Steph & Kam (& Oscar!) Take on the Darke Co. Fair. Or, Chicks Who Aren't Afraid to Eat

Steph and I decided to go to the Fair! Because it's fucking summer, yo. And the fair is full of awesome.



We just missed The Ohio State Fair in Columbus, so we traveled a tad north to the Darke County Fair.


We are arrived. Free parking, yo!


Did I mention we are arrived? Boy, we both needed a vacation....


Stephanie kicked my ass (TWICE) at the pig races. We decided beforehand that whoever won would gift the prize to the loser. I figured this was perfect, because I am awesome at rollerball games and I could totally win her a prize!

Then she kicked my ass. TWICE. So she won me this chicken! Or, maybe, it's a duck. A duck chicken. Really, we're not sure. I named him Oscar.


It's not the fair without some dinky princess tiara. The closest I'll ever come to wearing a Campbell tiara! I guess I just try and look forward to a Tiptree tiara?


Then it was on to other fair-time treats... like giant produce!


Stephanie, tho, had her eye on tasty, award-winning desserts. These were under bulletproof glass, let me tell you.


Checking out all that food made us hungry. Cause, let's face it, why else do you really go to the fair except for all the food? This place drew us in with this impressive BBQ rack. Those are old-school coals cooking that meat there yo.

And oh.... what meaty goodness it was!


Oscar, too, was getting pretty parched by this time.


Have I mentioned we were really here for the food? The tasty, tasty roast chicken? I suspected, at this point, that Oscar really was not a chicken, as this massacre of his fellow beast did not seem to bother him. But really, how could he be a duck? Have you ever seen a yellow duck?


Excuse me, this chicken bone here, ah... that's better.

Tasty food elicits goofy faces, srsly.

But Stephanie isn't such a meat person. Oh now, Stephanie had been pining after the fresh corn on the cob.

And oh boy, yes. Fresh corn, people. We passed fields and fields of Ohio corn on the way in. This was our reward.

And that was that.

Time for a brief rest before that other fair time attraction - livestock! What? You thought we'd do the rides right after we ate? What do you think we are, 15?

This is totally what Tessa and Kimmie the dawgs would look like if they were goats. Srsly.

Stephanie was not terribly interested in visiting the animals, but she seemed to get on well with this goat.

I think she fell in love with it, actually.

We found out later that we weren't supposed to be touching this sheep, as it had just been groomed for showing. Ooops. Way to read a sign, Hurley.

Kameron says, "This is a big motherfucking turkey."

Stephanie's imitation of this rooster.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner! This pheasant must surely be one of Oscar's kin. Could our duck-chicken really be a pheasant?

Which of these things is not like the other???

I don't think this is one of Oscar's stock.

This duck, then, perhaps?

Maybe this duck is Oscar's mom? Note the similiar hairstyles. We may never know. These are the mysteries that will keep me up at night.

Holy crap, Monty Python and the Holy Grail figurines. No self-respecting fair-goer should go home without these.


Classic Ohio vs. Michigan baby chic.

OK, yo, lunch is settled. Ferris wheel time!

View of the fairgrounds.

High up over Ohio! High on life, that is!

High on life with Oscar!!

Look, more fairgrounds! The fair was just about the right size for two krazy kats like us.

Rockin' out with Oscar on some more rides.

Singing the "Ooooo hiiiiii oooooooo" song with Oscar.

Oscar pretends to fly. I pretend to be impressed.

Rides are done. It's time for ice cream!

And what trip to the fair would be complete without face painting? What, you thought I'd leave without getting my face painted??

The look on my face says it all. Deep fried twinkies. Yes, they were selling deep fried twinkies at this Ohio fair. I just couldn't leave without one. Did I mention I stocked up on insulin yesterday in anticipation of just such an event?


Seriously. It's a deep fried twinkie. He totally dipped it in batter and fried it. "You want powdered sugar?" he said. "Oh sure!" I said. "Chocolate sauce?" "Er, I said, uh, no!" I mean, I have to draw the line somewhere, people!

Trying the first bite....
Actually, this is pretty fucking good!

Stephanie's obligatory, "I can't fucking believe I'm sitting here with a deep fried twinkie eating hippie in Ohio. What have I done with my life??"

My response, "Stop your bitching or the duck-chicken gets it."

And finally, what trip to the fair isn't complete without totally making yourself sick with that one extra treat just before you leave?

My obligatory "Gee golly the patriarchy loves me and my phallic desserts" shot (OMG this should totally be the author photo on my book jacket).

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

Next year: deep fried Oreos and skee ball!

Conversations With Our Print Designer

"You know, if we all looked in real life the way we did after I got done with them in Photoshop, that would be pretty awesome."

Next Gen Parents

Mod of the Week

I'm thinking to keep the original "sparkle" plastic eyes with this one, which is a first. For the Nyx pony, I painted over the eyes. I'm also wondering if I should do wings.



But, until then, this is about how they all start. In the background, you can see what will soon be my Red Bull pony.

I am an uber 80s girl geek, aren't I?

DP&L

Bill this month = $110.76
Amount budgeted = $80.00

The good news is, trash & water came in $20 under budget, so at least I won't starve this month.

Can't wait for September and October when I can stop using the aircon.

OK, Seriously

Seriously, I can't believe I just did that to Nyx after everything I just did to everybody in this stupid book. The next book will be so much better. The "good" guys will actually "win"! .... sort of!.... in a roundabout way!!

It's like The Dark Knight of the series. Or the Empire Strikes Back at the Dark Knight.

Next book: less Dark Knight, more heads getting chopped off!

Really, that's what every book needs: more heads getting chopped off.

Less than 10K to go, probably more like 8k. It's mostly filler between big scenes now (yes, I wrote a lot of the latter half of this book out of order. This is the only series where I've ever been able to do that).

Tired

I must just really be burned out. I think I'll take off the Friday before labor day to give myself a 4-day break. I was in bed at 9 last night, and I'm headed to bed tonight at 8pm. I feel exhausted.

You can only juggle with so many "I have to" and "I need to"s in your head before you just burn out. What happens when I concentrate on doing everything well is that I do nothing well. I can only have 2 of the 3 major aspects of my life in alignment at the same time 1)Work Life 2) Social Life 3) Writing Life (actually, add "health life" in there as well, now).

