journal

August 3rd: moderate algae growth, but more than enough to make me foggy-brained

August 28th, post gloriously-battering rain, no algae in sight.

This is a refurbished, older model Roomba.  Chris and I have always kind of wanted one (to the point that we put one on our wedding registry for kicks and giggles).  But they\’re expensive, so we hadn\’t taken the idea of getting one super-seriously until we found a really good deal for this one.  We named it Jeeves.  Or, I named it Jeeves, and when we turned it on, it proceeded to bump into basically everything, thus immediately making my name choice absurd.  I feel like anything named Jeeves should probably have a certain dignity and grace, and while this Roomba is plenty industrious and cleans very well, it is not graceful or dignified.

So, in preparation for having Jeeves in our home, we tidied up the upper level of our house.  Roombas are decent about working around obstacles, to a point, but for best results, they should only be navigating around furniture, not shoes, jackets, books, etc.  The carpet, to all appearances, was pretty clean.  Chris had been vacuuming previously, and while our canister vacuum isn\’t in great shape, it\’s at least still picking up dirt.

You\’d think, then, that Jeeves wouldn\’t have had that much to do.  But lo and behold, after it ran the first circuit of the upstairs, there were dust bunnies packed into its filter and dust compartment.  I emptied it, proceeded to get foggy and anxious, realized it probably had algae pollen or whatever in it, and put the compartment back into Jeeves.  Then I ran Jeeves again, because why not?  And Jeeves came back with more dust bunnies.  I dunno exactly what the technology they put into Roombas to make them find that many dust bunnies in apparently clean carpet, but I\’m impressed.  Also, it is now Chris\’ job to empty the filter and dust compartment.

We had similar results after we set it on the bedroom, too.  Actually, I went into the bedroom to watch it bumble around, and within half an hour, the \”dustbin full\” indicator had gone on.  I\’m going to guess the previous owner probably didn\’t steam-clean the carpets before they sold the house to us, but still.  That was crazy to me.

I\’m hoping to set Jeeves on the downstairs sometime this week, but that\’s going to be a bit more difficult to tidy up, and it also has more separate rooms.  So maybe it\’ll be a multi-part process.  Still, it cheers me to know I\’m living in less dust and algae pollen.  

Sleepwise, we swapped two doors in the house.  When we got the place, the master bedroom\’s door had this absurd \”fancy\” window in it, which was covered by pseudo-curtains.  This presumably was in fashion at… some point, but pragmatically speaking, the setup merely lets in light and makes the door extra heavy.  Since the presence of light makes me sleep more poorly, the door had to go.

So we swiped the downstairs bedroom door, and put that on the master bedroom\’s door frame.  And now the \”fancy\” door is on the guest bedroom, where it won\’t bother me nearly as much.  Chris also had the idea to lightproof the master bathroom door, which routinely lets in light in the mornings.  This was accomplished by weatherproofing it, actually…  Which is kind of weird, but as long as it works.

The bedroom is now so dark at night that even after I\’ve woken up in the middle of the night, and my eyes are well adjusted to the dark, I literally can\’t see the bed or anything on the floor.  I just have to know roughly where they are based on memory.  This results in my groping around blindly in the dark while going to and from the bathroom.  But, I\’m sleeping better, so I\’ll take that tradeoff.

Another home improvement that occurred was this:

At least I\’m probably on an upswing.  On my doctor\’s advice, I\’m cutting down on my hours of fasting.  I\’ll continue to stop eating at 8pm, because that helps cut down on my snacking, but my mornings will no longer be calorie-restricted.  Eating breakfast again seems to be helping my energy levels somewhat.  It also lets me get my supplements into my system much earlier, which results in better brain function for more of the day.

Snacking-wise, I haven\’t entirely stopped… but something\’s changed.  Instead of tending to crave sweet foods, I mostly just… don\’t.  I did still buy myself some salty snacks recently, but they don\’t seem to have the same effect that they did prior to this little experiment.  I\’m still on the fence as to whether that\’s a good thing.  I mean, physical health-wise, it definitely is… lower sugar intake means better health, at least for someone like me.

