Blog

  • Fall Semester is almost over

    I hate the new schedule.  Yes, fall semester isn't over until today.  Really Monday.

    More good news – today's skirt, again one of the larger ones I've recently bought also feels too big.  I have to remember to grab it's belt before I leave.  Also the bras I bought at the same time are also feeling a bit big.  That's not an issue at all since they have an alterations department.  At about a third of the cost of new, they will custom alter these.

    Evening food is still an issue, but I'm working on it.  Exercise is getting easier. 

    I've been doing cardio only, but I think I'll add some weight and core exercises tonight.

  • Shrink and sleep and stress

    First, a minor victory.  The skirts I bought around Thanksgiving when I first acknowledge I gained weight are getting bigger.  My plan is to wear belts until I can't any more than have a tailor take them in.  In Texas, you can always get away with a good jean skirt, not all of them are good but they are close.

    I have been having problems sleeping since I had some seniors fail web mastering.  My problem? I take anything like this to heart even though I did everything I could to prevent.  Thus my ninth graders are really driving me crazy because they don't do the assigned work. 

    I'm trying really hard not to take too much responsibility for it, even though some of their parents are adding to the stress.

    You see, I give a lot of work and it doesn't take very long to get hopelessly behind.  One class period on myspace (yes, it's blocked but… ) and you are behind.  Funny, but if you do the assignment FIRST, you'll get time to play, but if you don't, well, you get hopelessly behind.  I tell them out to get caught up but they don't listen. 

    My failure rate is the highest it's been but the good news, is my administration have been in my room enough to know it isn't my fault, and I am trying.  The kids just keep making the wrong choices.  I'm hoping to solve some of that with the new lab on Wednesday we'll see.

    I'm still not sleeping but I am doing better with it.  At least I don't stay up trying to stay caught up at school anymore and I am taking more time for myself.

  • Lovely Day!

    Seriously.

    The sun is shining and I’m not at school right now but doing some school work.

    We are giving Fall semester exams.  I’ve given two French exams (yes, that’s right), and I have three more to go.  Tomorrow is going to be my tough day.

    When I finally figured out I was available to see the shrink, I called and the only appointment available was 1:00 pm during my Tech Support class.  That seemed serendipitous and I took it.  Then they announced we would have to give other people’s exams, so I immediately emailed the test coordinator and told him I was not available that period and he didn’t schedule me.

    Left 15 minutes before the appointment, got my head shrunk and then thought about going back.  But it is a lovely day, I was near my favorite Avenue and they were having a sale.  Also realized I was close to the CPAP place so I called them up and said, hey, why don’t you replace everything my insurance will let me replace.

    Bought a few shirts on sale, swung by the CPAP place and now I have new tubing, new mask and new filters and paid for them.

    Now I’m back home and just took a break from organizing things for next semester to brag.

  • Still trying

    My shoulder is still killing me, but I know why.  I was in so much pain at the end of the day, I was ready to scream and the kids knew it.

    Desk is too high.  Figured out to pull monitor to front of desk and work on adjustable table, but it was too late at that point.

    Can't use the hot tub until this evening.  Orkin came out and killed the ants.  Husband promised to clean out hot tub when he gets home tonight.

    May go to new massage guy this afternoon and see if he can fix it.  Or just break down and go to chiropractor.

    Missed agility last night, between shoulder pain and ant guys was having trouble driving.  

    The best news is that I haven't been binging like I was a few weeks ago.  Shifting calories has really helped.

  • A bit of a set back

    My shoulder has been sore all week and has been really bad this weekend.  If I can keep it down and in, it’s good, but that’s hard to do.

    Massage helped, but then, not two hours later, my foot got caught and I feel down our stairs, only 4 steps from the ground but now everything hurts.

    Hot tub helps.

    As a result, my blood sugar has been up along with my fatigue level.  That means I can not do as much on the treadmill.

    However, I’m still managing to walk on the treadmill daily, though I did stare at my shoes for 2 hours before I could get on it.  Well, daily except for Mondays when I train two dogs at dog agility.

  • Numbers

    Diabetes can be all about numbers.

    The good news, is that today’s numbers are good.  And the trend of numbers I’ve seen are good.

