Sore Knees and the Quest for Fitness

Yesterday an attractive young lady(30-40 yo) said to me as she was showing me through her business  "okay then young lady you just come this way and you be careful that you don't hurt yourself".  I was momentarily insulted to be addressed in such a patronizing manner.  I decided that I needed to join yet another gym.  I work in Opelousas part-time and I am in Breaux Bridge full time.  My favorite gym that I don't attend is Sure Fit.  The people there are wonderful, funny and seem happy to see me every time I wander in.  I have been giving them my money for two years and haven't seen the inside.  I figured that I needed another gym  not to attend on the days that I am in Opelousas so I joined Community Fitness.  They were running a special for 99$ a year including the use of their pool.  This need for fitness came about last week when I was working with my daughter in the ER.  On our break she talked me into walking around the outside of the hospital a total of 2 times.  It rather felt good to stretch my legs and I was sweating just a little when we went back inside.  Then my knee started to hurt. It continued to hurt into the  next week and still hurts.  I am sitting here typing with an ice pack on it and feeling really old.   Anyway, so yesterday Stan drove me to the gym and I limped in, filled out the paperwork and then asked if they could show me around.  My knee was killing me but I managed to keep up and got the 50 cent tour.  I can only ride the bikes for now and she suggested not much resistance.  I will also do some upper body work.  I am in the worse shape I have been in in years.  When I was at my highest weight at over 300 lbs I was in better shape.  I have been just floating along getting older, more stiff and feeling the arthritis move around in my body.  I haven't put on any weight recently but I haven't lost any either.  The young lady comment was meant to be nice but it stuck in my craw like a burr.  I say stuff like that to my older lady patients in the ER.  I never knew that I was being patronizing.  The thing it did for me was wake me up.  I am not a young lady, I am a sixty year old grandma-to-be who is hiding a bikini clad body under 100 pounds of adipose.  If I don't do my level best to get rid of this fat I am going to be using a cane to get around and I will be damned if that happens before I am 75.  I figure that for the next month if I can ride a stationary bike for about 30 min or start a slow walk for a mile 5 days a week that will be a start. I am really anxious to see my peeps at Sure Fit.  I know they will be happy to see me and will help me in any way.  I just have to dig deep to maintain the motivation.  Someone asked me if I wanted an exercise buddy.  Not now.  For now I am on a solitary journey that will take all my concentration.  I have found that talking and walking aren't such a good mix for me.  I tend to be competitive and in about 50 lbs will find a partner to work out with but not now.  I can do this.

Rebekah May 4, 2012

May 4th represented an educational triumph for my daughter. She was awarded her Masters in Nursing and is a Family Nurse Practitioner or will be when she sits for her exam. I am in awe of her. She knows so much and is able to put into practice all that she has learned. She is a credit to the profession and will be a blessing for those she treats. Her husband, in-laws, mom,dad, grandmother Thelma, and her brother and sister-in-law all were there to witness her graduation and celebrate her success. We had a blast. Congradulations sweetheart.

Happy Birthday Joshua 35 Years of Pictures

Happy Birthday to my son. I had a blast looking through boxes of pictures and had to really limit myself. I had added several from his wedding to Syd but took them out because I already have the same pictures on a previous blog. Josh you are such a gift from God and I thank Him daily for allowing me to help you grow.

Aunt Edna: RIP

Edna was my mother's younger sister. She was the daughter of Cleo and James White. She was Paul Bagley's wife, Billy and Judy's mom, Kimberly,Michael, Molly and Julie's grandmother. She was aunt to Barbara, Patti and me. She was a hoot. I can still see her at my niece's wedding dancing the stripper song with a feather in her hand. Edna was a registered nurse, graduating from Grant Hospital School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio during a time when nurses wore caps and capes, scrubbed floors and actually cooked the patients meals. Her daughter and niece(me) and great niece(Rebekah) followed her career choice into nursing. She worked for Dr. Layton Schaffer as his office nurse for over 25 years and retired in his service. She and my mom shared holidays and we grew up with our cousins, sharing special meals, laughter and love. She really had a wicked sense of humor, anything and everything was fair game. I remember times when I laughed till I cried around her.

The last time I saw her was a year ago. She was smaller, older but she was still Aunt Edna. I started to cry and she said "I'm not dead yet, don't cry".

I believe that sometime this morning there was a party in heaven. Her sister Inalee, her husband Paul, her granddaughter Julie and her mom and dad were there to welcome her home. Good bye Aunt Edna you will be missed.

