burnin

So far it seems that we've dodged a huge freezing rain bullet, although it's just past noon and the rain is still lightly falling. The trees have slowly become glazed and I can see the branches drooping under the weight. Luckily it's about 2C warmer than they forecast so the rain is not getting as much chance to freeze before it hits the ground - good for the trees, but just as bad for the roads! This year's ice storm is a bit early - they are often in April - so I hope it's not a two-fer this year!

My new favorite singer is Jelly Roll - have you listened to him at all? ‘Burnin’ came on while I was on the treadmill this morning so I took the time to think about what it is I like about his music… First there's the lyrics that seem to be saying my words, singing my struggles - you can hear the pain in his voice, but there's also strength and hope in the notes behind him. The hard beat drives my steps forward - there's no giving up! The melody raises my spirits and reminds me that while I've had some hard times, the good times far outweigh any struggle, and that perhaps the struggle is what makes everything else so wonderful.

I'm doing an experiment with the tamoxifen… the last two days I've tried taking it in the morning, but it's too soon to tell if the time change will help. Both yesterday and today I had a hard time pushing through exercise - yesterday I couldn't even manage anything other than a slowish walk on the treadmill - weights were out of the question. This morning I did my regular routine but gosh, it was hard. Really hard. And I can still feel it a few hours later - that is not my norm. I had to slow down and decrease incline on the treadmill at times today as my strength seemed to drain out of me a few times, but I kept on and DID IT!

I'm pretty good at pushing through hard things, probably with all the practice with my mental health, but I can honestly say that it is much easier to press myself physically than it is mentally. For the physical I have a strong feeling of ‘try’, while when I'm having mood issues the ‘try’ is what is missing or if not missing, only faintly there. Actually, maybe it's only rarely missing, and usually there, even if faint.

I just saw the mallards in the pond while I was making tea. There's been a pair that visits for a few days every year since I can remember. I spend ages watching out that window in the kitchen - it's a wonder that I haven't sliced a finger off when using the cutting board! It overlooks the bird feeder which is a hub of activity. Lately the goldfinches have been there in huge flocks - they are starting to turn back to their brilliant yellow. The early red-wing blackbirds visit as well - their red & yellow epaulets are slowly becoming more vivid.

Behind the bird feeder and about 20 feet downhill is the pond. We've seen kingfishers, great grey herons, owls, turkey vultures, otters, beavers (one built a lodge for a few months), racoons, and of course squirrels and chippies. Oh and a few foxes, coyotes and of course deer! That window is tied for my favorite place in the house. My favorite is my bathtub - it's got huge windows on two sides, and a mirror on the third side that reflects what is out the other window. I can often see birds hopping around in the trees.  I wonder how many ‘joy points’ these windows have given me over the years!

Thursday we celebrated Carm's birthday with some friends over dinner. Trudie, Leo, Pat, Marie, and Liston gathered around the table with us for an evening of laughter and reminiscing. Trudie & Leo have decided to put their farm up for sale and move into a retirement community - it is a big change for them and certainly the end of an era. Last night we had a last minute dinner at their place which is just 1km down the road - those easy dinners will come to an end…

Awesome!

“friends around the table”

“music”

“the best night sleep in weeks”

sugar in the air

I'm going to start this post like I did the last one, but it's the opposite so good! Well, that didn't last long… I was back to normal for part of yesterday but awful for the other part… this morning I'm great with only tendrils of anxiety and dark thoughts, although not tons of motivation. So I guess I'll just have to hang on for the ride and keep reminding myself that nothing is forever! Or in other words ‘Carry on as if I were Normal!” ha ha ha!

I can do this!

Today there is a haze of sugar in the air as so often happens on March 27th! I made Carm's burnt sugar cake yesterday and just now finished with the fudge icing. We'll be on a good sugar high tonight! Friends are coming for supper to help Carm celebrate the flipping of the calendar to a new and bigger year.  I cheated a bit with supper though with pre-made lasagne as the main. I'm making some ribs (Italian style) and a broccoli salad to round things out. Easy peasy! 

Later in the afternoon… hang on and fake it till you make it! I have to remember that it's just my brain playing tricks on me - ignore and smile!

Awesome!

“a good morning!”

“licking the beaters - oh that sugar!”

“a sunny morning - always uplifting”

“dogs asleep in the sunspot that they love so much”

“the right song playing just as my energy is flagging”

while it lasted

Well, that didn't last long… from about 2pm on Sunday to 2pm on Monday I felt great… One day of ‘normal’ and now I'm back deep into anxiety about everything… I'm always an optimist or pessimist, depending on which way on the pendulum my mood swings - if I'm depressed, it will never end… also, if I'm on the upside, I think that it will never end… hurray and alas for being wrong…

For the last several months I've been so wrapped up in fatigue and teetering on the edge of depression, that I've not been there for people, both friends and family. So many people I care about are having their own issues, but I can't seem to get myself together to help out where I could. I don't know how to get past this stagnation and its accompanying spiral of guilt. 

Then there's the piles of stuff around the house that need addressing, but I look at them and feel defeated and wonder if this will be my life for the next 4 ½ years... 

