Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Happy Thanksgiving

Do you live in the U.S.A.? If you do then Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but it’s been pretty screwed this year. The kids are at their father’s house for the day. He just moved into a new house so this is the first holiday, so it makes sense to spend the day there. We will do our family Thanksgiving on Saturday. We’re actually boycotting the Macy’s parade as I type this (it started 10 minutes ago) in the hopes that we’ll watch it Saturday. Jen and I were supposed to go to my sister’s house but they have a real estate issue going on and they had to cancel. Now we’re mostly staying home. I want to go visit my dad (he was supposed to go to my sister’s too) but I haven’t figured out the timing yet. Mostly because of my stomach fun from yesterday.

I woke up a little after 6:00am today and felt pretty nauseous. I moved from the bed to the couch along with a big bucket to puke in if needed and slept a couple more hours. Vomit-free. Thankfully. Now I am feeling okay. I just drank 12 ounces of water over a span of about half an hour. I had my morning vitamins too. So far so good, but I think I said that yesterday too, didn’t I? In about 10 minutes I will be clear to eat something. I’ll have a protein bar and see how it goes. Fingers crossed my stomach is done with whatever hell it tortured me with yesterday. I don’t want to be sick on Thanksgiving, you know? I don’t want to be sick when I visit my father.

So again, to all of my American friends out there, Happy Thanksgiving! And may your gastric-bypass-rewired stomach not give you any shit today! HoHoHo and all that stuff!

Goals

Despite the fact that I’ve spent the last 10 hours feeling seriously sick with stomach pain and gas and all sorts of badness, I still managed to hit my daily water goal (64 ounces) and my daily protein goal (80 grams) as well as closing all three activity rings (calories, exercise, and standing) on my AppleWatch.

I just hit the water goal a minute ago. I’m going to wait 30 minutes and see how I feel. There is a little part of me that wants to try to eat a little something before I sleep. I probably won’t, but let’s see how I feel in half an hour, yeah?

Lap Cat

My brilliant, beautiful, bride, Jennifer took this picture.

Is Lily sitting on my lap (for the first time ever!!) because she can sense I am feeling sick and wants to comfort me, or does she just want to sit on the blanket that my grandmother made?

Probably the blanket.

Bad Day Continues

My stomach is still a mess. Is it better than it was when I last posted? Maybe a little bit. I had a very small protein snack an hour ago and while it initially made me feel worse, maybe it opened the door to some minor improvement. Who knows.

Again, if the occasional day like this is the price I have to pay for the weight loss success that gastric bypass surgery gave me, then I absolutely will pay it. No hesitation.

That doesn’t mean today hasn’t sucked though. Oh, it has.

So Far, So Bad

Whatever was going on with my stomach as lunch time approached, it was definitely not pain caused by emptiness. I had lunch and the pain never went away. It’s been about four hours and it’s just as bad now as it was at its worst.

I knew something was wrong when I first woke up this morning, but it went really wrong about 12:30pm and it’s just hanging on for dear stomach-achy life. It’s made this afternoon very difficult. I can’t concentrate, I can’t focus. All I can think about is how my stomach hurts. What did I do wrong? Am I going to end up laying on the floor in a fetal position? That’s happened twice over the last 18 months and both times it was the middle of the night. I don’t think this is as bad as those times, but it sucks quite a lot.

As always though… if this is related to the gastric bypass that allowed me to lose over 200 pounds then it is totally and completely worth it. I will take this every once in a while over how I felt before the surgery every single day. I am definitely having a bad go of it right now, but it is still better than how it used to be. Amen and Huzzah and all that.

Now that I have made that clear… my effin’ stomach can go ahead and stop hurting now, thank you. Amen and Huzzah and all that.

So Far, So Good

I have made it to lunch time and nothing disastrous has happened yet. My feeling that today is going to be a bad day has not yet come true, but I still have half the work day to go. Fingers crossed that everything stays quiet.

I have been having a couple of issues. My stomach is not having a good day. The frequency of gastric bypass side effects does seem to be getting smaller with time, but today has been noteworthy. I was feeling a little off this morning while drinking water and doing my exercise. By the time I had my protein bar breakfast in the car on the way to work I was okay. Three hours later though I started having that empty-stomach-ache feeling. I had a small snack and felt better, but it only alleviated things for about an hour. Now the stomach ache is back, but I just started eating lunch so hopefully that will put an end to it.

The other issue I am having today is one that I hinted at in a post last night. I am completely exhausted. I got about 6.5 hours of sleep last night, which is a little less than I was hoping for. I still wear my Apple Watch to sleep to keep track of various sleep related data. One data point that seems really important to how rested I feel is called Sleeping Heart Rate Dip. The SleepWatch app says that a dip between 10% and 20% is average. Over 20% is excellent. Under 10% is not good. The last two nights I have been under 10%. I don’t know why. The app recommends exercise as a way to encourage your heart rate to dip more while you sleep, and I have exercised a lot the last couple of days. I’m not sure what to do about this, but I am so tired today that hopefully my body won’t have a choice but to have a good night’s sleep tonight. I guess we’ll see how things look in the morning.

Until then… fingers crossed that my sense of impending doom is not warranted. Here’s hoping!

Impending Doom

The last post talked about trusting my instincts. A big part of me is wishing I hadn’t written that because for most of this morning my instinct has been telling me that today is going to be a really shitty day.

Why?

I don’t know.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I am working in the office. The office alone sort of points to a bad day, but it’s more than that. In the United States, the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest travel day of the year. Everyone in the country hits the road on this day each year. I expected my morning commute to be an absolute nightmare. Add to the expected gridlock that it was pouring rain outside and it would be safe to assume that the traffic would be a gridlocked nightmare times 10. Nope. There was no traffic at all. Everyone drove a little slower than the speed limit thanks to the rain, but I never had to hit the breaks once over the entire 40-something mile drive. You would think that would ease my sense of impending doom, but nope. Somehow it made it worse.

Today should be a quiet day at work. If the office is anything to go by, it’s dead as can be here. I only see two other people and they both work for me. Weird. I should be feeling optimistic and excited about the coming holiday weekend, but instead I am just dreading everything. Once I get home tonight and see my beloved bride again, I will start feeling really good about the weekend, but until then?

It’s going to be a long, sucky, painful day.

83/365
83/365

Instinct

Do you trust your instincts?

Daily writing prompt

Back in the ’90’s I was in an all original music rock band and we had a song called “Instinct“. Does that have any bearing on any of this crap? No. No, it does not.

Do I trust my instincts? Hell no, I do not. I guess I don’t entirely mistrust them either, but generally speaking the first thought I have after responding to a gut feeling is something along the lines of, that was probably a mistake.

As an analyst type of guy who loves statistics, I wish I had some numbers on how often instinct is accurate vs inaccurate. I expect that it is more accurate than not, but who knows.

While I often doubt myself, when I have one of those feelings and share it with someone else, if the other people doubt me I get pissed and stand by my feelings in a nearly militant fashion. Does that make sense? No, no it does not.

I guess I am just kinda screwy that way. I can doubt me, but you can’t. Ugh, what a nut job.

Trust to your instinct
If it’s safely restrained
Lightning reactions
Must be carefully trained
Heat of the moment
Curse of the young
Spit out your anger
Don’t swallow your tongue

Written by Neil Peart, Performed by Rush

So Tired

I’m exhausted. My last few nights sleeps have been short and bad. I’m going to try going to sleep an hour-plus earlier than normal in the hopes of better results.

Think it will work?

I’d create a poll so readers can choose yes or no but I’m too tired… and way too lazy.

Sweet dreams, oh my gentle readers and only friends.