No rest for me

I felt so much better this morning. I did my half hour walk with the dog and I wasn’t totally dragging by the time I got home. Improvement! I felt so good (a totally relative term – fibro good isn’t normal good) that I decided to take my bike out for a ride. I easily made the three mile loop and didn’t even feel like I was going to die on the hills. It was only about a half hour and I didn’t feel like I was working that hard but when I got home I had that nice, warm  endorphin rush feeling. I came in and took a shower, dried my hair and started making some Lemon Lentil Soup for lunch. My energy crashed about the time I had to get on my hands and knees and dig around in the bottom cupboard for the right sized lid to the pan. (I can’t figure out how the lids can totally disappear in there.) I suddenly desperately needed a nap and I got this intense ache in the middle of my back. I knew some rest would be needed in the afternoon so I planned for an hour of laying down.

I revived for a little while when I tasted the Lemon Lentil Soup. It was SO good! I’ve made lentil soup many times and it’s always just okay. I eat it because it’s good for me and not because I love it. Not so with the Lemon Lentil. It was delicious. Maybe a little too good because I had to get a small second serving. Once again, I had to appreciate the awesomeness of my favorite cookbook, The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook. I’ve had it for about four months now and I’m still finding recipe treasures within, like the Lemon Lentil Soup and the Balsalmic Roasted Beets. There are over 200 recipes in this cookbook and they are all so healthy. It’s really the must have cookbook for going gluten and dairy free.

Anyway, by the time I got the kitchen cleaned up I felt like I was going to just collapse on the floor. I was SO tired and my body felt SO heavy. I was about to go lay down when my 12-year-old crashed through the door with a couple of his friends and they wanted me to make them lunch. So I made them something, did all the dishes while I was in there and then went to lay down. And, wouldn’t you know it, another kid came over and pretty soon there was squealing and screaming and air soft pellets flying and doors locked with half the kids outside and half inside. And more screaming and squealing. So I finally got up and yelled out the window for them to find something else to do. It took them another 20 minutes to get it together and get out. I went out to survey the damage and then spent the next half hour cleaning up the aftermath.

The rest of the day included making dinner, cleaning up the kitchen (again!) and going to my 12-year-old’s school for conferences where we learned that he doesn’t pay attention in class, talks nonstop to his friends and does less than the bare minimum on all of his school work, which we already knew. The teacher wished us good luck as we left. I’m afraid we’re going to need luck for dealing with that kid. Plus, lots more energy. I’m just too tired to do battle with him on a daily basis.

I planned on walking home from the school for my evening exercise but it started raining while we were in the conference feeling like bad parents. *sigh*

Oh well, tomorrow is another day. And I have leftover Lemon Lentil Soup to look forward to!

Super Butt-Kicking Fatigue and My Big, Fat Problem

Has fatigue been kicking your butt extra hard lately? Boy, it sure has mine! Even people without Fibro are commenting on how tired they’ve been lately. I blame two things: the busyness of May and the knock out power of whatever the cottonwood trees are spewing this time of year.

I can always tell the cottonwood trees are getting ready to do their thing because for a couple of weeks before they start spewing their fluffy, noxious clouds, I can barely stay awake. Seriously! After taking the dog out for a walk in the morning if I sit down to read, I’m out like a light, my Kindle flopping up and down in my lap as I fall in and out of consciousness. Last week I even fell asleep with a cup of tea in my hand. (Luckily, I woke up before I spilled.) And my body – ugh! It feels so heavy, like my arms and legs are made out of lead and weigh100 lbs each. At times I feel like I don’t even have the strength or energy to move my body at all. The last couple of days, my heart starts pounding when I walk up the stairs and my muscles burn, like they’re working real hard. It’s ridiculous!

Add to this the busyness of baseball games, conferences, concerts, birthdays and other special occasions that plague (yes, plague!) May and the all over body ache that comes from such extreme tiredness, and I’m one unhappy (and did I mention tired?) camper.

All this tiredness and all over body aching just complicates my big, fat problem which is…well, fat. I have too much of it. I’ve gained 15 lbs over the last four years and I’m about ready to burst out of my pants, which are already the biggest size that I consider acceptable for me. I have to do something!

Common sense tells me that to lose weight I need to eat less and exercise more. Unfortunately, given how dead tired I am and how I’m already eating as healthy as I possibly can, I don’t see how either one of those things is possible. I’m not eating too much and I feel like my body needs more rest, not more activity.

