CinnamonOpus Says

Bad Mommy, Good Mommy

I’m having a bad mommy/good mommy sort of day.

First, it was the day of Stinkerbelle’s doctor’s appointment. After a time change, a 9:15 appointment is perhaps not the BEST time to go anywhere with just a short ride in the car, because one just settles in for a nap when one is unceremoniously dragged from the nice warm confines of the car, through the rain, and into a noisy office. And although one remains in the bucket, and begins to settle in during a long-ish wait with a bit of a bottle, and begins to drift off to a comfy sleep… one is pulled from the bucket and stripped naked.

No, that was STINKERBELLE’s morning. Not mine. But that’s not the half of it.

Once she was stripped down to her diaper, the doctor came in. And that’s fine, because the doctor is a man, and Her Babyness loves to flirt. She was all charm and smiles and cooing and breezed through her exam. She had him wrapped around her little finger.

Until he said, “…and the nurse will be in shortly to weigh and measure her and give her her needles.”

So, the pediatrician had called our family doctor on Friday, and they agreed that her vaccinations would all have to be done again. I was in agreement. I had not, however, asked Herself if it was okay.

The doctor left, and the nurse came in. Immediately Stinkerbelle was put out. “Where had the lovely man gone? Why is this woman talking to me and making pen marks on this paper by my head and feet?” She was tolerant, but as you know, it’s all fun and games until somebody tries to pick you up and take you away.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

My baby burst into loud, long, shrill wails of panic. Somebody was trying to take her away from her mommy!

I felt bad for her, because she was clearly VERY upset. But secretly? I was THRILLED that my daughter was “making strange”. It means she is starting to bond. She knows me and she wants me. I love that.

So once the weighing was done, she was handed back to me and I calmed her down. She was mad, but she began to forgive me.

The nurse came in with some Tylenol, and told me to give her a dose. And while Stinkerbelle played with the crinkly paper on the exam table, the nurse explained the shot and the possible side effects. Her Babyness might be tired, or irritable, or have a low-grade fever. I was to call them if there was anything at all I was concerned about. And then she told me to hold my daughter’s leg firmly, one hand at the top near her hip and the other above her knee.

The next wail, this one of pain, rang out through the office. But she was not done. She needed a shot in the other leg, too. More wailing. Big, sad tears.

I picked her up to comfort her. She was furious with me. I had betrayed her tiny trust. I was a Bad Mommy.

Once she was calmer, I put her down to dress her. I felt pretty bad. There were little blood stains on my shirt where her legs had been. There was a big wet patch where she had cried big tears into my chest as she looked for comfort.

I got her dressed and packed her into her car seat, and we headed out.

We stopped off quickly at the grocery store. She fell asleep a few minutes into the trip, somewhere in the bakery aisle, a combination of the need for a nap, the trauma of the morning, and the effects of the Tylenol and needles. And she slept hard for the next hour.

She woke up happy sometime after 11, in her car seat in the middle of the foyer, two of her cats checking up on her. She grinned at me, and I think she had forgiven me.

For the rest of the day, she is perfectly content to lie quietly playing on a blanket in front of her favourite video, as long as Mommy does not leave her sight. She’s tired, she’s feeling off, but she’s the happy baby we know and love.

But she needs her mommy — the Good Mommy — nearby at all times, just in case. And hey, spending a quiet day on standby for snuggles with my beautiful girl… Can’t think of a better way to spend the day than that.

November 3rd, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Fitness and fatness, Her Babyness | 4 comments

Backupuncture and Cross-Dressing Cats

Yesterday was the day I was going to try acupuncture for my 20-years-old back problem. (Yes. I changed my mind and switched from massage. No, I did not tell you. But it was in the comments! Read the comments, people!) It was also a billion degrees outside.

I wilt in the heat. I grew up with a pool, so unless there is the option to jump in a swimming pool or go into someplace air conditioned, I wilt like so much lettuce. I also sweat out the top of my head more than anywhere else, so you can imagine how warm it gets, not to mention the effect on any hairstyle. And, to help with that, my car’s air conditioning died sometime around 2006, and we cannot afford to get it fixed this year. So the half-hour drive to the acupuncturist was a warm one indeed.

Add to the heat my nervousness at the prospect of letting a stranger stick needles close to my spine, and you can imagine how incredibly, uncomfortably warm I was.

When I climbed up on the exam table, I was melting. And lying on your stomach in such circumstances does not help matters. And I had needles stuck in my lower back in short order, followed quickly by electropulses, so finding a comfortable position was nigh unto impossible.

I was so warm that the paper they put on exam tables literally disintegrated beneath me. It melted.

And I am not good when I am uncomfortably warm. Not good at all. So that hour was not my best day ever.

The backupuncture was fine. Acupuncture is a weird sensation — needles are stuck in but they are not pointy so much as putting pressure on points in your body, like a strange micro-massage. And he’d stick them in to test how deep to go and wiggle them around and it was strangely uncomfortable. And having these things pulsing with electrical energy was an unusual feeling. I cannot describe it. It was occasionally quite painful, almost. But once he had it set to the right amount, and I was cooling down and was able to just relax, it was not bad.

I don’t think it did much, but then, this is a very old injury and one treatment of any sort will not do it. But I think it has potential to help me, and so I am willing to give it a go — for as long as we can afford it, anyway. It’s not cheap, and not covered by the provincial health plan. But I am booked in again tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes. And I am praying for a cooler day.

I got home, and decided to start washing and putting away the billions of baby clothes we now have for Mystery Baby Girl. I took a box of 6-12 month clothes upstairs, started streaming an episode of Coupling on the computer, and began sorting by colour. I would take a bunch down to start the washer, and come back to find Cinnamon rooting through the yellow fuzzy stuff. I would go downstairs and into the baby’s room to look for more things of a certain colour, and come back to find Lucy tunnelling into a fleece somethingorother.

Finally, armed with a squirt gun and waving my arms frantically, I shouted at the lot of them, “These are NOT! YOUR! CLOTHES! These are BABY CLOTHES! You! are! not! BABIES!!”

You can imagine how effective such a speech would be on a room full of cats.

Lucy gave me a look of “No habla ingles” and flopped down on a pair of overalls.

I sighed.

I did a couple of loads of clothes and went to bed.

This morning, we got up and BDH pointed to the basket full of pink things sitting in the bathroom and asked, “Are these clean?”

I told him yes, they were.

“Not so much anymore,” he said.

It seems BDH got up to pee in the middle of the night and went into the bathroom. It was dark. In the dark, he heard the “peep peep peep” sound that Duncan makes when he is talking in a friendly way to somebody. He switched on the light to find Duncan happily relaxing in a pile of pink.

“You’re not a girl,” said BDH.

This morning, I added, “No, but he IS a baby. And perhaps he feels he looks good in pink.”

Some men do, you know.

July 17th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Cats, Adoption, Fitness and fatness | 2 comments

Big Days

Our adoption court date is scheduled for this week. So is my visit to the massage therapist for my back.

I’m not getting my hopes up but… Here’s hoping both go well.

July 15th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Adoption, Fitness and fatness | 16 comments

Can’t Sit Still

I can’t sit still today.

Literally.

I am physically unable to sit still. For I have tweaked my back once again (Damn you, L3 and L4! Damn you and your facet joints to hell!) and so sitting for any period of time in any sort of position causes me some serious discomfort.

Come to think of it, sleeping’s no hell either.

I am starting to find my various injuries tiresome. I have lived my life for the past twenty years with these things and put up with the pain because the doctors said, “They’re not serious, they’re just aggravating. And there’s no way to fix them.” Well, surely medical science has advanced enough in twenty years to make it possible to do SOMETHING.

The question is… when?

I am not in a position, this close to bringing Mystery Baby home, to do anything about it right now. And that is a drag. If I had reached this point of frustration a long time ago perhaps I could have seen the doctors, had the treatments or surgeries, whatever — but then, there was always something to do then too, wasn’t there? Just in the last 5 years, there has been a wedding, a miscarriage, infertility treatment, medical reports, homestudy… so there was nothing that could be done for fear of delaying or even jeopardizing any of those.

And now I find myself faced with a couple of years of picking a baby up and putting her down and lifting things and pushing things and carrying things… and I worry that I won’t be able to do what I need to do sometimes. And what’s worse, I won’t be able to do what I WANT to do a lot of the time. And that makes me a little worried, and a little sad.

It’s not that I am in constant pain. There are far more good days than bad days. But there are a lot more bad days than there used to be as I get older. When my knees are bad I can’t bend them to sit or go down stairs. And a bad back day leaves me in really bad shape, with spasms and unable to move at all. So I want to do something to make it go away.

