This and that

 I think I mentioned that I started walking a few weeks ago at work.  I am walking the hills I used to run, with the intent to run them again.  (My work is about a mile from my old house, so very easy to walk the same neighborhoods.)  (Do you remember when a mile seemed so far?  I wrote that and thought, no way, it's much closer, but I've walked to my old neighborhood from work, and it's about a mile.)  Anyway, a couple weeks I was only able to get in 1 walk because I took 2 days off, one for a training and one for camping.  Last week was also a 3-day week for me because I came home from camping on Monday and Friday was Juneteenth, a holiday here in the States.  Not everyone celebrates it, but I am happy to work for a company that does.  You can find more about it here. Anyway, 3-day weeks mean they are usually very busy, having to fit 5 days into 3.  However, I did get a walk in on Thursday.

My plan had been to walk my route for a couple weeks and then last week, I was going to make the uphills longer.  However, that didn't happen, so this week longer uphills, with the goal of running at least part of it the following week.

Speaking of these hills . . . the first time I walked the hills (up and down) I saw the route on my Garmin app and it immediately took me to my 1st anniversary of my runstreak.  I had decided to run a pattern that said "365" for 365 days, and I even made it so that it was 3.65 miles.  I was soooooo proud of it.  I even bragged about it on Facebook and Instagram.

Can you see the problem?  🤣🤣🤣 It took a friend on Facebook asking me what E65 meant before I realized my mistake.  

Damian has been working (finally) in his area downstairs.  He has his room walls done, although, he's not super happy with it. We are sorta waiting on the 4th of July sales to see if the flooring he wants goes on sale.  It is quite pricey, so a sale would be really nice.  We know that refrigerators are going on sale, and it might just be cheaper to buy it all at once.  

He did start on Asher's room, and is being more intentional with the walls, leveling and all that better.  We can't really afford him to take out the stuff he's done in his room, and redo it, so I think he's stuck with it.  

Perimenopause, weight loss, house

 I don't mean to not post, and I don't want to stop blogging.  I just feel like I have nothing to talk about.  My blog name doesn't even fit because I'm not currently running.  I haven't run at all since May 3rd.  My mileage for May is 3.5 miles (2 runs).  My back has been bothering me and when I did those two runs on the 2nd and 3rd my back flared, so I quit.  I had pretty much decided that maybe my running career was over.  I started thinking about what I love(d) about running and it really is the views and seeing new places that I had propelled myself to on my feet.  I decided I wanted to try going for bike rides, but didn't want to buy a bike, especially a fancy one if I wasn't going to use it. 

When the entire world shut down in 2020, Damian decided to buy a fancy bike.  He only rode it a few times, and then it's sat in our backyard forever.  I think he moved it once from one spot to another at our "new" house, but it hasn't been used since before we moved (2022).  I decided I would use his temporarily to see if I liked it so I dug it out of the weeds and we went to go get new tires, but they didn't have what he wanted, so they ordered them . . . 3 weeks ago.  Still no tires.

Then, last week I decided I really wanted to run again, but I haven't run for a month now, so I started walking the hills at my work.  My back has not been bothering me much at all, so I'll maybe increase the hills?  I don't know, I still lack motivation to actually do it.  I think about it.  I think about wanting to do it.  But then I don't do it.

I really think this is part of perimenopause.  And actually, other than the weight gain, might be my least favorite thing about it.  

Speaking of weight gain, I have lost close to 30 lbs since September.  The first 6 months I was taking the phentermine and had lost 14 lbs, but all of that loss happened in the first 3 months, and the last 3 months I had not lost anything.  I was pretty frustrated.  I have a coworker that can get GLPs from her cousin who works for a big pharmaceutical company, so I started a GLP in March and have lost another 13 lbs, with no plateaus. Well, I'm sorta in one right now, same weight now for 2 weeks, but I have consistently lost 3 lbs, or more, a month since March.  

I am actually quite worried about the maintenance.  I don't know how that will work.  Things I've read and heard, all say that most likely I will have to be on some sort of lose "maintenance" dose, but even though I get a discount (well, technically 2, one for going straight through the pharmacy, and one from my coworker), it is still expensive.

I have noticed that the weight loss now is definitely different than 10 years ago.  Meaning my body is "fluffier" at 150 now than it was 5 years ago when I was running all the time.  My 150 back then was from running and eating well, now it's just from eating better, with no exercise, so less muscle.  (Although I am still doing yoga/pilates about 3x a week.)

BUT my old pants fit.  I had a couple pairs of Lucky jeans I had bought at Goodwill forever ago and couldn't bear to part with them, so I've kept them even though I couldn't even get them up past my knees.  I can now wear them.  Which makes me happy.  (now to get into my size 6 pants that I wore in 2015 during my heyday marathon running days,)

August 2025

May 2026

You can definitely see the difference in my face, shoulders, collarbone, etc even though they're different angles and different lighting.

Don't even ask about our house.  We have finally received all the money, but Damian is his mother's son and has procrastinated doing the work.  I am letting him lead, because it is his space, but I am about ready to send him an eviction notice for our living room.  😉  I told him this weekend that he would have an entire bedroom done if he had started the work on Memorial Day (when we had the materials), but he's put it off for 3 weeks.  We decided to go with beadboard, which I'm happy about, it's recycled PVC, which means waterproof, and we found a completely waterproof flooring, so . . .  He finally did some work on Sunday, about 3 hours worth, and got most of his room done (walls).  

We talked about doing his entire room first (floor and walls) so that he could move his bed back down there, then we'd go to Asher's room, and then the rest of the living space.  This way, Asher and him would at least have bedrooms, and we can work on the living space afterwards.  

It's looking really, really good.