Where Is My Medal?

Man-o-Man yesterday was a long day for me! Good thing it was Friday. If it had been a Tuesday and I still had the rest of the workweek ahead of me, I might have cried.  I had scheduled to do a Secret Shop after my radiation.  Wouldn't you know that the one day I had a time-sensitive errand is the day that the radiation appointment took literally three times as long as usual? 

I made it to the secret shop with about 20 seconds to spare and then the shop took just under two hours. Ideally, it would have taken  40 min. So that was longer than expected. 

But then we get to the real trying part of my day.  I went to Jewel at 6pm on a Friday.  That's just crazy. The worst time to go!  Busy and all the carts were wet because it was raining. Wait, there is more. Then Jewel was sold out of all the really good 3-day specials that were the basis of my grocery list and the whole point of going to Jewel over Aldi.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I was home by 8pm. Long day.  I would have skipped the grocery store if not for the looming "Winter Storm Warning." I was freaking exhausted.  The fact that I don't like the family to put away the groceries because they don't know how to do it the right way really worked against me. I plan to spend the weekend recovering from my very long but not bad Friday.

In all honesty, it's a delight to complain about simple things like a lack of $1.99 ground turkey.

5 radiation treatments down, 20 to go.  The universe smiled upon me this morning when I was greeted by 5 crocus buds about to blossom.

Over 10% Done!

It's only Wednesday.  Doesn't it feel like it should be Friday already?  Even though I am only working half days during radiation, I am still prone to whine about working five days in a row. 

If I was running this country, we would have higher taxes and in exchange, we would have healthcare for all and free public college - and trade school training.

Businesses would participate in robust training/internship programs for their employees and would get tax credits for that-- we would be leading the world in green energy innovations and best of all -- a four day work week model. Some people might Monday thru Thursday, other people might work Wednesday thru Saturday.

While I'm at it, add to my platform, 1 year paid parent leave -- and in my country that would mean 1 year paid leave if you had a child or adopted a child as well as if you had an ailing parent and wanted to care for them. Dual paid parental leave options.

We could totally do all this if we wanted to make it happen. Think of all the worry and stress that would disappear if people didn't have to worry about healthcare and college costs. Plus the worry and stress families having juggling that first year with a baby or the last year with a parent.  Plus think about how the Earth would flourish if we embraced alternatives to oil and gas. 

And those sweet, sweet 4-day work weeks.

In any case, I'm over 10% done with radiation. After Friday I will be one fifth done. Yippee. 

Big Milestone Today

Seven days into the new year- heck the new decade- and I've already lost a pair of gloves.  This is why I can't have nice things. This is also why The Man got me four pairs of cheap $1 gloves for Christmas. Now I have 25% fewer gloves to make it through winter. 

I think we all know that by February 29th, leap day, I will be down to one pair which is actually made up of two different colored gloves and at least one of the two gloves will have a hole in the thumb. This would be, as they say, par for the course when it comes to me and outerwear accessories. In case you have not guessed my track record on retaining gloves or scarves long term is not great. 

I need glove clippies.

Lucky for me, today's weather was warm enough that my bare hands didn't suffer too badly.

Heard anything good lately?  I have been listening to the album Bubba by KAYTRANADA on Spotify--the free version because I am trying to cut down on monthly service fees in general. Good stuff it makes me feel like it's the first Saturday in June and the sun is shining and I have Monday off work. Two earbuds up!

Looking For Answers to Life's Big Questions?

The answer is usually to drink more water.  No, really it's true.  Stressed out?  Have a glass of water?  Want better-looking skin or hair?  Drink more water.  Tired?  Drink a cold glass of water.  Hot flash? Drink a cold glass of water.  Mad at your spouse?  Have you considered...a nice tall drink of water?

It's true though, water cures many ills and prevents even more. 

Today was treatment #1 of 25 and guess what I did?  Oh yes, I made sure to drink extra water before the treatment and more water after it was done. Hydration, a healthy diet, and regular exercise are the name of the game during radiation therapy--and pretty much all the time really!

How was radiation? You can't tell when the actual radiation is going into your body, so obviously it doesn't hurt.  I think that the machine should have sound effect options. I would have liked it to make the sound of a Tie-Fighter laser-blasting as the radiation was beamed into me. 

That would make the whole radiation experience more exciting.  Alas, it's pretty quiet and kinda boring just laying their all alone, on a table waiting for voices to come in over the intercom letting me know when to breathe and when to hold my breath. Boring does beat painful, so I will take it and I will hope that the next 24 treatments are as uneventful as the first. 

Happy Monday!

Sunday is for Soup: January is for Joy

I don't like winter.  I will admit snow looks pretty and a day off work due to a blizzard is a nice way to break up the monotony of a workweek but other than that I'm not a fan.

