time for damage control

For the past year The Monkey and I have been pretty careless about our health. While we were actively TTC (and both employed) being relatively conciensious about our health came easily. We did the South Beach Diet twice with much success. And, in fact, we were still on the "diet" when we both lost our jobs and moved, etc etc etc. (I don't need lectures -- I know we were stupid.)

The Monkey actually does pretty well with his weight. Or, he used to. Over the course of a year I noticed some weight gain. But who am I to bring up such things when I had also gained weight. (In fact, there were months at a time when I moaned and groaned at the scale because my darling, wonderful husband weighed LESS than I did.) When The Monkey quit smoking we expected him to put on some extra poundage. Not to mention he wasn't very active because walking causes him a pretty good amount of pain. And yet, I allowed him to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. It was bound to catch up with him, I suppose.

For the past month or so I noticed a trend. Instead of sleeping through the night, The Monkey was going to bed around 10:30 - 11:00 then, almost like clockwork, getting up at 2:00-ish to pee. He's never had this problem before so, like a good wife, I immediately made him an appointment for a physical. I was expecting bloodwork and other routine stuff, to include a prostate exam. (Let's face it, The Monkey ain't getting any younger. :P) What I wasn't expecting was to see the scale tip as far as it did (he's put on 25 pounds in the four months he's been a non-smoker) and I was terrified when the nurse said his blood pressure was 140/100. So, our GP put him on Zestoretic for his blood pressure and he's going in tomorrow for labs. They're testing his cholesterol, blood sugar, thyroid, etc. And they're going to test for something regarding his prostate.

I feel like a bad wife for allowing him to continue his unhealthy lifestyle. He already has sleep apnea which increases his chance for heart attack and stroke by so-many-fold that it's terrifying. His weight increase is exacerbating the apnea and, of course, not helping his blood pressure or cholesterol, I am certain. So, instead of being proactive I have to do damage control. [sigh]

Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. (The fact that we HAVE to pay close attention to our health, not the fact that things are not going well.) I'm going to see if I can find a place for us to swim. That's the only exercise I can see him taking to because it won't hurt. We'll be taking things one step at a time. First and foremost is our diet and his blood pressure/cholesterol. Once those are under control and he's doing better in that respect, I'll see about making him another appointment to see about a CPAP machine. Eventually we'll see about getting him into a back specialist to see what can be done about his sciatica. (Of course, we could get reeeeeeeeally lucky and have that become a non-issue once he loses weight.)

In the mean time I am forced to be the worry-wart that I am. I am also tasked with making meals that reflect a healthy and well-balanced diet. If anyone has suggestions on recipes or some type of meal planner, by all means!

I have the cutest niece EVER.

So, we just finished eating supper and we were all hanging out in the living room chit-chatting. My niece, Madison, was walking around playing with a little flashlight. She was pointing it at the ceiling and nearly falling over backward to look at the spot of light. Hilarious! Then my oldest nephew, Raymond, started flipping through some music on his cell phone. When he put on King Nothing by Metallica Madison (who is all of 19 months old) started mimicking my nephew who was, of course, headbanging. And because she's such a ham, when we started laughing at her she kept doing it. I think my sister caught it on video. If she did, prepare to be overloaded by CUTE.

She is DEFINITELY a child after my own heart. [happy sigh] My little rocker in the making. :D

blindsided by a Disney movie??

Last night my sister treated me to the new Disney Pixar movie Up. We've been joking about the previews for weeks looking at each other at random and hollering 'Squirrel!' My niece asked to see it for her birthday so that's what we did.

I'll admit that I really didn't know what the movie was about, exactly. The previews didn't really give away the plot. Right before we left for the theater I read the synopsis online. It seemed harmless enough.

It was a very cute movie but, holy hell, the first 20 minutes of the movie had me bawling. And it was hard to discretely wipe my eyes with 3D glasses on. Damnit! Even the little Pixar 'short' that they played before the movie made me teary. Curse you Pixar! But, seriously, the movie was good. And I think plenty of my IFer friends will appreciate the sentiment the movie expressed.

I was retelling some of the plot to my mom this afternoon and couldn't even get all the way through it without bawling again. Meh.

Errgh. Only 42 more days until we go up north. While I'm thoroughly excited, I am worried that we won't have the money. I am really praying that The Monkey gets a bonus. We have to renew our tags in July. I think I am going to have to take my sister's advice and call in and ask our bank about foregoing our car payment for July. Surely they will oblige? I mean, I only have six payments left (I financed the car for five years) and I've never missed a payment in that entire time. The same thing goes for The Monkey's car. If we are able to do that for the month of July we'll have an extra $400 for the month which we can put toward our tags and we won't be so strapped for money.

I want to cry

I should be a couple months shy of graduating. Instead, I keep getting calls from my school about re-enrolling. Each time I have to explain that they let me down by not informing me my Stafford loans had reached their maximum and that no one would approve me for a private loan and I simply can't afford to return just now. Don't they realize that I would have much rather FINISHED my last three classes than basically drop out so close to graduating?! Morons. I am very upset with DeVry.

The girl I started school with in January 2007 is graduating this weekend. I feel like crap.

crap crap crap!

