Ummm, so I have nothing to say

So I know this is my blog, but maybe I've been a little self-absorbed lately.

Clothes

Seriously, where do people buy clothes nowadays? I bought some shirts from Express last month because they were on major clearance and only $7 but after I wore one once, I discovered there was a hole in one. Fortunately it's right on the seam and I can fix it easily, but seriously? I realized that with cheap prices, we have to accept mass production and the lack of quality that comes with it, but I really don't like my clothes falling apart after one wear. Also, I feel bad shopping at certain stores where I'm sure that they use sweatshops and poorly regulated production means as a way to make sure that I can buy that shirt at $7. Really, really guilty. I'd like to make my own clothes, but most of the fabric I can buy is come from factories with similar practices, so it's not really like I'm solving the problem. What's a guilty Liberal to do? Anyone have any clothing stores that they love?

I did it!

I actually went to my ballet class tonight. AND I didn't collapse at the end of it. Sure it was an easier class than my usual one with the crazy/super good teacher who is a complete tyrant, but at least I got some exercise. Maybe I'll even make it to the gym tomorrow. I've been trying to keep it together for the past couple of months. Mostly failing miserably. So I've been playing some video games and reading some more and catching up on bad tv. Teaching Liam to read. I've been really turned off of food lately. I think I lost some weight last week not by exercising but the sheer nausea of migraines and everything sounding completely disgusting. However one day I was making pbjs for the kids when the smell of the peanut butter was very tempting. So I made and ate a pbj for the first time in probably years and damn it, it was the best thing I'd ever eaten. Yay for the simple things in life. I got to the LAST DAY of being on my prednisone when the pain of Murgatroyd (love the name, Stephanie!) growing finally got to be to much and I had to call the APRN I'd been seeing. Lo and behold, she re-upped the steroids and now I have an appointment on Wednesday with the rheumatologist. I'm not sure what she's going to prescribe, but it made be anything dietary restrictions, methotraxate, or a recommendation for a bi-lateral mastectomy. I've been doing some research into the last option because I can't live with the pain but I can't be on immunosuppressants forever because they make me CrAzY. But do yourself a favour and NEVER EVER GOOGLE images for mastectomies. Yikes. But the rate of re-occurrence is nearly zero. Still can happen. But the rate for prednisone is 75%, doing nothing is 50% and partial mastectomies is 25%. Yikes. The problem with dietary restrictions is the likely one is gluten. Which is fine, I can live without bread and baked good for the most part. The problem is the other stuff that gluten gets sneaked into. Like does anyone know a good soy sauce that doesn't contain gluten? Chicken broth is another. And goodbye to ever eating out because I can't be sure what ingredients the restaurants use. I've had a terrible taste in my mouth for the past month. I finally looked up it and it's most likely being caused by the metformin. Apparently metformin can cause the body to go into a state known as ketosis, which is when the blood runs out of sugar (glucose) and so the body starts burning fat for fuel. Mostly a good thing. There are times that this is bad (anorexics and heavy athletes for example) but I'm hoping that it's a sign the metformin is working and I'll start being able to drop some pounds. Sorry for the randomness of the this post, but I thought that I'd do an update.

The previous post

The previous post is password protected because it's something that's very personal to me. I know not everyone is mature enough to read it and there are some people who read this blog that I'd rather didn't (screw you Josie if you're reading this; why don't don't go mess up someone else's life). So if you'd like the password, email me at baeksonghwa at gmail dot com. Comments are not password protected as far as I know.

This post is password protected

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Why this won't become a weight loss blog

Alternate title: My body is trying to kill me

I woke up with a MASSIVE migraine this morning. Seriously, body? Isn't it bad enough that other sensitive parts are hurting, now you have add in a headache? It'd been coming on for days, but I was still floored by how awful I felt (almost literally, I had a hard time standing up). My head would have felt better if actually had exploded. Add in lots of nausea and you get the idea. Justin kindly gave me some migraine medication before swiftly escaping for work, probably because he really didn't want to clean up the mess if the nausea corporealized. Of course this was the day I was determined to get back to the gym. After the drugs kicked in and Liam waking up necessitated me getting out of bed, I dragged myself into clothes and headed to the gym. Because my body isn't the boss of me, damn it. I survived the gym and then spent the rest of the day lounging in bed and watching Dirk Gently episodes. Because British tv rules. I also undid all the good of going to the gym in two mini Snickers bars. Crap.

