I woke up at 10 this morning and managed to get right up, stay up and get a lot of stuff done. 6 loads of laundry, as well as work (I work from home - telecommute via VPN to our office servers.)

My sister Deb came over today and I got her started on SparkPeople. Yay! She wants to lose weight and quit smoking. I hope she can do both, but most especially quit smoking.

We took a 20 minute walk together tonight and it went by pretty fast. And wasn't as boring as when I walk alone.

My calories have dropped a lot. I forget to eat. I'm going to have to work on that.  I thought it was because I ran out of long-acting insulin that I dropped 5.1 pounds this week, but when I checked my food intake for the past week against my basal metabolic rate (calories), my calorie deficit was pretty high.

Tomorrow we're going out for breakfast before our guitar class. Tomorrow is midterm.  Gotta know chords and scales in the keys of D, E minor and G. (I learned all of these when I was in school as a kid playing the clarinet.)  I think that's pretty much all you need to know to be a rock star LOL

I slept for most of the day yesterday.  Then when I went to bed last night at about 11pm I still slept until 8:30 this morning.

I'm going to check the drug store today to see if my prescriptions were filled.

I also slept through my diabetes class yesterday.  I hope they'll let me attend the 3rd class of another session (it's a 3-part session).

I think today I'm going to take a walk - and hope that energizes me.  It's hard to believe that I used to walk 6 miles  a day.  Now I have a hard time getting myself to walk from my chair into the kitchen to fix something to eat. 

But, because I took the diabetes class, I can join the gym at the hospital for about half price with no "initiation fee" for two months.  I might take advantage of that.  My last gym was affiliated with a hospital, so I felt safe on the equipment - knowing medical help was nearby if something went wrong.

I don't feel much like it.  I'm going to take a nap instead.

I ran out of my long-acting glucose and my diabetes is going haywire and it saps all my energy.

Plus I just got back from two days staying with Mac (which really wasn't so bad - we are, after all, still friends) because I had to spend two days at a client site 10 minutes from his (and technically my) house, but sleeping in the guest room in a twin bed - I didn't sleep much either night.

I'll get back on track...

Day two of my new lifestyle (or something like that). Seems like a lot of work and tracking. But I guess it's a necessary evil if I want to see patterns, trends, whatever.

Lots of work today. Sheesh, it seems like it will never let up. I worked til about 9pm last night although not ALL of it was working (I spent a lot of time at SparkPeople.com yesterday.)

When I woke up this morning my glucose was 74. Very good. But only 4 points away from being considered a low, so I took my morning meds and planned to eat after my 30 minute waiting period (because of meds I'm on - have to wait 30 minutes before eating.) So I sat down to work, and was just going to work for 30 minutes.

Two and a half hours later, Roger called me to let me know how much his paycheck was so I could enter it into Quicken and to ask me if I needed him to get some cash for me - I have to travel to Chicago Sunday night for two nights. He said he was on his way to lunch. Yikes! I remembered I hadn't eaten yet. After I got off the phone I checked my glucose and it was 59 - definitely low.

I need to get groceries. Nothing here to eat (healthy anyway) so I grabbed a glass of chocolate soy milk (28 grams of carbs) to combat the low and hopped in the car to go get something to eat. And then, because of time constraints, I ended up at Burger King and got a whopper with cheese. Whew! What a dent it made in my daily allotment of everything! I didn't get fries (to my credit) but ordered a side salad instead. I was too full from the burger to eat the salad, so I'll have it with dinner tonight.

I need to take a walk. I know that is what is going to be the catalyst for getting my body moving in the right direction (literally AND figuratively!) for losing weight and getting control of my diabetes.

So, I am tired of feeling like death warmed over. I'm tired of aching all over. I'm tired of being stiff after sitting for only a few minutes. I'm tired of being tired all the time.

I need motivation. I know the answer to most of what ails me is exercise. I've almost got the food thing down - well... kinda sorta. I mean, I don't order big belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream on them for breakfast anymore, nor do I drink smoothies that have 5 servings of fruit and enough sugar in them to send me into a diabetic tailspin. But I still tend to overeat and enjoy snacks in more than moderation. Like Nutter Butter peanut butter cookies. Yum. And I can't eat just three of them. Once I have them, I tend to binge. It's like drinking beer. The first one tastes just okay. But by beer number three, I'm ready for six more. (Why I don't drink beer anymore.)

Why does it have to be so hard? I think I had an easier time quitting smoking than I am having quitting all my bad habits that are contributing to my overall heath issues.

