I totally just opened this up for the purpose of whining. Which is my favorite use of blogging, obviously.
Today is just one of those days defined by the weather. I woke up, saw the temperature is 70 degrees. Not a good, sunny 70 either. No, one of those wet, muggy, barf 70s. Which is torture to exercise in, by the way.
Went to boot camp and we did some of my least favorite things–intervals (run up hill 400-500 meters, walk down hill, repeat). But at least it was only 4 of them. I made it through that, but I think the extra exertion is what helps my blood sugar rise. It was around 180 when I got home.
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention it was 40 when I woke up.
Well, after boot camp I went to shower. And wouldn’t you know diabetes really likes to kick you when you’re down. See, I have this continuous glucose monitor, which is a clamshell-shaped piece of plastic attached to a sensor inserted into my stomach. Due to moronic design, you have to put tape over it, otherwise it won’t stay on. I use this expensive (insurance covers it at least) tape, IV3000. Never had problems with it before–it has withheld lots of sweat and showers.
Oh, but not today! Today it decides to completely disintegrate in the shower. Massive WTF. The top of the tape slithers off and leaves all the glue behind. Water-proof glue. Soap-proof glue. Apparently everything-proof glue. Normally when I change my sensor and peel off the tape, it leaves a bit of a residue that is easily removed with a bit of rubbing alcohol.
Not this shit though. I’m going to be rubbing glue balls off my stomach all day. I put a new piece of tape over the old sticky mess, and so help me if this tape comes off in the shower tomorrow, I will cut someone.
The rest of the day better pick up. I’m skeptical though.
Oh, and though it was 70 this morning, it’s supposed to be below freezing tomorrow morning. God damn it, Texas.
So, I loaded up The Sims 2 last week after installing Mansion & Garden Stuff, and wouldn’t you know I started trying to navigate the screen using those blasted SimCity Societies controls?
You can tell what I’ve been doing in my spare time the past few weeks.
I didn’t play Sims 2 for long. I like the Mansion & Garden Stuff Pack, however I’m just not in a Sims mood lately at all. It seems I can only like either Sims or SimCity at one time. And it’s completely ridiculous that the SimCity Societies navigation controls would get embedded into my brain like that. Why can’t we have some sort of standards as far as zoom, panning, and yawing?
It makes me worry about Sims 3 a little bit. Hopefully they won’t shit it up.
What else… I had something I wanted to write about earlier, but now I forgot what. I hate that. Umm… I saw Twilight on Friday. I really enjoyed it. There were a lot of people critical about it, but I just can’t relate to what they’re saying. I was worried about it being all MTVed-up, stupid, and too different, but it wasn’t. I rather liked the portrayals of Edward and Bella. I think they had great chemistry, and I thought it was actually quite similar to the book in that respect.
There were some moments of the movie that were so much more awesome having read the book. Like Jasper for instance. The second he showed up the first time was quite classic. Hilarious. I didn’t expect to like him so much because I thought the actor looked odd (haha), but oh man, it really worked.
Another funny one was Billy. I think he was more awesome than in the book. I liked Jacob, but am bugged by the fact that the actor will never be a million feet tall like Jacob in the books. And his hair bothered me because it really looked like quite the ridiculous wig.
The theater was packed when I went. I actually wasn’t sure if it would be in my town at the 11:00 showing. I went by myself, haha, and good thing because I don’t know that I would have found two seats next to each other. I ended up sitting in the lone chair with the wheelchair space next to it. Some woman brought her new born to the showing and it was annoying as all hell. I mean really, lady. Your little baby to a packed movie theater at 11:00 at night? REALLY?
Bunch of savages in this town.
In other, completely unrelated news, I decided to try out a meal delivery program. Why? One, I am utterly incapable of making good food choices everyday on my own. Two, I’m even less capable of keeping up the horrendous routine of grocery store, cook, clean day in and day out. I just can’t do it. Cannot. I might could keep it up for a week, get completely burnt out, then eat out the next two consecutive weeks for every meal out of retaliation.
