Week in photos

Free range afternoon

Mouse always has his eye on me

Jay has taken up juicing. Apparently all the guys in his firehouse are doing it? The first few rounds did not go well. I'm thinking that recipes are there for a reason.

Our septic tank runneth over and started backing up into the downstairs shower. Talk about gross. So we had to get our tank pumped and the line flushed. Farewell $460, I will miss you!

Gorgeous church  outside of Chestertown. My friend Christina is thinking of getting married there next year. I had to go to our Chester River Hospital last week to train my vacation back up. Afterwards, Christina took me on a tour of Kent County. We also visited her parents' gorgeous home in Rock Hall, where we had a few glasses of wine on the porch. Her mom also made some heavenly guacamole. It was a nice visit!

This beautiful tree on the church grounds is 400 years old

Marker from the tree

Jay hard at work on chicken coop #2. It will comfortably house our entire flock!

Mouse was about to attack Jay, so he gave him a good chase around the yard

Mom visited for a Scentsy party over the weekend

She loves her grandpeeps

And she brought me some flowers for my birthday

After mom left on Sunday, I went to Martinak for a long walk and some photos. I was taking pictures of this cherry tree sapling when this tiger swallowtail came out of NOWHERE and landed on the branch. It's not nearly warm enough for butterflies to be making an appearance. It reminded me of my dad. Maybe this was his way of saying hi. 

Watts Creek... kayakers enjoying the spring day

More cherry blooms

An osprey left its nest after I got too close. :(

Early spring at Martinak

Steroids are nasty

So I’m pretty sure that my high blood pressure was caused by a combination of pain and the methylprednisolone that I was put on to relieve the pain from my swollen tonsils. This stuff is evil.

I took my last dose of the stuff last Thursday and my blood pressure has been slowly coming back down. But by Friday it had not decreased enough for my concerned coworkers and I had significantly different BP readings from my left and right arms, which apparently is a bad sign. So they gave me an EKG.

Nothing like having to lift up your boob for your coworker to stick electrodes under. The EKG was abnormal, but not heart attack kind of abnormal. My doctor friend who reviewed it said that it was probably nothing and could be connected to the steroids, but that I definitely needed to see my PCP about the high blood pressure. At the doctor yesterday, they took another abnormal EKG and numerous blood pressure readings. By the time I had finally calmed down, it was down to 128/88. Much better than my previous readings of 140/110 and 158/108. Goes to show you how much pain and stress can affect those things. 

My primary care physician agreed that it was most likely nothing, but she is sending me to a cardiologist for an evaluation and stress test just in case. On my 33^rd birthday, I get to go see Dr. Okun. 

This is not how I envisioned spending part of my birthday, but oh well. Jay is probably happy because it means that I’m bailing on book club and now we get to go to dinner instead. And since we’ll be on “the other side of the bridge,” we will have plenty of great restaurant options in Annapolis and Baltimore. I’m sure that everything will be okay, but it will be nice to have him with me at my appointment.

All of that said, I’m not really sure what is going on with my diet right now. I’ve been committed to recording everything I eat with LoseIt, and have remained under my target calories for the past 8 weeks. However, somehow I’ve gained 2 pounds in the last week, while as long as I stick to my plan, I should be losing a pound a week. I think it is probably all water retention from the steroids and that this time of the month isn’t great for me. So I’m trying to be patient. I'm still exercising every other day, if not every day. I've been walking, doing the elliptical, and swimming. Over the weekend I did the stationary cycle and used the rowing machine. So my body seriously needs to get its act together.

Since I’m not sure how the diet is affecting me health-wise, I am trying to keep my saturated fats and sodium low. I caved a bit in the carbs department, but I haven’t completely caved to the point of eating pizza, French bread and French fries. But I did have a rough day last Friday. I had two tater tots, a big slice of delicious pineapple, part of a chocolate dipped banana from Edible Arrangements  and several fried green beans. And too many cocktails at Harry’s. I’m now trying to keep around/under 40-60 net grams of carbs a day and under or around 20 grams of saturated fat a day. My current struggle is with nuts. I am shoveling fistfuls of almonds and walnuts into my mouth. I convince myself that since almonds and walnuts are heart healthy that eating a pound in one sitting is perfectly acceptable.