But until I can take the time to have them properly fixed, I will have to muddle through. And that means, move. I can keep moving. That’s the only thing that keeps the back pain at bay. And perhaps if I keep moving I will strengthen my knees as well.

Plus, what baby doesn’t like to get out for walks and to play in the yard and stuff like that?

I can’t sit still. It’s a good thing — at least in the short term — that a baby keeps you on the go.

July 14th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Adoption, Fitness and fatness | no comments

Ummm… Never Mind.

I was all set to come in here today and write about my day yesterday.

I was at a Canada Day volleyball tournament yesterday, playing some recreational ball in the sun with friends. It was a lovely day. And I watched a young woman I used to coach when she first started out, and she’s grown into a very poised, very talented athlete. And I started feeling my age, with torn-up painful knees, and I thought, “I remember when I used to be that good.”

So today, I was feeling like writing one of those oh-to-be-young-again, missing-who-I-used-to-be, growing-old, contemplative, blah-de-blah-blahing kind of posts.

And then I read this article about a woman who will be competing, and perhaps medalling, in swimming at the Beijing Olympics. And she’s 41 YEARS OLD.

Dude. LOOK at the woman. Look what she is doing AT MY AGE.

Granted, she’s spending, what, 100K a year with a staff whipping her into shape. (I mean, if I had 100K, I could be awesome fit too. I could kick some butt my own self.) And we won’t analyze the divorces and time spent away from current husband and kid.

But on the surface of it, she’s 41 years old and she’s fit and she’s worked her can off to get back into shape. And she’s competing with the young kids.

And after reading that?

She TOTALLY made me look like a big ol’ whiny crybaby butthead. Who needs to get in shape.

So… yeah. Never mind.

July 2nd, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 4 comments

40 Days Update, Part 1

It’s been awhile since I updated everyone on how my 40 Days is going. So I thought today is as good a day as any.

The first promise I made to myself as part of my 40 Days of Change was to say something nice to myself in the mirror each day. And I have been doing well on that one — almost too well, in fact. The problem with this one is that you begin to believe your own hype, and it can really set you up for a fall. This is what happened to me yesterday, in fact.

I have been working out each weekday, really consistently and pretty hard. When I hurt my back 2 weeks ago, I had to give up on some of my workout, but I supplemented that with my new recumbent bike. And I’ve been riding it a lot, some days over 2 hours. And I have been looking in the mirror and beginning to believe I was making some change.

So, yesterday, it was warm, and I thought it would be a good time to pull our all my summer clothes from last year, and put on a pair of shorts. I was kind of excited about it, actually, because I was looking forward to putting them on and having them fit more comfortably than they have in awhile because I have been working so hard.

Except it didn’t go that way. In fact, quite the opposite: I can’t even button my shorts from last year.

I was so upset. How does this happen? How is it that I am exercising so much and I am just getting fatter? How is this possible?

God, how I hated myself yesterday. It was hard to find anything nice to say. And honestly, I was really confused. I really believed I WAS getting better, that I was getting fitter and looking better. And it just wasn’t true. I was just fooling myself, I guess.

But then I resigned myself to the fact that, as much as I am loathe to admit it, I am getting old. Middle age spread has set in, and I am just going to be fat from here on in. It happens to some people. And I guess it has happened to me.

So I will continue to say nice things to myself in the mirror. Change my mindset, in effect. I guess it’s a good way to make peace with who I have become.

And it was nice to like myself for awhile.

June 3rd, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 4 comments

Built-In Obsolescence

Our weekend was nice. We were both sore from exercise and tired from other life stuff all weekend, but it was nice. And the weather was beautiful — warm and sunny, a nice change from the cold of the previous two weeks.

But waking up this morning… not so much. My head hurts and I am sitting here with ice on my knee and I would much rather be curled up in bed for, oh I don’t know, HOURS more.

It’s not like we did TONS this weekend. We ran a lot of errands. We cleaned the house more. BDH mowed the lawn. I cooked. But we’re both tired and sore as though we built a house.

We’re both working really hard to get fit. Now that his finger is healed, BDH is back into soccer, and he’s riding the bike each morning, while I do yoga each day and get on the bike and whatever else. And I think that the problem is we’re pushing a bit too hard.

My back is still pretty sore from when it went bung a week and a half ago. My knees ache and I’m hobbling around like a little old man. And the longer it goes on, the more I am beginning to think it is because I am doing too much working out, too fast.

I hate that. It’s a sure sign of getting older. The doctor tells you that you have to exercise more for ____ (fill in miscellaneous health problem here). So you say, okay, I can do that. And you ease in slowly, and the next time you see your doctor s/he says “That’s great, but it’s not enough”. Or, you jump right in and give yourself a good workout each day and suddenly, you have a whole host of other ailments to complain to the doctor about.

You cannot win.

I started getting old at 19. That’s when all my hard sports training started to break my body. Torn this, slipped that, sprained another thing. But I didn’t FEEL old. I didn’t FEEL injured. Nowadays, I really FEEL it. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. My body is letting me down.

So I am caught in a bit of a dilemma: If I continue to work out each day, I hurt. But if I rest and recuperate, I lose the enthusiasm to exercise and my momentum is lost. Do I push on through the pain like I would have before, and come out the other side fit and feeling better? Or does that even happen anymore, at my age? Will I just continue to hurt unless I stop?

I don’t have the answers. I just know that I am beginning to resent the built-in obsolescence of the human body. It’s a prison for a much younger spirit. (Okay, admittedly, it’s a minimum security prison, but STILL.)

BAH. To top things off, not only am I sore and tired, but now I am PEEVISH too.

Stupid body.

Pass me the icepack. And a couple of Advil.

May 26th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | no comments

Ow. Bright. Warm. Ow.

Today was my first walk of 2008! Taaa daaah!

No, it’s not like I haven’t walked AT ALL this year… but this was my first walk outdoors, around the neighbourhood. I’ve walked indoors, and in fitness facilities, and on treadmills and stairs… but this was the first day of warm springlike weather in which to enjoy the first of many neighbourhood walks.

For the past few years, weather permitting from spring through fall, I would get up each weekday morning and walk, usually anywhere between 4 and 8 km. I always enjoyed my walk time — well, perhaps enjoy is too strong a word, as my feet hurt or I got blisters or my legs became dead weights or I would sweat like a sweaty thing that sweats. Enjoy might be overstating the pleasure a bit. But it was certainly nice to get out and enjoy the weather, and have some quiet time to think and listen to my headphones and have no other pressing worries for 45 minutes or so. Walk time also depended on weather. The hotter it got, the earlier I walked. But it was part of my weekday routine. And I have kind of missed it.

So today was my first walk of this year. And here are my thoughts on the occasion:

• Ow. My everything hurts.
• And it hasn’t been sunny and warm since 2007, so I felt a bit like I had just crawled out of a cave, blinking and unsure.

But it always feels so good to be DONE. My muscles and joints ache in that delicious feeling of a job well done. A shower is a luxurious reward. And when I crawl into bed tonight, I’ll be more tired than normal, and that is always nice.

And the nice thing about walking is, I can try to incorporate it into my daily routine once Mystery Baby is here. It’s something we can do to get out and about for a bit. Babies love to go for walks (well, the majority do… hopefully Mystery Baby will too). It calms them when they’re upset, it’s fun for them when they are bored. And as for mom, it’s a bit of fresh air and exercise and — be honest — stress relief. To get out and stop the crying, or get out and see something besides the four walls of your home, or just get out and clear your head and get perspective — it’s all a good thing.

So here’s to the first step of many, and many walks this year!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go soak my aching everything in a hot tub.

April 7th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Adoption, Fitness and fatness | one comment

No Ego, and a Sense of Accomplishment

I’ve been struggling for quite a while now to get back into shape. I’d like to lose a lot of weight and get fit again. I’d like to feel good about myself again. But it’s a tough thing to do.

I spend a lot of time working at my computer. And I have done for the past 8-10 years. As time has passed, sitting in front of a computer, and combined with getting older, my body has switched from a well-conditioned machine into a wholly neglected tub of goo. It’s been gradual, but then my time doing fertility treatments and basically sitting around waiting for my ovaries to do their thing (which, we now know, they flatly refused to do. Bastards.) was sort of what kicked the whole sedentary thing into overdrive. (And made me puff up like the StayPuft Marshmallow Man. Which just added insult to injury.)

So I need to change a lot about my life and myself.

Motivation has been a challenge. I start out all right, but then after awhile I get bored or life gets in the way and I stall at whatever it is I am doing and then ultimately stop altogether. Winter makes hibernation and immobility so easy. There are things that have to get done that are “more important” than exercise.

