Two Thoughts

Two brief topics for this more-or-less lunch time post.

First:

I screwed up. As often happens, three hours after I finished breakfast my stomach was starting to ache because it was too empty to deal with itself. I had a snack. Peanuts. Lovely. I then… had another snack. Some sugar free cookies. That was a mistake. Not because I had a bad reaction, but because I was stuffed and only about 90 minutes away from lunch time. Now here we are, 10 minutes into my planned lunch break, and I am still stuffed and can’t see myself having a real lunch. Dumb ass. You’d think after a year and seven months I would know what I can and cannot handle in terms of between meal snacks. Nope. I screwed up. 

Maybe I’ll try to eat a lunch-esque something or other about an hour from now. I don’t have any meetings so I won’t have any problems with work scheduling, but I also don’t want to ruin dinner. We’re planning on having some gnocchi tonight and I want that to go really well. I wonder… do we have any meatballs in the freezer? Hmmmm… we’ll see.

Second:

Social media. Shit. Why can’t I just stop with the social media stuff? I mean, I post to this blog 123612764 times a day, why can’t that be enough? What the hell is wrong with me?

I need a twitter alternative. There are a lot of decent platforms, but none of them are quite good enough. I should just back one of them and post there 2496723457 times a day and fool myself into thinking I’m having fun with it. It will be a bald faced lie, but I don’t mind.

So which should I go with? There are three that I am kind of using a little bit. 

  • Mastodon
  • Threads (which makes me sick because it’s a facebook product and facebook is just as slimy as twitter)
  • BlueSky

Mastodon is good because this blog cross posts there. Threads is good (even though zuck is fucking evil) because there are a lot of people that I followed on other platforms that I am following there. BlueSky is good but… I really don’t know why. Probably just because I sort of use it, I guess. 

Common Enough for a Hand Out

At my check in at the weight loss clinic I asked about my low blood sugar episodes.

Apparently the question is common enough that they had a handout already printed and ready to be handed out.

Huh. Apparently we can chalk it up to crackers. I’ve been eating crackers a lot and lo and behold, eating crackers leads to blood sugar dive bombs in people with little butchered stomach pouches like mine.

Crud. I like crackers and I have a cabinet full of them. Crud.

One Wacky Day

As weird, crazy, wacky days go… that was one.

My stomach was in and out of gastric bypass weirdness all day, including a legitimate yacking during dinner. Fun.

As mentioned in a prior post, I was also exhausted all day. I had six uninterrupted hours of sleep last night, but the way I felt through the day you’d think I was awake the whole night. Of course it’s 10:00pm now and I’m not tired at all. I’m just sitting up in bed watching Deep Space Nine ( my binge watch reached season five today) and wondering if I’ll be tired enough to sleep sometime soon.

Tomorrow is this week’s in-the-office day. The company is giving out the annual holiday gift. This year I passed on the turkey and went with the ham. When will we eat it? No clue. I offered it up to my sister and her husband for Xmas dinner but I think they are passing on it.

I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday morning. It’s my 1.5 year check in with my gastric bypass surgeon. I’m compiling a list of questions. Today’s wacky-weirdness will lead to a few, I’m sure.

Until then… get some sleep, Trekkie-nerd-boy.

Am I Sick, Tired, or Sick and Tired?

I’ve felt off all day today. I mentioned in a post not long ago that I am having occasional weird episodes that feel exactly like what my type one diabetic step son says low blood sugar episodes feel like. Today is different though.

I can’t tell if I feel like I am having low blood sugar moments, or if I am just really, really tired, or… somehow both? I had a decent night’s sleep last night, but not great. The previous two days have been better than most over the last couple of months, but still not great. Good sleep is an issue for me, no doubt.

Today though… is the fuzzy head feeling due to low blood sugar, or am I just really tired. I can’t tell. That’s why I think it might be a little of both. Every time it starts ramping up I have something to eat, but it doesn’t go away the way it usually does. Does the blood sugar problem go away and leave the exhaustion behind?

Does this post make any sense at all? I can’t tell because I am too tired to proof read. I’ll check this one over in a day or two and laugh at how bad it is. 

Until then…

Ouch

I woke up at 2:30am with a bad stomach ache. Not one of those killers that leave me in a fetal position on the cellar floor, but a normal you-ate-too-much stomach aches.

It’s 3:10am now and it’s starting to lighten up a little now. Here’s hoping I’ll get another 2+ hours of sleep tonight.

In summary though… ouch.

How Was Your Thanksgiving?

It’s about 8:30pm here in Eastern Massachusetts. Thanksgiving Day is fast coming to its close. How was your day, USA? Did you feast like it’s going out of style, surrounded by family and loved ones? I hope so.

We didn’t have a Thanksgiving today, at least not in the traditional celebration’s sense. Jen and I slept late, which was glorious, and then hung some cool new ambient lights in her office before cleaning up a bit. We then hung out for a while. She played World of Warcraft while I watched an episode of Invasion on AppleTV+. After that we went to visit my father. He had his Thanksgiving dinner at his assisted living place. My sister and her family joined him. They have had a super rough week so I am happy they got to share that with him. I hope it lifted their spirits a little.

Jen and I hung out with him for a couple of hours and then went home and made dinner for ourselves. After dinner we watched the last episode of JFK: One Day in America. It was pretty powerful and moving, even if it did not add anything new to what we know about the assassination. It happened nine years before I was born and yet it’s still tough to watch sometimes.

Now we are just hanging out in the living room listening to The Beatles on vinyl because it’s still the 1960’s, right? Look at me with my vinyl records and film cameras. Dead technologies live forever ’round these parts.

After writing a novel or two about stomach pain yesterday, how am I doing today? I woke up feeling a little sick still, and I have not been 100% at all today, but I have been okay. No real issues. There were a few instances of stomach aches but I think they stemmed from my tiny little rewired, redesigned, rebuilt stomach being empty. Once I ate something I was okay. I’m still a little gun shy today though. I should be over it by tomorrow. I still have to do today’s exercise, which is disappointing, and I still have 12 ounces of water to go before I hit today’s goal. I’ll get it all done. I’ll probably wait until Jen is asleep later then I’ll go down cellar and jog in place (pronounced “yog, with a soft J”) for about half an hour and that should close all of my activity rings on my Apple Watch.

Did you know that the US version of The Beatles Help album includes excerpts from the film score? I sure didn’t know that. I know the UK version of Yellow Submarine has film score, but Help does not. Interesting. Does the US version of A Hard Day’s Night have anything like that? Maybe I’ll visit the used record store in downtown Methuen tomorrow and see if they have a copy.

Okay then, that’s my summary of Thanksgiving Day 2023. I loved every second of it, despite not having the kids here. We’ll make up for their absence on Saturday when we do our official family Thanksgiving celebration. We should have a full house for all of that.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the USA. Everyone outside of the USA, here’s hoping you just accidentally had an extra special good day today.

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?

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.