Maybe I'll post every day just to reflect on the all the swill running around in my head.

Edited to add:  I wrote this yesterday but forgot to post it.  I changed the date on it to reflect the day I wrote it.

Sunday I'm walking for PurpleStride Detroit 2011! Join me in my efforts to fight pancreatic cancer! http://bit.ly/PSDetroit11 Select the group "Melanie's Hope" in memory of my sister Melanie  who lost her battle last year with Pancreatic Cancer.  Please consider making a donation.

(Click on 'Team Rank' on the right and it will open a list of teams.)

Conversation this morning.  Roger was just returning from Physical Therapy.

Me: Your hair looks great.

Roger: I just brushed it.

Me: You're having a good hair day.

Roger: At my age, just having hair makes it a good hair day.

I had a liver CT scan last week.  I had to drink a 16 ounce bottle of Barium 3 hours before, then another 8 ounces 1 hour before, then another 8 ounces right before, and after a single scan 8 more ounces (because my stomach wasn't full).  They also gave me an IV of contrast dye.

So here is the diagnosis.

Turns out I DO have fatty liver.  I also have a hemangioma - a benign tumor. (They didn't say how large it was.  I'll ask my doctor when I see her later this month.)

I will be having a liver CT scan done again in 6 months to see if the tumor has changed sizes.

My main concern is the fatty liver.  I will need to get back to a very strict regimen of low fat low carb foods (I am highly resistant to insulin, which is what causes fatty liver) as well as exercise to get around the insulin resistance.  I was doing pretty well until my doctor took me off Actos after the FDA announced that more testing needed to be done to validate its safety (evidently, there is a possible link to bladder cancer.)

I love salads.  I don't know why I don't eat more of them.

Well, yes I do.  Because I like other foods, too.  Foods that I'll need to steer clear of.  I'm pretty proud of myself tonight.  We had dinner at This Place which specializes in Burgers. I had their Avo-Cobb-O Salad - which is their cutesy way of saying California Cobb Salad (the Avocado is what separates it from being just a plain Cobb Salad).  This is a picture of a Large.  I ordered a Small and it was almost more than I could eat.  It consisted of crisp mixed greens (mostly iceberg lettuce) with tender grilled chicken breast, applewood smoked bacon, hard-boiled egg, avocado, black olives, ripe tomatoes and crumbled Bleu cheese.  I had bleu cheese dressing with it.  Not really low fat but definitely low carb.

Tomorrow I start guitar class with my sister Debbie.

I accidentally left my cookies and cache on a work computer last week while I was there (I noticed my Xanga site in the recently viewed when my boss was doing some stuff on the laptop in the conference room using the overhead projector).  I don't want my boss looking at ANY of my social networking accounts.  Next time I am there I will clear out that cache and cover my tracks better.  After that I will take off the Friends Lock

I wanted to get away with Roger so I decided today would be a good day to come into the office.  Last week I suggested to Roger that we take the train into town, get a hotel, and spend a couple days in Chicago.  We took the 7:11 am train from Flint and got here around noon.  About the same as driving considering that once you hit the city limits it takes an hour to get anywhere because EVERY FREAKING STREET IN THE LOOP is under construction, it seems, and the city is filled with detour after detour.

Last night we went to Millennium Park and saw Crown Fountain (when preparing to build these, they went through the city taking pictures of real people - the faces change periodically on these monoliths.)

After that we went to the sculpture correctly called Cloud Gate but colloquially known as "The Bean" because its shape resembles a kidney bean.

We then went to the Pritzker band shell where there was a free Jazz concert - we sat in about the 10th row back, center stage.

The music was good, but I prefer softer jazz.  This was pretty progressive.  It was mostly Miles Davis stuff.

From there, we decided to take a walk on the twisty-turny BP Pedestrian Bridge

After we finished there, it was dark out and we decided to go back to our hotel.

Where we are staying on the floor commemorating this 'icon' (this is the actual display when you get off the elevator):

Today, before I had to go to work, we took a walk along the Chicago River

Then stopped for Breakfast

And finally, on to work

Tonight we'll probably hang out at one of Chicago's biggest tourist attractions

or maybe Grant Park

I just wish there were fireworks tonight.  If we can, I would also like to see about maybe doing a dinner cruise.

I did this a few years ago with two of my BFFs (one who is active on Xanga) But we did it on a Saturday night, when there were fireworks from Navy Pier.