Doldrums

It's mid-January and I'm bored. Or lethargic. Or something other than enthusiastic.

I finally got around to taking the decorations off the Christmas tree yesterday. They're boxed but not put away. Yet.

I've tried crocheting. I'm not satisfied with the outcome. And I'm a damn good crocheter! But I have no enthusiasm.

I'm working on a jigsaw puzzle. Usually, when I'm doing a puzzle, it supercedes everything else. I get up early and stay up late just to work on the puzzle. But this one just isn't moving me. Oh, it isn't the puzzle. It's the ennui.

My Kindle sits idle. I've started reading three books and abandoned each after only a handful of pages. No focus.

I need a few things from the store, but I'm delaying the trip. Just don't want to gather up the list and the coupons and the money and the gift cards and...well, I'm just not feeling it.

So I eat. More than I should. And it's too bloody cold to go out and walk, so the pounds are creeping back. Those pounds that I worked so hard to lose last Spring.

I did have a doctor appointment yesterday. It was a follow-up to my December visit for my SOB attack. And apparently my health is okay. At least as far as can be determined externally. (We all know now that stuff can grow unseen in the dark and not be found until one is very, very, very sick)

I take my medication every day. I read the paper - well, parts of the paper. Much of it is too depressing or of no interest. I keep up with the dishes and if pressed, I'll go so far as to run the Hoover.

It's the middle of January and on reflection, I think I feel this way every middle of January. I'm pretty sure it will pass. In the meantime, yaaawwwnnn

An Anniversary

Three years ago today, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Surgery removed the tumor. Six months of chemotherapy was an effort to stave off a recurrence. Tests, tests and more tests were performed to determine if the above worked.

Thus far, all looks well. I have a team of medicine men taking good care of me. They drag me into their offices a couple of times a year to make sure I'm still vertical. They order blood work and CT scans. Also mammograms, which I would have been doing even without a cancer history.

My digestive system is the only indicator that something happened in there. In all likelihood, it will never return to the pre-Ca days. I'm still learning to live with that. And the key word here is "live".

Happy New Year

I promised myself that I would try to do better this year. I thought I would make an effort to add a little something to this page every day of 2012. You see how that worked out?

I also promised myself that I would lose that last 15 pounds. The pounds that left off getting lost when I got sick with a strange breathing disturbance (okay, my COPD kicked in) and had to take prednisone for 10 days. Ever take prednisone? It's a type of steroid - not the anabolic kind that athletes take - and it has a strange effect on me. It makes me eat. I'm not really hungry. I just want to eat. So I put on a couple of pounds while the prednisone was coursing around in my body. Then Christmas was here and there was a lot of eating just because there was so much around to eat. Now, just so you know, it really was only a couple, well, three, pounds. But when I went on the losing weight quest back in May, I was aiming for a reduction of 30-ish pounds. I had only dropped 15 when I filled my prescription for prednisone, so I have to work on losing the rest. If I can make myself as motivated as I was last year, I should be at my goal by end-of- February-mid-March-the-latest. The weather is supposed to be 40s-50s all week so I should be able to get back into the walk-every-day mode.

And if I don't get to that point by mid-March, well, maybe I can at least do better with coming here on a regular basis. For now, I guess it's time to start putting away the Christmas decor. I didn't really go crazy putting stuff up so I don't have a lot to take down. I was pretty happy with the tree. I only put glass hearts and glass drops on the tree with white lights. I thought it was understated and elegant.

So a week into the new year and I have my goals. Let's see how well I do.