It\’s just… mentally and emotionally, food was basically my only stable pleasure in life.  I like gaming, music, learning new things, putting patterns together to understand systems and people, rereading familiar stories, and helping people, but each and every one of those is a fickle pleasure.  Fickle, because they aren\’t predictable and I can\’t usually know whether something\’s going to make me feel comforted and happy or not.

Food cravings weren\’t fickle.  The particular food I was craving might change, but because of how well I remember flavors, and because of how the US food industry standardizes itself to offer the same flavor each time you consume a product, eating a particular food was always both predictable and pleasant.  For example, Kraft\’s macaroni and cheese.  It pretty much always tastes the same, assuming you use the same amount of butter, milk, etc.  Or a burger at a fast food chain.  These things are made to always taste the same, so you can develop a comfort with that taste, and then return to enjoy it over and over for years to come.

Now?  Now I don\’t really crave particular foods any more.  And I\’m trying to stay away from sugary snacking, because I\’m guessing the change is gut bacteria-related and if I eat too much sugar it\’ll revert and I\’ll be more unhealthy again.  Healthier, physically, yes.  Mentally and emotionally, I\’m missing that stability of being able to open a box/bag of whatever and feel instantly more stable, comforted, and happy.

I didn\’t particularly predict this would happen when I started the intermittent fasting diet, but I did note signs of it as the weeks progressed.  For now, I\’m going to wait it out and see if weight loss and/or improved overall mood results.  For all that eating sugary junk food did instantaneously comfort me, there\’s some compelling theories that suggest I\’m better off overall without it.  The data is a bit muddled, but I did sometimes notice being in a worse mood or being more volatile a few hours after eating said junk foods.

The only other downside to this change in my food habits is that now I have less motivation to cook interesting things, because my overall interest in food is down.  This is kind of unfortunate, because I cook twice a week and it\’s hard to muster any enthusiasm to go to the grocery store when mostly what I get to do now is mentally mark off things as inedible.  I go down the aisles, commenting to myself, \”sugar, sugar, dairy, sugar, sugar, nasty-tasting, sugar, nutritionally deficient, dairy, sugar, goes bad too fast for me to bother buying it, sugar, meat that isn\’t humane, sugar, sugar, sugar…\”

I\’m vaguely tempted to make a video of myself doing just that, perhaps at 3am when only the stockers are around to hear me record myself doing it.  It might be kind of educational for other people to see the various aisles of the grocery store quantified like that, but I\’m not really sure I can make it entertaining, because the subject is so depressing to me.  I used to be able to walk into a grocery store and see so many interesting options for meals.  Now my selection has narrowed so immensely that it\’s kind of disappointing to walk through the rows of foods I mostly can\’t have.

Maybe I\’ll have my spouse start doing the grocery shopping when we shuffle the chores list…  

In general I kind of feel like yesterday was a waste, but I guess that\’s not really accurate.  I did deal with the complicated problem, and handled a few smaller regular tasks…  it just kind of feels like because I missed most of yesterday\’s stuff, I failed at the entire day.  I\’m going to objectively say that\’s neither fair nor reasonable, but it doesn\’t really change that it\’s how I feel emotionally.  Meh.  Seems I need more practice in being kind to myself. 

Chris didn\’t end up winning anything at the company raffle, so I\’ll have to spend actual money if I want to go kayaking this summer.  I do think it\’d be fun, but I had a look on Craigslist and nobody\’s really giving them away.  You\’re spending $200 minimum for a kayak, and that\’s for the shoddiest inflatable ones.  So, I\’ll have to think on it some more. 

Other exercise-related thing, Pokemon GO is stressing me out.  When I play a game, I don\’t generally min-max, or try to play in the most excruciatingly efficiently ideal manner, but I do try to at least be somewhat effective about how I play.  My spouse min-maxes and such for fun, so I have his insights to apply to any games we play together.  Unfortunately, for Pokemon GO, min-maxing basically involves driving all over the place, spending hours playing, and juggling a lot of little niggling details.  Also coordinating with tons of people over the Internet.  Given how low energy I\’ve been lately, that\’s a hard pill to swallow… and trying to do just a bit, rather than all of it or none of it, doesn\’t seem to be working.  So I don\’t know what to do. 

