Mother of Re-Invention

I got my annual bloodwork results back. My PCP hasn't seen them yet although almost none of it is a surprise to either of us. She already prescribed Wegovy for me, and told me to go on a true eating plan too.

Results:
-A1c and glucose were high, back to pre-diabetic range.
-iron was low. Need to keep taking iron pills, it appears.
-LDL Cholesterol was high. This has not been an issue in many years, but apparently it's back up.
-My MCHC (hemoglobin in red blood cells) was very low, and RDW (red cell distribution) was high. Pretty sure this means I have anemia, which makes sense because I have been feeling pretty weak and easily out of breath lately.

Turns out a year of stress/grief over-eating and over-drinking isn't good for a middle-aged lady's body.

All of these are diet-related, and can be resolved by eating better. In the most basic sense, my eating habits have been so poor I am malnourished.

So less saturated fats, more protein, less sugary crap, more iron-rich vegetables and proteins.

Took me a year to do this damage, let's see how long it takes me to undo.

We are having our first real "cold" day of the fall, where it is 48 degrees in the morning and 60s in the day, and Molly is already miserable. I wrapped my mom's nap blanket around her last night, but I think she needs a little dog-sized fleece. My husband is also cold. I am just so goddamned happy I don't have to be in shorts and sleeveless top anymore. Bring on the yoga pants!

Finally signed up for Howdy to access China Beach. Verdict: it still holds up. It's only 4 seasons, but each episode is an hour (45+ minutes) and I think the seasons are 22 episodes. That's lots of time to let the stories unwind and the characters develop, and they are making good use of that time. I always thought McMurphy was more self-righteous than she is, so watching her is much more enjoyable this go-round. And KC is more opportunistic and selfish than I remember, which makes her turns toward kindness and connection with the other women a little more satisfying.

I was deep into this ep where the five main women were stuck in a foxhole during a bomb raid, and it was a moment for them to actually talk to each other, tell stories and connect. But then I looked over at Molly who was shaking uncontrollably from the booming sounds, and quickly sped through to the next scene. Poor girl is so, so afraid of storms and loud noises -- PTSD from her Hurricane Ian experience when she was just a baby, and the roof got ripped off my parents' house.

Anyway, I suppose I should do some things today. But I would like to be lazy today if I can. Maybe after chores.

I got my Christmas booth set up yesterday. Moving into a new booth is like moving into dorm rooms in college; it's not quite the exhaustion of moving an entire house, but it is building one room from nothing into something lovely and inviting. But since I am no longer 19-20 years old, the physical exhaustion is overwhelming.

The good news is I got it done enough so I could post pics and customers can freely shop for all kinds of Christmas goodies. I still have a few boxes of inventory to bring in, but it doesn't look half-empty without them. Heck, the booth is going to be open for 3 months, I can bring that stuff in as other items sell.

My cousin and her husband are coming in for the weekend, their first visit to Chicago. They live outside Atlanta, and she and I have gotten pretty close since my dad died. She was there when Mom (her Auntie Honey) died, and she has actually already been here since she drove up with me and Molly when we finally moved back from Florida. But this is their first trip to see us. We were talking about going downtown on Saturday -- do the architecture boat tour, go to the Bean, etc.

But now that Chicago is a police state, with fucking Border Patrol on goddamn boats up and down the river, and groups of masked ICE thugs roaming downtown and plucking up brown families from tourist spots (not to mention the raids on homeless shelters and in one case using fucking BLACK HAWK HELICOPTERS to raid and essentially destroy an apartment building in the middle of the night), well...I don't know that I want to go there this weekend. I don't think my heart could handle seeing my city being invaded this way. I bounce between fury and grief just thinking about it.

I know I have lived in the suburbs for 25+ years, but Chicago is still MY city. I worked there for decades, in the Loop, in museums, in hospitals in good neighborhoods and bad. I have volunteered for 8 years for an organization of primary care clinics all over the North side. Like we used to say in regards to soap operas, I have "done my time" to own my claim to Chicago.

My cousin and her husband are staunch conservatives. We have had several thoughtful conversations about politics and policy (and freaking Trump, who embarrasses them even though they voted for him). I know her first thought isn't "they deserve this, they are illegal, get them out", it's for me and how I will feel about it. I will talk to her tonight and see if they still want to go downtown this weekend since I am sure this is on Fox or whatever they watch. Who knows, maybe they won't want to go for safety reasons. I know I am not afraid for myself; a frumpy middle-aged white lady isn't their target. Yet.