But I had one day! Surely there will be more…

Somehow though, I'm able to exercise and eat reasonably well most days, so not all is lost! I can't seem to heal my brain but gosh darn! I'm not going to give up on my body as well! 😱  I guess it's one thing that I seem able to control so my efforts go there, leaving not much left for anything else…

A quick dash into the google rabbit hole suggests that tamoxifen has shown promise in diminishing bipolar mania, but it can also trigger bipolar depression. So there's always that 😞 … I'll just make up my mind to get through it… will the power of positive thinking be enough?

ENOUGH WHINING!

Zumba was great yesterday (it was in the morning before the crash). I was starting to know where my feet should be based on the beat of the music. Oh sure, some of the steps were too fast for me so I just jogged in place, but I got some! It energized me so I got onto the treadmill for a leisurely walk when we got home - part way through is when I nosedived…

The owl was back again! This time I got a blurry photo - I really had to zoom in as it was all the way past the barn. We've still got some snow on the ground, but I'd estimate that 90% of the field has melted. It was a slow and orderly melt this year - the creek flooded as usual but the waters went down quickly once the river's ice jam had released. The last few days have been grey with spatters of snow and rain… and the upcoming week looks like more of the same with little sun…

Awesome!

“24 hours of feeling like my own self!”

myself again

Today is the first day since I've been fully back on tamoxifen that I've felt like myself. I'm not dragging myself around in a haze and still have some energy even after walking an extra 50 minutes on top of the hour that I had done in the morning. My head is still a bit foggy but I suspect that will never go away - hopefully it will improve some more as I often don't feel very alert to what is going on around me. It’s a bit discouraging as I was so happy to get some of my brain back after I stopped lithium 2 years ago - alas, it's even worse…

Friday night we had some last minute guests. Olaf & Steph came after work on Friday for a short visit - they were gone by 10:30 the next morning. It was fun to see them… although I was in bed 2 hours before everyone else!

On Friday I got busy with a bit of cooking and had two failures and one near failure :-( First I burnt the chickpeas to a blackened crisp. Dooh. Then I made scarpaccia from zucchini that we'd pre prepped and frozen last summer… It was on the verge of turning black when I took it out of the oven. We were able to rescue some of it but it didn't turn out like it normally does. Then the focaccia! That can't burn! It's too much darn work to get it to that point (as was the scarpaccia but let's not go there!)... so I set the timer for 16 minutes instead of the 19 that it normally takes. It came out on the dark side of perfect at the reduced time! If I had gone by the normal time it would have burned!

What the actual heck! I burned things in two different ovens… but, both the scarpaccia and the focaccia were in the big oven. My theory is that the garlic oil that I used had more suspended particles that were maybe more prone to burning… I guess I'll have to run a few experiments (but even though I feel better today than I have for a while, I do not have the energy to futz around with the oven…)

This morning Carm took the dogs out like normal and as I was fixing their breakfast in the kitchen I happened to look out the window and there on the fence down by the barn was a giant owl! I grabbed the binocs and watched it for ages. The dogs were sniffing around but it didn't fly away until Carm wandered down - he didn't see it until it flew away! There are so many squirrels and mice around that it could feast for days. 

Awesome!

“a quiet night in”

“feasting on finger food”

“the owl!”

“flocks and flocks of geese overhead”

“my amazing sketchers that I wear on the treadmill everyday! Still going strong after over a 1000 km!”

past the ides of march

 Spring arrived officially today at 5:01am! The robins showed up today as if on cue - I saw several rooting around in the brown grass outside the treadmill window. The geese have been arriving for several days, as have the odd red-wing blackbird. The birdsong has several new voices creating a cacophony of discordant music. But oh what a sound! It's gotta be on my top 20 favorites 😉 

I've been fully on a half dose of tamoxifen for over a week now and as I expected, I had a few rough days of insane fatigue and nausea when I increased from ¼ to ½. But the last few days have been a bit better so hopefully the trend will continue - it's been 3 days now that I've started back into my workout routine but gosh, I’m having to push myself through the fatigue... In the meantime, my temperature regulator has been going haywire - I'm grateful for any break from dripping with sweat or being chilled to the bone - I will never take having a ‘normal’ temperature for granted again!

The temps have been unseasonably warm so yesterday Carm and I ventured out for a long walk along the quiet part of our country road. It was spectacular! We are debating on whether to bring the dogs next time… we don't ever walk them off the property as I figure it's less likely that they will take themselves out for a solo walk, but maybe I'm being over cautious. They would certainly enjoy the outing 😀 

This morning I ventured into town with Carm on his trip to Costco and had him drop me off to see Mom & Dad. It had been ages so it was nice to spend some time with them. It's been a long winter for all of us I think!

Zumba has been cancelled two weeks in a row but should resume again next Monday - we'll see if the break made me more agile on my feet - I highly doubt it! In the evenings I distract myself with FB reels - sometimes the algorithm brings me lots of exercise videos which are very motivating. I've saved dozens of dance/zumba reels but never seem to remember to try practicing with one or two of them. I feel that if I were to practice moving my feet more, I might improve… ha ha ha. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that I can even walk without tripping!