Excuses. I have a million of them.

So I started doing these yoga classes. I downloaded them — they’re podcasts and they’re free — so I can do yoga here where nobody can see me and I can fit it into my schedule. And that’s been good, because it takes away one of my excuses. Well two, actually — I wasn’t willing to spend money on getting into shape, and these are free, and I don’t have to go anywhere to do them.

But even still it’s been hard to stay motivated. So I got to thinking.

The instructor of these classes, Chaz, drops little sayings or pearls of wisdom into his classes. And one of the things he always says started to hit home with me. He always talks about having “no ego” when doing yoga — that is, just because the person next to you can do a particular stretch or pose or whatever and you can’t, doesn’t matter. If you do what you can do, and stop comparing yourself to the next person — have no ego — you’ll still get the benefits of it.

So I began to think: am I comparing myself to others? Even though I’m all by myself?

The answer was yes. I am comparing myself to myself. And it’s been defeating.

I used to be what some might call a “high level” athlete, since I played a competitive sport at university. So I was really fit through high school and university. I worked out each day, in some shape or form, playing, practicing, doing weights, whatever. So when I think of myself as “in shape”, I think of that. I look at myself in the mirror, and just despise who I see because I am so far removed from that person.

Truth is, time and circumstance means I can never be that person. Not ever again. And yet, I was hating myself for NOT being her anymore. And so in the face of that, it was easy to just give up on exercising and trying to get into shape. It was impossible, based on those standards.

But then I started listening to Chaz and thinking about having no ego.

I started to think about doing what I can do. When I was doing a class, you’re supposed to listen to your body and do what you can do, and get some benefits from it. So I really started to think about that. Am I making some progress? Am I getting some benefit from what I am doing?

I got really excited the other day when I was able to do something in the class that I had never been able to do before. Just from sheer hard work. I was really happy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was CLOSE. And it was PROGRESS. And I was really pleased.

It was nice to feel good about exercise again, and not just because I looked in the mirror and saw a change. In fact, if I look in the mirror I see no change whatsoever. But when I do the class, I know that I can do this pose. I may not be able to do it today if I am not stretched enough or whatever, but I know that I CAN.

It just seemed like a much healthier way of approaching exercise.

I also began to think of a woman I once saw interviewed who had been hugely overweight once, with no money and two small children to look after. She started to look at things in that way as well. Do what you can do. So she parked her kids in the front yard, and started walking back and forth along the sidewalk in front of her house. She had to keep the kids in view, so she walked as far as she could, turned around, and walked back. Back and forth.

It was a very small thing. And she had to swallow her ego, because it was a little bit of walking. And she was doing it in front of the neighbourhood. But she just did it. She was up off the couch, and she could do what she could do. It was a sense of accomplishment.

And it blossomed. She did a little more and a little more. And she saw gradual change. And years and something like 150 pounds later, she was fit and happy and was being interviewed to tell everyone how she did it.

So I began to think, what small things can I do?

I remembered little things. Things I had read in magazines and stuff. I used to travel a lot for work, and one thing they always said to do while you were travelling is climb the stairs in your hotel if there was no fitness facility. And they advise people to take the stairs instead of an elevator at work in an office building. Hell, when I would go to practice, our coach had us run stairs each day.

So I put on some music, and I went up and down the stairs. Cost me nothing but a little time, and it was a hell of a workout. It was simple but it was effective. My heartrate was up. I was moving. I did it.

Another thing they always advise is to count your steps each day with a pedometer, and try to get 10,000 in per day. Well, I don’t know about that. But, BDH goes to play soccer at a big sports facility. And at this facility, I regularly see people walking around. So I checked it out, and one circuit of the facility is 550 metres. Half a kilometre.

So last night, while BDH played soccer, I put on my running shoes and my iPod and I walked for 6 km. So what if there were people around. So what if they could see me walking around and around. So were some other people. And I was moving.

So, yeah. I may never be the thin, ultra-fit person I once was. But trying to be? That’s my ego talking.

I have to learn to do what I can do. I have to learn to be a different me.

March 13th, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 8 comments

Make No Promises

Here we are in 2008. Is everything changed? Do we all feel renewed and different?

Nah. Didn’t think so.

New Years is always such an odd event. I mean, not just for the drunken revelling and beer-goggle choices in the evening’s partners and the random kissing of strangers, although for the outsider looking in that can all be pretty amusing. But it’s odd because it’s basically a day like every other, except people use it as the start of their life’s “do over”.

So many resolutions are made. People make promises to themselves that the majority won’t keep. They set themselves up for failure, year after year. But hey, at least they get to get all drunk and party, party, party while they do it!

I used to try to make resolutions. I used to say, “Okay, it’s the new year. It’s a good day to start X or Y or Z, or change A or B or C about myself”.

And usually? MONUMENTAL failure. I know that there are some people that can keep their resolutions, faithfully, and change their lives for the better. I am NOT one of those people.

There have been years where a resolution has been broken THAT. SAME. DAY. Resolve to eat better? Yes, well, that was before I found myself mindlessly eating chocolates from the bowl on the coffeetable while absorbed in a movie. Resolve to exercise more? Yes, well usually that train is running out of the station on the first very cold/snowy/rainy/inclement weather of any sort — and I am not running after it, but rather sitting on my butt somewhere. Resolve to lose weight? See the two previous resolutions.

For the most part, though, I can keep a few of them going for a little while. I used to start them with a journal. Needless to say, both the journal and the resolutions were abandoned completely — if I did VERY well, mind you — by March or April or so. Our house is littered with journals, full of fervent writing for the first 20 or 30 pages… but after that, you’re looking at the middle of a great big empty.

But in recent years, our lives have been too up-in-the-air, too much at the mercy of others, for us to even want to make any sort of resolution. We had doctors telling us what to do and what not to do and when to come and go, and agencies telling us what to bring them and when and why. And 2008 is going to be no exception. For the first half, our lives will be at the mercy of decision-makers here and in Kenya and in Ethiopia, and for the second half, they will be will be at the mercy of a little person who — I am sure — intends to rule our lives with a chubby iron fist and a winning smile.

Try keeping your resolve in the face of THAT.

But there are some suggestions I can make to myself that will be easier to follow. I will try to keep my perspective as best I can this year in the face of what will doubtless be some daunting situations. I want to try to be a more organized manager of our home, and a more attentive and more patient wife and pet owner and, eventually, mother. I can try to work toward being healthier and better prepared for the rigours of travel and parenthood. I should continue to try to be a good person, in general.

But those are things that are ongoing. They don’t require a special date to tell me it’s time to start.

January 2nd, 2008 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Holidays, Adoption, Friends and Family, Fitness and fatness | 2 comments

The Rules: Pre-Christmas Edition

There are rules in this life.

• If there are homemade cookies, they will get eaten.
• Corollary: If you have plans for said cookies — gifting them, eating them yourself — sooner is better than later.

• Telemarketers should not be surprised by rude responses, especially during dinner time, after 8 pm/kids’ bedtimes, and on weekends.
• Corollary: Telemarketers should not be surprised that they get no responses at all if they call using an 800 number, a made-up number like 012-345-6789, or a number that shows up as “unknown”.
• Corollary: Whoever invented call display should be knighted.

• When it comes to pyjamas, chocolate and breakfast, the time on the clock is irrelevant.
• Corollary: Drinking does NOT come under the above rule.
• Corollary: Phone calls do NOT come under the above rule. Especially see “telemarketers”, above.

• Drop-ins are never cool.
• Corollary: See “pyjamas and time”, above.

• Yoga is a very old Indian word, meaning “Contradiction”.*
• Corollary: When your yoga instructor starts talking about “focus” and “being present” and “concentration”, that is when there will be interruptions.
• Corollary: You are implored to relax in poses that require you to be upside down, supporting your entire body weight with your hands, or standing on your head.
• Corollary: It is impossible to breathe deeply in most poses. Especially with a belly in the way.

• “Christmas Classic” and “National Lampoon” should NEVER be in the same sentence.
• Corollary: Almost anything containing Bing Crosby is completely fine for the holidays. Even if it’s a Western, set in Bali, or has a strange Robin Hood plotline. Or all of the above together, even.

• Cats are non-traditional lovers of Christmas.
• Corollary: The more you spend on something for your cat, the higher the disdain your cat will have for an item.
• Corollary: Cats are fuzzy, mobile ornaments you can find in manger scenes, under Christmas tree skirts and in Christmas trees.
• Corollary: Wrapping paper rules.

*Note: I totally just made that up.

December 13th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Holidays, Cats, Fitness and fatness, Movies | 2 comments

High-Tech Yoga (Cat Not Included)

I’ve been on a yoga kick lately.

