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There’s an article in the New York Times that attempts to stop people from lecturing other people about skipping breakfast by pointing out that basically all the research and messaging is flawed, and that we probably need to start over.

The headline tells us that breakfast is not magical, but I’m here to tell you that indeed it is magical.

If I don’t get breakfast of some kind, you get nothin’

That’s right. If I don’t get breakfast of some kind, (and as far as I’m concerned, coffee counts as breakfast), you get nothin’. No code, no support, no accessible all the things, nothin’. I stay completely unmotivated until something goes in my face hole. That something could be just coffee, or coffee with some food. But they’re both breakfast, and since this is what keeps me (a) doing all the things and (b) not murdering everyone around me, breakfast is therefore still magical!

Seriously though, read the article.

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As a rule, I can’t complain. My ears work fine, and I haven’t had any problems since 2005. That streak is apparently over. I woke up Friday morning with muffled hearing on the left side, and pain. Out of the blue, because everything was working fine on Thursday, but whatever. So I called the doctor, went in in, learned that I had an ear infection, and afterwords went and got anti-biotic eardrops and anti-biotic pills. Things stayed the same for the weekend, but that sort of thing takes time, so I figured no big deal. Until yesterday morning. Now both ears are hosed. I can’t hear out of either of them, so I’m having to do everything using a braille display because no sound, or very little, and it’s gotten worse. I could still hear sort of yesterday, but it was hard. But by yesterday afternoon, absolutely nothing, and both ears are swollen and there’s lots of pain shooting through my head. Admittedly, I freaked out a little, because I depend on my hearing, a lot. So it’s really hard to deal with complete silence and ringing when you’re not used to it, and I’ve been bumping into a lot of shit because it’s hard to navigate. I know my deaf and hard-of-hearing friends deal with this all the time, but when you’re not used to it some new challenges are presented and I ask my deaf and hard-of-hearing friends to be patient with me until this is fixed, which will hopefully be tomorrow, because if the doctor doesn’t have any openings, then it’s Urgent Care World time, and I don’t care how long I have to wait. I’m pretty particular about keeping my ears cleaned out, which is probably why this hasn’t happened in such a long time. So I suppose I should be thankful for that at least. I wonder if they’ll use the hook this time. Last time, that’s what it took to fix it, along with enough anti-biotics to kill several science experiments. Someone needs to hurry up and invent that easy button, so when shit like this happens I can just press it and everything’s back to normal. I briefly thought about sending Denise an email to ask if I could borrow her Dison so I could put it up to my ears and turn it on so hopefully it would just suck everything out. But she probably wouldn’t let me do it because it would be dangerous, and I’m exhausted because I haven’t been able to sleep very well, and these are the sort of nonsensical things that pop into my head when I’m sleep-deprived. Of course first and second Seder didn’t happen. And 9AM can’t get here fast enough. And I feel like I’d like to launch a drone strike against my ears because they’re not being good citizens and making things difficult. But hopefully this will be fixed soon and I can get back to my normal life.

 

Until next time.

 

Evans, Georgia, United States
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I did not make it to the gym today. Still dealing with the crud. Cough, hack, cough, hack. Our bad weather isn’t supposed to get here until after 11 tomorrow morning, so I may get in there tomorrow, but I’ll definitely be coasting. I skipped breakfast, ate some lunch, and had a little dinner. I wasn’t very hungry today. Oh well, here’s to a better tomorrow.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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As I mentioned previously in my last Badd Weight Watcher post, I was hoping to lose one pound, which would have ensured that I arrived at my current goal of a ten percent weight loss. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t lose that one pound. I was up 0.8 pounds when I went to last Saturday’s Weight Watchers meeting. But there was an intangible victory to go with it. I have a pair of jeans which, (when I first got them), didn’t fit. Then, as I progressed, they fit, but were tighter than I would have liked. Now, they are still a little tight, but not a problem to wear all day. I didn’t go yesterday because I’ve managed to come down with the crud in the form of a cold, complete with a cough. I’m feeling a little better today, but everything still tastes weird and breathing is difficult. I slept a good chunk of yesterday away, and got up later than I usually do this morning as well. I’m hoping I feel a little better so I can make my workout tomorrow afternoon, because I didn’t get any workout time in last week. The plan for this week is to of course eat reasonably well, and workout Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Since I missed working out last week, I’m not going to try to go whole hog and work out five days this week, and I will probably coast at least tomorrow. But that will depend on how I’m feeling when I get on the machine. If I get on the machine and start going and am feeling like the Zone is a good place to be, then it’s on and no coasting. But I won’t know that until tomorrow. And of course, barring the crud, I’ll be at next week’s Weight Watchers meeting and will hopefully have lost what I need to in order to reach my ten percent goal. Denise will be back, and she’ll have the new puppy with her, and knowing her will probably have lost a ton, which will make me slightly jealous.

