things I need to take with me then transfer them to the van and stash them away so I could leave in time to make it to SMB North by Wednesday.

I got most everything I need but it’s still not all put away. But I did make it to my appointment in time.

They removed the driver’s seat hunting for that fuse. When they still couldn’t find it, I think they just started pulling fuses one by one looking for one that was burned out. Found it! It was on the main panel but mislabeled. I was a lot happier than they were. SMB Texas is going to get a decent sized bill for not labeling the fuses correctly but I got off scott free.

So I headed on my way to North Carolina. I set a new record for me. I drove seven straight days without a day off but I made my destination with a half day to spare.

And that destination is…? Structure House, a residential health improvement program where I will check-in tomorrow and save $500 a week by living in my RV in their parking lot instead of in one of their apartments. I am here for some unknown period of time where my food, exercise, mood and other health indicators will be monitored and I will attend classes to learn how to do these things on my own after I leave here in hopes of getting me completely well again.

I have no idea how much, if any, of this experience I will blog about. So, if you don’t hear from me for awhile just assume it’s because I am busy getting well. All right?

TTYL,

Linda

For the third time in three years our building-wide fire alarm went off.

Not quite dawn. (Dave took this picture when everything was pretty much over.) It took me awhile to wake up enough to realize it was the fire alarm. Before we even got to the first landing on our way down the stairs the alarm stopped.

But we could see flashing lights through the dark out the window so we waited a bit.

And the alarm started again. So we went on down.

Yes, there was a real fire. Yes, this time they hauled hoses into the front door of the building and pumped water. I have no idea why the sauna was on fire but it was.

They got the fire out and the alarms were silenced again.

For a few minutes. Then they went off again.

Seems they were having trouble clearing the smoke from the sauna’s vicinity in the basement.

The sauna, hot tub, exercise room, and the central elevators are currently out of service.

Finally the alarms stopped for the last time and I went back to bed.

But, I did meet a couple more neighbors. One of whom has lived here for 23 years. Guess she likes this place in spite of this type of neighborhood gathering, huh?

TTYL,

Linda