Tests are done! Soon I'll know if I've had "the COVID" or not. Fingers crossed that I have had it clear back
in March 2020. Slight fever then, chills, just not feeling well, plus I lost my sense of smell/taste for quite some time. Highly suspicious, but not verified yet. DS wasn't feeling well, either, at that time. So did we have the
dreaded flu (COVID) back then? I'll find out soon.
What blew my mind when I went in for the tests was just how out of shape I am! I had to walk in from their parking lot...only about 100 ft. and I could barely make it!!! To offset this, at bare minimum I will be walking the full length of my house (inside)
repeatedly, cleaning, and doing other activities. I could not believe how weak I was!! Did the mask have something to do with it? Granted, I've only had a couple of hours of sleep since I had to get up at 6:30am (GROAN!!) and couldn't sleep last night (anticip.....ation??), but even so! My blood sugars were at 120 last night even
after a nearly zero carb dinner (scrambled eggs topped with 0 carb cheese + a cuppa Bulletproof coffee), so I hope my a1c is nice and low as well.
But what I'm realizing is that I need more (MUCH MORE) exercise. Not like jumping jacks or anything like that, but more like gardening, house cleaning, and maybe dancing. Just more activity and less plain sitting. Heaven knows that there's plenty to do. At this time in our country's history it seems to me like a good time to improve my health and somewhat withdraw from the fracas and pandemonium and danger even more than I'm already doing now. UNLESS, that is, I have a natural immunity to COVID. Then I will risk doing some of my own shopping. I certainly hope that that is the outcome of today's journeys and testings.
I may have found some relief (for both my neighbors and myself) from my yapping puppies. I closed the gate to the Dog's Yard area where they love to bark incessantly at the back fence. I cannot have that!! I have given' them "calming" daily meds for excessive barking which seems to be working fairly well for Mittens, and I even put an additional "calming collar" on Boots, but to no avail. So today, in complete frustration, I simply shut the gate to the dog's yard, leaving both pups on the garden and WOW side with NO ACCESS to the back fence over there in the dog's yard. Oh, I've still heard/seen Boots yapping at something, but not the CONSTANT shrill barking! I pray that this is my answer, even if it's temporary. My neighbors and I both deserve a bit of a rest from it. And MAN, is it stressful for me!! I'm responsible for the disturbance without being guilty of the "crime". My girls are in their "teenage" years ATM. Boots has already had her first "season". They are nearly full grown. Sometimes they pay attention to me and sometimes they don't. But right this minute all is nice and quiet in the back yard.
They are both prowling around, sort of hunting, and then laying up against the back fence in the sunshine again (with NO barking!! ♥
♥), then up to my WOW, drink of water, bite of food, and off to prowl again. Great dogs, but I can't wait for the next stage of development:
young adults, when they should calm down on the ever-vigilant barking. Right now they're just ornery teenagers! I really don't want to spay them as it may reduce that prey instinct and I do want that instinct during Barn Hunt, but geez...!!
The other day I saw an ad on TV for a
new keto cereal (yet "sweetly" naughty) called Magic Spoon and it looks really promising. We already get the best keto ice cream around (called Rebel ice cream) and have it shipped to us from rebelcreamery dot com, but we're sort of burnt out on it at the moment, so I checked out Magic Spoon today. OMG! If it's half as good as they are saying it is, I'm in business!! I ordered all the flavors and we'll see how we like them. The ingredients look good, and they're using allulose as a sweetener (that's also good). They have rave reviews. My fingers are crossed. One serving is one full cup. Put on a plate or bowl or even a snack Ziploc full (one cup) and eaten as a dessert after dinner (my one meal a day) could be really nice for me. I like to have the repeated bowl-to-face hand motion; it's very satisfying to me to eat that way, especially "dessert". Flavors include: frosted, cocoa (Cocoa Puffs), peanut butter (Reese's-like), fruity (like Froot Loops), blueberry, cinnamon, cookies and cream, maple waffle, and two Fall flavors, apple cinnamon and pumpkin spice. All of these seem right up my alley. And kind of a fun thing, too. I'm really looking forward to their arrival. I can have them with HWC diluted with some water, too, or almond milk. It's how I make "milk" without lactose (milk sugar). It sounds so good, though, with milk or without. A nice bowl of forbidden sweet cereal is one thing that I (and many others) miss the most doing keto, so I'm hoping that this is an excellent substitution.
==========================(Friday wee hours)
Got my test results back: I'm negative, ie., never had COVID. That news to me is both good and bad. Good that I've never had it, but if I do get it, there are now
treatments for it, and bad that I need to go "out there" in the world periodically, but as a specifically COVID-sensitive person (diabetes, elderly, obese = prime COVID target). But at least I now know.
I also got to look at my tests online from Jan. 2019-Oct. 2021 on a chart so I could see how they all compared. My kidney tests are kinda high, but last time I got checked (in July '21) they were higher. HOWEVER, I do believe that I had a UTI when I took them in July, and my baseline from nearly 3 yrs. ago until now (other than last July) was much lower
and is there again, so I'm ok.
I'm studying (deeply) both my apparent insulin resistance (belly fat) and my gout/high uric acid and how increased exercise can help both conditions. Good ol' Dr. Internet!
