I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

I AM LEAVING THAT TITLE MY GOD I AM BRILLIANT.

Okay, so with the new job came new, normal hours.  Yay, evenings with the boys!  Boo, lost my prime walking time.  For the past 6 months I have had a hell of a time figuring out how to get some cardio back into my routine (and boy howdy, I did not realize just how much the cardio was working.  Things are fitting differently without it, and I do not like it.  I try not to get obsessed with the scale, because that only leads to not-so-great places in my brain, but I've not got money for a new wardrobe).  I tried adding extra stuff to the yoga, but all that did was make me not want to do yoga.  So last week I was considering how I tend to sleep, and I decided since I'm usually awake at 6 anyway, I might as well haul myself out of bed and do 20 minutes of biking before work.

So yesterday was Day 1 of that.  I get up, get the workout clothes on, lace up the shoes, grab the phone and the earbuds, don my helmet, wheel the bike out.

I get on the bike, start to pedal, and the gears slip (I think), my foot comes off the pedal, I have no balance at that point, we all know exactly how klutzy I am; I ripped my ACL climbing onto a jet ski, and I wipe out in the driveway before I even get started.  I cushioned the bike's fall, though.  Yay?

So now I am covered in road rash.  Let's see--the left knee, that has taken all the trauma since I was nine?  Badly skinned as a child, ACL surgery, skinned again during the Rafting Trip O' Doom in North Carolina when we all fell out of the boat?  Yeah, major nasty scrape all over that.  Also some to the side of it.  Left elbow is scraped all to hell.  I scraped the last three knuckles of my left hand.  I also, somehow, got part of my right ankle.  I have some interesting bruises along my back and ribs.

BUT I AM NOTHING IF NOT HARD CORE!  I took my morning bike ride, baby!  And it was nice.  A burrowing owl swooped thisclose to my face; I listened to "Tiny Dancer" as the sun came up. I was not eaten by a cougar.

Once I got home, Scott helped to patch me up and off I went to the doctor.  This is a new doctor, and she and I have been in discussions regarding my lack of spleen and what that means for my bloodwork results (yay, constant high white cell count); yesterday she was reassured that, yes, this is normal for me, so I'm glad about that.

But.  There is always a but.  I have a nice vitamin D deficiency going.

(waits for the "Whaaaa?" to fade out.  Also points out this is the second round of bloodwork, so I'm feeling pretty confident in the results.)

That's right, all you pale-skinned northern kids can take your porcelain complections and go home--I'm so hardcore I have a vitamin D deficiency in the goddamned sunshine state.  If I wasn't honorary goth before, I am now.

The googling about what lack of vitamin D can cause was quite interesting--I am most looking forward to the possibility that I'll be able to sleep through the night again once this gets straightened out--and I'm on a once a week dose of prescription vitamin D.  This might take a year to regulate (woot?), but that just means an entire year of inappropriate "D" jokes from David and Jason, so hey.

There are a gazillion possible reasons as to how or why I am, in this way, deficient as a human.  I have no idea what really caused it: my tendency toward layering?  My lack of exterior windows at this job and the last one?  Too much sunblock?  Age and weight? My hatred of the hideous light of the daystar​? Who knows.

So, in the end, that's me.  Everything hurts, possibly because of lack of ... um ... D (heheheheh), certainly because I remain a klutz, but my sense of humor is intact and I get out of "let the child climb on you like a human jungle gym" until the scabs clear up.

The scoop on Scott and I meeting Alton Brown is up over on WP (with footnotes. After a day of jury duty--which is certainly our most depressing civic duty, if nothing else--I am too tired to cross-post and deal with footnotes).

If you don't know who Alton Brown is ... well, there's a link. As the paperboy fish on Spongebob says, "Arm yourself with knowledge."

So that was a long, godawful weekend.

On Friday, my dad went into the hospital because he was feeling short of breath and kind of odd in one arm. In the end, it turns out his heart went into a-fib, so it wasn't pumping enough blood, or not pumping it properly, or something like that--it was weird, and not good, but it wasn't a heart attack and the doctors all felt it can be controlled with medicine and diet change.

The "best" part of this was that he and Mom had the Zweeble that night, because Scott and I were at Jason's birthday dinner. However, the Zweeb was a champ about the whole thing. He usually comes through when you need him to, though seeing Pop hooked up to a whole bunch of machines made him a little uncomfortable, so he asked to go to the car to get his stuffed animal. That was when we arrived. And if you think that drive from Sarasota to Englewood was fun, I'd have to inform you otherwise.

Saturday was spent here, awaiting word. Overall the word was good, but I was working with about three hours of sleep, so after a certain point, everything seemed like hell on earth anyway. Jason came over, though, which made things much easier to deal with. I'm not sure how many crises he's been here for, now, but it's more than one.

Dad came home Saturday, and everything looks good. He feels fine, he's on the new meds, he has doctor's instructions for what to do if he has another episode, so good on that.

Sunday was a not-so-unusual rough day with the five-year-old, but when you add it on top of the rest of the weekend, it really sucked. Though we tried out some new ways to deal with him that seemed to work, overall, so that's a good thing.

Ugh.

Also in there was Jason's birthday dinner, which was fun (especially his "no, really, I think I'm going to turn around and leave" surprised face), and my contract from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and cake, so the entire weekend didn't totally suck. This morning is a mental health morning.

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And again I see reports of LJ's eventual demise ... although I sort of think it's not going to die off, per se, so much as become an all-Russia/Singapore site at some point. But whatever, it's the internet, nothing lasts forever (well, it's all cached, but people are lazy so it's the same sort of thing). I seriously hate Facebook, though. I think, if LJ dies off, I'll go be the oldest person on Tumblr. It's pretty, and posting photos is easier. :)

But I suppose I'm here rearranging the deck chairs 'til the bitter end.

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Now, off to read and read and read until it's time to go to work. Mental health morning, away!