the thoughts and experiences of Heather Meadows
Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton’s life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.
If you’re curious about why this happened, you’ll be disappointed, as they’re still looking into it. But here’s the rest of the story anyway.
This morning I awakened with the distinct impression that I was about to have an awful Charley horse in my left calf. There are things you can do to stop them, or to lessen their impact, so I set about keeping my leg as still as possible while I attempted to get out of bed so I could stand with my foot flat on the floor. It was mostly successful, though there in the middle I had a huge jolt of pain.
Despite that, though, I noticed something as I was waking up: I felt good.
Not only did I feel like I had gotten enough sleep, but my heart wasn’t racing, and I felt like I could breathe–almost normally.
This good feeling carried me through my morning routine and out the door for a 25-minute walk around the neighborhood, during which I never once had to gasp for air. By the end of it I was a little winded, but I recovered almost immediately.
What the hell?
Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but this is so different from how I’ve been feeling. I’ve been essentially unwilling to try to do anything due to how horrible my chest made me feel. Yesterday I was so annoyed about it that I broke down and had McDonald’s for lunch, complete with sweet tea.
I can think of two environmental things that have changed recently that might explain this. First, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time outside since last Wednesday, when I took a brief walk.
Second, we’ve been keeping the door to the second bedroom closed the past few days because of a really weird smell in there.
I thought at first that another lizard had gotten in and died, but I’ve scoured that room, moving the furniture even, and I can’t find a damn thing. Plus, oddly, the smell occasionally goes away.
We’re keeping the door shut so we don’t have to smell it, but I think it’ll also help contain the smell and make it stronger so when I finally call maintenance they’ll know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, it’s possible I’m allergic to whatever I’m smelling in there.
Or maybe it’s neither of those two. I hope it’s not the outdoors thing, because I don’t want to seal myself away inside all the time.
Regardless, I haven’t felt this good since the day I decided to start getting up earlier, right before I got gastroenteritis. Hope it continues!
Yesterday I was on the phone with my brother Ben, whose birthday is today.
“Wait, how old are you?” I asked him.
“Tomorrow I’ll be 26,” he said.
“26, eh? I remember when I turned 26,” I said. “I was like, ‘Uh oh!'”
I think I had somewhere I was going with that, some joke I was going to make, but it never quite happened and that ended up being all I said.
Sean, overhearing this, started cracking up.
I guess we can call this “odd news”, because all the passengers escaped safely and terrorism isn’t suspected. And it’s weird!
Mainichi has the best coverage.
Taiwanese jet explodes into flames at Okinawa airport, no passengers hurt
Here’s Asahi’s, just to be fair.
China Airlines aircraft explodes soon after landing at Naha Airport; all 165 people on board escape
I’m trying to figure out what has caused this downward spiral in my health.
My initial reaction was to blame it all on emotional distress from the fire. While that may be a factor, at this point I don’t think it accounts for everything. After all, I was still riding a bike after the fire. As soon as I was able to get one, I rode when I could while we were still living with Sean’s parents. Back then I didn’t have full time work and was able to do things according to my own schedule, but I was also healing emotionally, and I also didn’t really have a place to call my own…so I wasn’t as vigilant as I had been, but I was very eager to get our own place so I could get back into the swing of my life.
I got my current job around the same time we moved into this apartment. At first I was going on walks or to the Y during my lunch break all the time. I knew I wasn’t in as good shape as I once was, but I was determined to get back to it.
But something happened and I didn’t stick to it. Why did I stop working out at lunch?
Sometimes I wouldn’t take a lunch. And then I got into the habit of eating out for lunch, which meant I had to have time to pick something up to eat, which meant I usually didn’t think I had enough time to work out as well.
Also, since we’ve lived here, I’ve only been to the Canal once, and I haven’t biked the Greeneway at all. For some reason I’ve felt like it was too much trouble or it took too much time. But that makes no sense. At the old apartment, I had to lug the bike up and down three flights of stairs, and I did it without complaint. Here, all I’d have to do is walk it out the door. So why am I not biking before or after work, or on the weekends for that matter?
And why do my weekends solely consist of sitting around on the computer and/or watching DVDs? Why don’t I go places anymore? Every Friday I think, “I want to do something this weekend,” and then every Saturday and Sunday I think, “I’ll do it later,” and then it’s Monday and I haven’t done anything.