Why I just can’t be normal about one thing in my life, I have no idea. I truly am incapable of functioning as a normal adult. The past 7 years or so of deterioration have proved this. Other people go to the store, cook, clean, exercise, go to work, have families and don’t seem to have any issues with it at all. I can’t even do one of those things without turning completely neurotic. There is truly something wrong with me.
But I’m trying to get better. I started my third Adventure Bootcamp today (I’ve already signed up for a year). I’m so glad I signed up for this back in September. I don’t think I could handle exercising in a gym, and God knows I won’t do it on my own. Now with the meal delivery program, hopefully I can become more functional. I started it last week, and am enjoying the meals so far.
I do well with routines like this that don’t require constant effort. Next I just need to hire us a maid. Not even kidding. I’ve seriously considered it before, though I’m not entirely sure it would work well.
Am I pathetically lazy or what? But fuck it. Really. My problem is that I get upset thinking about how my entire life is filled with these obnoxious tasks that are never ending. NEVER. ENDING. It seems like a giant waste of life, and I have a hard time getting over that fact, which is why I blow it all off so much, and end up not exercising, not cleaning, and eating like a 10 year-old whose parents aren’t home. Which helps nothing in the end, except ensuring an early death. So my compromise is these new routines. Hopefully I can keep it up. It’s looking good so far.
Do you ever have days where you’re just extremely klutzy? I think I just had one of my most ridiculous hours ever.
During lunch I needed to change my infusion set for my insulin pump. (Some background: the infusion set includes the catheter you put in your skin and the tubing that runs from it to the pump. I change it every three days.) First, I take out the old one, which normally is no big occurrence, you just pull the tape off and out comes the tiny little plastic that was in your skin. Well, for whatever reason, I pull this one out and it starts gushing blood. GUSHING. It doesn’t hurt at all, but oh boy is it pouring out. I’m in my work clothes of course, so I really had to scrounge for something to mop up all the blood before it stained them. Luckily I had some napkins left over by the TV tray.
Anyway, I get that cleaned up then go to insert the new infusion set. It’s a pretty simple process: you hook the tubing to a reservoir of insulin and then place that in the pump. You prime your pump (fill the tubing with insulin), then you place the infusion set into a little device that will inject it into your skin. Well, I did all this–except one thing: I forgot to take the tape off the back of the adhesive. So I got it all inserted and even pulled the needle out of the catheter before realizing the tape was still on. Yep, so that was wasted. Had to pull it out and do it over.
Second time around, repeating entire process, I go to inject and made sure I took the tape off this time. However, I forgot to take off the cap around the needle! BRILLIANT. But luckily at least, this didn’t waste anything as it couldn’t go very far with the cap. Haha.
Next time I got it in without any issue. Finally.
Unfortunately, this is not the end of my afternoon escapades. After getting my pump settled, I needed to go check my blood sugar. When I pressed the button to eject a strip however, it gives me an error message. NEVER had that happen before. Tried changing the test strip drum first, didn’t help. Tried changing the batteries, didn’t help. Was ready to eat lunch, so I gave up for the time being and pulled out another meter that came with all my pump stuff that I decided I didn’t want to use. Checked my sugar, everything went fine, but then I dumped the little bottle of strips on the floor and they scattered everywhere.
Next I just ate my lunch, including a Boost shake, which I had opened and set out prior to all this fiasco. Well, it had been a few minutes, so I wanted to shake it up a bit again before drinking. Of course, I didn’t put the cap on very tight, so when I shook it, lots of it went flying everywhere. UGH.
After all that, I decided to figure out the problem with my meter, so I finally just dug through to the very back of my diabetes junk cabinet to get the manual for the meter to look up the error message. Turns out the little area where it reads from the meter was just dirty. I wiped it with a wet cloth and all was fine.
And that concludes the stupidest lunch hour I’ve ever had in my life.
I have not played Sims 2 in some time now. Instead, this weekend I pulled out Sim City again. Started playing Sim City 4 for a bit, but then got pissed because it kept crashing my computer. Sim City 4 is such a cool game, but it runs like complete and utter crap. Maybe part of it is just because it’s on Vista. Regardless, if I don’t save every five minutes, I eventually find myself throwing it across the room and screaming at my monitor.