The one task of reselling I put off the longest is the data entry. I have a notebook where I write down everything I buy, where I got it, what I paid for it, and what price I put on it. I use it as I process items so it is always complete. But then it needs to go into a spreadsheet, for taxes. Technically I only need that once a year, so I tend to put off entering it until the end of the year. Mistake! Because once I enter it, I ALSO then need to take each monthly sales list and find those items in the spreadsheet to mark them as sold. And I always, always, always forget that finding the sold items is just as time-consuming and tedious, if not more so, than entering them in the spreadsheet to begin with.

There is some nerdy value in doing this; I can sort the data to see what categories are my biggest sellers, what is the most popular, what never sells, etc. I can judge which months are busiest/slowest, my average price point, etc. There is satisfaction in getting this completed, and I get to re-live some really good sales especially the ones where I got a great ROI.

This year, though, there is also a deep sadness. I am only in the March/April inventory additions, and so many of the pages are items from my parents' house, or items I sourced while I was in Florida. As I type I can picture them in their house, I remember boxing them up and packing them into the pod. Sometimes I can even picture my parents using them or showing them to me, but this is less common; it's not that I don't remember, it's that most of what I am selling from their house is stuff they had tucked away unused and mostly forgotten. But then there are the ones that are sucker punches: Dad's gingerbread clock, Mom's CIC gift clock, the gurgle pots I bought for Dad over the last few years, the frames that Mom used for the family pictures in her bedroom.

I need to take breaks in doing this, but when I do it still just hangs over me, waiting to be finished. The only way through is through, page by page. I peeked ahead and I only have 5-10 more that included random house items.

Then it's 80+ MORE pages of thrifted/estate sale items that I have bought since I came home!

Oh, that sounds really bad. Did I buy that much stuff? Yes, but itemizing all of it makes it seem like more than it is. For instance, I bought a shoebox full of Barbie clothes and shoes for $20, but it filled 3 pages of the notebook when I sorted it all separately.

Ok, this has been a long enough break. Back to data entry. Pray for me!

I have some Charlie Kirk thoughts that aren't really appropriate to put down anywhere else. Mostly because they are lengthy and speculative about the future, and no one is really talking about that yet. It's a bit longer than my earlier musings on the topic.

( Read more... )

I hope this isn't completely nuts but I am temporarily adding a new booth for 3 months just for Christmas.

Here are the pros:
1. The manager is giving me a great deal on the rent. It helps her so she doesn't have to worry about bringing in a new vendor during our busiest season, and of course it makes it much easier for me to make a profit.

2. I already have enough display fixtures in my basement so I don't need to buy anything extra.

3. I have an insane amount of Christmas inventory. At least 12 full shelves in my basement. I couldn't sell any of it last year because I was in Florida, and I had been stockpiling. It will take me years to sell it all.

4. It was going to be a massive logistical challenge taking things out of my current booths to make room, and now I don't have to. So I don't lose potential sales on those items. And it cuts down my work in half -- I only have to concentrate on setting up/tearing down 1 small booth, not 2 or 3.

5. Hopefully this will go a long way toward my basement project in terms of selling off my excess inventory. I am even going to put price tags on the fixtures (the shelves and tables) and maybe sell some of them too!

6. Will be a good distraction during this first season without my parents. They both died around the holidays last year, so it's all I would be thinking about otherwise.


Here are the cons:
1. It's a lot of extra work.

2. I had other projects queued up for September but now it just needs to be pricing ornaments 24/7!


Yeah, it will be worth it. Cha-ching!

What I wanted to talk about this morning before I side-tracked myself:

It's time for me to get healthy, again. I have no idea what I weigh but I know it's not good. I don't think I want to know. My eating has been for shit, I drink way too much and too often, and now that I have been back in Illinois I don't even walk the dog like I used to. None of the clothes I was wearing in Florida fit, and I was heavy then. My face and chin are unrecognizable, my ankles are weaker than they have ever been, and I sweat all the time. I am right back to, maybe even worse than, when I started on Medifast 3 years ago. (Two?)

I have done every diet imaginable. I know what I am supposed to do, how much I am supposed to eat. I don't want to follow a program, or have a coach, or even post online about it. (For now, lol.)

So I am just going to start. One meal at a time, one day at a time. Looking at the long view and the short one. Small tweaks and large ones. I will talk to my PCP at my appointment in October about a different weight-loss drug than Zepbound. Just eat better foods, choose health over comfort, move more. I will let my clothing be my guide as to my progress. I don't care about the number on the scale.

I cannot go up another size. I cannot go back on diabetes meds. So this is my solution.

Posting here as a marker for a calendar date.

Even when you don't officially get a regular paycheck, you still need days off. It seemed like a weird concept at first but I have learned my mind and body need it.

So today is a day off. Not doing laundry, or cleaning out the garage, or whittling down papers in the to-do manila folder on my desk.

