How many times in a row do you have to get tonsillitis before they decide it's time for you to get your tonsils out? I've had tonsillitis at least 3x / year since I was about 9. I still have my tonsils. This year, since moving to the great white north, I have now gotten tonsillitis (self diagnosed thanks to WebMd, then verified by visit to Doc first time) twice in very quick succession this new year and it's not even March.
I was so proud of myself that I was fighting this last time so hard, trying not to let the cold reach my chest which then can escalate (for me) into bronchitis really quickly. Wednesday night I went to my spin class and did the best I've done thus far and it was hard. The trainer was awesome and kicked our butts. I came home feeling so proud and felt so good. Then...a night of tossing and turning and coughing my head off followed. I was so wiped out the next day during my training class I thought I was going to die. After lunch my colleagues around me were telling me to go home as I was white as a sheet.
It was snowing like crazy and what should normally be a 20 minute drive took me an hour. Once I got home I took so much cold medication and sleep medication that I slept. I slept all day Friday and all Friday night. I finally feel human today.
I'm so tired of being sick. I had really hoped that working out would build up my immune system, but we'll see. Speaking of building my immune system, I've started taking Kundalini yoga. Kundalini is a type of yoga that focuses not only on the outside but also the inside. According to Wikipedia (for what it's worth) Kundalini yoga is a physical and meditative discipline, comprising a set of techniques that use the mind, senses and body to create a communication between "mind" and "body". Kundalini yoga focuses on psycho-spiritual growth and the body's potential for maturation, giving special consideration to the role of the spine and the endocrine system in the understanding of yogic awakening.
Now, all of this felt a bit "woo woo" to me the first class. We do a lot of chanting and focus on our "auras" and our "chi". I'm not sure I really buy into all of this, but I have to admit it has grown on me and I love it. I like the meditation (as I am awesome at the corpse pose - essentially laying on your back). But mostly I like it because a lot of yoga focuses on breathing techniques and I now have asthma - which really concerns me. So I asked my yoga teacher if she had any additional exercises to help me out. She then asked me if I would be interested in homeopathic medicine...uh...well...I guess so.
I've never been interested in homeopathic medicine. I am the quintessential American girl - if a pill will make me better, bring it on. When I lived in Japan, the doctors there often wanted to use "the foreigner" as a guinea pig and try Chinese medicine on me. As if I was an alien and it would react differently on me than them. I hated it. Why deal with nasty tasting crap for 2 weeks when a pill will cure me in 2 days?
But I thought I really hate dealing with my inhalers and it's really expensive and I would love to figure out a better way to deal with my asthma. Little did I know what that would entail. So I fill out this "intake" form for her. My yoga teacher has some type of homeopathic certification. So last week, after class she pulls out all of these vials. She then sits next to me and takes my pulse while dropping different liquid herbs on the pad of my thumb. Uh yeah...whatever. I'm like la la lah. I feel nothing. She's making typical doc type noises, switching vials around and such. Then, all of the sudden, she looks up at me and asks, "do you smoke"? I'm like, no. Then she says, "but did you smoke". Uh...yeah. She goes, I knew it! I was like, am I suddenly at a Tarot Card reading? WTF? So she recommended 2 herbal remedies for me. I looked them up - they are legit old school remedies.
She sends me to this herbal shop to buy them. I was meeting a friend for lunch, so I made her go with me as my yoga teacher said if you think I'm out there, the people who run this shop are "kooks". Lovely. So I go to the shop, find my stuff and get out of there before it gets busted as it is clearly a head shop. Well, actually I have no idea, but it was bizarre. Incense and books and herbs everywhere. Freaky-deeky people "working" there as well. I think one guy was actually a witch doctor.
So now I'm supposed to drop these two herbal liquids under my tongue twice a day. First off, they are NASTY tasting!! I have a very low tolerance for that. THEN, one of them BURNS!!! Completely unpleasant and it creates canker sores in my mouth.
