Who has time to work?

I have nothing interesting to post today, except that I'm not dead yet.  Did a 45-minute upper-body strength and cardio interval workout this morning at Steele Park with a Meet Up group.  Great workout and I can feel good about it all day long.  So I got one workout in this week.  Two if you count my little walk on Monday.

Then I had my annual well woman exam -- we know how much fun those are, don't we ladies?  And, of course, I'm back up to 111 (I miss my short-lived 105).  Then I decided I needed a cordless hand-vac, so I can clean the patio cushions and the car.  Thank you Amazon.  And then I needed a Shark steam pocket mop.  Thank you Costco.  Then I had to clean the kitchen floor with it.  Thank you.....oh -- that was all me.  Not bad.  Better than running back to the sink or a bucket to rinse and wring every other minute.  All in all, I think I likey the Shark.  I plan on walking around barefoot all afternoon.

Not much work happening yet today, and now I've got to get more green tea, PPV and record Sherlock Holmes and The Blind Side, and then I'll need to quit early to get ready for book club. SO much to do.  Oh well.  I can work harder tomorrow.

Back ON that Horse, or How I Jogged for, like, 5 or 6 blocks.

Whew.  Back from a walk/jog.  I'm feeling SO much better now, that I actually started over -- back to ground zero and walkin' the 'hood.  Because I need to ease back into workouts and because it's spring and the bougainvillea, the roses, the citrus, and everything else beautiful and fragrant that stuffs up my nose and gives me eczema, is in bloom.  Not to mention that the sun exposure was probably a great idea for my extra-crispy face.  And because I gained back that last 5-7 pounds on the 'roids, dammit.  So I decided to drop everything and brave the allergens and sun for the 20 minutes I had while the dogs' rice was boiling.  Three songs to the South, half a song East, and 2.5 songs North to home and I'm done.  And I even jogged for a few blocks.  Twice.  So there.  Take that you frickin' allergies and skin and stuff!

It's good to be home.  And feelin' better (the vitamin A seems to be helping the Grover's).  And farmin', BTW -- I've got bell peppers, fennel, spinach, and onions, and my apricots and tomatoes are setting now.  If a tenth of the blooms on my Meyer lemon come to fruition, I'ma open a lemonade stand.  I'm such a proud mama.  Who knew I could grow stuff that's actually useful?  Do you KNOW how many stupid hibiscus plants I've killed in my time?  And now I'm growing stuff that I can eat.  Cool.  Stay tuned for the citrus peel enzyme cleaner experiment.  I've got several batches fermenting now and it should be ready to clean my house by mid-June.  Lemony-jealous much?

Because no one's lookin' at your waist if you have SWEET, SWEET shoes.

Or boots.  This post is a Love-Fest for my new Old Gringo boots.  I found them in a shop on Main in Durango and they wanted, get ready,  hard to believe.............$575.00.  OUCH!!  But they were, are, some frickin' awesome, cool boots.  I needed them.  Obviously.

They didn't have my size, or I probably would've dropped $600 right there.  (I know!)

TGFTI (thank God for the internet).  So I go "home" to our rental house and start surfing HARD for these boots (mind you, I'm still all itchy/scratchy, so this took some focus).  Zappos -- yes, but $470.  Mmm.  No.  Cavender's, yes, but $420.  Finally  SCORE!!!!  Endless shoes and bags for $321, free shipping and returns, no tax.  Oh yes.  Boom.  Hit confirm order, done.

The boots were at my house when I arrived home last night.  LOVE the internet and Brown.

And the object of my affection:

Now don't tell me that these are not the coolest boots EVER, because I will not believe you.  I would sleep in them, but they poke the sheets.

Who knew my own skin could be so uncomfortable?

Okay, so I haven't blogged for a week or three, because I was busy being busy being sick.  My skin just turned on me.  After the bugs, I gave myself a severe allergic reaction to topical sulfur and an MSM supplement (an organic form of sulfur that you supposedly cannot be allergic to -- oops, not true) and was just in agony with that stuff (my neck swelled up to the size of about three linebackers on 'roids).  Then on top of that I got old white men's disease -- Grover's disease, which means that my skin can't hold itself together any more and I have an itchy rash on my neck and torso and limbs that gets worse if I get hot and/or sweat (so this is either a great excuse not to work out, or a serious blow to my exercise plans).  Like I needed another itchy frickin' rash.  And they don't know what causes it (the insult of burning myself inside and out with sulfur might have had something to do with it, or it might have been the drugs for the bugs, or maybe all the hot baths I was taking for the bugs, or I might have defective or plugged up sweat glands -- frickin' who knows), and there is no cure for it.  And it can last 10-12 months, or go on for years.  Just my luck.  But hey, I lived with my good friend Itchy Rash of Unknown Origin (atopic dermatitis) for 2.5 years before the bugs happened, so I can deal.  So far, my research reveals that Vitamin A is about the only known treatment for it.  So I'm all Vitamin A'd up.  (Trivia -- your body creates Vitamin A from Beta Carotene -- who knew?)  Now if I could only sleep for more than 2 hours at a time -- I wake up itching like a son of beech.  Basically I haven't slept an entire night since early February.  But I'm optimistic that it will improve -- I mean it can't get worse, and at least I don't have bugs any more.  I think.  Oh, and I got some TOTALLY kick ass Old Gringo boots last night.  So things are looking up.

