High Holy Mass of Contradictions

I've decided to switch to a raw diet for a while. Again. I've done it a few times before and I always feel incredibly healthy and energetic, but it takes so long to prepare enough food for a day that I usually find I don't have enough time.

And that will probably happen this time, too, but at least I can get a few good days of it in, hopefully, or learn to mix it into my lifestyle as a day or two each week of raw eating.

The other side effect I'm hoping for, predictably enough, is to shed some of the extra me I've gained since my thyroidectomy last year (and there's a pretty generous amount of me gained). I'd prefer to be a somewhat thinner me again. (I want to stress that I'm not dieting in the women's magazine sense of the word - I'm changing my lifestyle in a way that feels great and has historically resulted in my body dropping some of its excess.) We'll see how it goes.

(Ooh, and I went for a pretty decent run Saturday for the first time in weeks, if not almost months. I think just the idea of eating raw gives me energy. :) )

Anyway, the above article caught my eye because Karsten and I were just chatting yesterday about making a trip to Germany. We weren't specific about whether we meant for our next vacation or just sometime in the indefinite future but I kind of think it might be within the next year, which is exciting! I haven't been back to Germany since I spent a summer there as an intern in 1993. But I was also not vegetarian then let alone vegan, let alone raw vegan, and I was totally unaware at the time of the groundswell of alternative diet support there seems to be throughout pockets of Germany. This time it will be essential, but also exciting to explore and discover veggie-friendly places to eat and shop. Basically, I want to be a food tourist. :)

Ugh. The doc's office just called to say my thyroid hormone levels look normal, so I won't get an increase in my Synthroid dose. I really can't believe it. I'm so obviously off from my normal self, but I guess that's something blood tests don't necessarily show.

These aren't related (I don't think), but on Friday someone broke into our car window (annoying, but not that big of a deal really), and yesterday I started getting sick again, presumably from my thyroid acting weird (very annoying, and increasingly a big deal). Nothing much more to say about those, I guess: the first is already repaired, and the second will be handled soon enough by surgery and medication. I hope.

I'm also posting this directly in LiveJournal, you may notice. I've been working out my posting strategy for my LJ and the honeybowtie.com blog, as well as the new one I'm about to introduce, which has more of an interactive marketing focus. I want to keep the two blogs more topical, which means I think I'll be posting more of my non-topical observations here.

[And I just posted this by accident. Clearly I need to re-familiarize myself with the LJ posting tools. ;) ]

Just wanted to add that as many people's online presence gets to be more fragmented for the SEO benefit, not to mention the personal/professional delineation most people want, I suspect there will be a lot of this back and forth, changing strategies. It's an evolving process. So please bear with me. :)

I'm not ready to announce the new marketing blog yet, but here are the other relevant places where I spend time if you want to keep up with me:

The Bee Hive (http://www.honeybowtie.com/blog/)
Has been serving as an all-purpose blog, but increasingly, I'd like to start using this to capture my observations about songwriting, the creative process, the music business, etc.

My personal Twitter account (http://twitter.com/kateo)
Where I do a lot of my intermittent chatter. If you're not using Twitter, consider it. I find it's a good outlet and a great way to feel connected to friends throughout the day without needing to have specific IM conversations or whatever.

My work Twitter account (http://twitter.com/magazines_kate)
Where I chatter intermittently about work projects, complain about productivity issues (like, say, Twitter ;) ), and muse about marketing and e-commerce. It's not always as boring as it sounds, I swear. ;)

My FriendFeed account (http://friendfeed.com/kateoneill)
If you want to subscribe to an aggregation of my online activity (and/or anyone else's, for that matter), this is a great tool. It's always passively in use for me, and I use it actively off and on, mostly when Twitter is down (which is mercifully less common than it was a few months ago). If you haven't checked out FriendFeed, it's a pretty neat way to keep up with people who are spread out all over the web. Like me. :)

I don't get my nails done in a salon very often. I'm fortunate to have the kind of nails that grow well, have a nice natural color and shape to them, and don't need much grooming. But I do treat myself to a manicure now and then just for the pleasure and the tidiness of it. When I do, I've always tried to opt for salons that don't specialize in acrylics. There's always such an overpowering chemical smell walking into one of those places, and when I walk into one I've never tried before and it has that smell, I usually just turn right around and walk back out.

