The Raven's Roost

I'm alive LOL. The past week or so I've been dealing with what I can only describe as crushing fatigue. Just enough energy to do the minimum, which also means no workouts, no walks, no extras. I'm feeling somewhat better, just in time for Debby to come wreak havoc. Fox and I have already bought gas and etc in case it's such a rainmaker that we get stuck back here for a while. He and some of the other guys out this way can work the road with their tractors if it gets bad, and we can run our generator for ten straight days if needed. Typically we don't run ours 24/7 but that's how we mentally measure the amount of gas we have.

I can tell I've slacked off on yoga, too. I know it'll all come back soon enough but man I am so stiff. I also canceled my strength app, though I plan to continue lifting. But it's time for marathon training, which means I need to lift more like a runner and less like a bodybuilder. It's guided me through enough that I know how to do my fall and winter lifting, and I'll be more motivated to stick with it because I know how much it helps my running. I still hate weighted lunges but man they are SO good for my wonky hips.

If I weren't so dead I'd think about making a couple of loaves of shokupan today.

The only thing of note that I've really done is I finished Okami. I also collected all the stray beads, which means I'll never need to do the Devil Gate Trials again. (Three Great Tengu at once. THREE. This was after defeating TWO OTHERS) I've started a new game+ but until Steam fixes whatever they messed up with controllers I can't progress beyond the first fishing game. Hopefully they actually DO something about that, because it's not just Okami that's affected, but this is also Steam so who knows. I started playing Hob, not sure where I saw it recommended, but I'm enjoying it immensely. Hob is entirely wordless. No dialogue, no written signs, nothing. Your powerups have descriptions in one sub menu but nothing is ever really explained to you.

I'm going to try to get a short treadmill run in this morning. I would have gone out to run on the road but it was already 78 when I got up, and there isn't a breath of wind outside. If it were breezy that would at least bring some relief but it feels like a sauna. There hasn't even been much bird or squirrel activity in the yard, and usually the Cardinals start cheeping once the sky begins to get light.

I finally got all my imaging results and blood panels back, and the doctor's office has set a follow up appointment.

Nothing. Aside from that ceruloplasmin being a little low, there's a lot of use of the words "normal," and "unremarkable." I don't even have deep-tissue liver scarring or stiffening, no signs of cirrhosis, NAFLD, no kidney problems, no pancreatic problems, no bile duct weirdness.

So why in the world do my liver enzymes get "elevated" every six months or so? In the absence of an internal problem, I have to assume something I'm doing is causing my liver to get angry every so often, but looking back over my testing history, I can't figure it out. I only drink alcohol when we're on a Disney trip. I don't eat huge amounts of processed foods. The only thing I wonder about is perhaps it's the ramping up of marathon training, where I'm doing 50 or 60 mile weeks, but I doubt anyone's going to tell me to stop.

Obviously running a marathon, itself, isn't healthy. It's hell on your body. Training to run a marathon is a different thing, and could be looked at as being pretty good for you. The first time I started marathon training, I found I naturally wanted to improve my diet and sleep so I'd feel better running, and a whole cascade of lifestyle changes came from it.

But anyway, I'm not even meeting with the doctor himself, "just" a nurse practitioner. LOL. I also my an appointment with my GP the same week, but I'm getting all this out of the way before our trip at the end of the month and I can just enjoy myself without it hanging over me. We're going for a little trip to Disney, mostly to visit the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival, which we both really like. So next week I'll also be pulling the camper out and getting all that ready to go. No races that weekend, either. But we'll be there for the change from April to May, so we'll get to have two different Gideon's cookies, and probably a new set of ice cream flavors at Salt & Straw.

I don't know if now they're going to test more and do something like the biopsy, or just shrug and say, "If you feel all right then keep doing whatever you're doing."

Trying to get sort of caught up on peoples' posts here, since I derped out and stopped reading.

The new washing machine is installed and it's really nice. I'm somewhat leery of stuff with a lot of "smart" features and onboard computers, etc since that's just more shit that can go wrong. We need to get the old machine to the dump sometime soon but the truck was acting up again. Fox made a special trip into town last night, suspecting a bad cable going to the spark plug, and he turned out to be correct.

When we head to Orlando next (April, most likely) I'm going to get a DEXA scan and a resting metabolic rate test done. Or as I told Fox, I'm going to pay someone a lot of money to make me feel bad about myself. I can't get a real fix on what my body fat percentage is. Fox seems to think the Garmin scale is accurate, but I know it isn't. Even knowing that, it still eats away at me every day as I watch the fat go up and muscle go down, which is exactly what happens when you lift heavy and eat a high protein diet. (insert big eyeroll here) I even tested my theory by weighing myself, then changing my date of birth in the app to make myself ten years younger. I weighed myself again and lo! My body composition improved dramatically! I put it back to my real age, and the measurements went back to high body fat and very little skeletal muscle. Even the percentage of water changed though that is supposed to be what the scale is using to get your body composition. (Muscle and fat have different amounts of water in them and thus conduct electricity differently, or that's the idea anyway.) So I'm of the opinion the scale is just using my raw weight and age, and then spitting out the other data based on population averages. That view was reinforced recently when I was reading a post from some guy about my age who is a regular triathlon competitor, and he routinely changes his age to 18, uses his Garmin scale, then changes his age back again so as not to mess up his V02max, because otherwise his scale does the same thing to him.