With the gift of an iPod for an early birthday present, I’ve been exploring the world of podcasts. I watch and listen to all sorts of things — news, history, BBC, National Geographic — but what has been really big the last few days has been yoga podcasts.

I’ve explored a few, and found one I really enjoy. The instructor is gently humorous and easy to follow, and he has a wide variety of lessons. Some are easy, but most are a bit more advanced than I am accustomed to. They challenge me, at the moment to just keep up, but also because they are pretty tough and there’s new poses to learn.

So each day, at least once a day, I pull my laptop over to an open space in the room, and I start the podcast. I get settled and ready to start. I do a few preliminary poses. And then the inevitable happens.

CAT.

Now, a lot about yoga is to be present in the moment, and to be conscious of your breathing or your body as you do a move. This is easier than it sounds when you have cats.

If Opus doesn’t suddenly find this the perfect opportunity to a) start shrieking her fool head off or 2) start sniffing around as though she is looking for a place to happen, then one of the others will surely distract me. Lucy will try to snuggle in under me as I do a child’s pose. Duncan will come and lay down in the space and lazily stretch a paw out to tap your hand while you try to do a pose. Any one of a number of cats will walk through, around, and under a downward dog. I get cold noses in my armpits as I lay on my back or purring in my ear.

The cats? They love the yoga, it seems.

So, we haven’t worked out all the kinks yet in this high-tech yoga workout thing. But I am happy to say that this new class is kicking my butt and I really enjoy it.

And apparently, so do the cats.

December 4th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Cats, Fitness and fatness | 2 comments

Tightening Our Belts

There’s been a lot of tightening of our belts around here lately.

Yes, we are adopting, and so we’ve had to consider the fact that, well, it costs a lot of money. And since I am a stay-at-home mom-to-be and we have only the one income, we’ve had to budget a bit — which we are very, very bad at — and give up things we would normally buy and do — again, something we are very, very bad at. So, we’ve found ourselves quite frequently saying “I’d love that, but…” and passing on things we used to be able to do or have or buy when I was working.

But on a more literal level, we are actually, really, tightening our actual belts. Well, not so much WE, so much as BDH. I cannot believe the change in him! He’s been playing soccer at least 2 nights a week, and eating better AND less, and it shows. He’s losing weight and gaining muscle, and it really shows. For someone who has been struggling with his weight as long as I have known him, it’s been a real transformation. He looks wonderful.

He denies it, of course. He doesn’t want me to feel bad because he is losing weight and I, quite obviously, am not. But he looks FAB.

And so, it makes me think.

I guess I need to be better about getting in shape. Because, quite frankly, I am not.

I worry sometimes, that my newly-fit husband is going to look at his young, svelte soccer-playing female teammates and then come home and look at me and wonder where his young, fit wife went. I got my hair cut and coloured last week, and so I got the “young” part covered. Now I have to work on the “fit” part. I don’t want him to look at me one day and say to himself, “I have a fat wife, and I don’t find her attractive anymore”.

I also don’t want my child to get frustrated with me because I am too out-of-shape to play with him or her, too old and not fit enough to keep up.

I used to be in great shape. I used to love to exercise, and loved to buy clothes. Now, I don’t do any of that. Of course, I could afford it back then, both in time and in money.

I have tried. I try starting workout plans, and then abandon them just as easily. It’s hard to stay motivated to work out at home. There are so many other things that need doing. And so many other things I would rather be doing. I’ve skated by for years on muscle mass and a good metabolism. But not so much anymore.

Now, I am just out-of-shape. Now, I am just flabby and fat.

So I have to do something. There’s too much to lose. The question is, what? We cannot afford for me to join a gym, and frankly, it doesn’t appeal that much to me unless they have some classes that are interesting where I could dissolve into a group. I could sign up for classes in a martial art or yoga or something, I suppose, but I have to find something that is absolute beginner-level and that will hold my interest. And cheap, obviously.

But it has to be something. I need to tighten my belt soon, too.

November 15th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 2 comments

Seriously Sleep Deprived

As you all remember, I have had some not-so-fun nights at the Sleep Clinic trying to fix my perpetual exhaustion in time for the arrival of a certain little someone into our lives. The same sleep clinic where I was glued and taped and masked within an inch of my life and then asked (HA!) to go to sleep.

My doctor at the sleep clinic decided to prescribe me a CPaP machine to help alleviate my sleep apnea and help me get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in, what, 40 years. So last Friday, I went in to a medical supplier specializing in sleep and oxygen products, to be fitted with a CPaP machine.

The deal is, after they fit you and explain how it all works and how to clean it and stuff, you take it home for a free trial for a month. If you like it and if it works for you, after that month you can keep it, to the tune of about $1800 (most of that covered by provincial health coverage and our medical insurance, thankfully).

I got fitted and kitted out by a lovely young person named Ashli, who explained that it might be tough for the first little while, but that the trick was to Just. Keep. Trying. She said just try and go a little bit more each night, and eventually I’d know the difference between a good night’s sleep and a bad one.

I nodded and took it all in, but I really had no idea.

So armed with my shiny new machine, I came home. I dutifully followed the instructions, hooked everything up, and put my mask on the first night to get ready to bed.

I admit, I was nervous.

It’s a lot different, sleeping in your own bed, as compared to sleeping in the clinic. No wires, for one thing. No extra-hot room, nobody watching you on camera, no microphone recording every snort and snuff. Your own bed. So that was nice.

But still — the frigging MASK.

How does one get used to this THING on one’s FACE?

You can’t yawn, or the air pressure forces your mouth open like some wind tunnel, and your ears pop. You can’t scratch your nose or sneeze or have a drink. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world to sleep in. And if you move even slightly, and your mask is not fit JUST SO, you get geysers of air blowing into your eyeballs or in your ear or whatever.

It takes some getting used to.

That first night, I went to bed around midnight, and woke up every hour until about 4. I’d wake up, find something had shifted or was wrong, and sit up and take the mask off and put it back on again properly. So at 4 am, I finally got frustrated and took the damn thing off.

The next night it was the same thing.

Plus, there was the added bonus of waking up with a headache and dry mouth and a nosebleed from all the air blowing on them all night. And let’s not forget, the pool of condensation that dribbles out and all over you or your sheets each time you take the mask off.

So the third night, I got wise.

Before bed, I made sure my room was warm enough to keep too much condensation from forming. I turned up the humidifier on the machine (thankfully there is one built in) and put on lip balm and had a big drink before bed.

That night was still not a restful sleep, but I managed to go a half an hour longer.

The next night, I tightened all the straps up on the mask so there was NO WAY that bastard was going to move. No air geysers to to wake ME up each time I moved. HA. I’ll show YOU, bastard mask.

That worked too. I made it from 11 to 5. Still not a restful sleep, and still waking up way too much, but I was going longer. And this morning, I made it until 6 am.

The problem is, the waking up every hour is keeping me from getting an deep, restful sleep. So it’s like having about 10 little tiny naps all night long.

My head is throbbing and I am so very tired. I am seriously sleep deprived now, to the point that I am nervous about driving to appointments this week.

I know that one of these nights, the mask won’t bother me anymore. And one of these nights, I’ll be so damn exhausted I’ll just sleep through it all. It’s just tough going until that point.

So now I understand what Ashli meant when she said “Just keep going. Keep trying.” And I understand why they offer you a month free trial.

It had better be worth it.

October 17th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 5 comments

Well That Was Ass

So much for waking up refreshed.

To wake up, one needs to have been asleep. And during last night’s sleep clinic combination of treats, sleep was not something I got a lot of.

I got glued and taped and wired within an inch of my life once again. But this time, the tech getting me set up said I had to leave my hair down. And this did not seem like much of a problem until they put The Mask on.

The mask is much like an oxygen mask you see in the movies, except bigger and harder, with 4 straps wrapping round your head to keep it in place, and a big hose hanging off the front. So, not only do I have wires everywhere, but I have them tangled in my long hair which, when the mask went on, was pinned to my neck and face and made me hot and itchy all night.

The machine the mask and hose are attached to blows pressurized air into your mouth and nose all night. Which is not bad, once you get used to it — unless you have to yawn, in which case it makes your ears pop and hurt. But goodness knows, you wouldn’t feel the need to yawn while going to bed, right? Also, you cannot even touch your face or talk or move without breaking the seal between mask and skin and changing the pressure. Well, for someone with allergies, who has to sneeze and blow her nose, and also who now has hair taped and pressed to her face thanks to Mr. Friendly Sadisto-Tech, I was miserable and hot and itchy. And had a desperate pain in my sinuses because, hey, pressurized air blowing up them and no way to blow…

But I tried to lay still on my back and deal.

