My first Psych appointment is one hour and 39 minutes from now. Let’s bring on the irrational fear, shall we? I am super nervous but I cannot say what I am nervous about. What the hell are we going to talk about? Is there something wrong with my brain that will stop me from having the surgery? Is there something wrong with my brain that if I do go through with the surgery will stop me from being able to handle the post-surgery routine?
Am I just crazy?
One hour and 36 minutes until we find out.
30 seconds in the little single serve blender thingie makes much better protein shakes than 60 seconds of stirring with a spoon. This is the way. I have spoken.
I am procrastinating. The Apple Activity App has a challenge for National Women’s Day to do a 20 minute work out. I want to do it but I don’t want to do it. So I’m sitting here procrastinating.
We still don’t know what we’re doing with the kitchen. We have an estimate for like four different upgrading scenarios. All or grossly expensive, but only a couple are beyond us. We have more people coming in for estimates, which is terrifying on the Covid front. We have someone coming tomorrow to look into pulling down the panelling and the wallpaper border and repainting. No promises, but when we moved in 11 years ago it was the #1 change we wanted to make. Still waiting. We’ll see how that goes.
I have my next appointment at the weight loss clinic on Thursday. It’s the psyche check in. My first. I am not sure where it’s going to go but I expect a nervous breakdown, or at the very least tears. We’ll see how that goes.
I haven’t done any music today. If I end up doing an album in a day thing then it will probably start around dinner time. There’s just too much else going on.
Okay. Enough procrastinating. Let’s do that 20 minute workout. Wish me luck.
Yesterday I wrote about the existential crisis I faced when trying to mix up my first protein shake. I had been lead to believe, by my own eyes, that the huge bucket of protein shake powder did not come with a scoop. Today, day two of the new shake world order, I took a tablespoon and tried to dig out about 32 grams of powder. While digging in the huge bucket I found the scoop buried inside.
Now, knowing what the shake tastes like with the exact correct milk to powder ration, how’d it taste? Okay. I promise I won’t be drinking it for fun, but I also won’t be turning my nose up at it. I’ll put it into the weight loss surgery win column.
What else is going on today, no the first business day of vacation? I tried to watch The Walking Dead on my iPad while sitting in the living room with Jen and Harry last night, but they were watching Rick and Morty and I had to join them. I mean… Mr Nimbus, right? I am watching the new episode on AMC’s website and the stream during the commercial breaks is screwing up left and right. I’m not very optimistic that it’s going to let me get through the whole episode, but amazingly I just heard one of the new bad guys use the phrase, “mother puss bucket” in what can only be thought of as a verbal tip of the hat to Ghostbusters but given that I use that phrase as a verbal tip of the hat to Ghostbusters I am feeling seen and acknowledged right now.
So what’s the music plan for my vacation week? I mentioned doing an album in a day, but I am not going to go through with it. Instead I will just try to come up with a couple of song ideas for Record Every Month. I was also thinking of hitting up Guitar Center and trying to trade in my Strat. Instead I might get back into the idea of finding someone to overhaul my Les Paul Custom. Like everything else, it all depends on money.
What about non-musical plans for the vacation week? Well, I’m glad you asked. We are thinking about getting back to figuring out the ways and means of upgrading out kitchen. We’re going to do some research tonight. You know, do some interviews. Ask some questions. Rattle some trees and see what shakes out. We’ll let you know.
Okay, this morning’s zombie watch is now past the point where I stopped last night. I’m going to pay more attention now. Talk to ya’ll later.
Mutha Puss Bucket.
To commemorate my return to the world of eating breakfast and the end of my intermittent fasting experiment, I commissioned a piece of art that I like to call Protein Shake and Vitamins: I Pick Things Up and Put Them Down.
Obviously I used one of my lucky Lowell Devils beer glasses. Obviously.
I had a tough day yesterday food wise. We had McDonalds for lunch in the car which was bad enough. When I got home I ate some peanuts, and I think there was something else too but I can’t remember. If I had updated my food log in real time instead of waiting until this morning I might remember better. We had Japanese food for dinner, which isn’t terrible but probably still not great. Then I got stupid and had an ice cream sundae and a big bowl of popcorn. I think there was something else in there too. Shit. I also fucked up the no drinks with meals schedule a couple of times. Once I ate less than 15 minutes after drinking and another time I drank less than an hour after eating. It was just really hard to do yesterday. Crap.
Today will be better, I believe. It’s already started out with some changes. My days of intermittent fasting are over. I am going to delete the app I was using and cancel the reminders I had setup. I am once again a breakfast eater. Or, more like a breakfast drinker.