Okay, I may be exaggerating with eating an entire pound of nuts, but I haven't exactly been counting them out.

In other news, we are running out of time to figure out who is taking care of our critters while we’re away. 

Mind you, this is when we LAND in Brisbane. We are down to 31 days before our flight leaves.

Normally I’d be fine with asking our friends to take care of the chickens, but three weeks is a lot to ask of someone. Plus this vacation is going to require cleaning litter boxes, and I don’t want to ask that of my friends. When you’re spending over ten grand on a vacation, another few hundred bucks for a pet/house sitter shouldn’t be an issue. However, Jay still won’t make a decision on whether he is going to ask a slightly odd guy he knows from the Masons. So I think he just wants me to take care of it. I sent out a message to our book club to ask for recommendations… some of the women have college age kids who might want to earn a few easy bucks. Fingers crossed.

My aunt Nancy has been sending these photos almost daily. I can almost smell the salt in the air.

This picture was taken FROM A McDONALD'S! Seriously, how beautiful is this place that even the McDonald's has this kind of view?

25 Things - Update on Progress

At the beginning of the year, I posted my goals/quasi-resolutions... here is an update on how I'm doing:

1. Be more positive
   I think that I'm getting there. Honestly, therapy has helped me a lot... I do what I can, try to understand others and their motivations, then let the rest of it go.
2. Lose ~13% of body weight (or eat healthier and exercise at least 3x a week)
   I'm at 5.11% of my body weight. That's progress! I've also exercised at least 3 times a week for the last few weeks. I'll take it.
3. Start a few plants from seed for the garden
   I have the starter seed kit, I just need to figure out when to start the stuff. 
4. Come up with a new budget and stick to it
   I've figured out the budget - next update will tell you if I stuck to it. :)
5. Get rid of the red couch and chair that I freaking HATE
   Ugh, not yet.
6. Purchase new furniture and decorate downstairs
   Also not yet. I have to make sure that it fits with #4.
7. Put together a time capsule for our house
   I have it, but it's sitting downstairs on my kitchen counter. It doesn't need to go in until we finish the drywall in my old bedroom's closet.
8. Blog at least twice a week
   Failing that one. Oops.
9. Get organized - important documents, books, seasonal items, etc.
   Maybe later this year. I'm just happy to have my house mostly in one piece!
10. Be in good enough shape to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing (aka Mount Doom) in New Zealand
    Definitely not yet. We leave in 50 days, so I think that should be enough time as long as I stick with those 3x a week workouts.
11. Raise a small flock of chickens for meat (at least six)
    This is gonna be a tough one. Not sure if I'll ever be able to do this.
12. Sell some eggs, otherwise we'll be overrun when the new chickens start laying
    Later this year... probably August or September when the new girls start laying.
13. Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, even though I'm scared of being eaten by a shark
    Oh it's gonna happen! Flights are booked, baby!
14. Snuggle a koala
    Also going to happen at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in less than 2 months!
15. Install the heat pump downstairs
    This is finally happening tomorrow! I can't wait to have whole house HVAC!!
16. Make room in the budget for a cleaning service
    Not sure about this... I'm thinking that now that the house is completed, it's a lot easier to keep clean. Also, if we get a normal driveway and make some landscaping improvements, it will be much easier to keep our floors clean.
17. Get the crawl space insulated
    Yeah, yeah. It'll happen one day. Maybe soon. Maybe later. But someday this year.
18. Have photos done and send Christmas cards out this year
    Maybe I should make my appointment with Laura Dye  now so that I don't slack on this one. I want the cats and chickens in our "family" photo. I think that would be awesome! Maybe an American Gothic kinda thing in front of the house. But with Jay in his turnout gear (shirtless with suspenders would be HILARIOUS) and me with a chicken under one arm and a cat under the other. 
19. Fence in yard
    This is going to happen, although not sure if it will happen before or after the trip
20. Hatch out some silkie and black/red star mixes
    They're hatching tomorrow! Squee! :)
21. Say no and not feel guilty afterwards
    I've been doing that more often. Really.
22. Have an awesome time at the Mardi Gras Ball
    I did have an awesome time, although I must say that I was quite happy and relieved when it was all over. I was even happy to clean up the next day!
23. Can tomatoes from our garden
    Gotta plant them first. And put up a fence so that the chickiepoos don't eat them.
24. Print "before" collages to frame and hang in the house
    I started to get some of these together. I need to make this happen.
25. Use at least one week of our time share
    We are planning to take a group vacation to the Dominican at the end of the year, but when I wrote to the timeshare people, they told me that they couldn't confirm a villa for us until a month out. GRRR. So in all likelihood, we will be using another person's timeshare to make sure that we get what we want. I'm quite irked by the whole thing.