    Fasting blood sugar is going down.

    TDD Insulin is slowly going down.

    The numbers on the scale are slowly going down.

    A good trend.

  • Good news!

    Weighed in with the dietician and I had only gained one pound in the month of December.

    Considering that I gained an average of 5 pounds from August to October, I’m doing well. 

    My first month of medically supervised weight loss happened the month of Thanksgiving — and I gained no weight, so we both think I am doing well.

    Exercise is going great too.  I did 20 minutes both Saturday and Sunday, trained both dogs back to back on Monday, first time I’d done that in a long time and I started making handling mistakes in the last runs so I stopped and watched.

    I was only able to do 8 minutes last night but so far have 15 minutes in and am hoping for 20.  Yeah, I’m having to do it in 4 sets, but I’m doing it.

  • Animas Insulin Pump Food Database

    I’m excited and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Those of us who have Animas pumps — IR1000 on, will fully acknowledge that using EzManager to input favorites sucks. Especially if you have a lot of entries.

    I get my food from a service in Dallas called Diet Gourmet.  Low fat, low salt, good flavored food and a no brainer.  They usually come with nutrional information on it but they just changed the menu.  Plus I don’t get ALL the values in the log, which is kind of a bad thing right now since I’m on a medically supervised diet.  

    Well, I got my replacement pump today, downloaded everything off the old and uploaded and thought, gee it would be nice to have my Diet Gourmet food in the database.

    I tried individual entries made me nuts.  As always. I kept typing things in wrong.  Well, I finally got the bright idea of looking at a backup file.  GUESS WHAT!  Nice and simple XML file.

    So I reformatted the Diet Gourmet excel sheets to match the order of the XML file, did a ton of cut and pasting, and I currently have not ONE week, but TWO weeks of Diet Gourmet meals in my pump.

    Did find a nice little bug.  Oh, well.  They have done a good job of programming around it.

    And have you guessed that this little episode did "sell" the Ping for me.  Oh, I am sure my area rep had my account flagged, but they did answer the phone fast and did get me taken care of.

    It’s funny but I went over a year (have to look at the archives to know for sure) and had the same pump.  Was really concerned about having to get it replaced, etc.  Now, since a few recalls and a lot of little glitches, I’m cool with it.  Have it delivered at school.  Keep the old one to make sure I’ve got the settings and it’s what I want.  Drop the old one of at the DHL Headquarters down the road, and I’m good to go.

  • Intervention Show on Diabetes

    That was a tough show to watch.  I haven’t watched Intervention before, but since Scott and some of the other diabetic twitters were talking about it, I decided to DVR it.

    I also find it interesting that the family feels that the invention was successful.  I do agree that the kiddo looks healthier than he did before. 

    Like diabetes, I don’t think that there is a cure for diabetes mismanagement.  I think we all do the best we can on a given day.

    There is a lot to say and feel about it — I recognized that most of the kiddos problems were caused by the complications of diabetes, mostly the depression which is not acknowledged enough.  I also believe that the family erred by not transitioning the boy well into doing his own self care.  However, we don’t know the whole story.

    I have been sliding down the slippery slope of diabetes mismanagement for quite some time.  It’s a gradual slope and today I almost didn’t test my blood sugar before lunch because it was too much trouble to find my meter (I did find it).  I also ran out of insulin in the middle of lunch so I didn’t dose appropriately.  I’ve got to get better at that and I have to keep in mind that if I don’t take of care of myself, I can’t deal with anything else.

    Part of my problem is my plate is truly too full.  I’m Campus Technologist in addition to teaching a full load.  Today our phones went down, and part of my job is to put tickets (work orders) in the system so they will get fixed.  Thankfully I let someone else do the teaching today, while I spent a lot of my day with the tickets and with planning the new lab install.  I’ve also decided we have to start tomorrow or we won’t make it. 

  • Finally a good day

    Don’t knpw how much this had to do with it buy I woke up with a normal blood sugar.

    didn’t sweat out the water thing but did make sure I drank a lot. yeah it was mostly diet coke but fluid none the less.

    I didn’t have weird xravings just got through the day eating what I think a normal person does.

    Hopefully I wil have more of those.