It’s so easy…

I thought you were going to blog every day, or at least every other day?  What happened

um

A great man once said, “If it’s easy to do, it’s easy NOT to do.”

It’s easy to drink a gallon of water every day.  It’s easy to go on a walk every day.  It’s easy to do 10 push-ups, lets do 15.  It’s easy to just clean up after yourself.  It’s easy to just write down what you need to do the night before.  It’s easy to make phone calls and get business set up.  It’s easy to choose healthy foods and fun to cook.  It’s easy to just set a time every day to write something in your blog. It’s also easy to think, “who cares what I write, or whether I walk or drink a gallon of water? Who cares if I make my phone calls, no one cares about making or saving money anyway…they’ve all given up or they think they can do it better than someone that has studied for years to learn this stuff.  When am I ever going to need to be strong enough to do ANY push ups?  Why should I clean when no one ever comes here?”  It gets to be nasty stuff that I say to myself.  It’s the same stuff I repeat from what I heard as a child.  I don’t enter things in the county/state fair because it doesn’t matter to anyone but me.  I don’t make the Christmas baskets I used to because it doesn’t matter to anyone but me.  I don’t put up 1000 jars of jelly because the only one that appreciates home made jelly is me.  I don’t practice my instrument and I won’t go back for lessons because music only matters if you’re a star, and then it doesn’t have any world wide importance.  I’m not brave enough to don a Lady Gaga outfit and play a trumpet concerto in front of people.  It’s ok to have an electronic bugle at military funerals, because it doesn’t have real meaning anyway.  These things have no significance to anyone but me, and I don’t matter.  When I get comments like, “You’re so TALENTED!” or “You’re so SMART,” I down play them.  My response is, “What a stupid thing to be good at.” I am amazing at things when there’s no competition.  There’s no competition because these are not things anyone wants to get good at.  This is the point where depression sets in.  Why would anyone in their right mind depress themselves?!! 

How do you get passed this?  Oh… read someone else’s blog. AGoebel’s blog and Ithilen’s blog always get me up.  I think it’s easier to fail and expect it than to try to succeed, expect success and then fail and be surprised.  When you don’t succeed, you lower the bar, and sooner or later, it becomes a ditch instead–full of stinky water and leeches.  When you expect failure, you say, “hmmm, this stinky water kinda looks like pop, or tea, and I don’t mind the leeches too much, they’re company at least.”  ARGH  How could anyone live like that?

My friend, Randy, described it this way:  It’s the 2nd place curse.  When you get 1st place, you get the big trophy and the applause and the pats on the backs.  When you get 3rd place, you’re ok, but you understand you might not have given it your best effort and you know what to do to improve.  But with 2nd place, you think it might have been the judges; it might have been my dress, or that croissant I had that morning.  It might have been just 2 points difference.  And you try again.  It’s like bowling a 299, or getting assistant principal, or co-manager…almost enough.  I don’t think of it as a curse.  I think of it as a license to fail, just a little bit.  It nags you to try again, to keep going, to finish the race.  It really doesn’t matter if what matters to me is important to anyone else.  My life should not be determined by the latest poll. 

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED:  JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING DOESN’T “MATTER” IN THE WORLD DOESN’T MEAN IT SHOULDN’T “MATTER” TO ME.  Who I am matters to some people, and what I do contributes to who I am.  Even if what I am good at, and what I do seems trivial in the overall scheme of things doesn’t mean that that little niche shouldn’t be filled.  I will go for 1st place, and will be delighted with 2nd, or even 3rd.

my pet rock

So you know I had a Kidney stone.  1/2″ — 50 cal.  They broke it up on Tuesday…as far as I know.

I went into the hospital, they stuck me in the hand, and I woke up in the recovery room.  I still feel a lump in my back that might be the stone or it might be the end of the stent.  I have increased my water/juice/tea intake by, oh, at least a couple of gallons.  In Sweet Adelines, they said, “Sing Wet, Pee Pale!” meaning that we should always be hydrated when we sing to avoid damage to vocal chords, and the result is that on a scale from 1= water and 10=French onion soup, the pee was a 1 or 2.  It is now a 1. 

7/23, I went walking around the lake for my exercise. 4 mile walk about 1 hr. 20 m.  Didn’t bring my water bottle.  There are water pumps at the 1/2 way point, and I drank some there.  When I got home, pee was about an 8.  This didn’t bother me at all, and I just drank 6-8 oz. and called it good.  2 days later, I walked around the education center and took the hill.  Got a nice picture from up top.  Patted myself on the back, but once again, no water bottle, and pee measured about a 7.  Drank a 20 oz. bottle of that Green tea, and called it good.  7/26 I got the kidney stone emergency.  Are these things related?

