It seriously doesn’t count – at all – if you turn the machine up to some ridiculously high resistance level and then use your arms to basically support all of your weight while you flail your legs underneath you.

That’s about as effective as sitting on the back of a tandem bike, letting your legs go around, but never actually exerting the effort to pedal.

My tip: turn down the resistance level and actually DO the workout.

I had a doctor’s appointment today for what I believe is an ulcer again. Got some meds. Am happy about this. But.. my blood pressure was high. Not going to kill me immediately, but not something I want to sustain.

My doctor wanted to start me on meds immediately. I told him no. I have a bunch of reasons why I said no; none of that needs to be written out here and can mostly be summed up as, “I don’t like taking meds and I am stubborn” with a touch of the crazy thrown in for good measure.

He stared at me.

I stared back.

He told me I have 30 days – 4 weeks – in which to prove to him that I do not need meds. He’s given me the target of taking 4 points off of my systolic number.

THIS oughta’ be fun, no?

Edited to add some things:

- I have a family history of high blood pressure (for which medication was used and no lifestyle changes whatsoever) and heart disease and all those other awful things – so I do take this very seriously.

- One of the side effects of the ulcer is that I am ridiculously – wildly, crazily, unfathomably – bloated. I literally can’t take a deep breath. This doesn’t help with blood pressure.

- The doctor was very rushed when he said he wanted to prescribe the meds; I am not going to take anything, at all, for any length of time, without a discussion.

- In the past, I have had white coat hypertension (as evidenced by the variance in pressure between home and doctor’s office)

- I have been off of my gym routine, thanks to the two surgeries and the six week plague-from-hell. I am now back at it and, I think, that will help lower things. Really, I’ve been lazy and I need to stop being lazy and get back into the habit again and stay in the habit.

- If, after 4 weeks, my pressure isn’t down, I will discuss the meds with the doctor and, if he still feels it’s a good idea, I’ll take them.

Today is a PD day for the younger two kids – I am working from home today, save for a chunk of the afternoon where I have to be at one of our outreach locations for an hour.

This morning, after Oldest One was out the door and the younger two were awake and eating breakfast, I reminded the kids that I was working from home – so, despite my physical presence, they should not expect me to be attentive and should try to keep the volume down inside the house. I am available for urgent issues – otherwise they need to follow the usual rules and routines. I suggested they go sledding.

I usually start working before 9 am when I’m at home – because I recognize that there will be a few unavoidable interruptions. Today I was working a bit before 8 am.

Between 9:30 and 11:30 – a span of two hours – I have been interrupted for the following very urgent questions/situations:

- a child who has been told to wear snowpants for sledding informed me that he has no idea where his snowpants actually are and then stood outside in the snow weeping because he couldn’t go sledding without them.

- the dogs needed to go out, and back in, and out, and back in. It’s cold, y’see, so they don’t want to stay outside long enough to actually do what needs to be done… but, once inside and thawed, they realize that they do still need to pee and, ohmygod, now it’s urgent.

- the internet stopped working and I had to text Coffee to kick start it for me

- one kid came to ask if I could make him some hot chocolate

- the other kid came to ask if he could make some hot chocolate for himself

- a kid showed up to ask if he could make his lunch earlier than usual

- a kid came to ask if he could play on his laptop for an hour or two

- a kid came to tell me that his brother did not sign out of the playroom when he was finished in there

- an hour after eating it, a kid came to tell me how good the oatmeal was this morning and to thank me for making it for him

- Saul Goodman started making piteous mewing sounds that caused me to go looking for him because I thought he was locked in a room. He was sitting on the stairs and seemed pleased to see me when I finally ‘found’ him.

- I had to hide all of the bodies in the freezer

I feel better now that I’ve taken an actual scheduled, planned break. Jeeeez. It’s a miracle I’ve gotten anything done at all today – but I’ve been surprisingly productive.

Clearly the ADD has some benefits.

“It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.” — Mr. Rogers

There are many garbage receptacles in the women’s change room at the gym; there’s one in every little alcove, one in the shower area, one in each changing area (there are 3 areas), two in the washroom area, and one in the entry/exitway of the change room itself.

In other words, they’re accessible and available.

They are also mostly empty.

For some inexplicable reason, the benches in the changing areas almost always have five or six half-empty disposable water bottles sitting on them. Abandoned.

There is always an empty bottle of shampoo, or shower gel, in one of the shower stalls. Sometimes two.