I'm gonna get dressed, drive to the northwest suburbs, and pick up a cute plant stand from a fellow reseller. She gave me some tips on the good thrifts in her area so I will check those out too.

Then I will come home and hang out on my porch with my dogs.

Maybe I will unload the dishwasher later. Maybe.

But I am not even wearing my hearing aids today. I don't need to talk to anyone.

Have a good day, everyone!

As a reward for finally re-grouting the shower (instead of talking about it or moving it around my to-do list in hopes it would re-grout itself) I am sitting down at my pretty desk in my pretty office and posting for a few minutes.

I am shockingly making headway-(ish) in my Big projects. First, of course, I re-grouted the stupid shower. I saw the financial planner and accountant on Monday -- and now have a list of follow-ups from those meetings to add to my to-do list. The HVAC guy came to do the annual maintenance on the AC, and sent me a quote for a new HVAC system to replace the basement boiler (which I hate). But the roof must come first, so my next task is to call the two recommendations I got to get estimates on a new roof. That's tomorrow's Big Task, along with cleaning up my paperwork pile and getting any tasks in there done.

The daily routine stuff is coming along nicely. The bed gets made in the morning, the dogs and I cuddle, the dishes get done, and everything is tidied. I have even banged out 10 pages of inventory -- 80 more to go!

The weather is finally kind of cool (70s) so right now I am headed to the garage to start cleaning that beast out. A lot of it is just taking pics and putting things for sale on Marketplace. Get that junk OUT!

I miss my mom's affection.

She was a physically demonstrative person. She hugged and kissed and would smooth my hair and kiss my forehead. She was like that to all of us, curving her hand around our chins or cheeks to give us a kiss, Dad included. Molly too. Now, when I cup Molly's chin, she melts into it, her eyes and bones going soft and sad.

My cousin commented after she died, that like her mother, Mom kissed us "on the mouth", but it wasn't something the rest of her family did. I never really thought about the distinction; both Mom and Dad always kissed us on the lips. But I guess different families kiss in different ways. I think it came from Babchi (our grandmother); I remember her kissing me on the lips all the time. It's just the way our family does it. Or used to do it.

And I miss it a lot.

I have so many pictures of my Dad and I smooching, of my Mom going in for a weepy hug with me. She had this way, when she saw you for the first time in a while, where her facial expression would change, her smile growing soft and warm and big, like you made her heart feel better just from the sight of you. She bestowed that warm, welcoming smile on everyone in her life, not just us. I bet it's why her friends miss her as much as we do.

That last month I was living with Mom, we were extra-affectionate. As a kid, when she got home from work, she was always so exhausted. At night she would plop down on the ground in front of us on the couch (mostly me, but often Kate), and we would rub her scalp or shoulders. She loved the scalp rub so much, her neck lolling with a big sigh. When she got sick, she suffered from bad edema in her legs, so we rubbed her feet at night. My dad did it first, of course, but when it was just us after he died, I took on the nightly task. She appreciated it just as much as she did when it was her scalp. We would sit on the couch together, her feet on a pillow on my lap. Molly had to come sit on the big ottoman in front of us because there wasn't room for her on couch (and she did not like that). Mom and I would talk while I rubbed and tried to move some of the excess fluid out of her toes and ankles. Plans or stories or just anything. It was a nice quiet moment for us.

We hugged a lot, too. She had taken to saying an old Polish phrase she had never used before; I think it was a long-forgotten memory from her mother or grandmother. "Daj mi buzi," she would say as she stopped while passing me in her rollerator in the house.

Doh-meh-boo-gji. I said I didn't know what it meant. "Give me a kiss," she said. I smiled and gave her one. When the boys arrived (her grandsons), she added a tap to her lips when she said it so they knew what she wanted. They got it.

For months after they died, I couldn't really mourn them as my parents because I could not stop reliving the moments of their deaths. One of the memories that would kick off a reliving jag was saying goodnight to Mom the first night she was in hospice. After a long day of the ER and observation and then the ambulance trip to the hospice, she was completely worn out but the drugs were finally kicking in so she could rest. I leaned over to say goodnight, giving her a kiss on the lips, and her arm haphazardly came up to my head. I could feel the back of her hand pressing the back of my head. She was trying to give me a hug, the only way she could now. It's the last time she was able to touch me; after that she was mostly unconscious so the physical affection was only from me to her. This was her last hug for me.

At least now, when I think about that moment -- and still have that tactile memory against the back of my head -- the memories that flood back are all of the other affectionate moments of our lives. Which is still incredibly sad and brings on floods of tears, but it's much less painful than reliving her death. Daj mi buzi, Mom.