A couple of vital statistics

I went to donate blood today in the middle of a firefighting exercise at work (I'm in IT, so nothing was literally on fire).  A bit stressed, but I'd made the appointment and thought I'd better keep it.  They took my pulse and BP as a part of the process.  The results:

• Pulse: 60 beats/minute, resting (I had been sitting around for a while, but was not laying down at the time)
• BP: 106/70

And I had actually been hoping for a little bump in BP, to help pump things out quicker, so I could get in and out fast.  Oh, well.

Monday

The random number generating scale has been sent off to its reward, replaced by a new one that does all the body comp tracking stuff, and is German.  No idea if it's more accurate or not; that will take some time - and all we'll ever really know is whether or not it's consistent.  Anyway, it thinks I weigh 148.0 this morning.  Certainly possible.  I ate a lot over the weekend - random stuff.  Here's a rough summary of yesterday:

• no breakfast
• tea with cream
• cheese - maybe 5-6 pieces throughout the day
• about 3 chocolate cherries throughout the day
• olives
• one or two pieces of the "bark"
• 3-5 almond flour chocolate chip cookies
• salad with blue cheese dressing
• a glass of pinot noir
• homemade sauerkraut
• london broil
• strawberry ice cream

There was probably more.

As I mentioned, we had our initial taste of the homemade sauerkraut yesterday.  It tastes great - not too sour, not too salty.  Lee thinks it is too crispy, but I actually like the texture.  And, not that I should need to mention it, but nobody got sick or died from eating it, so I apparently did it right.

Friday

I don't know that I have anything to say today at all.  So, scale said 146.1 this morning, and here's what I ate yesterday:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• cheese
• beef jerky
• bouillon
• tortilla chips (probably about 7)
• spinach-artichoke dip (no idea what's in it)
• iced tea
• steak-and-wedge salad with blue cheese dressing
• two hunks of bark
• two almond-flour chocolate chip cookies

That was it.  Sleep is still sub-par, but I do think the hot flashes are starting to ebb a bit.  It rained last night, which is a lovely sound to fall asleep to, and I don't recall fully waking until around 4 am, so it could definitely have been worse.

Plans for the weekend include shrubbery procurement and planting.  I wish we didn't have to, but it needs to be done.  The weather is supposed to be cool and drizzly, if I have been hearing the weathermen correctly.  Should help with digging holes, I guess.

Thursday

This week's settling into a routine, by golly.  Wake up exhausted, eat, go to work, go home, eat again, do random stuff all evening, fall into bed, sleep horribly.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  As a matter of fact, though, last night was somewhat less horrid than the night before - at least I didn't have one of those waking moments midway through where I looked at the clock, found that it was 1:45 and despaired because the night wasn't over.  But it was still a lingering thermal nightmare.  At about 4 am, I think, I got very cold, and turned on the mattress pad, pulled the blankets up, and curled into the fetal position.  So I've been thinking that "hot flash" is a misnomer.  Just saying.

The random number generator that we laughingly call a scale says that I weigh 145.7 this morning.  A slow weight decline all week, fueled (if weight loss can be fueled) by walnut-avoidance in the evenings.  Instead, I've been having coconut oil products - and then staying very busy until bedtime.

The coconut chocolate almond bark (yes, I do realize it's had a different name each day this week) finally solidified at an eatable thickness yesterday, and I had some after dinner.  And then made some almond-flour chocolate chip cookies, which pretty much took up the rest of the evening.  They do turn out well, though, and the recipe (from Food Lovers Make it Paleo) makes between 3 and 4 dozen, so we will be sharing, I think.

Here's yesterday's eating:

• fat-bomb smoothie
• bacon
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements
• cheese (I didn't want it until around 1:30, which is unusual)
• a few Godiva pearls
• bell peppers, stuffed with grassfed beef, rice, tomatoes, and the cut-off parts of the peppers, chopped up.  Cheese on top.  Very tasty.
• whatever-it-is bark - 3 or 4 small pieces (probably the equivalent of one piece of the previous batch)
• two almond flour chocolate chip cookies

That was it.  I just realized that my chocolate cherry consumption is way down as well.  Which is certainly fine.

I had to laugh last night.  I have been drinking bouillon on workdays to ensure my salt intake is adequate, and I went to refill my supply and read the ingredients.  Wow, are Tones beef bouillon cubes NOT paleo!  MSG, Corn Syrup, random vegetable oils, I think beef is the last ingredient on the list.  But they do have about a gram of sodium per cube.  I don't think the stuff will kill me, but I may do a bit of research to find a better brand when these run out.  Yikes.

I have started using the stairs exclusively at work - my cube is on the third floor of a 3-story building, so it's not an arduous climb or anything (certainly, it shouldn't be!).  I'd made up my mind to do so about a week ago, since I have had no luck getting to the gym at all, but could not remember to do it in the mornings, so the net effect was to have me take two flights of stairs downwards at the end of each day.  This morning, I finally remembered to go UP the stairs, too.  Not particularly hard - and with repetition, should become much easier - which, I hope, will help with the Bolder Boulder at the end of next month.

Wednesday

Sleep continues to elude me.  It's the heat, to some degree - we did indeed hit 88 yesterday, so I'm sure it didn't really get colder than about 60 last night, and that and the hot flashes made for a disturbed night.  Plus, I just could not get comfortable.  I have some sort of blockage thingy going on in my left ear - either wax, or something on the inside of the eardrum - and when I lay on my left side last night, I could hear the blood whooshing through my arteries quite clearly.  Nice, slow heartbeat, I must say, but it was distracting. 

