Happy Halloween

 I have never been much of a Halloween lover (if you are, please don't judge me).  I always hated that my birthday was in October, I wanted it in the spring.  But Maddox told me a few years ago it was his favorite holiday, so I bought a bunch of decorations for him.  He put up none of them this year, and I was too lazy to do it.  Plus, I kept thinking Halloween was a long ways out, it's not, it's today.  I will likely go trick or treating with Asher and Damian, with Maddox tagging along.  He's going to be a character from the video game Fall Guys.  

Working with kids, I've heard a lot of video game characters as Halloween costumes this year, most of which I don't know.

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I don't think I mentioned it, but I was looking at half marathons again a month or so ago, and found one in the Tri-Cities at the end of February.  That is where I ran my 2 marathons, and is close to where I grew up in eastern WA.  Anyway, this one goes past a winery that I really like (well, I've never been to the winery, just like their wines) and I thought that would be fun.  Chris could sit at the winery and then I could "steal" a drink from him as I ran by.  

Anyway, the training plan I was looking at was supposed to start this week . . . and of course I've run less the last two week than I have all month.  In fact, last week I only ran 3 miles, just one run.  This week I've run twice (both 3 miles).  Even with these last 2 weeks of low mileage, I have run more this month than I have since April.  If I had run my normal amount last week and this week, I would have been pushing 50 miles, which is the most I've run in a long time, October 2022 I ran 66 miles, after that it's been very few.  October 2024 I ran 9 miles, yes, 9 miles for the whole month.  I have definitely been in a running funk for a long time. Interestingly, October 2022 was the last month I did my run streak, but even before that, I wasn't running a lot, maybe it was every day, but it was often only 1 mile.  In February 2022 I ran more than 1 mile 5 days a week, March I ran only 1 time more than 1 mile, that month I got 33 miles.  

I don't know what shifted at that time. My Dad died in October of 2021, but maybe that was accumulated stress from going through my parents house and stuff.  

Back to the half marathon, this happened at the beginning of the summer, right when I was supposed to start training for the half marathon I had decided on this fall, I quit running as much.  Maybe I just need to not decide on a half marathon and just run.  

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The weight loss pills I am taking . . . in about 4 weeks, I lost 8 lbs.  🎉 I noticed my appetite went down, I am not snacking at night, in fact, there have been some nights where I am short of my protein goal, and I have to force myself to eat something to get to 100g of protein.  I am hitting 100g (or more) every day, with supplements, I have found a good brand of protein bars (Pure Protein, 20g per bar) and a good collogen/protein powder (Vital Proteins, also 20g per serving) and a good whey protein powder that tastes just like lemonade (Myprotein Clear Whey Protein Powder, another 20g).  If I do all that every day, I'm at 60g and only need another 40g.  I can tell you the protein in 3oz of chicken (about 30g), roast (about 30g), eggs (6g), string cheese (7g), and there's a good (I think) organic turkey meat (20g) and I found a lower suger (9g) yogurt that has 16g of protein (the other yogurt had a lot more sugar and less protein).

Anyway, I was doing great, feeling great, and losing weight.  I was seeing a loss every week, often several pounds.  And then 2 weeks ago I quit losing.  I have been at the same weight for 2 weeks, nothing has changed . . . well, I did stop eating 2 protein bars, and that is around the time I added the whey protein powder.  But that should not be what makes me plateau.  My appetite is still gone.  I am still getting 100g (or more) of  protein.  It's frustrating.  I'm not stopping, but I am frustrated.  

Remember the above paragraph . . . 2 weeks ago I quit running 4 days a week and went down to 1 or 2 days, maybe there's a correlation there . . . hmmmmmm.  

The lady I see that prescribed the pills only does virtual.  She does not live in WA. I would prefer to see someone in person, but these pills are affordable and she is easily accessible.  She has a chat thing that I message her in and she responds within the day, even on the weekend.  So that's nice.

I hope you all have a great Halloween and happy November tomorrow!