Baby Hart

About a week ago my son Joshua and daughter-in-law Sydni came to see me. Joshua said I have a present for you and as he was talking he kept fiddling with something in his hand. He then handed the object in his hand to me and I looked at it. It took a good 10 seconds or longer to me to process what I was looking at. It was the positive pregnancy test that they had taken. I was stunned then I bent over and cried. I was beyond thrilled. What a wonderful day. I was so honored that I was the first that they told. What was most amazing was that I was able to keep their secret until they wanted others to know. I will never forget when they came into the ER and had a pregnancy test done. I was not at the station when the results came in and no one else knew why they were there. When I came back in Heather had a lab result paper in her hand and her expression was like a deer in headlights. She had the paper clutched to her chest and she was just staring at me. I nodded to her to let he know that I knew and she started to laugh and hugged me. The big deal was to keep it quiet in the ER so that "Taunt" Jill wouldn't find out till the kids could tell her. A few days later Josh came by to see Jill and asked her if Grande Taunte Jill was the proper term. Apparently that meant 'big' aunt Jill and not great aunt. Took her a minute too, to figure out what he was trying to say. She thought that he was telling her that Ellie the dog was having puppies(Jill owns Ellie's mom) Now everyone knows and all are thrilled so when, years from now, Baby Hart reads his or her grandma's blog he/she will know that from the first there was an abundance of love.

Nutrasystem Day 1

No I am not going to blog each day about my diet. That would bore the crap out of me and anyone who reads this. I have another blog that I will put entries on that hopefully will keep me motivated. I hate being fat. I am just cumbersome and it irks me that I cannot move like I used to. I have short and long term goals that are measurable. I am going to have breakfast now and I will be happy!!!

Resolutions

I didn't want to rush the process of trying to figure out what my New Year's resolutions would be this year. I actually sat down with pen in hand to try to figure out a list that would be attainable and practical. I wondered how long it would be before I managed to break any resolutions that I would make. I decided not to write anything until I had a handle on what was going to stick. My first resolution was of course to go on a low carb diet. That lasted less than ten seconds because as I was typing my list I was eating a cookie. I can multitask. I had the cookie firmly held between my lips while I was typing with both hands. In fact I had 4 more cookies waiting on the table next to my computer. The next resolution was to go to the gym on the days that I get off work. That resolution lasted less than 36 hours. The gym is on my way home and I have been paying them every month for two years. I haven't darkened their doorstep in over a year. I went to work on Wednesday night and on the way home in the morning I passed the gym and remembered that I was supposed to stop and walk for 30 minutes. I didn't want to turn around because the street was busy so I decided that I would walk the dog through my neighborhood a distance of exactly one mile. I got home, had to run to the potty(no bladder control) and while there stripped off my clothes and put on my jammies. THEN I remembered that I was supposed to walk. Well poop. Okay I felt I could still salvage this because I have an exercise ball that I bought over a year ago and have not inflated. I got it out to blow up and realized that I needed to look up something on the computer... like how much weight does this thing hold? I got sidetracked on the computer because I had crops to harvest on Farmville. It's a damn shame that you can't lose weight playing computer games. By the time I got around to looking up the weight limit on my exercise ball it was time to go to bed. I did lay on my back in bed and raise each leg 10 times. My next resolution was to clean house and keep it in order. Its been two weeks and I still have Christmas decorations lying around in partially sealed boxes PLUS I emptied the floor in my walk in closet to make room for the half-packed decorations so that I won't have to go to the Attic each year and drag them down. Now my bedroom looks like a bomb went off. I was so excited because in my closet I found another 2 HUGE containers of pictures that were tucked away. This is a good thing because I had promised to find all my pictures and get them in one place for one of LAST year's unwritten resolutions. I spent about an hour or two looking through the pictures and the mementos that I have saved. I went back to the computer to look up scrapbooks. I need a mess of scrapbooks to put cards and pictures that the kids made me. Oops I had to head on over to Cityville first to collect my rent and request gifts to complete game goals. With that finished I found the scrapbooks I wanted and made note of them so that I could order on my next payday. I got up to get a drink of water and noted that the sink was full. I did dishes and mopped the floor. Then I went to the laundry to get clothes out of the dryer and realized that I need clothes hangers. I went back to my bedroom and had to move some of the boxes out of the way to get into my closet and discovered a box full of my mom's recipes that she had saved. What a treasure trove. About 10 years ago I stored this box and made a fricking resolution to organize the contents and make a family cookbook. I got my coat hangers after looking through the recipe box and hung up clothes. I needed to take a nap for work so I went to bed and set my phone alarm for 2 hours. I raised each leg 10 times and went to sleep. In the middle of my nap I had to pee and got up and promptly fell over a box and peed on myself. I had to clean up and by that time I was awake. I got my shower, did my hair and reflected on the last 15 days of failed resolutions. I realized that I may have a problem with distractions. I am probably ADD. So I have made my only resolution this year. It is to list what I need to accomplish each day... the night before. I only list one or two items that are reachable and will cause me great guilt if I can't manage to accomplish them. I am talking easy stuff here. Like yesterday my to do list included stripping my bed and gathering all the bath towels. I did that AND I put them on to wash. That wasn't on my list so I get bonus points for going over and above. The other to do thing was to pull the rest of the stuff from my closet and put JUST the fragile boxes of Christmas decorations in place. DONE!!!!!! Yay!! Today as I type the things that are looming for me to do are to get dressed(with good hair) and visit a friend in the hospital and to put away another 4 boxes. I did make progress on a non-resolution. I ordered nutrasystem and I am going to give it a try...one day at a time.