Sick people, check in! Lots going on in this update.

I know at least two, maybe three, maybe all, of us Fanci people have been sick in the last few weeks. I got very mildly sick in comparison to everyone else's death pneumonia, but it was enough to park my butt at home for three days. Hope everyone is feeling better soon and taking care of themselves.

I did not take care of myself. The first day, I did laundry and housework, as well as followed my little sick girl dog around the house to make sure she kept all her food and pills down. I made myself sicker and spent most of Tuesday in a headachy, fevery haze. I also ate a lot of junk food over those several days. Ice cream, baked Cheetos, sweetened cranberries, quesadillas with generous helpings of sour cream and cheese, not to mention flour tortillas cooked on a hot skillet. Not everything I ate was bad, but I made poor choices. Forget deciding between temptation and virtue. I just flat-out didn't care.

Truth be told, I was hungry when I was sick. Or at least I thought I was. I may have just been a little dehydrated, which I tend to be more often than not, and as we all know, being thirsty often tells your brain that you want food. I tend to not drink much liquid after I get home from work until just before bed, when I have a cup of nighttime tea and most of a 16-ounce glass of water. At work, I drink Diet Coke, despite the days I decide I'm going to start drinking more water and clean out my eternally dirty personal glassware.

Sunday, I'm going to have to start tracking my food again. Or tomorrow. What's wrong with Saturday? Nothing. I chafe against tracking, but I have to do it. I'm out of control, and I'm the only person who can pull my habits back onto the straight and narrow.

Fine, I'm coming back. Mom. Err, Lance.

Of course, when I wasn't eating right and wasn't feeling well, you may imagine that I was not exercising, either. I haven't worked out in at least a week, not since last Saturday when I took the boy dog for a walk. I get dispensation for 4 days - one for operating on 3 hours of sleep and 3 for being sick - but I've just been lazy otherwise. But that's easily started again.

I'm almost to the end of stage one of The New Rules of Lifting for Women. I was looking at the next batch of exercises and am worried that I won't be able to do one of them. I tried it out with the barbell and failed even with an un-weighted bar. It's a variation on an overhead shoulder press, and my shoulder is just not up for those shenanigans. It's discouraging. I don't want to give up weights. I'll modify the workout and figure something out until my shoulder heals. Yes, I need to have it looked at. Yes, I have insurance. But I don't know where to start. And right now, and for the next several months, I can't really afford copays and deductibles; I don't even have the credit to float it.

The vet bills from the last several weeks are close to $500. My mind was racing at 3am on Sunday morning as my boyfriend and I sat in those incredibly uncomfortable wooden chairs in the waiting room of the vet emergency clinic. I was worried my girl dog Bones was going to die, and I was also worrying how I was going to pay for surgery if she had a bowel obstruction, as I feared at the time. The dog is fine, but the financial anxiety remained for the rest of this week and isn't completely allayed, though I have tamped it down with a more reasonable, pragmatic attitude and positive action.

I'm so incredibly deeply in debt right now for different things, from personal loans I took out to consolidate debt and wound up using to help out my family, to car repairs, to home improvement purchases, to electronics. I sat down later Sunday and went over my budget, and I developed a strategy and got to know the bigger picture in regards to my personal debt a lot better while I was out sick. I've got a plan for my debt payoff and have been implementing it in stages. Steps include setting up debt cancellation plans in case of life-changing events, ranking bills in payoff importance by balance and APR, and reducing most payments to just over the minimum so I can throw the full force of my available funds at paying off one debt at a time. Additionally, my boyfriend is not only emotionally supportive, he has pledged and provided financial assistance. So I have a solution fleshed out. In less than a year, I should be in substantially better financial shape, and that will help me to be less worried and anxious about my future. And that means I can't use "But I'm poor!" as an excuse to avoid seeing doctors and specialists about me shoulder. So I'm working on it.

Since we're talking about injuries and dogs and exercise, I'll say a few words about my dogs. My Spock is a fat beagle now. We've given him too many high-calorie treats and not given him enough exercise. Part of it is that he has allergies and is frequently wheezy. However, the beagles are newly on the allergy medicine hydroxyzine, and it helps him be a lot less drippy and breathe a lot better. So I feel less mean taking Spock for a longish walk. I've been reluctant to walk him, though, as I can only walk one dog with my good arm if I have any hope of having a pain-free shoulder situation, and leaving with one dog means the other whimpers and is incredibly, vocally upset the entire time we are out. With Bones, that means a lot of howling and barking. Sorry, boyfriend and Bones, but Spock needs to get his cardio on, and mommy needs to not want to amputate that arm.

"Yay, I love bread! What, geese? Goslings? Who cares! There's bread!!!"
(You have to say it in the Eeyore voice for full effect.)

We went for three 30-minute walks, and he had to stop halfway to pant really hard halfway through each one. Part of it is that it's starting to get to be face-meltingly hot at long last. Part of it is that pollen is really aggressive this year, it's the Happening in progress, and a lot of people I know with allergies are especially miserable this spring. I can't imagine it's easy for a little guy being compelled to walk by this person next to him, up hills through the grass, next to the busy road full of cars. So we sit there by the side of the road, him panting his little heart out, me feeling bad that he's so exhausted and that I've let this happen to him, but also feeling happy that we're out doing something about his weight.

He's getting less food, fewer treats, and lighter treats, though I have to admit, the first few days girl dog Bones was home and feeling poorly, Spock felt extremely neglected, and I tried to make up for that attention gap with treats. Now that things are back to normal, I'm hoping to get his weight down to a reasonable poundage with these measures. I'll take him out walking later at night until it's intolerable outside at any hour, which should happen in DFW in about three weeks. I don't know what we'll do to get him to be more active then. Maybe I'll teach him some new tricks. We worked on high-five the other day. He's always pleased to learn something new and get treats, and this time, he exhibited behavior that is sometimes called the "zoomies" and ran happily around the house for a good 5 minutes. He was so happy and playful. I need some new tricks to teach this dog!