Math

I'm not a big fan of math, unless it's addition into my bank account. But I've been doing the math and I've come to the conclusion there aren't enough hours in the day for me to live a normal life and take care of my diabetes the way I know I should.

                             Hours in the day                    = a negative number...
                 What I need to get done in them

First off all, let's look at the taking care of myself thing. There's the whole "low carbs" thing I'd been trying...That stopped almost as soon as it started. I was crazy to think I could do that. I do think I'm eating better though. I know I'm eating more yogurt, and fruit, and vegetables, and I am trying to lay off the heavy carbs at night. I'm not always successful, and if there is pizza to be had you can be sure that I don't even bother. I've also been trying to exercise more. My blood sugars are always better when I do that. This is all good news, but none of it is habit yet. When I can say that I've been doing all of this for a month together, then I'll be more apt to celebrate...but let's look at the numbers, because I think they show why I haven't formed any good habits yet.

I try to exercise at least 20-30 minutes five days a week. Okay, fine, three to four, max. But still, that's better than I've been doing.

I usually work five days a week, which takes up 10 hours of my day (30 minute commute each way, 8 hour work day, 1 hour lunch in there somewhere).

Where I spend most of my waking hours...at least it looks cool.

Add in the 8 hours I get for sleeping (sadly, it's usually more like 6 when you take into account the tossing and turning and pump beeping, but I'm still trying for 8) and that means 18 hours of my day are already accounted for. 30 minutes of exercise shouldn't be that bad, right?

Well...we're forgetting some things.

There's the 1 hour a day I spend getting ready to go to work, scarfing down some breakfast, and making sure I pack myself a lunch. If my night was particularly bad, that hour includes my 30 minutes of exercise, and if my night was really terrible or I wake up low, then the exercise is replaced with health maintenance.

By the time I get home my husband has usually started dinner, but sometimes I make dinner (a rare occurrence) or I at least get home in time to help. I am also trying to be better about cleaning up afterwards, so that's 20-30 minutes of clean up and maybe 30 minutes of cooking. Usually I get home only 10-15 minutes before dinner is ready because I get off of work an hour and a half after my husband, plus my 30 minute commute, so he's a hungry guy by the time I drag my tired ass through the door. Let's say all this takes an hour and a half.

How much of my day has been spent already? 19.5 hours, and 19.5 from 24 is 4.5 hours. I should have plenty of time for more exercise. Wait...did I include eating dinner? Better make that 4 hours left over. Still plenty of time.

Only I haven't had time to decompress yet. And at least once or twice a week I'm working on laundry. And my dogs need fed. And by the time dinner is over and cleaned up on an early night (because sometimes I work 'til 7 or 8) it's almost 8pm, and if I exercise then I'll be up for hours because of adrenaline (I know this from experience.) And really, a few minutes of conversation during a 24 hour period is enough for you and your spouse to connect, then call me co-dependent and clingy because I need more than that. A lot more. The house doesn't clean itself, either. And I feel like I'm always spending at least an hour a week paying bills, though it's likely less than that.

It should take longer to spend a paycheck than it does.

Still lots of time, right? Well...my husband and I are working on becoming foster parents, and once we have a placement we'll be adding going to the doctor with the kid, going to court with the kid, going to birth parent visits with the kid, going to meetings about  the kid and taking care of the kid to the mix. And while much of that is going to require me to take time off because of work, or happen on the weekend, a lot of it is going to eat up what little free time my husband and I have, because we want a younger child and I've heard they can't really feed or clothe themselves until they're at least five or something. Most of my experience with babies has been pretty limited, but they seem to be able to take care of things on their own pretty early...

Books always tell the truth, right?

I know what I need to do is get up earlier and get in my workout so that I'm not adding an additional thing to my poor sleep cycle, especially since I tend to go low in the mornings and will need to deal with that before I can exercise...only, let's be real, there is definitely a problem with getting up before 7 am. At least there is for me. I am just not a morning person. I can't concentrate or focus, and the earlier I get up, the harder it is for me to eat breakfast.

I know I'm making excuses, but unless I have a staff of five working seven days a week four hours a day with me there's little chance of me getting into the kind of shape I wish I was in, so I guess I need to set myself a goal and just work at getting to it, and if I don't look like a Victoria's Secret model a year from now that's okay. As long as I'm healthy, that counts as a big win.

I miss this show.

One step forward, two steps back

Had my doctor's appointment today. My hbA1c was 7.1, which is exactly what it was last time I went and .1 less than it was in November. All my blood work came back good. So that's going for me.

Got another bill from Medtronic, and frankly, I've had it with them. I was told my pump should be covered no problem by the employee who was handling my account, my insurance is not covering all of it, and now I still owe $1600+ dollars for this blasted thing. If I had that kind of money, I'd pay it off just to give myself a five month break from dealing with insurance and medical companies (because God knows when January and "deductible season" rolls around again this starts all over.)

I may have mentioned this before, but I get stressed out pretty easily. I try hard to be positive. I'm a naturally pessimistic person, and I don't want to be that way. I work hard to try and not be negative, to try to not hate on people, to try and just roll with it.

http://flowingdata.com/2011/09/18/yoda-pie-chart/

Fine, Yoda. Fine. Sometimes I succeed and it's great. Sometimes I fail and the whole damn world is going to hell and taking me right along with it. And yes, I know it's not the end of the world because I owe money for medical supplies. My husband has already advised me on how to proceed, and since he has a great deal of medical industry knowledge I'll follow his lead. And I'm sure someone somewhere owes more than I do, or is in a great deal of medical debt, but we all deal with issues our own ways and right now, with what I've got going on in my life, owing $1600 to a company that assured me I wasn't going to owe them anything is kind of my biggest first-world problem.

http://whatwouldjackdo.net/2011/05/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and.html

It's not even the money as much as the principle which irritates me no end. I shouldn't be paying them anything. They should have secured the information about how much I would owe and what my insurance would cover before they sent me the pump and I started using it for a year. I don't know if I've ranted about this before or not, but honestly- who DOES that? You don't get to move into a house before you sign a ream of papers indicating that this is your interest rate, this is your monthly payment, this is who you owe what. You don't get to take a big screen TV home from Best Buy before they swipe your credit card...and afterwards your credit card company doesn't say, "Oh, wait...we don't cover that particular kind of TV. Sorry" so that Best Buy now has to come after you for the money a year later.

Insurance is a weird thing. It's great to have it, don't get me wrong. I'd really be up shit creek without a paddle without it. But dealing with it is a giant pain in the ass, and Obamacare has not fixed any of the problems that we have in our health care system as far as I can tell. In fact, all it has done is fixed things so that now everyone has to pay for something that won't pay for the things they need when they need them. Way to go government. Big win there.

I actually saved this on my computer as "Congress."

 



And now Google Blogger is not letting me change the alignment of the text, which means I'm gonna have to either type all the way to the end of the line or else my words are going to look like I'm some eighth grader trying to make her blog look all cool. And I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to make the stupid program work the way it's supposed to!

 



Sorry Yoda.