However, winter is a quarter of the year and I don't want to spend 25% of my year crabby.  I have done an excellent job of achieving 100% crabbiness for the 25% of the year known as winter in the past; and now that I am nearly a full 50% of a century years old, it's time for a change.

Therefore one of my goals for January is to find the joy in January.  Today is day 5 of January and here is what I've come up with thus far...

When I am out for a run and it snows the snow makes everything quiet and muffled like I am alone in the midst of everything around me.  It also cushions my fall when I slip on the ice I couldn't see. 

Lucky for me so far, so far this year it's been mild and the snow isn't sticking around for more than a day on the sidewalks.  That fact helps me enjoy winter.  The gloomy grey sky is like a blanket blocking out the arctic air keeping our temps above freezing during the day. 

A cozy blanket of clouds is better than a blanket of snow!

The smell of a wood-burning fireplace is an unmitigated plus in my book, so that is nice and also during the winter it is much easier to stay home and not feel compelled to go out and do stuff. Winter is also when I regret not buying a car with a remote start.  As you can see my quest to find the joy in January is a work in progress.

One thing I do know is that winter is a good time to try new soup recipes and a bowl of flavorful soup is a joy.  This week another soup from Real Simple Magazine.

I made a few changes. I used 1 lb of ground pork and 1/2 a lb of ground turkey. I didn't have mirin so I used pinot grigio and I used 3 tablespoons of grated ginger. 1 tablespoon in the meatballs, 1 tablespoon sauteed in the pot and then 1 tablespoon more when the soup was done. I also added a splash of oil when the soup was done because it needed a little something more and toasted sesame seed oil was the right little something.  Lastly, my grocery store didn't have baby bok choy so I cut up 1.5 full-size bok choy like you would cut celery.  (see below)

Happy Sunday!

I tried it

I saw this meme on a friends FB page:

I laughed and scrolled on, and then last night... 

The kids love Martinelli's sparkling apple cider. It's a bottle cap top. If you have to refrigerate it, you are on your own because it has no cork.  If you are like my hubs and drink the cheap staple wine sold at Walgreens known as Looking Glass Wine,  well those corks do not fit either.

Guess what does fit in the Martinelli's bottle?  You guessed right? Something that is always in our fridge!

Note. Right after I took this picture P. came in the kitchen and ate half of the cork. LOL

Happy First Weekend in 2020!  Cheers!  keep that fridge stocked with bubbly AND carrots! 

Just Me Talking About My First Friday in 2020

How did you spend your first Friday in this new decade? I had a groovy time this afternoon hanging out in the Radiation Department of my hospital.  Today was the dry run for my upcoming radiation treatments.  I am happy to report both my doctor and the nurses said I am very good at holding my breath.  I credit all the running I do.  Is this a skill I can add to my resume? 

Why holding my breath? It is supposed to help move my heart and lung away from the beam of radiation. This technique is called Deep Inspiration Breath Hold.  Very zen sounding. I'm all for whatever I can do to keep my heart healthy-- especially since I had chemo and that can impact the heart.  Like the cancer isn't bad enough!  Insult to injury and all that.

It would be great if I could zone out and listen to a book on the audible app while I am laying there with the machine moving around me, but I have to listen to them tell me when to breath, hold my breath, and most importantly when I can stop holding my breath.  So no listening to a book.

Today I spent one of my credits on a thriller that takes place in Australia.  The bad guy is killed right off the bat, so now the question is what all went down prior to his death.

I've been a member of Audible off and on for years and now is a really good time to be a member. They have a special where if you listen to 3 books between now and March 3rd, you get a $20 Amazon Credit. Then I can use my $20 Amazon Credit to buy some paperback books. You can join Audible anytime this month and get in on the deal. If you are already a member you don't have to do anything, it's all tracked through the website.

Noom was the best app I ever bought

If you listen to podcasts or watch TV you've probably seen ads for the app Noom. Last year their ad campaign was basically, Noom is not your mom's Weight Watchers.  I have news for you Noom, my mom never did Weight Watchers, but I  did after Anna was born and it worked short term. 

By March of 2019, I was ready to make a change in my diet but I wasn't sure which way to go.  I knew that in the past a diet that makes some foods forbidden never worked  out for me past the first two weeks of food restriction. I knew a keto diet, which seems to have been very popular with people on my social media, wasn't going to work for me. I also didn't want to do Weight Watchers again because in my experience I was good at cheating the system. This was obviously stupid and hurt no one but me, but that's the reality of it.

I did some research, read some reviews and completed Noom's online evaluation. Noom gave me a price for 4 months of their program and I decided the price was decent, but I wanted to line up my two week free trial with my paycheck. So I waited another week and then I joined.   Because I am someone who likes to get my money's worth from goods and services I purchase, I followed every step of the program. I weighed myself daily, I logged all my food, I read all the articles, and followed all the instructions therein.

