delalana

I’m doing good right now. Tired as anything, but hopefully I can make a dent in that this weekend.

My pool is targeting opening in 8 days. I cannot wait. This may be an overreaction to having been away for so long, but right now my brain is saying 5 hours a week in the pool sounds nice. The portion of my brain that recognizes that limits are a thing is saying how about 2-3. And maybe get out in the kayak this weekend. Or the SUP if I really feel like testing my balance.

Thanks, Sloth. Thanks. It’s helped not having to jump into a whole different community the past few months even though I haven’t really been able to do anything scout related since covid shut down my pool. Kitties are almost always helpful and that is a wonderful amount of floof. They’re just not quite so helpful when they insist on tearing up the furniture because they’re bored and want attention while you’re trying to work. Not that I would know anything about that... The past couple of days have been ok. I’ve been exhausted, but I’ve also been able to get to sleep in a reasonable amount of time as opposed to the 1-2 hours it’s been taking the past couple of weeks. Here’s hoping that continues. I’ve been reminded that I have people less than a mile away willing to do pretty much anything for me. These people were around the last time I was dealing with similar issues, but at that point I was a lot more mentally isolated and wasn’t really in a place where I felt like I could reach out to anyone (note that this was absolutely not true). So I’ve got a better support system in general this time. I’ve also been reminded that eating crap is better than not eating anything at all. So if I go to the grocery store for a cucumber and come home with a cucumber and giant chocolate muffins that’s ok right now.

My mental health has taken a bit of a steep nosedive over the past few weeks. I’m not ok.* I’m better than I was at my absolute worst, but I’m still not in a great place. I’m getting help and I’ll be working on it. But I don’t really know what the next few weeks will look like. I’m here, though. And I’ll do everything I can to keep coming here. Here is one of the places that seem to help. I don’t have specific goals or a challenge this time around, but I’m here. *At the moment I’m fine, stable, not about to do anything stupid or dangerous. But in a slightly more macro sense, I’m not ok.

The first zoom belly dancing class just finished. It wasn’t terrible, but choreography is hard to follow on a tiny computer monitor so it was a lot of quick memorization and repetition of short sequences. It’s better than not having anything, though. My calves seem to be fine with the hour and a half of work, which is a relief as I really haven’t been working them all that much for the past few weeks. I got an email this afternoon that my pool is opening June 27 for members only. I am a member so this even better than I’d hoped for in terms of me getting to swim without tons of people around. The email didn’t have any details, so I still don’t know what time I’ll end up swimming or exactly what precautions they’re taking. Exercise has been going fine since yesterday and I was pretty close to staying under my calorie goal yesterday. Today I’ve got a big chunk of calories leftover with only dessert left to go for the day, so staying under should be no problem.

Weighed in on the scale today. I’m not going to focus on the exact number too much as I’ve had other things on my mind the past couple weeks. As far as consistency of measurements, today wasn’t quite as close as last week, but still not terrible. Four measurements were within a 0.2 lb range, with a fifth measurement being 0.2 lbs above that range. Food consumption has been getting better over the past few days, even if I haven’t fully stayed under my calorie goal. I’m hoping today will be the day I get back to fully tracking and staying under. I’ve been getting some of this, but there are also nights when I probably could get to sleep but just stay up doing something because I get distracted or don’t want to go to bed. I’m trying to at least cut down on the latter so I have fewer days where I’m in a bad mood and having trouble focusing on work. In amusing news, I chopped up a bulb of garlic Sunday night and can still smell it on my hands. Apparently, the delicious smell of my favorite pizza is really just the smell of garlic and nothing else.