(10K more words! 5 days a week of workouts! Better clothes! Happy relationship! Better social life! 2009 writing schedule! My career! Not being a midlist writer! Good day job work! Paying off my credit card! Getting home for the holidays! Financial security! Gaming job! Next novel contract! When to call the cops about the noisy neighbors! Sleeping! Bad food choices! No Chipotle, no! Interesting blog life! Great life! Full potential!)

... and, g'night, folks.

Tomato Soup & Cheese Pie

Had a project get pushed back to me at work today, one of those low priority projects that comes across your desk, you clean up as best you can in a couple passes, and send back out again.

It came back in the hands of one of our clients, who had marked it up and gave it back to our CEO... along with an offer for his copy editing services.

Yeah, seriously.

I had this terrifying moment where I wished I was just cleaning up and formatting technical SOPs and writing up exec bios and maybe internal memos again, instead of... well, instead of everything. I just wanted to work on things that didn't really matter. Things that nobody looked at. Things I could do where screwing up didn't look so huge and didn't make me look so goddamn incompetent.

I wanted to be nobody, doing nothing important.

I wanted a risk-free job. Because having a job where you actually do public-image type stuff means that not only are the odds good that you will fail - and fail often - but that you will look like a total incompetent ass in front of a great deal of people.

On the bus home, I wanted nothing more than to beeline for Chipotle. I was trying desperately to talk myself into pizza, but it makes me feel so much worse these days that it turned out to be easy to talk myself out of. I wanted something external to fix me and my incompetence. I wanted to hide under the floor, watch some crappy shows, and just disappear.

But you know what?

Here's the thing. Living is full of risk. Especially when you live like you want something. It's easy to do crap work that nobody cares about. It's easy to stay in the same job, in the same town, with the same friends, going to the same places, your whole life. There's nothing wrong with that. It involves minimal risk.

When I chose to be a writer, I chose to risk making an ass of myself in public when I fucked up. More than that, you don't even *risk* it, you just *do* it. Every time you put any kind of work up, any time you do something and put it up for public discussion, you *will* at one time or another, fail. You will fail utterly, and publicly. You just will. And you have to accept that. You accept it when you choose that life, or you find some other life, because this is what it is.

God's War is going to get slammed next year (if anybody even reads it. Slammed would be great, honestly, cause then it would mean people were reading it). I'm going to get called out on a lot of lazy shit. There will be typos. There will be offensive things to people of all walks of life, who will likely tell me just how offensive and stupid and ignorant I am (much of which will be true). There will be continuity errors. Huge plot holes. The occasional stupid line and unlikable character.

That's how it is.

I've had a lot of fear lately, because so much of my writing *has* felt disjointed, off. I've been writing a lot of blog posts and personal correspondence with typing errors; words show up in a sentence that shouldn't be there. Paragraphs don't tie together. Those deft open/close text packages aren't as easy to craft, in part, I think, because I haven't been working hard enough to create them.

I'm going too fast all the time, thinking ahead of what I'm typing, and then losing my train of thought (this post is a good example of that. I started out ready to tie it all up with a bow, and now I'm digressing into sugar numbers and copy edit errors, when I wanted to talk about fear and failure). I don't know what's wrong, if I just need a vacation, or what. My sugar numbers are fine. It's just harder to concentrate.

But whatever it is, temporary insanity or just my usual wackiness, this is how it is. Public failure is the price you pay for a public life, small as mine may be. Sometimes I fuck up. All you can do is work toward not fucking up next time. Or fucking up less spectacularly.

I need to go back to editing everything in triplicate before it goes out. I need to slow down. Not every project needs to go out an hour after I get it, which may be some of the problem. I'm always feeling a sense of urgency that's just not nearly as important as accuracy.

I remember working with my old boss back before he became President of another company, and how he'd work his ass off all night on projects. Things got done, yeah, but they weren't done without errors. And they weren't little errors. I remember one time we actually forgot to turn on an antenna at one of our cell sites. Another time, we sent guys up a tower we weren't sure we had a structural on (turns out we did, but we didn't know it when they were 100 ft up an icy, overloaded cell phone tower). We made a lot of mistakes. Tired, overworked mistakes.

But he kept all of our contracts, and got us new ones, because he fessed up to errors, accepted that they were going to happen, and knew how to make the best of them. Shit happens. It's the price you pay for running too hot, too fast.

And, like I said... in the three years I knew him, he went from Project Manager to President.

He made a lot of mistakes along the way. But he knew how to get shit done.

So it's back to boning up on my copy writing reading and research, which I've been lax about during our latest project, and, as said, instituting my triplicate copy check, exhausting as that may be.

I am not going to be a perfect person. That may be obvious, right? But here's the thing: when you fuck up big time, there's this part of you that says, "See, you're worthless! You're a total fuck up! You should go back to cleaning dog kennels!" and you're terrified it's true, that the whole world is smarter than you, that you're not fit to breathe, that you should have died two years ago in a hospital in Chicago.

And sure, all these things may be true. But you know what? Life is a persistence game, just like writing, just like 90% of the goals and dreams you set and make for yourself. There are a lot of people who give up when they fail the first time, the second, the third. And there are a lot of people who learn from their failures. And, of course, a lot of people who get by on pure incompetence.

I'd like to be in the second category.

Thing is, you know: I'm not a brilliant person. I work very hard just to have what I've got now. And I have to work harder to hold onto it, because there are down days, bad periods, and times when none of your emails or blog posts really make any sense anymore and what you really need is a vacation.

Maybe failure just means you need a vacation.

I'm going to go work on my pony mods and have Nyx chop somebody's head off.

I'm no better or worse than anybody else at anything. At life, at writing, none of it. I just have no interest in giving up or giving in on any of it.

Persistence.

Even when it's shit. You, your work, the world.

Persistence.

Because being dead is boring.

Money Shot

"You’ve spent your life imagining diverse races and cultures, and doing a hell of a good job. Yet your inability to imagine true love manifesting between two members of the same sex almost classifies you as retarded in my mind. It’s not even a moral issue. You’re just an idiot to me."

- Michael Swaim, in response to Orson Scott Card (just him in general, really)

The Boys

I was in the middle of writing a scene between Rhys and Yah Tayyib this morning, and realized how novel it was, writing a scene between two men in the God's War universe.

And then I realized they were talking about a woman.

Heh heh.

Typo of the Day

bel dames = bed dames

Prepping for Autumn

Had to wear a jacket to work this morning. Just a tad brisk. Autumn is coming, and then winter. And there's nothing better for the sanity than lots of projects. So I picked up a $25 craft table today!


Pony mods are back!

Have I mentioned how much I've gotten done since that free WoW subscription ran out?