I had longer wires this time, so I did not feel pinned to the bed, so I could move a bit. Until about 30 minutes in, when the wire taped in the middle of my forehead somehow got snagged. And then I was pinned.

The seal to the mask had leaks everywhere from my fussing and moving, and most of the night I had air blowing in my eyes, so they began to dry out. I had a headache of epic proportions, and they keep the room so damn hot… Two hours passed before I finally said I. Have. Had. It.

Now, I’m supposed to be on camera and miked in case I should need anything. Yet, for two hours of misery, the tech didn’t come in. Even when I called — which through a hard plastic mask is not easy — nothing. I was sitting up in bed and cursing a blue streak before he came in.

“Having trouble getting to sleep?” asked Mr. Friendly Sadisto-Tech, as the smell of cigarette smoke wafted over me.

Jeez… Ya think, buddy?

I asked to take a couple of Tylenol for my shrieking headache, which were in my bag ,which he so graciously handed to me. He asked if I need a sleeping pill, which he could call and get a prescription for. I said, no… I’ll try to get to sleep on just the Tylenol.

After 10 more minutes, I realized that the point of no return is coming. They need 4 hours of sleep for valid results, and there were only 5 hours and a bit left. I called for the sleeping pill. Because I didn’t want to have to go through this AGAIN.

So, after the pill, I slept. Not well, I believe, because I dreamt a lot about masks and how they kept changing size and I could not make each size work, and I began to feel like I was drowning. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, these nonrestful dreams coincided with the fact that the mask had come loose, or I had been pulling at it to try to refit it in my sleep — TWICE. Twice Mr. Friendly Sadisto-Tech came in and readjusted things. I went back to sleep both times, but was still fighting the fight against the parade of masks.

Finally, at around 5, I woke up, and dozed a bit, but had the driest mouth ever known to man. I eventually just said “Fuck it, get me out of here.” I made myself wake up fully so Mr. Friendly Sadisto-Tech would come and release me from all the tangle of wires and masks of somnolent hell. He came in and loosened the glue and quickly ripped tape off my face and neck and head, like some sort of bizarre torture. I was now, to add to sleepy, sore and pissed off.

I got the hell out as quick as humanly possible, and got into my car.

Now, here’s the scary part: This is a sleep clinic, where people go for sleep disorders. They’re generally not getting good sleep, at the clinic or otherwise. Sometimes, they’re given sleeping pills. And then, they’re unceremoniously chucked out en masse at 5:30 am — sleep deprived and possibly under the influence of a prescribed drug.

After bumping (gently) into the pay parking kiosk as I pulled out of the parking lot, I became acutely aware that I was not acutely aware. And also, that they should NOT be sending people out to drive after these things.

But I made it home safe and sound. I showered the glue out of my hair and the tape residue off my stinging skin, and crawled into bed.

So much for a miracle fix.

I woke up later this morning, and cried long and hard at the thought of 40 more years of being tired, for the rest of my life not ever knowing what it’s like to feel rested. I am more exhausted than I have been in a long time.

Maybe I’ll just go back to bed.

September 18th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments

Think Sleepy, Comfortable Thoughts

… because tonight, I am at the sleep clinic again!

I need all the sleepy, comfy, relaxed vibes you can send me. Not to mention, good jammies (I have those, don’t send them) and 4 dollars for the parking lot (also have it, but if you want to send me money, send as much as you want. Preferably $20s and $50s. Crisp new bills only, please.)

The metal ponytail, the glue on the head, the tape across the face… OH JOY! Consider yourselves lucky I don’t do a video blog.

I hope to get some sleep tonight, but I am not counting on it. In fact, I expect to sleep like ass, come home, and crash for several hours.

But we’ll see.

What I am really hoping is for this CPaP machine to do the trick, and that I can get a decent sleep and feel a bit rested. Or at least, have the numbers and lines and graphs indicate that I slept better. Considerably better, even.

If I like it, maybe I’ll even get a little kitty-sized one for Bubby. (Kidding. Of course. She sleeps just fine. Napping is her forte.)

So… comfy jammies? Check. Water bottle? Check. Book to read? Check. Alarm clock? Check. (I can’t sleep without a clock. It’s a thing.)

I think I am ready.

Wish me luck.

September 17th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 2 comments

My Sleep, It’s Totally Busted, Man…

Today was the day I had my appointment with a specialist at the sleep clinic to analyze my data from the last time I was at the sleep clinic. Remember that time? When people glued stuff to my head?

Stop your laughing, Tena. I hear you.

Anyway… the results are FASCINATING. No, I mean it… really cool! So cool, in fact, that I paid $5 to get a copy of the report to bring home and share with BDH and his mom and all you good people.

I am amazed that they got as much data as they did. And so, from the data, here is what I can tell you.

I have moderate sleep apnea. (You all know what sleep apnea is, right? It’s when you stop breathing when you sleep.) Apnea is dangerous in varying degrees. If you have severe sleep apnea, then of course the whole stopping-breathing-thing is very serious because, hey, you’re doing it way too much. But also, it can lead to increased incidence of heart attack and stroke. So that’s not cool. But me, with my moderate sleep apnea — I just have to be aware that it can get worse as I get older and can put me at risk of these things. Which is why it is good I am dealing with this now.

And now, because inquiring minds want to know, here are some interesting numbers and factoids about me and my sleep:

• While I was at the clinic, I had 403 minutes available for sleep. (So, roughly 7 hours.)
• Of those 403 minutes, I slept for 229 minutes. So, half the time I was in bed — or, in percentages, I have a 57% sleep efficiency. That is, in technical terms, The Suck. Which means I have to “sleep” twice as long to get enough quality sleep.
• I fell asleep within 8 minutes of lights out. (That’s good.)
• But then, I woke up again right away. (That’s bad.)
• It took me 176 minutes to get into REM sleep. The average person takes around 100 minutes, so I take twice as long. And that is because my body fights going into REM sleep because it doesn’t want to stop breathing. And that is also The Suck.

I also got an analysis of my sleep stages and how long I stay in each, but I don’t know what that all that stuff means anyway.
Now for the really surprising numbers:

• I stopped breathing 123 times during the night.
• I stop breathing an average of 32 TIMES AN HOUR.
• I stop breathing for an average duration of 32 SECONDS.
• The longest duration I stopped breathing was — wait for it — 71 SECONDS.

So… yeah. That’s not good. My sleep is totally busted. I’m barely sleeping at night, even when I am in bed for 7 or 8 hours. No wonder I have been tired my entire life.

So, I go back on Monday night, when they will once again glue and tape stuff to my head (OH JOY). But this time, they’re trying me out on this MAGICAL MACHINE.

The machine is just a pump, basically, that forces pressurized air into your mouth through a mask. The air forces your throat to stay open so that you have unobstructed breathing. The pressure is just enough that it ensures you don’t stop breathing anymore.

Apparently, if it works, you feel rested and better THE. NEXT. DAY. If it works for you, the effects are immediate.

Can you imagine? I have never, NOT ONCE IN MY LIFE, ever felt rested when I woke up. I cannot imagine what that will feel like!

I sure hope the machine thingy works.

A full night’s restful sleep — oh, I can endure another night or two of the long wires if that is my reward.

September 11th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments

These Shoes Were Made For Walkin’

But somehow, my legs are trying to tell me they were NOT. I’m feeling it, I can tell you.

I have begun walking again, because hey, it’s good for me. And besides, you can only get so many spam emails that say “You’re Obese! Stop It!” before you begin to think “hmmmm, a little exercise wouldn’t go amiss right about now…”

It’s really lovely, now that the weather is cooler and not so humid, and the kids are back in school. I love going for walks around the neighbourhood. In the early morning, it’s cool and quiet, but I am so tired. And often, it’s cool when I start out, so I throw on a jacket, but my the time I am halfway done, I’m melting because the temperature warms up. If I go later, the kids are in school so it’s still really quiet, but it’s a little warmer, and there’s a better chance that I’ll have dressed more appropriately. Going early buys me a little more time in my day, but going later is often more enjoyable and is a nice break in my day. So when I go depends on my mood and the weather forecast.

I’m having a hard time with the hour or so that it takes, though. I like to do between 4 and 8 km, depending on the time and my energy level. But to go that far takes at least an hour, and it takes away from the stuff I should be doing around the house, or my blogging. And so I feel like I am shirking my duties a bit. I feel kind of guilty.