So after about 3 times of that, I finally pulled out Sim City Societies. I bought this quite a while ago for $10 off Amazon. Reviews for this game were pretty bad, and that fact that it was only $10 a few months after being released is never a good sign. When I first put the game in after buying it all that time ago, I couldn’t get into it. Mostly, I was just in a Sims phase and didn’t feel like it at the time. But also for some bloody reason they decided to make the navigation tools fucked up beyond belief in Societies. I do not understand why they would stray so far from previous Sim Cities in this regard. It’s just awkward. I have to use the arrow keys to pan, which drives me nuts because I’m used to right clicking with the mouse and dragging. And the zoom is ridiculous. You can’t zoom out very far at all. And unless you’re turned a certain way on the map, the edges of your city get hidden. Whoever designed this aspect of the game should be fired.
Anyway, despite all that, I got over it a little bit this weekend and actually tried to play past the tutorial. And it’s actually quite fun! Ridiculously different than any previous version of Sim City, but I knew that going in. I really miss zones. Placing every single house gets a little bit old. But I like placing individual work places and venues. (The combination of this is of course City Life, haha!) The graphics are cute, and the variety of the buildings is entertaining. So far I’m just loving creating areas that produce lots of spirituality. I made a totally cool Amish-like area in my city yesterday. LOL.
If I wasn’t at work procrastinating, I would show a picture. Maybe I’ll add it later.
The other thing I’ve been eating up all my free time with is reading Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter novels. Oh these are so much fun! Haha. They’re a little silly, and I say that mostly because the endings are all over-the-top happily-ever-after for the main characters involved. And they’re all very similar in that regard. But man these things are entertaining to read! I absolutely love the world she’s set up. Vampires and Greek mythology? HOW FUN! I just finished reading Seize the Night. And I’m already super stoked to read Acheron’s book, but I’ve got a few more before that one. So yeah, that’s my guilty pleasure as of late. If I could spend the entire day just reading these books, I’d be happy.
In other news, I still hate work. Maybe it’s the time of year and the fact that I’m preoccupied with other stuff. Maybe I just need a serious career change. Which is scary, because I’ve never had thoughts like that before. I’m just sick to death of what I’m doing right now. It doesn’t interest me anymore. It might also be just that I haven’t had any new and interesting projects fall into my lap in several months. Whatever it is, I’m struggling to make it through the eight hours every day big time. Last week, I didn’t show up until 10am a couple times. I should be grateful I can get away with bullshit like that. Sigh.
Countdown to a 2-week Christmas break starts now. It won’t be long enough, it never is, but it will be something.
Hello, internet. So I finally got hooked up to my insulin pump last Thursday. I drove to Austin (a couple hours) for the training because I didn’t want to wait another week, and I’m SO GLAD I DID.
On Friday, Andy and I drove to Broken Bow, Oklahoma to visit with my family in a cabin by Beaver’s Bend. I think I would have been miserable had I not been on the pump yet with the poor control I was having with shots recently. With the pump I was able to eat whenever, and go on a long hike without worrying about balancing insulin shots.
Adjusting to the pump was so easy. And I don’t mind it being attached to me in the least. I quickly learned that most of the time, I can hook it to the middle of my bra and you can’t see it, and I don’t notice it at all. I had always assumed I would have to have it hooked to a waist band, and this always made me hesitant because I knew that would annoy me. But the bra (or the top of my shirt if I’m lounging around the house or sleeping) is perfect.
And words cannot express how cool it is to press a couple buttons to figure out exactly how much insulin I need for a meal.
I’m not hooked up to the continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) yet. The training for that is tomorrow, and she’s coming here, so I won’t have to travel this time. I’m quite excited to see what my blood sugar is doing during the times I don’t prick my finger! I honestly don’t know what to expect there, but I know finding out is going to help me a great deal.
How the CGMS works is that it’s a separate thing attached to your body and it takes glucose readings from under your skin and transmits them wirelessly to the pump every 15 minnutes or so. You still have to prick your finger 2-4 times a day to calibrate the CGMS. But pricking only 2-4 times a day is much better than 6-8! Plus, the CGMS shows a graph of your BG throughout the day and will alert you if you’re going too low or high.
Haha, I can’t wait to see what’s going on during exercise and sleep.