Smoky Halls

"Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed."
- Roger Kahn

There are no boxing scenes in Black Desert. How can this book have no boxing scenes? Maybe this is its primary problem with the book.

That and the fact that I'm 10k from the fucking end.

Workadooo

Copywriter vs. print designer SMACKDOWN!!

I now understand the age-old rivalry between the copywriter and the print designer.

Love Notes for a Stressed Out, Sleep Deprived Monday

Workadoo

Dialogue & Debauchery

Hoping to squeeze out a little more tonight. Close enough to fucking taste it, but there's no way I'm going to be able to write my Big Bad Fight Scene Finale and denouement tonight.

It's coming, tho. Oh boy, it's coming.

Quote of the Day

"The radical invents the views. When he was worn them out, the conservative adopts them."
- Mark Twain

One for the Road

And now I have to go get some work done.

Crazy Fuckers

I think what I like so much about climbing (or, the idea of climbing, I haven't even been indoor climbing since Alaska) is that so much of it is a mind game. It's you against yourself.

I've always been my own greatest nemesis.

Muwahaha ahahaah.

That said: here's some crazy fuckers.

Budget Hero!

Get started on your Monday workadoo timewasters today!

Build a better national budget! (my budget was good until 2070+, which is sad, cause I'm bad at math).

Push

Had to stop because there was so much *talking.* Blah, blah, blah, mutant shape shifters blah blah bugs and death and bel dames and untrustworthy magicians and resurrections and blah blah. Need to do some sleeping and sorting tonight of what I kicked out today and yesterday, refocus, connect it, and wrap this fucker up.

I want a fucking draft, and dammit. A reasonably coherent one.

Reasonably.

Tra la.

Non-Fail Cookery

Spinach and ricotta cheese quiche. Full of cheesy goodness and low carb to boot!


You'll need:

Handful of spinach
1 or 2 avocados (you can also try it with artichoke hearts instead)
1 container of ricotta cheese
1 package of garlic-herb spreadable cheese (like Boursin. Mmmm Boursin cheese)
A couple tablespoons of fresh basil (optional. I just so happen to have some growing on my porch)


Add together both kinds of cheese and eggs.


Stir briskly. Mmm briskly.


Add spinach, avo, salt and pepper. Stir some more until it looks like compost. I promise it will taste better than it looks right now.

Pour into greased baking pan and pop into the oven at 375 for 45 minutes. These incredibly good smells will start coming from your kitchen. You have 45 whole minutes to savor this!

When you take the pan out, your quiche should be nice and golden brown on top.


Cheese and cheese! For a truly sinful treat, top with finely shredded mozzarella, because if 2 kinds of cheese are good, 3 is truly fantastic.

Enjoy.

Omnipoddery

Spot the pump!

Dug up this photo from the first day I wore the Omnipod pump to work with a non-frumpy shirt. It's a lot stealthier than it sometimes feels.

Cooking Fail

Minced beef and tofu.

Not as tasty as you might expect.

Twin Peaks, Season 2

OK, seriously, whatever happened to Bob? You're losing the thread of your story now. We went from quirky hijinks in fucked up to town to just plain quirky hijinks, which honestly aren't as interesting.

Oh no, Agent Cooper, no!

Quote of the Day

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

People always think I'm trying to be deliberately rude when I say some snarky offhand remark before connecting the dots. 9 times out of 10, I'm just being socially retarded.

Cheap Thrills

I went out to lunch with the guys at work today, so I decided not to go to a show or bowling or anything tonight (it's all a tradeoff. I really needed to get out of the office, and I like hanging out with the guys, but I spent about $5 more than I wanted to. Water and the daily special next time, no sides).

Headed to the gym right after work, -75% of basal for an hour before and the hour during the workout. Didn't bottom out until the end. Took a lifesaver. Perfect 80 at dinnertime. For next time, -75% of basal an hour and a half before workout and half an hour during. Trial and error. There's no easy way out of it.

Walked over to the craft store across the street to look for a cheap (under $50) craft table, as I turned my pony mod table into my dining room table, and I miss my pony mods.

No luck, so I spent the evening walking among the local hotrod club cars assembled in the parking lot, then went over to The Greene and listened to some live music. It was a gorgeous summer night tonight. Kids dancing at The Greene. The whole fake town lit up. People eating ice cream. Security guys on bikes. A loud Ohio rendition of "Save a horse, ride a cowboy."

Walked home, wrote two or three thousand more words of my version of The Empire Strikes Back (have I mentioned that Empire was my least favorite movie in the series? That explains a lot about my struggle with this book. It's a necessary book for the series arc, but a difficult and sometimes not-fun one), and listened to loud music.

Tomorrow: pancakes, loud music, and a bunch more words.

Now: blessed, lovely, fantastic sleep.

Juicy.

Long Push

90K or finish by Sunday.

Dare me.

You'll Be Seeing a Lot of These This Weekend

Just bear with me.

As of Next Month...

I will owe less than $10,000 on my Credit Card (back down to four figures, baby!)

I haven't seen four figures since before I got sick.

Mmmm health care and job layoffs, oh my.

But I'm actually doing this thing, yo.

Holy Shit

The last one of these I posted was back in March, and it looked like this:



What the fuck have I been doing the last five months? Besides moving and having a day job and getting on the pump?

Fuck, no wonder I've felt so fucking wacked out.

As of this morning:



Yeah, seriously. 3K in FIVE MONTHS.

On the one hand, fucking five months of nothing. On the other hand, I've gone over it so much in my head now that it feels more like I'm transcribing something that already happened instead of making something up. Which isn't quite as fun, but it does get it to get the fuck out faster.

The realistic goal is to hit 85,000 this weekend, but let's be fucking serious here.

I SHOULD be hitting 90K.

I can't believe that I really took a 6 month writing hiatus.

Dayton, OH - One of America's Fastet Dying Cities!

Yeeeeaaaah....

A year or two for some more corp copyediting on the resume, a car next year, and then it's time to get outta dodge.

What I Want Tonight

To get a decent night's sleep.

And sneak out of the office at 4:30 tomorrow.

Then plan my writing schedule for 2008/2009.

Again.

Workadoo

Work weeks when I have big projects due tend to be kind of crappy weeks, yo. I missed both of my workday workouts because of work meetings and was hopped up on too much diet Coke, which meant I was far more jumpy and anxious than usual. Which means I'm not sleeping well. And I've been avoiding the cardio sessions at the gym since I got the pump because I knew that leveling for a cardio session was going to be a fucking bitch. So I avoided it.