It doesn\’t help that the game itself is still really buggy and likes to crash on me a lot.  If I play more than a few minutes, I\’ll probably have to restart the app at least once, and that unfortunately involves entering all the login information each time.  And then changing all the settings back to what I want them as, because it forgets them each time as well.  My friend, who\’s been playing this without a break since it launched, has basically just given up on the game being any good.  Every time it messes up, she just says a variation of, \”Well, Niantic (the creator company) is still terrible.\”  It\’s kind of a sad state of affairs.  She still plays because she walks for exercise, and so she just gets out the game then and basically doesn\’t play otherwise. 

I dunno.  I guess, overall, I\’m just tired.  Low on energy, and feeling like I just keep getting lower.  Hopefully it\’s just something some sleep, good food, and some relaxation can fix…

I had a chat with my doctor regarding the intermittent fasting diet, and she doesn\’t seem to think it\’s working for me, at least not in the way she was hoping.  So I\’m thinking on whether I want to continue it.  I kind of do, because I think it really limits how much snacking I do, but on the other hand, it\’s kind of unpleasant in the morning when I\’m lined up to exercise but don\’t have even a jogger\’s breakfast to draw on.

I\’m also mulling over finding a place to jog.  I mentioned last week how very poorly I did when I jogged, and how it unnerved me, but the fact remains that it is definitely better exercise than biking.  Your heartrate actually stays elevated for a lot longer after you jog than after you bike or row or some other form of exercise.  This translates to more calorie-burning potential.  In addition, I think in general jogging uses more muscles than biking.  And I do kind of really want to play Pokemon GO while I exercise.  So, I don\’t know.  I probably won\’t do it, because I\’m not sure how many revolutions I could run around the park near my house before I get seriously anxious about weirding out other people at the park, or thinking about what they must be thinking.  I\’d run in completely abandoned places, but that\’s also a great way to never be heard from again, so… bleh.

On a happier note, I got to go kayaking last weekend!  A friend got a bunch of people together and secured permission to borrow his family\’s lake house, so we all visited on Sunday.  It was a nice place, big tall trees with a soft grass and mossy carpet near the house, a nice view of the ocean, and the house itself had running water and electricity and such.  There wasn\’t actually a whole lot of beach, because grasses like to grow in the sand dunes, and the grasses serve a purpose by keeping the sand from eroding away.  And there was a huge set of stairs going down from the house to the beach (but hey, that means the beach house won\’t get swept away anytime soon!).  We hung out at the beach area, ate watermelon and pizza, and chatted a bit. 

But yeah, they had a kayak, which I promptly took out on the lake.  This is one of the Great Lakes, not a little tiny thing you can see both shores of, so I didn\’t have much frame of reference for how far out I went.  But I made very sure to take note of where I\’d come from, and conveniently, there were 2 white outdoor chairs on one side of the staircase, and 1 lavender one on the other side.  So that made it pretty easy to keep near the right piece of shore.  I had a pretty good time, too, because it\’s relatively quiet on the lake once you\’re far enough out.  And the paddling is good exercise.

I hadn\’t done that sort of thing for years, so I got tired fast, naturally.  But since nobody was yelling at me to keep rowing (like say, on a rowing team), I was easily able to take breaks.  It\’s somewhat similar to riding a bike in that way.  That kind of makes me want to get a kayak and go out to a smaller, nearer lake around here.  It\’d be a bit of an endeavor to do that, so I\’d probably only do that once a week.  Or maybe on Saturdays, as exercise day #6?  I dunno.  There\’s a very slim chance that Chris will win a kayak from his workplace\’s raffle, so if that happens, I guess I\’ll consider it more seriously.  If it doesn\’t happen, I guess I can think about putting one on my wish list.  My van will hold a kayak or two, probably.  It fit an 8 foot conference table, so it\’s probably safe enough.