To top it all off she gave me some dietary recommendations - basically things she wants me to stop eating. First on the list is all cow dairy and eggs. UHHHHHHH!!! NO CHEESE?!!! It's like my go-to snack. I LURVE cheese, just about any and all cheese (except stinky blues). Then, a laundry list of vitamin supplements. We'll see how long it lasts.
So here's to becoming a kook. Om.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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Saturday, February 14, 2009
Creeky and Confused
Today ended my third week of bootcamp. I am sore in areas I didn't know existed. I can't sit or lay in the same position for long periods of time without risking a serious cramp or twitch. When I get up, my body creeks and cracks like an old lady. Class today is at noon. I woke up at 9:30 thanks to a stupid telemarketer and it was bright sunshine and snowing. What do you call that? When we lived in Hawaii and the sun was out while raining they called it, pineapple juice. Silly, but appropriate. So what would you call sun and snow at the same time? Shave Ice?
Okay - sorry, sidetracked. So I was very tired this morning...could have very easily gone back to sleep. But I show up and as usual I'm the first to arrive. My other 5 cohorts in pain show up and we end up doing spinning sprints and jumps followed by ubiquitous push-ups and lunges because clearly we didn't work out legs enough while spinning.
Then we get back on the bikes after lunging and push-ups because clearly we don't need our legs anymore - legs must be numb. So we did hills. At a certain point doing hills I honestly thought I was going to break down and start crying. I was trying to channel my inner Lance Armstrong saying to myself over and over, "I'm in the Alps, isn't it pretty?". I manage to find some inner motivation to finish the climb up the hill and then we have to finish the day with 60 bicep curls and 60 triceps.
After I finished I felt really good and it seemed the hour went by really fast. It clearly did not seem that way in the moment, but push-ups are getting "easier". My ultimate goal is to do boy push-ups, not girl ones.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I have a bit of a strange dilemma. I used to have a MySpace account, but there are too many strange people who post inappropriate spams to your account so I took it down. Other people asked me to join Facebook which is more private than MySpace, so I did. I went to 3 different high schools. I get "friended" by a lot of people that I can't remember. So I have a lot of random "friends". I also find it odd that after 20 some odd years these people want to "friend" me. It's really just wanting to compare lives and see how people have aged. I don't have any photos of myself because I'm not thrilled with the way I look these days (hence the bootcamp) AND because there are certain people over the years that I am not so keen in looking me up again.
So I work with a man that I will call A. I have conversed with A since I started my new job in July. A has been with the company a little bit longer than me and is in a Director role. I was able to go to headquarters in December for some training and met A and those on his team. They were very cool to me and we did lunch and then drinks and dinner. From then, I invited A and his team to my network via LinkedIn. LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals. Not long after I made my request, I got an email from A asking if I was on Facebook. Now, due to some lessons learned over the years, I try now to keep my work "friends" separate from my social "friends". AND I didn't exactly want someone from my current company in a higher position than myself seeing my status updates and other silly things I chose to post to my Facebook account. I already have felt like I have to censor myself in my blog at times and I didn't want to do so on Facebook. But, how do you say no? So to his question of am I on Facebook, I simply answered "yes". Then, I get an email a few days later saying he didn't believe me because he couldn't find me and asked if I would "friend" him. So...feeling a bit of pressure I did.
While I really like A - he's very intelligent, good-looking, he's probably in his 50s and has a kid in college. I might be interested in him if we didn't work for the same company and the fact that I do work with him regularly. On Facebook, there is an internal IM system. On a few occasions A has IM'd me via Facebook asking what I'm up to and such. Then recently he's started IM'ing me at work. Recently he IM'd me at work and I couldn't tell if he was interested in me as a friend or more than a friend. I've been out of "the game" for such a long time, I can't tell when I'm being flirted with or not. So I always assume the person is not. Until this week. Monday, I get an IM from A who has read one of those stupid quizzes I filled out on Facebook and references it. So we have a bit of banter back and forth and then he says, "I think if you lived here, we could have a lot of fun". Okayyyyyyy. What do I say to this? Especially as he's chosen to say this via our work IM and not Facebook IM. So I just say, thanks. THEN, Friday I get a V-Day IM from him.