The one awesome thing I had control over this week was my going-out habit that I've been working to crack (once or twice a week at Chipotle is a serious problem). I'm stunned to say this is the second week in a row that I haven't given in, mainly due to that whole budgeting thing. Doing so well last month has made me want to do good this month. Also, I have a hankering to go bowling *and* see a movie this weekend. Which requires said fun money. I'm also putting away to buy an elliptical for the apartment. Winter isn't far away, and having it around when I'm too cold to go to the gym will be great for my peace of mind and my sleep.

I did finally do a cardio session at the gym today after work, the first with the pump, and it was predictably shitty. I decreased my basal by 75% and ate three lifesavers and bottomed out twice. I hung on for 35 min instead of the regular 45 and then called it a night. Cardio at the end of the day just kills my sugar.

So I'm thinking of doing something like a -25% 2 hours before, -50% 1 hour before and -75% during to bring my sugar up enough to work out.

It's just a matter of getting the numbers right, and sadly, and fucking frustratingly, it's just a matter of trial and error. And I fucking hate it. But the alternative? The alternative is to just hide in your room and just not do anything cause it's just too hard, too much trouble, because failing is easy and discomfort is hard.

And who the fuck wants that?

But man, I fucking hated it. The worst part is over, though. I went to the gym for the first time on the pump, and didn't pass out. Honestly, any day I don't pass out I should count as a good day. Sometimes I don't think I give myself enough credit for how well I've done (with the incredible support of Steph and the Old Man and Jenn before them). I mean, seriously, an A1c of 5.9 at one point, and never above 7. Let's just hurrah over that, shall we?

Anyhow, back to the fucking book.

Resolutions for next week:

1) Drink less diet Coke
2) Get to the gym for the designated 4 timeslots, come highs, lows, or hellish waters
3) Write 5,000 words of Black Desert, because seriously, this shit needs to get done. I've got another series I need to sell. I have no idea why this fucker won't write itself. I think I'm lacking in proper motivation (we haven't even started editing the first book yet, so I think I'm being lazy. Quitting WoW, however, resulted in a sudden flurry of activity, so I'm gunning to have it done mid September).
4) Keep on keepin' on

Tra la.

Speaking of Non-Tudor Women

"Hassani's statements came after two Kurdish feminists in Iran were accused of being members of an armed rebel group and of carrying out subversive activities threatening the security of the state."

It's a good thing that all women are naturally passive, submissive and obediant, then. See, this is what I'm talking about. I want more stories about real women (whether or not the accusations are true is a whole different issue, but also interesting).

Writing Rewards

When, after 80,000 words, a new character (new to this book) finally starts to become a real person, and you realize you're very proud of how well she's grown up.

One For the Road

The Tudors

Showtime's version of Rome is... well... It has Jonathan Rhys Meyers, so it can't be all bad?

It's pretty, and there's politics, and, Jonathan Rhys Meyers? But holy hell, man, all the women in this story are sex bunnies used and abused by their respective male owners. You've got the Bolyn girls' father basically selling them out for sex to the King (there's a huge difference, I'm sorry to say, between a woman deciding to advance herself by seducing the king and a woman seducing the king cause her daddy tells her to).

I get that sex and women's bodies are historical commodities, but I just can't buy into a show that shows so many women as completely passive vessels. Where are the powerful matriarchs and scheming wives and willful daughters (Did Rome spoil me? And that's the sad thing, right, there were still way more male characters in Rome than female, but hot damn, the women charcters *didn't suck*)? One of the most dispicable lies in history is that women were just always passive slaves to men. That, historically, women had no power and no voice and contented themselves with their lot in life. If that was true, nobody would have burned witches, there would have been no laws against women owning property or having jobs, nobody would have considered wrapping up women's bodies or binding their feet or cutting off their clits.

You know why you make laws and powerful social mores that enslave a group of people? Cause they scare the living shit out of you. Because they have a lot of power. Because they are people too. And those people do what people do, and they often do it by whatever means necessary and whatever they have in their power.

Yes, women were confined by the restrictions of the times and societies they lived in, but you find ways to negotiate power and get want you want even with the worst of restrictions. You make it work. You play the game (a la Dangerous Liasons). There are always women with voices and women who get shit done. Not just the daily living stuff, but the deliberate work of kicking your husband's ass so he makes something of himself, getting your kids into worthwhile matches and positions, political backstabbing through gossip and rumor (and fashion!!), and whatever the hell else you have at your disposal. You use it because those are the only tools you have.

The tragedy of so much film and television and history books is pretending that these women never existed.

It makes me want to puke.

Stuff That Annoys Me

When people refer to Wikipedia as "Wiki."

This is Wiki. This is Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia is a Wiki, but it is not "the" Wiki.

More Creative Accounting

My water and trash bill is $18 less than I budgeted for! I can go bowling next weekend!

Being a grownup: not doing what you want to do when you want to do it, but when it makes financial sense to do it.

Fitting

Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...

The Air Pirate

21% Elegant, 24% Technological, 20% Historical, 56% Adventurous and 57% Playful!

You are the Air Pirate, the embodiment of steampunk fantasy. Admittedly, you would probably be more comfortable in a pulp adventure or Eberron fantasy, but you are able to find your niche in the less serious side of the genre. You are probably somewhat light on your technological accessories, but the ones that you do carry have a roguish dash to them. Your clothes are most likely styled after those of Victorian aristocrats or loyal airship officers, the better to show off your wealth and the spoils of your raids. Chances are you prefer to be flashy and extravagant, and frock coats are perfect.

Try our other Steampunk test here.

Take The Steampunk Style Test at HelloQuizzy

How to Sleep With a Writer

It's unavoidable, when you sleep with writers. Lovers, beware?

(Have I mentioned that Rhys's wife has ADD?)

July Budget

I think this is the first month since I started my new budget in January that I actually 1) didn't come in over budget 2) didn't put anything on my credit card 3) didn't go to Chipotle at least once a week (I only had two Chipotle receipts!)

Groceries

Budget: $350
Actual: $347.20
Creative accounting: I had $30 in gaming snacks I brought to our work LAN party and $5 in soda that I decided to count as "fun" money instead of grocery money in order to balance my books.