I've commented to friends from time to time, too, that if all those chemicals smell that bad, they can't be good for the health of the people who work there. Now a study has shown that the chemicals in nail treatments are associated with higher incidences of birth defects, and that the intensity of exposure for salon workers is 1200 times that of the average American. But to my surprise, it's not only the acrylics that are implicated: it's regular nail polish, too. Three compounds regularly used in nail salons -- toluene (a colorless liquid used as a solvent), formaldehyde (helps harden nails) and dibutyl phthalate (a plasticizer that makes nail polish flexible) -- are known to cause cancer or birth defects.

In fact, after six Vietnamese nail salon workers in Springfield, Massachusetts miscarried and others had rashes, fungal infections, and asthma, a community group obtained a $100,000 grant to build a salon with high quality ventilation. Moreover, OPI Products, which produces the nail polish used in many salons, "announced in March that it would begin removing toluene from its products. Last year, the company said it was removing dibutyl phthalate."

So it looks like there's hope for improvement, but I'm still not convinced that the acrylics aren't horrible, too. I mean, even if they didn't cause health issues, I'm still stuck on the superficial smell issue. Seriously, can you imagine having to spend 8-12 hours a day surrounded by that stench? Those are some dreadful working conditions. Luckily, improving the ventilation in salons should help with that problem, too.

HT: Jezebel

On top of the issues I've been having with the weakness in my arms and legs, etc, I now look as if I attempted suicide on my wrist. With a cat.

We're having our new windows installed today, and the installer showed up surprisingly early -- 7:30 AM, in fact. So we scrambled to round up the cats (well, Karsten scrambled -- I shuffled) and lock them in the cat room. We got all except one, the smallest one. Bopper, the Ninjakitten (see icon). The one who was a feral kitten when we adopted her and who reverts to wildcat behavior when she's scared. For 20 minutes, Karsten and I chased her back and forth across the house, frightening her into a panic state. Karsten was ready to give up. I was ready to try a different approach.

She was cowering in a corner of the living room, ears down, hissing, when I approached her slowly and made soothing noises. I took my time reassuring her, and she gradually began to relax. After a lot of convincing, I was able to pick her up and carry her all the way across the house with only minimal struggle on her part. Only when we got to the cat room door did she start to freak out, writhing wildly and carving a 5-inch gouge into my left inner wrist and a puncture in my right palm. But by god, I got her into that cat room.

And then I started cussin' and cryin' about how bad it hurt. Yowch! I should have taken pictures of it, but it was kind of gross. I'm all bandaged up now, and had to put on an extra-long-sleeved shirt to cover my wrist so my coworkers wouldn't think I was making a desperate cry for help.

What a week this has been!

This probably makes me sound like a hypochondriac, but after describing my progression of symptoms following my flu shot to a coworker, she did some searching on the web, found out about Guillain-Barré Syndrome, and suggested I read up on it. It was a good call; everything I've read about it resonates with what I'm experiencing. From a variety of web sites:

... some patients have developed GBS after receiving an immunization... . It typically begins with weakness and/or abnormal sensations of the legs and arms. ...causes rapidly progressing muscle weakness... . The signs and symptoms of GBS usually appear rapidly over the course of a single day.

I'm using this entry to document the symptoms I've been having in case I need to go to see a doctor. (I don't have insurance, so I'm trying to gather as much information as possible before making the decision to do that.)

( List of symptoms )

Most of the web sites say there is no real treatment and it's difficult to diagnose, so I'll just be monitoring these symptoms myself until/unless I notice anything of an increasingly alarming disposition. I'm hopeful that it will just run its course and I'll be done with it.

• I got a flu shot today, and almost immediately began experiencing a strong metallic taste in my mouth. Within twenty minutes, I began to feel woozy. The nurse who administered the shot said she'd never heard of the metallic taste side effect, but advised me to eat and drink something. I did, but both symptoms have continued throughout the day. Only after getting the shot (and starting to experience my weird symptoms) did I have a conversation with a coworker who told me what she knew about the suspected hazards of flu shots (with mercury looking more and more like the culprit for my metallic taste), and now I really wish I hadn't gotten that damn shot.
  
  
• Work is pretty hectic right now, and looks as if it will continue to be hectic for the rest of the month. Can't really talk about it, but hey! Great timing for NaSoWriMo, right?
  
  
• But Rummy is out and Webb is in, so Democrats appear to have the Senate, and we can all wish Donald a fond farewell. That's at least a halfway decent consolation prize for the shock and frustration that was the landslide passage of Amendment 1 in Tennessee.
  

Update: Just adding a link, for my future reference, to the entry I went back and found from three years ago when I got a flu shot and also described my state as "woozy." So... I'm thinking this'll be my last flu shot.

This sucks.