My only concern will be my hands… I had to turn the kayak back earlier than I would have liked, because I developed a blister.  I recognized it pretty quickly, which I\’m pleased about.  The first time I went out in a kayak, I managed to get like 5 blisters and tear a few open before I got tired, and those hurt a bunch for a good while.  So this time I was smarter, and I\’m happy to say the silly thing is entirely healed up now.  I did also manage to bruise both thumbs, but the solution to both bruises and blisters is very simple: gloves.  I have nice fingerless gloves somewhere, which I used to use in my rowing team days.  They\’d work just as well for this.

The last bonus for doing kayaking regularly is the muscle groups it exercises.  Most of my exercise focuses on my leg muscles, and pretty much just those.  Kayaking is mostly arms, shoulders, and some back muscles.  I have a pretty strong back, but historically I\’ve been rather poor about exercising my shoulders and arms.  So this would be a good development, if it works out. 

The perils of being on the Wrong Planet, I guess.  Hopefully they won\’t hold it against me, any of them.  I\’m not really sure how much my brother and sister-in-law have taught their children about neurodiversity.  I can\’t imagine it\’s a huge priority, with all the things going on in their lives.  Regardless, it\’s nice to see them, and thoughtful of them to make this trip up, because we won\’t see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving this year.  Traveling is really difficult with small children. 

On the exercise front, I don\’t feel quite so tired and low-energy in the mornings any more.  This is good, because biking takes energy.  I\’d been kind of skimping on the distance for Tuesday mornings, because after getting up the final hill and coming face to face with the busy street, I mostly just don\’t feel like contending with the traffic to go further.  I think I might alter my Tuesday route to take myself through the park rather than go up the hill immediately.  That route would let me avoid basically all of the traffic, while still letting me play Pokemon GO a little  and get to enjoy the downhill on the way home.

There\’s precious little I enjoy about exercise.  But hitting a good downhill with a lot of speed, with the sun shining and blue in the sky, is actually something I do enjoy.  Also enjoyable, biking tends to keep you going fast enough that the mosquitoes don\’t get you.  I still have bites on my legs and arms, but I\’m pretty sure that\’s because bitey things got into the house, not because things are still managing to get me at 10+ mph.  The final thing I enjoy about biking is that I am, so far, the fastest thing on the trail I frequent.  I feel slightly bad about liking that, but honestly, it means I only have seconds in which I might have to interact with people or exchange awkward glances.  After that I\’m past them.  I take extra care to make sure I don\’t scare people as I pass them, and stay well to whichever side I\’m on so as not to crowd the other people. 

My physiology, I personally think, makes me unsuited for pretty much every type of exercise except biking.  My great strength is in my legs, which are beefy due to genetics and the fact that they have to carry me around.  So one would think that jogging would be a good plan.  But I gave jogging a really good go in college, and failed to get any better at it.  And it\’s really, really disheartening to be the slowest person of all, even slower than the other slowest person in the class.  And while they improved, I didn\’t.  I also feel somewhat vulnerable to both human predators and biting insects while walking or running, so that\’s really not ideal.

It would be nice if those things weren\’t the case, though, because you really can\’t play Pokemon GO while you bike.  You need your hands to steer the bike and help you balance, and you can\’t be using one or both of them to play the game while you do that.  So when I bring that game along, I have to stop and get off my bike every time I want to play.  If I was jogging, I could literally just jog in place while I did the little tasks the game wants you to do, and then continue on, no problem.

On the food front, I\’ve thrown together something easy to break my fasting with: trail mix, comprised only of golden raisins and tree nuts.  I\’ve been reading a lot of things about how tree nuts are great for brain health, so I tried snacking on them months ago.  It went okay, but I got tired of them.  About a week ago, I bought a bag of trail mix last week to stand in for dinner.  Liked it a lot, but it was mostly peanuts and knockoff M&Ms.  I figured I could do better.  So now, in theory, I have. 