Fun Money

Budget: $150
Actual: $124.70
Creative accounting: I had $21 in pizza early in the month that should have gone here, but I budgeted $29 for internet that it turned out was already paid at installation, so I "saved" $29 and put this toward that. Like I said: creative accounting. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I also accomplished this by mistakenly believing I'd only budgeted $100 in fun money on this new budget, so I went the last two weeks of July thinking I'd blown it until I opened up my spreadsheet today and totaled up all my receipts. Go-go self-deception!


CC Payment

Budgeted: $750
Actual: $750
Creative accounting: None. This one hurt to pay. There's going to be a party when I pay this off. I better start saving for it now.

I did, in fact, "save" $100 this month. I have $100 every month budgeted towards meds. I'll end up using this month's meds money to get new contact lenses.

It's not glamorous, this life, but it's getting my shit together, one buck at a time (did you know a bottle of Coke zero costs $1.39???? $1.39, seriously. It's fucking criminal).

Note to Self

I drink too much diet Coke.

Things That Will Probably Suck But Let's Hope Not Anyway

Occlusion

The pod started beeping at me at 1:40am, which wasn't so bad because I was up anyway due to my 1:30 am sugar check and the fucking assholes downstairs with their yappy dog and loud college friends whose Friday and Saturday night parties seem to be carrying over into Sunday nights. This used to be such a quiet building before they moved in.

In any case, the pod and the meter started beeping, which usually means something bad, so I turned the meter back on and read, "Occlusion error, insulin delivery has stopped. Change pod now."

Oh, lovely.

Got up, deactivated it, filled up and activated a new one, and then couldn't get back to sleep for another hour because of said wild neighbors downstairs. Is it really necessary to slam every door in your apartment at 3am?

Honestly, I was far more annoyed at my asshole neighbors and their party-til-4am bullsit than a 2am pod change.

A Gallon of Gas is still Cheaper than a Gallon of Airline Water

Airline travel has been degenerating steeply since 9/11. It's not getting any better.

At least they still think that drinking from the bathroom tap is "just not classy."

I mean, they have *some* standards!

I'm not looking forward to my next plane trip, on any airline.

Sunday

Went over to Steph and the Old Man's today to help them put together the last of their shelves down in the basement. Learned how to properly use a power drill. They've been remodeling their bathroom all week, and using my shower while theirs is out of commission. Their bathroom looks like a real Oakwood bathroom now! Not a pink-tiled monstrosity from the 1940s! It's a miracle. Like Steph said, it looks like something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue.

It's been fun to help them out with the occasional thing around the house, whether it's building shelves or moving furniture or painting doors. It's a taste of what it'll look like if I decide to buy my own 1940s fixer-upper (tho I suspect mine would be in the 90-100K range and not the 120-130K range. Yes, I'm talking house prices. This is Ohio. House prices are the only advantage to living here).

I had some other things to say, but they popped right out of my head. Um.

So I guess I'm done.

One for the Road

Once Upon a Time...

August

The grass is brown, and the season puts me in the mood to look up, and up, always, for the first dead leaves of the season. Even though it's just August, it's the beginning of the end. Maybe I'm just reminded of Alaska, when the leaves were falling in mid-August, when the storms were coming in, when you got to watch it all go, swept away, in just a few short weeks.

Today I bought at least four kinds of cheese.

I laid out in the sun, I thought about August, Alaska, thought about who I used to be before I got sick. Kept wondering, god, who the hell am I now?

In some ways, I was worse then. I wasn't a nice person. Way worse than now. I'm not sure how much better I am now. But for me, back then, the summer was going to last forever. Things would just keep getting better. You blaze through on the way to somewhere. You keep going. The weather might change, but summer doesn't end.

Now I don't really know who I am, or what I do, really. Most of all, I don't know what I want, and that's what's been killing me.

Why Am I So Tired?

Went out and watched The Dark Knight again with a couple guys from work, and paid more attention to the gender dynamics that folks were mentioning. And yeah, it's true. It's so classicaly comic-bookey in the good way (good vs. evil, chaos vs. order, epic villian vs. epic hero, etc), and in the bad way. The one female character who's not a wife or girlfriend who gets blown up or introduced merely to act as revenge catalysts for the guys is Ramirez, and you know that part was written for a guy and they congratulated themselves for casting it the way they did.

It was still half an hour too long, and WTF is up with that *entire* Hong Kong sequence?

But anyway, by the end of it I realized I was incredibly tired, and it was only 8:30. This may be because I spent all day proofing our Ops Manual, then spent the next three hours sitting at a movie, and all that non-movement makes you pretty sluggish.

I've also been working at getting back into dating the last couple of weeks, and corresponding with bunches of folks, and I think that took some stuff out of me. Socializing can be hard work for me, even in the written form. Ever since the last breakup, I haven't been as self-confident when it comes to dealing with the dynamics of dating. Not that I was ever good at it, or socializing in general, and hence why I'll make huge efforts for a few weeks and then just... stop. To recover. Because it's just exhausting. It's why I don't have a lot of friends, either. Keeping social relationships together is really tough for me. I'm working at getting better at it, but it's a struggle.

When it comes to self confidence, I've been working hard to get that back, too, but it's slow going. Some of that, I know, is missing because I'm not getting any real writing done. I get all my energy from writing, and I've had nothing to show for it for several months but a bunch of company websites, an Ops Manual, and enough sales letters and corporate correspondence to cripple a horse. It concerns me. And it's not good for me.

In the end, what I mean to say is, it's just been a long week for some reason. A week that needs some sleeping here at the end of it. Some writing during it. And then I need to get back to the gym next week.

Need, need, need.

But for now, the sleeping.

And I Feel Fine

Science fiction will save us.

Notes to Myself

Is it a good or a bad sign that as I'm proofing our 300 page Ops Manual I'm thinking, "Well, at least this doesn't need to be SEO-optimized."

I've think I've officially become a corporate writer.

Avenge me....

One for the Road

All I Want for Christmas

Met with my pod educator tonight to go over how I'm doing. My numbers have improved dramatically, and it looks like I'm evening out. She went through some more advanced things, like programming an extended bolus and temp basal, which eluded me (apparently some folks find that doing a 30%/70% bolus split for pizza does wonders. That is, you can program it to give you 30% of the amount you take to cover pizza up front and the other 70% over the next 3-4 hours as your sugar starts to *really* spike. God, could you imagine if I could figure out a way to eat pizza again without being sick?). So I'll be playing around with those.

She also gave me a few tips for keeping the pod on during exercise. Some people actually apply extra super glue between the pod and the adhesive (it's actually made to move a little bit with your body, but you can secure it tighter) or to stick it on just below my arm, towards my back and underneath my bra - so my sports bra would, effectively, also serve as my pod bra. Ha.