Is this horrible out-of-breath-all-the-time thing a product of my slow decrease in activity? If so, how did I let this happen?
Or is my slow decrease in activity caused by being out of breath all the time? Is there something in my environment maybe that makes me less desirous to move around? Am I allergic to something in the apartment, or at work?
I don’t want to just assume I’m a victim of my environment. Obviously I’m going to ask my general practitioner about this when I seem him in another week.
This is all just making me so mad. I can’t draw a clear line of how this has happened to me–how I’ve let myself go this badly.
The more you do, the more you are able to do. The more you do it, the more you are able to do it.
The less you do, the less you are able to do. The less you do it, the less you are able to do it.
Is that all there is to this? Am I where I am now because my laziness gradually grew? Because I stopped packing lunches and cooking dinners? Because I never “feel like” taking the bike out for a spin?
How can I correct this if I get winded after thirty seconds of mild physical activity?
I will find out more when I see the doctor again. I hope I can figure something out.
Yesterday I finally put my bike onto the stand so I can ride it like a stationary. (There has got to be a shorter way to say that.) It works great. I got a stand with magnetized resistance rather than air because the guy at Outspokin’ said it was quieter, but it’s still kind of noisy, so I’ll have to pick and choose when and where I use it.
At first I was thinking the front of my bike would fit under the bar table, so I had set the bike up over there, but the handlebars turned out to be too high, plus the front wheel hits the cross braces at the bottom of the table legs. I could probably jerry-rig something, but do I really want to dismantle my bicycle?
So I lugged it across the room to the dining area, so I can see the TV screen over the back of Sean’s couch while I’m riding.
And let me tell you, that was not easy. The stand is very heavy, to provide stability, and leaving it attached to the bike made the whole ensemble awkward to move. I couldn’t just shove it, because the stand’s folding legs kept trying to collapse. I basically had to lift the stand and then lean the bike to cause it to roll in the direction I wanted.
When I got it into the dining room, I had to stop and sit down. I was gasping for air. It was weird. I’m having that experience more and more often, where I feel like I can’t get air fast enough. My muscles never get anywhere near the point of feeling tired before I’m unable to breathe. I had thought maybe it was allergies, and the hope was that exercising indoors would help me avoid that experience, but apparently not. It looks like it’s something I’m going to have to deal with regardless of when and how I work out.
So I sat on the couch for a long time, sucking air in through my mouth and releasing it the same way, waiting for my heart to stop pounding and my body to feel ready to move again. Finally I was able to position the bike, which didn’t take as much effort. I tried it out and everything seemed good, but since I was afraid of being winded again I didn’t stay on the bike for long.
Writing about how pathetic this is, and thinking wistfully back to my kung fu days when I was in the best shape of my life, will do me no good. It’s a situation I just have to accept and deal with, unfortunately. Small steps.
I haven’t exercised since Tuesday; yesterday I felt terrible when I got up, and today I was just tired and got up too late. I did run around shopping during lunch yesterday, if that counts for anything.
But I have been eating fairly well. Yesterday I had a Slim-Fast for breakfast, half of a spring greens salad with strawberries (no dressing) for lunch, and then salmon-potato croquettes with grits and steamed veggies at Boll Weevil for dinner. Dinner might have been too much food. But at least I drank water, and I didn’t have a dessert…which is a miracle for me at the Boll Weevil.
I found yesterday that putting off my lunch until late in the day made me not feel hungry at all, and then eating a large dinner not too long after that staved off the headache. I just need to make sure I don’t eat a large, unhealthy dinner.
Today I didn’t have breakfast because I’m out of Slim-Fast, but when I got to work I discovered some leftovers from where the morning crew had made breakfast for one of the production assistants to celebrate her birthday, so I had four cocktail wieners. I also ate a mint from Olive Garden that happened to be in my desk…I need to watch that sort of thing.
I’m not doing anything mind-blowing in terms of lifestyle changes, but that’s how it should be: one step at a time. And I am feeling better. I’ve been pretty chipper lately…reading and posting more on my blog, for example. The next thing I want to get back into is photography. I was out at a party last night for nearly three hours and I didn’t take a single picture. That really shows how out of practice I am.
