Feeling So Behind

Just the other day I joined FLYlady so I can get some help with cleaning, decluttering, organizing my home. This is a very useful thing on the internet that has apparently helped many people, including my friend Anna who recommended this to me. So far I have not been able to read much of the information I need to read, never mind actually getting to doing the work. I'll chalk at least some of this down to being sick as it's as good an excuse as any I guess. I also have been reading about water Kafir grains on the internet. Again, so much to raed and so little time to read it, though I have been brewing some of the Kafir drink. This is good as it will rebuild the good bacteria in my digestive tract after the damage the antibiotics does is over. Something else I haven't gotten around to reading is about video conferencing from ActConferencing.com. I also have about 5 or 6 books on the go that I would love to finish reading. Hmmmm, maybe this is why my body has taken on the pneumonia, to give me time to relax and read. I "never" get colds or the flu, or at least haven't in many years, maybe 15 years, give or take a few, so have been somewhat confused as to why I would suddenly come down with something so serious as pneumonia and be coughing up blood. Yup, maybe I created this as a way to slow down and catch up. :o)

Grateful for Good Friends

For the last 3 or 4 days now I've been having some difficulty with my breathing and as a result I go into coughing spasms and sometimes even cough up phlegm with blood in it. On Sunday I went to town to one of the walk-in clinics and saw a doctor there. He pulled out his stethoscope and requested I take some deep breaths. Ya right! Well, I gave it a try and ended up coughing uncontrollably again, and hacked up some more blood & phlegm. Ahhh, evidence to show the doctor... not that he really looked at it, though maybe a tiny glimpse. He prescribed 10 days of antibiotics and a chest x-ray. He said it's pneumonia, though on the x-ray requisition when I went for the x-ray yesterday, I noticed it said bronchitis, so who knows. Maybe I'll find out more when I go for the x-ray results in a couple days. Anyway, so here I sit sick.

I am very blessed to have good friends and I am very grateful for them. Yesterday I called for an appointment at the x-ray place and was told it would be Thursday, though if I wanted I could go in without the appointment and just sit and wait until I got in, however long that would take. I decided to do that. At first I planned to go in a couple hours, then decided to put it off "until tomorrow". Then Phil phoned to see how I was doing. After I told him he said I should just go and get it done, not put it off, and he volunteered to meet me there to keep me company while I waited. I really thought that was nice of him. I have always gone to things like this all alone and just sat there with a book to read. I've always done pretty much everything on my own. It was nice to have a friend keep me company. Later in the day, when I got home, my other friend Ray come out and packed in 6 bags of pellets, each 40#, for my stove. I had brought them home in my truck a few days earlier, then got sick. I did pack 2 bags in myself and was very grateful to Ray for being so thoughtful as to come by and pack the rest in. Now I have a stack beside my stove so I can feed them into the hopper and keep a warm fire going.

Ouch!!!

On Monday, two days ago, I was doing my volunteer work at the local Food Bank. I had done a bit of portioning of ice tea and orange crystals when Anna came and asked me to do some filing. i was busily doing the filing when suddenly I felt an extremely sharp and nasty pain in my left wrist. I really hadn't done anything that should have caused this to happen, was just moving some hanging files in one of the filing cabinets. It took some time for the pain to dye down enough for me to continue my work. Since then, I have had a very sore wrist and pain up into the back of my hand. I'm not sure what damage has been done in there, but am sure something has happened. This is not normal.

This left wrist is the one that was damaged in a crash on September 10, 2010 when I was riding my trike and was hit by a car. The distal radius (bone at base of thumb, goes up to elbow) was shattered right into the joint line (very bad), and every bone in the wrist was dislocated. I also had several other injuries, but this one was by far the worst. I was taken to hospital by ambulance and the next morning had surgery to reconstruct the wrist, and they put a metal plate in with 9 screws to hold it all together. After the bones were healed, the metal was causing me problems, so on March 30, 2011, I had a second surgery to remove the metal. At that time the surgeon also fixed the trigger finger issue I was having since the crash. I've had physiotherapy done on the wrist until the therapist decided she had done all that could be done for it.