So far, on my pump, I’ve been setting my basal rate (rate of insulin delivered per hour throughout the day) to about 50% during the night while I sleep. Otherwise, I go low. This amuses me for some reason, given my history of nasty night lows. I really wonder why my body does this at night.
Anyway, similarly, I’ve been increasing my basal rate to 125% of normal while I exercise and for a bit after. And this worked out fantastically today and yesterday. Friday, I didn’t adjust it (kept at 100%) and was high afterward.
My blood sugars aren’t completely awesome yet; there’s an adjustment period for figuring out the right basal rate, correction factor, and insulin/carb ratio. But the first guess at these rates is already a billion times better than how I was doing on that god awful 70/30 insulin.
And instead of taking 100 units of insulin a day, I’m already down to 60-65. YAY!
In other news, check out this fucking rat. My god, the TAIL. I just cannot get over that picture. A friend of a friend posted it on Facebook. This is R.O.U.S. come to life!!!
I have nothing to look forward to this week. It’s Monday afternoon, and I’ve been going crazy since last night.
Friday was an extraordinarily awesome day. It was the last day of Adventure Boot Camp (for one week, then we start again), and we only had a half-day of work due to this state employee charity thing. I also got my monitor back from the Acer repair center, got some books I ordered from Amazon, and my insulin pump came in.
I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly everything came together with the pump. I had my doctor appointment last Monday, where we discussed my options and my doctor agreed a pump would be the best solution. The pump company called me right away, got everything squared away with my insurance company, and by Friday afternoon I had everything. Everything except training with one of the pump company’s representatives and my doctor that is. It’s not so simple that I can just start using this thing, so I have to meet with them first.
Well, I tried calling a couple different people last week. One told me to call the other, who happened to be out of town. So I left an email and heard back today that she’s still out of town the rest of this week and will call me Wednesday.
Now that is a huge amazing disappointment. Everything else happened so fast, and to get stuck at this point is nothing short of sheer evil torture. This week would have been so perfect to set this whole pump situation up. It being my off week with boot camp being the main reason for that. I don’t really like the idea of starting the pump right in the middle of the week with boot camp in the mix. I’d like to get used to it for a day or two before dealing with it in boot camp.
Plus, at the end of next week, I’ll be going on a trip with family and would also like to have as many days as possible under my belt before that as well. Going out of town with diabetes is always an adventure as it is.
So I’m really not happy that this lady is not available for training. Every time I talk to my doctor’s office, they tell me to call this other guy because he “gets things done” and I wonder if this is why. But when I called him, he told me to email her, so who knows. I might try him again tomorrow out of desperation.
I’m probably being a bit impatient, but then I remember just how expensive this insulin pump is, so I don’t feel so bad. My insurance company is covering 80% of it (plus this continuous glucose monitoring system that comes with it), and my total payment (which is the remaining 20% plus whatever my deductable is–I think maybe $300) comes out to around $1500. So yeah, not so cheap, this insulin pump. But hopefully worth it. If I ever get to use it that is.
Having this thing sitting on my floor is also making it harder for me to give a flying shit about my blood sugar readings at the moment; in other words, it’s difficult to try very hard with dealing with shots when I’m looking forward to starting something so new soon.
Anyway, with boot camp not meeting, getting my insulin pump set up was the only thing I had to look forward to this week. This week is such an in-between waste of time week. Last week was good with boot camp and Friday’s schedule to look forward to. Next week will be good because boot camp starts again and I have a trip to look forward to the following weekend. This week contains nothing but work, oh joy! >:|
As far as bad weeks go, this one was probably in my top three. Well maybe not, but I have a bad memory of bad things, so it’s one of the worst in a long while, let’s put it that way.
My blood sugar is just a mess. That’s all there is to describe it. In my post on Monday I said it was doing better. Well, apparently I jinxed things saying that. The next day I was low before I left to exercise in the morning (58), and it was 357 when I got back. This morning it was 130 before I left (following a 2am low of 38), then it was 385 when I got back. There just aren’t words for the ridiculousness of that.
The consensus seems to be that I’m running out of insulin in my system at that time in the morning. And exercise is causing my body to create glucose, but it has no where to go. Something like that anyway.
