On Whatever This Is ...

 According to my OneDrive, on this day, some 16 years ago (?!!!!), we were in Florida ... WHERE in HADES have SIXTEEN years gone? Seriously? I don't remember a lot of it, but I remember it was the place where I got the absolutely most divine sausage and pepper sandwich from a roadside food truck that has never left my mind! It also marked the point where I fell in love with sausage and peppers, which I never ever wanted before then. Remarkable! 

Too bad I didn't take a picture of it! 

I took a picture of this, though: 


I think it was Miami. Long before we learned about Dexter :D 

While some things stay the same, the more they change, some things really do change ... My human suit being one. I've never had a "perfect" shell. Ever. Well, scratch that ... Maybe when I was five. Maybe. I was scrawny for a little while, in youth. That clearly didn't last. 

Let's define perfect, shall we? Not the dictionary varietal - but the one we all think we need to live up to. Yeah, that one mandated to us by society, and marketing agencies across the world. Yeah, no. 

My problem is I haven't really ever been able to envision myself in that type of body. I'm not tall. I'm most certainly not athletic. I don't have a long neck. I don't have a full head of thick, and luxurious hair. My eyebrows are absolutely not snatched, and even more absolutely out of control. I have a frown wrinkle right by my eyebrow, for lack of a better term, probably caused by a lot of unrealized squinting at computer screens ... I am pasty white - never met a tan that would stick to my alabastery skin, at least not since my early adult years. Tanning lotion turns me a bright, and shiny shade of orange. I have zero muscle tone to speak of (all self inflicted, of course, from lack of movement), and on, and on, and on ... 

I'm just a human, brought to you by a combination of sturdy Irish and English stock. The benefits of this form? 

1. I'm low to the ground, so falls will be less harmful
2. I would make an excellent hit woman, because I'm more invisible than visible to normal people. I blend
3. I'm value-priced, because there's no potion, lotion, cosmetic procedure, or form of makeup that will alter what I have. 
4. I'm adaptable because I can work with what I have for very little to no money. 
5. While I may not 1000% enjoy my human suit, I'm at least comfortable here. It's well cushioned. 

All that being said, what I am working on is health. I would like to assume that I've made significant improvements in the last two or so weeks, from a diabetic approach. I will count as a blessing the fact that only Friday, did the pharmacy finally notify me to let me know my glucose monitor is in. As someone who either didn't have any, or didn't notice the symptoms of that particular self-inflicted ailment, I just went on about my business, changed the majority of what I was eating, and feel somewhat better. 

I doubt that, pictorially, I look much different, though my Beloved says that my face is thinner every day. My legs are definitely thinner, and the swelling/edema in the right leg has diminished considerably. Overall, I'm down about 8 pounds since the worst point, and I've been in "pee-tosis" (Ketosis checked only with the pee strips) for more days than not. 

Not gonna lie. I have had sugar. Not daily, but there was a shareably-sized bag of M&Ms, and a Mocha Chocolate Kit-Kat consumed in the last week, along with half of a chicken quesadilla, and some crinkle fries the other night when we stopped at the local (read: only) bar and had dinner after picking up the car from the repair place. I ate half because probably midway through that half, and some of the fries, I could feel bloatiness ensuing, and I knew that if I kept eating, I would just feel like complete garbage by the time we got back home. 

Sometimes, you just have to eat some really not-good-for-you foods just to know that it's NOT right for you. Especially, if it's less-than-high-quality bar food. Sometimes, you have to go to Don Hall's Gas House, and get that decadent bread, and real butter, and a coffee-crusted ribeye. Someday soon, we'll do that. We haven't had dinner there since last spring, the night I left for Arizona. 

This week, I have learned that you absolutely should never attempt to make buffalo chicken dip with WHIPPED cream cheese. It was repulsive, and whipped cream cheese is apparently not suited for high-heat situations. Ew. I also made crispy oven-roasted Brussels sprouts for the first time, and were they ever good. Only complaint? I should have made more!  

That, and a NY strip with sauteed mushrooms (made by my Beloved) is a pretty fantastic dinner. 

I have also learned that I cannot watch negative things on the Tube of Boobs and NOT be negatively impacted, by way of the braincells. I started to watch Physical on Apple TV, and what ...? I could relate to every single solitary bit of inner dialogue the woman had going on, and though I loathe the fact that everything now is a "trigger," I can definitely see how that show would be a trigger to someone in throes of healing from anorexia, or bulimia. Not a good thing to watch, methinks. 

Anywhooo, my only other health concern at the moment is kidney stones. I can feel them. They don't let me forget they are there. It's frustrating feeling like you either have a knife shoved in your back left side right between your rib bones, or at the lower end, someone's knuckles nearly constantly jabbed in that same location. I'm making an appointment to get a scan to see what the damage actually is, and see if it can be alleviated. Enough is enough. 

I'm anxious to go pick up the glucose monitor and see what my number is. I'm curious to see how much it has dropped in the past two weeks. 

I'm also anxious to focus on eating better this week. 

There are a lot of excellent things in store for me, so I'm outta here to go make those things reality! 

Have a great week!