On a very much healthier note, I think my craving for sugary foods and high GI foods is decreasing.   This is excellent, because they\’re probably the reason why I\’m not losing weight.  The three components for someone like me to lose weight are: eating plenty of vegetables and some fruit, getting movement and exercise, and managing sugar intake.  I have the first two going reasonably well, but the lattermost is… challenging.  Almost everything that tastes delicious and is quick to eat is high GI or flatly full of sugar. 

This is a really good thing, because I went to get my hair re-dyed on Monday.  To get my hair its sapphire shade, I actually have to have my head in the wash bowl three separate times.  And unfortunately the place I have this done, does not have very comfortable wash bowls.  Like, \”can-cause-neck-injuries-by-themselves\” uncomfortable.  I am not a fan.  But, my hair is blue and short again AND I don\’t seem to have re-injured my neck.  Very happy about this. 

Even though I\’m disheartened about the whole fasting and exercise routine, I\’m still keeping it up pretty religiously.  I\’ve felt kind of foggy and tired over the last week or so, which makes me wonder if the two are related.  But I do actually see at least one apparent effect from the intermittent fasting thing.  My stomach size seems to be shrinking.

I\’ve always had kind of a large stomach, and it\’s very flexible to boot.  I can generally just keep putting food in it, and it\’ll stretch to accommodate whatever.  Recently?  That\’s less the case.  I think the stomach is still stretchy, but I feel full faster and don\’t seem to feel the need to eat as much.   I\’m still waiting to see if this is going to end up in weight loss, or just a reduction in how much I eat.  Also waiting to see if my body\’s going to get angry at me for not getting enough nutrition.  I\’m taking my supplements, which include a lot of vitamins and minerals, but that\’s really not a replacement for eating proper food.  I\’m not going to magically be healthy if I eat snack food but make sure to take my supplements. 

So yeah, I don\’t know.  Something is happening.  Remains to be seen what exactly, still. 

Exercise-related, I\’ve been playing more Pokemon GO recently.  Chris and I are getting back into it a bit since they finally added a friends option and trading (two fundamental parts of a Pokemon game).  This is helped along by the fact that there\’s literally a park within a mile of my house, and I can bike there in less than five minutes.  So while I\’ve kept with my 5 day a week exercise, I\’ve also occasionally just been snagging my bike and going down to the park for a few minutes.  It\’s not, like… really hard exercise or anything, but it\’s still extra exercise.  Also extra vitamin D from all that sunshine I\’ve been accidentally absorbing. 

I don\’t have a really awesome tan or anything, but I basically just don\’t use sunscreen when I go out.  No burns yet, so I think I\’m probably okay.  One of the major problems with my blood tests last year was low vitamin D.  With luck, this year I\’ll have higher results.  I\’m going to guess they still won\’t be high enough to be healthy, but surely with all that sunlight and my regular supplements, they\’ve got to be higher, right? 

Lastly, I ran across a new webcomic a couple days ago, which has proceeded to hijack much of my focus.  It\’s called Wilde Life, and is something like a cross between fantasy, slice of life, and horror.  I like fantasy type things, and the characters in the comic are very realistically made and intriguing.  I\’m still trying to quantify exactly why the comic is so fascinating to me, but regardless, I\’ve read it twice already and am working on a third read with the reader comments. 

I read a lot of webcomics, though I pruned down my reading list from over 100 of them to something more like 30 a few years ago.  So this one will definitely get added to the reading list, and I\’ll hopefully enjoy it for years to come. 

It sounds like next year, my spouse and I could probably just go visit my parents.  Seems they had a pretty good view of the nearest fireworks show, and from the comfort of their apartment, too.  I could also see about simply biking over to the town hall area, which is less than a mile away, and just being right there at the show, I guess.  I think I might need to get better ear protection if I do that.