Before and After

We are nearly done. I am beyond exhausted and hurt all over.

There was a mad rush to get everything done this weekend - getting the porch painted to improve curb appeal, straightening the yard, painting trim in the house, straightening, dusting, sweeping, mopping, shining, staging. You would not believe how filthy the house was - and I feel like we just cleaned it! Constant construction = constant dirt and dust. Jay had to work yesterday, so I busted my ass from the time I got up to the time I crawled into bed. We had hoped to finish the stairs, but at 10 pm last night, I gave up. The steps still needed to be sanded before we stain and poly them and there was no way I had another 2 hours in me. Overall, we spent 51 man hours from Friday through Sunday working on our project. Jay spent 21 hours between Friday and Saturday, I spent 27 hours between Friday and Sunday, and my girlfriend Angela came over and helped us paint for about 3 hours on Saturday.

Why the mad rush? Our house is being appraised today for refinancing. When my dad died, I inherited a substantial sum of money. However, since he wasn't planning on dying anytime soon, the majority of the money was in an IRA. I don't think he knew much about how IRA's work, because the money that he had inherited from my grandparents was all in cash, which he converted to the IRA. Since I wasn't a surviving spouse, nor of retirement age, I took a HUGE hit on taxes, which left me with less than half of the original amount. I won't lie - I spent about half of the remainder on a ring to wear in my dad's memory, furnishing my Odenton apartment, paying the disparity in rent between what I was putting in to make up for my ex not making much money, Ann Taylor clothes for work (and good makeup & skincare products) and took some nice vacations with the ex (which was also mostly on my dime). The rest of the money went to dumpster rental and some emergency repairs with the house, mainly the roof and porch to the tune of $30,000. By the time I met Jay, most of the money was gone - so I had to take out a home equity line of credit for the actual rehab project. And of course aforementioned rehab project ended up taking more time and costing way more than what I took out from the HELOC. So that is the long story short of why we are refinancing. Once the new conventional mortgage is in place, we will be saving almost $500 a month - or more, if the appraiser gives us a better LTV (loan to value).

Add all of this work to the Atkins diet that I started last Wednesday? My body is screaming for more nourishment. I probably should have eaten more this weekend, but we were so busy. The thing that I've noticed about Atkins is that I'm not as hungry, and things with the least number of carbs suddenly tastes ultra sweet. We had green beans on Saturday and they tasted sugary to me. Weird! So that's going pretty well, but I need to force myself to eat more often. Today is day six and I feel pretty shaky this morning. I'm sure it's because I didn't eat enough this weekend and I put my body through hell.

Unfortunately I don't have photos of every room for the before comparison.

So, without further ado... I give you the final comparison (and some in-between) photos:

Not too shabby, eh? :)