So I don't like that scale. I don't even trust it to measure changes over time because I don't think it's actually measuring anything. Since DEXA is considered the gold standard (and nothing is going to be 100% accurate short of four-compartment weighing or an autopsy), I can pair that with my RMR results and get a much better idea of how I might need to adjust my diet and stuff. Or it'll tell me I really AM at this super high body fat level and I'll feel bad about myself.

On the other hand, my resting heart rate last night was 42. Hehehehe

I also got to try a soda called ThumsUp. It's Indian, as in imported from India, and the can even has how many rupees in tax were paid on it and everything. I like it much better than American cola, it's got a smoother taste. But I'm also not a big soda drinker, so the few times that I actually want something like that and drink it, it's an experience. I'm not going to be ordering cases of it online or anything, but if I'm at an Indian place and they have it, I'll probably get one. We actually have a couple of Indian markets in Jacksonville that I ought to make a point of visiting. I'd like to start making some of my curries more from scratch.

I am amazed at the way optometrist's appointments can be streamlined now. My doctor has some fancy retina-scanning machine, and if you're willing to pay the small upcharge for the service, it takes away the need for most of the annoying eye doctor procedures, like having your pupils dilated, staring at their ear while they shine a flashlight into your eyes, and it seemed to shave a lot of time off the "read this next line" test. I've been in glasses since I was eight, and I tend to dread eye exams because they were always tedious and took forever.

I mentioned the issue I'd been having with close-up reading and she says it's likely not a test problem - I'd said I thought I had maybe answered some of the reading test questions wrong because it seemed like as soon as I got my new lenses, I couldn't see anything close to my face. She says it's a very common, almost universal phenomenon where a part of your eye that focuses close up loses its elasticity, and it can be corrected with ... multi-focal lenses!

It's a fancy way of saying "bifocals," and "Bird is absolutely ancient." Someone pass me a cane so I can wave it threateningly at teenagers.

On the other hand my changes in diet and routine are helping my body recomp go along nicely. I've managed to get my metabolism running well enough that I'm hot much of the time - not hot flashes, just continuous, lower-level warmth. It's much better than constantly freezing. It makes sleep worse, because it's difficult to actually "turn off" but the overheating thing wakes me up during the night. I bought myself a bamboo fiber blanket, which ought to allow me to sleep cooler while still having the weight and pressure of a blanket. But I'm eating enough calories to continue to lose fat while still nailing my workouts and not feel like death.

The Crows found that beheaded rat and made off with it, LOL.

I honestly kind of want to go back to my old contacts just so I can get a pair of reading glasses that would sit on the end of my nose, and I could peer judgmentally at people over the tops.

I wondered why I've lately felt dizzy and weird when I stand up, so I recently started taking my pressure again (still trying to find a good way to integrate this with my blood glucose data and thinking I need to just make my own spreadsheet) and it was 96/54.

Which is pretty good I guess? At least I'm not dead.

I'd love to be able to talk to my doctor about going off BP meds, but my anxiety gets so bad every time I go in that I get normal or slightly above readings. Last office visit it was like 120/79 because I was nervous. When I'm in my natural habitat it tends to run very low.

My doc seems pretty laid back, so I wonder if he'd be open to looking at my self-collected data. I know there's a degree of inaccuracy in testing one's self for these things, but inaccuracies aside I think it might give him a more accurate picture of my health stats than when I'm in his office and despite knowing that there isn't any reason to be worried, worrying anyway.

Guess who has two thumbs, a Dreamwidth account, and an appointment for the COVID vaccine later this week?

...

It's me. Fox and I have appointments in a couple of days for the first jab.

Finally :)

Page five of The Cat's Inheritance got posted yesterday, I'm pleased with my ability to block out time to work on comics and get them done. Today I plan to lay out the final five pages in Clip Studio, create the panels, roughly sketch the figures, add text balloons and boxes, then convert all those files to Correl for color. I am poking around in my brain for the next story, which I'd like to be a bridge between where we are "now" and taking readers back in time to where Dee and Alia and still living in the Imperial capitol. But I'm also considering just creating a timeline or brief history and having a permanent front-page link to it. I think it might also be fun to create a page on sphinxes from Enguerrand's Guide to Magical Creatures. Enguerrand's Guides are the Peterson Field Guides of Muna.