The scale was feeling benevolent this morning - 146.3, and Lee said he was down a pound.  I think we did eat well yesterday.  Here's the breakdown (for me):

• fat-bomb smoothie
• the usual supplements
• tea with cream
• cheese
• bouillon
• Godiva pearls, eaten mindlessly
• wedge salad with blue cheese dressing, tomato bits, and bacon
• some hunks of lobster - a claw's worth, I think
• 6 oz filet, medium rare, with bearnaise sauce
• about 1 spear's worth of roasted asparagus
• 3 sauteed shrimp (might have been 4; they were small)
• iced tea
• a few pieces of something called "bacon steak" (explained below)
• part of a creme brulee
• a spoonful of chocolate mousse
• a small piece of chocolate coconut bark

The bacon steak was cured pork belly sliced about 1/2" thick, seared and then baked, and served as a side dish.  Lee ordered it to see what it was, and we all had some - I had edge pieces, which were crispier.  It was very rich - between (among?) the three of us we could not finish it.  Tasty, though.

I did redo the coconut chocolate bark last night - the parts that were thick.  I got smart this time, and let it solidify enough in the fridge to get flat and stay that way, then put it in the freezer for the finishing touch.  Will be breaking it up tonight.  The thin parts were quite good - I used up some "dark" chocolate chips we had in the house, which were sweeter than the Lindt 85% (only about 50% cacao, I think), and I like the results a bit better.  It melts a bunch faster than the last batch, though - very messy.

Had the rest of the fat-bomb smoothie this morning, but it isn't working its magic quite so much today.  I'm very sleepy, although my brain is functioning well.  And no meetings to break up the day.  I'm going to have to be creative.  Doable.

Tuesday

147.0 this morning - either the scale, or my body, is being mean to me.  And given that I'm in the throes (or throws - as in blankets) of menopause, we already know that the latter is true.  Lee would have it be the scale - it wantonly added 4 pounds to his weight yesterday.  I think it's on the way out - and I think it knows it.

Here's yesterday's eating:

• scrambled eggs
• bacon
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements - for Monday
• cheese
• about 8 Godiva pearls - okay, maybe 10
• a half-sour pickle slice
• iced tea
• a bacon-blue cheese bison burger, no bun
• green beans
• two french fries
• a piece of chocolate-coconut-oil bark

About that last, I would like to say that it continues to function as Speed to me.  We were tired when we got home from dinner (at Ted's), but I wanted to make some new bark, so I ate one of the remaining two pieces of the previous batch.  And almost instantly got the fidgets.  Made the new bark.  Made a pot of tea.  Checked the transplanted plants from the weekend.  Watered all of them.  Put the dog food out for morning.  Changed clothes.  All in about 5 minutes - and after that, I was able to sit down and read for the rest of the evening.

It is unseasonably warm here just now - going to get very close to 90 today, which is pretty radical for April.  So my sleep last night was a bit broken up - I know I ran the iPod to get to sleep in the first place, then three additional times throughout the night, the last two starting around 3:30 am.  This morning, as a result, I had a coconut milk smoothie, and I'm feeling just fine right now - full of vinegar.  Good stuff, coconut oil.

Oh, and I have to redo the coconut bark from last night - I froze it on a slant, which made half of it thicker than the last batch - and the whole goal was to make a thinner, more accessible batch.  Bugger.

Monday

We had a pretty-near-perfect weekend.  Fabulous weather, yard work to provide a sense of accomplishment, a fun family get-together, and I got some sleep.  Just spot on.  I think I ate fairly well, although the scale says 146.6 this morning.  My assessment of that number has to do with sore muscles from the gardening.  Here's yesterday:

• bacon
• strawberries with cream
• tea with cream
• the usual supplements, I think 
• 2-1/3 hot dogs, with mustard
• a very few potato chips (we split a bag three ways)
• a few almond-flour crackers
• cheese
• walnuts
• a glass of merlot
• meatballs with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella
• salad with some sort of "lite" commercial dressing
• ice cream
• two chocolate cherries (or maybe five - I might have gone for them more than once)

The gardening took the form of planting out the last two tomato plants on Saturday, and rigging up drip irrigation for them and the other patio pots.  We are now growing two slicing tomatoes (one heirloom), four Romas for sauce, and two cherry-sized - one heirloom and the other a grape tomato.  Along with the lettuce and carrots and berries.  On Sunday, we hooked the drip to a timer, and then started weeding without really intending to - it was just so nice outside, one hated to waste it.  I pulled up about a half-bag of dandelions and other unwanted vegetation from the big flower bed in the front, while Lee dismantled our compost bins - they've never worked here; it's just too dry and I don't have an easy way to water them.  Then he and Elizabeth filled another 7 or 8 bags with random stuff from around the driveway - we had vast drifts of pine needles this year that we haven't had before.  And we all hauled those to the curb.  After which I helped Lee clean out the garage storage shed and finally crashed (around 3 pm).  And as usual, I'm all astonishment at the stamina that Paleo gives me.  I can get hot and sweaty, or sore, and keep going in that state for hours.  It's really weird.

We are all a bit stiff this morning, but not bad.  I'm a little sunburned as well - hopefully enough to kick off some tan without peeling.  At some point yesterday afternoon I took 3 Advil and 3 fish oil, and felt much better after that kicked in.  I really do think that helps a bunch with the stiffness.

The week ahead is supposed to be fabulous weather, so I suspect that more yard work may await.  Or at least more sitting outside enjoying it.  Yeah!  Summer is close!