House-Sitting in Wintertime

The weather is stupid. It does not like me and is therefore trying to thwart me in many ways, by making it nearly impossible to go outside for any length of time while I am attempting to care for many chickens. Chickens who all seem to have the expectation of non-frozen water, scratch to eat, and a warm dwelling. I go outside to care for the chickens and wheeze in the winter air, then I walk the inside dog and wheeze, and then I take care of the outside dog, all while wheezing.

And did I mention that Oreo, the outside dog, is living in the mud room? Because she is there now, since it is too brutally cold and windy for her to be outside in her doghouse. And Lilly, the inside dog, is about the size of my forearm and cannot abide the cold. She has devised ways of balancing on one paw while outside, even when going to the bathroom, so to speak. It is both sad and hilarious.

The animals are miserable, and they look at me as if to say, "You are not our person. Our person would fix this. You do not have power over the weather. You are insufficient."

They are right. If I had power over the weather, it would be a balmy 75 degrees all year long, and mostly sunny. All rain would take place at night, and we would never get enough to flood the roads. We would have one annual snowfall, on Christmas Eve, resulting in a white Christmas, but the snow would quickly melt on December 26th. Snow would never stick to the roads, drift, or compact into ice.

In short, we would be living in paradise instead of a subzero arctic hellscape. No records for snowfall would be broken this year (yes, that's happening), and we would never HAVE to wear a coat, unless we wanted to for fashion purposes.

Also, there would be cake. Not in the forecast, just on the table, waiting.

I have developed a sore throat. It is wearing on me, making me less willing to put up with the weather's crap. Stupid life-ruining weather, making me have to drive in snow, making me have to shiver. Creating and then worsening a cold I would otherwise have been immune to, due to overexposure from many coughing library children.

I have decided to make a choice for the family I'm house-sitting for. The whole house, chickens, outbuildings, and dogs are going to be picked up, loaded on to many trucks, and driven down south to a warmer climate. We will return when spring arrives.

It will make things more convenient for them, I think. They'll have a shorter drive home.

Also the chickens will need sunglasses.

That is all.

Workout Wednesday: In Which Laura's Stomach Explodes

Strictly speaking, this is not a post about exercise, but it is about health and diet, so I am counting it as worthy of Workout Wednesday.

Having a gallbladder can mean a lot of things. It can mean that your body is digesting fats. It can mean that your body refuses to digest anything. It can keep you healthy. It can almost (or actually) kill you. But not having a gallbladder means only one thing: You aren't digesting any of the fatty foods or oils that go into your body. What does that mean? They pass out of your body in the way that things pass through. Only faster. And sometimes that means pain, folks. It means PAIN.

When my gallbladder left me behind and went to the great big medical waste incinerator in the sky, I altered my diet. I cut out LOTS of fat. I tried my very best to avoid things that would make me sick. I started buying eggs from free-range chickens because they are low in fat and cholesterol. I switched to low or no-fat yogurt. I stopped eating chips, I cut down on butter and other spreads...and I tried my very best to make my diet healthier.

That wasn't hard, because the change in my diet was really that I added back in a lot of the foods I'd had to stop eating. Before my gallbladder surgery, I was eating bagels with low-fat strawberry cream cheese and fresh mozzarella.

Yeah. That's the end of the list. There was no other food. And yet, I survived! What a surprise.

The changes worked, and I felt good. I didn't have to go get the medicine they make to help gallbladderless folk digest fat. I was in the clear.

But this last week has involved lots of crazy. Thursday I went to Chicago, grabbing food as I went. Friday I ran to Kokomo, then I quickly made a salad and cake for Jen's reception, and I ate a few slices of pizza for dinner, because it was there. And then Saturday, I ate at Jen's reception (lots of yummy salads with creamy dressings) and then pizza in the evening at her grandma's house. And Sunday I ate leftovers at home of the first pizza and the broccoli salad. And Monday I grabbed fast food for lunch and then had pasta for dinner with a yummy creamy sauce--

And all of that translates to lots and lots of unnecessary fats in my diet.

That might explain today's horror. Or I may have eaten something today that didn't settle well. It could have been a bad batch of sweet tea. It could have been a funky yogurt, or bad melon. Heck, Drugged Out Waiter could have given me food poisoning. He could have dropped meth in with the bread. Who knows.

All I know for sure is that I was half-convinced that I should head straight to the emergency room at around 3:00. It was the worst pain ever. The kind of pain no one should ever feel.

Part of me kept wanting to check and see if someone had walked into the library and actually shot me, or perhaps left a knife lodged in my stomach, right below the last rib. Somebody could have come in to kill me, and maybe I was in shock! That was why I thought I should keep working on the teen fall brochure instead of passing out from blood loss and sheer agony! But no. No one had actually stabbed me. Not yet.

Source: memegenerator.net via Laura on Pinterest

The worst part was, I'm pretty sure I did this to myself. TO MYSELF. So this is me saying: I am not letting that happen again. That might mean I drag you out of your way so I can get healthier food when we're running around having fun. And if that's the case, I am sorry. But I simply cannot go through that again.

I am feeling much better now; well enough that I came home from meeting Rachael and worked out. What I didn't do was move up to level three of 30 Day Shred. I didn't quite have that in me today.

Here's hoping tomorrow I feel even better and can move up a level. I am starting to do so well at level two, it feels like I'm cheating just because I'm not finishing my workout pleading with my television for mercy.

Why does begging Jillian Michaels to please let me die feel normal now? (I'm pretty sure that's a rhetorical question...)