Where oh where have I been? Well going batty over on the facebook of course! Really though, I owe you all a blog entry. I finished the reboot and stayed all mum about it. Aren't you all just burning with anticipation at what the end was like? What is life like after the reboot? No? Yeah, me either.
Well it ended pretty low key. By the last few weeks it was getting tiresome. Not because we wanted steak and lots of it, but because I don't know... It just was. I was just tired of washing bottles, and making juice and washing the juicer. But we did it, we finished. I don't have official numbers to give you all besides my weight. In the 60 days I lost 26lbs and my blood sugar average was approximately 107. Unlike Mike, I didn't go get all my starting numbers checked cause I had done them like a month before we started. I have an appointment to get my A1C checked on November 1st and sometime in the near future I'll get my cholesterol checked. See this is how envision that going... I'm going to get up really early one morning. The lab opens at 7:30, so I'll jump on my bike around 7 ride the 4 miles to the lab, let them draw my blood and then I'll jump back on my bike and start riding to work. Somewhere along the trek, say about 1.5 miles down the road I'll pull over at Carl's Jr. and scarf down a double famous star with cheese, extra onion, extra pickles and a milk shake. Then I will stare out the window at my bike thinking "shit what did I just do..." As I learned recently I don't puke on command, so I will roll down the street very very slowly. I will stumble in the door and into my desk sweating like crazy and Georgia will think I am in the midst of a heart attack. Yup that is exactly how it will happen. Ok maybe not the milk shake cause I really don't like them, and it probably won't be a double but chances are good that something horrendous will enter via my face. BUT! Did y'all catch the part about me riding my bike there? If you didn't well then you suck and you need to go back and read it again!
Anyway something similar will happen around my A1C appointment. Though it's closer to my office than the lab and I don't think there is anything on the way that I could stop and shove down my gullet. The point I'm making is that we have changed our habits. The first weekend off the fast we were in Seattle where plenty of poor choices were made, however, they were less destructive than the kind of choices we made in our previous life. I instigated a trip minus Mike to Red Robin where I couldn't choke down a full 1/2 of a burger. I didn't have but 1 french fry and yes I did have a few pieces of appetizer and a salad. In days gone by I could eat the entire appetizer by myself, follow it up with a dinner salad, then a Red Robin cheeseburger, all the fries in my basket and a second helping of bottomless fries. Jesus Christ writing that out made me kind of sick! So the new me had a dinner salad, a few pieces of an appetizer and a few bites of a burger and a french fry. It was a substantial difference let me tell you! Also when I was done I was 1. incredibly regretful and 2. full to the point of physical pain. I wanted to throw it all up and boy did I try. If I had tried any harder my hand would have been INSIDE my esophagus. Nothing would come back up, it was like my body was like IT'S MINE NOW HEIFER!! So since being home we've been sticking to mostly salad, soups and the like. We went to our first post fast bbq and ate steak. We each had a small piece of meat the size of our palms. The entire weight of both our steaks was less than the weight of 1 steak we previously would have happily ingested. I fell victim to the bag of potato chips that Liz brought but again I'd say I did pretty good considering my history. For the most part I have been biking with Mike on an almost daily basis. There are some days when I tell him to eat my shorts, especially on those days when the rain is pouring down. After the incident with his phone and his waterproof suit I decided to stand my ground against riding in the rain until I have better rain gear. Ok really that's just an excuse. I told him I would do it if I had a good pair of goggles and a zip lock bag. Frankly when the rain is pouring down and you can't see where you're going and your bike light is no longer enough light to cut through the dark, it really makes it hard to look outside and say "sure let's go for a ride". I'm getting better though, at this point I can do the 11 mile loop without stoping. I can also now finish the 14 mile loop. That still requires a break but unlike the first time, I no longer faint when I get to the top of the nasty hill. Yeah nothing funnier to watch than 3 goofballs on the side of the road and one of them flat on her chunky back. I couldn't believe it you guys! Everytime I got back up I was like oh no I'm going back down. It was funny in retrospect and mostly annoying in the moment. I was ready to call a cab. You know they have them with bike racks around here!
So how do I feel otherwise? Well I've been taking my meds, that's good right? I have my good days, I have my bad days. I've been dipping into a slump though. My boss used to say we can't have peaks and valleys, zu! She said it a lot and it pissed me off because of the context of the conversation. I think of that statement cause it's how I feel lately. But I suppose that is what I can expect suffering from Bi-Polar. Recognizing when it's coming on is the only thing I can control. Sleeping 12 hours straight without disturbances was probably the most glaring sign that somethings coming on. I mean sure I was tired from working 4x10's to make up some time which means being up and at work at 7. But I was doing that for a few months, and sure now it's dark and cold but it is generally dark and cold in this state. Still I don't generally sleep for 12 hours straight. Hell I can't usually sleep for 5 hours without waking up for something or because of nothing. So there I was waking up and thinking Jesus did I just really sleep that long? It was a bad Saturday from there and I hate that I took it out on Mike but he's there and sometimes it will be something he said or did that sets me off. I don't know how many times I can say sorry cause I know it's going to happen again. I'm not a miserable ass who just wants to make everyone else just as miserable, especially not Mike. It's just the hand I was delt and I am trying to make it less shitty for the poor man who has chosen to stand by me.
They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family and I think that's a fallacy. Look at Mike, he stands by me even if he's mostly cowering in the corner through my episodes. And for those of you who were unfortunate enough to watch the destruction of my relationship with one of my sisters on facebook, you know that you can choose what family isn't worth keeping in your life. Life is painful enough without letting the toxic energy of other people make things more difficult. Believe me it hurts. It hurts probably as much as the pain of cutting off a limb without anesthetic. It crushes me to think that I might never see my baby Tori again. I was there the day she was born, I was there through my sisters pregnancy entire pregnancy. I love my sister, I always have and will. It's very hard to say what I want to say about it in such a public forum. Not because I'm worried someone will tell her what I say, by all means do! And I'm also not worried about what she might say because as we've all seen she has no trouble coming up with something extremely nasty and hurtful to say. I'm  not her doormat to walk all over, sorry sis. Really what it boils down to is that it's painful for me. We have had our ups and downs but for a while there we were really close. I enjoyed being her friend as much as her sister. I don't think she's ever truly given two shits about me as a person or much less as a sister and that realization is crushing. As a family we have had such a tumultuous relationship with her. I don't know what was different about her than the rest of the kids, but somewhere along the way it was like she made every one of us the enemy. She might say that it's just my parents and I that are the enemy but we all know she only backs down to certain people because she will be completely fucked if she sets her final bridge afire. So it is what it is. I'm glad to have so many people in my corner who see me through my crazy episodes, through my depressed episodes and are there to celebrate when I'm in a great manic episode. I have a great party in my corner and I am thankful for every single one of you. I might not say it often enough, but I am glad you're in my life guys.
So let us all just keep taking our meds and drinking our juice and eating our veggies and riding our bikes. And lets laugh cause if we don't have laughter what do we have?