General Chris updates

 Because I have been reading old posts lately, I have realized I really like having a journal that I can go back to to look at my life.  I've remembered so many things reading my old posts.  Anyway, I realized today that I haven't updated on my general life for awhile.  

Sometime in the beginning of the year, Chris mentioned that he had lost a bunch of weight.  I didn't really notice because I see him every day.  I think when you see someone everyday, you don't always notice changes that happen over time, and weight can be one of those things.  

August 2024

February 2025

He said that he hadn't drank in 2 or 3 months and had lost a bunch of weight.  I thought that was amazing

And then, not long after that (I don't remember the exact time frame) he started talking about how much his hip hurt.  He didn't know what was going on, so he went to the dr.  He told me that his dr. told him he had arthritis in his hip.  He said one night he woke up needing to go to the bathroom and he couldn't walk, he had to crawl to the bathroom.  I thought he was exaggerating because I've had arthritis in one hip for 8 years or so, and it's not horrible.  For me, it tends to be an ache in my leg, in fact, when I found out it was arthritis, I had gone in because I had a constant ache in my thigh that wouldn't go away.  I got it x-rayed and found out I have arthritis in my hip . . .

*okay, remember, how I said 4 paragraphs up, that I like having this journal so I can go back and look at what happens in my life???  Well, I went back to find if I posted about my arthritis diagnosis, and I read this post where it does talk about my arthritis diagnosis, but I also had been diagnosed with "pars defect."  I explained it in that post, but that explains A LOT about my recent low back pain that won't go away.*

Okay, back to Chris.

I had a hard time believing that his hip pain was as bad as he said it was because of arthritis.  And then I got a call from his dr's office in March.  The nurse was frustrated because they had been calling him for months and he wouldn't answer or call back and he had labs that had been ordered in January that he had not done . . . in March.  Anyway, I started getting after him for not contacting his dr or doing his labs.  After all this, I got into his hospital digital records and found that he had been diagnosed with osteonecrosis in his hip.  Basically his hip joint (the ball) is deteriorating.  At the level of decay he has, the only solution is a hip replacement.  Both hips have decay, however, at the moment only the right hip is serious.

In order to get hip surgery he had to do a bunch of steps, which includes getting an echocardiogram because of his heart problems that were discovered when he had a stroke in 2017.  He needs to quit all nicotine.  And he needs to get his A1C down . . . this was news to us.  Apparently when he FINALLY did his labs, it was discovered that his A1C level was a 12%. Normal is under 5.7%, they want him at  under 7.

So, remember he lost a bunch of weight in January and February?  Well, it wasn't him stopping alcohol, it was actually diabetes.  He wasn't even diagnosed with "pre-diabetes" or early stages, or anything, it's straight up diabetes and they put him on a shot right away.  

My brother-in-law has had diabetes for well over 10 years (I don't remember how long, maybe over 15 years) and has not been put on a shot because he has worked to control it.  (He doesn't and is very against going on the shots, and has a dr that has allowed him to continue to try to manage it with pills and diet, even though that hasn't worked well.)  Honestly, I have wondered if they put Chris on the shot (he takes Mounjaro) right away because of his hip.  Chris has actually been doing very, very well with his diet.  Apparently his insurance won't approve a nutritionist (they also only approved the Mounjaro to be refilled every 6 months, but only gives him 3 weeks worth of shots, they fought that and he is thankfully able to get it refilled every month), so he has done  A LOT  of online research trying to figure out his diet.  He succeeded and got his A1C done to 6.5 (or something), so his hip surgeon called to schedule the surgery about a month ago.

Do you know what that man did?? He told the dr that he needed a few more months to get enough PTO . . . I got after him for that.  I told him he didn't need to schedule it for right now, but get the surgery on the books, so when he is ready, he doesn't have to wait.  He still hasn't called.  🙄

Anyway, he is currently walking around with a cane and he says it doesn't hurt as bad as it did.  I wonder if he's just gotten used to the pain, well, and also, his dr has him on prescription strength ibuprofen.  

