So the world is weird.

I live in Los Angeles.  The world is extra weird for us.  I’ve essentially been on isolation in a way since September when the collagenous colitis hit.  I am finally about 95% better, but still on meds.  We had planned to go to a Yaymaker paint nite a few weekends ago, but long before panic hit, my doctors had me avoiding crowds.  They told me then it was worse than we were being told.  So we had canceled.   We thought we’d go get a drink at LACMA, but it close then too.  Since then, basically everything but groceries, pharmacies, restaurants for take out has closed. 

Groceries are rough due to hoarders.  I’m not allowed to go to the grocery store even during special hours.  Trying to avoid my hubby having to go whenever possible.  We’re finally getting groceries again, but fruits / veggies / potatoes / etc are still in short supply.  Tough when you don’t eat meat, are lactose intolerant, and cannot eat raw veggies.  Most fruits and veggies are wiped out but lettuce / salad packs.  We’re tipping the delivery folks a little extra while we still can because they’re lifesavers right now. 

Also my mom is sending us a care package from somewhere that still get food.  

No toilet paper in weeks but we got us travel bidets.  My mom is worried about the fact that we must do laundry in a community laundry room, but we cannot have even portable washers here.  I wish we could at least have a real bidet installed or maybe a sprayer attached to the toilet, but we’re weird in that even know, we don’t wanna piss off the landlords, so honoring our lease but it’s gonna get rough if it keeps getting worse. 

There were three new cases in my neighborhood yesterday, one of which was one of the people who died.  So we’re being even extra careful now.  Wearing gloves on our walk, etc.  

But we’re alive.  Kitties are fine.  We’re fine.  We do a 30 - 60 minute walk around the neighborhood and avoid passing near others.  Wash our hands if we touch anything.  Shower after the walk.   Our complex is leaving doors open so no one has to touch them.  

Could be worse.  Could definitely be better.  If people would just stay home and actually keep their distance while doing necessary things, we’ll be fine.  Some are selfish and not doing that.  

Local  and state officials are doing all they can.  Feds? Not so much.  

Look after each other.  Stay safe.  Stay home.  If you must go out for meds or food, keep a safe distance.  We avoid walking by anyone too close on our walks.  Wash your hands if you touch anything from outside of your home, including delivery packages.  Hand sanitize if you touch something away from a sink and soap.  If your skin is sensitive have good moisturizer ready for all of the hand washing. 

Stay safe.  Keep your distance from anyone not in your home.  

It’s been awhile

Not sure why I am posting again, other than it makes it easy for me to find all of these things. I think everyone I know gets updates from me directly or on social media. Still I realized I stopped posting here completely last year. So here’s my step stats for all of last year + so far this year.  My total step count for 2019 was 2,866,256,   Floor count for 2019 was 134.  That all comes out to 1,269.2 miles.  863,320 calories burned in 2019.  2020 started much like the end of 2019, but is starting to improve finally.

Right after my last post I started feeling pretty yucky. I won’t go into details but I ended up in urgent care twice, the ER once, and then had to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. Never had a colonoscopy before but had endoscopy procedures twice before and hated them. This one was much smoother as I told them about my prior experiences and they made sure not to start until I was totally out of it. From those procedures they diagnosed me with Collagenous Colitis. I don’t recommend it.

 It was really bad from September until mid-January. They put me on a round of Budesonide and I am now starting to feel human again + the main symptoms are almost fully in remission. 

The hubs suggested we start doing walks together. So this month I’m working my way back to trying to hit my official FitBit goal of 7k steps and hoping to work back up to 10k days. I hit 10k yesterday for the first time since September.

I will say the giving up meat and limited dairy + the walks = I have lost about 45-50 lbs in the past two years.  There was some concern that being sick would cause weight loss in a less than ideal way, but since my weight fluctuates normally by about 5-10 lbs, I didn’t really notice much during that time.  At most I lost 4 lbs being sick.  I’m still not at my ideal weight.  I set my goal weight for something I think is achievable that would still be in overweight by about 10 lbs.  If I hit that weight, I may or may not set it for lower, today thought my goal is about 175.  I’m currently under 200.  At my highest I was almost 250.  So I’m already happy with the progress made.  Whether or not I can make 175 anytime depends on many things, but I am definitely trying.