I've dated some guys who are pretty squeamish and easily weirded out, so I was concerned, at first, about having the pod on my stomach. When I realized you could wear it on the back of your arm, well, hell, there goes the last squeamish thing I had about the pod. Stuck to the back of your arm, it's less likely to get in the way, and less likely to make a partner squeamish or weirded out.

Also, she showed me how the backlight works! Oh, man, you have no idea how fucking sweet this is. All these nighttime sugar checks are a bitch with no backlight. I have to use my cell phone. Back in the day, I'd have to turn on my book light or a bedside light, which isn't bad when you're sleeping alone, but I do hate it when I have a partner and have to bug them.

She cautioned me about my tight target. My target is set at 85-95, and damned it all if the damn thing doesn't fucking keep me there. Today's numbers:

5:33 am: 98

12:13 pm: 81

3:00 pm: 121 (post-lunch correction, look, I'm getting better!)

7:48 pm: 80

With a tight target, though, you do have a better chance of going low, so I need to be aware of it. You're also at risk for developing hypoglycemia unawareness, which I need to watch out for (hasn't been a problem yet, but some people have it right off the bat). I *have* noticed that I feel low more often now when I'm not low at all. I tested twice with this meter and again with my old meter a couple of times when I could have sworn I was low, but was at a respectable 90-something. So it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. I assume that as my body gets used to being constantly at 80-100, that'll happen less often.

I want an A1c under 6. I just do. Under 6 is normal. Under 7 is "target" for a diabetic. But I don't want to be a diabetic. I want to be as normal as possible while living abnormally.

I was dancing around in the hallway today at work for no reason, and realized how great I've been feeling. I can't just bottle this stuff up. I have to work hard for it, everyday, and you know...? It's worth it.

So. Fucking. Worth it.

T1 Ironman Blog

Good reads, my T1s, good reads.

Mmmm Equality

Personally, I've been striving toward equality to empower my fellow women with the desire and opportunity to get boob jobs. Also, cardio strip classes are waaaay more practical than kickboxing. The moon is also made of cheese and Jesus rode a T-Rex to school, which makes me happy.

No?

Killing Us Softly

Women and "women" in advertising.

A touch dated in presentation ("they now use computer imaging to make fake women!") but the ads - and the messages - are still the same.

(it's all good, but be sure to check out the Special K ad at the end)

Quote of the Day

“The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret."
- Robin Sharma

Omnipod By the Numbers

5:34 am: 96

12:12 pm: 95

3:15 pm: 155 (still working on that post-lunch correction)

6:51 pm: 95

No fucking shit.

The bitch is back, yo.

Catherynne says..

"In the days before I got the bright idea to start writing novels, I ran that particular obstacle course. I dutifully ate the scorpions and walked the highwire, dredging up my childhood abuse and past relationships and anything else that seemed suitably dire to please a professor. It really makes for an alarming personality type: someone who has lost all notion of appropriate social filters, and views their private pain as public discourse.

You know, a blogger."

Read the rest

WoW No More

My WoW account expired yesterday, much to the delight of my book contract and my waistline. I suspect the 5 lbs I've gained over the last three months have just as much to do with too much WoW as they do with too many flourless peanut butter cookies.

Now that I'm on the pump, I'm paying even more attention to what I'm eating. Again, as I discovered back when I did my health assessment, it's funny that I'm one of those people who can't let things slip for a few months. A few months of WoW and cookies and it's all over. Sucks to be me, but that's the way it is. At least I catch myself now.

Still working at fine-tuning the insulin for workouts. I hate having to re-calibrate everything again after just getting it down. Not doing well on that front. Continuing to do my workouts at work, but not my additional 2 at the gym. I need to face my fear and just fucking do it.

Just do it.

Personally, I always like the "No Fear" slogan a lot better.

Consistent Incompetence

Some people, seriously.

One for the Road

Omnipodding Week 3

Is this week three? The beginning of week 3, in any case.

Things have largely settled down and evened out. I'm still trying to figure out the boluses for meals. I used to calculate these entirely differently; the onboard calculator they have seems to usually work so long as you have an accurate carb count. I'm used to dosing certain ways for center food items, and all those previous calcs are kinda fucked.

How can I explain?

Let's say I test before a meal and my blood sugar is 134. According to my little chart, I would take 4 units of insulin to "correct" for that 134 [to get it back to 80] *plus* 1 unit for every 15 carbs I was eating (this 4 unit "base" changes depending on that number. If I test at 80, my base is 2. If I test at 160, it's 6, and on up the scale, up to a 14 unit "base" when your sugar hits 400 and you should prob'ly be phoning a doc).

So if I'm eating, say, eggs and veggies, I'll just take the 4 units of insulin. Afterall, there's no "hard carbs" in those. No bread, sugary items, nothing with more than 15 units of carbs, really.

But if I'm eating eggs and veggies and toast, I'll take 5 units (the base 4 plus 1 for the toast).

Well, the pod doesn't calculate carbs the way I used to. Maybe I've set this up incorrectly. I'm meeting with the local nurse educator tomorrow for a check up about how I'm doing. Thing is, the morning calculator works fine. I know that if I dial in 17 carbs for my berries, then whatever the PDM says to give me is good.

Lunch is trickier, because I don't have an accurate count. I know about what I *used* to take, but every time I try to guess and then plug in the carb amount and test 2-3 hours later to see how I did, I'm always off by 2-3 units. I don't think this is a basal problem. Maybe?

My best numbers of the day (which, strangely enough, used to be my worst) are now my morning numbers. I've consistently woken up with 78-112 all last week. On days I don't exercise, my noon number is usually 100ish as well (I'm trying to figure out how to account for the new exercise routine at work. Because we do intervals, my blood sugar invariably goes up, not down (like it would during cardio), so I'm trying to figure out the best basal rate for the hour; I'm getting closer [I'll test at 134-164 after exercising], but it's not ideal yet).

I've been doing a lot of mid-afternoon tests because of aforementioned inability to get my lunch carb ratio correct. Or whatever is messed up. I even altered the basal for the afternoon so it's a little higher (and then it comes down again around 5pm when I'm less insulin resistant). The mid-afternoon numbers all suck (187, today, three hours after I ate, was the best mid-afternoon I've had).

Thing is, I figure that with a pump you should be more stable more of the time. If you're not, what's the point? So, shouldn't my mid-afternoon number be better than it used to be? 187 is what I'd test at during mid-afternoon *before* the pump.