I asked Karsten to buy me some of that Airborne herbal stuff and I took it yesterday, but I had also taken some Emer-Gen-C supplements, and I guess I ended up consuming over 8,000 mg of vitamin C yesterday. So when I woke up this morning, I had a very upset stomach. Let's just leave the description there, shall we? I did a little research and found that that's basically what happens when you consume toxic levels of vitamin C.

And although my cold-like symptoms have almost vanished, I still have one hell of a fever (no thermometer around, so I don't know how high, but I have that raw nerve sensation all over my skin which is definitely a fever thing for me).

Here it is, Paddy's Day, and I'm propped up in bed with my laptop, wishing I could be out doing all the gazillions of things there are to do tonight. But at least I've got my "Irish Pride" t-shirt on.

If y'all go out tonight, have a drink for your ol' pal Kate, would you? There's a friend.

When I learned about the connection between carbonation and bone density loss, I cut my soda intake almost completely. I was mostly good about keeping up with that for the past several years, but got a little lazy this past year or so, allowing the occasional Dr. Pepper to sneak into my lunch or ginger ale into my dinner.

Now, after reading about a new-to-me connection between soda and cancer, I've decided it's over. We're breaking up for good, me and soda.

Admittedly, the highest risk factors involve diet soda and prolonged heat exposure, and I don't drink diet soda, and the sodas I buy may or may not have been exposed to heat during their distribution process. So I may not be much at risk on this issue.

But you know what? It's not so much that. It's all the little things. Like how it likes to make me belch (very unattractive!). Like how the high sugar content skews my sense of taste. And so on. Soda is just plain wrong for me. And I think it's high time we both accepted that and got on with our lives.

Tough workout this morning. After 2 miles on the treadmill, I had to hop off, stretch, and do some other exercises like squats and Roman chair bends. Then I got back on the treadmill for another 2 miles, but it was really rough going the whole time.

I guess it's understandable, though. Yesterday I did my fastest run since my injury, so my muscles may still be trying to recover. It was still not fast, mind, but I kept a steady 10 min/mile pace, which is significant improvement from my 12 min/miles two weeks ago. I'll try to keep up the 10:00 pace for a little while longer before I start shooting for under 10 min/mile over a longish run. It's tough to be patient about this because before my injury, I was working my way into the 7 min/mile range. I expect it'll be months before I regain that kind of speed. But at this point I'm more concerned about regaining my mileage than my speed, and that's steadily improving.

Did my first five-mile run since my injury. I do have a little bit of twinge-iness below and to the right of my right kneecap and slight soreness in my right hip, but otherwise I feel fine. I'm icing my knee and I took some ibuprofen, and I'll rest this weekend. That brings my total for the week to 13 miles, which, although I'd planned a 17 mile week, still feels like good, solid progress. Next week should be 19, but I'll be satisfied with 15 or more.

Well, doggone. Looks like I have myself a case of iliotibial band syndrome.

Last Monday, I did an 8-mile training run and had some knee stiffness and general soreness, but nothing remarkable. I iced, rested, took Ibuprofen, and felt better in two days, but stayed on the treadmill on Wednesday to soften the impact of my 2.5 mile recovery run. By Thursday, I did my usual 6-mile run in the park with Karsten, and on Friday, we ran another 6 miles along Belle Meade Boulevard. Then on Saturday morning, I did a 10-mile training run in the park, and have been experiencing pretty heavy knee pain ever since.

The symptoms are classic ITBS: lateral knee pain, some hip soreness, difficulty walking up and down hills and stairs but no difficulty walking on flat surfaces. I've been icing, resting, and taking Ibuprofen, and I'm feeling ready to get on an elliptical machine tomorrow morning, but I've also been doing my homework. I have some stretches I have to start doing religiously -- at just about every possible opportunity. I found a seemingly reliable article on the web that recommends a strengthening exercise which I just tried and can feel that it should work over time. And I need to buy new shoes.

Oh, and I can't run on Belle Meade Boulevard anymore. That same article makes a point about sloping roads -- I noticed on Friday morning how uncomfortable my legs felt because of the slope toward the edge of the road, and I now suspect that that run had more to do with my current knee pain than my longer but flatter run on Saturday morning.

I've also made up my mind about the Chicago marathon: not this year. I've decided that I'll run in the Park Forest Scenic 10, which is a 10 mile and 5K race in my hometown on Labor Day weekend. And then I'd like to run the half-marathon portion of the Country Music Marathon next April, and then by next October, I'll be ready for Chicago. Hopefully, I'll have also figured out some tricks to make my knees cooperate with the kind of mileage I'm trying to run.