Since the wrist healed from the second surgery, for about the last 6 months or so, the wrist has been pretty good. It has days when it hurts more than usual, when there's some clunking going on in there, but for the most part it's been doing pretty well, all things considered.... until 2 days ago. Now I have to keep the wrist and hand wrapped for support and just live with the extra pain. If it doesn't improve over the next few days, I will be going to see a doctor about it, though I don't think they really can do much of anything to fix it at this point.

Nice Day

The weather forecast for today, as of 11:00pm last night, was for a high of 2°C and 40% chance of wet flurries. You can imagine how happy I was when I woke to a clear, sunny day. About 11:00am I looked outside and saw my thermometer was showing 7°C!! Snow is melting like crazy, steady drips falling from the roof. As the day has progress, it's now nearing 1:30pm and there are lots of clouds moved in, though still lots of blue sky showing. There is a bit of wind, and with the temperature hanging steady still at 2°C, that will melt away the small amount of snow we have at this time. I don't mind that at all.

Quinoa Recipes

I just thought that, before I head off to bed, I would share some links with you.... links to some healthy food!! Things like Quinoa Burgers and An Amazing Veggie Burger. Now that you can make the burgers, you want to make the bread/buns to go with them: Quinoa Bread and Quinoa Bread/Sandwich Buns. All of these recipes are from the same woman and all are Vegan. At the bottom of the pages, you will also find links to other wonderful recipes. So far I haven't tried making any of these, but they sound easy enough and rather yummy, so I will be trying them in the near future.

Music.... and Mewsic

I admit that I am not very musically inclined, though I do love to listen to good music. For awhile I did sing and enjoyed playing around with drums. I was in Omak at the Stampede several times, and one year while there I bought a Native drum from a vendor in there Indian Encampment. I have maracas and other such small instruments, or in my hands, "noise makers". I did have these small musical instruments hanging on the wall in my living room and some of them fell down. Today I spent some time making little wire hangers so I can put them all back up where they are safe. I didn't get them put up yet, will do that tomorrow, but at least I got them ready to hang and just have to climb up and hang them. Now, with the hour being late I think I will head to bed and dream.... of all things good and wonderful... even children happily playing with a kids drum set as they dream of becoming a famous rock star.

I bid you a very good night as I go off to cuddle my wonderful cat, Mewsic, and drift off into dreamland.

My Health Journal

To help me with my weight loss plans as well as with getting my cholesterol levels down and monitoring my blood glucose levels, I decided to start a "Health Journal". Starting January 1st of this year, I have been writing down everything I eat each day, how much water I drink, what exercise I get, what the results are to my daily blood glucose test. I also write about things that make me sad or things that make me happy as they both affect my health. I sometimes write goals for the next day. I write all of this in different ink colors: red = blood glucose reading; green = exercise; blue = water as well as weight/TOPS; black = food I eat and all other things. If I have an acid reflux attack I write it in black, then color it over with a red pencil crayon.

Yesterday I bought some new pens so I will have more colors to work with: pink, turquoise, purple. Today I found some other pens of various different colors that I had already bought some time ago and had in the house... and had forgotten about them. I want/need to clean up my home. It has gotten so far out of control and I am having a very hard time cleaning it up. Today I did some sorting of 'stuff' and will write in my Health Journal about what I accomplished and how it makes me feel. I will write it in the turquoise so it's bright and pretty and I can see at a quick glance where I have achieved something good and positive in this area.

I plan on this Journal being a very important tool in making positive changes in my life and in my health.

TV Commercials

I've been sitting here watching TV this evening and as always, commercials are part of an evening of TV watching. There is currently an ad on for a certain brand of pickup truck.... now one for beer. I've watched ads for fiber bars, for rv repairs, for cookies, even for potato chips and other snack foods. I'm not one for enjoying the ads and often hit the mute button rather than listen to them, but I have to admit that I get a laugh out of the current Dairy Queen ad. The lips decide to control us, talking in a very hypnotic voice, saying "look into my eyeeeeeee I don't have eyes. Look into my uvula!" Well, maybe you have to watch it to see the humor... or maybe I just need to go to sleep, lol.