Working together

My husband went and had his annual physical this year with the VA. He has gained a bit of weight and his cholesterol is borderline. His doctor said they want to give him a chance to change his diet, and lose weight before they stuck him on a Statin drug. So now I am on a mission! A mission to do an overhaul on our diet and exercise and to make US healthy so that we can live a long, long life together. We sat down with my Cooking Light magazines and one of the MANY cookbooks that I have, and went through each recipe. We marked the ones that would benefit both of our diets. We set him up with a Sparkpeople page to help him track his food. It feels better to do this together b/c I have seriously been faltering the last 2 mths with my own dieting and exercising.

Tonight, for dinner, we had 6oz. of baked fish (Pangasius) and he had 4 oz of steamed asparagus, and I had 1.5 oz of asparagus. Yum! Tomorrow night we are trying a vegetarian lasagna. And if I can wake up early enough in the morning, I will grill a chicken breast and send it along with a baby spinach salad for him to take to work. Woohoo! Finally motivated again!

My trip to the ER

Let me start off before I went to the ER last night.

On Tuesday, I started getting a cough and achy joints from the hips down. I told my husband that I was probably coming down with a cold. Which sucks. Because I am diabetic. And it takes FOREVER to heal.

Wednesday morning I woke up and the cough felt really deep in my chest. Then later on in the day it felt like a sharp pain behind my right shoulder. I took a hot shower and then coughed up nasty dark phlegm (sorry but just leading up to it all).

So my husband got home and I told him I was worried that maybe I was coming down with swine flu or something because of all the aches and pains. Around 9:30pm last night, I finally told him to take me to the ER, because I was worried that maybe, just maybe, I had pneumonia.

Got the Memorial Hermann ER and was seen right away. Got a breathing treatment, while they stuck an IV needle in my arm and drew blood, made me pee in a cup, then stuck a long little brush up both sides of my nose (OMG I think it touched my brain! it freaking hurt!) to test for the flu. Sent me to Xray and had my chest xray'd and doctor came in and said " You seem to have a touch of pneumonia".

So they hooked up an antibiotic to the IV and let it drip for an hour. Nurse came in, disconnected the bag, pulled out the IV and left the room.

5 seconds later.......

...came back into the room with an OMG! look on her face and holding a bag of sodium chloride says, "I'm sorry, I was supposed to give you this one too". WTH??

So said nurse has to stick a NEW IV into my arm, which was just lovely, and hook me up for another hour of IV dripping into my veins. By this time it is 2 in the morning and when she comes in to remove IV I say "Go find out if this is it b/c you ARE NOT STICKING me again." So comes back in 5 minutes later with another bag just to make sure I am hydrated. Meanwhile, the ER Doc is on the phone with my doc discussing if they should admit me into the hospital. Outcome...we think it's safe for her to go home.

So he comes in and they remove the IV and the nurse takes my heart rate....99. So he checks my pulse..99. So they put the little thingy on my finger.....240!

I have to lie down and they hook me up to the EKG and ......99. Freaky. I was really worried that I was having a heart attack or something even though I felt fine and normal.

They released me at 4am, came home, went to bed, went to my doc's office at 8am, got the all clear, filled my prescriptions which consisted of 2 antibiotics, 1 albuterol pump and (mercy me!) Robitussin with codeine. I have gotten a total of 6 hours of sleep today but only in 3 hr increments as the coughing is waking me up. Hoping for a better day tomorrow and that they caught this early enough for me not to end up in the hospital.

Forgot to add...

I bought a bunch of new workout clothes. Really colorful and I am ready to start using them. Tomorrow I am going to go to the gym in town and check it out. I need to start going to the gym because my cardio is not enough to lose more weight.I have plateaued out this past month. I need to add the dreaded weights to my workout, Uggh! I hate lifting, even if I can bench 100 lbs! (Well, it impresses me so who cares!?)

I have 2 requirements of the gym......a.) rowing machine and b.) sauna. Everything else is just an added bonus LOL.

A Late Valentines Celebration

You know what? I just love my husband. He understands the times when I just need to slow down and relax. We didn't celebrate V-Day b/c he and his boss watched NASCAR and if any of you or any of your other halves watch NASCAR, then you know they had like some 6 hour delay. So my husband's boss was here ALL DAY Sunday.

Well tonight he comes home from work and I tell him we are just going to go eat somewhere b/c I really did not want to cook tonight. There is a little Italian restaurant  owned by this little old Italian man in town. And I told my husband I wanted to go eat there tonight (because I really wanted a good glass of Italian wine!). We waited to be seated and then ordered our food and wine and we sat and talked and it was so nice. I love this place. People sit in there for hours, enjoying their loved ones as it is custom to do in Italy. To sit and eat and "visit" with each other after a long day is so wonderful. I wish we could do that every night. We were in this place for a little over 2 hours. So were all the people that were there when we came in. I am thinking of making this a monthly event so that I can just spend that time with my husband.

After 3 yrs

Before.

During.

After!

We finally painted the first room in our house. Now the builders had put some kind of flat beige paint on the walls when they built our house but I've been saying since 2007 that I was going to paint every room a different color. So Friday, my husband and I headed over to Lowe's and picked up a huge selection of paint sample cards and walked around the house putting them up against the wall until we found the one we wanted for the front guest bedroom. The front bedroom is where we have decided to start and we will work our way (EVENTUALLY) from the front to the back. My plan is to go through each room, completely clean it out. Go through everything and throw away junk and put aside things for a garage sale and keep the things we need. I hate clutter and my husband is a total pack rat! So we went back to Lowes, Saturday morning, bought everything we needed and then some, and preceded to tape off the entire room and then paint it. I think we did a great job and it came out really nice. Since the rest of my house is still beige and the front room is now a dark Lilac, I keep gravitating towards that room to stare in awe at the pretty color. LOL. Next weekend we are painting the guest bathroom a nice yellow color. It feels good to start finally putting our personal touch on our home.

Found some motivation....

....within myself this week.

I have decided to do the treadmill twice a day for the rest of this week. I may or may not keep up that pace after that but this week, it's on.

My body is hurting in places I forgot it could hurt but it's a good hurt. It's a "hey you finally remembered I (says the muscles) exist!" Yeah, it hurts for now but it won't hurt forever.

I would like to be able to build up to walk/run 4 miles a day no less than 5 days a week, then move on to 5 miles/ 5 days a week by the end of March. It's daunting b/c my butt is so out of shape but I will attempt to do it.

And speaking of butts, I have like no butt at all. It's why buying pants sucks b/c for some reason, people who make jeans forgets that some people don't have butts or hips but they sew in a huge space for them anyways and then b/c my waist is an inch wider than my hips, my pants fall off of my bootie. And even when I'll be able to fit into said pants with smaller waist than hips, the butt will be saggy b/c I don't have a butt to fill it out. I will prob have to switch to men's jeans. Ah, the unfairness of it all!

The Count

One, one time on the treadmill today ...ah ah ah!

Two, two times on the treadmill today....ah ah ah!

I am a glutton for punishment.