Don't Give Up 2

This morning, I was walking in the village. A boat passed me (on a trailer, of course!) The name of the boat was “Don't Give Up 2”. My brain didn't need any more inspiration to start a journey on my physical condition as of late.

Since the beginning of May, I have been in pain. My back and my right shoulder hurt. When I saw my doctor, he sent me to get some X-Rays.

From the result, I had a degenerative back problem and a shoulder's tendinitis, he said. This was a shocked! he even told me that from now on, I have to limited my activities to the ones practice by the “elders”. I am 55 years OLD (notice the emphasis is on old), and I had to face life in pain and limit my activities. He sent me to a physiotherapist.

When I met her, she re-assure me that my pain was from the tendinitis and my back was normal for my age. After 5 sessions in her torture chambers, she sent me back to my doctor to see if they could remove what was causing my shoulder pain because I was not improving.

She agree with my doctor that for the time being, I should not move my right arm over my head. In pickelball term: No smash!

After my last visit with the physio, I gave up! I was losing confidence in my medical team. I decided to stop complaining about my pain. If someone would ask, I was to tell them, I was better. When you give up hope, you either get depress or you accept what ever is going on. I'm not the depressive type so I accepted that from now on, I'll be in pain. So I would have to live with it.

Then it was a Thursday and I was tired to look at my neglected house. I started the exterior washing. To do that, I was on a step ladder a great part of the day, with my right arm over my head. This is exactly what my doctor and the physio said not to do. I didn't care, I thought that I would be a few days in pain but I was already in pain so, what!

The following day, I was not in more pain. I had planned to take it easy but since I was OK, why not go for couple of game of pickelball. So off to the court. I played about 2 hours. I was not suppose to smash the ball but in several occasion, I “tap” the ball when I shouldn't. No strength behind the shot just lightly tapping the ball above my head. I felt something in my shoulder, it was like a little tingling. I kept playing, I figured latter I would deal with the pain.

In the evening, I was standing up by the sink and realized that I had no pain in my shoulder. I rise slowly my arm above my head and where I was getting pain before there was not anymore.

I can't explain how, but the only thing I can see is that I have been more active, ignoring advice.

I just don't know if it's healing right now and what I have been told so far was a load of manure... the stinky one at that!

I would say my shoulder is back to 80 %. It's not painful anymore, it's more like soreness after being inactive for a while.

Was “Don't Give Up 2” a reminder that just float by or what?

Mood

Just as a warning, I am in a bad mood. Doesn't mater the reason, let just say shit happen!

So for a while my humor might be off. Don't worry cream always rise above the shit, right?

Mental is part of health so I thought it was appropriate to share this with you all. Hopefully it's not a new chronic condition affecting people over 55, something like mad retiree disease... I know there is cures; Wine? but I won't touch that. Pills? but I don't take any. Time? that is what I'll have.

So this is my post for today, I cut off all the flowers, there is no rainbow!

Voice of Treason

 

Do you hear voices or is it only me? For almost 2 months now I have had that loud mouthpiece talking to me...

“Richard you did good, take a rest”;

“Don't worry you lost enough, you should stop now”;

“So what if you don't reach your goal”;

“Why don't you have one more glass of wine?”;

“You love fries, have some more”;

“You don't need to lose that weight, you just want to”

This is the voice of treason, I have been listening to its dirty tempting advice for a while now.

Even recently when I said I wanted to reach to my goal, what did I do? Toasted my goal with more wine and all kind of junk food!

Losing weight so far has been easy, and in my mind it meant I could do it anytime. I know how to do it, so I'll wait a bit longer... WRONG! “Richard control yourself” the voice of reason is murmuring.

So right NOW, not tomorrow, or any other day, right NOW, I'll get back to my secret plan, you know the one about eating less, eating better and exercising.

Right NOW, I'll turn the accountability meter back on. I'll weigh myself and post it right here, every Sunday. Today I was at 171.8 lbs I’m reporting it even though it’s not the official Sunday weighing day.  I better lose 1.5 lb per week from now on or I'll kick the voice of treason so far out that it will need light speed to ever again get hold of me.

I'll also get back to blogging daily. It was helping me before and since there are one or two people out there who seem to be able to put up with me, I'll take total advantage of it.

I am so excited right now, I'm rising my glass of water to a better health! Anything exciting in your life?

Mea Culpa

Maybe it’s because it's Sunday and I know that historically on weekends fewer people read blogs. Maybe it's my conscience being so loud that and I can't tune it out no more. Or maybe my fingers had to do some exercise on the keyboard. Whatever the reason, I'm coming out now: I have a problem!

Since the big blackout of Jun 2015, for those of you who were not listening to the news, I spent 5 days and 5 nights without Internet access. It resulted in me neglecting my duties as a man, as a father, as a friend, as a human being and if that was not bad enough, as a bloggist.

I have a whole list of excuses but I won't use them, I'm coming out now, so here comes the truth; I started to play solitaire again! It's bad, I can't seem to do anything but play “one more game”. But the “one more game” ends up being hours lost forever.

