Jane, you ignorant slut! (if you don't get the reference you're too young!)

Here I am again, in a weird medical place. Hypothyroid forever, all of a sudden my blood work indicates hyperthyroid. I mean .. it happens, but how often, and why? Dr. Google isn't a good idea, so for now I have been removed from my thyroid meds and am getting more blood work done in a few weeks. If the
results still indicate hyperthyroid - it will be time for a thyroid scan to see if the nodule I have is 'hot', meaning, producing hormones. 

Also in the dugout is anemia. PPPFFFTTTT!! I was a bit anemic at my last 6 month checkup but the doc gave me iron to take and I didn't think much of it. Obviously, since I stopped taking the pills pretty quickly. Now I am more anemic than before. This time the doc is worried and has ordered an upper GI, and I may have a colonoscopy at the same time because of my history of colon cancer (with a small C), we will see what the GI guy says tomorrow when I go for a quick consultation appointment. 

My doc is apparently worried that I have some bleeding going on somewhere, or something worse since he added a CEA to the blood work he ordered to check my thyroid. Sigh-h-h ..

Here's the thing - I FEEL good! Exercise, losing some weight, having a bit of energy, I've felt like I've been getting the physical part of my life together lately. 

Blargh.

Where's Roseanne Roseannadanna when you need her! "As my good friend Richard Fader always said
"IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING"!"

Yep, Jane is an ignorant slut - and I am probably 100% fine! Let's hope, anyway. I'm voting for a problem with absorbing iron. Not sure what they do for that, hopefully just supplements. Sounds like the best result for the anemia. The thyroid? Who knows!?!?!

Pity Party

I spent yesterday and today working my way through a pint of chocolate, chocolate chip Haagen-Daz. When I was pregnant with my first child I frequently ate a pint a day which equaled huge weight gain with that pregnancy. I have gotten away from it now, and when I do eat it - it takes me 4 to 5 days to get through a pint. I probably do it about 4 times a year now.

Friday was my favorite boss's last day. We are working remotely and there isn't a really good way for a fabulous sendoff for someone when you can't be with them in person, not to mention the fact that she lives in Wisconsin and I am in Illinois. Still. I wanted to be able to do something.

Feeling sorry for myself is not something I like to indulge in (unless it is about discontinued favorite foods - cough) and even if I do - I generally don't drown myself in high dollar, high fat content ice cream. But when I do - it's always chocolate, chocolate chip Haagen-Daz. 

My constitution has changed since I was young and pregnant, though. Because now when I eat a pint of ice cream over the course of 2 days - it goes right through me and I actually lose a few pounds. 

Win, win, if you ask me. I get to have a pity party AND lose weight! 

Still, I'm going to miss you Heidi. I hope your new job brings you no reasons to binge on ice cream and many new and lovely coworkers! 

WHY???

I know I have talked about this before, but why do things I like get discontinued? 

One of  my daily indulgences that has been consistent for at least 20 years and maybe more, (I am unwilling to do the math), is eating a bagel with cream cheese every morning. Whatever happens during the day, wherever I go, whatever I do, my day won't start right if I don't have my bagel and my tea. And it's not just any bagel, it's a Lender's Onion bagel with 1/3 less fat Philadelphia Brand cream cheese. 

I'm very specific, aren't I?

My son does most of the grocery shopping at my house (can't beat it) but he called me from the store one day saying "It's not good news, Mom." Holy cow I thought he'd run over a cat or something! But no, the bagels I eat were on clearance. He asked how many packages I wanted. OMG! Not again! Why does this happen to me??

I don't have a big freezer so I had him pick up (he paid for them) 5 bags. 

And then they were gone.

Apparently the company was sold, and when I contacted the new company they said the bagels are still being made but they couldn't tell me the distribution. 👀 Um .. what?? They also said that during the pandemic the demand for bagels has risen and it has been hard to keep up with the demand.

Pandemic bagel eaters? Who knew? (guessing it's not really a thing)

It sort of felt like I was being placated, so it just may be they are gone forever. We will see. In the meantime, my son is buying different types of onion bagels for me to try and so far they have all had one thing in common - they don't taste much like onion. 

Blargh. Somewhere I think my onion bagels are dancing with my Stouffer's Noodles Romanoff, laughing at my discomfort. 