I'm even beginning to understand how the two are related. I took Physiology (or "Fizzle-ology" as we lovingly called it) during my nurse's training at the State University, so I can more or less wade through the scientific jargon and understand most of it. My belly fat isn't just unattractive; it's dangerous, too, for my diabetes (a1c is down to 6.7!), and all of the visceral fat really needs to go! I just learned that I may be eating too much protein for me, although it doesn't seem too much to me. Great! No problem! That I can change. Easily! I'm already doing an eating window of 1-4 hrs./24 hr. period. More veggies with that? YES, PLEASE! I do love my veggies! But I have to be careful to NOT eat too many veggies with high purines (cauliflower, spinach, asparagus, mushrooms, and the list goes on...and on...and on!!).
But veggies have carbs, so I'll try to balance that. I could go forever without eating any liver, "sweetbreads", sardines, and the like, but I do love my tuna. Goodbye tuna?
Plus I'm appreciating that I need to get out more (as evidenced by my
exhausting 100 ft. walk into the testing center on Tues.), so I've decided to walk my dogs and garden much, much more! I'm seriously hoping that with increased exercise I can turn all of this around, even while staying protected at home. I just got a HUGE shipment of things from Walmart today, 7
HUMONGOUS boxes, and they rang the bell and ran. DS was asleep, so I wrangled each one into the house, panting and puffing as I did and sitting down to rest from time to time, but we have vicious porch thieves around here, so that was an incentive to get all of them inside ASAP. I wasn't as exhausted as I was walking in to my appointment on Tues. (I got to sit down and rest), but darned close! I need some consistent exercise.
Shopping online tonight I found something for both me and the pups. It's a double decker, folding dog stroller: one dog in each crate, one up on top of the other, mounted on a stroller type frame. PERFECT! The next trip to the vet won't be nearly as chaotic as this last one was!
But even better I can take them out for a walk NOW, out to the mailbox a half block away (DS does it now) to socialize them (and they BADLY need it!!!) without risking any confrontation with man nor beast, and I intend to be extending the stroll more and more as I can manage it. And it should work as well as a "safe" place for the pups to wait for events to begin at any Barn Hunt. My pickup is currently in the shop having the stolen catalytic converter replaced. (Way too many thieves around here!) Once that's done, I can go get the bales of straw for the dog's Barn Hunt setup out in the backyard. Why not make exercise fun? And I have sitting in my front room ATM a 50# bag of rice hulls, a 40# bag of soil conditioner, and three 20# bags of worm castings! Time to put on some DEET (so many mosquitos out there!!) and get out into the garden again. I need some more peat moss, but that will have to wait for the pickup.
=====================(later in the midday on Friday)
DS will pick up the DEET this afternoon on his way home from work AND the peat moss - two 3 cubic ft bags of it. (They're working him like crazy lately! He's supposed to be part time.) I did up the dishes already and am in the process of mopping my bathroom floor. Dear Spot isn't doing so well. She won't eat a bite and her walk is super wobbly. She just wants to curl up in her bed and snooze. She's like a walking skeleton, but then she starts rolling around on her back on the carpet like it's a back scratcher or she gets up and
trots around my room for a bit. No wobble at all! So who knows? Poor baby is just doing her best. ♥♥
DS just called me from the road. His boss just gave him another assignment so he's going to be late with my pick up from Lowe's and Walgreen's. No worries. He does all my errands at this time. Bless him! I'm grateful that he'll just be getting them for me. I'll just have to change my plans to begin work in the garden (with all the mosquitoes) until tomorrow because I'm not going out there without my DEET! I'm already covered in painful, itchy mosquito bites from the last time I watered out there.
I'm also going to be spraying my 30% vinegar
full strength on the whippy weeds, and the less breeze out there the better. Fortunately, tomorrow morning will be
VERY calm, so I'm going to be brave, fill my 2 gallon sprayer, and go out into the fray against the whippy weeds!! This extra strong and concentrated vinegar is harshly acidic enough to be harmful to my eyes and skin if it happens to waft up or waft on me. Same thing with any unintentional plants nearby that I don't want to shrivel up and die. So I have to be very careful that this powerful solution doesn't get on anything that it shouldn't, and that has made me fearful of just doing this chore, but it has to be done, albeit carefully. Those whippy weeds are in my sights!! And absolutely NO RAIN for another week! Perfect conditions that certainly won't last. C'mon whippies!!
MUAHAHAHAHA!!
It's dinnertime for me now. Life after MD's passing has begun to bring out the forgiveness in me. It's
not absolution for her or her doings, but rather a simple letting go for me. These are burdens that I no longer have to bear. I'm realizing that more and more. Her treatment of me was not my fault. Since I hold no guilt for how she treated me, I also hold no responsibility for it, either. So what she did was rotten, but I don't have any reason to hang on to it. I got my wish: I survived her - and as time goes on, I forgive me. I
understand her more, and that is helpful, too. But lately I am amazed at how well I did turn out,
despite her and her "mothering". She was cruel, no doubt about it, but she suffered cruelty at a young age, too. It must be how she got so darned good at being cruel herself. I'd rather be me right now and live my life that I have ATM than to have the panicked existence and fear of exposure that she lived with until her dying day. No thank you! It's just a dirty shame that we couldn't have been closer and her more kind and loving towards me, but that just isn't the way it was. Again: not my fault. But given the cards of life to play that I held, I think I've done pretty well. No regrets. And that's a pretty fine place to be.
Dinnertime!
Honeybera