So I was tempted to do the whole weight tracking stuff on this blog, but then I realized that 1) no one cares (seriously, even I don't care about the numbers) and 2) I hate weight loss blogs. Mostly because they're all the same. But I did find a couple blogs that I enjoy. The first is Can You Stay For Dinner? This is more of a food blog than a weight loss one, but she has chronicled about losing 135 (!) lbs. The difference is that she started this blog after she'd lose the weight. But her recipes are realistic and look really yummy. The second blog is called Jack Sh*t, Gettin' Fit. This is the most irreverent weight loss blog that I've read. He's blogged everyday for 3 1/2 years. There is hardly anything on this blog to motivate you to lose weight, but there are plenty of song parodies, conversations with Snape, and helpful healthy tips, such as:

• Turn a regular desk into a treadmill by flipping it upside-down, then figuring out some way to make a tread go round-and-round. 

• Switch to low-fat, organic, whole wheat cigarettes. 

• Can’t afford a fancy heart-rate monitor? You can make your own with a digital watch and a wire connected directly to your heart. 

• Don’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry or have a lot of money. 

• You can make your diet more low-fat by eating less fat, dumbass.

 

• Enjoy the benefits of probiotic drinks, or, at the very least, don't drink a bunch of anti-biotic drinks.

 

• Can't sleep? Try a warm cup of Ambien tea right before bed.

 

• Some folks actually have trouble gaining weight; to those people I offer this simple-to-follow advice: why not try shutting the hell up, please?

Definitely worth a look since this blog isn't going to become a weight loss blog anytime soon.

Today I:

Went to the gym

Nothing else. Seriously.

2012

2012 was a lousy year. I tried to remain optimistic to the very end, but let's face it, I had kind of a crappy year. I don't remember the first part, mostly because I was trying to wake up from the hibernation of a very long, dark winter. Then I struggled through the summer with a major depressive episode. Then when things started to look up and I started to feel more like a human being, I got sick. Very sick. And then things came crashing down again and I've barely been functioning the last month.

I've decided that after being on the prednisone 6 weeks longer than intended and suffering through the side effects, I was done. I'm 10 days away from being completely weaned off it. Unfortunately, the mastitis is back in full force. So I'm basically living in pain right now. Today was especially bad as my left arm ached all day in addition to the lump. I'm hoping that once it stops growing, maybe it won't hurt (I think the pain is from inflamed tissue, not the lump) and maybe I'll just learn to live with it. Maybe I'll give it a name. Otherwise, it's off to the rheumatologist I go.

The house is a huge wreck. I'm reminded in the book Cold Sassy Tree when Miss Love tells Will Tweedy that when a woman gets sick, her house get sick too. Sexism aside (it is supposed to be 1906), it became true in our house too. When I got depressed and started to hurt physically too, I stopped doing the housework. I spent most of today trying to fix a little of that, doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen, but it was very much doing a task and rewarding myself by reading a few more chapters of the new JK Rowling book. And I petered out around early afternoon. I suck.

I met only one of my goals this year. I got more of the house decorated, but it's far from done. I didn't lose weight, but at least I didn't gain a ton either. I found out that I'm insulin resistant, meaning that losing weight is going to be difficult even if I exercised all the time. Being on medication for a quarter of the year that left me hungry and energy-less really didn't help. Hopefully the metformin will help with the insulin resistant. But I did start a garden and did pretty well until the aphids set in.

I'm hoping that 2013 will be a good year. I'm trying to plan a trip to visit my bff in Vietnam and Singapore, and this year we're taking the kids to Disneyland. Yay! 

My goals for the next few months:

Lose as much weight as I can

Go through my clothes and get rid of stuff

Start building a functioning wardrobe (you know that I don't even own a pair of jeans right now?)

Sew some new stuff for me