I was frustrated beyond all reason this morning. Just plain pissed. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever been so frustrated with having diabetes. I’ve had my share of bad moments, mostly revolving around lows in the night, but that didn’t get me down quite so much. I think what’s bothering me so much about this situation is that it’s revolving around my new found exercising, and it took everything in me to start exercising in the first place. As I’ve already talked about many times here before, I’m coming from a bad, bad unhealthy time in my life.
My diabetes interfering is just pushing me over the top. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with other people in that camp as it is. Six years of gaining so much weight and not exercising even a little bit did more damage than I even realized. My knees are not in good shape at all. But I expected some of this. I even expected a bit of a mess with my diabetes, just nothing even close to this bad.
Being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 18 didn’t even get me down like this. Not even close, actually. In fact, I took the news of being diagnosed fairly well, and I think that is because it made me lose so much weight in a the span of few months before I landed myself in the hospital. It made me fit into a size 8, so I forgave it. Haha. But nine years later, I’m less willing to excuse its fucking bullshit.
I’m tired of it. I spoke with my doctor. He suggested splitting my evening shot up, but I’m skeptical that it will cover me properly that way. I’m skeptical that the insulin I’m on right now is going to adjust to my new schedule at all, actually. I’m going to see him Monday morning. Hopefully I won’t lose my shit. I’m one of those people who cries easily when upset, pissed, or frustrated. I loathe the idea of bringing that into the doctor’s office, but oh well.
I posted about this to the diabetes live journal community, and of course everyone there thinks my life will be easier if I consider an insulin pump. Not that I’m surprised by that. People in that community are quite big fans. In fact, all pumpers I’ve heard of highly recommend it. I don’t know many type 1s in person, in fact, I think the only one I know is my cousin’s husband (well, and their first child), and they live in California. He does have a pump, and last I heard loves it and would never go back.
But despite all this, the idea of having some thing attached to me all the time scares the shit out of me. But if it helped make me more flexible to change and avoid completely absurd situations like I’m in now, perhaps it’s really time I get over that.
This week was also not made any better by the fact that there are a couple things work-wise stressing me out. One was a time-crunch situation early in the week, that wasn’t really anyone’s fault, it just happened to come with some bad timing given everything else going on between my mess and my being out of town last week. This group is really, really good to me, so I’ll do anything I can for them. But that ended Tuesday. The other thing is concerning a different group I do work for outside regular hours. I did a project for them that mostly ended this summer. They paid me once at the beginning of the year for it, and though they talked about continuing with new things in the future, they never talked about when this would happen, and more so, they didn’t discuss payment with me for these things. Then in September, out of the blue they throw some new stuff in my lap, and it seemed to me like it was expected of me to just do it, and there was no talk of payment at all. Perhaps if it were any other time in my life, I would have just shrugged it off. But as you all know, I’m going through some craziness at the moment. Now is not the time to expect free shit out of me. Well, I didn’t get back with them right away. My schedule was pretty full with the other project I mentioned, me going out of town, and my state of pitiful health.
So then this week, they’re wondering if I’m going to just be permanently busy, or if it’s just tempory. I decide it’s time I bring up the fact that if I’m going to be doing new projects for them, we need to make a new contract. It’s stupid, and I’m probably making a bigger deal of it than it is, and this being done all over email, maybe I’m just taking it wrong. But whatever the case, I HATE dealing with this side of things. I HATE being put in the position where I have to bring this up at all. And lord knows if I even did it tactfully. It’s just stressing me out.
My in office job isn’t causing me stress at least, other than just being required to show up. Haha. Seriously, that is the most stressful part at the moment. After my nutty blood sugar level this morning, I took off today, and I felt stupid and guilty as hell doing it. I don’t know why. I guess I just feel like a turd after being gone all last week, even if I was gone for work. I get preoccupied with worrying that they think I’m just this weird freak that can’t get her shit together. The logical part of me knows they don’t really think this. I just have issues with being so different from everyone sometimes, I guess. I’m not normal like everyone else there. I’m quiet, I’m geeky, I have a lot of weird interests compared to them, I can’t keep a normal human schedule to save my life, and my diabetes naturally makes me a freak of nature. Most of the time, I can accept this. But times like now it gets to me. I feel more guilty being such a “special case” because I know I’m lucky to be there. Too incredibly lucky. Let’s just say “someone” I know was told at his evil job that it’s frowned upon to choose to take his vacation time at the end of the year. Of all the stupid on the planet ever. That kind of crap really puts my complaining about work into perspective.