So, confession time. Since we came back from Disney last month I have been more lax about my eating habits and it's time to straighten that out. I've previously been more of a flexitarian who leans vegan. But I have been finding myself eating more and more animal-based foods lately, so earlier this week I started getting strict with myself. And ... I haven't had problems with my heart arrhythmia, my anxiety has backed off, and I'm starting to sleep better again. Psychosomatic? Maybe. But I still feel better. Prepping dinner will be slightly more involved, since Fox is still an omnivore and I am not pushing him to change his habits. But at worst I'll need to use two saucepans or skillets, so it isn't adding that much more of a burden as far as cleanup. And making things like seitan in advance requires a little planning, and actually making the loaves is not difficult. Ditto pressing tofu if that's something I want. And I already use my Instant Pot to cook large batches of beans, so I can just start making more and portioning them out into quart bags for freezing.

I even feel well enough and less-anxious enough that I baked a pan of vanilla-chai oatmeal bars last night. I don't want something as calorically dense as some of my other energy bars, but the oatmeal ones make a good post-run snack when needed and they don't have a ton of sugar in them. When my training load increases later this year, I'll go back to making the "heavier" energy bars with black beans, dates, avocados and such in them.

Didn't get any test results this week. I know they'll post online well ahead of when the physical letter is generated and mailed, but I was kind of hoping to find out something.

Anyway, I only have one longer article today, The Most Radical Thing You Can Do Is Stay Home, by Rebecca Solnit. Perhaps more of us should begin making the choice to stay at home, so that other people don't have to make the choice to leave their homes.

 1. Topping the Random Notes list this weekend, a guide to self-managed abortion. This is a fairly detailed read but a good one, which hopefully none of us will need, but it's always good to have the information available.

2. In much less important news, my treadmill died. Not entirely - it's erroring out when Fox runs, so effectively HE doesn't have a treadmill. Since all of our other efforts at repair have failed, we're going out shortly to look at buying a new one. The motor will be salvaged - it's fine and hey, how often do you come across 2.5 hp electric motors? We think the circuit board is bad, but everything testable by a couple of reasonably electronic-literate people is testing normal.
It seems like a combination of weight and speed. When I weighed the same as Fox, I was not able to run nearly as fast as he can, so I was not pushing it too much. I'd maybe make it up to five mph for a few minutes but that was taxing my heart and lungs more than it was taxing the treadmill. 

3. Recently we both became interested in testing our blood sugar levels. Fox sometimes bonks hard, and a blood glucose meter seemed like a good tool to have for tailoring his fueling needs, pre-run, post-run, and during. We have an assortment of gels, jelly beans, and chewy blocks, along with whatever homemade energy bars I'm making. I feel pretty confident in my own eating and fueling habits, or I did. Because my fasting sugars consistently test in the "diabetic" range. There is little I can do to bring them down, either, so I'm always getting these 120s in the morning, 140s or 50s after eating, and it's stressing me the hell out because the usual advice for bringing glucose down is "lose weight, exercise, and stop drinking sugary sodas." If I lose ten percent of my body weight, I'll end up in the hospital - this is a patently Bad Idea. Exercise more? I mean, I was considering training for a fifty-miler so I guess that counts. And I haven't routinely consumed sodas since the mid-1990s. I don't put sugar in my coffee or tea, I stopped drinking wine, and I normally operate on an "earn my treats" mentality that allows me to have dark chocolate or nice cream if I worked out that day. 
On the other hand, these meters can also have a margin of error that throws readings off by as much as twenty points. 
I started checking on the hour for a while after eating, and rather than spiking, my sugars dip within an hour, then slowly climb back up to fasting levels. This happens pretty consistently. I rarely test out of a sixty point range, even though according to this meter, that range is high. I've decided for my own sanity to stop doing this unless I feel unusually bad and need a reading, because I suspect the meter is way off, and the "high" readings are stressing me out badly. As in panic-attack bad. Fox thinks this is a good idea.
He knows a lot more about diabetes than I do because he attended classes and such along with Kitty. He says since I'm not experiencing rollercoaster highs and lows, spiking into hyperactivity and then crashing out, only to do it again, I'm not diabetic. He thinks the meter is wrong as far as that goes, and it's mainly useful for seeing swings up and down, and that I should ignore the base number and just look at the range of the highs and lows. So, in the interest of not spending any more days losing my shit over this and swinging between trying to find out how to further improve my diet and shopping for prosthetic legs (because that's how bad my Anxiety Brain has been getting with this) I'm going to just drop it for now.

4. This one-shot comic I did. Just FYI, the ravens are mechanical AI constructs. Ruby was programmed (badly) to believe she is a real, living bird. Whirr is a longer-running one that has been "interactively programmed" by watching and responding to the behavior of humans around him, and one of the traits he's picked up, for better or worse, is sarcasm. Partially inspired by Google Home, Alexa, and this. 

5. So Delicious makes a no-sugar-added vanilla frozen dessert from coconut milk that is amazing. It tastes like vanilla and coconuts. That's it. I am all about this stuff right now.