I needed a break. I needed to reset my brain, and my soul. I needed to take a breath and reassess. Yet, as Mr. Lennon supposedly once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans," or something to that effect.
Oh, and the last time I had coffee was approximately 4:00 am Thursday morning. Go figure.
I'm pretty sure I spent the entire drive to the airport in silence. My flight was leaving at 7:00, and of course, it snowed overnight, so the start was a bit slow, but once I got to the highway, all was clear of hazard.
People are very quiet early in the morning, even in large groups waiting to board a small plane. Large group would be an exaggeration, but still ... Not a whole lot of conversation going on. This is pretty much what it looked like leaving Fort Wayne:
What a wild ride, Mr. Toad. What a wild, wild ride this year has been. IT's been a hot minute since my last post - well over a month. Just haven't had much that I wanted to say out loud, but here we have the obligatory looking back/seeing forward post for the end of the year and just before we start it all over again.
I have zero relationship with time anymore. Some days, I feel MUCH older than I am, and other days, I wonder how the hell I made it this far, or how come I don't FEEL my age. (I think it's 56, but I'd have to do maths, and I don't wanna).
This year, and slightly before it, we have lost family, we have lost beloved fur family members, we have lost jobs. We have gained jobs. We have gained raises. We have gained improvements to the homestead. We have come farther than ever before, and yet backtracked, but at least not as much as we gained. We have seen new sides of ourselfs (we being me, and sometimes my Beloved), and revisited past selfs that we didn't WANT to see again. And we have gained new family members, such as this:
At once, it seems like the longest, and yet the shortest stretch of 365 days ever.
I don't have a timeline because I don't journal, so I won't light you up with a bunch of memories. Just suffice it to say that it's been all over the fucking place and back!
I got sick earlier this year (probably late fall) before Captain Terror Toes (up there) arrived. That was a doozy. The test said it wasn't COVID, so maybe I'll believe that or maybe I won't, or maybe my body has just changed its approach to fighting off hellacious colds. Who knows? I really just think we're part of a giant petri dish and The Theys are testing a new strain on all of us, but just not telling us as much, as they did with The COVID years. It's just an experiment with many facets. If we don't know, and we just think we have colds, does it impact the global economy as much? HELL NO it doesn't Check that one off the list! Probably not as good for Big Pharma if we think it's all just a cold, but also something to note, and check off the list. Enough of that tangent. Just felt the need to share my true thoughts on the matter. :)
I had a cold. So bad that my beloved took me to the clinic. I had drugs. I had breathing treatments. I'd say all in all, it took up a good 3-4 weeks of productive living. That all being said, what I learned was I have to get my shit in order. I could not continue living and eating the way I was and expect different results.
I was Queen o' Carbs there for a minute, and it showed. My sugars were ASTRONOMICAL, if not from the meds, from the constant intake of junk stuffs. I was miserable on all fronts. So, I went back to keto. I think I mentioned it back in November, but I'm still at it. Sugar is substantially lower, mostly in the pre-diabetic range, with some days even being non-diabetic, and THAT is what counts because I do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT wish to be a slave to insulin, Metformin, etc. I just don't want it, and the only way to not get it is to get a grip.
I'm in a much better position today than I was when I started. The weight is not leaving as fast as I'd hoped but I'm closer to the other side of 200s than the 220s, so there is that. I don't know what I'll do in the coming year. All I know is that I have to remain focused on the long-term, rather than the instant gratification and bury-my-feels-in-FastBreak-bars urges. That way lies stupidity and suffering, and it's just not worth it anymore.
One day, I just woke up and decided no more. The all-out binges are gone. Yes, it sucks having to sit with your feels, but it's better than having to go to the doctor head held low in shame, and being prescribed 10-20 different meds all designed to combat and counteract the symptoms of the other ones, or combat the symptoms of shitty food choices.
One thing I do know, though - I am done being hyperfocused on it. I can eat a salad and chicken at pretty much any restaurant. I can cook, so I can make my own food at home, and not have to worry about eating what he eats. I have complete control over what goes in the chewhole. Period.
Enough about food. On to movement. I am in the process of finishing up Home Gym 2024. We've got a new treadmill, the rowing machine, a bench, some free weights, and my newest addition, a rebounder, which I have to first construct. Also, since we got the new television, and a new stand, the old relics will be moving out here, along with the archaic DVD player so I can do DVDs, or workouts from the Tube of Yous very readily.
I'll be creating some format of a schedule today and tomorrow, and setting things up to get movement in. My boss started moving, back when it was deadly hot in Phoenix, earlier this year, and has lost 20 pounds just by going swimming every day. While he travels a magical metric fuckton more than I, we have the same remote-work-at-home surrounds, and if he can do it just because he felt like doing something, I would imagine I can, as well. I am not chained to my desk chair, except by choice.
