Monday, April 30, 2007

Various and Sundry

Well, I survived my teaching stint - people are still coming to Tuesday classes, so at least I didn't crash and burn. Sensei now has a day job - working at the same plant as my husband! So now they're apparently gossiping about me during the day. It's interesting hearing what each of them chooses to tell me about what they talked about, often very different. It was interesting teaching, but I'm rather glad to be a full-on student again.

Our last two green belts became purple this last Friday (Congratulations J and I!). Sensei asked me to sit with him and act as a judge (or at least a vaguely apprentice judge-like being). I surprised myself by actually catching something in a kata that he missed - normally I'm not the best observer of such things. Rob will tease me about it sometimes. If we both saw a car accident and somebody asked us what happened, I'd say "The red car came from that-away (vague wave), and smashed into the white car." Rob would say "The red Corvette came around the corner from Broadway, I think it was about 20 over the speed limit, hit the right front bumper on the Escort and spun it into the railing."

More doctor things this week. I had a wondrous outbreak of Shingles about two weeks ago, which fortunately got cut short by a timely steroid injection and a course of anti-virals. My purse looked like a fricking pharmacy. While my PCP had me in hand, she made me go get a new cholesterol test since I'm overdue. I've been watching my diet reasonably well for the last year (Okay, I'm waaay overdue), and I was sort of hoping the Metformin would help lower my levels, since high cholesterol is one of the side effects of insulin-resistance. No such luck. My cholesterol is up about 30 points. So I have another appointment this week, and I'm thinking she's likely to stick me an a statin. Or possibly thyroxin, depending on what she thinks the low thyroid is doing in the mess that is my metabolism.

My I add (whine warning), that it's completely unfair that Rob eats the same diet I do, only with more meat and butter and cream, and his cholesterol is 120 points lower than mine? Erg.

I did get some amusement out of the answering machine message. The lab tech called with the gross results (I don't get a breakdown until the office visit), and included the generic advice. "You should watch your diet and increase your exercise." I just started laughing. Increase my exercise to what? Monday it's an hour of intense cardiovascular (I'm loving the TurboKick, btw). Tuesday it's an hour of weights, an hour of yoga, and 90 minutes of karate. Wednesday is Turbokick again. Thursday is weights and yoga. Friday is Turbokick and karate. Weekends I take off from formal exercise, unless I do the Sunday karate class. Adding it up, that's ten hours of exercise a week minimum! I'm losing weight only slowly, but damn I'm in good shape. I'm the only person I know with six-pack abs on a pot-belly - you can see the muscle lines in the fat.

In more cheery news, we took our first family camping trip. Both boys enjoyed the camping, with only very minor complaints of boredom (Mommy forgot to pack the coloring books), and both held up well on the hikes. The surprise eager camper was Nicky. We were expecting scrambling over rockfalls and up and down canyon trails (Clifty Falls state park, IN) to be hard on short, twisted Basset legs, but he went snaking up and down pretty much everything, with only an occassional boost for really high rocks. He wasn't even sore or noticeably tired afterwards (unlike everyone else) - and this is a dog who sometimes limps after walking to school and back! With such a success on the first outing, we'll undoubtedly be camping some more this summer.

4 comments:

frotoe said...

I'm glad you're feeling better- Shingles, huh? I've heard that can be painful.
and, yeah, I don't think you could possibly add any more excercise into your life w/o burning out. Good for you, though. I've been slacking off bigtime and it is very evident.

Steve said...

Have you had success with fish oil/Omegas for your cholesterol? I'm fighting a predisposition to high cholesterol myself, and have had a lot of success with that.

Miss Chris said...

Shingles...yikes!!!

Perpetual Beginner said...

Yeah, Shingles is pretty painful. My attack was fortunately cut short at a fairly early point, but I had enough bolts of pain to see why it has such a reputation.

I do supplement with flax-seed oil, Steve. It seems to be doing me some good. My HDL is up about 50%, so my ratios have actually improved significantly. It's just that a total cholesterol of 257 is too high even with good ratios. As of Wed. I'm now on Crestor, so we'll see how that does.