But then, the other side of the coin: I enjoy the benefits. I like the quiet time to myself. I feel energized afterwards. And of course, it makes me feel more fit, and hopefully will help me lose some weight. I like to think the benefits outweigh the negatives, but we all know guilt is a big force. And guilt is, as always, in league with laziness… so when the two of them gang up on me, these feet don’t see the pavement. So it’s been a real big deal for me to commit to doing a walk each day.

I always listen to music when I walk. Walking with my iPod on gives me a couple of things to do. The music is good for keeping me from getting bored — which, let’s be honest here, I do REALLY EASILY — and it keeps me distracted from the growing complaints of my sore and tired muscles. But it also pushes me sometimes, too. This morning I had a song on that I played 3 times over, because the beat pushed me to walk a little faster and work a little harder. Music is good for me when I exercise. It has a positive impact.

Because of that, I am not good at walking with other people. I like to concentrate on what I am listening to, and so I am not terribly social. BDH used to walk with me, but he’d be chatting away about this and that, and I’d be completely ignoring him. We both got frustrated. If I don’t have my headphones on, then I can chat till the walk is done. But once the music is on, I’m focused.

I tried running for awhile, and I kept at it for at least a month, every day, but I loathed it. Good doG how I hated it. Always have. Even when I was in the best shape of my life, I found running incredibly boring. And as a mesomorph, built with big muscles made for jumping and power instead of endurance and distance, the strain of running on my joints far outweighs the benefits. Still, I have this bizarre fantasy-world image in my head of some lithe, willowy me (so you know it’s a fantasy) jogging along… Alas. Never going to happen. Not in a bazillion years.

But the walking? Perfect. I can walk for a long time and my joints don’t mind it one bit. I can speed up and get the aerobic benefits I need. And I like it, so I am far less likely to quit.

Well, until it gets really cold, anyway…

September 5th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Fitness and fatness | one comment

The Night of the Long Wires

Well, I am home after my night at the sleep clinic. My sleep is still broken — they didn’t magically cure me after a night there. The first night there is when they hook you up to some monitoring equipment so they can tell you later what is wrong with you.

I am glad they only have to do it once.

Last night, I drove out to a neighbouring city to a small-ish office building across the street from their Very Bad Hospital, and after searching for a few minutes, found the parking lot. I checked in at about 8:15, well before the 8:30 deadline. I got to the door of the clinic building and read the office signs that said the overnight monitoring was on the 3rd floor. So I went up the elevator and into the 3rd floor, which was full of closed doors. Since I had no idea what to expect, I didn’t know what those closed doors were. There was not a sign to be seen anywhere. But I could hear people, women’s and men’s voices, behind those closed doors. And there were a few rooms open that looked like small apartments, with unmade beds and little kitchen units and a TV and such, so I figured I had the right place.

I called “helloooooooo?” a few times, until a young woman in scrubs came out. She looked and very sternly asked what I wanted. I apologized and said I was looking for the sleep clinic. Annoyed, she asked how I got in. I told her I had just walked in. Apparently this was why she was annoyed, because the door downstairs was supposed to be locked and you were to buzz to be let in, so they would have known I was there and coming up. Also, the door being open is a big security problem in an otherwise empty office building in a quite frankly bad neighbourhood.

I walked through the clinic, which was full of computer stations and mostly men in their pyjamas wearing wires, and was shown to my room. The tech told me to fill in a questionnaire and when I was done, get into whatever I was wearing to sleep in, and wait until she came to get me. The questionnaire was quickly done, just general health questions and questions about my sleep, so I got changed, got myself organized, and sat down and started to read my book.

After about half an hour, the tech came back and took my questionnaire, and said if I had to go to the bathroom I should do it first, because afterwards it can be a challenge. So I did. When I was finished, she took me to a chair in the middle of the clinic, sort of like a hairdressing station, and started to prepare to hook me up.

First she did head measurements, and made about 5 big X marks on my head with a grease pencil. Then she got some paste and stuck little wee electrode thingies to my scalp with the paste and some tape. EW. Not cool. She said it was to monitor brain activity. Then she began fastening more of these electrode thingies to various other parts of my head: one behind each ear, one on one temple, another under one eye, one on my chin. These were to monitor various things like eye movement, grinding my teeth… anything that could be part of diagnosing my sleep problems.

I had tape all over my head. The wires from the electrodes were strung down my back like a wire ponytail.

Then she fastened a little electrode thingy to my neck, which she said was a microphone so she could hear me snore and other noises I might make. NIIIICE.

Next was a bunch of electrodes to monitor my heart rate and breathing. First she attached some to my chest and back, then she put two straps containing electrodes around my chest, one up top under my armpits and one lower down around my ribcage. I began to regret my choice of pyjamas. My shirt was bunchy and I was uncomfortable.

Finally, she attached some electrodes to my legs to check for leg movements. these had really long wires that came up over my shoulder to join the ever-growing wire ponytail down my back. Then all the wires were attached to this little box that I wore like a purse over my right shoulder.

So, head taped up like a bizarre Xmas present, and wires sticking out all over, I was free to relax until 10 pm, when she would come to my bedroom and get me hooked up and ready for sleep. I got myself ready for bed — set up an alarm clock, took my medicines, had some water — and read while I waited.

She came in just after 10, and I got into bed. She hooked my little monitor purse up to the wall, and she put one of those oxygen things up my nose, so that I felt for the rest of the night like I had a big plastic booger in each nostril. That got hooked up as well, to monitor my breathing, and she put a little heart rate clip on my finger. Then we were ready to do The Test.

The test requires you lay flat on your back on the bed and they check that all the electrodes are working properly. Through an intercom and watching you on a camera, the tech tells you to do various things like look left and right, blink, cough, hold your breath, to test everything is working properly. Once it is, the tech switches off the light and you are watched on camera all night long. OH JOY. As if THAT doesn’t make you a little uncomfortable. Since you’re all attached to the wall, if you need anything during the night, you just ask, because you are wearing a microphone.

And with that, lights out.

My room was totally quiet. Too quiet. I could hear every snort and cough in other rooms. I heard the tick-tick-tick of the tech on her keyboard. Plus it was very warm, and I instantly regretted not turning on the fan in the room before getting into bed. Also, with all the wires on running behind my back, I was sure I was lying on some wires, because I had very limited head movement. I felt like my head was taped to the bed. I lay there, hot and in a very uncomfortable position with my head at an odd angle, and tried to sleep.

I was miserable.

I fell asleep after about half an hour, only to wake back up again. The tech came into my room to get some equipment from the nightstand that she needed to use in another room. I was so tired, and since I had already been asleep, I did not ask for any fan or any sleeping pills (they are available if you want them) or any assistance. I just wanted to sleep. I kicked off the covers and tried to go back to sleep.

And I did get back to sleep, although I woke about every 15 minutes or half an hour and checked the time on my alarm clock. And at one point, after 1 am or so, I slept straight through for a couple of hours. But all in all, it was not a good sleep. I slept, on and off, for most of the night, finally waking for good at 4:45.

Wake up call was was at 5:30, so I lay there on my bed for the last 45 minutes or so and tried to while away the time. I was miked and on camera, so I was limited — couldn’t sing or hum, couldn’t make any silly hand movements or do any little dancing-things. Just lay there, begging to myself for it to be over. And finally, at 5:30, my tech came in. She’d seen me wide awake and got me up first.

She helped disentangle me from all the wires and took off all the probes. I had great freaking lumps of paste in my hair. I had a shrieking headache. I was exhausted and warm and miserable. There was a post-sleep questionnaire to be filled out, and then I was free to go.

Nothing felt so good as the car air conditioning as I left, I can tell you. Well, nothing except the long, hot shower I had when I got home to get all the guck and paste off myself, and then the long sleep in cool sheets I had this morning after BDH left for work.

I feel like I have a hangover.

But, my misery is all for a good cause, because the doctors will have lots of information when they study my results. And hopefully, there will be lots to tell me and something they can do when I meet with them in September for follow up. So, while I feel exhausted now, in a few months time I hope that my sleep will be mended, and I won’t have to feel tired every day anymore.

Hopefully the night of the long wires will be worth it.