We'll see how the rest of this week goes: I'd been planning on running the Music Row 5K this Saturday, but even though it's short, it's a very hilly run and that could do me in. I've got my fingers crossed. I hear JoDee Messina is supposed to be running in it, and I thought it would be fun to chance seeing her there. But not at the risk of another several days of aching knees.

Looking for motivation to keep your blood pressure low?

How about this? If you allow your blood pressure to become elevated and stay elevated, your arteries may become rigid in response. If they do, you'll need to have elevated blood pressure in order for normal blood flow to continue.

This is the explanation my father's doctor offers as to why my dad suffered several strokes during his immunotherapy treatment. He's being treated with Interleukin II, which apparently is known to lower patients' blood pressure as a common side effect. The doc's theory is that my dad's carotid arteries are too hard for IL-II, and the strokes are the evidence.

I find the explanation plausible but distressing. If IL-II is out of the picture, his options are really limited from here on out.

But it sure made me think twice about adding salt to my lunch today.

Gorgeous weather! I'd heard it was going to rain by 9, so we headed out at 7:30 to get in an hour or so before the rain. Unfortunately, a mile or so into it, my back started hurting like it did a week and a half ago in Chicago. So I walked until I met up with Karsten as he was heading back in my direction (and that took quite a while), and sent him to get the car.

In the meantime, I did a little resting and stretching, and found that I could walk a bit more. Once I got walking again, I found that I could jog a bit. And once I'd jogged a bit, I found that I could do some speedwork.

Weird. I went from having shooting pain where I couldn't even walk to feeling OK sprinting.

If it happens again, I'll think about seeing a doc. But I think the doc would just tell me to take it easy. So I'll see what I can do about that. ;-)

Skipped my run again this morning. (I didn't run yesterday morning either.) Yesterday, I skipped because my knees felt like they could use a break. This morning, I skipped because my back is really hurting. I think part of it is due to my period, but I'm aware that I may be overtraining.

I've read and heard over and over that runners injure themselves when they freak about skipping a day, worried that they'll lose fitness. And I definitely know what that feels like: I'm definitely fighting back the sensation that I'll lose ground in my training by skipping a few days. But I also know that they say you don't lose any fitness for a week or two, and if you're injured, you need to rest. So I'm trying to be smart about it.

But I better be able to get out there tomorrow. I always look forward to my Friday morning run.

(Obviously, I'm not working as hard as I should be. So shoot me.)

I just found this tip on the Country Music Marathon web site:

Weigh In Daily

Step out of bed every morning and onto the scale. If you're anywhere from 1% to 3% lighter than yesterday, re-hydrate by drinking 8 ounces of fluid for each pound lost before training again. Between 3% and 6% lighter, re-hydrate and back off that day's training intensity. Over 7%, get to the doctor.

So that day when I was 5 pounds lighter than the day before (which is about a 3.5% loss for my weight), it probably was just water weight loss from dehydration. I'm sure I was drinking a lot of water the day before, but it must not have been enough. Good to know for future reference.

I was feeling a little better already late yesterday. I guess that wasn't too bad. One of my running buddies this morning said she had the flu last year for 11 days, so I guess two days of being feverish and tired is better than a prolonged bout with actual influenza.

Anyway, so I was back out running this morning. 4 miles, struggling with side stitch through most of it. I hate mornings like this, where it seems like once the stitch shows up, I can't get rid of it. I try breathing out forcefully, as I've read to do, but it doesn't seem to help. I can walk for a minute or two and feel OK but as soon as I start running again, the stitch comes back.

Also, this really chatty woman I know joined me on the track and ran the second and third mile with me. She's nice and all, but I was glad for the peace and quiet on the last lap after she decided to head inside.

Oh, and I was relieved to see that my weight is back up, though not quite to where it was on Thursday. But I'm not going to worry about it unless I see a major fluctuation like that again.

and have been feeling woozy ever since. Muscles very achey, slight fever, generally feel like crap.

And this is supposed to keep me from feeling... bad, right?

I weigh myself at the same time every weekday as weight factors into lots of measurements: fitness, BMI, even hydration, and so on. I don't like to see the number change very much from day to day, and it usually doesn't. Even during fitful times in my menstrual cycle, a difference of two pounds from one day to the next would be a lot.

This morning I weighed exactly five pounds less than I did yesterday. Five pounds!

I'm not freaking out yet, but I'm definitely going to watch the next few days carefully. I'm more than a little puzzled about how I could have dropped so much water weight so fast -- and if it's not water weight, I'm definitely concerned.