Migraines and more

It feels like 2018 is going to be another health related year.  Not that many years have been non-health related recently, but I seem to keep making appointments for health related issues.  I just had an appointment with my doctor last week and an appointment with my new neurologist this week.  I've had my first dental cleaning and have an upcoming appointment for my optometrist.  All in the first few months of the year.

Mom's New Ride

First thing's first.  Yes, this is a new header image style.  I just got a little tired of the square format with the title at the bottom and a text box around it.  I think this style will be a nice change of pace without taking too much time away from actually posting.

Okay, on to business.  No, I have not purchased my mother a new car.  Yet.  She's being stubborn about it.  I could say that this started a week or so ago when she had a complaint about her current car, but honestly this started back when I helped her pick out her current car in 2014.  I never intended for this to be the end all car for her.  Cars age.  Cars get better each and every year.  Car payments go away.  Put those together and I just figured that after 5 years I'd look and see what her current car payment could purchase at that time.  Now I didn't share that sentiment with Mom as she's like me... stubborn.  She doesn't like things being given to her and would rather 'do without' so that she can give to others.  The fact that I'm taking my money and spending it on her is a sore spot with her.

A year in review

I skipped over doing this last year, so sadly there isn't a '2016 year in review).  But this is something I've done for 2013, 2014, and 2015 and will hopefully continue on with in the future.  If for no other reason than it will be fun to look back and see what I was going through at these times.

Anywho, this is an idea I got from Joanna on her Happiness blog.  I hate to say that I haven't visited her blog in a long long time.  It's one of the things that I've just given up on... keeping up with all my blogging friends.  Anyway, on to the year.

Where I look back at most years (since 2013) as good, I can't say the same about 2017.  It started off on the wrong foot.... I was sick.  I mean damn, I was sick from late December 2016 until around March of 2017.  I finally went to the doctor, got some antibiotics and some allergy pills and kicked it but three months of sickness really gets to you.

I traveled.  I visited Detroit for the car show in January.  I drove down to Dallas to visit my friends there.  I flew down to New Orleans in September to hang with my friends.  I made some cool purchases from a new 55 inch OLED television, a new refrigerator, a new grill, a new computer, and a new car.  But that traveling and those purchases put a big stress on my finances.  For the past few years I found it easy to keep around $2000 in my savings.  That was without trying to do so... I'd buy what I want, when I want, and I'd still find myself with an extra two grand to blow on something.  Well... this year I didn't have that.  One of the first decisions I made in 2017 was to go down to Mardi Gras with a friend in 2018.  He booked us a hotel and a train ride down and I owed him $1000.  Oops.  It took me most of the year to pay him off.  Everything else just kept getting in the way.  And now, almost a year later, it looks like I might not have much cash to go down with.

Music Conversion

I've gone and done it... I'm changing the way I listen to music.

This actually started a couple years ago.  In 2015 I wrote about me dipping my toes into the streaming music system.  A quick summary of that post is that I had heard a podcast with some techy guys talking about streaming music services... specifically spotify.  I mused a bit about some of the services I knew and even mentioned the new elephant in the room; Apple Music.

My conclusion was that I couldn't justify the cost.  Most of those services go for $10 a month and I don't spend $10 a month on new music.  Fast forward to about a year go (late 2016) and I bought my Google Pixel XL.  Google in it's infinite AI wisdom included a 3 month subscription to Google Music.  I am quite the sucker for free trials and I signed up for it.  It only took me a few days to realize I don't like it.  For one, on the computer Google Music only plays through a web browser.  I actually like things being more portable like that, but not my music.  I'm so accustomed to having iTunes be my music world that the replacement would have to at least START with a stand alone desktop app.   Plus iTunes integrates well within windows.  I had it set so that whenever I minimized it, it wouldn't go down to the task bar like any other program.  Instead, it would minimize as a toolbar with the play/fast-forward/rewind/ect buttons.

The Best Time Of The Year!

I've had quite a few depressing or at least non-happy posts, so I really just wanted to post something that makes me happy.

Football.

Specifically, College Football.  Between early September and early January my attentions turn distinctly to watching and enjoying college football.  I'm specifically a fan of the University of Michigan, but that's equally paired with a simple love of the game.  Sure, I root against Michigan State and Ohio State when they play the Wolverines, but I root FOR those same teams when they are playing other people.