Oh, and in other crappiness, my big 24″ monitor shit out on me completely (after a period of hinting at it) right after I came back from my trip last week. With everything else going on this week, particularly with my knees hurting like a bitch, I haven’t shipped it off to be repaired/replaced yet. It’s still under warranty, luckily. So for now my poor pitiful self is stuck with my old 17″ with 1280×1024 resolution, and it’s a little bit of torture. Especially while playing Sims. >__>
Okay new goal: my next entry here isn’t going to be so pouty.
I am definitely feeling my lack of sleep last night. I haven’t figured out how to adjust from weekend schedule to boot camp schedule yet at all. The easy solution, of course, would be to not get things so out of whack on the weekends, but then I’d also like a trillion million dollars (I still haven’t received that check).
My trip to San Antonio was…well, it just was. The training was really good, if not a bit slow paced in parts, but I definitely learned a lot. The location of the training however, sucked massive donkey balls and I’d rather eat my eyes out than go back to that part of San Antonio ever again.
I’m not much of a fan of the city to begin with. It’s not attractive, and besides the Riverwalk, I don’t find it very interesting. And I’ve been to the Riverwalk a lot, so that’s not even that cool anymore. But this training wasn’t anywhere near there anyway. Rather, it was in north San Antonio (right off loop 1604 and hwy 281, if you know the area), and by gods that place is just a big freeway surrounded by the world’s largest Walmart parking lot.
Who designed that area, really? Or did it just expand too quickly and new businesses just kind of pooped themselves anywhere they could fit?
The access roads to the highway are frightening, and good luck ever getting in without cutting someone off who’s going 70mph down them. And if you avoid the access roads, you’re stuck in this maze of a parking lot–I can’t even call them roads, though I guess technically they are. There’s just not much sense of direction–they just twirl around commercial buildings.
Luckily, the training center was within walking distance. And also luckily, I did not get run over by some shit fuck going 80 in the parking-lot-roads.
My mom told me I’m just spoiled by College Station, and she’d be right. Which is frightening in its own right really, that I’ve adjusted so much to the ass-clowns driving around here that I find it worse elsewhere. Everyone here is just slow-paced. Often, rather addle-brained, honestly. But I’m finding I do prefer it to the sheer lunacy I find in Houston or San Antonio.
In other news my knees hurt. Boot camp went well this morning, despite my taking a week off for this trip (and no, I didn’t exercise while I was gone–shocker). But I wasn’t in the dead-last back of the pack the whole time (haha), and managed to not vomit up last night’s dinner all over the place. The only place I’m sore so far is my knees. I must have put too much pressure on them at some point, but I didn’t notice it at the time. My blood sugar wasn’t nutty this time. Started at 84 and was exactly 100 when I got home. So it’s still rising a little, but not a nasty 50+ like the first week.
I actually read in the diabetes LJ community that a “hard” workout can often raise a diabetic’s BG, where as a “medium” workout might not. This is just some random person saying this, so who knows if there’s any truth to it. But they mentioned that it might raise temporarily and then drop back down shortly after, which does hold true to my situation that first week. Meh, something to ask my doc next time I go, I suppose.
At the end of the workout today, we did a bit more stretching than in the past, and as we straddled our legs, I realized just how ridiculous I’ve become. There was a time when I could straddle my legs all the way out and lay my chest on the ground. These days I can’t hardly reach my toes. I miss that flexibility, and I was never a naturally flexible person to begin with. That’s one of those things I probably won’t ever get back though. Too old. But hopefully, one day, some of it will come back. Maybe even enough that I could take dance classes again. If nothing else, starting to exercise has made me wish more than ever that I never stopped that activity which dominated near 20 years of my life.