I think once I get myself into a decent routine, where I’m getting up at the same time every day, I will start looking more seriously at my meal planning and charting things out, but for now I’m just trying to gradually adjust.
Snape: Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down and I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, and tell you how I became the half-blood Prince of a school called H-warts. In Spinner’s End born and raised, in the playground is where I spent most of my days, chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ out cool, shootin’ some quaffles outside of the school.
This and much more awaits in this parody of the final Harry Potter book. Those of you who have finished reading, check it out! It’s a hoot.
Have you heard of this new show Aliens in America? I hadn’t, until TheStraightPoop mentioned she’s going to be an extra.
Click here and watch some of the videos. I mean, damn. I’m offended, amused, and intrigued, all at once.
It looks like it could be worth watching. Actually, some of the stuff, just from the videos, is scary because I recognize it from my life. I’m not talking about the prejudice, which is more blatant than I would expect, but the other things, the culture. The alpacas :>
(I do think I should point out that I was once acquainted with some Pakistani Muslims and I’m not sure they would always wear traditional garments. It seemed like it was the women who did that, while the men just wore western clothes.)
“Muslimism”. Snerk.
I think I have a permanent band of sweat on my lower back. Ew.
You step out the door and your face is dripping. Glad my deodorant works.
I ran some errands over lunch and it about killed me.
Tonight is the goodbye dinner for my favorite weatherman; otherwise, I’d probably go swimming.
Apparently high temperatures in Saitama Prefecture have actually caused a railroad track to become warped.
Officials said the bend in the track was found about 300 meters southeast of Ogawamachi Station. One of the rails was bent inwards and the other was bent outwards, causing the tracks to shift as much as 5 centimeters.
[…]
Officials at the Kumagaya Local Meteorological Observatory said that the high temperature in Yorii, located next to the Saitama Prefecture town of Ogawa, hit 39.5 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Ha, 103 degrees? How about the 107 we had here in Augusta last Friday? You snooze, you lose, Japan.
Today I have sinus pressure and a headache, and I wish I was still in bed. I don’t think I will be going outside to exercise. Truthfully I don’t want to exercise at all, but we’ll have to see.
Yesterday I felt pretty good for the majority of the day, but last night I felt like I was going to die of hunger. I had a horrible hunger headache. I ate a Healthy Choice frozen dinner, and when that didn’t satisfy me, I ate the three peanut butter crackers I had left over from my lunch, which also consisted of a Caesar salad from Publix (I didn’t eat the dressing) and a peach. Breakfast was a Slim-Fast shake. I’m not sure how many calories all that is, but it seems to have been less than I’m used to.
I’m drinking some water now, and I think that’s helping me to feel marginally better.
I got up at 6 this morning, put on my workout clothes, set up my new pedometer, and went for a walk, taking out the trash as I went.
Almost immediately I was out of breath. I had to stop walking and force myself to breathe deeply. These days it feels like there’s a hole in my lungs, so no matter how heavily I breathe I don’t get enough air. I’m thinking it’s allergy-related, though it almost certainly also has to do with how out of shape I am.
After dumping the trash I walked straight back to the end of the main road, then turned into one of the many patio home complexes and walked back through there. I thought about going on into another complex, but I ultimately decided that I didn’t want to overdo it on my first day, so I came back to the apartment. In total, I walked a piddly .628 of a mile.
It was already hot when I walked, even though the sun had barely risen. My clothes were plastered to me by the time I came back inside, and the air conditioning was quite a welcome relief.
Yesterday I bought a stand for my bicycle so I can use it as a stationary bike indoors. I also looked at treadmills, but all the powered ones seemed too big, and I didn’t see a non-powered one anywhere. I may do some more research online.
The two bad habits I need to break are eating out all the time and staying up too late. If I can keep those things under control, I think it will make a big difference.
I’m considering making a rule for myself that if I do eat out, I have to have a salad. That might work. But I seem to always break my own rules, so I really just want to try to pack my lunch as much as possible.
Avoiding staying up too late will really just involve willing myself not to get heavily involved with something I’m doing right before bed, be it watching DVDs or reading blogs or working on a project. Last night I was burning DVDs and watching Detective Conan until I realized it was already 10:30. I wrapped up as quickly as I could and went to bed.