This week, my biking routine added injury to insult.  (I used that backwards on purpose, yes.)  I\’m still not losing weight, but exactly a week ago, I somehow managed to pull a neck muscle while doing my head-checks to make sure I wasn\’t running over any pedestrians or cutting in front of them too closely.  It was the 4th last week, and there was a parade and such on the day.  Parade-goers walk on bike paths, but unlike normal pedestrians on bike paths, they don\’t understand that if someone says \”on your left!\” it means, \”I\’m approaching to pass you on your left side, please move to the right and don\’t startle when I zoom by you.\”

So I ended up doing a lot of twisting my neck to one side or the other, and without so much as a warning, the next day, my neck hurt like heck.  I left it alone for a few days, figuring that I\’m still fairly young and it\’d probably heal itself.  That was a mistake, apparently…  it only proceeded to get worse.  On Sunday night, I had trouble getting to sleep due to it hurting so much, so I went to the chiropractor first thing on Monday and got my neck readjusted.  The theory is that it helped, but I woke up yesterday just as stiff and sore…  It is, needless to say, frustrating.  I have an appointment again today, where they will hopefully shove the dratted thing back into place again and it\’ll keep this time.

In the meantime, I continue to find myself holding my head at an awkward angle: slightly sideways toward my right shoulder, and twisted left so I\’m still kind of facing front.  I suspect this is the position that jars my neck least when walking and such, but it\’s somewhat befuddling that I keep returning to it without even noticing.  I\’ll try to straighten out my neck and face forward, and sometimes literally seconds later, I\’ll find myself at the twisted angle again.  It\’s awkward.  It probably looks really weird, too, so it kind of surprises me that my spouse hasn\’t said anything.

The other major \”bleh\” issue is that I seem to be slightly allergic to the algae that\’s growing in the pond out back.  Maybe I should say \”infesting\” rather than growing.  The pond is now more algae than it isn\’t, and the stuff is the color of dirty sea foam.  I\’m hoping the homeowner\’s association will be paying to clean it out a bit, soon.  But it\’s odd to me, because the neighboring pond at the park has no algae at all.  Really makes me wonder why, and whether there\’s some critter I could import from there to here.  Going to bet it\’s a lot more complicated than that, though, ecosystems being what they are. 

Because it\’s around the 4th of July, and I live in the US, I currently live in a place where fireworks will go off at any given moment, especially if it\’s night time.  Autistic sound sensitivity, meet \”nobody cares, enjoy your frazzled nerves and general ill-will.\”  Yyyyep, that\’s right.  Just because it\’s a national holiday does not make all those explosions somehow friendly or easier to tolerate.

This is my first 4th of July in this house, and I was kind of hoping it\’d be a bit quieter than it is.  Which isn\’t to say it\’s not quieter than my old apartment was, mind.  People there thought it was acceptable to light fireworks off at, say, 3am, regardless of whether it was 2 weeks after the 4th, or before it.  Even knowing many of my neighbors were immigrants and thus at a lot higher of risk if the cops were involved, I almost called law enforcement several times.  I never quite got to that point, but I was mad enough to scream out the window several times.

You are now perhaps wondering how I manage July 4th at all, and whether I attend fireworks shows or do events at all, considering what I\’ve described.  The answer to the first is \”poorly.\”  When explosions can happen at any time, with no warning, I find myself a lot more rattled, anxious, and distractable.  I mostly survive this time of year.  The answer to the second is \”yes, with proper motivation.\”  Fireworks shows aren\’t just about the fireworks, they\’re also about spending time with people.  I do find fireworks pretty, and I approve of their use of gunpowder over the more standard ammunition and guns.  I can prepare myself somewhat to be bombarded with the sounds, bring ear plugs, and clamp my hands over the earplug-wearing ears to further dampen the sound.

This year my friends are busy, so I\’ll miss the fireworks show downtown.  I\’m not sure whether I\’m sad or relieved.  It would be fun to spend that time with them, but my nerves are already pretty frayed.  It\’s been a pretty crummy last few days for me.  In addition to the fireplace gunk I mentioned last week, I think something molded in the house and my throat\’s been sore and scratchy for weeks.   I\’ve been unable to help my grandmother get her stereo system (multi-CD player) working properly, despite putting literal hours into it at this point.  I ran out of some of my supplements, had major gastointestinal issues, and the house appears to have developed an infestation of tiny bugs.  They seem to be attracted to the tub, kitchen counters, and bathroom counters, whereupon they die, en masse.  All neatly and evenly spaced.  It\’s both bizarre and disgusting.