Trying to Move More, Against my Body's Better Judgement

Walking is my form of exercise. I have walked a lot in the past, but walking now - isn't as easy as it used to be. At least, when doing it for exercise and going for a little speed and distance. My knees have put in a formal objection, so I have shortened my distance temporarily and started doing exercises for my knees to strengthen them. It's working, too, which is nice. At least I've got that going for me.

But with this working from home thing, there needs to be more activity. NOT an athlete as a kid, younger adult, and certainly NOT an athlete now. Hmmm.. what to do?

I ordered a standing desk converter thing. It goes on top of my own desk, my monitors will sit on it and when I want to work standing up - it rises up, supposedly smoothly. We will see about that. My main concern is that it will raise my monitors about 4 inches when I am sitting, and right now my monitors are as low as they can go. Other than that - I am looking forward to it. 

I've tried to think of what I will need, a surge protector with a long cord so it is long enough to reach whether the desk is up or down. Some cord protector sleeves to try to bundle them a bit so they aren't all over the place, and I'm hoping will make the cords less attractive to Cruz, the only cat here that has a life goal of becoming a crispy kitty! I am determined to make him fail at that.

Not going to stop walking by any means. I am enjoying it, especially the listening to music part. Much better than listening to audio books which is what I used to do. But especially since there are days when it is close to a hundred degrees (summer in Chicago, what??) when I feel like I don't go as far or as fast as I'd like, and because I'm not sure what winter will be like - this is one more strike against bad health or maybe declining health that comes with aging. NO! I am not that old. And I'm not even sick! But I intend to stay as healthy as I can be until I DO get ready to meet my maker. Not anywhere near that yet. Preventative medicine is the best medicine.

Now, to make my body stop objecting to what I am trying to do .. that is a work in progress, but I will win!

I'm Not The Only One.

There is a widget on my left sidebar showing a list of blogs I used to follow and read on a regular basis. The abandonment of my blog coincides loosely with the shutting down of Google Reader. Damn you, big tech! I clicked through a lot of those links recently and found at least half (if not more) are either abandoned like mine, completely gone, or turned into more of a business model - good for those people! But that was never for me.

The ones that surprise me the most are the blogs that have been entirely deleted. I mean - people wrote things, memorialized a moment in time, if you will. Several moments in time. And then for whatever reason were comfortable with wiping everything out. Not sure I could do that, regardless of whether or not anyone ever reads a thing I write, ever again. Seems almost like deleting a piece of your past, somehow.

At some point I will need to update that list, but if I'm honest - I don't read blogs anymore. Instagram caught my eye and people liked looking at pics of my cats (hey, something for everyone!) and blogs, candidly, started to take up too much time. So maybe I will just remove the ones that aren't current anymore, me thinks it will be a very short list by the time I am done.

We don't read as much as we used to and it's sad, our attention spans have gotten too short. Not sure what that means going forward but I'm not giving up cursive writing!!

Everything is Just a Little Too Connected For my Liking

So I did a Google search for a left-handed potato peeler. Okay maybe that wasn't it, but let's stipulate - it was a product. Not going to specify because this happens. All. The. Time. With. EVERYTHING. Still, a day later I got an email from Amazon giving me links to several left-handed peelers. 

Then I'm on Instagram a day after that and what do I see? Ads for, you guessed it, left-handed potato peelers! 

Is there anything we do online that isn't connected to everything else? Is our data mined by everyone for everything? It gets a bit creepy sometimes. Maybe I need to try a browser like Duck Duck Go and search for something obscure to see if the same thing happens. I'm beginning to think there is no way to get away from this crap.

So I am doing a test. I just did a search on Duck Duck Go. I am not even going to type the words here, of what I searched for. The only place I typed the words was in that browser. I will paste a pic because I don't think words can be mined from an image. But what do I know? (I only work in I.T.!)

If I don't get any emails or spontaneous ads for things related to this Duck Duck Go search, I may have to switch. Like most people, I don't have anything to hide - but it feels - icky - for lack of a better word, for the Internet to know everything I do online.

And for that matter, I think since I am working from home, I will unplug my pet-cam. Who knows who could be hacked into that?? This world just keeps getting weirder and weirder, I swear.

Did I just age myself - profoundly - by doing the search I did? Sigh-h-h...

Word of Advice

There are some rules that should just be followed. ALWAYS.