I noticed the humidity when I stepped outside to head out to Adventure Boot Camp this morning at 5. I thought, well, we had one week of awesome fall-like weather, it had to end sometime. It did not occur to me, however, that with humidity comes EXTREME MOSQUITOS until I was already outside and warming up on the grass.
I forgot just how much I hate humidity. I now have at least 800 mosquito bites. And Google is telling me it’s the first day of fall. Apparently Texas missed that memo.
Other than the humidity and the fact that I ate pizza last night, I noticed a major improvement between today and my first day of exercising last Monday. I kept up with other people so much better today, which makes me all the more annoyed that I won’t be able to attend the rest of the week because I’ll be out of town. Sure, I could exercise while I’m gone, but I honestly don’t think I’m even near a point where I know how to push myself to do the right things on my own.
Anyway, I brought up the fact that I ate pizza last night because at one point this morning I had to stop because I thought I was going to puke. We just finished doing these things called “burpees,” where in you put your hands on the ground in a squat, pop out your legs straight behind you, jump them back in, then jump up–and repeat. Ugh. I didn’t feel it until it was over. We were doing them in partners, which always makes me feel obligated to do more (maybe that’s the point). I did not recover well.
I’m quite sure the pizza dinner did not help. Pizza always makes me feel like ass crackers; I honestly don’t know why I eat it. I think it’s like Lewis Black and candy corn.
I’ve had quite the interesting week. And I’m not sure why I decided to write about it now, when I’m incredibly pissed about wasting 30 minutes of life sitting behind a bunch of ass-fucks on University Drive trying to get somewhere I don’t even want to be at all. The traffic today is just astoundingly shitty! Which is saying a lot, because it sucks on a regular basis. I don’t know if it’s people up from Galveston, a football game this weekend (I don’t keep up), or just students being shitheads in general, but GOD.
Okay, now that that’s out of my system (not really, maybe I need to browse the internet and come back), my week was interesting because I joined this thing called Adventure Boot Camp. Which basically entails getting up at 5 in the morning and exercising with a huge group of women, and dying a little bit. If you know me at all (even just from reading my posts), the idea of me exercising at all is completely laughable, made even more laughable by the idea of me waking up at 5 in the morning.
So why did I do this? *Shrug* I’ve pretty much thought about my state of patheticness and how I need to do something about it 24/7 for the past several years. I came across this Adventure Boot Camp on a blog, looked it up, and decided to join. The idea of just joining a gym, or starting to figure out how to exercise on my own accord when I haven’t done so since I was a child always seemed like a massive fail to me. But committing to something like this, that’s everyday in a big group, sounded like something more up my alley (actually, it reminds me of drill team). The 5:30 in the morning thing sounded absurd at first, but then when I thought about it, I realized when would be a good time? After work? That’d be hot and still hard to do. Plus it’d be daylight hours and more people would be around.
As it turns out 5:30 in the morning is much like night time to me still, so it’s actually not so bad, and as far as exercising times go, it’s really quite perfect. No one else is around but our group, we’re outside with only moonlight, so my shame factor is significantly decreased.
The hard part is going to bed earlier, and going to work afterward. Fucking work. I’m in a very anti-work mood for the past several weeks, but that’s a rant for later.
So how was my first week of exercising after an eternity of being a couch potato? Torture! I’ve been walking funny all week. But at the same time I like it, and I want to get better. It’s made me realize just how pathetic I truly have become. It makes me miss dance and how flexible I used to be. How strong my legs used to be.
It’s funny because I’ve hated my body since I turned 12. I’ve never in my life been a skinny person, and I’ve resented it big time. Looking back, I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was when I was younger, it was more just that most teenagers are skinny, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t fat, like I thought I was, I just wasn’t a size 0, and while actually some what toned, I was larger than near every one else on my high school drill team and in my dance classes. Perhaps that was my problem, trying to fit in with a bunch of tiny dancing teens.
Anyway, when I was a senior in college, I quit dancing. I think I gained a few more pounds that summer and combined with an impending course load of doom, I decided to take off from dancing that semester. Fully intending to come back of course. But did I? NO. Biggest mistake ever.