To sum up 2023, it was as terrifying as this video and all its acidesque components:
Yet, still, it was a pretty good year.
Now, on to what's next:
1. No resolutions. I don't resolve to do shit!
That was easy.
As for what's REALLY going to happen, I know of a few things already:
1. Going to Phoenix to see my best friend, have dinner with the bosses, and take a much needed break from the normal routine in less than two weeks so I can reset my brain and my soul.
I need the AZ air and sunshine for a minute.
2. New systems of organization as far as work goes.
I've been studying Notion, the productivity platform that we use for work, and learning what I can so that I can get my own workload organized, and not get so far behind as the right-now things pile up on top of the already long list.
Well, I did say "a few things ..."
That's about all I know for 100% sure.
The rest is what I make of it.
The year will be filled with a growing, learning puppy that, at some point, will turn nearly full grown, keeping Nettie healthy and living her best life in her high senior years, and figuring out just what cat food Bean actually DOES like. He's been rebelling since Jezebel passed, and refuses to eat the food he so readily hogged so she wouldn't have any when she was here.
There may be a revamp of the living room. There's a new rug, but we need some new furniture, some blinds, and new paint on the walls to go along with it. I think it's time. We've had the same baby-poop brown on the walls since 2008. It's time.
Other than that, I don't know, and I'm not a five-year-plan kind of person. I like to see where the wind takes me. I've learned that it's much easier to just go with the flow than try to plan anything, so that's what I'm going with. The flow.
I hope all of you who read this have an excellent new year full of all the things you wanted and none to very few of the things you did not want!
So, I was going to write about a lot of things, and then THIS showed up in my YouTubery:
And I realized that I'm pretty much guilty of at least five or six of the seven things, at one time or another. About the only thing I never talk about online is anything I may have donated to or done for any random being. Just not my style. I've been publicly thanked, and even that made me uncomfortable. I just don't do things for people to garner praise. The only times I have done such things, it's never worked out in my favor. Live and learn.
Otherwise, I am wholeheartedly guilty of oversharing on a variety of topics, including health, goals, family issues, routines, etc. and believe you me, every time I do overshare, the first thing that usually crosses my brain marquee is "Does this really matter to anyone at all, let alone me?" But still, I do it. I guess it's because of the FOMO aspect of our online world, and also because I know the few people that DO read my blog are people I know, and interact with outside of here, so it's more like your everyday average phone call.
That being said, I don't know if I'll keep all my ideas and plans and goals to myself just to appease some gods of Stoicism, but the video does make a good point. Shut up and live. Stop talking about it, and just do it.
And just to NOT follow directions, which is my passion in life, I'll tell you that I'm still on keto (after what, one week? Two weeks?), still in peetosis, and have not had sugar, by way of candy, snack foods that are not keto, and I eat approximately twice per day, and only once have I had a snack of Elote almonds in the afternoon. The solution thus far has been to eat first meal sometimes earlier than lunch, other times at lunchtime, and then dinner, earlier, and ALL the TV-watching snacking at the same time (which has been pork rinds and chip dip, sugar-free Jello and whipped cream). That's about it. 1/2 to one cup of coffee in the morning, and another in the afternoon that typically gets sipped on til early evening.
I can't say I've lost all that much weight, but my breathing is exponentially better, now that the cold is over with, and all the inflammatory junk foods have been eliminated. The achiness is better. No random joint pains. No random chest pains. More energy. Blahbity blah blah blah and so on. Oh, and after all the steroidy "anti-inflammatory" respiratory treatments and drugs, my sugar was at 106 today before lunch. It hasn't been that low in a LONG LONG time. I have confidence that it will continue to decrease, and I'll be NON-diabetic within the next month. Woot.
As for overthinking, this is where I'm doing it differently this time. I am NOT listening to this, that, and every other keto channel in the universe. I'm not counting carbs or macros or anyfucking thing. I'm just doing me, and doing what I know works for me. I know what foods to eat, what foods to not eat; I know how to meal prep if I want to, or order Factor keto meals if the urge strikes me. I'm just done being on a "diet." I am merely trying to be as healthy as I can and avoid the drugs, and bullshit for as long as possible.
I will not talk about my beliefs regarding Big Pharma and Big Medicine because we all have to do what works for us. Ask me, I'll tell you. Otherwise, minding my own beeswax, and keeping on keeping on.
In OTHER news, we have achieved a puppy.
Meet Odin. Took a few days to find the right name, but here we are. Odin - according to Wikipedia, is this, based onNorse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him. It associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet.