The last thing to mention is that I\’m getting a bit disheartened with my 5 day/week exercise routine and fasting diet.  The latter makes the 3 days of biking kind of unpleasant, because I don\’t eat until noon, but with it being hot out, I need to bike before noon.  This would be fine, but I\’m also still not losing weight, and I have a limited amount of patience for things that degrade my enjoyment of life with no positive effects to show.  I\’ll perhaps talk to my doctor about upping my \”eating time\” to 10 hours instead of 8, and starting to eat at 10am instead of noon.  I might be able to have breakfast 2 biking days out of 3, if that happened.  

The trip out with my dad for Father\’s Day went well.  I didn\’t mention it precisely last week, because he sometimes reads this blog, but we took him mini-golfing at a local off-the-wall place called Glow Golf.  It involved neon lights, black lights, and hunting and fishing themed decor.  It was, suffice it to say, interesting.  We also did dinner, of course, and the cheese shop.  I\’d mainly settled on the mini-golfing because one of my strongest memories of \”dad time\” was of us doing that together at a fancy-ish indoor mini-golf course at a big mall.  The memories are pretty fuzzy, since that was over 20 years ago, but it was still kind of fun to try this particular course.  I\’m not sure I\’d go back, but it was at least challenging.  And he seemed to have fun, so that\’s really all that matters.

That wasn\’t the only social event this week, either.  My grandmother came over to the house.  She helped us buy the place, and it\’s nice to have family over anyway, so we broke out some beef stew and Chris made his rosemary bread.  She didn\’t stay for a super long time, but she saw the house, ate lunch, and had a bit of tea afterwards. 

The new meal planning I mentioned is the result of my throwing up my hands, after weeks of faithful exercise, and deciding my body is just not interested in losing weight.  I\’m now adhering to a fasting diet, which has me restricting my eating to between noon and 8pm.  This basically means I skip breakfast.  It\’s not necessarily ideal, but I\’m hoping that between the benefits of fasting and the lack of snacking in the evening/morning will mean that I actually start losing weight. 

So far it\’s only made me properly miserable once, when my first meal was really low in sugar/substances convertible into sugar.  I got very dizzy after that until I ate something else.  Haven\’t made that mistake again, and I seem to be doing okay now.  I\’m not performing as well on my morning exercise, but without a ready supply of energy, who can blame my muscles for not doing as good a job? 

I may or may not get an earful about the situation from the doctor I\’m going to today.  I\’ve been wanting to know if anything unusual is up with my joints, so I scheduled an appointment about a month ago with a kinesthesiologist.  Basically, a chiropractor, but for the whole body.  So we\’ll see what he says, but the intake paperwork was much more interested in my diet than in my joints.  And the intake paperwork was long, bleh. 

The last interesting thing of note this week came about because a wasp (or maybe several) got into the gas fireplace in my home.  It\’s an open question as to why they\’d do that, and why, after doing that, they\’d shun the perfectly good top exit to buzz around the fireplace area, get into the house, and then proceed to smash themselves against the sliding door… but after two repetitions of letting them back out, we decided this had gone on long enough, and lit the fireplace.  We let it run for several hours, which should be quite long enough to convince the little buggers to go somewhere else. 

The end result, however, seems to be that the air is full of something that\’s choking and unpleasant to me.  This is a gas fireplace, so it\’s not like there\’s really… ash.  Unless it burnt a wasp nest, I guess.  All the same, something in the air is making me miserable.  I\’m hoping it\’ll go away soon, as I keep the fan on regularly so the air circulates through the house. 

Hopefully this won\’t be a regular occurrence, because I kind of like using the fireplace.  It makes the house extra cozy.