Birthday Boots and Sisterhood

Keen Boots

My sister, Carri, took me shoe shopping for my birthday.  It was part one of the shopping excursion I asked for.  Part two will be for clothes.  Both are needed because my entire wardrobe except for a handful of items are one to two sizes too big for me.

She took me to a high-qualit shop in the Portland area first and I thought it would be primarily for fun--in store window shopping.  But two hours later I walked out of there with these boots on my feet.

I'd never paid a 3 figure price for shoes in my 58 years! I'm still feeling a bit weird about it.

After we left the shoe store we stopped to pick up a take and bake pizza--artichoke hearts/bacon/cheese--and headed over to our sister Jamie's apartment where she left me while she went to a Christian rock concert.  Jamie and I polished off that pizza as we visited together for the first time in months;

All in all a good birthday which kept my lucky Friday the 13th birthday streak unbroken.

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Sunday Serenity

Microwaveable Beanbag with Kitties

My sister bought this for me in the motel office the night we arrived in Phoenix.  It helped us both get through the weekend.

It lay on my chest the first two nights as I nursed my anxiety and the laryngitis I'd had most of the week.

Irony or what?  I went down there to talk to Ed and my voice barely worked.

The third and last night I loaned the beanbag back to Carri who'd had a bad crash while roller blading.

I probably wouldn't have used it anyway as I had my favorite heating pad that night.  The one with strong arms. As Ed paid for Carri to get her own room so he could spend the night with me.

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Sunday Serenity

Smile

My sister knows me so well. :)

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The Sister Plan

Meta Morpho Sis

Tonight is our class with the nutritionist in Battleground.  My sister and I got a family member's discount when we signed up last summer.  It was still spendy.  My share is 50% of my disability check for fifteen months.   That means 9 or 10 more months of payments.

It includes a lot of reading matter, supplements, consultations, lab tests and classes every other Tuesday and recommendations for more reading and film watching.

The Metamorphosis book is included along with the binder of articles and charts.  The book at top, Why is My Brain Not Working? is a loaner to me from his library.

You'd think I would have been treating the plan with more respect considering the cost but I've been a bit lax about it since mid November.

I've not completely reverted to across the board unhealthy choices but the handful of poor choices I have made are having a huge impact.  I've not started gaining either ounces or inches but I've stopped loosing.  Except muscle mass.  And my mood has been volatile.  And I stopped reading the material and the other complementary reading and studying I had been doing before and after signing up.

I think the two most impactful choices have been the return to drinking coffee daily after a year and a half with only rare treats and the neglect of exercise.  Those two choices contributed to an increase in insomnia again after nearly a year of only moderate issues with it.  Thus sleep deprivation accumulated and my mood and energy tanked and that fed the 'need' for more coffee and the aversion to exercise ...

This all contributed to the difficulty concentrating, staying on task and comprehending and retaining information.  Hence the loss of enjoyment in reading and writing...

So I'm back on the merry-go-round.

I have a choice to make.

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