I never knew a thing about Odin (also father of Thor) until we watched American Gods a while back. While some would say he was the villain, I got a kick out of him.
And, while I don't know about death, war, the gallows, or the runic alphabet, I do know that his shelter name was Prince Eric (royalty), he's a very intelligent tike, he has been victorious in stealing Nettie's heart, and he's got frenzy down to a science with those super-sharp puppy teeth, and what seems will become a high amount of energy!
See below for proof:
I'm trying to take a picture daily in mostly the same position, so we can do a time lapse (after he's grown) and see how quickly he progressed.
He's just an excellent gentleman and a much-needed addition to our family.
I'm sure I'll make you nauseous with a magical metric fuckton of pictures at least over the next year, but for now, I've got dinner to eat.
Apparently, all the cold drugs, and the breathing drugs do make the blood sugar skyrocket. No wonder I was all jitters yesterday, despite eating very, very low carb, probably keto level. I did a breathing treatment at 8:30, which was far too late, so I stayed up til 11:30, but clearly, I should have just went for an all-nighter. I laid on the couch, staring at the moonlit ceiling for hours, listening to the low-key bubbling of the aquarium filter.
So, I weighed in at 216. Not my worst. Not my best. Just is what it be.
Makes me look like this:
This is what I do to get ready for a meeting with a client ... and hope to ALL HELL that I am NOT in the actual meeting room when I'm playing around with the filters!
Yes, it's been a hot half a year or more ... I'm not feeling very Zen, so I thought I'd dust off this old diary and say some words.
Back in June, I was in the process of minimizing my everythings. I kind of gave up on any attempt at trying to lose weight, and was focusing instead on different goals. I even started the Zen Polar diary in attempt to veer away from constantly thinking about "self" improvement. Since then, we've done a significant amount of work on the homestead, which you can read about here. I'm not here though to talk about that.
What a week already. Two-plus hours spent with the contractor mapping out the Waltenburg Ranch Revision c.2023. My head is a bit spinny. Other things of a more personal nature that I won't talk about here - all of it just piling on.
That picture brought to you by the fact that I wanted it to be the thumbnail for this, rather than what you'll see next.
Moving on ...........
Ever get a song stuck in your head, and you KNOW it exists, but you cannot locate it for the life of you, with the Googley Machine, OR with ChatGPT?
I've got these words looping in my brain cell:
"That's just the way that it is, and you can't change it ..."
So far, in search of this elusive tune, I've listened to snippets of Jefferson Starship-Airplane-pick-a-name, Bruce Hornsby, and Phil Collins. I gave up. I'll find it later.
Yesterday, while dealing with the feels around a currently happening situation, this popped up in the ol' UTuub feed:
What really mattered: The title - "Unpack Delayed Grief"
I'm not quite sure what the Universe is trying to say ... Is this really DELAYED grief, in my case, or just not much grief at all? There just wasn't a relationship to speak of for which I could grieve. It still feels the same as when he was alive. Nothingness. Once I realized that most of the interactions he ever had with me were forced (by my mother) and nothing he really seemed all that enthused about doing, I gave up trying.
Side note: Whilst writing this, my brother called, and basically said, "Now I understand why you live where you do, and not closer ..." The games, with my mother, they still continue ...
Eventually, I'll have to listen to the episode, but I'm not all that keen on Ms. Handler - no particular reason, she just doesn't do it for me. I'll still have to listen to know whether there was something inside that I need to hear, or if it was just a gentle reminder from the aforementioned Universe to do some more grieving.
Meanwhile, big changes are about to happen at the Ranch, as I think I mentioned the other day, and I struggle with any sort of vision about what things will look like when all the work is done.
Also meanwhile, I have once again really let myself go, and lived with all the carefree abandon of a 17-year-old me. Much to the detriment of my sugar level, which was a hearty 171 this morning, with but one tiny sip of coffee ...
I have all the feels - the tingliness, the ache in the chest, etc., the body aches from too much carbage, also etc.
I briefly considered going the drug route, and maybe achieving one of the currently popular diahbeetus drugs. I am watching it work for a friend. I did some reading, and watched all manner of reports, both good and bad. I just can't. It's not a realistic approach for me, especially given my brain, prone to anxiety and depression. I can't.
So, that leaves me with me.
It's another Monday, and another chance to start over.
I have learned, over the past several months, that a "normal" lunch meal is too much, as is a "normal" dinner meal. Therefore, I'm not looking at this as calorie restriction, but as in cutting meals in half to avoid the detrimental fullness and lethargy that ensues when I overeat.
I've thrown out the sucralose-laden Torani syrups, which weren't all that great once I left them alone for many months.