Basis released some new sleep metrics this week. Now, not only can we track how much sleep we got, we can also look at how much REM, deep and light sleep we got in a night along with how many tosses and turns there were. I looked at this for the first time yesterday, and was surprised as how bad my sleep Friday night actually looked. Twenty-eight tosses and turns, sixteen percent REM (which is apparently OK), and the rest light sleep. That would probably explain why I slept so much yesterday. I think four hours or so of sleep were recorded for Friday night, then I got up for a while and then went back to sleep. I haven’t looked at today’s data, but I seem to have slept better last night and, although still tired today, I’m feeling more rested. I suppose I’ll see once I run the numbers. I went to bed late last night, so tonight I’ll probably go to bed earlier and try to get myself back to my normal waking time of around 6 in the morning by the end of this week.

I’ll end here for now, and hope that next week’s report will show better results all around. Until next time.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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This has been one of those days. It’s the kind of day where you know before you even get out of bed that you are going to have a serious spoon shortage. (don’t worry, I’ll explain what I mean by spoons in this post, so keep reading). And not only is there going to be a shortage, it’s going to be severe, and it might even be a spoon deficit. When you wake up and you realize that getting out of bed is going to be hard today. And thinking is going to be hard. And so is eating, or reading, or paying attention, or anything else that would still allow you to classify yourself as a useful human being.

Why do I keep referring to spoons?

As promised, here is the spoon explanation. You can read the original exposition of the Spoon Theory here, but in case you don’t want to click the link, here’s a breakdown. This theory applies if you have one of those invisible illnesses. The ones that get you the “you-don’t-look-sick” treatment.

Imagine you start your day with twelve spoons. Some days you might have less, but we’ll keep it simple for now. Now imagine that there’s another person. A real hard-ass who will take your spoons without mercy. Each task you have to do during the day, (and this includes waking up), costs you a spoon. And because there’s this hard-ass waiting to take your spoons, once you use one, you don’t get it back. OK, so cracking open your eyes costs a spoon. Getting in the shower, shaving and everything that goes with showering costs you another spoon. Then you have to eat. And there goes another spoon. Work? Let’s not talk about work. Just know that you could end up using a lot of your spoons doing that. Then you get to the end of the day and you only have a couple spoons left. You still have to cook, then eat, then clean up, and possibly do stuff around the house. And you’d like to do something fun. But you’re limited on spoons so you have to make a choice about what you’re going to do. You can borrow spoons from tomorrow, but then you have to figure out how to get tomorrow done with les spoons.

So back to today. Today, there were very few spoons. Getting out of bed was hard, getting lunch was hard. By t, things had gone totally downhill. I ate some yogurt for dinner because I didn’t feel like doing anything else, and wasn’t really hungry. And bedtime will be in a few minutes. As soon as I finish this post. Which has taken me close to two hours to write, and not because of a serious amount of thinking. I really hope tomorrow is better. Wil and Denise are coming over, and we’re supposed to go out and have some fun, which I’m looking very forward to. And Pesach starts tomorrow night, and there’s the Seder. So I’m not canceling tomorrow. But for today at least, everything sucks.

Evans, Georgia, United States