This is depressing, to say the least. I’ve gone back and forth over this and what I should do about it over and over. The scariest thing is, I’ve been getting flashes of myself in the future and, in the future, I’m looking fat. Yikes! I can’t let that happen! On the other hand, the only time I’ve been able to lose weight in the past is by doing a low carb kind of diet. Blech! It makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I hate meat and can only eat very small portions of it. I don’t want to get fat, but if eating more dead animals is the only way to get skinny then I’ll just be chunky! I now eat two vegan meals a day (with plenty of protein from seeds or beans) and I like it that way. I don’t want more animals to give their lives just so I can suffer through eating them.

So basically, big changes are out of the question for me. I realize there are small changes I can make. I can cut down even more on grains and eat more vegetables. And, while adding longer exercise sessions isn’t a good idea (or even possible) with this super, butt-kicking fatigue, I can add an exercise session to most of my evenings.

But will it be enough? I just don’t know. Small changes have never been enough for me before. Earlier this year, I cut out gluten, corn, dairy and refined sugar, something that has helped other people drop weight, and I’ve gained a few more pounds. How can a person cut out sugar and GAIN weight? Only me with my messed up metabolism!

It’s just so unfair. *sigh*

Anyway, I will document my battle with fat and fatigue.

Today: I made my sniffy dog walk a little more briskly (dragging her away from “good” smelling shrubs had to burn a few extra calories!) and I measured my brown rice at dinner to make sure that, God forbid, I wasn’t eating any more than 1/4 a cup of it. I made a green smoothie for a snack and, when that obviously wasn’t going to be enough to tie me over until dinner, I ate a few veggies with hummus, again carefully measured. I stretched my mini interval training session out to 15 minutes and then did the tummy toning strength workout from this month’s Prevention magazine. (This routine, when combined with “flab-busting” cardio, is supposed to trim 5 inches off my waist in 6 weeks. Yeah, right! If only it were that easy.)

And now I need to be dragging myself off for another exercise session….

Sunlight, Siskins and Squirrels

A few of these pictures I took the first week in April. That’s how far behind I am on blogging and even uploading pictures from my camera! The flowers in the first picture are now buried under a mound of Bishop’s Weed that has to be a foot tall and the Pine Siskins of the next few pictures are long gone.

A happy change in my yard was spotting this little face peeking out of a nest built in the top of my hedge:

I spent most of one sunny day watching the two baby squirrels venturing out to explore their world. Unfortunately, they were camera shy so I didn’t get any good pictures.

After awhile, Mama Squirrel came out onto a branch to threaten me with some squawking and tail swishing. She was so cute!

Then the squirrel family just up and disappeared.

Yesterday, this little guy showed up:

Isn’t he adorable? I’m hoping he’s one of the babies that lived in the hedge but it’s so hard to tell because they all look pretty much the same.

And now I’m off to ANOTHER baseball game. I’m so ready for the season to be over!

Blame it on the moon

Now some of you with fibro may want to throw things at me when I admit this but, I rarely have pain at night. Laying down usually eases all my pain, most of the time.

I do have these weird episodes where I wake up with my hips and shoulders aching like crazy, like my bed has suddenly become a cement slab and I have something heavy on me, pressing me down further into the bed. Sometimes my arms and hands even go to sleep. When I get up in the morning, I discover that my whole body is very stiff, especially my hips and my neck. Also, I’ll be very thirsty and I feel like all the water has been sucked out of my extremities and deposited into my abdomen. And no matter how much I drink during the day, I still feel dehydrated. Later in the day, I usually noticed that I’m feeling pretty foggy too. It’s not pleasant!

Usually, this occurs when I’ve eaten too much salt or during a few days mid-cycle. At least I’ve always thought so. Now, I’m not so sure because this morning I woke up feeling like this and I didn’t eat too much salt and I’m not at the mid-cycle turning point of my hormones either. I had no clue what brought this on.

I did some yoga to try to loosen up my hips and my neck and then I drank about a gallon of water. As I was standing at the counter guzzling water, I looked through the newspaper laying on the counter and an article caught my eye and got me wondering if the moon could be the cause of my crazy fluid problems. Apparently, today is the full moon and the moon is the closest to the Earth that it gets all year. (Or something like that. I didn’t have my glasses on yet. ) Could the moon be changing the fluids in my body?

Personally, I think it’s possible. I think everyone is more effected by external influences like the sun, moon radio waves, energy currents and stuff like that than they realize. And with fibromyalgia, it’s possible that we feel and are more aware of these influences. It’s something I’m going to watch for, to see if there is any correlation.