And it worked. I lost 43 pounds over five months and I have kept it off for five months. Theses days I am in the healthy BMI range. 

But wait there is more to the story!

You have to consider that I started Noom in March and then in May I found out I had cancer. Now I had a serious reason to continue Noom or a great excuse to throw in the the towel. I decided to stick with Noom and now my goal was not about feeling better about wearing a swim suit. Now I needed to get down to healthy BMI before starting chemo.  According to the research I read, a healthy weight and regular exercise and the best things you can do to avoid cancer. Among the stress of shitty diagnosis and a major surgery, I reached my goal, and again I was at a turning point.

 Food and chemo don't really mix.  Either your taste buds have gone on strike or you a flirting with vomiting.  Eat healthy? exercise?  Ha!  A great time to give up on using Noom- or a really good time to use Noom as a major tool in my arsenal to slay chemo.  I chose to slay. :-)

 I completed chemotherapy without gaining weight and I exercised,either walking, running or riding a stationery bike,  almost every single day ( I skipped about 7 days over five months). The gentle nagging of my notifications and the curriculum  Noom provided was a life saver for me in 2019.

I didn't know what I was in for last year, and I am very glad I had Noom to help me get through some very turbulent times.

Want to check out Noom?  This is my referral link.

New Decade, Who Dis?

Well as you can imagine, I didn't participate in the look where I was in 2009 and look where I am now in 2019 retrospectives that were on Facebook and the like.  In 2009 I had more hair and boobs. Now an inch of hair and the boobs. Welp. It beats letting my boobs kill me.

Anywho... New Decade and I'm still here. In my head, I picture myself at 32. I think far too often as if I am not yet a grown-up and that middle age and retirement are thirty years away.  Turns out, that this year I will be half a century old.  I've already lived longer than many people and I'm much closer to retirement age than my high school years.  Wild how time goes by slowly and far too fast at the same time.  How can I be almost fifty and have two kids that are over 18?  It happened so fast and so slowly at the same time. 

For today, the sun is shining, I'm still here and I think I will go for a run.  Later I'll have another bowl of my soup from yesterday and read a book that I got for free for being a member of the Between the Chapters Book Club run by Kensington Books on Facebook. 

My Goodreads book goal for 2020 is 50 books. Get it?  50 years 50 books?  I love numbers tying into my life and my goals. 

Happy New Year. 2020 is going to be amazing (that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

My year kinda sucked, how about you?

I was planning to write loads of posts in 2019.

Instead, I wound up having cancer and getting to experience surgery, CT scans, MRIs,  and chemo. Chemo is terrible and not that bad at the same time. I was lucky in that I didn't have terrible side effects. For what it's worth, if what you know about cancer and its treatment is derived from TV or Movies rest assured, it's really not like that, of course in TV and film they usually kill off all characters who have cancer which is clearly suboptimal. I do not want life to imitate art in this case.

I like living and I would greatly enjoy getting four more decades on this planet.  The cancer I had, better just stay gone.  To that end, I'm going to be spending the beginning of 2020 doing radiation, I'm all for doing what it takes to get my rate of recurrence as low possible and then I look toward science with my fingers crossed hoping that research going on right now will lead to treatments that will make cancer a chronic disease and not a life-shortening disease for all of us.

Cancer is a real buzzkill when it comes to having fun, making plans, and writing.  Talk about being blindsided by life- or potential death depending on how you want to look at it. Fortunately for me, now that the chemo is over and I've had months to adjust to my genetic predisposition to various cancers, I am ready to get back to life.  Rather I should say back to living and so here we are on New Year's Eve 2019.  Am I doing anything exciting? No. But I am writing, I ran three miles today and I made a new soup recipe.  Exciting?  No. Living? Yes.

The recipe is from this month's Real Simple magazine. Yes, I have the hard copy. I got a deal on a year subscription for $2- can't beat that.

Here is the soup.  It's vegan but still very hearty. The recipe calls for store-bought pesto to be added to the top along with Parmesan cheese crisps, but as you can see I skipped both of those and served it as is.

I looked for a link to the recipe, could not find one, in the magazine it's called Whole Grain Minestrone Soup.  In any case, the ingredients are in the picture above and you can see the directions below. Enjoy!

DIRECTIONS:
Heat the oil in your big pot. Add the first 5 ingredients and cook for 10 mins. Stir occasionally so nothing gets burnt -esp the tomato paste. Then add the rest of the ingredients except the baby kale and simmer for 30 or so minutes until the farro is tender. Take out the rosemary sprig and add the baby kale and simmer for 5 more minutes. If the soup is too thick add up to 3 cups of water.  I added some salt and pepper and Italian seasoning for just a wee bit more flavor.

Happy New Year! I will be focused on a year full of everyone and everything I love to do- so more time with friends and family as well as writing, running, cooking and my resolution for the year- TRY NEW THINGS!