I kinda forgot that I can’t have brownies in the house.
Category Archives: health & fitness
A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals
Outpatient
On Friday, December 7th, I underwent outpatient surgery, per the suggestion of my urologist.
I’m only 42. Those parts really shouldn’t be failing on me already. But, I figured, the inconvenience of surgery would be worth avoiding the future inconvenience of dealing with urological issues indefinitely.
Circadian Rhythms
It’s obvious on this sleep graph where school started this August.
There’s a definite transition from the summer schedule of 6:50am weekday wake-up to the new school-year schedule of 6am wake-up (or thereabouts). That squiggly part in between was the week before school started, where there was no summer camp, so I took the week off to hang out and have some fun with Connor. Ah, that one glorious day when we slept past 8:30!
I find myself waking up at 6:30am on weekends now. I don’t get up and stay up, but I do wake up to go pee. Then I crawl back in bed and get another sleep cycle in before Connor comes to the door at 8:00 sharp and stage-whispers, “Good morning, Mommy!”
Valid Reasons For Feeling Meh
Blog entry: from the car.
Let’s see how this works out. I’ve never dictated a blog entry using Siri while I was driving, but there’s a first time for everything.
This is actually kind of cool, except for when my phone thinks that I’m done because I pause too long.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about feeling kind of meh today, since it doesn’t happen very often anymore. (Sidenote: it seems that if I don’t use Siri, and instead I just use the microphone, it works pretty well with my Shatner-esque pauses.)
As I was checking my email on the john this morning, I learned that some friends of ours are moving 40 minutes away. They currently live about 5 to 10 minutes from our house. So, that was kind of a bummer for me, although I am super glad for them. It sounds like they’re super excited to move out to the country.
It’s kind of funny, though, because their idea of the perfect place to live is the exact opposite of what we were looking for when we wanted a house. What we wanted was something close to the highway, so we could get places quickly. What they wanted was no neighbors.
Then, when I went to drive my son to school this morning, I saw that it was spitting rain or snow or something in between. I was displeased.
So, I guess I can actually pointed to a couple of good reason why I have that familiar old feeling today. It happens. I’ll get over it.
Edit to add: Also, people who drive 15 mph through downtown infuriate me. Not what I needed.
Feeding My Microbes
I’ve been listening to an audiobook about microbes and the microbiomes of several different species, and it’s totally fascinating.
There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the human gut microbiome — that is, all the bacteria and other microbes that live in the gastrointestinal tract — how the beneficial microbes can be reduced or entirely eliminated by antibiotics, how some people have effected changes in their health by transplanting the gut microbes from one person into another, and how we can nourish our own microbiome by feeding it fiber and fermented foods like yogurt.
The dietary changes aren’t a quick fix by any means, but as I was listening to this book, it occurred to me that I really, REALLY don’t eat enough fiber.
Take my word for it. 💩