I see Spider everywhere, my heart is clicking faster and faster, I am not free of a Freecell but I'm in a Pyramid too. From my window, there are TriPeaks! I'm so Puzzled! Grrrrr

This is it, I'm putting an end to that, after the next game, I'll stop... well I'll stop tomorrow; today has already started. Wait! Tomorrow is Monday, I should start this on a weekend, next Saturday, I'll just play ONE game, that sounds reasonable, right?

You folks don't suffer from any addiction, do you?

Life is Sweet Enough

My wife sent me an email yesterday. We were sitting side by side but sometimes we communicate via email. I think she does this to have a proof that she told me so...

Her email was about an interesting article:

“The drastic results of eating 'healthy foods,' with added sugar”. Link to CTV. This was a documentary done by Australian actor Damon Gameau. It's worth reading, take a few minutes to go to the link above, I'll wait here.

What he’s talking about is what we were doing when our daughters were little. They had granola bars, cereals and juice daily. We didn't know better. When you think you are providing your kids with healthy food and later find out it was not the case you realize something has seriously gone wrong.

Why would the industries lace their product with sugar? a good chance it's because it's addictive. They want us to buy their products because it tastes good and the more you eat the more you want. THEY WIN! We also win, we win a bigger waistline; pounds on the scale; all kinds of deceases; and a diminishing quality of life. This last one might not be that important because you also win a shorter life span.

The cynic in me think that the sugar industries target kids. If you are to get people addicted to your products, kids are the perfect target as they will be lifetime customers. Doesn't matter to them if those kids’ lives happen to be shortened as they will have their own kids who will be raised in the same sweet environment as their parent provided and it will create more customers.

Maybe as with cigarettes, there should be a big warning on every bag of sugar and any product which contains sugar. However, even with the cigarette warnings kids do start smoking anyway.

Has anyone been successful at losing weight while still eating refined sugar?

You can get out of the sugar wagon, we did it.

Before going on our trip in June, I thought about buying a treat. I looked at cakes and looked at the ingredient labels but there was just too much sugar.

So I thought I’d buy some muffins, when I looked at the labels it was as bad as buying cake. I looked at the smallest muffins available, they were almost bite size, but still contained too much sugar. I was not able to rationalize buying “comfort food” which would impair my health.

At some point, for some “special” occasions, we will have a piece of cake, pie or a cookie, but my definition of “special” is not an open door to eat the shit every time I want; My wife and I had our birthday while on the sugar wagon, we didn't have cake, but we gained one more year of wisdom!

Healthy Internet

We live in a small village surrounded by irresistible temptations. Our internet is provided through an antenna attached to our home.

It works great as long you don't touch NOTHING... NOTHING is in capital letters just as a reminder to ME!

So last week I washed the side of our home where the antenna is. When the technician had installed the antenna, he had left some cables hanging on the side of our home and it was driving me nuts, well, more precisely it was driving me nuttier.

So when I washed the siding, I had the step ladder out, the sun was shinning on my thin scalp and an idea in this overheated brain of mine came to. When I have an idea I take it seriously, I never know when the next one will come.

The idea was to get a screwdriver, unscrew 3 bolts, push the cable underneath the siding and screw back the 3 bolts, Voilà, internet cable out of my sight, and I could reclaim some needed sanity...

These are things I used to do as part of my job a while back, but now with the limited movements in my right shoulder (yes, I’m milking that one to the max), I was rushing the job. I screwed the screw IN the cable, didn't even noticed.

By now you must wonder why I'm talking about this on a health blog, this is a public advice message folks, if it's working DON'T TOUCH IT! I would appreciate it if from time to time you smart people remind me of it; I'm sure I'll forget as soon as this post is published.

Hey, how are you all doing? Now that I have the Internet back I have started to read some posts but have not commented yet. I'm trying to keep a low profile for now, I'm sure the shame will just go away, won’t it?

 Look at that clean antenna!

The technician just left, do you see the cable by the screw, it's going to drive me nut but I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT, I WILL NOT TOUCH IT... today!

Barely Surviving

Thursday I washed one of our outside walls. It was windy and cold but I figured I'd be warm enough while working. I was right!

I used a brush that attaches to the hose to clean the sidings. It's difficult to control where the water goes, so I ended up getting soaked every time I was cleaning the upper part of the wall. Not a problem!

The Internet antenna got wet.  No problem right? It's outside so it is exposed to rain, snow, bugs, so I didn't take extra care, it was just water. Big problem!

Since then, the Internet is out, completely out, there is no more saving or looking at the “cloud”. It is so bad that if I want to know the weather, I have to look OUTSIDE!

I am learning new skills, like learning to talk with PEOPLE, instead of chatting. How are you supposed to show happy or sad face without using :-) or :-( ?? and I went to play pickleball twice in the past 2 days.

My friends must start getting sick of hearing about my internet problem, but I'm just trying to cope, I'll whine until it's fixed.

We even went for a tour of the lake on our boat. Life can be so tough!

How are you folks doing? Don't bother answering; I don't have Internet I won't be able to read any answer before next week...

This post was possible because one of our friend let me used their functional connection to the Internet, lucky them! I must say though that my antenna is much cleaner than theirs.