I've droned on and on this last year about diet and exercise - it's almost an obsession… but anyway, I log my food into an app that calculates not only calories and macros, but also micros (vitamins and minerals). It's a challenge to meet everything in the calorie deficit that I've been keeping and no matter what I did, I could not lose weight but was gaining, even on 1200 calories a day. That sucked! And I was hungry all the time… So I delved deeper into the internet to get some ideas on what I was doing wrong.

It seems that I was not eating enough calories and that they were the wrong kind. I rarely hit my protein goal, well actually, I didn't pay much attention to it. So after reading a ton of stuff, I started adding my exercise to the app and ADDING the extra calories I burned in the form of protein and wouldn't you know! My weight has been stable for a few weeks (I actually lost 5 pounds when I started) even though I'm eating a ton more calories. I'm HOPING that I've been gaining muscle, but my fancy scale doesn't seem to think I have. I'm not worrying about it at the moment, especially since I started back on the tamoxifen which does cause weight gain… I know I seem hung up on the numbers on the scale, but it's the easiest metric to gauge my progress.

AND GOSH DARN IT - I've worked so hard to get to this point I don't want to backslide! I like the way I look in the mirror 😉 It thrills me to see a new muscle pop out! 💪 

We had a little earthquake here yesterday! It sounded and felt like a giant truck driving by but it went on and on and rattled things that wouldn't be rattled by a truck. I found a website that showed a chart of tremors and sure enough, it wasn't our imagination.

I think the restart of the tamoxifen played havoc with my mood and anxiety as I was on the verge of a full blown panic attack 80% of the time, on top of everything else… that has calmed down somewhat the last few days. Plus I've been better at staying off of social media which is a cesspool of anxiety causing conversations. I keep up to date by reading a few daily emails from trusted sources and mostly stay away from everything else. I'm not perfect though and sometimes end up down a rabbit hole into a quagmire of manure.

An old song came on my playlist this afternoon which seemed apropos given the current state of global affairs... 'Eve of Destruction' by Barry Maguire is an oldy from the sixties when fears of nuclear war was in the backs of everyone's mind...

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you, boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'
I'm sittin' here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction

I'm writing this in 'Blogger' as my old method no longer works but unfortunately the numbers and extra characters don't work... very frustrating and annoying. Not even an exclamation mark... and there's no formatting like indent. Boo hiss.

Awesome!

“first long walk of the year”

“robins! red-winged blackbirds! geese!”

“tofu crumbles”

“snow melting”

into March

I was shocked this afternoon when I checked my blog for my last post… which is over a month ago! I guess it's a barometer of sorts although I've been feeling okay for the last few weeks. So what's been happening… well, I'm often in freak out mode with what is going on south of the border. I don't have much optimism for the next few years but try not to dwell on my fear. 

Well, I do have a faint amount of optimism with our new prime minister but we shall see if he can swing the gloves at Trump. Of course, with the bullshit in politics the conservatives are already making stuff up. And we'll have lots of election interference from the USA… so everybody - CHECK FACTS! And why the F! has PP not bothered getting a security clearance so that he can be briefed on national security. WHY?

When I'm not curled up in a ball nearly hysterical, I'm on the treadmill and for the last few weeks I've added weights to my daily workout. I feel stronger and can even see some muscles (although at the moment I'm wiped - it was a big day for me today! 30 minutes of weights & floor exercises, 5 minutes on the bike, 90 minutes on the treadmill at high incline, and then 15 minutes out on the snowshoes - it was warm and sunny!) I certainly earned my dinner tonight!

Speaking of supper… a few weeks ago I made buckwheat groats as a side… they were okay but very bland. Today I chopped an onion, added garlic & herbs, then stirred in chopped yellow peppers and cherry tomatoes. Much better! (note to self: 1 cup broth, ⅔ cup groats, 3 min HP, 10 NR). Easy and quick :-) Buckwheat is a whole grain that feeds our microbiome. It was delicious with the salmon that we treated ourselves with.

We've had only a tiny bit of social life - last week we had Trudie & Leo for supper one night and Pat for supper another night. Tomorrow J&D are coming for lunch and then Pat again later in the week for supper. There've been other forays into the world but they've been few and far between. The weather has been a factor keeping us home.

In late January I took a break from Tamoxifen… the depression was getting real, not to mention weight gain, hair loss, hot flashes & cold chills, and a myriad of other irritations… my side effects cleared up eventually, although some took a good 4 weeks to resolve… I had an appointment with the medical oncologist a few weeks ago and she suggested trying 10mg every other day for a few weeks and then try 10mg daily - down from 20mg every day. It's been a week and things are going okay.

The dogs have been enjoying the occasional foray into the field - we've got a grid of paths that wind through the field. It's probably been the best winter for snowshoeing in years.

The weather forecast for the next week is looking awesome with a few days in a row of double digits! Hurrah!

I miss the simplicity of COVID!

Awesome!

“flashes of spring”

“date walnut oat chocolate squares”

“just dates in general - who knew they were so healthy!”

“roasted chickpeas”