August 2nd, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 5 comments

Taking Stock

Some personal challenges I want to meet in the next little while:

• Going to a sleep clinic to figure out what’s going on or not going on with my sleep. I’ve been tired since the day I was born. There’s not one day in my life that I can remember NOT being tired. So I want to get it fixed. Especially if we have a child coming sometime in the next 6-12 months. I’d love to have lots of energy to give him or her. And I am hoping that being rested makes some of the other challenges easier. So here’s hoping the sleep clinic, where I have an appointment next week, can sort me out!
• Exercising more consistently. I want to find an exercise regimen that I enjoy that I will stick to, but until that happens, I have to buckle down and just do something. I hate getting on the treadmill, hatehatehate it, but it’s free and it’s here. I find excuses not to get on it, but I can’t keep doing that anymore. And I need to get my days organized so that I have lots of time to go for a walk as well. That’s something cheap that I can do every day.
• Getting better at dealing with being around babies. It’s still really hard to deal with tiny babies, knowing I can never have one. It still hurts. We went to a BBQ a few weeks back, and there was a couple there with their new baby. It was all I could do to hold it together sometimes, as people would coo over him, and talk about what a miracle he is, and marvel out loud about how it all started from a little bit of mom and dad… all reminders of what we cannot have. I spent about half the day fighting back tears in the bathroom. But I know it gets better with time, and so I just have to cut myself a little slack.
• Getting more organized. My days are still pretty all-over-the-place these days, and I prefer a bit more routine. I like to have a plan of things to get done — it just helps me feel like I am accomplishing things to plan my time out a bit. I need to get into a routine that works for me.
• Losing weight. I’m at the point in my life where it would be really good for my health to find an good weight for me and stick to it. During the pregnancy/fertility stuff, I put on a fair bit of weight, as can happen with that stuff — but now that time is over, and I want to get healthy again. Ideally, I’d like to lose a LOT of weight, but right now, I’ll start and be happy with a little slow downward progress. It has been really, really frustrating. I think if I exercise it might help, but that’s not been the case this year. So I will try it on my own first, and if it doesn’t work, I will talk to my doctor.

July 26th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Adoption, Fitness and fatness | no comments

Out, Damn Spot

I have to admit that I am overjoyed at the prospect of air conditioning today. Even though, right now, I am sitting on the porch in the shade and enjoying the (kind of) quiet, as the day wears on and it gets up to 32 degrees and overcast, I’ll be glad of it. The forecast says it will be 32 degrees with a 30% chance of rain, including possible thunderstorms. So you know what that means — it’s going to be as humid and hot as an asscrack out here.

But not now. Now it is just pleasant.

I don’t do so well sometimes in the humid and the hot. I am unfortunately burdened with massive environmental allergies — to, you know, EVERYTHING — and on top of that, I have asthma. So the very hot, humid days can sometimes be The Suck for me. Like this morning, for example. After BDH headed out to work, I got changed and went into the now-empty living room to workout, doing some yoga and Pilates.

I was communing with Rodney, doing all the breathing and the stretching as per his somewhat hypnotic commands. I got about halfway through the workout, and I noticed a big, itchy bump on the inside of my leg. And another one, on my face.

HIVES.

Blasted hives! 15 minutes on the carpet, and the heat and the sweat and the carpet were causing me to break out in hives. BAH.

I remember as a teenager, the worst case of hives I had ever had came on in much the same fashion. It was a really hot August, and I was sleeping in the basement room to stay cool (my father didn’t get air conditioning until AFTER all his children left home). I had woken up one morning, and my hands were swollen so badly, I couldn’t bend my fingers. Nothing else was wrong, just fat, puffy hands — but it prevented me from going in to work to do my summer job, which was mostly filing and typing. The next day, I woke up and my hands were no longer swollen. My feet, however, were so puffy I couldn’t fit shoes on. Again I stayed home. The next day, I checked first thing when I woke up — hands were fine, feet were fine. So I went off to work.

I got home that evening, and flopped down on the carpet in front of the television to watch some TV and try to stay cool. After about 20 minutes or so, I started feeling really warm. And then, WHOOSH — suddenly, I was red and itchy and covered in hives. EVERYWHERE — arms, legs, neck, forehead. My father took me to a walk-in clinic, where the doctor looked at me, and in the understated way that only a doctor can have when stating the painfully obvious, said, “Hm. Looks like you’ve got hives.”

No shit, Sherlock. Ya THINK?

Those were the days before Benadryl was the cure-all for all things allergy. There wasn’t anything really strong enough that he could give me. So I just had a little bit of topical cream and that was it. I thought I was going to die from the hot and the itching.

So today, when those first few hives appeared, I got ready. I got up off the carpet and had a nice, cool, soap-free shower. I put some distance between me and the cats. I took an antihistamine. I took my asthma meds. And I am planning on staying cool and mostly calm and quiet for the rest of the day.

If, later today, I turn into a red and itchy version of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man (not the friendly one, mind you; the mean and angry one from Ghostbusters) I’ll be sure to take a picture and post it. “There but for the grace of God” and all that rot.

June 13th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | no comments

Food Fight

I have to get better at food.

I really want to be one of those people who plans a menu for the week. And then I want to be one of those people who goes shopping and gets everything in one trip. AND I want to be one of those people who shops with coupons and gets great bargains and keeps the grocery bill nice and low.

Do those people exist? If they do, I envy them.

I am really trying to find a good shopping strategy. I started out meal planning for the week and then going out once and getting everything. But I was finding that when I went and did one big weekly shopping trip, I bought a lot of stuff that we didn’t eat or that we ended up throwing out or that we really didn’t need. And I was spending more money than I wanted to.

So then I decided this month I would try doing little trips on a day-to-day basis as we needed things. I thought maybe then there would be less “extra” bought and perhaps we’d spend less money. Also I am hoping we enjoy stuff more when it’s fresh. It’s how I shopped when I lived in Japan a lot of the time, because I was not home much and because my fridge was the size of a file drawer. But… it’s a hassle to go out each day. And I don’t know if I am spending less.

I am worried about the costs. One of the things we have to do for the adoption home study is show them our finances. And it stresses me out, because I don’t think they’re going to be good enough.

We’ve been just the two of us for a long time, and cooking and food and eating out are some of our pleasures. We don’t go out a lot or buy a lot of clothes or travel. A lot of our entertainment is in cooking and eating out. So I am afraid that we’ll do poorly on our home study because of that. I’m afraid our expenses will look bad.

I am so bad at cutting back. We don’t have champagne and steak-and-lobster tastes. But we do have some habits that are hard to change. We eat more expensive cuts of meat — boneless and skinless — because I once was a vegetarian and with very few exceptions, anything like bones or cartilage or anything like that in my meat will nauseate me, so that’s my fault. Our beverages — pop and milk and water for our cooler — are sometimes fully 1/3 of our expenses, and finding cheap alternatives are hard. BDH loves cheese, and cheese is expensive unless you want to buy the oily, no name stuff — so it’s a choice about quality and health benefits. So I struggle with those things in the grocery store.

We are trying — BDH is trying — to eat out less. We use coupons when we can. We choose cheaper, healthier options like Subway if we can. BDH is trying so hard to take breakfast and lunch to work and eat it each day, and resist the temptation to go out with the gang. But it is so hard for him sometimes, and I have a hard time griping about it when I look at the extraordinary progress he has made in the past few years, and how hard he has tried. And really, honestly, we don’t eat out that much — but it’s getting to be clear to me that even occasionally is too much.

On the plus side, with the spring and summer coming, fruit and vegetables will be cheaper, and we’re trying to eat more of them. We rarely buy snack food anymore, but what we do buy lasts weeks. I am exploring no name options and giving up little extravagances in my own diet. And I am trying to just eat less. We’re both just trying to eat less.

People give us well-meaning advice all the time, and sometimes not so well-meaning. They think because we are overweight it is a character fault. They think we don’t know that we’re overweight and that we aren’t trying to do better. They think we eat crap all the time, when in truth we eat healthy food. They think we eat lots of processed and pre-prepared and packaged food. They think that veiling it in warnings about our health makes it okay. They think that because we’re overweight, somehow warnings about our health don’t get through our fat heads, when in truth they terrify us and make us feel guilty and worse about ourselves. They think it’s as easy as “just eat less” or “just follow a diet”. They think it is easy to look at your husband whose diabetes means he cannot enjoy what he loves and then tell him he has to enjoy even less, that he must be denied even more.

Food is a minefield for us. I feel like whenever I have to talk about food with someone I am preparing to do battle. I feel embarassed about the choices I am making, even though I know they are often good ones. I feel ashamed of eating and enjoying it. I feel guilty for who I am. I feel like I am being set up to be a parent who is giving all the wrong signals about food. I feel like when it comes to food, no matter which choices I make, they will be the wrong ones to someone.

I hate the feeling of being judged. I hate worrying about this stuff. Food should not be an area of conflict and battle and stress. That’s how the problems start for a lot of people in the first place.

So. Yeah. My budget isn’t getting fixed today.

April 12th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Adoption, Fitness and fatness | 11 comments

Stop Bouncing Up and Down, Will You?

I am writing this post from atop one of those bouncy exercise yoga ball thingies. And I gotta tell you, typing is a TRICK when you’re bouncing on these things.