Another thing I’ve been wondering about is the effect of solar flares. Last week I had several days of my nervous system being super hypersensitive and a few other people living on the other side of the globe were experiencing the same thing. While browsing the internet, I happened across an article about solar flares being particularly intense during those two days. Could the solar flares be the cause of our nervous system meltdowns?

These things may be completely unrelated but who knows? I think it’s worth keeping an eye out for.

*Please excuse any grammar or punctuation errors, especially the possible misuse of the words effect vs affect. It’s a brain fog day!

 

 

 

Fibro Friday: Rain isn’t helping

I’m in a bit of a blue mood today. The primary reason for this is that it’s raining. Again. Or, still. However you want to look at it. The skies are dark, gray and dreary and everything is soggy, soaked and just plain gross. I wouldn’t be so cranky about it but in the past two weeks (or maybe it’s three now!), it’s rained every night that we’ve had a baseball game making for several hours of cold, damp misery. Today was supposed to be my relaxing, stay-dry, baseball-free day and the boys had to go and tie the game last night so that we have to finish it tonight. (Actually, I’m glad they were able to come back and tie after being down 10-2. They’re only one win behind the team in first place!) They play tonight at 5:30, in two short hours from now and those “showers” that are supposed to be diminishing today are more like a downpour and show no signs of diminishing, dissipating or going the hell away. Ugh.

The other reason I’m feeling blue is pain. The stabbing pain on the inside edge of my left shoulder blade, the dull ache from the stiffness in my knees, ankles and fingers. The yucky ache across my mid back. The stiffness in my hips. The right arm/elbow pain from the so-called tendinitis  that isn’t going away after six weeks of resting my arm as much as possible. All these pains are working together to pull me down.

But I’m working on staying positive. Right now I’m treating myself to some Taste Nirvana Coconut Water. The can says “happiness inside” and I think there is a little bit of happiness in there. It’s yummy. And it reminds me a little bit of Hawaii and thinking about our trips to Hawaii makes me happy, as does the hope that we will go again. I especially like to imagine myself on my favorite beach, the little one the locals use, somewhere between Wailea and Makena.

I wish I were there right now. *sigh* It’s a great swimming beach. The water is so calm you can just float, letting the waves gently rock you up and down, relaxing all the muscles in your body. The climate on the dry side of Maui is great for fibromyalgia too. My pain pretty much vanished during our first trip there. The second time the rain followed us there (this happens a lot to people from the Seattle area!) and my aches and pains didn’t go completely away. But they definitely improved.

Tonight I plan to snuggle up under a blanket with my kitty (provided he’s in a cuddly mood) and my current book, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Good reading time always helps me weather the pain and the rainy days. And the weather people say the weekend is supposed to be nice, so I have that to look forward to.

On this spring day…

I woke up to another chilly, gray, rainy morning. I grumbled the whole time I was donning my cold, rainy day walking gear. I’m tired of being wet, cold and muddy and I really didn’t want to go out today. But my beloved pup loves her walks so much. We call walks “What Her Heart Most Desires” because, next to food, walks are what she lives for. Plus, it just has a better ring to it than spelling out W-A-L-K, don’t you think?

By the time we got to the end of the nature trail across from the house, the rain slowed to a drizzle, the sky brightened and a beautiful rainbow appeared on the western horizon. I watched it grow into a full rainbow and then a double rainbow. It was stunning and very unusual, as we normally only see afternoon/evening rainbows in the eastern sky around here. And, of course, I didn’t have my camera!

When we got home the sun was still shining, turning the raindrops into sparkling jewels. A quick glance around my backyard revealed a few blossoms so I got my Canon PowerShot out to see if I could get the macro function to work. A couple of weeks ago I bought a book on photography and a guide to my camera. I’ve been playing around a little with the settings but still haven’t been able to get the macro function or manual focus to work.

I was very happy to get the above photo of my rhododendron because my old camera wouldn’t take good rhody photos. The rest are just okay. I need to learn to work on changing my depth of focus so I can get that nice filtered look in the background. This may take awhile because I’m challenged when it comes to following instructions, especially when it comes to electronics, so these less than stellar photos will have to do for now.

I also need to learn the secret to getting good pictures of bright pink or red flowers. But this is good. Now I know what to work on next.