This situation has wiped me out.  I can’t stand for any length of time, had to cancel my lessons, didn’t go to training, didn’t drive, didn’t go to band practice, didn’t make my club visits or help out in contests.  It’s a different kind of sore…  It’s like the rock in the shoe, or the plantar fasciitis, or an arrow in your back like the cartoons.  Before I had my hip replacement, when the barometer would go up, so did the pain, and every step hurt.  There was only one position I could sleep in, and 1 mm. off and it hurt.  But there WAS a position.  With this, it’s a localized spot of pain.  Not agonizing like it was that Saturday, just annoying.  There is no comfortable position–not standing, not sitting, not lying down.  I am prevented from any type of exercise until these stones pass, but like I said in the 1st paragraph, it feels NO DIFFERENT than before they broke the thing up.  And as yet, I’m not seeing any evidence that anything, powder, sand or boulder, has passed.  I have to wait until 8/25 to get the official results.

I have gone from watching my calorie intake to watching my liquid intake, and my exercise has been completely curtailed.  I guess I have to start over once this thing is done.  Thank God for Amanda!  She helps me to realize that a week or 2 off will not scuttle the whole project as she’s been on her program for 8 years.  It’s a set back, but not surrender.  Lesson learned? TAKE YER FREAKIN WATER BOTTLE WITH YOU WHEN YOU WALK! 

Unsanctioned alternative diets

That should get a lot of hits!

I haven’t written in too long, then something happened that caused me to get back into my blog. 

A few years ago, I got some sort of vicious cough.  My throat hurt and I coughed non-stop for 3 days getting little or no sleep.  I had to go to a conference in Kansas City to learn some sales technics and at the end of the session, I was supposed to take a test.  This is not one of those lvl 3 tests:  Cognitive applications. It was not one of those lvl 2 tests:  Practical applications.  It was a lvl 1 test.  What did he write and say and write it down EXACTLY as he said it.  Missing an “a” or an “of” or just getting the gist of the patter didn’t even get you partial points.  You had it memorized verbatim or not at all.  Well, my son was coming back from the Gravel Pit (as they euphemistically put it) and I had to leave a day early.  I took the final and got 85% with no study.  Then, at 4 am…another sleepless night sitting up in the hotel chair…we headed off to the East Coast to welcome our boy back.  I finally got some sleep on the long drive over as my hubby was driving the car.  24 hour drive and about 8 hrs. of that was sleeping fitfully, but sleeping. What does that have to do with unsanctioned diets?  I had nothing but soup to eat for 4 days.  Chicken soup, Minestrone, veggie beef, tomato basil.  It felt good on my throat and stopped the cough briefly.  I lost 8 pounds.   All that coughing was a terrific ab workout.  It hurt to breathe.  It hurt to sit up and lie down.  It especially hurt to cough.  When we got home, I think I slept for about 10 hours.  My normal is about 5-6.  I was weak and sore and really really hungry.

Last Saturday, July 26, hubby and I went to a meeting.  The Area governors decided to have a celebration lunch at Old Chicago afterwards, so I drove hubby to the restaurant and dropped him off, then drove our carpool person back to her house and then returned to the restaurant.  We had a good lunch!  BUT!  on the way home, my back started hurting like I’d pulled a muscle on one side.  Then it upgraded to a discrete location and severe pain accompanied by nausea.  This was about L Street.  I wasn’t sure I was going to make it home and stopping to change drivers would have ensured that scenario.  Got home and emptied stomach most unpleasantly.  But the pain did not subsist.  There was no comfortable position.  Sitting and lying down did not alleviate the pain. I had 2 students at 4:00!  They were new and I decided that since there was nothing left in my stomach now, I’d go teach the lesson.  I had to excuse myself to go throw up in their toilet.  Ew!  Then I didn’t get home fast enough and pulled over and fertilized the grass, but not without making a mess on my shirt as I got out of the car.  I got home and changed clothes to my “work out” clothes…loose fitting pants and a t shirt.  Then I proceeded to throw up another 4 hours.  I gave up and hubby drove me to the emergency room.  TADA!!!!  Congratulations!  you have a 1.3 cm kidney stone!  On a scale of 1-10, how would you describe your pain?  9.  I had 5 kids and 2 hip replacements.  The most difficult delivery was only an 8.  The hip surgery only measured a 6.  (I remembered the nurse asking me if I knew how to work the morphine machine because in the time most patients had used 1 1/2 bags I had only used 1/4 bag.)  Good news is that the stone only hurts when it moves.  Here’s an antibiotic, a drug that you take after breakfast because it’s a drug you take after breakfast (still don’t know what it did), some pain pills and some anti nausea tabs you dissolve in your mouth.  Drink PLENTY of fluids! 

6 hrs. of throwing up netted me a 3 pound weight loss in 1 day.  Now I went on to the Soup diet again.  Plus tea, plus cranberry juice, plus apple juice.  Lost another 2 pounds.  Had the procedure yesterday to break up the kidney stone, and I still don’t think it’s moving.  Having to pee every 2 hrs. and drinking more tea, water, cranberry juice, apple juice and soup.  I can have some solid food, but I’m not hungry for it.  How NOT to lose weight?  Cough for a week with no sleep and drink soup, get a kidney stone and drink soup.  There’s GOT to be a better way!!!!!