So I'm working hard at fine tuning it.

I've turned off all the annoying beeps, and the only alarm I get is the one I set for two hours before the pod should expire and the one built into the pod for when the pod actually expires. It does still click when it delivers insulin, which is annoying, but something you just have to live with, apparently.

I'm still not sure if I'm sold on it, but I'm happy and sane and the numbers seem to be leveling out. Now it's just a matter of refining it, which I'll be doing with the educator and my endo next month.

Being diabetic is fun!

I was eating this brown rice and vegetable medley thing tonight that I used to eat all the time in Alaska (it's really good, actually; it has bacon and parmesan cheese and tomatoes and all sorts of great stuff), and thinking, "Man, remember in Alaska when you could eat as much of this as you wanted without really thinking about it?"

Remember when I could eat really, anything I wanted at any time, in whatever amount that caught my fancy, without thinking about it?

It's become such a foreign idea, eating without thinking. At least I don't have to take a shot *after* I think about it now, tho? Just plug some numbers into a PDA-looking thing and click for awhile?

Could be worse. Far worse. Big needles and death worse, but there are time when I think I minimize how much this stuff really eats up you life, your thinking. How much it consumes your day. Little stuff adds up.

People who whine annoy the crap out of me. Hell, I'm alive! It's fucking great! I could be injecting pig insulin into my thigh with a giant needle I had to sharpen myself!

But there's a lot that goes into it. Living, yeah, staying living (and sane living) takes a great deal of effort, and math, and forethought these days. I minimize it as much as I can. It's nearly invisible (which is probably why it's so fucking agonizing to me when it *isn't* as invisible). Because, you know, when we choose places to go out to eat at work, when we have a work gaming day, when Steph and the Old Man invite me over for dinner... it's something that not only I'm aware of, but stuff that other people become aware of, too. I have to have diet pop. I can't be living on Doritoes and Mountain Dew like the guys (I couldn't do that anyway without being 300 lbs, but I can't even do it just for a Saturday, you know?).

And running around, exercise without planning and forethought (impulsive sex can also be a lot less fun), and then there's that 1am sugar check, which I do still have to do with the pod. Every am. At least I don't have to take a shot at 5:30 am, tho?

Three steps forward, two steps back.

It's a lot of work, yeah, but it's my life. It's the price I pay to live. Not a bad price at all, but it eats at you sometimes. I can't pretend it doesn't. Especially when I want to eat bagels and order pizza. I hate that more than 2-3 pieces of pizza makes me sick. Hate it. I hate being broken.

It's not the end of the world, just a different world. And sometimes it can piss you off.

But it can't keep you from doing anything.

And that's the part you have to remember.

Guess Who's Coming to Town?

Scalzi and Toby will be reading at the Books & Co. across the parking lot from my digs next month (I nearly - NEARLY - said, "Fellow writers Scalzi and Toby...." But I'm going to reserve that particular weirdness for after the first of the three books is out next year, at least, thanks).

That should be a fun reading.

Blog Review

You know, I'm not actually a very brutal person, but I seem to play one on the internet:

"Kameron seems to be a very active and independent person. She does what she wants and does not care too much about what people will think of her. She may have relationship issues. Some of her posts talk about how she needs to be more in touch with her feelings and how she needs to be more open with people.

Brutal Women was a very interesting blog and I'm glad I read it. I just hope I never come across Ms. Hurley and get her mad because I will get my ass kicked with her martial arts/boxing skills and then she could potentially shoot me. That would prevent me from further posts."

I almost laughed til I cried.

(from here)

Blogging Break

Not sure when I'll be back, but for the two whole readers who come here regularly, do not despair:

I am probably not dead.

The Day that Blew By

Wow, that was fast.

Today, I learned that a cup of fat-free half and half is 143 calories, whereas a cup of peanut butter is 520 calories.

Which means eating half a bowl of sugar free, fat free pudding is about 143 calories, whereas eating half a batch of flourless peanut butter cookies is only 260.

Dammit man. In any case, those calorie counts are a lot better than I thought they'd be. I think these are nighttime snacks I should stick with.

On a related note:

OMFG sugar free, fat free eggnog!!! OMG!!!! A DIABETIC'S DELIGHT!!!

You have no idea how much I've missed eggnog the last two Christmases.

Zen

On the one hand, feeling neutral is so great. There are no gigantic emotional swings, no depression, no pressing need to do do do go go go, no crazy sugar-swinging hysterics.

On the other hand, it's kind of annoying that I find it difficult to get worked up over much of anything when I go from spiky crazy to normal again.

Dark Knight

Too long. By about half an hour. A typical problem with summer movies.

Also had one too many bad guys (why do they ALWAYS try and pack a *another* one in at the end instead of fleshing out the one they have?).

Extra bad wasn't necessary, as Ledger's joker was terrifying enough.

Not a happy superhero movie.

Just the way I like it.

Things to Look Forward To

Red Sonja (will anyone ever make a kick-ass warrior woman without making a point of saying she has a "vulnerable" side? Did they make a point of saying that Bale was a great, dark, brutal Batman but also had a "vulnerable" side? Is this really a superhero selling point?). But aside from that, yeah, sweet beans.

Terminator 4 with... Christian Bale. Everything else about it looks iffy, but they've got bodies hanging from telephone poles in the teaser trailer, so maybe there will be some kind of substance that doesn't suck? Let me keep my delusions.

Thoughts on the Pod

The Good:

1) I can keep my blood sugar more constant, by testing and correcting easily every... two to three hours.

2) No more shots. No more 5:30 am Lantus shot on weekends, in particular.

3) There is a handy bolus calculator that tells you how much insulin you've injected within the last three hours and automatically calculates how much insulin you need based on the carb amount you enter and some other presets you've given it.

4) I can adjust my basal rate for exercise on the fly, so I don't have to take less insulin at lunch to make sure I can work out before dinner. All I have to do is program a lower basal rate during that hour workout.

5) No shots means no bruises on my thighs, which isn't a huge deal, but which I found vaguely annoying.

The Bad:

1) Note that in order to keep that blood sugar consistency, I have to test and correct... every two or three hours. This is substantially more than the 4-5 times a day testing I was doing before.

2) The online bolus calculator doesn't work for me at all. I've been dialing in an extra unit or two and juggling the presets to see if I can get it to work correctly, but no dice. I don't think it adds in the basal rates correctly. Yes, I programmed all the settings i.e. carb lowering amounts and target blood sugar.