Sometime early to mid afternoon on Friday I got back to a normal emotional state and have been hanging out there since. I’m extraordinarily tired today, but I’m guessing that’s my body finally letting go of tension and will dissipate as time passes. Exercise was actually helping pretty well for a while. But there were so many background and accuse stressors over the past month that I think it got to be too much for that outlet to handle. I should probably start focusing again on getting to sleep on time. Sleep has a huge effect on my mental health and stability, but staying up late is one of my reactive responses to strongly emotional events, which just leads into a downward spiral. In other news, the state is opening up more on Wednesday, including opening restaurants, gyms, and swimming pools to 50% capacity. I’m not planning on rushing back into a social life for a variety of reasons, but I figure if I keep things to periodic haircuts and swimming at the local pool a couple of times per week I’ll be pretty safe. Depending on how popular the “entertainment” pool next to my lap pool is this summer, I may even be able to start swimming in the afternoon instead of at 6am (morning person I am not.) Things are getting better. And I’m stopping this now because my words are ceasing to make sense even to me. As I said, I need to sleep.

Today ended up being about 0.5 points better than yesterday (scale from 1-10.) I did end up getting carry out for dinner, but I also did a harder workout than I have for the past couple of weeks and got the dishes to almost done. Sanity inducing goals for tomorrow are: 1. No carry out (or chicken nuggets that I’m supposed to be keeping around for the occasional five year old guest) 2. Get in a light workout 3. Finish the dishes

Today is so far going better than yesterday. Yesterday my food intake wasn’t great, but I did manage to avoid fried foods and get a load of dishes done. One more load and I should be either almost or completely back to having a clean kitchen. I don’t have specific goals for today, aside from a general “avoid the deep fried chicken” goal that was already tested when I had to drive in to work this morning. But 9:30 is not lunchtime. I need to drive in again soon, since I couldn’t find what I was looking for the first time, and hopefully the Perkins will be easier to ignore this time. To that end, I have already eaten lunch, so at least I won’t have that excuse. I should probably add a workout to the daily goals list...

Scale went up from last week. Not really a surprise given that my emotional coping mechanisms still revolve more than they should around deep fried chicken. May was not a fun month for all kinds of reasons and I’m really hoping June doesn’t follow along the same path. I took a series of readings on both Sunday and Monday mornings. On Sunday the readings were all within 0.1 lbs and on Monday there was a 0.3 drop after the first reading, but the four after that were all within 0.1 lbs of each other. As far as the fancier portion of the readings went, fat mass varied by 0.4% across the last four readings. I’m trying to get back to the point where it feels like I, as opposed to depression brain, am in control of my life, so goals for today are to eat leftovers for lunch and dinner and to do a load of dishes from what’s been piling up in my kitchen. Lunch is done, leaving dinner and dishes to go.

Glad to hear things were quiet last night

Everything was quiet here last night and much calmer in Minneapolis and St. Paul as well. Curfew is still in effect for tonight.

Welcome I don’t have the patience for many analog things these days (I can read a clock, but the time it takes me to do so is measured in seconds.) There’s a doctors scale at the gym at work, so I’m planning on comparing that to the new scale I have at home whenever I get back to the office.

I answered in a little more detail on my thread, but for anyone here, I live in the Minneapolis suburbs. I’ve not heard of anything happening this far out, but there’s an 8pm curfew last night and tonight for a fair number of the northwest suburbs. I am keeping my butt at home tonight and hoping everyone in the metro comes through ok.

Thanks for checking in. We’re OK out here. On the surface things don’t seem much different and it’s easy to feel like Minneapolis is so far away. But, then, there’s a city wide 8 pm curfew, I watched the gas station less than a block from a friend’s old apartment burn down on the local news last night (the friend lives in Chicago these days and is fine), and a friend in Seward checked in this morning saying, “We’re alive. It’s chaos.” So I’m ok. Just worried and sad for everyone who’s affected by everything far more directly than I am.

There are no words. I’m so sorry for all the pain everyone is going through.

I hope you and your family and all your students stay safe tonight. It’s scary out there.

Continuing the scale analysis, I weighed myself three times this morning - without moving the scale in the middle this time - and the measurements came within a .3 lb range. That seems decent to me, although I really have no idea of what’s a good precision target for a scale. The scale did go up overall from when I weighed in on Tuesday morning, but that’s not entirely surprising given the leftover pizza that I’ve been eating the past few days. For fun, I did put the calories in and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Yesterday I had a normal breakfast and lunch and a reasonable portion of pizza (read: about 2/3 of what I actually wanted), and it only put me over by about 100 calories for the day. Also, I finally got a haircut scheduled!