Back to the subject of my post yesterday – keeping my mouth shut – I give myself a C+.  There was some serious show boating going on during the game and it was all I could do to keep my biting comments to myself.  By the time a friend came over, the biting comments were chewing a hole in my stomach and had to come out a little. And that’s okay. It’s a work in progress, a perfect opportunity to WORK on refraining from harsh speech.  The same things that are annoying me are annoying other people too. It would take a saint to not be annoyed by the constant bragging going on and I’m a long, long way from achieving sainthood.

Last night’s game was one in which many of the neighborhood kids played on both teams and, therefore, against each other. At the end of the game, several of the neighbor kids from opposing teams gave each other a big hugs. Daniel’s friend got him out but he wasn’t all “ha ha” about it (like a few of the kids in the league would have been). In fact, the had this look on his face like, “I really hate to do this….” Afterward, his friend felt discouraged because he didn’t think he did that well and Daniel patted him on the back and said, “it’s just because you weren’t feeling well. You were home with a fever just this morning!” I loved seeing that. That’s what Little League should be like. Maybe our neighborhood kids don’t play on select teams (only because we parents CHOSE to not do that just yet) and maybe they won’t even get mentioned for All Stars (kids from our ‘hood rarely do) but they are great kids who are generally respectful to one another and that’s way more important than belonging to a “select” group.

Recommitting to the Five Precepts

Although I don’t attend any Buddhist services and haven’t had any formal Buddhist training, I try to apply some of the simple teachings to my life. In my mind, the Five Precepts are a great place to start. The Five Precepts, as taken from Insight Meditation by Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, are as follows:

1. To refrain from killing

2. To refrain from stealing

3. To refrain from sexual misconduct

4. To refrain from false, harsh and idle speech

5. To refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind

Although they are easy to remember, they aren’t always to easy to live by.

At first glance, it seems like #1, refrain from killing, would be the easiest. But, if you will notice, it doesn’t say “refrain from killing human life.” This precept springs into my mind at many inconvenient times like when I get undressed, turn on the shower and then notice a moth or crane fly stuck to the shower wall. To just hop in the shower and let the little guy drown would, in my mind, be breaking this precept. So, I turn off the shower and try to gently fish the moth or crane fly out of the water. Sometimes they don’t cooperate and I wish I could just wash them down the drain. But, I can’t. Same goes for walking down the sidewalk when it’s covered with ants or worms. I do my best to hop over them, no matter how much of a fruitcake I look like while doing it.

At my age (41-years-old), precepts 2, 3 and 5 aren’t an issue anymore. Occasionally, #2, refrain from stealing, becomes an inconvenience when the store forgets to ring up my dog food or something, and I admit there have been a few instances when I’ve forgotten to return to settle up. And there are some days when I would break #5 to get relief from my pain. But I would stay home while taking the intoxicating substance and, therefore, would not cause harm to another being while I was high. (For the record, I’m all for people in physical pain getting whatever kind of medication they need to feel relief, whether that is prescription narcotics or marijuana. They key is being responsible with it.)

The one that constantly trips me up is #4, refrain from false, harsh and idle speech. I confess my speech has been harsh lately and my tongue has run wildly while my brain has been idle. There are always going to be those people whose behavior is contemptible. I’ve always had a particularly hard time with people who are manipulators, who will do just about anything to get things their own way. Even if the things they do aren’t that bad, they bug me! I always want to see them exposed for the sneaky, manipulating creatures they are. But since they are so manipulative, they often appear very charming so very few others see them for what they are. In the past, I had a tendency to try to point out the lies and manipulation, to get other people to see what was really going on. And it did nothing but make me look like I was a jealous troublemaker.

Now, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’ve just been sharing my contempt for certain people who will step on KIDS as they drag their own kid to what they consider the top. Sure, the people I’ve yapped to already know about it, having had their own kid stomped on by these self-centered pricks (see how harsh!) but I still need to keep my mouth shut.

I also need to stop hoping I’m around to see their backstabbing catch up with them. It’s not healthy for me to feel that way. In the words of the Buddha, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” It’s true. I’ve been feeling the burn lately.

These people will get what they want. But their victory is empty. Getting to the top means nothing if you didn’t get there with hard work, talent and great attitude. Plus, it’s none of my business, even though it sure feels like my business when I see good kids (and I’m not only thinking of my own) not getting the recognition they deserve just because their daddy hasn’t kissed the right behinds…oops! There I go again.

That #4 is challenging and requires constant vigilance and commitment. But, today, I vow to do better.