August Step Count

I keep wondering why I am holding onto my blog since I did the reset awhile ago.  I need to art again soon or something.  For now, I’m finally getting around to checking out August’s step count.  Not as bad as I thought it’d be considering the heat and humidity were worse than usual so I was mostly a lump in my chair those days.

July Step count

I have been super lazy about posting because I’m mostly journaling the old school way / for myself.  And also no one I know is really on here anymore.  That said, here's my July step count.  Not as bad as I expected for Summer. 

June FitBit step counts

Okay so there’s been enough going on that clearly I cannot keep up with weekly right now.  Here’s all of June’s step counts.  That really low step count day was when I was sick. My official goal on FitBit is set to 7k.  My unofficial goal is to hit that magic 10k number.  I expect it to be nearly impossible to hit 10k during the summer because Heat + MS = miserable me.  But we’ll see how it goes, maybe I’m wrong.  I do try to get at least 5k at night before bed, after midnight.  Makes hitting 7k much easier in hotter days.  Also because of that most of my total steps are taken in walks that FitBit counts as exercise.  That’s my only form of exercise until we set up the yoga mat area of the living room.

May 12-18 Fitbit Stats

8 h 59 m walks.

Tea Time

The last several years I have slowly changed my diet.  I went from at least a soda or two a day to only occasionally when out to eww soda is gross.  My main drink now is unflavored carbonated water.  My second drink is tea.  I didn’t used to like tea but after giving up soda, I still wanted something with flavor more than water so tea it was.  I occasionally drink hot teas, but for the most part, I still prefer iced. 

I’ve subscribed to Sips by to try a larger variety of teas.  I then got a Bella ceramic tea kettle that has different temperature settings for different teas.  The last goal was to find a tea mug I was happy with for hot and cold both.  I was using just my ceramic Eeyore mug.  Worked well enough.  I could put tea bags right in the cup.  I also use an infuser basket with screw on lid.  It was really meant to go in a travel mug it came with, but I didn’t like the mug, so kept the infuser piece to use in other mugs.  Also the Sips By box always comes with a muslin tea bag with some paper ones if you choose to have loose leaf teas included.  So I have a bunch of those to use.  All work well but I still found my biggest issue was when making iced.  I’d either cold brew it which takes forever and tends to take a lot more tea for the same results.  Or I’d brew up a cup, add ice.  It always seemed a little off.  The one item that kept popping up in my searches was the DavidsTea Travel Press.  I was a bit leery of the $35 price tag.  I have plenty of stainless steel mugs.  Can use tea bags for loose leaf tea.  Etc.  So that wasn’t what sold me.  What sold me was that it’s for hot and cold teas both.  

 

It is super easy to use.
- Add your preferred tea amount in the stainless steel section of the mug (it’s designed for loose leaf, but I also use tea bags)
- Add water to the lower line for iced or the upper line for hot (it can be difficult to see especially as the hot water steams up the mug, so take it slow until you get the hang of it).
- Steep for the recommended or your preferred time
- With the lid open press the inner plastic wall down into place (empty for hot teas, filled with ice for iced tea).


That’s it.  It’s easy to use and to clean.   I have tipped it upside and shaken it around. It appears to be leakproof under most normal  use situations but I probably wouldn't put it in a bag.

I will say if you only drink iced, DAVIDsTEA also makes an all plastic travel press for iced tea only.  You can find that one HERE.  Pros of that one: currently $24 vs the $35 of the stainless one. Cuter designs.  But for me the $10 extra was worth it to be able to keep iced drinks colder longer and hot ones hot longer.  I live in a warm climate, so stainless steel is best for cold drinks.

The plastic and stainless steel inner plastic walls are interchangeable so if something happens to the plastic piece, I will buy an iced one next time and use that piece with this stainless steel outer wall.