It’s not bad from a human standpoint, but it’s a bunch of 11”(ish) tiles, so there is some slight height variation. That and I’m not sure if storing the scale on its side is bad for it. My old scale recalibrated itself every time someone stepped off it, so I would hop on and off before I weighed myself.

This week I dropped the weight I gained last week, so happy with that. It looks like part of the variability of my scale is due to placement. I don’t have a great place to keep it out on the floor, so it normally lives under the sink and gets put down manually every time I want to use it. This morning I accidentally kicked it a couple inches out of place after I’d weighed in the first time. When I stepped back on it, the new weight was nearly 1 pound higher than the old. So, depending on how much work I can get the app to do for me, I think I’ll take @Xena’s suggestion of taking an average over the course of the week or just mentally smooth out the trend line. Other than that, yesterday morning’s home improvement project turned into all day yesterday and a little bit today, so lunch yesterday was not a thing and dinner was pizza. I still have the leftovers, so I’ll work through those in the next couple of days and maybe limit things a bit more next weekend, depending on how I feel when I get there. Workout did not happen yesterday (although I did manage to pull a muscle with all of the maneuvering around under the sink), but I should be able to make up for that today.

That sounds fun. Now I have Friday plans! Things are going well here. I’m using the nicer than expected weather to get out on and around the lakes. It’s a good reminder after a long winter why I love living where I do.

Have not been specifically watching calories yesterday or today, but ate pretty much as usual with the exception of chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. According to my scale, though, I gained 4.5 lbs between yesterday and this morning. I’m going to just file that under interesting quirks that are probably a sign that I need to drink more water during the work week. And maybe not pull out the scale nearly every day. We got some unexpected sunshine, so I got to go out for both a kayak and a bike ride today. Being back on the water was rejuvenating and so far I’ve completely avoided sunburn and only have one teeny tiny blister. During the bike ride, I rediscovered my terrible sense of direction and got partial tours of two lakes and a bunch of ponds. Rather longer than the original plan of one lake and one pond. It was fun, but now I’m thoroughly tired. It is a gorgeous evening and they keep pushing out the rain prediction. Maybe we’ll actually get to see the sun tomorrow.

I was, in a very non-direct way. My main concern with the pool is just wondering when it’ll open. It’s in a community center and the other half of the deck is dedicated to a water playground type pool, so that could push the opening date out. But maybe they’ll open the pool for laps only ahead of time... I’m not sure with this one. The local lake hasn’t been too bad, but the bigger/more popular lakes near Minneapolis (like the one that’s hosting the open water swimming) may be a different story. Last I heard (March or early April) another lake right outside Minneapolis was so crowded it was hard to social distance even if you wanted to. That was the walking trails, though, so the in water population might be different, too.

Workouts and calorie counting continue apace. I decided to work on something my boss was paying attention to right before lunch on Wednesday, so I did not got my afternoon off. A replay of the same thing happened this morning with my boss wanting to get things done “this afternoon”, but as of 1pm no one pinged me for anything. Given that we’re at a “I need feedback” stage, I’m going to call this a fair early start to a long weekend. I finally have specific things to look forward to! My belly dance classes are starting back up online in a couple of weeks. It’ll be disappointing not to get to actually see everyone, but nice to at least get something back. I also heard this morning that Minneapolis is opening up some socially distanced open water swimming at one of the lakes. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet. On the one hand, exposure risk and a half hour drive. On the other hand, it’s outside and it’s been so long since I’ve swum. There’s no word on my pool opening back up and, even when it does, open water is likely safer. So I don’t know what I want to do yet.

I had a couple of similar experiences house shopping a couple of years ago. And it seemed like half of the houses that were even maybes were sold before I could get there to look at them. The housing market is crazy these days, but if you found your perfect house once, you’ll find it again.