So, this has all kind of set back my mid-life get-my-ass-in-shape-and-write-a-funny-blog-about-it program.  On the up side, I did get down to 105.  But then the dermatologist gave me large doses of 'roids (I've never met a dermatologist who didn't think that steroids were the answer to each and every skin problem, and I've never had steroids actually fix any problem.  Ever.  Although I will admit I was pretty happy with them the day I had about 4 layers of hives all over me.)  And  about 11 days into my 10-day steroid program, duh, I finally realized why I was eating everything that wasn't nailed down.  And that lasted at least two weeks (hell, I'm STILL hungry), and totally blew my big weight loss victory -- the one good thing that came from the whole bug ordeal, blown to bits by 20 tiny steroids tablets.  I hate dermatologists AND steroids.  So I'm probably back up to 110 -- I haven't checked yet, because I finally just left town and went skiing for a week.  Oh, and note to my dermatologist -- sun exposure (which he recommended) can actually exacerbate Grover's (kind of a crap shoot I guess -- might help, might hurt).  My face got all red, swollen, blistery, and, yes, even itchy, despite SPF 30.  So my joy continues.  I took two days off to let my face heal a bit, but couldn't resist getting one last afternoon of skiing in -- final day of the season for me.  AND it was GOOD.

Here's the photo of my happy, sore, cold face.  Pretty, NO?

Hang on, got to get some liquid sedative....

So tomorrow, I'm back to Phoenix and reality and trying to get back to normal -- at least I'm not washing everything every day any more.  I.  Re.  Fuse.  Looking forward to opening the Amazon purchases that I got myself last week and catching up with my friends and neighbors.  What up?!  to Luane and Rhonda, who have been doing a boot camp at the Y every morning at like 6 am or something even more insane and doing it for like 2-3 weeks.  OUCH.  My hat is off, ladies.  My butt remains in bed at that hour, but my hat is way off.

Next week:  Maybe I take P90X out of the box?  It could happen.

How to lose those last 5 pounds without even trying: the Frickin' Scabies diet.

Well, where to begin?  I'll start with the good news:  I'm down to ONE-OH-FIVE!!!!!!  Can you believe that sh!t?!  I cannot.  I would have been happy to hit my 107-108 goal.  But 105?!  That's my post-graduate weight, just without the muscle and with more wrinkles.  So, Mission Accomplished!  Now the trick is to keep it off.  And since I went through an entire BAG of Sprout's delicious "natural" cheese puffs today, I'm not optimistic.  BUT, my P90X system (Bring It!) arrived today.  And you will be hearing more from me and my P90X system (BRING IT!!).

The bad news?  OH, the friggin' bugs.  I lost 5 pounds because I've been in Hell with NO ice water for two weeks now.  I couldn't sleep, couldn't work, and haven't even WANTED to eat (except for that bag of cheese puffs I really wanted those this morning).  As you know, from my last post, I have to get up every morning, strip the bed, wash my sheets, blanket, and pillow, vacuum all over, shower and soak myself with all kinds of potions designed to either kill the microscopic mite bastards or soothe my poor besieged, burned, bumpy, and nearly-destroyed skin, (3X per day) and then clean everything I've touched.  I had to put trash bags over all my chairs, and my car seat, wash everything I use or bag it up immediately, wash the dog and everything the dog sits on daily, and had to buy a play pen for the dog, so that she doesn't sleep in the bed with me and act as a fomite.  (Look how the bugs have improved my vocabulary.)  After two horrible sleepless nights of topical pesticide cream that prevented me from scratching the incredible itch and from putting anything soothing on my body, I determined that the bugs are impervious to the topical pesticide.  In fact, I think they liked it.  Shit.  So I went to the Dr. for the internal bug bomb, known as Ivermectin, because I JUST COULDN'T FRICKIN' TAKE IT ANY MORE!  I was (and still am) an itchy sore, red, sleep-deprived basket case.  That photo doesn't actually do my allergic-to-nasty-microscopic-bugs rash justice -- my skin is actually like twice as bad today, since that photo was taken yesterday.  Hopefully it gets a bit worse as it's getting better.  Anyway, I took that stuff last night, but I don't think that it killed all of the little ba$stards either.  Will find out when I attempt to sleep tonight.  And, even more fun, the intolerably itchy rash is supposed to continue, even after the bugs are gone, for another 4-8 weeks.  Good God.  I've been afflicted with the F'in plague.  No one deserves this.  It is really, really awful.  Anyway, I'ma try not to dwell on how bad it is and give you something positive:  demodex mites, aka eyelash or face mites.  Look 'em up, boys and girls, because, guess what?  YOU probably have them too!!  Oh yes, you do!  You've got both dust mites AND face mites.  So there.  You just don't have the scabies mite, that I like to call Satan's scarab.  The one bright spot in the bug battle, is that the sulfur cream that burned my neck and upper torso actually cleared up the demodex mite population around my eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and ears.  I had issues that I didn't even know they were causing, and my skin (on my face anyway) hasn't looked this good since I was 11.  Now if I could only get some sleep.  Gonna have to go get another glass of liquid red sedative.  It's available at most grocers -- just ask for "cabernet sauvignon."

Will blog again when I'm feeling better and have good news and fitness progress to report.