The Ugly:

1) Workouts that involve jumping around? Like tuck jumps and jumping jacks? Totally out, unless I want to tape or bandage the thing in place. It also hurts when you jump around, cause you can feel the needle bumping up and down uncomfortably. I already own a sports bra. I don't want one for my medical hardware, too.

2) It beeps. It beeps 12 hours before you need to replace it and again when you need to replace it. This would not be so bad, only it also beeps when it's finished delivering your bolus insulin, too, so that's more beeping 3-6 times a day.

3) It generally takes upwards of two minutes to inject 6 or 7 units of insulin. Two minutes? What the hell is it so slow for? Since it clicks as it delivers insulin, I can only imagine that it's because it's literally clocking it out at .10 unit increments.

4) It clicks every time it delivers insulin. Every. Damn. Time. I emit clicking sounds like a fucking clock.

5) The PDM is easy to use, but clunky, especially in a device you're using at least 10 - count `em 10 - times a day to check blood sugar and deliver boluses.

6) 1 in 7 pods fail, so you always have to bring a backup and your pens.... so, all that "gear" I figured I could ditch cause I was on the pump? I have to fucking carry it all around *anyway.*

I can see the advantage of a pump for people who hate needles or who have trouble with control, but my A1c runs 5.9-6.5 while using the pens, and I've figured out how to live with them. Sure, the pod makes insulin delivery more discreet, but you still have to stab your finger and bleed on a stick 10 - count `em 10 - times a day.

So again, really, what's the point?

I keep reading about all these folks who say insulin pumps really changed their lives (especially the pod), and I just don't see it. Granted, I've never been squeamish about stabbing myself at the table or telling people I have diabetes. So maybe these are more for squeamish people who have a hard time getting their blood sugar under control and don't like needles?

I admit, the beeping, clicking, knocking around cyborg thing really annoys me. I'm thinking I'll ditch it Monday morning and talk with my endo about it during our appointment in August. This was really the only pump option I was excited about (the idea of having tubing hanging off me isn't all that appealing either), and honestly, I really like the pens. I feel like they've given me a lot of freedom and flexibility, and I don't have to worry about jumping up and down during exercise and hurting myself/dislodging something. The insulin's already in there.

I am not terribly impressed, so far. I mean, when I first got it it was "Oh neat shiny and cool!" and now I'm like, "Was taking a Lantus shot at 5:30 am really so bad that I have to pack around two additional pieces of hardware?"

I just don't think it was.

I don't know. I'll take some time off and revisit it, maybe. So far I'm pretty wishy-washy.

Out and About

Still feeling too anti-social and tired to get out and about tonight. Hoping to at least go see a movie tomorrow.

Now I am faced with the fact that I do not want to cook but do not want to go out and should not be spending money on carry out food.

Pancakes and video games tonight is about all I'm up for.

Much better day than yesterday, tho. Once I switched out the pod things leveled off again and after a few spikes, I'm leveling off again. Give me another night and some exercise, and things should be much better.

But tonight: pancakes and video games.

Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Came home, changed out to a new omnipod (I keep wanting to say ipod heh heh heh), cried for awhile.

Tested at 35. Ate some graham crackers and cried some more.

I hate being broken.

I hate it more than anything in the whole world. I hate being dead already, just limping along with the help of synthetic insulin.

I hate being broken.

Crying some more.

Tomorrow will be better.

That's all living with chronic illness is for me, really: that stubborn conviction that tomorrow will be better.

Getting the sweats and the shakes at the sugar comes back up.

Fucked up cyborg, I am.

Limping along.

Tomorrow will be better.

Sugar Death

You know, just seeing how much insulin I have to take just to stay under 300 because the pump's fucked and basal's not working, I have to say that I'm reducing my, "I could live for at least 3 days without insulin after the apocalypse!" to "I'd be lucky to make it 24 fucking hours."

Glad I took them seriously about those emergency supplies, or I would have had to go home a hell of a lot earlier.

Depressing, to be dying all the time.

Pod Failure

Had my first pod failure this morning when I went to switch out my omnipod. I'd read about this in the omnipod forums - apparently 1 in 7 actually fail out of the box. The good news is that this is supposed to mostly happen immediately, as soon as you put it on. I kept getting communication error messages, so I switched out the pod and successfully activated a new one.

Well, it looks like they "usually" only fail out of the box, because this second one I've had one has kept me at a steady 300 all fucking day long. I have no idea what's going on with it. Checked the cannula, which is in place. It still clicks when it delivers a bolus, the proper basal program is on, it just... wants to keep me at 300.

As recommended, I kept my pens on hand for just such emergencies (I would have had the extra pod, too, but this *was* my backup pod, and I forgot to replace the backup this morning, figuring that the chances of having 2 bad pods weren't high ha haah 1 in 7, do the math).

I suppose it's possible this is also a leveling issue, but I doubt it. I switched out sites and pods, so I'm thinking there's some kind of blockage or bad cannula or something.

I took a 6 unit correction hit with my pens, which should help. I'll just need to manually finagle it until I get home and change out the pod.

Fucking annoying. Seriously, 1 in 7? Don't they have some rigorous quality check for these things?

Man, My Life is Boring

...and it's going to stay that way for at least another year. On the one hand: kind of depressing. On the other hand: this is what you get when you cross wild, roaring 20s with chronic illness and job layoffs:

A year of boring suck.

Ah well, I'm making the most of it. And the upside is, once my boring year of suck is overwith, I'll be ready for my roaring 30s!

By the Numbers, redux

Actual thought tonight, as I prepared for a pre-8:30 bedtime:

"Gee, I don't know why I'm so wiped out and exhausted."

Gee, I wonder.

Numbers this morning were a lot better, but I was running high this afternoon, in part because I think I underestimated the carb count on today's black beans at lunch. So I was running 170-190 pretty much all afternoon, which is less than ideal.

Morning was awesome, though, a nice clean 86-123 until noon, with a 136, which still isn't too bad.

I'm setting my 1am alarm tonight, but not the 3am (yes, I set a 3am alarm last night. What can I say? I'm very cautious with new toys).

I'm already looking forward to Thursday when I get to change the site. They recommend that you keep the omnipod on your stomach/hip/torso area the first week or two, but I really hate having it there. I'd much prefer my arm. Bending over, wearing jeans, situps, etc... it's just not the most convenient place for it. And I can only use one side anyway, because I sleep on my right side.

Anyway, going to bed. Only one sugar check alarm tonight. Huzzah.