Why do we have to have a title?

 My 2 followers (Love you! 💕) both asked about my run 2 weekends ago, so I decided I'd post.  I have thought about posting several times last week but I've posted a lot lately, so have refrained.  I have felt like posting more because I am reading my old blogs and it gets me thinking about it again.  

Anyway, I ended up running on my treadmill.  It was horrible.  I bought these earphones a while ago and mostly like them. (They are hard to hear when it's loud, like a busy street, or a loud treadmill.)  

Because my treadmill has developed a thumping noise in it (happened after we moved) it can be really loud, so I stopped my run for a bit to get my other ones that go in my ear and are mostly noise canceling.  Well, then I couldn't connect those to my Kindle to watch the show I had on, so I used my phone, however, because it took me so long to figure out my headphones the treadmill thought I was done running and turned off after a mile.  I just couldn't get into the run, I just didn't want to be there.  I kept stopping and fiddling with things, or just resting, or turning on the fan.   

On my treadmill if I hit stop it stops the belt but not the workout and then if you hit start you start back up at the same pace and all the stats are for one run, well, I accidentally hit stop twice, which stops the workout and you basically have to start over.  I did that not once, but twice (because I kept stopping because I didn't want to run on the treadmill).  Luckily I was able to capture the treadmill time because at one point I realized my Garmin was no longer calibrated to the treadmill.  I have to run a full mile, according to the Garmin, to calibrate, so the third mile I decided to calibrate the run.  I had to restart my Garmin to recalibrate, so I did that.  But then I had to run about a tenth of a mile more than 1 mile so that I could calibrate it. 

Anyway, at one point I looked outside, I had the garage doors open, and saw it wasn't raining, and then it was only drizzling and I figured I should have just gone for a run outside.  However, a few min later it was pouring.   My total mileage was 3.22 . . . but it took me (no joke) an hour to "run" those 3 miles.  When I told Chris that, he said that I could walk 3 miles in an hour, and I laughed and said "pretty much." And, he's right.  My sister and I walked 3.63 miles in August in exactly an hour.

Last Sunday I ran 4 miles and then barely ran all week.  I only logged 10 miles.  It feels disheartening, but also, I'm easily able to talk myself out of runs, I didn't run at all Sunday, which is supposed to be my long run day.

I'm not sure how much I've talked about my weight in the last couple years, but I've gained all the weight I lost 10 years ago back. It's been frustrating because I knew I was gaining weight and I would work on losing it. I would lose one or two (sometimes 5) lbs, and then be back up with another pound added on.  I would get disheartened and say f*ck it and then gain a little more, only to crack down again and try to lose it and be unsuccessful.  To say I've been frustrated and annoyed is an understatement. In case you didn't know, this is all part of perimenopause including the lack of motivation, and I know I'm in the middle of it.

With that said, my office manager, who is in her mid-50s has been struggling with the same issue, and she's consistently tried (way more than me) and been unsuccessful.  She knows an ARNP that does weight loss meds that are not very expensive.  I've been thinking about weight loss meds for a couple years, but they have been too expensive, and I don't necessarily trust the companies online that advertise them cheap.  Anyway, when my office manager had been on her pills a few months she came to me complaining that she "only" lost 10lbs in 6 weeks, and I was sold.  I told her 10lbs in 6 weeks is awesome.  At about the same time, I got some money from the farm so I decided to try it.  I'm doing Phentermine, which is not a shot, it is a pill and it boosts your metabolism and suppresses hunger.  It was one of the ingredients in Phen-Fen (or Fen-Phen whichever came first) but it is not the one that caused heart palpitations and death.

Anyway, I've been on the pills for 4 weeks and as of Friday, I've lost 8lbs.  Obviously, my weight fluctuates, and it's higher today than it was on Friday, but it's also lower than it was last Tuesday, so that is a win. 

If you're curious, I paid $225 for 2 months of pills.  She's got a $300 consultation fee on top of that, thankfully going forward it won't be $525, it will be $225-ish every 2 months, with monthly check-ins. I know some people feel this is cheating, but seriously, it's been a struggle for awhile now and I'm tired of it.  