Let's specify first that I don't like professional football.  I don't watch the NFL, I don't root for the Detroit Lions, and I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.  I've asked myself on many occasions why that is, and I think I've come down to two specific reasons.  Amateurism, and the temporary nature of any good team in College.  For amateurism, I just love the fact that these guys aren't getting paid millions of dollars to go out and play a game.  If they don't make a particular play, there's no part of me wondering if they pulled back because of the possible loss of money.  Let's face it, if a player gets injured in the pros it might cost him millions of dollars on his next contract negotiation.  At the college level, these guys are putting everything on the line every time the play for the possibility of joining that millionaire's club. If they don't take that risk and make that play, they might not get drafted.  And most of the players at this level know they won't be professional athletes.  They're going to be business men, journalists, car salesmen, doctors.  They're playing more for the love of the game than for even the possibility of money.

Health Update

This is just a short post (I started with the intent of this being short... but I got wordy and it's not short any longer... sorry) to update on some of my ongoing health issues.  My two main problems since I first saw my doc in 2014 has been diabetes and migraines.

At the time I knew I had diabetes.  I had the classic symptoms.  I was thirsty and hungry all the time and I was constantly having to urinate due to me drinking so much (and I was drinking to quench the thirst that couldn't be quenched).  The doc did a blood test and my A1C came back firmly into the uncontrolled diabetes level.  Since then I've been taking daily blood sugars to track my diabetes while he put me on metformin, increased the metformin twice, put me on byetta, and then increased the byetta.

Outside of medication I made some changes to my life.  First and foremost I just simply tried to limit how many carbs I ate.  If there was a choice of bread or meat, I'd take the meat. If it was potatoes or beans, I'd take the beans.  Cookies or fruit?  Go for the fruit.  I didn't fully take the carbs out as I knew that would be near impossible for me.  I just love bread and potatoes and corn.  I was already self limiting sweets, but I never ever fully stopped eating them.  The next step was to pick my battles.  Everybody here should know by now that I live with my mother and am trying to help her out as much as I can.  Well one of her loves is cooking and baking.  I didn't even want to try and take that way from her or change her habits.  So I just ate whatever she put on the table for dinner.  As a wife and mother who came to age in the 70s, her cooking habits are firmly in the 'meat and potatoes' area.  She also had to fight cholesterol for my father in the 80s and 90s and beyond, so she limited the meat and focused on the potatoes and pastas.  So... yeah.  I get quite a bit of carbs from mom.  I still limit it... I eat less or no bread at dinner, I take extra helpings of the meat and less of the potatoes, but the menu is just not diabetes friendly.  So my battle would be where I could make the most impact.

Anticipating

You know... I love looking forward to things.  At this very moment (its about 7 AM, Saturday morning, November 4th) I am looking forward to my brother coming over and watching College Game Day.  I'm looking forward to possibly playing Dungeons and Dragons with my brother, nephews, and a friend this afternoon.  I'm looking forward to watching Michigan crush Minnesota this evening.  I'm looking forward to talking to my brother as we always find something interesting to discuss (a couple weeks ago it was white privilege!).  I'm looking forward to Sunday where I only have to do a bit of shopping and some laundry but is other wise a day off.  I'm looking forward to returning to work on Monday as I battled a migraine most of last week and work was just awful.  I'm looking forward to driving up north for a work meeting on Wednesday.  I'm looking forward to a three day weekend next weekend.  I'm looking forward to the Thanksgiving 4 day weekend.  I'm looking forward to Michigan Vs Ohio State.  I'm looking forward to Christmas.  I'm looking forward to Michigan's bowl game (can you tell that it's a football Saturday yet?).  I'm looking forward to the point where I can order my new phone and then receive it (the damned Pixel 2 XL black and white version has been out of stock since it went on pre-order back on October 4th!).  I'm looking forward to my birthday.  I'm looking forward to Mardi Gras.  I'm looking forward to having my credit cards paid down and maybe a Summer vacation.  I'm looking forward to a trip to Grand Rapids, a weekend in Chicago, and a trip up north (three trips in the nebulous planning stage with a friend).  I'm looking forward to Winter.  I'm looking forward to Spring.  I'm looking forward to Summer.  I'm looking forward to (next) Autumn.