I guess I tempted fate one too many times last week. I went to bed last night with a slight pain in my right ear. I woke up at 4:00 AM with my ear swollen shut. It hurts but it's not unbearable just yet. Since our insurance hasn't kicked in just yet (at least I don't think it has... plus we haven't received our cards in the mail), I'm going to try my best to treat this at home. I've read about home remedies of equal parts vinegar and water. :-/ I've never tried it, though. But it may just work seeing as how the infection is still very mild.

One thing is for sure -- no more swimming without ear plugs! I'm going to do some research and find the best ones for swimming. I have moldable plugs but they aren't very good. I've used them in the shower and they seem to want to fall out when they get wet. Kind of defeats the purpose, dontcha think?

UGH. So much for getting through 2009 without another ear infection. I was doing so well, too! [sigh]

seriously??

For the past week I've been losing a straining battle with my skin. I am most certainly experiencing one of the worst breakouts that I can remember. Certainly one of the worst since I stopped Lithium (which is known to cause skin issues). I chocked it up to being hormonal because it started just before AF made a grand entrance. But instead of steadily getting better it has steadily gotten worse.

I hate when my skin breaks out even a little bit. This is atrocious. I look like I have a freakish bumpy skin rash. (These aren't the kind of pimples that come to a head and can be easily disposed of with a warm wash cloth. These are horrible, painful cyst-like bumps that take FOREVER to go away!)

Perplexed and frustrated, I went to Walgreens to pick up something, anything that might help end the breakout that is making me feel like an overly hormonal teenager. I found a system that looked promising and as I was examining active ingredients I thought about the new Clean & Clear cleanser that I'd bought a couple of weeks ago when I ran out of my other cleanser. (Stupid me, I'm always looking for a skin-miracle-in-a-bottle and try new things every now and again.) When I looked back at the timing of the breakout the only thing that had really changed was my switching to this cleanser. So while I was still looking in Walgreens I picked up the very same cleanser and checked the ingredients...

Can someone please give me a logical explanation as to why Clean & Clear decided to put MINERAL OIL and PETROLATUM (aka Vasoline) into an acne treatment?!? Since when does slathering your face with additional OIL help clear up acne??? I am SO furious. Because a) I was stupid enough to buy the cleanser without checking the ingredient list and b) Clean & Clear was stupid enough to put OIL in their acne wash!

From here on out, I am a Neutrogena girl. I will never, ever again buy another Clean & Clear product. In the mean time, I am covered in pimples. My face looks awful and I have these terribly painful bumps behind my ears. I even found a pimple on my earlobe. WTF?? Hopefully the stuff I bought today will help clear it up in a few days or, at most, a week.

In other news, I picked up my car from Expert Tire this afternoon. The final bill came to $654. It went on credit. UGH. The bright side of this is that my car has all new quality brakes, my 'change oil' light is no longer on, and it no longer veers slightly to the left. And, though I can't really tell right now because I don't drive long distances anymore, the 'shakes' associated with unbalanced tires are no more. So, am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Am I glad it set us back $654 and change? HELL NO! But, that's life, eh?

I guess that's what I get...

Note to self: When car starts making bad noises, do not put off getting it looked and/or fixed for several MONTHS.

[sigh]

For the past couple of months my car has been making a scraping/grinding sound. I knew where it was coming from: the front brake on the driver's side. It was a distinct noise -- one of metal scraping against metal. But it wasn't an every-time-I-braked thing. It was intermittent. Sometimes I went for weeks at a time without hearing the noise at all. I knew what it was because a couple of years ago I had the same problem on the passenger side. But, the idiot mechanics I took it to replaced ONE caliper instead of both. It's safe to say that if they'd replaced both (like the mechanics are doing today) I wouldn't be having this issue. I guess it says something that the place I took it to last time went out of business weeks after I took my car there. Figures.

Then a few days ago it got significantly worse. The blood curdling scraping sounds were happening every time I braked no matter how ginger I tried to be. So this morning I took it over to Expert Tire. Normally I give all mechanical issues over to my dad because, well, he's a mechanic. But when I told him about the scraping noises when they first started he brushed me off about fixing it. So I put it off. And then I didn't have money for parts so there wasn't much point in bugging him about it anyway. So a $600 bill is what I get for putting it off. [sigh] They replaced both front calipers, both rotors, and the pads (of course). Then they adjusted and cleaned the rear brakes which, thankfully, were not in any need of being replaced. (Dodged THAT bullet considering they haven't been touched since I bought the car almost five years ago.) Since I was spending a small fortune on car maintenance I told them to throw in an oil change, to balance and rotate my tires, and to do a front-end alignment. (The alignment is free, though, thanks to our purchasing life time alignments on both cars shortly after we bought them.)

I am really horrible at maintenance. The only thing I'm diligent about are oil changes. I really have to start taking better of this car. Especially considering that it's no longer under warranty AND it's about to be paid for. (After July's payment, I'll be in the triple digits! Holy crap!)

The Monkey's car is in need of some TLC, too. His brakes act funny. We are fairly certain that the rotors are warped. We've only replaced the pads one time on his car (versus the four times we've replaced mine due to faulty calipers). He also needs an alignment (again, free) and an oil change. He also needs new tires. The set he's riding around on now are terribly bald. But we don't have the money for tires just now. Thank goodness he works about two miles from home, eh?

So now it's time to go pick up my car. I'm interested to see how much different it performs after being serviced. It's probably psychosomatic but I always feel like my car runs better when it's just been serviced or washed and detailed. :P