I'm also hoping that these pills are unlike GLP-1 shots where I won't be dependent on them forever to keep the weight off.  I'm hoping to lose the weight and go off them and maintain.  Maybe I'll get out of this stupid perimenopause phase and it won't be so bad.  (I think once you've gone menopausal 😆things even out a little . . . I hope 🤞).

Tennis

 I posted a picture about 2 posts ago of Maddox playing tennis.  He told me last spring that he really wanted to play tennis this year.  He's been asking me for awhile to go play with him, and I didn't make the time, but I really need to go this coming spring.  He really, really enjoys it, and is surprisingly good at it for never playing before. (I don't think dragging a racket when he was one-ish counts.)

He's been playing doubles and really likes playing on the net, and is good at it.  He hasn't had a steady, regular partner, which is too bad because it's always better to play with the same person for awhile to learn each other.  He's had some good partners, but most of the time he's the better player.  He didn't start winning his matches until about a week ago, but it was a good boost for him because he was getting really discouraged and I was worried he would not want to play again.  

His last tennis match is Monday.  It's crazy that it's already almost over.  I think because you can't play tennis in the rain, they make it a short season with 3-4 games a week to get it done before the more consistent rains come.  Apparently, even though tennis is a spring sport, they have the boys play in the fall and the girls play in the spring because there aren't many courts.  

I've noticed that since I quit running so much I have gotten bad about not running in rainy, cold, too hot, overall not ideal, weather.  I need to go run 3 miles today.  That will put my mileage at 12 miles this week (don't get me started on how low 12 is, but honestly it's been awhile since I've gotten more than that in a week). It's raining pretty hard today and I don't want to run in the rain.  I've sorta talked myself into running on the treadmill.  I haven't run on the treadmill in a long while. December 2023 is the last time I ran on the treadmill.  I guess I just need to suck it up and do it. I've put it off for several hours.

more reminiscing and some guilt

 I've mentioned (multiple times now) that I'm reading old blog posts as I'm inputting old runs into the Garmin app.  Well, I stumbled (I guess that's not quite the right word) on this post about running in Kauai, from January of 2014.  I did not remember that we were planning on going to Kauai in 2015, I do know that in June of 2014 I was laid off due to the program I was working in being moved to a different agency.  I'm sure that's why I didn't go to Kauai in 2015.  We did go in 2019, and it was just as beautiful as I thought it would be.  I also think it's interesting that this picture that I posted in 2014

is the same beach as these pictures I took in 2019

It's hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure the top picture from 2019 is just the water to the right of the stock photo I posted in 2014. The second photo is the opposite side of the beach, I think. I still have not run a race in Kauai, but I have run many times, and it is just as beautiful as it looked in pictures in 2014.

I've also noticed that I was really selfish in my early years of running.  I forgot that my first half marathon was only because Damian, who was 14 years old at the time, volunteered to miss his gymnastics thing (being in a parade) to watch Maddox, who was 2, while I ran.  When I read that post I felt really bad that I did that.  I know at the time it was a big deal to me, but to put that onto my 14 year old.  I just feel bad.  I realize now that I treated Damian like a mini-adult instead of the teenager he was.  I have been paying attention to Maddox and his teenage years lately, and I've allowed him to be a kid a lot longer than Damian was allowed.  

There are differences, I was a single parent until Damian was 10, and I used him as an "emotional support person" a lot, which is also not good.  But then I threw him into a relationship (even if it was his Dad) that changed the dynamics of everything, and then had another baby, which really pushed him to the side.  I'm thinking I need to take him out and apologize for how I treated him when he was still just a kid (not that I was mean, but that I expected so much from him).  

Uphill both ways

 I mentioned in my last post that I am adding all my old runs to Garmin.  I started the last few days of February 2012 and I am currently in August 2013.  I was fast back then.  The (one and only) long run I did in August of 2013, I ran 8 miles at a 9 min/mile.  (Also, "one and only" is funny because all of my runs from back then are 4 miles or more, my current "long run" is 4 miles.)  