This is not good

There are a lot of ways to self assess my situation.  I can look at my money, I can look at my job security, I can look at my leisure time (both how much of it I have and how much of it I use), I can look at my job, my job satisfaction, my dreams, my desires, and so much more.  And by most measures, I'm doing fine.

I mean, I have savings without sacrificing any wants, desires, or needs.  I have a career that lets me work just about anywhere, and am good at my current job.  I have quite a bit of 'time off', and have plans for get togethers with friends and family both big (Mardi Gras) and small (football Saturdays, D&D, setting up my friends cord cutting).

But that's kind of like looking at the graphic I have in the title and thinking that little cartoon dog is fine.  I mean, he's saying "This is Fine", he's smiling, he even has his jaunty little hat on.  Don't mind the obvious signs like the fire raging in the background... he's fine.  But you know he's not fine.  You know he's in trouble and he's putting on a brave face for some reason.  And that's me.  I'm not fine.  There are fires raging both external and internal that are making me not fine.  There's a smile on my face most of the time but it's forced and cracked and temporary at best.  I tell people that I'm fine, but I'm lying to them.  Because I'm not fine and I don't know how to express that to someone without it devolving into whining.

Hodgepodge

A couple things I want to 'muse' on.  President Trump, New Phone, Lack O Cash, Moving, Mom's Health, Weight V Size.  Really just a grab bag of topics, none really worthy of their own individual post.



President Trump

I don't like him.  I don't like him as a person or a politician.  But I don't think I can say I like or dislike his policies because I don't get the feeling that he has any real policies beyond Making America Great Again.  And no... I don't know what he means by that.  Let's cover all of that piece by piece.

Him as a person.  He's a twit.  He has a five year old's mentality.  If you insult him, he'll insult you back.  What ever he does is 'great' and probably the 'greatest' ever.  He cares about reviews.  Now I didn't like George W Bush as a person either.  I felt that he was honestly against intelligent discourse, but even with all the 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' stuff, he still came across as Presidential most of the time.  I don't remember him striking out against the press, individual press outlets, and certainly not against individual journalists.  I imagined him railing against all of these things in private, but he didn't let that seep into his public persona.  President Trump does and it seems to be getting us into trouble.  A perfect example of that is North Korea.  Can anybody honestly say his bombastic attempt at handling North Korea has caused them to step back their efforts at all?  Has it caused them to ratchet up their nuclear and missile tests? In that way, hasn't it also brought us closer to actual war?  I mean, at this point are we more or less likely for one of their tests to go horribly wrong and land a missile on Japan? Are we more or less likely for one of their jets to attack one of our jets?

Mom's Health

So yesterday I got all pissed off and pumped up and just had to write about the protests and patriotism.  I think one of the reasons I was so pissed though was family.  Mom is sick.  More sick than normal.  And I'm just about as worried about her as I've ever been.  Lemme set the stage a bit so you can understand my concern when I get back to the present.

My father died 10 years ago.  It was devastating to our entire family.  Family, to us anyway, is just about everything.  To this day I'm still striving to earn my father's pride.  As hard as it was for me to lose my father, it was ten times as hard for my mother to lose her husband.  They had plans to grow old and travel together.  To enjoy both their retirements and reap all the benefits they'd worked so hard for.  After the initial round of grief, I thought Mom would be okay as she started to travel with my aunt... her sister.  Mom and Aunt S have always been very close, and now that they were both widows, they became even closer.

Mom, at the time, was very healthy.  Sure, she had type 2 diabetes, and smoked, and had several other long standing problems, but she could get up and run with the best of them.  She was about 60 at the time and looking at her and her activity level would put her closer to 50.  Then she started having heart problems.  Over the course of a year she went into the cardiologist and had a bunch of tests and figured out that she needed to have a triple bypass.  Just to rush through this part, she had a bad recovery from the surgery and after another year of tests, they found out that none of the bypasses were viable.  They all failed.  And their best guess was that they failed soon after the surgery... so while mom was trying to recover from open heart surgery, she didn't have the improvement the bypasses were supposed to offer.