There are half-used bars of soap left behind in soap trays in the showers. Sometimes just wrappers from bars of soap.

I do not understand this. I could see this sort of thing happening if the garbage pails were few and far between – people are lazy (oh, the irony of lazy people at the gym!). I could see this sort of thing happening if the garbage pails were inconvenient or hard to use (?) or overflowing with trash.

But.. they’re not.

That said, there are never paper towels on the floor or kleenexes. There are never hair brushes or clothing left behind. No tampon wrappers in the bathroom area, littering the floor. No clumps of hair in the sink. No magazines or newspapers left on the benches.

And everything else is clean – the mirrors are streak-free, the showers have no mildew, the floors are washed.

The change rooms are regularly cleaned by the staff; I’ve seen them come in and tidy up and scrub things down. It just reaccumulates.

I don’t understand this.

You’re now an official member of our family. May you always be as content as you are in the following photo, taken while you were falling asleep and purring in the kitty yurt.

Saul Goodman

Coffee and I went out to pick up some groceries today and stopped at a local pharmacy to get shampoo and face wash. The cashier – who recognizes us and is quite friendly – asked how the kids were doing. We joked around a little and then she mentioned that one of her kids (the eldest) is biological and the other two were adopted.

We noted that our three were adopted and she smiled and proceeded to tell us all about the horrors of her experience with childbirth and how she immediately had her tubes tied after that kid was born – hence, the adoption.

I was thinking to myself how refreshing this conversation was – despite wanting to get out of the store with our purchases – because she didn’t attempt to bring “the magic of birth” into the story or tell us that it was “all worth it!” or anything else along those lines. In fact, she specifically noted that “seeing [her] new little baby” did not do anything for her in terms of making it all worthwhile – it remained the worst experience of her life.

I mean, she flat-out said that she got her tubes tied right afterward because IT WAS THAT BAD.

And that’s when another random customer got involved and started talking about how incredibly awful her labour was – more than 50 hours – and how it was totally unnatural it is to try to shove something THAT BIG through the vagina.

She half-yelled the part about her vagina.

I was giddy. Vagina-talk in public AND openly going against the common blissful childbirth stories? Awesome.

Yes, the conversation went on far longer than we’d have preferred, but man.. it was nice. It was seriously nice to hear two people admit that the entire thing sucked and not try to claim otherwise. Refreshing, even.

Hunting.. from the window ledge.

Yesterday we added a new cat to our family brought home a foster cat. He’s a tiny, but gangly, little guy who does not seem particularly concerned about much of anything. He’s been wandering around the house like he’s always lived here. His name is Ernie, in theory, but I’ve been calling him Saul Goodman – or ‘s all good, man – because he’s the sort of cat who can help you with your legal woes.

The reactions of the other resident creatures has been interesting to say the least. Daisy, after the first swipe Saul Goodman took at her nose, has been completely uninterested. She looks at him, and then basically wanders away to chew on something.

Zooey has pretty much been non-stop barking because OHMYGODTHERE’SANOTHERCATINTHEHOUSEDOYOUPEOPLEKNOWTHIS?! I’ll be crating her for the morning, while I’m at work, and praying that I can get through an afternoon conference call without her getting hysterical in the background. (“What’s that? No, I don’t hear that howling noise.. Maybe we have a bad connection?”)

Isadore VonFluffypants-Maru, however, is mad. She’s been yowling and growling and snarling and hissing at poor Saul Goodman. (He doesn’t seem to be concerned and, this morning, even hissed back at her – which she found a bit shocking, I think. He just keeps running past her, crawling into her crack-pipe box..and otherwise making her mad.) Maru has been alternating between pouting and anger, parking her butt on the kitchen counter for a bit and refusing to eat treats. Then grudgingly taking the treats. Then being mad again.

We told the kids that we were fostering Saul Goodman for a while – an unknown amount of time – so that, if everyone didn’t get along, we wouldn’t be breaking anyone’s heart by returning him. A good plan, except that one of the kids has already basically suggested that we’d be idiots not to take this ‘kick ass cat!’ and offered to chip in $100 of his savings to pay for the adoption fee. Right. I think he’s on to us.

At any rate, other than the theatrical yowlings of Maru explaining to us all the ways in which we have ruined her life, things seem to be going well. So far we’ve only got a few camera-phone photos of our new family member our temporary guest, but you can see a bunch of really, really good pictures here. Let’s be honest: those are probably the best you’ll ever see of him, given his new owners’ temporary captors’ skill with a camera.