Also, I forgot how much I loved my treadmill when I first got it. I got it at the end of 2012 (maybe a Christmas present to myself?).  I remember how easy it was to run on it, I was doing 4 miles at close to an 8 min/mile.  I also remember when I moved it and suddenly it wasn't so easy.  I truly believe the treadmill was sitting on an incline, so it was like I was running downhill the whole time.  When I first got it, it sat in the carport of that home.  We moved in 2014 and it went to the garage in that house, and it was so much harder there.  We only lived in that house 6 months and then in the new, new house it was in the living room.  I liked it there because I could watch TV and still be "part of the family" while it was there.  It is back in my garage at my current house, and I don't care for it there and I rarely use it.  Since moving it out of the carport in the first house, it has never felt as easy, so I really do think it was on an incline.  

I forgot how active I got when I first started running.  In 2013 I had the goal of 100 miles a month.  I was not making that goal, so I switched to 1200 for the year.  Well, over the summer I got plantar faciitis and completely quit running for about a month (middle of Sept-middle of Oct.).  But I started going to a gym and was doing a row machine and elliptical.  In fact, I had a personal trainer assessment, and that was the person that told me to roll my foot with a lacrosse ball.  I did not remember that was who told me to do that.  As I'm reading old posts, I have started remembering things.  

Honestly, this is one of the biggest reasons I continue to write on here.  I have no followers (well, about 2 faithful ones) and like I said before, blogging is out of style now, but I can go back and read my thoughts from 13 years ago.  

Anyway, reading my old blog posts and looking at my old runs has made me want to run more.  I'm sure it won't last, but for now, I'm running.  Not farther, just more often, although, I'd like to run farther, I'm working on it. It's also made me appreciate hills a lot more, because I see how fast my times were, seriously, I was running 4+ miles at a 9 min/mile pace and sometimes under that.  After my month off of running in 2013, I came back and ran 4 miles at  a 8.26 min/mile.  I don't know if I'll ever get back to that, but I do want to go back to running hills, which means I have to do it during or after work (I work in the area I used to live in with all the hills).  

So yesterday I decided I was going to run at work, but then didn't have the time.  I was headed to Anacortes, a very cute town on the edge of the Sound about 30 min away, to see some clients so I decided I'd run that trail I last week and run the other part, the part that goes over the water.  However, it was really windy and I knew that the stretch over the water would just be horrible. I really struggled with just going home, and running there, but I really felt that I would not run if I did that.  I also had planned to run the hills at work, and Anacortes is very hilly, so I decided to just do it.  I stopped at a park that I knew had a bathroom to change in and then went for my run. 

I don't know Anacortes well, but I know a few streets so I planned to just do an out and back.  I started down one street and realized I was going downhill and really didn't want to run uphill on the way back, so I turned down a side street that went uphill. I started turning on random streets and it seemed that every street I turned down went uphill.  I had decided to only do 2 miles because I just didn't want to run, but then when I needed to turn back to the park, I just kept running into roads that turned and could not get back to the main road that I knew I needed to be on.  

The other issue I was running into was the really, really dark clouds that were fast approaching overhead.  It started raining, and I just couldn't get back to my car.  The run ended up not much farther than 2 miles, 2.6miles, but it felt forever because I just kept running into roads that turned instead of go straight, where I needed to go.  I also just kept going uphill.  I'd turn and go downhill for a block and then I was going back uphill but it really felt that there were waaaayyyy more uphills than downhills. I felt like the stories our parents used to say "I walked uphill both ways to school" were true and is really possible, meanwhile the clouds just kept getting darker.  Thankfully I made it back to my car before it started raining hard.  

On my drive home it really started pouring and about 10 min after leaving thunder and lightning started.  It really was a crazy run, and then a crazy drive home.  I was really glad I got done when I did.

I have no pictures, but here is a picture of Maddox hitting a tennis ball. 😀