Not gonna lie - I ate ALL the carbs/sugar this weekend, and past week. Those are gone, either by way of chewing, or garbage can. The Diet Dr. Peppers - gone.
I know how I feel when I eat clean, and I know how I feel when I eat garbage. I am choosing clean.
I'll be taking my vitamin D, choline, and B12 regularly, and eating low-low-carb, but probably not a technically keto existence.
What will it look like?
Morning: Coffee, and water with Jamaica and Key lime juice
Lunch: Small salad with homemade ranch dressing, tomatoes, onions, Queso Fresco cheese, and a few of those fried onions
Dinner: Greek yogurt, peaches, chia, hemp hearts, and crush pecans with cinnamon, and stevia
Snack (evening TV watching) berries with heavy cream or Elote almonds.
No, the almonds aren't all that clean, but better than a bag of tortilla chips and cheese, or crackers, or cookies, or Fast Break bars.
Other than that, not going to obsess (for me). Not tracking nothing. Weighing in daily because that will probably remain constant for the rest of my time on this planet. Just going to focus on the things that matter, stop eating my feels, and my boredom, and make the best of this human suit I've got on.
In other news, working on a new store that will only provide digital products (papers, clip art, etc.)
Got the new laptop this weekend (I probably didn't mention it before), and just waiting on a KVM switch so I can attach it to this monitor, and not have to buy a new desk. However, that IS an option, if it comes down to it. I do have a drawing desk, but it sits up a bit too high for my comfort (or for maintaining feeling in my legs/feet). Also got a new graphics tablet, so it will be great fun to learn how to draw digitally. I am really looking forward to that!
Also going to be working on getting myself back in a mental groove, work-wise. After a year-plus, I have finally learned how to take weekends off; however, I still need to up my Monday-Friday game and get better at getting shit done.
Other than all THAT, not a lot going on. A new week is here. Time to move forward.
Sneak peek of the new digital scrapbook paper series, Wildflower Skies. :)
Mostly just here to test out the new keyboard and mouse combo (thanks to the boss man who keeps me stocked in peripherals).
I've never had a wireless keyboard before. Probably will have to stock up on some AAA batteries to make sure I don't lose control :)
See also, I ordered on of my creations from Rad*Ish Pads to do quality control testing. I have to say, even if it is my own design, the quality of the mousepad, itself, is superior. It's solid, comfortable, cushiony, and the printing is just as detailed as what you see on the listing.
I wasn't too sure about the keyboard because it's got this big panel before the keys, but so far, I can barely tell a difference - just that my palms are resting on IT rather than the desktop.
Not much going on in the world of me, personally. Been making shitty food choices, and paying for it in the form of chemical headaches, bloatiness, and the like. What a shock, eh? I honestly can't say that it's any form of conscious grief response because, also honestly, it doesn't feel much different now that he's somewhere else than when he was still on this planet. Sad, but true. The worst part is over (the funeral, or circus) and all that went with that.
I just don't have much to say about it, at all, at any time. It just is what it is.
Things are definitely changing at Place de Waltenburg. We're making some changes that will definitely improve the resale value, but not going overboard. I know that this will be the perfect home for a new couple or young family, or even older couple (our age)? Plus, as the Theys say: Location, location, location! You can't beat the peace and quiet that comes with being out here in the styx.
For now, that's all I'm going to say. When it's done, I'll share some before/after imagery.
Things are kind of at a stand-still with the Zazzle stores, and Rad-Ish Studio, as far as marketing anything because it's not my forte. For now, I am learning more platforms, and learning more about design, and have achieved a new laptop that will be solely dedicated to this part of life. It arrived today, after a month of not-so-patiently waiting, and now I'm waiting on a stand so that I can properly set it up and get it connected to this monitor.
I've been toying around with a few of the AI art generators (Leonardo.ai, Dall-E, and CF Spark on Creative Fabrica. Canva and Kittl have minor AI tools, but I have yet to tackle those fully. It's all a learning process.
I'm working on a few new things, but for the moment, I haven't listed anything new anywhere. Taking it all slow and building it up. Plus, it lets me be creative, which was the whole goal.
The amount of sheer clutter and detritus in the house has diminished greatly. They pretty much know us by face at the donation center. Next up, packing up the things that we do not use or need on a daily basis, and doing a second round of purging during that process. Truthfully, I think we'll be closer to carloads of stuff than truckloads, but we'll probably still rent a truck for moving purposii. That's a bit down the road, though, so not really on my radar. I'm just happy to have gotten rid of more stuff that was literally and figuratively weighing us down.
Next week, things really start rolling, so I doubt I'll be saying much. We're spending the weekend mapping things out and getting prepared. It really is exciting, even if I don't express it outwardly.
Til next time, hope you have a good stretch of days!
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