The Dietician asked me to replace one meal a day with a protein shake mixed with 0% milk. Today is the first morning when I have both ingredients in the house. Today is the first morning I had a protein shake. Was it good? Eh. Was it gross? Not really. Did I measure it accurately? No idea. The instructions said 8 ounces of water and one scoop of powder, but there was no scoop to scoop with. I put a couple of table spoons in and ran with it.
Amazon will help. I used to have a single serving electric mixer. I thought it was still around somewhere but I can’t find it, so I ordered another one. I also ordered a scoop. Actually a couple of scoops. I dug a little deeper and the suggestion is 32 grams. I didn’t see a 32 gram scoop on Amazon but I did see a set of scoops of various sizes. I’ll do the math. The minions of Bezos say it will be delivered tomorrow sometime so one more day of estimates followed by a lifetime of accuracy. Something like that. At least I measured the eight ounces of milk correctly.
I also had my morning vitamins and added a vitamins column to my food log. I should find an app to track this rather than a Google Spreadsheet, though ya’ll know how much I love a good Google Spreadsheet.
Now I just have to avoid eating like a fat fucking moron again and we should be good to go for the next Dietician appointment. I have three more appointments in March. Psych starts this week. Nothing next week, then Dietician and then Cardiology. There is nothing booked in April yet, but there will be at least another Dietician and probably another Psych booked soon enough.
Question for the next Dietician appointment. Do the protein shakes count as eating or drinking?
One other unimportant blogging note. I added a new Category to the blog. Weight Loss Surgery. I am nearly positive that I have tagged all of the related posts over the last couple of months but from now on I will start using the new category too. Just in case I need to read through the back story someday. That should make it easier. I might go back and add posts tagged with weight loss surgery to it, but I might not. Who knows. I just thought I’d share. Just a little inside baseball and all that.
The age of Taking Vitamins has begun.
There are four vitamins I need to take post-weight loss surgery and the dietician suggested I start now. I will now be taking three pills with breakfast and two each with lunch and dinner. I think I need a pill caddie, babie.
I took the three with breakfast today even though I don’t eat breakfast. That’s about to change too, but for now I just took the three pills. I had a moment of brain fry with lunch. I have to stop drinking anything 15 minutes before I eat and 60 minutes after. I made myself some lunch and started eating. Then I remembered the pills. Okay, so today’s lunch pills will be approximately 60 minutes after lunch. I’ll figure this out.
The food log is still going, sort of. I haven’t started measuring yet but I am keeping track. I also haven’t started working off the meal plan the dietician gave me. I think that starts next week. I’m also supposed to replace breakfast with a protein shake. I have the shake mix but I won’t have fat free milk to mix it into until over the weekend, so the shakes start next week too.
I still haven’t had any caffeine or soda since February 3rd. That’s going well. The no drinking with food thing is a serious bitch. I keep forgetting about that. It’s resulting in me drinking less water and it might be resulting in me eating less food, but it’s also a pain in the ass to keep on top of. I’ll get there though.
My next appointment is next week with the Psych folks. Oh, am I looking forward to that.*
Okay, back to work. I am just over three hours away from a full week vacation and I really, really need it right now. Freedom is close, but there is a lot of work still in the way.
*Sarcasm. Or #sarcasm, if you prefer.
I just spent some time on Amazon selling my soul to the bezos–devil. I need to take a slew of vitamins for the weight loss surgery. I ordered a big pile of them. I also have to take protein shakes. I ordered a ton of it. I need to start weighing my food. I bought a food scale.
I’m freakin’ out, man. I can do this, but I am going to freak out through the whole thing.
I did another important thing. I signed up for Paramount+. Why? Star Trek: Picard comes back for season two tomorrow and I am there. It’s time to find out what Q has been up to all this time.
Fun.
RPM is over. Now for the annual “now what?” Post.
I assume the folks at RPMHQ will kick off another Record Every Month challenge. I’ll do that. I’m thinking two songs each month, sort of like a single. Then at the end of the year re-record the best songs?
In the real world I have to buckle down on the weight loss surgery prep. I have a bunch of directives from the dietician and so far have only integrated two. I think there are three more and one of them is a little Earth shattering.
Outside of that? There’s the band. I think I may have reached the point in the pandemic where I’m willing to try a band practice. I think. We will have to see. Fingers crossed I don’t panic and chicken out.
I’ll see if I can dream up anything else. I’ll let you know.
The labs and the ultrasound are done. They had to stab me three times to draw blood and the ultrasound tech was having trouble finding whatever it was she was looking for.
Last time I had an in person appointment I signed up for their patient portal app. I’m kinda hoping I’ll get to see all of the images of my inner workings. That should be fun.
Inside the Red Head's Head 