Sigh...seriously? I am not sure what to think about this or really what to do. Thoughts?
Okay - sorry, sidetracked. So I was very tired this morning...could have very easily gone back to sleep. But I show up and as usual I'm the first to arrive. My other 5 cohorts in pain show up and we end up doing spinning sprints and jumps followed by ubiquitous push-ups and lunges because clearly we didn't work out legs enough while spinning.
Then we get back on the bikes after lunging and push-ups because clearly we don't need our legs anymore - legs must be numb. So we did hills. At a certain point doing hills I honestly thought I was going to break down and start crying. I was trying to channel my inner Lance Armstrong saying to myself over and over, "I'm in the Alps, isn't it pretty?". I manage to find some inner motivation to finish the climb up the hill and then we have to finish the day with 60 bicep curls and 60 triceps.
After I finished I felt really good and it seemed the hour went by really fast. It clearly did not seem that way in the moment, but push-ups are getting "easier". My ultimate goal is to do boy push-ups, not girl ones.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I have a bit of a strange dilemma. I used to have a MySpace account, but there are too many strange people who post inappropriate spams to your account so I took it down. Other people asked me to join Facebook which is more private than MySpace, so I did. I went to 3 different high schools. I get "friended" by a lot of people that I can't remember. So I have a lot of random "friends". I also find it odd that after 20 some odd years these people want to "friend" me. It's really just wanting to compare lives and see how people have aged. I don't have any photos of myself because I'm not thrilled with the way I look these days (hence the bootcamp) AND because there are certain people over the years that I am not so keen in looking me up again.
So I work with a man that I will call A. I have conversed with A since I started my new job in July. A has been with the company a little bit longer than me and is in a Director role. I was able to go to headquarters in December for some training and met A and those on his team. They were very cool to me and we did lunch and then drinks and dinner. From then, I invited A and his team to my network via LinkedIn. LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals. Not long after I made my request, I got an email from A asking if I was on Facebook. Now, due to some lessons learned over the years, I try now to keep my work "friends" separate from my social "friends". AND I didn't exactly want someone from my current company in a higher position than myself seeing my status updates and other silly things I chose to post to my Facebook account. I already have felt like I have to censor myself in my blog at times and I didn't want to do so on Facebook. But, how do you say no? So to his question of am I on Facebook, I simply answered "yes". Then, I get an email a few days later saying he didn't believe me because he couldn't find me and asked if I would "friend" him. So...feeling a bit of pressure I did.
While I really like A - he's very intelligent, good-looking, he's probably in his 50s and has a kid in college. I might be interested in him if we didn't work for the same company and the fact that I do work with him regularly. On Facebook, there is an internal IM system. On a few occasions A has IM'd me via Facebook asking what I'm up to and such. Then recently he's started IM'ing me at work. Recently he IM'd me at work and I couldn't tell if he was interested in me as a friend or more than a friend. I've been out of "the game" for such a long time, I can't tell when I'm being flirted with or not. So I always assume the person is not. Until this week. Monday, I get an IM from A who has read one of those stupid quizzes I filled out on Facebook and references it. So we have a bit of banter back and forth and then he says, "I think if you lived here, we could have a lot of fun". Okayyyyyyy. What do I say to this? Especially as he's chosen to say this via our work IM and not Facebook IM. So I just say, thanks. THEN, Friday I get a V-Day IM from him.
Sigh...seriously? I am not sure what to think about this or really what to do. Thoughts?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Happy
Lately I've been feeling pretty happy. It's unusual for me especially over the last few years filled with being laid off, selling my house and moving. I'm finally over that "new hire" hump where I feel like people finally know me, my hard work to build a network has paid off. I made it through another scary period of lay-offs and I know it could always happen sometime in the future, but I think I'm "safe" for now.
I enrolled in a bootcamp that is kicking my ass, but I can't believe the stuff I'm able to do. My energy level is up and oddly enough I've been in a really good mood lately. It's weird.
I enrolled in a bootcamp that is kicking my ass, but I can't believe the stuff I'm able to do. My energy level is up and oddly enough I've been in a really good mood lately. It's weird.
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