Long story short, and there are certainly a million more reasons behind it, 5-6 years later and a billion pounds, and you have where I am today. Very unhealthy, and apparently more out of shape than 70 year-old women. I say that, because there are women in their 70s in this camp (there are also college girls, it fits all levels/ages), and I shit you not, I struggle to keep up with them. I am bottom of the pole for sure. It will take a very long time for me to undo what all I’ve done (I could lose 10 pounds a month for a year and still not be skinny), but I hope I can keep up with this and not poop out.
My main challenge so far has been stupid diabetes. Of course. My blood sugar very much affects what I’m able to do in terms of endurance. If it’s really high, fucking forget it. The first three days were perfectly fine. Thursday, I woke up with a low (48). Fan-fucking-tastic! So I corrected it before going off to camp. Came back from camp and it was a whopping 280. Way to go, you stupid, stupid body. I’m used to my body retailiating after a low, but this was just absurd. Tried to correct after that, went to bed for an hour, got up and it was still 280. I had a massive headache at this point and decided to take off work and fell back asleep. Woke up for lunch, and what was my blood sugar? 38!
Utter failure.
Well, as it turns out this morning, I realized the true reason for this, and that reason is my stupid period. I didn’t even remember that it was that time already. Did not occur to me once. But assuredly this is the main reason behind the extreme ridiculousness. And this morning was a repeat of that ridiculousness, just to a lesser extreme (61 / 258).
Anyway, hopefully once my time is over, the morning lows will be too. Figuring out if I need to adjust my insulin levels with the new exercise will be tricky. I’m scared I’m going to really screw up once, and ruin myself on the entire exercising thing. Hopefully not. Fingers crossed.
So yeah. That’s pretty much that. I’m incredibly bummed though because I already have to miss four days of camp next week because of stupid work. Back in June I signed up to go to this overly expensive training in San Antonio, and I can’t back out of it now. Stupid training. Why couldn’t it be back in August? I’m very unhappy about going to this. Not excited at all, and I really don’t like San Antonio. Mostly, I don’t want to get more behind than I already am in boot camp. But, what can you do?
The only plus side is that I won’t have to sit in the little pit of hell that is my office building for a few days. Some times I get so burned out on office life and working in general, I completely lose it. Now is one of those times. Nothing about what I’m doing right now interests me, and emails are pissing me off. My God how I hate sitting here for so long, it’s just the hugest waste of life. And then I get to thinking how this seems to bother NO ONE ELSE here, and I get even more pissy. And un-punctual. Crawling in after 9:30 for the win. Fuck it, I just don’t care. It’s times like this I realize I should take long vacations each year. If I would take a week, maybe I wouldn’t burn out like this. But it never seems like a good time, and it never seems like a good reason. (What am I going to do on my break? Sit around and watch Days?) So I just resort to taking days here and there, and then feeling immensely guilty every time I do, imagining how everyone here thinks I’m a lazy, pathetic idiot, which I am.
In other news, some kid in town got “accidentally” shot by his roommate and died the other day. He was good friends with a co-worker, which is how I even heard of the incident since I don’t pay much attention to local news. This situation is just so absurd and disgusting. I mean really, what is some college age (or just out of college, maybe) kid in College God damn Station doing with a gun anyway? The kid got shot in the head while his roommate was showing off some feature of the gun to some other guy. WOW, really. Way to practice gun safety. I wonder what happens to people like this (the killer)? Nothing? I’m sure he feels like shit, and will forever, but if it were my family member or friend that got killed that would just not be okay. Reading news posts on the internet about it, the majority seem to be defending the “accident” and just plain too sympathetic toward the shooter here. I do not understand this, at all. It’s sad, absolutely, and the shooter was a friend, but regardless of what happened, he should be held responsible. If he was driving drunk and killed the kid that way, these people would not be so defensive of the offender. And gun carelessness is just as negligent. The more I think about it, the stupider the whole tragedy sounds. This should have never happened. Some kid living on “Fraternity Row” (I shit you not) should not own a gun, and he should not have kept it fucking loaded and ready to go while showing off to some buddies. That is a danger to everyone who may enter that house, the surrounding houses and anyone driving by. God.
Have I done enough ranting for the day? Maybe. Only a few more hours of the afternoon, and hopefully I can get over my extreme grumpiness.