Something I’m worried about is how Sean tends to wake me up by playing music or talking on the phone too loudly in the morning. He woke me up shortly before my alarm went off today, so maybe I was ready to get up anyway, but I recall thinking furiously as I listened to him through the wall that we really need to do something about it. I even considered for a long time switching the bedrooms so I would be sleeping in the front room, down the hall from the living room, instead of in the back room, which is right next to the living room. But that would mean I would have to do laundry in the spare bedroom and then carry it into the other bedroom to put away, and having a washer and dryer in a spare bedroom’s closet just seems weird.
Plus it would be a pain to move our bed :>
I’m wondering if maybe a white noise generator would do the trick…it might also cancel out any noise from our upstairs neighbor, who can keep odd hours. But would it interfere with my alarm clock?
Beyond that, I have two things I want to do to get myself further into the “zone”. The first involves some changes to our second bedroom. I’m giving away the huge desk, and I’m going to try to find a small desk and maybe a shelf to go in there and then use the floor space for exercising. Eventually, when we get a flat panel television, I’ll put the ancient monster we currently use in there as well, for use with workout DVDs. Until then I can just use a laptop.
My hope is to arrange the room so that it looks inviting but is still easy to work out in.
The second thing I want to do is rearrange my office at work. I have a vague idea on how I want to do it. Basically my goal is to shift the “hallway” part of the room so that it’s in front of me rather than behind me. It’s really annoying to have people walking behind me all the time. My plan is to move my desk back so that my back is against the opposite wall. I’ll have a decent view of both doors that way.
Once I get my office to where I can see when people are coming, I want to start doing mini-workouts at my desk. Nothing elaborate, just some movement on a regular schedule. I actually found some software that will pop up and lead you in Tai Chi every 30 minutes, but I’m not sure I want to have some woman’s voice all of a sudden blaring out of my speakers. Still, it seems interesting and I’ll look into it further. I can also simply get a timer and set it for a certain interval, and do my mini-workout whenever it goes off. You can understand why I’d prefer to be able to see people coming…I’d rather not look like a complete doofus if I can help it.
I’ve come to believe that using my lunch break for a workout isn’t the best plan. I think when I take my break I should do some walking around, but I’d rather it be something fun than something I won’t look forward to doing, and something that will make me sweat enough that I’ll need a change of clothes. Changing to work out saps my valuable break time. So I think I’ll shift to an “exploring” sort of lunch, when it’s not too hot. I’ll do my usual trek to the Riverwalk, or I’ll go to the Greeneway, or I’ll find some other place that isn’t too far away.
Also, when I went to the bike shop yesterday I learned how to take the front wheel off my bike, so it shouldn’t be quite as big a hassle to get the thing into my car. So maybe I can bike a little during lunch too, or before or after work.
Ultimately I want to try to keep it interesting so I don’t get bored and quit.
Finally, I need to change my mentality. If I don’t exercise much (or at all) one day, that doesn’t mean I can’t do it the next day. But I need to stop thinking of every time that happens as “starting over”. When I do that I get all revved up with my “new plan” and then when it fails I crash for awhile. What I need to do is think of myself as continually doing these things, rather than starting and stopping. It’s just like how they say you shouldn’t “diet”, but instead change your eating habits permanently.
I will be seeing my general practitioner in two weeks to discuss the results of the bloodwork they took yesterday. Depending on the outcome of that, I may be starting on blood pressure, cholesterol, and/or thyroid medication. Come September I will be back on hormones to regulate my periods. However, I will not think of those as fertility treatments. I’ll talk more about that in another post.
One in every three [Japanese] cars now a minivehicle
One official said the number of minivehicles soared in 2006 “because automakers took the wraps off a slew of new models and unleashed fully restyled models.”
[…]
Industry officials said the minivehicle category has been popular particularly with women and the elderly because they are easy to drive.
Such cars also benefited from fuel efficiency and low maintenance costs after the asset-inflated bubble burst in the early 1990s, they said.
Here’s Shiba, reporter for Pro Tennis magazine in the anime Prince of Tennis, in her awesome minicar. I want one!