As part of our new exercise plans, BDH picked up new walking shoes and one of these exercise balls. We both have bad knees so it’s a good tool for strengthening them, since walking really hurts sometimes. And since I do yoga, I might be able to get some use out of this in a yoga workout, too.

But rignt now? The bouncing is kinda fun. It’s hypnotic, man. Updownupdownupdown…

I must admit that I am impressed. I am only bouncing a very little bit, but I can feel the work in my knees. And my legs are feeling it a bit too. And my back, where I have a chronic sports injury, is not too happy about the sudden need to exercise, either.

And let’s not even talk about how this giant ball terrorizes the cats. Well, except for Opus. She’s actually the reason I am sitting on the ball. Little chair-stealing bastard stole my desk chair. I’m going to pretend that she did it to force me to exercise, and that she only has my best interests at heart.

Yeah right.

So all in all, it’s been a good investment.

Updownupdownupdown…

April 5th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Fitness and fatness | 4 comments

Steps of Different Kinds, But All Going Forward

Adoption Journey - Day 74

Huzzah! Our passports came yesterday!

This is a big deal for us. We had to get passports, obviously, so that we’d be able to travel to Ethiopia when the time comes to go get our Mystery Baby. And with all the new passport thingies from the U.S. government, there was a hullaballoo just getting a passport in a reasonable amount of time. But we got it done, and they came yesterday morning. We went out to the post office to pick them up last night. One big step on our adoption checklist is complete!

Once we got them, the first thing we did was rushed out to the car, ripped the packages open, and checked the date of issue.

March 29, 2007.

So that means, since the Ethiopian government mandates that we have to hold our passports for 6 months prior to travel, the very soonest we can leave to travel to Ethiopia is September 29. September 29! It’s hardly any time at all.

Last night BDH was kind of complaining that we should have gotten our passports sooner, and if we had done, we’d be getting our child sooner. He blamed it on himself, procrastinating. But honestly? I don’t mind. Six months is NOT that long when you are preparing for the arrival of a baby into your life. We are going to need all that time to get things ready, to get the house ready, to get our lives ready. Plus, with the millennium celebrations happening in Ethiopia during September, I don’t want to travel then anyway, since it will be tough to get hotels and flights and so on. So October or November suits me just fine.

We also took another step — or more correctly, a lot of steps — in getting prepared for imminent parenthood. And it was a tough one.

We got up early this morning and went for a walk.

BDH hates exercise, he really does. And honestly? I’m much more comfortable sitting in front of a computer these days than getting out and sweating. But in order to improve BDH’s blood sugar levels and keep his diabetes controlled, he needs to exercise. So we decided to start our morning walks again, weather permitting, and when the weather is bad, he’s going to get on the treadmill in the basement. As for me, I already do yoga, and get on the treadmill, and go for walks, but it’s intermittent, and this will motivate me to do it more faithfully.

There were a lot of reasons that pushed us to start walking again, but it all kind of hit home for BDH at the home study meeting the other night. We talked a bit about health issues and adoption, and BDH really realized there’s a lot riding on this. One, I’d like BDH to live a good long life, so he has to learn to control his diabetes. And I am a candidate for high blood pressure so hey, I can use all the exercise I can get. But even more important, the healthier we are, the better our chances for adoption, and the better equipped we will be to keep up with a youngster. We don’t want our health (or lack of it) to jeopardize our chances.

So yeah, we did it. It was freezing cold this morning, but we bundled up and off we went. 4 km. He complained the whole way, but he did it. And he’s hurting now, but it will get better. The first day’s always the hardest. Me, I quite enjoy the morning walks, once I actually get going — and especially now when it’s cool, as opposed to humid summer mornings. Hopefully I can keep him motivated to keep going.

So there are a few more steps done on this long journey to meet Mystery Baby.

April 3rd, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Adoption, Good News, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments

Lessons Learned

Yesterday was full of learning experiences. I learned many things.

• Wearing comfortable shoes does not stop blisters from bleeding all over your socks. Only band-aids will do that.
• It is a bad idea to do your financial paperwork for your homestudy JUST before you go to the doctor who is testing you for high blood pressure.
• The pain and grief of infertility never goes away, even when you are adopting. No matter how much you like her or how happy you are for her, when your neighbour tells you she is pregnant with twins it will make you cry for hours afterwards.
• Looking out the window is no way to tell how warm it is outside.
• If your garage is peopled with Adventure Mice, it’s a good idea to wear gloves when cleaning it out.
• If you get rid of cable or satellite, you don’t miss it. But if you get rid of your DVD player, you’re nuts.
• Our neighbour really IS wonderful. She took the time to come and tell us about her pregnancy privately, because she knew we were struggling and wanted us to hear it from her first.
• There is really no other option but to lose 30 or 40 pounds.
• Cats really ARE nocturnal. Turning off the lights makes no difference to them, or to how busy they are, or how noisy they are.

I hope today involves a little less learning. I could stand to learn a whole lot less today.

March 29th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Infertility, Cats, Adoption, Friends and Family, Good News, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments

Endorphins! STAT!

Dude. This exercising kick I’ve been on? It sucks today.

NO, that’s not right. Let me rephrase.

This exercising kick? I suck wind today.

I am trying not to hate it. Really trying. But getting on the treadmill? It’s really trying.

People talk about “endorphin rush” and “runner’s high”. I haven’t seen it.

I’ve seen “out of shape sweaty” and “panting like a dog” and “post-treadmill dizzy”, but nothing resembling a high.

Well, unless you count the dizziness.

Today I ran — well, more accurately, it would be called “wogging”, which is a jog that is so slow you might as well be walking — 1/3 of the time on my treadmill.

Not once did I enjoy it. Not one step. There were no endorphins.

In fact, there were the opposite of endorphins.

Would that be “exorphins”, then?

“Runner’s bad trip” instead of “runner’s high”? “Jogger’s loathing”?

You know when I will feel runner’s high? When my pants are too big because I am a svelte domestic goddess, and I have to run out and buy more.

February 13th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments

Building a Better Mom-In-Training

Fiona, that fitness goddess, has inspired me.

Recently, she chronicled her adventures in running, and one of the things she said was (paraphrasing slightly) that if you want to do something, you can do it. And what I want to do is to get into better shape in advance of the Mystery Baby’s arrival.

Now, it used to be that I got into shape by playing volleyball. It was a good workout and I played it every day for about 2-3 hours. It was a lot of running and jumping and a fun way to workout. Well, 10+ years on, and I have to admit that I am too old for that sort of thing. I am well and truly long past my playing days, as much as it pains my vanity to admit (but my knees, OY! They thank me). It’s hard on the joints that took so much abuse during those years of everyday workouts. And quite honestly, a year and half of infertility treatment hasn’t done much to help with things, since I’ve been stationary for a lot of that time and, frankly, swelled up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the drugs bytimes. So, that’s out. And coaching, even if I were not taking time off, would not be enough of a workout.

So then my thoughts turned to various gym-related activites. Yoga? I hear people fart a lot during yoga, and really, don’t you think that would be, to say the least, distracting? Seriously. I don’t want to be around my cats when they fart, let alone total strangers. And doG forbid, finding myself in the “dog chasing cat saluting the mountain” pose, and suddenly… (*shudder*) No thanks. I think Rodney Yee and I can just commune by DVD in the privacy of my living room, thankyouverymuch. Next. Join a gym? Well, all my free cash is invested in Mystery Baby right now, and most gyms in the area are fairly expensive. Swimming? PLEASE. I’d have to, like, WEAR. A. BATHING. SUIT. So, NO. Not until AFTER I am a svelte domestic goddess.

But then, reading Fiona’s post reminded me of the treadmill in the basement. Yeah, I’ve been walking, but maybe it’s time to rachet things up a bit. Maybe it’s time to set a schedule and push a little harder. So today, I am starting on a new fitness routine, trying to build upon the progress I am making. I am going to try mixing things up a bit, maybe adding a minute of jogging into every 5 minutes of walking, or something like that. Something to increase what I am doing, and also adding a little variety so I don’t get bored and discouraged. Because if there’s one thing I hate to do, it’s run in the “jogging for exercise” sense, so if an opportunity presents itself to quit, then I’m on that like a duck on a junebug. And I need to NOT quit. BDH has also offered to move a TV and DVD player and some speakers into the basement to keep us distracted while we exercise, which I think might help. Anything to help distract me is good.

So we will see how I do. The Goddess Fiona has inspired me. The treadmill will help perspire me. And hopefully, because I want to do it, I will be able to do it.

February 5th, 2007 Posted by CinnamonOpus | Everyday Life Stuff, Adoption, Volleyball, Fitness and fatness | 3 comments